#god cannot save you from that tank stack

[impossible-rat-babies]

love it when DF is like. here’s the most recent patch trial for you to heal owen <3 oh and here is the 7th raid of pandaemonium too <3

[shnowbilicat]

Why Overwatch 2 will be just fine

Before we begin I wanna say that all of this are my own perspectives and thoughts, so take it with a grain of salt ... but tbh yall should sit down and chill until the game drops, kay? Kay.

Soo, there was another OW2 livestream not so long ago and people started freaking out and boycotting the devs. Why? 5v5 and there will be only one tank now.

I'm hearing left and right how much of a problem this will be and I can't stop getting annoyed about the fact that people really are SO upset that there will be no 'off tank' in their games and how the devs 'refuse to balance their game' instead and how there will be smurfing and- you get the point.

Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm not into the 'meta' cuz my competitive rank is a 'metal' one, OR MAYBE I'm just this guy who says 'it just game, why u have to be mad??'.

I personally really look forward to OW2, mostly for the PvE part of the game as it sounds so massive and seeing how much they've done with the very first mission they've shown us and the fact that we can level up our heroes and equip unique abilities just makes me giggle and excited about the final release and future events and updates!

So many cutscenes, so many new animations and skins, so many new maps to play X33

And 5v5?? I'm looking forward to that too!

No, for real, one tank does not make or break anything for me, mostly for one single tiny reason alone.

A Tank is still a Tank.

I dunno if you ever played other games where there are Tank, DPS and Healing roles, like LoL, Dota, heck even Pokémon and Fire Emblem.

Tank roles have one single purpose; be the literal meat shield for their team.

I dunno about you, but I've never played a Tank in my life that wasn't completely about taking the attention from my squishies and jump in to protect them. And according to my ranking I'm a Tank main, sure my highest Rank is Platinium, but just because I don't grind my way up like any other madmen.

Tanks are SUPPOSED to be in the front lines taking the damage, making a way through the crowd, mess up the other team's formation. I also believe I'm not the end all be all for my squishies, I trust in them that they can protect themselves when I go in for a kill, which they can with their several abilities like a sleeping dart, climbing walls or building up a wall to hide behind.

Here we have Pro Tank players freaking out and complaining that 'they lack a tank' that there won't be any strategy involved cuz they are missing another meat shield that has their back etc. etc.

Again, I'm just a noob playing my Quickplay and Arcade games for lootboxes ... but god am I sick and tired of hearing these excuses from one trick pro players who have been stuck in their metas and comps.

SURE they are up there for a reason, but the fact of the matter is that I don't care if you do not want a 'dive comp' if I wanna play D.Va to get myself a 6 stack Ult kill, kay??

I don't care if we have a Zarya and Roady, they gonna wreck our enemy team and I'm gonna pump up their asses with as much healing as they want, kay???

The standarts OW pro players have been setting time and time again has muddied the waters of normal play. Because of them Symmetra and Bastion have been thrown into the corner of the back room and will never be seen in normal play because 'they ain't meta'.

Bro, I've been a Bastion main since Comp Season 3 and I've been wrecking my games left and right whenever I play him. I do not need your meta to succed, I don't need a Mercy pocket or a Rein shield because people like the pros set the standart that Bastion is ONLY useful when these criteria are met.

Not only that, BECAUSE of their standarts I forced myself into being able to switch to any roles with heroes that do just as much good as my Bastion. And that was actually a very good thing! Now I'm a solid Gold-Plat rank player that can play pretty much every hero in Mystery Heroes.

... and then I see our current pros. Who are scared shitless that their off tank players gonna play ... DPS?? Or Healing?? Like, weren't you guys moaning about one tricks? About people not being able to switch?

You ... you do know how OW started, right? OW was a game the devs SPECIFICALLY made to be open gameplay, they WANTED people to switch to heroes and experiment with new combos.

But lately we had buffs, nerfs, change in ques and all you can do is complain about it.

YOU put the standart 2-2-2 because people started to go tank-healers only, or Genji-healing only, or some shit because that was OP.

YOU were the ones forcing in a role que system because other people could not or refused to switch their roles.

YOU forced the devs to rework ALL HEROES to your standarts. Granted, here you got the devs to make Symmetra interesting to play, Bastion and Torb more viable and Brig to be more fair ... for you, because I cannot play Brig to safe my life, she's such a squishy and I die the second the round starts.

If you cannot handle what pro players dished out years ago, then please do me the favor and stay with your Rein-Zayra combo for the rest of eternity thxx

And we haven't talked about the OW2 hero reworks and new maps with more things to hide behind yet! Making each Tank more viable and more enjoyable to play. And guess what? THEY AIN'T DONE YET! I've seen alot of players moarn that the game will be SO unfair ... but we haven't seen anything yet. Espacially since they haven't told us any DPS or Healing ability changes either.

'But BUT 3 years of development!!!' so?? 3 years could mean anything. Not to mention that the EXACT SAME DEVS are working on OW2 are ALSO STILL working on OW 1 at the same time. And it's a pandemic. Sure they are a huge team, but they have a huge goal; aka THE STORY MODE WITH HUNDRETS OF HOURS OF PLAYTIME AND ANIMATED CUTSCENES.

They still have a long ass way to go, so chill out and give em some time. There are over 30 heroes they have to rework, remodel, give a part in the Story. Multiple new Maps to work, maybe even rework, test and make sure everything is as polished as possible for the general player base; which ain't the pros btw.

So, with pretty much mostly everything said, what's my final stand?

I would say to everybody worrying that the game won't be good; trust me, it'll be just fine.

If you don't enjoy the 5v5, there will still be Arcade and Story to keep ya company, like, I've been playing Quickplay and Arcade 99% of the time, you gonna be fine fam.

And if you're a pro player who JUST CANNOT handle 5v5 without their off tank puppy jumping after them then here's a tip:

Don't play Overwatch 2.

Nobody will force you to it, Overwatch will still exist with it's 6v6 2 tanks, 2 DPS, 2 healing boringness and it's frozen metas and comps and the same ass people in the Top 100 you play against each and every day with tiny buffs and nerfs every other day.

Meanwhile me and my squad will enjoy more shenanigans in OW2.

I'll gladly play momma Orisa and keep my friends save and sound, while also hooking every evil doer who dares come close to em ewe

Overwatch 2 is for us, the players who play the game like the devs intended; play the heroes you want, no matter if you lose or fail and have to pick yourself up again to grow and become stronger.

Overwatch 2 will be just fine.

[thevoilinauttheory]

Day 22: Deity

[ So. A very long time ago, both @ever-searching​​ and @mathemagiks​​ did an “OC Primal” challenge/meme - that I, for so very long, wished to do but had zero motivation to do. (You can find them both here and here, respectively! I suggest reading, they’re very great!)

So... I decided to do that for the prompt! ]

Primal Name: Myrrdyn

Trial Name: The False Heavens (Location: Unknown; Weather: Starry Night)

Quest Overview: In an attempt to save Maximiloix and your lives from the hands of fate, Caromont has called upon the powers of Myrddyn, a god of magic and prophecy. While successful, your mediator friend has found himself consumed by the primal and unable to break free. Stop him, before the very heavens crash upon the world beneath your stage of stars.

Battle Music:

Phase 1 - Night and Day - Amadeus Indetzki Interlude - True Love’s Last Kiss - (Eternal Eclipse) Thomas-Adam Habuda Phase 2 - Full Orbit Soundtrack - Sky: Children of the Light

The music softens through the phases. Phase 1 and Interlude’s tracks will repeat; once Phase 2′s track ends, the rest of the battle will be played out in silence.

Appearance: As Caromont draws massive amounts of aether into his body, his eyes and hair fade to white - the once kind eyes have now turned dead and indifferent. A veil of stars and constellations adorn him much like a crown, his nails painted of swirling universes. The planets surround him, command of them at his fingertips; a halo of moons and a celestial gown. Both dazzling and dark, the hands of time and fate are weaved by his hands.

Start of Battle Quote: “The future is mine, and mine alone. Only I can give fate what it desires.”

Battle Overview: The battle against Myrddyn is split into two phases and an interlude, and flips the entire system of mechanics on its head - creating a whole new level of difficult.

[ The rest will be under the cut, due to length. ]

Phase 1

In Phase 1, Myrrdyn introduces the party to the basics of his battle; his first move being a tank-buster - [Starlight] - which targets the main tank with five stacks of the [Tragic Fate] debuff.

This debuff will reduce magical defense significantly, and wears away one stack at a time over the course of ten seconds. The lower the stack count, the more damage that will be received - and tanks must switch before the next [Starlight] attack. [Starlight] will be cast again after the ability [Myriad of Stars], an unavoidable party-wide attack, has been cast. During this first phase, Myrrdyn’s abilities will switch between [Laws of the Moon], and [Laws of the Sun]. 

[Laws of the Moon] targets both Healers with “stack” markers - players must act unpredictably and not stack with the two healers, and instead have the healers spread as far from the party as they can get. [Laws of the Moon] acts like a “spread” mechanic, but will instantly KO everyone inside of the stack markers should there be more than one inside of them.

[Laws of the Sun] targets two DPS with “spread” markers, and again, players must act unpredictably and instead act as if these markers are two “stack” markers instead. [Laws of the Sun] acts much like the ability “Akh Morn” and players must stay stacked until the ability ends after four strikes. There must be four players total in each marker, any more or any less will KO everyone in those markers.

Laws of the Moon Speech Notification: “I am your moon and stars.” Laws of the Sun Speech Notification: “You are my sun and sky.” Phase 1 Party Wipe Quote: “The future is mine, and mine alone.”

Interlude

Myrddyn: “What... power is this?” Maximiloix: “Wait! Do not hurt him!”

The interlude, the party has worn down Myrddyn enough to drop Caromont’s body, making him vulnerable to attacks. Before they have a chance, Maximiloix steps in to shield him from damage. The interlude is both a DPS and Healing check - the DPS must focus on breaking Maximiloix’s shield before the “Burst” gauge reaches zero. During this, [Myriad of Stars] breaks through the shield every two seconds to cause its group-wide damage.

Once the shield is broken, Myrddyn breaks free again - swallowing the stage with darkness, now lit only by stars. The barriers of the stage are broken, and it is now possible to fall off the edges.

Interlude Party Wipe Quote: “You believe you could challenge fate?”

Phase 2

Myrddyn: “Do not resist the fates I have assigned you, for I can read your every move.”

All abilities afterwards are played out in random, unless otherwise specified; making it difficult to tell what he might cast next. 

Phase 2 taps into Myrddyn’s prophecy abilities further - and the party must act recklessly.

He starts the phase off with [Myrddyn’s Enclosure] and targets one tank and one healer - which encases both in an attackable cocoon of night-sky; each casting [Weight of the Heavens]. If the cocoons break before the cast timer is up, the player inside will be instantly KO’d. Otherwise, the players only receive 25% of their current health in damage. Players can be healed through the cocoons by other players, but cannot do any actions of their own.

Then comes another [Starlight] tank buster, following after is [Gift of Prophecy] which applies a buff to Myrddyn, which then switches the effects of the [Tragic Fate] debuff, as well as [Laws of the Moon], and [Laws of the Sun], while it is active. [Tragic Fate] now deals more damage the higher the stacks, [Laws of the Moon] now becomes a proper “stack” mechanic, and [Laws of the Sun] now becomes a proper “spread” mechanic. Players must watch to see if this buff is applied or not before acting. After [Gift of Prophecy] is casted, he will cast another [Starlight].

At 75%, he will add [Orbit] to his attack list. This is a knockback spell, simple. Though if a player remains on the field two seconds after [Orbit] has cast, they will be KO’d instantly by the actual spell itself - players must jump off of the ledges to dodge the spell before it hits (but only after the knockback, however, they may be knocked off the edge by it safely). 

Orbit Speech Notification: “I will turn your skies upside-down.”

At 50%, he will add [Turn of the Earth] to his attack list. This spell targets two random players with beacons of light, giving them the “Night” or “Day” debuff - all other players receive either a “Dawn” or “Dusk” debuff. One “Dawn” player must stack with the “Night” player, and one “Dusk” player must stack with the “Day” player. All other players must spread out to avoid doubling up damages. If no one is stacked on either the “Night” or “Day” players, they will be KO’d instantly. If the wrong players stack with the “Night” or “Day” players (i.e. a “Dawn” player stacks with “Day”, or a “Dusk” player stacks with “Night”), all players involved will have 40% of their total HP done in damage. Myrrdyn will only use [Turn of the Earth] twice per battle, and will stop using it before then if his HP reaches 40%. 

At 25%, he will use [Celestial Call] to bring down four “Heaven’s Pillar”s. Each pillar will start casting [Fates Weaving], an ability that will heal Myrddyn 5% of his total HP with each cast. Destroying these pillars will cause them to burst, dealing massive group-wide damage; each must be defeated sparingly - either taking down the boss with heavy DPS, or planning on taking them out slowly while healing in between.

At 10%, Myrrdyn will turn desperate and add [Wild Fates] to his attack pool. [Wild Fates] will not only bring the Limit Break bar down to zero, but start dealing heavy continuous damage to the main and/or off tanks. This damage can only be reduced if the tanks turn off their stances and allow a DPS or Healer to take aggro in their stead.

If Myrddyn enrages, he will continuously cast [Myriad of Stars] in one second increments, as well as be buffed with [Prophetic Dreams]; a buff that increases magical damage done, and reduces damage taken significantly.

Enrage Speech Notification: “It is useless, useless, useless! I will NOT allow you to change MY fate! I control it, only I!” Phase Two Party Wipe: “It was useless to attempt changing your fate... but at least... you tried your best.”

Upon Defeat: “How...? I... I can... see everything... can I not?”

With the primal expelled from him, Caromont falls unconsious - his appearance returning to normal. Anyone can change their fate, and you did today.

[kaediisarchive]

Final thoughts on the 2021 Mortal Kombat movie.

LOTS of spoilers under the cut! Do not look at this post if you don’t want to see spoilers!

And remember, this is all just my opinion. It’s not like an actual in-depth review because I’m not a film student; this is just my perspective on what I saw as a fan of this franchise.

POSITIVE

Sub-Zero and Scorpion were great. Opening fight was great.

“Eddy Tobias” namedrop lmao

I love the snow preceding Sub-Zero’s attack. Very foreboding.

Score is AWESOME. My favorite soundtrack is probably the one that plays when Sub-Zero is attacking them in the city towards the beginning.

Sonya rigging her house with a secret bunker and trap doors is smart and fits her character.

I like that the dragon logo has an integral meaning to the story.

Loved Jax vs Sub-Zero. Not mad about the origin change of Jax’s arms. I like that he had to work through his feelings of inadequacy and failure; people don’t just immediately bounce back after something that traumatic. I also like that his arcana manifests to protect Sonya rather than in the heat of battle. It shows his emotional priorities and what separates him from people like Kano who manifest their arcana in a fit of rage.

Sonya “Throw Hands on Sight” Blade lmfao. They nailed her fighting style too and I am happy.

Kano is the best thing about this movie. No competition.

Kotal reference!

Nightwolf reference!

Shang Tsung’s soul magic being black and wispy and foreshadowing Noob Saibot.

KANO DID THE HEART RIP

CHEKOV’S GNOME I’M SCREAAAAAAMMMMIIIIIINNNNGGGGGG

I love Liu Kang in this. He is 1000000% a Wholesome Boi. I like that he’s younger and unhardened and not the fully realized champion version of his character yet. Let him grow into it so it feels earned later on. I like that he’s the underdog, and I like what they’ve set up for him in the future. Also, the casting for him was perfect and they nailed his fighting style, too.

That little “the FUCK” that the Kano actor improvised(?) in the middle of Liu Kang’s lines made me laugh more than it should have. I don’t know why that moment got to me so much but it did.

I love Kung Lao. And they nailed his fighting style, too! Great to see variation that represents the characters (though there were less shining examples, which I’ll touch on later).

LOW SWEEP! LOW SWEEP! LOW SWEEP!

Egg roll scene is best scene.

Kabal! I love his dry humor. And his voice reminds me of Duke Nukem, which I’m not mad about. It complemented his dialogue well.

Not mad about Kung Lao’s death because it was meaningful. His fatality on Nitara was sick, too.

Liu Kang taking the ribbon from Kung Lao’s hat and wearing it in his honor, giving an origin for his signature headband is FANTASTIC.

THE PIT!

FLYING BICYCLE KICKS!

LIU KANG’S DRAGON FATALITY!

SONYA’S ENERGY RINGS!

Sub-Zero was a GREAT final boss. They really built him up appropriately to make him feel like it.

Scorpion’s fatality! And his skull face!

NEUTRAL

Not sure how I feel about Sub-Zero being wholly evil and there being no involvement from Quan Chi. It’s more straight forward for sure. It makes him an interesting (and badass) character, and I’m really behind this portrayal in that he is one of the most believable characters in the movie, but I’m not sure if I like the implications for later films in how this has simplified the dynamic in the entire Shirai Ryu vs Lin Kuei plotline. Having Quan Chi be the Machiavelli was always one of my favorite MK twists. And how do we eventually end the feud now? If Bi-Han / the Lin Kuei were wholly responsible, why should Hanzo EVER make peace with Kuai Liang down the line? The complexity feels like it’s been stripped down a bit, but I do love this iteration of Sub-Zero. I truly do. That’s why this is in the neutral category and not the negative XD.

Why didn’t Jax tell Cole when he saw the mark? Why wait until his family gets attacked? Maybe he didn’t want to do it in front of his family to keep them out of it, but that ends up endangering them more. Not a gripe, just a curiosity.

Sound editing was a bit too intense at times for my taste. I have tinnitus, so...big boomy bass with very mild voices is a chore for my ears to switch between. My ears were ringing within the first twelve minutes.

Torn between “fuck you Reiko” and “Reiko deserved better”. He deserved just a little bit better, but Skarlet says “get fucked” anyway.

I don’t like the “shaky cam” used in the fight scenes. Not my cup of tea. Very hard to visually process at times.

Whatever cosmic force is picking the champions for Earthrealm is doing a shitty job at it.

Why did they change the location of the Sky Temple to a desert? Again, not a gripe, a curiosity.

“We will not see another full moon before the tournament begins” THEN WHERE IS THE TOURNAMENT BUDDY???

Not sure how I feel about the “arcana” concept. It’s an okay plot device but kinda hammy.

Kitana’s fan! But why? Why is it there? I could understand the Kotal and Nightwolf references because Sonya has been researching, but why is Kitana’s fan randomly in an Earthrealm temple? Purely cheap fanservice.

Nitara was really cool. Shame she had to die, but her death was cool and there have to be some characters that get killed off. Wish she had more screentime though; feels like another instance of fanservice just having her show up basically as a namedrop and a quick kill.

The phrase “Are you okay?” was said WAY too much in this film. So much that I actually notices how often it was said, and I usually don’t pick up on these things.

Pretty sure a camera operator fell at one point in a Sonya scene because the camera jerked around violently all of the sudden then stabilized. Whoops.

How did Sub-Zero know to take Cole’s family to the gym? WHY did he take them there?

NEGATIVE

Opening scene was awesome, but it’s emotional impact felt stunted. I feel like the order of events should have been twisted a bit. Hanzo find his wife and son should have been the big emotional climax of the scene, but it felt like a passing moment and gave him no time to mourn and no time for the impact to truly set in with me. It was an “oh no they died” moment instead of an “ OH MY GOD THEY DIED THIS IS SO FUCKED FUCK YOU SUB-ZERO” moment. I dare say that the Legacy web series did it better in spite of their lower budget and overall quality; the series of events had better pacing and gave more emotional impact because of it. I said what I fucking said don’t @ me.

Wish we got more Scorpion. I love Sanada, I love him as Scorpion, but they didn’t give us the time we needed with his character to truly get a grasp of him.

Cole Young is like white bread in a parade of decorative cakes.

Raiden, a normally passionate and protective character whose fatal flaw is that he involves himself too much in events because he cares about the people in his realm and ends up fucking things up because of it, now seems to not care in the slightest. He feels completely uninvolved save for an occasional pop in to give a nod of disapproval. I don’t like this unemotional take on one of the most emotional characters in Mortal Kombat.

Small complaint from my perspective as a martial artist but uh...”Throw your uppercut!” was a bullshit line in a bullshit scene. If you’re locked up with someone like that and the guy has his arms around your neck, you physically cannot uppercut. You cannot fit your arms between his arms because they are cinched tightly around your shoulders/neck. YOUR HEAD is between your fist + bicep and HIS HEAD. In that situation, the guy has also left his body completely unguarded, so the most logical thing to do since you CANNOT reach his head is to go for BODY BLOWS. Beat him until he lets go to protect himself, catch his floating rib with double strikes, or punch the dude in his fucking liver as hard as you can to DROP HIM. Cole is supposed to be an experienced fighter, yet he makes one of the most rookie mistakes a fighter could ever make. Normally I wouldn’t care to point out mistakes in fight choreography or whatever because it’s MK and I expect ridiculousness, but this is the WRONG kind of ridiculous. It’s just NONSENSE.

I have SO MANY issues with Mileena. I’ll make this as short as I can. I don’t like the design of her mouth. I don’t like her weird stacked voice. She shows NO personality, not in her acting or even her fighting style, just an evil minion that got angry because she almost got her ass kicked. The turned one of the principle characters of the entire franchise and a fan favorite into a GRUNT. There is NO mention of Kitana outside of literal “fan”-service. Not even a reference to one of the most important plotlines in all of Mortal Kombat. And then they KILL HER OFF!!! When they do inevitably bring in Kitana WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY GOING TO DO SINCE THEY KILLED OFF MILEENA???? I’m heated and biased and they did my girl dirty.

Speaking of doing characters dirty, poor Reptile. They turned him into an actual animal. What a waste.

Why are they so mean to Sonya if she doesn’t have a mark? She wouldn’t be as much of a “liability” if they would take the time to prepare her and teach her how to defend against fighters that have unlocked their arcana. Mind-numbingly stupid logic.

This movie relies A LOT on prerequisite knowledge to work. It’s like they want fans to fill in the blanks for them. But not everyone watching is already a fan; this isn’t an obscure release, this is a blockbuster movie released worldwide. These gaps in lore and prior knowledge don’t make sense for such a broad audience.

Cole Young literally could have just been Johnny Cage.

Where was Raiden when his temple was being assaulted?

Cole’s arcana is LITERAL PLOT ARMOR IM FUCKING DONE

No but for real that’s the most boring decision they just ripped off Jax’s MK11 heater effect and Baraka’s blades (I know they’re tonfa and they aren’t attached and I DON’T CARE). Also, now he’s suddenly good at fighting again? After being dog shit this entire movie??? And tanks Goro?????

If Raiden is an Elder God in this continuity, why is he allowed to help Earthrealm AT ALL? It seems like favoritism and bends the rules that the Elder Gods are supposedly bound by way too much. They really just shouldn’t have made him an Elder God; I honestly think they just said it to introduce the concept without a fuck given towards the actual lore of the Elder Gods.

WHY DID RAIDEN TELEPORT KANO TO SONYA’S HOUSE AFTER HE BETRAYED THEM I HAD TO REWATCH THAT SEVERAL TIMES TO MAKE SURE I JUST SAW WHAT I SAW  WHAT THE ACTUAL NONSENSICAL FUCK

Cole REALLY should not have been involved in that last fight. Especially not after Scorpion shows up. It should have been Scorpion vs Sub-Zero ONLY for the final fight. Cole tag-teaming Sub-Zero with Scorpion cheapens Scorpion’s revenge.

Camera work in the final fight was not good, especially in the first portion. At one point Cole gets thrown into a fence, but it cuts to an awkward inverse angle that makes him look like he’s bouncing off of a trampoline. This continues to happen and ruins several shots for me.

Honestly Scorpion should have just possessed Cole. Permanently. No switching back and forth. No more Cole, only Scorpion.

PREDICTIONS

Lots of dead characters come back as revenants and / or with upgrades.

Kano comes back with cyber eye.

Mileena comes back with full teeth.

Liu Kang becomes MK champion, wins tournament, and kills Shang Tsung. As it should be.

Cole Young helps Liu Kang become champion somehow idk maybe he sacrifices himself or something just please don’t make Cole the champion I will start a riot.

Next movie will start IMMEDIATELY at the tournament since there was supposedly less than a month until the tournament starts in this movie.

New characters coming in will be Kitana, Shao Kahn, Jade, Quan Chi, Kuai Liang, Noob Saibot, Ermac, and Johnny Cage.

OVERALL

This movie was good, bloody fun! It’s not an A++ Oscar-winner, but if you expected that going into it, you played yourself. It was Mortal Kombat; it was stupid, it was gory, and I had a blast watching it. Kano and Liu Kang were the best parts of the movie for me, with Scorpion and Sub-Zero tied for third. Also I popped a lot for the cheap nostalgia hits. I’m overall satisfied with what we got in spite of my complaints, and I only complain so in-depth about the things I love lmao so trust me when I say I’m not actually mad, just nitpicky. I’ve watched it twice now, and I would watch it again. It’s like a 6.8/10 for me.

[spectralscathath]

Elm for the character ask!

Send me a RWBY character and I’ll tell you:

✨Elm Ederne✨

My top three ships for the character

Elm/Ironwood, Winter/Elm, Taiyang/Elm

My three least favorite ships for the character

Hazel/Elm, Nora/Elm, Joanna/Elm

My biggest criticism for the character

Definitely how she’s treated by the writing. Elm swings between ‘powerful yet compassionate, the heart of the Ace-Ops’ and ‘Angry Dumb Violent Black Woman’ depending on what the scene wants in that moment, and personally I think it’s very insulting. Elm as a character is one of my absolute favourites and I wish she had a consistent (not racist) characterisation. 

Also, once again, the ace-ops “redemption” in the last few episodes (and those are heavy airquotes), was one of the stupidest things crwby has ever written, and they wrote the Haven fight. 

My favorite thing about the character

I love how she’s buff but still is very soft in her character design. Crwby has very little body diversity, pretty much every female character is a a teeny lil twig with balloon tits, pipecleaner arms, and an alien head, so Elm is refreshingly different. She’s tall, she’s absolutely stacked and ripped as hell, she’s actually kinda well-proportioned when compared to most of the other female characters, but she also is feminine. She wears earrings, she has very soft features, a cute hairstyle, she has THE kindest eyes in all of rwby, look at this woman’s expressions and tell me that she does not have the gentlest eyes of the cast (you cannot and if you try you are lying), and I just love her character design.

A headcanon I have about them

I have so many. So so many. But since so many of those are angsty (or I’ve said them already), let’s talk about Elm being chronically late to work because she spotted a cat and followed it to either pet it, feed it, or make sure it hadn’t escaped its house. 

Winter, fellow cat enthusiast, covers for her.

What I would change about them if I was making a re-write

Oh god, well I wouldn’t fucking nerf her. I mean, I’d remove the ace-ops vs team rwby fight entirely, but I absolutely wouldn’t nerf her. See, as the story fits right now the Ace Ops are a five-man band, and Elm is the Big Guy (even tho personally I think she’s the second-in-command of the team, Harriet’s reads as inexperienced to me in comparison, but then, her fiery attitude still makes her a good Lancer). 

So let’s talk about the Ace Ops as a Five-Man Band. Clover is obviously the Leader, he’s the planner, he pulls off the crazy ‘would never work in a million years’ saves, he keeps the group focused and moving towards their goal. Vine is the Smart Guy, the assassin who can pose as a diplomat, the one who holds some sort of common sense. Harriet is the Lancer, she’s the newest to the team aside from Marrow, she’s not the second-in-command, but she’s got the potential to be a leader in the future. She’s brash and a little too reckless and challenges Clover on everything. Marrow is the Heart, he’s the rookie, he’s still finding his footing on the team, but he’s eager and he’s trying, and he’s a good reminder to the more jaded soldiers (Clover, Elm, Vine) that there’s more to the fight then just the next fight.

So. Elm is the Big Guy. This means that she’s the Powerhouse of the Ace-Ops. She’s the reliable fighter, she’s the one who can take the hits that would smash down the other teammates and walk away whistling, she’s the one who looks at a problem and decides to hit it until it stops being a problem, she’s the one who can be counted on to never go down. Elm isn’t a simple character, she can be wonderfully complex, Clover’s right-hand woman and a solid support, the one he can rely on for anything. Elm just doesn’t go down, and if I was writing her, I’d have that irrepressible will be manifested in the fact that she should absolutely be a tank. This is not to say that she’s going to be unstoppable, or be broken in terms of power level, what it means is that if I was writing the Aces in this way, I would have Elm be the raw strength behind the team while everyone else fills out different capacities (a proper team has people who are good at different things), since they’re meant to be the Best in Atlas, and them losing to a few college dropouts really doesn’t make sense.

What I I think of their character allusion and what (if anything) I would change about it

Hm. The Elm and the Vine really doesn’t work for me (is it even an aesop fable????). Like, I understand the basis of it, but honestly, I’d probably pull from Norse or Celtic mythology for Elm, perhaps an earth goddess sort of role? I’d need to think on it.

[hermannsthumb]

Can you do winter prompt 13 obvious setups?

13. my family invites you to join our holiday meal as an obvious setup and i’m so sorry

from winter writing prompts here

GOD i was so FUCKIN obsessed with this prompt when u sent it in, thank u so much. consider this the remix fic of 45. your family ditches you for the holiday so i take you home with me, except my family thinks we’re dating now

--------------------------------------------------------

“I swear,” Newt says, “I didn’t know.”

Hermann--suitcase at his side in an iron grip, snow still melting off the shoulders of his parka, splotchy red spreading across his cheeks--scowls at Newt like Newt’s just dug up his mother’s grave or something equally unforgivable. Newt shrinks away instinctively. “You cannot be serious,” Hermann says. “You must have known.”

The situation in question is this: intimately aware of Hermann’s famously bad relationship with a good chunk of his family, and how it’s likely to have only gotten worse after the whole Breach collapse Hermann-was-right-and-your-wall-was-stupid-and-wrong thing, Newt decided to take one for the proverbial team and just invite Hermann ‘round to his place for low key holiday celebrations this year. The alternative was ditching Hermann in the mostly deserted Hong Kong Shatterdome and listen to his dad guilt him about it for two weeks. Not that Newt would need any help feeling guilty; he knew for a fact that if he did ditch Hermann, Hermann would just be up all hours of the night in LOCCENT monitoring the late location of the Breach and missing Newt.

Newt wasn’t being sentimental, either. Hermann really would miss him like Newt was a limb that’d been lobbed off. Lingering side effects of their drift (even all these months later) has made it difficult for them to be even a few miles away from each other, let alone a fucking ocean. Luckily reluctant co-dependency isn’t new for them.

So Hermann agreed. Newt’s dad was just thrilled. He seemed to take it as confirmation of his decade-long suspicions that Newt and Hermann desperately want to be more than lab partners but are too chicken to make a move (as he explained eloquently over the phone to Newt, while Newt spluttered and protested) and ran with it, to Newt’s horror. Especially to his horror now.

His dad’s only done up one bed--one full-sized, dinosaur-patterned bed--for Newt and Hermann to share.

“Look,” Newt says, even though he knows what he’s about to say is a blatant lie, “it’s gotta be a mistake. We’ve got a sorta-guest room down the hall, I bet my dad meant for you to go there.”

“I certainly hope so,” Hermann sniffs.

Newt takes Hermann’s suitcase from him and books it down the hallway, and Hermann clacks angrily behind him. The sorta-guest room is classified as such because of the lumpy cot they kept in there for when Newt’s uncle would visit, though the bulk of it contained mostly junk, overstuffed bookshelves, and a desk Newt used to grow weird plants on in a fish tank. The tank (Newt discovers when he pushes the door open) is still there. The cot is not.

God damn it. “Dad,” he calls, while Hermann continues to seethe. “Hey, Dad?”

Nothing. Then, finally: “Yes?”

“Where’s the cot?”

Footsteps up the stairs. Dad pokes his head around the doorframe. “Cot?”

Newt sighs. “The cot we used to keep in here,” he says. “Hermann needs a place to sleep. Or I do, at least,” he adds, turning to Hermann, “you can take my bed--the cot’s not super comfortable.” The room never had very good ventilation, either. Hermann will just wake up shivering from the lack of heat with a stiff knee every morning, which means, thanks to drift hangover, Newt will too, and then they’ll both be miserable. At least Newt’s got a bit more meat on his bones.

“Oh, I tossed it out years ago,” Dad says. “Too old. It was falling apart.” Newt spies the beginnings of a smile beneath his beard, even as he feigns confusion. (God, he is so not getting a Father’s Day card next year). “Is there something wrong with your bedroom, Newt?”

“Uh, yeah,” Newt says. He shoves Hermann’s suitcase back at him just to fold his arms angrily. “Whatever, I’ll just sleep on the couch.” It’s a pullout. He thinks. It’ll be better than curling up on the carpet in his room or contending with Dr. Icicle Feet Blanket Hogger of the Year--stuff he only knows also thanks to the drift, okay, he and Hermann don’t make a habit of sleeping together. In both senses.

“But where will your poor uncle sleep?” Dad says. His smile grows.

Right. Illia’s already claimed the couch. Newt takes Hermann’s suitcase back. “Fine. I’ll dig out my stupid Boy Scouts sleeping bag and take the carpet. Hermann--”

“Newton,” Hermann interrupts. He looks slightly embarrassed. “Ah. That really isn’t necessary. I suppose we can manage to make your bed work.”

“Great,” Newt says.

“Great!” Dad says. He slaps Hermann so hard on the back that Hermann squeaks and sways on his feet.

Newt clears away some space in his old dresser--which is easy, since his fashion tastes haven’t evolved from when he was seventeen, and he took most of his clothing with him to the Shatterdome in the first place--and he and Hermann unpack their suitcases with relative ease. Or at least Newt unpacks their suitcases with relative ease. Claiming fatigue from their terribly long journey, Hermann lounges on Newt’s bed with his collar undone, like the picture of Victorian debauchery, and watches him. Frankly, though, Newt prefers the bossy little orders to his previous whining about their sleeping situation, so he’s happy to do it. Mostly. “You haven’t folded that sweater correctly,” Hermann says.

“It literally doesn’t matter,” Newt says. “It fits, and that’s all I care about.” He shuts the drawer to prove his point.

“It matters to me,” Hermann says. “I’ll know it’s not folded, and it’ll bother me.”

Newt grits his teeth. He opens the drawer. He folds Hermann’s sweater.

“There, was that so terribly difficult?” Hermann says.

He stretches his arms above his head, and nestles back against Newt’s stack of pillows with a soft groan that makes Newt’s witty, sarcastic retort shrivel and die on his tongue. Hermann can be awfully, uh...sensual for a guy with a bowlcut. “You really have got quite a comfortable bed,” Hermann murmurs. “I could fall asleep right now. Mm.”

Newt kicks the drawer shut again and flops down next to him. They do both fit, at least, though they’ll be bumping elbows and legs for sure. “It’s the most average bed of all time,” he says. He grins. “It just feels like it isn’t because it’s not one of those fucking cement slabs we have back at the base.”

Hermann makes a face. “I won’t be happy to get back to those.”

“Yeah,” Newt agrees. 

He rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. The little plastic glow-in-the-dark stars he pasted up there when he was twelve are still going strong, though the Lego spaceship he strung up with fishing twine is long-gone. Probably fell and broke into a million little pieces over a decade ago. “I’m sorry about this, by the way,” he says. “The, uh, sleeping situation. My dad...”

He trails off. Hermann crooks an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“He thinks that we,” Newt says, and swallows, “I mean, like--he wants us to...” To admit they dig each other? To get hitched and have, like, a half-dozen genius physicist-biologist babies? Be happy together? It’s not as if Newt doesn’t want those things with Hermann. (Well, maybe not the genius baby thing. He can wait a while for that.) “It’s just, I’m an only child, you know, and my mom’s out of the picture, and I think he thinks that I need--”

Newt’s saved by a knock at the bedroom door. “Dinner!” Dad says.

It turns out it was only temporary salvation. The moment he and Hermann take their seats at the tiny dining table--seats which are, for some reason, crammed together at one side, when there’s a whole fourth perfectly fine one just sitting there empty--and heaping mounds of everything are piled onto Hermann’s plate (too skinny, Dad says with a sigh, and Hermann only looks mildly offended), Dad and Illia start giving them the third degree. Yes, Hermann was born in Germany; no, he hasn’t spent any significant time there since university, though he supposes he wouldn’t mind going back at some point; yes, a lot of the original jaeger coding was of his own design; yes, he and Newt have shared a lab for the entirety of their time in Hong Kong, and before that in the various Shatterdomes they were shuttled between, and-- “Er, no,” Hermann says, “no, Newton is an--ah--exemplary lab partner, what makes you say...?”

“I raised him, Hermann,” Dad says.

Hermann’s mouth twitches up. “He’s the messiest man I have met in my entire life,” he says. “You ought to see the sort of rubbish he used to leave around--kaiju intestines, blood--oh, and there was one time he left a piece of dead skin louse on the coffee maker--”

“Hey, I’ve gotten better!” Newt says around a mouthful of potatoes. “Last week you didn’t even have to ask me to clean up all that venom I spilled on your desk.” He was proud of himself for doing it as fast as he did. A minute more, and it probably would’ve eaten through to the top drawer. Hermann was less enthused.

“And it only took you half a decade,” Hermann says. “Well done, Newton. If the kaijus ever return, perhaps you’ll have learned to operate a broom by then.”

He takes a smug little sip of his wine that he quickly coughs up into a cloth napkin when Illia--apropos of nothing--says “Are you married, Hermann?”

“Ah.” Hermann coughs a few more times, and wipes at his eyes. Newt suddenly becomes very interested in his plate. “No. I am not.”

“Seeing anyone?” Dad says.

“Dad,” Newt groans, shrinking down in his chair. If he’s lucky, and thinks very hard about it, maybe the Breach will reopen right beneath him and he’ll be tossed into an alternate dimension where Otachi ate him after all and he never had to sit through this conversation.

“No,” Hermann repeats. “I--no.”

Dad and Illia share a satisfied glance. “Our little Newt was always quite a handful,” Dad says, “but--”

No helpful Breach comes to swallow him whole, so Newt resorts to his back-up plan, which is smacking Hermann’s glass of wine off the table and into his lap as Hermann shouts in surprise. “Shit,” Newt says, too-loud, “looks like we gotta get that cleaned up, Hermann--c’mon, here we go--”

He shoves Hermann’s cane into his arms, and then proceeds to shove Hermann down the hallway until they reach the bathroom. Hermann’s glower has returned with a vengeance. “You utter buffoon,” he keeps saying, while Newt (crouched on the floor) dabs at his newly-burgundy pants with a wet handtowel, “you moron, you wretched little--”

“I’m sorry, okay,” Newt half-shrieks. He throws the handtowel to the ground as he stands. His ears are still burning red-hot from the table, and his sudden close proximity to Hermann--noses barely an inch from each other, so close Newt can smell wine on his breath and count every last dark eyelash that frames his soft eyes--isn’t helping matters at all. “What else was I supposed to do? I panicked!”

“These were my best slacks,” Hermann says, “and now--”

“You have a dozen just like them,” Newt says, “two dozen. Three dozen. I just fucking folded them all!”

“Stop shouting,” Hermann says.

“Make me!” Newt shouts.

“I bloody will!” Hermann shouts back, and then he grabs Newt by his tie and kisses him. 

When they emerge from the bathroom and take their seats fifteen minutes later, Hermann with his collar suspiciously askew, Newt with his own buttoned suspiciously higher than it was going in, Dad and Illia pointedly say nothing.

Hermann pours himself a new glass of wine and clears his throat. “What, ah, what were we discussing?”

[sweetness-doesnt-touch-my-face]

Animal Crossing.

My Animal Crossing story starts on Christmas day of 2004. I received my first original Nintendo DS, the big bulky one that was candy pink. A year later, I was gifted with Animal Crossing Wild World. Because I was a six year old that was naive and innocent, it was one of the only games I was allowed to play because my family thought it was a kids game. That said, I was also a child who always got bored after a few weeks. I must have given that game away and bought it again at least four or five times. It always sold at the generous price of $59.

The cover art was cute and I guess I thought it would be different or that I’d find something new because I had somewhat grown up and maybe I’d be better at it, lol. It was enticing in a way that I couldn’t really understand. But it was a huge part of my childhood and it’s hugely ingrained in my mind. Mostly because it scared the living fuck out of me. I only remember the last town I had.

Of course, I forgot to save many times. Mr. Resetti and his theme never failed to frighten with my utmost regrets, lol. But I also managed to get the cranky and peppy villagers who were compete assholes. From the deep male voices to their often domineering catchphrases. It’s funny now but to a little girl who thought she’d just be friends with cute animals. I felt like I was being bullied, lmao.

“I could eat you for breakfast, short stack!”  - those words are seared into my brain for life.

As I searched a completed collection of amiibo cards. I slowly but surely began to remember the villagers from my final game play. Here is the list:

Stitches, Patty, Kitt, Rocco, Victoria, Wolfgang, Camofrog, Limberg, Anabelle and Pudge.

As the years went by, I kind of forgot about Animal Crossing. I remember seeing City Folk on the shelves and wanting to play it oh so badly because the cover art just screams pure invitation. But nobody bought it for me. And I wasn’t allowed to touch my brother’s Wii console. The releases of the titles seem strategically spaced out, even though it may not be the overall intention. 

In 2013, everything changed. I cannot tell you how freaking stoked I was for New Leaf. My god, the anticipation and hype that was building with the official site. The graphics were 1000000000x better than previous games. It was beyond my wildest dreams. It was so beautiful. I thought that Wild World was the greatest thing in the world, that it couldn’t possibly get any better, aha. It exceeded my expectations and I played it for seven years. From 2013 to 2019.

Just wanna note before I share my villager list for New Leaf, I have never time-travelled nor created another town. I stick with what I get first. The only time I’ve ever cheated in all of my years of AC gaming was the 1.million bells hack for New Leaf. It made life easier but it drained the fun. It felt secure but in the end, it made the game a lot more dull. Once updates stopped, New Leaf got tedious and unchanging. The same quests/chores, same dialogue.

It got stale pretty quickly but I pride myself on managing to keep at least three of my original villagers that were there since the very beginning. It’s sentimental for that reason among many. New Leaf introduced so many possibilities. It was an integral part of where the series would lead. It challenged the old format with new and enjoyable features. It was revolutionary at its time with the 3DS.

So without further ado, my New Leaf villagers (past and present):

Nate, Daisy, Sterling, Pompom, Avery, Groucho, Hippeux, Hopper, Baabara, Canberra, Tank, Peaches, Astrid, Charlise, Tangy, Soleil, Peewee and Simon.

All the offence, I hated most of these villagers. Almost all of them were ugly. I tolerated very few. Most of them were jocks, snooty and peppy. I’ve come to realize that the normal personalities are my favorite. Thus making Daisy my absolute favorite villager of all time thus far. Peaches was a sweetie.

And despite Nate being a lazy boy and Groucho being a cranky grump. They had their soft and caring moments so I keep them in my heart. Same with Sterling to some degree. All of them except Groucho were/are my original neighbours since the beginning (2013) I refuse to let them move, lol.

I let most of the others move though - as you can tell by the long line, lmao. I tried to put them in the order of which they moved in. Either way, I had good times. I may check on them again in the future but alas, it’s time to say goodbye. It was a long and comforting chapter of my life which provided a safe escape.

In 2015, Happy Home Designer came out. It mostly went under the radar where I live. There wasn’t much promo except for the snippets from nintendo direct. I was willing to give it a go as the graphics were evidently better than previous titles. Truth be told, I played it for a week and have never touched it since. It was mildly fun but not enough to keep my attention for long periods.

The next spin-off was in 2017 with Pocket Camp which featured exclusively on iOS and Android. In that year specifically, I was not in the best place, both mentally and physically. I don’t even remember hearing about it back then. I was just not in the right frame of mind for anything outside of my bubble.

I feel like the momentum is over at this point so I haven’t bothered with it.

Finally, here we are in 2020. 

My god, aha. I thought New Leaf was the greatest it would/could ever be. Oh boy, was I ever so wrong. The build-up to New Horizons was almost unbearable at times. The teasers on nintendo direct left me screaming at the brand new mechanics and a story that’s never been told. It is like a breath of fresh air. New Horizons is amazing. The attention to every bit of detail on the villagers fur and faces to the realistic environmental changes.

Mixing the old with the present. We see familiar characters but in a brand new spotlight. Everything is different in the best possible way. It’s not discouraging the player with its new foreign abilities. It’s been incredibly easy to pick up on thus far. You can/will get lost in it for hours. We have all the time in the world now to enjoy this thoroughly. It’s beyond anything I could have ever imagined.

If I only could go back to the past and show this game to six year old me...

I can’t think of anything possibly topping this. Then again, they’ve proven me wrong twice before so let’s just rest for a little while, aha. I love this game. They’ve truly outdone themselves and they should be oh so incredibly proud.  It’s introducing Animal Crossing to a whole new generation of players.

And I hope people feel the same addictive curiosity that I felt as a child.

Last of all. These are my villagers so far.....

Oh! LoOk WhO fOlLoWeD mE fRoM nEw LeAf

Charlise. 

My first villager along with Flip the monkey. Sigh. I honestly didn’t like Charlise and she’s a lot more bitchy in this game so I’m just done with her tbfh. She can go back to Piplup (my shitty town name in NL) I’ve learned to live with her.

Flip is a jock so he has zero personality. He literally crafted a leaf and gave me the recipe for it so enough said. Gala, the ever so cute pig on whom I met at my first island adventure. She’s a normal personality and beyond wholesome. Bianca is the second to arrive from another island I visited. She’s endearing and I’ve never had a tiger villager before so yeet.

Barold moved in unprovoked. He’s....interesting (ugly) but okay.

I invited Daisy to my campsite on which she agreed to move in on a space right next to my house because she is my New Leaf BFF. I also invited Tia because she is a villager that I’ve wanted for years. She’s just adorable with her tea cup head, lol. After that, I’m letting whoever move in. No more amiibo summons.  

Last of all, before I invited those two villagers to my campsite. Someone else arrived first. And much to my surprised and beyond enraged dismay - IT WAS HIPPEUX. One of my least favorite villagers from my New Leaf town. The second fucking NL villager to appear at random at my island. I’m not lying, I wish I was. He was a rude and annoying asshole. I’ll forever hit him with my net.

I managed to kick out another unwanted villager (Gruff) who took Tia’s spot because I’m an idiot who placed a house down before even convincing her to move in. Since he left, another random villager moved in. Elise the monkey. Who was actually from my brother’s island. I just let her be her little sassy self.

Many visitors have come to the campsite in the last month or so. 99% of them were grumpy, deep voiced and ugly. Some cuties were too homesick to stay. A couple were neighbours from my Wild World town, which was heartwarmingly nostalgic. There was one new villager on who I could NOT pass up. Eunice the sheep. Her wool is my favorite color. She’s a normal personality and a poet. I’m a writer/poet irl. She ticked all the boxes so I convinced her to move in.

What I didn’t expect was her house being decorated as a laundromat...

Last of all, my final and 10th villager is Papi. After weeks and weeks of beating the shit out of Hippeux. He just never got the inkling to move. Everyone else seemed to. Me being an obvious dictator here, I could not stand for this any longer. Therefore, I just amiibo-ed summoned. #NoRegrets.

Congrats if you read this whole thing. I don’t claim to be the biggest fan of AC. But we have a history on which I cannot forget. I don’t think it will ever end.

[yekulan-dothkah]

Squadron Command Missions

Here’s what I know so far:

-Battle tactics are gained randomly, but they are common to gain. -4 Tactics. --Independent; not terribly good or bad at anything, buffs damage reduction, damage done, and hp. --Offensive; These characters will focus more on aggressive abilities and on attack spells and weapon skills, only increases damage dealt. --Defensive; Will focus on aggro generating abilities and keeping the attention of enemies. Increases damage reduction and hp. --Balanced; focus on attacking and role with bonuses to damage and hp. -Items:

--High-grade Company-Issue Tonic. ---This is a phoenix down, but for squadron members and they stack, it is used the exact same way when in a dungeon and a member falls. --[Company name] Aetherite ticket. ---One free teleport to your grand company HQ. -Chemistry rewards. --Characters that have a chance to obtain currencies and items typically only recover a fraction of what they would normally recover when sent out on daily missions. --Chemistry for things like tactical, mental, and physical ability seem to have no effect on the mission at this time. -Doing 10 command missions will reward the missing emotes like push ups, sit ups, ect. that are seen being performed by squadron in barracks during training. -If you die during the duty, the whole party is assumed to have wiped and you get kicked back to the start of the dungeon to run back to wherever you fell; I guess the Arcanists and conjurers don't care about you. -Squadron members have advantages; they can use all their abilities available from 50 and down despite being level sync’d. -The control features of Engage, Disengage/Re-engage, and Execute Limit Break should be used liberally. You literally will not complete Wanderers Palace without them. --Engage; self explanatory, they will engage the currently targeted mob group --Disengage/Re-engage; Disengage makes them stop attacking unless you click re-engage or engage, useful for getting past mobs you can sneak by or don’t have to fight. --Execute Limit Break; This is a special limit break, all three squadron members attack on your mark, seventh heaven style, and then the whole party gets a brief damage buff. It’s only uses 1 LB bar, even if you have 2 LB saved up. -Glamour, pretty simple and stated in patch notes. I’ll update this with more info on the reblogs as I learn more.

Updates: -While two Arcanists will help with healing duties, it is the slowest god damned dungeon you’ll ever do until they get more damage buffs from Battle Tactics. -Archers can and will grab aggro if you’re not careful as tank, they may be AI but they can hit hard. -You cannot choose what mob your squadron focuses on, so just focus on what they are for faster clears. -Unconventional tactics are recommended to be tried, EI; Running past tonberry stalkers to reset them. -If you aren’t already, sell the items you get from the chests back to the grand company for more seals or desynth them if your desynth is low. (I am still getting “okay” returns from Wanderers palace as an 80 weaver desynth, 0.14)

[amazingworkspaces-blog]

The Battlestation (and a bit of history) Workspace

Here are some of the products that make this workspace an Amazing Workspace:

Xbox One Elite Controller

Once I received all three monitors and set them up it became readily apparent I needed a new desk as the screens hung off the edges by about 4 inches on each side. I ended up buying an Uplift sit/stand desk base and putting a 96x30" maple packing table top from Uline on it.

Intel Xeon E5-1650 v3 @4.8GHz (equivalent to a 5930K)

Acer XB271HK 2160p@60Hz w/ gsync

Desk at standing height. Arch's display blanks much quicker than W10 and I'm too lazy to change the settings.

Peripherals:

Schiit Stack (Modi/Magni 2 Uber)

EK Supremacy EVO X99 Waterblock

12x Corsair ML120 Fans

Zowie EC1-A Mouse

EVGA GTX 1080 FTW Hybrid

I finished with cable management today and I can finally share my battlestation!

EK GTX 970 Waterblock

Caselabs S8

Initially I had purchased a Xeon E5-1650v4 right when it launched. Unfortunately I soon discovered that the v4 Xeons were the first generation that intel would prevent overclocking on. So i sold the v4 and purchased a used E5-1650v3 from hardforum. The chip is an excellent overclocker and I found that I was hitting the thermal limitations of my h115i well before I was hitting the chips maximums.

Audio:

From left to right the monitors are XB271HU, XB271HK and PB258Q.

If you plan on spending the money for a top-end rig, please please please, spend another $200 to make sure a power surge doesn't fry it. This UPS (1500PFCLCD) provides 900W of power and will shut down your computer safely if it detects a power outage. It can also display your system's current power usage which is nice. Mine idles between 120W and 220W. The highest I've seen was 600W when i was stress testing the CPU at 1.4V

Dual DDC Pumps w/ EK dual top

I can however recommend purchasing a toothed wire conduit. Keeps everything very nice and organized. All the wires from my desk go directly underneath to the conduit and then out the side to a neoprene sleeve and over to the computer's IO.

At the time I finished the build in it's current form, I was still using two 21.5 inch 1080p Samsung monitors and my GTX 1080 had never seen more than 30% load in-game. I purchased all three of my current monitors used from r/hardwareswap.

With the top off. These are the fans for the roof rads. All of the raditor fans, including the two in the front go to the same PWM fan hub seen here. The case fans are on a separate fan hub. The entire top including rads and fans can be removed in less than a minute by disconnecting two QDCs and undoing four screws.

Asus PB258Q 1440p@60Hz

Modhouse Audio Argon Headphones

The blue thing is the transformer for the white CCFL hidden down below, between the two roof rads.

The vast majority of my setup has been obtained used, either through r/hardwareswap or hardforum . I cannot recommend going the used route enough. It has saved me a ton of money and allowed me to meet more of my fellow PC enthusiasts.

In all its glory. Apologies for the picture quality. My obsession for expensive niche hobbies hasn't yet entered the photography realm (thank god).

Currently I am running a VFIO setup. Windows runs in a VM on top of Arch Linux for the sole purpose of gaming. The VM is given its own dedicated GTX1080 via IOMMU / VT-D, resulting in very minimal performance drop (5%) when compared to a virtualized GPU. In this photo the windows VM is running on the left two monitors while Arch is running on the vertical monitor powered by a 970. With the program Synergy you can move the mouse from the windows VM across the Arch seamlessly exactly like normal multiple monitor setups. I went this route because I wanted to use linux as my daily driver but I game a lot and I dislike dual boot. Unfortunately my previous CPU did not support Directed I/O, which started me on the upgrade path that ends in the picture above.

Rama M10-A on the right. The macro-pad has two layers at the moment. The first layer is bound to volume/media functions. If you hold the big brown key down like a modifier, you can access the second layer. I use that to control the windows VM (power on+off, disconnect devices/monitors, etc).

I attached a dual monitor bar to an Ergotech HD and I CANNOT reccomend doing that. While the arm itself is strong enough to support both monitors, the tilt spring behind the vesa plate is not and sags horribly. At some point i may test if one monitor alone is too light for the arm in which case I'll buy a second. But for now I ended up sticking a small block of wood behind it to keep it level and it works good enough.

2x EK XT 360 Radiators

Cooling:

WD Red 4tb & 1tb

Specs:

The loop goes:

Rama M-10A Macropad

EVGA GTX 970 SC

Samsung 750 EVO 250GB

AT2020USB

It was at this point I began looking into custom liquid cooling. Conveniently enough, the same seller from hardforum happened to be selling his caselabs S8 from a different build, along with the rads and the CPU block. All I needed was a few extra fittings and GPU blocks.

Working with the Caselabs S8 is the first time I ever felt the word "chassis" was appropriate for the cases we build in. It's endlessly customizable and built like a tank. I've always found beauty in function and all of their cases are stunning.

1x EK XT 240 Radiator

PCGR Modular Gaming Keyboard V2 w/ Gateron Greens and GMK caps

Schiit Stack on the left.

EK GTX 1080 FTW Waterblock

Unfortunately the desk base is Chinese crap and can only support 300lbs. With the weight of the maple top, and the monitor arms and peripherals, I do not trust the desk to also support the rig. Not having the computer on the desk has made cable management a royal pain in the ass. Every single cable that goes from my rig to my desk has to be a minimum of 15' long, or there will not be enough slack to allow the desk's full range of motion. I ended up buying $60 worth of cable management supplies to alleviate the rats nest that accumulated under my desk.

64GB Cruicial ECC RAM @2133MHz

The CPU sits at around 75C during stress tests at 1.35V. The 1080 never gets above 45C even during extended gaming sessions at 100% load.

Asus X99-E WS/USB 3.1

Acer XB271HU 1440p@165Hz w/ gsync

Reservoir >> Pumps >> 970 >> 1080 >> Roof Rads >> CPU >> Front Rad >> Reservoir

[teaandgames]

Revisited - Dragon Age: Origins (2009)

Remember when the word ‘Epic’ used to refer to those long form poems about some grand hero and his adventures? Along the years the word seemed to slip down to the level of ‘Awesome’. But Dragon Age: Origins, were it somehow converted to poetry, would certainly be an Epic. It’s a heroic story, featuring an ensemble cast fighting against insane odds to save what bits of the world haven’t managed to kill each other yet. It’s grim, as fantasy of this type tends to be, and it’s brutal.

It’s also beginning to show its age somewhat. This was expected of course, the game did release in 2009, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It was the first step into a new franchise, one that has now spun into something huge, so it was most important to set the groundwork. Judging by the sheer volume of codex entries, and the amount of people you can chat to, that groundwork has been quite thoroughly set. Dragon Age: Origins has constructed an entire world, which is great, even if fighting in that world does get to be a bit tedious.

But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. Let’s assume that you blotted the late 2000s out of your mind and start from the beginning. Dragon Age: Origins is set in the Kingdom of Ferelden, which is about to start ripping itself apart. A blight is spreading across the land, which in layman’s terms means a whole lot of monstrous Darkspawn. Think Orcs and you’re on the right lines. Monstrous transformations of ordinary people. Origins opens with a big fight against the Darkspawn horde. The good side is led by King Cailan and his general, Loghain. Right at the pivotal moment, Loghain quits the field leaving Cailan - and the famed Grey Wardens - to perish in the battle.

Except for two Grey Wardens, that is. These are people that are specially trained to deal with Darkspawn and it’s leaders - the Archdemons. Our hero becomes a member of this order and is sent on a quest to unite a Kingdom that is battling civil war on one side and the Darkspawn on the other. First though, you have to decide who you want to be. You can choose between the usual fantasy archetypes: human, dwarf and elf. Then you can pick your class: warrior, rogue or mage. It’s a bit limited, looking back on it, but it’s plumbing for basic DnD rules. Humans and elves can be any class but dwarves, unfortunately, cannot be mages. They specialise in hitting things, selling things that they have hit or buying things so they can hit them.

What impressed me most on this replay was how often your race actually gets brought up. It’s a testament to Bioware’s writing. They’ve strayed from the Tolkein archetypes, so elves are not haughty and aloof. In fact, most in the cities are used as servants. At best. I was a Dalish Elf (an elf that wandered the forests) and was met with heavy-handed racism at every turn. It’s pretty much given that humans in dark fantasy will be overtly racist, but it was handled well and my status as a Grey Warden carried enough weight that I could usually throw it back in people’s faces. I liked that.

It never changed enough to facilitate a second run through but a few persuasion checks and incidental dialogue were different. It was enough that my run felt uniquely personal - ignoring all the other thousands of Dalish Elves players, mind you. Yet Dragon Age: Origins goes great lengths to slot you into the world and shape it around you, even if it usually has a succeed state for whatever you do. See, with the blight coming the remaining Grey Wardens (which is you and a companion named Alistair) need to unite the various races of Ferelden if you’ve any chance of surviving this thing.

Uniting these races means travelling across Ferelden (which is a jolly big place if you hadn’t guessed), and usually results in a moral choice as to who you’ll support. You have to weigh up usefulness in war against what is right to do. Case in point, my people - the elves. You go to recruit a Dalish clan for war but it turns out they’re being torn apart by werewolves. Seems an easy fix until you realise what game you’re playing. Nothing is what it seems. You normally end up with one side of the debate helping you regardless, otherwise you’d be screwed, but your choices do go to shape the world. For better or for worse, they matter to the story. To help you make these choices, you’re given a plethora of companions to help you along. This is another tick in the ‘writing’ box.

I can’t think of a companion that I disliked, after the intial meeting. Each is wildly different, with their own complex backstories. The first companion, Alistair, seems to be an ordinary church boy (or ‘Templar’, they hunt rogue mages) until it’s slowly revealed that he’s the heir to the bloody throne. He hides his feelings behind humour, until you manage to needle him enough to open up. Personally, I had a soft spot (funnily enough) for the golem, Shale. She had been stuck in one place for thirty years and, as you might expect, had a burning hatred for birds. Some of these companions can be romanced if they like you enough, leading to a bloody awkward sex scene. Conversely, your choices and dialogue may piss them off enough that they leave. Still, even if you are naturally a complete arse, you can shower them with gifts to make up the deficit. Which does invalidate things a bit, mind you.

But I’ve sung the praises of the writing enough. It may have survived well over the years but there are parts that definitely haven’t. First off, it really doesn’t look that great. The animation is a little primitive now, especially when it comes to the faces. One of your companions, Leliana, sings you a song at one point and she just opens her mouth like she’s about to start drooling. The set dressing hasn’t aged well either. It overuses brown a bit too much for my liking. Even the capital city of Denerim is determined to look downtrodden and glum. I get that Origins is set during a period of depression but surely this was not always the case? A splash of colour here and there would do wonders to make Ferelden a place worth saving. As it is, areas like the Deep Roads in the dwarven city of Orzammar are a real slog to get through.

The biggest reason for that particular slog, though, is in the combat. On paper, it’s a great system. You have four characters that you can control independently, each with their own skills. The standard set up is a mage, a rogue (for DPS and for things like lockpicking) and a couple of meaty tanks. In order to juggle their growing library of skills, you can pause the action at any time to issue orders. It’s great when you’re tackling a boss but in a basic fight, having to manage everyone can make things take longer than they should. And you often do have to manage them, because the AI is thicker than a stack of planks.

A common theme was for my two tanks to finish off a couple of melee enemies and then completely ignore the horde of archers. They’d run up to my character, like a dog coming up for a fuss, oblivious to the arrows penetrating their skulls. It made me feel like a father trying to control a group of unruly children. The novelty quickly wore off. This could have been solved by dabbling around in the ‘Tactics’ screen but I didn’t consider ‘turn your back on someone clearly firing at you’ to be much of a tactical thing. This isn’t even taking the completely loopy difficulty curve into consideration, which elevates enemy mages to God-like status. A single fireball can wipe half your team and leave the others to slowly get to their feet. It makes for many frustrating reloads as you try and figure out how best to corral your children into mage killing.

Towards the end, I had a few skills that could usually blast away my enemies and hooked everyone up to health potion IV drips. It made my wins feel dirty. No matter, combat in games like this always struck me as a last resort. I preferred a silver tongue and quickly specced my Rogue into speechcraft. It allowed me to open up more doors into this huge world. It’s hard to look back, now that two straight sequels and god knows what else has come out, and think that this is where it all started. This huge world that sometimes feels more like a walking encyclopedia than a game.

The Hero of Ferelden feels like a tiny speck of light in this huge, grim world. It may look a bit rough and play even rougher, but that’s been a staple of Bioware games for a long time now. Instead, you go into them for the writing and Dragon Age: Origins serves up a variety of interesting characters and places. While it does dip its hands into standard fantasy archetypes a bit, the Kingdom of Ferelden feels like a living, breathing place - albeit a dying one. For a game like this, the world is everything. Dragon Age: Origins nails its world beautifully, perhaps at the expense of the gameplay.

[tumblunni]

Okay, I’m gonna babble a bit about playing Oneshot now!! So umm, under a readmore if you dont like long posts. Sorry!

* Man, the setting is just so FASCINATING and MYSTERIOUSSSS! You’re sent to save this mysterious world, and its kinda this unique setup where you start the game with the thing you need to fix it, and you just need to go on this big journey to get it to where it needs to be. And its all fun and cool and surreal cos you’re literally carrying The Sun, which for some reason is a magic lightbulb?? This place is so strange and charming like that, there’s this mix of robots and magic and stuff thats just accepted as normal here. Like... humans MADE robots, but all this weird mechanical-biological combination stuff was always here and they react like ‘WTF’ if you mistake it for a robot. It kinda makes a lot of sense that they’d have such advanced robots even in the most rural areas when the laws of their reality seem to already work like machines in the first place. I mean, some humans just randomly have objects for heads?? That’s just... a thing?? Big metal heads?? ‘Of course I’m not a robot’. This is just like some sort of medical condition I guess?? i was surprised when I finally actually saw a robot with an object head in the very last area, lol. ‘WHOA BUT YOU LOOK LIKE A HUMAN’ xD

* And there’s the whole biological system and economy and etc revolving around blue/green/red phosphor, which is why losing the sun means the end of the world for these people BUT they’re able to survive for a while without it. This stuff just exists that absorbs sunlight and can store it like batteries, but its like a naturally occurring tree sap?? Big glowy cyberpunk tree sap, from trees with neato glowy patterns instead of leaves. And from ALL SORTS OF other biological sources, like being honey secreted by microscopic starlight shrimps, and their land equivelant the phosphor flies in the next area. Its like if solar panels were things you could mine up from fermenting goddamn apples! ITS SUCH A UNIQUE COOL IDEA!!!! And its got so much detail into this worldbuilding and it all looks so pretty and surreal to see these things scattered around the world providing the light and power for every town you find. Its like... there’s always a realistic reason why this person is here, there’s never a single gap in the constant decision to ALWAYS explain the phosphor source for every single room. And it just looks super pretty cos you have these glowy things stacked on bookshelves and in lil tanks and in lil jars and just ITS GREAT how you can even see the differences in each area’s version of the technology?? Like in the Barrens where everyone is robots, there’s very little light at all. All the phosphor sources are mined and installed into generators that in turn power all the robots. They dont need as many light sources cos they emit light themselves, and their vision probably doesnt even work the same way as humans. So its really subtle and sad that you only see a large number of the jar lightbulb thingies in areas that are said to be abandoned human settlements. Its so messed up to think that the robots are trapped by their programming to keep refilling useless lights in places they dont even occupy, wasting their limited power source even faster... And in the Glen because its a more rural area that provides all the farming for the more technologically advanced main city, you just see more ramshackle home remedies for phosphor. There’s robots and technology everywhere but they arent really used by the locals? its like all these facilities have been built on their land by the Refuge citizens, and all the robots are government workers who dont even talk to the citizens. And guards keeping people from going to the Refuge until they work up enough money to afford a visa, and then theyre kinda never allowed to return, it seems?? That would have been messed up even when the world was functioning correctly, but its super disturbing now that we’re all doomed and the Refuge is literally being advertised as the only safe place to live. Which just makes it sadder when you get there and its suffering just as many problems as everywhere else! But just seriously, if it actually WAS the only safe place and they’re sitting here sustaining themself on work from the Glen and the Barrens and keeping all these people out even though without them the place wouldnt frickin BE safe to begin with! GAHH MORAL QUESTIONS, I LOVE THIS WORLDBUILDING GAHHH. And its so nuanced because none of this stuff is ever outright stated, all the characters act like its a normal way for society to work, and Niko is so young they dont really understand it anyway. Its just this sort of thing you realize after a while and it makes it all even sadder. And especially because all the people in the Refuge are just ordinary citizens too, and theyre not even living in the luxury they were promised to begin with. There isnt even really any clear person who upholds the status quo, they dont seem to have any government? Its just like everyone is running on the laws and programming left behind by someone long gone, and they dont have the capacity to question it. And its falling apart because nobody even understood that person’s reasons for making things this way in the first place. Like how the Barrens was meant to be an operation to extract blue phosphor to deliver to the Refuge, but the degredation went faster than expected and all the humans had to withdraw back. So now its just a bunch of robots continuing this mining operation with no end goal, as they slowly break down. They’re just expending energy to mine more energy, which sits there waiting to be delivered to no-one, because their programming is all ‘humans first, robots have no free will’. They’ll keep doing this stuff thats supposed to benefit humans, rather than looking after themselves! And at least they have Silver the one robot who broke her programming and acts as sort of a mayor to the rest. But she’s chronically depressed and alone and even with her help they werent able to fix the generator until you came along, and even when you fix it you’re able to bring some robots back to life but others are just empty background scenery that’s too broken to move T_T And... like... it seems that robots literally cannot become ‘tamed’ unless they interact with humans? Nobody seems to be able to explain how you ‘tame’ a robot, but it seems they gradually learn to step outside their programming and form more of a personality through just... being loved enough. And seriously even if they say they’re unable to feel emotions, all the un-tamed ones still seem to express their own personality and its just like they’re stuck unable to disagree with a bunch of laws that keep it restrained. I FEEL SO SAD FOR THEM! I miss the prophetbot, they were my first friend in this world and i cant do anything for them except give them one nice conversation before i have to move on. They’re unable to move on! Their programming literally stops them from leaving that one tutorial spot, stops them from talking to anyone else except the destined hero. the other robots talk about how prophetbot struggles to try and talk to them when they visit them, but they have ‘great difficulty’, and just... goddd, how chipper and helpful they are to give you the tutorial... god i was the first friend they had in centuries... I hope they get some sort of epilogue maybe in the credits??? SORRY, WHERE WAS I? Oh yeah THE WORLDBUILDING IS REALLY GOOD And anyway, the Glen people live on raw phosphor in sort of local homeopathic equivelants. No phosphor generators outside of the areas that’re occupied by Refuge robots doing research and such. They just have cute lil jars filled with fireflies, and they use the light of un-harvested phosphor trees. Which makes it even more skeevy that the refuge is using them to harvest this stuff, seriously?? And its SO FUCKIN SAD to see that one farmer who has their farm surrounded by tiny pot lights and has faith that eventually something will sprout even though they dont have any sun. And its all so much more sympathetic because they’re cute spoopy shadow bird people! I’m really glad the game gave plenty of cute designs to the normal humans when we finally got to them, cos they’d be so much less interesting compared to all these bots and cool magic people. Hooray for unexplained object heads! And then when you get to the Refuge its constantly bathed in ominous red light! (or a more calming pink in the less spoopy areas) Cos like 80% of all the architecture is just big water generators, its like venice but with blood red glowyness! And apparantly even though they’re burning all this high energy red phosphor constantly, its still barely enough to keep the city running. And they’re trying to run these labs to research stuff in the other cities, and they’re trying to find a way to recall and repair the Barrens robots, and they have loads of machinery that’s sustaining the state of the whole world. So its not like theyre COMPLETELY abandoning everyone else, but still its so creepy and sad to hear some of the scientist npcs talking so casually about their cameras showing that so-and-so area is ‘degrading’ at a certain rate, and oh this particualr robot somewhere far away just died. God, I really hope you didnt mean that exact boat-rowing robot that I met in the first area, you bitches! T_T But anyway it was really interesting to find books with little artworks and bonus worldbuilding on how exactly the three types of phosphor work. The design for the phospor shrimp is SO ADORABLE!! They have little goopy bubbles surrounding a more fragile inner body, they look just like the sparkly pools you find them in! Btw thats the best part of the first area, its this cool eternal night in a desert which makes it look like the surface of the moon, with these small crater-like lakes thatre all that remain of the once vast sea. And the phosphor shrimps inside them glow like stars! I wish i’d taken more screenies when I was playing that part!! And there’s stuff about how red phosphor is the best at generating energy, but it has the shortest lifespan and needs to be constantly in motion to work, hence the canals of water swooshing these crystals around the city. ITS JUST SO FUCKIN FASCINATING AAAA

* and just GODDDDD the REALLY UNIQUE SITUATION of the GAAAAAME Its just this.. like... inevitable doom?? There’s no immediate threat that you can fight, no combat, no villain causing this tragedy. Its just a slow death by lack of resources, and one very tiny shred of hope that this legendary prophecy person might be able to save us all. You have to very personally see the suffering of all the people affected by this, because the premise is going on a pilgramidge to reach the place where you can save the world. you have to walk through every city and you have to trust in these people in order to move forward. You have to get fuckin sad about every single one of them! And its just... not even an ordinary destroyed world. Its this half destroyed world where people are trying to go on with their lives, people are all working together to fix what they can. Its just the inevitable knowledge that ultimately nobody can fix the underlying problem, all they can do is stubbornly cling onto what time we have left, instead of giving up. It reminds me a lot of when you get to walk through the destroyed Lindblum in FF9, and see everyone rebuilding and banding together even as they’re being occupied by these enemy soldiers and forced into obedience. At that moment it feels like it could have been the end, but everyone’s bravery motivates you to keep going, and it just becomes so heartwarming to see the place slowly getting rebuilt in the later stages of the game after the war ends. Its neat that it never fully gets back to how it was, but its something different, yknow? And you get little npc stories like the sweet grandma who was sewing her granddaughter a dress with the last of her savings, then got blinded in the attack on the city and could never see the kid get to wear it. And she’s always going to be disabled now, even after you save the world, but it hit me right in the heart to know i had the power to give back hope to that grandma and make her life just a little bit less painful. It was nice to see all the npcs become more positive again as the place was rebuilding. I wish you could have walked around the game again after you finish it, and see what everyone would be like in the epilogue, yknow? ANYWAY, Oneshot is a whole game that captures that unique sadness, in my opinion! though you dont get to see the cities before theyre destroyed, it can still be equally sad in a different way to come into this situation blind and see everyone dealing with horrible trauma as if its normal, with barely anyone remembering the old world... :(

* And I am SO ON EDGE about the possibility that i might not be able to save the world in the end! There’s a lot of more pessimistic npcs around the world who believe thats gonna be the ending. Maybe I can restore the sun but maybe it’s too late, and the world has been too damaged. I mean... I can’t reverse what’s happened to anyone. The first area reminds you of that very painfully with how some of the robots dont wake up when the generator is fixed. I dont know if the place is too broken for these people to pull it back from the brink, even if i restore light and warmth to it. But like.. even if thats true, I still want to do it! Even if all I can do is just make everyone happy again, and let them pass their final days in peace instead of being afraid right up to the very end. Even if all I’m doing is saving THESE people, saving the ones I met and grew attatched to, but knowing probably the world will still die at some point in the future. Or even if its gonna be faster than that, yknow?? I just want these people to not be sad when they die. if thats all i can do then i still wanna do it, its better than giving up. I dont agree with the one cynical person saying ‘its better to die quick than keep fighting’. :( But still i hope there’s a happy ending somewhere in the multiple endings stuff. :(

* oh and seriously WHAT IS UP WITH THE SQUARES Thats the biggest creepiest part of the whole ‘biological technology’ aesthetic here, the degredation of the world is personified as videogame glitch type effects. But the characters make it clear that this is actually happening in-universe! they dont even have words for pixels, they just know that stuff is all losing its durability without the sun, and falling apart into ‘squares’. Like... everything. EVERYTHING. Natural rock formations, just flaking apart in these unnatural square patterns. Trees and buildings and everything! Robots malfunctioning cos some part inside of them has become pixels, their entire mainframe has magically poofed into the rawest of raw materials as if it never existed. Like it would be bad enough if it was just gears poofing back into raw metal or something, but SQUARES?? Its like if everything suddenly turned into dust regardless of what it originally was. Its the same visceral creepyness as flesh turning to stone! And the pixels seem to be like.. semi-sentient somehow?? or at least mobile and capable of actively spreading outwards whenever they appear. There’s some places that’re just plain square-shaped holes in things, and then there’s some where there’s pixelized light projections spilling out from the broken thing and creeping like moss to envelop and destroy anything else that touches them. Thats why its so important to immediately shut down any ‘square anomoly’ whenever it appears, and like.. still, even if you stop it from spreading you cant fix whatever got square’d. You just have to toss away all these materials and keep mining more of them to replace everything. Everything just has this random chance of being permenantly destroyed out of nowhere, with no chance to predict it or prevent it. It probably makes it feel like ‘why even bother putting effort into anything’. Life is just constantly about replacing and maintaining what already exists, with no chance to progress beyond that. No wonder everyone loves the mysterious Author’s books, its not like there’s much time to create their own books, yknow? (tho i feel really sad for the one librarian who actually is writing their own books and nobody notices them because The Author has become the expert on everything now...) And like... they say that AS FAR AS ANYONE KNOWS, the square degredation has never affected a living person. Yet. But like.. its still happening to robots! They already get to experience a preview of the horror of seeing your own hands fall apart into pixels as you beg nobody to touch you or else they’ll die too. YOU GET TO SEE NPC ROBOTS GO THROUGH THIS. They just beg you not to stand close to them, as they die VERY SLOWLY, and there’s nothing you can do to help! At least it seems like robots can be saved if the squares are caught fast enough, if you remove and replace just the squared parts, before it spreads to the rest. But not every robot is lucky enough to be considered important enough to be repaired, and ones out further away from the Refuge have absolutely no chance... And.. like... everyone is just so casual about this?? It seems its been happening constantly throughout all of living memory! And everyone just acts like its common sense that this is caused by the sun dying, and it’ll stop when Niko brings the new sun to the tower. But I kinda... really dont know?? Is this gonna be the bittersweet part of the ending? This stuff keeps happening even though i can fix every other problem. I mean man it would make a lot of sense that this is what caused the sun to be destroyed in the first place, rather than being caused BY the sun being destroyed. But what caused this to happen??? GAHHHH MYSTERIES I hope at least some of them are answered by the end!

* And OKAY THE BIGGEST MYSTERY Who on earth is The Author? I’m starting to suspect maybe he’s the same person as The Entity?? There’s this mysterious voice you hear on computers that talks to you the player instead of Niko, and does all this random creepypasta nonsense like changing your desktop background and you have to look at that to solve a puzzle, blah. I really dont like that stuff, it just feels pointless and un-fun and like its supposed to be just a novelty that the programmer find a way to do this. And all this OOOO SCARY blablabla doesnt really gel with the more subtle scaryness of a world slowly dying. Plus generally the puzzles are the worst part of the game, no offense. Its always just wandering around a really big and akward place trying to pick up every item and use every item on everything and combine every item. Its like a point and click adventure with a more hard to control interface :P I’m totally here for the story and not the puzzles, i’ve never liked this ‘rpg horror standard’ kind of thing. But anyway I had to mention it cos ‘The Entity’ is kinda integrated with this gameplay mechanic. BUT YEAH ANYWAY Its a mysterious semi-antagonistic-semi-helpful voice that gives you tips for puzzles in a really passive aggressive scary way with interface madness. And even though its helping you it’s constantly being like YOU SUCK and THE WORLD IS DOOMED GIVE UP and EVENTUALLY YOU’LL BELIEVE ME. So i dont really know if this is some sort of final boss villain who caused the pixel infection, or if its some worn-down antihero type who wants to help but has lost faith in the world ever being saved...? I mean.. the only evidence I have for The Entity being the cause of the pixels is literally just ‘it communicates with you via computer, and they’re pixels’. But i dont even know if its literally a talking computer AI thing or its just a guy hacking computers to send you messages... And I’m starting to suspect that this mystery voice might be the same person everyone else knows as The Author? I mean.. you hear about him but apparantly nobody has ever seen him, and his books just constantly keep appearing in the library at a rate faster than you’d think anyone would be able to write. And he knows all this stuff about how the world used to be before the sun died, as if he was there...? And he can apparantly travel everywhere even though nobody else can travel across all these lost wastelands. And everyone thinks he must have a flying machine, but it could also make sense if he was some sort of mystery digital conciousness that can observe everything and manifest via any form of computer screen, yknow! Like.. maybe he is this world’s ACTUAL god?? And I’m just like the only replacement they can get, after he gave up. Which explains why I’m completely fallable and I know nothing about this world even though everyone tells me I’m their god. Me as a characetr is just... me as a person. I’m not even really me in the role of their god, I’m just a player who’s made contact with this other world and has been mistaken for god because god is gone. And I have to do the best I possibly can, to fix the things even god couldnt fix... And its just very mysterious cos some of the books you can read say stuff that outright contradicts the world?? Like, The Author wrote about knowing the head librarian George, even though she says she’s never met him and his manuscripts just appear on her desk very morning. And this part of the book also says how she ‘believed fate was like rolling dice’, whereas the george you meet literally IS a dice-headed human. You’d think it would be weird to even write that down as if it was something out of the ordinary? So like.. maybe this George is some sort of reincarnation or replacement for another one who died??? Maybe all the object head people are actually hyper advanced robots and just dont know it. Like.. Silver looks completely human aside from her glowy armoured body and metallic skintone. And robots are apparantly completely able to become sentient just like humans after being ‘tamed’. As far as everyone knows Silver is the most advanced robot that exists, but maybe like... the object-headed people are her prototypes, and the regular human-looking people are actually all finished robots?? And like.. the world has already died and we’re just left with robots that they tried to make to replace themselves, or to hold their souls or something, and now even they are beginning to fall apart, starting with the least advanced robots. So the pixelization is maybe just like the robots’s glitchy perception of what’s happening when stuff breaks down, or something? Though that’d be sad cos it’d mean even Niko is just a robot designed to be the messiah, and their memories of having a family in another world are all faked to give them a motivation to wanna finish the quest... But whatever, this is just a wild random theory lol. I’m pretty sure the actual ending will be something completely different that makes me laugh at this post in retrospect!

[mattholicguilt]

Cassian Andor waits all day to die.

He can see Jyn lying yards away, torn away from him in the blast, and the Imperial base is in ruins but this damn rock beneath him stands firm. Scarif is alive and so is he, and he waits all damn day to die.

He can’t feel anything from the waist down, and he knows without looking that he’s badly burned, and he can smell his own melted skin, and he waits all day to die.

The stars pop into view above him, one by one, and he waits for them to call him home. He waits and he waits and he waits and he waits.

Cassian wakes up in a bacta tank as the fluid drains around his shoulders, and he looks through the thick transparisteel for his parents, for his old boyfriend Del, for Jyn, Bodhi, Baze, Chirrut. He finds no one but an unfamiliar med droid, so if this is heaven it’s not what it’s cracked up to be.

The droid helps him from the tank to a cot. “Fortunately, we were able to repair the damage to your spine and keep your burns from being fatal. The scars are irremovable, but you will be able to walk again.” Cassian just wants the droid to shut up. He wants Kay here to tell him he got hurt because he was being a dumbass. “Rest now.”

Cassian’s eyes are already closing— he’s exhausted and he hurts. “Wait,” he tells the droid weakly. “The Death Star. What of the Death Star?”

“The mission to retrieve the Death Star plans was a complete success, although you were the only survivor,” the droid informs him, and Cassian thinks he’d like to rewire the piece of shit until he understands what defines a complete success, because it’s sure as hell not the loss of life he saw on Scarif. “While you were undergoing treatment, the plans were delivered to Senator Mothma and the Death Star has been destroyed.”

“Destroyed,” Cassian repeats. “We won.” Galen was right, and the plans were worth it, and it was all worth it. It must have been. “We won.” And then he leans over the bed and vomits onto the floor.

Cassian floats in and out of consciousness. The med droid administers painkillers and nutrients, and Cassian halfheartedly plots ways to trick the droid into giving him just a little too much of the former. He waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits to die.

One day, he opens his eyes and there’s a young woman with long braided hair watching him. “I’m sorry,” she says when she sees his eyes open. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Who cares.” Cassian shifts, trying to get a better look at her. “Who are you?”

“Leia Organa,” she says simply. “You knew my father.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s dead.” It had to have happened recently, but she sounds like she’s made her peace with it. Meanwhile, Cassian’s floundering in empty space, looking for something to grab on to. He knew Bail. He liked Bail.

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” She shifts immediately into a senatorial disposition. She is not grieving, she is not mourning. She has a job to do. “There’s going to be a medal giving ceremony for the brave men and women who gave their lives on Scarif,” she informs him. “I was wondering if you felt well enough to be there.”

Even if he did, he’d try to find a way out of it. Cassian knows about survivor’s guilt, and he’s experienced more than his fair share of it. This is different, and worse. He’s lonely. He doesn’t belong here. “I can’t,” he tells Bail’s daughter. “But— there was a man. An Imperial pilot, you need to make sure they don’t treat him like an Imperial pilot. Bodhi Rook. He was a rebel. He was a rebel all the way.”

She nods. “Of course.”

“And the droid,” Cassian says, already feeling like he’s expended his energy for the day just be speaking. “K-2SO. He was a hero, alright? It wasn’t just reprogramming.”

“Got it,” she says, standing up. “And— here. Since you aren’t coming to the ceremony.” She slips a medal around his neck.

On backward parts of Naboo, they used to stack heavy stones on the chests of suspected witches, crushing the breath out of them. That’s how he feels now with the weight of the medal pressing down on his lungs. “Thank you,” he says to the princess.

At night, Cassian hears a voice echoing through the empty medbay. He knows it can’t be real but he listens anyway. “You can live,” Chirrut says to him. “You can live.”

“What?” he says to the voice that can’t be real, shouldn’t be real.

“You were wondering what in the cosmos you could do for us.” And then he sees him, shimmering and blue and real, sitting on the opposite cot, staff in hand, as infuriatingly cryptic as ever. “But you can live, Captain. For us. We are a part of the Force now, and the Force lives in you, and so if you live, you live with us, and for us.”

Cassian shakes his head. “You didn’t have to die,” he says, and his mouth tastes of copper and bitter, burnt promises. “All you were doing was protecting the kyber crystals.”

“We were protecting the galaxy,” Chirrut says. “And I think we did a good job.”

“Empire’s still out there,” Cassian says, rolling away so he doesn’t have to look at Chirrut’s ghost. “And you’re still dead.”

Slowly, slowly, Cassian gets back on his feet. He lives, and he lives with Chirrut’s quiet encouragements in one ear and orders from the Alliance in the other. Cassian throws himself into battle, vowing to himself to be one man who fights like ten men, a hundred, a thousand.

Surviving is much, much worse than dying.

He burns himself out, week after week, and Chirrut’s ghost haunts him with soothing tea recipes and well-intentioned advice. “Believe in the Force,” he tells Cassian, pleads with him. “Rely on it. But the Force cannot help you if you cannot help yourself.”

Cassian flies with Rogue Squadron during the Battle of Hoth and tries not to think about their namesake. He fights. He wins. He loses people.

“Why would the Force save me, then?” Cassian asks Chirrut’s ghost one night after he’s had too much Corellian brandy. “Why am I alive? Why not you, or Jyn, or, hell, K-2SO?”

Death did not restore Chirrut Îmwe’s sight, but Cassian can still feel the damn ghost staring at him. “Maybe the Force knew that you weren’t done yet.” Cassian fists his hands over his eyes like he can blot out the world, the galaxy, the whole damn universe. “Cassian—”

“I just want to be done,” he says, a low voice trying to keep from screaming. “God, I just want to be done.”

Cassian doesn’t have friends but he does have colleagues, people he talks to in order to sustain a veneer of stability. Bail’s daughter speaks with him occasionally, but he tries to keep those talks short. Her planet blew up; his world imploded. He’s terrified of looking into her eyes for too long and seeing everything he’s feeling reflected back. He’s cordial with some of the Rebellion higher-ups like Nien Nunb and Admiral Ackbar.

Wedge Antilles comes closest to being a friend, if Cassian let himself have friends. He’s a pilot defector like Bodhi was, and Cassian likes that but at the same time he tries not to think about it. He tries not to think about Bodhi at all because it hurts, it all hurts. Over and over again he has to hear from the other rebels how important it is that they all honor the memory of Rogue One, and all he wants to do is scrub the memory away, forget it, stop the endless cycle of hurt.

“I’m sorry you’re in pain,” Chirrut’s ghost tells him one night, earnestly, honestly. “And I’m sorry you’re alone. But forgetting won’t fix anything, my friend. You cannot erase the past.”

“I know,” Cassian says. “The past is all I have.”

Wedge would be a good friend. Cassian knows this. As it is, Wedge is a good colleague. He knows when Cassian needs to talk and drink and he knows when Cassian needs to be left alone. He’s an exceptional pilot. A funny guy.

As Wedge is relaying some bizarre story about Tatooine he heard from Luke Skywalker, Cassian feels the corners of his mouth turning up despite himself. He smiles, and he laughs, and then he walks away without a word. It’s a few days before he speaks to Wedge again.

Chirrut tells him that it’s okay to form attachments. Chirrut tells him that they are all connected in the Force, anyway, and he might as well let himself laugh and smile and reach out to other people. Chirrut tells him it’s okay if he lets go, and it’s okay if he moves on, and it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.

“Here,” Wedge says, handing Cassian a cup of caf. They’re holed up in the base on 5251977, a tiny planet no one’s even bothered to name. It about captures the attitude of the Rebellion at this point— war hero Han Solo is in Hutt captivity, Vader and the Emperor reign more powerful than ever, and there are rumors that they’ve begun building a second Death Star. Cassian remembers Bodhi naming Rogue One and he wonders what Bodhi would name this rock. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like the worst day of my life happened for nothing,” Cassian says matter-of-factly, and he sips his caf. “Rebuilding the Death Star. Kriff.” He drinks and it scalds his tongue and he doesn’t care.

“Rebuilding it with the same flaw though,” Wedge says. “I guarantee it. They’ll always rely too much on that Galen Erso, even after his death.”

Cassian is on Endor when everything goes down. He fights alongside Bail Organa’s daughter and Luke Skywalker and war hero Han Solo. He fights, and he wonders when Wedge Antilles is going to be shot out of the sky. Nien Nunb and Ackbar surely must be dead by now. He fights, and he waits for everyone around him to drop dead, waits to lose everyone all over again.

He waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits to die.

And again, he doesn’t.

At night, they celebrate with the Ewoks. Wedge claps him on the shoulder before going off to hug Luke Skywalker. Cassian looks across the bonfire clearing and sees Chirrut’s ghost watching him, looking peaceful.

Beside him stand three others, Jedi Knights dead but not gone. Cassian recognizes Yoda, he’s seen holos of the old Master. The other two are unfamiliar.

Cassian wishes he could see Bodhi Rook. He wishes he could see Baze Malbus, Jyn Erso, K-2SO. He wishes he could see all those rebels who sacrificed themselves. He wishes he could see his parents, and Del, and everyone he’s had to give up since he was six years old.

The war is over but the fight isn’t. Cassian feels sick every time he sees people acting like things are back to normal so he volunteers for every mission he can. While his colleagues take a step back, Cassian throws himself into whatever he can.

“Why aren’t you with Baze?” Cassian asks Chirrut’s ghost the night before he and Wedge are scheduled to storm one of the stubborn, clinging Imperial bases. Since Chirrut showed up from beyond the dead, Cassian’s been wondering. “You’re always here. Where’s Baze? Why aren’t you with him?”

Chirrut leans against the wall opposite Cassian’s, staff in hands, reminding Cassian so much of that first night. “The Force has not chosen to bring us together again yet.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” It’s out before Cassian can reel it in. He only knew Chirrut and Baze in life for a few days, but he knew where they belonged. If the Force was keeping them apart, then the Force was a sadistic joke, not the well-meaning entity Chirrut always made it sound like. “You should be with him.”

“I am with the Force,” Chirrut says. “And he is with the Force. So I am always with him.”

At the Imperial base, Cassian moves with ruthless precision, imagining himself a droid or a Stormtrooper or anything that’s easier than what he is. He gets orders, he follows them. He gives orders, they get followed. He shoots to kill. He sticks with Wedge while they search every chamber of the base, Alliance fighters around them taking some Imperials prisoner, killing others.

And then they reach an assembly hall with a screen like a theater, benches barren as officers scatter to more remote parts of the base trying to flee, trying to hide. One woman stands at the entrance to the large room, blaster aimed at Cassian.

“Rebel scum.”

But Wedge is too fast for her, and when he ducks around and sneaks up behind her, it’s all too easy to wrestle away the blaster.

The feed displayed on the large screen keeps going on, even though no one’s watching it.

And then Cassian’s watching it.

He sees a man bolted to a long table in an industrial room, screaming in pain. Wires attached to the nodes stuck to his forehead trail back into a control panel. One hand hovers over a switch on the panel, its owner obscured and off screen. “You are a traitor,” the off screen man says. “That’s all you ever were, not a hero, not a pilot.” He hits the switch and the man on the table screams even louder, writhing in his bonds. “This is what you deserve.”

Cassian feels like the ground is crumbling beneath his feet and he’s falling, falling, falling. “What the hell is this?” he says, waving his blaster toward the screen. Wedge and the Imperial officer seem confused, and Cassian realizes belatedly that he’s crying. “Tell me! Tell me what the hell is this.”

“It’s an educational broadcast,” the woman says. “Once a week we have to watch this scum-loving turncoat get tortured. Supposed to make us afraid to cross our superiors or something.”

“You…” Cassian looks at her with wild eyes. “Tortured? You watch him…”

For the first time since Cassian and Wedge showed up, the Imperial officer actually looks frightened. “Look, pal, I just work here.”

Cassian shoots her dead without thinking about it and spins back to face the screen. Wedge drops the dead officer and watches the captain, appalled. “Andor. Andor.” He’s calling Cassian’s name, but Cassian doesn’t hear.

He looks at the screen and he watches Bodhi Rook being tortured.

   Surviving is much, much worse than dying.

Bodhi opens his eyes and the room is too bright. It isn’t home or heaven, it isn’t dusty Jedha City or the green of Yavin 4. He remembers contacting Raddus, the shield going down, and then the boom crash of explosives.

When he tries to move, he realizes his arms and legs are strapped down. He can’t budge from the table he’s on, and that’s when the panic threatens to break him.

“Shh shh,” he whispers to himself, squinching his eyes shut and wishing he had his goggles. His head feels bare and cold without them. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“It’s really not.”

In his panicking, Bodhi didn’t notice the man walk in. He recognizes him from holos and propaganda posters, though he’s never met the man before.

“Welcome to the Death Star,” Grand Moff Tarkin says, a sneer curling his mouth to the side. “Maybe now that you see how accommodating we can be you’re having second thoughts about trying to blow us up, hm?”

Bodhi blinks rapidly, tries not to think about what must have happened to the rest of Rogue One. “They’re going… they’re going to shoot your wrinkled asses out of the sky, you slimy son of a bantha.” He doesn’t have to be brave. He can pretend to be brave. He can be enough.

Tarkin watches him like he’s examining a bug, and Bodhi tries not to squirm. The Moff is just a man, but Bodhi can’t help but remember Bor Gullet’s tentacles digging into his mind, scraping him raw. Tarkin looks like he could do the same thing, and intends to.

“If you’re going to kill me,” Bodhi says, “just do it.”

Tarkin grins and Bodhi can feel the panic flipping his stomach, and he wants his goggles back on his head, and he wants to see his friends, and he wants to be brave and he wants to be done. Tarkin says simply, “But then you’d never learn.”

And then he leaves.

Bodhi tries to stay conscious as much as he can and keep track of what’s happening around him, but Imperial officers keep coming in and administering drugs that knock him out or trap him in suffocating nightmares.

Sometimes they taunt him and hurt him before they leave, but he can tell that none of them have orders to do so. It’s fun for them to take out all their pent-up hate on someone who was stupid enough to try to join the Rebellion.

When he’s alone, Bodhi clenches his fists in the restraints, nails digging into his palms, and he tells himself who he is. “I’m the pilot,” he says into the quiet darkness. “I’m the pilot. I’m the pilot. I’m the pilot.” He delivered the message, but maybe it didn’t matter. The friends he flew with to Scarif are dead. “I’m the pilot.”

And then suddenly, one of the times he wakes up he knows he’s not on the Death Star anymore. He can tell; it’s an identical room but the shifting around him feels different. He wonders if the Death Star is gone. Any time he asks one of the officers assigned to him they just snarl and zap him with an electric rod, leaving tiny scorch marks peppered up his arm.

But he likes to believe that the Death Star is dust. He likes to believe that they got the plans to the Alliance, and that he was brave, and that he was enough.

He has no idea how long it’s been since Scarif on the day he meets the lieutenant.

The lieutenant is a thin man who comes to the room where Bodhi’s being kept and smiles at him with all his teeth. “Mr. Rook,” he says calmly, standing near Bodhi’s feet. “I hope you’re comfortable.”

Bodhi breathes in and out, shuts his eyes and opens them. He can be brave. “Really,” he spits back. “Then you should’ve sprung for a nicer room.”

The lieutenant doesn’t react. “I’m just here to talk, Mr. Rook,” he says. “I’m thinking we can help each other.” Bodhi won’t. He swears this to himself, over and over and over, has been for the whole time he’s been in captivity. They’ll come at him for information, and he’ll deny it. What little he knows about the Rebellion, he’ll carry with him to the grave. He swears this. “First, I was wondering… what can you tell me about the leadership of the Rebel Alliance?”

“I am the leadership of the Rebel Alliance,” Bodhi says. “I’m the king. I’m the king of space. Ha.”

The lieutenant doesn’t look angry or annoyed. He simply, calmly, steps around the restraining table, takes Bodhi’s left hand and breaks his pinky finger.

Weeks pass. Maybe. Bodhi doesn’t know how to measure time. He counts his bruised and broken parts and takes a guess. The lieutenant comes and questions him, and Bodhi tells him to go to hell, and the lieutenant hurts him. It becomes a predictable pattern.

The lieutenant beats him, cuts him, burns him. Bodhi knows the Empire and he knows they have more sophisticated devices of torture. He knows the lieutenant is being barbaric because he wants to, because he wants to feel Bodhi break beneath his own hands.

Except one time he comes in with an interrogation droid and Bodhi feels his heart start racing. They aren’t only trying to hurt him now. They genuinely want what information he has, and they’ll break him for it. He needs to be ready. He can be ready.

Except when the droid starts in on him it’s like every nerve in his body is screaming out in pain. Bodhi’s lost, drowning in it, and terrified that he’ll do anything to stop the pain, including give away the few and precious secrets of the Rebellion he has. He can’t. He can’t.

Frantically, he grapples for something to hold onto, something besides pain and fear. I’m the pilot. I brought the message. Galen Erso. Rogue One. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. The droid doesn’t stop hurting him and Bodhi doesn’t stop feeling small and helpless and scared.

And in racking his brains for something to hang onto, he remembers words that a friend used to say, over and over again, a prayer, a cause, a promise. “I am one with the Force,” he whispers to himself as the droid sticks its needles in him. “And the Force is with me. I am one with the Force. The Force is with me. I am one with the Force.”

The pain stops, and Bodhi thinks for a second that maybe he’s finally died. But then he opens his eyes and sees the lieutenant watching him with that too-wide smile. He’s stopped the droid and is pacing toward Bodhi’s head. “The Force?” he says, a lilt in his voice. “You think you know the Force?”

Bodhi doesn’t know if he should respond or ignore, so he shuts his eyes again and keeps whispering. “I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.”

The lieutenant slaps him, hard, and Bodhi stutters and stops. “Fool,” the lieutenant says. “You don’t know the Force. But I can show you.”

His hand goes to Bodhi’s forehead, cold fingertips and stiff Imperial uniform cuffs. And the Force isn’t gentle, and it isn’t a protector. It sinks into him and picks, picks at his brain. He can feel the lieutenant pilfering through his mind, digging his claws into Bodhi’s memories and fears and hopes.

“I’m…” Bodhi says, struggling. “I’m not… afraid of you.”

The lieutenant twists his fingers and Bodhi feels his thoughts scramble, anxiety thrumming in his bones. “Because of Gerrera’s monster?” the lieutenant asks. “You’ll find I’m much more talented than that beast.” And he reaches further into Bodhi’s mind.

Bodhi screams.

When he’s finally done, that first time, the lieutenant withdraws from Bodhi’s mind and cracks his knuckles. “Excellent.”

“You…” Bodhi tries, but he feels weak and rattled and a little shattered. “You aren’t a Jedi.”

“No,” the lieutenant says. “I’m really not.”

Bodhi dreams, and he dreams of Galen Erso. Galen stands before him and he places a hand on his shoulder and he tells him, “You can be brave. You can do right by yourself. You can listen to your heart.” Bodhi nods; he wants to, he wants to so badly. “You can do all that,” Galen says to him. “But it still won’t be enough.”

Bodhi gasps awake in his white, white cell, presses his wrists against his restraints until the pressure calms him down. He doesn’t know if the dreams are something the lieutenant seeded into his brain or if they’re products of his own anguish.

“Galen Erso,” he mumbles to himself, because he needs to remember. He needs to remember what he did it all for. He needs to remember that before he was here he was a pilot, and he was a hero, and he was brave. “Cassian Andor. Jyn Erso. Baze Malbus. Chirrut Îmwe. K-2SO. Arro Basteren. Yosh Calfor.” He remembers all their names. That was his job. He was the pilot. “Eskro Casrich. Farsin Kappehl.”

One day after the lieutenant’s interrogation, he releases Bodhi’s restraints and lets him roam the cell freely. “As a reward,” he explains, “for all the excellent information you’ve given us.”

He’s too far gone to even know what they found in his head. He only hopes it wasn’t enough for the Empire to do any more damage against the Rebellion. He hopes that in his time with the Rebellion they didn’t trust him enough to tell him anything important. He hopes and he hopes and he hopes.

Alone in his cell, he curls into a corner and holds his head in his hands.

The lieutenant comes and hurts him, with the Force, with machines, with his hands. Bodhi screams and cries and pleads for the end. Bodhi survives.

When he’s alone, he says the names over and over to himself. Galen Erso. Cassian Andor. Jyn Erso. Baze Malbus. Chirrut Îmwe. K-2SO. Arro Basteren. Yosh Calfor. Eskro Casrich. Farsin Kappehl. Ghosts in his head tell him they’re all dead because of him. Ghosts in his head tell him he’s somehow managed to be a traitor to both the Empire and the Rebellion.

“I’m the pilot,” he says. “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.”

The lieutenant is in his cell with him, toying with his mind, when they hear the commotion outside. Alarms. Boots slamming through the corridors as officers run to face the threat. Someone calls out on the comms, “Lieutenant Snoke, we need to evacuate.”

And when he’s alone, Bodhi hopes this is it. He hopes he can finally be free.

He knows he’s right. He knows he’s dead, finally, because when he looks up, Cassian Andor is standing in the doorway.

   “Five years,” Cassian says, shouts it at Mon Mothma as he’s pacing across the D’Qar war room. “Five years since Scarif, and they’ve been torturing him this whole time.”

“Rest assured, I am as horrified as you are,” the senator responds, her mouth tight. “If we had any idea there was another surviving member of Rogue One, of course I would have informed you. But remember that Bodhi Rook is still an Imperial officer. Even now, we can’t risk our own people going after an Imperial pilot.”

“Without Bodhi Rook there would be no Rebel Alliance,” Cassian says, restless and unable to stand still because Bodhi is out there, Bodhi is out there and alive and in pain. “And you just… you sit here and you act like your war is over—”

“Cassian, calm down,” Wedge says from beside him. He’s raring and ready to go get Bodhi, too, but he’s not up for yelling at Mothma.

“No, he’s right.” Cassian spins to see who’s speaking up for him— Bail’s daughter. Leia. “With all due respect, Senator, Bodhi Rook is one of our own. Captain Andor, I’ll go with you. I’ll help recover Bodhi Rook.”

She didn’t even know him, but Cassian thinks that’s just who Bodhi was. Is. He can start a fire in people he never even met.

“When do we leave?” Wedge says.

An undercover rebel relays the information about where the broadcasts of Bodhi’s torture are originating from— a Star Destroyer called the Tyranus. Wedge recruits the pilots from Rogue Squadron and they get ready to go.

In his room, Cassian’s pulling on his boots when the ghost appears in front of him. And without really meaning to, he’s suddenly screaming at Chirrut. “Did you know? Did you know about Bodhi? Did you know this whole time?”

“No,” Chirrut says. “I would have told you.”

Faith and friendship, solidarity. It should feel good. Cassian remembers that speaking with Chirrut is supposed to give him hope. But Bodhi is out there, and Bodhi is alive, and Bodhi is in pain.  

Cassian looks up and he’s surprised to see an actual ghost look so haunted.

Rogue Squadron heads for the Tyranus, Leia flying in formation with them. Cassian’s been silent the whole time, since they left D’Qar, the jump to light speed, even now as they draw near the Star Destroyer. He thought surviving Scarif was the worst thing he ever had to live through. But knowing he left Bodhi behind is eating away at him.

Before they left D’Qar, Cassian had come across Leia in a quiet moment and confided in her, “I wish Bodhi died on Scarif. Is that wrong?”

She’s too young to know as much about war as she does. So is he. So are they all. “I don’t know if it’s wrong,” she told him honestly. “But he probably wishes the same thing.”

Now, Wedge covers Cassian, taking tactical shots at the Tyranus so Cassian can zip right into the landing bay. He hits a few Stormtroopers with his X-Wing’s weapons before jumping out of the cockpit and firing his blaster at everyone in sight.

Bodhi is here.

Cassian runs through the corridors, shooting everyone he sees. If he threw himself dangerously into missions before, he doesn’t know what to call this. The only thing keeping him alive and upright is the thought of Bodhi in one of these chambers, shaking and scared and alone.

Cassian turns a corner and surprises an officer, who he pins to the wall, shoves a blaster in his face. “Prisoners?” The officer just looks stunned. “Where do you keep the prisoners?”

The officer rattles off directions and Cassian promptly knocks him out. Cassian is gone, running away, before the man’s unconscious body hits the floor.

Hiding behind a wall, Cassian watches an Imperial lieutenant leaving one of the rooms in the area the man directed him to. He waits for the lieutenant to turn a corner, and then he hurries to the door and lasers the lock undone, storms through the door.

And there’s Bodhi, curled up on the floor, pale and too thin, warped hands gripping at his brittle hair. But when he looks up, when his eyes light up, Cassian sees the brave man he met on Jedha.

“Bodhi,” he says, worried his voice might break. The distance between them is too much, and Cassian rushes forward and sinks to the floor in front of Bodhi. “Bodhi, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Bodhi says, so soft and so quiet, his voice full of relief. “We’re done now. I’m finally dead.”

“N— no, no,” Cassian says quickly, wanting to reach out and hold him but afraid it will hurt him. “We’re still alive. Me, you. We have to get out of here.”

Bodhi’s face crumples. “No, no, no,” he whispers, all in a rush. “No, no, I want you to be real, no no no.” Cassian tries to take his hand but Bodhi jerks away, buries his face in his hands. “Want it to be over. It’s a trick and it’s a trick and it’s always a trick and it’s a trick and a trap and it’s a trick.”

“Bodhi,” Cassian tells him lowly, desperate. He can hear the battle raging around them, knows someone’s going to discover him any moment. “Please. It’s really me.”

“Enough. Enough. Enough,” Bodhi says, rocking back and forth. “I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.” As Bodhi repeats his mantra, Cassian takes a better look at him. He’s missing fingers, and the ones left are bent and swollen like they were broken and healed wrong. There are scars, burns on his feet and arms and bruises decorating his chest and legs. Lines of old cuts trace up and down his abdomen, his neck, his arms.

And there’s other things Cassian notices, too. Scabs on Bodhi’s face like he’s been clawing at his own skin, chunks of hair missing that could have been ripped out by Bodhi himself. They did more than hurt him in this room. They wrecked him.

“I am one with the Force and the Force is with me,” Bodhi says.

“Chirrut Îmwe used to say that,” Cassian says, trying to find a way to get through to Bodhi. At the moment, it isn’t even about escaping or surviving. It’s about stopping Bodhi from looking so tormented. “Do you remember him?”

“Chirrut Îmwe. Baze Malbus,” Bodhi says in recognition. “Galen Erso. Jyn Erso. Cassian Andor.”

“Cassian Andor,” Cassian says, pointing to himself. “It’s really me. Please, please believe me.”

“Cassian Andor,” Bodhi repeats, and slowly, slowly, he holds out one hand and presses it against Cassian’s chest. Cassian brings his own hand up to cover Bodhi’s and hold it there. “Cassian Andor.”

“I am one with the Force,” Cassian says. “And the Force is with me.”

Bodhi nods, and tears leak from his tired eyes. “Let’s go.”

Cassian helps him up, and as they walk he realizes that one of Bodhi’s legs was broken and, like his fingers, healed wrong. Hate boils in his stomach but he tries to push it down as he and Bodhi hobble toward freedom.

“I wish I had my goggles,” Bodhi says suddenly, sounding so much like himself that it makes Cassian’s chest ache.

“I’ll buy you some new ones,” he promises as they round a corner.

Quietly, Bodhi says, “But I want mine.”

They walk, and then Cassian’s comm goes off. “We’ve got you cleared for exit,” Leia says. “But we’re under a lot of fire out here. We can get you out here, but I can’t guarantee that the Squadron is going to get out.”

Cassian shuts his eyes, takes a deep breath. “Yes you can,” he says into the comm. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll give you a way out.” He looks at Bodhi. “I know you’ve been through hell. But. Are you up for flying an X-Wing?”

Bodhi nods, stops to think, and then nods again. “What’s your plan?”

“I’m gonna blow this thing to pieces from the inside.”

They stand there, frozen for a moment, and then Bodhi starts shaking his head. “No, no, no,” he says, heart thudding in his ears. “I’m n— I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving you in here with… them. I’m not leaving you.”

“Bodhi.”

“I need to do this,” Bodhi says, shaking, and he’s remembering the lieutenant telling him in detail everything they were going to use him for. They were going to reprogram him like a goddamn machine. The lieutenant told him he was going to be a better weapon against the Rebel Alliance than the Death Star ever was, and he was so, so scared that he wouldn’t be able to stop it. “I need to do this,” Bodhi says. “I need to be enough to do this.”

“I came here to save you,” Cassian says.

“I know,” Bodhi tells him, and his eyes are so full of light. “You did save me. Thank you.” Where his hands clutch Cassian’s arm, he squeezes, trying to convey comfort. “Now we need to save the rest of them.”

Cassian looks at him, so battered and broken and so, so brave. “Okay,” he says finally. “Together.” He stuffs the comm link back in his vest pocket and walks with Bodhi down the hall. “Now, you’ve been on Imperial Star Destroyers before, right? Where do we find the reactor core?”

Bodhi directs and Cassian helps get him there. “Did…” Bodhi starts, shaking old nightmares out of his head. “On Scarif. Did anyone else…?”

Cassian shakes his head. “I didn’t know you were captured,” he swears, stopping a moment to let Bodhi catch his breath. “I just… I found out a few days ago. Came and got you as soon as I could. I promise.”

“I know,” Bodhi says, standing up and moving along with Cassian again. “And I know you’re real.”

Cassian wants to tell him everything. The years he’s spent alone, his talks with Chirrut’s ghost. He wants to tell Bodhi how he’s become a legend and a hero, that rebel pilots tell their children bedtime stories about Bodhi Rook, the hero who followed his heart. He wants to tell Bodhi about the medal ceremony that neither of them made it to.

But they get to the reactor, and the end of the line. The corridors are empty— most of the Imperials must have fled.

“This panel,” Bodhi says, tapping the wall. “Remove it and there’s— there’s a switch.” Cassian does, and he finds the switch.

“You can still go,” Cassian tells him.

Bodhi shakes his head. “You’re not going to be alone,” he says. “I want to be done. I want to be enough.”

Cassian leans forward, presses their foreheads together. “You are enough,” he promises Bodhi. “You were always enough.” He tucks Bodhi’s hair behind his ear.

Cassian’s wondered for so long why he didn’t die. Why he had to live, and later, why Bodhi was taken. This was why.

He looks around and doesn’t see Chirrut, and Cassian hopes that he’s finally with Baze. He puts a hand on the switch, and Bodhi puts his own hand over Cassian’s. After all the damage done to him and to his pilot’s hands, his palm is still soft and warm.

“I wish I had my goggles.”

“I’ll buy you a new pair,” Cassian promises. And they pull the switch together.

[newstfionline]

‘Like Going Back in Time’: Puerto Ricans Put Survival Skills to Use

By Caitlin Dickerson and Luis Ferré-Sadurní, NY Times, Oct. 24, 2017

SAN JUAN, P.R.--A grandmother turned a school bathroom sink into a bath. Neighbors are piling into a garage for communal meals prepared on an old gas stove. A 79-year-old man made a bonfire out of fallen tree branches to cook.

More than a month after Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico on a path of destruction that spared no region, race or class, residents of the island have found their creativity stretched to the limit as they try to function without many amenities of the modern world.

It is not just water and electricity that are in scarce supply. Cellphone service ranges from spotty to nonexistent. Cars are damaged and roads blocked. For many, work and school still have not resumed, so they wander the streets, play board games and sit around telling stories by candlelight.

“It’s like going back in time,” said Kevin Jose Sanchez Gonzalez, 25, who has been living in darkness since Sept. 5, the day before a previous storm, Hurricane Irma, began to chip away at Puerto Rico’s electrical grid.

Crammed into homes three or four families at a time, living on canned and freeze-dried food without any means of turning it into a hot meal, and sleeping in shelters, Puerto Ricans have been learning to make do, sometimes in extreme ways.

As the sun set in the shantytown of La Perla in Old San Juan, Ramón Marrero, 79, slumped onto the unwashed cot inside his brother’s tool shed, where he had lived since Maria claimed his home.

A single light bulb illuminated the other contents of the bare, musty room: two plastic chairs piled with clothes, canned fruit and vegetables, and a single gas burner.

Mr. Marrero, a community elder known to his neighbors as Don Ramón, draped a towel over his bare back to fend off the mosquitoes. Earlier, he had walked to the post office to charge his cellphone and mobile battery pack.

The only electricity he had seen since the storm came from an extension cord connected to a shared generator donated by Luis Fonsi, the Puerto Rican pop singer who filmed the video for the hit song “Despacito” in La Perla.

Mr. Marrero was hesitant to plug in the light bulb or his electric fan--only one could be used at a time--because he was afraid to overheat the machine or take energy from his neighbors.

Residents of the barrio say they were left to clear garbage and other debris on their own after the storm because municipal workers had failed to show up. Like Mr. Marrero, they were using fallen branches to fuel bonfires for cooking.

Lorel Cubano, the director of a local nonprofit, said most of the aid the neighborhood had received was from private citizens and celebrities like Mr. Fonsi. “The government hasn’t arrived here,” she said.

Georgia Lopez Ortiz, 92, is one of many elderly residents of the Luis Lloréns Torres housing project who have been too scared to walk outside since Maria wiped out the streetlights. The notoriously crime-ridden development is the largest in the Caribbean, and is dominated by rival gangs. Residents say it has become even more dangerous in the dark.

Ms. Ortiz’s washing machine does not work, so she has been hand-washing clothes in a bucket. She cannot cook, so her daughters bring her food every few days.

When aid groups visit, she throws a rope through the security bars that enclose her patio, and uses it to pull up packages of water and dried goods.

Raquel Mercado, 69, lives in a cramped one-room apartment with her 37-year-old son. Her car has not worked since it was flooded during the storm, so she has not been able to get to a bank to withdraw cash or to a pharmacy to refill her prescriptions.

She is selling snacks out of her apartment to bring in some money.

“What else is there to do?” Ms. Mercado said. “We’re stuck here.”

A baseball game blared from speakers connected to a projector screen in Maricarmen del Llano’s living room. The adults drank red wine as they cleaned up from a dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes.

Even in the well-off parts of the island, though, life is not quite normal.

For the last month, seven extended family members, including a newborn, have been living with Ms. del Llano, a school psychologist; her husband, a veterinarian; and their two children, ages 7 and 9.

The whole house is running off a powerful generator. Overnight, they use the machine to run air-conditioning in each bedroom.

Tangie Sobrino, Ms. del Llano’s cousin and the newborn’s mother, is getting ready to move back home with her husband, a lawyer, and their two other young children. They were preparing to purchase a $5,200 generator.

“Our reality is not the norm,” Ms. Sobrino said, referring to the many Puerto Ricans for whom recovery was much further off.

The storm also revealed what had been carefully hidden cracks in the upper echelons of Puerto Rican society, which has been imploding during a decade-long recession.

Inside her two-story home with multiple balconies and a pool, Maria Julia Martinez’s stainless-steel refrigerator, espresso machine and toaster oven have been gathering dust. The family’s flooring business had tanked in recent years, and they could not use the appliances because they did not have $2,000 to fix their broken generator in the backyard.

They have a much smaller generator that could support a couple of small appliances at a time, but to save gas money and prevent it from breaking down, the family runs the machine only at night. They use a propane camping stove and a barbecue to prepare food.

When Ms. Martinez’s husband cranked on the small generator one night last week, she ran off to do a couple of laundry loads on the efficiency cycle. Afterward, the entire family, including their pets, went to sleep on mattresses set up on the floor of their upstairs master bedroom. A small air-conditioning unit in the room provided a respite from the rest of their home, which felt like a dark and steamy cave all day and night.

“This is living in hell,” Ms. Martinez said. She acknowledged that despite their discomfort, her family was still much better off than most people on the island. “I feel bad for feeling bad.”

Inside the elementary school classroom that has become their temporary home, Iris Perez and her two adult daughters sat in plastic chairs, slapping mosquitoes on their exposed arms and legs and staring blankly, as if it was too hot to speak.

Like nearly half of Puerto Ricans, they had been living in poverty before the storm. But Maria swept away their ocean-side home, and banished them to a new level of destitution.

This emergency shelter was better than the last; here there were showers and the family had the classroom to itself. Before, the women--along with Ms. Perez’s brother, son-in-law, and two young granddaughters--had slept next to other families and bathed with cups of water, filled up in the bathroom sinks.

Hand-washed clothing hung from fluorescent lights on the ceiling. A bookshelf had become a medicine cabinet, with deodorant and baby shampoo stacked in front of school books. Filing cabinets were diaper changing stations.

Nashali Reyes, Ms. Perez’s oldest daughter, was seven months pregnant, and worried about contracting the Zika virus. Her 2-year-old daughter Charyliz bobbed around the classroom with a blanket and bottle in her hands, seemingly unbothered by the bug bites on her face, which had become swollen and infected because she was allergic.

“It doesn’t matter what we do,” Ms. Reyes said, gesturing to a bottle of repellent. They had to keep the windows and doors open, they said, to maintain a livable, if extremely uncomfortable, temperature.

A message written on a whiteboard reminded them to keep their temporary home clean. “Welcome,” it said in Spanish, “May God bless you.”

Felix Cruz was holding court for his neighbors at a dining table in his garage. His home had been transformed into a motel and soup kitchen of sorts, because of his two extra bedrooms and large furniture, including a couple of sofa beds where people were crashing.

Most of the neighborhood’s residents are retired and living on fixed incomes. They cook and eat communally using a 40-year-old gas stove that has been dragged out of storage and scraped clean of cockroach eggs and mold.

They have been cramming their food into a small freezer in Mr. Cruz’s backyard, opening it as little as possible to preserve the cold air.

The neighbors pooled money to pay for gas to power a small generator that could support a couple of fans, and are eating two meals a day, usually rice and whatever meat is on sale.

They eat on fine china, even though doing dishes in the dark is a pain, to try to distract themselves from their discomfort.

“It was difficult before because food was expensive, electricity was expensive, and now it’s even worse,” Mr. Cruz said. He pointed to Alma Gonzalez, 67, one of the neighbors he said had become like family. “When she has money, she pays. When I have money, I pay. That’s life.”

[amazingworkspaces-blog]

The Battlestation (and a bit of history) Workspace

Here are some of the products that make this workspace an Amazing Workspace:

Xbox One Elite Controller

Once I received all three monitors and set them up it became readily apparent I needed a new desk as the screens hung off the edges by about 4 inches on each side. I ended up buying an Uplift sit/stand desk base and putting a 96x30" maple packing table top from Uline on it.

Intel Xeon E5-1650 v3 @4.8GHz (equivalent to a 5930K)

Acer XB271HK 2160p@60Hz w/ gsync

Desk at standing height. Arch's display blanks much quicker than W10 and I'm too lazy to change the settings.

Peripherals:

Schiit Stack (Modi/Magni 2 Uber)

EK Supremacy EVO X99 Waterblock

12x Corsair ML120 Fans

Zowie EC1-A Mouse

EVGA GTX 1080 FTW Hybrid

I finished with cable management today and I can finally share my battlestation!

EK GTX 970 Waterblock

Caselabs S8

Initially I had purchased a Xeon E5-1650v4 right when it launched. Unfortunately I soon discovered that the v4 Xeons were the first generation that intel would prevent overclocking on. So i sold the v4 and purchased a used E5-1650v3 from hardforum. The chip is an excellent overclocker and I found that I was hitting the thermal limitations of my h115i well before I was hitting the chips maximums.

Audio:

From left to right the monitors are XB271HU, XB271HK and PB258Q.

If you plan on spending the money for a top-end rig, please please please, spend another $200 to make sure a power surge doesn't fry it. This UPS (1500PFCLCD) provides 900W of power and will shut down your computer safely if it detects a power outage. It can also display your system's current power usage which is nice. Mine idles between 120W and 220W. The highest I've seen was 600W when i was stress testing the CPU at 1.4V

Dual DDC Pumps w/ EK dual top

I can however recommend purchasing a toothed wire conduit. Keeps everything very nice and organized. All the wires from my desk go directly underneath to the conduit and then out the side to a neoprene sleeve and over to the computer's IO.

At the time I finished the build in it's current form, I was still using two 21.5 inch 1080p Samsung monitors and my GTX 1080 had never seen more than 30% load in-game. I purchased all three of my current monitors used from r/hardwareswap.

With the top off. These are the fans for the roof rads. All of the raditor fans, including the two in the front go to the same PWM fan hub seen here. The case fans are on a separate fan hub. The entire top including rads and fans can be removed in less than a minute by disconnecting two QDCs and undoing four screws.

Asus PB258Q 1440p@60Hz

Modhouse Audio Argon Headphones

The blue thing is the transformer for the white CCFL hidden down below, between the two roof rads.

The vast majority of my setup has been obtained used, either through r/hardwareswap or hardforum . I cannot recommend going the used route enough. It has saved me a ton of money and allowed me to meet more of my fellow PC enthusiasts.

In all its glory. Apologies for the picture quality. My obsession for expensive niche hobbies hasn't yet entered the photography realm (thank god).

Currently I am running a VFIO setup. Windows runs in a VM on top of Arch Linux for the sole purpose of gaming. The VM is given its own dedicated GTX1080 via IOMMU / VT-D, resulting in very minimal performance drop (5%) when compared to a virtualized GPU. In this photo the windows VM is running on the left two monitors while Arch is running on the vertical monitor powered by a 970. With the program Synergy you can move the mouse from the windows VM across the Arch seamlessly exactly like normal multiple monitor setups. I went this route because I wanted to use linux as my daily driver but I game a lot and I dislike dual boot. Unfortunately my previous CPU did not support Directed I/O, which started me on the upgrade path that ends in the picture above.

Rama M10-A on the right. The macro-pad has two layers at the moment. The first layer is bound to volume/media functions. If you hold the big brown key down like a modifier, you can access the second layer. I use that to control the windows VM (power on+off, disconnect devices/monitors, etc).

I attached a dual monitor bar to an Ergotech HD and I CANNOT reccomend doing that. While the arm itself is strong enough to support both monitors, the tilt spring behind the vesa plate is not and sags horribly. At some point i may test if one monitor alone is too light for the arm in which case I'll buy a second. But for now I ended up sticking a small block of wood behind it to keep it level and it works good enough.

2x EK XT 360 Radiators

Cooling:

WD Red 4tb & 1tb

Specs:

The loop goes:

Rama M-10A Macropad

EVGA GTX 970 SC

Samsung 750 EVO 250GB

AT2020USB

It was at this point I began looking into custom liquid cooling. Conveniently enough, the same seller from hardforum happened to be selling his caselabs S8 from a different build, along with the rads and the CPU block. All I needed was a few extra fittings and GPU blocks.

Working with the Caselabs S8 is the first time I ever felt the word "chassis" was appropriate for the cases we build in. It's endlessly customizable and built like a tank. I've always found beauty in function and all of their cases are stunning.

1x EK XT 240 Radiator

PCGR Modular Gaming Keyboard V2 w/ Gateron Greens and GMK caps

Schiit Stack on the left.

EK GTX 1080 FTW Waterblock

Unfortunately the desk base is Chinese crap and can only support 300lbs. With the weight of the maple top, and the monitor arms and peripherals, I do not trust the desk to also support the rig. Not having the computer on the desk has made cable management a royal pain in the ass. Every single cable that goes from my rig to my desk has to be a minimum of 15' long, or there will not be enough slack to allow the desk's full range of motion. I ended up buying $60 worth of cable management supplies to alleviate the rats nest that accumulated under my desk.

64GB Cruicial ECC RAM @2133MHz

The CPU sits at around 75C during stress tests at 1.35V. The 1080 never gets above 45C even during extended gaming sessions at 100% load.

Asus X99-E WS/USB 3.1

Acer XB271HU 1440p@165Hz w/ gsync

Reservoir >> Pumps >> 970 >> 1080 >> Roof Rads >> CPU >> Front Rad >> Reservoir

[amazingworkspaces-blog]

The Battlestation (and a bit of history) Workspace

Here are some of the products that make this workspace an Amazing Workspace:

Xbox One Elite Controller

Once I received all three monitors and set them up it became readily apparent I needed a new desk as the screens hung off the edges by about 4 inches on each side. I ended up buying an Uplift sit/stand desk base and putting a 96x30" maple packing table top from Uline on it.

Intel Xeon E5-1650 v3 @4.8GHz (equivalent to a 5930K)

Acer XB271HK 2160p@60Hz w/ gsync

Desk at standing height. Arch's display blanks much quicker than W10 and I'm too lazy to change the settings.

Peripherals:

Schiit Stack (Modi/Magni 2 Uber)

EK Supremacy EVO X99 Waterblock

12x Corsair ML120 Fans

Zowie EC1-A Mouse

EVGA GTX 1080 FTW Hybrid

I finished with cable management today and I can finally share my battlestation!

EK GTX 970 Waterblock

Caselabs S8

Initially I had purchased a Xeon E5-1650v4 right when it launched. Unfortunately I soon discovered that the v4 Xeons were the first generation that intel would prevent overclocking on. So i sold the v4 and purchased a used E5-1650v3 from hardforum. The chip is an excellent overclocker and I found that I was hitting the thermal limitations of my h115i well before I was hitting the chips maximums.

Audio:

From left to right the monitors are XB271HU, XB271HK and PB258Q.

If you plan on spending the money for a top-end rig, please please please, spend another $200 to make sure a power surge doesn't fry it. This UPS (1500PFCLCD) provides 900W of power and will shut down your computer safely if it detects a power outage. It can also display your system's current power usage which is nice. Mine idles between 120W and 220W. The highest I've seen was 600W when i was stress testing the CPU at 1.4V

Dual DDC Pumps w/ EK dual top

I can however recommend purchasing a toothed wire conduit. Keeps everything very nice and organized. All the wires from my desk go directly underneath to the conduit and then out the side to a neoprene sleeve and over to the computer's IO.

At the time I finished the build in it's current form, I was still using two 21.5 inch 1080p Samsung monitors and my GTX 1080 had never seen more than 30% load in-game. I purchased all three of my current monitors used from r/hardwareswap.

With the top off. These are the fans for the roof rads. All of the raditor fans, including the two in the front go to the same PWM fan hub seen here. The case fans are on a separate fan hub. The entire top including rads and fans can be removed in less than a minute by disconnecting two QDCs and undoing four screws.

Asus PB258Q 1440p@60Hz

Modhouse Audio Argon Headphones

The blue thing is the transformer for the white CCFL hidden down below, between the two roof rads.

The vast majority of my setup has been obtained used, either through r/hardwareswap or hardforum . I cannot recommend going the used route enough. It has saved me a ton of money and allowed me to meet more of my fellow PC enthusiasts.

In all its glory. Apologies for the picture quality. My obsession for expensive niche hobbies hasn't yet entered the photography realm (thank god).

Currently I am running a VFIO setup. Windows runs in a VM on top of Arch Linux for the sole purpose of gaming. The VM is given its own dedicated GTX1080 via IOMMU / VT-D, resulting in very minimal performance drop (5%) when compared to a virtualized GPU. In this photo the windows VM is running on the left two monitors while Arch is running on the vertical monitor powered by a 970. With the program Synergy you can move the mouse from the windows VM across the Arch seamlessly exactly like normal multiple monitor setups. I went this route because I wanted to use linux as my daily driver but I game a lot and I dislike dual boot. Unfortunately my previous CPU did not support Directed I/O, which started me on the upgrade path that ends in the picture above.

Rama M10-A on the right. The macro-pad has two layers at the moment. The first layer is bound to volume/media functions. If you hold the big brown key down like a modifier, you can access the second layer. I use that to control the windows VM (power on+off, disconnect devices/monitors, etc).

I attached a dual monitor bar to an Ergotech HD and I CANNOT reccomend doing that. While the arm itself is strong enough to support both monitors, the tilt spring behind the vesa plate is not and sags horribly. At some point i may test if one monitor alone is too light for the arm in which case I'll buy a second. But for now I ended up sticking a small block of wood behind it to keep it level and it works good enough.

2x EK XT 360 Radiators

Cooling:

WD Red 4tb & 1tb

Specs:

The loop goes:

Rama M-10A Macropad

EVGA GTX 970 SC

Samsung 750 EVO 250GB

AT2020USB

It was at this point I began looking into custom liquid cooling. Conveniently enough, the same seller from hardforum happened to be selling his caselabs S8 from a different build, along with the rads and the CPU block. All I needed was a few extra fittings and GPU blocks.

Working with the Caselabs S8 is the first time I ever felt the word "chassis" was appropriate for the cases we build in. It's endlessly customizable and built like a tank. I've always found beauty in function and all of their cases are stunning.

1x EK XT 240 Radiator

PCGR Modular Gaming Keyboard V2 w/ Gateron Greens and GMK caps

Schiit Stack on the left.

EK GTX 1080 FTW Waterblock

Unfortunately the desk base is Chinese crap and can only support 300lbs. With the weight of the maple top, and the monitor arms and peripherals, I do not trust the desk to also support the rig. Not having the computer on the desk has made cable management a royal pain in the ass. Every single cable that goes from my rig to my desk has to be a minimum of 15' long, or there will not be enough slack to allow the desk's full range of motion. I ended up buying $60 worth of cable management supplies to alleviate the rats nest that accumulated under my desk.

64GB Cruicial ECC RAM @2133MHz

The CPU sits at around 75C during stress tests at 1.35V. The 1080 never gets above 45C even during extended gaming sessions at 100% load.

Asus X99-E WS/USB 3.1

Acer XB271HU 1440p@165Hz w/ gsync

Reservoir >> Pumps >> 970 >> 1080 >> Roof Rads >> CPU >> Front Rad >> Reservoir