...And back to the regular Tank.

Fabulous Vesnali, everyone. I am down to 30 wishlist items out of all the years, and should be able to get a few more of them after cashing in my coins. Thanks to all! :)

Nothing so far with Babette, we can remain plot-hopeful for a while yet!

Hope you're all doing ok, weather even looks like sunshine here today...

Wooo, nice job!

Babette? Plot hopeful? Didn't follow this XD

Yeah, Babette has been going through changes, started with a small bump them the art updated to a bigger tummy bump... Possible NPC baby!

Thank god Vesnali is over, and I can stop hunting flowers.

In other news: anyone in the shark tank a fellow record collector?

I had to look up who babette was XD Oooooo, that could be cool!

Haha, I love that sticker. xD

And congrats on getting most of the items you needed! I have a lot of coins in my bank and all of this year's items, but I still never got around to checking what I still needed/wanted from previous years. So maybe I'll do that soon and hope I have enough coins for most of it. :P

Yeah, they mentioned that her pregnancy/birth wouldn't be directly tied to Vesnali, but it would be something for spring. So I guess sometime over the next few weeks maybe that will happen.

Records like music? I don't collect, but it seems like a fun hobby!

Yeah! I love vinyls, I'm just slogging through and logging all of the ones I own on discogs by their catalogue number and it's....slow going. I was hoping someone else here had a discog and I could snoop through their collection :p

(I've got a 130 of mine logged already and that's roughly a third of my collection)

Oh wow, that's a lot! Good luck getting the rest of it put in. Are there certain genres that you prefer to collect, or just anything that you can find?

It's a fairly decent little collection and thank you it's murdering me finding all the right releases.

Uuuh I'm partial to classic/prog rock I suppose, along with old-school new wave. I also pick up most soundtracks, blues, and reggae I find. Lots of Bowie, Elton John, Zeppelin, that kind of stuff in there.

Ah, nice! It's interesting that vinyl seems to be making a comeback in popularity, although there have probably always been collectors. But I see it mentioned more now I think.

I don't think I'd really make a good collector of anything, I don't really like clutter and am the kind of person who will actually get rid of stuff that serves me no purpose instead of just holding onto it for whatever reason.

Except maybe books, I prefer real ones to ebooks although I will use the ebooks for convenience. Books that I really like though, I like to have a physical copy of. I don't have a whole lot right now, I haven't been into reading as much as I used to be, but I want to start it up again.

I've always loved vinyls, my parents had a little stash of them under the house that I was given. I only really got into it when I hit my late teens and bought myself a little record player. Then I inherited a stack when a a family friend died, and started hitting up second hand stores, and eBay, and record conventions and it's uh. Taken on a life of it's own. Oops.

I'm an absolute whirlwind of disaster in my bedroom it's covered in books and clothes and vinyls. It doesn't help that my room is the size of a pretty large living room. It's good that you don't like clutter and throw things easily!

I understand what you mean about books, I'm the exact same way. (Although I also collect antique books......again, oops).

What are your favourite books? c:

My room is a bit of a mess now, but I'm in the middle of organizing it and clearing some stuff out. Otherwise it's usually pretty neat, except I don't usually make my bed all the way because laziness.

Harry Potter will always have a special place in my heart. I want to reread that series soon, actually. I also like Lord of the Rings, and Chronicles of Narnia was one of my favorites as a kid.

I really haven't read too much in the past few years, college was mostly studying and not a lot of time for that. I've got a list of books that I want to read, full of different kinds like fantasy stuff and some other more serious fiction and non-fiction, just from stuff I've seen floating around and some recommendations. But I'd read anything as long as it's interesting.

I just reread The Great Gatsby because my brother just had to read it for school, that's a nice one too.

Teach me ur ways of neatness tbh. I'm in awe.

Ahhh Harry Potter was so important to me as a kid, but when I re-read part of it recently it just wasn't the same. I also spent most of the books as a kid thinking "but when will she tell me more about Remus and Sirius". I like LOTR! I've got multiples copies of the trilogy, and of the Hobbit. Never got into Narnia though.

Oh that sucks but it's understandable, college/uni is hell. I've tried to get back into reading but I've found I rarely have the patience for it now sadly - unless they're ones I've read a million times.

I /love/ books like All Quiet on the Western Front, Slaughterhouse Five, Good Omens, Brokedown Palace, and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Massive soft spot for poetry too especially Coleridge and Eliot.

I know, even as a kid I realized that there was still a lot of stuff that wasn't necessarily covered, or there were just too many other side characters and stuff that we loved but didn't get as much coverage as we maybe wanted. But the books were already pretty long, with lots of story to tell and not enough time. I don't know if you've ever checked out Pottermore (it's changed quite a bit within the past year, they completely revamped it from what it was before), but it's got some more in-depth stuff about some of the characters and other things. A lot of new stuff was original writing or notes from Rowling herself, some of it pretty interesting if you still love the series. You can tell that when she was writing it she had the whole world and characters with their backgrounds pretty planned out, but not all of it was able to make it into the books.

That's part of the problem I seem to have too though, the patience. I know part of it is because of the internet and spending too much time on sites like this and others, even when there's really nothing to do I just come here because I don't even know. Habit, I guess. I really want to try and get myself out of it though. Not quit completely, but just make more time for other things like reading and other stuff that I used to love but haven't done as much anymore.

I think I have some of those on my list of things to read, at least the titles are familiar so I've heard of them. Never got much into poetry, although I can remember liking a few that I've read but not what they were called or anything. So that's not helpful. xD

Wow, this post is huge. Sorry o-o

Yeah it's understandable that she cut things out and simplified things to move the story along, but I'm still a little bitter tbh. I think Rowling's strength lies in the fact that she created the bones of such a fascinating world with so much /potential/, and not necessarily in the actual strength of her own writing. I joined pottermore when it first started but I haven't really checked it since it got re-vamped. She's made some comments and things about what the rest of the world's wizarding communities are like that a lot of people (myself included) really disagree with, so at the end of the day I pretty much don't read Rowling's word as Word of God any more sadly.
(Also I was a very confused tiny queer that loved Remus and Sirius a LOT so I'm still bitter about how things ended up there)

I'd /really/ recommend All Quiet on the Western Front and Good Omens - one being a war novel and one being comedy - they're both short books and they hit really well. Good Omens is probably one of the funniest books I've ever read, and All Quiet is my favourite book of all time because of how sad and poignant it is.

Poetry is nice, but it can take a while to find poets that click with you. A nice casual poem to read is The Old Astronomer to His Pupil by Sarah Williams - that one only takes a few minutes to read. Long narrative poems like Christabel and Rime of the Ancient Mariner are a different beast entirely.

you have borne enough, my dear // a.s

That's probably one of my favourite poems I've found, honestly, and it was actually written by a friend.

Yeah that's true, the world itself is pretty interesting, even if not necessarily with all of her ideas. As a kid I used to make up my own stories when I was bored sometimes, never anything that I wrote down just all in my head. I would use that world and the LOTR world and some others, and just either come up with continuations or create my own stories that took place in the same world but were unrelated to the events of the books. It can be kind of fun to have a world already created that you can just play around in.

Those books sound interesting too, I'll add them to my list.

And yeah, I remember having to read a sample of the Ancient Mariner one for school. I don't remember much about it other than it was a bit tough to follow, or I just didn't care much at the time.

Poetry is definitely one of those things where everyone has their own preference for types that they like though. I have found that I tend to prefer the ones that are fun to read aloud, like they rhyme or have lots of alliteration or words that sound the same and it flows on its own almost like a song or something. I hope I explained that well enough, it's been a while since I've taken any kind of literature class I've forgotten some of the proper terms.

One last thing for Vesnali. If there are any sharks that didn't get enough coins to get all the items you want from the shop, please ping me and post what item you need/want most and couldn't afford and I will see what I can do. :D Sharks only.

Ahhh yes, the childhood forays into fandom when we didn't even know what it was called. Yeah there's definitely something amazing about sandbox universes like that. So much potential and unexplored possiblities!

Even as Coleridge lover The Rime is a bit too much of a slog for me most of the time orz. Rhyming poetry is neat, but I've got to admit it's not entirely my bag. I like the ones that just barely rhyme where it's more like similar words that link it together more casually - Eliot is a good one for that I think. But you might enjoy Kubla Khan by Coleridge then?

Also I've got to bow out and get some sleep for now, but it's been awesome chatting c:

Sitenote: Anyone else having problems with their HA? My CWS keep disappearing, and now my mouth is missing..

That's a very nice offer!

Kubla Khan... sounds familiar, like maybe we read a fraction of it or something in school. I'll check it out later!

Sleep well! Also yeah, I've noticed some weird stuff going on with HAs, probably some cache issues again or something.

Awwww , thanks for being such a sweet sharkie and helping out our fellow fins! <3

It sounds like getting into record collecting is a lot of fun. Hopefully after you get them all cataloged it will be an easier time to add to the collection. :D

I'm the same as you , I get rid of stuff all the time. It drives my mom crazy cause she's the opposite. Lol. "What if you need that later?!" Oh well. =p Although I really want an in-home library some day. I have it all planned out in the Sims... just a matter of winning the lottery to get it. Victorian style with a reading nook, fireplace with built-ins all around, and a white baby grand. drools