(skip to the tl;dr 30 second rundown at the end of this post for a quick review)
Stella’s story is definitely taking an… odd turn and a quick shout out to all the awesome artwork and created material, been seeing a lot in Stella’s Gallery and can not wait to see more! So, what’s Stella been up to this week?
The big story this week has been the return of Jake; also called the soap opera week, also called Jake and Stella, the mushy mushy love story. For the non-romantics in the room, many of the story elements may have seemed to drag on and on and on (wow we got our longest video yet at 12:57 minutes, 12:57 minutes filled with long pauses, slow segues and teenage awkwardness), we, in the world of story followers, call videos like that backstory and world building, so just file it away as you never know when it might come back, or when we can use it to show continuity errors (ok, ok, I will focus back on the story recap). So the tl;dw recap of the video is we learn that Jake was helped by John Threadgill (Pinstripe) and didn’t do much except play at a little bar and get addicted to drugs (oh wait, that reveal comes later in the week, sorry, mah bad, was trying to liven up the video). We also learn that Stella had a urn/memorial of Jake’s ashes or something (creepy if it is an urn of ashes, whose ashes are in there). Jake asks if Stella still loves him and Stella replies in a way jake was not expecting (musician Jake is sooo in touch with his emo side it seems). A little note, Stella’s response to Pinstripe seems good riddance as the only mention is a “He’s gone now”. So guess its Buh-Bye to Pinstripe from Stella. Bitter Stella really does seem to surface more and more these days (see Bitter Enemies and her little rants about Angela, Piotr, and well almost everyone… except Jake). The video is really all about pausing and going slow and little details, something Stella’s not had much of lately being on the run. So even if the viewers did not see it that way, the slow pace may have been a welcome slow down for Stella. Oh, last item about this video, Stella remembers the third date as the physics building, Jake says English building, wow, for a tight relationship someone is having memory issues, better not go on the Newlywed Game, you will miss all the questions Stella.
Tuesday’s video is a little more in the action vein as we see Nori and Stella training. What has everyone glowing with excitement, is the last few seconds of the video. Stella seems to have some weird repulsion (no not the ew gross repulsion, but the Jedi physical send you flying repulsion) effect on Nori as they fight. Nori goes and gets this little cloth bundle and unwraps it, it is a stone, a black oblong-ovoid stone (where have we heard about that before). When Stella picks it up, it begins to glow and levitates above her hand, a strange symbol appearing on the stone. Wha, what, what? Of course no one, Stella included knows how or why that happened, but, strange things are afoot Watson. This is followed up by a set of thoughts from Stella that what if someone thinks humans are an infestation on the Earth and is working to set up a handy way to get rid of said infestation (I guess the alien store ran out of human Raid) and the reveal that Jake is battling a drug addiction. He got into a fight in Mexico, started using pain pills and slowly developed an addiction. Ignore the fact that Stella was going through his things while he was sleeping (maybe she just was going to do his laundry), we find Jake has a problem that he is struggling to overcome, one that many people deal with. A number of players shared their stories in the comments to the post, stay strong and I admire you all for what you have experienced.
Old Things is a post about objects that may seem found but often pop back up when you least expect it (you mean like a pimple…). Of course Stella is not talking about icky things like pimples, but rather that odd stone that she was able to levitate. What is that stone and what does it mean? Maybe we need some more mentions of the stone to really get our curiosity going. Stella happily provides another mention of the stone calling it “The Elephant in the Room” (a reference to something that everyone knows about, but no one talks about. Such as the Leaderboard). So, how and why do you think Stella made that rock levitate (remember to keep the replies PG-13 please)?. Along with what is that stone about, the other question for this week is what exactly is Greg Jordan tracking? Stella shares an audio recording from Greg. He has found an EC (Energy Confluence? Not exactly sure). But the audio links to the Breadcrumbs video Greg shared last week. It seems there is a buried pyramid in China that only human eyes can see (satellites/digital means can’t pick it up). It seems to hold great power. Curiouser and Curiouser.
Max, a cute young boy, wrote a letter to his mother and father about his fun at Space Camp. He got to meet a real astronaut, Karen Madox [Maddox] who told them that NASA is doing top secret stuff and you can see things from Earth not on maps (come on Google Earth has everything that exists). Maybe Karen was saying things she should not have been saying… ya know? Just sayin’… We round out the week with a chatlog of a conversation between Angela Sanning and Piotr. Angela has been working on translating Mu glyphs and believes the diamond shaped one means victory (hmmm very interesting). She tells Piotr Pramik is teaching her and a group of students how to use special relics to unlock gifts (hmmm very interesting). Why does this sound like a bad spinoff from Animal House meets Porky’s (hmmm interesting).
And I end with some tips for those into story – navigating Stella’s site. The site still is a work in progress (no I will not mention the L word that plagues many competitive people’s nightmares), but there are a few ways to search through the site to try and find posts (although there is a nice wiki out there that has a lot of information and is a great tool for players to use in finding information). There is a search function (although it does seem to be a work in progress as well). And you can use the category menu to display posts related to certain topics (such as the 12 Lines, or videos, or such). You can also run through the posts day to day, although some of the challenge reward posts do not show up when moving day to day (so keep that in mind and note you can find old solves at FevGames, the Endgame Wiki and other solve sites out there).
tl;dr 30 second rundown
- Monday – Jake and Stella reconnect. Jake wants them to run away and leave everything.
- Tuesday – Nori is training Stella. Nori gives Stella a stone that Stella causes to glow and levitate along with revealing a mysterious symbol.
- Wednesday – Stella muses on the thought that, “Someone or something thinks humanity is an infestation of this planet.” We also learn Jake is taking Suboxone and fighting a drug addiction.
- Thursday – Old objects and things have a habit of coming back. Greg has found a buried pyramid in China that holds great power.
- Friday – A letter from Max at Space Camp talks about him meeting Karen Maddox, an astronaut who talked about NASA doing top secret stuff and things you can see from space that is not on maps.
- Saturday – A chatlog shows a conversation between Angela Sanning and Piotr Denisov. Angela wrote a paper on Mu glyphs, a diamond shaped one meaning victory. Pramik has a group of students he is teaching to use their “gifts”. Pramik has relics/artifacts he is using to teach the students.