The Northern Crater - Site History

	History of the Northern Crater in 1999 Dec. 26 - Okay, almost recovered from that cold... since I wasn't entirely better yet, I was a bit slow on getting what I'd intended as a little Christmas present for TNC visitors: The Final Fantasy Purity Test! Of course, I'm not sure where to put it really... so for right now, it's stuck over in the Weird Crap section of the fanfics and humor page. Eh well. Also added one new FF8 midi in the Sounds section. I'll get to the other million things later... I hope... Dec. 22 - Finally, I got a new chapter of Misbegotten done! I didn't intend for it to be so long, but then I started thinking about something I was doing with the sequel, and added some stuff. ;) Things from here on out should be pretty simple, I think. The end is near... Also added one new FFV midi in the Sounds section. Only one because... I think I've heard basically every track in the game now that's been sequenced accurately besides the last battle and ending theme type pieces. And since I'm enjoying FFV so much, I had a grand old time doing another rather unusual CG, which is now up in My Gallery. As strange as it may be, I'm sort of proud of it... And the reason I haven't done a bunch of the other stuff I've been intending to is because last week I was incredibly busy, and as soon as I got unbusy, I discovered I was suffering from a terrible cold. Crap. Dec. 16 - Just a quick little update... Steve got his moogle page open, so I was finally able to adopt a friend for Hakuden! Now with him and Kuni, I've got the Choco-Mog summon. Heh heh heh... Dec. 15 - I've had a busy couple of weeks, between GIA stuff, a Christmas cantata at my church (I'm in the drama... why would anyone want me to sing? :P), my newest site (I'll get into that below), and a really interesting new job opportunity. And I mean really interesting, the kind I'm going to be boasting about annoyingly here for awhile if it goes through. ;) So I've been working hard, and rather than working on actual content for TNC, I relaxed a little and had some fun decorating the page for the holiday season, which I suppose you already saw. =) Also decided to finally make some new link banners that went more with the new blue/white design than the old black/blue/cyan design. Three different characters, all personal favorites of mine, in standard 200x40 or compact 90x33 size! ...Except of course, you know I can't actually update the site with no content without feeling kinda guilty, so I looked around for anything I could get done real fast... so there is a new picture in my Gallery, my first CG pic for ages that I'm actually happy with, plus a few new FFV midis in the Sounds section, and a little bit of FFV and FFIV character info added to the Information section. Yippee. And now, on with the gratuitous spamming! :D Tonberry-Cactuar Adoption Foundation is now open! So if you want one of those cute little guys, head on over... It's not just a cyber-pet adoption agency though - it also contains info on the history of these two monsters, and a lot of my weird ramblings about them. You think I maybe spend way too much time thinking about this stuff? I'm beginning to wonder... Dec. 5 - Mmm... FFV is good... I can't believe they didn't release it here years ago, darnit. :P Anyway, just had to say that, and now on with the updates: I put up a few new sites today on the Links page, basically from awesome people who have contributed to this site in some way or another and have awesome sites of their own. And speaking of awesome people who have contributed to the site, Petra sent me another absolutely gorgeous pic of my sweet Laguna-kun looking very sexy! :D That's over in the Guest Gallery... And since our esteemed fanfic editor actually liked my Triple Triad fic and decided she wanted to post it at GIA today, I slapped a generic title on it and said okay, and figured I should probably put it up here as well... so here it is: A Game of Cards. I told you the name was generic. :P Spoilers up till the end of disc 3, of course. The Information section has a little update - the FFT script! Too bad the actual game dialogue doesn't have all the hilarious Daravonisms... oh wait, that's a good thing. Heh heh... And finally, as in just about every update, a few more midis for the Sounds page. My collection of FF midis is getting ridiculously huge, but I like it! ;) I added a bunch to the midi jukebox while I was at it, too. Nov. 26 - Didn't feel like updating any of the stuff I said I'd do below, except for finding a few more midis for the Sounds page, mostly for FF8, and including one I sequenced. (I'm really having fun with sequencing midis lately... right now I'm working on one of the Crystalis opening theme. ;)) However, I looked at Angel of Darkness, realized that the entire "why enshrine a villain" page sounded lame and shallow and superficial, because when I made it, all the other Sephiroth fan pages I knew were lame and shallow and superficial, and I thought that's how a shrine should be. Thank goodness I've found more enlightened Sephiroth fans by now, to whom I can really speak my mind... So that entire section has been rewritten from scratch, except for parts of two paragraphs. And since I was doing stuff with that shrine, I worked a little on Only in Dreams as well, adding pretty much all the Square artwork I can find of Laguna to the Pictures page, and adding info on the stuff that I actually have to the Merchandise page. (Now you can all see that adorable SD Laguna keychain that I was going to marry Brian Glick for!) Oh yeah... and since I finally remembered to upload the one last FFVII midi I'd found, the FF7 midi collection now contains every track on the OST! :D So now I've got that and FF4 all finished. FF6 would be complete, except that I can't find a midi of the entire ending anywhere, just the character medley part... At any rate, one more section that likely will never need updating again. =) Nov. 21 - Another small update - a bunch of new FFV midis added to the Sounds section. You can kind of tell where I've gotten in the game more or less by the midis that are there... man, it's fun. ;) And on a less happy note, technical difficulties abound lately... my email and browser have both been acting screwy, plus for some unknown reason my primary modem line is completely gone. No dial tone, no busy signal, no "This number is no longer in service"... just completely dead. So I'm kind of wary of being online too long (since I have to use my voice line, which means no incoming calls will reach me), which is why I'm continuing to be really lame and slow about replying to mail. :P Nov. 14 - Just a small update this time, but one that'll probably make a lot of people happy: Two new chapters of Misbegotten! It was originally going to be one chapter, but so many things were happening in it (that I didn't originally intend... they just sort of popped into my head as I was writing) that I broke it down into two. And just because I'd found them, I added a couple more FFV midis to the Sounds section. Yep, that's it... Nov. 9 - Big update today, to make up for all the time I spent between updates. Let's see... First off, you may have noticed the image on the front page is slightly different than before. The link formerly labelled "Angel of Darkness" now simply reads "Character Shrines." That would be because the Laguna shrine is finished enough that I actually thought I might as well put a link to it. Mmm... Laguna... Also, a whole bunch of new fan art, since I haven't updated for awhile. Three new pics in my gallery, and two new (and absolutely awesome!) pics from Petra Rödig and Kristen Smirnov in the guest gallery. And a kind soul loaned me his copy of FFV straight from Anthology, so I've been playing and loving that, which inspired me to go out in search of FFV midis for the Sounds section, and even added a few of those to the midi jukebox. And a bunch of weirdness has transpired lately, prompting me to post some things in the Weird Crap section... in Random Insanity, a transcript of a completely weird thread from a message board, in which we started saying "What if you could challenge Seifer to a game of Triple Triad?" It got highly amusing, so I posted it here too. ;) And over in Fake Stuff, Fuzzydevil has once again spotted Sephiroth in an unusual location! He appears to be moving backwards through time... O_o I did a little more with the FAQ, since I discovered that a lot of the answers were a bit outdated, and finally (I think this is it), the Links page has finally been updated with the new design, and a bunch of new links, as well as no more dead ones. Unless, of course, some sites have gone down in the last couple days... I hope not. :P I think that's the only file that was left to redo, so this means if you see any more pages with the old black background and so on, it's an error. Please let me know if you find any. Oct. 22 - Originally this wasn't going to be an update, just a progress report. You may have noticed that the Fanfics/Humor section is gradually being switched over to the new layout, piece by piece, over the last week or so... Today I figured Misbegotten has been lying there clashing with the rest of the site for way too long, so I decided to be good and switch that. Well no, to be honest, actually I uploaded some new experimental graphics to test a new layout, and it didn't work, and then when I tried to upload the old graphics, I realized I'd accidentally overwritten the old graphics with the new. That sucked, but at least it forced me to actually finish putting it in the new format today. And now I don't want to touch it ever again. :P Maybe a new chapter soon though, nevertheless... Anyway, now all that needs redoing on the site is the Links section and a couple more specific fics, if I remember correctly. Thank goodness. I'll try to get that over with soon. ;) Anyway, I was just going to post a progress report, then I realized it would be just plain rude if I made an update without adding the two Counter Gifts I'd received, while they were still timely. Thanks, Kristen and Fuzzydevil! ;) I owe both some mail, I believe... as well as several other people. I'll try to get to that soon too. And I actually did get my act together and put the first of the fics in my submitted-but-not-yet-posted list in the format as well, which would be an excellent FFVII fic: Dirt Angels, by Matthew Schuele. It's good enough to make up for the fact that I haven't gotten to the rest of the bunch yet. By the way, I'm making a Halloween costume after all... a FF1/FFT Priest/White Mage. I'm not really sure which I should say I am, since the costumes appear to be identical... but hey, if I take the hood down and become the White Wizard from FF1, every time I win a battle, I can flip people off! :D Come on, am I the only one who saw that? I swear, I'm gonna make an animated gif of that someday. Oct. 13 - Special 20k update! Er, okay, not really... I've been working on this update for awhile, but I had so much stuff to put up, I was trying to get more and more done... then I realized I was never going to get it all done, so I better put up what I have ready. Plus, I got a little incentive to actually get an update up, in the form of a Counter Gift and award from Prince Vegeta! I checked my counter, saw how close I was, and figured... yeah... better update. Heh heh... Also in this update: a great new pic in the Guest Gallery by Kristen Smirnov... first FF8 submission! Featuring my dear Laguna! :D Also my first finished game music midi over in the Sounds section! After the first time I heard Fragments of Memories, I always identified it with Laguna, and well... uh, I'm kinda obsessed, so I had to do it. ;) Also I added a new page to the Graphics section for Desktop Graphics, featuring the set of FF8 Windows icons I made and some FF8 wallpaper. Hope you guys enjoy them as much as I have been. =) And finally, the two big things I've been working on... first, the semi-long-awaited version 2.0 of the FF Code. Whew. There are some major differences in the layout, but there's not that much difference between the old version and the new one, when you get right down to it. FF8 characters added, major NPCs for various games added, and a couple new questions and choices for existing questions. You should be able to update it with no problem, despite the fact I don't have an automated code generator for the new version. Yet. ;) And the other you might have noticed on the main page - a nifty little bit of javascript code I came across that randomly plays midis! I'm not sure all the bugs are worked out yet on IE, but it seems to work very reliably in NS. A link to the site where I found the script and learned how to customize it is in the credits/legal info at the bottom of the main page, until I have an actual credits page or something... and I think that's it for the updates. And in other news, I did beat FF8, and am currently on disc 3 my second time through, and I've become completely addicted to Triple Triad. Seriously. I actually cheered out loud today when I won the Laguna card with a Same/Plus combo that turned every card on the board into my favor. ;) Expect a ramble from me soon about how awesome FF8 is. Sept. 24 - Early morning quick update, which I wasn't planning on, but I'm suddenly rather ecstatic. If you've been reading this page for awhile, you probably know of my lengthy quest for a midi version of Samba de Chocobo, to finally complete my collection of FFIV midis. You probably also know that I'd had no success. However, Robert Silvers (whom you may know from the rather frightening Song Parody section of this page) recently became my knight, and apparently the knight's duties involve intuitively tracking down midis, because he was successful where I failed for all these months! Huzzah! And here it is... the elusive Samba de Chocobo midi! The FFIV midi section is now complete! Obviously I had to update with that wonderful news immediately, and since I was doing so, I added a couple more minor things I'd gathered in the last few days since my last update, namely a couple FF8 midis in the Sounds section, plus a new drawing of mine in my gallery. Yeah, FF8. I love that game, and I think it's going to end up as my favorite one of the series, unless the last dungeon and the ending are somehow incredibly disappointing. ;) Yep, I'm there already... I think I may write up my impressions of the game once I beat it and post them here, just in case anyone wants a rundown. And yes, if I do that, I'll avoid spoilers except in a secondary document. Sept. 21 - Just what everyone's been wanting, chapter 42 of Misbegotten! Hmm, and unfortunately, this chapter does not hold the answers to life, the universe, and everything... that comes in a couple more chapters. Heh heh... Anyway, also added a bunch of new FF8 midis in the Sounds section, and also got the proper names of several tracks I wasn't sure on from a couple different people who have written me mail in the past few weeks. Which reminds me, I really need to catch up on my mail, I know I've gotten some stuff that really deserves a reply. I'm just really stressed and frustrated right now, and I'll get to it when I don't want to telekinetically bash in the heads of most of humanity. ;) Oh yeah, and also a new picture in my gallery, of the new love of my life... my gosh. At this point, I think I might... that's might... love him more than Sephiroth... I can't make up my mind. :P Sept. 16 - Booyaka! Heheh, sorry, couldn't resist. ;) I love Selphie... and all the characters in FF8 actually, cept I still dunno about Squall and Rinoa. Anyway, content: put up two new fics. One is a FFIV fic by Anna-mathe, Black Lightning and Red Eyes, and it's just plain cool, full of humor, touching scenes, and adventure... a great addition to the Serious Fics section. And if you want something that's completely insane, head over to the Silly Fics section and check out CZK's The Legend of Something-Or-Other: The Quest of Thunder God Cid. Seriously, one of the most demented things I've ever read, and most of the other things I can think of that might be more demented are by CZK too, come to think of it. O_o Also I got a slightly premature counter gift from LC3 (yay! Seifer! :D), which is over in the Counter Gifts section, shockingly enough, and I added a bunch of new FF8 midis over in the Sounds section, because... I love this game's soundtrack! I'm listening to Slide Show Part 2 while I write this and completely cracking up. ;) Actually that's why I don't have that new Misbegotten chapter up yet... this game is absolutely consuming me. I haven't been this into a game since FF6... Actually, I don't think I've ever been this into a game. I heard from people who played the import that FF8 was good, but I didn't expect it to be this good! And Laguna is so great, just like I thought... even if he's sort of a dork. ;) It's likely I'll be putting up another character shrine once I finish the game if he doesn't start being completely lame for some reason. =) Sept. 9 - Yeaaaaaah! Site redesign! barely refrains from cheering like Selphie What can I say, I got bored and creative last week while a certain message board was down... and of the sites I've been making lately, the TNC design with the frames was my least favorite. Though this design will have optional frames very soon, serving a far more fun purpose... heehee. Besides the obvious new look, I do have a couple bits of new content as well - a single piece of fan art in my gallery, and... well, I caved in and bought FF8, even though I couldn't afford it, so I typed up the character descriptions as they appear in the instruction manual and HTMLed them for the Information section. Holy crap, they're cheesy... and whoever wrote Irvine's description... uhh... someone needs to sit down with them and explain the word "innuendo". O_o;; Sept. 1 - Another chapter of Misbegotten, and that's all for now... I'm kinda putting off the other stuff I need to put up. :P But at least now I'm getting to the chapters that I already have mostly written, that just need polishing up and editing before I post them, so the epic is nearly complete! :D In other fun news, I'm trying to get the various dates in FF7's Gold Saucer recently, since until today, I'd only seen the date with Aeris. Today I saw Tifa's, and next on the agenda will be Yuffie, I believe... At any rate, it'll give me something to do because... grrr. After waiting anxiously for two years, it looks like I'm not going to be able to buy FF8 right away. This seriously sucks - I've never had to wait to play a FF game in my entire life... August 28 - I shouldn't even be typing now, my hands are killing me, but... I've been listening to the FF8 OST (Just disc 1 - don't want any surprising or beautiful scenes being spoiled by my recognizing the music) and have come to the realization that I love every single track I've heard so far. Yowza... There's never been a FF soundtrack I liked this much. Really. And so I started putting up some midis from the first disc. And since I was doing that, I also added the new pic I drew in my gallery, one that I'm rather proud of - I finally got my Sephiroth-sama to look right! :D And just cause I needed somewhere to store them to access them from other places on the web, I uploaded a bunch of non-FF game midis in the secondary sounds page. Secret of Mana, Soul Blazer (Huzzah!! Finally someone has granted my wishes - and I don't even have any of the dragonballs!), and River City Ransom. Bwa ha ha! August 17 - Okay, I've been really busy, but there's a fair amount of new stuff up, hopefully that'll be worth it. Added some new midis and a couple pieces of new fan art in my gallery... Fuzzydevil sent in an awesome screen capture, which is in the Fake Stuff section of the Fanfics/Humor section... Hmm, actually, maybe I should put that in the Seph shrine too, it would be fitting. ;) Also, I wrote up another chapter of Pretty SOLDIER Sailor Barret, which I'm rather proud of. Particularly the part about Red and the wand... cackle And I think that's everything, though I'm almost positive I missed something I was going to put up... Update part 2 - I decided to have a little fun today and seek out some FFV midis, so now there's a few more of those, basically from early in the game, since those are the ones I know well enough to know how they should sound. Pirates Ahoy! :D Oh yes, and on another midi-related note... I now have every song from the FFIV OST in midi format except that pesky Samba de Chocobo! Argh, so close! I think that just may be my first serious midi project. July 27 - A new chapter of Misbegotten. And er, that's it. :P Update part 2 - As I mentioned below, I know I've been neglecting the Information section, and so I decided to sit down and write up a summary of some of the characters from FFIV. They don't have much background provided, so I can get them done quickly. ;) Cecil, Tellah, and Rydia's background information pages are now up. Also I fixed a couple broken links in the fanfic section (thanks, CMZ!), and I think that's it... July 21 - One new FFIV fic, "Don't Jump, Kain! Don't Jump!", by Anna-mathe on the page of serious Fanfics (though it has some very amusing moments. ;) Maybe I should switch that section's heading to "traditional" fanfics rather than "serious"...), and one new piece of fan art from Aeris in the Guest Gallery, of Prettz from the FF anime! I got quite a kick out of these, and I hope the rest of you enjoy them. =) July 17 - I've got a lot of cool stuff to add, but since some of it requires a little more work, I thought I'd put the stuff that's already done up now and put up the rest in a couple days. Two smaller updates as opposed to one large update, you know? Well, a couple people sent me some midis and tipped me off to a couple sources where I could get some really hard-to-find ones, for which I'm very grateful. =) So now my FFIV midi collection is ALMOST complete (Darnit, why hasn't anyone ever made a midi of Samba de Chocobo?! Maybe I'll try to make one myself, this is insane...) and some new VI and VII midis are up as well. Also, there's a new parody in the Weird Crap section of my page, although I think maybe it would have gone better in the Random Insanity section than the parody page, as it's pretty stupid. Heh. July 13 - Another chapter of Misbegotten, and it's a long one! Actually, I think they're likely all going to be long ones from here on out, which is why I can't get them up as fast as I got Heart of a Dragoon up. July 3 - Three updates in four days? When was the last time that happened? :P Anyway, I have accomplished the first of my tasks that were listed below in my updates, and so now there is one less thing on the list - Heart of a Dragoon is now finished, and today I'm posting the last two chapters and a little epilogue, as well as a couple notes on the story. I usually like reading the author's notes, so I thought maybe I should write some myself... That list is really helping me get stuff done, you know... and you know what's next on the list. ;) Those who have been waiting patiently or impatiently, your waiting is about over! July 1 - Spent the night getting my midi collection sorted out and uploaded, and the result is a ton of new midis in the Sounds section. Mostly FF6 and FF7, with some FF1 and Mystic Quest thrown in. ;) Man, now I seriously want to replay those last two... and I discovered I really like the FF7 boss music. But there is one thing to note - I don't have the OSTs of those two games (or any other FF game except 8, sadly) and can't find a track listing, so I don't know the actual names of those tracks. Hopefully that will be fixed soon... June 30 - I need to get my priorities straight. Badly. And this is the beginning. Read below in the Coming Soon bit to see what my gameplan is. First of all, I need my hands to get better. This means not typing so darn much, which means not typing up my fics. But what I can do while not typing is write my stories the old-fashioned way, in notebooks. Which is how I wrote the single thing in today's update: chapter 8 of Heart of a Dragoon. Hope you enjoy... I'm really getting into this again. =) One last note: if you have a Geocities site, especially if you're an author or artist, or publish any other original creation on a Geocities site, visit the link in the new button on the front page. Seriously, you need to know this, and Geocities didn't bother to tell you, I imagine. They certainly didn't tell me... June 18 - Heheh, a couple weird FF/anime crossover things up today! I told you I was gonna put up a new episode of Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Barret (and enhance the first episode... this is fun!), but I didn't even think about adding the other thing until this afternoon, when I suddenly remembered it... FF7 and Pokémon fans might get a kick out of the latest addition to the Random Insanity section of the Weird Crap archive... June 16 - Today's update has a couple new and semi-predictable fan arts by me (at least, if you know me and my recent Pokémon obsession), and more interestingly, two contributed works, a new fic and a new picture. Aeris, author of First Impressions, sent me a really cute picture of my beloved Sephiroth, and Chris "CMZ" Reaves sent me a really neat fic called Homesick, about the events in Nibelheim five years before the game. Heck, maybe soon I won't have to do any work at all, I can just put other people's fics and art up! ;) Okay, okay, kidding. On a more personal note... I got a Laguna keychain! HUZZAH! :D Thank goodness for eBay, even if it did screw up and severely tick me off. :P Actually, I bid on a set of all five FF8 keychains, but dangit, Laguna is the man. No wait, Sephiroth is THE man. Laguna's The Man With The Machine Gun. ;) June 6 - A bunch of new midis, mostly FF6, plus a couple FF7 and FF8 and one FF4. (Grrr, FF8... I want my Laguna!) Plus another chapter of Misbegotten. Hopefully now that I have that chapter out of the way, the rest will just... flow... I think I'm gonna play through the rest of the game again while I'm writing it though... May 22 - Heh, I intended to take a break, but going through some directories today, I realized I had a fair amount of FFIV info ready to go up, at least the character stats and a couple back stories. And while I was adding those to the Information section, I was reminded of this very scary, very stupid picture of Sephiroth I drew yesterday when I was similarly exhausted... Heh heh, and then I remembered I'd made a similar pic awhile back by splicing some images together, and... well, I'm not going to even try to explain it. They're in the scrapbook section of Angel of Darkness, and my only comment is: O_o;;; May 17 - What's this? Back to back updates?! O_o;; Haven't done that for awhile... but I managed to finish another chapter of Misbegotten. I think after the next chapter, it's going to be incredibly easy to write, it's finally all coming together in my mind exactly how I want it to! Yay! Also I put up the cool birthday present Kappa gave me in the Guest Gallery. Mwahaha! On a personal and sadder note, it appears I don't get an E3 Laguna keychain after all. Supposedly that's Mike Tidwell's fault... yeah, sure it is, Slick. My dreams have been shattered. :( Oh well, I do have a nice server now thanks to some fellow agents, and since the notice about the server switch was only up for a day and a half, here's the info again: May 16 - Awwww yeah. Much better. If you haven't noticed by now, TNC is now on a good server, not lousy buggy slow Fortunecity anymore! Huzzah! Where is it then, you might ask? Well, working at GIA has some priveleges... apparently a 13-17 meg page is "a drop in the bucket", according to AK. ;) I owe the guys a big favor for this... and if they manage to come through with the Laguna keychain I begged them to get at E3, I may have to marry Brian Glick or something.. O_o;; Important notes about the server change: If there's any question or trouble with the V3-URL, the new direct URL of the site is http://www.thegia.com/andrea/tnc/. The old pages at Fortunecity will be deleted (I'll just use my account there as storage space for various things, probably), so anything that has http://www.fortunecity.com/underworld/finalfantasy/363/ in the URL will be dead, if you happen to have links to anything on my site. The directory structure remains more or less the same though, so in most cases if you just substitute http://www.thegia.com/andrea/tnc/ for the above, the link will be fine. Okay, now that that's taken care of, new stuff! Well, not so much new stuff actually, but I did finally revamp and categorize the fanfic and fan art sections a bit. (Edgar mode engaged) You see, there're more fics and drawings here than there are grains of sand out there. I can't keep track of 'em all! (Edgar mode disengaged) Okay, so maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea. Everything's a little easier to find now, I think. The only actual new content in those departments, though, is this FFT sketch I did last night. Yippee. Last note before I go, did anyone else remember that yesterday's the anniversary of Square's press conference in which they released the first wave of FF8 info? I remember, cause it happened on my birthday. ^,^ I've been anxious for the game ever since (or at least Laguna Loire... ^_^;;), which means I've waited an entire year... yikes. And still months to go... :( But hey, at least I got a cool purple Pokemon shirt! ;) May 11 - Surprise update! Though my fingers have been killing me, my thumbs are in working order, so I rented Ehrgeiz, Square's new 3D fighter... And of course, you probably know exactly why. ;) If you don't, well... one of the fighters you can choose from is THE MAN himself, Sephiroth! Complete with Masamune... mwahaha! He's so beautiful and graceful in battle... and he has this great, arrogant laugh, and the alternate outfit has him topless! ^,^ Seriously, I like fighting games, but even if you don't, you might like Ehrgeiz anyway if you're as much as a Seph fan as I am. ^_^ Sooooo, since I hadn't worked on the Seph shrine for awhile, I took advantage of my video capture card and took a bunch of screen shots of my beloved in action... ahhh, if only I had a second controller, so I could have fought as shirtless Seph... ;) But at least I got some fun shots of him... and I'll be getting a few more in the next couple days, most likely. (It's a rental, and goes back Wednesday. -_-) Yes. I am obsessed. =) I took so many, they have their own page in the shrine, as part of the Scrapbook. While I was updating, I also added some more Weird Crap, another parody from Rob (who's more obsessed with Ehrgeiz than I am), and two new drawings, of my beloved and of... someone else... ^_^;; in the Fan Art section. Added a couple new midis to the Sounds page... FF8! ^,^ Also did some reorganizing, so if you find broken links, lemme know, okay? Oh, and speaking of broken links, I got rid of a couple. ;) Apr. 29 - A new chapter of Misbegotten, finally! I got a little discouraged after my computer crashed just before I saved the new chapter last time, and it took me till now to redo it. Man, last night though, I got inspired. I ended up playing through the scene with Cloud and Tifa in the Lifestream, which has got to be one of the best scenes ever in a video game. Also updated with a fair amount of new FF7 midis, and sheesh, I've only got about half the tracks! I guess I'd have more if I wasn't such a stickler for complete accuracy and stuff... but at least I got all the chocobo remixes! I think. :P There's as many chocobo mixes as there are Pokemon, darnit! In other news which is non-page related but still has relevance to the page - I finally beat FFT! :D (AV and AK smiley!) Monday night, I believe. I don't see why everyone finds it so confusing, really.. it was more straightforward than FF7's, in my opinion. And now that I've beaten that, I have an idea for another long fic of epic proportions... but I think I better finish the first epic fic before I start on it. =) Also, a certain someone was awesome enough to send me the FF8 OST, limited edition no less! Arrrrgh, now I want the game more than ever... if only so I can find out what the heck ODEKA ke Chocobo is for. O_o;; Apr. 16 - Some stuff that's got nothing to do with FFIV! Well, part of the update, anyway... I did upload another two chapters of Heart of a Dragoon and a rather cute picture I did of Kain, but also I added a bunch of midis (mostly FFT and FF7 - I never before realized just how much music FF7 has!), and another extremely screwed up Sephiroth parody by Robert Silvers, which is in the Weird Crap section. Holy crap, he's demented. O_o;; Speaking of Rob, that's one reason I haven't been updating so much as I should be... I volunteered to set up a homepage for his Professor Daravon Club (which can be found here - I'm going to put up a real link soon, but I'm too lazy now), at roughly the same time I decided to revamp my personal page (which you can find here if you really care - it'll be up with the new design in a day or so), which also happened to be the point at which I got to take over as fan art curator at GIA. Yay! Apr. 1 - Hmm, I never do what I say I'm gonna do in my "coming soon" thing below. Oh well, it's April Fools Day, so I don't have to! Nyah! Anyway, today's update is all FFIV, thanks to my renewed interest in the game. I uploaded a whole bunch of new midis, and now have almost the entire soundtrack! (Still looking for good midis of Samba de Chocobo, Giott, the Great King, and Within The Giant, and I have no idea what the tracks GMO lists as Ring of Bomb and Run! are. :P And how come the Chocobo Forest music isn't on there, by the way? Hmm.) Also uploaded the first five chapters (or rather, parts - they're all rather short) of my new fic, Heart of a Dragoon. It's set a few years before the start of the game, so if you haven't played the game and are afraid of spoilers, you don't have to be. ^_^ Mar. 29 - Nothing major here, just another chapter of Misbegotten. Though that's probably plenty for most of the people who come here... I have to admit though, I'm getting tired of FFVII stuff, especially since I started a new game of FFIV. It's sorta sent me on this whole kind of FF renaissance, to be honest... I've been working on making some icons (check it out!), as well as being inspired to begin two new fics: one about Tellah and Anna that I've been dreaming up for ages, and a prequel to the FFIV fic I already did, Forgiveness. Both are going to be a great deal longer though, I believe... and a lot better written than anything I've done so far. Something else I did, that's not actually part of my site... hehehe, if you're a Zany Video Game Quotes fan, I made some Win95/98 logo.sys files! Heheh, I love Photoshop. One last note... don't send me any email right now. I lost access from my ISP, which means my email address is no longer functioning, which means I'll never be able to read it anyway. And to be honest, I think I might not renew it right away. I can mooch my parents' account at night to update the page, but since I hate ICQ and have been seriously slacking on my email, 24 hour access is no big loss. Mar. 11 - Fics, Fan art, and Sounds today... In the Fics department, I updated the link to First Impressions, and added what Daniel had finished of the FFT MST. In the Fan art department, I added a piece by BiZou, and a piece by myself. (I think maybe I should have put mine in the Weird Crap section though... ^_^;;) In the Sounds section, fixed the titles of a couple songs, thanks to Odin. Mar. 5 - Sorry for the lack of recent updates... my tendonitis came back BIG time... so this special anniversary update might be it for a couple weeks. Sorry again... but my hands won't move right. :P Stuff that's new this update: First of all, I fixed the link to Vincent's stats and story, in the Info section, which I forgot to do last time. Also a new chapter of Misbegotten, and a bunch of new midis - including my first FF8 midi! Eyes On Me is really growing on me, by the way... I figured out how to play it on guitar today. Heh. I may post the chords in the Sounds section later, if there's actually any kind of interest. It's darned fun to play, and contains Dm! Anyway, just for fun, let's look back to a year ago, the day I started this page, what did I do? Heheh, I see I uploaded the first two chapters of Misbegotten. Who'd have thought I'd still be working on it a year later? And Sephiroth vs. Pirate Fabio... there's a classic. ^_^;; Scary that those were the only two things on the site... and now look at this monster! Feb. 19 - Added a little bit of stuff to the Info, since I felt like doing something opinionated and show-offish... Heh. Added the stories of Celes and Shadow to the FFVI section, and the stories of Vincent and Sephiroth to the FFVII section, mostly because their stories interest me the most, and I like writing about them. Also added those fics I've been meaning to add for ages... Hope you enjoy them as much as I do. ;) Feb. 17 - I messed around with the links page, took off some dead links, updated some URLs and banners, added a link to my Xenogears site. If I had your link here and now it's not linked, it's because I haven't been able to connect to it for a couple weeks, and I don't know where it's located now, so write me and tell me the new URL. Also added some new midis, and a new chapter of Misbegotten. Might be incredibly depressing, but considering the weekend's events, that's sort of fitting. I think pretty soon I'll add Daniel's incomplete MST of the FFT script... I told him I wanted to wait until it was finished, but now it never will be. Sigh. Feb. 15 - Not exactly an update... more just a note to those who care... some of you may have read Daniel Seltzer's MST of the FF1 script, in the Fanfic/Humor section... well... Daniel died this weekend... His group of online friends, we just found out, just before midnight. We'll all miss him a lot... and sad to say, those who only know him for his MST here will never get to see his true masterpiece, the MSTing of the FFT script... I don't know what I'm trying to say here. Just that I miss Daniel, and I hope his legacy will live on through his writings... that even after his death, he will still be making people laugh. That's all... Oh... thanks for making my site go over 10,000 hits... I was really excited about it, but then I got this news... and I can't stop crying long enough. Midi of the moment is Daniel's favorite song from the FF series... I get the feeling I'll never hear it again without crying. Feb. 10 - As Cid Highwind might say, "@#&%! I'm pissed!" As you may or may not have noticed, Fortunecity seems to be having some serious troubles keeping their pages up for 24 hours at a time this week. To quote another video game, "How irritating!" Anyway, believe me - I'm going to be looking around for a new site host soon, cause this has just been the last straw. Just a reminder, don't use the full Fortunecity URL, use "http://come.to/thenortherncrater/". V3-URL has been incredibly helpful during this annoying time, and their service has been incredibly fast and reliable. The only completely free net service I've ever seen that works BETTER than it claims to! Wish they gave out web space... On to actual updates... Chapter 32 is now up, and also I have an addition to my Weird Crap section. Man, I love being sarcastically helpful! Feb. 6 - Chapter 31... I may come back later and add something to the Weird Crap section as well - a little FWAK I thought up in about ten minutes more or less to make fun of someone's spelling error on a message board... Heehee, don't mispell the names of items around me, or I'll invent ways to get them! ;) Feb. 3 - Just a tiny update, I added a FF6 midi to the Sounds page because, well, I'd never found a midi of it before. I wanted to snatch it up before it was all over the web. ;) So why is this update so small? Because my Xenogears site is coming along incredibly well! I absolutely love playing with layouts and so on... making it just right... also, I've started a project with Chiba, of FF7 scripting fame - We're scripting Xenogears! But rest assured, I haven't abandoned this page... especially not with FF8's Japanese release coming up fast. ;) I'm just doing some real intensive work right now, and soon things will be back to normal here. Jan. 29 - As promised, Chapter 30... it's a big one! Jan. 26 - I actually did a few different things this update... first of all, I might as well mention I fixed up some of my own artwork that I had in the Fan Art gallery, and made it look nicer. Didn't feel like doing a whole big update just to point that out though... Also, speaking of small stuff, I fixed a couple broken links around the site. New as of today, there is something else in the Weird Crap section - the freakin' weirdest Sephiroth parody since my version of the Shaft theme. O_o;; That's here courtesy of Robert Silvers... and once you're done laughing your head off at Rob's psychosis, you can head on over and check out Chapter 29 of Misbegotten. ^_^ Also, not an update, but something that may be interesting to fans of the FF series - head over to GIA and check out Andrew Vestal's feature about FFVIII and FFIX... I'd heard this rumor before, but never given it much credence until he put all the evidence together in one place. I'm not convinced he's right, but it is an interesting theory... Jan. 19 - I was inspired to draw today, so I finally decided to get off my butt and make a nicer front page for Misbegotten. The pic's a huge improvement, thank goodness... Anyway, that's about it. Jan. 15 - Just one thing... I seem to have lots of ideas for stuff to add, but I never have time. And all anyone ever comes here for is Misbegotten anyways.. the rest of the site may as well not even exist. (Excuse me if I seem bitter, but it's the only thing I ever seem to get feedback on. Sigh. Wonder if I'll ever get any hits when the story's done...?) So I added another chapter. Jan. 8, 1999 - First update of the new year... yay! And my FF1 retrospective goes up today at GIA, too... which is why I've been busy. Anyway, I got rid of the holiday stuff, and added another chapter of Misbegotten... And if you guys have had too much serious stuff lately, you have to check out the real star of this update - the entire FF1 script, as MSTed by Daniel Seltzer. It's incredibly funny. Both can be found in the Fanfic/Humor section.

History of the Northern Crater in 1999