https://shifti.org/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=BryanShifti - User contributions [en]2026-04-22T11:41:30ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.46.0-alphahttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Talk:Male_Model&diff=19747Talk:Male Model2022-07-15T03:51:13Z<p>Bryan: Gosh, thanks!</p>
<hr />
<div>==Transgender==<br />
It's strange, because this story very emphatically isn't about a trans woman. It's about a man, if anything in the exact opposite situation, and often using understandably-for-the-time old-fashioned language, a man that would probably, from the text, consider me more of a freak than he considers himself.<br />
But the way you describe those feelings of daring, realising you're not the centre of attention if you don't want to be, the excitement of a well-fitting bra and the panic at the merest hint of being outed? The cis friend making it all fun and friendly and safe, even? I feel extremely seen, certainly much more so than I was expecting to.<br />
Plus, I'm a big fan of Xanadu and this one in particular analyses the setting in some fun ways, which is cool.<br />
Awesome work!<br />
--[[User:Nitro~Nina|Nitro~Nina]] ([[User talk:Nitro~Nina|talk]]) 12:29, 9 July 2022 (CDT)<br />
<br />
: Well, gosh, thanks! It's pretty neat to know that even after all these years these old stories still get read and appreciated. And I'm especially pleased that the thing that came out prominently was the characterization, I always liked focusing on that part of the transformation. Glad you enjoyed it. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] ([[User talk:Bryan|talk]]) 22:48, 14 July 2022 (CDT)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Template_talk:Separator&diff=18650Template talk:Separator2015-05-22T02:55:00Z<p>Bryan: /* New Separator Type */ Sure, just make sure not to break it</p>
<hr />
<div>== New Separator Type ==<br />
<br />
I beta-tested how a new separator type ('&#xFF5E;&bull;&#xFF5E;,' or a bullet with full-width tildes to either side,) in [http://shifti.org/index.php?title=User:RandomDSdevel/Sandbox/Works_in_Progress/Stories/When_Worlds_Collide%3F!%3F&oldid=18415 an early revision of a story I'm working on], and I think it looks kind of nice. Can it be added as a separator type? <br /><br />
—&thinsp;[[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 17:06, 27 February 2015 (EST)<br />
:Could I maybe add the new separator type I proposed myself? <br />
:—&thinsp;[[User:RandomDSdevel|RandomDSdevel]] ([[User talk:RandomDSdevel|talk]]) 20:09, 21 May 2015 (EDT)<br />
:: It's a wiki, go ahead and give it a try. Just make sure to check if you've broken the template's other uses and roll back your change if you do. :) If you're literally wanting to use those text characters as the separator rather than ''images'' of the text characters, though, it might make more sense to create a separate template for it. Just glancing at the code it doesn't look like there's an obvious way to fit two completely different types of separator in here. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] ([[User talk:Bryan|talk]]) 21:55, 21 May 2015 (CDT)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Bryan%27s_picks&diff=16607Bryan's picks2013-02-01T04:49:24Z<p>Bryan: oh, silly me. all I needed to do was the <table> tags.</p>
<hr />
<div><div class="floatright"><br />
{{BP legend}}<br />
''[[Talk:Bryan's picks|Leave a comment...]]''<br />
</div>{{favorites list}}<br />
"Bryan's picks" is a list of stories on Shifti that I, [[User:Bryan|Bryan]], has picked as being of particularly good quality both in terms of technical execution (formatting, spelling, etc) and in terms of writing.<br />
<br />
If you've posted a story on Shifti that I haven't included here don't worry, I may have not even read it yet. The gold stars are assigned based on personal taste and are even more subjective, so they shouldn't be taken as anything other than a sign of my own hubris. I may even reassign gold stars at some point as my tastes shift over time. Other users are encouraged to create their own lists and make their own editorial decisions; I'm doing this solely as a user, not as an administrator.<br />
<br />
Note that I have high technical standards; a few incorrect "your/you're"s is sufficient to warrant the "needs copyediting" icon and a story that still looks like a rough draft won't be added here at all even if it's otherwise complete. I am happy to provide editing assistance myself, or for general assistance requests try the [[editor's corner]].<br />
<br />
==New additions==<br />
<br />
New additions remain in this section for at least a week before being moved into sections by subject.<br />
<br />
February 2:<br />
*[[User:Ermine/Jessica's Mouse|Jessica's Mouse]] by [[User:Ermine|Ermine]] - Andrew doesn't like Jessica's mouse, or Jessica for that matter, but the mouse likes him. {{BP modmagic}}<br />
<br />
<br clear="all"/><br />
<br />
==Bryan's picks==<br />
<br />
<table border="1" rules="rows" frame="above" style="border-color:#ccc;"><br />
{{BP header1|Animal TFs|top=true}}<br />
{{BP header2|Canine, lupine and vulpine}}<br />
<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title= [[User:Erastus/The Effect of Spotted Clothes|The Effect of Spotted Clothes]]<br />
|author= [[User:Erastus|Erastus Centaur]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= A love story about a boy and his dog. Set in the Barken, Texas universe, but previous knowledge of it isn't needed.}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Free]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|author= [[User:Xodiac|Xodiac]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= Buddhists should learn Morse code.}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|icons={{BP short}}<br />
| title=[[User:Virmir/Spells of Brigervan|Spells of Brigervan]]<br />
|author= [[User:Virmir|Virmir]]<br />
| blurb=Bryce's life flashes before his eyes.<br />
|genre={{BP fant}}}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Posti/Where Wolf|Where Wolf]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|blurb= Clever werewolf, feral werehuman}}<br />
<br />
{{BP header2|Cervine}}<br />
<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Escape]]<br />
|author=[[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb=The alien invaders have vastly superior technology, but humans have an advantage that the aliens simply don't understand.}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|icons={{BP star}}{{BP illo}}<br />
|title=[[Forest Life]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author=[[User:Bryan|Bryan]]<br />
|blurb=The elevator stopped at a most unexpected floor. A long transformation ensues.}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Hunter's Moon]]<br />
|author= [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]<br />
|genre= {{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= Some types of lycanthrope stalk their prey in an unusual way.}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/It's in the Skin|It's in the Skin]]<br />
|icons={{BP short}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author=[[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= A quick little tale showing why one should make sure one can trust one's suppliers.}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Erastus/Summer Job|Summer Job]]<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
|author=[[User:Erastus|Erastus Centaur]]<br />
|blurb= Spending summer in a national park isn't a bad way to earn some money.}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Swift of Foot and Hoof|Swift of Foot and Hoof]]<br />
|icons= {{BP star}}{{BP illo}}<br />
|author= [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|blurb= Morlith discovers a brand new spell of a sort never seen before. The only way to be sure what it does is to cast it, and then the challenge for him and his apprentice becomes figuring out how to reverse its effects.<br />
|genre={{BP fant}}}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/Who gets the Dreamers?|Who gets the Dreamers?]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= Team 18 scores a major catch! Go team!}}<br />
<br />
{{BP header2|Equine}}<br />
<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Arms and Armor]]<br />
|icons={{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]<br />
|blurb= A curator at a museum discovers a peculiar suit of medieval armor, or perhaps barding; it looks like both.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title= [[User:Posti/Baylors Rein|Baylor's Rein]]<br />
|author= [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|blurb= A wayward Prince will do anything to have his own way - even if it means using risky magic.<br />
|genre={{BP fant}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Best Laid Plans|Best Laid Plans]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|genre= {{BP comedy}}<br />
|author= [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|blurb= Plot and counterplot between old friends - who's fooling who?<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title= [[User:Posti/Companion|Companion]]<br />
|author= [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= Aaron's life slowly starts to change. Who's responsible?<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Leasara/Dark_Horizons|Dark Horizons]]<br />
|icons= {{BP sex}}{{BP short}}<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
|author= [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]<br />
|blurb= A straightforward description of a straightforward bioweapon test.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title= [[User:FelixSagittarius/Gaia%27s_Rain|Gaia's Rain]]<br />
|author= [[User:FelixSagittarius|Felix Sagittarius]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= I believe Gaia's policies are deeply misguided, but at least we get some nice TFs out of them.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title= [[User:Posti/Gypsy Gold|Gypsy Gold]]<br />
|author= [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb=A murdered Gypsy's ghost wants his rightful property restored.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title= [[User:Posti/Hoof Beat|Hoof Beat]]<br />
|author= [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|blurb= A human cop insults a pompus elf and gets predictably cursed. But even magic wears down with time.<br />
|genre={{BP fant}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|icons={{BP star}}<br />
|title=[[User:Posti/Jacked into the System|Jacked into the System]]<br />
|author=[[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|blurb=Jake got a 'deal' on his BodMod suit - and finds out that the price tag is a lot higher than expected.<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Posti/Lasting Impression|Lasting Impression]]<br />
|icons={{BP short}}<br />
|author=[[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|blurb=A couple of clever thieves run into a cleverer Wizard.<br />
|genre={{BP fant}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Long Ride into Morning|Long Ride into Morning]]<br />
|author= [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= A man and his mare get their bodies swapped for a year by a chance encounter with a fay. Both are eager to swap back, but complications arise.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[The Long Shadow]]<br />
|icons= {{BP star}}{{BP long}}<br />
|genre= {{BP fant}}<br />
|author= [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]<br />
|blurb= A reluctant knight goes off to war and gets tangled up in a battle of magics. An excellent depiction of the equine mind.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Major Problems|Major Problems]]<br />
|icons= {{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|blurb= Backpackers in France encounter a cursed abandoned farm. The aftereffects are with them for years.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Posti/No Bull|No Bull]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|blurb= A phooka tries to be helpful, in her own way.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/On The Couch|On The Couch]]<br />
|author= [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= Post-traumatic TF syndrome? Perhaps. A patient confides in his psychiatrist about the time he spends as a horse.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Posti/Simple life|Simple Life]]<br />
|author= [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|blurb= The King's tax assessor finds he's got a price on his head, and then decides he's fine with what his assassin has in mind.<br />
|genre={{BP fant}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Stable Home Life]]<br />
|author= [[User:Xodiac|Xodiac]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|genre= {{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= On the one hand, it's a trap. On the other hand, rent's cheaper than you thought.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Posti/Totally_Pucked|Totally Pucked]]<br />
|author=[[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= Puck has a bit of fun at the expense of an ass.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Translations|Translations]]<br />
|author= [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|genre= {{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= Jack's work on translating the spell was meticulous, the materials of utmost purity. But he got it inside out.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Tug of War|Tug of War]]<br />
|author= [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|genre= {{BP modmagic}}<br />
|icons={{BP star}}<br />
|blurb= An overly competitive man loses his title and Edward gets caught in the middle of the plots that ensue.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:MatthiasRat/An Unexpected Stop|An Unexpected Stop]]<br />
|icons={{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author=[[User:MatthiasRat|Charles Matthias]]<br />
|blurb= A broken-down car, a stay at a farmhouse, the love of the farmer's daughter; a classic tale well told, and with a nice ending.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Posti/Whicker Man|Whicker Man]]<br />
|icons={{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|blurb= While on a road trip in the back country of Ireland Kevin finds himself an unwilling guest of the locals. An extremely well described and drawn out transformation.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
{{BP header2|Aquatic}}<br />
<br />
{{BP row<br />
|icons={{BP star}}<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/How did the Ceolocanth REALLY Survive?|How did the Ceolocanth REALLY Survive?]]<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]|blurb= Thanks to shapeshifting, of course.<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/The Power of Suggestion|The Power of Suggestion]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb=The placebo effect is powerful indeed.<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Whale Jelly]]<br />
|author= [[User:Jedcurtis|Jed Curtis]] <br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= Not only does the spot removal creme fail to work, it causes significant weight gain as a side effect.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/You get what you Wished for|You get what you Wished for]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}{{BP illo}}<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= Starfleet knows what it's doing when it sends in the redshirts.<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
}}<br />
<br />
{{BP header2|Other}}<br />
<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Eyesore|Eyesore]]<br />
|icons={{BP short}}{{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|blurb= Haunted houses come in many forms and locations.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Leasara/Change_of_Flightplan|Change of Flightplan]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]<br />
|blurb= A quick tale illustrating a way to sidestep the bureaucracy at the border.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Leasara/Look_Before_You_Leopard|Look Before You Leopard]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}{{BP sex}}<br />
|author= [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]<br />
|blurb= An undercover agent tries to escape from his current assignment. The outcome is hinted at by the title.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/The Pantry is Bear|The Pantry is Bear]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|author= [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|genre={{BP comedy}}<br />
|blurb= A short about the trials and tribulations of a long-suffering husband.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title= [[User:Michael Bard/The Perils of Wereostrichdom|The Perils of Wereostrichdom]]<br />
|icons= {{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= A social worker means well, but really, who'd believe the truth?<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Puzzle Box|Puzzle Box]]<br />
|icons={{BP viol}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|blurb= A memorable and disturbing reptilian TF. A word to the wise; the old cliche of friendship overcoming all doesn't always hold true.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title= [[Testing The Waters]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|author= [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= A subtle magical trap in the woods draws its victims in but at least it's a nice place to settle down.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Leasara/Whiner's Dismissal|Whiner's Dismissal]]<br />
|author=[[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|blurb= A rare and special vintage shared at a wine tasting triggers a detailed change among all involved.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Leasara/What_You_Eat|What You Eat]]<br />
|author=[[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= Cooking could be considered a form of alchemy, after all. This gingerbread recipe marks an important accidental discovery in the field. <br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Witchhunt]]<br />
|icons={{BP long}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Bryan|Bryan]]<br />
|blurb= Sequel to [[Xanadu]]. Someone's gunning for Eric, and his friends Arthur and Felix get caught up in it.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
{{BP header1|Anthropomorphic}}<br />
<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Leasara/180_Meters|180 Meters]]<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
|author= [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]<br />
|blurb= A test of a deep-diving suit goes disastrously well.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Change Lady|Change Lady]]<br />
|author= [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb=Know when to stop asking!<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Colony]]<br />
|icons={{BP long}}{{BP star}}<br />
|author=[[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]<br />
|blurb=An alternate history where the New World has no native humans, and the magic of the land keeps it that way.<br />
|genre={{BP fant}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Doe's Hoof]]<br />
|icons= {{BP star}}<br />
|author= [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]<br />
|blurb= When a gnomish forest ranger riding a raven advises you not to leave the trail, don't. Origin story for the "Enchanted National Forest" setting.<br />
|genre={{BP fant}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/Down the Rabbit Hole|Down the Rabbit Hole]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}{{BP viol}}<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= Evil bunnies! Evil, evil bunnies!<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Far Indeed From Sherwood Forest]]<br />
|icons={{BP long}}{{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Xodiac|Xodiac]]<br />
|blurb= Robin Hood and Maid Mare-ian, now living on the pun in modern Florida. A Xanadu story.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|icons={{BP short}}<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Historical Revisionism|Historical Revisionism]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|blurb= A man gets a chance to rewrite history, but the result is a bit unexpected.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:JonBuck/A_Kind_of_Paradise|A Kind of Paradise]]<br />
|icons= {{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]<br />
|blurb= What if the world was going furry, and nobody noticed?<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael_Bard/My_Name_is...|My Name is...]]<br />
| icons={{BP short}}<br />
| author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
| blurb= Upon gaining superpowers, be extremely thoughtful about how you choose to first introduce yourself to the world.<br />
| genre ={{BP comedy}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Rabbit/Public_Domain|Public Domain]]<br />
|icons= {{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
|author= [[User:Rabbit|Phil Geusz]]<br />
|blurb= The power of perception gets magnified by the Internet until it defines its own reality. Best goldfish transformation I've ever read.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Rush Hour]]<br />
|author= [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]<br />
|blurb= A Winds of Change short, though you don't need to have read any others to follow this. Contains one of my favorite dino TFs.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/Slip Sliding Around|Slip Sliding Around]]<br />
|icons={{BP short}}<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= Quick and cute, illustrating a common problem of anthro TFs.<br />
|genre={{BP comedy}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Stages|Stages]]<br />
|author=[[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|blurb=The tale of Tim, a typical young man in college who endures a typical year in the life of the Paradise setting.<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:JonBuck/Tall Tales|Tall Tales]]<br />
|author= [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]<br />
|icons= {{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= Newly-minted furries and old hands alike get together in a furry convention to organize. A kind of critical mass is achieved. Sequel to [[User:JonBuck/A Kind of Paradise|A Kind of Paradise]].}}<br />
<br />
{{BP header1|Mythical TFs}}<br />
<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Posti/Bottom Up|Bottom Up]]<br />
|author=[[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= An old partnership from ancient Greece still holds firm to this day.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Leasara/Chain_Reaction|Chain Reaction]]<br />
|icons= {{BP sex}}{{BP short}}<br />
|author= [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]<br />
|blurb= The ultimate sexually transmitted disease.<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title= [[User:Posti/Cleaning Up|Cleaning Up]]<br />
|author= [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= A grad student working in a museum cleans up a set of pan pipes sealed over two thousand years ago, and discovers what was sealed within.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title= [[User:Leasara/An_Early_Spring_Night's_Dream|An Early Spring Night's Dream]]<br />
|icons= {{BP sex}}{{BP illo}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]<br />
|blurb= Charles and a fairy are both searching for something in the woods. Ill-advisedly, Charles agrees to assist.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/A Faerie Tale|A Faerie Tale]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= Offended fae take terrible vengeance, and then make it worse. A nice bittersweet little story.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Leasara/Free_Solo_Dragon|Free Solo Dragon]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}{{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]<br />
|blurb= A story that's inherently short; a mountain climber loses her grip on the rock face.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/Inspire Me|Inspire Me]]<br />
|author=[[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= If one can't find inspiration, giving it is not such a bad consolation.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|icons={{BP short}}<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/Keeping Secrets|Keeping Secrets]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author=[[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= If you have secrets you shouldn't assume you're the only one.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|icons={{BP star}}<br />
|title=[[The Limelight]]<br />
|author=[[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]<br />
|blurb= The magic of wisps mix with the magic of the stage. Set in the Wisp-touched universe.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|icons={{BP star}}{{BP sex}}<br />
|title=[[User:Posti/Mortal Danger|Mortal Danger]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author=[[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|blurb=A boat trip into the wilds results in a whole passle of shapeshifting, including an interesting version of the satyr/dryad dynamic.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/Mythic Journeys - Part 1|Mythic Journeys Part 1]] and [[User:Michael Bard/Mythic Journeys - Part 2|Part 2]]<br />
|author=[[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= An epic-length story featuring many Greek myths and transformations, and a few others besides.<br />
|genre= {{BP fant}}<br />
|icons={{BP long}}{{BP viol}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|icons=<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/Of Love and Hate|Of Love and Hate]]<br />
|author=[[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]] |blurb= Also of good and evil. A bittersweet tale that touches on the concept of absolute and relative morality.<br />
|genre={{BP fant}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|icons={{BP long}}<br />
|title=[[Olympus]]<br />
|author=[[User:Bryan|Bryan]]<br />
|blurb= In 1935 magic swept out into the world and devastated civilization. A quarter century later Dalton thinks he's figured out where it came from. Origin story for the Wisp-touched universe.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Refamiliarization]]<br />
|icons= {{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Xodiac|Xodiac]]<br />
|blurb= He thought he'd got off easy, wearing just a modest pair of horns when the magic struck the convention... (A Xanadu story)<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Leasara/Three-Fourths|Three-Fourths]]<br />
|author= [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]<br />
|icon={{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= A witch goes to Africa in search of a familiar and winds up with more than she bargained for.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Posti/Unicorn Dance|Unicorn Dance]]<br />
|icons={{BP star}} <br />
|author= [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|blurb=A beautiful fantasy tale of a young princess and her love for a visiting prince.<br />
|genre={{BP fant}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/A Walk in the National Enchanted Forest|A Walk in the National Enchanted Forest]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= Featuring one of Canada's most famous mythical creatures.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/Wereing on the Moon|Wereing on the Moon]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= Another science fiction epic, though not quite as long as ''Returning Home''. Even far in the future an old disease resists a cure.<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
}}<br />
<br />
{{BP header1|Transgender}}<br />
<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Leasara/Corruption|Corruption]]<br />
|icons= {{BP sex}}{{BP short}}<br />
|author= [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]<br />
|blurb= An evil enchantress wins her war to reshape the world, but by reshaping herself along with it the results are not quite what she expected.<br />
|genre= {{BP fant}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Femtroopers]]<br />
|icons= {{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author=[[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]]<br />
|blurb= After the mass transformation of [[Xanadu (setting)|Xanadu]], the rivalries and alliances between various groups of cosplayers take on a solid reality of their own.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Fight the Wind]]<br />
|author=[[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= A low-plot but well-described TG tale about a man who's swept up in life changes.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|icons={{BP short}}<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
|title=[[User:Posti/Joker|Joker]]<br />
|author= [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|blurb= Prototype teleporters and practical jokers are an interesting combination.}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[The Perils of Voice Acting]]<br />
|author=[[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]] <br />
|icons={{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= A voice actor receives a visit from a monster from a show he worked on years ago, demanding that he play his part so that it can find resolution to the series. A [[Xanadu (setting)|Xanadu]] story.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
{{BP header1|Miscellaneous and multiple}}<br />
<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Everything is Kaput!]]<br />
|author= [[User:Devin|Devin Hallsworth]]<br />
|icons= {{BP edit}}<br />
|blurb= The bunker survived the apocalypse, but not the apocalypse it was designed for.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Erastus/Just the Right Shoes for This Life|Just the Right Shoes for This Life]]<br />
|author=[[User:Erastus|Erastus Centaur]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb=Set in Bob Stein's "Walk-a-Mile" universe, a man tries on a variety of lives to see which one fits best.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=The Last of the Niagaras<br />
|icons= {{BP star}}{{BP short}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= Creepy-creepy! Makes me glad I'm not a railroad buff. A man goes in search of a long lost model of train locomotive and it finds him. '''Temporarily offline for paper publishing.'''<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title= [[User:Michael Bard/The Myth of Beetlecat|The Myth of Beetlecat]]<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= Oberon demands a fursuit for the fairie ball! Not exactly a classic tale, but classically told.<br />
|genre={{BP fant}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Once Upon a Country Road|Once Upon a Country Road]]<br />
|icons= {{BP star}}<br />
|author=[[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|blurb= Kidnapped by aliens, but for nontraditional purposes.<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Reality_Bites|Reality Bites]]<br />
|author= [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|blurb= What would ''really'' happen if a common TF plot device was tried.<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/Returning Home|Returning Home]]<br />
|icons= {{BP long}}<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= A science fiction epic. Anita Lei discovers the means to open a gate between universes, and winds up cast through to a world that's been devastated by a war that rendered the land uninhabitable. The only way to survive is to go native.<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Sentinel]]<br />
|author= [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]<br />
|genre={{BP fant}}<br />
|blurb= A small troop of French soldiers, fleeing Napoleon's fall, come upon a manor house abandoned after the French Revolution. Its grounds contain a small pool of magic, in which a number of ghosts still survive.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/Something Fishy|Something Fishy]]<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|author=[[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb=How do aquatic aliens invent technology without the ability to make fire? A Xanadu story.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Posti/Something to Remember|Something to Remember]]<br />
|author= [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]<br />
|icons= {{BP viol}}{{BP star}}<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|blurb= An uncharted isle, a hate-filled witch, and a well-written take on the legend of Circe. <br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/Survival and Sacrifice|Survival and Sacrifice]]<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|blurb= The Thing's journey, told from an interesting perspective.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Michael Bard/The Survivor|The Survivor]]<br />
|author= [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
|blurb= Far in the future Venus has been terraformed, humanity has passed, and a successor civilization of uplifted animals controls the solar system. A smuggler crash lands and finds that the 'primitive' aboriginals of Venus have retained some fairly advanced knowledge.<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[Taint of Chaos]]<br />
|author= [[User:Bryan|Bryan]]<br />
|blurb= When the gods created the world out of chaos, they left a few bits behind. These have bad effects on their surroundings.<br />
|genre={{BP fant}}<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|genre={{BP modmagic}}<br />
|title=[[Taylor Series Tom and Cat]]<br />
|author= [[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]]<br />
|blurb=An odd means of curing cancer, to be sure. First in the [[:Category:Taylor Series|Taylor Series]].<br />
}}<br />
{{BP row<br />
|title=[[User:Eirik/Through Reality|Through Reality]]<br />
|icons= {{BP short}}<br />
|genre={{BP SF}}<br />
|author=[[User:Eirik|Eirik]]<br />
|blurb=Dennis comes to a gateway through which a story lies, and then runs away.<br />
}}<br />
</table><br />
[[Category:Story lists]]</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Bryan%27s_picks&diff=16606Bryan's picks2013-02-01T04:28:49Z<p>Bryan: these templates weren't working any more, subst:int them to at least get the page looking nice again.</p>
<hr />
<div><div class="floatright"><br />
{{BP legend}}<br />
''[[Talk:Bryan's picks|Leave a comment...]]''<br />
</div>{{favorites list}}<br />
"Bryan's picks" is a list of stories on Shifti that I, [[User:Bryan|Bryan]], has picked as being of particularly good quality both in terms of technical execution (formatting, spelling, etc) and in terms of writing.<br />
<br />
If you've posted a story on Shifti that I haven't included here don't worry, I may have not even read it yet. The gold stars are assigned based on personal taste and are even more subjective, so they shouldn't be taken as anything other than a sign of my own hubris. I may even reassign gold stars at some point as my tastes shift over time. Other users are encouraged to create their own lists and make their own editorial decisions; I'm doing this solely as a user, not as an administrator.<br />
<br />
Note that I have high technical standards; a few incorrect "your/you're"s is sufficient to warrant the "needs copyediting" icon and a story that still looks like a rough draft won't be added here at all even if it's otherwise complete. I am happy to provide editing assistance myself, or for general assistance requests try the [[editor's corner]].<br />
<br />
==New additions==<br />
<br />
New additions remain in this section for at least a week before being moved into sections by subject.<br />
<br />
February 2:<br />
*[[User:Ermine/Jessica's Mouse|Jessica's Mouse]] by [[User:Ermine|Ermine]] - Andrew doesn't like Jessica's mouse, or Jessica for that matter, but the mouse likes him. {{BP modmagic}}<br />
<br />
<br clear="all"/><br />
<br />
==Bryan's picks==<br />
<br />
<table border="1" rules="rows" frame="above" style="border-color:#ccc;"><br />
{{#if:true||<tr><br />
<td colspan="5" height="20px"></td><br />
</tr><br />
}}<tr><br />
<th colspan="5" style="background:#ddd; font-size:125%; text-align:left; padding:2px;">Animal TFs</th><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<th colspan="5" style="background:#eee; font-size:115%; text-align:left; padding:2px; padding-left:20px;">Canine, lupine and vulpine</th><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Erastus/The Effect of Spotted Clothes|The Effect of Spotted Clothes]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Erastus|Erastus Centaur]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A love story about a boy and his dog. Set in the Barken, Texas universe, but previous knowledge of it isn't needed.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[Free]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Xodiac|Xodiac]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Buddhists should learn Morse code.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Virmir/Spells of Brigervan|Spells of Brigervan]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Virmir|Virmir]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Bryce's life flashes before his eyes.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Where Wolf|Where Wolf]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Clever werewolf, feral werehuman</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
<tr><br />
<th colspan="5" style="background:#eee; font-size:115%; text-align:left; padding:2px; padding-left:20px;">Cervine</th><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[Escape]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">The alien invaders have vastly superior technology, but humans have an advantage that the aliens simply don't understand.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]][[Image:Image icon.png|20px|This story is illustrated!]]</td><br />
<th>[[Forest Life]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Bryan|Bryan]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">The elevator stopped at a most unexpected floor. A long transformation ensues.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[Hunter's Moon]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Some types of lycanthrope stalk their prey in an unusual way.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/It's in the Skin|It's in the Skin]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A quick little tale showing why one should make sure one can trust one's suppliers.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Erastus/Summer Job|Summer Job]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Erastus|Erastus Centaur]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Spending summer in a national park isn't a bad way to earn some money.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]][[Image:Image icon.png|20px|This story is illustrated!]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Swift of Foot and Hoof|Swift of Foot and Hoof]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Morlith discovers a brand new spell of a sort never seen before. The only way to be sure what it does is to cast it, and then the challenge for him and his apprentice becomes figuring out how to reverse its effects.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/Who gets the Dreamers?|Who gets the Dreamers?]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Team 18 scores a major catch! Go team!</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
<tr><br />
<th colspan="5" style="background:#eee; font-size:115%; text-align:left; padding:2px; padding-left:20px;">Equine</th><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[Arms and Armor]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A curator at a museum discovers a peculiar suit of medieval armor, or perhaps barding; it looks like both.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Baylors Rein|Baylor's Rein]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A wayward Prince will do anything to have his own way - even if it means using risky magic.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Best Laid Plans|Best Laid Plans]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Plot and counterplot between old friends - who's fooling who?</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Comedy mask.png|20px|In the comedy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Companion|Companion]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Aaron's life slowly starts to change. Who's responsible?</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Triple X icon.png|20px|Contains graphic sexual depictions and/or innuendo]][[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Leasara/Dark_Horizons|Dark Horizons]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A straightforward description of a straightforward bioweapon test.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:FelixSagittarius/Gaia%27s_Rain|Gaia's Rain]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:FelixSagittarius|Felix Sagittarius]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">I believe Gaia's policies are deeply misguided, but at least we get some nice TFs out of them.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Gypsy Gold|Gypsy Gold]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A murdered Gypsy's ghost wants his rightful property restored.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Hoof Beat|Hoof Beat]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A human cop insults a pompus elf and gets predictably cursed. But even magic wears down with time.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Jacked into the System|Jacked into the System]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Jake got a 'deal' on his BodMod suit - and finds out that the price tag is a lot higher than expected.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Lasting Impression|Lasting Impression]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A couple of clever thieves run into a cleverer Wizard.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Long Ride into Morning|Long Ride into Morning]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A man and his mare get their bodies swapped for a year by a chance encounter with a fay. Both are eager to swap back, but complications arise.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]][[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px|Over 100 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[The Long Shadow]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A reluctant knight goes off to war and gets tangled up in a battle of magics. An excellent depiction of the equine mind.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Major Problems|Major Problems]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Backpackers in France encounter a cursed abandoned farm. The aftereffects are with them for years.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/No Bull|No Bull]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A phooka tries to be helpful, in her own way.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/On The Couch|On The Couch]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Post-traumatic TF syndrome? Perhaps. A patient confides in his psychiatrist about the time he spends as a horse.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Simple life|Simple Life]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">The King's tax assessor finds he's got a price on his head, and then decides he's fine with what his assassin has in mind.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[Stable Home Life]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Xodiac|Xodiac]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">On the one hand, it's a trap. On the other hand, rent's cheaper than you thought.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Totally_Pucked|Totally Pucked]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Puck has a bit of fun at the expense of an ass.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Translations|Translations]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Jack's work on translating the spell was meticulous, the materials of utmost purity. But he got it inside out.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Tug of War|Tug of War]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">An overly competitive man loses his title and Edward gets caught in the middle of the plots that ensue.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:MatthiasRat/An Unexpected Stop|An Unexpected Stop]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:MatthiasRat|Charles Matthias]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A broken-down car, a stay at a farmhouse, the love of the farmer's daughter; a classic tale well told, and with a nice ending.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Whicker Man|Whicker Man]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">While on a road trip in the back country of Ireland Kevin finds himself an unwilling guest of the locals. An extremely well described and drawn out transformation.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
<tr><br />
<th colspan="5" style="background:#eee; font-size:115%; text-align:left; padding:2px; padding-left:20px;">Aquatic</th><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/How did the Ceolocanth REALLY Survive?|How did the Ceolocanth REALLY Survive?]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Thanks to shapeshifting, of course.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/The Power of Suggestion|The Power of Suggestion]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">The placebo effect is powerful indeed.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[Whale Jelly]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Jedcurtis|Jed Curtis]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Not only does the spot removal creme fail to work, it causes significant weight gain as a side effect.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]][[Image:Image icon.png|20px|This story is illustrated!]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/You get what you Wished for|You get what you Wished for]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Starfleet knows what it's doing when it sends in the redshirts.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
<tr><br />
<th colspan="5" style="background:#eee; font-size:115%; text-align:left; padding:2px; padding-left:20px;">Other</th><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]][[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Eyesore|Eyesore]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Haunted houses come in many forms and locations.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Leasara/Change_of_Flightplan|Change of Flightplan]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A quick tale illustrating a way to sidestep the bureaucracy at the border.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]][[Image:Triple X icon.png|20px|Contains graphic sexual depictions and/or innuendo]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Leasara/Look_Before_You_Leopard|Look Before You Leopard]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">An undercover agent tries to escape from his current assignment. The outcome is hinted at by the title.</td><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/The Pantry is Bear|The Pantry is Bear]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A short about the trials and tribulations of a long-suffering husband.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Comedy mask.png|20px|In the comedy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/The Perils of Wereostrichdom|The Perils of Wereostrichdom]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A social worker means well, but really, who'd believe the truth?</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Axe.png|20px|Contains graphic descriptions of violence]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Puzzle Box|Puzzle Box]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A memorable and disturbing reptilian TF. A word to the wise; the old cliche of friendship overcoming all doesn't always hold true.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[Testing The Waters]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A subtle magical trap in the woods draws its victims in but at least it's a nice place to settle down.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Leasara/Whiner's Dismissal|Whiner's Dismissal]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A rare and special vintage shared at a wine tasting triggers a detailed change among all involved.</td><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Leasara/What_You_Eat|What You Eat]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Cooking could be considered a form of alchemy, after all. This gingerbread recipe marks an important accidental discovery in the field.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px|Over 100 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[Witchhunt]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Bryan|Bryan]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Sequel to [[Xanadu]]. Someone's gunning for Eric, and his friends Arthur and Felix get caught up in it.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
{{#if:||<tr><br />
<td colspan="5" height="20px"></td><br />
</tr><br />
}}<tr><br />
<th colspan="5" style="background:#ddd; font-size:125%; text-align:left; padding:2px;">Anthropomorphic</th><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Leasara/180_Meters|180 Meters]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A test of a deep-diving suit goes disastrously well.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Change Lady|Change Lady]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Know when to stop asking!</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px|Over 100 kilobytes long]][[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[Colony]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">An alternate history where the New World has no native humans, and the magic of the land keeps it that way.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[Doe's Hoof]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">When a gnomish forest ranger riding a raven advises you not to leave the trail, don't. Origin story for the "Enchanted National Forest" setting.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]][[Image:Axe.png|20px|Contains graphic descriptions of violence]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/Down the Rabbit Hole|Down the Rabbit Hole]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Evil bunnies! Evil, evil bunnies!</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px|Over 100 kilobytes long]][[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[Far Indeed From Sherwood Forest]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Xodiac|Xodiac]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Robin Hood and Maid Mare-ian, now living on the pun in modern Florida. A Xanadu story.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Historical Revisionism|Historical Revisionism]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A man gets a chance to rewrite history, but the result is a bit unexpected.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:JonBuck/A_Kind_of_Paradise|A Kind of Paradise]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">What if the world was going furry, and nobody noticed?</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael_Bard/My_Name_is...|My Name is...]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Upon gaining superpowers, be extremely thoughtful about how you choose to first introduce yourself to the world.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Comedy mask.png|20px|In the comedy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Rabbit/Public_Domain|Public Domain]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Rabbit|Phil Geusz]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">The power of perception gets magnified by the Internet until it defines its own reality. Best goldfish transformation I've ever read.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[Rush Hour]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A Winds of Change short, though you don't need to have read any others to follow this. Contains one of my favorite dino TFs.</td><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/Slip Sliding Around|Slip Sliding Around]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Quick and cute, illustrating a common problem of anthro TFs.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Comedy mask.png|20px|In the comedy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Stages|Stages]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">The tale of Tim, a typical young man in college who endures a typical year in the life of the Paradise setting.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:JonBuck/Tall Tales|Tall Tales]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Newly-minted furries and old hands alike get together in a furry convention to organize. A kind of critical mass is achieved. Sequel to [[User:JonBuck/A Kind of Paradise|A Kind of Paradise]].</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
{{#if:||<tr><br />
<td colspan="5" height="20px"></td><br />
</tr><br />
}}<tr><br />
<th colspan="5" style="background:#ddd; font-size:125%; text-align:left; padding:2px;">Mythical TFs</th><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Bottom Up|Bottom Up]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">An old partnership from ancient Greece still holds firm to this day.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Triple X icon.png|20px|Contains graphic sexual depictions and/or innuendo]][[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Leasara/Chain_Reaction|Chain Reaction]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">The ultimate sexually transmitted disease.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Cleaning Up|Cleaning Up]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A grad student working in a museum cleans up a set of pan pipes sealed over two thousand years ago, and discovers what was sealed within.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Triple X icon.png|20px|Contains graphic sexual depictions and/or innuendo]][[Image:Image icon.png|20px|This story is illustrated!]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Leasara/An_Early_Spring_Night's_Dream|An Early Spring Night's Dream]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Charles and a fairy are both searching for something in the woods. Ill-advisedly, Charles agrees to assist.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/A Faerie Tale|A Faerie Tale]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Offended fae take terrible vengeance, and then make it worse. A nice bittersweet little story.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]][[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Leasara/Free_Solo_Dragon|Free Solo Dragon]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A story that's inherently short; a mountain climber loses her grip on the rock face.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/Inspire Me|Inspire Me]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">If one can't find inspiration, giving it is not such a bad consolation.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/Keeping Secrets|Keeping Secrets]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">If you have secrets you shouldn't assume you're the only one.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[The Limelight]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">The magic of wisps mix with the magic of the stage. Set in the Wisp-touched universe.</td><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]][[Image:Triple X icon.png|20px|Contains graphic sexual depictions and/or innuendo]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Mortal Danger|Mortal Danger]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A boat trip into the wilds results in a whole passle of shapeshifting, including an interesting version of the satyr/dryad dynamic.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px|Over 100 kilobytes long]][[Image:Axe.png|20px|Contains graphic descriptions of violence]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/Mythic Journeys - Part 1|Mythic Journeys Part 1]] and [[User:Michael Bard/Mythic Journeys - Part 2|Part 2]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">An epic-length story featuring many Greek myths and transformations, and a few others besides.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/Of Love and Hate|Of Love and Hate]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Also of good and evil. A bittersweet tale that touches on the concept of absolute and relative morality.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px|Over 100 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[Olympus]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Bryan|Bryan]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">In 1935 magic swept out into the world and devastated civilization. A quarter century later Dalton thinks he's figured out where it came from. Origin story for the Wisp-touched universe.</td><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[Refamiliarization]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Xodiac|Xodiac]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">He thought he'd got off easy, wearing just a modest pair of horns when the magic struck the convention... (A Xanadu story)</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Leasara/Three-Fourths|Three-Fourths]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A witch goes to Africa in search of a familiar and winds up with more than she bargained for.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Unicorn Dance|Unicorn Dance]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A beautiful fantasy tale of a young princess and her love for a visiting prince.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/A Walk in the National Enchanted Forest|A Walk in the National Enchanted Forest]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Featuring one of Canada's most famous mythical creatures.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/Wereing on the Moon|Wereing on the Moon]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Another science fiction epic, though not quite as long as ''Returning Home''. Even far in the future an old disease resists a cure.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
{{#if:||<tr><br />
<td colspan="5" height="20px"></td><br />
</tr><br />
}}<tr><br />
<th colspan="5" style="background:#ddd; font-size:125%; text-align:left; padding:2px;">Transgender</th><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Triple X icon.png|20px|Contains graphic sexual depictions and/or innuendo]][[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Leasara/Corruption|Corruption]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Leasara|Shannon Robertson]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">An evil enchantress wins her war to reshape the world, but by reshaping herself along with it the results are not quite what she expected.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[Femtroopers]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">After the mass transformation of [[Xanadu (setting)|Xanadu]], the rivalries and alliances between various groups of cosplayers take on a solid reality of their own.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[Fight the Wind]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A low-plot but well-described TG tale about a man who's swept up in life changes.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Joker|Joker]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Prototype teleporters and practical jokers are an interesting combination.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[The Perils of Voice Acting]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Joysweeper|Joysweeper]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A voice actor receives a visit from a monster from a show he worked on years ago, demanding that he play his part so that it can find resolution to the series. A [[Xanadu (setting)|Xanadu]] story.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
{{#if:||<tr><br />
<td colspan="5" height="20px"></td><br />
</tr><br />
}}<tr><br />
<th colspan="5" style="background:#ddd; font-size:125%; text-align:left; padding:2px;">Miscellaneous and multiple</th><br />
</tr><br />
<br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Editing needed.png|20px|A good story, but it has some minor structural issues]]</td><br />
<th>[[Everything is Kaput!]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Devin|Devin Hallsworth]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">The bunker survived the apocalypse, but not the apocalypse it was designed for.</td><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Erastus/Just the Right Shoes for This Life|Just the Right Shoes for This Life]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Erastus|Erastus Centaur]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Set in Bob Stein's "Walk-a-Mile" universe, a man tries on a variety of lives to see which one fits best.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]][[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>The Last of the Niagaras</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Creepy-creepy! Makes me glad I'm not a railroad buff. A man goes in search of a long lost model of train locomotive and it finds him. '''Temporarily offline for paper publishing.'''</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/The Myth of Beetlecat|The Myth of Beetlecat]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Oberon demands a fursuit for the fairie ball! Not exactly a classic tale, but classically told.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Once Upon a Country Road|Once Upon a Country Road]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Kidnapped by aliens, but for nontraditional purposes.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Reality_Bites|Reality Bites]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">What would ''really'' happen if a common TF plot device was tried.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Book with bookmark.png|20px|Over 100 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/Returning Home|Returning Home]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A science fiction epic. Anita Lei discovers the means to open a gate between universes, and winds up cast through to a world that's been devastated by a war that rendered the land uninhabitable. The only way to survive is to go native.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[Sentinel]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:JonBuck|Jon Buck]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">A small troop of French soldiers, fleeing Napoleon's fall, come upon a manor house abandoned after the French Revolution. Its grounds contain a small pool of magic, in which a number of ghosts still survive.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/Something Fishy|Something Fishy]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">How do aquatic aliens invent technology without the ability to make fire? A Xanadu story.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Axe.png|20px|Contains graphic descriptions of violence]][[Image:Star.png|20px|A particular favorite of Bryan's]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Posti/Something to Remember|Something to Remember]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Posti|Bob Stein]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">An uncharted isle, a hate-filled witch, and a well-written take on the legend of Circe.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/Survival and Sacrifice|Survival and Sacrifice]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">The Thing's journey, told from an interesting perspective.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[User:Michael Bard/The Survivor|The Survivor]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Michael Bard|Michael Bard]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Far in the future Venus has been terraformed, humanity has passed, and a successor civilization of uplifted animals controls the solar system. A smuggler crash lands and finds that the 'primitive' aboriginals of Venus have retained some fairly advanced knowledge.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[Taint of Chaos]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Bryan|Bryan]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">When the gods created the world out of chaos, they left a few bits behind. These have bad effects on their surroundings.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Rampant Lion.png|20px|In the fantasy genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center"></td><br />
<th>[[Taylor Series Tom and Cat]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">An odd means of curing cancer, to be sure. First in the [[:Category:Taylor Series|Taylor Series]].</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Modern magic.png|20x20px|In the modern magic genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
<tr><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Magnifying glass.png|20px|Under 15 kilobytes long]]</td><br />
<th>[[User:Eirik/Through Reality|Through Reality]]</th><br />
<td style="white-space:nowrap; font-size:smaller;">by [[User:Eirik|Eirik]]</td><br />
<td style="padding-left:5px;">Dennis comes to a gateway through which a story lies, and then runs away.</td><br />
<td align="center">[[Image:Aliens.png|20px|In the science fiction genre]]</td><br />
</tr><br />
</table><br />
[[Category:Story lists]]</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Bryan&diff=16605User talk:Bryan2013-02-01T04:21:23Z<p>Bryan: /* Critique Request */</p>
<hr />
<div>==Searching==<br />
<br />
After the chat we had about the limitations of the internal search system of MediaWiki I took a look at wikimedia for search extensions. "Lucene Search" seemed to be the best bet, but after fighting to get the backend for it built and installed I learned it wasn't any better than the built-in system. (In truth, its worse. No ability to select additional namespaces to search in, requires manual dumping of the database and importing into the backend for indexing, etc...) All the code is there to support it, though. However I've shut down the search daemon and disabled the extension. I'm going to go back to poking at the MediaWiki internals to see if I can change the default search to include the User namespace. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:22, 21 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:When Wikipedia's under extreme load it shuts down the internal search engine to conserve resources and instead present a wrapper for a Google search limited to the wikipedia.org server, perhaps you could use something like that? Wouldn't work until Google started spidering us, which I don't know if they've done yet, but with MediaWiki's search as poor as it is it may be an improvement. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 02:42, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::There are several extensions on MetaWiki for Google searches. As far as I can tell from the [http://www.keil-draco.com/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=shifti stats page] Google has started the indexing process. (look down under the "bots" section). I'll get to work doing the reorg so Category:Author points to author homepages and Category:Stories By Author is the stories themselves. (It's better if we stay ahead of the curve, no?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:13, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::Sure, though staying behind the curve also has its advantages (we'll know more about what the organization of Shifti actually looks like :). I'd advise lowercase titles for pages and categories where possible, BTW, it makes them more natural to link to. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:18, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::Now you tell me. I've already gone and finished the reorg. How about I put together a few templates to somewhat automate the categorization and linking process? [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:39, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::::If you like, though I don't really see the point of turning <nowiki>[[Category:Author]]</nowiki> into <nowiki>{{Category author}}</nowiki> and such. I'll convert over the category to lower case, I'm used to doing that sort of thing over on Wikipedia. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:49, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::I was thinking more along the lines of <nowiki>{{AuthorPage}}</nowiki> adding <nowiki>[[Category:(Author Name)]]</nowiki> to the <nowiki>{{Title}}</nowiki> template. No need to go crazy with stuff like that. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:04, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::::::<s>A potential gotcha you might run into: If you put <nowiki>{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> on a template, it resolves as the ''template's'' page name. So every author page could wind up categorized in [[:Category:AuthorPage]]. You'd probably need to take the category name as a parameter, or ask that every user substitute the template rather than transclude it (if you use "<nowiki>{{subst:template name}}</nowiki>" instead of just "<nowiki>{{template name}}</nowiki>" the text of the template page is inserted directly into the article the moment you click "save").</s> Huh. I see now that you already use this in [[Template:Title]] and it works the other way. I'm going to have to double-check my Wikipedia experience on this one. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:28, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::: I'm also not a fan of categories in templates because it makes it impossible to use the template elsewhere (such as on a help page describing its usage) without incorrectly categorizing the other pages it appears in. I really think we're not a big enough wiki yet to be worrying much about this, I'm capable of cleaning everything up manually. It only took me two minutes to switch everything over from Stories By Author to stories by author. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:21, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::::Not a problem. But look at the hoops I had to jump through for the <nowiki>{{part}}</nowiki> template, which refused to resolve inside the table on the help page. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:31, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Searching and redirects==<br />
<br />
I think we might be able to sidestep the whole "search upgrade" thing by adding redirects - put on at [[Companion (Bob Stein)]], have it redirect to [[User:Posti/Companion]] and it should work, no? [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Yup. Wikipedia uses redirects of common misspellings in the same manner. No need for the parenthetical (Bob Stein) unless there's some other page already called "Companion", though. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:06, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Actually, I guess the parenthetical might be useful for people who are searching for "Bob Stein". The category would be a more useful place to find that but I guess people might not know to look there initially. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:47, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:: That was my thought on it. It would allow for a search for Bob Stein to turn it up. Though you are correct, the category page would be the better spot. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:29, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Dragons of Histh organization==<br />
<br />
About the "Dragons of Histh" stuff... I'm not to comfortable with "Book the One", "Book the Two" and such being main namespace entries. I'm asking before I do anything, but I'd feel better if they were moved to, say, "Dragons of Histh: Book the One" or "Book the One (Dragons of Histh)". As well, does this "Kinglake Film Partnership" actually exist or is it just some fluff name that 'Loathesome Dragon' created to make the setting seem more important/famous than it really is? (And if it is just a fluff name then I think it should be moved to User:Loathesomedragon/Kinglake_Film_Partnership. If it isn't it seems like rampant advertisement and I will delete it with that being the reason.) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:03, 5 August 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:I was thinking of moving those stories myself, actually. The names seemed overly generic and could be confusing. But as for the Kinglake thing, I don't see any reason not to leave it be; it's not likely that anyone's going to name a story that and it's not going to be in any story categories, so nobody will see it unless they're actively searching for it. So there's no clutter. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 00:30, 5 August 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== New Templates ==<br />
<br />
I've noticed that you've been adding some new templates lately. However, the [[Help:Templates]] page still needs updating with the howtos and examples. Or are they still in the rough? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:38, 2 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Not really, I just haven't got to updating it yet (and the external image template is covered in the image help page, which IMO is a more approriate place for it). I'll update tonight after I've done more work on ''Against Type'', my creativity is tied up at the moment. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:50, 2 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Against Type ==<br />
<br />
Your ISP is blocking my emails again. I can't send you the current file. It's almost done, too. :P --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 22:39, 7 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Blacklists ==<br />
<br />
In addition to the Captcha there are now two blacklists, one for certain username patterns and one for certain URL's.<br />
Username Blacklist can be found at [http://shifti.org/MediaWiki:usernameblacklist MediaWiki:usernameblacklist] and the URL blacklist is at [http://shifti.org/MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist] -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:00, 12 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
I've gone and slapped the spam blacklist code around a bit because it irritated the crap out of me earlier. Won't be irritating me anymore, even though it's still installed and functional. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:53, 8 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
Can you disable the ''captcha'' for me, please? Its a pain to recognize very jabbered letters, I have to post one story many times consuming a traffic. Strange, it requests identify eben for a page without any links.[[User:Inry|Inry]] 11:39, 10 February 2009 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Code Update ==<br />
<br />
You asked for it, you got it. A list of random pages is available via &lt;randompages/&gt; &ndash; it currently understands "style" and "class" as standard HTML parameters and can take a "count" parameter, which determines the length of the list generated. It is currently completely undecorated, so I think I'll set it up so it you can do &lt;randompages&gt;title text&lt;/randompages&gt;<br />
<br />
I also fixed up Special:Random to search NS_MAIN and NS_USER by default while not interfering with the operation of Special:Random/&lt;namespace&gt;<br />
&mdash;[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:40, 20 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
'''Update''' &mdash; added the title bar stuff. Two new paramters to go with it, "titlestyle" and "titleclass" &ndash; these control the look of the displayed title text. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:00, 21 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
More news. I've added the requested "Total Number Of Articles" bit to the categories page. Unfortunately it only covers articles and not subcategories. Doing subcategories is going to take another chunk of patching. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:57, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Unfortunately it's borked at this point and combining sub-categories and articles in one lump. I'm going to disable it for now and go back to the poking. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:00, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::And I've fixed it. Problem is that this would never fly for MediaWiki - it's making a massive database query and iterating over the results to count the articles. On Wikipedia, for example, this would require getting millions of results and iterating over them - quite intensive. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:35, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== другие языки / International ==<br />
<br />
How to correctly add to the Shifti pages on Russian? I have some translation of your stories and some my own stories.<br />
[[User:217.21.43.222|217.21.43.222]] 04:00, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Neat! Shifti runs on MediaWiki software, which is fully Unicode-compliant. It should be possible to just copy and paste Cyrillic text straight into the edit window and save it as-is, and you should be able to use Cyrillic in page titles and user names and such as well. Give it a try and let me know if any specific problems crop up.<br />
<br />
:Also, I'd be happy to see Russian translations of my stories posted here. It's something I'd never have imagined would ever happen :) Just make sure you ask other authors for permission before posting translations of any of theirs, though - copyright remains with the original authors and if they don't want translations posted they get the final say on that. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 04:13, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
::Same here. BD's stories are excellent and if they have been translated into another language, it'd be nice to see them here so his international fans can read them.<br />
<br />
::As a side note, it's wonderful that the non-english-speaking furs and TF fans have found Shifti and are interested in participating. This is the kind of thing I was hoping for when I decided to host the site. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 04:24, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
== Alex Warlorn said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
I just want to say, I'm sorry that my comment offended you. That was not my intention. I have been a fan of your writing for YEARS. <br />
<br />
--Alex Warlorn 00:35, 25 December 2007 (EST)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Which comment? I don't recall being offended by any comments on Shifti, so perhaps something's being misinterpreted, or perhaps my memory is faulty. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:25, 25 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Forum? ==<br />
<br />
Hey there, I've been contemplating this since a conversation I had with bard a while back about the number of comments posted to storys on shifti and I've been wondering if maybe there are some people that just arent familiar with or crazy about the commenting method of a wiki.<br />
<br />
I've also been pondering a kind of central place where people can post or discuss whatever they want about stuff on shifti or about transformation in general, basically a forum like Proboards linked to from the main page.<br />
<br />
Just wondering what you and shadow wolf think about this. [[User:Devin]]<br />
<br />
:Well, I consider TSA-Talk to be the sorta-semi-official "forum" for Shifti. This site originally grew out of the need to replace the TSA with a new archive that would be more flexible and easier to keep updated, so inheriting the associated fora seems reasonable to me. Better to use existing places with existing populations than to fragment the userbase unnecessarily, IMO. But if other fora are created I'd have no problem with listing them here too. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 12:59, 26 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
<br />
== Admin help please ==<br />
<br />
Bryan, I should have read the manual first, but I didn't. I should have moved story "Mermaid" to "Paying attention to detail 1" and "Mermaid Too" to "Paying attention to detail 2" and "Paying attention to detail" to "Paying attention to detail 3" and the irony is not lost on me, but I created new pages with those names and then realised there is no 'delete' function. Now I've created new pages I can't move to them, I think an admin needs to sort out the mess. Apologies in advance - sw13644.<br />
<br />
:No problem. Just to make sure I follow your request correctly, are you're wanting me to delete the pages [[Mermaid]], [[Mermaid Too]] and [[Paying attention to detail]]? Or do you want the revision histories of those pages to be merged into the new pages' ones instead? For future reference you can request page deletions by adding the string "<nowiki>{{request deletion}}</nowiki>" to the page. Alternately, if you're concerned that people might have linked to the old pages and will now get lost looking for your story sections, you can redirect the old pages by replacing the contents with "<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[new page name]]</nowiki>". [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 18:40, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
----<br />
<br />
Could You please check if my story The Right of Dreamers is listed properly in search categories and is accessible for anyone who might want to read it. I submitted the story two months ago and there is no single comment on it yet, neither good nor bad one :(. I’m not waiting for many comments for my other two stories as they are written in Russian language and therefore are unreadable for most shifti users, but The Right of Dreamers I wrote in English for it to be readable on shifti. I don’t want to think that my story wasn’t interpreting enough to leave a comment for at least a few people of those who should see it in Dragons category since it is there. Therefore I assume there might be some technical problems I don’t understand myself. <br />
[[User:GreyDragon|GreyDragon]] 04:49, 17 November 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Three-fourths ==<br />
<br />
Thanks!<br />
<br />
I didn't know about watching pages, so I wasn't aware of the comment, I'll be amending my watchlist presently. The story was a request from Soty, and I was familiar with his work, but not the one you linked, thanks for that too. Feel free to have a go at editing the story. I'll go take a look at it as well when I have the time.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 01:00, 16 February 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
I have tightened the story up a bit and caught a few typos. Let me know if you think it still needs work.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 02:10, 18 February 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Will do. Sorry I haven't got to giving any help myself yet, weekend's been pretty hectic for me. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 02:48, 18 February 2008 (EST)<br />
== U-V said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
Wow! My goodness, I'm touched and honoured (re: unequal share) That I could help inspire a story like that! It's very in keeping with the spirit of the little scenario I had slightly built up in mind. :)<br />
<br />
--U-V 09:30, 27 March 2008 (EDT)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Thanks. I wrote it without referencing the image, just my memory of it, so the setting wound up slightly different - I take it the image was meant to be set on a ship. Oh well, a minor thing. It also wasn't the mass TF implied by the bit of text you included in the image description, but it didn't rule out anything like that happening subsequently. I've got other writing commitments right now so I can't extend it, but maybe later. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 11:45, 27 March 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==General==<br />
Hello again, Bryan. I have just finished creating my homepage on Shifti. I hope that the stories’ list I had just created will be interesting for other Shifti users. The list has only 3 stories at the moment but I hope that there will be more with time either with my own search efforts or thanks to help of more experienced TF readers and writers (including You, sir).<br />
As for my own TF stories, they are in Russian language. Will it make sense posting them on my Shifti homepage anyway?<br />
--[[User:GreyDragon|GreyDragon]] 14:07, 21 August 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Sure! There was a fellow a while back who was doing Russian translations of existing stories (see [[#другие языки / International]] earlier on this page), I was keen to host a bunch of those here. If you like you could create a category for Russian-language stuff, if more comes along it'd be neat to have a directory of it. Shifti supports unicode, so you can use Cyrillic characters both within the page text and in page titles (eg, [[Русский язык]]). I'm not a Russian speaker myself, unfortunately, so I won't be able to help much with the editing and such. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:22, 21 August 2008 (EDT)<br />
== bobby said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
great site thanks see u<br />
<br />
--bobby 17:13, 23 September 2008 (EDT)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Um, thanks. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:34, 23 September 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Oops... ==<br />
<br />
One of these days I'll remember to double-check that I'm actually giving the greeting on the right page... I keep forgetting that the "new user" entries on Special:RecentChanges doesn't have a 'Talk' link. And I guess I should also keep from editing when distracted :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 06:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:No problem, everything's easily fixable. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 07:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Spam/Vandalism ==<br />
<br />
Viqsi has said that [[Web comics]] comes up as the #2 result on [http://www.google.com Google] in a search for Shifti. That might be the reason that it seems to be getting hit more often than other pages.<br />
<br />
Besides that, though, it is looking like Shifti might be pulling in some spammers/vandals who hit a page once or twice to test if the site is being patrolled. There are a lot of Wiki's that have been massively vandalized and the vandals might have been following that pattern.<br />
<br />
Beyond that... I had thought about protecting [[Web comics]] but decided not to because I was unsure if it could be blocked against just anon-edits. Good to see that it can. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Yup, semi-protection blocks both anonymous edits and edits by accounts that are relatively young - I believe the default is four days. That prevents throwaway accounts from being easily used to circumvent it. Good to know why [[web comics]] was picked as the target; that means it's unlikely that the vandal will just start picking other pages at random. Not that there are a heck of a lot of publically-editable pages, since most authors seem to prefer the subpage route. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 05:25, 18 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Defaultsort ==<br />
<br />
It seems that the Default Sort Template doesn't work anymore. In Category Pages, my stories appear in User:Forestier/... [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 14:32, 6 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I made a mistake. The story are correctly ''sorted'' ; but I remember that they used to appeared under their real title, not under their page name. [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 14:49, 6 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Yeah, this was previously done by a custom tweak done to Shifti's code that was lost in the crash. It's been noticed and we'll have it fixed back up soon. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:08, 10 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::Thanks. [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 20:13, 10 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
== Critique Request ==<br />
<br />
Your Xanadu Universe has really struck a chord with me. Since I first discovered it a few weeks ago, it has inspired me to write the first fiction I've done in more than a decade. I would appreciate it if some time, when you have the time, you could read what I've written and tell me what you think of it and or how I could improve it. There is no hurry, and I won't be upset if you decline. I'm a grown up and can take criticism. :-)<br />
Thank you<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
:Sure thing, I'll give it a read-over tomorrow after sleep (to make sure I read it right :). [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:31, 27 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I've posted my stories on Deviant Art and would like to post on TSATalk. How do I properly give you credit for creating the Xanadu Universe? I only know you as Bryan. <br />
<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
On DA I gave a short discription of the Xanadu Universe and directed folks who want to learn more to Shifti.org.<br />
<br />
When you want to, take another look at 'Wynd, Skye etc.' And tell me what you think so far. No hurry, it's far from finished.<br />
<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
==Permission Sought==<br />
<br />
Despite the long odds against it, I've decided to bite the bullet and see if I can get my Mermaid stories published as a novel. I want to seek your permission first, since the Xanadu setting is such an important inspiration in their creation and Eric and Felix show up briefly as characters. I'll give full credit and, as before, I won't be upset if you decline. Thanks --[[User:Alveric|Alveric]] 17:07, 22 November 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:By all means, permission granted! If by some chance you get it published and have the opportunity to add an author's note or forward or other such bit of text I'd be tickled if you managed to slip in mention of the Xanadu shared universe existing beyond just that story, but even that's not really a request. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 04:25, 23 November 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Actually, how would you feel about writing a preface? --[[User:Alveric|Alveric]] 05:18, 23 November 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
An Update: My Mermaid stories have been published as ''The Accidental Mermaid''. It's available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You're on the dedication page along with a mention for Shifti.org. I'm working on the sequel, ''The Girl With the Sea-Green Eyes'' (also here on Shifti). Alot of the questions I get involve the Xanadu Event. I refer people here, but I would still be interested in a preface from you. --[[User:Alveric|Alveric]] ([[User talk:Alveric|talk]]) 16:27, 6 August 2012 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Bryan&diff=15532User talk:Bryan2011-11-23T04:25:29Z<p>Bryan: /* Permission Sought */ granted. :)</p>
<hr />
<div>==Searching==<br />
<br />
After the chat we had about the limitations of the internal search system of MediaWiki I took a look at wikimedia for search extensions. "Lucene Search" seemed to be the best bet, but after fighting to get the backend for it built and installed I learned it wasn't any better than the built-in system. (In truth, its worse. No ability to select additional namespaces to search in, requires manual dumping of the database and importing into the backend for indexing, etc...) All the code is there to support it, though. However I've shut down the search daemon and disabled the extension. I'm going to go back to poking at the MediaWiki internals to see if I can change the default search to include the User namespace. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:22, 21 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:When Wikipedia's under extreme load it shuts down the internal search engine to conserve resources and instead present a wrapper for a Google search limited to the wikipedia.org server, perhaps you could use something like that? Wouldn't work until Google started spidering us, which I don't know if they've done yet, but with MediaWiki's search as poor as it is it may be an improvement. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 02:42, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::There are several extensions on MetaWiki for Google searches. As far as I can tell from the [http://www.keil-draco.com/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=shifti stats page] Google has started the indexing process. (look down under the "bots" section). I'll get to work doing the reorg so Category:Author points to author homepages and Category:Stories By Author is the stories themselves. (It's better if we stay ahead of the curve, no?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:13, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::Sure, though staying behind the curve also has its advantages (we'll know more about what the organization of Shifti actually looks like :). I'd advise lowercase titles for pages and categories where possible, BTW, it makes them more natural to link to. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:18, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::Now you tell me. I've already gone and finished the reorg. How about I put together a few templates to somewhat automate the categorization and linking process? [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:39, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::::If you like, though I don't really see the point of turning <nowiki>[[Category:Author]]</nowiki> into <nowiki>{{Category author}}</nowiki> and such. I'll convert over the category to lower case, I'm used to doing that sort of thing over on Wikipedia. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:49, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::I was thinking more along the lines of <nowiki>{{AuthorPage}}</nowiki> adding <nowiki>[[Category:(Author Name)]]</nowiki> to the <nowiki>{{Title}}</nowiki> template. No need to go crazy with stuff like that. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:04, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::::::<s>A potential gotcha you might run into: If you put <nowiki>{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> on a template, it resolves as the ''template's'' page name. So every author page could wind up categorized in [[:Category:AuthorPage]]. You'd probably need to take the category name as a parameter, or ask that every user substitute the template rather than transclude it (if you use "<nowiki>{{subst:template name}}</nowiki>" instead of just "<nowiki>{{template name}}</nowiki>" the text of the template page is inserted directly into the article the moment you click "save").</s> Huh. I see now that you already use this in [[Template:Title]] and it works the other way. I'm going to have to double-check my Wikipedia experience on this one. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:28, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::: I'm also not a fan of categories in templates because it makes it impossible to use the template elsewhere (such as on a help page describing its usage) without incorrectly categorizing the other pages it appears in. I really think we're not a big enough wiki yet to be worrying much about this, I'm capable of cleaning everything up manually. It only took me two minutes to switch everything over from Stories By Author to stories by author. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:21, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::::Not a problem. But look at the hoops I had to jump through for the <nowiki>{{part}}</nowiki> template, which refused to resolve inside the table on the help page. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:31, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Searching and redirects==<br />
<br />
I think we might be able to sidestep the whole "search upgrade" thing by adding redirects - put on at [[Companion (Bob Stein)]], have it redirect to [[User:Posti/Companion]] and it should work, no? [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Yup. Wikipedia uses redirects of common misspellings in the same manner. No need for the parenthetical (Bob Stein) unless there's some other page already called "Companion", though. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:06, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Actually, I guess the parenthetical might be useful for people who are searching for "Bob Stein". The category would be a more useful place to find that but I guess people might not know to look there initially. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:47, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:: That was my thought on it. It would allow for a search for Bob Stein to turn it up. Though you are correct, the category page would be the better spot. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:29, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Dragons of Histh organization==<br />
<br />
About the "Dragons of Histh" stuff... I'm not to comfortable with "Book the One", "Book the Two" and such being main namespace entries. I'm asking before I do anything, but I'd feel better if they were moved to, say, "Dragons of Histh: Book the One" or "Book the One (Dragons of Histh)". As well, does this "Kinglake Film Partnership" actually exist or is it just some fluff name that 'Loathesome Dragon' created to make the setting seem more important/famous than it really is? (And if it is just a fluff name then I think it should be moved to User:Loathesomedragon/Kinglake_Film_Partnership. If it isn't it seems like rampant advertisement and I will delete it with that being the reason.) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:03, 5 August 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:I was thinking of moving those stories myself, actually. The names seemed overly generic and could be confusing. But as for the Kinglake thing, I don't see any reason not to leave it be; it's not likely that anyone's going to name a story that and it's not going to be in any story categories, so nobody will see it unless they're actively searching for it. So there's no clutter. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 00:30, 5 August 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== New Templates ==<br />
<br />
I've noticed that you've been adding some new templates lately. However, the [[Help:Templates]] page still needs updating with the howtos and examples. Or are they still in the rough? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:38, 2 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Not really, I just haven't got to updating it yet (and the external image template is covered in the image help page, which IMO is a more approriate place for it). I'll update tonight after I've done more work on ''Against Type'', my creativity is tied up at the moment. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:50, 2 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Against Type ==<br />
<br />
Your ISP is blocking my emails again. I can't send you the current file. It's almost done, too. :P --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 22:39, 7 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Blacklists ==<br />
<br />
In addition to the Captcha there are now two blacklists, one for certain username patterns and one for certain URL's.<br />
Username Blacklist can be found at [http://shifti.org/MediaWiki:usernameblacklist MediaWiki:usernameblacklist] and the URL blacklist is at [http://shifti.org/MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist] -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:00, 12 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
I've gone and slapped the spam blacklist code around a bit because it irritated the crap out of me earlier. Won't be irritating me anymore, even though it's still installed and functional. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:53, 8 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
Can you disable the ''captcha'' for me, please? Its a pain to recognize very jabbered letters, I have to post one story many times consuming a traffic. Strange, it requests identify eben for a page without any links.[[User:Inry|Inry]] 11:39, 10 February 2009 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Code Update ==<br />
<br />
You asked for it, you got it. A list of random pages is available via &lt;randompages/&gt; &ndash; it currently understands "style" and "class" as standard HTML parameters and can take a "count" parameter, which determines the length of the list generated. It is currently completely undecorated, so I think I'll set it up so it you can do &lt;randompages&gt;title text&lt;/randompages&gt;<br />
<br />
I also fixed up Special:Random to search NS_MAIN and NS_USER by default while not interfering with the operation of Special:Random/&lt;namespace&gt;<br />
&mdash;[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:40, 20 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
'''Update''' &mdash; added the title bar stuff. Two new paramters to go with it, "titlestyle" and "titleclass" &ndash; these control the look of the displayed title text. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:00, 21 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
More news. I've added the requested "Total Number Of Articles" bit to the categories page. Unfortunately it only covers articles and not subcategories. Doing subcategories is going to take another chunk of patching. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:57, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Unfortunately it's borked at this point and combining sub-categories and articles in one lump. I'm going to disable it for now and go back to the poking. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:00, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::And I've fixed it. Problem is that this would never fly for MediaWiki - it's making a massive database query and iterating over the results to count the articles. On Wikipedia, for example, this would require getting millions of results and iterating over them - quite intensive. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:35, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== другие языки / International ==<br />
<br />
How to correctly add to the Shifti pages on Russian? I have some translation of your stories and some my own stories.<br />
[[User:217.21.43.222|217.21.43.222]] 04:00, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Neat! Shifti runs on MediaWiki software, which is fully Unicode-compliant. It should be possible to just copy and paste Cyrillic text straight into the edit window and save it as-is, and you should be able to use Cyrillic in page titles and user names and such as well. Give it a try and let me know if any specific problems crop up.<br />
<br />
:Also, I'd be happy to see Russian translations of my stories posted here. It's something I'd never have imagined would ever happen :) Just make sure you ask other authors for permission before posting translations of any of theirs, though - copyright remains with the original authors and if they don't want translations posted they get the final say on that. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 04:13, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
::Same here. BD's stories are excellent and if they have been translated into another language, it'd be nice to see them here so his international fans can read them.<br />
<br />
::As a side note, it's wonderful that the non-english-speaking furs and TF fans have found Shifti and are interested in participating. This is the kind of thing I was hoping for when I decided to host the site. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 04:24, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
== Alex Warlorn said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
I just want to say, I'm sorry that my comment offended you. That was not my intention. I have been a fan of your writing for YEARS. <br />
<br />
--Alex Warlorn 00:35, 25 December 2007 (EST)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Which comment? I don't recall being offended by any comments on Shifti, so perhaps something's being misinterpreted, or perhaps my memory is faulty. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:25, 25 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Forum? ==<br />
<br />
Hey there, I've been contemplating this since a conversation I had with bard a while back about the number of comments posted to storys on shifti and I've been wondering if maybe there are some people that just arent familiar with or crazy about the commenting method of a wiki.<br />
<br />
I've also been pondering a kind of central place where people can post or discuss whatever they want about stuff on shifti or about transformation in general, basically a forum like Proboards linked to from the main page.<br />
<br />
Just wondering what you and shadow wolf think about this. [[User:Devin]]<br />
<br />
:Well, I consider TSA-Talk to be the sorta-semi-official "forum" for Shifti. This site originally grew out of the need to replace the TSA with a new archive that would be more flexible and easier to keep updated, so inheriting the associated fora seems reasonable to me. Better to use existing places with existing populations than to fragment the userbase unnecessarily, IMO. But if other fora are created I'd have no problem with listing them here too. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 12:59, 26 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
<br />
== Admin help please ==<br />
<br />
Bryan, I should have read the manual first, but I didn't. I should have moved story "Mermaid" to "Paying attention to detail 1" and "Mermaid Too" to "Paying attention to detail 2" and "Paying attention to detail" to "Paying attention to detail 3" and the irony is not lost on me, but I created new pages with those names and then realised there is no 'delete' function. Now I've created new pages I can't move to them, I think an admin needs to sort out the mess. Apologies in advance - sw13644.<br />
<br />
:No problem. Just to make sure I follow your request correctly, are you're wanting me to delete the pages [[Mermaid]], [[Mermaid Too]] and [[Paying attention to detail]]? Or do you want the revision histories of those pages to be merged into the new pages' ones instead? For future reference you can request page deletions by adding the string "<nowiki>{{request deletion}}</nowiki>" to the page. Alternately, if you're concerned that people might have linked to the old pages and will now get lost looking for your story sections, you can redirect the old pages by replacing the contents with "<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[new page name]]</nowiki>". [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 18:40, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
----<br />
<br />
Could You please check if my story The Right of Dreamers is listed properly in search categories and is accessible for anyone who might want to read it. I submitted the story two months ago and there is no single comment on it yet, neither good nor bad one :(. I’m not waiting for many comments for my other two stories as they are written in Russian language and therefore are unreadable for most shifti users, but The Right of Dreamers I wrote in English for it to be readable on shifti. I don’t want to think that my story wasn’t interpreting enough to leave a comment for at least a few people of those who should see it in Dragons category since it is there. Therefore I assume there might be some technical problems I don’t understand myself. <br />
[[User:GreyDragon|GreyDragon]] 04:49, 17 November 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Three-fourths ==<br />
<br />
Thanks!<br />
<br />
I didn't know about watching pages, so I wasn't aware of the comment, I'll be amending my watchlist presently. The story was a request from Soty, and I was familiar with his work, but not the one you linked, thanks for that too. Feel free to have a go at editing the story. I'll go take a look at it as well when I have the time.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 01:00, 16 February 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
I have tightened the story up a bit and caught a few typos. Let me know if you think it still needs work.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 02:10, 18 February 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Will do. Sorry I haven't got to giving any help myself yet, weekend's been pretty hectic for me. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 02:48, 18 February 2008 (EST)<br />
== U-V said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
Wow! My goodness, I'm touched and honoured (re: unequal share) That I could help inspire a story like that! It's very in keeping with the spirit of the little scenario I had slightly built up in mind. :)<br />
<br />
--U-V 09:30, 27 March 2008 (EDT)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Thanks. I wrote it without referencing the image, just my memory of it, so the setting wound up slightly different - I take it the image was meant to be set on a ship. Oh well, a minor thing. It also wasn't the mass TF implied by the bit of text you included in the image description, but it didn't rule out anything like that happening subsequently. I've got other writing commitments right now so I can't extend it, but maybe later. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 11:45, 27 March 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==General==<br />
Hello again, Bryan. I have just finished creating my homepage on Shifti. I hope that the stories’ list I had just created will be interesting for other Shifti users. The list has only 3 stories at the moment but I hope that there will be more with time either with my own search efforts or thanks to help of more experienced TF readers and writers (including You, sir).<br />
As for my own TF stories, they are in Russian language. Will it make sense posting them on my Shifti homepage anyway?<br />
--[[User:GreyDragon|GreyDragon]] 14:07, 21 August 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Sure! There was a fellow a while back who was doing Russian translations of existing stories (see [[#другие языки / International]] earlier on this page), I was keen to host a bunch of those here. If you like you could create a category for Russian-language stuff, if more comes along it'd be neat to have a directory of it. Shifti supports unicode, so you can use Cyrillic characters both within the page text and in page titles (eg, [[Русский язык]]). I'm not a Russian speaker myself, unfortunately, so I won't be able to help much with the editing and such. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:22, 21 August 2008 (EDT)<br />
== bobby said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
great site thanks see u<br />
<br />
--bobby 17:13, 23 September 2008 (EDT)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Um, thanks. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:34, 23 September 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Oops... ==<br />
<br />
One of these days I'll remember to double-check that I'm actually giving the greeting on the right page... I keep forgetting that the "new user" entries on Special:RecentChanges doesn't have a 'Talk' link. And I guess I should also keep from editing when distracted :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 06:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:No problem, everything's easily fixable. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 07:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Spam/Vandalism ==<br />
<br />
Viqsi has said that [[Web comics]] comes up as the #2 result on [http://www.google.com Google] in a search for Shifti. That might be the reason that it seems to be getting hit more often than other pages.<br />
<br />
Besides that, though, it is looking like Shifti might be pulling in some spammers/vandals who hit a page once or twice to test if the site is being patrolled. There are a lot of Wiki's that have been massively vandalized and the vandals might have been following that pattern.<br />
<br />
Beyond that... I had thought about protecting [[Web comics]] but decided not to because I was unsure if it could be blocked against just anon-edits. Good to see that it can. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Yup, semi-protection blocks both anonymous edits and edits by accounts that are relatively young - I believe the default is four days. That prevents throwaway accounts from being easily used to circumvent it. Good to know why [[web comics]] was picked as the target; that means it's unlikely that the vandal will just start picking other pages at random. Not that there are a heck of a lot of publically-editable pages, since most authors seem to prefer the subpage route. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 05:25, 18 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Defaultsort ==<br />
<br />
It seems that the Default Sort Template doesn't work anymore. In Category Pages, my stories appear in User:Forestier/... [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 14:32, 6 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I made a mistake. The story are correctly ''sorted'' ; but I remember that they used to appeared under their real title, not under their page name. [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 14:49, 6 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Yeah, this was previously done by a custom tweak done to Shifti's code that was lost in the crash. It's been noticed and we'll have it fixed back up soon. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:08, 10 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::Thanks. [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 20:13, 10 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
== Critique Request ==<br />
<br />
Your Xanadu Universe has really struck a chord with me. Since I first discovered it a few weeks ago, it has inspired me to write the first fiction I've done in more than a decade. I would appreciate it if some time, when you have the time, you could read what I've written and tell me what you think of it and or how I could improve it. There is no hurry, and I won't be upset if you decline. I'm a grown up and can take criticism. :-)<br />
Thank you<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
:Sure thing, I'll give it a read-over tomorrow after sleep (to make sure I read it right :). [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:31, 27 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I've posted my stories on Deviant Art and would like to post on TSATalk. How do I properly give you credit for creating the Xanadu Universe? I only know you as Bryan. <br />
<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
On DA I gave a short discription of the Xanadu Universe and directed folks who want to learn more to Shifti.org.<br />
<br />
When you want to, take another look at 'Wynd, Skye etc.' And tell me what you think so far. No hurry, it's far from finished.<br />
<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
:Sorry about my silence there, been a bit distracted with some RL stuff and wound up taking a bit of a vacation from online life. If you want to credit me by my full name for Xanadu, it's Bryan Derksen - I've been keeping it off of Shifti, generally speaking, just as a way of keeping my "RL" and "TF" spheres of interest distinct but it's not a huge secret or anything. :)<br />
<br />
:I'll take another read-through of your story soon, probably won't get to it in the next two days but hopefully soon thereafter. I'll add it to my task list. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:49, 10 April 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
==Permission Sought==<br />
<br />
Despite the long odds against it, I've decided to bite the bullet and see if I can get my Mermaid stories published as a novel. I want to seek your permission first, since the Xanadu setting is such an important inspiration in their creation and Eric and Felix show up briefly as characters. I'll give full credit and, as before, I won't be upset if you decline. Thanks --[[User:Alveric|Alveric]] 17:07, 22 November 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:By all means, permission granted! If by some chance you get it published and have the opportunity to add an author's note or forward or other such bit of text I'd be tickled if you managed to slip in mention of the Xanadu shared universe existing beyond just that story, but even that's not really a request. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 04:25, 23 November 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Acinonyx2&diff=14642User talk:Acinonyx22011-06-08T14:20:54Z<p>Bryan: welcome to Shifti!</p>
<hr />
<div>Welcome to Shifti! Always glad to see new contributors. This is a bit of a standard boilerplate introduction that will hopefully help get you started on some of the basics you might not have noticed. Firstly, there's a main index of help pages at [[Help:Contents]] - a link is provided in the default sidebar titled "Help." It's a good idea to browse through the table of contents there so you'll know what information is available should you need it.<br />
<br />
If you're here to post stories, there's a guide specifically for the basics of that over at [[Help:Posting stories]]. General editing assistance is at [[Help:Editing]], and information about how to use talk pages (like this one) is at [[Help:Talk pages]]. If any of the formatting seems esoteric at first, don't worry - wikis are collaborative and other editors and administrators will come around to help tidy up anything that's left in a messy state, if you want. The more complex details can be learned later as you go.<br />
<br />
You can set up a personal homepage for yourself at your root user page, which you can find by clicking on your user name at the top of the page. Use your user page however you see fit; most authors generally list their stories there, along with a bit of biographical information about themselves and perhaps some links to other websites. See [[Help:User pages]].<br />
<br />
If you have any questions, you can either click the edit link for this page and write it here or you can follow the link in my signature to my own home page and leave it in the talk page over there. You can find a list of Shifti's administrators at [[Shifti:Administrators]]. Once you've got your bearings, feel free to delete this welcome message from your user talk page. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:20, 8 June 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:RozaliaGabriel&diff=14641User talk:RozaliaGabriel2011-06-08T14:20:49Z<p>Bryan: welcome to Shifti!</p>
<hr />
<div>Welcome to Shifti! Always glad to see new contributors. This is a bit of a standard boilerplate introduction that will hopefully help get you started on some of the basics you might not have noticed. Firstly, there's a main index of help pages at [[Help:Contents]] - a link is provided in the default sidebar titled "Help." It's a good idea to browse through the table of contents there so you'll know what information is available should you need it.<br />
<br />
If you're here to post stories, there's a guide specifically for the basics of that over at [[Help:Posting stories]]. General editing assistance is at [[Help:Editing]], and information about how to use talk pages (like this one) is at [[Help:Talk pages]]. If any of the formatting seems esoteric at first, don't worry - wikis are collaborative and other editors and administrators will come around to help tidy up anything that's left in a messy state, if you want. The more complex details can be learned later as you go.<br />
<br />
You can set up a personal homepage for yourself at your root user page, which you can find by clicking on your user name at the top of the page. Use your user page however you see fit; most authors generally list their stories there, along with a bit of biographical information about themselves and perhaps some links to other websites. See [[Help:User pages]].<br />
<br />
If you have any questions, you can either click the edit link for this page and write it here or you can follow the link in my signature to my own home page and leave it in the talk page over there. You can find a list of Shifti's administrators at [[Shifti:Administrators]]. Once you've got your bearings, feel free to delete this welcome message from your user talk page. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:20, 8 June 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Lights_Out&diff=14538Lights Out2011-05-24T06:13:05Z<p>Bryan: Limbering up long-disued writing muscles by popping out a quick story start. No idea where it's going, if anywhere. :)</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Category:Bryan]]{{DEFAULTSORT:Lights Out}}<br />
{{WIP}}<br />
{{byline|user=Bryan|author=Bryan}}<br />
<br />
The monitor flicked to a black screen in mid-keystroke. I blinked, frustrated for a moment at whatever new failure alert the operating system was about to throw at me, and then realized it wasn't just the monitor that had gone dark. The ceiling light had gone out and the computer's fan had gone silent at the same moment. It was a strange relief that it wasn't really a computer problem but rather just what appeared to be a power failure. Still an annoyance but not one that it was up to me to fix.<br />
<br />
It was past one AM and maybe I should have taken this as an opportunity to go to bed, but I'd always been quite the night owl and curiousity was far more important than fatigue right now. If nothing else I needed to check if it was just my own house's circuit breakers that had blown. So, navigating carefully by touch and memory down the pitch black hallway and stairs, I made my way to the living room and had a look outside.<br />
<br />
Sure enough the lights seemed to be out throughout the whole neighborhood. Possibly farther - I didn't see anything much aside from the dim light of the night sky backlighting the row of houses across the street.<br />
<br />
The weather had been great today so all I had to do was slip on my shoes for a quick trip outside to survey the horizon. My neighborhood happened to be draped over a modest hillside, with my house near the top, so walking down to the sidewalk provided me with a clear view both north and south along 108th street. It was eerie. There was a glow in the sky from distant city light, but I couldn't spot a single local source of illumination. There wasn't even light from the cars on the busy avenue a few blocks away.<br />
<br />
No light, and no sound either. For the first time since the lights had gone out I was a little bit unsettled. There was ''always'' the sound of cars in the city, even just a faint background murmur. Losing the street lights shouldn't have affected that. I wondered if I should perhaps go back inside, maybe dig up a battry powered radio and see if there was something more significant than a blown transformer going on.<br />
<br />
Then I took another look at the glow in the sky and wonder once again replaced worry. That wasn't citylight. With the light pollution gone, at least briefly, I was seeing the Aurora Borealis. The shifting orange and greenish-blue streamers were still very faint up there but it literally made my toes tingle to see that sight; it was a rare treat for a city dweller such as myself.<br />
<br />
I twitched at the sound of a door opening, glancing over at my neighbor's house to see the dark shape of someone emerging onto the porch. The neighbors had moved in only just that spring, a couple of months ago, but I'd had opportunty to chat with them a few times and they were a nice couple; the woman was a nurse and the man worked in the national parks service in some capacity. As my eyes adjusted I saw that it was the man who'd come out. I couldn't remember his name but I gave him a friendly wave.<br />
<br />
There were probably people poking their heads out of houses all over the place right now, though I was the only one I could see who was standing out by the road yet. Rather than call out to anyone to exchange pointless information I turned back up to observe the sky, wanting to take advantage of this opportunity for silent awe before the lights came back and ruined it. Maybe it was just my eyes continuing to adapt to the dark but the aurora had intensified. My breath caught in my chest and I just stared.<br />
<br />
The tingle intensified too. After an indeterminably long moment I managed to gasp, my breath having been caught far longer than it should have, and wavered unsteadily. ''Wow. I can't believe this is affecting me so deeply!'' I wasn't normally such the sentimental sort and yet here I was, feeling so overwhelmed I had almost lost my balance. In fact...<br />
<br />
I let out another gasp, more of a whimper, and tried to tear my attention away from the lightshow overhead. The tingle turned to sharp shooting sparks running up my legs and exploding through my chest. I stumbled to my hands and knees on the lawn. ''Thank goodness I managed to miss the pavement,'' the thought ran giddily through my mind. It wasn't the first thing I should have thought of, really - whatever was happening to me seemed like it might be a bit more serious than a banged knee. I looked up see if my neighbor was still out on his porch but just managed to glimpse his door slamming shut before I could utter a word.<br />
<br />
A sensation surged through my body. I couldn't describe it; something akin to pressure, something akin to pleasure or pain - I'd never felt anything like it. I managed to emit only a faint keening whine through clenched teeth, trembling and doing my best just to hold my position. I'd left my cell phone inside and I probably couldn't have dialled 911 even if I hadn't. Was I having some sort of seisure? The burning, tingling, itching pressure spread through me like a wave. I felt like I was trapped underwater, having trouble breathing as the weight crushed in on all sides and filled my body.<br />
<br />
I needed help, was desperate for help. But an equally powerful irrational paranoia also gripped me; I was out in the open and the thought of being caught like this ''terrified'' me. I had to get back inside. Gasping and spasming all the way, I managed to crawl the short distance back to my own front door.<br />
<br />
I'd closed it behind me when I'd gone outside. Try as I might, I just couldn't seem to get a grip on the doorknob to get it back open. My hands felt swollen and clumsy, my vision blurred from the pounding pressure in my head, and my guts were clenching in such a way that I could barely reach high enough. With a pitiful whimper of defeat I let myself collapse on my doorstep, curling up and hoping to simply endure whatever it was that was happening to me.<br />
<br />
The shifting greenish light in the sky was so bright now. I clenched my eyes in an attempt to block it out but I could still somehow feel it shining down on me. Something was tearing. That was good, the tearing eased some of the pressure. The pressure was fading now. Fading...<br />
<br />
I must have finally passed out. I came to again with a startled snort, alarmed and yet infinitely relieved. The pressure was gone, the ''light'' was gone. The only discomfort I had was a bit of hunger. And yet there was still definitely something very wrong with me. Moving with as much care as my unsteady muscles could muster I tried getting to my feet.<br />
<br />
All I managed was a clumsy flop. My arms and legs weren't responding correctly to my commands; they moved when I told them to but the angles were all wrong. I took a deep breath to calm myself for another try and even that action felt strange, my tongue flopping over teeth that weren't the correct shape. ''Don't panic don't panic don't panic...'' I repeated the thought desperately. Letting the breath go again I tried to at least roll over into a more comfortable position on my stomach. That was easy enough. I paused for a moment to let that modest triumph sink in and calm me, and then I tried to take better stock of what was wrong with me.<br />
<br />
Both aurora and citylight were gone, but the remaining starlight was startlingly bright now that my eyes had had ample time to adapt. I saw my arms stretched out in front of me and just stared for a minute. They were the wrong shape, stretched and distorted, and they were covered in a thick coating of dark fur. I tried flexing my oddly stiff fingers and all I saw in response was a slight splaying of paws at their ends. Big hairy ''paws'', tipped with what looked like a set of claws.<br />
<br />
I twisted to look back at the rest of myself. My clothing was split open along most of its seams with more of that dark fur bursting out through the gaps. ''Werewolf,'' the word bubbled up through the stunned layers of my mind. As insane as the idea might be it certainly seemed to click; my whole body had been altered into the form of some sort of nonhuman beast. And strange as it might seem having a name to attach to the phenomenon actually managed to calm me somewhat.<br />
<br />
Even if it wasn't quite right. I blinked as more details began to percolate through my mind. ''Werewolf? No...'' I cautiously flexed my leg, bringing it into better view. The proportions of my foot had lengthened considerably but what had burst out through the toe of my shoe looked more like a cloven hoof than it did a wolf's paw. And then there was my tail. My ''tail!'' The mere fact that I seemed to have one at all should have been enough to throw me for a loop, but this tail went all out. It was long and thick and snakey, with a relatively short coat of fur and a row of sharp curved spines sprouting along its top. ''What kind of tail is that!?''<br />
<br />
My respite from panic started crumbling again. In some small corner of my mind I actually found that amusing; I realized that I was losing it because I couldn't figure out exactly what ''type'' of werewolf I'd abruptly turned into. But right now any sort of rational thought was facing an uphill battle for my emotional state.<br />
<br />
And then a sound came that shattered any remaining hope of that. From somewhere far away, echoing through the dark city streets, came a rising cry of fear and longing. It was an inhuman sound and yet somehow it grabbed hard at my heart. Without thinking I pushed myself clumsily up to all fours, ears perking to catch it. Another voice cried out to join it from somewhere closer by, and I couldn't help myself; I took a deep breath and called out an answer of my own.<br />
<br />
It was sort of a howl, sort of a roar. And though I had never heard it before in my life I knew exactly what it meant; "me too! Oh thank god! I'm so frightened!"<br />
<br />
There were others out there that this had happened to, whatever "this" might be. Lots of others. The chorus of cries was rising all around me. I had to ''find'' them!<br />
<br />
I could feel that standing upright would be a challenge, maybe even an impossible one, but that didn't matter right now; I just needed to ''move''. And it turned out that learning to walk on all fours was quite easy with these reshaped limbs. As I got the knack walking quickly became running; I was too scared for half measures right now. I left a trail of shed clothing down the street as I galloped along the pavement.<br />
<br />
Others joined me. Big, menacing, predatory-looking beasts in the darkness; it should have been terrifying but was instead strangely reassuring. I was ''one'' of them. I caught a few good glimpses as we ran. I couldn't really say what we were exactly; there was something wolflike about us, but also maybe catlike, and of course there were those hooves on our hindlegs and that ridge of spines down our backs... the faces were the strangest part of all. Not at all human but with a definitely recognizable human expression. We were all frightened and confused and lost.<br />
<br />
I wound up in a group of four. We hadn't really known where we were going but it seemed pretty clear when we'd arrived, a small park with a secluded copse of trees in one corner, a perfect place to pause and hide for a moment. I felt the grip of fear easing as we came to a stop in the shadows.<br />
<br />
''I've been taking crazy pills,'' I thought once my panting had subsided. ''There's no other explanation. I'm crazy. This is all crazy.'' I eyed the three other creatures around me trying to make some sense of it all.<br />
<br />
We were all the same species, it seemed, whatever that species might be. There was a sleek-looking one who was still wearing a mostly-intact stretchy wite T-shirt, a smaller one with torn shorts still clinging valiantly to his waist, and a larger one who actually managed to look a little bit pudgy. The pudgy one was breathing hard and had braced all four legs to keep from collapsing, the small one was wandering back and forth with a somewhat vacant look in his eyes, and the sleek one had carefully folded her hindlegs to sit back on her haunches.<br />
<br />
I blinked. It was a ''her,'' wasn't it? I suddenly became aware of my nudity and felt like blushing a little. But I also knew that propriety was pretty far down on my list of priorities right now, and for that matter who even cared considering what I looked like right now. More important things were on my mind.<br />
<br />
The city was still echoing with the simple cries of whatever-the-hell-we-were-now as we ran around trying to find safety. Now that I seemed to have succeeded at that, at least temporarily, I tried something both quieter and more complex. "Hurr..." I grimaced, concentrating on controlling my foreign tongue and throat. "Hurr arr yurr?"<br />
<br />
The gutteral sounds were pretty far from human speech. My coincidental companions seemed to recognize what I was attempting, though, and the sense of eager relief was palpable. They were no doubt all just as confused as I was, and just as eager for any sorts of answers they could get.</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:SylviaChristiansen&diff=14458User talk:SylviaChristiansen2011-05-19T06:30:17Z<p>Bryan: Welcome to Shifti!</p>
<hr />
<div>Welcome to Shifti! Always glad to see new contributors. This is a bit of a standard boilerplate introduction that will hopefully help get you started on some of the basics you might not have noticed. Firstly, there's a main index of help pages at [[Help:Contents]] - a link is provided in the default sidebar titled "Help." It's a good idea to browse through the table of contents there so you'll know what information is available should you need it.<br />
<br />
If you're here to post stories, there's a guide specifically for the basics of that over at [[Help:Posting stories]]. General editing assistance is at [[Help:Editing]], and information about how to use talk pages (like this one) is at [[Help:Talk pages]]. If any of the formatting seems esoteric at first, don't worry - wikis are collaborative and other editors and administrators will come around to help tidy up anything that's left in a messy state, if you want. The more complex details can be learned later as you go.<br />
<br />
You can set up a personal homepage for yourself at your root user page, which you can find by clicking on your user name at the top of the page. Use your user page however you see fit; most authors generally list their stories there, along with a bit of biographical information about themselves and perhaps some links to other websites. See [[Help:User pages]].<br />
<br />
If you have any questions, you can either click the edit link for this page and write it here or you can follow the link in my signature to my own home page and leave it in the talk page over there. You can find a list of Shifti's administrators at [[Shifti:Administrators]]. Once you've got your bearings, feel free to delete this welcome message from your user talk page. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:30, 19 May 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Bryan&diff=14130User talk:Bryan2011-04-10T08:49:55Z<p>Bryan: /* Critique Request */</p>
<hr />
<div>==Searching==<br />
<br />
After the chat we had about the limitations of the internal search system of MediaWiki I took a look at wikimedia for search extensions. "Lucene Search" seemed to be the best bet, but after fighting to get the backend for it built and installed I learned it wasn't any better than the built-in system. (In truth, its worse. No ability to select additional namespaces to search in, requires manual dumping of the database and importing into the backend for indexing, etc...) All the code is there to support it, though. However I've shut down the search daemon and disabled the extension. I'm going to go back to poking at the MediaWiki internals to see if I can change the default search to include the User namespace. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:22, 21 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:When Wikipedia's under extreme load it shuts down the internal search engine to conserve resources and instead present a wrapper for a Google search limited to the wikipedia.org server, perhaps you could use something like that? Wouldn't work until Google started spidering us, which I don't know if they've done yet, but with MediaWiki's search as poor as it is it may be an improvement. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 02:42, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::There are several extensions on MetaWiki for Google searches. As far as I can tell from the [http://www.keil-draco.com/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=shifti stats page] Google has started the indexing process. (look down under the "bots" section). I'll get to work doing the reorg so Category:Author points to author homepages and Category:Stories By Author is the stories themselves. (It's better if we stay ahead of the curve, no?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:13, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::Sure, though staying behind the curve also has its advantages (we'll know more about what the organization of Shifti actually looks like :). I'd advise lowercase titles for pages and categories where possible, BTW, it makes them more natural to link to. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:18, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::Now you tell me. I've already gone and finished the reorg. How about I put together a few templates to somewhat automate the categorization and linking process? [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:39, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::::If you like, though I don't really see the point of turning <nowiki>[[Category:Author]]</nowiki> into <nowiki>{{Category author}}</nowiki> and such. I'll convert over the category to lower case, I'm used to doing that sort of thing over on Wikipedia. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:49, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::I was thinking more along the lines of <nowiki>{{AuthorPage}}</nowiki> adding <nowiki>[[Category:(Author Name)]]</nowiki> to the <nowiki>{{Title}}</nowiki> template. No need to go crazy with stuff like that. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:04, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::::::<s>A potential gotcha you might run into: If you put <nowiki>{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> on a template, it resolves as the ''template's'' page name. So every author page could wind up categorized in [[:Category:AuthorPage]]. You'd probably need to take the category name as a parameter, or ask that every user substitute the template rather than transclude it (if you use "<nowiki>{{subst:template name}}</nowiki>" instead of just "<nowiki>{{template name}}</nowiki>" the text of the template page is inserted directly into the article the moment you click "save").</s> Huh. I see now that you already use this in [[Template:Title]] and it works the other way. I'm going to have to double-check my Wikipedia experience on this one. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:28, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::: I'm also not a fan of categories in templates because it makes it impossible to use the template elsewhere (such as on a help page describing its usage) without incorrectly categorizing the other pages it appears in. I really think we're not a big enough wiki yet to be worrying much about this, I'm capable of cleaning everything up manually. It only took me two minutes to switch everything over from Stories By Author to stories by author. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:21, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::::Not a problem. But look at the hoops I had to jump through for the <nowiki>{{part}}</nowiki> template, which refused to resolve inside the table on the help page. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:31, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Searching and redirects==<br />
<br />
I think we might be able to sidestep the whole "search upgrade" thing by adding redirects - put on at [[Companion (Bob Stein)]], have it redirect to [[User:Posti/Companion]] and it should work, no? [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Yup. Wikipedia uses redirects of common misspellings in the same manner. No need for the parenthetical (Bob Stein) unless there's some other page already called "Companion", though. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:06, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Actually, I guess the parenthetical might be useful for people who are searching for "Bob Stein". The category would be a more useful place to find that but I guess people might not know to look there initially. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:47, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:: That was my thought on it. It would allow for a search for Bob Stein to turn it up. Though you are correct, the category page would be the better spot. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:29, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Dragons of Histh organization==<br />
<br />
About the "Dragons of Histh" stuff... I'm not to comfortable with "Book the One", "Book the Two" and such being main namespace entries. I'm asking before I do anything, but I'd feel better if they were moved to, say, "Dragons of Histh: Book the One" or "Book the One (Dragons of Histh)". As well, does this "Kinglake Film Partnership" actually exist or is it just some fluff name that 'Loathesome Dragon' created to make the setting seem more important/famous than it really is? (And if it is just a fluff name then I think it should be moved to User:Loathesomedragon/Kinglake_Film_Partnership. If it isn't it seems like rampant advertisement and I will delete it with that being the reason.) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:03, 5 August 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:I was thinking of moving those stories myself, actually. The names seemed overly generic and could be confusing. But as for the Kinglake thing, I don't see any reason not to leave it be; it's not likely that anyone's going to name a story that and it's not going to be in any story categories, so nobody will see it unless they're actively searching for it. So there's no clutter. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 00:30, 5 August 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== New Templates ==<br />
<br />
I've noticed that you've been adding some new templates lately. However, the [[Help:Templates]] page still needs updating with the howtos and examples. Or are they still in the rough? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:38, 2 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Not really, I just haven't got to updating it yet (and the external image template is covered in the image help page, which IMO is a more approriate place for it). I'll update tonight after I've done more work on ''Against Type'', my creativity is tied up at the moment. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:50, 2 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Against Type ==<br />
<br />
Your ISP is blocking my emails again. I can't send you the current file. It's almost done, too. :P --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 22:39, 7 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Blacklists ==<br />
<br />
In addition to the Captcha there are now two blacklists, one for certain username patterns and one for certain URL's.<br />
Username Blacklist can be found at [http://shifti.org/MediaWiki:usernameblacklist MediaWiki:usernameblacklist] and the URL blacklist is at [http://shifti.org/MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist] -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:00, 12 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
I've gone and slapped the spam blacklist code around a bit because it irritated the crap out of me earlier. Won't be irritating me anymore, even though it's still installed and functional. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:53, 8 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
Can you disable the ''captcha'' for me, please? Its a pain to recognize very jabbered letters, I have to post one story many times consuming a traffic. Strange, it requests identify eben for a page without any links.[[User:Inry|Inry]] 11:39, 10 February 2009 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Code Update ==<br />
<br />
You asked for it, you got it. A list of random pages is available via &lt;randompages/&gt; &ndash; it currently understands "style" and "class" as standard HTML parameters and can take a "count" parameter, which determines the length of the list generated. It is currently completely undecorated, so I think I'll set it up so it you can do &lt;randompages&gt;title text&lt;/randompages&gt;<br />
<br />
I also fixed up Special:Random to search NS_MAIN and NS_USER by default while not interfering with the operation of Special:Random/&lt;namespace&gt;<br />
&mdash;[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:40, 20 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
'''Update''' &mdash; added the title bar stuff. Two new paramters to go with it, "titlestyle" and "titleclass" &ndash; these control the look of the displayed title text. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:00, 21 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
More news. I've added the requested "Total Number Of Articles" bit to the categories page. Unfortunately it only covers articles and not subcategories. Doing subcategories is going to take another chunk of patching. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:57, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Unfortunately it's borked at this point and combining sub-categories and articles in one lump. I'm going to disable it for now and go back to the poking. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:00, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::And I've fixed it. Problem is that this would never fly for MediaWiki - it's making a massive database query and iterating over the results to count the articles. On Wikipedia, for example, this would require getting millions of results and iterating over them - quite intensive. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:35, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== другие языки / International ==<br />
<br />
How to correctly add to the Shifti pages on Russian? I have some translation of your stories and some my own stories.<br />
[[User:217.21.43.222|217.21.43.222]] 04:00, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Neat! Shifti runs on MediaWiki software, which is fully Unicode-compliant. It should be possible to just copy and paste Cyrillic text straight into the edit window and save it as-is, and you should be able to use Cyrillic in page titles and user names and such as well. Give it a try and let me know if any specific problems crop up.<br />
<br />
:Also, I'd be happy to see Russian translations of my stories posted here. It's something I'd never have imagined would ever happen :) Just make sure you ask other authors for permission before posting translations of any of theirs, though - copyright remains with the original authors and if they don't want translations posted they get the final say on that. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 04:13, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
::Same here. BD's stories are excellent and if they have been translated into another language, it'd be nice to see them here so his international fans can read them.<br />
<br />
::As a side note, it's wonderful that the non-english-speaking furs and TF fans have found Shifti and are interested in participating. This is the kind of thing I was hoping for when I decided to host the site. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 04:24, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
== Alex Warlorn said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
I just want to say, I'm sorry that my comment offended you. That was not my intention. I have been a fan of your writing for YEARS. <br />
<br />
--Alex Warlorn 00:35, 25 December 2007 (EST)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Which comment? I don't recall being offended by any comments on Shifti, so perhaps something's being misinterpreted, or perhaps my memory is faulty. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:25, 25 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Forum? ==<br />
<br />
Hey there, I've been contemplating this since a conversation I had with bard a while back about the number of comments posted to storys on shifti and I've been wondering if maybe there are some people that just arent familiar with or crazy about the commenting method of a wiki.<br />
<br />
I've also been pondering a kind of central place where people can post or discuss whatever they want about stuff on shifti or about transformation in general, basically a forum like Proboards linked to from the main page.<br />
<br />
Just wondering what you and shadow wolf think about this. [[User:Devin]]<br />
<br />
:Well, I consider TSA-Talk to be the sorta-semi-official "forum" for Shifti. This site originally grew out of the need to replace the TSA with a new archive that would be more flexible and easier to keep updated, so inheriting the associated fora seems reasonable to me. Better to use existing places with existing populations than to fragment the userbase unnecessarily, IMO. But if other fora are created I'd have no problem with listing them here too. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 12:59, 26 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
<br />
== Admin help please ==<br />
<br />
Bryan, I should have read the manual first, but I didn't. I should have moved story "Mermaid" to "Paying attention to detail 1" and "Mermaid Too" to "Paying attention to detail 2" and "Paying attention to detail" to "Paying attention to detail 3" and the irony is not lost on me, but I created new pages with those names and then realised there is no 'delete' function. Now I've created new pages I can't move to them, I think an admin needs to sort out the mess. Apologies in advance - sw13644.<br />
<br />
:No problem. Just to make sure I follow your request correctly, are you're wanting me to delete the pages [[Mermaid]], [[Mermaid Too]] and [[Paying attention to detail]]? Or do you want the revision histories of those pages to be merged into the new pages' ones instead? For future reference you can request page deletions by adding the string "<nowiki>{{request deletion}}</nowiki>" to the page. Alternately, if you're concerned that people might have linked to the old pages and will now get lost looking for your story sections, you can redirect the old pages by replacing the contents with "<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[new page name]]</nowiki>". [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 18:40, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
----<br />
<br />
Could You please check if my story The Right of Dreamers is listed properly in search categories and is accessible for anyone who might want to read it. I submitted the story two months ago and there is no single comment on it yet, neither good nor bad one :(. I’m not waiting for many comments for my other two stories as they are written in Russian language and therefore are unreadable for most shifti users, but The Right of Dreamers I wrote in English for it to be readable on shifti. I don’t want to think that my story wasn’t interpreting enough to leave a comment for at least a few people of those who should see it in Dragons category since it is there. Therefore I assume there might be some technical problems I don’t understand myself. <br />
[[User:GreyDragon|GreyDragon]] 04:49, 17 November 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Three-fourths ==<br />
<br />
Thanks!<br />
<br />
I didn't know about watching pages, so I wasn't aware of the comment, I'll be amending my watchlist presently. The story was a request from Soty, and I was familiar with his work, but not the one you linked, thanks for that too. Feel free to have a go at editing the story. I'll go take a look at it as well when I have the time.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 01:00, 16 February 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
I have tightened the story up a bit and caught a few typos. Let me know if you think it still needs work.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 02:10, 18 February 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Will do. Sorry I haven't got to giving any help myself yet, weekend's been pretty hectic for me. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 02:48, 18 February 2008 (EST)<br />
== U-V said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
Wow! My goodness, I'm touched and honoured (re: unequal share) That I could help inspire a story like that! It's very in keeping with the spirit of the little scenario I had slightly built up in mind. :)<br />
<br />
--U-V 09:30, 27 March 2008 (EDT)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Thanks. I wrote it without referencing the image, just my memory of it, so the setting wound up slightly different - I take it the image was meant to be set on a ship. Oh well, a minor thing. It also wasn't the mass TF implied by the bit of text you included in the image description, but it didn't rule out anything like that happening subsequently. I've got other writing commitments right now so I can't extend it, but maybe later. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 11:45, 27 March 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==General==<br />
Hello again, Bryan. I have just finished creating my homepage on Shifti. I hope that the stories’ list I had just created will be interesting for other Shifti users. The list has only 3 stories at the moment but I hope that there will be more with time either with my own search efforts or thanks to help of more experienced TF readers and writers (including You, sir).<br />
As for my own TF stories, they are in Russian language. Will it make sense posting them on my Shifti homepage anyway?<br />
--[[User:GreyDragon|GreyDragon]] 14:07, 21 August 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Sure! There was a fellow a while back who was doing Russian translations of existing stories (see [[#другие языки / International]] earlier on this page), I was keen to host a bunch of those here. If you like you could create a category for Russian-language stuff, if more comes along it'd be neat to have a directory of it. Shifti supports unicode, so you can use Cyrillic characters both within the page text and in page titles (eg, [[Русский язык]]). I'm not a Russian speaker myself, unfortunately, so I won't be able to help much with the editing and such. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:22, 21 August 2008 (EDT)<br />
== bobby said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
great site thanks see u<br />
<br />
--bobby 17:13, 23 September 2008 (EDT)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Um, thanks. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:34, 23 September 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Oops... ==<br />
<br />
One of these days I'll remember to double-check that I'm actually giving the greeting on the right page... I keep forgetting that the "new user" entries on Special:RecentChanges doesn't have a 'Talk' link. And I guess I should also keep from editing when distracted :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 06:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:No problem, everything's easily fixable. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 07:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Spam/Vandalism ==<br />
<br />
Viqsi has said that [[Web comics]] comes up as the #2 result on [http://www.google.com Google] in a search for Shifti. That might be the reason that it seems to be getting hit more often than other pages.<br />
<br />
Besides that, though, it is looking like Shifti might be pulling in some spammers/vandals who hit a page once or twice to test if the site is being patrolled. There are a lot of Wiki's that have been massively vandalized and the vandals might have been following that pattern.<br />
<br />
Beyond that... I had thought about protecting [[Web comics]] but decided not to because I was unsure if it could be blocked against just anon-edits. Good to see that it can. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Yup, semi-protection blocks both anonymous edits and edits by accounts that are relatively young - I believe the default is four days. That prevents throwaway accounts from being easily used to circumvent it. Good to know why [[web comics]] was picked as the target; that means it's unlikely that the vandal will just start picking other pages at random. Not that there are a heck of a lot of publically-editable pages, since most authors seem to prefer the subpage route. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 05:25, 18 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Defaultsort ==<br />
<br />
It seems that the Default Sort Template doesn't work anymore. In Category Pages, my stories appear in User:Forestier/... [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 14:32, 6 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I made a mistake. The story are correctly ''sorted'' ; but I remember that they used to appeared under their real title, not under their page name. [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 14:49, 6 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Yeah, this was previously done by a custom tweak done to Shifti's code that was lost in the crash. It's been noticed and we'll have it fixed back up soon. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:08, 10 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::Thanks. [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 20:13, 10 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
== Critique Request ==<br />
<br />
Your Xanadu Universe has really struck a chord with me. Since I first discovered it a few weeks ago, it has inspired me to write the first fiction I've done in more than a decade. I would appreciate it if some time, when you have the time, you could read what I've written and tell me what you think of it and or how I could improve it. There is no hurry, and I won't be upset if you decline. I'm a grown up and can take criticism. :-)<br />
Thank you<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
:Sure thing, I'll give it a read-over tomorrow after sleep (to make sure I read it right :). [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:31, 27 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I've posted my stories on Deviant Art and would like to post on TSATalk. How do I properly give you credit for creating the Xanadu Universe? I only know you as Bryan. <br />
<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
On DA I gave a short discription of the Xanadu Universe and directed folks who want to learn more to Shifti.org.<br />
<br />
When you want to, take another look at 'Wynd, Skye etc.' And tell me what you think so far. No hurry, it's far from finished.<br />
<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
:Sorry about my silence there, been a bit distracted with some RL stuff and wound up taking a bit of a vacation from online life. If you want to credit me by my full name for Xanadu, it's Bryan Derksen - I've been keeping it off of Shifti, generally speaking, just as a way of keeping my "RL" and "TF" spheres of interest distinct but it's not a huge secret or anything. :)<br />
<br />
:I'll take another read-through of your story soon, probably won't get to it in the next two days but hopefully soon thereafter. I'll add it to my task list. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:49, 10 April 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:ShadowWolf&diff=13948User talk:ShadowWolf2011-03-12T23:20:47Z<p>Bryan: /* Spam Flood */ Sounds like a reasonable step to me.</p>
<hr />
<div>how do you delete a page that has no content? I've had to modify a title of a story page and removed it's content, but the title still appears on my author page.<br />
:Please sign with the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> - but generally you have to remove all content and then kill any links to it you've made. That'll "orphan" it and then an admin can go and do the actual delete. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:43, 3 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
:Page deleted, Oberon. (Recent Edits is a wonderful tool!) - in the future, though, please sign all entries on a talk page using the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> specifier - it's what gives the nifty user link and timestamp. (and in requests for deletion, could you please include the page name ?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:48, 3 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Sitenotice text==<br />
<br />
Where did you put the text for the donation sitenotice? Normally it'd be at [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]], but I'm assuming since it's not there you've inserted it into the source code somewhere. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 20:46, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
Never mind, I found it - MonoBook.php, right? I should move it out of that and into sitenotice, it won't appear for anyone who's using a different skin otherwise. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:01, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Didn't know about the Sitenotice bit, so yeah, I did a bit of hacking and dumped it straight into the code from the primary skin. I actually had thought about dumping it directly into the Skin driver, but decided not to. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:08, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:There, fixed up. I pulled the code from the source and added a version to the [[Mediawiki:Sitenotice]]. "A Version" because I had to use the same custom tag I created for [[Shifti:Site support]] to do the button. (PayPal kinda requires it be a form with a crapload of hidden fields) &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:16, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
::Heh. I was just working on that myself. Good to know I was on the right track. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:20, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
::This is odd. It appears that integral.org is in the spam protection filter, I can't save [[Main Page]] now. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:37, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:::Not in any of the spamfilters I installed. It's not in the central MediaWiki list or in the site-specific list. I'll look deeper. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:00, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
:::[[Special:Version]] doesn't have any spam-blockers besides [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist SpamBlacklist] and none of its lists have "integral" anywhere in them. So I don't know what the problem could be... Everything I've installed is hacked to not bug people that are in the Admin group about '''''ANYTHING''''', so I'm at a loss as to what the problem could be. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:04, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
::::Well, whatever the problem was, it seems to have passed. I should have saved a copy of the error message but I suppose it's moot if it doesn't come back. BTW, I hope you don't mind the little tweaks I made to the sitenotice banner. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:38, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:::::Nah, it works. And I've reverted the changes I made, since it wasn't the cause of Felix's problem. He saw the Captcha, but apparently either 1) Didn't know what it was or 2) Couldn't read it. So I've just gone and given the "Author" permissions group a Captcha exception. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:49, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
What do you think of the notion of putting a progress bar in the donation request, as demonstrated in [[Shifti:Sandbox]]? Wikipedia does it that way, and it might give people more incentive to donate in order to get rid of the banner. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:23, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:That's pretty nifty. Maybe have the bar in red, though :) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 01:30, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
::There, added a color parameter. Red's a bit garish, though, maybe something a bit more pastel? [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:43, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:I hate that banner!! It offends me, I must destroy it by donating! *snicker* :)<br />
<br />
--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 23:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Broken Discussion pages and Captcha errors ==<br />
<br />
Not sure what's going on. When I click on the Discussion link on a page that doesn't have a discussion, it takes me direct to that page's edit frame (NOT the Discussion page), and I seem to have full edit rights on it. Something seems to have gone wonky along the way.<br />
<br />
Pre-existing Talk pages seem to work fine (as evidenced here), though when I was trying to post it gave me an "out of captcha" error (When I tried to post it on the Current Events page that is.).<br />
<br />
Oh and for the TF Types, you may want to add "Plant" (for TF's that are not animal based, but not quite Dryad based for the mythical category), and "Inanimate" (and maybe even Robotization or however you want to classify it). <br />
<br />
I'm not quite sure if inanimate would be good enough as a catchall for a "living material' type TF (think X-Men's Colossus, and Ice Man, who turn into living steel and living ice respectively), or if we might want another type for that as well.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 13:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I'm working on this, but apparently the 'title' parameter isn't being properly set. When it's a red-link PHP is getting a URL that looks like 'index.php?title=XXX?title=XXX_talk&action=edit&redlink=1' and it's seeing that first 'title=' and not the second one. I'm trying to figure out how to solve that.<br />
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Turned out to have several causes, all related to various problems with a code upgrade and several other problems that cropped up. Since I have yet to see this problem re-occur, I'm going to call it 'fixed'. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:38, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Story submission captcha? ==<br />
<br />
I just went to post a new story and after I hit the 'save page' button, it took me to an edit screen that had:<br />
Your edit includes new external links. To help protect against automated spam, please enter the words that appear below in the box<br />
at the top. I looked and looked again and couldn't find any external links in my story. In fact there was no markup at all once I removed all the tab-indention on the paragraphs.<br />
<br />
I'm all for automated systems blocking automated systems, but this sort of struck me as odd. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:01, 20 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:The regular expressions might have triggered on a non-link URL. But I cannot be certain, as this is the first report I've seen of it. (and sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Also, as long as I'm bugging you guys, any chance of getting an inverted color scheme skin? Dark text on a light background seems to be more difficult for me to read for any length of time than light text on a dark background. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:The new 'shiftimin' skin took a while to get fully functional, but you could, likely, use "user CSS" to get the same result. Give me a bit of time and I'll see if I can get a "map" together for the CSS behind the "monobook" skin so you can override it easily. Alternatively you could poke at the CSS yourself, but...<br />
:There is a page giving a minimal explanation of CSS at [[Help:Custom css]] and we have a page open to user additions about CSS hacks at [[Custom CSS Hacks]]. I've been planning to do up a page explaining the various classes of the primary 'MonoBook' skin for a while. Guess it's about time to actually get to work on that. (and again, sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Question ==<br />
...from a nubcake guy. Just asking, is a story allowed to be set in a video game universe ([http://halo.wikia.com/The_Halo_Universe Halo]: w00t!)? 'Cos I wanna write a TF story set in there, but I'm not too sure if this is allowed on Shifti. Hope it's yes, 'cos it's already in progress. Thanks! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]<br />
:We have no restrictions on fan-fiction, but if we receive a take-down notice it will be removed. (I run the server and would be the one facing the legal actions - so I will not fight a DMCA notice unless I am certain it is invalid) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::Great! Well, I'm pretty sure Bungie, the copyright holder, encourages fan fic, so I think it's ok...Note "I think". I'm not sure how they'd react to TF fan fic. Thanks for confirming (and once again for the fave I can't tell you how much that means to me)! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]<br />
:::Most companies are open to fan-fic, because it helps with the popularity of their product. And you got the "fav" because I saw real promise in the original and in your willingness to take constructive criticism. Every other author in my "new authors to watch" section has shown the same promise, though they haven't all been available to take the constructive criticism that could be offered. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:24, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Hi there! This is the noob writer, Drake, again, here for a fresh wave of bother-the-administrator. Sorry to bother you, but here I am. Bothering you. Anyway, I was hoping you could help critique my new story, [[User:WolfyDrake95/Finding Himself|Finding Himself]], which I uploaded a couple of days ago. I got comments from Guvnor of Space and Concerned Reader, but I thought I'd ask for your opinion since you were the only one who seemed actually care about my first, and admittedly not-so-good, story. I do hope you can drop a critique and a comment to help me improve.<br />
<br />
The above was an email that I sent to you but received no reply for. And also, about the fanfic that this section was initially about: can I upload screenshots? Halo features a Theatre mode in which one can take screenshots of players or NPCs, so I think I could use screenshots to illustrate characters, etc. Anyway, thanks for reading so far! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]], 23:43, 27 June 2009<br />
<br />
:Hey there, ShadowWolf, it's Drake again. Hope you could look through my [[User:WolfyDrake95/Letting Go|new story]], in case you haven't noticed. Yea, it's not very good, and it took a strange direction halfway through writing (becoming all wierd and sappy), but I hope it would merit, at least, a critic. Of course, if you're too busy, it's okay, I'm fine with that. I'm pretty sure critiqueing new writers isn't exactly the only thing you do ;). <br />
<br />
:And by the way, if creating new info tags were possible, a "Critique Requested" one might be more effective in garnering critiques than the "Comment" tag that's provided. And in regards to my Halo-fanfic, is it okay if I put screenshots from in-game to illustrate? It'd be useful for people to understand what I'm saying, since Halo isn't as well known as Star Wars. &mdash;[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 12:48, 3 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Sadly I'm going to have to decline a critique on that story. I have tried reading it and found that it did not interest me, sorry.<br />
<br />
::As to the images... I am unsure about this, as there is content in the texture-maps and such that will wind up as part of the image that are copyright MS/Bungie. However... This would appear to be a case covered by the "Fair Use" exceptions, so unless a lawyer that uses Shifti can answer otherwise, go ahead and upload.<br />
<br />
::The 'critique requested' template itself should be easy. I'll have to see about that at some point today. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:35, 3 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::All right, I understand if you don't want to critique. I do know that this isn't exactly my best story...I suppose every writer has times when he writes bad. Just that I get these times more often. I sorta knew it was already bad, but I guess I needed someone to tell me that it was lousy, right to my face. Ah well. <br />
<br />
:::As for the pictures, thanks! And for the template, another thanks. You're one hell of an admin! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 04:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::::It's not that it isn't a good story, Drake. The problem is that when I tried reading it I was not able to get more than a few paragraphs in before I said "this is depressing"&mdash;I do not read anything that I can say that about because I suffer from bipolar disorder. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 11:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::::Um...then I guess I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. And yeah, I guess I shouldn't write so many depressing stories; it certainly gets a little boring after a while, and I suppose you're right in that when people read stories, they probably won't like those that make them all depressed. I should put a warning on that story one of these days! Anyway, I think I should start on my more normal stories soon. <br />
::::I don't know what to say about that last bit of what you said because I'm just a kid, and I'm not very smart and I'm terrified that I'll say something insensitive or insulting or whatever. I do that a lot of times, and the people on the receiving end tend to take offense. Sorry.<br />
::::On the upside, I'm thinking of writing a PaW story soon. It's a cool story setting, the Pig and Whistle. Looks like a good setting for assassinations!<br />
::::Still, thanks for taking the time to clarify the issue. I suddenly feel happy. :) &mdash;[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 13:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::::I don't offend easily&mdash;and if you ever do, you'll know it. Depressing stories can be good, too, but I stay away from them for medical reasons&mdash;bipolar disorder means I have massive mood swings and reading depressing stuff just feeds into that. There have been several times when I've read something really depressing and it had a very bad impact on me.<br />
:::::On another note&hellip; You are a lot more intelligent and mature than most of the "kids" these days (IMNSHO). Most "kids" these days have almost no idea how to put a sentence together and you are one of the few that I have run into that can take criticism.<br />
:::::As to a PaW story&hellip; The setting was created, as it says in the description and rules, as a "reboot" of the "Tales from the Blind Pig" setting. Within the last couple of years the "Blind Pig" setting has had numerous arguments over what is and is not "canon" between authors who have seen the setting grow and contributed and people just finding the setting. Because the creator has left it behind it has become something of a "lawless waste" with no real controls and people changing it from what the creator said is actually the reality of the setting. To solve this and make the setting much more internally consistent I asked around and a small group formed to generate the new setting. There is a lot more to the setting than has been revealed or is likely to be openly revealed to anyone anytime soon.<br />
:::::And we tried to define only what was needed to give the setting its own identity so that the people actually interested in writing a story set there could create the setting itself. We only ask that you not set the story outside of the NAR/RoT/Quebec area unless you are actually from that other area. The reason for that is simply that we wish to allow people from those other regions to have control over what, exactly, happened to their regions after the collapse. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
{{Green|Well Wolfy is from Singapore, so he could open up that side of the world. On a side note, all 14-19 year olds I know on the internet have trouble with basic grammar and spelling when talking normally, so I wouldn't quite call your writing juvenile.}} --[[User:Concerned Reader|Concerned Reader]] 14:29, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Well, actually Singapore is pretty boring. Nothing's really cool or fun here (maybe I'm just used to it?), and society feels very...suppressed. There's no space for individuality. If you try to be yourself, you get mocked and stuff (like when my friends discovered that I was on Shifti). Bad story material. And as for deciding what happens to my region...I dunno. Best I don't, I have terrible imagination and my mind only circles around video games that I play. <br />
:If I might refer you to the [[User_talk:WolfyDrake95/Letting Go|talk page]] of Letting Go, you'll find the rough plan of this PaW story.<br />
:As for my writing, I won't deny that I'm very, very proud of it (my downfall), which is why I hurt a lot sometimes when criticized without knowing why (thus why I seemed so upset when I replied to ShadowWolf's declination). I also have a somewhat existant superiority complex (I got really jealous when ShadowWolf commented that Rabbit was impressed by CR's Rebuilding. Puberty? I dunno.) <br />
:Even though I know I'm not that good a writer, I like to think that I write depressing stories because of my "painful experiences in life". Actually, it's because I read a lot of Michael Bard's work (both the sad ones and the happy ones). Both of which are awesome, by the way. I'll admit that I'm a fan of his. <3 <br />
:Oh, and thanks for the compliments, you two. I can feel my ego swelling already. :) &mdash;[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 14:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I hope I'm doing this right and putting it in the right place. If not, please accept my apology. If you have the time, I would like for you to take a look at the stories I've posted and offer some criticism. I've read enough of your material to trust your judgement. Also could you suggest others who might be able to help me to improve my work?<br />
Thank you<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
== RSS Feed? ==<br />
<br />
Not sure if there's much you can do about this or if I'm using it wrong or expecting the wrong things. But I've signed up for the RSS feed on Shifti, and I'm not only getting the new changes soon after they occur, but I also get a bunch of changes that were already reported to me, often multiple times.<br />
--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 11:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:That's the way the RSS feed works. It works similar to how the 'Recent Changes' page works by default. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:: True but it seems to be picking up changes it has already reported that haven't had any actual new changes done. For example, when Bryan was adding/updating the separator graphics, the RSS feed repeated it twice for each change he did, and that seems to happen a lot.<br />
::--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::I'd look closer - there were, in most cases, two files uploaded/updated - and yes, there is a bug somewhere in the system that is double-logging some events. I haven't been able to track that one down, though. It's about time to take a look and see if there is a new version of the code available, however, so I can see if an upgrade fixes the problem. (Most notably it is the new-user stuff that gets double-logged, but I have no idea how this is impacting the RSS feed) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:37, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::: I meant that as a general example thouhg; not that in particular.<br />
<br />
:::: Another example, I just got an RSS update now. I've been watching the feeds and had no recent updates from Shifti since this morning whence I'd gotten Jon's latest update and a few hours. The update I JUST got says there are 8 new changes, including Jon's After Hours addition again, Wolfy's New world addition and 4 entries for the RSS Feed discussion. (Despite this being the 4th entry now). All of the entries have a time of 4:03PM ADT. --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 19:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::::: Odd... And I'm not really that knowledgeable about the MediaWiki code-base (yes, I can hack on it, but...) I have a feeling that the problem lies in how the system works. I think that it might be compiling a list of all changes within a certain period and sending it out. And if it isn't keeping a proper time-stamp on the items, that is a violation of the RSS spec, IIRC - since it is then pushing out duplicates without a way for readers to determine that with any degree of certainty. I'll sign up to the RSS feed myself and see if I can track the problem. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Okay - I've got my client signed up to the RSS feed for the [[Special:RecentChanges|Recent changes]] page. Let's see what this edit does... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Now I've seen the problem and it sucks. That one previous edit led to a major flood of '31 new edits' in my feed reader. Looks like I was right - it isn't properly date-tagging the entries. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Looked at the raw XML of the feed and it doesn't look like there is an error in it - though there might be. Let me go take a look at the RSS specs to see if I can figure out what is missing and/or not being set properly. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Ooooh... I think I just found the cause. Apparently the feed is claiming to be RSS 2.0 but it isn't putting a stable &lt;guid/&gt; tag on any of the entries. This tag is the method by which most RSS readers decide whether an item is new or not. The feed here does not have them. This is probably an oversight on the part of the person that wrote the code, but I cannot say. I'm going to go check Wikipedia to see if they have it there - because if they don't then the only reason that feeds of Wikipedia aren't getting overwhelmed is because of the volume of edits there. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Changed it to include the link-url as a guid - it should be genuinely unique to a specific page revision. Lets see if this fixes the problem... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Okay - I give up (for now) - because that last edit showed up with a massive number of others and the added <guid> tag doesn't seem to have helped any. Unless, of course, those &lt;guid/&gt; tags need a bit to start showing up... I really don't know. Might be time for me to look into cleaning out the cache table of the database. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:20, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: And that looks like it did do it after all. Bug report being marked <strong style="color: red;">CLOSED/RESOLVED</strong>. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Bug not completely resolved. On restart my RSS client has shown a singularly massive flood of repeated messages. This does not make sense to me, as it was not doing this during the testing yesterday - and I am willing to bet it will not show such action today. However it might be that the text I am using to generate the data for the GUID tag is not as stable as I once thought - this bothers me and makes me think I might have to go much deeper into the code for changes. Perhaps as deep as altering the 'feed item' class so that it requires the actual ID of the revision so that said ID can be used for the GUID. --[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Sadly... It looks like utilizing the Date of the edit might be the only way to uniquely identify them - in combination with the page title, that is. However, I shall not be making those changes at this time. What I shall be doing is finding a way to interact with another developer so that I can be certain this will permanently and fully squash this bug. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: Not sure what's going on, but the problem seems to be cropping up again. I've gotten RSS feeds telling me of changes that I've already gotten before (and before and before)... --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:52, 12 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Has to do with how the URL's are generated. Since I'm using the URL as the GUID, it looks like there is a periodic shift in them. I have zero clue how to fix it, because I'd have to come up with something that is genuinely unique as an identifier, and I can't think of anything that would work there. (at least, nothing that is actually available to the feed generator) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:15, 12 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== ShiftiMin-related stuff ==<br />
<br />
I expect to be poking at the new theme with sharp sticks during the [[TSA-Bash]] anyways, but in the meantime I discovered (largely by happenstance) that if you're not logged in, there's no "log in / create account" link in ShiftiMin! I'd say that's a bug - unless we want to become a <em>really</em> exclusive club. ;)<br><br />
Looking pretty decent otherwise; we just need to figure out how to handle the menu organization. (Plus about eleventy billion other pet peeves with which I intend to drive you TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE. Mua ha ha.) --[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 15:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I thought I'd gotten that bug (GAH! Must be related to me changing the user-options bits to a drop-down from the long list it was)<br />
:Since Shiftimin does not work on versions of IE prior to 8 without a massive javascript hack it is not meant to be used as the primary skin for Shifti. This means that the 'missing login/create link' is a very low priority bug.<br />
:I am currently poking at ideas for another design that is as (or more) minimalistic but is also designed to take full advantage of modern browsers CSS3 support and HTML5. That redesign is not public yet, since it is currently little more than an image in the GIMP.<br />
:Oh, and I already am 'TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE' - I just hide it well. So driving me there is a very short trip... And... If you have any ideas at all for changes, just dump them here. I'll get on top of the ones that are fast/easy to implement immediately.<br />
:And if you have Fx3.5 available, look at Shifti using the Shiftimin skin. All kinds of nifty little hacks I've added that target it. (Okay, so they could probably target Safari/WebKit and Konqueror/KHTML as well... but I'm not going to try and support all the alternative browsers until they agree on the format for the CSS. And Opera '''STILL''' does not support even the 'border-radius' property or the 'box-shadow' or 'text-shadow' properties)<br />
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:02, 9 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Hey there, ShadowWolf. Just poking in here to point out what seems to be a bug. The SiteSearch function isn't working; I believe it has something to do with the server crash and tech replacement the other day. If I click the Search button it shows<br />
<br />
:A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: <br />
::SELECT page_id, page_namespace, page_title FROM `shifti_page`,`shifti_searchindex` WHERE page_id=si_page AND MATCH(si_title) AGAINST('' IN BOOLEAN MODE) AND page_is_redirect=0 AND page_namespace IN ('0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','12','13','14','15') LIMIT 20 <br />
:from within function "". MySQL returned error "145: Table './shifti/shifti_searchindex' is marked as crashed and should be repaired (malfoy)".<br />
I guess this isn't normal, but I'm also guessing that you might have already noticed. Anyway, sorry that I can't donate. I don't have PayPal or MasterCard or anything. &mdash;[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 13:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Thought I'd run the "check and repair" before bringing the new server live. Guess it didn't actually do the repair... It's fixed now - sorry for not spotting it myself :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:03, 17 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Redirects ==<br />
<br />
Just a heads-up, I noticed that [[PAW General TimeLine]] was linked to from [[Talk:Rebuilding]]. I didn't check all the redirects so there might be others. In general I think it's best not to delete redirects left behind by page moves, especially not when the redirect's name still accurately reflects the content it's redirecting to - even if you fix all the internal links there's still the possibility that other pages out on the web point there. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Links on archived pages ==<br />
<br />
Hi ShadowWolf! Thanks for the welcome. :-)<br />
<br />
I made the edits to the archived page because, well . . . posterity is nice, but if you don't actually get to the site intended, that's not very useful to readers! At WikiFur we either update outdated links, replace them with a link to archive.org, or remove them altogether; leaving them broken tends to results in linking to spam sites sooner or later. And WikiFur's old site is going down imminently. [[User:GreenReaper|GreenReaper]] 01:58, 28 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Ah, well... I've added a new section to the front-page. For that set of archived pages we really should keep the links up-to-date. We have a larger problem right now that is in the process of being worked out - I'm sure you've seen the site-notice banner... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:21, 28 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Spam Flood ==<br />
<br />
What can we do about this? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 04:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:So far there's only about a half dozen spam postings showing up per day, which is IMO quite manageable in terms of manual deletion. I'd recommend avoiding anything that might slow down legitimate posting. Maybe tweak the account creation captcha, if that's easy to do (I'd bet that spending more than a few hours working on it will probably be more time than is taken doing manual cleanup for the next month :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Right now I have a lot to do - including fixing the donation button. But a better captcha system than what we have is a good idea and I've been wondering if maybe using ReCaptcha would be a good idea. Very few spam-bots have cracked that one so far. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Seems to be coming in just brief surges. After that page of spam last night I went to bed expecting to have dozens more to delete in the morning, but no more came in. This one, too, may pass. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:35, 9 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I'm moderating another Wiki, and it's been hit as hard, if not harder. It's annoying to say the least, and we're trying to figure out better options ourselves, but there isn't much that can be done. Damn spammers. --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 12:07, 10 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I'm not going to try and fight the losing battle of who can outwit who. The only winner in that game is the spammers and everyone else loses big. The trick here is going to be finding a better way to secure the account creation and, at this point, file uploads. I have thought about an oversight system for monitoring uploads/page creation by new accounts, but it seems too draconian to me. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:24, 10 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This is getting worse than it was before. Looking at the Recent Changes page is very discouraging. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 08:18, 12 March 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Looks like we'll have to change Captcha systems (there might be a way to use ReCaptcha, which is a "proven hard to break" system) and I am going to change the upload permissions so that you need to have "author" status. Give me a bit to look at things - the problem is that any system we go with has to be both easy on humans and tough on bots... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 11:42, 12 March 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Sounds like a reasonable step to me, Shifti is not very image-oriented anyway and only a few stories have them. Shouldn't be any need for non-authors to upload them. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:20, 12 March 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:ActiveMormon&diff=13881User talk:ActiveMormon2011-03-08T04:32:28Z<p>Bryan: Welcome to Shifti</p>
<hr />
<div>Welcome to Shifti! Always glad to see new contributors. This is a bit of a standard boilerplate introduction that will hopefully help get you started on some of the basics you might not have noticed. Firstly, there's a main index of help pages at [[Help:Contents]] - a link is provided in the default sidebar titled "Help." It's a good idea to browse through the table of contents there so you'll know what information is available should you need it.<br />
<br />
If you're here to post stories, there's a guide specifically for the basics of that over at [[Help:Posting stories]]. General editing assistance is at [[Help:Editing]], and information about how to use talk pages (like this one) is at [[Help:Talk pages]]. If any of the formatting seems esoteric at first, don't worry - wikis are collaborative and other editors and administrators will come around to help tidy up anything that's left in a messy state, if you want. The more complex details can be learned later as you go.<br />
<br />
You can set up a personal homepage for yourself at your root user page, which you can find by clicking on your user name at the top of the page. Use your user page however you see fit; most authors generally list their stories there, along with a bit of biographical information about themselves and perhaps some links to other websites. See [[Help:User pages]].<br />
<br />
If you have any questions, you can either click the edit link for this page and write it here or you can follow the link in my signature to my own home page and leave it in the talk page over there. You can find a list of Shifti's administrators at [[Shifti:Administrators]]. Once you've got your bearings, feel free to delete this welcome message from your user talk page. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 04:32, 8 March 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:TH&diff=13850User talk:TH2011-03-05T08:50:41Z<p>Bryan: Silly me, there was no need to include a full URL in that link</p>
<hr />
<div>Thanks for the sentiment over on that spam page. Never fear, we've got a couple of active administrators here and it's rare that spam nonsense like this lasts more than 24 hours. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 04:08, 5 March 2011 (UTC)<br />
: Good. It just turned up more in my feed recently. [[User:TH|TH]] 07:58, 5 March 2011 (UTC)<br />
::Yeah, sadly the RecentChanges feed will always have the junk mixed in along with the good stuff - that's what it's for. If you want a feed that's more discriminating, perhaps try [[Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Story]] to get just recent changes to pages that are in the category "story"? Whatever weird spambot is generating these pages hasn't been putting them into story categories. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:49, 5 March 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:TH&diff=13849User talk:TH2011-03-05T08:49:37Z<p>Bryan: Perhaps try a category-specific feed to filter out this weird spam?</p>
<hr />
<div>Thanks for the sentiment over on that spam page. Never fear, we've got a couple of active administrators here and it's rare that spam nonsense like this lasts more than 24 hours. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 04:08, 5 March 2011 (UTC)<br />
: Good. It just turned up more in my feed recently. [[User:TH|TH]] 07:58, 5 March 2011 (UTC)<br />
::Yeah, sadly the RecentChanges feed will always have the junk mixed in along with the good stuff - that's what it's for. If you want a feed that's more discriminating, perhaps try [http://shifti.org/wiki/Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Story Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Story] to get just recent changes to pages that are in the category "story"? Whatever weird spambot is generating these pages hasn't been putting them into story categories. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:49, 5 March 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Talk:Hannah%27s_Tale&diff=13845Talk:Hannah's Tale2011-03-05T05:59:07Z<p>Bryan: Found an amusingly apt article on io9 today. :)</p>
<hr />
<div>This is well along and I think I'm ready for some comments. It's my first attempt in a very long time to do first person.<br />
<br />
This story is now essentially finished, though I expect to do some revisions. I hope it's an enjoyable read. Please tell me what you-all think.<br />
<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
:There, took me a little while to get to it but I've finished reading. :) 'Tis a nice little tale, and flowed pretty smoothly. There wasn't a whole lot of plot to it but that's not too big a "fault" - a lot of Xanadu stories are written along these lines, most of mine are similar. Mermaids in particular are tricky to write a lengthy plot for since they've got such limited mobility. I see now that your other ongoing work is a crossover, with the other mermaid Skye making an appearance. That's one of the neat aspects of shared settings but it could also lead to constraints on your subsequent stories so don't hesitate to edit this one some more if events in your other stories call for it. For example, it sounds like Skye is going to be separated from the other two protagonists of her story in fairly short order. Maybe a major plot for the other story could be them searching for her?<br />
:Anyway, focusing on this story. The mervulcan mix was a great idea, very fun. However, the Vulcan side of the mix didn't come up very much. I realize that under the circumstances it's entirely reasonable that the mer side would be the more significant one but it still feels a bit like a wasted opportunity. When Hannah was being manhandled by that pirate I was expecting that she'd pull out the ol' Vulcan nerve pinch on him (that encounter could perhaps use a bit of rewriting anyway - the characters' reactions seemed a bit odd, both in Hannah pulling a knife on a man who was trying to help her and yet still trusting him to carry her around, and the pirate not reacting very much to his passenger threatening him like that).<br />
:Then of course there's the Vulcan mind meld and telepathic aptitude in general that you could play around with a bit. Especially right at the end, it could be useful as a means of underwater communication with Skye and I'd be curious to see how it interacts with Force-based mental communication. As it was her reunion with Alex was a little uneventful.<br />
:Hope these were the sorts of critiques you were looking for. No major issues leapt out at me otherwise, overall quite good. Thanks for writing! :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:11, 1 March 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Thank you very much. I've been a bit uneasy about the interaction between Hannah and Ben myself. It was intended to be a short humorous interlude after the melodrama of her realizing her full alieness. Actually she believed, at first, that Ben was abducting her for some nefarious purpose. You're right, however their reactions don't match up. I will work on this.<br />
<br />
I was planning on fleshing out Alex and Hannah's reunion and relationship in the sequel, but maybe I should do more here.<br />
<br />
Again, thank you. This is exactly the sort of feedback I wanted.<br />
<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
I made some minor changes that, I hope, will improve things while I consider further changes.<br />
<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
<br />
:Amusingly, I just stumbled across this little article on io9 today: [http://io9.com/#!5777081/what-would-happen-if-a-vulcan-studied-to-become-a-jedi What would happen if a Vulcan studied to become a Jedi?] No mention of throwing mermaids into the mix, though. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 05:59, 5 March 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:TH&diff=13844User talk:TH2011-03-05T04:08:07Z<p>Bryan: Thanks for the sentiment. :)</p>
<hr />
<div>Thanks for the sentiment over on that spam page. Never fear, we've got a couple of active administrators here and it's rare that spam nonsense like this lasts more than 24 hours. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 04:08, 5 March 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:CammieWoodard&diff=13797User talk:CammieWoodard2011-03-03T16:00:54Z<p>Bryan: Welcome to Shifti!</p>
<hr />
<div>Welcome to Shifti! Always glad to see new contributors. This is a bit of a standard boilerplate introduction that will hopefully help get you started on some of the basics you might not have noticed. Firstly, there's a main index of help pages at [[Help:Contents]] - a link is provided in the default sidebar titled "Help." It's a good idea to browse through the table of contents there so you'll know what information is available should you need it.<br />
<br />
If you're here to post stories, there's a guide specifically for the basics of that over at [[Help:Posting stories]]. General editing assistance is at [[Help:Editing]], and information about how to use talk pages (like this one) is at [[Help:Talk pages]]. If any of the formatting seems esoteric at first, don't worry - wikis are collaborative and other editors and administrators will come around to help tidy up anything that's left in a messy state, if you want. The more complex details can be learned later as you go.<br />
<br />
You can set up a personal homepage for yourself at your root user page, which you can find by clicking on your user name at the top of the page. Use your user page however you see fit; most authors generally list their stories there, along with a bit of biographical information about themselves and perhaps some links to other websites. See [[Help:User pages]].<br />
<br />
If you have any questions, you can either click the edit link for this page and write it here or you can follow the link in my signature to my own home page and leave it in the talk page over there. You can find a list of Shifti's administrators at [[Shifti:Administrators]]. Once you've got your bearings, feel free to delete this welcome message from your user talk page. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 16:00, 3 March 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Talk:Hannah%27s_Tale&diff=13761Talk:Hannah's Tale2011-03-01T15:11:14Z<p>Bryan: a critique, as promised</p>
<hr />
<div>This is well along and I think I'm ready for some comments. It's my first attempt in a very long time to do first person.<br />
<br />
This story is now essentially finished, though I expect to do some revisions. I hope it's an enjoyable read. Please tell me what you-all think.<br />
<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
:There, took me a little while to get to it but I've finished reading. :) 'Tis a nice little tale, and flowed pretty smoothly. There wasn't a whole lot of plot to it but that's not too big a "fault" - a lot of Xanadu stories are written along these lines, most of mine are similar. Mermaids in particular are tricky to write a lengthy plot for since they've got such limited mobility. I see now that your other ongoing work is a crossover, with the other mermaid Skye making an appearance. That's one of the neat aspects of shared settings but it could also lead to constraints on your subsequent stories so don't hesitate to edit this one some more if events in your other stories call for it. For example, it sounds like Skye is going to be separated from the other two protagonists of her story in fairly short order. Maybe a major plot for the other story could be them searching for her?<br />
:Anyway, focusing on this story. The mervulcan mix was a great idea, very fun. However, the Vulcan side of the mix didn't come up very much. I realize that under the circumstances it's entirely reasonable that the mer side would be the more significant one but it still feels a bit like a wasted opportunity. When Hannah was being manhandled by that pirate I was expecting that she'd pull out the ol' Vulcan nerve pinch on him (that encounter could perhaps use a bit of rewriting anyway - the characters' reactions seemed a bit odd, both in Hannah pulling a knife on a man who was trying to help her and yet still trusting him to carry her around, and the pirate not reacting very much to his passenger threatening him like that).<br />
:Then of course there's the Vulcan mind meld and telepathic aptitude in general that you could play around with a bit. Especially right at the end, it could be useful as a means of underwater communication with Skye and I'd be curious to see how it interacts with Force-based mental communication. As it was her reunion with Alex was a little uneventful.<br />
:Hope these were the sorts of critiques you were looking for. No major issues leapt out at me otherwise, overall quite good. Thanks for writing! :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:11, 1 March 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Talk:Wynd,_Skye_and_One_White_Mouse&diff=13760Talk:Wynd, Skye and One White Mouse2011-03-01T08:44:54Z<p>Bryan: Reading Hannah's tale right now, but tossing this out there while I do that. :)</p>
<hr />
<div>I was planning on giving the Xanadu thing a rest for a while and work on a non Kubla Con TF story that's been floating in my brain, however, the characters don't seem to want to be let go of just yet.<br />
<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
:Just had a read-through and it looks like a fun set of characters to have an adventure with; each of them has complementary abilities and limitations. It's a well-described introduction to them. Of course, now comes the hard part - the adventure itself. Looking forward to seeing what you've got in mind for that. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:44, 1 March 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Bryan&diff=13747User talk:Bryan2011-02-27T08:31:22Z<p>Bryan: /* Critique Request */</p>
<hr />
<div>==Searching==<br />
<br />
After the chat we had about the limitations of the internal search system of MediaWiki I took a look at wikimedia for search extensions. "Lucene Search" seemed to be the best bet, but after fighting to get the backend for it built and installed I learned it wasn't any better than the built-in system. (In truth, its worse. No ability to select additional namespaces to search in, requires manual dumping of the database and importing into the backend for indexing, etc...) All the code is there to support it, though. However I've shut down the search daemon and disabled the extension. I'm going to go back to poking at the MediaWiki internals to see if I can change the default search to include the User namespace. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:22, 21 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:When Wikipedia's under extreme load it shuts down the internal search engine to conserve resources and instead present a wrapper for a Google search limited to the wikipedia.org server, perhaps you could use something like that? Wouldn't work until Google started spidering us, which I don't know if they've done yet, but with MediaWiki's search as poor as it is it may be an improvement. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 02:42, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::There are several extensions on MetaWiki for Google searches. As far as I can tell from the [http://www.keil-draco.com/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=shifti stats page] Google has started the indexing process. (look down under the "bots" section). I'll get to work doing the reorg so Category:Author points to author homepages and Category:Stories By Author is the stories themselves. (It's better if we stay ahead of the curve, no?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:13, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::Sure, though staying behind the curve also has its advantages (we'll know more about what the organization of Shifti actually looks like :). I'd advise lowercase titles for pages and categories where possible, BTW, it makes them more natural to link to. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:18, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::Now you tell me. I've already gone and finished the reorg. How about I put together a few templates to somewhat automate the categorization and linking process? [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:39, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::::If you like, though I don't really see the point of turning <nowiki>[[Category:Author]]</nowiki> into <nowiki>{{Category author}}</nowiki> and such. I'll convert over the category to lower case, I'm used to doing that sort of thing over on Wikipedia. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:49, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::I was thinking more along the lines of <nowiki>{{AuthorPage}}</nowiki> adding <nowiki>[[Category:(Author Name)]]</nowiki> to the <nowiki>{{Title}}</nowiki> template. No need to go crazy with stuff like that. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:04, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::::::<s>A potential gotcha you might run into: If you put <nowiki>{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> on a template, it resolves as the ''template's'' page name. So every author page could wind up categorized in [[:Category:AuthorPage]]. You'd probably need to take the category name as a parameter, or ask that every user substitute the template rather than transclude it (if you use "<nowiki>{{subst:template name}}</nowiki>" instead of just "<nowiki>{{template name}}</nowiki>" the text of the template page is inserted directly into the article the moment you click "save").</s> Huh. I see now that you already use this in [[Template:Title]] and it works the other way. I'm going to have to double-check my Wikipedia experience on this one. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:28, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::: I'm also not a fan of categories in templates because it makes it impossible to use the template elsewhere (such as on a help page describing its usage) without incorrectly categorizing the other pages it appears in. I really think we're not a big enough wiki yet to be worrying much about this, I'm capable of cleaning everything up manually. It only took me two minutes to switch everything over from Stories By Author to stories by author. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:21, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::::Not a problem. But look at the hoops I had to jump through for the <nowiki>{{part}}</nowiki> template, which refused to resolve inside the table on the help page. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:31, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Searching and redirects==<br />
<br />
I think we might be able to sidestep the whole "search upgrade" thing by adding redirects - put on at [[Companion (Bob Stein)]], have it redirect to [[User:Posti/Companion]] and it should work, no? [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Yup. Wikipedia uses redirects of common misspellings in the same manner. No need for the parenthetical (Bob Stein) unless there's some other page already called "Companion", though. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:06, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Actually, I guess the parenthetical might be useful for people who are searching for "Bob Stein". The category would be a more useful place to find that but I guess people might not know to look there initially. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:47, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:: That was my thought on it. It would allow for a search for Bob Stein to turn it up. Though you are correct, the category page would be the better spot. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:29, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Dragons of Histh organization==<br />
<br />
About the "Dragons of Histh" stuff... I'm not to comfortable with "Book the One", "Book the Two" and such being main namespace entries. I'm asking before I do anything, but I'd feel better if they were moved to, say, "Dragons of Histh: Book the One" or "Book the One (Dragons of Histh)". As well, does this "Kinglake Film Partnership" actually exist or is it just some fluff name that 'Loathesome Dragon' created to make the setting seem more important/famous than it really is? (And if it is just a fluff name then I think it should be moved to User:Loathesomedragon/Kinglake_Film_Partnership. If it isn't it seems like rampant advertisement and I will delete it with that being the reason.) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:03, 5 August 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:I was thinking of moving those stories myself, actually. The names seemed overly generic and could be confusing. But as for the Kinglake thing, I don't see any reason not to leave it be; it's not likely that anyone's going to name a story that and it's not going to be in any story categories, so nobody will see it unless they're actively searching for it. So there's no clutter. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 00:30, 5 August 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== New Templates ==<br />
<br />
I've noticed that you've been adding some new templates lately. However, the [[Help:Templates]] page still needs updating with the howtos and examples. Or are they still in the rough? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:38, 2 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Not really, I just haven't got to updating it yet (and the external image template is covered in the image help page, which IMO is a more approriate place for it). I'll update tonight after I've done more work on ''Against Type'', my creativity is tied up at the moment. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:50, 2 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Against Type ==<br />
<br />
Your ISP is blocking my emails again. I can't send you the current file. It's almost done, too. :P --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 22:39, 7 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Blacklists ==<br />
<br />
In addition to the Captcha there are now two blacklists, one for certain username patterns and one for certain URL's.<br />
Username Blacklist can be found at [http://shifti.org/MediaWiki:usernameblacklist MediaWiki:usernameblacklist] and the URL blacklist is at [http://shifti.org/MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist] -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:00, 12 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
I've gone and slapped the spam blacklist code around a bit because it irritated the crap out of me earlier. Won't be irritating me anymore, even though it's still installed and functional. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:53, 8 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
Can you disable the ''captcha'' for me, please? Its a pain to recognize very jabbered letters, I have to post one story many times consuming a traffic. Strange, it requests identify eben for a page without any links.[[User:Inry|Inry]] 11:39, 10 February 2009 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Code Update ==<br />
<br />
You asked for it, you got it. A list of random pages is available via &lt;randompages/&gt; &ndash; it currently understands "style" and "class" as standard HTML parameters and can take a "count" parameter, which determines the length of the list generated. It is currently completely undecorated, so I think I'll set it up so it you can do &lt;randompages&gt;title text&lt;/randompages&gt;<br />
<br />
I also fixed up Special:Random to search NS_MAIN and NS_USER by default while not interfering with the operation of Special:Random/&lt;namespace&gt;<br />
&mdash;[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:40, 20 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
'''Update''' &mdash; added the title bar stuff. Two new paramters to go with it, "titlestyle" and "titleclass" &ndash; these control the look of the displayed title text. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:00, 21 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
More news. I've added the requested "Total Number Of Articles" bit to the categories page. Unfortunately it only covers articles and not subcategories. Doing subcategories is going to take another chunk of patching. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:57, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Unfortunately it's borked at this point and combining sub-categories and articles in one lump. I'm going to disable it for now and go back to the poking. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:00, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::And I've fixed it. Problem is that this would never fly for MediaWiki - it's making a massive database query and iterating over the results to count the articles. On Wikipedia, for example, this would require getting millions of results and iterating over them - quite intensive. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:35, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== другие языки / International ==<br />
<br />
How to correctly add to the Shifti pages on Russian? I have some translation of your stories and some my own stories.<br />
[[User:217.21.43.222|217.21.43.222]] 04:00, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Neat! Shifti runs on MediaWiki software, which is fully Unicode-compliant. It should be possible to just copy and paste Cyrillic text straight into the edit window and save it as-is, and you should be able to use Cyrillic in page titles and user names and such as well. Give it a try and let me know if any specific problems crop up.<br />
<br />
:Also, I'd be happy to see Russian translations of my stories posted here. It's something I'd never have imagined would ever happen :) Just make sure you ask other authors for permission before posting translations of any of theirs, though - copyright remains with the original authors and if they don't want translations posted they get the final say on that. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 04:13, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
::Same here. BD's stories are excellent and if they have been translated into another language, it'd be nice to see them here so his international fans can read them.<br />
<br />
::As a side note, it's wonderful that the non-english-speaking furs and TF fans have found Shifti and are interested in participating. This is the kind of thing I was hoping for when I decided to host the site. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 04:24, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
== Alex Warlorn said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
I just want to say, I'm sorry that my comment offended you. That was not my intention. I have been a fan of your writing for YEARS. <br />
<br />
--Alex Warlorn 00:35, 25 December 2007 (EST)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Which comment? I don't recall being offended by any comments on Shifti, so perhaps something's being misinterpreted, or perhaps my memory is faulty. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:25, 25 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Forum? ==<br />
<br />
Hey there, I've been contemplating this since a conversation I had with bard a while back about the number of comments posted to storys on shifti and I've been wondering if maybe there are some people that just arent familiar with or crazy about the commenting method of a wiki.<br />
<br />
I've also been pondering a kind of central place where people can post or discuss whatever they want about stuff on shifti or about transformation in general, basically a forum like Proboards linked to from the main page.<br />
<br />
Just wondering what you and shadow wolf think about this. [[User:Devin]]<br />
<br />
:Well, I consider TSA-Talk to be the sorta-semi-official "forum" for Shifti. This site originally grew out of the need to replace the TSA with a new archive that would be more flexible and easier to keep updated, so inheriting the associated fora seems reasonable to me. Better to use existing places with existing populations than to fragment the userbase unnecessarily, IMO. But if other fora are created I'd have no problem with listing them here too. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 12:59, 26 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
<br />
== Admin help please ==<br />
<br />
Bryan, I should have read the manual first, but I didn't. I should have moved story "Mermaid" to "Paying attention to detail 1" and "Mermaid Too" to "Paying attention to detail 2" and "Paying attention to detail" to "Paying attention to detail 3" and the irony is not lost on me, but I created new pages with those names and then realised there is no 'delete' function. Now I've created new pages I can't move to them, I think an admin needs to sort out the mess. Apologies in advance - sw13644.<br />
<br />
:No problem. Just to make sure I follow your request correctly, are you're wanting me to delete the pages [[Mermaid]], [[Mermaid Too]] and [[Paying attention to detail]]? Or do you want the revision histories of those pages to be merged into the new pages' ones instead? For future reference you can request page deletions by adding the string "<nowiki>{{request deletion}}</nowiki>" to the page. Alternately, if you're concerned that people might have linked to the old pages and will now get lost looking for your story sections, you can redirect the old pages by replacing the contents with "<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[new page name]]</nowiki>". [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 18:40, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
----<br />
<br />
Could You please check if my story The Right of Dreamers is listed properly in search categories and is accessible for anyone who might want to read it. I submitted the story two months ago and there is no single comment on it yet, neither good nor bad one :(. I’m not waiting for many comments for my other two stories as they are written in Russian language and therefore are unreadable for most shifti users, but The Right of Dreamers I wrote in English for it to be readable on shifti. I don’t want to think that my story wasn’t interpreting enough to leave a comment for at least a few people of those who should see it in Dragons category since it is there. Therefore I assume there might be some technical problems I don’t understand myself. <br />
[[User:GreyDragon|GreyDragon]] 04:49, 17 November 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Three-fourths ==<br />
<br />
Thanks!<br />
<br />
I didn't know about watching pages, so I wasn't aware of the comment, I'll be amending my watchlist presently. The story was a request from Soty, and I was familiar with his work, but not the one you linked, thanks for that too. Feel free to have a go at editing the story. I'll go take a look at it as well when I have the time.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 01:00, 16 February 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
I have tightened the story up a bit and caught a few typos. Let me know if you think it still needs work.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 02:10, 18 February 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Will do. Sorry I haven't got to giving any help myself yet, weekend's been pretty hectic for me. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 02:48, 18 February 2008 (EST)<br />
== U-V said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
Wow! My goodness, I'm touched and honoured (re: unequal share) That I could help inspire a story like that! It's very in keeping with the spirit of the little scenario I had slightly built up in mind. :)<br />
<br />
--U-V 09:30, 27 March 2008 (EDT)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Thanks. I wrote it without referencing the image, just my memory of it, so the setting wound up slightly different - I take it the image was meant to be set on a ship. Oh well, a minor thing. It also wasn't the mass TF implied by the bit of text you included in the image description, but it didn't rule out anything like that happening subsequently. I've got other writing commitments right now so I can't extend it, but maybe later. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 11:45, 27 March 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==General==<br />
Hello again, Bryan. I have just finished creating my homepage on Shifti. I hope that the stories’ list I had just created will be interesting for other Shifti users. The list has only 3 stories at the moment but I hope that there will be more with time either with my own search efforts or thanks to help of more experienced TF readers and writers (including You, sir).<br />
As for my own TF stories, they are in Russian language. Will it make sense posting them on my Shifti homepage anyway?<br />
--[[User:GreyDragon|GreyDragon]] 14:07, 21 August 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Sure! There was a fellow a while back who was doing Russian translations of existing stories (see [[#другие языки / International]] earlier on this page), I was keen to host a bunch of those here. If you like you could create a category for Russian-language stuff, if more comes along it'd be neat to have a directory of it. Shifti supports unicode, so you can use Cyrillic characters both within the page text and in page titles (eg, [[Русский язык]]). I'm not a Russian speaker myself, unfortunately, so I won't be able to help much with the editing and such. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:22, 21 August 2008 (EDT)<br />
== bobby said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
great site thanks see u<br />
<br />
--bobby 17:13, 23 September 2008 (EDT)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Um, thanks. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:34, 23 September 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Oops... ==<br />
<br />
One of these days I'll remember to double-check that I'm actually giving the greeting on the right page... I keep forgetting that the "new user" entries on Special:RecentChanges doesn't have a 'Talk' link. And I guess I should also keep from editing when distracted :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 06:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:No problem, everything's easily fixable. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 07:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Spam/Vandalism ==<br />
<br />
Viqsi has said that [[Web comics]] comes up as the #2 result on [http://www.google.com Google] in a search for Shifti. That might be the reason that it seems to be getting hit more often than other pages.<br />
<br />
Besides that, though, it is looking like Shifti might be pulling in some spammers/vandals who hit a page once or twice to test if the site is being patrolled. There are a lot of Wiki's that have been massively vandalized and the vandals might have been following that pattern.<br />
<br />
Beyond that... I had thought about protecting [[Web comics]] but decided not to because I was unsure if it could be blocked against just anon-edits. Good to see that it can. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Yup, semi-protection blocks both anonymous edits and edits by accounts that are relatively young - I believe the default is four days. That prevents throwaway accounts from being easily used to circumvent it. Good to know why [[web comics]] was picked as the target; that means it's unlikely that the vandal will just start picking other pages at random. Not that there are a heck of a lot of publically-editable pages, since most authors seem to prefer the subpage route. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 05:25, 18 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Defaultsort ==<br />
<br />
It seems that the Default Sort Template doesn't work anymore. In Category Pages, my stories appear in User:Forestier/... [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 14:32, 6 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I made a mistake. The story are correctly ''sorted'' ; but I remember that they used to appeared under their real title, not under their page name. [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 14:49, 6 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Yeah, this was previously done by a custom tweak done to Shifti's code that was lost in the crash. It's been noticed and we'll have it fixed back up soon. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:08, 10 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::Thanks. [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 20:13, 10 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
== Critique Request ==<br />
<br />
Your Xanadu Universe has really struck a chord with me. Since I first discovered it a few weeks ago, it has inspired me to write the first fiction I've done in more than a decade. I would appreciate it if some time, when you have the time, you could read what I've written and tell me what you think of it and or how I could improve it. There is no hurry, and I won't be upset if you decline. I'm a grown up and can take criticism. :-)<br />
Thank you<br />
Alveric<br />
<br />
:Sure thing, I'll give it a read-over tomorrow after sleep (to make sure I read it right :). [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:31, 27 February 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Vitruvian_Being&diff=13692User talk:Vitruvian Being2011-02-21T15:15:27Z<p>Bryan: Some ideas on how to raise issues like this</p>
<hr />
<div>Please do not make such notes on Category pages - they do not belong there. Technically correct though it may be, Lycanthropy has been, in a sense, co-opted to mean any form of a "were" disease or disorder. What that means is that your objection has been noted, but will not be acted upon. Thank you. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 12:40, 21 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
It's better to receive a response rather than Wikipedia's lifeless bots. -- Vitruvian Being<br />
<br />
:Wikipedia's bots have feelings too, they're that sophisticated. :) Anyway, if you do wish to raise an issue with the categorization of a page, probably the best place to put the comment is either on the story's talk page or the category's talk page. If the comment receives no reply after a while, going to the author's talk page or an admin's talk page to raise awareness might also be a good approach. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:15, 21 February 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Category:Honeymane&diff=13681Category:Honeymane2011-02-20T06:19:49Z<p>Bryan: {{author category}}</p>
<hr />
<div>{{author category}}</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Honeymane&diff=13680User talk:Honeymane2011-02-20T06:19:17Z<p>Bryan: Welcome to Shifti! I suspect you don't actually need most of this orientation, but here it is anyway. :)</p>
<hr />
<div>Welcome to Shifti! Always glad to see new contributors. This is a bit of a standard boilerplate introduction that will hopefully help get you started on some of the basics you might not have noticed. Firstly, there's a main index of help pages at [[Help:Contents]] - a link is provided in the default sidebar titled "Help." It's a good idea to browse through the table of contents there so you'll know what information is available should you need it.<br />
<br />
If you're here to post stories, there's a guide specifically for the basics of that over at [[Help:Posting stories]]. General editing assistance is at [[Help:Editing]], and information about how to use talk pages (like this one) is at [[Help:Talk pages]]. If any of the formatting seems esoteric at first, don't worry - wikis are collaborative and other editors and administrators will come around to help tidy up anything that's left in a messy state, if you want. The more complex details can be learned later as you go.<br />
<br />
You can set up a personal homepage for yourself at your root user page, which you can find by clicking on your user name at the top of the page. Use your user page however you see fit; most authors generally list their stories there, along with a bit of biographical information about themselves and perhaps some links to other websites. See [[Help:User pages]].<br />
<br />
If you have any questions, you can either click the edit link for this page and write it here or you can follow the link in my signature to my own home page and leave it in the talk page over there. You can find a list of Shifti's administrators at [[Shifti:Administrators]]. Once you've got your bearings, feel free to delete this welcome message from your user talk page. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:19, 20 February 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:ShadowWolf&diff=13618User talk:ShadowWolf2011-02-09T15:35:52Z<p>Bryan: /* Spam Flood */</p>
<hr />
<div>how do you delete a page that has no content? I've had to modify a title of a story page and removed it's content, but the title still appears on my author page.<br />
:Please sign with the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> - but generally you have to remove all content and then kill any links to it you've made. That'll "orphan" it and then an admin can go and do the actual delete. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:43, 3 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
:Page deleted, Oberon. (Recent Edits is a wonderful tool!) - in the future, though, please sign all entries on a talk page using the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> specifier - it's what gives the nifty user link and timestamp. (and in requests for deletion, could you please include the page name ?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:48, 3 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Sitenotice text==<br />
<br />
Where did you put the text for the donation sitenotice? Normally it'd be at [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]], but I'm assuming since it's not there you've inserted it into the source code somewhere. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 20:46, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
Never mind, I found it - MonoBook.php, right? I should move it out of that and into sitenotice, it won't appear for anyone who's using a different skin otherwise. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:01, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Didn't know about the Sitenotice bit, so yeah, I did a bit of hacking and dumped it straight into the code from the primary skin. I actually had thought about dumping it directly into the Skin driver, but decided not to. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:08, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:There, fixed up. I pulled the code from the source and added a version to the [[Mediawiki:Sitenotice]]. "A Version" because I had to use the same custom tag I created for [[Shifti:Site support]] to do the button. (PayPal kinda requires it be a form with a crapload of hidden fields) &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:16, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
::Heh. I was just working on that myself. Good to know I was on the right track. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:20, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
::This is odd. It appears that integral.org is in the spam protection filter, I can't save [[Main Page]] now. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:37, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:::Not in any of the spamfilters I installed. It's not in the central MediaWiki list or in the site-specific list. I'll look deeper. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:00, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
:::[[Special:Version]] doesn't have any spam-blockers besides [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist SpamBlacklist] and none of its lists have "integral" anywhere in them. So I don't know what the problem could be... Everything I've installed is hacked to not bug people that are in the Admin group about '''''ANYTHING''''', so I'm at a loss as to what the problem could be. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:04, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
::::Well, whatever the problem was, it seems to have passed. I should have saved a copy of the error message but I suppose it's moot if it doesn't come back. BTW, I hope you don't mind the little tweaks I made to the sitenotice banner. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:38, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:::::Nah, it works. And I've reverted the changes I made, since it wasn't the cause of Felix's problem. He saw the Captcha, but apparently either 1) Didn't know what it was or 2) Couldn't read it. So I've just gone and given the "Author" permissions group a Captcha exception. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:49, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
What do you think of the notion of putting a progress bar in the donation request, as demonstrated in [[Shifti:Sandbox]]? Wikipedia does it that way, and it might give people more incentive to donate in order to get rid of the banner. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:23, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:That's pretty nifty. Maybe have the bar in red, though :) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 01:30, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
::There, added a color parameter. Red's a bit garish, though, maybe something a bit more pastel? [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:43, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:I hate that banner!! It offends me, I must destroy it by donating! *snicker* :)<br />
<br />
--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 23:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Broken Discussion pages and Captcha errors ==<br />
<br />
Not sure what's going on. When I click on the Discussion link on a page that doesn't have a discussion, it takes me direct to that page's edit frame (NOT the Discussion page), and I seem to have full edit rights on it. Something seems to have gone wonky along the way.<br />
<br />
Pre-existing Talk pages seem to work fine (as evidenced here), though when I was trying to post it gave me an "out of captcha" error (When I tried to post it on the Current Events page that is.).<br />
<br />
Oh and for the TF Types, you may want to add "Plant" (for TF's that are not animal based, but not quite Dryad based for the mythical category), and "Inanimate" (and maybe even Robotization or however you want to classify it). <br />
<br />
I'm not quite sure if inanimate would be good enough as a catchall for a "living material' type TF (think X-Men's Colossus, and Ice Man, who turn into living steel and living ice respectively), or if we might want another type for that as well.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 13:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I'm working on this, but apparently the 'title' parameter isn't being properly set. When it's a red-link PHP is getting a URL that looks like 'index.php?title=XXX?title=XXX_talk&action=edit&redlink=1' and it's seeing that first 'title=' and not the second one. I'm trying to figure out how to solve that.<br />
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Turned out to have several causes, all related to various problems with a code upgrade and several other problems that cropped up. Since I have yet to see this problem re-occur, I'm going to call it 'fixed'. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:38, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Story submission captcha? ==<br />
<br />
I just went to post a new story and after I hit the 'save page' button, it took me to an edit screen that had:<br />
Your edit includes new external links. To help protect against automated spam, please enter the words that appear below in the box<br />
at the top. I looked and looked again and couldn't find any external links in my story. In fact there was no markup at all once I removed all the tab-indention on the paragraphs.<br />
<br />
I'm all for automated systems blocking automated systems, but this sort of struck me as odd. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:01, 20 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:The regular expressions might have triggered on a non-link URL. But I cannot be certain, as this is the first report I've seen of it. (and sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Also, as long as I'm bugging you guys, any chance of getting an inverted color scheme skin? Dark text on a light background seems to be more difficult for me to read for any length of time than light text on a dark background. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:The new 'shiftimin' skin took a while to get fully functional, but you could, likely, use "user CSS" to get the same result. Give me a bit of time and I'll see if I can get a "map" together for the CSS behind the "monobook" skin so you can override it easily. Alternatively you could poke at the CSS yourself, but...<br />
:There is a page giving a minimal explanation of CSS at [[Help:Custom css]] and we have a page open to user additions about CSS hacks at [[Custom CSS Hacks]]. I've been planning to do up a page explaining the various classes of the primary 'MonoBook' skin for a while. Guess it's about time to actually get to work on that. (and again, sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Question ==<br />
...from a nubcake guy. Just asking, is a story allowed to be set in a video game universe ([http://halo.wikia.com/The_Halo_Universe Halo]: w00t!)? 'Cos I wanna write a TF story set in there, but I'm not too sure if this is allowed on Shifti. Hope it's yes, 'cos it's already in progress. Thanks! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]<br />
:We have no restrictions on fan-fiction, but if we receive a take-down notice it will be removed. (I run the server and would be the one facing the legal actions - so I will not fight a DMCA notice unless I am certain it is invalid) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::Great! Well, I'm pretty sure Bungie, the copyright holder, encourages fan fic, so I think it's ok...Note "I think". I'm not sure how they'd react to TF fan fic. Thanks for confirming (and once again for the fave I can't tell you how much that means to me)! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]<br />
:::Most companies are open to fan-fic, because it helps with the popularity of their product. And you got the "fav" because I saw real promise in the original and in your willingness to take constructive criticism. Every other author in my "new authors to watch" section has shown the same promise, though they haven't all been available to take the constructive criticism that could be offered. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:24, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Hi there! This is the noob writer, Drake, again, here for a fresh wave of bother-the-administrator. Sorry to bother you, but here I am. Bothering you. Anyway, I was hoping you could help critique my new story, [[User:WolfyDrake95/Finding Himself|Finding Himself]], which I uploaded a couple of days ago. I got comments from Guvnor of Space and Concerned Reader, but I thought I'd ask for your opinion since you were the only one who seemed actually care about my first, and admittedly not-so-good, story. I do hope you can drop a critique and a comment to help me improve.<br />
<br />
The above was an email that I sent to you but received no reply for. And also, about the fanfic that this section was initially about: can I upload screenshots? Halo features a Theatre mode in which one can take screenshots of players or NPCs, so I think I could use screenshots to illustrate characters, etc. Anyway, thanks for reading so far! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]], 23:43, 27 June 2009<br />
<br />
:Hey there, ShadowWolf, it's Drake again. Hope you could look through my [[User:WolfyDrake95/Letting Go|new story]], in case you haven't noticed. Yea, it's not very good, and it took a strange direction halfway through writing (becoming all wierd and sappy), but I hope it would merit, at least, a critic. Of course, if you're too busy, it's okay, I'm fine with that. I'm pretty sure critiqueing new writers isn't exactly the only thing you do ;). <br />
<br />
:And by the way, if creating new info tags were possible, a "Critique Requested" one might be more effective in garnering critiques than the "Comment" tag that's provided. And in regards to my Halo-fanfic, is it okay if I put screenshots from in-game to illustrate? It'd be useful for people to understand what I'm saying, since Halo isn't as well known as Star Wars. &mdash;[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 12:48, 3 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Sadly I'm going to have to decline a critique on that story. I have tried reading it and found that it did not interest me, sorry.<br />
<br />
::As to the images... I am unsure about this, as there is content in the texture-maps and such that will wind up as part of the image that are copyright MS/Bungie. However... This would appear to be a case covered by the "Fair Use" exceptions, so unless a lawyer that uses Shifti can answer otherwise, go ahead and upload.<br />
<br />
::The 'critique requested' template itself should be easy. I'll have to see about that at some point today. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:35, 3 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::All right, I understand if you don't want to critique. I do know that this isn't exactly my best story...I suppose every writer has times when he writes bad. Just that I get these times more often. I sorta knew it was already bad, but I guess I needed someone to tell me that it was lousy, right to my face. Ah well. <br />
<br />
:::As for the pictures, thanks! And for the template, another thanks. You're one hell of an admin! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 04:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::::It's not that it isn't a good story, Drake. The problem is that when I tried reading it I was not able to get more than a few paragraphs in before I said "this is depressing"&mdash;I do not read anything that I can say that about because I suffer from bipolar disorder. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 11:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::::Um...then I guess I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. And yeah, I guess I shouldn't write so many depressing stories; it certainly gets a little boring after a while, and I suppose you're right in that when people read stories, they probably won't like those that make them all depressed. I should put a warning on that story one of these days! Anyway, I think I should start on my more normal stories soon. <br />
::::I don't know what to say about that last bit of what you said because I'm just a kid, and I'm not very smart and I'm terrified that I'll say something insensitive or insulting or whatever. I do that a lot of times, and the people on the receiving end tend to take offense. Sorry.<br />
::::On the upside, I'm thinking of writing a PaW story soon. It's a cool story setting, the Pig and Whistle. Looks like a good setting for assassinations!<br />
::::Still, thanks for taking the time to clarify the issue. I suddenly feel happy. :) &mdash;[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 13:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::::I don't offend easily&mdash;and if you ever do, you'll know it. Depressing stories can be good, too, but I stay away from them for medical reasons&mdash;bipolar disorder means I have massive mood swings and reading depressing stuff just feeds into that. There have been several times when I've read something really depressing and it had a very bad impact on me.<br />
:::::On another note&hellip; You are a lot more intelligent and mature than most of the "kids" these days (IMNSHO). Most "kids" these days have almost no idea how to put a sentence together and you are one of the few that I have run into that can take criticism.<br />
:::::As to a PaW story&hellip; The setting was created, as it says in the description and rules, as a "reboot" of the "Tales from the Blind Pig" setting. Within the last couple of years the "Blind Pig" setting has had numerous arguments over what is and is not "canon" between authors who have seen the setting grow and contributed and people just finding the setting. Because the creator has left it behind it has become something of a "lawless waste" with no real controls and people changing it from what the creator said is actually the reality of the setting. To solve this and make the setting much more internally consistent I asked around and a small group formed to generate the new setting. There is a lot more to the setting than has been revealed or is likely to be openly revealed to anyone anytime soon.<br />
:::::And we tried to define only what was needed to give the setting its own identity so that the people actually interested in writing a story set there could create the setting itself. We only ask that you not set the story outside of the NAR/RoT/Quebec area unless you are actually from that other area. The reason for that is simply that we wish to allow people from those other regions to have control over what, exactly, happened to their regions after the collapse. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
{{Green|Well Wolfy is from Singapore, so he could open up that side of the world. On a side note, all 14-19 year olds I know on the internet have trouble with basic grammar and spelling when talking normally, so I wouldn't quite call your writing juvenile.}} --[[User:Concerned Reader|Concerned Reader]] 14:29, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Well, actually Singapore is pretty boring. Nothing's really cool or fun here (maybe I'm just used to it?), and society feels very...suppressed. There's no space for individuality. If you try to be yourself, you get mocked and stuff (like when my friends discovered that I was on Shifti). Bad story material. And as for deciding what happens to my region...I dunno. Best I don't, I have terrible imagination and my mind only circles around video games that I play. <br />
:If I might refer you to the [[User_talk:WolfyDrake95/Letting Go|talk page]] of Letting Go, you'll find the rough plan of this PaW story.<br />
:As for my writing, I won't deny that I'm very, very proud of it (my downfall), which is why I hurt a lot sometimes when criticized without knowing why (thus why I seemed so upset when I replied to ShadowWolf's declination). I also have a somewhat existant superiority complex (I got really jealous when ShadowWolf commented that Rabbit was impressed by CR's Rebuilding. Puberty? I dunno.) <br />
:Even though I know I'm not that good a writer, I like to think that I write depressing stories because of my "painful experiences in life". Actually, it's because I read a lot of Michael Bard's work (both the sad ones and the happy ones). Both of which are awesome, by the way. I'll admit that I'm a fan of his. <3 <br />
:Oh, and thanks for the compliments, you two. I can feel my ego swelling already. :) &mdash;[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 14:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== RSS Feed? ==<br />
<br />
Not sure if there's much you can do about this or if I'm using it wrong or expecting the wrong things. But I've signed up for the RSS feed on Shifti, and I'm not only getting the new changes soon after they occur, but I also get a bunch of changes that were already reported to me, often multiple times.<br />
--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 11:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:That's the way the RSS feed works. It works similar to how the 'Recent Changes' page works by default. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:: True but it seems to be picking up changes it has already reported that haven't had any actual new changes done. For example, when Bryan was adding/updating the separator graphics, the RSS feed repeated it twice for each change he did, and that seems to happen a lot.<br />
::--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::I'd look closer - there were, in most cases, two files uploaded/updated - and yes, there is a bug somewhere in the system that is double-logging some events. I haven't been able to track that one down, though. It's about time to take a look and see if there is a new version of the code available, however, so I can see if an upgrade fixes the problem. (Most notably it is the new-user stuff that gets double-logged, but I have no idea how this is impacting the RSS feed) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:37, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::: I meant that as a general example thouhg; not that in particular.<br />
<br />
:::: Another example, I just got an RSS update now. I've been watching the feeds and had no recent updates from Shifti since this morning whence I'd gotten Jon's latest update and a few hours. The update I JUST got says there are 8 new changes, including Jon's After Hours addition again, Wolfy's New world addition and 4 entries for the RSS Feed discussion. (Despite this being the 4th entry now). All of the entries have a time of 4:03PM ADT. --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 19:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::::: Odd... And I'm not really that knowledgeable about the MediaWiki code-base (yes, I can hack on it, but...) I have a feeling that the problem lies in how the system works. I think that it might be compiling a list of all changes within a certain period and sending it out. And if it isn't keeping a proper time-stamp on the items, that is a violation of the RSS spec, IIRC - since it is then pushing out duplicates without a way for readers to determine that with any degree of certainty. I'll sign up to the RSS feed myself and see if I can track the problem. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Okay - I've got my client signed up to the RSS feed for the [[Special:RecentChanges|Recent changes]] page. Let's see what this edit does... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Now I've seen the problem and it sucks. That one previous edit led to a major flood of '31 new edits' in my feed reader. Looks like I was right - it isn't properly date-tagging the entries. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Looked at the raw XML of the feed and it doesn't look like there is an error in it - though there might be. Let me go take a look at the RSS specs to see if I can figure out what is missing and/or not being set properly. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Ooooh... I think I just found the cause. Apparently the feed is claiming to be RSS 2.0 but it isn't putting a stable &lt;guid/&gt; tag on any of the entries. This tag is the method by which most RSS readers decide whether an item is new or not. The feed here does not have them. This is probably an oversight on the part of the person that wrote the code, but I cannot say. I'm going to go check Wikipedia to see if they have it there - because if they don't then the only reason that feeds of Wikipedia aren't getting overwhelmed is because of the volume of edits there. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Changed it to include the link-url as a guid - it should be genuinely unique to a specific page revision. Lets see if this fixes the problem... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Okay - I give up (for now) - because that last edit showed up with a massive number of others and the added <guid> tag doesn't seem to have helped any. Unless, of course, those &lt;guid/&gt; tags need a bit to start showing up... I really don't know. Might be time for me to look into cleaning out the cache table of the database. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:20, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: And that looks like it did do it after all. Bug report being marked <strong style="color: red;">CLOSED/RESOLVED</strong>. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Bug not completely resolved. On restart my RSS client has shown a singularly massive flood of repeated messages. This does not make sense to me, as it was not doing this during the testing yesterday - and I am willing to bet it will not show such action today. However it might be that the text I am using to generate the data for the GUID tag is not as stable as I once thought - this bothers me and makes me think I might have to go much deeper into the code for changes. Perhaps as deep as altering the 'feed item' class so that it requires the actual ID of the revision so that said ID can be used for the GUID. --[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Sadly... It looks like utilizing the Date of the edit might be the only way to uniquely identify them - in combination with the page title, that is. However, I shall not be making those changes at this time. What I shall be doing is finding a way to interact with another developer so that I can be certain this will permanently and fully squash this bug. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: Not sure what's going on, but the problem seems to be cropping up again. I've gotten RSS feeds telling me of changes that I've already gotten before (and before and before)... --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:52, 12 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Has to do with how the URL's are generated. Since I'm using the URL as the GUID, it looks like there is a periodic shift in them. I have zero clue how to fix it, because I'd have to come up with something that is genuinely unique as an identifier, and I can't think of anything that would work there. (at least, nothing that is actually available to the feed generator) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:15, 12 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== ShiftiMin-related stuff ==<br />
<br />
I expect to be poking at the new theme with sharp sticks during the [[TSA-Bash]] anyways, but in the meantime I discovered (largely by happenstance) that if you're not logged in, there's no "log in / create account" link in ShiftiMin! I'd say that's a bug - unless we want to become a <em>really</em> exclusive club. ;)<br><br />
Looking pretty decent otherwise; we just need to figure out how to handle the menu organization. (Plus about eleventy billion other pet peeves with which I intend to drive you TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE. Mua ha ha.) --[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 15:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I thought I'd gotten that bug (GAH! Must be related to me changing the user-options bits to a drop-down from the long list it was)<br />
:Since Shiftimin does not work on versions of IE prior to 8 without a massive javascript hack it is not meant to be used as the primary skin for Shifti. This means that the 'missing login/create link' is a very low priority bug.<br />
:I am currently poking at ideas for another design that is as (or more) minimalistic but is also designed to take full advantage of modern browsers CSS3 support and HTML5. That redesign is not public yet, since it is currently little more than an image in the GIMP.<br />
:Oh, and I already am 'TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE' - I just hide it well. So driving me there is a very short trip... And... If you have any ideas at all for changes, just dump them here. I'll get on top of the ones that are fast/easy to implement immediately.<br />
:And if you have Fx3.5 available, look at Shifti using the Shiftimin skin. All kinds of nifty little hacks I've added that target it. (Okay, so they could probably target Safari/WebKit and Konqueror/KHTML as well... but I'm not going to try and support all the alternative browsers until they agree on the format for the CSS. And Opera '''STILL''' does not support even the 'border-radius' property or the 'box-shadow' or 'text-shadow' properties)<br />
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:02, 9 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Hey there, ShadowWolf. Just poking in here to point out what seems to be a bug. The SiteSearch function isn't working; I believe it has something to do with the server crash and tech replacement the other day. If I click the Search button it shows<br />
<br />
:A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: <br />
::SELECT page_id, page_namespace, page_title FROM `shifti_page`,`shifti_searchindex` WHERE page_id=si_page AND MATCH(si_title) AGAINST('' IN BOOLEAN MODE) AND page_is_redirect=0 AND page_namespace IN ('0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','12','13','14','15') LIMIT 20 <br />
:from within function "". MySQL returned error "145: Table './shifti/shifti_searchindex' is marked as crashed and should be repaired (malfoy)".<br />
I guess this isn't normal, but I'm also guessing that you might have already noticed. Anyway, sorry that I can't donate. I don't have PayPal or MasterCard or anything. &mdash;[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 13:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Thought I'd run the "check and repair" before bringing the new server live. Guess it didn't actually do the repair... It's fixed now - sorry for not spotting it myself :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:03, 17 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Redirects ==<br />
<br />
Just a heads-up, I noticed that [[PAW General TimeLine]] was linked to from [[Talk:Rebuilding]]. I didn't check all the redirects so there might be others. In general I think it's best not to delete redirects left behind by page moves, especially not when the redirect's name still accurately reflects the content it's redirecting to - even if you fix all the internal links there's still the possibility that other pages out on the web point there. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Links on archived pages ==<br />
<br />
Hi ShadowWolf! Thanks for the welcome. :-)<br />
<br />
I made the edits to the archived page because, well . . . posterity is nice, but if you don't actually get to the site intended, that's not very useful to readers! At WikiFur we either update outdated links, replace them with a link to archive.org, or remove them altogether; leaving them broken tends to results in linking to spam sites sooner or later. And WikiFur's old site is going down imminently. [[User:GreenReaper|GreenReaper]] 01:58, 28 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Ah, well... I've added a new section to the front-page. For that set of archived pages we really should keep the links up-to-date. We have a larger problem right now that is in the process of being worked out - I'm sure you've seen the site-notice banner... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:21, 28 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Spam Flood ==<br />
<br />
What can we do about this? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 04:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:So far there's only about a half dozen spam postings showing up per day, which is IMO quite manageable in terms of manual deletion. I'd recommend avoiding anything that might slow down legitimate posting. Maybe tweak the account creation captcha, if that's easy to do (I'd bet that spending more than a few hours working on it will probably be more time than is taken doing manual cleanup for the next month :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Right now I have a lot to do - including fixing the donation button. But a better captcha system than what we have is a good idea and I've been wondering if maybe using ReCaptcha would be a good idea. Very few spam-bots have cracked that one so far. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Seems to be coming in just brief surges. After that page of spam last night I went to bed expecting to have dozens more to delete in the morning, but no more came in. This one, too, may pass. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:35, 9 February 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:ShadowWolf&diff=13600User talk:ShadowWolf2011-02-09T06:13:05Z<p>Bryan: /* Spam Flood */</p>
<hr />
<div>how do you delete a page that has no content? I've had to modify a title of a story page and removed it's content, but the title still appears on my author page.<br />
:Please sign with the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> - but generally you have to remove all content and then kill any links to it you've made. That'll "orphan" it and then an admin can go and do the actual delete. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:43, 3 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
:Page deleted, Oberon. (Recent Edits is a wonderful tool!) - in the future, though, please sign all entries on a talk page using the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> specifier - it's what gives the nifty user link and timestamp. (and in requests for deletion, could you please include the page name ?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:48, 3 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Sitenotice text==<br />
<br />
Where did you put the text for the donation sitenotice? Normally it'd be at [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]], but I'm assuming since it's not there you've inserted it into the source code somewhere. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 20:46, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
Never mind, I found it - MonoBook.php, right? I should move it out of that and into sitenotice, it won't appear for anyone who's using a different skin otherwise. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:01, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Didn't know about the Sitenotice bit, so yeah, I did a bit of hacking and dumped it straight into the code from the primary skin. I actually had thought about dumping it directly into the Skin driver, but decided not to. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:08, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:There, fixed up. I pulled the code from the source and added a version to the [[Mediawiki:Sitenotice]]. "A Version" because I had to use the same custom tag I created for [[Shifti:Site support]] to do the button. (PayPal kinda requires it be a form with a crapload of hidden fields) &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:16, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
::Heh. I was just working on that myself. Good to know I was on the right track. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:20, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
::This is odd. It appears that integral.org is in the spam protection filter, I can't save [[Main Page]] now. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:37, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:::Not in any of the spamfilters I installed. It's not in the central MediaWiki list or in the site-specific list. I'll look deeper. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:00, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
:::[[Special:Version]] doesn't have any spam-blockers besides [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist SpamBlacklist] and none of its lists have "integral" anywhere in them. So I don't know what the problem could be... Everything I've installed is hacked to not bug people that are in the Admin group about '''''ANYTHING''''', so I'm at a loss as to what the problem could be. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:04, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
::::Well, whatever the problem was, it seems to have passed. I should have saved a copy of the error message but I suppose it's moot if it doesn't come back. BTW, I hope you don't mind the little tweaks I made to the sitenotice banner. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:38, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:::::Nah, it works. And I've reverted the changes I made, since it wasn't the cause of Felix's problem. He saw the Captcha, but apparently either 1) Didn't know what it was or 2) Couldn't read it. So I've just gone and given the "Author" permissions group a Captcha exception. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:49, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
What do you think of the notion of putting a progress bar in the donation request, as demonstrated in [[Shifti:Sandbox]]? Wikipedia does it that way, and it might give people more incentive to donate in order to get rid of the banner. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:23, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:That's pretty nifty. Maybe have the bar in red, though :) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 01:30, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
::There, added a color parameter. Red's a bit garish, though, maybe something a bit more pastel? [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:43, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:I hate that banner!! It offends me, I must destroy it by donating! *snicker* :)<br />
<br />
--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 23:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Broken Discussion pages and Captcha errors ==<br />
<br />
Not sure what's going on. When I click on the Discussion link on a page that doesn't have a discussion, it takes me direct to that page's edit frame (NOT the Discussion page), and I seem to have full edit rights on it. Something seems to have gone wonky along the way.<br />
<br />
Pre-existing Talk pages seem to work fine (as evidenced here), though when I was trying to post it gave me an "out of captcha" error (When I tried to post it on the Current Events page that is.).<br />
<br />
Oh and for the TF Types, you may want to add "Plant" (for TF's that are not animal based, but not quite Dryad based for the mythical category), and "Inanimate" (and maybe even Robotization or however you want to classify it). <br />
<br />
I'm not quite sure if inanimate would be good enough as a catchall for a "living material' type TF (think X-Men's Colossus, and Ice Man, who turn into living steel and living ice respectively), or if we might want another type for that as well.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 13:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I'm working on this, but apparently the 'title' parameter isn't being properly set. When it's a red-link PHP is getting a URL that looks like 'index.php?title=XXX?title=XXX_talk&action=edit&redlink=1' and it's seeing that first 'title=' and not the second one. I'm trying to figure out how to solve that.<br />
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Turned out to have several causes, all related to various problems with a code upgrade and several other problems that cropped up. Since I have yet to see this problem re-occur, I'm going to call it 'fixed'. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:38, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Story submission captcha? ==<br />
<br />
I just went to post a new story and after I hit the 'save page' button, it took me to an edit screen that had:<br />
Your edit includes new external links. To help protect against automated spam, please enter the words that appear below in the box<br />
at the top. I looked and looked again and couldn't find any external links in my story. In fact there was no markup at all once I removed all the tab-indention on the paragraphs.<br />
<br />
I'm all for automated systems blocking automated systems, but this sort of struck me as odd. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:01, 20 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:The regular expressions might have triggered on a non-link URL. But I cannot be certain, as this is the first report I've seen of it. (and sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Also, as long as I'm bugging you guys, any chance of getting an inverted color scheme skin? Dark text on a light background seems to be more difficult for me to read for any length of time than light text on a dark background. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:The new 'shiftimin' skin took a while to get fully functional, but you could, likely, use "user CSS" to get the same result. Give me a bit of time and I'll see if I can get a "map" together for the CSS behind the "monobook" skin so you can override it easily. Alternatively you could poke at the CSS yourself, but...<br />
:There is a page giving a minimal explanation of CSS at [[Help:Custom css]] and we have a page open to user additions about CSS hacks at [[Custom CSS Hacks]]. I've been planning to do up a page explaining the various classes of the primary 'MonoBook' skin for a while. Guess it's about time to actually get to work on that. (and again, sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Question ==<br />
...from a nubcake guy. Just asking, is a story allowed to be set in a video game universe ([http://halo.wikia.com/The_Halo_Universe Halo]: w00t!)? 'Cos I wanna write a TF story set in there, but I'm not too sure if this is allowed on Shifti. Hope it's yes, 'cos it's already in progress. Thanks! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]<br />
:We have no restrictions on fan-fiction, but if we receive a take-down notice it will be removed. (I run the server and would be the one facing the legal actions - so I will not fight a DMCA notice unless I am certain it is invalid) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::Great! Well, I'm pretty sure Bungie, the copyright holder, encourages fan fic, so I think it's ok...Note "I think". I'm not sure how they'd react to TF fan fic. Thanks for confirming (and once again for the fave I can't tell you how much that means to me)! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]<br />
:::Most companies are open to fan-fic, because it helps with the popularity of their product. And you got the "fav" because I saw real promise in the original and in your willingness to take constructive criticism. Every other author in my "new authors to watch" section has shown the same promise, though they haven't all been available to take the constructive criticism that could be offered. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:24, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Hi there! This is the noob writer, Drake, again, here for a fresh wave of bother-the-administrator. Sorry to bother you, but here I am. Bothering you. Anyway, I was hoping you could help critique my new story, [[User:WolfyDrake95/Finding Himself|Finding Himself]], which I uploaded a couple of days ago. I got comments from Guvnor of Space and Concerned Reader, but I thought I'd ask for your opinion since you were the only one who seemed actually care about my first, and admittedly not-so-good, story. I do hope you can drop a critique and a comment to help me improve.<br />
<br />
The above was an email that I sent to you but received no reply for. And also, about the fanfic that this section was initially about: can I upload screenshots? Halo features a Theatre mode in which one can take screenshots of players or NPCs, so I think I could use screenshots to illustrate characters, etc. Anyway, thanks for reading so far! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]], 23:43, 27 June 2009<br />
<br />
:Hey there, ShadowWolf, it's Drake again. Hope you could look through my [[User:WolfyDrake95/Letting Go|new story]], in case you haven't noticed. Yea, it's not very good, and it took a strange direction halfway through writing (becoming all wierd and sappy), but I hope it would merit, at least, a critic. Of course, if you're too busy, it's okay, I'm fine with that. I'm pretty sure critiqueing new writers isn't exactly the only thing you do ;). <br />
<br />
:And by the way, if creating new info tags were possible, a "Critique Requested" one might be more effective in garnering critiques than the "Comment" tag that's provided. And in regards to my Halo-fanfic, is it okay if I put screenshots from in-game to illustrate? It'd be useful for people to understand what I'm saying, since Halo isn't as well known as Star Wars. &mdash;[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 12:48, 3 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Sadly I'm going to have to decline a critique on that story. I have tried reading it and found that it did not interest me, sorry.<br />
<br />
::As to the images... I am unsure about this, as there is content in the texture-maps and such that will wind up as part of the image that are copyright MS/Bungie. However... This would appear to be a case covered by the "Fair Use" exceptions, so unless a lawyer that uses Shifti can answer otherwise, go ahead and upload.<br />
<br />
::The 'critique requested' template itself should be easy. I'll have to see about that at some point today. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:35, 3 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::All right, I understand if you don't want to critique. I do know that this isn't exactly my best story...I suppose every writer has times when he writes bad. Just that I get these times more often. I sorta knew it was already bad, but I guess I needed someone to tell me that it was lousy, right to my face. Ah well. <br />
<br />
:::As for the pictures, thanks! And for the template, another thanks. You're one hell of an admin! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 04:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::::It's not that it isn't a good story, Drake. The problem is that when I tried reading it I was not able to get more than a few paragraphs in before I said "this is depressing"&mdash;I do not read anything that I can say that about because I suffer from bipolar disorder. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 11:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::::Um...then I guess I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. And yeah, I guess I shouldn't write so many depressing stories; it certainly gets a little boring after a while, and I suppose you're right in that when people read stories, they probably won't like those that make them all depressed. I should put a warning on that story one of these days! Anyway, I think I should start on my more normal stories soon. <br />
::::I don't know what to say about that last bit of what you said because I'm just a kid, and I'm not very smart and I'm terrified that I'll say something insensitive or insulting or whatever. I do that a lot of times, and the people on the receiving end tend to take offense. Sorry.<br />
::::On the upside, I'm thinking of writing a PaW story soon. It's a cool story setting, the Pig and Whistle. Looks like a good setting for assassinations!<br />
::::Still, thanks for taking the time to clarify the issue. I suddenly feel happy. :) &mdash;[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 13:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::::I don't offend easily&mdash;and if you ever do, you'll know it. Depressing stories can be good, too, but I stay away from them for medical reasons&mdash;bipolar disorder means I have massive mood swings and reading depressing stuff just feeds into that. There have been several times when I've read something really depressing and it had a very bad impact on me.<br />
:::::On another note&hellip; You are a lot more intelligent and mature than most of the "kids" these days (IMNSHO). Most "kids" these days have almost no idea how to put a sentence together and you are one of the few that I have run into that can take criticism.<br />
:::::As to a PaW story&hellip; The setting was created, as it says in the description and rules, as a "reboot" of the "Tales from the Blind Pig" setting. Within the last couple of years the "Blind Pig" setting has had numerous arguments over what is and is not "canon" between authors who have seen the setting grow and contributed and people just finding the setting. Because the creator has left it behind it has become something of a "lawless waste" with no real controls and people changing it from what the creator said is actually the reality of the setting. To solve this and make the setting much more internally consistent I asked around and a small group formed to generate the new setting. There is a lot more to the setting than has been revealed or is likely to be openly revealed to anyone anytime soon.<br />
:::::And we tried to define only what was needed to give the setting its own identity so that the people actually interested in writing a story set there could create the setting itself. We only ask that you not set the story outside of the NAR/RoT/Quebec area unless you are actually from that other area. The reason for that is simply that we wish to allow people from those other regions to have control over what, exactly, happened to their regions after the collapse. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
{{Green|Well Wolfy is from Singapore, so he could open up that side of the world. On a side note, all 14-19 year olds I know on the internet have trouble with basic grammar and spelling when talking normally, so I wouldn't quite call your writing juvenile.}} --[[User:Concerned Reader|Concerned Reader]] 14:29, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Well, actually Singapore is pretty boring. Nothing's really cool or fun here (maybe I'm just used to it?), and society feels very...suppressed. There's no space for individuality. If you try to be yourself, you get mocked and stuff (like when my friends discovered that I was on Shifti). Bad story material. And as for deciding what happens to my region...I dunno. Best I don't, I have terrible imagination and my mind only circles around video games that I play. <br />
:If I might refer you to the [[User_talk:WolfyDrake95/Letting Go|talk page]] of Letting Go, you'll find the rough plan of this PaW story.<br />
:As for my writing, I won't deny that I'm very, very proud of it (my downfall), which is why I hurt a lot sometimes when criticized without knowing why (thus why I seemed so upset when I replied to ShadowWolf's declination). I also have a somewhat existant superiority complex (I got really jealous when ShadowWolf commented that Rabbit was impressed by CR's Rebuilding. Puberty? I dunno.) <br />
:Even though I know I'm not that good a writer, I like to think that I write depressing stories because of my "painful experiences in life". Actually, it's because I read a lot of Michael Bard's work (both the sad ones and the happy ones). Both of which are awesome, by the way. I'll admit that I'm a fan of his. <3 <br />
:Oh, and thanks for the compliments, you two. I can feel my ego swelling already. :) &mdash;[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 14:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== RSS Feed? ==<br />
<br />
Not sure if there's much you can do about this or if I'm using it wrong or expecting the wrong things. But I've signed up for the RSS feed on Shifti, and I'm not only getting the new changes soon after they occur, but I also get a bunch of changes that were already reported to me, often multiple times.<br />
--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 11:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:That's the way the RSS feed works. It works similar to how the 'Recent Changes' page works by default. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:: True but it seems to be picking up changes it has already reported that haven't had any actual new changes done. For example, when Bryan was adding/updating the separator graphics, the RSS feed repeated it twice for each change he did, and that seems to happen a lot.<br />
::--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::I'd look closer - there were, in most cases, two files uploaded/updated - and yes, there is a bug somewhere in the system that is double-logging some events. I haven't been able to track that one down, though. It's about time to take a look and see if there is a new version of the code available, however, so I can see if an upgrade fixes the problem. (Most notably it is the new-user stuff that gets double-logged, but I have no idea how this is impacting the RSS feed) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:37, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::: I meant that as a general example thouhg; not that in particular.<br />
<br />
:::: Another example, I just got an RSS update now. I've been watching the feeds and had no recent updates from Shifti since this morning whence I'd gotten Jon's latest update and a few hours. The update I JUST got says there are 8 new changes, including Jon's After Hours addition again, Wolfy's New world addition and 4 entries for the RSS Feed discussion. (Despite this being the 4th entry now). All of the entries have a time of 4:03PM ADT. --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 19:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::::: Odd... And I'm not really that knowledgeable about the MediaWiki code-base (yes, I can hack on it, but...) I have a feeling that the problem lies in how the system works. I think that it might be compiling a list of all changes within a certain period and sending it out. And if it isn't keeping a proper time-stamp on the items, that is a violation of the RSS spec, IIRC - since it is then pushing out duplicates without a way for readers to determine that with any degree of certainty. I'll sign up to the RSS feed myself and see if I can track the problem. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Okay - I've got my client signed up to the RSS feed for the [[Special:RecentChanges|Recent changes]] page. Let's see what this edit does... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Now I've seen the problem and it sucks. That one previous edit led to a major flood of '31 new edits' in my feed reader. Looks like I was right - it isn't properly date-tagging the entries. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Looked at the raw XML of the feed and it doesn't look like there is an error in it - though there might be. Let me go take a look at the RSS specs to see if I can figure out what is missing and/or not being set properly. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Ooooh... I think I just found the cause. Apparently the feed is claiming to be RSS 2.0 but it isn't putting a stable &lt;guid/&gt; tag on any of the entries. This tag is the method by which most RSS readers decide whether an item is new or not. The feed here does not have them. This is probably an oversight on the part of the person that wrote the code, but I cannot say. I'm going to go check Wikipedia to see if they have it there - because if they don't then the only reason that feeds of Wikipedia aren't getting overwhelmed is because of the volume of edits there. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Changed it to include the link-url as a guid - it should be genuinely unique to a specific page revision. Lets see if this fixes the problem... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Okay - I give up (for now) - because that last edit showed up with a massive number of others and the added <guid> tag doesn't seem to have helped any. Unless, of course, those &lt;guid/&gt; tags need a bit to start showing up... I really don't know. Might be time for me to look into cleaning out the cache table of the database. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:20, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: And that looks like it did do it after all. Bug report being marked <strong style="color: red;">CLOSED/RESOLVED</strong>. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Bug not completely resolved. On restart my RSS client has shown a singularly massive flood of repeated messages. This does not make sense to me, as it was not doing this during the testing yesterday - and I am willing to bet it will not show such action today. However it might be that the text I am using to generate the data for the GUID tag is not as stable as I once thought - this bothers me and makes me think I might have to go much deeper into the code for changes. Perhaps as deep as altering the 'feed item' class so that it requires the actual ID of the revision so that said ID can be used for the GUID. --[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Sadly... It looks like utilizing the Date of the edit might be the only way to uniquely identify them - in combination with the page title, that is. However, I shall not be making those changes at this time. What I shall be doing is finding a way to interact with another developer so that I can be certain this will permanently and fully squash this bug. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: Not sure what's going on, but the problem seems to be cropping up again. I've gotten RSS feeds telling me of changes that I've already gotten before (and before and before)... --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:52, 12 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Has to do with how the URL's are generated. Since I'm using the URL as the GUID, it looks like there is a periodic shift in them. I have zero clue how to fix it, because I'd have to come up with something that is genuinely unique as an identifier, and I can't think of anything that would work there. (at least, nothing that is actually available to the feed generator) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:15, 12 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== ShiftiMin-related stuff ==<br />
<br />
I expect to be poking at the new theme with sharp sticks during the [[TSA-Bash]] anyways, but in the meantime I discovered (largely by happenstance) that if you're not logged in, there's no "log in / create account" link in ShiftiMin! I'd say that's a bug - unless we want to become a <em>really</em> exclusive club. ;)<br><br />
Looking pretty decent otherwise; we just need to figure out how to handle the menu organization. (Plus about eleventy billion other pet peeves with which I intend to drive you TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE. Mua ha ha.) --[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 15:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I thought I'd gotten that bug (GAH! Must be related to me changing the user-options bits to a drop-down from the long list it was)<br />
:Since Shiftimin does not work on versions of IE prior to 8 without a massive javascript hack it is not meant to be used as the primary skin for Shifti. This means that the 'missing login/create link' is a very low priority bug.<br />
:I am currently poking at ideas for another design that is as (or more) minimalistic but is also designed to take full advantage of modern browsers CSS3 support and HTML5. That redesign is not public yet, since it is currently little more than an image in the GIMP.<br />
:Oh, and I already am 'TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE' - I just hide it well. So driving me there is a very short trip... And... If you have any ideas at all for changes, just dump them here. I'll get on top of the ones that are fast/easy to implement immediately.<br />
:And if you have Fx3.5 available, look at Shifti using the Shiftimin skin. All kinds of nifty little hacks I've added that target it. (Okay, so they could probably target Safari/WebKit and Konqueror/KHTML as well... but I'm not going to try and support all the alternative browsers until they agree on the format for the CSS. And Opera '''STILL''' does not support even the 'border-radius' property or the 'box-shadow' or 'text-shadow' properties)<br />
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:02, 9 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Hey there, ShadowWolf. Just poking in here to point out what seems to be a bug. The SiteSearch function isn't working; I believe it has something to do with the server crash and tech replacement the other day. If I click the Search button it shows<br />
<br />
:A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: <br />
::SELECT page_id, page_namespace, page_title FROM `shifti_page`,`shifti_searchindex` WHERE page_id=si_page AND MATCH(si_title) AGAINST('' IN BOOLEAN MODE) AND page_is_redirect=0 AND page_namespace IN ('0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','12','13','14','15') LIMIT 20 <br />
:from within function "". MySQL returned error "145: Table './shifti/shifti_searchindex' is marked as crashed and should be repaired (malfoy)".<br />
I guess this isn't normal, but I'm also guessing that you might have already noticed. Anyway, sorry that I can't donate. I don't have PayPal or MasterCard or anything. &mdash;[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]] 13:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Thought I'd run the "check and repair" before bringing the new server live. Guess it didn't actually do the repair... It's fixed now - sorry for not spotting it myself :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:03, 17 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Redirects ==<br />
<br />
Just a heads-up, I noticed that [[PAW General TimeLine]] was linked to from [[Talk:Rebuilding]]. I didn't check all the redirects so there might be others. In general I think it's best not to delete redirects left behind by page moves, especially not when the redirect's name still accurately reflects the content it's redirecting to - even if you fix all the internal links there's still the possibility that other pages out on the web point there. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Links on archived pages ==<br />
<br />
Hi ShadowWolf! Thanks for the welcome. :-)<br />
<br />
I made the edits to the archived page because, well . . . posterity is nice, but if you don't actually get to the site intended, that's not very useful to readers! At WikiFur we either update outdated links, replace them with a link to archive.org, or remove them altogether; leaving them broken tends to results in linking to spam sites sooner or later. And WikiFur's old site is going down imminently. [[User:GreenReaper|GreenReaper]] 01:58, 28 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Ah, well... I've added a new section to the front-page. For that set of archived pages we really should keep the links up-to-date. We have a larger problem right now that is in the process of being worked out - I'm sure you've seen the site-notice banner... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:21, 28 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Spam Flood ==<br />
<br />
What can we do about this? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 04:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:So far there's only about a half dozen spam postings showing up per day, which is IMO quite manageable in terms of manual deletion. I'd recommend avoiding anything that might slow down legitimate posting. Maybe tweak the account creation captcha, if that's easy to do (I'd bet that spending more than a few hours working on it will probably be more time than is taken doing manual cleanup for the next month :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:WolfyDrake95/To_A_Friend&diff=13321User talk:WolfyDrake95/To A Friend2011-01-10T15:06:21Z<p>Bryan: No problem</p>
<hr />
<div>Hello Bryan!<br />
<br />
Thanks a bunch for helping me reconstruct the page. Unfortunately, I've already reposted this story, under a slightly different URL: [[User:WolfyDrake95/To a Friend]]. I did that one the long way, so I've got rid of the question-marks and formatting errors in that one. So... I guess you could delete this page... Sorry for wasting your effort. Still, thanks! It's really appreciated.<br />
<br />
&mdash;[[User:WolfyDrake95|Wolfy]] 09:33, 10 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:No problem, my bad for not checking more thoroughly. By the time I got to this one I'd worked out a pattern for doing most of the conversion from HTML so it went pretty quickly. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:06, 10 January 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User:Robotech_Master/Romancing_the_Changed&diff=13303User:Robotech Master/Romancing the Changed2011-01-10T09:18:36Z<p>Bryan: Salvaged from Google Cache. there are some special characters that got turned into "?" characters in here, will return to tidy those up later.</p>
<hr />
<div>{{universe|Paradise}}<br />
<br />
{{title|name=Romancing the Changed<br />
|user=Robotech Master<br />
|author=Chris Meadows}}<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars|AUGUST 14, 2007}}<br />
<br />
{{dropcap|L}}aura lay back, safe in Michael?s arms, secure in the knowledge that her loneliness was over. Now that they had finally found each other, neither of them would ever be lonely again.?<br />
<br />
Portia Henderson contemplated the monitor for a moment, then tapped the ENTER key and entered those six lovely letters every writer longs to reach: ?THE END?<br />
<br />
She sat back and regarded her work, taking a deep breath of satisfaction. Now, according to the movies, she was supposed to get all weepy, drain a miniature liquor bottle or two from the fridge, and then head down to South America to have an adventure. She snorted. Yeah, right. She was certainly no Kathleen Turner for looks, and out here in the real world there was still plenty of work left to do.<br />
<br />
Now that Portia had finished the first draft, she could set it aside for a few days to ?ripen,? then go back through it and make any necessary revisions once she could see it in a new light. ''Then'' she had to send it to the publisher, wait a few weeks, get it back with red pencil marks on every page, and revise again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Meanwhile, there were plenty of other projects that required her attention.<br />
<br />
Portia sighed. She didn?t regret the convenience of the computer, not one little bit?but all the same, sometimes she wished for the old days of manual typewriters. It seemed to her it would feel satisfying to pull the sheet out, then rack in a new blank one and slide the carriage across to start typing. It would actually feel as though she was ''doing'' something. It always felt a little silly to start a new project with nothing more momentuous than hitting ?Ctrl-N?.<br />
<br />
But for now?new projects could wait. Maybe a tiny little liquor bottle wasn?t warranted, but some kind of a break was. Portia rose and stretched, feeling the kinks work out. She supposed she ''had'' been too long at her computer, come to think of it. She made sure to save the file, then headed out of her study to get a drink in the kitchen.<br />
<br />
But as Portia entered the kitchen, she felt the first pang of nausea that heralded an onset of the flu. ?Oh hell,? she muttered. ?I hope it?s not avian flu. I?d hate to turn into a bird or something.? Chuckling at her feeble joke, she went to get a bucket ready and check herself into bed.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars|AUGUST 16, 2007}}<br />
<br />
''Brrrrrrrt. Brrrrrrrt.'' <br />
<br />
Portia?s hand reached out from under the covers and fumbled for the phone on her bedside table. After a few moments, she found it, and pulled the handset under the covers with her. ?Whoever this is, I hate you and I want to die.?<br />
<br />
The rich baritone chuckle from the other side almost made Portia forget she was sick. ?I?ll try not to take that personally.?<br />
<br />
?Hi, Keith. Bleah, I feel sick?sorry I couldn?t make the photo shoot today.?<br />
<br />
?So am I. I know how much you like to be there.?<br />
<br />
?Couldn?t risk infecting anyone else, even if I did feel up to getting out of bed.? Portia sighed. ?It?s all right, I?ll survive.?<br />
<br />
?How about I drop by sometime tomorrow to make up for it?? Keith asked. ?If you?re feeling up to visitors, I mean.?<br />
<br />
?Um?I don?t want to give this flu to you,? Portia said.<br />
<br />
?That?s all right, I?ll just make sure to wash my hands a lot.? Keith chuckled. ?It?s been too long since the last shoot.?<br />
<br />
Portia considered, the desire to see Keith again warring with her incipient nausea. It wasn?t a close contest-even if Keith was the person who made her feel ''least'' like Kathleen Turner. He was the cover model for all of her romance novels, and thus epitomized the phrase ?ruggedly handsome? in a way few other men could. To make matters worse, he didn?t even have a Fabio-esque ego about it. In fact, the modelling was just part-time moonlighting for him-his day job was, of all things, a librarian at the local university.<br />
<br />
She sighed. She had a crush on him sooo bad-which was the real reasons she looked forward to the cover photography sessions for her books. But of course ''she'' wasn?t attractive. She was barely even ?average.? Why would he even look at her?<br />
<br />
(Of course, Portia wasn?t stupid. She recognized this feeling as one of the biggest clich?s of the romance genre-but at the same time, clich?s were only clich?s because they just kept happening, right?)<br />
<br />
Then Portia remembered Keith was still on the line, waiting for an answer. ?Um?sorry. Mind wandered. Sure. Maybe I?ll feel better tomorrow morning. If not, it?ll still be nice to see you.?<br />
<br />
?All right. I?ll drop by around ten. See you then.?<br />
<br />
?See you.? Portia fumbled the phone back on the hook, and sighed. ?I?ve had this thing for three days. I?d ''damned'' well better feel better by tomorrow.?<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars|AUGUST 17, 2007}}<br />
<br />
August 17th dawned clear and bright, and Portia woke with a clear head for the first time in days. The nausea was gone. She actually felt good-full of energy. Which was a good thing, because she really needed to shower and clean up if she was to look what she laughably thought of as her best for Keith?s visit.<br />
<br />
Portia was soaping between her legs when she felt something unusual-a lump right at the base of her spine. ?That?s weird,? she muttered. ?Aren?t the strange lumps supposed to be in my breasts?? And then, as she felt it, the lump grew ''longer'' beneath her hand. ??the hell??<br />
<br />
Portia tried unsuccessfully to look over her shoulder. She could actually ''feel'' the lump growing. It was like her spine was extending into a tail. That wasn?t right! Then she noticed something else. Patches of something were forming all over her skin?grey and white fuzz, like five o?clock shadow. As she watched, the patches grew larger, spread, merged into each other, and continued growing longer.<br />
<br />
Then her fingers and toes started cramping up-and her entire lower legs spasmed. ?Gah!? Portia slipped on the shower tiling and fell against the side, hitting her head. ?Ow!? She tried to get to her feet, but something about her legs wasn?t working like it was supposed to. Finally she reached up and turned the water off, then crawled out of the shower and used the toilet to pull herself back up to her feet. ?Whuff fappening tuh me??<br />
<br />
The words didn?t come out right. Something was wrong with her lips. They seemed to be?getting longer. Pushing outward into a muzzle. And something was happening to her ears! But that wasn?t possible?was it? Steadying herself on the counter, Portia looked up into the mirror.<br />
<br />
A complete stranger looked back at her. A stranger with long white hair instead of mousy brown?but more importantly, with the face, ears, eyes, muzzle, and grey-and-white fur of a snow leopard. Portia wobbled on her feet, staring. This wasn?t happening. Peter Funt was going to jump out from behind her door and inform her she was on an episode of ''Candid Camera''. This couldn?t be ''real''!<br />
<br />
But after a moment, the waves of panic subsided, replaced by something that was almost like euphoria. ''Is this what being in shock feels like?'' Portia wondered, as she continued to stare at herself.<br />
<br />
Portia turned her head this way and that, checking out her profile. Once she was over the initial shock, she had to admit, it could be worse. She wasn?t sure why, but she seemed to look a bit slimmer now. Her breasts seemed slightly larger, and they showed no signs of the sagging that had afflicted them before. ?If I weren?t furry,? she reflected, experimentally feeling out how to enunciate the words with her new muzzle, ?I?d look damned good.?<br />
<br />
There were some weird differences now, though. Her fingers were a bit shorter, and ended in claws instead of nails. Her lower legs were digitigrade?she was standing on her toes, and her heel was way up in the air. She stumbled and nearly fell over before firmly resolving not to think about it.<br />
<br />
And of course there was that long, silky fur that covered her entire body-and the long, thick tail that was lashing agitatedly behind her. Portia reached back and tried to grab it. It took her three or four tries; the new limb almost seemed to have a mind of its own. ?This is so ''weird''.? She ran her hands along its length and shivered at registering sensations from a body part that hadn?t existed a few minutes before. ?What?s ''happened'' to me?? Quite irrationally, Portia found herself wishing for a miniature liquor bottle or two. Or one not so miniature.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
In the end, Portia supposed she couldn?t stay in the bathroom forever. If nothing else, Keith was going to be coming over soon and?<br />
<br />
?Oh God, Keith!? Portia realized. ?I can?t let him see me like this!? She wobbled to the phone to call his cell, but it went straight to voicemail. ?Dammit, he left his phone off again!? Portia looked down at herself and sighed. ?Well, one thing?s for sure. I?m not going to answer the door naked.? She went into her bedroom and dug through her dresser for clothes that would fit. Annoyingly, none of her bras was the right size anymore?but that was all right, she had plenty of sweatshirts that were loose enough to cover everything.<br />
<br />
Skirts were another problem, though. If she pulled the back of the waistband up to just below her tail, it pinched. Finally, Portia took an X-acto knife to one of her older, crummier skirts, making a tail slit that she could see about stitching more permanently later. As for shoes?forget about it. She wasn?t even going to try. ?If I can?t go barefoot in my own home, where can I??<br />
<br />
As ten a.m. fast approached, Portia glanced nervously at the door. She was torn between pretending not to be home or just telling Keith he couldn?t come in because she?d taken a turn for the worse. He?d understand?wouldn?t he? But at the same time, Portia found she wanted to see him now more than ever. He, at least, was normal.<br />
<br />
But what would he think of her?<br />
<br />
Portia was pacing her living room when the knock finally came, and was so startled she stumbled on her unaccustomed tiptoes and nearly fell. Catching herself, she staggered over to the door and peered through the peephole. There he was, standing there in jeans and a ?wife-beater? T-shirt, looking like he?d just stepped off the cover of one of her novels?with, of all things, a ?get well? fruit basket tucked in the crook of one arm. Seeing the change in light behind the peephole, Keith grinned and waved.<br />
<br />
She sighed. Well, pretending not to be home was out of the question now. She reached over to put the chain on, then opened the door, standing out of sight behind it. ''Oh God, I can smell his cologne.'' Portia almost whimpered. ?Uh, hi Keith. Um?listen. My flu got worse this morning. It?s really not a good idea for you to come in right now.?<br />
<br />
She hazarded a glance through the peephole. But Keith was just nodding, a slight smile still playing over the corners of his mouth. ?I thought it might be something like that,? Keith said. ?It?s hitting a lot of people this morning.?<br />
<br />
Portia blinked. ?It??<br />
<br />
Keith kept his voice calm and steady. ?Portia, this may sound crazy, but I?m going to guess you woke up this morning and found you needed to shave a lot more than just your armpits. Am I right??<br />
<br />
Portia?s jaw dropped. ?How did you know that??<br />
<br />
?It?s something that?s been happening to a lot of people at this time of year. If you let me in, I?ll explain. I promise I won?t be shocked or horrified by how you look now.?<br />
<br />
Portia stood there for a long moment, as his words slowly sank in. Then with trembling hands she closed the door, fumbled for the chain, and opened it again, taking a deep breath and swallowing hard as it swung out of the way leaving her and Keith face to face.<br />
<br />
Keith looked at her for a long moment, his eyes traveling from the tips of her ears down to her furry feet and back up. Then he smiled wider. ?Portia, you?re ''gorgeous''!?<br />
<br />
?I?m a freak!? Portia protested. ?I know I wasn?t much to look at even before, but now?how can I live looking like this? I belong in a zoo!?<br />
<br />
Keith stepped inside and put the basket down, shutting the door behind him. ?You?re not a freak. You?ve just got a natural fur coat. There are hundreds of thousands of people who are going through exactly the same thing, and it?s doubling every year.?<br />
<br />
Portia blinked again. ?Hundreds of thousands? That?s not possible. It would have been on the news.?<br />
<br />
?Well, the thing is, it?s been happening very quietly.? Keith grinned. ?You see, to most people you won?t look any different. Well, maybe they?ll notice you look thinner, and you?ve started bleaching your hair. But there?s this ?reality distortion field? in effect that makes the Changed still look human to almost everyone except other Changed.?<br />
<br />
?Changed.? Portia could hear the capital letter. ?So why can ''you'' see me??<br />
<br />
?I?m not really sure,? Keith said. ?I guess I?m the exception that proves the rule. I started seeing furry people a couple of years ago, and after enough of them noticed I was freaking out at them when no one else was, they took me aside and explained the whole thing. I?ve been expecting to Change myself every August 17th since then, but so far no luck.? He shrugged. ?Anyway, I do my part to keep an eye out for people who get sick at the right time. This year it was you.?<br />
<br />
??The right time?? You mean it?s on a schedule?? Portia asked, slightly hysterically.<br />
<br />
?It has been so far. Nobody really knows why. Some people think there?s some kind of intelligence behind it, but if there is it?s not something we can communicate with any more than ants can talk to the ant farmer.?<br />
<br />
Portia shivered. ?There?s a pleasant thought.?<br />
<br />
?Anyway.? Keith lifted the fruit basket up and put it on the table. ?I didn?t have any way of knowing what you?d turn into, carnivore or herbivore, so I sort of split the difference.? He pushed a couple of oranges aside and pulled out a plastic bag of beef jerky. ?I expect you?re getting pretty hungry by now.?<br />
<br />
?After what happened to me? I couldn?t possibly?? Portia began, but was betrayed by the sound of her stomach growling. She snatched the bag out of his hand and ripped into it. The dried meat smelled amazingly good to her newly-sensitive nose, and her sharp pointed teeth tore into it with ease.<br />
<br />
Keith slid onto a seat, backward, resting his arms on the top of the back rest and leaning forward to watch her. ?It?s not true, what you said, you know,? he said after a while.<br />
<br />
?Mwha?? Portia asked, her mouth full of shredded jerky.<br />
<br />
?About not being much to look at,? Keith said. ?I?ve always thought you were kind of pretty.?<br />
<br />
Portia nearly choked. ?You?re not serious,? she said after swallowing.<br />
<br />
?No, really,? Keith said.<br />
<br />
Portia blinked. As far as she could tell, he wasn?t kidding at all. He looked dead serious. ?But?why didn?t you say anything??<br />
<br />
He shrugged. ?I knew how you felt about yourself. I was?well, I guess I was afraid you?d think I just liked you for your fame.? He looked down. ?Of course, now you?ll think I only like you because you?re gorgeous. Or because I?m some kind of a fur fetishist.?<br />
<br />
?Are you?? Portia asked before she could stop herself.<br />
<br />
?No!? Keith insisted. ?I mean?I don?t think I am. I haven?t been attracted to any of the other furry girls I?ve met.? Portia gawked. He was ''blushing'' now! ?But I?ve?well, I?ve always had a thing for you. I just never could work up the nerve to say so.?<br />
<br />
?But?you could have any girl you wanted,? Portia said. ?Why would you want me??<br />
<br />
?You?re funny and clever and good-natured and smart,? Keith said. ?You?re fun to be around. And you?re?well, ''you''.? He shrugged. ?You?re still you, even under the fur.?<br />
<br />
?Thanks, I think,? Portia said.<br />
<br />
?I am ''so'' glad you didn?t end up turning into a man,? Keith said.<br />
<br />
Portia stared. ?Turning into ''what'' now??<br />
<br />
Keith smiled wryly. ?It?s been known to happen. About one percent of Changed flip genders. It could happen to me next year.?<br />
<br />
?Perish forbid,? Portia said. ?I can?t even imagine you as a woman.?<br />
<br />
?I doubt most of the ones it happens to can,? Keith said. ?I guess that?s part of why I finally got around to?saying what needs to be said. I don?t know how long I really have.? He looked at the floor. ?Um. Not that, you know, you have to feel the same way or anything. I just feel better for having said it.?<br />
<br />
Portia blinked. ?''I'' don?t have to feel?? Keith, I?ve had a crush on you since the day we met.?<br />
<br />
Keith looked up. ?You have??<br />
<br />
?Of ''course'' I have. Hello? Unattractive woman, writes romance novels for a living, handsome guy? I never said anything because?well??<br />
<br />
Keith slowly facepalmed. ?Of course. The self-image thing again.?<br />
<br />
?For all I knew, you were beating ''beautiful'' women off with a stick!? Portia said. She paused. ?That didn?t come out right.?<br />
<br />
Keith chuckled. ?I know what you mean.? He shook his head. ?The truth is, you?d never guess since I do photo modeling, but I?m actually kind of shy. I usually relate better to books than people. Which is, well, why I jumped at the chance to model for your books when I heard your publisher was looking.?<br />
<br />
?But I?d only written one book at that point,? Portia protested. ?And self-published it to boot.?<br />
<br />
Keith shrugged. ?I read it. It was good.?<br />
<br />
They lapsed into silence for a few moments, each watching the other. Finally, Portia spoke up. ?So?what do we do now??<br />
<br />
Keith snapped his fingers. ?That?s right, I forgot. Newbie orientation.? He fished a USB thumb drive out of his pocket and offered it to her. ?I?ve got all the important stuff right here. FAQs, howtos, grooming guides, bookmarks for websites and forums, everything you need.?<br />
<br />
Portia took it, gripping it with the pads of her new paws. ?Organized by Dewey Decimal, no doubt,? Portia said dryly.<br />
<br />
?Of course not,? Keith said. ?We use Library of Congress, remember??<br />
<br />
Portia chuckled. ?Right.? She glanced at the USB drive, then examined the hand holding it more closely. ?I can see I?m going to have to learn to type all over again.?<br />
<br />
?I don?t have experience with that, but I?ve been told it?s easier than you think,? Keith said.<br />
<br />
?How reassuring.?<br />
<br />
?But you can go over all that stuff later,? Keith said. ?The first order of business is a shopping trip.?<br />
<br />
?Shopping?? Portia stared at him. ?You can?t be serious. I can?t go out like this!?<br />
<br />
Keith grinned and shook his head. ?I told you, nobody will notice anything weird. Besides, you kind of have to go out like that, because you?ll probably be like that for the rest of your life.?<br />
<br />
Portia fumbled the USB drive, and it hit the floor with a small ?thud?. ?The rest of my life??<br />
<br />
?Um.? Keith frowned. ?I guess there was probably a better way to say that. But, yeah. Some people, a very very small number, have a secondary change a year later, but nobody's ever changed back to human yet. Odds are, you?re like that for the rest of your life. I?m sorry.?<br />
<br />
Portia sighed, and picked up the thumb drive. ?I guess I?d better start getting used to it, then. So, shopping. What and why??<br />
<br />
?Clothes, mainly,? Keith said. ?You?ve probably already noticed you have different measurements now, and also you?ll need things customized for your tail.?<br />
<br />
?Where do I go for something like that?? Portia wondered. ?It?s not as if chain stores stock it, is it??<br />
<br />
?One of the alteration shops in town is Changed-run,? Keith explained. ?They keep a lot of generic stuff on hand, and can customize the rest. And some stuff won?t be any different.?<br />
<br />
Portia sighed. ?I guess I might as well.?<br />
<br />
Keith nodded. ?Oh, by the way, are you wearing shoes??<br />
<br />
Portia blinked. ?How would I? These feet aren?t exactly shaped for it.?<br />
<br />
?Yeah, but you can still wear them anyway. It?s something to do with the field,? Keith said. ?You just pretend to put them on and they sort of disappear. Trust me. If you don?t, people will see you aren?t wearing them, and ?no shoes no service.??<br />
<br />
?Hmm.? Portia stepped into her bedroom, found a pair of sneakers, and tried it. ?Huh. If that doesn?t beat all. It doesn?t feel any different.?<br />
<br />
?It looks different to the rest of the world, though, and that?s what counts.? Keith opened the door. ?After you??<br />
<br />
Portia snorted, and bapped him with her tail on the way out.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
A quick run downtown in Keith?s Prius brought them to ?Like Cats and Dogs?. Keith was slow getting to the door, and Portia pushed through it before he could hold it open for her. ?Whoa!? Keith grabbed the door just before it could close.<br />
<br />
Portia blinked, looking over her shoulder. ?Huh??<br />
<br />
Keith grabbed the tip of Portia?s fluffy tail and held it up. ?You?ve got to be more careful,? he chided her. ?It would have hurt if you?d let the door slam shut on this.?<br />
<br />
?Oh.? Portia felt her ears tinge pink. Then she glanced at Keith, who was absent-mindedly running his hand through the fur of her tail. ?You know, if you keep that up, you?re going to have to buy me dinner.?<br />
<br />
Keith dropped the tail as if it was on fire, and blushed bright red. ?Oh! Um, sorry.? Portia?s ears got a little warmer themselves as she realized she?d liked the feel of Keith?s hand there and halfway wished he hadn?t stopped.<br />
<br />
?Like Cats and Dogs? turned out to be a small clothing shop staffed by a Siamese-patterned housecat Changed man and a woman whose anthropomorphic form resembled a small fox with big ears?a fennec, Portia realized. She?d read about them during research for a novel set in northern Africa. She chuckled as she realized where the name of the shop came from.<br />
<br />
Keith nodded to the Changed behind the counter. ?Hey guys. Not busy yet?? The shop was nearly empty; but for Portia, Keith, and the staff, there were only a couple of people?both humans?in the store.<br />
<br />
?You know how it goes on Change Day,? the fennec woman said. ?Most of the newbies don?t find out about us until the afternoon. Congratulations on beating the rush, miss.?<br />
<br />
?Oh, I?m being rude," Keith said. "Portia Henderson, this is Natalie Karo, and Sean Felhurtz. Natalie, Sean: Portia.?<br />
<br />
?Oh!? Natalie squealed, her over-sized ears perking forward. ?You?re the romance novelist, right? I have all your books!? She rummaged under the counter and produced a dog-eared (?fennec-eared??) copy of ''Portobello Passion''.<br />
<br />
Despite the strangeness of it all, Portia grinned and held out her paw to take the book. Here, at least, was something she understood. She pulled a pen out of her purse and, after a little scrabbling, managed to grip it firmly in her paw. ?This may be a little shaky?haven?t quite got the hang of these things yet.? She scrawled ?From a ?cat? to a ?dog?. ?Portia Henderson? on the title page and handed it back.<br />
<br />
Natalie read the inscription and beamed. Her tail wagged briskly behind her. ?Oh, thank you so much! I?ll treasure this always!?<br />
<br />
Portia chuckled at the tail-wagging. ?No problem. It?s always nice to meet a fan. In fact, this may be the first ''normal'' thing that?s happened to me all day. Well, relatively speaking anyway.?<br />
<br />
Sean laughed. ?I hear ''that''. C?mon, let?s get you fitted for some clothing with tail-holes. That is why you came, right??<br />
<br />
Portia smiled. ?It?s like you read my mind.?<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
Natalie and Sean turned out to have a pretty good grasp of fitting for Changed, and when Portia described the type of wardrobe she was looking for they came up with a number of tailhole-modified outfits that were just what Portia was looking for. ?Hey, Keith, what do you think of this one?? She held up a dress by the shoulder straps.<br />
<br />
Keith stared at the dress, a low-cut number in red satin, and his eyes bugged out a little as, Portia supposed, he imagined her in it. ?Glrk,? he said at last. <br />
<br />
Natalie giggled. ?We'll get a tail-hole sewn into that before you leave the store. Only take a minute.?<br />
<br />
?Meantime, let?s get you fitted for some lingerie,? Sean said, leading the way into the frilly section of the store.<br />
<br />
Portia raised an eyebrow. ?You?re both going to handle the fitting??<br />
<br />
?Natalie will handle the actual ''fitting'', but I do have experience picking things out,? Sean said. ?You see, I used to be a ?Shawna?.?<br />
<br />
Portia blinked. ?Oh.?<br />
<br />
?Now how about this lacy pink number, here?? Natalie suggested.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
By the time the fitting was over, other customers started drifting into the shop, and Sean left to help them. Natalie led Portia to a section set up in a closet at the back of the room. ?This is our mini-boutique,? Natalie explained. ?We keep specialty items here that the un-Changed wouldn?t understand if they saw in the main shop. Let?s see, you?ll need a bottle of herbal scent flea shampoo, a set of claw clippers?these are from a vet supply store, meant for use on panthers?a good fur brush??<br />
<br />
?You?re being so matter-of-fact about all this,? Portia said, as they walked back up to the counter. A small line had formed with Sean away helping other customers. ?I?m still waiting to wake up and find out this was all a dream.?<br />
<br />
Natalie chuckled. ?We get that a lot, especially around Change Day. If you think this is something, try having it happen four years ago. There were hardly any Changed at all. For months I thought I was going out of my head. Then I met Sean, who had it even worse.? She slipped behind the counter and opened the cash register.<br />
<br />
Portia shuddered. ?I?ll bet. This fur is bad enough?but to change gender on top of that? I can?t even imagine what that must be like.? She stepped around to the back of the line.<br />
<br />
?I could tell you,? sighed the female ferret-Changed at the front of the line. The female Husky-morph she was with patted her on the shoulder reassuringly.<br />
<br />
?Oh. Um?sorry,? Portia said.<br />
<br />
The ferret shrugged. ?I?ll deal with it.?<br />
<br />
Before leaving, Portia slipped into a changing booth and changed out of the old skirt and sweatshirt into some new, cat-adopted clothes she?d just bought. Then Keith rejoined her as she carried several bags out to the car. ?Find everything you need??<br />
<br />
?And then some.? Portia pulled a red bikini top out of one of the bags. It was festooned with a row of little hearts, and had shoulder straps for extra support.<br />
<br />
Keith stared at it. ?Now I ''know'' you?re teasing me.?<br />
<br />
?I wasn?t going to get it, but Natalie talked me into it. She said I ''needed'' something that showed off my new figure and my new pelt.? Portia shrugged, dropping it back in the bag. ?I?m still not used to this.?<br />
<br />
?Used to which? Being a cat, or being attractive?? Keith asked.<br />
<br />
?Either. Both, I guess.? Portia closed the trunk on the bags. ?This is ''all'' new to me.?<br />
<br />
?Maybe there?s a book in it, though,? Keith said. ?Didn?t you once say everything is ?grist for the mill???<br />
<br />
Portia snorted. ?I think my millstone just cracked.?<br />
<br />
Keith held the passenger door for Portia. ?Well, come on. I think I owe you lunch.?<br />
<br />
Portia?s ears burned again. ?I was just kidding??<br />
<br />
?No, no, I insist,? Keith said. ?It?s a debt I?m only too happy to pay.? He looked down and mumbled, ?Besides, I should have asked you out a long time ago.?<br />
<br />
?Oh, Keith?? Portia sighed.<br />
<br />
?No, really. At least then you?d know for sure I was sincere.? Keith tapped the power button that stood in for the Prius?s ignition key, and pulled out of the parking space.<br />
<br />
?What I was going to say is, ''I'' should have asked ''you'' out,? Portia said. ?At least then you?d know ''I'' was sincere and not just a whiny, needy bitch on a furry rebound.?<br />
<br />
?You?re not a bitch,? Keith said. ?In either sense of the word.? He flashed her a shaky grin. ?A female cat is called a ?queen?, after all.?<br />
<br />
Portia couldn?t help but smile back. ?Then maybe I?m a ''queen'' bitch.?<br />
<br />
?No, not likely.? He chuckled. ?Now, how do you feel about Italian??<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
The meal began as a slightly nervous affair on both their parts. They picked at the salad course and breadsticks and talked about the cover shoot for the latest book and plot points from various of Portia?s novels, as if it were a completely normal affair. Portia noticed that she didn?t have any trouble eating the salad?but on the other hand, even housecats liked to eat grass every now and then.<br />
<br />
When the wine arrived with the main course, it turned out that the sommelier was a badger. ?There really are a lot of us around, aren?t there?? Portia mused thoughtfully.<br />
<br />
The badger withdrew the cork and offered it to Portia for sniffing, then poured a dollop into a wine glass for her. ?Yes, ma?am, there are,? he said. ?I take it you?re new??<br />
<br />
?That?s one way of putting it, I guess,? Portia said, swirling the wine around and holding it up to the light. She felt faintly silly, since she had no idea what she was supposed to be looking for, but people always did this.<br />
<br />
The badger nodded. ?Well, don?t worry,? he said. ?It?ll get easier with time.? He poured for Keith, then left the bottle with them and hurried off to attend to other patrons.<br />
<br />
?This is going to be like when you get a new car and suddenly start noticing the same model of car everywhere, isn?t it?? Portia mused.<br />
<br />
?Kind of,? Keith said. ?Though on the other hand, you literally ''couldn?t'' see them before it happened to you.?<br />
<br />
Portia sniffed the wine, and blinked as her newly-sensitive nose detected a remarkable melange of aromas she?d never noticed in a wine before. ?Huh. No wonder they have a Changed sommelier.?<br />
<br />
Keith nodded. ?He?s very good.?<br />
<br />
For a while they sipped and ate in silence. Portia kept looking down at her furry new body as if expecting it to change back at any moment, and Keith tried to focus on his food but kept stealing furtive glances when he thought she wasn?t looking.<br />
<br />
Finally, Portia sighed and said, ?So tell me the truth. Am I stuck like this? For good??<br />
<br />
Keith swallowed the bite of food he?d been chewing and took a moment before speaking. ?Probably,? he said. ?I won?t sugar-coat it. Some people, a very tiny percentage, change again into something else a year later, but nobody?s ever changed back to human yet.?<br />
<br />
Portia blinked. ?So a year from now I could turn into a?a chinchilla or something??<br />
<br />
?You could theoretically turn into a ''male'' chinchilla or something,? Keith said. ?Some people, a very tiny few, Change ''every'' year. Nobody knows how or why.?<br />
<br />
?And you ''really'' find me attractive like this? Seriously??<br />
<br />
?Portia, I?ve ''always'' found you attractive. I?m sorry now I didn?t say something earlier,? Keith said. ?I just knew you wouldn?t have believed me.?<br />
<br />
Portia thought about it a moment, then shook her head. ?I think maybe I would have.? She chuckled. ?I?d have ''wanted'' to believe you. Amazing how easy it is to believe what you want to believe.?<br />
<br />
?You really felt that way about me?? Keith said.<br />
<br />
?I really did,? Portia agreed.<br />
<br />
Keith thought a moment. ?Then?do you still??<br />
<br />
?Keith, I?m a ''cat'' now for goodness sake!? Portia protested.<br />
<br />
?That doesn?t mean anything,? Keith said quietly. ?Do you still find me as attractive as you did yesterday??<br />
<br />
?Yesterday I was sick as a dog,? Portia said. ?I didn?t find ''anything'' attractive, except maybe the toilet.?<br />
<br />
Keith rolled his eyes. ?Last week, then. Stop dodging the question. If the fur thing wasn?t an issue, would you still have that crush on me??<br />
<br />
Trapped, Portia looked down at her plate and admitted, just barely above a mumble, ?Of course I would.?<br />
<br />
Keith grinned at her. ?Good. Because as far as I?m concerned, the fur thing ''isn?t'' an issue. You?re the same charming and lovable person you?ve always been.?<br />
<br />
Portia blinked. ??Charming and lovable?? Are you sure you don?t have me mixed up with some ''other'' Portia Henderson??<br />
<br />
?You?re the one and only.? Keith chuckled. ?Seriously, Portia, I like you a lot. I always have. I like talking to you, I like being with you. How can I make you believe me??<br />
<br />
?Now I ''know'' I must be dreaming,? Portia said. ?This always happens right before I wake up.? She muttered, ?Of course, the ones where I?m naked in public last ''all night long''.?<br />
<br />
?I promise, this is real,? Keith insisted. ?I thought you were pretty before, I think you?re gorgeous now, but I wouldn?t care if you were ugly because I like ''you'', not your looks. How can I prove it to you??<br />
<br />
Portia felt her ears heating up again. ?I?m?not sure.?<br />
<br />
Keith grinned. ?Well, I guess I?ll just have to think of something.?<br />
<br />
Portia raised an eyebrow and wondered whether she ought to be worried.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
After lunch, they went back out to Keith?s car. Portia panted a little on the way. ?God, it?s muggy.?<br />
<br />
?And you?re wearing a full-body fur coat, too,? Keith said, popping the car door for her. ?Want to come over to my place?? Portia stared at him. ?Er?I didn?t mean that like it sounded,? Keith hastily added. ?I was just going to say, I live in an apartment complex with its own swimming pool.?<br />
<br />
Portia snorted. ?Admit it, you just want to see me in that bikini.?<br />
<br />
Keith grinned. ?At least I didn?t invite you up to see my etchings.?<br />
<br />
Portia rolled her eyes. But on the other hand?''Come on, girl, how many times did you fantasize about him inviting you over to his place?'' Granted, most of the fantasies had involved dialogue considerably more like that found in her novels?but then again, she supposed much of it would sound fairly corny in real life. ?All right.?<br />
<br />
?Of course, I could just drive you back?? Keith blinked, and looked at her again. ?What??<br />
<br />
?I said ?all right,?? Portia said. ?A pool sounds like a great idea in this weather. And I?ve got the suit, might as well try it out.?<br />
<br />
?Oh. Er, right.? Keith swallowed, then wrenched his eyes back to the road.<br />
<br />
Portia smiled, watching him, and realized that she no longer needed any proof. The way he was acting was proof enough. He really ''was'' attracted to her. He might have hidden it before (though even now she remembered a few furtive glances at previous ?shoots that she hadn?t thought much about at the time), but now that he?d brought it out in the open, his body language gave him away completely.<br />
<br />
And when Portia let herself think about the implications of that, it put the Change almost entirely out of her mind. The man ''she?d'' had a crush on all this time had felt the same way about ''her''? It was like ?The Gift of the Magi?, or a Shakespearian comedy of errors. Portia wondered when, or if, either of them might have worked up the nerve to do anything about it if it hadn?t been for the embarrassed rush of speaking freely that had happened after her Change.<br />
<br />
But one thing was for sure. ''Regardless of what we didn?t have the nerve for before, this is a clean break,'' Portia vowed. ''I?m not going to let this chance go to waste.'' <br />
<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
They pulled into the lot at Keith?s apartment building a few minutes later. Portia grabbed the paper bag that had her bikini in it, and followed Keith to the elevator. ?It?s not much,? Keith explained as they rode it up to the fifth floor, ?but it?s home.?<br />
<br />
Keith?s apartment had comfortable-looking but not extremely fancy furniture, and was kept more or less neat. The only sloppy element was the piles of books scattered here and there?but then, Keith ''was'' a librarian. And Portia noticed that one stack, kept on the sofa, was composed entirely of ''her'' books.<br />
<br />
Keith noticed her glance. ?Oh. Uh, heh, been meaning to put those away.?<br />
<br />
Portia grinned. ?I rather like it, actually. It?s nice to see my stuff being read, not just sitting on a shelf.?<br />
<br />
Keith smiled back. ?I?m glad you like it. Anyway, if you want to change in my bedroom, it?s right through that door. I?ll wait out here for you.?<br />
<br />
Impulsively, Portia leaned in to kiss him on the cheek?though it came out more like a lick from the still-unfamiliar feline muzzle. She took the bag into the bedroom with her and closed the door, leaving a dazed-looking Keith behind.<br />
<br />
Portia looked around at the bedroom. It was tastefully furnished, neatly kept, but fairly plain, reflecting its owner?s personality. There was a king-sized bed, neatly made, and a bedside table with a lamp, alarm clock, and bookmarked copy of ''California Rose'' by Portia Henderson sitting on it. The room had the sense of a place where its owner spent eight hours a day because he had to, but didn?t see much outside of that appointed time.<br />
<br />
It didn?t have anything like the mirror on the ceiling or other?esoteric implements Portia had imagined for it (and sometimes written about in other contexts). Handsomeness aside, Keith was basically?completely normal. Portia chuckled ruefully at her silly daydreams.<br />
<br />
Then, impulsively, she flipped to the title page of the bedside book and autographed it before putting it back as she?d found it. After that, she sat on the bed and quickly slipped out of the new clothes she?d bought at ?Like Cats and Dogs?, neatly folding the bra and panties and placing the skirt and blouse on top of them. Then she pulled the bikini out of the bag, examined it for a moment, and began fastening it on.<br />
<br />
She?d never dreamed of wearing something this daring before the change?after all, she didn?t really have the body for it. But now she did?even if that body was covered in fur. Portia slid the last strap into place, then turned to look at herself in the dresser mirror, turning slightly this way and that to get the full effect. She tried to see herself through someone else?s eyes?which wasn?t too hard, given that she still wasn?t used to having this body. She had to admit, it did look good on her.<br />
<br />
Then Portia poked her head out of the bedroom door. ?Okay, come see what you think!?<br />
<br />
Keith raised an eyebrow, but stepped into the bedroom to look at her. His eyes widened as he took in Portia?s rosette-dappled body, set off by the bikini. ?You look?amazing,? he breathed, staring at her.<br />
<br />
Then Portia moved up to him, slowly, as if afraid she might scare him off if she moved too fast. Tentatively, she reached out to touch him, looking up to meet his gaze. ?About that crush you said you had?? she murmured, ?do you still have it??<br />
<br />
?I do. You know I do,? Keith replied, looking down at her. ?What about you??<br />
<br />
?Never lost it,? Portia breathed, moving closer.<br />
<br />
?Are?you sure you want to do this?? Keith asked, though she could see what it cost him to do so. ?You sure it?s not just the fur talking??<br />
<br />
?If it is the fur talking, I really like what it?s saying.? Portia smiled. ?We should have done this a long time ago. It shouldn?t have taken me getting turned into a snow leopard for us to figure this out.?<br />
<br />
?That?s good enough for me.? Keith placed one hand over Portia?s on his chest, and drew her into an embrace with the other, tilting his head down to kiss her on the side of the muzzle. Portia shivered, dislodging one of the shoulder straps to her bikini. The shiver proceeded down her spine and out her tail, pointing it straight up behind her back, as she leaned into the kiss.<br />
<br />
They never did make it down to the pool.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars|THE END}}<br />
<br />
{{Author note|This story was inspired by the following three artworks by Heather Bruton:<br />
*http://www.furaffinity.net/view/991200<br />
*http://www.furaffinity.net/view/884147<br />
*http://www.furaffinity.net/view/300788<br />
<br />
Only the first of those images actually made it into this story. Originally I intended to incorporate the other two pictures, too, and end with a repetition of the first paragraph, but with the names changed to ?Portia? and ?Keith?. But I realized when I got to the end it seemed like such a good stopping point, and the repetition of the first paragraph seemed a little too twee and didn't really fit anyway.<br />
<br />
You can just assume the other pictures represent scenes from later in the same relationship (though yes, I know the guy doesn?t quite look the same in all of them). My favorite is the second one.<br />
<br />
The ?avian flu? joke was originally supposed to be ?swine flu?, but then I realized I was going to have to set the story years before anybody knew about swine flu. Oh well.}}<br />
<br />
[[category:Paradise]] [[category:Robotech Master]] [[category:Anthropomorphic]] [[category:Leopard]] [[category:Story]]</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:KiTA&diff=13302User talk:KiTA2011-01-10T09:07:33Z<p>Bryan: Thanks for saving these, I'll be getting to them ASAP.</p>
<hr />
<div>I had an interesting medal created by Viqsi here, but it vanished in the server collapse.<br />
<br />
Someone needs to go edit Michael's page. I have archived his talk page from "Morgan's week" here:<br />
[[User_talk:KiTA/Archive1/]]<br />
<br />
As well as here: http://kita.ath.cx/temp/michael.html.htm<br />
<br />
For some reason, the edit button doesn't appear on his page for me. [[User:KiTA|KiTA]] 03:49, 10 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Thanks for saving these. I've got copies too, from Google Cache, and they're definitely high on my to-do list for putting Shifti back together (fortunately the backup we were able to salvage included all of Bard's actual stories, as far as I'm aware). I'll get to them soon, it's just a bit time consuming converting HTML back into wiki markup. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 09:07, 10 January 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User:Robotech_Master/Mending_the_Port&diff=13301User:Robotech Master/Mending the Port2011-01-10T09:01:28Z<p>Bryan: forgot the defaultsort</p>
<hr />
<div>{{universe|Chakona Space}}<br />
<br />
{{info<br />
|author= Chris Meadows<br />
|title= Mending the Port<br />
|website= http://terrania.us<br />
|contact= robotech@eyrie.org<br />
|setting= Chakona Space<br />
|series= A Hardscrabble Life<br />
|position= 2<br />
|previous= [[User:Robotech_Master/Breaking_the_Chayne|Breaking the Chayne]]<br />
|next= <br />
|genre= fantasy<br />
}}<br />
<br />
{{author note|Set in the [[wikifur:Chakona Space|Chakona Space]] universe of [[wikifur:Chakat|Chakats]], which is overall the property of [http://chakatsden.com Bernard "Goldfur" Doove].<br />
<br />
This was written as a collaboration between me and Chakat Honeymane. I wrote dialogue for Hardscrabble, and Honeymane wrote the character Strongtail. We both kind of tussled over how the story itself was supposed to go. We had a lot of fun working on it, and hope to continue it soon. Special thanks to Shifti wiki administrator ShadowWolf for looking it over and making many constructive suggestions!<br />
<br />
I don't feel like this particular story rates the "XXX" tag (though a lot of Chakat stories do). There is a very small amount of violence, which I do not feel warrants the "Violence" tag.}}<br />
<br />
{{title<br />
|name= A Hardscrabble Life, Episode Two: Mending the Port<br />
|author= Chris Meadows<br />
|user= Robotech Master<br />
|coauthors= Chakat Honeymane<br />
|category= Robotech Master}}<br />
<br />
{{dropcap|D}}awn found two trembling chakats huddled back in the basement of the ruined building. The Polizei only had minimal patrols at these hours, so it had been easy for them to make it back. Or at least, it had been for Strongtail. Hardscrabble didn't have much interest in moving at this point, though Strongtail wasn't sure whether this was due to hir injuries or just shock from what shi'd seen Strongtail do.<br />
<br />
Despite the situation, Strongtail had attempted to bind the wounds on the small cub, but not being a medic of any sort, shi had been afraid to do anything further. Fortunately, the injuries turned out to be less severe than they had seemed at first. It was all the scar tissue that made her tougher, Strongtail supposed.<br />
<br />
All the same, Hardscrabble was now curled up into a ball, whimpering a little. "You ''killed'' him," shi finally managed to articulate. "You just k-killed him."<br />
<br />
"Yes." Strongtail said flatly.<br />
<br />
"But he was?he was?" Hardscrabble choked back a sob and hiccuped instead.<br />
<br />
"He was a terrible person, Scrabs," Strong said, stroking the cub's flank. "He was beating you."<br />
<br />
"Only when I deserved it."<br />
<br />
"And what did you do to deserve such a punishment?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble sniffled. "When I didn't do what he told me."<br />
<br />
"He was using you Scrabs?all of you kids." Strong sighed. "He didn't even care enough about you to feed you properly. He was as bad as some of the taskmasters at UAE Gulags.<br />
<br />
"But you ''killed'' him!"<br />
<br />
"I know. I can still taste him," Strong said, spitting.<br />
<br />
"Wh-what are you gonna do to me?"<br />
<br />
Strong tilted hir head in confusion. "I suppose I'll have to look after you, won't I? If I can find a way off this rock, I'll take you with me."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble blinked. "You'll?what?"<br />
<br />
"What?"<br />
<br />
"Oh." Hardscrabble thought for a moment. "I guess?that's right."<br />
<br />
"Well, I'm hopelessly confused now." Strongtail smiled crookedly. "Are you hungry? I think it's just about breakfast time."<br />
<br />
"Breakfast?" Hardscrabble screwed up hir face in thought. "I've?heard of that."<br />
<br />
Strongtail sighed sadly, and began to work on putting together the meal from what little supplies they had, stopping momentarly to wipe hir eyes.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
After breakfast, everything looked a little brighter?partly because the sun had time to rise. Hardscrabble watched Strongtail cleaning up, though made no move to help out hirself. Shi was still turning the events of the last night over in hir head, trying to make sense of them.<br />
<br />
Now that the shock had worn off, it was easier to think about it, but Hardscrabble was still having trouble figuring out exactly how shi felt now. Chayne had been pretty mean to them?but that was how you had to be to live, on Argos. He'd beaten them up a lot, but he'd also ''toughened'' them up so they didn't get killed.<br />
<br />
But now ''he'd'' been killed?and by the code of the street, Hardscrabble knew that meant shi belonged to Strongtail now. Like it or not, shi was going to have to live with it. Shi guessed it could be worse. Apart from when shi'd torn his throat out, Strongtail was a lot nicer than Chayne had been.<br />
<br />
"How's your leg Scrabs?" Strongtail said, nodding towards one of Hardscrabble's bandaged legs.<br />
<br />
"I'll live." Hardscrabble put Chayne out of hir mind. Surviving was the important thing now.<br />
<br />
"I imagine," Strongtail laid down beside the cub and leaned in to kiss hir on hir forehead. "You're certainly a tough little kitten."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble flinched away from the kiss, confused. "I don't think I'm much tougher than anybody else."<br />
<br />
"You'd be surprised." The older chakat paused for a moment. "Tell me about yourself. How'd you come to be with this Chayne person anyway?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble frowned. "I?really dunno. I just am. Was." Shi shrugged. "I guess they found me when I was little."<br />
<br />
Strong nodded, "Go on."<br />
<br />
"Isn't any 'on'. Just don't r'member." It wasn't strictly true, but Hardscrabble really didn't feel like thinking back to those days right now on top of what shi'd just been through.<br />
<br />
"Okay." Strong sounded a bit disappointed.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble considered a moment. Shi didn't want to disappoint Strongtail. "Do have this, though." Shi looked around for hir backpack, then opened it and rummaged deep inside. Shi came out with a small metal tag, which shi offered to Strongtail. "This was in my ear. Chayne had it cut out."<br />
<br />
It had a serial number stamped into it, and the ship name ''Freebird''. It had indicator lights on the back, but the battery had long since gone dead.<br />
<br />
Strongtail blinked as shi picked it up and examined it. "Are you sure?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble pointed at the triangular gap in hir ear. "What do you think?"<br />
<br />
"I think I'd like to know what happened to your parents." Strong frowned. <br />
<br />
"They're still?in the bad place, I guess."<br />
<br />
"I'm sorry." Strong stroked Scrabs' tail gently.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "Shit happens."<br />
<br />
Strong sighed again, "I'm going to need to change your bandages now, if that's okay with you?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble sighed. "I guess."<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
Muttering to hirself, Strongtail began to unwrap the bandages, taking note of the yellow and red patches on the gauze as it peeled off. Materials science had largely eliminated the problem of the gauze scabbing to the wound, but some of the scabbing still peeled off just from friction. <br />
<br />
Strongtail was relieved to see that the wounds were already starting to heal over, and there were no signs of infection. But then, shi hadn't really expected any. Scrabs was a chakat, after all?and if shi hadn't gotten infected in all the other wounds shi'd gotten during hir life, shi probably wasn't going to start now.<br />
<br />
"Should've killed him more slowly," shi muttered. "Asshole."<br />
<br />
"You shouldn't have killed him at all!" Scrabs said hotly.<br />
<br />
"What's done is done," Strongtail stated with what shi hoped was an air of finality to it. "You shouldn't mourn such a man anyway."<br />
<br />
"Can mourn who I want to," Hardscrabble said rebelliously. "It's my?mourner."<br />
<br />
"Fine. In any case, we need to get off this rock." Strongtail rubbed hir forehead, "I don't suppose you have any idea how to do that."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble glanced at where Strongtail's butt was planted on the rubble-strewn floor. "Get up, move over, sit down again?"<br />
<br />
"Uh, no, I mean off the planet." <br />
<br />
"Then whyn'cha just ''say'' that?" Hardscrabble asked.<br />
<br />
Strongtail facepalmed so hard hir nose hurt.<br />
<br />
"Get on a spaceship, mebbe?" Hardscrabble continued. "That's how I heard you're supposta get off a planet."<br />
<br />
"Either that or we'll need to learn to fly."<br />
<br />
"I heard they taught that at the spaceport," Hardscrabble said. "Costs a lot, though."<br />
<br />
"Do you know where it is?" Strong looked closely at the younger chakat. "I know it's around here somewhere, but I don't know where it is exactly. And the locals haven't been exactly forthcoming or friendly, thanks to your thieving."<br />
<br />
"It's the place thataway with the big tower." Hardscrabble pointed. "Y'can see it for miles, in the daytime. I think they light it up at night, too. Or useta."<br />
<br />
"I don't recall seeing anything like that when I was heading into the area. Maybe it was blown up in the recent fighting?"<br />
<br />
"Well, it was kinda foggy yesterday."<br />
<br />
"How about we go for a walk then, and you can show me this tower of yours."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "All right, if y'want." Shi yawned. "Funny, thought I was s'posta be the blind one."<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
As the sun began to rise high enough for rays to slant down over the tops of buildings into the street, Hardscrabble peeked out of the doorway and glanced back and forth. Shi darted behind a pile of rubble for a better vantage point, moving with the swiftness and stealth of a veteran infiltrator. "All clear," shi said after a moment.<br />
<br />
Strongtail frowned. "Do you always go about like this? Wouldn't it be easier to just walk to places you need to get to like a normal person, rather then pretending you're James Bond or Chakat Quietpaw?"<br />
<br />
"I dunno who those are, but in this part of town 's best to stay safe," Hardscrabble said quietly.<br />
<br />
"I suppose so, but I'm kinda big to be sneaking around." Strongtail frowned.<br />
<br />
"Maybe you should stop eating so much of that stew then."<br />
<br />
Strongtail wrinkled hir nose. "You think I got this big on food like ''that''?"<br />
<br />
"Well, you ''are'' that big, an' you ''do'' eat that stuff, so?" Hardscrabble shrugged.<br />
<br />
"I'm sure it was all elementary." Strong half rolled hir eyes. "Lets just get going to a safer part of town so you don't have to play spy with piles of bricks."<br />
<br />
"'m not ''playing''," Hardscrabble mumbled. "C'mon. This way." Shi led the way up the street and through an alley between buildings.<br />
<br />
Strong shook hir head and followed as closely as possible to the cub.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble led the way down the alley, then hopped up onto a pile of rubble and stood on hir hindpaws to reach up and grasp the bottom rung of a fire escape. Hand over hand, then paw over paw shi pulled hirself up to the first platform. "C'mon!" Shi clambered up three more flights to the roof.<br />
<br />
Sighing, Strongtail followed suit, quickly pulling hirself up and climbing the stairs to the roof as well. Upon reaching the top, shi turned to look in the direction the cub was pointing to. Several miles away, across the city, a fairly short control tower poked its way a few stories above the rest of town. "See?" Hardscrabble said. "Tower."<br />
<br />
"And you're sure that's the space port?"<br />
<br />
"I been there. Once."<br />
<br />
"It's going to be a long walk."<br />
<br />
"Luckily we got feets!" Hardscrabble bounded across the roof, then leaped across the alley to another roof. "Well? C'mon, what'cha waiting for?"<br />
<br />
"Wouldn't it make more sense to walk on the ground? If one of us falls, we could be seriously hurt, and you're already injuried."<br />
<br />
"Nope!" Hardscrabble called back cheerfully, before turning and bounding toward the next roof.<br />
<br />
Strongtail swore under hir breath, before leaping across the gaps hirself in pursuit.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble glanced over hir shoulder and emitted a rare giggle at Strongtail struggling to keep up. Not that shi expected Strong to fall behind?Strong could probably leap farther than shi could?but it was a good reminder of just who was in charge here. <br />
<br />
If Hardscrabble gave Strong time to think, shi'd probably do something dumb again, like going up to a Polizei and asking for directions. Weird how shi seemed to think that just 'cuz shi was in a city, shi was back in ''civilization''. (Hardscrabble had never seen "civilization," though shi'd heard about it a lot.) "C'mon, we're almost there!"<br />
<br />
"Slow down you imp!" Strongtail shouted.<br />
<br />
"'m not an imp, 'm an urchin!" Hardscrabble replied. "I urch a lot!"<br />
<br />
"I'll urch you if you don't slow down!" Strongtail called back, quickly leaping across two alleys in two graceful bounds.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble pointed. "There it is." The rooftop they stood on belonged to the last building for several hundred feet. There was a cleared space between it and a fairly tall concrete wall that marked the edge of the spaceport. There were guard towers evenly spaced along it, and a main gate with a security checkpoint. Hardscrabble shivered. "Yer sure this is where y'wanna go?"<br />
<br />
After a moment Strongtail landed beside the cub. Beyond the guard towers and fences, there were several embedded craters in the large open field. Most of them were filled with some sort of fluid, but none of them seemed to be occupied by any ships. "Where are all the ships Scrabs? This place looks like it hasn't been used in years."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "Ships don't come that often. Once, twice a year mebbe."<br />
<br />
"That's not going to help us." Strong sighed heavily. "I suppose I could see if I could make a call back to Chakona."<br />
<br />
"Guess y'could see." Hardscrabble shrugged. "They don' like city people much, though."<br />
<br />
"Even so, if we're going to survive long enough to see the next ship come, we're going to need proper food and shelter." Strongtail rubbed hir chin before glancing at Hard's back. "I think all that jumping's gone and reopenned your wounds hun."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "They'll close again. We come here in the streets we'd'a both got new ones."<br />
<br />
Strongtail closed hir eyes momentarily and sighed for what Hardscrabble thought was the millionth time. "Alright. Let's get down from here so I can talk to the people at the port."<br />
<br />
"'kay." Hardscrabble led the way to a door on a small shed-like structure at one corner of the roof, and pushed it open to reveal stairs. "Here."<br />
<br />
After a moment of thought, Strongtail picked up the cub and decended down the dark stairwell.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Even before they finished crossing the open space, Strongtail could see something was wrong at the spaceport.<br />
<br />
"Looks like we're not the first to be here kiddo," Strongtail said as shi glanced at the obviously warped gate. The whole guardhouse looked like it had gone through some sort of battle?and given the anarchy that currently reigned on the planet, shi wouldn't have been surprised if that was the case. <br />
<br />
Upon reaching the gate, Strongtail could see even more signs that a vicious battle had been fought there, although how recently, shi couldn't be sure. "When was the last time a ship came here Scrabs? Do you remember?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "Last year, 'think. Didn't go over this far much. We worked the market. Couldn't get in the port without ID, waste of time." Shi kicked at a piece of rubble on the ground. "Looked different then."<br />
<br />
"Let's see if there's anything still inside." Strong shook hir head in frustration. The whole damned universe seemed to be working against hir.<br />
<br />
But the grounds of the spaceport weren't any better. The destruction was not unlike some of the wars Strongtail had covered. There were burnt out vehicles on the roads, and several of the buildings looked like they had been shelled heavily. <br />
<br />
It didn't take them long to lose interest in the grounds?it was clear there wasn't anything useful awaiting them there. But the control tower seemed to be reasonably intact, so they made that their next destination. The interior told a different story?it was pitch black, with no lighting whatsoever. This was not an issue for Strongtail, but shi knew it would be for Scrabs.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble looked around. "We should be outta here 'fore dark. Mebbe who did this might come back."<br />
<br />
"I doubt it." Strongtail was pretty sure that the real reason Hardscrabble was worried was that shi couldn't see well in the dark, anyway.<br />
<br />
Strongtail gave the room a once over. Although the signs of battle were less obvious here, the whole place looked like it had been looted from top to bottom. Although there were stairs, shi doubted the upper levels had faired any better. Still, shi supposed shi might as well check. Strongtail padded up the stairs. Hardscrabble followed, becoming more enthusiastic as shi came into the light filtering down from the tower's open top.<br />
<br />
The control tower was not quite as bad as shi had feared. Most of the consoles were built into the walls and floor, so had been too big for looters to remove. Still, most of the comm screens and a few of the windows were smashed out, and rain had done for a lot of the other equipment.<br />
<br />
"Guess we're outta luck, huh?" Hardscrabble said, curiously peering behind a dislodged access panel. Hir hand suddenly lashed out and she withdrew it with a large, squeaking rat in hir grip. A quick twist of the neck, and it was dead. Shi raised it to hir mouth, then paused and glanced to Strongtail. "Want some?"<br />
<br />
"Uh, no. How about you put it down and we'll get some real food later."<br />
<br />
"You kidding? This ''is'' real food." Shi sighed happily. "Never got a rat to myself back in the gang."<br />
<br />
"The people back home are just going to eat you up." Strongtail laughed. "Like it isn't hard enough to convince people we aren't cats as it is."<br />
<br />
"Not if I eat them first!" Hardscrabble said cheerfully, taking a big bite of rat. "Mmm, juicy."<br />
<br />
Strongtail frowned and looked away. As shi did, hir eye fell on one of the consoles tucked away in the corner. Shi blinked, then moved to take a closer look. It was easier to see in the darker corner: one of the lights was still blinking. It was a status indicator for the auxiliary subspace pulse generator.<br />
<br />
Shi snapped hir fingers. "Of course, the generators!" <br />
<br />
Strongtail knew that interstellar subspace comm generators were immense, and usually buried underground?and the models that were supplied to colony worlds were usually sealed units, inaccessible without factory tools. It simplified maintenance, and made sure the warranties stayed intact.<br />
<br />
That power light meant the generators were still active?and thus, still intact. Which made sense?after all, they were too big to steal and too inaccessible to damage. It also meant that the tower itself was still receiving power. And that meant? "We might still have a chance to get off this hellhole." Strongtail exclaimed outloud.<br />
<br />
"Hrmp?" Scrabs replied with hir mouth full of rat.<br />
<br />
Strongtail opened hir mouth to reply, then stopped as shi heard a loud clatter from the level below. Scrabs's eyes widened and shi nearly choked on hir rat. Strongtail frowned, and reached into hir pack. "Kid must be getting to me," shi muttered as her fingers closed around the handgrip. "But better safe than sorry." Hardscrabble backed out of sight, crouching with a console between hir and the door.<br />
<br />
As Strongtail tensed, shi heard a voice from downstairs. It sounded like a human, but shi couldn't be sure. It wasn't long before the voice started to move up the stairwell toward them.<br />
<br />
"Damn kids sneakin' around stealin' my stuffs. Where's me rat?! Where's Jerry?!" The voice was gruff and somewhat gravelly. <br />
<br />
Cautiously, Strongtail called out. "Who's there?"<br />
<br />
The voice fell slient for a moment, before speaking. "Nows the rats are mockin' me they are." Moments later, a very dirty looking human's head with a long matted beard and (what appeared to be) a greasy hubcap hat upon his head peaked around the corner. "Yous aren't not rats! You're some sort of pussy cat."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble wrinkled hir nose. Strongtail could tell why. The man ''stank''.<br />
<br />
The man stepped into the room, his body being as filthy as the rest of him. "You's seen me rat pretty pussy? I's been feedin' him so I's could eattem." After a moment of glancing, he spotted the remains of the rat's tail, where Scrabs had dropped. "Oi! You's eattened me rat! He was me best friend he was!"<br />
<br />
"I?" Strong began, before thinking better of it. "Do you know what happened here?"<br />
<br />
The man was now cradling the tail in his hands, openly weeping. "Why'd you eattened Jerry you mean pussy cat!"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble peered over the top of hir console, then ducked hir head back. <br />
<br />
"Oi!" The man cried, dropping the tail, "You's come to steal me home haven't ya? Well you can't have it see? It's mine! all I got left, just me and Jerry!"<br />
<br />
"No, look, we haven't come to steal anything sir." Strongtail tried to think of what to say.<br />
<br />
"Except me rat!"<br />
<br />
"We didn't know it was yours." Strongtail said quickly, trying to defuse the situation, "we just came to see if there were any ships that could get us off planet."<br />
<br />
"We? Who's this 'we'?" The man looked around suspiciously. He sniffed the air, his dirty nose twitching a bit like a rat's itself. "Ohhhh, I see. There's twos of ye! Twos and twos and twos and twos?" He trailed off into a cackle. "But ya's got more legs then just twos, you's like sixes!"<br />
<br />
"?right. Look, I've noticed that the subspace communication generators are still operational?"<br />
<br />
Suddenly the demeaner of the man changed completely. "Now there's a phrase I haven't heard in a long time," he said softly, his voice completely changing. "And I haven't seem a morph quite like you in a long time either. Chakats, aren't you? Are you from Star Fleet?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble frowned, hunching lower. Shi glanced to Strongtail and made a whirling screw-loose motion beside hir head.<br />
<br />
Strongtail shrugged slightly, before replying. "Not quite sir, but we are trying to get off world to the Federation. Do you know anything about the communication system?"<br />
<br />
"Of course I do," the man said, "I worked on it everyday. But you're out of luck. They broke everything?all the interfaces and calibration tools." He waved a hand at the weathered consoles. "What they didn't do for, exposure did. Without them, we can't even talk to the port on the other side of the planet, much less a ship."<br />
<br />
Strongtail frowned. "But everything's based on standard interfaces, isn't it? I'm a journo?I know a little something about comm gear myself. The actual ''transmitter'' is fine, it's just we don't have the cup and bits of string we need to use it. Right?"<br />
<br />
The man chuckled. "Cup and bits of string. Heh heh. You could put it like that, couldn't you? Yes. Yeees. We could probably hack something together, if we had the right parts."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble frowned. "Don' trust him," shi muttered. "He's screwy in the head."<br />
<br />
"What kind of parts would we need?" Strongtail asked. "Could we find them on the port, or in the market?"<br />
<br />
"Maybe. Maybe." The man fingered his beard. "A PADD would do for the interface. Other parts?there might be something we could use in the market. Portable audio players have the right kinds of linkages in them. And a lot of the right kinds of conduits end up at scrap metal dealers."<br />
<br />
"I have a PADD and a tricorder?" Strongtail said slowly. Shi didn't really trust him either, but if he really was an engineer, he'd know far more about the system then shi could possibly teach hirself in a year. "?and some rations. If you think you can help us, I'll be willing to share them with you. I'm sure they'd taste better then rats."<br />
<br />
With that, the man's demeaner changed again, "Where's me Jerry? JERRY!" <br />
<br />
"Uh, I dunno." Strongtail thought for a moment, "Can you fix the transmitter or not?"<br />
<br />
"Wha-?" Just as quickly as the 'crazy' episode had came on, it was over. "Of course, I can fix anything."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble rolled hir eyes and made the "screw loose" motion again.<br />
<br />
"Then shall we go?" Strongtail suggested.<br />
<br />
The man's eyes widened, and he frowned. "We?um, we?I don't think I'd better. I can give you a list of what you'll need, but?I don't really like going into town." He twitched, as if he might flip back to asking about Jerry again momentarily.<br />
<br />
"All right, calm down," Strongtail said, digging out hir PADD. "Just write it down here and we'll go get it."<br />
<br />
"Right?" The man reached out and took the PADD with one trembling hand, looking it over. "Huh. Fancy one. All right?" His fingers flickered over the control surface as he chorded words into place and sketched diagrams with a fingertip. "I think?those should do it. I can pull the rest out of the consoles here. I'll do that while you're gone."<br />
<br />
"Works for me." Strongtail glanced to Hardscrabble. "C'mon, Scrabs. Let's leave the man to his work."<br />
<br />
"Don' gotta tell ''me'' twice," Hardscrabble muttered, following Strongtail down the narrow tower stairs.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble lagged behind Strongtail as they headed back out of the starport and toward the market. Shi could see Strongtail had something on her mind. "Somethin' wrong?" shi asked.<br />
<br />
"I'm not sure how we're going to pay for any of this." The older chakat sighed. "It's not like I have a lot of cash."<br />
<br />
"Oh." Hardscrabble considered. Shi didn't see the "pay for" part as terribly necessary, but shi guessed shi could humor the bigger chakat for a while. "How've you bought stuff up to now?"<br />
<br />
"I had some from when I first came here, and I did a few?jobs once." Strongtail shook hir head. "Maybe I could trade some of my stuff. I'm not sure I like the idea of going around nude on this planet though.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble frowned. "Well?ya could go to the shops on Red Street," shi said. "I hear they're always looking for 'zotics'."<br />
<br />
"I'd rather not."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "Guess you'll hafta think'a something else then." Or maybe ''Hardscrabble'' would?<br />
<br />
"Mm."<br />
<br />
As they walked along, Hardscrabble could see Strongtail sinking deeper and deeper into thought. It made it easier for Hardscrabble to fall further and further behind. Finally, shi made a quiet dash for the fire escape on the side of a building. Shi preferred being on the roofs in these unfamiliar parts of town.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble glanced over the side of the roof one more time at Strongtail plodding up the street and frowned, hir preference for the safety of the rooftops warring with uneasiness at leaving the bigger chakat on hir own. But the streets in this part of town were cleaner than the rest of it, and the much-bigger Strong should be able to handle any trouble that came up between there and the market anyway. And it would be easier if Strongtail didn't know where Hardscrabble was for what shi was planning.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble dashed forward and leaped to the next roof, keeping pace with Strongtail but staying out of sight.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Strongtail was unamused. One minute shi had been walking along, and the next Scrabs had disppeared on hir. Shi wasn't too worried?shi knew shi'd somehow formed an empathic connection with the cub. Shi didn't know how shi felt about that, but the bright side was that it would make it easy to find the cub when shi needed to. Even now, shi had a feeling Scrabs wasn't too far away. <br />
<br />
But Strongtail could deal with Hardscrabble later. Right now shi was concentrating more on packing up all hir stuff and heading back to the port by way of the market. Shi'd have to sort what shi could trade and what shi couldn't, and try to get ahold of the parts that way.<br />
<br />
Thankfully, it didn't take long to make the selection. Shi didn't have much of value, mostly articles of clothing, but shi did have a couple of ruby necklaces that might be worth some significant amount of money. Shi was loath to part with them?they had been hir mother's and meant a great deal to hir?but when it came right down to it, they were just ''things''. Shi and Hardscrabble were ''people'', and people were what mattered.<br />
<br />
It was getting fairly late in the afternoon by the time shi made it to the market. It wasn't all that busy, which suited Strongtail just fine. It was, however, slow going. Many of the shopkeepers were less than forthcoming, often demanding much more for their wares then shi could properly afford. However, Strongtail was finally able to convince at least a couple of the merchants to deal fairly with hir, and was able to trade for a few things. However, shi wasn't able to get all the items shi needed, and was trying to save the jewelry for last. <br />
<br />
Shi finally found a rather obese merchant with some of the most expensive items on the comm component list, just before dusk. After a few moments of haggling with the man, it was clear he wasn't going to take anything less then full value.<br />
<br />
"Fine fine." Strongtail sighed dispondently, before rummaging through hir bag for the box with the necklaces in it. "How about these? They should be worth enough?"<br />
<br />
"Well now?" the merchant said softly, picking one of the necklaces up and examining it closely. "This is different ain't it?"<br />
<br />
"Do we have a deal?" Strong asked, "The necklaces for the compensator?"<br />
<br />
"No." The fat man sneered, before snatching the necklaces out of the box and stuffing them down his pant's pocket. "They'll just cover the cost of all those other items you've been stealing from me you fucking monster"<br />
<br />
"I told you, that wasn't me." Strong said angrily, "If you're not going to trade, give me my damn necklaces back."<br />
<br />
"No."<br />
<br />
"If you don't I'll?" Strong started.<br />
<br />
"If you don't back off, I'll call the Polizei," the fat man sneered again. <br />
<br />
Strongtail sighed. Shi knew that the Polizei would be of no help to hir if they did come, and starting a fight wouldn't help matters at all anyway. Shaking hir head, shi turned away and headed towards the Port.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
Strongtail made hir way through the gate as the setting sun was painting the sky red behind hir. Shi glanced back at it for a moment, reflecting on how far shi had come in the last twenty-four hours. Shi'd made a new friend?or more than friend?and maybe found a way to get off this rock. But?<br />
<br />
"'bout time ya got here!" <br />
<br />
Strongtail spun around, to find Hardscrabble seated in front of the wall next to the gate. "What took ya so long? I been waiting here for ages!" Scrabs complained.<br />
<br />
Strongtail snorted. "Some of us don't ''like'' to bounce from roof to roof like a God?like a gosh-darned rubber ball. What have you been up to all day, anyway?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble smirked. "Oh?this an' that."<br />
<br />
Strongtail blinked as shi noticed for the first time the loop of conduit wound around Hardscrabble's torso, and the other parts poking out of hir knapsack. What was more, she recognized them as the very same parts shi had been trying to buy from the fat merchant?the patterns of scratches were the same. "How did you? I thought I told you not to go about stealing!"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble snorted. "I didn't ''go about'' stealing," shi said smugly. "I did it all in one place."<br />
<br />
"Ugh." Strong rubbed hir ears. Shi felt another Scrabs-induced headache coming on. "I'd tell you to return it, but you'd probably end up being skinned alive."<br />
<br />
"S'pose that means ya don't want these back, then?" Shi held up a double-fistful of red fire.<br />
<br />
"What?" Strongtail accepted the objects and realized they were hir mother's necklaces, catching the light of the setting sun. "You stole the necklaces back?" <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble nodded. "Ya felt like ya really hated losin' 'em, so how c'd I let that?" Shi didn't have the chance to say anything else. Strongtail leaned forward and hugged the younger chakat fiercely. <br />
<br />
"Oof!" Hardscrabble said. Shi hesitated a moment, then put hir arms tentatively around Strongtail and hugged hir in return. The coil of conduit around Hardscrabble's torso made it a little uncomfortable, but Strongtail didn't care.<br />
<br />
After a moment, Strong broke the embrace. "Still, you can't go around stealing."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble rolled hir eyes. "How many times I gotta tell ya, I didn't ''go around''. Anyway, I left him a receipt. All nice an' legal."<br />
<br />
"Uh huh." Strong sighed, wondering what shi was going to do with the wayward cub if and when they got somewhere civilized. "I doubt he'll see it that way."<br />
<br />
"I don' think I can ever go back there again, but we're leavin' soon, so." Hardscrabble shrugged. "It really matters so much, have the ship you call bring lotsa money an' go give him some." Hir face darkened. "I wouldn' bother, tho. 'part from what he said ta ''you'', that's the bastard who 'accidently' left out a box of poisoned food bars for us a while back."<br />
<br />
"Yeah, everyone on this planet is a jackass." Strongtail laughed in a strained fashion. "Let's get inside before more of them show up to lynch you."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble grinned. "They'd have a hard time doing that!"<br />
<br />
"Right, come on you imp, inside." Strongtail pointed into the darkening compound.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble rolled hir eyes. "Okay, okay. I still don' like that man, tho. Seen peeps like him 'fore. Creepy. Can't trust 'em."<br />
<br />
"I don't really trust him either." Strong said. "Don't worry, if he goes nutty on us I'll save you!"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble glanced sidelong at hir. "Yeah, I'll just bet y'will."<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
The derelict human's name turned out to be Warrant Officer John Wagner. Despite Strong's and Scrab's misgivings, he was far more stable, at least mentally, for the next few days. As he had promised, he quickly set about repairing the damage done to the port's communication systems. So long as they kept him away from rats, he was fairly lucid. <br />
<br />
So as not to interfere with the work, Hardscrabble did hir hunting at the other end of the base from wherever he happened to be. (After hir first several tries, Strongtail gave up trying to talk hir out of it. What the hell, it would make the rations last longer.)<br />
<br />
After a few days, they hardly ever noticed his stench. <br />
<br />
Even so, the smell plus everything else taken together got to be too much after a while. As a result, Strong and Scrabs had taken to longish afternoon walks through the grounds. Since they were no longer welcome at the market, they didn't have anyplace else to go. Out of deference to Hardscrabble's eyesight, they made sure to be indoors before dark. <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble seemed to have calmed down considerably since that first day, and hardly ever looked nervous anymore. It had only taken a couple of changes of bandage for hir wounds to heal into new scars to join all the others barely visible under hir fur. <br />
<br />
"I'm going to get the weirdest looks when people see us together," Strongtail muttered to hirself after checking the wounds over one last time. "They're gonna think I'm some kind of child abuser."<br />
<br />
One day, their walk took them by the rubble of one of the passenger terminals at the south end of the spaceport. Every so often, Hardscrabble would duck into a hole in the wall or under one of the benches to root out another rat and devour it with a great deal of crunching and slurping. <br />
<br />
Strongtail privately suspected Hardscrabble was doing it just to gross hir out, and was determined not to react. Depending on how long the repairs took, shi feared shi might end up eating rats hirself in the foreseeable future.<br />
<br />
"If you keep eatting like that, you're going to get fat," Strongtail remarked, after Scrabs had eatten hir third rat that day.<br />
<br />
"How would you know? I don' think you ever ate a rat in yer life!" Hardscrabble retorted.<br />
<br />
"True," Strongtail grinned, "but I do know that little kittens who eat too much get chubby real quick."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble glanced at her. "Oh, is ''that'' why you look like that?" shi asked in wide-eyed innocence.<br />
<br />
"Why you little?!" Strong laughed as shi made a mock lunge towards the cub. <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble danced away. "I still got some way to catch up 'fore I look like you!"<br />
<br />
"Ah, but you don't want to end up like me." Strongtail chased the cub; it had been a few days since either of them had stretched their muscles, and it felt good. <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble took off like a shot, ducking under a turnstile where Strongtail would not fit and dashing up some stairs. "Why's that?" shi called over hir shoulder.<br />
<br />
"Well, being myself, I did get dumped here." Strong said as shi followed as close as shi could.<br />
<br />
"Hmph!" Hardscrabble kicked a bench in passing, and it fell over behind hir. "I got dumped here long 'fore you did. Ending up like you might be a ''good'' thing." Shi sniffled a little, quickly wiping it away.<br />
<br />
"Oh?" Strongtail vaulted the bench without slowing down as Hardscrabble ran around a corner.<br />
<br />
"'cuz you been somewheres that aren't here. An' here sucks." Hardscrabble skidded to a halt as the corridor dead-ended in a small lobby with some decrepit potted plants and overturned benches. "Aw crap. Here ''does'' suck." Shi ducked behind a bench.<br />
<br />
Strong bounded around the corner, and glanced around. "Got you now! And with luck we'll both be off world soon."<br />
<br />
"I don' even know what that's gonna be like," Hardscrabble said from hiding. "I only ever remember being in the Bad Place 'fore."<br />
<br />
Strongtail grinned and reached behind the bench to pick the kitten up. What shi got was a live rat put in hir hands, then a giggling chakat kitten leaping away over the bench again.<br />
<br />
"Come back here!" Strong made a face and threw aside the rat. Then, with one fluid motion, Strongtail darted forward and picked up the giggling chakat, nuzzling hir belly.<br />
<br />
"Aw?hey! Cut that out!" Hardscrabble squirmed for a moment, before finally giving in.<br />
<br />
"Never!" Strongtail laughed, hugging the kitten tight. "At least you've been a bright spot in this whole place."<br />
<br />
"Bright? Hope not. Harder to hide in the shadows if yer bright."<br />
<br />
"You won't have to do much hiding any more?or eat any more rats?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble grinned. "But I like rats! I think I'll just eat more."<br />
<br />
Strong shook hir head. "There aren't any rats on Chakona!"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble cocked hir head. "Are you ''sure'' this's such a great place yer takin' me?"<br />
<br />
Strongtail laughed.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
After a week and a half of enduring it, both Strongtail and Hardscrabble finally got fed up with Wagner's pungent aroma and determined to do something about it. <br />
<br />
It was not as hard as it might have been?thanks to the disused starship landing basins, there were a number of sources of water nearby. Strongtail and a mildly-reluctant Hardscrabble had been using them themselves, after they had figured out how to reactivate the circulation system and purify the water. Even so it was was still rather filthy by most civilized standards.<br />
<br />
Strongtail had thought it would be easy to talk Wagner into it when he was in one of his more civilized phases. Even when Wagner was lucid, however, he acted like a man obsessed; once he had been asked to fix the system, he had barely stopped to eat or drink. After a few tries to get him to listen, Strongtail reluctantly had Scrabs fetch a rat. Once the man was unhinged, it was a simple matter to lure him in by dangling "Jerry" in front of his face, then tossing it into the pool. <br />
<br />
Soon the man was turning the water a rather disturbing dirt brown.<br />
<br />
"We're goin' need a new pool, Scrabs," Strongtail said in a tone somewhere between shocked and amused.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shook hir head. "I jus' got one question."<br />
<br />
"Yeah?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble held up the bar of soap they'd been using. "You gonna do it, or you want me to?"<br />
<br />
Strongtail looked from Hardscrabble, to the bar of soap, to the man, and back. "Um? Let's just save it."<br />
<br />
"Good plan." Hardscrabble glanced over the rim of the pool again. "Ugh. Mebbe we sh'd go where we don' hafta watch him a while."<br />
<br />
Strongtail sighed and fiddled with hir mother's necklace. Shi had taken to wearing it ever since shi had nearly lost it. "I suppose. I don't want him to drown though."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged, and moved a little further away. Then shi glanced back at Strongtail. "Why you keep fiddlin' with that? Why's it so 'portant? 's not like you can eat it 'r anything."<br />
<br />
"I suppose it's not that important," Strong admitted. "But my mom gave it to me? it has sentimental value suppose."<br />
<br />
"Oh." Hardscrabble thought about that. "Kinda like my ear tag, I guess. Mebbe I sh'd jus' throw it 'way, but?it's the one thing I still got from back then."<br />
<br />
"It is a rather morbid thing to keep around? But I can understand why you'd want to keep it." <br />
<br />
"Yer Mom still 'round?" Hardscrabble asked.<br />
<br />
"Yeah, I don't really see hir lots though." Strong nodded. "I'm sure you'll get to meet hir when we get back to Chakona."<br />
<br />
"Anyone else I'll be meetin'? Father, sisters? Brothers?" Shi paused. "Do chakats ''have'' 'brothers'?"<br />
<br />
Strongtail grinned, "More like distant cousins who look male. But to answer your question, you'll likely meet my father too, but my sisters probably aren't going to meet you, at least not at first. A lot of them are off world, or on the other side of it."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble's eyes widened. "Wow. I've never been outside this city. How can they just?''go'' like that?"<br />
<br />
"Space is full of opportunities, you know. Maybe one day you'll be up there taking advantage of them." Strongtail smiled. "What about you? I know you don't have no family around here, but you got any friends?" <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble smiled faintly. "Well?there's a couple people. I 'spect they'll get on okay without me, tho."<br />
<br />
"Oh? So no girlfriends or whatever?" the older chakat asked teasingly.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble stared at hir. "That's just?''ick.''" Strongtail could feel hir sudden surge of disgust.<br />
<br />
"I suppose you're too young for puppy love." Strongtail tilted hir head to the side and watched the cub closely. "Although I'm pretty sure I've had crushes when I was your age."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble blinked. "Why would I want to love a puppy?"<br />
<br />
"It's just an expression. So what about these people you're friends with?"<br />
<br />
"Just a couple of 'em." Hardscrabble shrugged. "We kinda watched out for each other. 'specially fer Nikki. She's not real good at stealing 'r fighting."<br />
<br />
"Sounds like shi wouldn't have lasted long without your help." <br />
<br />
"Me 'n Khala looked after her."<br />
<br />
"Khala?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble nodded. "She's a cat like us, 'cept she only has two legs and no dick and is taller. She'n'me were the only furries in Chayne's gang, which's why we stuck t'gether. Nikki's a human."<br />
<br />
"Have you thought about what you're going to do when you leave?" Strongtail asked. "You know, say goodbye or whatever?"<br />
<br />
"Na'really." Hardscrabble shrugged. "They'll pro'lly be better off without me. They both got ways of making money fer real. Chayne liked them special for it, an' whoever the new one is will too if he's smart. All I can do is steal stuff."<br />
<br />
Strongtail nodded slowly and turned back to the man in the pool, who was struggling to crawl out of the dirty pool. Sighing, shi got up from hir sitting position and moved to pull the man from the water. Shi gave him a towel, then told him to get back to work.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
It was three days later when Hardscrabble and Strongtail were awakened by Wagner scratching at their door. "I wish he wouldn' do that," Hardscrabble groaned at the nervewrenching grating sound.<br />
<br />
Strongtail blinked a couple of times. "I hope he hasn't found a rat or something." <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble raised an eyebrow. "What've you got against rats, anyway?"<br />
<br />
"Just see what he wants," Strongtail sighed and rolled over.<br />
<br />
"Awright." Hardscrabble clambered to hir feet, stretched, and padded over to the door. "Yeah?"<br />
<br />
"It's done." Wagner said, running his hand through his matted hair. "You want to send something? There isn't much power."<br />
<br />
"Finally!" Strongtail leapt up and nearly knocked Scrabs over as shi bolted through the door. "Can you reach Chakona?"<br />
<br />
"Uh? Not in real time communications. I could send a message, but after that we'd be limited to more local space communications until we can recharge." Wagner shrugged. "Generator's fine, but most of the capacitors've gone out."<br />
<br />
"What're you gonna say?" Hardscrabble asked, scratching hir head in confusion.<br />
<br />
"I? dunno." Strongtail admitted. "How much can I say?"<br />
<br />
Wagner cocked his head. "As much as you want? I'll have to compress it into a single file and send it on a frequency. Unless you're planing on doing a reading of War and Peace and Caitians, there shouldn't be a problem."<br />
<br />
"And who you gonna say it to?"<br />
<br />
"Well? I guess we should send it towards? I dunno." Strong looked helpless.<br />
<br />
Scrabs patted the older chakat on hir leg. "Does it matter who gets it long's they got a ship?"<br />
<br />
"Well, it's be best if it wasn't, you know, pirates or whatever, but they don't really do raids or whatever." Strongtail shrugged.<br />
<br />
"I could broadcast it on the back of a distress signal. You won't be able to pick who receives it, but it's pretty omnidirectional. <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "I dunno what that means, but if it gets us rescued?"<br />
<br />
"Do it." Strongtail said firmly. <br />
<br />
"Sure sure, whatever," Wagner said. "Nearly time for my coffee break anyways."<br />
<br />
"Coffee break?" Hardscrabble asked. "I seen coffee before, but how do you break it?"<br />
<br />
"Alll engineers get coffee breaks you know!" Wagner said with a smile. "Me and Jerry would go out and have this wonderful latt? at the place just down the street."<br />
<br />
"Uh?" Strongtail glanced at the cub. "Maybe you can take us there sometime?"<br />
<br />
"I can take you there now, if you'd like." Wagner smiled creepily, "Just need to find Jerry. I haven't seen him in a while. He must be working in another part of the port."<br />
<br />
"How'bout?mebbe later?" Hardscrabble asked, glancing nervously at Strongtail.<br />
<br />
"No problem!" Wagner laughed. "Cats don't drink coffee anyway you silly pussy."<br />
<br />
The control room was much as it had been before, save that the comm panel that had shown a power light had been all but disassembled and was connected with enough cables to other consoles that it looked like an explosion in a spaghetti factory. <br />
<br />
Wagner was adjusting controls on half a dozen consoles, tongue poking out one corner of his mouth in concentration. He pointed to a glowing vid panel on the console next to Strongtail. "Just look there and speak yer piece. And smile. I bet you'd be really pretty if you smiled more."<br />
<br />
"Uh? Thanks."<br />
<br />
Strongtail pressed the button. "This is Chakat Strongtail, calling anyone who can hear me." After a moment she smiled, a bit self-consciously. What could it hurt? "I'm a reporter with the Chakona News Network, originally dispatched to Argos to cover the uprisings. Make a long story short, instead of covering them, I got caught in them. Now all I want is to get off this rock.<br />
<br />
"I've got another chakat, Chakat Hardscrabble, and a human, Warrant Officer John Wagner?"<br />
<br />
Wagner leaned in front of her. "Hi there!" he said, waving at the monitor for all he was worth until Hardscrabble pulled him out of the way again.<br />
<br />
"?with me. We'd appreciate immediate evac. We don't have any cash on us, but CNN will make it worth your while when we're back on Chakona. Please respond tightbeam to these coords?our comm equipment is failing and we might not be able to pick up anything but a directed signal. This is Chakat Strongtail, out."<br />
<br />
Crossing hir fingers, Strongtail pressed the save button, and then the activate button, sending the message into space, and hopefully towards someone willing to help.<br />
<br />
"What now?" Hardscrabble asked.<br />
<br />
"Now we wait," Wagner said. "Anybody seen Jerry?"<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
As the hours wore on, Strongtail became increasingly worried, although shi tried not to let it show to Scrabs or Wagner, who was teaching the Scrabs the game of Go. Complete with crowning and checkmates, though Strongtail had a suspicion he might have the rules slightly confused.<br />
<br />
Then after a burst of static, a voice came through the speakers. "?et up to loop until we receive a response. Message repeats: Chakat Strongtail, this is the ''U.S.S. Antigua'', a private cargo ship en route to New Persia. We received your distress signal, and are en route to render aid. We are transmitting on tightbeam, as requested, and in case we are still out of your range, this message is set up to loop until we receive a response. Message repeats: Chakat Strongtail, this is?"<br />
<br />
Strongtail jumped up and slapped the reply button, "We're here! Thank you! How soon can you get here?"<br />
<br />
After a few seconds' lightspeed delay, the response came. "This is Lieutenant Hartnell, piloting the shuttle ''Aruba''. ETA is six hours. Are your landing fields more or less clear? We'd prefer a beam to ride in, but should be good to go as long as it's relatively free of debris."<br />
<br />
"There's some crap in one or two of the landing cradles, but the rest of them are clear." Strong replied tensely, "And the rest of the equipment is gone."<br />
<br />
"Roger, Strongtail. We'll do the best we can. Suggest you be all packed and ready for us?planetary authorities might not be too keen on us coming in uninvited so we'd just as soon not stick around."<br />
<br />
"Right. See you soon!" Strongtail grinned, turning off the comm and preparing to follow the advice of the friendly pilot.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble sat on top of an overturned fire truck and skimmed stones into one of the landing cradles. The sun had just started to rise, and it was less than two hours before the shuttle was scheduled to touch down. And now that the actual prospect of leaving was staring hir in the face, shi kept looking at the gate to the west as if expecting someone to come marching through it at any time.<br />
<br />
For all shi'd said they'd be better off without hir, Hardscrabble was more than a little worried about Nikki and Khala. Not that shi didn't expect they'd be able to take care of themselves. Shi'd seen what happened when Khala was backed into a corner. Hardscrabble only wished ''shi'' could fight that well, and shi had two extra limbs!<br />
<br />
What was bothering hir was that neither of them had shown up looking for hir. Shi really wasn't ''that'' far away from Chayne's turf, after all. And surely Khala could have tracked hir. Why hadn't she shown up to see if shi was all right?<br />
<br />
"Penny for your thoughts," Strongtail said, coming up next to the fire truck.<br />
<br />
"What's a penny?"<br />
<br />
"I dunno." Strong hopped up and sat down beside the cub. "What's on your mind."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "Just thinking 'bout Nikki and Khala some, I guess. Pro'lly won't see 'em again, after this."<br />
<br />
"I see."<br />
<br />
"But they'll be all right." Hardscrabble nodded. "Khala tells stories, Nikki fixes stuff. Both a' those things're really valuable in this crap town. Nobody'd hurt 'em."<br />
<br />
Strongtail nodded and rubbed the cub's back gently.<br />
<br />
"Y'all packed?" Hardscrabble said after a while.<br />
<br />
"Of course. Are you?"<br />
<br />
"You think mebbe you might have a little extra room in yer luggage?"<br />
<br />
"Why? You got something you'd like to bring?"<br />
<br />
"Well, I was thinking?if there really aren't gonna be any rats where we're going, mebbe I should hunt up some you could pack f'r me."<br />
<br />
"Uh, no," Strong said firmly, but with a smile. "Don't worry about that stuff."<br />
<br />
"Aww?" Hardscrabble pouted.<br />
<br />
"Now c'mon. Why don'cha help me get our stuff outside so we can load it as soon as the shuttle lands?"<br />
<br />
"Coming!" Hardscrabble joined the grinning Strongtail in moving their luggage to the runway.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
It was time.<br />
<br />
Strongtail, Hardscrabble and Wagner were all standing outside with their eyes skyward. It was one of the better days on the planet, with only a few clouds here and there, so there was nothing to delay the landing. <br />
<br />
After a few moments of waiting, and several disappointing "I see it I see it! Oh wait, just a bird." moments, the shuttle finally appeared as a silver dot in the sky, leaving a contrail behind it as it streaked toward their position. <br />
<br />
As it drew overhead, it seemed to stop in mid-air and the contrail took a right-angle turn as it dropped, breaking through the bottom of the cloud a moment later in a seemingly-uncontrolled fall. Strongtail wondered if the pilot was just showing off or something. <br />
<br />
Then the shuttle slowed, reoriented itself, fired thrusters, and descended the last thousand meters at a more reasonable speed.<br />
<br />
"Wow! It's a real spaceship!" Hardscrabble said. "I never thought I'd see one again." Shi shivered a little, projecting nervousness and a little fear.<br />
<br />
"It'll be alright." Strongtail said, as shi noticed the cub's anxiety, and leaned down and pulled the cub close for a hug. "This ship won't be anything like that other one."<br />
<br />
"Hope so." They held hands, watching the ship descend on a pillar of flame, sending up a great cloud of steam as it touched down in the landing cradle nearest the old passenger terminal.<br />
<br />
"I suppose we'll have to wait for it to cool down." Strongtail said as shi looked across the tarmat at the ship. "Do you suppose it'll be safe to start walking over in that direction though, John?"<br />
<br />
At the sight of a starship, Wagner actually seemed to appear almost sane, only a nervous twitch at one corner of his mouth giving away the fact that he wasn't quite all there. "I don't see why not. The heat from these landings tends to dissipate pretty fast. Heh."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble glanced at him and frowned, then nodded. "Guess we better. They'll a'seen that coming in all over town!"<br />
<br />
After a few moments, the trio of them dragged their luggage over toward the cradle. It wasn't much, especially for Scrabs, but it still took some effort to shift. The two chakats didn't notice when Wagner slowed and dropped back behind them until he spoke.<br />
<br />
"Well pussies," Wagner suddenly said, "I don't think that ship has enough room, you know? for the lot of us."<br />
<br />
"Well of course not John," Strongtail remarked, not even bothering to turn back and look at the man. "It's just a shuttle."<br />
<br />
"And? And you know? I was thinking." Wagner spoke again. "I haven't seen Jerry recently."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble slowly turned to stare back at him.<br />
<br />
"And? uh, you know? cats ''eat'' rats." Wagner said slowly. "I've gotta get me Jerry back you know?"<br />
<br />
"What are you talking about?" Strongtail said as shi turned to look at the dirty man, just as he drew his phaser.<br />
<br />
"GRAAAH!" Hardscrabble growled. Shi threw the duffle bag Strong had given hir directly at Wagner's chest, and lunged after it with a boost from hir powerful hindlegs.<br />
<br />
"NOT JERRY!!!" Wagner screamed as the cub attacked him. The phaser went flying as taur and bag bowled into him, throwing him to the ground. His head bounced off the cement with a loud thunk.<br />
<br />
"Oh FOR FUCK'S SAKE." Strongtail swore loudly, "Is there anything ''else'' that can go wrong on this damn planet?!"<br />
<br />
BANG! A bullet whined off the shuttle's hull. Hardscrabble pointed. "Polizei!" A squad of them had just run through the western gate. They were way too far away to aim effectively, though.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble grabbed the unconscious Wagner and dragged him toward the shuttle. "C'mon, let's get out of here!"<br />
<br />
With a growl, Strongtail grabbed hirs and Scrab's bags, and made hir way to the waiting shuttle. More bullets whined off the shuttle or the pavement around them.<br />
<br />
Ahead of them, a hatch slid open and a boarding ramp extended. A man in a pilot's uniform poked his head out. "Hurry up before they hit us with something bigger!"<br />
<br />
"Help me with this guy!" Hardscrabble grunted. The pilot stared, then ran down the ramp to get Wagner's other arm. Together, they all made it aboard.<br />
<br />
Strongtail turned back just in time to catch one last glimpse of the pavement through the closing hatch. "About damn time," shi muttered.<br />
<br />
A few moments later, the Polizei's approach turned into a rapid retreat as the shuttle's engines lit. Clouds of steam again billowed across the runway, and when they cleared, the ship was gone.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars|EPILOGUE}}<br />
<br />
'''THE NIGHT BEFORE...'''<br />
<br />
Nikki huddled in the corner she had shared for so long with Khala and Hardscrabble, her dirty blonde hair the only part of her visible in the shadows. Now only Khala came, since the bigger creature of Hardscrabble's kind had come charging in, torn out Chayne's throat, and dragged Hardscrabble away. Everybody had been too shocked to do anything to stop them?and even if they hadn't, Nikki had a hard time imagining anyone would have wanted to go up against the ''thing'' that had so casually killed Chayne.<br />
<br />
Khala had tried to protect Nikki, tried to keep her from seeing?but Nikki had seen enough. For the next several nights, she had woken up screaming at all the blood. Khala had held her gently, told her stories, and purred her back to sleep, and after a while the nightmares had stopped coming. Khala seemed to be less horrified than most, and Nikki had wondered why she hadn't tried to claim the mantle of leader. She was stronger and tougher than the humans twice her age, and had those built-in claws and teeth too. And she'd have been a much better leader than Chayne.<br />
<br />
But Khala had only laughed when Nikki said so. "Thanks, but that's not my path. My story lies elsewhere. So does yours, in fact. Want to hear a secret?" And she'd winked and told the story.<br />
<br />
Khala was a marvelous storyteller. She knew the most amazing stories about far-away places whose names Nikki hadn't even heard. But the ''really'' amazing ones were the ones about the people and places she ''did'' know?<br />
<br />
The sound of Khala's quiet footsteps jarred Nikki out of her reverie. She looked up as the orange-and-black-striped tall tiger-girl squatted and offered her an immense drumstick. She took it and nearly dropped it, it was so heavy. Khala was already chewing on a larger thigh. "What is this?"<br />
<br />
"Emu. Osterman didn't keep up on his protection payments. The Polizei wrecked his farm and took his stock. Some of them got away."<br />
<br />
"And you just happened to find this one for them?" Nikki jerked her head toward the lighted center of the warehouse, where the new rulers of the gang reposed by a table.<br />
<br />
"I might have helped." Khala smiled, though didn't quite grin. She'd learned by now how seeing all those sharp teeth affected most humans. Nikki appreciated the gesture.<br />
<br />
"I'm never gonna be able to eat all this," Nikki protested.<br />
<br />
"I'll finish when you're done." Khala's smile widened. "It's really all my portion anyway. But ''you'' don't eat enough to keep a bird alive."<br />
<br />
"Thnkoo," Nikki mumbled around a mouthful of emu. It was rare getting this much to eat?though since Khala and Hardscrabble had taken her under their protection, it happened more often than it used to. She swallowed and stared at the drumstick for a moment as thoughts of her absent friend threatened to make it swim out of focus behind fresh tears.<br />
<br />
Khala patted her shoulder. "I know you miss hir. I do, too. But shi's all right. Trust me."<br />
<br />
"Have you??" Nikki asked hopefully.<br />
<br />
"I haven't heard anything more, no." Khala shook her head. "That should change tomorrow, though. Now eat your emu. We need our sleep, since we'll be getting up early tomorrow."<br />
<br />
"Mmkay." Nikki chowed down, managing to finish about a third of the drumstick before she could finally eat no more. Then they curled up together for warmth and dragged a tattered old blanket over themselves.<br />
<br />
"Khala?" Nikki asked after a while. "Can you tell me the story again? Our story?"<br />
<br />
Khala smiled sleeply. "All right. I guess I can." Her voice seemed to deepen an octave, and she began.<br />
<br />
"The twosome woke early, before the sun even began to peek over the horizon. They quietly slipped out of the warehouse, careful not to disturb any of the other sleeping gang members. They had a few nervous moments getting the grating free, but Khala's steady feline hands carefully unthreaded the chain without making a sound. They left the grating open, not worrying about hiding the fact they'd slipped away. After all, if all went well they wouldn't be coming back.<br />
<br />
"It was just the right time for their plan. The night's worst scavengers were off the street, but the trash of the day hadn't woken up yet. Hand in hand, they ran through empty streets, making a wide circuit around the market, heading for the spaceport to the east. As the sun began to rise, Khala pointed up. Nikki raised her eyes in wonder to see the contrail cutting its way across the sky, the dot of silver at the tip growing steadily larger.<br />
<br />
"Khala grinned and led her friend onward, through the gates. Then she turned right, circling around to one of the big buildings that bordered the airstrip on the opposite side from the gate?the ones that used to be fronted with huge panels of glass that were now all smashed out. They hid themselves just in time to see the ship touch down in the sunken docking pool practically right in front of them.<br />
<br />
"Then from across the runway, the three of them came. There was Hardscrabble, and the bigger stranger, and a wild-eyed, sick-looking human. They were halfway to the ship when the human stopped and started talking, and Hardscrabble and hir friend turned to face him. He drew a gun, then Hardscrabble tackled him, knocking him to the ground!<br />
<br />
"Then Khala grabbed Nikki's arm and pointed to the ship. Now was the time, while everyone's attention was on the confrontation on the runway. Nikki nodded, and together they ran out onto the tarmac and right up to the gleaming shuttle. Nikki was scared, because she'd never worked on something this big before, but she knew it would work because her friend's story had told her so. She put her hand over the control panel next to a small cargo hatch and told it to open the door for her, and not to tell anyone. And it did.<br />
<br />
"And Nikki and Khala snuck inside to find a place to hide before the ship took off," Khala finished.<br />
<br />
"Is that it? Isn't there more?" Nikki insisted. "What happens next?"<br />
<br />
Khala smiled. "We don't get to know that part yet." She yawned. "It'll take care of itself when we get there. Now go to sleep, mmkay?"<br />
<br />
"Okay?" Nikki was so excited, she didn't know how she would ever get to sleep. But somehow Khala's purring sent her off.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
The twosome woke early, before the sun even began to peek over the horizon. They quietly slipped out of the warehouse, careful not to disturb any of the other sleeping gang members. They had a few nervous moments getting the grating free, but Khala's steady feline hands carefully unthreaded the chain without making a sound. They left the grating open, not worrying about hiding the fact they'd slipped away. After all, if all went well they wouldn't be coming back?<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars|TO BE CONTINUED}}<br />
<br />
{{series bar<br />
|series=A Hardscrabble Life<br />
|previous=[[User:Robotech Master/Breaking the Chayne|Breaking the Chayne]]<br />
|next=None}}<br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mending the Port}}<br />
[[category:Robotech Master]] [[category:Chakat]] [[category:Chakona Space]]</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User:Robotech_Master/Mending_the_Port&diff=13300User:Robotech Master/Mending the Port2011-01-10T09:00:16Z<p>Bryan: Salvaged from Google Cache. there are some special characters that got turned into "?" characters in here, will return to tidy those up later.</p>
<hr />
<div>{{universe|Chakona Space}}<br />
<br />
{{info<br />
|author= Chris Meadows<br />
|title= Mending the Port<br />
|website= http://terrania.us<br />
|contact= robotech@eyrie.org<br />
|setting= Chakona Space<br />
|series= A Hardscrabble Life<br />
|position= 2<br />
|previous= [[User:Robotech_Master/Breaking_the_Chayne|Breaking the Chayne]]<br />
|next= <br />
|genre= fantasy<br />
}}<br />
<br />
{{author note|Set in the [[wikifur:Chakona Space|Chakona Space]] universe of [[wikifur:Chakat|Chakats]], which is overall the property of [http://chakatsden.com Bernard "Goldfur" Doove].<br />
<br />
This was written as a collaboration between me and Chakat Honeymane. I wrote dialogue for Hardscrabble, and Honeymane wrote the character Strongtail. We both kind of tussled over how the story itself was supposed to go. We had a lot of fun working on it, and hope to continue it soon. Special thanks to Shifti wiki administrator ShadowWolf for looking it over and making many constructive suggestions!<br />
<br />
I don't feel like this particular story rates the "XXX" tag (though a lot of Chakat stories do). There is a very small amount of violence, which I do not feel warrants the "Violence" tag.}}<br />
<br />
{{title<br />
|name= A Hardscrabble Life, Episode Two: Mending the Port<br />
|author= Chris Meadows<br />
|user= Robotech Master<br />
|coauthors= Chakat Honeymane<br />
|category= Robotech Master}}<br />
<br />
{{dropcap|D}}awn found two trembling chakats huddled back in the basement of the ruined building. The Polizei only had minimal patrols at these hours, so it had been easy for them to make it back. Or at least, it had been for Strongtail. Hardscrabble didn't have much interest in moving at this point, though Strongtail wasn't sure whether this was due to hir injuries or just shock from what shi'd seen Strongtail do.<br />
<br />
Despite the situation, Strongtail had attempted to bind the wounds on the small cub, but not being a medic of any sort, shi had been afraid to do anything further. Fortunately, the injuries turned out to be less severe than they had seemed at first. It was all the scar tissue that made her tougher, Strongtail supposed.<br />
<br />
All the same, Hardscrabble was now curled up into a ball, whimpering a little. "You ''killed'' him," shi finally managed to articulate. "You just k-killed him."<br />
<br />
"Yes." Strongtail said flatly.<br />
<br />
"But he was?he was?" Hardscrabble choked back a sob and hiccuped instead.<br />
<br />
"He was a terrible person, Scrabs," Strong said, stroking the cub's flank. "He was beating you."<br />
<br />
"Only when I deserved it."<br />
<br />
"And what did you do to deserve such a punishment?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble sniffled. "When I didn't do what he told me."<br />
<br />
"He was using you Scrabs?all of you kids." Strong sighed. "He didn't even care enough about you to feed you properly. He was as bad as some of the taskmasters at UAE Gulags.<br />
<br />
"But you ''killed'' him!"<br />
<br />
"I know. I can still taste him," Strong said, spitting.<br />
<br />
"Wh-what are you gonna do to me?"<br />
<br />
Strong tilted hir head in confusion. "I suppose I'll have to look after you, won't I? If I can find a way off this rock, I'll take you with me."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble blinked. "You'll?what?"<br />
<br />
"What?"<br />
<br />
"Oh." Hardscrabble thought for a moment. "I guess?that's right."<br />
<br />
"Well, I'm hopelessly confused now." Strongtail smiled crookedly. "Are you hungry? I think it's just about breakfast time."<br />
<br />
"Breakfast?" Hardscrabble screwed up hir face in thought. "I've?heard of that."<br />
<br />
Strongtail sighed sadly, and began to work on putting together the meal from what little supplies they had, stopping momentarly to wipe hir eyes.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
After breakfast, everything looked a little brighter?partly because the sun had time to rise. Hardscrabble watched Strongtail cleaning up, though made no move to help out hirself. Shi was still turning the events of the last night over in hir head, trying to make sense of them.<br />
<br />
Now that the shock had worn off, it was easier to think about it, but Hardscrabble was still having trouble figuring out exactly how shi felt now. Chayne had been pretty mean to them?but that was how you had to be to live, on Argos. He'd beaten them up a lot, but he'd also ''toughened'' them up so they didn't get killed.<br />
<br />
But now ''he'd'' been killed?and by the code of the street, Hardscrabble knew that meant shi belonged to Strongtail now. Like it or not, shi was going to have to live with it. Shi guessed it could be worse. Apart from when shi'd torn his throat out, Strongtail was a lot nicer than Chayne had been.<br />
<br />
"How's your leg Scrabs?" Strongtail said, nodding towards one of Hardscrabble's bandaged legs.<br />
<br />
"I'll live." Hardscrabble put Chayne out of hir mind. Surviving was the important thing now.<br />
<br />
"I imagine," Strongtail laid down beside the cub and leaned in to kiss hir on hir forehead. "You're certainly a tough little kitten."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble flinched away from the kiss, confused. "I don't think I'm much tougher than anybody else."<br />
<br />
"You'd be surprised." The older chakat paused for a moment. "Tell me about yourself. How'd you come to be with this Chayne person anyway?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble frowned. "I?really dunno. I just am. Was." Shi shrugged. "I guess they found me when I was little."<br />
<br />
Strong nodded, "Go on."<br />
<br />
"Isn't any 'on'. Just don't r'member." It wasn't strictly true, but Hardscrabble really didn't feel like thinking back to those days right now on top of what shi'd just been through.<br />
<br />
"Okay." Strong sounded a bit disappointed.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble considered a moment. Shi didn't want to disappoint Strongtail. "Do have this, though." Shi looked around for hir backpack, then opened it and rummaged deep inside. Shi came out with a small metal tag, which shi offered to Strongtail. "This was in my ear. Chayne had it cut out."<br />
<br />
It had a serial number stamped into it, and the ship name ''Freebird''. It had indicator lights on the back, but the battery had long since gone dead.<br />
<br />
Strongtail blinked as shi picked it up and examined it. "Are you sure?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble pointed at the triangular gap in hir ear. "What do you think?"<br />
<br />
"I think I'd like to know what happened to your parents." Strong frowned. <br />
<br />
"They're still?in the bad place, I guess."<br />
<br />
"I'm sorry." Strong stroked Scrabs' tail gently.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "Shit happens."<br />
<br />
Strong sighed again, "I'm going to need to change your bandages now, if that's okay with you?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble sighed. "I guess."<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
Muttering to hirself, Strongtail began to unwrap the bandages, taking note of the yellow and red patches on the gauze as it peeled off. Materials science had largely eliminated the problem of the gauze scabbing to the wound, but some of the scabbing still peeled off just from friction. <br />
<br />
Strongtail was relieved to see that the wounds were already starting to heal over, and there were no signs of infection. But then, shi hadn't really expected any. Scrabs was a chakat, after all?and if shi hadn't gotten infected in all the other wounds shi'd gotten during hir life, shi probably wasn't going to start now.<br />
<br />
"Should've killed him more slowly," shi muttered. "Asshole."<br />
<br />
"You shouldn't have killed him at all!" Scrabs said hotly.<br />
<br />
"What's done is done," Strongtail stated with what shi hoped was an air of finality to it. "You shouldn't mourn such a man anyway."<br />
<br />
"Can mourn who I want to," Hardscrabble said rebelliously. "It's my?mourner."<br />
<br />
"Fine. In any case, we need to get off this rock." Strongtail rubbed hir forehead, "I don't suppose you have any idea how to do that."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble glanced at where Strongtail's butt was planted on the rubble-strewn floor. "Get up, move over, sit down again?"<br />
<br />
"Uh, no, I mean off the planet." <br />
<br />
"Then whyn'cha just ''say'' that?" Hardscrabble asked.<br />
<br />
Strongtail facepalmed so hard hir nose hurt.<br />
<br />
"Get on a spaceship, mebbe?" Hardscrabble continued. "That's how I heard you're supposta get off a planet."<br />
<br />
"Either that or we'll need to learn to fly."<br />
<br />
"I heard they taught that at the spaceport," Hardscrabble said. "Costs a lot, though."<br />
<br />
"Do you know where it is?" Strong looked closely at the younger chakat. "I know it's around here somewhere, but I don't know where it is exactly. And the locals haven't been exactly forthcoming or friendly, thanks to your thieving."<br />
<br />
"It's the place thataway with the big tower." Hardscrabble pointed. "Y'can see it for miles, in the daytime. I think they light it up at night, too. Or useta."<br />
<br />
"I don't recall seeing anything like that when I was heading into the area. Maybe it was blown up in the recent fighting?"<br />
<br />
"Well, it was kinda foggy yesterday."<br />
<br />
"How about we go for a walk then, and you can show me this tower of yours."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "All right, if y'want." Shi yawned. "Funny, thought I was s'posta be the blind one."<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
As the sun began to rise high enough for rays to slant down over the tops of buildings into the street, Hardscrabble peeked out of the doorway and glanced back and forth. Shi darted behind a pile of rubble for a better vantage point, moving with the swiftness and stealth of a veteran infiltrator. "All clear," shi said after a moment.<br />
<br />
Strongtail frowned. "Do you always go about like this? Wouldn't it be easier to just walk to places you need to get to like a normal person, rather then pretending you're James Bond or Chakat Quietpaw?"<br />
<br />
"I dunno who those are, but in this part of town 's best to stay safe," Hardscrabble said quietly.<br />
<br />
"I suppose so, but I'm kinda big to be sneaking around." Strongtail frowned.<br />
<br />
"Maybe you should stop eating so much of that stew then."<br />
<br />
Strongtail wrinkled hir nose. "You think I got this big on food like ''that''?"<br />
<br />
"Well, you ''are'' that big, an' you ''do'' eat that stuff, so?" Hardscrabble shrugged.<br />
<br />
"I'm sure it was all elementary." Strong half rolled hir eyes. "Lets just get going to a safer part of town so you don't have to play spy with piles of bricks."<br />
<br />
"'m not ''playing''," Hardscrabble mumbled. "C'mon. This way." Shi led the way up the street and through an alley between buildings.<br />
<br />
Strong shook hir head and followed as closely as possible to the cub.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble led the way down the alley, then hopped up onto a pile of rubble and stood on hir hindpaws to reach up and grasp the bottom rung of a fire escape. Hand over hand, then paw over paw shi pulled hirself up to the first platform. "C'mon!" Shi clambered up three more flights to the roof.<br />
<br />
Sighing, Strongtail followed suit, quickly pulling hirself up and climbing the stairs to the roof as well. Upon reaching the top, shi turned to look in the direction the cub was pointing to. Several miles away, across the city, a fairly short control tower poked its way a few stories above the rest of town. "See?" Hardscrabble said. "Tower."<br />
<br />
"And you're sure that's the space port?"<br />
<br />
"I been there. Once."<br />
<br />
"It's going to be a long walk."<br />
<br />
"Luckily we got feets!" Hardscrabble bounded across the roof, then leaped across the alley to another roof. "Well? C'mon, what'cha waiting for?"<br />
<br />
"Wouldn't it make more sense to walk on the ground? If one of us falls, we could be seriously hurt, and you're already injuried."<br />
<br />
"Nope!" Hardscrabble called back cheerfully, before turning and bounding toward the next roof.<br />
<br />
Strongtail swore under hir breath, before leaping across the gaps hirself in pursuit.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble glanced over hir shoulder and emitted a rare giggle at Strongtail struggling to keep up. Not that shi expected Strong to fall behind?Strong could probably leap farther than shi could?but it was a good reminder of just who was in charge here. <br />
<br />
If Hardscrabble gave Strong time to think, shi'd probably do something dumb again, like going up to a Polizei and asking for directions. Weird how shi seemed to think that just 'cuz shi was in a city, shi was back in ''civilization''. (Hardscrabble had never seen "civilization," though shi'd heard about it a lot.) "C'mon, we're almost there!"<br />
<br />
"Slow down you imp!" Strongtail shouted.<br />
<br />
"'m not an imp, 'm an urchin!" Hardscrabble replied. "I urch a lot!"<br />
<br />
"I'll urch you if you don't slow down!" Strongtail called back, quickly leaping across two alleys in two graceful bounds.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble pointed. "There it is." The rooftop they stood on belonged to the last building for several hundred feet. There was a cleared space between it and a fairly tall concrete wall that marked the edge of the spaceport. There were guard towers evenly spaced along it, and a main gate with a security checkpoint. Hardscrabble shivered. "Yer sure this is where y'wanna go?"<br />
<br />
After a moment Strongtail landed beside the cub. Beyond the guard towers and fences, there were several embedded craters in the large open field. Most of them were filled with some sort of fluid, but none of them seemed to be occupied by any ships. "Where are all the ships Scrabs? This place looks like it hasn't been used in years."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "Ships don't come that often. Once, twice a year mebbe."<br />
<br />
"That's not going to help us." Strong sighed heavily. "I suppose I could see if I could make a call back to Chakona."<br />
<br />
"Guess y'could see." Hardscrabble shrugged. "They don' like city people much, though."<br />
<br />
"Even so, if we're going to survive long enough to see the next ship come, we're going to need proper food and shelter." Strongtail rubbed hir chin before glancing at Hard's back. "I think all that jumping's gone and reopenned your wounds hun."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "They'll close again. We come here in the streets we'd'a both got new ones."<br />
<br />
Strongtail closed hir eyes momentarily and sighed for what Hardscrabble thought was the millionth time. "Alright. Let's get down from here so I can talk to the people at the port."<br />
<br />
"'kay." Hardscrabble led the way to a door on a small shed-like structure at one corner of the roof, and pushed it open to reveal stairs. "Here."<br />
<br />
After a moment of thought, Strongtail picked up the cub and decended down the dark stairwell.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Even before they finished crossing the open space, Strongtail could see something was wrong at the spaceport.<br />
<br />
"Looks like we're not the first to be here kiddo," Strongtail said as shi glanced at the obviously warped gate. The whole guardhouse looked like it had gone through some sort of battle?and given the anarchy that currently reigned on the planet, shi wouldn't have been surprised if that was the case. <br />
<br />
Upon reaching the gate, Strongtail could see even more signs that a vicious battle had been fought there, although how recently, shi couldn't be sure. "When was the last time a ship came here Scrabs? Do you remember?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "Last year, 'think. Didn't go over this far much. We worked the market. Couldn't get in the port without ID, waste of time." Shi kicked at a piece of rubble on the ground. "Looked different then."<br />
<br />
"Let's see if there's anything still inside." Strong shook hir head in frustration. The whole damned universe seemed to be working against hir.<br />
<br />
But the grounds of the spaceport weren't any better. The destruction was not unlike some of the wars Strongtail had covered. There were burnt out vehicles on the roads, and several of the buildings looked like they had been shelled heavily. <br />
<br />
It didn't take them long to lose interest in the grounds?it was clear there wasn't anything useful awaiting them there. But the control tower seemed to be reasonably intact, so they made that their next destination. The interior told a different story?it was pitch black, with no lighting whatsoever. This was not an issue for Strongtail, but shi knew it would be for Scrabs.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble looked around. "We should be outta here 'fore dark. Mebbe who did this might come back."<br />
<br />
"I doubt it." Strongtail was pretty sure that the real reason Hardscrabble was worried was that shi couldn't see well in the dark, anyway.<br />
<br />
Strongtail gave the room a once over. Although the signs of battle were less obvious here, the whole place looked like it had been looted from top to bottom. Although there were stairs, shi doubted the upper levels had faired any better. Still, shi supposed shi might as well check. Strongtail padded up the stairs. Hardscrabble followed, becoming more enthusiastic as shi came into the light filtering down from the tower's open top.<br />
<br />
The control tower was not quite as bad as shi had feared. Most of the consoles were built into the walls and floor, so had been too big for looters to remove. Still, most of the comm screens and a few of the windows were smashed out, and rain had done for a lot of the other equipment.<br />
<br />
"Guess we're outta luck, huh?" Hardscrabble said, curiously peering behind a dislodged access panel. Hir hand suddenly lashed out and she withdrew it with a large, squeaking rat in hir grip. A quick twist of the neck, and it was dead. Shi raised it to hir mouth, then paused and glanced to Strongtail. "Want some?"<br />
<br />
"Uh, no. How about you put it down and we'll get some real food later."<br />
<br />
"You kidding? This ''is'' real food." Shi sighed happily. "Never got a rat to myself back in the gang."<br />
<br />
"The people back home are just going to eat you up." Strongtail laughed. "Like it isn't hard enough to convince people we aren't cats as it is."<br />
<br />
"Not if I eat them first!" Hardscrabble said cheerfully, taking a big bite of rat. "Mmm, juicy."<br />
<br />
Strongtail frowned and looked away. As shi did, hir eye fell on one of the consoles tucked away in the corner. Shi blinked, then moved to take a closer look. It was easier to see in the darker corner: one of the lights was still blinking. It was a status indicator for the auxiliary subspace pulse generator.<br />
<br />
Shi snapped hir fingers. "Of course, the generators!" <br />
<br />
Strongtail knew that interstellar subspace comm generators were immense, and usually buried underground?and the models that were supplied to colony worlds were usually sealed units, inaccessible without factory tools. It simplified maintenance, and made sure the warranties stayed intact.<br />
<br />
That power light meant the generators were still active?and thus, still intact. Which made sense?after all, they were too big to steal and too inaccessible to damage. It also meant that the tower itself was still receiving power. And that meant? "We might still have a chance to get off this hellhole." Strongtail exclaimed outloud.<br />
<br />
"Hrmp?" Scrabs replied with hir mouth full of rat.<br />
<br />
Strongtail opened hir mouth to reply, then stopped as shi heard a loud clatter from the level below. Scrabs's eyes widened and shi nearly choked on hir rat. Strongtail frowned, and reached into hir pack. "Kid must be getting to me," shi muttered as her fingers closed around the handgrip. "But better safe than sorry." Hardscrabble backed out of sight, crouching with a console between hir and the door.<br />
<br />
As Strongtail tensed, shi heard a voice from downstairs. It sounded like a human, but shi couldn't be sure. It wasn't long before the voice started to move up the stairwell toward them.<br />
<br />
"Damn kids sneakin' around stealin' my stuffs. Where's me rat?! Where's Jerry?!" The voice was gruff and somewhat gravelly. <br />
<br />
Cautiously, Strongtail called out. "Who's there?"<br />
<br />
The voice fell slient for a moment, before speaking. "Nows the rats are mockin' me they are." Moments later, a very dirty looking human's head with a long matted beard and (what appeared to be) a greasy hubcap hat upon his head peaked around the corner. "Yous aren't not rats! You're some sort of pussy cat."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble wrinkled hir nose. Strongtail could tell why. The man ''stank''.<br />
<br />
The man stepped into the room, his body being as filthy as the rest of him. "You's seen me rat pretty pussy? I's been feedin' him so I's could eattem." After a moment of glancing, he spotted the remains of the rat's tail, where Scrabs had dropped. "Oi! You's eattened me rat! He was me best friend he was!"<br />
<br />
"I?" Strong began, before thinking better of it. "Do you know what happened here?"<br />
<br />
The man was now cradling the tail in his hands, openly weeping. "Why'd you eattened Jerry you mean pussy cat!"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble peered over the top of hir console, then ducked hir head back. <br />
<br />
"Oi!" The man cried, dropping the tail, "You's come to steal me home haven't ya? Well you can't have it see? It's mine! all I got left, just me and Jerry!"<br />
<br />
"No, look, we haven't come to steal anything sir." Strongtail tried to think of what to say.<br />
<br />
"Except me rat!"<br />
<br />
"We didn't know it was yours." Strongtail said quickly, trying to defuse the situation, "we just came to see if there were any ships that could get us off planet."<br />
<br />
"We? Who's this 'we'?" The man looked around suspiciously. He sniffed the air, his dirty nose twitching a bit like a rat's itself. "Ohhhh, I see. There's twos of ye! Twos and twos and twos and twos?" He trailed off into a cackle. "But ya's got more legs then just twos, you's like sixes!"<br />
<br />
"?right. Look, I've noticed that the subspace communication generators are still operational?"<br />
<br />
Suddenly the demeaner of the man changed completely. "Now there's a phrase I haven't heard in a long time," he said softly, his voice completely changing. "And I haven't seem a morph quite like you in a long time either. Chakats, aren't you? Are you from Star Fleet?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble frowned, hunching lower. Shi glanced to Strongtail and made a whirling screw-loose motion beside hir head.<br />
<br />
Strongtail shrugged slightly, before replying. "Not quite sir, but we are trying to get off world to the Federation. Do you know anything about the communication system?"<br />
<br />
"Of course I do," the man said, "I worked on it everyday. But you're out of luck. They broke everything?all the interfaces and calibration tools." He waved a hand at the weathered consoles. "What they didn't do for, exposure did. Without them, we can't even talk to the port on the other side of the planet, much less a ship."<br />
<br />
Strongtail frowned. "But everything's based on standard interfaces, isn't it? I'm a journo?I know a little something about comm gear myself. The actual ''transmitter'' is fine, it's just we don't have the cup and bits of string we need to use it. Right?"<br />
<br />
The man chuckled. "Cup and bits of string. Heh heh. You could put it like that, couldn't you? Yes. Yeees. We could probably hack something together, if we had the right parts."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble frowned. "Don' trust him," shi muttered. "He's screwy in the head."<br />
<br />
"What kind of parts would we need?" Strongtail asked. "Could we find them on the port, or in the market?"<br />
<br />
"Maybe. Maybe." The man fingered his beard. "A PADD would do for the interface. Other parts?there might be something we could use in the market. Portable audio players have the right kinds of linkages in them. And a lot of the right kinds of conduits end up at scrap metal dealers."<br />
<br />
"I have a PADD and a tricorder?" Strongtail said slowly. Shi didn't really trust him either, but if he really was an engineer, he'd know far more about the system then shi could possibly teach hirself in a year. "?and some rations. If you think you can help us, I'll be willing to share them with you. I'm sure they'd taste better then rats."<br />
<br />
With that, the man's demeaner changed again, "Where's me Jerry? JERRY!" <br />
<br />
"Uh, I dunno." Strongtail thought for a moment, "Can you fix the transmitter or not?"<br />
<br />
"Wha-?" Just as quickly as the 'crazy' episode had came on, it was over. "Of course, I can fix anything."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble rolled hir eyes and made the "screw loose" motion again.<br />
<br />
"Then shall we go?" Strongtail suggested.<br />
<br />
The man's eyes widened, and he frowned. "We?um, we?I don't think I'd better. I can give you a list of what you'll need, but?I don't really like going into town." He twitched, as if he might flip back to asking about Jerry again momentarily.<br />
<br />
"All right, calm down," Strongtail said, digging out hir PADD. "Just write it down here and we'll go get it."<br />
<br />
"Right?" The man reached out and took the PADD with one trembling hand, looking it over. "Huh. Fancy one. All right?" His fingers flickered over the control surface as he chorded words into place and sketched diagrams with a fingertip. "I think?those should do it. I can pull the rest out of the consoles here. I'll do that while you're gone."<br />
<br />
"Works for me." Strongtail glanced to Hardscrabble. "C'mon, Scrabs. Let's leave the man to his work."<br />
<br />
"Don' gotta tell ''me'' twice," Hardscrabble muttered, following Strongtail down the narrow tower stairs.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble lagged behind Strongtail as they headed back out of the starport and toward the market. Shi could see Strongtail had something on her mind. "Somethin' wrong?" shi asked.<br />
<br />
"I'm not sure how we're going to pay for any of this." The older chakat sighed. "It's not like I have a lot of cash."<br />
<br />
"Oh." Hardscrabble considered. Shi didn't see the "pay for" part as terribly necessary, but shi guessed shi could humor the bigger chakat for a while. "How've you bought stuff up to now?"<br />
<br />
"I had some from when I first came here, and I did a few?jobs once." Strongtail shook hir head. "Maybe I could trade some of my stuff. I'm not sure I like the idea of going around nude on this planet though.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble frowned. "Well?ya could go to the shops on Red Street," shi said. "I hear they're always looking for 'zotics'."<br />
<br />
"I'd rather not."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "Guess you'll hafta think'a something else then." Or maybe ''Hardscrabble'' would?<br />
<br />
"Mm."<br />
<br />
As they walked along, Hardscrabble could see Strongtail sinking deeper and deeper into thought. It made it easier for Hardscrabble to fall further and further behind. Finally, shi made a quiet dash for the fire escape on the side of a building. Shi preferred being on the roofs in these unfamiliar parts of town.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble glanced over the side of the roof one more time at Strongtail plodding up the street and frowned, hir preference for the safety of the rooftops warring with uneasiness at leaving the bigger chakat on hir own. But the streets in this part of town were cleaner than the rest of it, and the much-bigger Strong should be able to handle any trouble that came up between there and the market anyway. And it would be easier if Strongtail didn't know where Hardscrabble was for what shi was planning.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble dashed forward and leaped to the next roof, keeping pace with Strongtail but staying out of sight.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Strongtail was unamused. One minute shi had been walking along, and the next Scrabs had disppeared on hir. Shi wasn't too worried?shi knew shi'd somehow formed an empathic connection with the cub. Shi didn't know how shi felt about that, but the bright side was that it would make it easy to find the cub when shi needed to. Even now, shi had a feeling Scrabs wasn't too far away. <br />
<br />
But Strongtail could deal with Hardscrabble later. Right now shi was concentrating more on packing up all hir stuff and heading back to the port by way of the market. Shi'd have to sort what shi could trade and what shi couldn't, and try to get ahold of the parts that way.<br />
<br />
Thankfully, it didn't take long to make the selection. Shi didn't have much of value, mostly articles of clothing, but shi did have a couple of ruby necklaces that might be worth some significant amount of money. Shi was loath to part with them?they had been hir mother's and meant a great deal to hir?but when it came right down to it, they were just ''things''. Shi and Hardscrabble were ''people'', and people were what mattered.<br />
<br />
It was getting fairly late in the afternoon by the time shi made it to the market. It wasn't all that busy, which suited Strongtail just fine. It was, however, slow going. Many of the shopkeepers were less than forthcoming, often demanding much more for their wares then shi could properly afford. However, Strongtail was finally able to convince at least a couple of the merchants to deal fairly with hir, and was able to trade for a few things. However, shi wasn't able to get all the items shi needed, and was trying to save the jewelry for last. <br />
<br />
Shi finally found a rather obese merchant with some of the most expensive items on the comm component list, just before dusk. After a few moments of haggling with the man, it was clear he wasn't going to take anything less then full value.<br />
<br />
"Fine fine." Strongtail sighed dispondently, before rummaging through hir bag for the box with the necklaces in it. "How about these? They should be worth enough?"<br />
<br />
"Well now?" the merchant said softly, picking one of the necklaces up and examining it closely. "This is different ain't it?"<br />
<br />
"Do we have a deal?" Strong asked, "The necklaces for the compensator?"<br />
<br />
"No." The fat man sneered, before snatching the necklaces out of the box and stuffing them down his pant's pocket. "They'll just cover the cost of all those other items you've been stealing from me you fucking monster"<br />
<br />
"I told you, that wasn't me." Strong said angrily, "If you're not going to trade, give me my damn necklaces back."<br />
<br />
"No."<br />
<br />
"If you don't I'll?" Strong started.<br />
<br />
"If you don't back off, I'll call the Polizei," the fat man sneered again. <br />
<br />
Strongtail sighed. Shi knew that the Polizei would be of no help to hir if they did come, and starting a fight wouldn't help matters at all anyway. Shaking hir head, shi turned away and headed towards the Port.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
Strongtail made hir way through the gate as the setting sun was painting the sky red behind hir. Shi glanced back at it for a moment, reflecting on how far shi had come in the last twenty-four hours. Shi'd made a new friend?or more than friend?and maybe found a way to get off this rock. But?<br />
<br />
"'bout time ya got here!" <br />
<br />
Strongtail spun around, to find Hardscrabble seated in front of the wall next to the gate. "What took ya so long? I been waiting here for ages!" Scrabs complained.<br />
<br />
Strongtail snorted. "Some of us don't ''like'' to bounce from roof to roof like a God?like a gosh-darned rubber ball. What have you been up to all day, anyway?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble smirked. "Oh?this an' that."<br />
<br />
Strongtail blinked as shi noticed for the first time the loop of conduit wound around Hardscrabble's torso, and the other parts poking out of hir knapsack. What was more, she recognized them as the very same parts shi had been trying to buy from the fat merchant?the patterns of scratches were the same. "How did you? I thought I told you not to go about stealing!"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble snorted. "I didn't ''go about'' stealing," shi said smugly. "I did it all in one place."<br />
<br />
"Ugh." Strong rubbed hir ears. Shi felt another Scrabs-induced headache coming on. "I'd tell you to return it, but you'd probably end up being skinned alive."<br />
<br />
"S'pose that means ya don't want these back, then?" Shi held up a double-fistful of red fire.<br />
<br />
"What?" Strongtail accepted the objects and realized they were hir mother's necklaces, catching the light of the setting sun. "You stole the necklaces back?" <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble nodded. "Ya felt like ya really hated losin' 'em, so how c'd I let that?" Shi didn't have the chance to say anything else. Strongtail leaned forward and hugged the younger chakat fiercely. <br />
<br />
"Oof!" Hardscrabble said. Shi hesitated a moment, then put hir arms tentatively around Strongtail and hugged hir in return. The coil of conduit around Hardscrabble's torso made it a little uncomfortable, but Strongtail didn't care.<br />
<br />
After a moment, Strong broke the embrace. "Still, you can't go around stealing."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble rolled hir eyes. "How many times I gotta tell ya, I didn't ''go around''. Anyway, I left him a receipt. All nice an' legal."<br />
<br />
"Uh huh." Strong sighed, wondering what shi was going to do with the wayward cub if and when they got somewhere civilized. "I doubt he'll see it that way."<br />
<br />
"I don' think I can ever go back there again, but we're leavin' soon, so." Hardscrabble shrugged. "It really matters so much, have the ship you call bring lotsa money an' go give him some." Hir face darkened. "I wouldn' bother, tho. 'part from what he said ta ''you'', that's the bastard who 'accidently' left out a box of poisoned food bars for us a while back."<br />
<br />
"Yeah, everyone on this planet is a jackass." Strongtail laughed in a strained fashion. "Let's get inside before more of them show up to lynch you."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble grinned. "They'd have a hard time doing that!"<br />
<br />
"Right, come on you imp, inside." Strongtail pointed into the darkening compound.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble rolled hir eyes. "Okay, okay. I still don' like that man, tho. Seen peeps like him 'fore. Creepy. Can't trust 'em."<br />
<br />
"I don't really trust him either." Strong said. "Don't worry, if he goes nutty on us I'll save you!"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble glanced sidelong at hir. "Yeah, I'll just bet y'will."<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
The derelict human's name turned out to be Warrant Officer John Wagner. Despite Strong's and Scrab's misgivings, he was far more stable, at least mentally, for the next few days. As he had promised, he quickly set about repairing the damage done to the port's communication systems. So long as they kept him away from rats, he was fairly lucid. <br />
<br />
So as not to interfere with the work, Hardscrabble did hir hunting at the other end of the base from wherever he happened to be. (After hir first several tries, Strongtail gave up trying to talk hir out of it. What the hell, it would make the rations last longer.)<br />
<br />
After a few days, they hardly ever noticed his stench. <br />
<br />
Even so, the smell plus everything else taken together got to be too much after a while. As a result, Strong and Scrabs had taken to longish afternoon walks through the grounds. Since they were no longer welcome at the market, they didn't have anyplace else to go. Out of deference to Hardscrabble's eyesight, they made sure to be indoors before dark. <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble seemed to have calmed down considerably since that first day, and hardly ever looked nervous anymore. It had only taken a couple of changes of bandage for hir wounds to heal into new scars to join all the others barely visible under hir fur. <br />
<br />
"I'm going to get the weirdest looks when people see us together," Strongtail muttered to hirself after checking the wounds over one last time. "They're gonna think I'm some kind of child abuser."<br />
<br />
One day, their walk took them by the rubble of one of the passenger terminals at the south end of the spaceport. Every so often, Hardscrabble would duck into a hole in the wall or under one of the benches to root out another rat and devour it with a great deal of crunching and slurping. <br />
<br />
Strongtail privately suspected Hardscrabble was doing it just to gross hir out, and was determined not to react. Depending on how long the repairs took, shi feared shi might end up eating rats hirself in the foreseeable future.<br />
<br />
"If you keep eatting like that, you're going to get fat," Strongtail remarked, after Scrabs had eatten hir third rat that day.<br />
<br />
"How would you know? I don' think you ever ate a rat in yer life!" Hardscrabble retorted.<br />
<br />
"True," Strongtail grinned, "but I do know that little kittens who eat too much get chubby real quick."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble glanced at her. "Oh, is ''that'' why you look like that?" shi asked in wide-eyed innocence.<br />
<br />
"Why you little?!" Strong laughed as shi made a mock lunge towards the cub. <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble danced away. "I still got some way to catch up 'fore I look like you!"<br />
<br />
"Ah, but you don't want to end up like me." Strongtail chased the cub; it had been a few days since either of them had stretched their muscles, and it felt good. <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble took off like a shot, ducking under a turnstile where Strongtail would not fit and dashing up some stairs. "Why's that?" shi called over hir shoulder.<br />
<br />
"Well, being myself, I did get dumped here." Strong said as shi followed as close as shi could.<br />
<br />
"Hmph!" Hardscrabble kicked a bench in passing, and it fell over behind hir. "I got dumped here long 'fore you did. Ending up like you might be a ''good'' thing." Shi sniffled a little, quickly wiping it away.<br />
<br />
"Oh?" Strongtail vaulted the bench without slowing down as Hardscrabble ran around a corner.<br />
<br />
"'cuz you been somewheres that aren't here. An' here sucks." Hardscrabble skidded to a halt as the corridor dead-ended in a small lobby with some decrepit potted plants and overturned benches. "Aw crap. Here ''does'' suck." Shi ducked behind a bench.<br />
<br />
Strong bounded around the corner, and glanced around. "Got you now! And with luck we'll both be off world soon."<br />
<br />
"I don' even know what that's gonna be like," Hardscrabble said from hiding. "I only ever remember being in the Bad Place 'fore."<br />
<br />
Strongtail grinned and reached behind the bench to pick the kitten up. What shi got was a live rat put in hir hands, then a giggling chakat kitten leaping away over the bench again.<br />
<br />
"Come back here!" Strong made a face and threw aside the rat. Then, with one fluid motion, Strongtail darted forward and picked up the giggling chakat, nuzzling hir belly.<br />
<br />
"Aw?hey! Cut that out!" Hardscrabble squirmed for a moment, before finally giving in.<br />
<br />
"Never!" Strongtail laughed, hugging the kitten tight. "At least you've been a bright spot in this whole place."<br />
<br />
"Bright? Hope not. Harder to hide in the shadows if yer bright."<br />
<br />
"You won't have to do much hiding any more?or eat any more rats?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble grinned. "But I like rats! I think I'll just eat more."<br />
<br />
Strong shook hir head. "There aren't any rats on Chakona!"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble cocked hir head. "Are you ''sure'' this's such a great place yer takin' me?"<br />
<br />
Strongtail laughed.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
After a week and a half of enduring it, both Strongtail and Hardscrabble finally got fed up with Wagner's pungent aroma and determined to do something about it. <br />
<br />
It was not as hard as it might have been?thanks to the disused starship landing basins, there were a number of sources of water nearby. Strongtail and a mildly-reluctant Hardscrabble had been using them themselves, after they had figured out how to reactivate the circulation system and purify the water. Even so it was was still rather filthy by most civilized standards.<br />
<br />
Strongtail had thought it would be easy to talk Wagner into it when he was in one of his more civilized phases. Even when Wagner was lucid, however, he acted like a man obsessed; once he had been asked to fix the system, he had barely stopped to eat or drink. After a few tries to get him to listen, Strongtail reluctantly had Scrabs fetch a rat. Once the man was unhinged, it was a simple matter to lure him in by dangling "Jerry" in front of his face, then tossing it into the pool. <br />
<br />
Soon the man was turning the water a rather disturbing dirt brown.<br />
<br />
"We're goin' need a new pool, Scrabs," Strongtail said in a tone somewhere between shocked and amused.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shook hir head. "I jus' got one question."<br />
<br />
"Yeah?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble held up the bar of soap they'd been using. "You gonna do it, or you want me to?"<br />
<br />
Strongtail looked from Hardscrabble, to the bar of soap, to the man, and back. "Um? Let's just save it."<br />
<br />
"Good plan." Hardscrabble glanced over the rim of the pool again. "Ugh. Mebbe we sh'd go where we don' hafta watch him a while."<br />
<br />
Strongtail sighed and fiddled with hir mother's necklace. Shi had taken to wearing it ever since shi had nearly lost it. "I suppose. I don't want him to drown though."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged, and moved a little further away. Then shi glanced back at Strongtail. "Why you keep fiddlin' with that? Why's it so 'portant? 's not like you can eat it 'r anything."<br />
<br />
"I suppose it's not that important," Strong admitted. "But my mom gave it to me? it has sentimental value suppose."<br />
<br />
"Oh." Hardscrabble thought about that. "Kinda like my ear tag, I guess. Mebbe I sh'd jus' throw it 'way, but?it's the one thing I still got from back then."<br />
<br />
"It is a rather morbid thing to keep around? But I can understand why you'd want to keep it." <br />
<br />
"Yer Mom still 'round?" Hardscrabble asked.<br />
<br />
"Yeah, I don't really see hir lots though." Strong nodded. "I'm sure you'll get to meet hir when we get back to Chakona."<br />
<br />
"Anyone else I'll be meetin'? Father, sisters? Brothers?" Shi paused. "Do chakats ''have'' 'brothers'?"<br />
<br />
Strongtail grinned, "More like distant cousins who look male. But to answer your question, you'll likely meet my father too, but my sisters probably aren't going to meet you, at least not at first. A lot of them are off world, or on the other side of it."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble's eyes widened. "Wow. I've never been outside this city. How can they just?''go'' like that?"<br />
<br />
"Space is full of opportunities, you know. Maybe one day you'll be up there taking advantage of them." Strongtail smiled. "What about you? I know you don't have no family around here, but you got any friends?" <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble smiled faintly. "Well?there's a couple people. I 'spect they'll get on okay without me, tho."<br />
<br />
"Oh? So no girlfriends or whatever?" the older chakat asked teasingly.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble stared at hir. "That's just?''ick.''" Strongtail could feel hir sudden surge of disgust.<br />
<br />
"I suppose you're too young for puppy love." Strongtail tilted hir head to the side and watched the cub closely. "Although I'm pretty sure I've had crushes when I was your age."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble blinked. "Why would I want to love a puppy?"<br />
<br />
"It's just an expression. So what about these people you're friends with?"<br />
<br />
"Just a couple of 'em." Hardscrabble shrugged. "We kinda watched out for each other. 'specially fer Nikki. She's not real good at stealing 'r fighting."<br />
<br />
"Sounds like shi wouldn't have lasted long without your help." <br />
<br />
"Me 'n Khala looked after her."<br />
<br />
"Khala?"<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble nodded. "She's a cat like us, 'cept she only has two legs and no dick and is taller. She'n'me were the only furries in Chayne's gang, which's why we stuck t'gether. Nikki's a human."<br />
<br />
"Have you thought about what you're going to do when you leave?" Strongtail asked. "You know, say goodbye or whatever?"<br />
<br />
"Na'really." Hardscrabble shrugged. "They'll pro'lly be better off without me. They both got ways of making money fer real. Chayne liked them special for it, an' whoever the new one is will too if he's smart. All I can do is steal stuff."<br />
<br />
Strongtail nodded slowly and turned back to the man in the pool, who was struggling to crawl out of the dirty pool. Sighing, shi got up from hir sitting position and moved to pull the man from the water. Shi gave him a towel, then told him to get back to work.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
It was three days later when Hardscrabble and Strongtail were awakened by Wagner scratching at their door. "I wish he wouldn' do that," Hardscrabble groaned at the nervewrenching grating sound.<br />
<br />
Strongtail blinked a couple of times. "I hope he hasn't found a rat or something." <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble raised an eyebrow. "What've you got against rats, anyway?"<br />
<br />
"Just see what he wants," Strongtail sighed and rolled over.<br />
<br />
"Awright." Hardscrabble clambered to hir feet, stretched, and padded over to the door. "Yeah?"<br />
<br />
"It's done." Wagner said, running his hand through his matted hair. "You want to send something? There isn't much power."<br />
<br />
"Finally!" Strongtail leapt up and nearly knocked Scrabs over as shi bolted through the door. "Can you reach Chakona?"<br />
<br />
"Uh? Not in real time communications. I could send a message, but after that we'd be limited to more local space communications until we can recharge." Wagner shrugged. "Generator's fine, but most of the capacitors've gone out."<br />
<br />
"What're you gonna say?" Hardscrabble asked, scratching hir head in confusion.<br />
<br />
"I? dunno." Strongtail admitted. "How much can I say?"<br />
<br />
Wagner cocked his head. "As much as you want? I'll have to compress it into a single file and send it on a frequency. Unless you're planing on doing a reading of War and Peace and Caitians, there shouldn't be a problem."<br />
<br />
"And who you gonna say it to?"<br />
<br />
"Well? I guess we should send it towards? I dunno." Strong looked helpless.<br />
<br />
Scrabs patted the older chakat on hir leg. "Does it matter who gets it long's they got a ship?"<br />
<br />
"Well, it's be best if it wasn't, you know, pirates or whatever, but they don't really do raids or whatever." Strongtail shrugged.<br />
<br />
"I could broadcast it on the back of a distress signal. You won't be able to pick who receives it, but it's pretty omnidirectional. <br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "I dunno what that means, but if it gets us rescued?"<br />
<br />
"Do it." Strongtail said firmly. <br />
<br />
"Sure sure, whatever," Wagner said. "Nearly time for my coffee break anyways."<br />
<br />
"Coffee break?" Hardscrabble asked. "I seen coffee before, but how do you break it?"<br />
<br />
"Alll engineers get coffee breaks you know!" Wagner said with a smile. "Me and Jerry would go out and have this wonderful latt? at the place just down the street."<br />
<br />
"Uh?" Strongtail glanced at the cub. "Maybe you can take us there sometime?"<br />
<br />
"I can take you there now, if you'd like." Wagner smiled creepily, "Just need to find Jerry. I haven't seen him in a while. He must be working in another part of the port."<br />
<br />
"How'bout?mebbe later?" Hardscrabble asked, glancing nervously at Strongtail.<br />
<br />
"No problem!" Wagner laughed. "Cats don't drink coffee anyway you silly pussy."<br />
<br />
The control room was much as it had been before, save that the comm panel that had shown a power light had been all but disassembled and was connected with enough cables to other consoles that it looked like an explosion in a spaghetti factory. <br />
<br />
Wagner was adjusting controls on half a dozen consoles, tongue poking out one corner of his mouth in concentration. He pointed to a glowing vid panel on the console next to Strongtail. "Just look there and speak yer piece. And smile. I bet you'd be really pretty if you smiled more."<br />
<br />
"Uh? Thanks."<br />
<br />
Strongtail pressed the button. "This is Chakat Strongtail, calling anyone who can hear me." After a moment she smiled, a bit self-consciously. What could it hurt? "I'm a reporter with the Chakona News Network, originally dispatched to Argos to cover the uprisings. Make a long story short, instead of covering them, I got caught in them. Now all I want is to get off this rock.<br />
<br />
"I've got another chakat, Chakat Hardscrabble, and a human, Warrant Officer John Wagner?"<br />
<br />
Wagner leaned in front of her. "Hi there!" he said, waving at the monitor for all he was worth until Hardscrabble pulled him out of the way again.<br />
<br />
"?with me. We'd appreciate immediate evac. We don't have any cash on us, but CNN will make it worth your while when we're back on Chakona. Please respond tightbeam to these coords?our comm equipment is failing and we might not be able to pick up anything but a directed signal. This is Chakat Strongtail, out."<br />
<br />
Crossing hir fingers, Strongtail pressed the save button, and then the activate button, sending the message into space, and hopefully towards someone willing to help.<br />
<br />
"What now?" Hardscrabble asked.<br />
<br />
"Now we wait," Wagner said. "Anybody seen Jerry?"<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
As the hours wore on, Strongtail became increasingly worried, although shi tried not to let it show to Scrabs or Wagner, who was teaching the Scrabs the game of Go. Complete with crowning and checkmates, though Strongtail had a suspicion he might have the rules slightly confused.<br />
<br />
Then after a burst of static, a voice came through the speakers. "?et up to loop until we receive a response. Message repeats: Chakat Strongtail, this is the ''U.S.S. Antigua'', a private cargo ship en route to New Persia. We received your distress signal, and are en route to render aid. We are transmitting on tightbeam, as requested, and in case we are still out of your range, this message is set up to loop until we receive a response. Message repeats: Chakat Strongtail, this is?"<br />
<br />
Strongtail jumped up and slapped the reply button, "We're here! Thank you! How soon can you get here?"<br />
<br />
After a few seconds' lightspeed delay, the response came. "This is Lieutenant Hartnell, piloting the shuttle ''Aruba''. ETA is six hours. Are your landing fields more or less clear? We'd prefer a beam to ride in, but should be good to go as long as it's relatively free of debris."<br />
<br />
"There's some crap in one or two of the landing cradles, but the rest of them are clear." Strong replied tensely, "And the rest of the equipment is gone."<br />
<br />
"Roger, Strongtail. We'll do the best we can. Suggest you be all packed and ready for us?planetary authorities might not be too keen on us coming in uninvited so we'd just as soon not stick around."<br />
<br />
"Right. See you soon!" Strongtail grinned, turning off the comm and preparing to follow the advice of the friendly pilot.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble sat on top of an overturned fire truck and skimmed stones into one of the landing cradles. The sun had just started to rise, and it was less than two hours before the shuttle was scheduled to touch down. And now that the actual prospect of leaving was staring hir in the face, shi kept looking at the gate to the west as if expecting someone to come marching through it at any time.<br />
<br />
For all shi'd said they'd be better off without hir, Hardscrabble was more than a little worried about Nikki and Khala. Not that shi didn't expect they'd be able to take care of themselves. Shi'd seen what happened when Khala was backed into a corner. Hardscrabble only wished ''shi'' could fight that well, and shi had two extra limbs!<br />
<br />
What was bothering hir was that neither of them had shown up looking for hir. Shi really wasn't ''that'' far away from Chayne's turf, after all. And surely Khala could have tracked hir. Why hadn't she shown up to see if shi was all right?<br />
<br />
"Penny for your thoughts," Strongtail said, coming up next to the fire truck.<br />
<br />
"What's a penny?"<br />
<br />
"I dunno." Strong hopped up and sat down beside the cub. "What's on your mind."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble shrugged. "Just thinking 'bout Nikki and Khala some, I guess. Pro'lly won't see 'em again, after this."<br />
<br />
"I see."<br />
<br />
"But they'll be all right." Hardscrabble nodded. "Khala tells stories, Nikki fixes stuff. Both a' those things're really valuable in this crap town. Nobody'd hurt 'em."<br />
<br />
Strongtail nodded and rubbed the cub's back gently.<br />
<br />
"Y'all packed?" Hardscrabble said after a while.<br />
<br />
"Of course. Are you?"<br />
<br />
"You think mebbe you might have a little extra room in yer luggage?"<br />
<br />
"Why? You got something you'd like to bring?"<br />
<br />
"Well, I was thinking?if there really aren't gonna be any rats where we're going, mebbe I should hunt up some you could pack f'r me."<br />
<br />
"Uh, no," Strong said firmly, but with a smile. "Don't worry about that stuff."<br />
<br />
"Aww?" Hardscrabble pouted.<br />
<br />
"Now c'mon. Why don'cha help me get our stuff outside so we can load it as soon as the shuttle lands?"<br />
<br />
"Coming!" Hardscrabble joined the grinning Strongtail in moving their luggage to the runway.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
It was time.<br />
<br />
Strongtail, Hardscrabble and Wagner were all standing outside with their eyes skyward. It was one of the better days on the planet, with only a few clouds here and there, so there was nothing to delay the landing. <br />
<br />
After a few moments of waiting, and several disappointing "I see it I see it! Oh wait, just a bird." moments, the shuttle finally appeared as a silver dot in the sky, leaving a contrail behind it as it streaked toward their position. <br />
<br />
As it drew overhead, it seemed to stop in mid-air and the contrail took a right-angle turn as it dropped, breaking through the bottom of the cloud a moment later in a seemingly-uncontrolled fall. Strongtail wondered if the pilot was just showing off or something. <br />
<br />
Then the shuttle slowed, reoriented itself, fired thrusters, and descended the last thousand meters at a more reasonable speed.<br />
<br />
"Wow! It's a real spaceship!" Hardscrabble said. "I never thought I'd see one again." Shi shivered a little, projecting nervousness and a little fear.<br />
<br />
"It'll be alright." Strongtail said, as shi noticed the cub's anxiety, and leaned down and pulled the cub close for a hug. "This ship won't be anything like that other one."<br />
<br />
"Hope so." They held hands, watching the ship descend on a pillar of flame, sending up a great cloud of steam as it touched down in the landing cradle nearest the old passenger terminal.<br />
<br />
"I suppose we'll have to wait for it to cool down." Strongtail said as shi looked across the tarmat at the ship. "Do you suppose it'll be safe to start walking over in that direction though, John?"<br />
<br />
At the sight of a starship, Wagner actually seemed to appear almost sane, only a nervous twitch at one corner of his mouth giving away the fact that he wasn't quite all there. "I don't see why not. The heat from these landings tends to dissipate pretty fast. Heh."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble glanced at him and frowned, then nodded. "Guess we better. They'll a'seen that coming in all over town!"<br />
<br />
After a few moments, the trio of them dragged their luggage over toward the cradle. It wasn't much, especially for Scrabs, but it still took some effort to shift. The two chakats didn't notice when Wagner slowed and dropped back behind them until he spoke.<br />
<br />
"Well pussies," Wagner suddenly said, "I don't think that ship has enough room, you know? for the lot of us."<br />
<br />
"Well of course not John," Strongtail remarked, not even bothering to turn back and look at the man. "It's just a shuttle."<br />
<br />
"And? And you know? I was thinking." Wagner spoke again. "I haven't seen Jerry recently."<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble slowly turned to stare back at him.<br />
<br />
"And? uh, you know? cats ''eat'' rats." Wagner said slowly. "I've gotta get me Jerry back you know?"<br />
<br />
"What are you talking about?" Strongtail said as shi turned to look at the dirty man, just as he drew his phaser.<br />
<br />
"GRAAAH!" Hardscrabble growled. Shi threw the duffle bag Strong had given hir directly at Wagner's chest, and lunged after it with a boost from hir powerful hindlegs.<br />
<br />
"NOT JERRY!!!" Wagner screamed as the cub attacked him. The phaser went flying as taur and bag bowled into him, throwing him to the ground. His head bounced off the cement with a loud thunk.<br />
<br />
"Oh FOR FUCK'S SAKE." Strongtail swore loudly, "Is there anything ''else'' that can go wrong on this damn planet?!"<br />
<br />
BANG! A bullet whined off the shuttle's hull. Hardscrabble pointed. "Polizei!" A squad of them had just run through the western gate. They were way too far away to aim effectively, though.<br />
<br />
Hardscrabble grabbed the unconscious Wagner and dragged him toward the shuttle. "C'mon, let's get out of here!"<br />
<br />
With a growl, Strongtail grabbed hirs and Scrab's bags, and made hir way to the waiting shuttle. More bullets whined off the shuttle or the pavement around them.<br />
<br />
Ahead of them, a hatch slid open and a boarding ramp extended. A man in a pilot's uniform poked his head out. "Hurry up before they hit us with something bigger!"<br />
<br />
"Help me with this guy!" Hardscrabble grunted. The pilot stared, then ran down the ramp to get Wagner's other arm. Together, they all made it aboard.<br />
<br />
Strongtail turned back just in time to catch one last glimpse of the pavement through the closing hatch. "About damn time," shi muttered.<br />
<br />
A few moments later, the Polizei's approach turned into a rapid retreat as the shuttle's engines lit. Clouds of steam again billowed across the runway, and when they cleared, the ship was gone.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars|EPILOGUE}}<br />
<br />
'''THE NIGHT BEFORE...'''<br />
<br />
Nikki huddled in the corner she had shared for so long with Khala and Hardscrabble, her dirty blonde hair the only part of her visible in the shadows. Now only Khala came, since the bigger creature of Hardscrabble's kind had come charging in, torn out Chayne's throat, and dragged Hardscrabble away. Everybody had been too shocked to do anything to stop them?and even if they hadn't, Nikki had a hard time imagining anyone would have wanted to go up against the ''thing'' that had so casually killed Chayne.<br />
<br />
Khala had tried to protect Nikki, tried to keep her from seeing?but Nikki had seen enough. For the next several nights, she had woken up screaming at all the blood. Khala had held her gently, told her stories, and purred her back to sleep, and after a while the nightmares had stopped coming. Khala seemed to be less horrified than most, and Nikki had wondered why she hadn't tried to claim the mantle of leader. She was stronger and tougher than the humans twice her age, and had those built-in claws and teeth too. And she'd have been a much better leader than Chayne.<br />
<br />
But Khala had only laughed when Nikki said so. "Thanks, but that's not my path. My story lies elsewhere. So does yours, in fact. Want to hear a secret?" And she'd winked and told the story.<br />
<br />
Khala was a marvelous storyteller. She knew the most amazing stories about far-away places whose names Nikki hadn't even heard. But the ''really'' amazing ones were the ones about the people and places she ''did'' know?<br />
<br />
The sound of Khala's quiet footsteps jarred Nikki out of her reverie. She looked up as the orange-and-black-striped tall tiger-girl squatted and offered her an immense drumstick. She took it and nearly dropped it, it was so heavy. Khala was already chewing on a larger thigh. "What is this?"<br />
<br />
"Emu. Osterman didn't keep up on his protection payments. The Polizei wrecked his farm and took his stock. Some of them got away."<br />
<br />
"And you just happened to find this one for them?" Nikki jerked her head toward the lighted center of the warehouse, where the new rulers of the gang reposed by a table.<br />
<br />
"I might have helped." Khala smiled, though didn't quite grin. She'd learned by now how seeing all those sharp teeth affected most humans. Nikki appreciated the gesture.<br />
<br />
"I'm never gonna be able to eat all this," Nikki protested.<br />
<br />
"I'll finish when you're done." Khala's smile widened. "It's really all my portion anyway. But ''you'' don't eat enough to keep a bird alive."<br />
<br />
"Thnkoo," Nikki mumbled around a mouthful of emu. It was rare getting this much to eat?though since Khala and Hardscrabble had taken her under their protection, it happened more often than it used to. She swallowed and stared at the drumstick for a moment as thoughts of her absent friend threatened to make it swim out of focus behind fresh tears.<br />
<br />
Khala patted her shoulder. "I know you miss hir. I do, too. But shi's all right. Trust me."<br />
<br />
"Have you??" Nikki asked hopefully.<br />
<br />
"I haven't heard anything more, no." Khala shook her head. "That should change tomorrow, though. Now eat your emu. We need our sleep, since we'll be getting up early tomorrow."<br />
<br />
"Mmkay." Nikki chowed down, managing to finish about a third of the drumstick before she could finally eat no more. Then they curled up together for warmth and dragged a tattered old blanket over themselves.<br />
<br />
"Khala?" Nikki asked after a while. "Can you tell me the story again? Our story?"<br />
<br />
Khala smiled sleeply. "All right. I guess I can." Her voice seemed to deepen an octave, and she began.<br />
<br />
"The twosome woke early, before the sun even began to peek over the horizon. They quietly slipped out of the warehouse, careful not to disturb any of the other sleeping gang members. They had a few nervous moments getting the grating free, but Khala's steady feline hands carefully unthreaded the chain without making a sound. They left the grating open, not worrying about hiding the fact they'd slipped away. After all, if all went well they wouldn't be coming back.<br />
<br />
"It was just the right time for their plan. The night's worst scavengers were off the street, but the trash of the day hadn't woken up yet. Hand in hand, they ran through empty streets, making a wide circuit around the market, heading for the spaceport to the east. As the sun began to rise, Khala pointed up. Nikki raised her eyes in wonder to see the contrail cutting its way across the sky, the dot of silver at the tip growing steadily larger.<br />
<br />
"Khala grinned and led her friend onward, through the gates. Then she turned right, circling around to one of the big buildings that bordered the airstrip on the opposite side from the gate?the ones that used to be fronted with huge panels of glass that were now all smashed out. They hid themselves just in time to see the ship touch down in the sunken docking pool practically right in front of them.<br />
<br />
"Then from across the runway, the three of them came. There was Hardscrabble, and the bigger stranger, and a wild-eyed, sick-looking human. They were halfway to the ship when the human stopped and started talking, and Hardscrabble and hir friend turned to face him. He drew a gun, then Hardscrabble tackled him, knocking him to the ground!<br />
<br />
"Then Khala grabbed Nikki's arm and pointed to the ship. Now was the time, while everyone's attention was on the confrontation on the runway. Nikki nodded, and together they ran out onto the tarmac and right up to the gleaming shuttle. Nikki was scared, because she'd never worked on something this big before, but she knew it would work because her friend's story had told her so. She put her hand over the control panel next to a small cargo hatch and told it to open the door for her, and not to tell anyone. And it did.<br />
<br />
"And Nikki and Khala snuck inside to find a place to hide before the ship took off," Khala finished.<br />
<br />
"Is that it? Isn't there more?" Nikki insisted. "What happens next?"<br />
<br />
Khala smiled. "We don't get to know that part yet." She yawned. "It'll take care of itself when we get there. Now go to sleep, mmkay?"<br />
<br />
"Okay?" Nikki was so excited, she didn't know how she would ever get to sleep. But somehow Khala's purring sent her off.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
The twosome woke early, before the sun even began to peek over the horizon. They quietly slipped out of the warehouse, careful not to disturb any of the other sleeping gang members. They had a few nervous moments getting the grating free, but Khala's steady feline hands carefully unthreaded the chain without making a sound. They left the grating open, not worrying about hiding the fact they'd slipped away. After all, if all went well they wouldn't be coming back?<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars|TO BE CONTINUED}}<br />
<br />
{{series bar<br />
|series=A Hardscrabble Life<br />
|previous=[[User:Robotech Master/Breaking the Chayne|Breaking the Chayne]]<br />
|next=None}}<br />
<br />
[[category:Robotech Master]] [[category:Chakat]] [[category:Chakona Space]]</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User:Robotech_Master/The_Future_is_Paradise&diff=13299User:Robotech Master/The Future is Paradise2011-01-10T08:41:32Z<p>Bryan: Salvaged from Google Cache. Unfortunately a bunch of characters (such as quotation marks) were turned into ? in the process. Will come back to clean this up later.</p>
<hr />
<div>{{universe|Paradise}}<br />
<br />
{{byline|user=Robotech Master|author=Chris Meadows}}<br />
<br />
{{author note|One of the great things about shared-universe Internet settings is that, unlike with pro-published settings, you can write stories that become canonical, whereas with pro-published stuff they would only be "fanfic".<br />
<br />
Well, this story is?actually an exception to that. As far as I'm concerned, this story ''is'' Paradise fanfic, and ''not'' to be taken as canonical. It's just my vision of things, and may not have any resemblance to the ways Jon might imagine the future going (if he does have any plans this far in advance). It's my own equivalent to [[Cascade Failure]].<br />
<br />
The idea began partly as a joke and partly as an exercise in taking things to their logical (or illogical) conclusions (as I did for the "Chakona Space" setting in [[User:Robotech Master/The Last Human Being|The Last Human Being]]). Once it started to come together in my head, I realized that I simply had to go ahead and write it. Hopefully it doesn't offend anybody. I know Jon doesn't generally want people to write stories set further in the future than his, but I just couldn't wait fifty years to write this one.&nbsp;:)<br />
<br />
(I have plans for a sequel, too, in which I ''really'' shake things up?)}}<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars}}<br />
<br />
'''JUNE, 2063''' <br />
<br />
{{dropcap|T}} he newscaster sat behind his desk and peered across it, into a dimly-lit room occupied by a bed surmounted by a heap of blankets. "The funeral mass of Changed-rights activist Christopher Mattiaz, aka "C.M.", was held this weekend in Blacksburg, Virginia," he read from an invisible teleprompter. "High-ranking members of the Catholic Church turned out in numbers usually reserved for the funeral of an archbishop." The scene changed to the interior of a church packed with clergy in white vestments. "Though never ordained himself, Mattiaz was an advisor to "Papal Bull" Pope Leo XIV, the first Pope to have Changed prior to assuming office. He was acknowledged as an important influence on how the Church dealt with the Change and its implications.<br />
<br />
"Mattiaz first Changed in 1996, making him one of the first 256 people to experience the phenomenon. He was also the earliest known case of perpetual annual reinfection by both the species and gender-change Q-viruses. Mattiaz worked with Walter Lundh?s Changed Network on the early statistical models that first demonstrated the rate of Change, and was highly influential in the Changed community thereafter. He was named as the first CEO of the Lundh Foundation for Change Research, and held a seat on its Board of Directors until his death.<br />
<br />
"Mattiaz was predeceased by his wife Leslie, who passed away in 2057. He is survived by four children, thirteen grandchildren, and seventeen great-grand..."<br />
<br />
?ARGH!? A hand reached out from under a mess of blankets on the bed and waved in a rude gesture, turning off the clock-holo alarm. The holographic newscaster vanished, along with his desk. A slim figure extricated itself and rolled out of bed, hitting the floor with a loud THUMP. ?Ow?? it moaned, staggering to its feet and brushing a mass of tousled blond hair out of its face. It held out a hand, palm up, and raised it, and the room quickly snapped into full illumination. ?OW!? the figure moaned again, shielding its eyes with the other hand as it turned the palm over and dropped it about halfway and the lights dimmed again.<br />
<br />
?Damn it, Jan,? the figure moaned under its?his?breath. ??Synthetic? alcohol, my foot. That was the real stuff or it wouldn?t ''hurt'' like this. Owwww?that ''w?dka wytrawna'' has a kick like the mule Gran?ther used to be. Donkey. Whatever. Owwww.?<br />
<br />
But it wasn?t as if he could really blame the warthog. Jan had been one of Chris Mattiaz?s closest friends since the early days. (Some gossip rags rumored they?d been more than friends.) And Jan would have known this day was coming for a long time, since Chris had refused to take rejuve treatments since they?d been invented decades back. So he?d had a lot of time to get ready to mourn.<br />
<br />
?Argh.? He thought back to the wake last night, where Chris?s oldest surviving friends and some of his relatives had gathered to down a few (or a lot of) drinks in his (and occasionally ''her'') name. (Though Chris had been buried as a man, no one had really cared to correct Jan if his pronouns had slipped from time to time.) It was all a little hazy now, but he didn?t ''think'' he?d done anything embarrassing under the influence of that flavored Polish vodka Jan had brought. At least, there wasn?t anyone else in his bed with him, which was a blessing.<br />
<br />
He stumbled into his bathroom, waving at the shower to turn on and heat up to his preferred temperature. He splashed a little water on his face, checked himself in the mirror, considered, and punched for double-sized infusions of analgesic and caffeine on the shower?s control board before sliding the door open and half-falling inside.<br />
<br />
He emerged a few minutes later, looking a lot more human, with the nighttime stubble shaved off and his hair combed and pulled back into a ponytail. And he ''felt'' a lot more human, too. He walked back into the bedroom and gestured at the bed to make itself and the auto-dispensary to make breakfast.<br />
<br />
He glanced at himself in the mirror as he shrugged into sweatpants and shirt. With the shadow of the hangover under his eyes, he looked a little older than his twenty years, but given that rejuve tech meant he could have been a lot older and ''still'' looked that young, he guessed it balanced out. Then he winced again as the commset chimed. ?James!? a girl called through the concealed speakers.<br />
<br />
James groaned. He didn?t need this, not at this hour. Whatever hour it was by now. ?Take a message,? he groaned, taking a mug of coffee and the breakfast plate from the dispensary nook.<br />
<br />
?James!? the girl called again, a bit more insistently. ?James Slater Mattiaz, I know you?re there! Pick up the comm right now!?<br />
<br />
James sighed. It wasn?t worth making her mad. ?Okay, pick up. Hey, Shayna. What?s going on??<br />
<br />
?Just wanted to see if you?re coming to Highside for the big zeeg-ball game this afternoon? Um?I realize this may be a bad time to ask and all. Really sorry about your Gran.?<br />
<br />
?It?s okay, Shayna, but thanks for thinking of me. Actually, I think a game might be just right to take my mind off of things. I was planning to Q-port up there a little later,? James said. He wasn?t really much into zeeg-ball as a sport, but his sig-friend was Stanford?s star player, so he put up with it. Besides, the tight-fitting clothes the players wore plus the anatomical effects of zero-gee were probably half of the sport?s appeal even to trufans. ?How about you??<br />
<br />
?I?m calling from the shuttle. I really hate how Q-porting messes with my head, ugh.?<br />
<br />
James chuckled. ?Yeah, I know what you mean. But you get used to it.?<br />
<br />
?Well, sure ''you'' do, it?s part of your job,? Shayna pouted, and he could imagine her tossing her head as she said it. ?I don?t see why I should have to, though. Shuttles are cheap.?<br />
<br />
And they let her catch up on her soaps and her social networking, James added inwardly. The perfect ?excuse? for downtime in her otherwise busy life. He suspected that was the real reason she professed to hate Q-porting so much, but far be it from him to call her on it. ?True enough. Well, I?ll see you there.?<br />
<br />
?Right! What?re you gonna be??<br />
<br />
James grinned. ?Think I?d tell you, and bust up our little game? Ha. You??<br />
<br />
?Well, it was worth a try! And Penn State?s currently running a brute-strength game, so I?m thinking something catty.?<br />
<br />
?But aren?t you ''always'' something catty?? James teased.<br />
<br />
?''Some''one?s cruising for a zeeg-ball in the face!? Shayna caroled.<br />
<br />
?You?ll have to spot me first!?<br />
<br />
Shayna chuckled. ?I?ll find you whatever you are. You know I will.?<br />
<br />
?Yeah, someday I?m going to have to figure out how you manage that,? James chuckled.<br />
<br />
?Maybe so, but not today! Oops, we?re about to launch, they?re making us shut down our phones. Gotta go. See you when!?<br />
<br />
?See you then.? James shook his head, then sat down to his breakfast. Then he?d make up his mind what to be for the day.<br />
<br />
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<br />
A half-hour later, a grey-furred man-shaped timber wolf in sweats, with a disc-shaped device strapped to his left arm just below the shoulder, stepped out of James?s apartment. His ears swiveled, taking in the low sounds of traffic from the nearby streets and skyways, as he adjusted to his new form. This was a variant he?d never tried yet, and he was hoping that it would add to Shayna?s difficulty figuring out who he was. It wasn?t too hard to get used to, though; in most ways it wasn?t too far from the fox Change he often wore as his public face when not trying to play the guessing game with Shayna. (He usually slept human, like many others, to keep from leaving fur or claw holes in the mattress or sheets.)<br />
<br />
James flagged down an autocab and set the destination for the Blacksburg Q-port/Shuttleport. He noticed that flags were still flying at half-staff, and shook his head. He?d never really internalized how people felt about his gran?ther. He knew, intellectually, there was a lot of respect in the community, but the emotional side of it still blindsided him at odd moments?especially now. ??Gran?ther,? he murmured, blinking back a sudden wave of tears.<br />
<br />
He?d mostly managed to compose himself by the time the cab pulled up at the gleaming onyx and marble edifice of the modern transit facility, but he still felt the need to stop in at a restroom. Fortunately, there was one just inside the door. As he stepped up to the paired doors, James noticed a sign on the men?s room that read ?Closed for Cleaning.?<br />
<br />
James cocked his head, considered for a moment, then shrugged and reached up to the disc-shaped Q-changer strapped to his left arm. A second later, his form slimmed down, his chest expanded, and his furgonomic shoes? fake-heels lengthened, then Jamie clacked into the ladies? room and shut the door behind her.<br />
<br />
As she splashed some water on her muzzle, Jamie looked down at her feet and muttered. ?High heels. Who the hell puts ?heels? on digitigrade furgo-shoes anyway? My ''real'' heels are halfway up my legs!? And for that matter, why did they even need to change at all when her form did, apart from adjusting to fit? But the she-male Q-virus was noted for having a quirky sense of humor. Or something.<br />
<br />
Of course, even bothering to change at all was something of an affectation?a sort of genuflection, she supposed, to the values of her late gran?ther. (Or maybe ?genderflection??) Ever since the Q-changer had been perfected, gender issues had become non-issues at a speed that amazed even the staunchest feminists. These days uni-sex restrooms were the norm in new construction, and split-gender rooms were only labeled that way out of inertia. When any individual could be either male or female at a whim, right down to the clothes, nobody thought much of a man nipping into a ladies? room or vice versa. (Some women preferred to change to men just to pee, because the urinals meant they had more options in a busy restroom.)<br />
<br />
Except for the older generations, like Chris Mattiaz. Even as gender-challenged as C.M. had been, he?d been raised in a world with firmly-delineated lines between the genders that were not to be broken. It simply Wasn?t Done. Never ''mind'' that mores from a time where the opposite gender?s genitalia were shrouded in as much mystery as a Masonic Rite were completely outdated when you could ''have'' those genitalia yourself at a whim. (Now opposite-gender restrooms held about as much mystery as the shower rooms after gym class had done in the pre-Change days.)<br />
<br />
Jamie chuckled, remembering. Even though Chris had been one of the more progressive members of his generation (and given his situation, he?d sort of had to be), he?d still growled more than once, ?If you?re going into a ladies? room, young man, you?d better ''be'' a lady first.? (And when he was a bear or a dog, he had a ''really'' impressive growl.)<br />
<br />
But come to think of it, he?d been C.M. off and on for over ten years before the Veil came down, Jamie suddenly realized. Which meant he?d had more than his share of ''having'' to use the men?s room while being a lady. Perhaps that might have explained some of his feelings on the matter. She?d have to ask him next time she?<br />
<br />
Jamie nearly broke down again as she remembered she wouldn?t be speaking to him ever again?at least, not on this side of a Veil that was much thicker than that other one had been. ?Dammit. Should?ve known better than to go femme if I didn?t want to get weepy all over again.?<br />
<br />
A few minutes later, James stepped back out of the room, composed again. He?d considered staying femme for the zeeg-ball game, to try to make it even harder for Shayna to pick him out, but that might be taking it too far. For all he knew, Shayna might be ''expecting'' him to show up distaff for that very reason. It was really hard to second-guess her?he?d never quite managed it yet.<br />
<br />
As he got in line for the Q-port up to the space station, James continued his line of thought from the bathroom. He knew he risked breaking down again, but in a way it also felt ''good'' to be thinking about the old man and the changes (and Changes) he?d seen in his life. Cathartic, that was the word he was looking for. And maybe it would help him get over these weepy moods.<br />
<br />
Chris?s old-fashioned attitudes about gender had been even more ironic given that he?d been indirectly responsible for the invention of the Q-changer, the great gender (and species) equalizer, to begin with. It had come out of experiments conducted by the Lundh Foundation, which Chris had lobbied tirelessly to fund.<br />
<br />
Building on the success of the early particle-acceleration experiments that had produced Veil-piercing ?X-ray specs? and camera lenses, the addition of powerful quantum computers to the mix had enabled Foundation researchers to pierce another veil and come face-to-face with the quantum ?reality viruses? responsible for species and gender Change.<br />
<br />
James?and just about everyone else on earth, for that matter?still wondered who or what had ''made'' the viruses; the researchers had not yet managed to work it out. Of course, even the proof of their existence had sent ripples through science and organized religion both. Were they ?angels?? Had they been made by God, or by an agent of God, or by something else altogether? They were clearly sentient, but were they also ''sapient''? What was their purpose, or what did they even want?<br />
<br />
They weren?t saying. Their communications were gibberish?some sort of high level machine code, perhaps even quantum-encrypted. Whether they ''couldn?t'' make themselves understood or just didn?t ''care'' to?and whether they even understood normal human interactions at all?were just more of those imponderables argued by everyone from bartenders to bishops.<br />
<br />
But one thing that ''was'' certain was that they were almost entirely passive when it came to reacting to human meddling. Perhaps they had been programmed that way as an anti-abuse mechanism: ?If humans ever discover you, submit.? It seemed to make sense they should be programmed not harm humans, given how much care they took not to harm people?s integral senses of self apart from the gender and species changing in their normal activities. Either way, it soon became clear that with the proper technology, they could be coerced into changing an individual immediately, and in specific ways.<br />
<br />
At first Q-changers had been big bulky things requiring as much power as a twencen particle accelerator, but after a few years they were small enough to fit in a living room, and then on an arm. James suspected a few more years would see Q-changer wristwatches. They could change gender to male or female (and even herm and neuter, though apart from a few minor subcultures not too many people really cared to experiment with those very much), and species from human to Changed or back?or even beyond, into ''non-''anthropomorphic animals.<br />
<br />
(Prolonged existence in a pure animal form had been found to lead to eventual loss of human intellect, so most consumer Q-changers had interlocks preventing that kind of change?though instructions for circumventing them abounded in the hacker community. Quantum trace scans were now part of ordinary procedures for processing donated zoo or rescue animals?though some ?volunteer zoos? also existed, in parts of the world where they weren?t illegal. And some countries were using death-row inmates to repopulate extinct species of mammal?)<br />
<br />
And over a couple of decades, the entire time James had been alive, this had led to landmark changes in the perception of gender and gender-identity. When people could swap at a whim, especially people who grew up never knowing a time when they couldn?t, they didn?t identify as strictly one gender or the other anymore. Children were given pairs of names at birth?James/Jamie, Shayna/Shane?and they could decide which one suited them more. There was a lot of argument among parenting experts as to whether it was best to raise a child as only one gender or the other or as both from the beginning, but either way seemed to work out about the same in the end.<br />
<br />
And gender job restrictions suddenly seemed silly and outdated. No female soldiers in combat? No female priests? How did you even decide who was ?female? anymore, anyway? (This was perhaps the hardest implication for the Catholic Church to handle, though they?d had some practice figuring out what to do with all the priests who gender-Changed during the uncontrolled years. They?d ended up ?grandmothering? those cases, in the same way they grandfathered in the occasional married Anglican or Lutheran priest who converted to Catholicism, and were eventually convinced to do the same for willing-changers, too?though strongly suggested they should at least be male ''while preaching'' as a matter of decorum.) Professional sports franchises by and large went from single-gender to mixed-gender. Colleges kept male and female teams out of tradition, but often fielded some of the same players on both teams.<br />
<br />
Heterosexuality and homosexuality became quaint terms that didn?t really apply anymore, because everyone was now potentially ?bisexual??or at least ?ambisexual?. People began to fall in love with each other as ''people'' without gender being an issue?if it came down to sex, they?d simply decide on the fly who preferred which role at any given time. A whole new class of romance novel emerged, in which one or both women or men in a relationship were at first scandalized to learn they?d fallen in love with someone of their own gender?then they went with the Q-change flow in spite of themselves and found happiness.<br />
<br />
Not everyone took to it so easily, of course, especially fundamentalists and extreme conservatives who believed people should stay the gender they were born. (Many of these were also human-form-supremacists, who strangely enough seemed to be able to get over their objections to the ?unnatural? Q-shifters when it came to shedding unwanted fur. But perhaps the strangest thing of all was just how few of those people there actually were?the Change had been around long enough by now that most people saw ?pure human? as simply another Change to try out.) Others just thought it made life more interesting to take their chances with the occasional Changes that still happened naturally (for some value of ?naturally?).<br />
<br />
And a lot of people of Chris?s generation had also been unable to get fully into the ?swing? of things either. Chris had firmly?even devoutly?refused to use the devices, even when he was having to endure being C.M. again. Her closest friends, the ones who knew how hard she?d prayed about it during the early years, would sometimes find it odd that she didn?t at least ?correct? her gender, but she?d just smile and say that if God hadn?t seen fit to remove her ?thorn? by now, it would have been awfully presumptuous of her to pull it out on her own. (He hadn?t objected so much to other people using it, though?such as when Leslie decided she wanted to match her spouse?s species Changes as well as complementing his gender.) That was apparently why she?he?''they'' had refused rejuvenation, too.<br />
<br />
That was another thing, James reflected, as the line in front of him grew shorter. The effect it had on the language. Strangely, all the people who had objected to ?his? being used as a gender-neutral pronoun had fallen completely silent, even as it was arguably ''less'' correct than ever. It was one thing to say ?his or her? in ''just'' those cases that could refer to someone of more than one gender, but to have to say it about ''everyone''?<br />
<br />
Some people flirted with the herm pronouns that had come out of furry fandom??shi? and ?hir??but the people who actually wanted to ''be'' herms objected that those should be reserved to ''them''. Other people experimented with altering genders in alternate sentences, or even within the ''same'' sentence, but it was too much work to keep up and came off as rather twee besides. In the end, most people just shrugged and used whichever gender of pronoun they felt like at the time.<br />
<br />
And gender-specific terms fell into less common use, since they weren?t really appropriate when the individual could be either gender at any given time. Except for people who insisted on staying in one gender, there were no ?brothers? or ?sisters?, only ?sibs?. ?Girlfriends? and ?boyfriends? became ?significant others? or ?sig-friends?. The term ?gran? became unisex. And ?gran?ther?, previously an archaic backwoodsy contraction, came back into vogue for referring to someone who could either be a grand''fa''ther or grand''mo''ther (though, admittedly, there weren?t many of that age who actually cared to be, yet). And, for that matter, might well be a ''panther'' too.<br />
<br />
The invention of the Q-changer had led to other advances, too?most notably Q-port technology. The quantum teleporter was effectively a way of telling the underpinnings of reality, ?No, look, that person isn?t really over ''here'', they?re over ''there'', and they always have been.? And as the ever-gullible underpinnings quickly corrected their mistake, suddenly that person ''was'' over there after all.<br />
<br />
Of course, it was still in its early stages, just as the early Q-changers had been. And even though it had been passed as safe for public use, it still had a side-effect that sometimes made shuttles more attractive even to James. For the first few minutes after the ?port, the Q-ported traveler (and sometimes his close friends or relatives) would have to deal with having two conflicting sets of memories in his head: one in which he?d just been where he?d ported ''from'', and one in which he?d instead been where he?d ported ''to''.<br />
<br />
The fake set always faded away like a dream as reality caught up, leaving no record unless the victim recorded or wrote them down. Still, it gave James a new respect for the finesse that had gone into the gender- and species-change viruses, which managed to change everything ''except'' people?s actual memories.<br />
<br />
And speaking of which, the ?port booth in front of him had just emptied out. James sighed, took a deep breath, and stepped inside. ?Highside Station,? he told the control computer. And then?<br />
<br />
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<br />
James arrived in the Q-port chamber at Highside Station?<br />
<br />
James had shuttled up to Highside Station the night before, sleeping off some of the inebriation of Jan?s dratted vodka on the shuttle up and dozing the rest away in a hotel room. Then he woke up, had breakfast, and Shayna called him to ask if he was there yet. Then he?d just happened to wander down here and stand in the Q-port chamber for no really clear reason?<br />
<br />
?Argh.? James shook his head, leaning against the wall and trying to pick out which reality was the real one. It was like waking up from a really vivid dream, only about ten times worse. It passed after a while as the universe caught up with the teleport effects, and James headed out of the port chamber into the entrance gallery.<br />
<br />
It was a really impressive sight, standing at the window and watching the earth slowly rotate through his field of vision. He always spent a few minutes taking it in as the aftereffects of the ?port faded away. It helped clear his head. All around him, he saw other furs (and a few humans) doing the same thing. It really was a heck of a view.<br />
<br />
He chuckled as a pair of fluffy snow leopard Changed passed by, tails twined together. They must have been new to the station. He predicted a rapid Q-change to something with less fluff would be in their future if they were here for the zeeg-ball game. All that fur drifting in zero-gee was often more trouble than it was worth (and made them look a bit silly, too).<br />
<br />
And speaking of which, it was just about time for that now. He headed spinward to one of the elevator columns that led to the zero-gee section of the station, where the zeeg-ball arena and seating were housed. Under the name ?zero-gee ball,? it had originally been invented to help astronauts keep in shape during their time on the older, non-spinning stations like the International Space Station or the subsequent, larger Liberty Station?and it became popular enough for downsiders to watch that all the newer rotating stations had zeeg-ball courts in their zero-gravity centers.<br />
<br />
The game was a sort of combination of soccer and volleyball, played inside a plexiglass sphere, involving a large inflated ball that athletes had to try to knock past obstacles into an enemy goal. The athletes wore compressed-air thrust packs on their backs, wrists, and ankles which they used to control their vectors of motion or to propel the ball when they couldn?t reach it with their hands. And just to make things more interesting, compressed air jets were spaced around the rims of the court and within field obstacles to fire randomly at ball and unwary players alike (as well as soften the impacts of players tossed toward hard objects).<br />
<br />
Chris and Leslie had enjoyed watching the games for the last few years of their lives, since a number of their grandchildren or grandchildren?s sig-friends had gotten involved in it. As a kid, James had been puzzled for a long time when Chris and Leslie had laughed together at Chris?s joke, ?I guess this time the enemy ''goal'' is down.? He felt a twinge of loss even now, thinking back on those days.<br />
<br />
James paid the ticket fee and found a ?seat? with plenty of time to spare. It was actually a body-length pad with velcro straps to hold its occupant down. Gravity was only about 1/30 G at this distance from the core, so he would only weigh about four to five pounds?not enough to hold him in place without them. He reached down and pulled out the section of padding that covered the tailhole in the cushion, then settled into place and strapped himself in to watch.<br />
<br />
The Penn State team took the field first, wearing the tight zero-gee jumpsuits that were the sport uniform in their school colors of blue and white. James found it interesting that there weren?t any lions on the team, Nittany or otherwise. For the first few years after the Q-changer had come out, it had been a fad for animal-named sports teams to make a Change to resemble their mascots part of the ?uniform.? This had fallen out of vogue after it turned out that teams with a varied makeup tended to have better flexibility than single-animal teams.<br />
<br />
Of course, if their animal makeup was varied, their general type wasn?t. As Shayna had said, the Penn State team seemed to be going for a ?raw power? playstyle, mostly masculine in gender and made up of the heavier range of Changes such as Percheron and Clydesdale horses, bulls or buffalos, and?James blinked and rubbed his eyes. Was that an ''elephant''? Wow. That player was either a complete poseur or someone to watch out for.<br />
<br />
Most people didn?t bother with elephants (or any of the other anatomically weird Changes) anymore?learning to do things with your nose rather than your hands was one thing when you had no other choice, but even many who?d taken that Change naturally had switched away by now. But for certain sports, like zeeg-ball, the added flexibility and strength of a trunk could make it worthwhile?if you took the time to practice. There was always someone who thought he could just jump into the form and use it by instinct. James suspected that any halfway decent coach wouldn?t let that happen on a college team, though.<br />
<br />
As the Penn State team took up their positions in the upper half of the globular playing field, the cardinal-and-white Stanford team floated into the lower half. James whistled. Whereas Penn State was a team of big bruisers, Stanford had gone the other way?mostly female and feline, but with a couple of chimps and an orangutan too. Even some of the players he knew usually went masculine were wearing sports bras under their jumpsuits this time. James wondered if the Stanford team together massed even half of what Penn State?s did.<br />
<br />
James had tuned out the announcer calling out player names as they took the field, but perked up when he heard, ??number 36, Shayna Ford.? Though he tried not to show it too much. After all, she might be watching for that kind of sign.<br />
<br />
Shayna was a slim, athletic spotted cat with big ears?a serval, he realized. Of course, he?d have had a hard time recognizing her without the number and the announcement, since facial features didn?t always stay constant across all the Changes. She was looking around, her ears swiveling?seeking him out, James guessed. He glanced down-field, careful not to meet her gaze. But when he chanced to look again, she?d drifted over in front of him and was grinning right at him, mouthing words through the plexiglass wall that it took him a moment to make out: ''Don?t ever play poker, love!'' <br />
<br />
James muzzlepalmed. Oh well, at least he could concentrate on enjoying the rest of the game now.<br />
<br />
The game began with the ball in possession of Penn State, and the bruisers used their greater mass for all it was worth?pushing off of the walls and the randomly-placed obstacles to gain greater and greater momentum as they shoved the ball toward the enemy goals. Inertia being what it was, they were very hard to stop once they got going, and more than once they slammed through a knot of Stanford players, scattering them in all directions.<br />
<br />
The smaller players went flying at incredible speeds while barely slowing the bigger players down. It wasn?t as painful as it looked?in zero-gravity, all the energy of collisions went into flinging the whole person backward rather than into compressing soft tissues. Still, without the airjet cushions there would have been some bad sprains or breaks when the players hit the walls.<br />
<br />
Penn State scored twice, and it started to seem like momentum was on their side in more ways than one. James got the sense that Stanford hadn?t had as much practice at its ?flexible? game lately as its coach might have wanted.<br />
<br />
But in the second half, they started to turn things around. Shayna in particular took the offensive, flinging herself off of obstacles and changing directions with her airjets with a deftness that the lumbering bruisers couldn?t hope to match, practically ''flowing'' around them as she plucked the ball away time and time again. Her teammates picked up on her example, matching their playstyle to hers, and they?d soon evened things up.<br />
<br />
The Penn State players were starting to feel the strain now. Most of the equines were starting to show the whites of their eyes, and the bulls were seeing red. Even the elephant, who true to form turned out to be the biggest threat on the Penn State team, couldn?t carry the game by himself. James grinned. Too bad that the game?s rules prohibited Changing during play. Penn State had made its bed, and was just going to have to lie in it.<br />
<br />
James suspected that Penn State could have had a chance, if it had adjusted to a more conservative style of play. If it took a lot of effort for them to move or stop, it took a lot of effort for someone else to move ''them'', too. They could have countered Stanford?s flexibility by playing less aggressively. But by this point, they were playing too scared or angry.<br />
<br />
James wondered how many of them had much experience fighting down the instincts of their particular animal forms. One thing Gran?ther and other natural multi-changers had learned was that there was a world of difference between knowing how to move in a shape and understanding how its additional hormones and neural patterns affected your mindset. The latter understanding required spending a lot of time in-form to get used to its mental effects.<br />
<br />
Apart from the elephant, who he suspected had been born to it, it wouldn?t have surprised him if the Penn State team only wore their bruiser species on the practice field. Most people who hadn?t grown up that way didn?t like being a lot bigger (or, for that matter, a lot smaller) than ?normal? when they didn?t have to be. It often led to painful accidents, like bumping your head on a door that wasn?t ?supposed to be? too low for you. Shayna, on the other hand, spent a lot of her time in feline species and most of their instincts tended to be similar enough to each other for the experience to carry across. Her perfect calm only made the Penn State team look worse by comparison.<br />
<br />
As the clock ran down on the final half, Shayna shoved off an obstacle near her goal, firing arm and leg jets behind her, and caromed off the globe wall, coming in at an angle so the jets bounced her away rather than slowed her down. She flew directly at one of the opposing bulls, a longhorn with foam-rubber-globed horntips, grabbed his horn in passing and swung through ninety degrees of rotation before letting go, and whizzed right past the elephant, snagging the ball from his trunk as she passed. She kicked off another obstacle, dived through the narrow space between the Percheron and Clydesdale playing goal defense, and slammed the ball home just as the clock ticked over to zero.<br />
<br />
The Stanford fans went wild, and James grinned. Perhaps he enjoyed the game more than he actually let himself admit. Or maybe it was just watching Shayna play it. He kicked loose from his ?seat? and floated down to where the Stanford team was emerging from the exit in the lower half of the globe, to mingle with fans and towel off the sweat.<br />
<br />
Shayna grinned at him as he approached. ?Wolf, huh? That looks good on you.?<br />
<br />
James grinned, putting two fingers into his muzzle and attempting, unsuccessfully, to shape a whistle. ?You know, whoever came up with the term ?wolf whistle? didn?t know what he was talking about. But how?d you guess??<br />
<br />
?Oh, you have a few little ?tells?,? Shayna teased, flicking an ear nonchalantly. ?For one thing, you never repeat the same species, so I can reject anyone who?s one you?ve already been. And you always sit in the equator seats.?<br />
<br />
?But those are the best ones!? James insisted. ?Are those your only clues??<br />
<br />
?Oh, not the ''only'' ones,? Shayna purred. ?But they?re enough that maybe you?ll make it a ''little'' more challenging next time, huh?? She winked.<br />
<br />
James grinned, his tongue lolling out of the lupine muzzle. ?Oh, I?ll show you ?challenging,? you little minx.?<br />
<br />
?No, no, I?m a serval. But maybe we?ll try minks next time.? She grinned. ?You know, I?m free for the rest of the day. Feel like taking in some dinner, maybe a show??<br />
<br />
?And maybe a room, later??<br />
<br />
?Jaaaaames.? Shayna rolled her eyes. ?Well, you ''are'' a wolf, I guess I should make allowances. C?mon, I hear they?re showing a ''Paradise'' retrospective in the holo-theaters up here. You know I?m a sucker for the classics.?<br />
<br />
James chuckled, and let his sig-friend lead him away.<br />
<br />
{{separator|stars|TO BE CONTINUED}}<br />
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Future is Paradise, The}}<br />
[[Category:Paradise]] [[Category:Robotech Master]] [[Category:Anthropomorphic]] [[Category:Wolf]] [[Category:Story]] [[Category:Cat]] [[Category:Sports]] [[Category:Future]]</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:MatthiasRat/Confession_Building&diff=13298User talk:MatthiasRat/Confession Building2011-01-10T08:26:09Z<p>Bryan: Salvaged from Google Cache</p>
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<div>==Wonderful story==<br />
<br />
It's so great to see you writing Paradise again. I really enjoyed this story. It's funny, from the title I went into it expecting one kind of "confession", but then it turned out to have a double meaning. I like that.<br />
<br />
I also liked how you managed to avoid the clich� that being Changed makes you somehow superhuman. (I haven't done as well with that in my own Paradise stories, I fear. :P) You hit exactly the right tone with the abduction, and Christopher's life being saved by the difference in height was (while not unexpected) a great touch.<br />
<br />
The confession to the priest was handled well, too. After that, showing the scene with Leslie in detail would have been redundant. I do hope that in your next installment you will go into her subsequent reactions to the whole thing, though.<br />
<br />
Again, excellently done, and please write more soon! �[[User:Robotech Master]] 05:00, 11 October 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Thank you, Robotech! I've actually been working on this story for quite some time. Given the content, I didn't want to write this the way I normally did, which was by posting it in pieces on Shifti and editing here. I knew to make this piece work, I had to nail it out of the gate. And given that the content is very different from my usual fare (I too have to resist making my characters overly heroic in the usual sense) it just took longer to write. As for my next Paradise story, I will not fail to discuss Leslie's new perspective on the situation. I hope to start it soon. :-) <br />
<br />
:Thanks again! --[[User:MatthiasRat]] 09:18, 14 October 2009 (UTC) <br />
<br />
I agree with RM. It's impressive how you made Christopher's reaction to the hijacking one of fear and avoided the Changed-person-uses-abilities-gained-by-new-body-and-trashes-attacker-on-the-spot-and-winds-up-totally-winning cliche, just like what RM said. Christopher's reaction later, likened to that of a cornered animal, is a nice way of ending off the conflict. And RM's right: the height difference thing was excellent (though it took me a couple of seconds to understand). The emotions in the story were expressed very well. I particularly like the ending; it's short, just a few two-word statements, but it has the impact and it works. Very, very well. Thanks for this great story! --[[User:WolfyDrake95]] 14:44, 11 October 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Thank you, Drake! Like I said to RM, this was a hard story to write for all the reasons you liked it. I'm delighted to know it worked. Thank you. :-) --[[User:MatthiasRat]] 09:18, 14 October 2009 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User:MatthiasRat/Confession_Building&diff=13297User:MatthiasRat/Confession Building2011-01-10T08:23:07Z<p>Bryan: Salvaged from Google Cache. This page was last modified on 11 October 2009, at 02:51</p>
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<div>{{universe|Paradise}} <br />
{{my stories<br />
|name=MatthiasRat<br />
|category=MatthiasRat<br />
}}<br />
<br />
{{author note|This story is set in October 2003.}}<br />
<br />
{{byline|user=MatthiasRat|author=MatthiasRat}}<br />
<br />
An October evening settled over Blacksburg, bringing with it crisp orange and yellow leaves, and a cool breeze over Brush Mountain and through the New River Valley. Tree branches rattled like chopsticks and shook curdled leaves free. Jack-o-lanterns grinned their fiery light from porch-tops while tombstones, ghosts, and ghouls stalked leaf-strewn lawns. The streets were quiet as most of the residents stayed inside to watch Tech football.<br />
<br />
But not everyone.<br />
<br />
"I hate Vector Geometry!" Kyle snapped as he slammed his textbook shut. "This doesn't make any sense at all!"<br />
<br />
"You'll never survive in Engineering if you don't figure it out," Rob pointed out. The skunk sat on his couch with one arm draped over Audrey's shoulder and his long tail curled around behind her like a blanket. Her head laid against Rob's chest, eyes closed in peaceful repose, her sketchbook forgotten in her lap.<br />
<br />
"Chris, can you help him?" Barb asked. The panther sat on the other side of the couch with her open backpack between her legs. Various projects stuck out of the top; collages, a few drawings, and some raw materials.<br />
<br />
Relaxing in the corner chair, Chris the rat lifted open his eyes and his whiskers trembled in a smile. "Whadya need help with?"<br />
<br />
Kyle, who sat in the middle couch with his math homework strewn on the coffee table, pulled at the ever expandable fur on his cheeks in exasperation. "Complex numbers. I understand i being the square root of negative one, although that doesn't make much sense either. But what's with Complex numbers?"<br />
<br />
Chris's ears lifted as he stood up, tail dragging off the cushions. "I'm pretty good with this stuff. Let me see if I can explain it." The chipmunk slid down the couch to give Chris some room to sit. With one paw, the rat pulled his thick tail to the side as he sat. He picked up one of Kyle's pencils and beat the end against his incisors. "Okay, show me what you have so far."<br />
<br />
While Kyle and Chris looked over the math, Rob and Barb resumed their conversation. It was the first time all four Blacksburg Changed had been able to get together by themselves since the beginning of the semester. They always met with SOAP on Friday nights, but they couldn't admit what they were. With only Audrey and Patrick in the know, they each had to keep a careful watch on how they spoke to each other.<br />
<br />
But with Chris having a Jan-free weekend, and Rob for once caught up on his school work, it was easy to set aside a few hours to gather and just enjoy being Changed. But they'd quickly discovered that after a long week, none of them wanted to really do much. Audrey and Chris were both exhausted after a long day at work, Rob wasn't much better himself, Barb was always a goner once evening set in, and Kyle was preoccupied with catching up on his Vector Geometry homework.<br />
<br />
Still, they all enjoyed gathering for a few hours in the evening.<br />
<br />
"So, does that make more sense?" Chris asked after scribbling charts and equations all over a blank sheet of paper.<br />
<br />
Kyle nodded, short tail flicking energetically back and forth. "Yeah, I think so."<br />
<br />
"Complex numbers are really neat," Chris added with a chitter. "Once you get the feel for them, it's amazing how much they can actually do for you."<br />
<br />
"I hope so! I'm going to see a lot more of these according to my professor."<br />
<br />
"Who do you have?"<br />
<br />
"Some grad student. I don't think he even knows the material!"<br />
<br />
"It might be his first time teaching the class," Chris pointed out. "I did the same thing a couple years ago before I went on research."<br />
<br />
"How's that coming?"<br />
<br />
"Good. I've got a long way to go, but my advisor isn't giving me dirty looks anymore."<br />
<br />
Barb nodded her head with a feline smile. "That's very important! When do you think you'll graduate?"<br />
<br />
"Maybe next Spring if I work my tail off."<br />
<br />
Rob smirked. "And if you can keep Jan from dragging you on a bike trip every other weekend."<br />
<br />
Chris rolled his eyes. "That would help!"<br />
<br />
"Isn't Leslie a little suspicious about all your trips?" Barb asked.<br />
<br />
The rat grunted and sat back while Kyle resumed his homework unaided. "If she is, she's not telling me about it. She tends to keep these things to herself."<br />
<br />
"Pot. Kettle. Black," Audrey murmured without even opening her eyes.<br />
<br />
"I was planning on telling her last week!" Chris protested in a squeaky voice. "We had a day off together for once and we took a nice long drive and hiked up Dragon Tooth Pass. I had it all planned out. I was going to take off my shoes and leave paw prints in the ground and I was going to chew some wood into dust to prove it to her."<br />
<br />
"So what happened?" the panther asked.<br />
<br />
Chris sighed, lowering his whiskers and snout. "It just never seemed the right time."<br />
<br />
"There is no right time," Rob declared. "That's why you just need to tell her and get it over with. You said you'd tell her once you were male again. Well you've been male for two months now, Chris, and you're no closer to admitting it!"<br />
<br />
"I know, I know. I'll... I'll tell her on Halloween. It's a special day for us. Our first date was on Halloween of all things."<br />
<br />
"I thought you said Leslie was working on Halloween," Rob pointed out.<br />
<br />
The rat sighed again, his ears and whiskers drooping. "Oh, right. Gah. I'll... I'll figure it out. It's just, how do I tell her that I've been female for most of our marriage? It'll hurt her."<br />
<br />
"The longer you wait," Barb added compassionately, "the worse it will be."<br />
<br />
"I know." Chris dug his claws into the carpet. "I just need the courage to tell her."<br />
<br />
"You'll find it," Audrey assured him.<br />
<br />
"Thank you."<br />
<br />
"Argh!" Kyle squealed. "I hate Vector Geometry!"<br />
<br />
The sudden interjection was enough to lighten the rat's heart. With a laugh, he sat up and asked the chipmunk what was wrong this time.<br />
<br />
{{separator|k}}<br />
Chris pondered his friends' advice as he wound his way through the maze of roads that is the Foxridge apartments complex. Leslie deserved to know what had happened to him. But how would she react? How could she handle knowing her husband had been female for most of their marriage? He'd lied to her. Simple as that. And he had been lying to her for a very long time. How could she accept that?<br />
<br />
The rat's whiskers drooped. The longer he waited the harder it would be. That truth was unavoidable. Another was like it; there was no such thing as the perfect time. Whatever time he told her would be the right one, and he'd never be able to know different.<br />
<br />
Running low on fuel, Chris pulled into a small gas station, tossing these ideas back and forth in his mind. The sharp bite of gasoline hit his nose, and a few shouted curses struck his ears. He reached for his wallet and glanced at the convenience store curious to see where the swearing came from.<br />
<br />
His paw froze, wallet half drawn from his pocket. Out the door burst three armed men in masks. They were laughing and had the stink of booze about them. Their eyes, glaring white, fell upon the rat and the largest of the three pointed his gun. "Get in the car, kid. We're going for a ride."<br />
<br />
Chris stammered, his heart stuttering with each syllable, "Wha.. wha... what?"<br />
<br />
One of the other two, both a little shorter of stature, but equally menacing in form, waved his gun. "Shut the fuck up and get in the car!"<br />
<br />
"Do it now, kid," the first said, blowing stale booze breath in his snout.<br />
<br />
"Uh.." Chris said, letting his wallet slide back into his jeans. His paws shaking, tail drawing tight against himself, the rat slid back inside. The leader took shotgun, and kept his pistol levelled at Chris's mid-section. The other two slid in the back.<br />
<br />
With his free hand the leader buckled his seat belt, white eyes glaring meaningfully at the rat. "Now we're all going to go for a little drive in the country."<br />
<br />
"Please," Chris managed in a high-pitched squeak. "Take my car. Just let me go."<br />
<br />
"Just shut up and drive!" the second snapped in tones so sharp they cut ice.<br />
<br />
Chris squeezed his eyes shut, fighting back a sob, and turned the ignition. The engine rolled over with a gasp and he eased the Saturn onto the road. "Good," the leader said, his mask splitting into a satisfied grin. His breath stank of booze, his flesh reeked with sweat and industrial chemicals, and his gun sizzled the air. "Not too fast now, we wouldn't want to get a speeding ticket."<br />
<br />
The other two laughed as if that were the funniest joke they'd ever heard. Chris cringed and gripped the steering wheel with both paws. He tried to angle them into the right lane. A right turn onto Prices Fork would take them back into Blacksburg. With all the street lights, surely somebody would see.<br />
<br />
"Left lane, kid," the leader suggested, poking the gun barrel into his arm. "I said country drive."<br />
<br />
Chris swallowed as a tear rolled through his cheek ruff. His whiskers were held so tight against his snout they felt that stinging burn of salt. As they made the left turn away from town, his eyes glanced at the Rosary beads hanging from his rearview mirror. His tongue, pressed against the back of his incisors, began to whisper, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."<br />
<br />
The third robber laughed like a donkey and beat his hand against the back of Chris's seat. "Heeheehee! Hey choir boy, miss your little priesty friend? Wish you were fucking in his bed now? Hawhawhaw!"<br />
<br />
The sharp-voiced one laughed and slapped a satchel he had in his lap. He burped, and the two of them laughed again. The leader chuckled under his breath, but kept his eyes on the rat and the road.<br />
<br />
"Hey," the third shouted as they drove past the Elementary School whose windows were dark like the eyes of skulls, "I got a joke for ya choir boy! How many Catholics does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Chris shuddered and quickly brushed a tear off his cheek. He muttered his prayers under his breath, glancing between the road and the night-dark sky.<br />
<br />
"Come on, guess!" The third guy punched the back of the seat. "I said guess you little shit!"<br />
<br />
Chris winced, his heart leaping into his throat. "Uh... one?"<br />
<br />
"Fuck no!" he brayed. "Three! A priest and a little choir boy to fuck, and a nun to tell them how to do it! Heehee! Wasn't that funny?"<br />
<br />
The rat sniffled but gave no reply. "The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want..."<br />
<br />
"Laugh you little shit!" He shouted, banging the headrest.<br />
<br />
The leader waved his gun in a circle. "Laugh."<br />
<br />
Chris eyes the gun, dark and promising, gasped for air, and said, "Ha ha ha ha."<br />
<br />
"That wasn't a laugh. I could've farted that! Laugh!"<br />
<br />
Chris shut his eyes and sent more tears down his cheeks. In a louder voice he said, "Ha ha ha ha! Ho ho ho ho! He he he he..."<br />
<br />
Both robbers in the back laughed along with him, mimicking his sobbing attempt and mocking it with drunken glee. Chris ground his teeth together, holding back the anguish. The road began to descend. The water treatment plant was at the bottom of a very large hill. He could drive right off the road and crash them. His was the only air bag. Chris lowered his eyes and gently pressed down on the accelerator.<br />
<br />
"Don't fuck with me kid," the leader said in a soft voice. "Try to crash us and I shoot you." <br />
<br />
"Bubububut then I wiwi... will crash."<br />
<br />
"And you'll die. Do as I say, and maybe you won't. But don't fucking test me." There was a coldness in his voice that frightened the rat more than the gun. His eyes glowered through the mask intense as a hawk. And he was literally the rat.<br />
<br />
His friends were all back at Rob's place. The police were busy with Tech football and would take too long to respond to the robbery. And with Leslie working the evening shift, there'd be nobody to miss him for over six hours. Chris wailed inside as he realized there was nobody to help him. Warmth filled his trousers.<br />
<br />
"Hey, I think the little shit peed himself!" the second robber said with another laugh.<br />
<br />
The third cooed, "Oh, did the little choir boy wet himself with his little weewee? Does he need his diapers? Hawhaw!"<br />
<br />
Chris cried as all three of the robbers laughed. His eyes stole to the crucifix illuminated <br />
only by the dashboard lights. The shadow of the cross stretched weirdly on the windshield. ''Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.'' <br />
<br />
But he did fear.<br />
<br />
{{separator|k}}<br />
The drunks made him drive up and down country roads taking him from the pleasant familiarity of Blacksburg, well past Radford and into Bland county. At some point they found their way to route 42 heading west between Walker Mountain and Brushy Mountain. The mountains were more long ridges that extended for dozens and dozens of miles, and the valley between them was interspersed with farms and the occasional small town. Chris only ever saw one cop car the entire time, but it had been going the wrong way. What other traffic there was seemingly thought nothing of them.<br />
<br />
Weary but still tense, Chris kept his mind on two things, the road ahead and his prayers. The jeers and taunts of the drunks constantly barraged his ears, but the words were all mush now, so much invective and so little imagination behind it, it nevertheless terrified him with its sheer brutality. Behind each joke there was a gun. He laughed when they told him too, a sound hollow and lifeless. Something a part of him assured him he would soon be too.<br />
<br />
Despite knowing the road, Chris had no idea what was around. He'd never driven this way before, and all his attention was on the weaving course, and the gun pointed at his side. His sensitive nose recoiled at the beer breath of the thugs, and his own urine-stained pants. He yearned to gnaw his steering wheel to plastic shavings.<br />
<br />
As the minutes dragged interminably past, each a seeming infinity of minute terrors and noxious affronts, the taunts passed into vulgar heckling and finally into bored jibes. The robber sitting behind him continued to blabber on aimlessly, laughing at his own frivolity. Not even the others were laughing at him anymore. The other man in the backseat, the one who snapped at every thing he did and who stank of two pack of cigarettes a day, and who'd already burned the end of one in the upholstery, now grumbled beneath his breath about Jews, Christians, Gays, and anyone else who'd earned his ire. Their leader sat calmly with the gun pointed at Chris so casually it could have been a cup of coffee. And the fuel gage continued its long slide toward empty.<br />
<br />
Chris's soul searing panic had settled into a mind numbing terror when the second robber snapped like a log bearing too much weight. "Fuck this shit! I want to count this stuff. Let's find someplace man."<br />
<br />
The joker snorted. "Yeah! Let's count this shit and see what we got."<br />
<br />
"And let's get rid of this kid," the nasty one added. "He's pissing me off."<br />
<br />
"He's driving," the leader said, dark eyes never leaving Chris. "He's almost an accomplice. We'll be there soon enough. You can count then."<br />
<br />
Chris tensed, tail tucking tightly against his backside. He felt the nasty one's eyes like a drill on the back of his neck. "Well I hate this little fuck. Let's get rid of him now." Chris lowered his head, ears wilting beneath the words. He held the steering wheel so tight his claws pricked his palms.<br />
<br />
The joker laughed and hit the back of the seat. "Heh, yeah! Let's dump him in the woods! I'll drive this piece of shit!"<br />
<br />
"I'll do the driving," the leader said in a cold voice. Chris felt tears starting to pool in his eyes again.<br />
<br />
"I ain't going back to fucking prison again," the nasty one sneered. "I ain't going back to fucking prison. He's seen our faces, and I ain't going back to fucking prison."<br />
<br />
Chris moaned under his breath, staring into the headlights as the high beams streamed down the empty road surrounded by nothing but fields and old forests. ''Oh God, please save me.'' <br />
<br />
The leader grunted and then nodded. "Okay kid. Time's up. Pull over."<br />
<br />
"Oh fuck yeah," the joker laughed and hit the seat several times. "Pull over kid! Yeah!"<br />
<br />
Chris's voice squeaked out, weak and miserable, "Please, no... I won't tell anyone..."<br />
<br />
The nasty out yanked a gun from his jacket and shoved the muzzle into the rat's shoulder. "Shut the fuck up you little runt! Now pull the fucking car over!"<br />
<br />
"Pull over, kid," the leader repeated, without any trace of hostility or compassion. "Now."<br />
<br />
The tears flowed freely, and Chris, not seeing what else he could do, slowed down and eased the car to a stop. The headlights shown a small grassy field at the side of the road shouldered by dark trees that hunched toward the road as if stooped with age. Chris yanked the parking break, every breath a desperate prayer, and then reached for his keys.<br />
<br />
"Leave the keys where they are," the leader waved the gun, leaning closer and putting his free hand over top of them. "Now get out. Doug, make sure he doesn't run."<br />
<br />
The joker climbed out behind the rat and stood at his door, grinning sadistically. His long face limned by the red taillights was gaunt like a mummer's mask made by Mephistopheles. Chris couldn't hold back his tears, and his paws shook in anguish. He fumbled at his seat belt for several seconds before he could still himself enough to undo the latch. He opened the door, and the joker grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him to his feet. The cool air thrust into his lungs. His tail nearly got stuck in the door when Doug slammed it behind him.<br />
<br />
With a shove, Chris fell to the asphalt. He heard the other two climb out of the car. Doug kicked him in the side and laughed. "Crawl you little shit! Time to crawl home to Mommy! Haw!"<br />
<br />
Chris crouched against the wheel, sobbing, and curling as tight as he could against the kicks. He was going to die tonight. He had only minutes left, if not seconds. Wasn't his life supposed to flash before his eyes? He could barely think of anything though, even the words of his prayers provided scant comfort. ''Oh Jesus, please save me! Forgive me my sins!'' <br />
<br />
"Fucking retard!" the nasty one said, and gave Doug a shove that sent the drunk sprawling in the street. He then grabbed Chris by the collar and hauled him to his feet. He punched him in the side and pushed the gasping rat around the front of the car. "Get the fuck out there!"<br />
<br />
"I'll take care of it from here," the leader said in his cold way. "Just get that idiot out of the road. I'll need you to toss his body in the woods when I'm done."<br />
<br />
Chris felt the leader's gun at his back. "Walk into the grass. Get moving." Chris's legs were leaden, but they moved anyway. He could taste the salt from his tears seeping through his jowls. He could smell half-decaying roadkill somewhere ahead. The only light came from the headlights, and he stumbled along between their rays, the grass tickling his paws. After he managed a good fifteen paces, the man behind him said, "Okay kid, that's far enough." The gun cocked. "Get on your knees."<br />
<br />
Chris hesitated, gasping for breath. He wailed with a last breath of hope, "Please. I don't want to die."<br />
<br />
"Who gives a fuck what you want?" The leader sneered, almost laughing at him. "Now on your knees."<br />
<br />
He felt a hand shove him from behind on his shoulder, and he fell. He caught himself on the ground, and then leaned back, tail curling around before him. He grabbed its smooth surface and squeezed. Two shadows stretched before him in the light, reaching toward the obsidian sepulchre in the woods. His tomb. His shadow crouched low with scalloped ears held so low his silhouette almost appeared human, while the man's towered above, menacing even in distorted outline. ''Pater noster, qui es in caelis...'' <br />
<br />
"Goodbye kid." That was it. He heard the trigger squeeze and the report of charge thrusting the bullet from the chamber, through the barrel, and toward his head. He knew that there probably wouldn't be any pain, and there wasn't. A small section of grass in front of him detonated in a small whump. A second shot followed the first immediately, and the bullet joined its companion in the ground. Chris blinked, confused.<br />
<br />
"What the fuck?" the leader said, clearly surprised.<br />
<br />
With the force of a hammer, Chris understood, and in understanding, knew he had only seconds to act before the leader tried to shoot him again. He put one long rodent foot into the ground and leapt forward, all his energy bent on diving into the darkness of the wood. Another shot sundered the night, but the bullet went wide.<br />
<br />
Chris felt the darkness of the trees envelop him, and soon he had almost no light to see by at all. He flung his arms wide and blundered through the brush. But his eyes were the eyes of a rat. What was impenetrable blackness to a man was revealed to him. He couldn't see very far, but enough not to smack directly into any trees. ''Thank you, Jesus! Oh thank you! Great is your name!'' <br />
<br />
"Come on, get him!" the leader shouted behind him. Twigs snapped, bramble rustled, feet stomped impetuously, and leaves complained as they were crushed in their rampage. Chris tried to run away from the headlights, moving deeper and deeper into the wood. The ground quickly began to slope up. He'd never be able to climb over the mountain, but he didn't have to. He just had to escape these men.<br />
<br />
The cold October air pressed in on his flesh and especially his damp trousers. The fur there was slick and stank, and the denim of his jeans chafed at his thighs as he ran. The brambles, branches, twigs, and roots blocking his path grasped at his paws, tail, shirt, and arms. One of them viciously nicked his left ear, and it was all he could do to keep from crying out in sudden pain.<br />
<br />
"That way!" the leader shouted from behind. Chris hunched lower and scrambled around a tree, pausing behind the bulk and grabbing his tail in both paws. He breathed in and out through his nose, listening to the three men stumble and swear in the darkness. They were already past the radiance of the headlights. They couldn't see him, but they could certainly hear him.<br />
<br />
Still, it took all his self-composure to keep from bolting. He didn't have a gun pointed at his head anymore. ''Thank you for that, Jesus!'' He would keep quiet until they gave up. ''Please don't let them find me.'' <br />
<br />
The search continued for an uncountable number of minutes. Chris crouched low against the tree, cringing at every scrape of bark and every exhalation of breath. Blood trickled from the gash in his ear and mingled with the stain of salty tears on his left cheek. Behind him he heard the crash of brush and the swearing of the robbers. They'd begun spreading out but had to feel their way along. The rat was still struck with terror, but that terror was held back by the single strand of hope he'd received.<br />
<br />
He took deep breaths, exhaling as softly as he possibly could. With one paw he rubbed the cut in his sensitive ear, a jagged cleave that would best be served by stitches if there were any doctors who could see it. He winced, and licked the blood from his fingers and claws. Bitter and far too much of it. Chris grabbed the bleeding saucer and squeezed, clamping his mouth shut lest his agony betray him to his would-be murderers.<br />
<br />
And then one of them found him anyway.<br />
<br />
The clouds parted, allowing a rising half moon to illumine the woods. The light was faint, casting a pearlescent outline along the tops of the trees. Chris's rodent eyes were already accustomed to the dark, but now he could see the rocks jutting up from the ground, the gnarl of roots that had been tripping him, and the low hanging branches that had pierced him. He debated about running further into the woods; even with the moon out the robbers wouldn't be able to follow him for long, but he couldn't make his legs move. They rooted to the ground more firmly than if buried in cement.<br />
<br />
And then he heard one of them stumbling toward his tree. It was the nasty one. Every word he spat beneath his breath was a cut with a nailfile. Chris winced and pressed further back into the tree, one paw still clutching tight his bleeding ear. Yet no matter how tight he held, the pain was never worse than the fear.<br />
<br />
"Fucking little shit, where did he go?" the nasty one said as he kicked aside leaves behind Chris's tree. "I'm gonna find him and shoot him up the ass." The voice moved to Chris's right, and the sound of boots stomping brought him closer. A hand brushed along the trunk, feeling his way around the tree. Chris stared with his right eye, he couldn't move any other part of his body, and watched as the barrel of a gun, silver in a slice of moon, advanced past the bark horizon. A bare arm began to follow it.<br />
<br />
And then something changed in Chris. The human part of him, locked in a terror beyond which he could no longer escape, gave way to a cornered beast. The rat leapt forward, grabbed the nasty one's arm in both pas, and bit firmly into the soft flesh with his incisors. Blood, warm iron and bitter tang, sprayed into his face and down his throat. A scream pierced the air, his hackles raised and tail lashing. The gun dropped to the forest floor unspent.<br />
<br />
The moment was brief and the key to Chris's prison. He blinked and spat the arm and blood from his tongue. The robber, wild eyed and clutching his wound, stumbled back and fell into the roots, blabbering of demons. The other two came running and cursing.<br />
<br />
Chris paused only a moment before running down the moon-begotten path deep into the forest. He leapt over tangles of roots, ducked beneath low hanging branches, wove around bush and bramble, suffering scratches and bruises heedlessly in his desperate flight. Pursuit dogged him, and he heard the sharp crack of gunfire a couple of times, but they couldn't see as well as the rat.<br />
<br />
He ran for several minutes, never slacking in pace or energy. His flesh, burning with fear and simple animal need, kept him moving. The clouds continued to disperse, providing a clearer path for the moon to shine, but offering no more illumination. The forest stretched outward in every direction, deeper and tighter and subtly darker.<br />
<br />
Gasping, tongue still drenched in blood, Chris came to a stop to catch his breath. He turned his ears to listen, but could no longer hear the sounds of pursuit. His body ached and stung, and the air leeched what warmth he had right through his sodden clothes. He shuddered, tears standing in his eyes. He let the sob escape his throat for a moment, but choked it back down before he lost control. He'd survived. By the grace of God, he'd survived. Now he needed to find help.<br />
<br />
But where was he? Chris glanced around and saw nothing but the forests. The moon was still rising, passing in and out of the clouds, but providing only enough light for him to make his way. He tried to remember what this area of Virginia was like. Route 42 passed between two mountain ridges as it wended southwest. It was the only road through this pass, so he had to find it again.<br />
<br />
Chris wrapped his arms about his middle and started hiking downhill. His ears stayed alert for any sounds of pursuit, and the gash in this left throbbed painfully. His teeth yearned to gnaw on something, and his tongue wanted water to wash away the foul taste of blood. He broke off a small branch that had already lost its leaves from one of the shorter trees and sated his teeth. He could do nothing about his tongue. The blood had smeared down the front of his shirt which was now so torn by bramble and bark that it was worthless even as a rag. His pants still carried the pungent scent of urine.<br />
<br />
It took several minutes to find the road again, and when he did he kept it at the edge of his vision. The robbers still had his car. Just thinking about them made him tremble and cry. ''Oh Jesus, please protect me from them.'' He walked on through the brush, letting that refrain repeat in his mind.<br />
<br />
He saw no sign of habitation for a very long time. The night grew colder as the moon lifted from the horizon to occupy a place high in the sky. Weird shadows stretched before him, ethereal in the silvery light. The tips of his toes and tail all felt numb. He chewed the branch down to nothing, leaving a trail of splinters in the undergrowth. A few cars flew past on the road. He shivered as he walked, wishing that he could still be as furry as he'd bene while a bear.<br />
<br />
A sullen despair began to fill his heart. He wanted nothing more than to climb into bed next to Leslie, wrap his arms about her and snuggle in close. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her and needed. Her face, so simple but earnest, would assure him that she loved him too with the merest twitch of her lips.<br />
<br />
Yet he was lost in the woods, scratched all over ? and even though the bleeding had stopped he'd bear scars for as long as he was a rat ? and his car stolen by three men who'd tried to kill him. They'd tried to kill him. He'd heard about things like this happening to others. But he'd never thought he'd ever see the like himself. If not for the Change, he'd be dead right now.<br />
<br />
He lifted one paw to his shorn ear and felt along the tear. It was wider than his fingers, but he couldn't tell by how much. But as long as he had that gash, he had a visible reminder of the mysterious grace of God. ''Glory be to God the Father, the Son, and the holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.'' <br />
<br />
As he continued to hike through the woods, Chris vacillated between panic and joy with a rapidity that kept him trembling from either and both more than the cold. His toes stubbed roots hidden beneath dead leaves, bushes pricked his tail, and he swatted his way through several old cobwebs on his path. Ever the road was at his right, but it felt an age before he finally saw the house.<br />
<br />
The forest ended abruptly into a field of scrub grass misty with a growing fog. A short distance beyond he saw a fenced-in pasture. He could smell cows but none of them were out. A line of trees framed a driveway on the other side of the pasture leading to a stout two-story building. A canopied wrap-around porch hunched over the front door. There were no lights on inside, but there were a pair of vehicles parked in the driveway.<br />
<br />
Chris gasped in relief, and ran alongside the pasture, one paw patting the fence to keep himself upright. He felt the sting of a splinter in one finger, but the rat kept running, every muscle in his body groaning in pain. He jumped the five steps and banged his knees on the porch floor. Struggling back to his large feet, he pressed the doorbell once, twice, and then a third time before a light flicked on upstairs. His good ear turned to listen to the sounds of somebody coming to the front door and swearing to himself.<br />
<br />
The porchlight flared, blinding him. Chris lifted one arm over his face as the door swung open. "Do you know what time... What the hell? What happened to you?"<br />
<br />
Chris lifted his arm and stared into the face of a slack-jawed man in a robe. "Please help me!" The rat said before collapsing to the ground and bursting into tears.<br />
<br />
{{separator|k}}<br />
<br />
The Stewarts, a couple whose youngest child had just gone off to Iraq and whose uniformed picture was plastered all over their walls, brought Chris inside and draped him in blankets to warm him while calling 911. Lizzie Stewart checked Chris over for serious injuries, and she did not appear relieved when told that the blood covering his snout and shirt wasn't his. They watched him with wary but polite eye until the police arrived.<br />
<br />
The cop, a Sgt. Reynolds, drove him to the station in Mechanicsburg which was even further from home, and made him sit behind a desk and repeat his story twice while he filled out forms. The station was empty but for a handful of personnel. It looked similar to what Chris had seen in small town movies, with a door leading back to a handful of cells, a couple offices for superiors which were presently dark, and a small smattering of desks for cops to fill out reports like Sgt. Reynolds. The reception area at the front had been protected by glass that might have been bullet proof. One table had an interrupted game of cards. An odd beastly musk lingered in the air, but Chris was too distraught to pay it any mind. <br />
<br />
Sgt. Reynolds jotted down a few more notes and then nodded his head. "That should do it. The others are out responding to a call we got earlier about some gunshots in the woods. They're bringing them in now and should be here shortly. Are you up to making an ID on them?"<br />
<br />
"I..." Chris swallowed heavily, and then finally nodded.<br />
<br />
Reynolds stood and stuffed the clipboard under his arm. "Good. Hold on." He lifted his radio <br />
and called. "Hey Paul, how goes the pickup? I've got somebody who can ID them."<br />
<br />
"ID's gonna have to wait," came the rather guttural voice over the radio. "One of them's bleeding pretty bad so we dropped him off at the hospital. The other two got banged up running through the woods. Brett and Dave are keeping an eye on them until we can book ?em."<br />
<br />
"So where are you?"<br />
<br />
"I'm a few minutes from the station. Coming back to drop off the paperwork." Paul chuckled to himself, a deep sound distorted oddly by the radio. "Do you have the werewolf there?"<br />
<br />
Chris snapped his head up at that. "Werewolf?" Reynolds asked, bewildered.<br />
<br />
"Yeah, the one guy says he was bit by a werewolf or something. Kept raving about it."<br />
<br />
Reynolds looked at him, a smirk on one cheek. "Are you a werewolf, Chris?"<br />
<br />
"Uh... no?" Chris replied, still feeling very confused. Had the nasty one glimpsed his real form there in the woods?<br />
<br />
"Nope, no werewolves here. See you in a few." Reynolds put the radio down, and then his smile faded. "It looks like we won't need you tonight. I'm going to go call your wife and then we can take you home."<br />
<br />
Chris took a deep breath and nodded. "Use the work number. Leslie doesn't get off until 3."<br />
<br />
"Right. Just wait here." Reynolds carried the clipboard in one hand and walked back to the entrance. Chris sat with paws in lap, sore all over, still cold, and very tired. He slumped in the uncomfortable seat, shifting every few seconds to keep his tail from getting pinched. He rested his head in his paws and closed his eyes, and minutes disappeared.<br />
<br />
He snapped them open when he heard the door outside again and the same voice from over the radio call out in a booming baritone, "Hey Jeff. Do you have the kid in here?"<br />
<br />
Reynolds sounded as if he were chewing on a pencil. "Just go on in and talk to him. I'm trying to reach his wife."<br />
<br />
Chris stared at the doorway and watched as a stout figure stepped through. The rat blinked and gawked. He looked like Congressman Sandrick. The badger dressed in the beige uniform of a patrolman stared slack-jawed back at him. For several seconds they stared unable to speak, but the cop seemed to digest things faster than Chris could. He turned back to the door and said, "Jeff, I'm going to talk with our friend here for a bit. I want to compare his story to those perps I collared." He turned back to the rat and gestured to one of the offices. "Let's go inside. A little more private." Numbly, Chris nodded and followed the badger into the darkened office.<br />
<br />
The only chairs were metal folding chairs around the papered desk. Chris took one, turned it backwards, and slumped forward against the back, tail trailing across the floor behind him. The badger, Paul, sat next to him, half leaning against the desk. "You don't seem that surprised to see me," Paul noted after a moment's inspection. His dark eyes stayed wide enough to show the whites. "I've never seen another animal man. But you've seen others like us before, haven't you?"<br />
<br />
Chris lifted his head a bit. "Yes. There's a few of us up in Blacksburg. Lots more around the country. I can get you the web address and password for the forum."<br />
<br />
Paul waved one paw, each fingered tipped with a long digging claw. "Worry about that another time. I'm content knowing that I'm not the only one. At least for now. But you, what happened to you tonight?"<br />
<br />
Chris had already told the story to Reynolds twice, but the earnestness in Paul's musteline face brought it out one last time. And this time, he filled in the little details that being Changed had given him. Paul asked him what the three men smelled like, and nodded when Chris told him. "That's what I thought too," he added, giving his black nose a tap with the tip of a claw.<br />
<br />
After Chris described running into the woods to escape from the field in which he almost died, Paul waved him to a stop. "Wait. How could he miss at that range?"<br />
<br />
"I was five and a half feet tall as a human," Chris explained. "I'm only four and a half feet tall now. He aimed where my human head was, and so aimed too high."<br />
<br />
Paul nodded and took a deep breath. "You are very, very lucky, Christopher."<br />
<br />
"I just want to go home, curl up next to my wife, and cry."<br />
<br />
"It will pass," Paul assured him. "It won't be easy, but the fear will pass." Paul's snout lowered for a moment and then he added, "I've been there myself. I'll help you get through this. And through the trial. We'll need you to testify of course, but you don't have to worry about that now. Those perps aren't going anywhere and they aren't going to get off. It'll probably be a little while before you get your car back though. They messed it up pretty bad."<br />
<br />
Chris hunkered lower, his paws curled up before him on the desk. "I don't want to drive right now."<br />
<br />
"I don't blame you. I'll drive you home tonight. We can talk more on the way if you're comfortable. I've been a cop for ten years and was in the Army for six before that, so there's nothing you can tell me that I haven't seen. And," his voice took on a surprising note of empathy for a badger and a cop, "there's a priest I know who you might want to talk to."<br />
<br />
The rat lifted his eyes, whiskers standing on end. "I never said I was Catholic."<br />
<br />
"You've been counting beads since you sat down." Paul pointed with a claw at the rat's paws. Chris looked down, and realized that he was moving his fingers as if he were praying his Rosary. "We don't have to, just thought you might have things you'd be more comfortable saying to a priest than to me. I can't keep things confidential. Well, except for this." He tugged at the fur on the back of one paw and then waited for the rat to ponder his suggestion.<br />
<br />
Chris lifted his paws and tried to dry his face. He hadn't shed any tears for some time, but the fur was still damp. Tentatively, he began to nod, the motion mechanical like a bobbing bird. "Yes, please, I'd like to see a priest."<br />
<br />
Paul grinned, revealing a wide array of teeth. "Then let's go wake him."<br />
<br />
{{separator|k}}<br />
The rectory adjoined a modest church with a bright marble statue of Mary standing above the entrance. Stained glass flanked her immaculate carving, though in the night Chris could making nothing out.<br />
<br />
He walked along side Paul, feeling dwarfed by the badger, but the presence was comforting. They'd spoken only a little, and that mostly about the Changed. Paul Howard had changed only this year and had yet to meet anyone else. He was curious about the Changed community and focussing on so mundane a topic eased some of the strain from the rat's mind. But in each silence that fell between them the nightmares returned. How could he do anything when all he heard in his mind was the laughter and taunts of those three men, or all he saw was the shadow of the leader stretching over the grass as he pulled the trigger?<br />
<br />
The rectory door stood amidst a well-tended garden prepared for winter. He pressed the door bell with his thumb, the claw nicking the wood above it. He pressed the doorbell two more times before their ears caught the sound of somebody moving within. The porch light flared, blinding both of them.<br />
<br />
An older man in his fifties came to the door dressed in a trenchcoat over pajamas. His face, lined with sleep, brightened as he recognized the badger. "Paul! What brings you here at this hour?"<br />
<br />
"Got a favor to ask of you, Father." Paul put a hearty paw on Chris's shoulder and gently squeezed. "Chris here was nearly killed by some perps tonight, and he needs to talk to somebody."<br />
<br />
"Oh my, come in, come in!" The priest held the door open and both of them stepped into the warm room. It was a greeting room with a circle of chairs and couches framed about a private altar set against the wall. The altar was adorned with a crucifix, two thick half-burnt candles, and a green table runner marked with crosses. He gestured to the seats closest to the altar. "Please sit. Let me get some clothes on and I'll be right with you."<br />
<br />
A holy water fount was attached to the inside of the door jamb. Chris and Paul blessed themselves while the priest went to adorn himself more presentably. The rat genuflected toward the altar before sitting in one of the chairs which gave him enough room to let his tail uncoil comfortably behind him. Paul didn't sit down, but hunched over a taller chair and waited.<br />
<br />
Apart from the altar, the room was only decorated with a trio of paintings of various religious scenes. Chris recognized the Last Supper and the Resurrection, but the third was some scene of Jesus preaching or healing and he couldn't tell which. On a coffee table was a large leather bound Bible with gold edges that he was tempted to open, but the priest returned before he could.<br />
<br />
He'd donned a priestly black cassock with collar, and his pepper-grey hair had been quickly combed. His face was tall with slim cheeks, narrow ears, and broad chin. His smile was slight but warm and it creased his entire face with laugh lines. "Well, Chris. I'm Father Todd. What would you like to talk about?"<br />
<br />
Chris swallowed and then lowered his eyes. "I think I'd like to make a Confession, Father."<br />
<br />
Todd looked at Paul. The badger nodded and turned to the door. "I'll be outside when you need me. I'm taking Chris home tonight. And Father, no matter what he tells you, believe him. It'll knock you on your... your... you know."<br />
<br />
Father Todd's smile faded a bit, but he did grab a purple stole and drape it over his neck and shoulders. He sat down opposite Chris and once Paul stepped out and shut the door behind him, he made the sign of the Cross and said, "Let us begin as we live, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."<br />
<br />
Chris signed himself and uttered the words under his breath. He then lowered his paw into his lap and sighed heavily. "I'm scared Father. I almost died tonight. And I've been living a lie for so long. I've been to Confession many times in the last few years, but I've never been able to Confess the one sin I've committed the most. And if I'd been killed tonight, I would have still had that sin on me. It's been eating me up for so long, and I thought I could keep it a secret, but I'm just lying to her over and over again." He shook and choked back a sob.<br />
<br />
Father Todd crossed his legs and folded his hands over the top knee. "But you weren't killed, Chris. God brought you here so you could be freed from sin."<br />
<br />
Chris felt the tears coming again. How could he still have more to shed? "I know... I know." He sucked in his breath, claws digging into his knees until the flesh whitened through the fur. "Father, I just, I've been lying about this for over seven years now. And that to my wife, my family, my friends, everyone. I never told anyone until last year and then only those who, well, saw or figured it out." He paused and drew in another breath, expanding his chest, hoping that might calm him or still the sobbing, but it only delayed the next bought.<br />
<br />
Father Todd leaned forward, setting both his feet on the carpet. "If you're afraid of telling me, don't be, Chris. I hear Confessions all the time. I've heard it all before."<br />
<br />
The rat laughed at that, unable to hold it back. "If you've heard this, wow, Father, that would be just... wow. Oh you have not heard it all. No not at all. Oh Lord, help me. Why can't I say this even to your priest!"<br />
<br />
"Take your time. Could I get you something to drink?"<br />
<br />
Chris shook his head. "No! No... thank you, Father, but no." He ground his incisors together, balling his paws into fists and striking his knees. "Oh my... oh! This is... ah jeez! Father I'm... I'm.... I... I... I... argh why am I... it saved my life but... oh Lord forgive me." He exhaled once and then snapped, "I'm not even human, Father! I haven't been human for seven years!"<br />
<br />
The priest blinked and moved his lips as if he were trying to find words. Instead he gestured for the rat to continue with one hand.<br />
<br />
"It happens on August 17th. I don't understand it, but every August 17th I change, Father. I... I have changed into creatures half human and half animal. At first I was a dog. Then I became a donkey, a bear, and then a rat. And then it started over again! I'm back to being a rat, Father. I know you can't see it. Nobody who hasn't Changed can see it. And that's... that's... oh Lord... that's why I'm alive."<br />
<br />
Father Todd took a deep breath and leaned forward. "What do you mean that you're a rat?"<br />
<br />
"I'm human shaped, walk on two legs, but I've got fur, a long hairless tail, a head shaped like a rat's with big ears and teeth." He grabbed his tail in one paw and lifted it. "If you want, you can touch my tail."<br />
<br />
He half expected the priest to object, but Father Todd reached his hand out curiously and spread his palm wide. Chris lifted the end of his tail so that the soft flesh met the priest's hand. "I... I do feel something!" He exclaimed. And then he smiled ever so faintly. "And Paul knows about this?"<br />
<br />
"Paul's a badger."<br />
<br />
"Ah."<br />
<br />
Now that Chris had said it all, he found the next revelation even easier to make. The words gushed from, unstoppable, but true. "And that's not all I've been lying about, Father. Five times I've also become female. Yes, yes, yes, I've changed from a man to a woman, but I still looked like a man to everyone else. Only days after I married my wife, I turned into a woman too. I'd hoped the Sacrament of Marriage would protect me, but... but it didn't! It didn't, Father! I just kept on lying and lying and I slowly pushed my wife away from me because we couldn't be intimate anymore! And that's not even the worst of it.<br />
<br />
"Last year I was a female bear, and I started meeting other Changed who could see what I really looked like. One of them, a boar, flirted with me several times. And I.. I liked it! I started to have feelings for him and I've seen him frequently since we met. We never dated or did anything, but there was a part of me that wanted to very badly. I committed adultery in my heart, and with another man, Father! I'm so ashamed of myself, I've just been hiding and hiding and hiding and lying about everything for so long I didn't know what to do except keep doing it more!<br />
<br />
"And now I almost died!" His words broke into sobs and he put his face into his paws, unable to look at the priest anymore who did his best to keep a kindly face.<br />
<br />
A hand rested on his shoulder, but did nothing more than rest there. Chris finally lowered his hands and cradled his tail instead. His feet rubbed against each other as he tried to curl into himself.<br />
<br />
"Chris," the priest finally said. "You were right. I'd never heard the like before. But it is still nothing I haven't heard. Many people spend their lives in a lie. The only escape, the only freedom, is the truth. Whyever you are changing it is the work of God. We don't know why or how, but it is still His, as are you. And He is quick to mercy, and He always forgives a repentant sinner. Like you."<br />
<br />
The rat lifted his snout and gazed at the priest. Father Todd's face was conflicted but kind. His cheeks twisted as the gears of his mind dragged at them from beneath, churning through all that the rat had said. That he believed Chris could not be questioned. That he found it almost impossible to believe was also apparent.<br />
<br />
A long sigh escaped Chris's muzzle, gushing across his tongue like oil from a derelict. "I know, Father. And I need it. I've been gone so long. I've been here, but it's all been a lie."<br />
<br />
Todd nodded, eyes softening with a comforting assurance. "You've confessed much already. Lay your sins bare to God, and all will be forgiven you."<br />
<br />
Chris the rat did exactly that.<br />
<br />
A lifetime of events poured from him and left him empty but for the truths of the faith. Father Todd, on seeing that nothing more was forthcoming, lifted high one hand and said, "Let us thank God for the grace of this sacrament. The truth has set you free, Chris, and mercy is now yours. For penance, I ask you only to say three Our Fathers and to do that which you know now you must." He didn't need to say it. Chris knew. "Now make your act of contrition."<br />
<br />
Chris, head bowed low, and paws pressed palms together before his snout, intoned those beautiful words. "Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for offending Thee. And I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend Thee my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and avoid the near occasions of sin."<br />
<br />
"In the name of the Church, I grant you pardon and absolve you form all your sins. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen." So saying, he made the sign of the cross over Chris, who mirrored the gesture across his chest with a trio of claws.<br />
<br />
Together, both men looked up and met each other's eyes. "Go in peace, Chris. It is not your responsibility to tell others who and what you are. But you should always be honest about it, for it is something given to you by our Lord."<br />
<br />
"Thank you, Father. I will."<br />
<br />
Father Todd extended his hand, and the rat gingerly took it and shook it. His body shook with relief as if casting off ragged garments. He rose to his feet, heart beating through his chest, and though he felt the scars of his run and smelt the stain of his shame, he knew something greater ? he'd been forgiven by God.<br />
<br />
Together, the two of them went to the door. Paul leaned against the hood of his car with arms crossed. He glanced at his watch as they came out. "Only a half hour? You're a lightweight, Chris."<br />
<br />
For some reason, that made the rat laugh. An uncertain and faltering laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.<br />
<br />
The priest gave Paul a firm look. "A badger, eh, Paul?"<br />
<br />
"Yes, Father," Paul replied. "I'm a badger now."<br />
<br />
"I expect to see you on Saturday for Confession then," Father Todd grinned mischievously.<br />
<br />
Paul grunted but then laughed. "Yeah, I guess I better. Good Night, Father. I've got to get Chris home now."<br />
<br />
Chris thanked the priest one last time, which Father Todd patiently accepted before reminding him that he had to get home to a wife who was doubtlessly worried. He needed no further convincing. As Paul started them on the road back to Blacksburg, Chris said his three Our Fathers, meditating always on the blessings that forgiveness brings.<br />
<br />
After, he spoke a little more with Paul, but now that their errand was done, neither found much they could say. Paul idly described his family and how he might go about telling his wife, and when they should reveal it to their children. Chris listened and watched the dark streets, festooned with trees and rocky fields on either sides, with looming hills blocking sight of the horizon stars. From the porches of the few homes they passed leered now shadowed jack-o-lantern grins. All was still and quiet.<br />
<br />
Until they reached Blacksburg. The hour was late, nearly four in the morning, but there was always somebody up and about in that college town. But what traffic they saw was light and gratefully sober. Chris felt his heart tighten in anxiety as they rounded University City Blvd, took the right up Falcun, and then pulled into the Chasewood Downs parking lot. The lights were on inside his apartment.<br />
<br />
Paul stopped the car and looked to him. "Do you want me to come in with you and help explain things to your wife?"<br />
<br />
"No. But could you come back tomorrow to help with that?"<br />
<br />
"Sure." Paul gripped him on the shoulder and grinned toothily. "Good luck, kid. You'll be okay. And do something about that ear. At least put some antiseptic on it."<br />
<br />
"I will." Chris held out his paw and the two shook. "Thank you for the ride, and for taking me to Father Todd. I needed that."<br />
<br />
Paul's eyes narrowed. "Honestly, Chris, I'm just doing my job. But I'm glad I could help. Now go to your wife. I'll see you tomorrow."<br />
<br />
Chris climbed out of the cop car. The air was cool and the sky black. The bright lights outside the complex made him wince. Through the window he could see Leslie sitting with her hands folded in prayer.<br />
<br />
The entire drive back he thought he'd hesitate when he got home. He tried working out how he would face her again, what he would say, what he would do, but all of that fled from him like leaves blown by mountain winds. He rushed to the door and fumbled in his pocket until he realized he'd left his keys in the car. He beat on it once, and the door sprang inward. He fell into Leslie's waiting arms.<br />
<br />
He couldn't see her face with his own pressed against her chest. Her arms held him tight as her quavering voice sobbed in relief. He wrapped his arms about her back and hugged tight, tears of misery mixed with joy. "Oh Chris! I was so worried about you!"<br />
<br />
"Oh, Leslie," he said, voice catching his throat with a sob. "Oh Leslie! There's so much... so much I need to tell you." Together the two of them, tears in their eyes, settled down on the couch, hand in paw, heads pressed close together. "Just so much I need to tell you, my love."<br />
<br />
And he did. And she listened. And believed. And still loved him.<br />
<br />
{{separator|k}}<br />
<br />
{{DEFAULTSORT:Confession Building}}<br />
[[Category:Story]]<br />
[[Category:Anthropomorphic]]<br />
[[Category:Paradise]]<br />
[[Category:MatthiasRat]]</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Bryan&diff=13296User talk:Bryan2011-01-10T08:08:33Z<p>Bryan: /* Defaultsort */ Another result of the crash. We'll get it fixed back up.</p>
<hr />
<div>==Searching==<br />
<br />
After the chat we had about the limitations of the internal search system of MediaWiki I took a look at wikimedia for search extensions. "Lucene Search" seemed to be the best bet, but after fighting to get the backend for it built and installed I learned it wasn't any better than the built-in system. (In truth, its worse. No ability to select additional namespaces to search in, requires manual dumping of the database and importing into the backend for indexing, etc...) All the code is there to support it, though. However I've shut down the search daemon and disabled the extension. I'm going to go back to poking at the MediaWiki internals to see if I can change the default search to include the User namespace. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:22, 21 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:When Wikipedia's under extreme load it shuts down the internal search engine to conserve resources and instead present a wrapper for a Google search limited to the wikipedia.org server, perhaps you could use something like that? Wouldn't work until Google started spidering us, which I don't know if they've done yet, but with MediaWiki's search as poor as it is it may be an improvement. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 02:42, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::There are several extensions on MetaWiki for Google searches. As far as I can tell from the [http://www.keil-draco.com/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=shifti stats page] Google has started the indexing process. (look down under the "bots" section). I'll get to work doing the reorg so Category:Author points to author homepages and Category:Stories By Author is the stories themselves. (It's better if we stay ahead of the curve, no?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:13, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::Sure, though staying behind the curve also has its advantages (we'll know more about what the organization of Shifti actually looks like :). I'd advise lowercase titles for pages and categories where possible, BTW, it makes them more natural to link to. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:18, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::Now you tell me. I've already gone and finished the reorg. How about I put together a few templates to somewhat automate the categorization and linking process? [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:39, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::::If you like, though I don't really see the point of turning <nowiki>[[Category:Author]]</nowiki> into <nowiki>{{Category author}}</nowiki> and such. I'll convert over the category to lower case, I'm used to doing that sort of thing over on Wikipedia. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:49, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::I was thinking more along the lines of <nowiki>{{AuthorPage}}</nowiki> adding <nowiki>[[Category:(Author Name)]]</nowiki> to the <nowiki>{{Title}}</nowiki> template. No need to go crazy with stuff like that. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:04, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::::::<s>A potential gotcha you might run into: If you put <nowiki>{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> on a template, it resolves as the ''template's'' page name. So every author page could wind up categorized in [[:Category:AuthorPage]]. You'd probably need to take the category name as a parameter, or ask that every user substitute the template rather than transclude it (if you use "<nowiki>{{subst:template name}}</nowiki>" instead of just "<nowiki>{{template name}}</nowiki>" the text of the template page is inserted directly into the article the moment you click "save").</s> Huh. I see now that you already use this in [[Template:Title]] and it works the other way. I'm going to have to double-check my Wikipedia experience on this one. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:28, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::: I'm also not a fan of categories in templates because it makes it impossible to use the template elsewhere (such as on a help page describing its usage) without incorrectly categorizing the other pages it appears in. I really think we're not a big enough wiki yet to be worrying much about this, I'm capable of cleaning everything up manually. It only took me two minutes to switch everything over from Stories By Author to stories by author. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:21, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::::Not a problem. But look at the hoops I had to jump through for the <nowiki>{{part}}</nowiki> template, which refused to resolve inside the table on the help page. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:31, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Searching and redirects==<br />
<br />
I think we might be able to sidestep the whole "search upgrade" thing by adding redirects - put on at [[Companion (Bob Stein)]], have it redirect to [[User:Posti/Companion]] and it should work, no? [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Yup. Wikipedia uses redirects of common misspellings in the same manner. No need for the parenthetical (Bob Stein) unless there's some other page already called "Companion", though. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:06, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Actually, I guess the parenthetical might be useful for people who are searching for "Bob Stein". The category would be a more useful place to find that but I guess people might not know to look there initially. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:47, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:: That was my thought on it. It would allow for a search for Bob Stein to turn it up. Though you are correct, the category page would be the better spot. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:29, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Dragons of Histh organization==<br />
<br />
About the "Dragons of Histh" stuff... I'm not to comfortable with "Book the One", "Book the Two" and such being main namespace entries. I'm asking before I do anything, but I'd feel better if they were moved to, say, "Dragons of Histh: Book the One" or "Book the One (Dragons of Histh)". As well, does this "Kinglake Film Partnership" actually exist or is it just some fluff name that 'Loathesome Dragon' created to make the setting seem more important/famous than it really is? (And if it is just a fluff name then I think it should be moved to User:Loathesomedragon/Kinglake_Film_Partnership. If it isn't it seems like rampant advertisement and I will delete it with that being the reason.) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:03, 5 August 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:I was thinking of moving those stories myself, actually. The names seemed overly generic and could be confusing. But as for the Kinglake thing, I don't see any reason not to leave it be; it's not likely that anyone's going to name a story that and it's not going to be in any story categories, so nobody will see it unless they're actively searching for it. So there's no clutter. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 00:30, 5 August 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== New Templates ==<br />
<br />
I've noticed that you've been adding some new templates lately. However, the [[Help:Templates]] page still needs updating with the howtos and examples. Or are they still in the rough? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:38, 2 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Not really, I just haven't got to updating it yet (and the external image template is covered in the image help page, which IMO is a more approriate place for it). I'll update tonight after I've done more work on ''Against Type'', my creativity is tied up at the moment. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:50, 2 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Against Type ==<br />
<br />
Your ISP is blocking my emails again. I can't send you the current file. It's almost done, too. :P --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 22:39, 7 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Blacklists ==<br />
<br />
In addition to the Captcha there are now two blacklists, one for certain username patterns and one for certain URL's.<br />
Username Blacklist can be found at [http://shifti.org/MediaWiki:usernameblacklist MediaWiki:usernameblacklist] and the URL blacklist is at [http://shifti.org/MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist] -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:00, 12 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
I've gone and slapped the spam blacklist code around a bit because it irritated the crap out of me earlier. Won't be irritating me anymore, even though it's still installed and functional. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:53, 8 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
Can you disable the ''captcha'' for me, please? Its a pain to recognize very jabbered letters, I have to post one story many times consuming a traffic. Strange, it requests identify eben for a page without any links.[[User:Inry|Inry]] 11:39, 10 February 2009 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Code Update ==<br />
<br />
You asked for it, you got it. A list of random pages is available via &lt;randompages/&gt; &ndash; it currently understands "style" and "class" as standard HTML parameters and can take a "count" parameter, which determines the length of the list generated. It is currently completely undecorated, so I think I'll set it up so it you can do &lt;randompages&gt;title text&lt;/randompages&gt;<br />
<br />
I also fixed up Special:Random to search NS_MAIN and NS_USER by default while not interfering with the operation of Special:Random/&lt;namespace&gt;<br />
&mdash;[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:40, 20 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
'''Update''' &mdash; added the title bar stuff. Two new paramters to go with it, "titlestyle" and "titleclass" &ndash; these control the look of the displayed title text. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:00, 21 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
More news. I've added the requested "Total Number Of Articles" bit to the categories page. Unfortunately it only covers articles and not subcategories. Doing subcategories is going to take another chunk of patching. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:57, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Unfortunately it's borked at this point and combining sub-categories and articles in one lump. I'm going to disable it for now and go back to the poking. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:00, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::And I've fixed it. Problem is that this would never fly for MediaWiki - it's making a massive database query and iterating over the results to count the articles. On Wikipedia, for example, this would require getting millions of results and iterating over them - quite intensive. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:35, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== другие языки / International ==<br />
<br />
How to correctly add to the Shifti pages on Russian? I have some translation of your stories and some my own stories.<br />
[[User:217.21.43.222|217.21.43.222]] 04:00, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Neat! Shifti runs on MediaWiki software, which is fully Unicode-compliant. It should be possible to just copy and paste Cyrillic text straight into the edit window and save it as-is, and you should be able to use Cyrillic in page titles and user names and such as well. Give it a try and let me know if any specific problems crop up.<br />
<br />
:Also, I'd be happy to see Russian translations of my stories posted here. It's something I'd never have imagined would ever happen :) Just make sure you ask other authors for permission before posting translations of any of theirs, though - copyright remains with the original authors and if they don't want translations posted they get the final say on that. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 04:13, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
::Same here. BD's stories are excellent and if they have been translated into another language, it'd be nice to see them here so his international fans can read them.<br />
<br />
::As a side note, it's wonderful that the non-english-speaking furs and TF fans have found Shifti and are interested in participating. This is the kind of thing I was hoping for when I decided to host the site. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 04:24, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
== Alex Warlorn said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
I just want to say, I'm sorry that my comment offended you. That was not my intention. I have been a fan of your writing for YEARS. <br />
<br />
--Alex Warlorn 00:35, 25 December 2007 (EST)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Which comment? I don't recall being offended by any comments on Shifti, so perhaps something's being misinterpreted, or perhaps my memory is faulty. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:25, 25 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Forum? ==<br />
<br />
Hey there, I've been contemplating this since a conversation I had with bard a while back about the number of comments posted to storys on shifti and I've been wondering if maybe there are some people that just arent familiar with or crazy about the commenting method of a wiki.<br />
<br />
I've also been pondering a kind of central place where people can post or discuss whatever they want about stuff on shifti or about transformation in general, basically a forum like Proboards linked to from the main page.<br />
<br />
Just wondering what you and shadow wolf think about this. [[User:Devin]]<br />
<br />
:Well, I consider TSA-Talk to be the sorta-semi-official "forum" for Shifti. This site originally grew out of the need to replace the TSA with a new archive that would be more flexible and easier to keep updated, so inheriting the associated fora seems reasonable to me. Better to use existing places with existing populations than to fragment the userbase unnecessarily, IMO. But if other fora are created I'd have no problem with listing them here too. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 12:59, 26 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
<br />
== Admin help please ==<br />
<br />
Bryan, I should have read the manual first, but I didn't. I should have moved story "Mermaid" to "Paying attention to detail 1" and "Mermaid Too" to "Paying attention to detail 2" and "Paying attention to detail" to "Paying attention to detail 3" and the irony is not lost on me, but I created new pages with those names and then realised there is no 'delete' function. Now I've created new pages I can't move to them, I think an admin needs to sort out the mess. Apologies in advance - sw13644.<br />
<br />
:No problem. Just to make sure I follow your request correctly, are you're wanting me to delete the pages [[Mermaid]], [[Mermaid Too]] and [[Paying attention to detail]]? Or do you want the revision histories of those pages to be merged into the new pages' ones instead? For future reference you can request page deletions by adding the string "<nowiki>{{request deletion}}</nowiki>" to the page. Alternately, if you're concerned that people might have linked to the old pages and will now get lost looking for your story sections, you can redirect the old pages by replacing the contents with "<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[new page name]]</nowiki>". [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 18:40, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
----<br />
<br />
Could You please check if my story The Right of Dreamers is listed properly in search categories and is accessible for anyone who might want to read it. I submitted the story two months ago and there is no single comment on it yet, neither good nor bad one :(. I’m not waiting for many comments for my other two stories as they are written in Russian language and therefore are unreadable for most shifti users, but The Right of Dreamers I wrote in English for it to be readable on shifti. I don’t want to think that my story wasn’t interpreting enough to leave a comment for at least a few people of those who should see it in Dragons category since it is there. Therefore I assume there might be some technical problems I don’t understand myself. <br />
[[User:GreyDragon|GreyDragon]] 04:49, 17 November 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Three-fourths ==<br />
<br />
Thanks!<br />
<br />
I didn't know about watching pages, so I wasn't aware of the comment, I'll be amending my watchlist presently. The story was a request from Soty, and I was familiar with his work, but not the one you linked, thanks for that too. Feel free to have a go at editing the story. I'll go take a look at it as well when I have the time.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 01:00, 16 February 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
I have tightened the story up a bit and caught a few typos. Let me know if you think it still needs work.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 02:10, 18 February 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Will do. Sorry I haven't got to giving any help myself yet, weekend's been pretty hectic for me. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 02:48, 18 February 2008 (EST)<br />
== U-V said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
Wow! My goodness, I'm touched and honoured (re: unequal share) That I could help inspire a story like that! It's very in keeping with the spirit of the little scenario I had slightly built up in mind. :)<br />
<br />
--U-V 09:30, 27 March 2008 (EDT)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Thanks. I wrote it without referencing the image, just my memory of it, so the setting wound up slightly different - I take it the image was meant to be set on a ship. Oh well, a minor thing. It also wasn't the mass TF implied by the bit of text you included in the image description, but it didn't rule out anything like that happening subsequently. I've got other writing commitments right now so I can't extend it, but maybe later. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 11:45, 27 March 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==General==<br />
Hello again, Bryan. I have just finished creating my homepage on Shifti. I hope that the stories’ list I had just created will be interesting for other Shifti users. The list has only 3 stories at the moment but I hope that there will be more with time either with my own search efforts or thanks to help of more experienced TF readers and writers (including You, sir).<br />
As for my own TF stories, they are in Russian language. Will it make sense posting them on my Shifti homepage anyway?<br />
--[[User:GreyDragon|GreyDragon]] 14:07, 21 August 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Sure! There was a fellow a while back who was doing Russian translations of existing stories (see [[#другие языки / International]] earlier on this page), I was keen to host a bunch of those here. If you like you could create a category for Russian-language stuff, if more comes along it'd be neat to have a directory of it. Shifti supports unicode, so you can use Cyrillic characters both within the page text and in page titles (eg, [[Русский язык]]). I'm not a Russian speaker myself, unfortunately, so I won't be able to help much with the editing and such. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:22, 21 August 2008 (EDT)<br />
== bobby said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
great site thanks see u<br />
<br />
--bobby 17:13, 23 September 2008 (EDT)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Um, thanks. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:34, 23 September 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Oops... ==<br />
<br />
One of these days I'll remember to double-check that I'm actually giving the greeting on the right page... I keep forgetting that the "new user" entries on Special:RecentChanges doesn't have a 'Talk' link. And I guess I should also keep from editing when distracted :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 06:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:No problem, everything's easily fixable. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 07:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Spam/Vandalism ==<br />
<br />
Viqsi has said that [[Web comics]] comes up as the #2 result on [http://www.google.com Google] in a search for Shifti. That might be the reason that it seems to be getting hit more often than other pages.<br />
<br />
Besides that, though, it is looking like Shifti might be pulling in some spammers/vandals who hit a page once or twice to test if the site is being patrolled. There are a lot of Wiki's that have been massively vandalized and the vandals might have been following that pattern.<br />
<br />
Beyond that... I had thought about protecting [[Web comics]] but decided not to because I was unsure if it could be blocked against just anon-edits. Good to see that it can. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Yup, semi-protection blocks both anonymous edits and edits by accounts that are relatively young - I believe the default is four days. That prevents throwaway accounts from being easily used to circumvent it. Good to know why [[web comics]] was picked as the target; that means it's unlikely that the vandal will just start picking other pages at random. Not that there are a heck of a lot of publically-editable pages, since most authors seem to prefer the subpage route. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 05:25, 18 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Defaultsort ==<br />
<br />
It seems that the Default Sort Template doesn't work anymore. In Category Pages, my stories appear in User:Forestier/... [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 14:32, 6 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I made a mistake. The story are correctly ''sorted'' ; but I remember that they used to appeared under their real title, not under their page name. [[User:Forestier|Forestier]] 14:49, 6 January 2011 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Yeah, this was previously done by a custom tweak done to Shifti's code that was lost in the crash. It's been noticed and we'll have it fixed back up soon. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 08:08, 10 January 2011 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Alex_Warlorn&diff=13159User talk:Alex Warlorn2009-09-04T00:07:39Z<p>Bryan: Have you checked archive.org? They might have a copy we can externally-link to.</p>
<hr />
<div>Welcome aboard. You may have noticed we're fixing a few things. We'll make sure your story posts are neat and tidy as you learn how the wiki works. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 17:01, 20 May 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
Normally I don't edit user pages without explicit permission, but since yours didn't exist yet I hope you didn't mind me moving the text from your category to [[User:Alex Warlorn]]. That page is your "home" page on Shifti where you can put descriptive stuff like that. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 17:46, 20 May 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
<br />
I actually only joined because those two stories of mine got rejected for reasons I felt were both absurd, and other reasons that weren't explained to me until -after- the door was closed. And the profile owner the story is on has a grudge with me over me getting him to remove a line from a chapter of his that completely destroyed the character development of a character he hates, I wrote a chapter where said character evolved as a person, and his one line reverted her back to a delusional obsessive compulsive. So I had to basically use harsh methods to get him to remove the line, and he's never forgiven me it seems. So I felt I had to post them somewhere. 21 May 2008 [[User:Alex Warlorn]]<br />
<br />
== Copyright Concerns ==<br />
<br />
The people who run Shifti do not have the money to face a copyright suit and your recent uploads of numerous Xanadu stories that you could not find the authors of is worrying. I do know that 'Liquid Courage' was written by Ed Beccerra (I hope I got his name spelled correctly) but beyond that I am in the dark as much as anyone. When it comes to copyrights we are very particular and if any complaints arrive the stories will be pulled without any hesitation. In the future please be even more careful about things like copyright. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:14, 22 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
" 'Liquid Courage' was written by Ed Beccerra" just going by the by-line that included in the story. -Warlorn, August 22 09<br />
<br />
:Would it be possible for you to contact the original authors for permission to post these here? If they're up on the net elsewhere, perhaps consider using external links instead of posting the content here if you can't get permission. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:03, 3 September 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I posted these stories here BECAUSE the websites they were on no longer exist! They were deleted by a hacker who left a comic book character showing the finger. And I contacted what authors I could and indeed got their permission. -- Warlorn Sept 3 2009<br />
<br />
:Well, that's a good start. Which ones were you able to contact? Also, where's the hacked site? Perhaps we can contact the site admin and get it fixed. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:11, 3 September 2009 (UTC)<br />
:: It sounds like what you're describing is the literary equivalent of "abandonware" software -- a work that is covered by copyright, but where the copyright owner can no longer be found, and where the work is no longer in publication (and thus cannot easily be obtained in a strictly legal way). If you look around the net, you'll find a number of abandonware sites. And if you look at them, you'll find that they tend to share a number of common characteristics: they tend to be kept separate from sites that carry more conventional types of copyrighted works; they tend to be very careful to explain what they do, and to describe how they determine that the software is really "abandoned"; they have a very clear mechanism through which someone who claims to be a copyright holder can object; and it is not uncommon that they run into legal problems anyway. Personally, I think that preserving abandoned works like this is a great thing to do. If you were to set up a site to preserve abandoned fiction of this sort, and take the risk involved in doing so, I would cheer you on. But it really needs to be separate from a more conventional site like Shifti -- think about how bad it would be if a legal problem forced all of Shifti to be taken down. [[User:Phaedrus|Phaedrus]] 16:56, 3 September 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::In this case it is rather easy to prove "abandonment" because the content in question was never offered anywhere except the net. If the canonical location is no longer available - for any reason other than the creator removing the site - then it is believable that the work has been "abandoned". Alex says that he has contacted most of the authors and has not provided any reason to not believe said claim. So in lieu of such proof that the authors did not grant permission for their works to be posted on Shifti, they can remain. However... As I've said before, the moment a copyright claim comes in, we shall respond. (In light of a recent court case I'm tempted to remove these works immediately without proof of a grant of rights... Because just knowing that the works are copyright and there might be a problem is, apparently, enough to vacate the 'Safe Harbor' provisions.) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 17:26, 3 September 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::Yeah, I'm not in a tearing great rush to take these down either. However, it's probably best to try to address these issues as promptly and thoroughly as possible anyway - hence my request for a list of the ones that are already "confirmed authorized", so we can stop worrying about those ones already and just focus on the remainder. As ShadowWolf points out, the current state of copyright law technically puts us in a bit of a precarious situation with the rest, but in practical terms I really don't expect any serious trouble while we sort this out.<br />
:::As an alternative, should the need arise - how about checking the [http://www.archive.org/index.php Internet Archive] to see if they've got a copy of the stories in question? Even with the original site down, we could still provide an external link to the archived copy there. Archive.org seems like a good substitute for a full-blown "abandonware fiction" site if one doesn't currently exist. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 00:07, 4 September 2009 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Alex_Warlorn&diff=13155User talk:Alex Warlorn2009-09-03T14:11:24Z<p>Bryan: /* Copyright Concerns */</p>
<hr />
<div>Welcome aboard. You may have noticed we're fixing a few things. We'll make sure your story posts are neat and tidy as you learn how the wiki works. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 17:01, 20 May 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
Normally I don't edit user pages without explicit permission, but since yours didn't exist yet I hope you didn't mind me moving the text from your category to [[User:Alex Warlorn]]. That page is your "home" page on Shifti where you can put descriptive stuff like that. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 17:46, 20 May 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
<br />
I actually only joined because those two stories of mine got rejected for reasons I felt were both absurd, and other reasons that weren't explained to me until -after- the door was closed. And the profile owner the story is on has a grudge with me over me getting him to remove a line from a chapter of his that completely destroyed the character development of a character he hates, I wrote a chapter where said character evolved as a person, and his one line reverted her back to a delusional obsessive compulsive. So I had to basically use harsh methods to get him to remove the line, and he's never forgiven me it seems. So I felt I had to post them somewhere. 21 May 2008 [[User:Alex Warlorn]]<br />
<br />
== Copyright Concerns ==<br />
<br />
The people who run Shifti do not have the money to face a copyright suit and your recent uploads of numerous Xanadu stories that you could not find the authors of is worrying. I do know that 'Liquid Courage' was written by Ed Beccerra (I hope I got his name spelled correctly) but beyond that I am in the dark as much as anyone. When it comes to copyrights we are very particular and if any complaints arrive the stories will be pulled without any hesitation. In the future please be even more careful about things like copyright. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:14, 22 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
" 'Liquid Courage' was written by Ed Beccerra" just going by the by-line that included in the story. -Warlorn, August 22 09<br />
<br />
:Would it be possible for you to contact the original authors for permission to post these here? If they're up on the net elsewhere, perhaps consider using external links instead of posting the content here if you can't get permission. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:03, 3 September 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I posted these stories here BECAUSE the websites they were on no longer exist! They were deleted by a hacker who left a comic book character showing the finger. And I contacted what authors I could and indeed got their permission. -- Warlorn Sept 3 2009<br />
<br />
:Well, that's a good start. Which ones were you able to contact? Also, where's the hacked site? Perhaps we can contact the site admin and get it fixed. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:11, 3 September 2009 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Talk:A_Flash_of_Lightning&diff=13148Talk:A Flash of Lightning2009-09-03T06:06:54Z<p>Bryan: Yeah, this one fell off my creative cliff, alas.</p>
<hr />
<div>I guess this is the start of the "Sound of Thunder" idea we've been discussing. Good start. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 23:40, 29 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Yup. Main character turned out to be a monkey-cat instead, though. Will add lizardy goodness soon I think. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 00:41, 30 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
<br />
Are you still looking for help/suggestions on this? It's listed on the [[Editor's corner]] page, but it looks like you've put things on hold for now. [[User:Phaedrus|Phaedrus]] 05:28, 2 September 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Yeah, this one sort of fell off a cliff for me - no really solid direction for continuing, just a vague notion that the main characters need to find each other eventually. And I'd forgotten about Editor's Corner entirely, that seems to be a failed experiment too. :) If this incomplete story has sparked an idea for a continuation, feel free to pick it up and run with it. I'm not sure that I'll have anything more to contribute, though. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:06, 3 September 2009 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Alex_Warlorn&diff=13146User talk:Alex Warlorn2009-09-03T06:03:05Z<p>Bryan: /* Copyright Concerns */ Using external links might be a suitable alternative.</p>
<hr />
<div>Welcome aboard. You may have noticed we're fixing a few things. We'll make sure your story posts are neat and tidy as you learn how the wiki works. --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 17:01, 20 May 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
Normally I don't edit user pages without explicit permission, but since yours didn't exist yet I hope you didn't mind me moving the text from your category to [[User:Alex Warlorn]]. That page is your "home" page on Shifti where you can put descriptive stuff like that. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 17:46, 20 May 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
<br />
I actually only joined because those two stories of mine got rejected for reasons I felt were both absurd, and other reasons that weren't explained to me until -after- the door was closed. And the profile owner the story is on has a grudge with me over me getting him to remove a line from a chapter of his that completely destroyed the character development of a character he hates, I wrote a chapter where said character evolved as a person, and his one line reverted her back to a delusional obsessive compulsive. So I had to basically use harsh methods to get him to remove the line, and he's never forgiven me it seems. So I felt I had to post them somewhere. 21 May 2008 [[User:Alex Warlorn]]<br />
<br />
== Copyright Concerns ==<br />
<br />
The people who run Shifti do not have the money to face a copyright suit and your recent uploads of numerous Xanadu stories that you could not find the authors of is worrying. I do know that 'Liquid Courage' was written by Ed Beccerra (I hope I got his name spelled correctly) but beyond that I am in the dark as much as anyone. When it comes to copyrights we are very particular and if any complaints arrive the stories will be pulled without any hesitation. In the future please be even more careful about things like copyright. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:14, 22 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
" 'Liquid Courage' was written by Ed Beccerra" just going by the by-line that included in the story. -Warlorn, August 22 09<br />
<br />
:Would it be possible for you to contact the original authors for permission to post these here? If they're up on the net elsewhere, perhaps consider using external links instead of posting the content here if you can't get permission. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:03, 3 September 2009 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Talk:Ami%27s_Song&diff=13145Talk:Ami's Song2009-09-03T05:58:47Z<p>Bryan: Sadly, quite right.</p>
<hr />
<div>I hate to be That Guy, but since the original poster said "I don't own this, wish I did", shouldn't it be removed per [[Shifti:Copyrights]]? [[User:Phaedrus|Phaedrus]] 05:30, 3 September 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Indeed, quite right. Alex, do you know the original author and/or can you contact him for permission? If not, this will quite sadly have to be removed (it's an old favorite of mine too so I don't say that with any eagerness, sigh). If it's up somewhere else on the 'net feel free to put external links to it anywhere on Shifti that they might reasonably go, links are fine. But we can't copy without permission. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 05:58, 3 September 2009 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Shifti:Sandbox&diff=12797Shifti:Sandbox2009-08-06T04:32:02Z<p>Bryan: MediaWiki only allows a subset of HTML for security reasons.</p>
<hr />
<div>{{Sandbox header}}<!-- Please leave this header template in place. It generates the short welcome message you saw before clicking "edit". Feel free to make whatever edits you like below it, and don't worry if you inadvertently delete it anyway; someone will be along eventually to put it back. --><br />
<br />
The following are a few examples of basic formatting for new users to experiment with. Go ahead and wipe them out if they're in the way.<br />
<br />
==Heading==<br />
<br />
* ''italics''<br />
* '''bold'''<br />
* '''''italics and bold'''''<br />
* [[link]]<br />
** [[link|displayed link text]]<br />
** [http://www.example.org external link]<br />
<br />
: Indentation<br />
:: Double indentation<br />
<br />
Why doesn't this work?<br />
<br />
<iframe src="http://www.google.com/talk/service/badge/Show?tk=z01q6amlqv09021rho6c0psisih2am4vd1faqncjiedir5dhbgrge3arr1dr6i1jcck95o9l39g16f5cgqc2cqe5uqtoel2mdun06lddiqkboguu26fm75v8tn7d7cij7a0jnh04j8lvvegr80bqu9sbcdc8gg86054a97s83d90aij0lrs03qvpeq0n8pcvhmc&amp;w=200&amp;h=60" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" width="200" height="60"></iframe><br />
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="https://clients4.google.com/voice/embed/webCallButton" width="230" height="85"><param name="movie" value="https://clients4.google.com/voice/embed/webCallButton" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="FlashVars" value="id=1eb366604560c3fd0129db4c732aebcba3475eed&style=0" /></object><br />
<br />
:It probably doesn't work because MediaWiki only permits a limited subset of HTML tags to be used, for security reasons. A list is available here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html_in_wikitext#Permitted_HTML]. the IFRAME and OBJECT tags aren't included among them. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 04:32, 6 August 2009 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Template:Green&diff=12758Template:Green2009-08-04T09:48:55Z<p>Bryan: closing the noinclude tag</p>
<hr />
<div><span style="color: #006400;">{{{1|}}}</span><noinclude><br />
<br />
Makes text green.<br />
<br />
<nowiki>{{Green|words to make green}}</nowiki><br />
<br />
{{Green|test}}<br />
</noinclude></div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:ShadowWolf&diff=12531User talk:ShadowWolf2009-07-20T06:01:24Z<p>Bryan: /* Redirects */ Or the one that made me miss that I wasn't logged in. :)</p>
<hr />
<div>how do you delete a page that has no content? I've had to modify a title of a story page and removed it's content, but the title still appears on my author page.<br />
:Please sign with the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> - but generally you have to remove all content and then kill any links to it you've made. That'll "orphan" it and then an admin can go and do the actual delete. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:43, 3 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
:Page deleted, Oberon. (Recent Edits is a wonderful tool!) - in the future, though, please sign all entries on a talk page using the <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> specifier - it's what gives the nifty user link and timestamp. (and in requests for deletion, could you please include the page name ?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:48, 3 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Sitenotice text==<br />
<br />
Where did you put the text for the donation sitenotice? Normally it'd be at [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]], but I'm assuming since it's not there you've inserted it into the source code somewhere. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 20:46, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
Never mind, I found it - MonoBook.php, right? I should move it out of that and into sitenotice, it won't appear for anyone who's using a different skin otherwise. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:01, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Didn't know about the Sitenotice bit, so yeah, I did a bit of hacking and dumped it straight into the code from the primary skin. I actually had thought about dumping it directly into the Skin driver, but decided not to. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:08, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:There, fixed up. I pulled the code from the source and added a version to the [[Mediawiki:Sitenotice]]. "A Version" because I had to use the same custom tag I created for [[Shifti:Site support]] to do the button. (PayPal kinda requires it be a form with a crapload of hidden fields) &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:16, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
::Heh. I was just working on that myself. Good to know I was on the right track. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:20, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
::This is odd. It appears that integral.org is in the spam protection filter, I can't save [[Main Page]] now. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:37, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:::Not in any of the spamfilters I installed. It's not in the central MediaWiki list or in the site-specific list. I'll look deeper. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:00, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
:::[[Special:Version]] doesn't have any spam-blockers besides [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist SpamBlacklist] and none of its lists have "integral" anywhere in them. So I don't know what the problem could be... Everything I've installed is hacked to not bug people that are in the Admin group about '''''ANYTHING''''', so I'm at a loss as to what the problem could be. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:04, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
::::Well, whatever the problem was, it seems to have passed. I should have saved a copy of the error message but I suppose it's moot if it doesn't come back. BTW, I hope you don't mind the little tweaks I made to the sitenotice banner. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 23:38, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:::::Nah, it works. And I've reverted the changes I made, since it wasn't the cause of Felix's problem. He saw the Captcha, but apparently either 1) Didn't know what it was or 2) Couldn't read it. So I've just gone and given the "Author" permissions group a Captcha exception. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:49, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
What do you think of the notion of putting a progress bar in the donation request, as demonstrated in [[Shifti:Sandbox]]? Wikipedia does it that way, and it might give people more incentive to donate in order to get rid of the banner. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:23, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
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:That's pretty nifty. Maybe have the bar in red, though :) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 01:30, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
::There, added a color parameter. Red's a bit garish, though, maybe something a bit more pastel? [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:43, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:I hate that banner!! It offends me, I must destroy it by donating! *snicker* :)<br />
<br />
--[[User:Devin|Devin]] 23:59, 4 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Broken Discussion pages and Captcha errors ==<br />
<br />
Not sure what's going on. When I click on the Discussion link on a page that doesn't have a discussion, it takes me direct to that page's edit frame (NOT the Discussion page), and I seem to have full edit rights on it. Something seems to have gone wonky along the way.<br />
<br />
Pre-existing Talk pages seem to work fine (as evidenced here), though when I was trying to post it gave me an "out of captcha" error (When I tried to post it on the Current Events page that is.).<br />
<br />
Oh and for the TF Types, you may want to add "Plant" (for TF's that are not animal based, but not quite Dryad based for the mythical category), and "Inanimate" (and maybe even Robotization or however you want to classify it). <br />
<br />
I'm not quite sure if inanimate would be good enough as a catchall for a "living material' type TF (think X-Men's Colossus, and Ice Man, who turn into living steel and living ice respectively), or if we might want another type for that as well.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 13:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I'm working on this, but apparently the 'title' parameter isn't being properly set. When it's a red-link PHP is getting a URL that looks like 'index.php?title=XXX?title=XXX_talk&action=edit&redlink=1' and it's seeing that first 'title=' and not the second one. I'm trying to figure out how to solve that.<br />
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 15:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Turned out to have several causes, all related to various problems with a code upgrade and several other problems that cropped up. Since I have yet to see this problem re-occur, I'm going to call it 'fixed'. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:38, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Story submission captcha? ==<br />
<br />
I just went to post a new story and after I hit the 'save page' button, it took me to an edit screen that had:<br />
Your edit includes new external links. To help protect against automated spam, please enter the words that appear below in the box<br />
at the top. I looked and looked again and couldn't find any external links in my story. In fact there was no markup at all once I removed all the tab-indention on the paragraphs.<br />
<br />
I'm all for automated systems blocking automated systems, but this sort of struck me as odd. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:01, 20 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:The regular expressions might have triggered on a non-link URL. But I cannot be certain, as this is the first report I've seen of it. (and sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Also, as long as I'm bugging you guys, any chance of getting an inverted color scheme skin? Dark text on a light background seems to be more difficult for me to read for any length of time than light text on a dark background. -- [[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 08:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:The new 'shiftimin' skin took a while to get fully functional, but you could, likely, use "user CSS" to get the same result. Give me a bit of time and I'll see if I can get a "map" together for the CSS behind the "monobook" skin so you can override it easily. Alternatively you could poke at the CSS yourself, but...<br />
:There is a page giving a minimal explanation of CSS at [[Help:Custom css]] and we have a page open to user additions about CSS hacks at [[Custom CSS Hacks]]. I've been planning to do up a page explaining the various classes of the primary 'MonoBook' skin for a while. Guess it's about time to actually get to work on that. (and again, sorry for the lag in the response) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Question ==<br />
...from a nubcake guy. Just asking, is a story allowed to be set in a video game universe ([http://halo.wikia.com/The_Halo_Universe Halo]: w00t!)? 'Cos I wanna write a TF story set in there, but I'm not too sure if this is allowed on Shifti. Hope it's yes, 'cos it's already in progress. Thanks! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]<br />
:We have no restrictions on fan-fiction, but if we receive a take-down notice it will be removed. (I run the server and would be the one facing the legal actions - so I will not fight a DMCA notice unless I am certain it is invalid) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::Great! Well, I'm pretty sure Bungie, the copyright holder, encourages fan fic, so I think it's ok...Note "I think". I'm not sure how they'd react to TF fan fic. Thanks for confirming (and once again for the fave I can't tell you how much that means to me)! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]]<br />
:::Most companies are open to fan-fic, because it helps with the popularity of their product. And you got the "fav" because I saw real promise in the original and in your willingness to take constructive criticism. Every other author in my "new authors to watch" section has shown the same promise, though they haven't all been available to take the constructive criticism that could be offered. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:24, 28 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Hi there! This is the noob writer, Drake, again, here for a fresh wave of bother-the-administrator. Sorry to bother you, but here I am. Bothering you. Anyway, I was hoping you could help critique my new story, [[User:WolfyDrake95/Finding Himself|Finding Himself]], which I uploaded a couple of days ago. I got comments from Guvnor of Space and Concerned Reader, but I thought I'd ask for your opinion since you were the only one who seemed actually care about my first, and admittedly not-so-good, story. I do hope you can drop a critique and a comment to help me improve.<br />
<br />
The above was an email that I sent to you but received no reply for. And also, about the fanfic that this section was initially about: can I upload screenshots? Halo features a Theatre mode in which one can take screenshots of players or NPCs, so I think I could use screenshots to illustrate characters, etc. Anyway, thanks for reading so far! :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]], 23:43, 27 June 2009<br />
<br />
== RSS Feed? ==<br />
<br />
Not sure if there's much you can do about this or if I'm using it wrong or expecting the wrong things. But I've signed up for the RSS feed on Shifti, and I'm not only getting the new changes soon after they occur, but I also get a bunch of changes that were already reported to me, often multiple times.<br />
--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 11:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:That's the way the RSS feed works. It works similar to how the 'Recent Changes' page works by default. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:: True but it seems to be picking up changes it has already reported that haven't had any actual new changes done. For example, when Bryan was adding/updating the separator graphics, the RSS feed repeated it twice for each change he did, and that seems to happen a lot.<br />
::--[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::I'd look closer - there were, in most cases, two files uploaded/updated - and yes, there is a bug somewhere in the system that is double-logging some events. I haven't been able to track that one down, though. It's about time to take a look and see if there is a new version of the code available, however, so I can see if an upgrade fixes the problem. (Most notably it is the new-user stuff that gets double-logged, but I have no idea how this is impacting the RSS feed) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:37, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::: I meant that as a general example thouhg; not that in particular.<br />
<br />
:::: Another example, I just got an RSS update now. I've been watching the feeds and had no recent updates from Shifti since this morning whence I'd gotten Jon's latest update and a few hours. The update I JUST got says there are 8 new changes, including Jon's After Hours addition again, Wolfy's New world addition and 4 entries for the RSS Feed discussion. (Despite this being the 4th entry now). All of the entries have a time of 4:03PM ADT. --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 19:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::::: Odd... And I'm not really that knowledgeable about the MediaWiki code-base (yes, I can hack on it, but...) I have a feeling that the problem lies in how the system works. I think that it might be compiling a list of all changes within a certain period and sending it out. And if it isn't keeping a proper time-stamp on the items, that is a violation of the RSS spec, IIRC - since it is then pushing out duplicates without a way for readers to determine that with any degree of certainty. I'll sign up to the RSS feed myself and see if I can track the problem. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Okay - I've got my client signed up to the RSS feed for the [[Special:RecentChanges|Recent changes]] page. Let's see what this edit does... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Now I've seen the problem and it sucks. That one previous edit led to a major flood of '31 new edits' in my feed reader. Looks like I was right - it isn't properly date-tagging the entries. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Looked at the raw XML of the feed and it doesn't look like there is an error in it - though there might be. Let me go take a look at the RSS specs to see if I can figure out what is missing and/or not being set properly. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Ooooh... I think I just found the cause. Apparently the feed is claiming to be RSS 2.0 but it isn't putting a stable &lt;guid/&gt; tag on any of the entries. This tag is the method by which most RSS readers decide whether an item is new or not. The feed here does not have them. This is probably an oversight on the part of the person that wrote the code, but I cannot say. I'm going to go check Wikipedia to see if they have it there - because if they don't then the only reason that feeds of Wikipedia aren't getting overwhelmed is because of the volume of edits there. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 22:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Changed it to include the link-url as a guid - it should be genuinely unique to a specific page revision. Lets see if this fixes the problem... -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Okay - I give up (for now) - because that last edit showed up with a massive number of others and the added <guid> tag doesn't seem to have helped any. Unless, of course, those &lt;guid/&gt; tags need a bit to start showing up... I really don't know. Might be time for me to look into cleaning out the cache table of the database. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:20, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: And that looks like it did do it after all. Bug report being marked <strong style="color: red;">CLOSED/RESOLVED</strong>. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Bug not completely resolved. On restart my RSS client has shown a singularly massive flood of repeated messages. This does not make sense to me, as it was not doing this during the testing yesterday - and I am willing to bet it will not show such action today. However it might be that the text I am using to generate the data for the GUID tag is not as stable as I once thought - this bothers me and makes me think I might have to go much deeper into the code for changes. Perhaps as deep as altering the 'feed item' class so that it requires the actual ID of the revision so that said ID can be used for the GUID. --[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
::::: Sadly... It looks like utilizing the Date of the edit might be the only way to uniquely identify them - in combination with the page title, that is. However, I shall not be making those changes at this time. What I shall be doing is finding a way to interact with another developer so that I can be certain this will permanently and fully squash this bug. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: Not sure what's going on, but the problem seems to be cropping up again. I've gotten RSS feeds telling me of changes that I've already gotten before (and before and before)... --[[User:Jetfire|Jetfire]] 17:52, 12 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Has to do with how the URL's are generated. Since I'm using the URL as the GUID, it looks like there is a periodic shift in them. I have zero clue how to fix it, because I'd have to come up with something that is genuinely unique as an identifier, and I can't think of anything that would work there. (at least, nothing that is actually available to the feed generator) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 18:15, 12 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== ShiftiMin-related stuff ==<br />
<br />
I expect to be poking at the new theme with sharp sticks during the [[TSA-Bash]] anyways, but in the meantime I discovered (largely by happenstance) that if you're not logged in, there's no "log in / create account" link in ShiftiMin! I'd say that's a bug - unless we want to become a <em>really</em> exclusive club. ;)<br><br />
Looking pretty decent otherwise; we just need to figure out how to handle the menu organization. (Plus about eleventy billion other pet peeves with which I intend to drive you TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE. Mua ha ha.) --[[User:Viqsi|Viqsi]] 15:30, 9 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I thought I'd gotten that bug (GAH! Must be related to me changing the user-options bits to a drop-down from the long list it was)<br />
:Since Shiftimin does not work on versions of IE prior to 8 without a massive javascript hack it is not meant to be used as the primary skin for Shifti. This means that the 'missing login/create link' is a very low priority bug.<br />
:I am currently poking at ideas for another design that is as (or more) minimalistic but is also designed to take full advantage of modern browsers CSS3 support and HTML5. That redesign is not public yet, since it is currently little more than an image in the GIMP.<br />
:Oh, and I already am 'TOTALLY BATS**T INSANE' - I just hide it well. So driving me there is a very short trip... And... If you have any ideas at all for changes, just dump them here. I'll get on top of the ones that are fast/easy to implement immediately.<br />
:And if you have Fx3.5 available, look at Shifti using the Shiftimin skin. All kinds of nifty little hacks I've added that target it. (Okay, so they could probably target Safari/WebKit and Konqueror/KHTML as well... but I'm not going to try and support all the alternative browsers until they agree on the format for the CSS. And Opera '''STILL''' does not support even the 'border-radius' property or the 'box-shadow' or 'text-shadow' properties)<br />
:--[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:02, 9 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Redirects ==<br />
<br />
Just a heads-up, I noticed that [[PAW General TimeLine]] was linked to from [[Talk:Rebuilding]]. I didn't check all the redirects so there might be others. In general I think it's best not to delete redirects left behind by page moves, especially not when the redirect's name still accurately reflects the content it's redirecting to - even if you fix all the internal links there's still the possibility that other pages out on the web point there. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 06:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Robotech_Master/Tiffnapped&diff=12151User talk:Robotech Master/Tiffnapped2009-07-03T00:58:33Z<p>Bryan: maybe stick a faves list on your user page? :)</p>
<hr />
<div>Mmm...nice story here. It seems a valuable addition to the Paradise Universe, covering quite a number of topics that were only mentioned in the passing previously, like crimes directed towards Changed, also Changed in mordern-day media. It's interesting and compelling, the writing is great, the characters well portrayed. I really enjoyed this story: sure hope you're writing more! --[[User:WolfyDrake95|Drake]], 18:47, 2 July 2009 (+0800 GMT)<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #006400;">I never really got into the Paradise Universe, being distracted with reading everything from "The Bind Pig" left me introduced to it much to late, but it is a very well done story. If I had a faves list, this one would be on it. </span> --[[User:Concerned Reader|Concerned Reader]] 16:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Maybe stick a "Faves" header at the bottom of your user page and list it there? :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 00:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Bryan&diff=11778User talk:Bryan2009-06-18T05:25:01Z<p>Bryan: /* Spam/Vandalism */</p>
<hr />
<div>==Searching==<br />
<br />
After the chat we had about the limitations of the internal search system of MediaWiki I took a look at wikimedia for search extensions. "Lucene Search" seemed to be the best bet, but after fighting to get the backend for it built and installed I learned it wasn't any better than the built-in system. (In truth, its worse. No ability to select additional namespaces to search in, requires manual dumping of the database and importing into the backend for indexing, etc...) All the code is there to support it, though. However I've shut down the search daemon and disabled the extension. I'm going to go back to poking at the MediaWiki internals to see if I can change the default search to include the User namespace. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:22, 21 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:When Wikipedia's under extreme load it shuts down the internal search engine to conserve resources and instead present a wrapper for a Google search limited to the wikipedia.org server, perhaps you could use something like that? Wouldn't work until Google started spidering us, which I don't know if they've done yet, but with MediaWiki's search as poor as it is it may be an improvement. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 02:42, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::There are several extensions on MetaWiki for Google searches. As far as I can tell from the [http://www.keil-draco.com/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=shifti stats page] Google has started the indexing process. (look down under the "bots" section). I'll get to work doing the reorg so Category:Author points to author homepages and Category:Stories By Author is the stories themselves. (It's better if we stay ahead of the curve, no?) [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:13, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::Sure, though staying behind the curve also has its advantages (we'll know more about what the organization of Shifti actually looks like :). I'd advise lowercase titles for pages and categories where possible, BTW, it makes them more natural to link to. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:18, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::Now you tell me. I've already gone and finished the reorg. How about I put together a few templates to somewhat automate the categorization and linking process? [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 13:39, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::::If you like, though I don't really see the point of turning <nowiki>[[Category:Author]]</nowiki> into <nowiki>{{Category author}}</nowiki> and such. I'll convert over the category to lower case, I'm used to doing that sort of thing over on Wikipedia. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 13:49, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::I was thinking more along the lines of <nowiki>{{AuthorPage}}</nowiki> adding <nowiki>[[Category:(Author Name)]]</nowiki> to the <nowiki>{{Title}}</nowiki> template. No need to go crazy with stuff like that. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:04, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:::::::<s>A potential gotcha you might run into: If you put <nowiki>{{PAGENAME}}</nowiki> on a template, it resolves as the ''template's'' page name. So every author page could wind up categorized in [[:Category:AuthorPage]]. You'd probably need to take the category name as a parameter, or ask that every user substitute the template rather than transclude it (if you use "<nowiki>{{subst:template name}}</nowiki>" instead of just "<nowiki>{{template name}}</nowiki>" the text of the template page is inserted directly into the article the moment you click "save").</s> Huh. I see now that you already use this in [[Template:Title]] and it works the other way. I'm going to have to double-check my Wikipedia experience on this one. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:28, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::: I'm also not a fan of categories in templates because it makes it impossible to use the template elsewhere (such as on a help page describing its usage) without incorrectly categorizing the other pages it appears in. I really think we're not a big enough wiki yet to be worrying much about this, I'm capable of cleaning everything up manually. It only took me two minutes to switch everything over from Stories By Author to stories by author. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:21, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::::::::Not a problem. But look at the hoops I had to jump through for the <nowiki>{{part}}</nowiki> template, which refused to resolve inside the table on the help page. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:31, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Searching and redirects==<br />
<br />
I think we might be able to sidestep the whole "search upgrade" thing by adding redirects - put on at [[Companion (Bob Stein)]], have it redirect to [[User:Posti/Companion]] and it should work, no? [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 14:48, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Yup. Wikipedia uses redirects of common misspellings in the same manner. No need for the parenthetical (Bob Stein) unless there's some other page already called "Companion", though. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:06, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Actually, I guess the parenthetical might be useful for people who are searching for "Bob Stein". The category would be a more useful place to find that but I guess people might not know to look there initially. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 15:47, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:: That was my thought on it. It would allow for a search for Bob Stein to turn it up. Though you are correct, the category page would be the better spot. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 16:29, 22 July 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==Dragons of Histh organization==<br />
<br />
About the "Dragons of Histh" stuff... I'm not to comfortable with "Book the One", "Book the Two" and such being main namespace entries. I'm asking before I do anything, but I'd feel better if they were moved to, say, "Dragons of Histh: Book the One" or "Book the One (Dragons of Histh)". As well, does this "Kinglake Film Partnership" actually exist or is it just some fluff name that 'Loathesome Dragon' created to make the setting seem more important/famous than it really is? (And if it is just a fluff name then I think it should be moved to User:Loathesomedragon/Kinglake_Film_Partnership. If it isn't it seems like rampant advertisement and I will delete it with that being the reason.) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:03, 5 August 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:I was thinking of moving those stories myself, actually. The names seemed overly generic and could be confusing. But as for the Kinglake thing, I don't see any reason not to leave it be; it's not likely that anyone's going to name a story that and it's not going to be in any story categories, so nobody will see it unless they're actively searching for it. So there's no clutter. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 00:30, 5 August 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== New Templates ==<br />
<br />
I've noticed that you've been adding some new templates lately. However, the [[Help:Templates]] page still needs updating with the howtos and examples. Or are they still in the rough? --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 19:38, 2 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Not really, I just haven't got to updating it yet (and the external image template is covered in the image help page, which IMO is a more approriate place for it). I'll update tonight after I've done more work on ''Against Type'', my creativity is tied up at the moment. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:50, 2 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Against Type ==<br />
<br />
Your ISP is blocking my emails again. I can't send you the current file. It's almost done, too. :P --[[User:JonBuck|Buck]] 22:39, 7 September 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Blacklists ==<br />
<br />
In addition to the Captcha there are now two blacklists, one for certain username patterns and one for certain URL's.<br />
Username Blacklist can be found at [http://shifti.org/MediaWiki:usernameblacklist MediaWiki:usernameblacklist] and the URL blacklist is at [http://shifti.org/MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist] -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 21:00, 12 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
I've gone and slapped the spam blacklist code around a bit because it irritated the crap out of me earlier. Won't be irritating me anymore, even though it's still installed and functional. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:53, 8 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
Can you disable the ''captcha'' for me, please? Its a pain to recognize very jabbered letters, I have to post one story many times consuming a traffic. Strange, it requests identify eben for a page without any links.[[User:Inry|Inry]] 11:39, 10 February 2009 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Code Update ==<br />
<br />
You asked for it, you got it. A list of random pages is available via &lt;randompages/&gt; &ndash; it currently understands "style" and "class" as standard HTML parameters and can take a "count" parameter, which determines the length of the list generated. It is currently completely undecorated, so I think I'll set it up so it you can do &lt;randompages&gt;title text&lt;/randompages&gt;<br />
<br />
I also fixed up Special:Random to search NS_MAIN and NS_USER by default while not interfering with the operation of Special:Random/&lt;namespace&gt;<br />
&mdash;[[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:40, 20 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
'''Update''' &mdash; added the title bar stuff. Two new paramters to go with it, "titlestyle" and "titleclass" &ndash; these control the look of the displayed title text. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 00:00, 21 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
More news. I've added the requested "Total Number Of Articles" bit to the categories page. Unfortunately it only covers articles and not subcategories. Doing subcategories is going to take another chunk of patching. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 19:57, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Unfortunately it's borked at this point and combining sub-categories and articles in one lump. I'm going to disable it for now and go back to the poking. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:00, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
::And I've fixed it. Problem is that this would never fly for MediaWiki - it's making a massive database query and iterating over the results to count the articles. On Wikipedia, for example, this would require getting millions of results and iterating over them - quite intensive. &mdash; [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:35, 23 October 2007 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== другие языки / International ==<br />
<br />
How to correctly add to the Shifti pages on Russian? I have some translation of your stories and some my own stories.<br />
[[User:217.21.43.222|217.21.43.222]] 04:00, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Neat! Shifti runs on MediaWiki software, which is fully Unicode-compliant. It should be possible to just copy and paste Cyrillic text straight into the edit window and save it as-is, and you should be able to use Cyrillic in page titles and user names and such as well. Give it a try and let me know if any specific problems crop up.<br />
<br />
:Also, I'd be happy to see Russian translations of my stories posted here. It's something I'd never have imagined would ever happen :) Just make sure you ask other authors for permission before posting translations of any of theirs, though - copyright remains with the original authors and if they don't want translations posted they get the final say on that. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 04:13, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
::Same here. BD's stories are excellent and if they have been translated into another language, it'd be nice to see them here so his international fans can read them.<br />
<br />
::As a side note, it's wonderful that the non-english-speaking furs and TF fans have found Shifti and are interested in participating. This is the kind of thing I was hoping for when I decided to host the site. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 04:24, 20 December 2007 (EST)<br />
== Alex Warlorn said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
I just want to say, I'm sorry that my comment offended you. That was not my intention. I have been a fan of your writing for YEARS. <br />
<br />
--Alex Warlorn 00:35, 25 December 2007 (EST)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Which comment? I don't recall being offended by any comments on Shifti, so perhaps something's being misinterpreted, or perhaps my memory is faulty. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 01:25, 25 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Forum? ==<br />
<br />
Hey there, I've been contemplating this since a conversation I had with bard a while back about the number of comments posted to storys on shifti and I've been wondering if maybe there are some people that just arent familiar with or crazy about the commenting method of a wiki.<br />
<br />
I've also been pondering a kind of central place where people can post or discuss whatever they want about stuff on shifti or about transformation in general, basically a forum like Proboards linked to from the main page.<br />
<br />
Just wondering what you and shadow wolf think about this. [[User:Devin]]<br />
<br />
:Well, I consider TSA-Talk to be the sorta-semi-official "forum" for Shifti. This site originally grew out of the need to replace the TSA with a new archive that would be more flexible and easier to keep updated, so inheriting the associated fora seems reasonable to me. Better to use existing places with existing populations than to fragment the userbase unnecessarily, IMO. But if other fora are created I'd have no problem with listing them here too. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 12:59, 26 December 2007 (EST)<br />
<br />
<br />
== Admin help please ==<br />
<br />
Bryan, I should have read the manual first, but I didn't. I should have moved story "Mermaid" to "Paying attention to detail 1" and "Mermaid Too" to "Paying attention to detail 2" and "Paying attention to detail" to "Paying attention to detail 3" and the irony is not lost on me, but I created new pages with those names and then realised there is no 'delete' function. Now I've created new pages I can't move to them, I think an admin needs to sort out the mess. Apologies in advance - sw13644.<br />
<br />
:No problem. Just to make sure I follow your request correctly, are you're wanting me to delete the pages [[Mermaid]], [[Mermaid Too]] and [[Paying attention to detail]]? Or do you want the revision histories of those pages to be merged into the new pages' ones instead? For future reference you can request page deletions by adding the string "<nowiki>{{request deletion}}</nowiki>" to the page. Alternately, if you're concerned that people might have linked to the old pages and will now get lost looking for your story sections, you can redirect the old pages by replacing the contents with "<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[new page name]]</nowiki>". [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 18:40, 3 January 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
----<br />
<br />
Could You please check if my story The Right of Dreamers is listed properly in search categories and is accessible for anyone who might want to read it. I submitted the story two months ago and there is no single comment on it yet, neither good nor bad one :(. I’m not waiting for many comments for my other two stories as they are written in Russian language and therefore are unreadable for most shifti users, but The Right of Dreamers I wrote in English for it to be readable on shifti. I don’t want to think that my story wasn’t interpreting enough to leave a comment for at least a few people of those who should see it in Dragons category since it is there. Therefore I assume there might be some technical problems I don’t understand myself. <br />
[[User:GreyDragon|GreyDragon]] 04:49, 17 November 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
== Three-fourths ==<br />
<br />
Thanks!<br />
<br />
I didn't know about watching pages, so I wasn't aware of the comment, I'll be amending my watchlist presently. The story was a request from Soty, and I was familiar with his work, but not the one you linked, thanks for that too. Feel free to have a go at editing the story. I'll go take a look at it as well when I have the time.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 01:00, 16 February 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
I have tightened the story up a bit and caught a few typos. Let me know if you think it still needs work.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Leasara|Leasara]] 02:10, 18 February 2008 (EST)<br />
<br />
:Will do. Sorry I haven't got to giving any help myself yet, weekend's been pretty hectic for me. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 02:48, 18 February 2008 (EST)<br />
== U-V said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
Wow! My goodness, I'm touched and honoured (re: unequal share) That I could help inspire a story like that! It's very in keeping with the spirit of the little scenario I had slightly built up in mind. :)<br />
<br />
--U-V 09:30, 27 March 2008 (EDT)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Thanks. I wrote it without referencing the image, just my memory of it, so the setting wound up slightly different - I take it the image was meant to be set on a ship. Oh well, a minor thing. It also wasn't the mass TF implied by the bit of text you included in the image description, but it didn't rule out anything like that happening subsequently. I've got other writing commitments right now so I can't extend it, but maybe later. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 11:45, 27 March 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
==General==<br />
Hello again, Bryan. I have just finished creating my homepage on Shifti. I hope that the stories’ list I had just created will be interesting for other Shifti users. The list has only 3 stories at the moment but I hope that there will be more with time either with my own search efforts or thanks to help of more experienced TF readers and writers (including You, sir).<br />
As for my own TF stories, they are in Russian language. Will it make sense posting them on my Shifti homepage anyway?<br />
--[[User:GreyDragon|GreyDragon]] 14:07, 21 August 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
:Sure! There was a fellow a while back who was doing Russian translations of existing stories (see [[#другие языки / International]] earlier on this page), I was keen to host a bunch of those here. If you like you could create a category for Russian-language stuff, if more comes along it'd be neat to have a directory of it. Shifti supports unicode, so you can use Cyrillic characters both within the page text and in page titles (eg, [[Русский язык]]). I'm not a Russian speaker myself, unfortunately, so I won't be able to help much with the editing and such. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 14:22, 21 August 2008 (EDT)<br />
== bobby said ... ==<br />
<br />
<div class='commentBlock'><br />
great site thanks see u<br />
<br />
--bobby 17:13, 23 September 2008 (EDT)<br />
</div><br />
<br />
:Um, thanks. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 19:34, 23 September 2008 (EDT)<br />
<br />
== Oops... ==<br />
<br />
One of these days I'll remember to double-check that I'm actually giving the greeting on the right page... I keep forgetting that the "new user" entries on Special:RecentChanges doesn't have a 'Talk' link. And I guess I should also keep from editing when distracted :) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 06:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:No problem, everything's easily fixable. :) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 07:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Spam/Vandalism ==<br />
<br />
Viqsi has said that [[Web comics]] comes up as the #2 result on [http://www.google.com Google] in a search for Shifti. That might be the reason that it seems to be getting hit more often than other pages.<br />
<br />
Besides that, though, it is looking like Shifti might be pulling in some spammers/vandals who hit a page once or twice to test if the site is being patrolled. There are a lot of Wiki's that have been massively vandalized and the vandals might have been following that pattern.<br />
<br />
Beyond that... I had thought about protecting [[Web comics]] but decided not to because I was unsure if it could be blocked against just anon-edits. Good to see that it can. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 02:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Yup, semi-protection blocks both anonymous edits and edits by accounts that are relatively young - I believe the default is four days. That prevents throwaway accounts from being easily used to circumvent it. Good to know why [[web comics]] was picked as the target; that means it's unlikely that the vandal will just start picking other pages at random. Not that there are a heck of a lot of publically-editable pages, since most authors seem to prefer the subpage route. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 05:25, 18 June 2009 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Web_comics&diff=11773Web comics2009-06-18T01:49:01Z<p>Bryan: Protected "Web comics": Excessive vandalism ([edit=autoconfirmed] (expires 01:49, 18 July 2009 (UTC)) [move=autoconfirmed] (expires 01:49, 18 July 2009 (UTC)))</p>
<hr />
<div>The web comics listed on this page all feature transformation themes, or have had plots in their runs with significant transformation content.<br />
<br />
== Transformation as main theme ==<br />
<br />
=== Abstract Gender ===<br />
<br />
http://www.abstractgender.com/ - by Aaron R. Stewart and Shawn Ullom<br />
<br />
Two young friends explore a "haunted house", and discover that although there are no real ghosts inside it ''does'' house a nest of mad science. They're both turned into girls and set loose.<br />
<br />
=== The Accidental Centaurs ===<br />
<br />
http://www.accidentalcentaurs.com - by John Lotshaw.<br />
<br />
Two people from our world are transported by an accident during a physics experiment to an alternate world where humans don't exist, becoming centaurs in the process. Other transformations occur as the story progresses. ''As of October 2008 this comic appears to have ended.''<br />
<br />
=== Alpha Luna ===<br />
<br />
http://alphaluna.keenspace.com/ - by Leonardo Vidal.<br />
<br />
The storyline of this webcomic is not yet clearly revealed, but it appears to feature a high school girl who unbeknownst to her is a werewolf.<br />
<br />
=== Black Tapestries ===<br />
<br />
http://blacktapestries.keenspace.com/ - by Jakkal.<br />
<br />
Lore, a drifter, is cursed with immortality and werefox lycanthropy by the ex-Order magic user Isaac. Contains both a good deal of transformation content and a good deal of violence.<br />
<br />
=== Boston and Shaun ===<br />
<br />
http://bostonandshaun.comicgenesis.com/archives.html - By Shaun Reveal (1999-2002 old archives)<br />
<br />
http://www.bostonandshaun.com/ - By Shaun Reveal (current page)<br />
<br />
Shaun has a dragon "soul mate" named Boston with whom he can merge. I know little about this comic so others will have to fill in the details, but apparently the comic's continuity underwent a major reboot after number 850 and the quality declined. This URL goes to an archive of the first 850 strips.<br />
<br />
=== The Changing Workplace ===<br />
<br />
http://www.taur.net/~ottercomics/tcw/ - By Oren Otter<br />
<br />
Oren's 'original' TSA webcomic, currently being rerun. Transformations of all sorts abound.<br />
<br />
=== Clan of the Cats ===<br />
<br />
http://clanofthecats.com/ - by Jamie Robertson, edited by Alex Byrne and Miranda Prince.<br />
<br />
A long-running story about a witch who is also a werepanther.<br />
<br />
=== Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures ===<br />
<br />
http://www.missmab.com/ - by Amber M. Panyko<br />
<br />
A popular furry webcomic. One of the races of the world - "Cubi" - are shapeshifters.<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Demon Eater ===<br />
<br />
http://www.demoneater.com/ - by Jilly Foo<br />
<br />
About demons that eat other demons to change form and become stronger. Main character starts out as a glob, then a lizard, bird then a human like form.<br />
<br />
=== Discordia ===<br />
<br />
http://www.discordiacomic.com/ By Arroyo and Fanning<br />
<br />
Drew Sinclair's life is changed forever when an angry ex-girlfriend accidentally unleashes Eris, the Greek goddess of discord, on the condition that Drew is her first target. ''Note: This comic has had very sporadic updates in 2007.''<br />
<br />
=== El Goonish Shive ===<br />
<br />
http://elgoonishshive.com/ - by Dan Shive.<br />
<br />
Tedd and Elliot are the main characters, though there's an extensive supporting cast. Tedd is a typical androgynous transformation-obsessed high school student whose father is a Man In Black with access to alien technology, including a "transformation gun" - quite convenient considering Tedd's personality. The TF content of this comic is heavy, but (usually) not gratuitous.<br />
<br />
=== Exiern ===<br />
<br />
http://www.exiern.com/index.php - by Drowemos<br />
<br />
A slightly tongue-in-cheek comic about an angry barbarian who rescues a princess from an evil wizard only to be transformed into an angry blond barbarian maiden. There are also fairly big hints that a relatively new character might be more than he seems. Appears to have a relatively sporadic update schedule.<br />
<br />
=== Last Days of Foxhound ===<br />
<br />
http://www.gigaville.com/listcomic.php - by Chris<br />
<br />
This is a fan comic that is a parody of Metal Gear and features Liquid Snake and his Foxhound group. One of them is a disguise artist that never reveals his true face. Transformation into different men and some of women and a wolf.<br />
<br />
=== Misfile ===<br />
<br />
http://www.misfile.com/ - by Chris Hazelton.<br />
<br />
A loser angel working in a dead-end job causes a mixup in the Heavenly Archives, misfiling the formerly-male high school student Ash under "female" and losing the most recent two years of Emily's life. The two have to deal with their changed situations until the angel can get back into Heaven to fix it, and keep it a secret so that the Heavenly Bureaucracy doesn't cover up the error by making it permanent.<br />
<br />
=== Narbonic ===<br />
<br />
http://narbonic.com/ - by Shaenon K. Garrity.<br />
<br />
Fresh out of university with a computing degree, Dave goes to work for the mad scientist Helen B. Narbon of Narbonic Labs. Storylines have included a couple of TG transformations, undeath, a brief cyborg transformation, a gerbil-to-werehuman, and in a series of Sunday specials a human-to-Venusian brain transplant. Narbonic concluded in 2007 and the entire archive is now available free at [http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic/toc.php webcomicsnation.com].<br />
<br />
===New World ===<br />
<br />
http://www.tfsnewworld.com/<br />
<br />
Sometimes sporadic in its updates, this comic features two parallel universes; one highly magical and one highly technological. The arch-wizard Nicoli, most powerful being in the magical universe, becomes bored and travels to the technological one. Adventures and transformations ensue in both realities, most prominently a TG foxmorph in the magical world.<br />
<br />
Scott Clements, the author and artist of New World has announced its permanent retirement as of early 2008. The www.tfsnewworld.com site is currently running Scott's next webcomic work entitled Spiderwebs in which Scott has promised there will be a nontrivial amount of transformation. The nature of such transformation has not yet been specified, and as of December 7th, 2008 there has not yet been a transformation in the Spiderwebs comic. Spiderwebs, however, is still very early in its infancy and is currently working to introduce the characters and setting. Transformations are likely to follow once this introductory period ends.<br />
<br />
=== The Office Bitch ===<br />
<br />
By Picklejuice<br />
<br />
http://picklejuice.comicgenesis.com<br />
<br />
Follow Toby on a bizarre journey through office life - if you were very slowly changing into a dog. Mature content.<br />
<br />
=== Paradigm Shift ===<br />
<br />
By Dirk Tiede - is currently in two parts with separate URLs, though likely will extend into more in the future.<br />
<br />
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/dirktiede/ps/series.php?view=archive&chapter=10435 - Part 1<br />
http://www.moderntales.com/comics/PS2.php - Part 2<br />
<br />
Appears to feature werewolves.<br />
<br />
=== Peter is the Wolf ===<br />
<br />
http://www.wlpcomics.com/adult/peter/index.html<br />
<br />
Lots of werewolves live secretly in our midst. Every once in a while, though, one of them screws up and accidentally converts a human into one of their own. This is the story of one such incident.<br />
<br />
=== Planet Closest to Heaven ===<br />
<br />
http://www.drunkduck.com/The_Planet_Closest_To_Heaven/ - By Jilly Foo<br />
<br />
Macho 19 year old man gets turned into a cat-dog by his partner for abusing his powers. Becomes the pet of a brother and sister with strange abilities.<br />
<br />
===Quest of the Therian Urn===<br />
<br />
http://www.taur.net/~ottercomics/qotu<br />
<br />
Bob was given a seemingly innocent jar which turned out to have magical powers. It transformed whatever was put inside. He didn't realize that it was stealing his humanity as well. Now he and his four friends, having been turned into animals, seek a way to destroy the urn and reclaim their identities.<br />
<br />
=== Room for One More ===<br />
<br />
http://www.taur.net/~ottercomics/rfom/ - By Oren Otter and Eala Dubh<br />
<br />
Fnaire Antbear, an anteater college student, resides in a huge mansion filled with bizarre characters and situations, and even an extradimensional world or two. On the surface a college-based furry comic, a large cast and many significant TF plotlines and characters run throughout.<br />
<br />
=== Sea of Insanity ===<br />
<br />
http://fractuslux.keenspace.com/<br />
<br />
Ancient creatures and deities of myth never really died out, they just went into hiding as the modern world forgot them. In this webcomic a young man named Finn becomes the roommate of a water nymph named Isle. A regular supporting character has been cursed by Bacchus to turn into a fish every 6 hours or so but so far this hasn't become central to the plot.<br />
<br />
=== Skin Deep===<br />
<br />
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/korybing/skindeep/series.php - by Kory Bingaman<br />
<br />
Michele is a new college student who, after finding a magical medallion, discovers to her surprise that her true form is actually that of a sphinx and that her new friends are also various mythological creatures cloaked in magical illusion.<br />
<br />
=== Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki ===<br />
<br />
http://www.sgvy.com/ - by Kittyhawk<br />
<br />
A young male anime fan is abruptly turned into a Valkyrie, a magical girl who must defend Earth against monsters from Norse mythology. Updates infrequently.<br />
<br />
=== Subject To Change ===<br />
<br />
http://subjecttochange.comicgenesis.com/ - by Picklejuice<br />
<br />
As the title implies, the subject is to change. Transformation of man to dogboy, and growth of boy to giant dogboy. Will feature other transformations in the future. In color. All ages content.<br />
<br />
=== Urgent Transformation Crisis===<br />
<br />
http://urgentcrisis.comicgenesis.com/ - by Jim Whaley<br />
<br />
Cashmere is the 18-year-old daughter of a wealthy family, and she goes to an exclusive school whose students are among the best and brightest. She gets roped into taking her younger brother Flint to the school science fair, where things go somewhat awry.<br />
<br />
=== The Werewif ===<br />
<br />
http://www.gwydhar.com/comics/werewif/index.shtml - by Michael Wakcher and Gwydhar Bratton<br />
<br />
A young man at a bar is bitten by a strange woman, who identifies herself as "the Werewif". After that, he discovers himself transforming into a woman when the moon is full. Each new issue is released at "that time of the month."<br />
<br />
=== Wickedpowered===<br />
<br />
http://www.wickedpowered.com/ - by Owen Gieni & Chris Crosby<br />
<br />
A fast-paced (almost to the point of disjointedness) sci-fi romp featuring three female time-travellers who come from the future to rescue Wiley, destined to become history's "manliest man", from assassination. Has so far featured both transgender and furry TFs.<br />
<br />
=== The Wotch ===<br />
<br />
http://thewotch.com/ - by Anne Onymous and Eric Robertson.<br />
<br />
''The Wotch'' follows the adventures of a high school girl who discovers that she is the "Wotch" - some form of high-powered sorceress with a portentious fate. This comic abounds with all manner of transformations, though TG is perhaps most common among them.<br />
<br />
=== The Wotch: Cheer! ===<br />
<br />
http://cheer.thewotch.com/ - by Tselsebar<br />
<br />
This webcomic is a "spin off" of The Wotch by a fan, following the four jocks who were TGed and became cheerleaders after Anne's "women's lib" side went on an unfettered rampage in the main comic. There haven't been any apparent TFs yet and the main characters aren't aware they used to be guys, but considering the universe it shares they seem inevitable. The art is quite well done.<br />
<br />
=== Zebra Girl ===<br />
<br />
http://zebragirl.keenspot.com/ - by Joe England.<br />
<br />
Sandra is turned into a demon by a magical accident. A later storyline also featured werewolves, introducing one as a regular character.<br />
<br />
== Transformation plotlines ==<br />
<br />
=== Absurd Notions ===<br />
<br />
http://www.absurdnotions.org/page50.html<br />
<br />
This is sort of a second-order storyline - the characters of Absurd Notions are playing a sword-and-sorcery roleplaying game, and in it one of their characters has just tampered with a magical artifact and turned herself into a squirrel. She remains a squirrel for the remainder of the adventure, with many implications explored.<br />
<br />
=== Bullfinch ===<br />
<br />
http://bullfinchcomic.com/2008/11/05/2008-11-05-bf/ <br />
<br />
A relatively new (mid-2008) modern-fantasy comic about an office populated by various fantasy characters from myth though modern fiction. In a short arc, K.C. Rankin is transformed into a squirrel for the weekend as punishment for calling his unicorn office-mate a "mutant horse". The comic is fairly new, but given the theme and setting, it seems future transformation is likely.<br />
<br />
=== Dandy & Company ===<br />
<br />
http://www.dandyandcompany.com/2007/01/22/ - By Derrick Fish<br />
<br />
A boy and his dog swap roles. In fact, every boy and dog in the world swap roles, though only Dandy and Bernard are aware of it.<br />
<br />
After going though the archives back to 2001, the comic actually has a number of other, smaller transformation themed plots scattered through the series. These include a couple of "fourth wall" fights with the cartoonist, a past Halloween arc where a human character became a werewolf (or rather, a heckhound), evil doppelgangers that invent a transformation device, and a demon character that can apparently change shape and grant twisted wishes.<br />
<br />
=== Gunnerkrigg Court ===<br />
<br />
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=230<br />
<br />
This chapter features a romantic interlude with a transformational twist.<br />
<br />
=== It's Walky! ===<br />
<br />
http://www.itswalky.com/d/20030825.html<br />
<br />
This chapter is nigh-incomprehensible without having read the rest of the comic. The Walkyverse isn't friendly to casual browsing. This particular chapter features the villains and two main characters [http://www.itswalky.com/d/20031116.html being genderswapped], [http://www.itswalky.com/d/20031117.html one] [http://www.itswalky.com/d/20031119.html of] [http://www.itswalky.com/d/20031120.html them] [http://www.itswalky.com/d/20031127.html that] rarity of rarities, female-to-male. It brings us the questions "What's it[being a guy] like?" "What's it[being a girl] like?" and the classic answers, [http://www.itswalky.com/d/20031125.html "Like keeping a little dog around that barks at everything"] and [http://www.itswalky.com/d/20031126.html "Like all the voices in my head are gone 'cept for one. ...And that voice wants matching shoes."] At the end of the chapter, reality's integrity starts to collapse, [http://www.itswalky.com/d/20031219.html making] [http://www.itswalky.com/d/20031220.html things] very [http://www.itswalky.com/d/20031221.html weird].<br />
<br />
=== Order of the Stick ===<br />
<br />
http://giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=175<br />
<br />
Order of the Stick is a webcomic poking fun at the foibles of the [wiki:WikiPedia:D20_System d20 game system] used by Dungeons and Dragons. In this storyline our intrepid adventurers encounter an Annis (or possibly a Green Hag) who hexes the gender-ambiguous elf mage Varsuvius with a ''baleful polymorph'' spell, turning him into a lizard. He remains a lizard for a while.<br />
<br />
http://giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=9<br />
<br />
Ah, the famous [wiki:WikiPedia:Dungeons_&_Dragons Dungeons & Dragons] magic item, the [wiki:WikiPedia:Girdle_of_Femininity/Masculinity Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity]. Order of the Stick is a webcomic that features a band of adventurers who know full well that they're operating by the d20 ruleset of 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons, and in many cases exploit the foibles thereof. In this strip they find such a girdle after a battle with ogres, and one of the characters secretly takes it along with him. It finally came into play over two hundred strips later:<br />
<br />
http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=233<br />
<br />
=== PvP ===<br />
<br />
http://www.pvponline.com/2005/11/18/fri-nov-18/<br />
<br />
Last Halloween a bout of lycanthropy made the rounds of the characters. Turns out one of them liked it.<br />
<br />
=== Sacred Pie ===<br />
<br />
A long-running story about three friends who have been sucked into an interstellar sci-fi adventure battling the forces of Satan himself.<br />
<br />
http://sacredpie.com/moon1.html - Chapter 19, "By the Light of the Moon"<br />
<br />
In this chapter, the trio are trapped on a prison world run by a "vampire" named Var. Having won Var's respect in a previous chapter, he now assigns them to collect a bounty on a Lupine - a species with shapeshifting abilities similar to werewolves. One of our heros is bitten and gains the ability himself.<br />
<br />
=== Sluggy Freelance ===<br />
<br />
Another long-running and complex story, starring Torg, Riff, Zoe and Gwynn.<br />
<br />
http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=000421<br />
<br />
Gwynn has been secretly learning magic and in a previous storyline attempted to use a love potion on Riff. Things went embarassingly awry and Torg found out. Now Gwynn wants to keep him from revealing this information, so she casts a spell that will "make an ass of him" whenever he tries to say anything important. This causes trouble as Torg takes Zoe out for a date and then encounters Oasis, an insane ninja assassin who is in love with him and will kill anyone she thinks might be a rival for Torg's affections.<br />
<br />
http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=001225<br />
<br />
It's Christmas and Torg gives Zoe a necklace he picked up in an Egyptian pyramid he was trapped in with Riff some time back. Naturally, the necklace is cursed - Zoe immediately turns into a camel.<br />
<br />
== Tantalizing hints ==<br />
<br />
=== Two Kinds ===<br />
<br />
http://twokinds.keenspace.com/d/20040308.html<br />
<br />
This webcomic appears to have a setting similar to that of Black Tapestries, a fantasy world in which there are humans and several races of furries who are at war with each other. The humans have powerful magic users called "Templars". There isn't any sustained TF content yet, but two days' strips (the first day is linked above) contained a TF in a flashback scene that holds the potential to have implications later.<br />
<br />
== Lost webcomics ==<br />
<br />
These webcomics have been taken offline or have unknown URLs.<br />
<br />
=== The Sinner Dragon ===<br />
<br />
<nowiki>http://www.sinnerdragon.com/</nowiki> (last known) by Gilda Laura Rimessi. Livejournal: http://sinner-dragon.livejournal.com/<br />
<br />
A sword-and-sorcery fantasy with both werewolf and weredragon main characters.<br />
<br />
== Others ==<br />
<br />
=== Slow Wave ===<br />
<br />
http://www.slowwave.com/index.php<br />
<br />
A weekly comic that serves as a sort of collective dream diary in the form of comic strips, the same kind as found in a daily newspaper. It's a [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DadaComics Dada Comic] without any overarching plot; these are the strips that involve TF in one way or another.<br />
<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=04-04-03 2004-04-03]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=04-10-23 2004-10-23]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=04-10-30 2004-10-30]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=05-02-19 2005-02-19]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=05-03-12 2005-03-12]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=05-04-16 2005-04-16]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=05-04-30 2005-04-30]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=05-06-25 2005-06-25]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=05-07-23 2005-07-23]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=05-11-05 2005-11-05]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=05-11-26 2005-11-26]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=06-01-14 2006-01-14]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=06-02-04 2006-02-04]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=06-03-25 2006-03-25]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=06-10-07 2006-10-07]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=07-04-07 2007-04-07]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=07-04-14 2007-04-14]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=07-12-22 2007-12-22]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=08-02-02 2008-02-02]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=08-03-01 2008-03-01]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=08-03-08 2008-03-08]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=08-03-29 2008-03-29]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=08-04-05 2008-04-05]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=08-09-13 2008-09-13]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=08-10-11 2008-10-11]<br />
[http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=09-02-07 2009-02-07]<br />
<br />
== Weesh ==<br />
About a rabbit which could grant wishes. In one episode, a girl wishes all to be furry, then to be kitty. One-shot TF.<br />
[http://weeshcomic.com/archive.php?strip=2009-03-13 2009-03-13]</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Shifti:Protected_redlinks&diff=11709Shifti:Protected redlinks2009-06-14T05:39:32Z<p>Bryan: whoops, wrong default namespace for transclusions</p>
<hr />
<div>This page contains a list of links to nonexistent pages that are protected against being created. This is done using the "cascading" page protection feature, which prevents edits to any pages that are transcluded into a page using it. This applies even to pages that don't exist yet.<br />
<br />
The purpose of this page is mainly for spam control, to prevent repeated recreation of pages with inappropriate names for use as spam repositories. Only include a page here if it's been recreated at least once, there's no need to include other deleted pages here.<br />
<br />
== Protected titles ==<br />
<br />
*{{Help talk:Posting stories/}}<br />
*{{User talk:Sheep/}}<br />
*{{:Wiki}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Administrative categories]]</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=Shifti:Protected_redlinks&diff=11708Shifti:Protected redlinks2009-06-14T05:38:54Z<p>Bryan: blocking recreation of Wiki</p>
<hr />
<div>This page contains a list of links to nonexistent pages that are protected against being created. This is done using the "cascading" page protection feature, which prevents edits to any pages that are transcluded into a page using it. This applies even to pages that don't exist yet.<br />
<br />
The purpose of this page is mainly for spam control, to prevent repeated recreation of pages with inappropriate names for use as spam repositories. Only include a page here if it's been recreated at least once, there's no need to include other deleted pages here.<br />
<br />
== Protected titles ==<br />
<br />
*{{Help talk:Posting stories/}}<br />
*{{User talk:Sheep/}}<br />
*{{Wiki}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Administrative categories]]</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Throat_Wolf&diff=11536User talk:Throat Wolf2009-06-09T07:22:02Z<p>Bryan: suggestions on some approaches to MediaWiki conversion</p>
<hr />
<div>Welcome to Shifti! Always glad to see new contributors. This is a bit of a standard boilerplate introduction that will hopefully help get you started on some of the basics you might not have noticed. Firstly, there's a main index of help pages at [[Help:Contents]] - a link is provided in the default sidebar titled "Help." It's a good idea to browse through the table of contents there so you'll know what information is available should you need it.<br />
<br />
If you're here to post stories, there's a guide specifically for the basics of that over at [[Help:Posting stories]]. General editing assistance is at [[Help:Editing]], and information about how to use talk pages (like this one) is at [[Help:Talk pages]]. If any of the formatting seems esoteric at first, don't worry - wikis are collaborative and other editors and administrators will come around to help tidy up anything that's left in a messy state, if you want. The more complex details can be learned later as you go.<br />
<br />
You can set up a personal homepage for yourself at your root user page, which you can find by clicking on your user name at the top of the page. Use your user page however you see fit; most authors generally list their stories there, along with a bit of biographical information about themselves and perhaps some links to other websites. See [[Help:User pages]].<br />
<br />
If you have any questions, you can either click the edit link for this page and write it here or you can follow the link in my signature to my own home page and leave it in the talk page over there. You can find a list of Shifti's administrators at [[Shifti:Administrators]]. Once you've got your bearings, feel free to delete this welcome message from your user talk page. [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:51, 8 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Boilerplate: pasted. A hearty welcome to you, Throat Wolf. And may I say, it is a pleasure to see another name I recognize from the TSA showing up here. -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 20:51, 8 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::Thanks. I'm glad to be here. Now I'm wondering whether some of my vore stories would be welcome over here. As my user page states, I kinda got burned when I tried to put some of them on the old TSA after they got my hopes up by posting the first one (without even having my authorization, I might add). —[[User:Throat Wolf|Throat Wolf]] 21:32, 8 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::We have a non-discrimination policy, though it has never actually been formally written down. There are some rules about what the various "favorites lists" will include, but even the most strict of them (mine, IIRC) are more aimed at blocking just "pure wank material" than any form of other story. Shifti is in the business of providing a place - for free - for people to post TF themed fiction. Some of us also provide help for new and established authors in the form of editorial assistance and commentary. I, personally, try to do it all - I run a favorites list (pretty badly out-of-date), greet new users, work on new features, answer questions and provide both editorial help and comments. And the TSA was defunct for a very long time before it was declared a "completed anthology" - that period of non-growth was one of the factors that led to Shiftis creation. (See [[Shifti:History]] for a very biased and one-sided view of the "birth" of Shifti) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 23:45, 8 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::::Ah, thanks. Do you know where I might find some good resources for converting Word-format docs to wiki markup? I tried exporting them from OpenOffice, but it removed all the paragraph breaks. :P —[[User:Throat Wolf|Throat Wolf]] 01:01, 9 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::::Sadly, no. I actually have this habit of writing in Wiki format to begin with. Maybe because I've done so much work on Shifti and everything I've written lately has been for Shifti. However... After a quick trip to Google I found that Wikipedia proves to be a good source of tools like what you're looking for - see [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Tools/Editing Tools#Wikisyntax conversion utilities|this page on Wikipedia]] (gotta love inter-wiki links!) -- [[User:ShadowWolf|ShadowWolf]] 01:23, 9 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::::: What I used to do a long time back when I had a few Word docs that needed wikification was to export them as HTML and then use a text editor to strip out or convert the HTML tags to wiki markup. It depends on the quality of the HTML export process, though - some exporters make such colossally messy HTML that it's hardly worth the trouble. If possible, perhaps you could use search and replace on your Word document to insert some unique and easily recognizable string everywhere there's a paragraph break? That way you could do an export to MediaWiki format, and then do a quick search and replace to re-add the paragraph breaks (I use Notepad++, it has a search and replace function that's able to handle line breaks. Or you could just use an HTML &lt;P&gt; tag, that works too) [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 07:22, 9 June 2009 (UTC)</div>Bryanhttps://shifti.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Robotech_Master&diff=11457User talk:Robotech Master2009-06-07T21:02:05Z<p>Bryan: Welcome to Shifti!</p>
<hr />
<div>Welcome to Shifti! Always glad to see new contributors. This is a bit of a standard boilerplate introduction that will hopefully help get you started on some of the basics you might not have noticed. Firstly, there's a main index of help pages at [[Help:Contents]] - a link is provided in the default sidebar titled "Help." It's a good idea to browse through the table of contents there so you'll know what information is available should you need it.<br />
<br />
If you're here to post stories, there's a guide specifically for the basics of that over at [[Help:Posting stories]]. General editing assistance is at [[Help:Editing]], and information about how to use talk pages (like this one) is at [[Help:Talk pages]]. If any of the formatting seems esoteric at first, don't worry - wikis are collaborative and other editors and administrators will come around to help tidy up anything that's left in a messy state, if you want. The more complex details can be learned later as you go.<br />
<br />
You can set up a personal homepage for yourself at your root user page, which you can find by clicking on your user name at the top of the page. Use your user page however you see fit; most authors generally list their stories there, along with a bit of biographical information about themselves and perhaps some links to other websites. See [[Help:User pages]].<br />
<br />
If you have any questions, you can either click the edit link for this page and write it here or you can follow the link in my signature to my own home page and leave it in the talk page over there. You can find a list of Shifti's administrators at [[Shifti:Administrators]]. Once you've got your bearings, feel free to delete this welcome message from your user talk page. [[User:Bryan|Bryan]] 21:02, 7 June 2009 (UTC)</div>Bryan