The YKTTW draft I'm currently sponsoring on TV Tropes ("All Stories Are Real Somewhere") is nearing its launch. I've got a few potential followups to work on next.

There are a few tropes I've noticed in puzzle games, particularly of the "falling block" variety. You know how in every game where you match different colors of blocks together, there's always a type of block that can be matched with any color? And there's always one that's dead weight and can't be matched with anything? I call them the Wildcard Block and the Dead Block, respectively. There's also that alternate mode where instead of pulling random blocks at a gradually-increasing speed, you have unlimited time and a very specific sequence of blocks to complete a predetermined puzzle. I call that one Puzzle Mode.

Then there's the one where win and loss conditions are removed, and you just get to putz around. It's in some puzzle games, but it shows up in all kinds of other games too, and it's something like a Free Play or Sandbox Mode.

And then you know how in stealth games, you can see a little cone in front of all the guards and security cameras that represents their field of vision? I'm not sure what to call that one, but I know it's a trope and I don't think it's on the wiki yet.

Healing Checkpoints

Checkpoints and save points have an interesting property in many video games. Whenever you reach a checkpoint, your health goes back up to full, as does your ammo, mana, and anything else that may need replenishing.

As it turns out, though, this wasn't already documented on TV Tropes. For shame! So I've taken the liberty of starting a YKTTW to collect examples. If you can think of any games that do this, hop over and share them. Or post a comment over here and I'll add it for you. Whatever.

In other news, I just finished a commander game with my Rhys the Redeemed deck. Started the turn with three tokens, and a Rhys. Played Parallel Lives and Seedborn Muse. Passed the turn. Untapped, made six tokens. Opponent (Momir Vig) tried to combo out and fizzled. I untapped, made eighteen tokens. Opponent (Lyzolda the Blood Witch) played Nevinyrral's Disk. I untapped, made 54 tokens. They scooped. Good beats, good beats.

Now I'm reading a bunch of books at the same time. I'm still reading A Dance With Dragons, and I'm at the Windblown chapter. I just finished The Faeman Quest this morning, and I started re-reading the first book too cuz why not. I'm re-reading So You Want to Be a Wizard cuz I'm about to start the newest book in the series. And I've also started on The Dresden Files because, well, I don't know much about it, but it seems like the sort of thing I would enjoy, and I've read the first chapter of the first book so far and it's promising. Oh, and I'm re-reading The Eyes of Kid Midas because I never got around to doing the thing where you read it again but keep an eye out for tropes to add to the trope page, so I'm doing that now. And I'm listening to audiobooks of the Peter and the Starcatchers series. (Jim Dale does the readings. He's the same guy who did the Harry Potter audiobooks. He's pretty good; I like him.) Also, I've got the books from two of the freshman seminars I'm thinking about taking next quarter if they're open, and I've been looking at them in advance because hey, why not? And of course there are the readings I have to do for my classes. We had a Ray Bradbury short story "Mars Is Heaven" assigned in my Lit class, and some bits about rap and hip-hop for Sociology.

The great thing is that I can do this. I mean imagine carrying eight or nine different novels around with you everywhere you go. What a drag. But since I have my Kindle, I'm set. I can swap between them whenever I like. Just this morning when I finished The Faeman Quest, I got to immediately swap over to a different book. That's a nice feature.

Man, I keep doing this thing where I write the titles as a WikiWord and have to go back and add spaces. This is what happens when you spend too much time editing TV Tropes. It's dangerous.

Anyway, I have this homework assignment where I have to do a reading response about this reading that I did for Sociology about how black fans and white fans interpret rap and hip-hop music in different ways, so I'mma start working on that.

I just started a YKTTW for the trope where a sphinx asks you a riddle. To mark the occasion, I'm going to think of a cool riddle.

Okay. Hmm. 

What has a beard but no hair,
Was brown but now is grey,
And is a piece of moldy bread?

Wait, I think I messed up somewhere. This is hard. 

Okay, if I were a sphinx and I wanted to eat some poor schmoe, what would I ask?

...

What is the fifty-first Merseinne Prime?

I'm not sure if I'd make a really bad sphinx or a really good sphinx.