The Queue: Void Nouns

Do you ever read a word so many times that it ceases to look like a real word? Lately, for me, that’s been “Void.” We’ve been combating the forces of the Void for years now. We fought a Voidlord. We’ve visited their home turf in Voidstorm. We’ve empowered Voidforges to get Voidshards we can make into a Voidcore, and then there’s the other Voidcore that’s a bonus roll. We’ve got Void Invasions, Void Assaults, and Void Rituals in ritual sites. Now we’re off for a Void Showdown on other planets.

I guess if there’s one thing you can say for the Void, it’s got consistent branding.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions and the answers, like your Voidwalker used to complain, are void where prohibited.

It’s hard to come up with anything more iconic about the last day of school than Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out,” which he said he was inspired to write when asked what the greatest three minutes of his life were — his two answers were Christmas Day right before opening presents, and the last three minutes of the last day of school before summer.

What we really need is an emo band writing a song for all the parents who now have to entertain a bunch of bored youths all summer. Take pity on your local parents, some of them are really going through it right now.

Heat (1995), with Pacino and De Niro. Just one of the absolute best crime movies of all times, iconic cinema. I’ll also throw in Seven Samurai (1954), though I would need a time machine to see that one in theaters, I guess.

Like you said, popcorn, one hundred percent of the way. But if it’s not popcorn, I’ll take nachos, especially if the terrible-for-you cheese sauce they serve with it has a kick to it — some of them do!

Most summers, I do the Final Fantasy V Four Job Fiesta. One year my first two jobs were Knight and Berserker. This was already leaning towards being a very item-and-equipment intensive party (in a different way from a party that wants to break a bunch of magic rods, I suppose), so outside of the game’s fourth major city, Karnak, I grinded to the maximum gil total of 999,999 so that I effectively did not need money for the rest of the game and I over-leveled my all-physical-damage, no-healing party at the same time.

Why that spot? There’s a party of six wolves that spawn frequently in the woods outside Karnak that drop an absurd amount of gil and have a 50/50 chance of either doing a weak physical attack or doing damage equal to the amount of damage they’ve taken, which means half the time they’re doing nothing. I even figured out that, since the Berserkers (and Berserked Knights) would autoattack, I could play the game on my Game Boy Advance SP without even looking at it — I’d just walk back and forth, fights would start, and then they would end. (I even commuted to work some days with my GBA in one hand, playing without ever looking at it. Don’t be me, kids.)

I still do this if grind each year I get Berserker as a job, in fact!