Well, this isn’t so much a plea for help as a quest for…Flavor.

See, I’m trying to come up with a tabletop roleplaying campaign for myself and my friends to enjoy. I already have most of the plot worked out, and I have a few of the characters…But that’s the problem. I only have a few. Specifically, two.

 Now, I don’t need every character and their grandmother, obviously, but I need enough of a cast for my coming campaign to give the world life, depth, and variety.

So what I’m asking is this: If you have a favorite character from a book/video game (or movie, but I try to stay away from these due to under-characterization in comparison to the other two options), please post their name and where they’re from, or a small description in the comments on this post. I don’t need much, just…Say 10 characters? Of course I’ll still be trying to create more as time goes on, but I have a tendency to find one or two characters I really like, and focus on those two, forgetting all about everything else I have to create for the campaign.

So…Yeah. Any help is appreciated <3 

Well, I’m back to tumblr through a strange set of circumstances. Pfft, who am I kidding, no one reads this. But still, for posterity and to slowly leach my own encroaching madness, I’ll pretend I have a captive audience.

Before anything else, though, to soothe the question left by my previous post- the fish were in fact White Clouds. Go ahead, google them. This will be here when you get back. Saw them? Good. Now, the ones I had were in fact black, and as far as I can tell this is normal. However, in the process of transferral from the pet store, the fish became inordinately stressed and lost all their pigment. This is actually normal for most fish, from what I’ve heard. You learn something new every day, no? Anyway, on with the journal entry (this post will be so long, it deserves to be called nothing less). 

I suppose recollections are in order. Firstly, I am sad to say that I am not doing well in college. My old habits of never studying and putting off homework are coming back to bite me in the buttocks, but on the plus side this has left me nowhere to go but up.

Secondly, shortly after moving out of my college dorm room before this summer, I ended up destroying my tank. It was a bad time all around, but the fish survived, and that’s what’s important to me. Although I had somewhat of a crisis in my mind, so the tank is staying at my relative’s home until I go back to college. However, in my relative’s striving to help care for the fish, they found a new tank (one of her friends had a 10 gallon that they didn’t want) and placed the fish into it. However, there was some leftover bleach on the rocks in the bottom, and so every fish ended up dead.

It was a sad time, but luckily I was still mid-crisis so my mind didn’t spare the fish enough thoughts to get upset over their death. So now the fish are all replaced. Now the new lineup is:

-2 Sunburst Platys

-2 Bleeding Heart Tetras

-2 Neon Tetras

-2 Whitish Cory cats

Yikes, all that color confounds me. But, seeing as how my relative was the one replacing and housing the fish, I could do naught but agree with some of her choices for the colorful fish. I did choose the sunburst platys, but only due to the fact that I was still fixated on Angelfish (which are said to be semi-aggressive, but the one store worker who made sense gave me a pretty clear picture as to what was really going on: it depends on the fish itself, not just the species) and couldn’t think of anything else. But I digress.

So, unfortunately, the old tank is dead and my new tank holds little if any interest to me, personally. I still love my tank, and want to continue it, but the fish themselves I feel are…Less than ideal for what I had in mind.

Speaking of the old tank, Allegro is still alive and kicking, amazingly enough. He’s been in his own ‘tank’ (a small plastic container of water is a tank, right?) since around February, and is still as amazing as ever. I think I honestly won’t be able to avoid crying when he finally kicks it- he’s just been around too long for me not to love him (I got him near on 2 years ago, when I first got to college).

Anyway, I think that covers most of my recent exploits and my tank’s condition. As a small side note, I did decide on going for a Major in Engineering, though I’m still not sure what branch to go into. And that’s ok, my Professor told me, because the defining factor usually comes down to a class I have a few more semesters to qualify for. So while I’m going to be ahead of the game math-wise (I’m finishing up Calculus I now, and jumping right back in with Calculus II in the fall), I still have a long way to go before I get my major.

 This is Senor Gunlock, signing off for now. I only hope that one day I can inspire others to not follow the example I set in my early years.

Well damn it’s been a while since I last posted on here. Lemme give a quick rundown of what’s happened…

I got back to school moved in with one of my friends from last year got my aquarium moved in without a hitch met some cool people and now I’m here at my desk.

Also, in regards to the tank I’ve had 2 fish die, 1 was banned, and after getting SEVEN MORE another one died. I’m not too happy about the whole dying bit, but I might as well give you all an update on how/why it may have happened.

You see, my roommate and I moved in to the dorm when it was, oh, roughly 110 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Not really, but it certainly felt like it. So since that day we moved in we’ve kept the room at around 60-65 degrees, and these are TROPICAL freshwater fish so the sheer cold of the room may have had something to do with it.

However at the same time I am probably among the worst tank owners in all of history, right above the children who win goldfish at the fair and simply stare at them until they croak. I feed the fish, yeah, but I never clean the tank. I just plopped in a Pleco and hoped to God he was hungry. I change the filter about as often as I change my socks, which is to say whenever I have a clean replacement and whenever I don’t wear sandals (which is to say almost NEVER). I finally got around to replacing the filter after the third fish died, but I haven’t covered THAT story yet so here goes that.

A week or two ago I was looking at my tank when I noticed Tenor was nowhere to be found. Normally I wouldn’t have worried but for some reason this time I did and after a bit of digging I found him dead under a log. I promptly flushed him and a few days later I found Canon dead too! So I flushed him and changed the filter.

After a month, my RA decides that beta fish are now aggressive, even after living right next door to me and never once hearing a fish-fight between me and my friends or hearing me complain about my ever-loving cockfighting beta. So I move Allegro to my girlfriend’s dorm (she has so many other fish, one more was pretty unnoticeable) and go about buying new fish to place in the tank.

At the fish store I finally decided on one more cherry barb to fill the void left by the other one, two glassfish, two fruitsbasket tetras, and two other tetras that we have no idea as to what they are but they are FUCKING AWESOME.

Seriously these things are the shit (a phrase that if I ever use again I think I may be in danger of hanging myself with my favorite necktie)! When we put them in the tank they were completely devoid of any color, so I thought the store girl had cheated me out of some decent-looking fish for my tank. But when we looked back at them after five minutes, we saw that they were back to their black-and-red selves! My mind was fucking blown! I just got two color-changing black-and-red badass fish for three bucks each, I almost forgot to name the fish!

Oh yeah the names are Waltz and Marche for the Fruitsbaskets Melody and Harmony for the glassfish, Beat and Rhythm for the AWESOME FISH, and Alto for the cherry barb. I figured I’d keep the trend of  Saxophone names going, since he WAS technically a replacement for Tenor.

However much to my dismay later that night I found, yup you guessed it, Alto laying dead in the tank. Well bugger, there goes 2.99 down the drain AGAIN.

Anyway on to the fish themselves. I must say this is an interesting bunch and its added some much-needed personality to my tank. Marche, the smallest fruitsbasket, has shown an almost alarming rate of persistence in following what have got to be the most feminine looking things in the tank (that would be the glassfish with their long flowy fins). Of course being the sick person I am I find this fucking hilarious as he switches back and forth between the two as his memory resets every five seconds.

However on a sour note Forte seems to have become emo, staring longingly into the pagoda where I found Alto dead last two nights ago. I must say its a bit disturbing and I half expect to be visited by the three fish ghosts on Christmas eve.

But yeah Capella and Aria still chase each other Bass is still as ignorant as ever Marche and Waltz are kinda cute I guess Melody and Harmony just stand there like a bunch of girls and Beat and Rhythm are by far the most badass things in the history of badassery. Seriously these things must be descended from Chuck Norris or something they are so amazing! They’re some of the smallest things in the aquarium but have the largest presence by far! I was going to make a joke but then I remembered I’m not Yahtzee, I don’t do a videogame critique called Zero Punctuation, and I don’t live in Australia because if I did all of my fish would’ve killed me at least twice by now, three times for the badass fish.

Alright, first post with an update on the fishes. Here goes. >.>

The three Danios seem to be very close…Or very stressed. They seem to be swimming all over the tank, in and out of various places and objects, chasing each other interchangeably. I’m not sure if this is some form of bonding, some strange mating habit (there are two males and one female, after all), or simply them teasing each other.

The beta, Allegro, seems to be doing just fine. He mainly keeps to himself, surprisingly enough, at the front of the tank; it’s possible he’s chasing the faint reflection he sees in the glass. I hope he doesn’t start banging his head on the wall, if that is the case. Otherwise, he seems to be healthy and active, going to other parts of the tank occasionally and eating well.

Forte, the juvenile Cherry Barb, seems to favor the front left side of the tank (left when you face the front), but more particularly the small area formed under the small footbridge decoration. She seems to be slightly agitated by the Danios, as they keep darting in and out of her “territory”. Otherwise, she’s eating well and is doing fine, and even takes the occasional foray into the rest of the tank, either to explore or just move around a bit. I don’t really know for sure.

Tenor, the adult Cherry Barb, however, seems more and more scarce and hard to find with each passing day. I’m slightly concerned for him, as he is the smallest fish in the tank without question. I feel partly responsible, as Cherry Barbs are supposed to be a schooling fish (most people recommend five to a tank, minimum), and I only have two in the tank. He can usually be found drifting next to the driftwood in the center of the tank, or keeping out of sight in the long leaves of the aquarium plant in the back right corner.

Bass, the pleco, seems unperturbed by anything that goes on in the tank as usual. He seems to favor no particular area of the tank, going to each wall equally to get sustenance. He seems like he’s hungry, though, so I feel like I should be giving him more than one algae pellet per week. I’ll bump him up to two a week, one on Monday and one on Thursday, and if the algae in the tank gets to be too much I’ll simply stop the pellets for a week and then go back to once a week.

All in all, my biggest concern is the Danios, as it always has been. I’m still not sure what they’re doing, but if it continues to stress the other fish in my tank I may have to remove one (Aria seems to be the biggest troublemaker) and place him/her in the half-gallon holding tank to see how the other fish react. In the worst case scenario, I may have to simply replace the fish with new ones and buy at least 5 this time to promote schooling.

*queue bass drop*

Yeah, I got an aquarium…And have decided to call it [the tank as a whole] Equilibrium. You’ll see why in a bit.

Firstly, some tank specs: it’s a 10gallon tank, standard hood+light setup, with a Whisper Filter (not sure if that’s actually the brand but it sure as hell sounds like a whisper). I have one aquarium plant, one piece of driftwood with another plant growing out of it, and a couple plastic items my friend got me (a small foot bridge and a chinese…thing. Not sure what it’s called).

Next, the fish…I currently have 3 Zebra Danios [2 male 1 Female], 2 Cherry Barbs [Not sure of gender but I picture them as a tomboy and a girlyboy], 1 Beta fish [male, blue, regular fin?], and 1 pleco [I picture him as a male].

I HAVE NAMED MY FISH AS FOLLOWS, SEE IF YOU NOTICE THE PATTERN.

Danios: Canon [Smallest], Capella [Medium], Aria [Females, for some reason, have a larger belly. Go figure.]

Barbs: Forte [Tomboy], Tenor [Girlyboy]

Beta: Allegro [MY FIRST FISHY <3]

Pleco: Bass [I tend to think of him as my ‘idiot savant’…He just sits around most of the time, but he has some GREAT hiding places to think in c: ]

Notice it yet? They’re all musical terms. Though of course I have ‘normal’ names for them…Like the three Danios that I call “Larry, Curly, and Moe”. Or the beta that I call “Grumpy”. Or the pleco I call “Tiny” (because they grow to…Like…2 feet! x.x He’ll have to leave the tank later!)

Anywho, that’s my intro. If you actually care about seeing the tank, you can wait until I find my camera xD;; Or come visit my dorm if I know you (when the school year starts).

Who actually cares enough to read/respond to my little blog…Thing? >.> Just getting a general headcount. If no one cares I’ll just spout random gibberish at inconvenient times.