#i could add a different line that triggers if youre under 10% and set its priority higher

[aconstantstateofbladerunner]

101 Open MHA Gen Prompts

I had a very long ask game where people gave me fake titles and I came up with fic ideas to go with them.  Multiple people asked to use some of them as prompts, and some of my friends have lately maligned the lack of gen prompts out there, so I decided to compile them all into a single post.  Almost all of these are gen, aka not shipping, but you can do what you want I’m not your boss.  Everything is free and open to use WITH CREDIT, so have fun with my word vomit.

1. In Dreams I Had the Sun - Being the number one hero isn’t all it’a cracked up to be, Toshinori realizes early on

2. The Chainlink Fence that Held the Ocean - In his new book post-retirement, All Might opens up about his regrets, struggles with mental health, and his issues with the hero system as a whole.  The backlash is swift and intense.

3. Welcome to the Loud Silence - After an injury, Izuku is rendered deaf.

4. Water Since Turned Red - After a villain attack nearly kills All Might, the beach where Izuku used to go to find comfort now feels tainted.

5. all scrap left untouched is bound together - A group hero students who failed the provincial license exam for the third time, effectively ending their careers before they start, get together to take revenge on UA’s first years who beat them out.

6. You’ve saved more more times than you know - Times All Might saved people without his powers, just by being a cool, nice dude.

7. No Amount of Tragedy Can Justify Your Actions - A dying All for One tries to justify his centuries of cruelty to an uncaring Toshinori.

8. To Leave a Cage Locked - One for All is conscious and has a will of its own, one that doesn’t always line up with Izuku’s wellbeing.

9. Okay, who let in the Kraken? - Izuku is the reincarnation of an ancient eldritch horror.

10. keep us alive up above - Izuku and Shigaraki get trapped together somewhere.  Izuku knows he needs the villain’s help to survive and escape, but the other would rather they both die.

11. The world will revolve around me neither less - The ebbs and flows of AFO’s influence over the years.

12. More Roulette, Not Russian - Kids get their quirks swapped.

13. Patron Saints - Toshinori teaches a class about pre-quirk superhero comic characters and their influence.

14. Don't Come Back - Touya Todoroki’s first few weeks after a severe injury resulted in his father abandoning him.

15. The Blessed and the Fool - Toshinori meets up with a few of his ua classmates after retiring.

16. Not Your Sacrifice - Some of the other kids have started adopting some of Izuku’s self sacrificing habits and the teachers are concerned.

17. Break in the Storm - Villains use a power outage as an opening to break into ua.

18. One Day Those Consequences Will Finally Catch Up - Even though the teachers don’t take her concerns seriously, Inko saves every piece of evidence regarding people hurting her son.

19. a garden in their eyes - Izuku meets a fan who got injured after trying to step into a villain fight, just like he did, and it makes him question some things.

20. what could have been, if not for you - After Inko divorces him, Hisashi’s goes to the press to say All Might stole his wife and son.

21. Promised Misery - All Might finds out the severity of Bakugou’s bullying, and warns him he’s on thin ice with him.

22. Fly Up Higher, Blossom Brighter - Izuku has to write a paper for middle school about being positive, intercut with all the bullshit he has to deal with.

23. Libre Me from Hell - One of Izuku’s new quirks is spiral related.

24. No One to Blame but Yourself - Izuku’s kindness doesn’t extend to murderers, tragic backstory or not.

25. At Its Finest - Izuku accidentally gets involved in a hero commission coverup.

26. A Rising Issue - Izuku starts developing more severe side effects of his injuries.  He’s convinced he’s under the influence of a quirk, while the adults thing he’s finally gone too far hurting himself.

27. What you are in the Dark - Izuku usually keeps most of his anger to himself until he can’t.

28. nowhere to go - Inko moves into UA after their home was destroyed.

29. Something Without - My theory about the 2 OFA vestiges that are blurred out is they don’t approve of izuku as a successor.  Izuku tries to figure out why. 

30. Walking with a Ghost - Toshinori joins the OFA dreams while he’s in a coma.  He gets to reunite with nana, and is more open to Izuku about his past and feelings.  Part of his starts to wonder if it’s worth waking up, since he will die and join the others eventually.

31. Death By Crying - Izuku is affected by a quirk that will suffocate him if he expresses any emotion.

32. Justice is Subjective - The hero commission gets to Shigaraki before AFO does.  

33. Undo / Underdog - Death loop fic.  Izuku keeps reliving the day he met all might after being killed by the sludge villain.  he has to find a way to break the loop and survive, but he gets s little weaker every time he restarts.

34. Like Wildfire - A rumor that Izuku is All Might’s bio son picks up steam, and the characters have to decide whether to deny it but risk suspicion or play along and add a new layer to the lies protecting one for all.

35. Once Upon A December - All Might and Inko actually met in the past trope.

36. Some Legends Are Told - All Might’s first interview post-retirement.

37. Will The Real Mentor Please Stand Up - Aizawa considers himself the better teacher, but a lot of the kids seem to like All Might more.

38. I don't want the cure, I want the POISON! - Inko is killed in a hit and run, and Izuku becomes desperate to find the killer.

39. I will kill my heart before I dance on stage for these bigots - Izuku is interviewed as a rising star of UA, and the interviewer brings in some of his old bullies because they claimed to be his friends from middle school.  Izuku does not play along.

40. Split Ends - A quirk gives Izuku brief visions of what would have happened if he made different decisions.

41. Dreamless Sleep - A One for All dream leaves Izuku with a cryptic half-warning, and he desperately experiments to try and figure out how to trigger the visions to get the rest of it.

42. toxic flowers and pretty blades - Young Inko escapes the constricting life of her cruel wealthy family by becoming a vigilante.

43. The Suns we Orbit - Some of the other teachers believe Izuku is too codependent on Toshinori, and separate them for a time.

44. Submerged - Similar to those buried alive fics only someone’s in a box at the bottom of the ocean.

45. Deprive - Izuku also loses his stomach to an injury, and struggles to adjust to the necessary lifestyle changes.

46. The ashes fall like snow - Post Kamino cleanup.

47. Home will always be here - Inko cares for Izuku after he’s sent home due to “trouble at work study” but he refuses to clarify what that means.

48. Playing Favorites - A look at several times where Izuku was punished, while Bakugou got off scot free.

49. Elusive Dreams - Some kind of training or issue forces the kids to stay away for several consecutive day, and they start losing it.

50. Fracture - Izuku struggles through physical therapy after a severe injury that leaves his hero career in question.

51. Starlight, Starbright - Space cadet au

52. Someone in Your Corner - Gran Torino looking after Nana, Toshi, and finally Izuku through the years.

53. I cast magic missile into the darkness - Generic “the gang plays d&d” fic.

54. One Month At A Time - Izuku breaks a limb, and has to let in heal naturally over the course of several months.

55. Head Above Water - Izuku runs out of his pain meds and can’t get access to more doses for a while, so he has to endure not only the pain, but the withdrawal symptoms.

56. Are you going to leave a path to trace - All Might uses a new strategy to try and get Izuku to be less self sacrificial: what about all the young kids who are going to look up to him?

57. The View from Halfway Down - Izuku realizes that a risky move has just landed him with a potentially life threatening injury, but the fight it still going.

58. The Dust Bites Back - A villain All Might defeated early in his career is back and out for revenge.

59. The Absence of your Worth - Nighteye thinks he’s put together a rock solid case for why izuku isn’t worthy of One for All.  All Might’s response is to ask if he has something against quirkless people.

60. Behind the Screens Nobody is Afraid - All Might explains some of the context of his most popular hero videos to Izuku.  They are much more tragic than the media has spun them in hindsight.

61. Under the Light of the Moon - Someone gets turned into a werewolf.  And I ain’t talking the wattpad piss shit.  I’m talking full-on back-breaking monstrous transformations into a bloodthirsty abomination set to Bad Moon Rising.

62. some dreams were made to be broken - Bakugou crosses a line and finally gets expelled.

63. You Say You're Into Closure - Izuku finally beats Bakugou in a one on one fight fair and square, but Bakugou is a sore loser.

64. Something or Someone Missing - AU’s memories of Izuku get wiped, but those closest to him can’t help but feel an absence.

65. Too Little Too Late - Izuku’s father returns to find he’s been replaced.

66. Collecting Dust - Inko goes through the stuff Izuku didn’t take to the dorms.

67. Where the souls of wanderers go - Toshi meets up with a retired hero support group.

68. Fragility of Trust - Suspected traitor au

69. no one answered - Izuku is trapped in a cell in a building that’s collapsing in slow motion due to a quirk.

70. Eye of the Storm - One of the other kids has a panic attack for the first time between public appearances.  izuku has never seen from from the outside.

71. To Whom It May Concern - The kids find a mysterious collection of letters from previous students hidden in the ceiling of the classroom.  Some are ominous, some are incomprehensible.  Aizawa has no answers.  They enthusiastically go to try and solve the mystery within, but that excitement quickly diminishes the more they find out.

72. Of Popsicles and Ponytails - All Might gets in a discussion with the other teachers about whether the Clark Kent glasses thing would actually work.  All Might bets them it does, so he goes around town with no disguise other than his hair being up, and no one bats an eye.

73. All Men are Not Born Equal - Word gets out to the public that izuku used to be quirkless.  Everyone finds out just how deep anti-quirkless sentiments run when some begin to question whether a quirkless kid should be at ua, regardless of whether or not he has a quirk now.

74. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies - Something about encountering death in person for the first time being the dividing line between child and adult.

75. Sins of the Father - All for One has had many children over the centuries, and has made numerous attempts to groom them into the ideal heir with several different methods.  None of them worked though.

76. Where The Dead Come To Rest - The kids come home after a long, grueling mission where they saw some shit, and are too tired to process what they went through.  They take off their gear for plain clothes, then sit in the common room in silence long into the night, not wanting to open themselves up but also not wanting to be alone.

77. Rivalry - Nighteye tries to pit Izuku and Mirio against one another.  It goes right over Mirio’s head, but Izuku becomes convinced the other boy is in on Nighteye’s plan to wear him down until he gives up One for All.

78. A Subtle Language - All Might and Nana never said out loud that they loved each other, but little things told them that they did.  All Might hopes to pass a similar love down to his own successor.  But Izuku is very different than himself as a kid, and he needs to learn a new subtle language of affection.

79. It’s Gone - One for All stops working one day.

80. A Sight For Sore Eyes - All Might looking after Izuku in the aftermath of the second movie.

81. Loose Lips (sink ships) - Bakugou blurts out something about One for All during a rage, so the rest of the class jump on him and Izuku for answers.

82. No Expectations - Word gets out that All Might is going to choose a successor.  None of the theories or speculation online resemble Izuku in the slightest.

83. Eden was Only a Garden - Izuku gets hit with a quirk that erases some of his most traumatic memories, but in doing so loses part of who he is.

84. Run it Down - With all Izuku’s new quirks and his incredible skill, some of the other students with similar powers (Iida, Sero, Uraraka) start to feel like izuku is upstaging them.  And it affects their friendship.

85. Fool's Gold - Bakugou grows even more jealous of Izuku having One for All, and his relationship with All Might.  He thinks that if he could just prove himself to be more worthy, All Might would change his mind and name him his successor.  But in reality, he ends up jeopardizing the relationship they already have.

86. somewhere down the road - The final deadline for Nighteye’s predictions passes, and All Might lives.  He debates telling Izuku, as even though it would be a weight off the boy’s mind, he doesn’t want to jinx it.  He will still die eventually after all.

87. Just For You - All Might has certain rules and boundaries for fan interactions that he completely ignores for Izuku.

88. if these walls could talk (their whispers would be maddening) - Montage of training accidents in a ‘cursed’ ua gym

89. If Only I Could... - Nighteye tells Mirio about One for All, including that he thinks he’s more deserving than Izuku and he plans to pressure him into giving it up.  Mirio struggles with the knowledge that his mentor, someone he respected more than anything, only saw him as a replacement for All Might, meanwhile watching Izuku strain under the pressure of that mentor’s impossible expectations.

90. This is a Test Designed to Provoke an Emotional Response - shameless Blade Runner AU

91. Once and for All - Retelling of the Superman story “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?” with All Might.  Some new heroes use much more aggressive and violent tactics against villains while also upstaging All Might.  That, and there general approval from the public cause All Might to question his moral code.

92. Sitting In The Rain - Tsuyu likes to just sit out in the rain sometimes.  Not do anything, just sit there.  Some friends decide to join her.

93. At Sundown - Mysterious creatures start attacking ua every night.  The gang works tirelessly during the day to find the cause and a solution, while defending their school and each other at night.

94. The 1000th time's the charm - Uraraka has been practicing a new move in secret but they just can’t get it right.  She wants it to be perfect before showing it off.  But one attempt gets her seriously hurt while training alone at night in one of the gyms, and she’s too hurt to get up to the phone to call for help.

95. Sunflower Seeds - All Might attempts to start a garden as a new hobby.

96. What It Means To Be Human - Sun god Toshi starts living among people.

97. Eyes on Me - All Might teaches Izuku some unarmed fighting moves to defend himself from bullies.

98. one remains - Izuku has developed all but one of the quirks he’s slated to, and he has no idea what it will be.  Anxiety ensues.

99. Come Back Home - Izuku vanishes from campus and everyone assumes he was kidnapped, but in reality he ran away to try and clear his head after a depressive spiral.  He goes by train as far away as he can until he comes to his senses and calls the others.

100. I Won - Izuku accidentally managed to kill Shigaraki during a skirmish, and while everyone around him praises his heroics, he struggles to deal with the fact that he killed someone.

101. Ivory Tower - All Might grapples with how much izuku suffered as a quirkless person, how he could have done more for quirkless rights in his time as a hero, and how now people may not care as much because he’s retired.

Reminder to credit me if you use any of these prompts, and a special thanks to everyone who submitted titles!

[inventors-fair]

Two guilds, one cause group commentary

Super sorry for being super super late.  Here’s the commentary about the guild colab cards.

@dumbellsndragons First of quite a lot split/aftermath cards for this contest! I was quite surprised! Beast is not much but it’s an honest spell. The real deal is Breakfast! It essentially doubles the power of your board, by splitting it to 2/2 bodies that can in turn trigger various etb effects. Temporary buffs, (bloodrush anyone?) can play a huge roll on how many tokens you can make!

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes​ Misjudged this one, took it for an Izzet Simic spell, while it’s actually an Izzet Gruul one that plays into the destroy to create mentality of the two guilds. While witty and creative, this spell feels a little too specific. It definitely has a fun side but I fear people would use it more as a combo piece.

@abzanhero​ Sel-gari was a very popular combination and Rotweaver is a very nice example on how those two guilds could interact. It fills the graveyard, cares about the graveyard and has the potential to make HUGE tokens for you to populate. All that in the expense of immediate impact on the board, but I asked for kitchen table EDH cards, and this fits the category very well.

@helloijustreadyourpost​ I love the throwback to popular EDH cards like Savra and the first print of Teysa that care about the color of creatures you control.  That said, I am not a fun of the limitations on the card, as I view more like a Yu-gi-oh design than an mtg card, where usually the only limitation is the cost of the card.

@bioodprice Great control card but the two triggers feel conflicted as the one taps a creature, and the other punishes the players for having untapped creatures. Either way, it has good pillowfort potential as it can hinder both voltron strategies and punish token based decks.

@dimestoretajic​ Great tempo card, would do wonders in limited enviroments. Lorewise, it’s sad to see that guilds consume their messengers. If this trend continues, Vivien will surely pay Ravnica a visit XD

@ghoulcaclulator64​ First of all, congratulations for going the extra mile and made your own artwork for the card! It’s really cool!

On to the ability of the card, its very well stated and it has great combo potential with all the copy effects of blue and red that can help you create an army of deadly blasters. I am not sure whether you wanted the trigger to work with spells any player controls or not, but all in all I find Whip-Walker an interesting design!

@kytheon4-4 Great flavor text that fits the theme of the design challenge 150%! Also a quite impactful card on a tri colored creature deck of all shapes and sizes. If mentor returns, it could definitely appear on Green creatures, or creatures of any color, like Exalted

@hypexion​ When you’re a Gorgon with a Biology major, there’s no need to stay in the undercity XD In general I like the use of ability counters, and this applies here as well. The +1/+1 counter would serve as a reminder for the deathtouch counter, though I must complain that Mila herself doesn’t have deathtouch but has to work for it like a guildless peasant.

@yourrightfulking​ For GGUURR you get two cards and at least a 2/2 body plus 2 damage wherever you want. This is an insanely good deal, and this being an instant means that you can also mess up combat big time. I wouldn’t call the card broken in any way but I feel there should be some moderation, maybe the damage affect players and planeswalkers? But that’s me nitpicking, all in all pursuit of perfection was a very nice entry for the contest.

@nine-effing-hells​ In a similar vein, from a mechanical standpoint, chorus of battle offers +4/+4 , with the additional trample and lifelink. Comparison with Titanic Ultimatum is inevitable, and it offers a lot more for an additional mana. I think here it should be safer if the play was asked to offer a single R and W to get the bonus and not the double colors which add a lot of weight to the card without clear benefit.

@misterstingyjack​ The design challenge was meant for you to design tri colored cards. There were a few color matters submissions, but this is the best “rulebreaker” and who’s a better rulebreaker than a goblin gang that pays homage to Shattergang Brothers A really cute card whose effects are relevant  in an EDH game, especially the green one. Death to the mana rocks! 

@grornt​ Great revisiting of Graft and I love the fact that with haste, the total damage you can do to the opponent doesn’t change as you pass around your counters! Interestingly, Riot and Bloodthirst also operate with +1/+1 counters so this beasty truly unites Simic and Gruul!

@hiygamer​ If there’s one thing “cannon” in this challenge, it’s that the Selesnya and the Golgari will rebuild Vitu-Ghazi! The abilities and the overall flavor of the card are super sweet, but I think we should be wary of lands with the potential to generate tons of mana. For example, as much as I love symmetry in design, the graveyard matters part of the card shouldn’t be on equal ground with the other ability as it’s easier to produce more mana with mill shenanigans.

@col-seaker-of-the-memiest-legion This pricey enchantment is so splashy, Kiora would probably try to steal it. Good thing you considered planewalkers on the second ability, because then you would have certainly crossed the line. I don’t know what kind of deck is the true home for this card, but even one turn with this card on the battlefield will decide the course of the game.

@dabudder​ For 2WUG, you get a 5/5 flyer and you draw one card. It’s not much, in EDH at least, but it’s definitely an honest play. Again, the fate of Vitu-Ghazi is on the spotlight, and here we see the Azorius care about it! Who knew Ravnicans love Selesnya that much?

@koth-of-the-hammerpants Scavenge 6 for merely two mana is a tremendous deal. The Second activated ability takes an A for creativity and flavor, as we see the pinnacle of recycling in this combined Simic Golgari project. I feel a few balance tweaks are required here and there but the idea of a creature “reforming” itself through +1/+1 counters is damn cool.

@narkis24​ Puns and memes are always appreciated but the abilities, while interesting, they have me wondering whether this is too oppressive for your opponent. The free treasure token every now and then is pretty innocent and it may be the token of an unofficial alliance made on the kitchen table. However, the potential of multiple counterspells with little investment  seems a bit scary. I would rather it somehow required self sacrifice in the ability so people don’t gang up on you.

@thedirtside I love the name and its connection with the bouncing nature of the card. While overall this spell feels weak or requires a lot of mana, I feel there are decks out there that would appreciate the utility this card offers.

@bread-into-toast​ Selesnya and Orzhov is a wild combination from every perspective but as the flavor text suggests, all woodshapers are welcome XD

The 5 toughness guarantees that you will make a good number of tokens before this thrull enters the soil, and it might deter a couple attacks while on the battlefield because it can potentially make 10 or more tokens with a good block. An Abzan token deck will have dozens of ways to utilize this small army, and the deat trigger gives you yet another one if there are not any available at that time. All in all, a stellar design. I didn’t do a runners up post this time, but this could be easily included.

@gollumni​ A solid utility 4 drop that shines more at late game than on curve because as the challenge suggests we’re playing kitchen table edh. For the full colored cost you disable three potential blockers. I love the tiny detail that unlike other creatures in the original ravnica that cared about different colors of mana when you cast them, Enlisted Banisher represents all three colors for the sake of devotion and color matters cards, like the beloved Knight of New Alara.

@shakeszx A very unique design that encourages different tribal strategies in an attempt to unite everything under its glorious pincers during combat. I feel a deck with Gedj as a commander would be both fun and challenging to build. I suppose it would contain a lot of Slivers and Allies. If anybody makes this deck please let us know!

@wolkemesser​ A wild project uniting Gruul and Izzet. This is probably the most intricate design I’ve seen in a while, utilizing XYZ, three colors, two kinds of tokens. But what about the kitchen table? The options this card offers are insanely good, so much that I think it’s undercosted. The red ability, essentially lets you save up mana, and treasures can also help you generate mana for the other two options of the card.

And while the power level is definitely high, I have to commend you for considering when the player is allowed to do these crazy mana sink shenanigans. Having a specific time window is important and setting it on main phase 2 means that you give both yourself and you opponents time to figure things out.

@teaxch​ Excellent build around potential and I like that the optional copying trigger as you can utilize a deck with both buffs and single target removals. The spiciest thing about this card is that it has the highest cannon potential because actually Izzet and Boros collaborate to create advanced soldiers. It’s Captain Amrica all over again :P They even got the right colors

@masternexeon​ I love the irony of a card that obstructs your opponents playing cards during your turn has flash itself. It’s a real solid hate bear. The haste hating is more of a trinket text than a relevant ability, but it’s better to have a rare ability than not having it.

@partlycloudy-partlyfuckoff I don’t know why this doesn’t have a straightforward adapt X ability, let’s move past that. Any numbers of counters are always welcome, but in this design it’s easier to get a good amount of counters early game, for example going for 4 on turn 4 is a really nice play and you can swing for 7, which will have a long and memorable impact on the kitchen table. On the other hand, if you topdeck this late game, there’s a chance you won’t be able to pay 11 for the 11 creatures you might have in the graveyard.

@davriel-canes-tea-supplier​ Another aftermath card. You surprised me there! Get down is a slightly more expensive freeze two spell, but that’s customary for dual purpose cards like this. On to business, we got a selective wrath effect. It’s more disruptive than an actual sweeper because odds are the opponent sees it coming (except if you discard it on purpose to head straight to business) Overall I feel the whole card could be a bit cheaper but I appreciate the impact it can have in the game, and it also helps me create an image of the Ravnican lobby that’s in the hands of Orzhov with the assistance of the Azorius

@reaperfromtheabyss​ Ending, with a flashy comeback of Fuse! Both halves are great cards in their own right, Body is a tad better than life’s legacy because it also gives life at the price of one black mana instead of any mana, and Soul can produce a respectable amount of flying tokens while wiping a player’s graveyard. The combined effect isn’t as explosive as other fuse spells, but the utility it offers is much appreciated. And while the card frame for fuse isn’t flavor text friendly, I really like the story it tells, about how the two guilds care about death and how they utilize it for their advantage.

[rottenappleheart]

I finished “Heaven’s Vault,” that archaeology/alien translation game that everyone was so excited about before it came out, and then I never heard of again. I think I know why. 

Short version: it seems as though it was made by people who were very good at the worldbuilding/linguistics parts, and not very good at making a video game.

Long version:  I did enjoy the game, eventually.  Beat it in just under 20 hours, feeling fairly good that I hadn’t missed anything major and had done everything I could find to do before the end. I also see now that there’s a New Game+ which gives the opportunity to spin things out again in a different manner, with more information, and this really neat article (spoilers ahoy) talks about how the mere concept of a NG+ is part of the worldbuilding (the Loop religion centers around the idea that everything that has happened will happen again.) 

The learning curve was very steep at the beginning, because of the aforementioned gameplay problems getting in the way of the “meat” of the game. Some low points:

The controls are extremely janky and remained frustrating throughout. I had to turn the mouse sensitivity to its very lowest setting to avoid spinning like a top, and the restricted camera angles often send you walking off in a direction you never meant, leaping back and forth through doorways when you just wanted to enter (or exit) a room, etc. 

The mandatory and constant “sailing” minigame, while beautiful, is aggravating and not as fun as I assume the developers thought it would be, given how much you have to do it. Whereas Wind Waker’s equally mandatory and equally constant sailing is a feature of the game, here it was mostly a lengthy interruption between the snippets of actual content. Except that bits of the story are also spun out in conversations between Aliya and the robot Six on these sailing interludes, so you’re encouraged not to skip them, the few times you are even given that option.

The graphics are... odd and awkward, unfortunately. The developers tried a very neat thing with (beautiful and detailed) 3D rendered environments, populated by (also beautiful, but jarringly animated) 2D hand-drawn characters. Who don’t have feet, but kind of fade into invisibility just below the knees, so as to avoid rendering walking animations, I guess. It’s very strange. There’s also no “collision sensor,” so your 2D player character is constantly clipping through other 2D NPCs, which sometimes interrupt everything you’re doing for a 15 second animated scene where they greet you, then walk away. There’s no way to avoid this. And when that happens, it overrides and cancels any ambient but plot-relevant discussion you were having with Six, which was deeply frustrating.

Speaking of which - there are a lot of strange, time-consuming transitions. Walking out of one section of the Elboreth marketplace into another takes another 10 second scene triggered by you entering a doorway, just to show you walking through a side alley. Every single time. When you show artifacts to a colleague, he will walk all the way to the other side of his office and walk all the way back before offering the same dialogue as every time before. Realistic, to grant him time to check his data? Yes. Extremely frustrating as an element of gameplay? Also yes.

Also, my game glitched multiple times, everything slowing to an infinite limbo as a triggering event failed to trigger, requiring a full reset. Any interaction with Oroi, for whatever reason, had a 33% chance of glitching. 

All of this adds up to a game that creaks and clunks, and is deeply frustrating to play. These are all things which seem fueled by bad design/poor planning, and it takes away from the GOOD parts of the game. Namely:

It’s really beautiful (once you get over the 2D/3D intersection.) The music is lovely, and all the designs are top notch. I really enjoyed spending time in these various worlds and discovering their history. (Actually WALKING through the worlds, less enjoyable, but...)

The development of the story and the character interactions is mostly organic and nuanced. Like a Bioware game (I’m sorry to reference them but it’s the easiest comparison), your responses to different plot events and side characters, and the order in which you discover things (or even what conclusions you draw! there isn’t necessarily a single right answer!) shapes the narrative. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes obvious when the NPCs have run out of interactions for you... such as when you take a twenty-minute sail to revisit your home planet, suffer through endless clipping issues and mandatory transitions, only for your contacts there to have zero dialogue options. (Whoops, this was supposed to be the “good” section.) 

The translations, which are the heart of the game, become really fun after the first few. Initially, you have ZERO information when you are given your first line of text to interpret, and have to guess blindly. In a little bit, you are given more information to determine whether that first guess was right or wrong. It’s a little frustrating, but I think what the developers were going for is that Aliya is already roughly familiar with Ancient script, and whatever initial guess she makes is about 50/50 correct. Each new line of text you uncover builds on the glyphs you already know. It became very fun to make more educated guesses - ah, I recognize the symbol we identified as “Gods,” so maybe combined with this other symbol, it might be “Prayer” or “Temple” - something related. Or when you start breaking down the “me/you/we/my/your/our” glyphs, it all makes SENSE. That was the fun part I eventually couldn’t get enough of - parsing out what Ancient meant, and piecing together the story behind the Nebula.

I genuinely did gasp when I figured out A Big Thing about the world story.

I really love stories about robots. Long-suffering, mildly sarcastic robots who are trying very hard to keep you alive while you do stupid things like climb down cliffs they can’t follow. I am very glad I was warned about the risk of losing Six forever and could avoid that particular path, because I think the last third of the game would have been a real bummer without Six as a companion.

Do I recommend it? Yes... mostly. Yes, with the caveats above about how clunky and frustrating the gameplay is. I probably will replay it in a while, taking advantage of the NG+, but not right away - I need to play something less inherently frustrating.

I wish there were more games like this, but I also wish it had been better developed, so that the good parts of it could really shine.

[zaph1337]

Monster Hunter Rating 37: Red Khezu, the Charging Wyvern

TRIGGER WARNING: BLOOD

I don’t normally talk about the monster’s qualities in the introduction, but I have to here to make sure that no one’s gonna get hurt because of this. This is a monster that’s veiny and blood red, and combined with Khezu’s design, it’s pretty disturbing. The weapons, however, are probably worse, as they have a cracked, fleshy aesthetic that looks like it could start bleeding at any moment, and I’ll put the trigger warning a second time once we get to talking about them in case it slips someone’s mind. Might seem overkill, but with a situation like this, you can’t be too careful, which is also why I’m gonna put this review under a “Read More” so anyone who doesn’t want to see it doesn’t get an eyeful while trying to scroll past it. Now, let’s talk about Red Khezu proper, shall we?

(How it appears in Monster Hunter Freedom 1)

(How it appears in Monster Hunter 4)

Appearance: See what I mean? This thing’s made to look like it had its skin ripped off, which is not a look you want to have unless your intention is to scar someone or their children for life. The MHF1 render conveys the skinned appearance better than the MH4 one, in my opinion, because it’s a deep red, like the kind you’d see in gore in PlayStation era games. The MH4 render reminds me more of a particularly red worm or lamprey...well, until you get to the body. Then it looks like someone plucked a chicken and painted it red. It probably looks more visceral in-game.

I think I prefer the standard Khezu design, to be honest. The pale complexion combined with everything else gives me Silent Hill vibes, and even though I haven’t played any of the games, I’ve watched videos on them, and I appreciate all they’ve done for the horror genre. Red Khezu, on the other hand, doesn’t give me that same impression, and I don’t know of any horror series’ I’m interested in where such a vibrant red on a fleshy-looking monster is part of the aesthetic. Still, it does its job well. 7/10.

Behavior/Lore: So, here’s something interesting: Red Khezu aren’t a subspecies. They’re what Khezu are supposed to be like; the Khezu everyone views as being “normal” are actually albinos who likely only got more populous than the red ones because they spend most of their time in caves, where anything that would want them dead likely wouldn’t be relying on visual cues to hunt anyways. That said, both types of Khezu leave caves to eat non-cave dwelling monsters and, surprisingly, mushrooms, which Red Khezu have been seen feeding on in the Swamp region. Unfortunately for them, being so fatty means that once they leave their cave, they put themselves at risk, ‘cause a lot of monsters want to eat them, including the Rath pair.

For some reason, Red Khezu are much more aggressive than the albino variety, and they even have increased muscle mass, which allows them to not only visit cold regions (which white Khezu can already do), but even stay in them during the winter months (which white Khezu can’t do). I don’t know why albino Khezu aren’t like this, ‘cause I can’t see how albinism would affect your muscle growth and temperament, but I don’t make the monsters, I just critique them.

I’m really glad that this is more interesting than “Khezu+.” The fact that Red Khezu aren’t a true subspecies is a neat idea, and considering that the Ecology page on the common Khezu doesn’t mention any omnivorous tendencies, it’s likely that Red Khezu even have a different diet than their pale cousins, which is something that I don’t think the previous G monsters had. While making them more aggressive than albino Khezu is to be expected at this point, it doesn’t take away from anything, so I’m not going to gripe about it. When you combine all of this with the qualities they likely share with albino Khezu, you get an interesting counterpart for what was already an interesting monster. 8/10.

Abilities: If you thought that keeping warm was the main benefit of having more muscle mass than a common Khezu, I have to question your educational history; Red Khezu are physically stronger than the albino variety, and their electrical organs are superior as well. Not only are their electric attacks stronger, they can also use electricity to incapacitate prey in ways common Khezu can’t. Also, their skin seems to be very elastic, as Red Khezu can stretch their necks out much farther than their pale brethren can. I think more needs to be stretchier than just the skin, but whatever. As a final note, for some reason they’re immune to fire, but this apparently comes at the cost of being weak to water.

Red Khezu do what I wish more subspecies’ do, which is take the basic abilities of their weaker forms and mix them up, not just make them more powerful. The new ways they can manipulate electricity and the extended reach of their more elastic necks likely make battles with them stand out more than the ones you have with some other G monsters. 7/10.

Equipment: Like I said at the beginning, TRIGGER WARNING FOR BLOOD. These weapons look just plain nasty, which, while potentially being part of their appeal to some people, will likely make others very queasy or worse. I’ll start with the least disgusting one, the Hunting Horn called the Blood Horn:

“Red Hunting Horn made from wrapped Red Khezu hide. Its color is very unsettling...” The color is unsettling? Not the fact that it literally has a mouth? Okay, in all fairness, the color of the wraps makes it more gruesome than the Khezu Horn, which just looks like it’s covered in bandages; these look like bandages that were soaked in something, and they were probably white before they were applied. Make of that little observation what you will. Now, here’s where things start getting nasty--this Long Sword from MHO:

...I can’t say I know what that implement is, but I do know that the Red Khezu skin is wrapped around it in a very unsettling way; until I saw the little bit of metal that was exposed at the sword’s base, I thought that those spikes were independently attached to the flesh instead of being the teeth of a full blade. And speaking of unsettling, the sheathe looks like it’s bleeding. That comparison to cracked flesh I drew earlier makes more sense now, don’t it? I’ve got one more weapon to show you guys, and it’s probably the nastiest one of the bunch: the Red Khezu Sword and Shield from MHO. If you’re already uncomfortable after looking at the above weapons, you might wanna scroll past this:

The reasons I find this the most gruesome of the weapons I’ve shown are A: the “sword” is a surgeon’s saw, which adds to the whole “twisted hospital” vibe that Silent Hill likes to use, and B: the shield literally has the Red Khezu’s “face” stretched over it, and the mouth is...what are those black things holding the mouth shut? They’re not sewing lines, ‘cause they’re way too big. Wait, the way the two on the left are angled, it looks like they’re 3D and not flat--are those things made of metal, like the shield? ‘Cause there are a few implications for that, and they’re all unpleasant. Moving on to the armor, the only renders the wiki had are the men’s sets from MHO. Here’s the Blademaster set:

This isn’t as vibrant of a red as Red Khezu normally are, but it does look like raw meat or exposed flesh, so that’s...cool? The fact that there’s nothing obscuring or darkening the face like in other games with Khezu armor makes it look kind of silly, though; it’s like a fleshy raincoat, which is equally parts disgusting and hard to take seriously. As for the Gunner set, it’s very different from the Khezu R Armor I showed off in the Khezu review:

To be fair, this does look a lot like the normal Khezu Gunner armor, so expecting it to look like the R Gunner armor is silly. There are a couple of neat things here--the arm guard has a spine embedded in it, and the right arm has a glove with claws (or at least long nails)--but for the most part this doesn’t stand out too much to me. It does look like someone cooked the meat for a few minutes, though, so it’s probably not violating any health codes.

Honestly, I prefer the standard Khezu equipment to this, but that’s mostly because there’s much more of it than Red Khezu equipment. Plus, outside of the ones from MHO, the weapons the devs recolored for Red Khezu don’t really look that unnerving. The red’s a bit too vibrant, so it doesn’t really fit the filthy hospital aesthetic that made Khezu weapons so eerie, and the armor looks gross, sure, but that’s all it has. Still, the MHO weapons are their own kind of disturbing, but the fact that the majority of Red Khezu weapons are in a game that most people don’t even consider a real MH game is depressing. 6/10.

Final Thoughts and Tally: After sifting through so many monsters that did so little, it’s nice to get something that stands out like this. Don’t get me wrong, I still prefer normal Khezu over red ones, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like Red Khezu at all; I just think that the albino ones have more going for them. 7/10.

[curiosity-killed]

a bow for the bad decisions

canon-divergent AU from ep. 24 (on ao3)

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7 | part 8 | part 9 | part 10 | part 11 | part 12 | part 13 | part 14 | part 15 | part 16 | part 17 | part 18

Wei Wuxian rolls his hands, flattens them, and presses the seal into the dirt. A flash of scarlet bursts in the air, then a sudden swell of power, prickling, needling— It dissipates, and Wei Wuxian exhales, resting his wrists on his knees. Eyeing him a moment, Jiang Cheng turns back to the wards and reaches out with his spiritual energy to press tentatively at the barrier. It feels…strange. Alive in a way that doesn’t feel quite like spellwork but more like the cool distance Wei Wuxian kept up during the war. “That’s it, then?” he asks. Still crouched down, gaze longsighted, Wei Wuxian gives a slight nod. His hair’s drawn up high off his nape in a style he hasn’t worn since they were kids, and it sharpens the angles of his face, makes the new hollows and tired lines more apparent. Worry shivers in Jiang Cheng’s chest but he presses it down; he was worse during the war. He’s doing better. Jiang Cheng will bully him into getting some sleep now that the shields are done.

“It feels…different,” he admits eventually, turning back to the energy he can only barely sense before them.

“Mm,” Wei Wuxian hums as he straightens up. He sways, stumbles back half a step, but catches himself. “The trigger arrays in this one will ping any intruders. They’re really more a warning than a true defense. If someone crosses them when they’re live, they’ll hit the talisman traps and so on.” Nodding, Jiang Cheng crosses his arms over his chest and surveys the work. Nine layers, nine shields of warding and arrays spreading out from the center of Lotus Pier to encompass all the outer buildings and main dock. If there’s another attack, the city itself will still be at some risk, but there’s enough ground covered by these defenses that all the townspeople could take shelter and be protected. The knowledge makes something tighten in his chest, a fanged satisfaction baring its teeth. “It’s under your command but tied to the land,” Wei Wuxian continues, wiping his palms on his skirts. “You can grant authority to others but as long as Lotus Pier stands, the shields will hold.” He’d explained it as he worked, but his explanations tend to get…well, distracted, when he’s multitasking. Channeling resentful energy is still a little shaky as far as Jiang Cheng’s concerned, but he thinks he gets the basic premise. Like using residual spiritual energy, the arrays draw on the resentment naturally released by the dying things throughout the region. Flowers, trees, animals — over the generations, they build up enough that the outer arrays can draw off them without leaching too much vital energy. And for the arrays in the center, the strongest and most vicious — well, there are always bodies in the lakes. “Not the Tiger Seal?” he asks. Wei Wuxian’s face is unwontedly serious, drawn, as he shakes his head. “No,” he says. “It’s… Think of it more like Chenqing. They draw from the energy around them but aren’t controlled by it. The only one who can command them is you, and whoever you grant access.” “So you and jiejie and Bujue,” Jiang Cheng suggests. Wei Wuxian wrinkles his nose, dropping his hands to his hips. “Maybe just shijie and a-Jue,” he suggests instead. He says it too casually, nonchalant in a way he only is about serious things. Jiang Cheng scowls. “Why shouldn’t our da-shixiong have access?” he asks. “Ah don’t give me that look, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian gripes, shoving at his shoulder. “I just mean the more access you grant, the bigger the holes are. Like a fishing net where you keep widening the weave, pretty soon anything can get through. Anyway, it’s not like I couldn’t figure out a way in if I really needed to. I made the arrays, didn’t I?” Relenting, Jiang Cheng lets it go. It makes sense, he supposes, even if he’s not sure he believes Wei Wuxian fully. “Alright. So I just…tell it who to answer to?” he asks. Wei Wuxian hitches his shoulders in a little shrug as if to say ‘sure.’ Stepping forward and holding his palm flat until he can feel the shivering vibration of the ward, Jiang Cheng closes his eyes. He can’t get a hold on this energy like he can his own qi, but he can feel it humming just shy of him. “Jiang Yanli,” he says and feels a ripple, an echo of sensation, course through the wards. “Yu Bujue.” He wants to add the third but holds back for now. Wei Wuxian will kick up a stink and anyway, he can always come back and change permissions now that he knows how. “Well then!” Wei Wuxian says, exhaling. “We’re all set. Ugh I’m starving. Do you think they cooked lunch already?” Jiang Cheng snorts but starts heading back. “Get some sleep tonight,” he says. “You’ve been pushing too hard and you agreed you’d take care of yourself. Last thing we need is a mess at the hunt.” Spinning Chenqing, Wei Wuxian scrunches up his face in annoyance. “I’m fine,” he insists. “The wards needed finished and it’s not like we got much done while Huaisang was here. Anyway, are you sure I have to come to the hunt? I could stay here and keep an eye on things while you and shijie are gone, make sure the defenses are ready, keep up training. The upper talisman class is really coming along, you know. They’re about ready for practical application.” He’s heard some variation of this argument about a dozen times over the last few months, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t hold back his eyeroll. If they were closer to the lake instead of on the far side of Lotus Pier, he’d just shove Wei Wuxian into the water and get it over with. “Yeah because coming to the Phoenix Hunt without our First Disciple and resident war hero won’t feed any rumors,” he retorts. “Anyway, you’ve still got to talk to Lan Wangji, remember?” That sours Wei Wuxian into silence. He kicks idly at a stick in his path, and Jiang Cheng eyes him a little curiously. He doesn’t know what happened between the two of them, and normally he wouldn’t care at all but — well, in those three months, he almost thought they’d be having a wartime wedding once they found Wei Wuxian. Incomprehensible as it was, Lan Wangji’s devotion to finding Wei Wuxian was simultaneously unnerving and deeply relieving. He’d been so sure that the sect leaders, the adults, the ones who actually knew what they were doing, would tell him to leave his hunt and let Wei Wuxian lie with the rest of the dead. When Lan Wangji stepped in at his side to join him, he’d finally been able to exhale a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding at the time. They weren’t friends by any stretch of the imagination, but they’d had a common goal and shared fear. It was like they were both searching for their missing piece; Jiang Cheng for his brother and Lan Wangji for his — his something. Jiang Cheng still isn’t sure what, exactly, Wei Wuxian is to Lan Wangji. “I still think it’s a bad plan,” Wei Wuxian says stubbornly. “It’s a-jie’s idea,” Jiang Cheng reminds him in an attempt to end the conversation. “Shijie thinks the best of everyone,” Wei Wuxian points out. Jiang Cheng inclines his head in acknowledgment. On another day maybe, back in Cloud Recesses or before the war or if he weren’t so sick of this argument, he’d let it go with the acknowledgment that jiejie is far too kind for the vast majority of people in the world. But he is tired and he’s sick of Wei Wuxian pouting about this whole plan. “What happened between you two anyway?” he asks. “He was always in your tents playing music at you while you were half-dressed during the war.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” Wei Wuxian shoots back, brow furrowed. It’s the frown that makes Jiang Cheng hesitate. He’d only been needling, venting some of his irritation by prodding at this easy opening, but now he pulls back. Wei Wuxian has always been a relentless flirt and overly affectionate with anyone he likes, but Jiang Cheng is almost certain he’s never actually acted on that. For all his irreverence and shamelessness, Wei Wuxian has an at times uncanny deference to morals. He might flirt and tease and drape his arms around shoulders, but Jiang Cheng doesn’t really believe he’d go to bed with someone if they weren’t serious, if they weren’t someone he meant to give himself over to fully. And anything less than that, Jiang Cheng is positive he would’ve heard about: Wei Wuxian would’ve crowed about getting a kiss from a pretty girl until Jiang Cheng beat him to death with a pillow. “Nothing,” he says, sighs. “I just — it was impossible to drag you away from him before the war and now you can’t stand to be around him. Did he say something to you?” They’d have a whole other rumor problem on their hands if Jiang Cheng punched Hanguang-jun in the face, but for his brother, he’s willing to do it. If Lan Wangji said something, hurt Wei Wuxian— “Relax, Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian says, laughs. “You don’t need to go beat up Lan Zhan for me. I’m not some fragile maiden.” Shooting him an annoyed look, Jiang Cheng forces his shoulders and hands to loosen. Wei Wuxian shakes his head before tilting it up toward the sky briefly, drawing in a breath of clean air. “So?” Jiang Cheng prods, elbowing Wei Wuxian in the arm. He scowls at him, rubbing at the spot as if it actually hurt, and Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes. “He’s just so — ugh, you know how the Lan are,” Wei Wuxian says. “All he wants to do is drag me back to Gusu to face punishment for my deviant methods. You heard him, all that ‘return to the righteous path’ and ‘I have to exorcise the evil out of you.’ I’m just tired of getting lectured all the time.” It still doesn’t feel quite right, like the explanation’s too shallow. Still, Wei Wuxian had hated all the rules in Cloud Recesses and Lan Wangji had been unusually terse about the cultivation path he walked. “Maybe he’ll relax if you explain it,” Jiang Cheng suggests, trying to sound genuine and not like he wants to shove the two of them in a small room and make them figure themselves out. “Like you’ve talked to me about it. He can’t bother you about returning to sword cultivation if he knows you…you know.” Wei Wuxian breathes out something that’s not quite a laugh, too bitter. There’s a twist to his lips that Jiang Cheng never saw until the war, something dark and ugly under his brother’s amusement. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “Maybe.”

[emotionalcello-makefanfics]

We. (Brujay fanfic) Part 1/4

Summary :

Alpha and Omega, more of a curse than a second gender. Theorized to be the nature’s solution of human’s close brush against extinction hundreds of thousands of years ago. It’s truly a blessing that their population is near extinction, not more than 5% of the total. The percentage of them meeting is slim to none. Yet here they are.

Word count : 1.3 k

Note : it's been a long time since I posted anything. To be fully honest, this is the first fic that i'm not sure whether to post or not bcs i'm not happy with it when posting. But I just feel like there's no room to grow this anywhere, and it's completely done. So...Enjoy?

Part 2

Click link to read on AO3

Click keep reading to read on tumblr~

Bruce has a secure private line created especially to connect through Jason’s. That flip phone has no contacts, and only the same set of numbers ever flashed on the outside screen. A Motorola flip phone with a monochrome graphic. They went great lengths to have this method of communication separated from their work, their families, and their intruding night time associates.

The security and secrecy take intricate design, but what they have is simple.

What they knew are crucial, and yet so easily contained.

Inside the text is a location and time, sent over an hour ago. In an hour and one minute, Bruce sent back the exact text message. Anything earlier means he won't be there.

Right on the edge of Gotham. Tight slums and abandoned buildings tower tightly. But one among many is not like the other. For one, access to an underground bomb shelter for the rich and has been long forgotten, abandoned since world war two. Its records, -a floor plan on a piece of paper signed by the government- doesn’t exist at the Records of Deeds. Bruce doesn’t know what happened to it, but he does have a concrete hint who might have it.

The building above the shelter had been inhabitable for ten years. Only roaches and rats as big as your biceps roams around and called it homes. Unlike the bunker that’s been revamped into something else. Batman slips to the underground floor from the long broken lift. A secret entrance triggered by messing around the elevator button that seemed to rust and long gone. A hatch opened under Batman’s feet, too small to fall in, but big enough for him to shimmy down.

The small tunnel ends on the rooftop of a wide but short corridor. Its blue light gave him an empty feeling. Even after a few seconds, Batman’s heavy drop still echoes. The corridor is less of a path and more like a rectangle box. Unlike the building on top of it, it’s clean, almost eerily spotless, and Batman with all the darkness of him is like a speck dirt in the middle of it.

Batman takes off his heavy and armored gloves, revealing the prim and manicured hand fit of Bruce Wayne the quirky playboy billionaire, Gotham’s darling. He presses his hand on a wall exactly 10 centimeters off the room’s center, pressing on it exactly 10 seconds before pulling it away.

The wall behind him opens from an invisible seam, another hallway deeper where he’ll finally reach the bunker.

The enforced door at the end of this second hall opened. Another seamless wall, a short and dead-ended room. Bruce takes off his cowl, stands with feet shoulder length apart, facing the wall and pressed both hands on the wall, shoulder-length from each other. The wall glows a faint green light, a small dent in the front of his eyes glares laser that scans through his face. That one is new, but he goes along with it. All this for the prize in the room behind the wall.

The final door opens, with it, a gush of cold refreshing wind brushed against his skin, leaving warm pleasurable shivers down his spine. He takes in a deep breath, smelling intently the scent of faint jasmine, a strong smell of cedarwood, a hint of lavender, and a tinge of iron and sweat.

Bruce is greeted with a shocking difference between the exterior and the interior. No matter how much he came to this room, he’s never numb to the amusement. A room with pastel walls and the softest carpeted purple floor his feet ever stepped on. It was a bunker that could easily be crammed with a hundred people but originally made for 10 upper-class people to take shelter luxuriously comfortable, now transformed as a room for two.

The room is filled with plushies, cabinets filled with sex toys, soft clothes, and extra pillows. At the end of the room, is a king-sized bed with red silk covers. There, laid the prettiest piece of man that made his Adam's apples bobbed at the sight. Just like him, the man gulps at his appearance. Unlike him, the man is already completely naked.

Bruce takes off his gear, putting them on the compartment that’s open and waiting right beside the door. As his gear put inside, along with another gear that’s already there, the compartment closed. As

The closer he approached, the stronger the man’s scent is. The scent of arousal. The scent of heat coming. So strong that it’s triggering his rut. He feels even his breathing grows heavy.

“If you’re going to walk any slower,” the man sigh, flinching, already in pain as his heat started without any sign of an Alpha in the perimeter, “I’m... going to start without you.”

“I’m sorry I’m late.” Bruce takes off the scent blocker from the flanks of his neck, a thinner than a paper membrane, invisible to the naked eye. When he lets his scent adds to the air, he could see the omega deeply breaths it in like a drug and exhales in a pleasured moan. The most melodic sound that Bruce Wayne had ever heard.

Bruce lands his knee to the plush mattress, hand on the back of the omega’s neck and bare his own for the omega to scent. They stayed a few seconds to take each other’s scent, to calm the omega and give the reassurance of safety.

“I thought you’re taking suppressant,” he asked in worry. For the omega in his arms hates it to the core and their sex always without them.

Not that Bruce minds. Heat sex is said to be the most pleasurable kind. An omega in heat will want you no matter how much the person behind it doesn’t want to. An omega in heat doesn’t have their straight mind to say no. Their body will be punished with pain if no one ‘assisted’ them in their heat. An alpha in a rut doesn’t have the straight mind to say no as well. Their rut came triggered always, over the smell of an omega in heat.

Alpha and Omega, more of a curse than a second gender. Theorized to be the nature’s solution of human’s close brush against extinction hundreds of thousands of years ago. It’s truly a blessing that their population is near extinction, not more than 5% of the total. The percentage of them meeting is slim to none.

Yet here they are.

“Consider yourself lucky.” The omega smirked, finally taking off his nose from Bruce’s scent glands. “I can’t take the shots forever. Healthwise, I still have to have them once every two years. I knew that the hard way when I first have my heat.”

Bruce felt his blood boil, from the top of his head down to his groin. His nose flared as he takes in his omega’s scent, rich and closing in on a full-blown heat. But he’s just way too angry to enjoy how easy the omega aroused him, with his scent and with the way his body reacted violently on his touch alone.

Without smelling his sweet scent, Bruce can’t imagine ever looking his adopted son is such ways. Supple, endearing, beautiful, with a delicious slick leaking down his carved legs, prepped and ready for mating.

 ++++++

 Heats last for days. The first time Jason revealed he’s an omega, he was in heat, in pain. For once in a long time, Jason needed him. Bruce took that chance. To let himself be the Alpha he had hidden from the world. No one knew about their second gender but each other. Not his other sons, not even his best friend Clark. The days they spent together for days, conversing normally between the calm in his waves of heat, made him remember two years ago where he had done this exact same thing.

In their little bunker, Jason tucked in his arms, as they wait for Jason’s next wave over a movie. Talking about petty topics with light delicate laughs slipping in between.

It’s not usually like this. Their heat less sex more sober and enjoyable as they’re there as themselves, not as a rut ridden alpha, and a lulled omega. Though Bruce is here, no matter what Jason needed from him.

Once in two years, he has an omega. Every once in a while, he has Jason.

 +++++

[eldunea]

So You Want To Run Through Preuzien?

i’ve received a fair few messages from people interested in having their muses go through prussia, with one person even being interested in making a preuzien OC, so i thought i’d do this post setting up some necessary boundaries and limitations for any character who intends to challenge the prussian league and make a name for themselves in my fakémon region. this applies primarily to muses who wish to start their prussia arcs before lotor became champion, although some of these points still apply to a certain extent even after he won the position.

without further ado…here we go. >:3

[TW: Mentions of death, animal abuse and human abuse. If these topics trigger you, do NOT have your muse do a run through pre-Lotor Preuzien.]

First Things First: Your Muse Probably Won’t Be Champion Anytime Soon

i’ll be blunt. unless your character 1) is willing to kill lotor and all of his pokémon, most of whom are sapient, 2) is willing to risk their life and the lives of all their partners in the championship battle, and 3) can also singlehandedly defeat a five-core complete forme/ragnamax zygarde that has world-ending capabilities and is comparable in power to eternamax eternatus, they don’t stand a chance. for #1 and #2, though lotor has dismantled most aspects of the fight to kill clause, he still keeps the part that says all official championship battles must be fought to the death. he does this as a deterrent to challengers--and he is not afraid to slaughter his opponents in their moments of hesitance should they express any reluctance to kill. and while he doesn’t own ragnamax zygarde, he has definitely single-handedly defeated it, as it’s how he became champion in the first place.

i want to make it clear that this doesn’t mean he’s unbeatable in every scenario. he can still be defeated in a less high-stakes setting where he isn’t allowed to kill or cripple his opponents, or destroy everything around him in a 5-mile radius. one of his big weaknesses is that ever since his championship battle in kalos against diantha he’s gotten real rusty in traditional 6v6 style battling; this is because he has spent all his time perfecting the prussian style of battle, and because if any criminals are stupidly polite enough to do a traditional 6v6 against him, his unprincipled bitch self will just bring out his entire team to gangbeat their ass. but in an all-out campaign match where he gets to use deadly force and unleash the full apocalyptic extent of his pokémons’ power, he is not going to lose to any muse who 1) is not as fully psychologically ready to shed blood as he is, 2) is not psychologically able to handle seeing their pokémon get killed or the mere thought of their pokémon being killed, OR 3) could not also pull off what he did. that is a FACT.

i do hc that lotor stops being champion eventually, but i haven’t figured out when would be a good time for lotor to lose his spot, or even whether i’d want him to lose it rather than stepping down. there are many different possibilities that can be explored and i may make different verses for them, such as the possibility that he loses/steps down from the championship some time in the near future (5 - 10 years) when he feels that his work is done/feels the pressure is too much, or the possibility that he feels his work will take literal decades and he steps down as an old man once he is satisfied that the region has finally reformed. if you are interested in lotor’s championship spot though, please know that as of writing this, i am IFFY about any plot where a muse defeats lotor and then returns prussia to its original ways. this is because despite my love of “ow the edge,” as the creator of preuzien i do want to write a happier ending for a region whose people have seen nothing but suffering. if this does end up happening, it will have to happen in a separate verse.

Be Prepared for a Long and Potentially Traumatizing Haul

the prussian league is a thirty-six-badge-long, MULTI-YEAR ordeal. there is no way around that. i hc other leagues usually take about a year to complete. the prussian league, on the other hand, takes a MINIMUM of 4 years to finish for trainers who start their journeys in preuzien, 3.5 years for trainers who have already entered the hall of fame for a foreign league, and 2.5 years for trainers who have entered the hall of fame in more than one foreign league. for some perspective on its difficulty--lotor, the guy with the 200+ IQ who beat ragnamax zygarde and stopped ragnarök during his championship battle, STILL took multiple years to complete his league challenge. can your muse clear the league in, say, half a year or a year less than the time it normally takes? yes, but i will be selective about who gets to have that honor. please don’t be “that person” and say “well my muse is capable of doing it in less than a year”--no. they can’t. why? because i said so.

another thing to note about the prussian league is its difficulty. this is part of why it takes such a long time for any trainer to get through preuzien: your muse will not have an easy time going through it, NO MATTER WHAT. yes, even if your muse has legendaries…joke’s on them, preuzien’s entire culture is geared toward beating the shit out of legendaries, and i daresay they’re damn good at it. yes, even if your muse is “really, really strong”…everyone in preuzien is also really, really strong, and not to mention, strength in preuzien is different from strength in most of the pokémon world because historically, the prussian league has put its trainers through situations--both on and off the field--approximating WAR. again, for perspective: lotor has one of the highest IQs on planet pokéarth and literally saved the world from the previous deity champion, and preuzien still had times when it PUSHED HIM PAST HIS LIMIT. so if you state that your muse is somehow able to just breeze through every gym and the national tournament like it’s nothing, that’s something i’m going to have a real hard time believing.

as to the trauma part of this section, prussia is a much friendlier place now that lotor is champion…provided you’re not an abuser or a member of a corrupt ruling class. but if your muse is entering the league pre-lotor’s championship, when the region was still under the rule of wilhelmine von hohenzollern, your muse WILL suffer some sort of trauma. there is also no way around that. if they started in preuzien, they would have started in mandatory trainers’ school, where they would have been both physically and emotionally abused by their teachers. the only ways to avoid this abuse are to 1) be a junker’s child whose parents are the rare prussian unicorns that do not support child-beating or 2) become a total kissup to the teachers and other authority figures of the school, screwing over your fellow students to save yourself, and i doubt most peoples’ muses would want to do that. if they started outside the region and came in…they still have the below section to deal with.

Your Muse Will Lose Pokémon

this is no longer a guaranteed if your muse is joining the prussian league under lotor’s rule. but in the time of wilhelmine, under the fight to kill clause, you may be ordered to kill your opponent and their pokémon for the entertainment of the crowd. and you can’t back out from this either, because if you do, you will be publicly executed for failing to provide the audience entertainment. this aspect of the fight to kill clause is no longer in effect, but when it was, it was responsible for so many young peoples’ deaths that the region’s age dependency ratio went completely out of whack. what’s more, the fight to kill clause also states that gym leaders can choose whether they wish to kill you without warning and/or your pokémon at any point during their matches, which only adds to the danger. in a region where the league literally requires you to fight for your life, it is NEARLY INCONCEIVABLE that anyone could get through this without losing at least one of their trusted partners. there is only one person in the entire history of wilhelmine prussia who managed to go through all the gyms and the prussian national tournament without losing a single one of their pokémon (and his name, by the way, is not lotor). i am going to keep it that way.

what’s more, if the brutality of the battles don’t get to you, the lack of healthcare will. preuzien in its pre-lotor days was infamous for the shortage of both human and pokémon healthcare that plagued its system. healthcare was only guaranteed to junkers, the military, and those who are deemed “victors,” aka those who fought long and hard enough to get the government’s attention and be seen as worthy. for the rest, they have to struggle through long and potentially life-ending lines at pokémon centers and doctors’ offices, all of which come from the fact that preuzien glorifies pokémon training and militarism to the point that almost every other profession is suffering a shortage in professionals and that includes healthcare. even if we go with the fanon that nurse joys are always in abundance because they’re actually ditto spawn that can be mass-produced, preuzien would deliberately make it so that there’s a lack of healthcare so they could force people to kill each other over who gets treated. so yeah. under wilhelmine, this is a region in which losing at least one pokémon is a 99.99999% certainty.

Your Muse is More Likely to Fail than Succeed

i’m gonna be straight up right now: i won’t let more than a handful of muses succeed in winning the prussian national tournament--at least, in proportion to the rest who fail. why? because if i as preuzien’s creator let too many people have a successful run through prussia, the difficulty of the league will lose its meaning. it’s not “the hardest league in the world” if every muse and their mother is capable of receiving all 18 type specialist badges, receiving all 18 other strategic badges, and clearing all four stages of the 256-person prussian national tournament. by having too many muses being able to achieve this extraordinarily difficult feat, it cheapens the accomplishment of the few who did. i might be more lenient on this for muses that enter the league after wilhelmine is deposed, seeing as the fight to kill clause is abolished and that explains a big chunk of the prussian league’s difficulty. but even so, given the unique demands that prussian-style battling foists on its trainers, they’ll be hard pressed to rise to the challenge--especially if they were not raised like most prussian trainers are to take it on.

if you want your muse to succeed, i will be tough about this. i will play devil’s advocate and come up with every single possible way in which your muse could fail, whether psychologically or strategically. even the best strategists which basically every muse seems to be can crumble and be broken by a league specifically designed to mentally shatter its participants in order to “weed out the weak.” and even the strongest-willed people which basically every muse also seems to be may lack the particular intelligence needed to handle strategic situations that require one to think less like a trainer and more like a MILITARY COMMANDER. this applies mainly to wilhelmine’s preuzien, because her league is brutal on a scale that is unseen anywhere else in the world and what’s more, it’s not afraid to play dirty. if doing a run when lotor is champion i will be less exacting, but i still want to keep the success to failure ratio low. please don’t take it personally when i start grilling like it’s a BBQ--i just want to be realistic and a hardliner about whether your muse really has what it takes. like the officials of the prussian league itself, i want to make sure that ONLY THE BEST OF THE BEST make it through. 

i will, however, say this: just because your muse fails to get to/through the prussian national tournament, doesn’t mean it’s the end for them. they could join tournaments for the badge level at which your muse stopped, or join the coordinating scene that has gained new life under lotor’s leadership. they could move on to another region and enjoy their newfound capacity to beat the shit out of almost everyone they come across, because sometimes even the people who fail in preuzien are leaps and bounds stronger than those who succeed outside it. or they could divert their efforts from trying to climb to the top, thank their lucky stars that they still have their mental health mostly intact, and start taking care of pokémon who were abused by the system. there’s still plenty to do after an unsuccessful prussian run--your character’s story will not necessarily end there, and even in prussia’s darkest days, it would not necessarily end in disaster. to sum it up, failure to complete the league is still a plot point that you may find worth exploring.

in closing, i would like to say: your muse will have it extremely rough going through prussia but honestly…the struggle is half the fun of writing it. >:3

[taww]

Review: Bryston 4B Cubed Stereo Amplifier

Bryston 4B Cubed stereo amplifier

The Audiophile Weekend Warrior (TAWW)

TAWW Rating: 4.5 / 5

An honest, refined and easy-going amp that may leave many questioning if they need more.

PROS: Clean, smooth and clear with a hint of warmth; effortless power; superb bass; bulletproof engineering, build and operation; that 20 year warranty.

CONS: Excruciatingly long break-in; not as lively or dimensional as some of the audiophile competition; balanced input seems slightly compromised.

Bryston is a name that needs no introduction, and the company’s popularity is obvious every time I post anything about them on social media - those posts consistently get a ton of likes and comments. Perhaps for this reason, along with Bryston's no-nonsense pro audio heritage, elitist high-enders seem to shun the brand as too mainstream and un-audiophile to be taken seriously. This hasn't stopped their latest Cubed series of amps from garnering some solid reviews since its introduction in 2016, with some proponents in online forums putting it in the conversation with some of the more revered high-end amps under $10k. I was intrigued, and thanks to the graciousness of Bryston's James Tanner and their US marketing rep Micah Sheveloff I was able to spend a full year getting to know one of their most popular models, the 4B Cubed (MSRP $6,695), along with the BP-17 Cubed preamp. Read on about my long but rewarding journey with this workhorse.

Design, Features & Usage

Compared to typically-spartan, even downright crude high-end amplifiers, the Bryston 4B Cubed (4B3 in shorthand) has a number of nice features:

Switchable unbalanced RCA and balanced XLR inputs

Low (23dB) and high (29dB) gain settings

Bridged mono operation

Soft start with remote trigger option

The distinguishing aspect of the Cubed series vs. Bryston’s previous line (e.g. SST2) is the Salomie input buffer. Co-developed with the late Ioan Alexandru Salomie, the circuit is said to reduce noise and distortion by 10x vs. the previous implementation and excel at immunity to RFI and power supply noise, a critical factor in today’s world where literally every device imaginable has a microprocessor and/or switching PSU buzzing away. Much has been written about the circuit in other reviews and the objective proof is in the 4B3’s superb measured performance - 0.005% THD and > 119dB S/N at full power (300W) across the entire audible spectrum.

I got the amp in black, with standard 17” front panel (no rack handles). The status LEDs glow green, but apparently this can be internally changed to blue if the customer prefers. I found the remote trigger feature quite handy when paired with the BP-17 Cubed preamp, and the switchable inputs useful for preamp/interconnect comparisons. The binding posts are of the standard 5-way insulated variety to meet EU regulations, and worked well with different sized spades. An extra pair of posts would have been nice to aid bi-wiring or my REL subwoofer hookup.

All business inside.

The 4B3 consumes a reasonable 60 watts powered up at idle - certainly not EPA EnergyStar territory, but about the same as my 60 watt Ayre AX7e integrated and just warm to the touch thanks to the generous heatsinks and extensive use of aluminum. Ecological concerns aside, I had no qualms leaving it running 24-7 in an open shelf with just a few inches of clearance above. Should you decide to do the green thing and power it down between sessions, the 4B3 consumes under half a watt on standby, and powers up quickly and smoothly. You'll hear the distinctive clicking of the soft-start circuit, and sound will start flowing within a few seconds. From a cold start, the sound takes about a half hour to get the juices flowing, and maybe an hour to reach full potential.

Setup

Preamp: I had the good fortune of having 3 very different preamps on hand during my time with the 4B3 - the companion Bryston BP-17 Cubed, the tubed Valvet Soulshine from Germany, and the Pass XP10. I found the Bryston pre to be a reasonably good match, but the Pass and Soulshine were simply better musically and both worked well, my top choice being the Pass. The 4B3's RCA input impedance is on the low-ish side (30kΩ), not the 100k+ that many tube pres seem to favor, so something to keep in mind when matching. The Soulshine did just fine, others may not.

Balanced vs. unbalanced input: for some reason, I preferred the sound of the 4B3 through its unbalanced inputs, save with the Pass preamp which doesn't fare as well unbalanced. It's hard to control for all the factors, but I had identical model of cable (DH Labs Air Matrix, Audience Au24 SX) in both RCA and XLR, and contrary to expectations I found the RCA input to sound fractionally more open and dynamic, and equally as quiet. Normally balanced operation affords you these qualities but I heard no such advantage with the 4B3. One clue is in the specs, which show drastically different input impedances for the balanced terminals - 30kΩ for positive, and a shockingly low 6kΩ for negative. This seems to indicate that it's not a differential/complementary input circuit like you'd find with e.g. Ayre or Pass, and I'd imagine this lack of symmetry compromises CMRR and some other benefits of balanced operation. I inquired with Bryston about how the circuit was implemented but didn't get a response.

High vs. low gain: Some people have commented that you can "tune" the sound of the Bryston, with the low gain (23dB) setting sounding a bit smoother and more laid back, while high gain (29dB) is more dynamic and detailed. I agree they sound different, but I had a different take: to me, high gain sounds transparent, and low gain sounds subtly dulled and veiled. For me it's a no brainer - unless absolutely necessary to attenuate, I'd always use the high gain setting. It simply sounds more truthful to me. I also inquired whether the low gain setting adds an additional attenuator in the signal path (it sounded like it to me) but again, I didn't hear back.

All the preamps, plus a DAC.

Bridged mono operation: I didn't test it, at least not intentionally, as I only had one amp on hand. I did accidentally flip the bridging switch once during playback which fortunately did not cause anything to explode. One note: if you do bridge it as a monoblock, be aware the input impedance drops to a very, very low 7.5kΩ, which I imagine will make some preamps quite uncomfortable.

Power cord/conditioner: The Bryston comes with a standard but appropriately-heavy 14-3 power cord, and it sounds quite good with it and wasn’t particularly fussy about changes. That said, I felt it was really locked in with the latest version of the Twirling Gerbil Red Electrum, a really fascinating cord made by our own MGD - bass became even more grounded, the soundstage locked in place and everything just clicked. Given that this cord isn’t readily available though, I’d say it’s worth trying a few different things (e.g. the Audience powerChord was a bit nicer than stock) but don’t worry too much - as long as you don’t use something gimmicky or too light, your amp is still going to sound good. One thing was clear though - the Bryston perferred being plugged directly into the wall vs. my Audience ar6 TSSOX conditioner. Even though the Audience is designed specifically with low impedance and high current delivery in mind, the Bryston felt constrained running through it - give it as direct a connection to the wall juice as possible.

Speaker cables: I got the impression that the Bryston prefers having a very direct connection to the speakers, working better with the heavier gauge cables I had on hand like the Cardas Clear Light or DH Labs Q-10 Signature (both 10 gauge or larger), vs. the Audience Au24 SX. I have a completely unsubstantiated theory that high damping factor amps employIng more negative feedback are more effective when there’s less between them and the speakers, whereas low/zero feedback designs (e.g. Pass or Ayre) don’t care as much and are more amenable to being tuned/voiced with lighter cables. Whatever the reason, I’d recommend sticking to the heavy stuff to maximize the Bryston’s grip on the speaker.

Speakers: I had a few speakers on hand, all of the 2-way monitor variety - Silverline Minuet Grand and SR-17 Supreme, Audiovector SR-1 Avantgarde Arreté, Role Audio Kayak. I really wish I had had a big 3-way floorstander as I’m sure the Bryston would have flexed its muscles and flourished wrangling a big speaker. My comparatively small speakers don’t provide that much of a challenge, all being amendable to low power tube amps. That said, the Bryston showed no favoritism towards any particular speaker - its voicing is essentially neutral and you’ll hear what the speaker is capable of. This is in contrast to my Ayre AX7e integrated, which clicks with the Silverline while sounding thin and unengaging with the Audiovector. I really did not think the Bryston would work at all with the Audiovector, an ultra high-resolution speaker that will megaphone any solid state liabilities like brightness, hardness or lack of body, but the Bryston impressively held its own with the unyielding Dane. I wouldn’t call it the most organic or emotive pairing, but they were quite agreeable working together. The Silverline SR-17 Supreme with Cardas Clear Light wound up being my preferred pairing, the combo bringing out wonderful midrange density and great dynamics, and most of my listening notes below reflect that setup.

Pure conjecture - I think the Bryston would be killer with a speaker like the Role Audio Enterprise - something a bit on the warm side with an silky-smooth but still-detailed soft dome tweeter that complements the transparency of the 4B3, and with some meat on the bottom end that could take advantage of the amp’s grip and power (I'm a fan of Role’s transmission lines). I’d also be curious to hear the 4B3 with a relatively inefficient but neutral speaker like something from ATC - that could be a good one, and ATC has a similar pro-audio pedigree. I’d steer clear of pairing with more forward/harder-sounding speakers, e.g. Focal Sopra or B&W or Paradigm Persona - not because the Bryston does anything wrong, but I frankly find those speakers with their metal/diamond drivers and higher-order crossovers too brittle and aggressive and in need of something more laid back (e.g. Naim) to sound anywhere near balanced.

Counterpoint: a reader reports getting great results with the 4B3, Focal Electra speakers and Crystal Cable with primarily hard rock and metal. I could see how the qualies of the 4B3 would click in such a system, particularly with harder-driving material.

The Sound

Out of the box, things were not promising. Compared to the Ayre AX7e I had been using for some time, or even an old Bryston B60 integrated, the 4B sounded drab. It wasn't bad per se, but everything was a little lacking - dynamics were a little flat, soundstage lacked depth, highs were a little glazed, midrange wasn't very dimensional, etc... even my wife couldn't help but comment, "this sounds boring." I saw a comment online describe the 4B3 as "gray," apt given what I was hearing for the first several days. A couple weeks later things were slowly improving, but not to the extent I was hoping. I was starting to get a little nervous about the conversation I'd be having with Bryston.

I fought the urge to swap other amps back in, and fortunately things continued to get better - much, much better. Despite having 100 hours of burn-in at the factory, the first 100-200 hours in my system were not at all representative of what this amp is capable of. After a month of continuous operation, virtually all of the aforementioned detractions had largely faded away; after 3-4 months and perhaps 500+ hours of music, it really started to push all the buttons. All my comments henceforth shall refer to the sound of the 4B after 6+ months in my system, and are representative of the long-term ownership experience.

With that out of the way... a standout aspect of the Bryston was how it delivered its obvious power with an easy finesse and speed. The Bryston sounds good for every one of its rated 300 watts (and actually more according to my unit's factory spec sheet)... this is an amp that revels in being cranked up, and the more watts I asked for the better it seemed to sound. But it also delivered those watts with delicacy and articulation, effortlessly revealing tons of musical detail in recording after recording without the typical detractions of high-power solid state - the glazed or harsh treble, the hard or murky midrange, the lack of rhythm and pulse. It was equally at ease floating Magdalena Kozena's vocals over delicate period accompaniment on a Mozart Aria, as it was hammering out the bass line of a Depeche Mode track. The 4B3's ability to reproduce music at realistic volume levels without strain or loss of transparency was addictive and had me cranking up number after number and pushing the limits of my neighbors' tolerance.

The treble was surprisingly delightful. In the past I've found big Bryston amps to lack refinement and resolution there, but the 4B3’s highs caught me off guard with how silky and delicate they were. Violins had just the right amount of brightness, bringing out the steeliness of the E string without sounding tinny, and triangles had realistic tinkle without popping out of the fabric of the soundstage. There was enough detail to do justice to the extremely high resolution AMT tweeters on my Audiovector monitors, but at no point did the 4B3 come close to burning my ears off the way some detailed amps can. Compared to the ol' Bryston B60 integrated, a longtime favorite that sacrifices some detail for sweetness and musicality, the 4B3 has far higher resolution in the upper registers that will bring out more energy without glare. There's no euphonic give in the high frequency response either, so if you need an amp that'll take some zing off a problematic tweeter (metal domes, I'm looking at you), look elsewhere.

Another nice surprise was how smooth and grainless the 4B3 was in the midrange, with just a hint of richness in the lower mids on things like cello, baritone, french horn or piano. It's subtle, and nothing like the bloom you'd get from a tube amp, or the coziness created by the Bryston B60 for that matter - just enough to balance out the transparency and power of the frequency extremes and keep the otherwise ruler-flat response from sounding too dry. Bryston claims the 4B3's quad-complementary output stage "mimics the characteristics of a Class-A design, but with dramatically lower distortion"; while it's not as round and juicy as true Class A designs like the Pass Labs XA30 or Valvet A4, it does approach their naturalness and smoothness much more than I'm used to from a high-power Class AB amp. I've found most gear that isn't blatantly colored to tend toward the leaner side these days, which can really put you in a pickle if you don't have something to balance it out. The 4B3 has a relaxed, generous quality to it which will help keep your system from getting too lean and bright, one of the more common traps of a modern system. I think this character of the 4B3 is summed up well in Christian Punter's extensive review on hifi-advice.com, and while I wouldn't go quite as far as he does, my listening observations largely align with his.

That warm, smooth quality might sound at odds with neutrality, but unlike some amps I've heard (ahem tubes) this came without biasing or distorting the sound in any particular way. Tonality of woodwind instruments in particular was spot-on, with the timbre of reed instruments - oboes, clarinets and bassoons - coming through distinctly and realistically. The wide variety of instrument timbres in a symphony orchestra are the toughest test for any gear and at no point did I pick up on anything nasal, bright, muffled or otherwise colored with the 4B3. True to its pro audio heritage, it gives the sense of telling it like it is with minimal editorializing and exceedingly low distortion.

Bryston makes much of the extensive lengths it went through in the Cubed series to both minimize internally-generated noise while maximizing rejection of external sources (e.g. RFI and power line noise). Whatever they did, it worked a treat. While the 4B3 is quiet at idle - with no input and your ear pressed up against the speaker, there's barely any hiss and zero hum - it's really the lack of audible noise and grain imparted on the signal that makes it sound so true and clean. Most solid state amps, including the older Brystons, always sounded a bit cloudy and grainy compared to the likes of Pass or Ayre. With the Cubed improvements, much of that has been scrubbed away, giving music a newfound sense of openness and purity approaching those venerable marques. Combined with fast, clean attacks, everything comes across with great clarity. Jason Kennedy describes this quality, along with all the usual British flourishes about PRaT etc., better than I could in his excellent review for The Ear - I recommend giving it a read.

The 4B3 also produced some of the best bass I have heard in my system. I've known Bryston amps to have big bass, but perhaps lacking in subtlety and definition. I found the 4B3 to be powerful for sure, but also tight, fast, and musically balanced. It was deep and tuneful, creating a feeling of unflappable stability with big orchestral music and heavy rock tracks. Sometimes amps with very high damping factor can sound lean, but the Bryston complemented its slam and control with just enough juiciness and resonance. String bass sounded full and tuneful without bloat, bass drum whacks had realistic impact, and pop/rock tracks had relentless drive. Some Class D amps I've heard capture pitch a bit more evenly (maybe due to their switching power supplies which reduce 60Hz colorations), but the Bryston is nearly their equal in that regard. It gripped the 6" woofers of the Silverline and Audiovector monitors and coaxed low notes of remarkable clarity and power within their physical limits.

Nits & Comparisons

Okay, so what doesn't the Bryston do right? Mostly little flaws of omission - subtle things that seem like fluff to non-audiophiles, but that the fanatics among us go through inordinate lengths and expense to obtain in the name of musical nirvana. While it's very detailed, it does gloss over some fine instrumental texture and spatial cues. While it's plenty dynamic, there are more organic sounding amps that convey more emotional swing and nuance - the electrifying climaxes of Maria Callas in a Puccini aria, the ebb and flow of the Vienna Phil in a Strauss waltz, the emotional surge of cellist Alisa Weilerstein in the Elgar concerto. While its midrange is very smooth, it doesn't have the liquidity of a fine tube or Class A solid state amp that makes instruments flow from the recording to your room. And its soundstage is a tick or two less deep and open, its images less dimensional and tactile than what those amps can convey.

Things got a little out of hand with the comparison testing...

For the most part, these are things you need to pay a lot more money to obtain, but some aspects can be had in this price range. E.g. the $4k (before it was discontinued) Ayre integrated gets more of the presence and immediacy of a voice, the sense that there's less between you and the performer - little nuances like clarity of diction, articulation of a bow stroke, pauses between phrases are a hair more convincing. Some people call this "inner detail" - not the obvious stuff, but the little things. The Bryston was a little laid back by comparison - not veiled, just less forthcoming - which will likely come as a relief to those with an aversion to harsh, forward solid state sound, but it's an omission nonetheless. The flip side is the Ayre pushes a bit too much in the other direction, sounding a little on edge and over-articulate compared to the unflappable Bryston, particularly with hyper-articulate speakers like the Audiovector. The 4B3 also has a more solid "core" to its sound - a sense of solidity and anchoring in the midrange. This is most apparent with notes around middle C (262Hz), where the Ayre lacks the natural weight that the Bryston captures nicely without sounding heavy or slow... again, a very endearing quality to those traditionally allergic to solid state.

An amp that made for a fascinating comparison was the Valvet A4 Mk. II ($8k) - a handmade, Class A solid state monoblock from Germany with minimalist circuitry and real soul. Despite being rated at just 55W/8Ω, with a reasonable load and volume level the Valvet sounds just as capable of macro dynamics as the Bryston while being noticeably more expressive within the melodies and more holographic with its soundstage. Tonally they were surprisingly close, both sounding full bodied in the midrange and extended in the treble. But the Valvet really has a way of projecting a compelling image and conveying a natural, singing quality that showcases the beauty of a tune and really pulls at your heartstrings. The resonance and ring of a soprano or flute, the halo around solo instruments, the height of the stage, the harmonics of an oboe - the Valvet captued these nuances with an uncanny ease and conviction that made the Bryston sound a little restrained and disconnected by comparison. However the Valvet doesn't have the same slam in the bass, won't drive as wide a range of speakers, and will run out of steam well before the Bryston even comes close to breaking a sweat.

I'll have more to say about the Valvet in its forthcoming review, but this isn't meant to be an indictment of the Bryston in any way - on the contrary, it proved itself a very fine sounding and satisfying amp, and I was impressed with how well it held up musically to a very special, highly tweaked-out audiophile amp costing over $1k more.

Verdict

Maybe I'm not talking to the right people, but the Bryston 4B Cubed seems to be flying under the audiophile radar. It's a very, very good sounding amp - great, even. Once properly run in, it possesses a subtly smooth and warm sound with none of the coldness or harshness one might be prejudiced to expect from such a powerful and practical solid state amp. And while not cheap, it's downright affordable compared to the astronomical price points in today's high-end market. It would be my absolute first choice for a combined music/home theater system, where it would have all the power and reliability to handle the needs of TV/movie watching while having plenty of refinement for music.

So it doesn't resolve the last few degrees of detail or stir the musical soul quite like the better high-end amps - the fuzz of the peach, the inner glow, the transcendent insight, whatever you want to call it. But those amps generally cost much more and/or have other limitations and compromises. For under $7k, the Bryston gives you musically satisfying reproduction that's easy to live with, and it will probably outlast every other piece of gear in your system. It's also a sound investment, maintaining resale value far better than average thanks to its durability, exceptional factor service and support, and of course that 20 year warranty.

Overall, I'd give the Bryston 4B Cubed 4 stars purely on sound quality, 5 for value, netting out to 4.5 stars overall. It's an amp you can set up and forget in most any system and just enjoy for years, and I came very, very close to purchasing the review unit. Ultimately my quest to get every last bit of that fuzz on the peach led me to continue my search for a reference amp, but there are times I wonder if I should have hung onto it... particularly now that I've moved to a larger space that could really benefit from the power, I have some pangs of regret sending it back. I enjoyed my time with the Bryston 4B Cubed and highly recommend giving it a listen - it might just be all the amp you need.

Many thanks to James Tanner @ Bryston and Micah Sheveloff @ WIRC Media for their generous loan.

[eremiss]

16. Jitter

8/10/20 -- I’m no longer satisfied with this piece, or how I wrote it. Gwen and Thancred do have an argument, but I’m not happy with how it all played out here. I plan to rewrite it at some point. I’ll post a link to it whenever that happens.   

Tl;Dr - Gwen and Thancred have an argument about his behavior and emotional distance towards Mini-Filia, and his refusal to reassure her, as well as how he’s being so closed to Gwen and keeping her at arm’s-length too. Once they’ve calmed down she tries to reassure him that she just wants to help and be there for both him and Mini-filia, he half-heartedly says he’ll keep that in mind and work on it, and the whole thing ends with a tentative, awkward truce.

CW: contains an intense argument (arguing/yelling/small outburst) that could possibly be triggering. Sorry I didn’t mark it before!

Gwen paced her room a few times, intermittently scribbling in her journal and haphazardly stuffing things in her pack while she tried to think. The sandwiches from the Exarch were half-eaten and the conversation she had with Ardbert was already half-forgotten, the spirit (wisely) choosing to give her space and privacy to sort herself out.

A letter from Cerigg, now pinned under one side of her journal, calling her back to Mord Souq ‘by fourth bell, if possible’ was what had spurred her into sudden action. 

She needed to talk to Thancred. Specifically, she needed to talk about Minfilia.

Gwen had known that since she first heard the way he scolded little Minfilia when they entered Il Mheg, and the notion had been reaffirmed after what she witnessed in his Echo.

They needed to talk, and the sooner the better. A time of relative calm and lifted spirits while they were all still bolstered by the success of returning night to Il Mheg was probably the ideal situation she could hope for. No one could be sure how long they’d have to rest while they figured out where to go next, though the Exarch would no doubt have a suggestion, and her idle time had already been cut short.

Despite her conviction, Gwen couldn’t help becoming a little bit jittery every time she thought about it. Knowing him, or what she knew of him five years ago --that stung and she almost winced-- the conversation was almost guaranteed to wind up...passionate.

Gwen had meant to speak with Thancred after they’d successfully retrieved the crown from Dohn Mheg, when they’d taken the night to recover at Uriangier’s and the two of them finally had the chance for a bit of privacy. But when she’d gone to his room she’d been distracted by a dozen different things, one of them being his genuine relief that she was alive and well, which he’d mostly kept to himself until that point, and another being… well, him. 

Up until that point she’d thought herself recovered from those long moons of worry and loneliness, as seeing those she’d so dearly missed and the man she loved alive and well and running around on inane errands for pixies did wonders to ease the ache and fill in the void that had been hanging in her chest. 

But then they’d had their first moment alone together since he’d fallen unconscious in Ala Mhigo, and the point of her visit had started to fall apart. Thancred’s firm embrace and relieved little mumble had completely derailed her train of thought, completely at odds with the gruffness and scowls he’d been wearing all day. The soft, longing press of his mouth and grasp of his hands had made sure she never got it back again. 

She hadn’t forgotten, no, but a burst of selfishness and yearning of her own had pushed it all aside for a night. The thought still made her stomach twinge with guilt.

But then Gwen and Minfilia had gone out together on an errand for the Nu Mou and gotten their own chance to speak in private…

Well, after that unfortunate bit of insight, it was probably good Gwen hadn’t already talked with him. This wasn’t going to be the sort of conversation Thancred would want to have at all, let alone twice.

It wasn't a conversation she was eager to have either -heavy and delicate and prickly as it was like to be- but she was generally better about that kind of thing. Being pushed and pulled into one task or another was part of being the Warrior of Light (and Darkness now, too, though she thought that title was a mouthful) and she’d learned to endure and move forward despite a few misgivings or a bit of irritation.

And, in a way, wasn’t the fact that neither of them wanted to have the conversation almost a sign that it needed to happen? 

Her pen, almost on its own, scribbled out the idea to perhaps talk with the twins or Uriangier, to ask about how Thancred and Minfilia had been before her arrival, or learn if they’d already attempted to broach the awkward subject and how far they’d gotten with it.

Gwen crossed it out. A bit of insight could be helpful, but it could also serve to cloud her head and make everything more tangled and thorny than it already was. No need to add ‘I’ve been talking to the others about you’ on top of everything.

Bells later, and nearing the time Cerigg had requested she meet him and the boy-- Taynor, the letter said, in Mord Souq, Gwen had only managed to pick out the finer points of what she wanted to say to Thancred, though the exact phrasing was still eluding her. She hadn’t eaten another bite, she’d packed and unpacked her bag twice, and she’d nearly trod a ring into the floor. Her journal still lay open on her desk, packed twice and wrestled free both times so she could keep scribbling in it. She hadn’t seen Ardbert again, and she was both grateful to be able to think in peace and a little disappointed. Perhaps she could have talked it over with him first.

A knock at the door stopped her from mulling it all over any further, and she frowned at it for the interruption. She tipped her journal shut before answering the summons.

Thancred waited on the other side, leaning against the doorjamb. He looked tired in a way that wasn’t entirely related to travel on the road, and his expression lifted when he saw her.

Her heart’s instinctive happy skip was cut short by an anxious twist, the resulting spasm uncomfortable and almost painful. 

Well, so much for preparing any more.

She could put it off again. Just a little longer, just until she got back, and maybe she would have her thoughts more in order then…

Gwen thought about Thancred’s harsh tone at the border of Lydha Lran and the look of sad resignation that had accompanied Minfilia’s aching words when looked out at Lyhe Ghiah.

She pushed that jittery little thought away. No waiting.

Whatever expression Gwen was wearing, probably a mix of the myriad things buzzing around in her head, made one of Thancred’s brows lift and his smile dim slightly. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No,” Gwen moved aside and waved him in, “not really.”

“Which is it?” he teased dryly, stepping inside.

Gwen took a slow breath as she pushed the door shut, “Not really, then,” willing her heart to slow and her thoughts to steady and straighten out.

“You’re leaving already?” She looked back to see Thancred regarding her bag with an incredulous stare. 

“I got a letter from a bounty hunter I met a few weeks ago,” Gwen explained. “He’s hunting a powerful sin eater and wants my help.”

“Right now?” He asked, a tinge of something disappointed in both his frown and his tone.

“As soon as possible, so before I go running off after another Lightwarden,” Gwen said apologetically, letting her shoulders slump with the confirmation. She wasn’t terribly eager to run off and leave him and the others behind, either. “Which means now.” She put on a rueful smile, “Busy as always, even here where no one knows me.” 

Thancred made a sound under his breath that might’ve been a sardonic chuckle, understanding but not pleased about it. He looked over her face, his own starting to grow pensive, “I take it that’s not all that’s on your mind.”

Gwen sighed, burying her fingers in her scarf to give them something to do. “No.”

She hesitated to speak again, not entirely sure where to start or how to phrase it. Her thoughts were puzzle pieces scattered all around, and she still hadn’t found the best way to put them all together.

As the silence stretched Thancred’s mouth turned down at one corner and his brows knit together, expression shifting to one that toed the line of suspicion. A look that came with wariness and walls.

Gwen’s mouth pulled slightly to one side and she fixed her weight on her feet.

Thancred’s expression shifted again, this time to something firmer and more stubborn that said he had a pretty good idea that she meant to scold or lecture him, and he was in no mood for either.

As if that was anything new.

Gwen took another slow breath, trying to push away that annoyed little snap and the other unpleasant things prickling around in her head. Wait. You should wait. You’re already getting annoyed, rolled around her thoughts, in and out of focus. She replied to his hardened expression with a patient tone, “I haven’t even said anything and you’re already scowling at me.”

A few moments passed and his expression softened somewhat, as who he was speaking to finally starting to weigh in on his instinctive defensiveness. He huffed and folded his arms, giving off a definite air of resignation despite his eased expression, “Fine. Go on, then.”

Gwen couldn’t help frowning. It had been a while since she was last confronted with his walls, at least so directly. This isn’t the right time. Shouldn’t do this now. I’m about to leave, I’m already all worked up and he’s already putting up walls--

“You know what I saw in the Echo,” she said anyway, only slightly carefully

Thancred shifted on his feet and set his shoulders, as though physically enduring the words. “I’ve got a good idea, based on the look you were wearing when you came out of it.”

Gwen twisted her scarf. “So you know I felt what you felt then, in that moment.”

Thancred’s mouth bent, “Don’t presume to know what I--”

“I’m not,” Gwen cut him off firmly. It stung for him to jump straight to that kind of assumption after how much they’d talked about what she’d experienced in past Echoes, including all the things it allowed --or forced, rather-- her to feel. “The only thing I’m presuming is that I’ve seen something you haven’t shared with anyone else. At least, not entirely.”

He shifted his jaw and glanced elsewhere, “You don’t know that.”

“I know you.” She reminded him. 

Thancred’s frown deepened, a hard edge creeping into his expression.

He would have explained that Minfilia had chosen not to come back, though Gwen wasn’t sure if he would have shared her reasoning. Only the bare minimum, if he was really pressed. And he definitely wouldn’t have admitted to his words, or his desperation, either.

“What about my wishes?!” Rang like a cracked bell and her heart twisted, both with the reverberation of his heartache and her own.

Gwen knew him well enough to know there was no point telling him she, at least partially, understood what he was feeling. Thancred didn’t want sympathy, especially when it was part of such an unruly tangle of emotions and questions as the one she’d been grappling with for days now.

She missed Minfilia, too. Everyone did. She’d thought herself at peace with the whole thing after all this time, for her own sake. But then, in the void between worlds, Gwen had seen her for just a moment, heard her voice, and that peace and acceptance had cracked like glass. And then she’d seen Thancred’s Echo…

It was all such a twelve-damned mess.

But for how twisted and knotted her head and heart might have been, Gwen had heard Minfilia’s decision that day in Nabaath Areng.

Much as it made old wounds ache, she agreed...mostly. At the very least, she understood. Understood that their Minfilia, of the Source, couldn’t bear to steal a life, especially a child’s, for her own sake.

The First’s Minfilia, the little girl who’d been born in the antecedent’s radiant shadow, deserved her own life. She deserved a chance. 

“And I know that day in Nabaath Areng, and everything after it, have been eating at you for years,” Gwen said heavily, voice calm even though her head was a knot of a million different thoughts and her heart was starting to skitter. 

Her chest ached, and she blamed the Echo.

“I’m fine.” Thancred’s voice was blunt and flat.

“I just want to talk,” Gwen insisted, doing her best to keep her tone even and calm despite the frustration creeping through her. He was never particularly open when it came to his emotions, beyond fondness, anyway, and he’d always been in the habit of literally and physically dodging topics he didn’t care to try and address, but he usually had a bit more patience, a bit more understanding, when she was the one to bring them up. He would always hear her out, at least, and not immediately shut her down. “To actually have a conversation, not stand here and talk at you while you scowl at me. Is that so much to ask?”

Thancred turned sharply, moving with heavy steps towards her desk as though he could just walk away from the conversation. She wondered if he would have gone for the door were she not standing in front of it. “My business is no concern of yours.” 

Gwen bristled, her patience and level-headedness both proving thinner and more feeble than she’d realized. His business? So Thancred can drag her into conversations, can discuss her flaws and take apart her issues even if she doesn’t want to, he can steal her journal and pry all he wants, but the moment she tries to do the same thing he gets surly and shuts down? He doesn’t have to talk when he doesn’t want to?

She tensed further, irritation hot and prickling in her head and on her skin. She blamed the Echo again, the emotions it pushed onto her always coming through far sharper and brighter than her own. She knew how to handle her own emotions well enough, but not someone else’s. It was so hard to keep a steady head when her own sadness or anger was suddenly amplified, doubled, reshaped with someone else's almost as if it were her own. She hadn’t thought to try and ready herself to deal with the Echo and his heartache she’d experienced on top of everything else.

She threw away more than a bell of fretting, of thoughts and consideration of careful phrasing, her voice sharp and plain as irritation started to strain in her throat, “You’re hiding your feelings and tearing yourself apart, and Minfilia thinks she’s no better than a spare weapon.”

Thancred clenched his teeth and his hands curled into fists. He sent a hard look over his shoulder, something brittle and angry washing across his eyes. “Stay out of it, Gwen. You don’t know anything about what’s going on--”

“I know what she told me, and I know what I saw.” Gwen’s voice wavered slightly under the sharp look before a surge of hot, staticy anger steadied it and sharpened each syllable, “She said you only kept her close as a contingency because you can’t stand to be around her.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Thancred grated out, struggling to keep his voice from rising. Normally he was the one to keep the calmer tone whenever they had a little spat, but not this time. “I don’t need--”

Gwen pointed vaguely behind her, in the direction of Thancred’s room. “She isn’t her.”

His glare was sharp and cold like a chip of ice, face dark like a thunderstorm.

She shifted her feet, set her weight and held her ground. She’d faced down Primals and worse, she would not be cowed by Thancred’s glare, even though, at that moment it was far more intimidating than any eikon had been.

“She’s her own person,” Gwen told him, words short and clipped. 

“Guinevere.” Her name was a growl, a warning.

She’d struck a chord. “She’s not some sort of--”

“Stop.” 

“--second chance!”

“I know that!” Thancred nearly yelled, whatever scraps of patience he’d been clinging to apparently spent. The sudden timbre of his voice nearly drove her back a step. 

The loss of his temper fueled roiling frustration in her chest, dredging up months of anguish from the Source --unrelated but potent and still haunting her even now-- to fan the flames. The words that landed on her tongue far too agitated to keep behind her teeth and too sharp to swallow,  “Knowing isn’t good enough!” Gwen snapped back, just short of shouting. “Act like it! Act like you give a damn about her and not just--”

“Of course I give a damn!” Thancred snarled. “Everything I’ve done on this damned world I’ve done for her! I taught her everything! She barely knew how to take care of herself when I saved her from that godsdamned cage!”

“For her sake, or yours?!” Gwen shouted at him, belatedly wondering if the people all the way down in the lobby could hear them.

That apparently hit a sore spot because Thancred stiffened like he’d been struck. A split second later he stood straighter, shoulders back and set, his arms tensing, looking every bit as though he wanted to scream or hit something or both. He was seething, lip curled and eyes dark with something glacial and jagged that looked a lot like fury.

 Gwen wasn’t sure when she squared her shoulders or clenched her fists, but she had. She knew it wouldn’t come to blows, it was Thancred, they wouldn’t actually fight. Yet the conviction behind those thoughts was weaker than she cared to admit. She’d just wanted to talk, for Twelve’s sake, how in the hell did they get here.

She managed not to shout, but just barely, “I’m not going to stand here and watch someone I care about suffer! I can’t just sit and watch you tear yourself apart and let a child go on thinking--!”

“Don’t you dare,” Thancred snapped, voice dangerous and low like thunder, something his expression cracking. “You finally deign to show up after all these years and you think you can waltz in here and--”

“Help!” Gwen yelled exasperatedly. She took a step forward, her posture making it a challenge, “I’m trying to help!”

“I don’t want your help!” Thancred roared, “I don’t need--!” He slammed his fist down onto her desk, the impact echoing around her room. The wood groaned and shuddered, dust falling free and the lamp and her journal trembling.

Gwen’s breath caught and she twitched with a barely suppressed reaction to jerk back.

The reverberating ‘thud’ dwindled to nothing and vanished, and the silence it left was behind utterly stifling.

Thancred was frozen, chest heaving. Something like shock pulled at his expression as he stared at her face, eyes wide while he processed the sudden quiet.

Gwen wasn’t sure what sort of expression she was making beyond the fact her eyes were wide and her whole body was tense, stopped just short of recoiling. Adrenaline surged through her veins and her heart was hammering against her ribs, skin and muscles prickling with nervous energy and desperation to move or fidget. 

It was a massive effort, but she kept still.

She’d expected him to get angry, though, admittedly, not so angry, especially not so quickly. It was a wound he’d been nursing since before he even came to the First, of course he’d get snappy when she poked it. She’d known that any attempt at discussing something so tender and guarded ran the risk of turning into an argument, but she hadn’t expected… 

Thancred shifted his gaze to his hand, studying the rigidity of his arm and the place where his knuckles were still pressed to the table.

His expression sobered in an instant.

Thancred’s arm relaxed and his fingers unclenched slowly, almost dazedly, as though he was struggling to believe he’d lost control of himself. He kept his eyes glued to the desk as he eased back a step, furtive and stiff like he was standing on ice that had just cracked under his feet. 

He hadn’t moved away from the desk, hand unfolding slowly as it dragged across the wood. He’d moved away --even further away, there was more than two yalms between them-- from her.

It felt as though the air had been sucked out of the room, the world falling still and silent again.

Thancred almost looked up, hesitant, nervous, but stopped. Instead he turned his back to her, almost seeming to shrink as he leaned against the desk and pulled his injured hand out of sight. He muttered something she didn’t catch despite the near-unnerving silence.

Probably broke his knuckles… The thought nudged the back of Gwen’s mind, and a little thread of sympathy pierced through the jittery, thorny haze of their argument.

Guilt crept up her throat. All of it needed to be said, she knew that, but not so harshly, and not thrown around like stones, either. They could have talked not shouted. Half of her anger had come from something older, lonelier, biggerness that had welled up and been pushed down while he and the others had slept and she’d been left alone. She didn’t even realize it still haunted her so strongly.

Gwen grappled with her thoughts, stifling nervous buzzing and knotting up frayed ends until her head had cleared a little. She lifted her hands to clutch at her scarf, a tinge of relief sliding down her arms and across her shoulders and easing the ramrod-straight set of her back. 

It was so quiet. Had it been this quiet before they’d started shouting at one another? Or was the outside world waiting with bated breath, unsure what to make of the sudden absence of raised voices?

Gwen looked at Thancred, trying not to let earlier sharp words and cold glares get in the way. There wasn’t any fight left in him, every last spark crushed under the weight of his outburst. Shame hung heavy on his bowed head and slumped shoulders, regret and weariness creeping along the slouch of his back.

He looked...defeated. 

Gwen approached carefully, almost like she was approaching a skittish animal. She wanted to think that sort of nervous caution was ridiculous, but the tension that filled every ilm of the room was thick as water, pushing back against her as she moved, so brittle that being too quick would cause something --she wasn’t sure what-- to break.

She was sure he heard her, her steps light but quite audible, but he didn’t react to them. She chose to take that as a good sign. 

Thancred held his injured hand carefully and stared solemnly down at it, damaged fingers trembling faintly against his cradling palm in small, painful spasms. He shied away from her as she drew closer, though the desk stopped him from getting far. He tilted his head away to avoid her gaze, a fall of pale hair shielding his eyes and hiding his face, though in doing so missed her hands reaching for him.

She delicately rested her hands around his, feeling him tense and twitch at the touch. His gloves obscured most of his hands, but she could see his knuckles were slightly misshapen and his third finger was trembling. That was enough to confirm her suspicions, a slight wince tightening her features,

Gwen whispered an incantation and drew on the air around them, readying to mend the damage the table had (rightly) inflicted.

She took a slow breath, addressing his hands when she murmured, “All that is to say.”

Thancred’s breath hitched, hands tensing beneath hers.

“That I’m... worried about you,” the magic started to take effect and his fingers stopped trembling, “and the toll this is taking. On both of you. You’re both hurting, that’s plain enough, and… I admit I hardly know Minfilia, but even so she’s still willing to be open with me.”

Fabric rustled, giving away when Thancred shifted his weight. Whether he’d done it out of nervousness, discomfort or something else, she wasn’t sure.

“But I do know you. And I know you’re struggling to deal with,” she lifted one shoulder in a small shrug, “a lot, and I think you’re not handling it very well. You don’t know what the future holds, no one does, so you don’t know if you’re prepared for whatever could happen. I think you’re trying to prepare for the worst, like always, even though it means...walls. I can’t say I blame you, but I don’t think that’s the right way to go about it, either.” Gwen paused, re-gathering her focus when it started to fade, “But you already know that.”

Thancred made a quiet sound that wasn’t disagreement.

“I know it’s been a while, but,” she sagged a little, the gulf five years between them and a few certain comments still stinging, “just know that I’m here. For everyone, and for Minfilia, but for you, too. Always. Time and harsh words doesn’t change that. Never has, never will.” The light winked out, cracked bones and abrasions mended and bruised muscles soothed. She leaned against him so lightly her side barely pressed to his, her voice gentle and thick with emotion, “I’m not saying you have to tell me everything, neither of us were ever completely transparent, I’m just asking you to... Let me help. When I can.”

Gwen lifted her hands off of his but didn’t pull them away entirely, not wanting to withdraw, to retreat, while they were still in such a precarious place. 

She felt tired suddenly, like a cup that had been poured out. Getting angry, especially yelling, always drained her, proving almost more exhausting than all the fighting she has to do day in and day out. There, in that moment, it left her extremely sapped and tired. She very nearly wanted to nap.

She didn’t feel better by any means, in fact she almost felt worse. She felt spent, and a bit hollow besides. She felt like a cup that had been dumped out.

Thancred’s mended fingers twitched, purposefully this time, and slowly flexed. He turned his hand to loosely, almost tentatively, curl his fingers around hers. Weight settled lightly on her head, his side pressing back against hers.

His whole demeanor was quiet now, withdrawn and subdued as though he both mistrusted himself and his emotions and was nervous about moving or being more vocal lest he lose control again, even briefly. He seemed like he was waiting for some sort of repercussion for lashing out like he had.

“...I’ll consider it,” he mumbled against her hair, quiet and withdrawn like a secret, “and everything you’ve said.” 

Of course he didn’t agree, or give even a mildly-definite answer. It was so unsurprising, so perfectly like him, that it almost made her feel better.

A bell chimed somewhere outside. Responsibility and duty cracked through her thoughts like the blare of an alarm tore through a dream.

Gwen sighed.

Thancred translated dully, “You have to go.”

“Yes,” she muttered, making no attempt to move away.

“...Do you have to?” he asked quietly, with a tone that said he already knew the answer but hoped he was wrong. 

Gwen hesitated, trying to gauge the tone of his voice. “I…” She considered, debated, and sighed again. They needed time, anyway. “Yes.”

He deflated slightly, humming a sound of understanding under his breath. He gently squeezed her hand and shifted his weight, pulling his hands away without further protest.

Gwen leaned into him for another long moment, counting seconds, and then pulled away and trudged over to her bag. She hefted it, fiddling with the closures and absently wondering if she had everything.

Thancred moved away from her desk, considering the door with a certain amount of disfavor. “When will you be back?” 

“I’m not sure.” The attempt at regular conversation didn’t quite feel awkward. “I shouldn’t be more than a day or two.”

He hummed vaguely as she pulled the straps over her shoulders and settled the weight on her back. 

Oh, she still needed--

Gwen looked back at her desk. She saw only her lamp and a few books she’d borrowed from the Cabinet of Curiosity about Norvandt’s plants.

Oh, she’d already packed her journal. She wasn’t surprised it had slipped her notice, given how frazzled and anxious she’d been and how many times she’d repacked her bag.

Gwen turned for the door and glanced at Thancred, who was standing quietly by them like he was waiting.

She moved over to him, still more carefully than strictly necessary. He stood a little straighter, waiting until she was well within arm’s reach before letting his arms drop to his sides. 

Gwen reached up, brushing the backs of his fingers against his cheek. “You’ll still be here?”

Thancred turned his head slightly, grazing his lips against one finger, “I will.”

The sweet little gesture didn’t inspire the happy, light feeling she’d hoped for, but it did lift her spirit a little. That was something, at least.

They stepped out together, Thancred ducking his chin and bidding, “Be safe, dove,” before turning for his room.

Gwen sighed, combing her fingers through her bangs.

Well, hopefully it would all be settled, and maybe a little better, in a few days. Time and space would give them room to think. And clearly they both needed it. She started towards the stairs, ready to dodge any glances sent her way.

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

Thanks @rhymingteelookatme for the suggestions and reading it over for me :D :D :D I DON’T LIKE WRITING FIGHTS. IT’S HARD. UGH

Oh hey where’d her journal go I wonder if someone fucking pocketed it REALLY DUDE?

SUBMITTING AT THE LAST MOMENT FUUUUUUU----

[deniscollins]

Boeing C.E.O. Knew About Pilot’s Warnings Before Second Crash

If you were CEO of Boeing, and after the Boeing 737 Max plane crashed killing 189 people in Indonesia you remembered that a top pilot had voiced concerns about the plane while it was in development, what would you do: (1) refuse to allow the plane to fly, (2) allow the plane to continue flying but initiate an investigation in the top pilot’s concern, or (3) something else? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

Boeing’s chief executive faced the grieving relatives of two deadly crashes of its 737 Max jet at an emotional congressional hearing on Tuesday, as senators pummeled him with questions about whether the company should have grounded the plane before the second accident. At times looking shaken, the executive, Dennis A. Muilenburg, said that if he could do it over again, he would have acted after the first crash, off the coast of Indonesia last October. “If we knew everything back then that we know now, we would have made a different decision,” he testified. He said Boeing officials had asked themselves “over and over” again why they didn’t ground the plane sooner.

“I think about you and your loved ones every day,” Mr. Muilenburg told the families, who at one point stood behind him holding up large photographs of the dead.

Still, Mr. Muilenburg acknowledged for the first time that he knew before the second crash that a top pilot had voiced concerns about the plane while it was in development.

The admission will most likely lead to more questions about why Boeing did not act more decisively before that crash, of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, on March 10.

Two days later, Mr. Muilenburg called President Trump to defend the safety of the Max. The plane was grounded, however, on March 13, although the United States waited longer than most countries to act.

The two accidents killed 346 people and have thrown the company into crisis and roiled the global aviation industry.

Mr. Muilenburg, who had spent weeks preparing for his appearance, was measured throughout more than two hours of testimony. He mostly avoided being cornered by senators’ lines of questioning, and declined to agree to demands that he endorse proposals to reform aviation laws.

The hearing was held on the first anniversary of the crash of Lion Air Flight 610, in Indonesia. The mood in the hearing room was tense. Multiple senators asked Mr. Muilenburg to address families of crash victims seated behind him.

The chief executive, who has been criticized for failing to convey sympathy after the crashes, apologized to the families directly in his opening remarks.

“We are sorry,” he said. “Deeply and truly sorry.”

During several tense exchanges, senators on the commerce committee sharply criticized Boeing’s handling of the situation. Mr. Muilenburg said in opening remarks that the company had “made mistakes” and he vowed to redouble its focus on safety.

Boeing faces multiple federal investigations into the design of the plane, including a criminal inquiry led by the Justice Department.

Among the most intense rounds of questioning concerned messages that a pilot central to the development of the Max sent to a colleague in November 2016, months before the plane was certified by regulators. The pilot, Mark Forkner, said in the messages that he had “unknowingly” lied to the F.A.A. about a new automated system, which was “running rampant” in the flight simulator and causing him trouble.

The system, designed to help avoid stalls, ultimately contributed to both crashes. Known as MCAS, the software triggered erroneously on faulty data, sending the planes into irrecoverable nose-dives.

Boeing provided Mr. Forkner’s messages to the Justice Department in February, though it did not give them to lawmakers or the F.A.A. until this month.

Mr. Muilenburg said he became aware of the messages “prior to the second crash.”

In January 2017, two months after his exchange with a colleague, Mr. Forkner sent an email to the F.A.A. reiterating an earlier request that the regulator remove mention of MCAS from pilot training materials.

“Delete MCAS,” Mr. Forkner wrote in the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times. He described the system as “way outside the normal operating envelope,” meaning that it would activate only in rare situations that pilots would almost never encounter in normal passenger flights.

Mr. Muilenburg said he “didn’t see the details of this exchange until recently.” He added that the company was “not sure” what the pilot meant in the messages to his colleague, and noted that the company had not been able to speak to Mr. Forkner, who now works for Southwest Airlines.

“You’re the C.E.O., the buck stops with you,” said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, adding, “How did you not in February set out a nine-alarm fire to say ‘we need to figure out exactly what happened,’ not after all the hearings, not after the pressure but because 346 people have died and we don’t want another person to die?”

Mr. Muilenburg, who appeared alongside Boeing’s chief engineer, John Hamilton, remained stoic as lawmakers took turns jabbing at the company and its signature airplane. The senators pressed Mr. Muilenburg to account for seemingly lax oversight by the F.A.A., haranguing him about the close relationship between the aerospace giant and its regulator.

In a report released this month, Indonesian investigators said that errors by the flight and maintenance crew contributed to the crash. But they blamed Boeing for designing a system that triggered repeatedly based on a single sensor and failing to notify pilots that it existed. A task force of nine international regulators said in a separate report that Boeing never fully explained the system to regulators, who relied heavily on the company to help certify the plane and did not have the expertise in place to adequately assess the information it did receive.

An earlier investigation, by the National Transportation Safety Board, found that the company had underestimated the effect that a malfunction of MCAS would have on the cockpit, wrongly assuming that pilots would immediately counteract an erroneous firing.

As the 737 Max was developed, Boeing employees working on behalf of the F.A.A., not government inspectors, signed off on many aspects of the plane. This system of so-called delegation, which lets manufacturers approve their own work, is now under scrutiny.

Boeing employees in its Seattle-area and Charleston, S.C., plants have said they sometimes felt pressure to meet deadlines while conducting safety approvals. Investigations by The New York Times have revealed that key F.A.A. officials didn’t fully understand MCAS and that the regulator at times deferred to the company, making decisions based on how much they would cost Boeing and its production schedule.

“Boeing lobbied Congress for more delegation and now we have to reverse that delegation,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said, referring to the company’s push to pass legislation that undercuts the role of the F.A.A. in approving airplanes.

“I would walk before I was to get on a 737 Max,” said Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, adding, “You shouldn’t be cutting corners, and I see corners being cut.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Muilenburg will appear in front of the House transportation committee, which has been leading the congressional investigation into the Max and is expected to adopt an even more adversarial stance. His appearances mark the first time a Boeing executive has addressed Congress about the crashes.

Representative Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon and the chairman of the transportation committee, will add a new piece of information, saying that Boeing engineers at one point proposed placing an MCAS alert inside the cockpit, according to a copy of his opening statement. No such alert was ever installed, though, and Mr. DeFazio plans to press Mr. Muilenburg on why that decision was made.

Inside Boeing, Mr. Muilenburg’s performance in front of Congress is seen as a key test of whether he will remain in his post as chief executive, as the board weighs further management changes.

This month, Boeing dismissed the executive in charge of its commercial division, Kevin McAllister, and stripped Mr. Muilenburg of his title as chairman, in a sign that the board is moving more urgently toward holding senior leadership accountable for the crisis.

Nadia Milleron, whose daughter Samya Stumo died in the Ethiopia crash, sat three rows behind Mr. Muilenburg at the hearing and said she believed “he should resign" and “the whole board should resign.”

As Mr. Muilenburg left the room at the end of his testimony, Ms. Milleron asked him to “turn and look at people when you say you’re sorry.”

He turned around and looked her in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

[connywrites]

of flesh and blood 11

start - part [10]

Honey, I wanna break you, I wanna throw you to the hounds. Yeah, I gotta hurt you, I gotta hear it from your mouth. Boy, I wanna taste you; I wanna skin you with my tongue. I'm gonna kill you, I'm gonna lay you in the ground.

-

“Now. Care to explain the situation from earlier?”

Gavin’s eyebrows twitched as they furrowed into his usual scowl, a predictable response that the RK900 completely anticipated.

“Wh-“

“You know precisely what. Or rather, who. You were ready to swing at Lieutenant Anderson and we both know that.” Gavin narrowed his eyes and felt exactly as he did then; challenged, agitated, with a twitch in his lips as they curled back in a snarl.

“You heard him. The way he was talking about you, about me.” RK900 remained unmoving without so much as a flicker in its expression.

“Why do you think I would care what he was saying at all?” Gavin felt his body recline on itself as he realized that it wasn’t only the truth, but the fact he’d nearly started a fight over what the android would have seen as something miniscule and unimportant brought back the embarrassment he hadn’t felt for a couple of days now.

“No words of defense?” Gavin stared at it, and his aggression didn’t leave. The irritation had lingered within him, swirling with sparks in his mind ever since he stepped foot into the meeting room. A frustrating irony as it had gone better than any he’d attended previously, yet he wasn’t satisfied – he’d felt worse.

“Ah. Wait. It was not him you were angry at.” Gavin blinked, and in a moment of confusion, his offensive stance faltered.

“It was the fact he pointed out what I’m doing, and that it’s working. Yes? Or at least, combined with your oppositional nature with him. Chen mentioned similarly and it didn’t bother you at all…interesting, the differences in human relationships. So perhaps you were further triggered because you dislike him, but nonetheless, that behavior is inappropriate, and especially in that setting. How is anyone going to take you seriously if you--“

“Maybe I don’t want them to take me seriously!” His voice raised with a bark, wrinkles forming around his nose as it scrunched, the man baring his teeth not unlike a threatened dog.

“I didn’t ask for any of this. If I asked you to hurt me, whenever the fuck that was, haven’t you done it enough already?”

Reaching forward, RK900 gripped the simmering tie and pulled Gavin forth by it with a vigorous yank, though its eyes remained steady and its expression nonchalant.

“Some seem to believe I am helping you, and this is how you treat me?” Anxiety crawled down his back again as his muscles stiffened in the action of being afraid rather than provoked.

“Do you want to revisit the other night?” Gavin’s expression dropped almost immediately as he stared into cold, slate eyes with his own, not quite brave enough to say no.

“Your day was great. Your meeting went fantastic. You got the raise you wanted and you’ve contributed to the Department with advice that they took rather seriously, to everyone’s surprise, even your own. You want to go back on that because of a few words a man said to you?”

“Well, when you put it like that…” RK900 allowed itself to feel the emotion Gavin was currently under, calmly settling into the strange, foreign discomfort that made it feel something similar to what it imagined Gavin might have the night he killed its previous chassis. It presumed he still didn’t even remember the event, considering how far under the influence of the medication he had been.

“Indeed.” There was a bite to its tone as an idea bloomed in its mind, tilting its head with a glare that held more bite than Gavin had seen to date. Suddenly, he was trying to pull away, feeling his stomach knot as something like horror struck him, the innate urge to run making him panic and wrench in a way that encouraged the tie to constrict tighter around his neck, making him bring his hands up to claw at the 900’s hands the same way as he had when it was choking him before.

“Let—go—” In response to that demand, it pulled him closer, nearly bumping his nose to its own as it brought him near until there was half an inch between them. A different idea followed a different sensation, one that would seem rather random if it didn’t already have a secure database for human psychology, deciding to follow through for the pure sake of instigation.

In what was a pair of seconds for the android and a startling eternity for Gavin, their lips met, and there was the taste of coffee on its mouth in the moment that was shared. Letting go of the tie, it let its arms fall to its side, making no movement to pull away but letting Gavin regain full freedom as he stepped backward so fast he almost lost his balance, smacking a hand to cover his mouth in a moment of combined shock, embarrassment and lingering fright from the way the 900 spoke, looked at him, yanked at him, dragged him, threw him—an image of the android with eyeless sockets pouring shimmering blue blood flashed into his mind, and for a moment he thought he might retch. Why was he seeing things like that, and why at a time like this?

What the hell flared in his mind, a vibrant neon sign that flashed red flags, and suddenly he felt himself against the wall.

RK900 licked its lips like a hungry wolf, savoring the taste and storing the memory into its hard drives.

“W-wh—what was that about?!” Eyes dilated, his body vibrated with the shaky desire to flee, but all of his proper thinking was thrown out the window with the rush of alarm flashing through his mind. Walking closer, the entity settled its hands on his waist, glancing down at his midriff as its thumbs brushed under the fabric of his dress shirt, tucking it upward as it rubbed small circles along the inward curve of his hipbones.

“You didn’t like that?” Gavin felt his heartbeat race in his ears at what seemed to be quadruple the rate, feeling ultimately helpless as he stood in place with no idea what to do. Every instinct in his mind warned him to fight back and try to push the taller male away, but there was no use as he knew he would easily lose at best, and end up hurting himself again at worst.

“Hm. Interesting. Again, your response seems to depend entirely on who is touching you.” Tilting its head, its demeanor was suddenly soft, tender while its hand slid up under his shirt, running over the warm, clammy flesh of his muscular stomach, seamlessly sliding apart the buttons with dexterous movements while it traveled its touch up his chest. Once it was halfway and felt the hair of his chest, it curled its fingers, trailing synthetic nails along the flesh of his torso, soft at first, before digging harder until it left whitened streaks behind that quickly turned red in their wake.

Sighing, as if bored, it let its hands fall away again, feeling no desire to pursue its actions as it stared at Gavin and soaked in the frightened expression on his face, awakening something else in the darkness of its programming. With one hand dipping to the inside of its jacket, it pulled out something Gavin couldn’t see, even when his eyes followed its movements; he only felt the cold, sharp metal when it was pressed against his neck, and without a moment of thought, he yelped as soon as the keen blade nudged against his skin.

“I could cut you like tissue paper. Do you want that?” Perplexed and ultimately terrified, wide eyes glanced down towards his own neck, then back up at the 900 as he felt his entire body begin to shake against its own will. He didn’t want to speak, he didn’t want to move, lest he shift too rapidly and add another scar to the pile in favor of a healing wound; but there would be no subtlety in going to work with even a cat scratch streak on his neck.

“N…no.” The flow of its own thirium pump seemed to increase as another sensation steamed up from within; excitement.

“Beg.” Wincing, Gavin wasted no time in swiftly forming the words and exuding the emotion in his voice as he spoke.

“P-please. Dear god, please, d-don’t hurt me,” he murmured with frightened breaths, a flashback in his mind of the android in the interrogation room that had belonged to 28-stab-wound murder victim, Carlos Ortiz. The way it shook and stared with fear and couldn’t speak, so his suggestion was naturally to try and rough it up a bit.

Suddenly, he understood how it felt, and it wasn’t a comfortable sensation at all.

“W-we’re partners. Friends. Remember? Th—there’s no need for this,” he murmured, squinting one eye shut as half his mind tried to escape, the other still peeking at Nines in fear.

“Is that how you felt when you slew me in cold, blue blood?” Eyebrows twitching, they slowly knit together in confusion, but the acknowledgment was apparent as his eyes lit up with recognition.

“I—you—this is why…” A sly, predatory smile crossed the 900’s features as it let the realization sink in.

“Nines…” Unsure of what he was really going for, he felt the prick of the sharp blade press against the skin of his neck, nicking it open just enough to sting.

“You—” Catching himself in an accusatory statement, he paused, swallowing briskly as he swallowed it down.

“I didn’t mean for that,” he said in a whisper, all too aware of the blade against his neck.

“Oh, I doubt that,” it responded, and in the blink of an eye, the blade struck a diagonal line across his neck – nearly parallel to the indented scar on his nose – cutting deep enough to spill a pleasant stream of dripping blood. Tears stung his eyes, and Gavin was quick to find himself sniffling in an attempt not to fully cry.

“You’re a terrible liar, and pathetic at trying to cover your own hide. At this rate, I should fire you.” Surprised, then agitated, then returning to being afraid, Gavin’s face contorted with disbelief.

“You can’t—”

The large hand was tangled in his hair and his skull smacked against the wall, before his balance was thrown and he found himself tumbling to the ground, not unlike it had happened the nights before.

“We really need to work on your phrasing, hm?” Bringing a hand to his neck, Gavin tried to press it to the wound as his breathing quickened and he hyperventilated, trying to ignore the salt water trailing down his cheeks, first in a trickle, then in a flood as rather than trying to flee entirely, he scrambled for a place to hide, ducking down behind the arm of his couch to nestle into the space between the furniture and the wall, bumping the base of the tall floor lamp as he remembered being thrown into the end table mere days ago.

“Oh, how pathetic. Tsk, tsk. You think you can get away with being an aggressor, then cower away when the tide shifts against you?”

The next thing he felt was the now well-acquainted yank of his hair, but nothing else, scalp stinging as he was pulled by the fistful of strands alone and scurried to his feet so as not to be simply dragged by the 900 while following wherever it was leading him.

The next thing he saw was the bed as he was forced to face it, then shoved down into it. His arms were behind his back, his tie was pulled undone, and the nice, freshly ironed shirt was pried off his body as the buttons popped off with the motions.

Then, the pain, similar that of the shattered glass, but more intense as the cuts were much deeper. One, then another, then another, initiating pained screams in response, but it was muffled within seconds as his face was shoved down into the pillow. The weight of the body pressed against the small of his back as RK900 sat on him, keeping his head shoved down and holding his body still while the other continued to carve in fine, shallow, slow lines across his back.

“Don’t worry. I’ll bathe you and bandage you up.” It’s voice was unnervingly soft, as if it were speaking from the point of view of a tender lover, a stark contrast to the pain he now felt in the front of his neck and scattered across his back.

“Maybe this will be a consistent reminder not to talk back. To anyone.”

-

Once he was out of the bath, he was given a few moments of peace while the android went to make coffee, taking advantage as he shamefully wiped the tears from his face and glanced into the mirror, turning around and casting a glance over his shoulder while he tried to make out how bad the damage was. Another wave of shock that immediately sunk a weight of foreboding into his stomach struck him as he recognized a pattern in the bright red, swollen lines: RK900 could be made out in reverse from the mirror’s reflection, perfectly carved in the all-too-familiar Cyberlife sans. Guilt welled in him, sinking into fear, then depression and raw self-loathing as he stepped back from the mirror, placing a hand against the wall in attempt to stabilize himself as he sunk to his knees on the floor.

He sobbed. For how long, he couldn’t be sure, taking the freedom of isolation to let himself break down, body shaking while any and all coordination and motor function gradually left him, growing unsteady all over again the tremors revisited him, shaking his entire form in heavy waves of emotion.

-

“You don’t have to shower this morning since I cleaned you up last night. But I do request you give your hair a swift wash and rinse before you put in the product.”

Gavin’s eyes stared at the ground, chin dipped to press against the top of his chest as his head hung, shoulders squared with his hands behind him, fingers interwoven in a polite posture.

“Yes sir,” he whispered just barely loud enough for its microphones to pick up on. With a snap of its fingers, it pointed to the bathroom, glaring with its usual cold stare as it silently demanded him to get moving, and so he did. As if on cue, it continued to hover close behind while it followed him to revisit the bathroom.

“Do you know what day it is?”

“October 7th, 2039.”

“That’s right. Do you know what that means?”

“It’s my birthday.” It wore a sarcastic smile, pretending to be proud of him for grasping such a basic concept.

“Thirty-seven years old. How do you feel?”

Once he was done making swift work of his hair, a quick and easy routine by now, he turned to face 900 with his arms stiffly returned to his sides. If he told the truth, the response wouldn’t be good, so he made a point to lie through his teeth.

“Fine.”

“It’s Saturday. You have the whole day to celebrate.” Reaching forth, it placed a hand to his cheek – he barely winced, now able to predict and somewhat expect when it was going to lay hands on him, and the times the touches would be gentle rather than abrasive.

“What would you like to do?” Sleep.

“I don’t know. I don’t usually celebrate.” Tilting its head back, it cast him a downward gaze before pulling its hand free again.

“That’s a shame. You have so much freedom now,” it cooed with a generous amount of irony in its tone.

“You have no idea what you’d like to do?” I haven’t seen my favorite TV show in a week.

“I’d like to stay home for today, if you don’t mind.”

Perfect.

“Alright, then. You can change into your more comfortable clothing and spend the day in bed.” The undignified feeling of foolishness rose up within him again as he was treated like a child, but his responses were all but naught.

“Thank you, sir.”

[amber-gimlet]

If you still need someone to talk shop about Living Legends with, I volunteer as tribute, assuming you'd be fine a rando you've never talked to (who's only knowledge of the game comes from the posts you tagged for it)? I'd have left well alone, but then I remembered the Digimon/Symphogear crossover I've been aching to talk about for a quarter of my life now, and well, Empathy Spike. So yeah, if you don't mind talking with someone who isn't well informed at the moment, I'd be happy to listen.

You are a kind soul, and I will take you up on that offer. A long game design ramble under the cut.

In order to make boss fights both unique and capable of taking on a group of players, I had to design my own mechanics. I’ve tried a couple different things, but the one I’ve settled for using across multiple bosses has been the Engine or ‘Meter’ mechanic.

Anytime the boss completes a certain condition tied to the use of its kit (some different conditions I’ve used for different bosses include stealing energy with Dishearten, blinding more than one enemy with a single use of Sunlance, activating one of its special moves, etc.) it adds a Counter to its Meter. The meter will usually have some sort of fancy thematic name based on the boss’s themes, but most of them work the same.

Each meter is tied to a specific high-cost move the boss ordinarily wouldn’t be able to build up enough energy to cast in the normal flow of combat. Once they have enough counters, they can be spent instead of energy to use these talents, many of which are powerful enough to turn the course of a fight.

For example, the dragon boss fight (wip) is actually five different ‘enemies’ tied to the same location because I wanted to try making a boss fight where you could destroy limbs. The Head alternates between casting Furious Rage (a high damage single target melee) and Sunlance (a single target low damage ranged attack that blinds an enemy and all adjacent enemies). For every additional enemy besides the target it blinds with an activation of Sunlance, it gains 2 Dragon Counters per additional Blind.

Once it has 8 such counters, it can use them to cast Inferno, an extremely high damage attack with a large radius that could potentially wipe a grouped up party. However, it still has to cast Inferno normally, it just doesn’t pay energy.

Another boss fight, Caterine, Fallen Knight of Chaos, works a bit differently. Her Meter gains counters when she activates her one of her special moves (talking about those is its own post), and once she has 10 counters…

….nothing happens. Yet. Caterine’s meter ability is Form of the Reaper, a Reaction talent. Reactions occur, as the name suggests, in response to a specific trigger. For, of the Reaper triggers when you would drop to 0 hp. Your hp instead becomes 13 hp, and you automatically summon a conjured weapon (more of them later), specifically the Death Scythe. I’m still considering modifying the talent to be a different conjured weapon, because I’m not sure that weapon works with her kit. I also set it specifically so that this meter casting of Form of the Reaper can be used even if Caterine has already used her reaction, since part of her normal build is built around using a different reaction attack*.

*Technically the only restrictions on Reactions and Interrupts is that you can’t use multiple reactions for a single trigger in a turn, and taking damage from an attack and specifically going to 0 hp are arguably different. But it’s still very much a grey area, so I decided to just go ahead and put in that she could use it even if she had already responded to that trigger just to save myself some headache later down the line.

[paleorecipecookbook]

Are You Undereating? Here Are 6 Common Signs and Symptoms

If this frustrating scenario sounds familiar, you’re not alone. I regularly see these symptoms in my patients—ironically, among those who are most committed to living a healthy lifestyle. The likely culprit surprises them, and it may surprise you too: undereating.

We all know the hazards of overeating. But eating too little on a daily basis has dangers of its own. Studies show it can actually slow your metabolism, put you at risk of muscle loss, and cause a host of other symptoms that make you feel unwell. Fortunately, once you understand the biology of undereating—and recognize the warning signs—it’s fairly simple to find your personal calorie zone so you can lose (or maintain) your weight and feel great too.

You follow your exercise regimen religiously, you focus on healthy foods, and yet you stopped losing weight. What’s the problem? You may be undereating. Here are six signs that you’re not eating enough. #paleo #nutrition #chriskresser

What Happens When You Don’t Eat Enough

Our bodies evolved during an era when food was scarce. As a result, we’re programmed to keep weight on. The brain can’t distinguish the difference between healthy weight loss and starvation, so when we start losing body fat, it senses trouble and triggers a variety of complex hormonal mechanisms designed to prevent us from losing too much.

In other words, most weight loss efforts ultimately fail not because people lack willpower, but because we’re literally battling the primitive, hardwired biology that’s meant to keep us alive.

Eating too little activates this powerful anti-starvation system—and can sabotage your efforts to lose weight or even maintain a healthy weight in a number of ways. For instance, when you start shedding pounds with most traditional diets, your metabolism slows. That’s partly because your body becomes smaller, and smaller bodies burn fewer calories. But it turns out that many people experience an additional metabolic hit that can’t be chalked up to reduced body size. (1) In fact, the number of calories you burn during the day can drop by as much as 40 percent—so even though you’re eating less, you might hit a weight-loss plateau or start gaining. (2)

Eating too little can also lead to muscle loss, which not only decreases your strength and fitness but also contributes to the decline in metabolism because muscle is the tissue that utilizes the most calories. (3) As soon as the quantity and quality of that vibrant sinew drops, your ability to burn off the food you consume declines—and you store the excess calories as fat. Meanwhile, undereating also causes your body to start churning out more of the hormones that drive hunger and diminishes those involved in satiety. (4)

The result: you not only feel hungrier, but also crave high-calorie foods—and when you’re eating, it takes longer for the sensation of fullness to set in, making it easier to unconsciously overeat.

Fortunately, this outcome isn’t inevitable. The Paleo diet, which has plenty of healthy protein, fat, and carbs, fills you up naturally, so you can feel satisfied with fewer calories—without crossing the line into undereating. Because the Paleo diet eliminates processed, refined carbs, most people end up eating fewer carbs overall, which can keep your insulin and blood sugar—and your hunger—in check.

Indeed, research shows that, calorie for calorie, the Paleo diet is more satisfying than either the Mediterranean diet or a low-fat diet. (5) And because it contains a healthy amount of nutritious protein, which has all the building blocks your body needs to maintain muscle tissue, it also helps you maintain muscle mass—along with a healthy metabolic rate—when you lose weight. (6)

The Six Key Signs of Undereating

When you’re trying to lose weight and eat healthfully, it can be easy to wind up restricting your food intake too much. Here are the most common red flags of undereating.

1. You Don’t Have Energy

Calories are fuel—the source of energy that keeps everything from your brain to your muscles functioning optimally. When you don’t eat enough, the level of glucose (the sugar your body uses for energy) in your blood plummets—and your energy takes a dive too.

2. You’re Experiencing Mood Swings

Eating too little can make you cranky—more likely to snap at your spouse or get infuriated at the slow driver in front of you. And there’s a good reason. Serotonin, the brain chemical linked to both mood and appetite, is affected by hunger and may play an important role in the sensation of being “hangry.” (7) When blood glucose drops, every organ in your body is starved for fuel, including your brain—and one of the first noticeable effects is a reduction in self-control.

3. You’re Not Sleeping Well

If you’ve ever gone to bed hungry, you know it can be tough to fall asleep. But eating too little can make it difficult to stay asleep, too. Studies have linked undereating with a reduction in deep sleep—the sleep during which your body is making critical repairs to muscle tissue and other organs—as well as poor sleep quality. (8) The good news: higher-protein diets, including the Paleo diet, may help.

In a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 44 overweight or obese people were put on one of two calorie-restricted diets: one featuring normal amounts of protein, the other high levels of protein. Every month for four months, participants completed a standard sleep-quality questionnaire. At the three- and four-month follow-up, the dieters who ate more protein (1.5 grams per kilogram of body weight) reported improved sleep compared to those in the lower-protein group, who consumed about half the amount of protein. (9)

4. You Feel Cold—All the Time

Calorie restriction decreases your core body temperature. Feeling cold 24/7 isn’t comfortable, and it might be a warning sign that your thyroid hormones have gone awry. Studies show that the drop in body temperature appears to come at least in part from a decrease in T3, a thyroid hormone that helps maintain healthy body temperature. (10) Since low thyroid is linked to low energy, low mood, and diminished health, the impact of feeling constantly cold is far reaching.

5. You’re Losing Your Hair

If you’re seeing more hair in your brush or comb, it could very well be due to inadequate calorie consumption. Hair loss is a sign of both eating too little overall and getting too little protein—so following a Paleo diet, which is chock full of nutritious protein, may help. (11)

6. You’re Daydreaming about Food

Studies show that weight loss triggers cravings for high-calorie foods—and even after 62 weeks, one study found, participants’ levels of hunger and their desire to eat were higher than before they lost weight. (12) Likewise, in one of the earliest, most well-known studies of starvation, conducted in the 1950s, researchers found that when your body is undernourished, it’s natural to become preoccupied with thoughts of food. (13)

The lesson: If you can’t stop thinking about your next meal, you probably need to eat more.

How Many Calories Do You Need?

Most estimates of caloric need are just that: estimates. But if you want to avoid both undereating and overeating, it can help to get a little more specific by taking your individual body type and lifestyle into account. Enter the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, a formula that has been shown to be the most accurate way of estimating your bottom-line caloric needs: the number of calories your body burns at rest.

Yes, you’ll need to do a little math, but we’ll keep it simple. Here’s the step-by-step approach to determining the bare minimum number of calories your body needs to function. (You’ll need your weight and height in metric units for this. Use this conversion calculator.)

For Men

Multiply your weight in kilograms by 10.

Multiply your height in centimeters by 6.25 and add that to the number above.

Multiply your age by 5 and add an additional 5. Subtract that number from the number above.

Here’s how it looks in an equation:

(10 x weight (kg)) + (6.25 x height (cm)) - (5 x age (years) + 5)

For Women

Multiply your weight in kilograms by 10.

Multiply your height in centimeters by 6.25 and add that to the number above.

Multiply your age by 5 and subtract 161. Then subtract that number from the number above.

Here’s how it looks in an equation:

(10 x weight (kg)) + (6.25 x height (cm)) - (5 x age (years) -161)

Once you’ve determined your baseline caloric needs, remember that number. That’s your bottom line. Your calorie consumption should not drop below it.

Now, to find your high number—the number of calories your body needs to maintain your current weight—use this calculator at from the United States Department of Agriculture, which takes into account your age, height, and activity level.

If you want to lose weight at a healthy rate—and feel well while you do it—your calorie consumption should be somewhere between the number of calories you burn at rest (your bare minimum number) and the number you require to maintain your current weight. That’s your ideal calorie range. If you’re having trouble finding a healthy balance that allows you to lose weight and avoid the common symptoms of undereating, reach out to a Functional Medicine practitioner or health coach for guidance. They can review your overall diet and help you identify trouble areas.

After working with hundreds of patients in my practice, the California Center for Functional Medicine, I’ve found that the Paleo diet is so satisfying that it makes it easier to stay in your safe calorie-consumption zone and still lose weight. It’s one of the few approaches I’ve found that allows you to eat less without really trying—and without suffering the consequences of eating too little.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Have you experienced symptoms when you’ve tried to lose weight? If so, what were they? What weight-loss strategies help you avoid the doldrums of undereating? Share your experiences in the comments section below so we can get a dialogue going about this all-too-common problem.

The post Are You Undereating? Here Are 6 Common Signs and Symptoms appeared first on Chris Kresser.

Source: http://chriskresser.com November 30, 2018 at 12:40AM

[npmjs]

The new npm CLI: a year in review; or, what you may have missed!

First published just under a year ago, npm@5 has probably seen the fastest rate in major changes of any prior npm version. Even if you’ve been following us closely, you probably still haven’t been able to keep up with everything that’s been going on with npm@5.

With npm@6.0.0 getting tagged as latest this week, we thought it would be a good idea to summarize all the changes that have happened since npm@5.0.0 was first tagged — and what you can expect to get in one upgrade when you first install npm@6.0.0!

Speeeeeeeed

This one’s first because it’s the most noticeable change for anyone doing the initial switch. npm is now between 4x and 17x faster than npm@4, especially in CI settings. This means developers can iterate on their changes faster, share their changes faster, and spend less time waiting between pushing a new build and continuing deployment. These sorts of speed differences are not just about making existing things fast, either—they’re about opening doors to entire new opportunities and allowing our users to scale projects beyond what they could do before.

We’ll continue to improve performance—both the CLI and registry teams are dedicated to getting you all that code as fast as your hardware allows it.

package-lock.json and automatic conflict resolution

Along with the speed change, you might have noticed a new file in your git repositories. package-lock.json is a so-called “lock file” that saves information about your node_modules/ tree since you last edited your dependencies. Even though it’s a generated file, it’s meant to be committed into git and has a number of benefits, including increased reproducibility across teams, reduced network overhead when installing, and making it easier to debug issues with dependencies.

Because this was such a significant change to the way npm works, initial iterations of package-lock.json were a bit of a bumpy ride, with unexpected changes and platform differences. As of npm@6, your lock file will be stable not just between you and your coworkers on similar platforms, but across operating systems! You can even use npm install --package-lock-only to generate one of these without installing into node_modules/.

Some folks faced issues when using package-lock.json that led to inscrutable git conflicts. As of npm@5.7 (and, by extension, npm@6), npm will now automatically resolve package-lock conflicts when you run npm install during a conflicted state. To make this experience even smoother, we’ve released npm-merge-driver, which lets you do all the rebasing and merging and other git backflips. You can get started with the merge driver by doing $ npx npm-merge-driver install -g one time. After that, all your future merge and rebase conflicts in any git repo will be resolved in the background.

Those of you who used package-lock.json throughout the npm@5 release line will see a big git diff next time you do an npm install with npm@6: the requires field is changing its format slightly, and we’re adding a new from field to locked git dependences (if you use those) but you should not see this happen again if you and your team are all on npm@6 or later.

npx

What’s that npx thing we mentioned? Why, it’s the npm package runner! npm@5.3 introduced a new workflow tool included with npm itself. npx solves a lot of specific problems, but its overall purpose is making the experience of working with npm-based CLI tools easy, smooth, and seamless!

npx can actually do a lot of different things, but the biggest benefits are:

You can run project-local binaries with it. That means you don’t need to install things like grunt-cli, gulp, bower, and tsc globally—you can install them as devDependencies and use npx to run the local versions without hassle (for example, $ npm i -D standard && npx standard).

You can do one-off, temporary installs of command line utilities that you run rarely, such as generators: $ npx create-react-app.

You can easily try different versions of these tools with a single install if you need to compare them: $ npx standard@8 && npx standard@10.

You can even install the shell auto-fallback to not even have to write $ npx ... in many cases.

npx has already made a huge difference in the daily workflow of many of our users. Have you tried it yet?

npm ci

Thanks to the new package-lock.json feature, we were able to add a cool new command in npm@5.7.0: npm ci! This added a second installer to the npm CLI that takes advantage of projects with package-lock.json files in order to rapidly extract to node_modules/. It skips a lot of the interactivity and human-oriented checks that npm install does, and even makes it so that any inconsistencies trigger errors, rather than having the npm install command fix them for you. npm ci, as the name implies, is meant primarily for use in Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment situations where you want fast installs that give you early warnings about potential errors. npm ci is about 2–3x faster than a regular npm install.

Finally, as with npm it, there’s now an npm cit for doing an npm ci install + npm test in a single command.

Two-factor authentication and token management

Last October, npm introduced two-factor authentication for a number of account-related actions, including publishing and dist-tag management. Roughly 9 billion weekly downloads—about 43% of downloads—now involve packages that were published by 2fa-protected accounts. That’s amazing news for the overall security of the ecosystem.

As part of that release, we also included the ability to create “read-only” tokens, filter tokens by CIDR, and manually manage your active tokens through the CLI and the website.

Brand new cache and offline installs

npm@5 introduced a completely new system cache for package downloads, replacing the older, buggier, and slower implementation. It was built on top of a standalone library, cacache, and was designed to work closely with the new package-lock.json format by enabling content-addressable storage of package data. This allows it to do much faster lookups of tarball data. It also allows npm to verify your package data on every single install, so you can always trust that what comes out of the registry or the cache is exactly the data you expect it to be.

This process also upgraded our shasum infrastructure to support Subresource Integrity, with new tarballs being published with sha512, instead of the now-insecure sha1 algorithm. This method also makes it much easier to upgrade our infrastructure once faster and better cryptographic hashing algorithms become available in Node.js.

Finally, the new cache architecture enabled a much-awaited npm feature: seamless offline installation! If you don’t have network access or can’t reach the registry for some reason, npm will automatically install from your cache without the need for any extra flags or preparation. Just keep a warm cache and go ahead and do your work on a plane or while you’re disconnected from the network to preserve bandwidth. If you’re on a functional but slow connection, you can even use the new --prefer-offline flag to opt into stale data in exchange for minimal network hits.

Reproducible builds

npm ci and lock files aren’t the only exciting feature for devops folks! As part of npm@5, Isaac completely rewrote node-tar, which is a huge part of the recent performance boost. It also gave us the ability to pack tarballs with pinned file timestamps.

npm can now generate and publish tarballs built at different times on different platforms with identical shasums, enabling reproducible builds!

Keep in mind that you still need to make sure your build run-scripts generate reproducible build artifacts for this to work!

npm publish and npm pack improvements

npm now prints a summary of tarball details whenever you package up an npm project. This summary includes information about the files that you’re including, along with their file sizes (which can help make sure you’re publishing only what you intend), the name and version of the package, and the shasum and integrity for the generated tarball.

In addition, both npm publish and npm pack now support --dry-run and --json flags. With these, you can test that you’re getting what you expect before you actually publish your project. If you’re trying to get reproducible builds working, you can use --dry-run to check that your scripts are generating your published files consistently.

Because npm publish and npm pack both accept any package specifier, you can even use them to test other people’s packages to make sure, for example, that the tarball published to npm actually matches the tagged git version: $ npm pack --dry-run github:zkat/figgy-pudding && npm pack --dry-run figgy-pudding.

You can even hook into the new prepack, pack, and postpack lifecycle scripts along with the new prepare lifecycle to automate this detection as desired.

Better git support

npm has also greatly improved its interaction with git dependencies, adding two major features to git deps:

First, git-based packages with prepare scripts defined will have their devDependencies installed and the prepare script executed before the package tarball for the dependency is packaged and installed. This means that if you want to work off a fork but you want a build step for your library, you can still have that build process! You don’t need to check in built/minified .js directly into git anymore—npm will generate them for you.

Second, npm added semver-range support for git dependencies. Just like you can do $ npm install pkg@^1.2, you can now do npm install github:usr/pkg#semver:^1.2. Semver support will work off branch and tag names, so as long as you keep those up, you’ll be able to use semver with them.

These features should help smooth out the experience for users that are heavily reliant on git dependencies.

npm hooks

npm hooks have been available for a couple of years, but the only way to manage them was through a separate CLI. As of npm@6, you can manage hooks directly with npm itself.

This feature allows you to add webhooks to npm packages, scopes, or users, and have the npm registry post to an external endpoint when related events happen. Hooks can be a great way to integrate npm into your release flow or to get better analytics. Check them out!

file: dependency symlinking

Previously, directory dependencies (that is, what would install if you did $ npm install ../some-pkg), would go through a two-step process: first, they would be packaged into a tarball, as if for publishing, and then that tarball would be installed as a dependency. However, updating that dependency’s code in the future required that you do a full install of it again. That caused some friction for users wanting to work based off local packages or who were working on monorepos.

Now, those dependencies are installed as symlinks, so any changes you make to them will be immediately visible to your package without needing to do a whole new install.

Improved output and usability improvements

npm@6 also includes a number of smaller aesthetic and usability improvements we’ve been incrementally landing in npm:

npm install saves by default

npm install now savess dependency changes by default. You no longer need to remember to add --save before your dependencies get written to package.json (and package-lock.json). This applies to other commands as well, like npm update and npm uninstall.

New npm view output format

Previously, you’d get several screenfuls of colorful JSON output any time you did $ npm view. Now you get this:

You can still access the JSON version by using --json or you can access specific packument fields with $ npm view [...], but the default view is now much easier to view and understand and it includes what we think is the most essential information about the package.

Short install summary

Running npm install in npm@4 would get you a massive amount of tree output. This output made sense when projects were smaller, but it eventually became unreadable for users and took a long time to calculate and print out.

Now, this is all you get when you run npm install on a big project:

We also added the by N contributors section to increase awareness of everyone putting effort into improving the npm ecosystem. You can find out how to give back by running $ npx thanks.

npm update respects latest

The npm update command was a weird creature before: unlike npm install, it would ignore the latest tag and instead install the highest semver-matching version available for that package. Sometimes, these higher versions were intended as prerelease versions and could cause unintentional installs of unstable software.

As of npm@6, $ npm update foo and $ npm install foo will have similar semantics on this front, with the exception that update will limit its install to a version matching the currently-saved semver range for that package.

install and update skip deprecated versions.

Along those lines, if you try and install a package and it has deprecated some of its versions, npm@6 will try to avoid installing the deprecated ones and find other matching versions if possible. Deprecated versions will only be installed if there’s no other way to fulfill the requested version.

Module: example Versions: 1.0.0 1.1.0 1.1.2 1.1.3 (deprecated)

So, given this example, npm install example@^1 will now install example@1.1.2, whereas before, it would have installed example@1.1.3.

…and more to come!

There’s a lot of very exciting changes coming in 2018! For more info about what we have planned, take a look at this post. 

 We’re working hard this year to continue minimizing friction for JavaScript developers and make the experience of using npm as smooth, seamless, and secure as we can. npm is the largest package ecosystem in the world and continues to grow at an incredible pace—we’re glad to have the opportunity to make that possible and bring JavaScript and web development into the future it deserves!

Watch this space: follow @npmjs on Twitter for release updates and subscribe to our newsletter!

[blogdial707]

C# For Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code C# Project

C In Visual Studio

C# For Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code For C# Development

C'est La Vie

How to Setup C# in Visual Studio Code Full SetupDownload the full source code of application here:https://codingshiksha.com/blogs/android/firebase-phone-auth. In this section, you use Visual Studio Code to create a local Azure Functions project in C#. Later in this article, you'll publish your function code to Azure. Choose the Azure icon in the Activity bar, then in the Azure: Functions area, select the Create new project.

C# for Visual Studio Code (powered by OmniSharp)

Welcome to the C# extension for Visual Studio Code! This extension provides the following features inside VS Code:

Lightweight development tools for .NET Core.

Great C# editing support, including Syntax Highlighting, IntelliSense, Go to Definition, Find All References, etc.

Debugging support for .NET Core (CoreCLR). NOTE: Mono debugging is not supported. Desktop CLR debugging has limited support.

Support for project.json and csproj projects on Windows, macOS and Linux.

The C# extension is powered by OmniSharp.

Get Started Writing C# in VS Code

Note about using .NET Core 3.1.40x SDKs

The .NET 3.1.40x SDKs require version 16.7 of MSBuild.

For MacOS and Linux users who have Mono installed, this means you will need to set omnisharp.useGlobalMono to never until a version of Mono ships with MSBuild 16.7.

Note about using .NET 5 SDKs

The .NET 5 SDK requires version 16.8 of MSBuild.

For Windows users who have Visual Studio installed, this means you will need to be on the latest Visual Studio 16.8 Preview.For MacOS and Linux users who have Mono installed, this means you will need to set omnisharp.useGlobalMono to never until a version of Mono ships with MSBuild 16.8.

What's new in 1.23.11

Move the global Mono check to the correct place (#4489, PR: #4492)

Visual Studio Code C# Project

What's new in 1.23.10

Support solution filters (*.slnf) (PR: #4481)

Prompt user to install Blazor WASM companion extension if needed (PR: #4392)

Add path to dotnet so child processes can use the CLI (PR: #4459)

Give more information when Mono is missing or invalid. (#4428, PR: #4431)

Revert incremental change forwarding (PR: #4477)

Fixes to asset generation (PR: #4402)

Add properties to blazorwasm debug configuration. (dotnet/aspnetcore#30977, PR: i#4445)

Avoid white status bar items to ensure contrast (#4384, PR: #4385)

Update OmniSharp to 1.37.8

Update Roslyn version to 3.10.0-1.21125.6 (PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2105)

Update included build tools to closely match NET 6 Preview 1 SDK (PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2103)

Improve custom error messages for MSB3644 (PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2097)

Do not call FindReferencesAsync for null symbol (omnisharp-roslyn#2054, PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2089)

use an OmniSharp specific message for MSB3644 (omnisharp-roslyn#2029, PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2069)

changed the default RunFixAllRequest timeout to 10 seconds (PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2066)

Support Solution filter (.slnf) (PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2121)

updated to IL Spy 7.0.0.6372 (PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2113)

Add sentinel file to MSBuild to enable workload resolver (#4417, PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2111)

fixed CS8605 'Unboxing possibly null value' (PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2108)

Updated Razor support (PR: #4470)

Bug fixes

What's new in 1.23.9

Add option to organize imports during document formatting. (PR: #4302)

Update to use zero based indexes (PR: #4300)

Improve request queues to improve code completion performance (PR: #4310)

Add setting to control whether to show the OmniSharp log on error (#4102, #4330, PR: #4333)

Support building launch assets for NET6-NET9 projects (#4346, PR: #4349)

Add debugger support for Concord extensions. See the ConcordExtensibilitySamples wiki for more information.

Update OmniSharp version to 1.37.6

Handle records in syntax highlighting (#2048, PR: #2049)

Remove formatting on new line (PR: #2053)

Validate highlighting ranges in semantic highlighting requests (PR: #2055)

Delay project system init to avoid solution update race (PR: #2057)

Use 'variable' kind for parameter completion (#2060, PR: #2061)

Log request when response fails (#2064)

What's new in 1.23.8

Updated Debugger support (PR: #4281)

Updated the version of .NET that the debugger uses for running its own C# code to .NET 5

Updated .NET debugging services loader to address problem with debugging after installing XCode12 (dotnet/runtime/#42311)

Fixed integrated terminal on non-Windows (#4203)

Updated Razor support (PR: #4278)

Bug fixes

Update OmniSharp version to 1.37.5 (PR: #4299)

Update Roslyn version to 3.9.0-2.20570.24 (PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2022)

Editorconfig improvements - do not lose state, trigger re-analysis on change (omnisharp-roslyn#1955, #4165, #4184, PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2028)

Add documentation comment creation to the FormatAfterKeystrokeService (PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2023)

Raise default GotoDefinitionRequest timeout from 2s to 10s (#4260, PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2032)

Workspace create file workaround (PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2019)

Added msbuild:UseBundledOnly option to force the usage of bundled MSBuild (PR: omnisharp-roslyn#2038)

Support auto doc comment generation (#8, PR: #4261)

Add schema support for appsettings.json (#4279, PR: #4280)

Add schema support for global.json (PR: #4290)

Update remoteProcessPickerScript windows ssh exit (#3482, PR: #4225)

Do not start OmniSharp server in Live Share scenarios (#3910, PR: #4038)

Suppress codelens for IEnumerable.GetEnumerator (#4245, PR: #4246)

Allow arm64 MacOS to debug dotnet projects (#4277, PR: #4288)

Emmet support in Razor files

To enable emmet support, add the following to your settings.json:

Semantic Highlighting

The C# semantic highlighting support is in preview. To enable, set editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled and csharp.semanticHighlighting.enabled to true in your settings. Semantic highlighting is only provided for code files that are part of the active project.

To really see the difference, try the new Visual Studio 2019 Light and Dark themes with semantic colors that closely match Visual Studio 2019.

Supported Operating Systems for Debugging

Currently, the C# debugger officially supports the following operating systems:

X64 operating systems:

Windows 7 SP1 and newer

macOS 10.12 (Sierra) and newer

Linux: see .NET Core documentation for the list of supported distributions. Note that other Linux distributions will likely work as well as long as they include glibc and OpenSSL.

ARM operating systems:

Linux is supported as a remote debugging target

Found a Bug?

To file a new issue to include all the related config information directly from vscode by entering the command pallette with Ctrl+Shift+P(Cmd+Shift+P on macOS) and running CSharp: Report an issue command. This will open a browser window with all the necessary information related to the installed extensions, dotnet version, mono version, etc. Enter all the remaining information and hit submit. More information can be found on the wiki.

Alternatively you could visit https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-vscode/issues and file a new one.

Development

First install:

Node.js (8.11.1 or later)

Npm (5.6.0 or later)

To run and develop do the following:

Run npm i

Run npm run compile

Open in Visual Studio Code (code .)

Optional: run npm run watch, make code changes

Press F5 to debug

C In Visual Studio

To test do the following: npm run test or F5 in VS Code with the 'Launch Tests' debug configuration.

License

Copyright © .NET Foundation, and contributors.

The Microsoft C# extension is subject to these license terms.The source code to this extension is available on https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-vscode and licensed under the MIT license.

Code of Conduct

This project has adopted the code of conduct defined by the Contributor Covenantto clarify expected behavior in our community.For more information see the .NET Foundation Code of Conduct.

Contribution License Agreement

C# For Visual Studio Code

By signing the CLA, the community is free to use your contribution to .NET Foundation projects.

Visual Studio Code For C# Development

.NET Foundation

C'est La Vie

This project is supported by the .NET Foundation.

[your-dietician]

The NBA Play-in: The moments the young Memphis Grizzlies grew up

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/nba/the-nba-play-in-the-moments-the-young-memphis-grizzlies-grew-up/

The NBA Play-in: The moments the young Memphis Grizzlies grew up

The play-in games were a resounding success for the National Basketball Association. Obviously, single elimination games have this fascinating mystique around them. With it added into the NBA, and with fans entering the arenas again, it made these situations that much sweeter.

The play-in games were a resounding success for the Memphis Grizzlies as well. They had great tests in both games against teams with riches of playoff experience compared to this young squad. San Antonio had Gregg Popovich — arguably the most successful NBA coach of the 21st century — and a good blend of battle-tested veterans (DeMar DeRozan, Rudy Gay, Patty Mills, to name a few). After a strong win there, they had to enter the Chase Center to battle Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and the rest of the Warriors on the road.

It was no small task ahead, but the Memphis Grizzlies prevailed and grew immensely from it.

Now after a month since the play-in tournament was played, let’s take a look at the different themes from these two games that illustrated growth for the Grizzlies.

In both play-in games, the Memphis Grizzlies got off to such strong starts. It wasn’t uncharacteristic for them to do so, as they were 11th in first-quarter net rating (+2.6) and 5th in first-period defensive rating (108). Granted, rating rankings have a slim separation statistically. Nonetheless though, it suggests they’re a pretty good first quarter team.

However, for most young teams those first 12 minutes of playoff-intensity games can be nerve racking and could start slow starts. The Grizzlies’ strong starts demonstrated great poise for a young team, as they outscored their two opponents 68-48 in those minutes. They also amassed incredible runs in those stretches as well — including a 19-2 run against the Spurs, and a 14-3 one against the Warriors.

Starting with the home game, the Grizzlies utilized the meaning of home-court advantage — a beauty that we actually got to experience in this COVID-ravaged season.

Ja Morant pulled the offense out of the 4-on-4 fast break. Jonas Valanciunas runs the floor since DeMar DeRozan oddly enough didn’t already beat him down the floor. Since Jakob Poetl — the primary rim protector — was playing the potential screen from Jaren Jackson Jr., there was an opening for Valanciunas to rumble down the lane for a thunderous jam. That’s always something that’ll get the crowd going.

Then, there was the resounding fast-break jam from Dillon Brooks that was probably the staple of the Grizzlies 1st-quarter run.

It was the classic “turning defense into offense” — a sweet way to get the momentum rolling on your end and away from the opposition. Brooks corrals the steal, audaciously looks off Morant, and throws down a vicious tomahawk slam right over Dejounte Murray.

In that same quarter, we saw the flashes from Jaren Jackson Jr. that make him such a tantalizing offensive prospect.

This sequence illustrates the duo potential of Morant and Jackson. Morant is going to garner attention off of the drive, like most good finishers. Poetl tags Morant, while Lonnie Walker — his original man — goes over to help. Since Keldon Johnson has to play help to prevent the Valanciunas bucket, Jackson relocates to a window Ja could whip a pass through for the in-rhythm 3.

This recognition from Jackson was ridiculous. He curls so far out that he’s not even in the frame here. It has to be 30 feet out! Johnson is caught ball-watching here, while probably waiting for Anderson to make the pass over to Valanciunas in order to make a deflection.

Though that 1st quarter lead vanished and didn’t seem as impactful in the process, it helped the Grizzlies establish a tone to energize the crowd, while also get its other franchise cornerstone going early.

The Grizzlies continued their excellent 1st quarter starts on the road against Golden State. That one was extremely imperative, as road games against the Warriors can still be dangerous for slumps. They possess the greatest scorer of all time in Steph Curry, and it seems like an avalanche whenever he’s humming.

However, the Grizzlies did an excellent job staying composed, setting the tone, and establishing an aggressive mindset. When it comes to those 3 things, this play pops to mind:

Dillon Brooks sent a message here that the Grizzlies were going to swarm defensively, and they were going to win every 50-50 ball. Again, turning defense into offense is a great way to find your footing early in high-stakes games.

With that in mind, this is probably the sequence most Grizzlies fans would appreciate the most:

Limited sample size, but Jaren Jackson Jr. nearly doubled his offensive rebound percentage from last season to this one (3.6 to 6.9). Though caught near the perimeter, Jackson chases the long rebound — probably gets away with a little bit of an “over the back” call — and gets reward with a trip to the line following an aggressive take to the basket.

Moving over to the offensive end, Ja Morant got going from deep en route to a career night from downtown.

Curry or Kevon Looney did not pay a single bit of respect to Morant on this jumper. Curry decided to go under the Valanciunas screen, while Looney stayed in drop coverage to play the roll. It allowed Morant to step into a 3 in rhythm to knock down his 2nd triple of the game, instilling more confidence in his outside game.

Young squads could get rattled early in playoff situations, especially when it’s unfamiliar to them. We even saw it a bit from the Grizzlies in the Utah series. Their composure and poise in the play-in games demonstrated maturity and growth from the young Memphis team.

Scott Strazzante/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

How the Grizzlies defended their opponent’s go-to scorer was one of the defining moments of the play-in games.

It served as the prelude to Dillon Brooks’ 2021 postseason breakout. He was tasked with defending DeRozan and Curry, and he lived up to his role as “defensive stopper.” He held DeRozan to 2-10 shooting as the primary defender, and Curry was 5-12 against him as well. The Curry numbers may not be as glorious as his other strong matchup data points (see: Bradley Beal, Damian Lillard or Luka Doncic), but he made it difficult for him to get shots off with a vigorous face-guard.

He surely does get more individual praise for his defensive performance against DeRozan, and rightfully so. He forced him into tough, uncomfortable shot attempts, while not falling for too many fakes.

While Brooks is fighting through the screen here, Valanciunas hedges the screen a bit until Brooks is over the Poetl pick. Once he’s free, he flies into DeRozan’s shot to force him into a rough miss.

There was another good hedge moment here between Valanciunas and Brooks late in the game. Off the high screen, Valanciunas does a great job of moving his feet until Brooks could recover. As the big man returns to drop coverage, DeRozan is forced into a tough sideline floater with a defender flying through to contest the shot.

Brooks’ physicality remained a strong trait in another resumé-building performance as a defensive stopper — the good (tough contests like this), and the bad (5 fouls).

This defensive epitomizes Brooks’ performance on DeRozan. Here, he bodies up DeRozan just enough to bother him, but not too much to create the foul call. Once he gets to that step-back, Brooks makes sure to get in a spot where he’s in his airspace without being completely in his landing spot — which would’ve given him a foul.

It wasn’t just Brooks tasked with stopping DeRozan. The Grizzlies put together an awesome scheme centered to stop him, leading to an uncharacteristic 5-21 night for the veteran star. It really ended with Jonas Valanciunas here. He’s often criticized on that end for his inability to guard out on the perimeter, but he was able to use drop coverage to a strength more against the mid-range maestro.

This sequence triggered evergreen memories of my basketball coach growing up screaming at our team to cut off the baseline. Jonas Valanciunas demonstrates one of the potential pluses in doing so. He has to hedge off the Dieng screen before Desmond Bane could recover. In the process, he forces DeRozan baseline which sends him to “no man’s land” and generates a turnover.

Again, Valanciunas showcases fantastic verticality here:

He helps off the DeRozan drive, and he maintains good rim protection instincts. He stays in control as the driver decelerates looking for contact, and he goes up with textbook verticality to swat the shot.

Switching over to Steph Curry, it was a bit of the opposite. Instead of a tough shooting night (still 13-28), the Grizzlies did a great job of blitzing him, forcing the Warriors into making quick decisions, and putting the supporting cast in positions to make plays without its star. Curry finished with 7 turnovers, the 6th time this season turning the ball over 7 or more times.

Before getting into Curry’s parade of turnovers, I want to showcase the defensive versatility of Jaren Jackson Jr.:

Jackson switches onto Curry off the screen and stays with him the entire drive. He forced him into the paint, where Xavier Tillman was ready to help. Both big men went straight up to swallow Curry’s shot and send it out of bounds to a Grizzlies’ possession.

Carrying on.

Ja Morant does a great job of stepping up into the switch, and Brooks tags the roller well too. Kent Bazemore is not the roller Curry is used to — story of the 2020-21 Warriors, right. Curry instinctually slips the short-roll pass to…nobody…leading to a turnover.

Xavier Tillman takes on the switch here and is really good at staying attached to his hip and in a spot where he could strongly contest the shot. The Grizzlies add extra pressure with Brooks stunting and Morant providing help. Curry is then forced to a mid-air decision, and the closest person near him is Juan Toscano-Anderson, and Morant is there for the steal.

The Grizzlies continued to swarm Curry and force him into quick, mid-air decisions that are either going to result in a wild shot, pass, or a travel.

Dillon Brooks and Kyle Anderson — the team’s two best perimeter defenders — blitz Curry out of the dribble hand-off. What is Anderson’s alternative? A Draymond Green 3? Though he splits between the two defenders momentarily, Anderson recovers to offer a strong enough contest — coupled with Valanciunas’ presence as well — to get him to pass cross-court out of his shot.

This play could’ve gone badly. Brooks probably should’ve played Andrew Wiggins’ roll, while Grayson Allen should’ve returned over to Steph Curry. Ja Morant saved the day here defensively though. Curry sees a sliver to whip a pass to Wiggins — and it’s a smart call, because an easy 2 for an athletic 6’9” wing is good offense. He was a bit too loose with the pass, and that — along with the pressure off Ja’s help defense — forces Wiggins to bobble the ball and turn it over.

In one of the largest possessions of the game, the Grizzlies come up with a massive turnover off of great defensive tactics. Tillman hedges the screen and forces him to the sideline, while Brooks recovers. It leaves Curry in a rough spot.

Let’s marvel at the defensive placement here:

Grizz defense -> curry turnover

Tillman and Brooks are trapping. Morant is in the corner, taking away further drives or a pass to the corner. Anderson is playing the roller and taking anything away in the middle. Grayson Allen is playing a free safety role — ready for anything baseline or crosscourt. It leads to an errant, crosscourt pass that goes over Green’s head for the turnover.

This was just a wonderful display of defensive strategy that forced their opponent into tough decisions the whole night.

Defending veteran stars like Steph Curry and DeMar DeRozan helped the Grizzlies grow in multiple ways. It illustrated the importance of locking in to create turnovers and to help your teammate tasked with stopping that player. It helped Dillon Brooks grow as a primary stopper in playoff situations. It was also a growing opportunity for Taylor Jenkins to learn, adjust, and get crafty with defensive schemes.

Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images

The biggest area of growth for the Memphis Grizzlies during the play-in games was in late-game execution. It was definitely a nervous spot, as the Grizzlies had close games with playoff contenders over the course of the season, and lack of experience typically led to losses. Those regular-season moments served as learning opportunities to set them up for success when it mattered most.

The late-game execution, for the most part, was really good — aside from that non-challenge on the Jordan Poole 3 that would’ve sent all areas of Memphis Grizzlies coverage into a frenzy if they lost.

One thing we learned in these moments is, it always pays to have floor spacing around Ja Morant. He’s the driving force of the offense, and one that savors the opportunity to make big moments. If you give him space to operate, he will do so. Others, too, have the chance to shine and contribute whenever the defense collapses on Morant.

In both plays, there are at least 3-4 defenders that are geared towards what Morant is doing at the rim. Rightfully so. Morant’s vision and poise are assets here, as he’ll dish out passes you don’t think he’ll make. In both dimes, he rises up and contorts his body in a way to sling a pass over to the lone corner man for an easy 3.

Something else to highlight with this young team is the amount of winning plays made late in the game from the role players. Xavier Tillman and Grayson Allen both made an impact down the stretch, whether it was big 3’s or hustle plays. One I want to particular point out is this put-back from Desmond Bane.

Bane tracks the ball as soon as it leaves Morant’s hands, leading to an easy put-back. No groundbreaking analysis with basketball terminology there. However, it was a momentum-swinger that ultimately changed the trajectory of the game. With that put-back, the game goes from becoming a 2-possession game to 3. When there are only 90 seconds left, that’s massive.

Another cool aspect from the Warriors game, especially in crunch-time, was the Grizzlies’ willingness to let the other guys beat them. They were not going to let Curry be the one that put the dagger in. That was evident with hilariously bad missed bunnies from both Andrew Wiggins and Draymond Green. They were going to make this supporting cast create for themselves and win them the game.

Both Brooks and Anderson played the dribble handoff extremely well, preventing any sort of look for Curry. Green is forced to turn to Poole, who dribbles it off his foot in a massive possession. Against top-heavy teams, there are two cases defensively: 1) let the star cook and worry about the other guys, or 2) stop the star and let the supporting cast beat you. Though Curry toughly got off his shots, the Grizzlies did an excellent job of forcing the ball out of his hands when it mattered most.

All of these particular executions wouldn’t be possible without a pure go-to closer. Every team has them. There are stars who face the moments head-on and live with either rising or falling in the process. Ja Morant got his first crack at the clutch, go-to moment on the road in a playoff environment.

It’s safe to say he rose above the moment.

Ja Morant got the switch he wanted, credit to the screeners for helping him do so. He was in a spot where he could hit the move that’s most comfortable for him: that hesi-dribble into the drive towards the left, then the right-handed floater. It’s absolutely money.

With a chance to ice the game, Morant didn’t falter under pressure. He sizes up Toscano-Anderson and gets back to that sweet spot where he wants his floater. Off to Cancun the Warriors go.

Yes, there were some inexperienced blunders. However, it didn’t break the Grizzlies this time. The Memphis Grizzlies grew from regular-season heartbreak to execute in the clutch when it mattered most. Role players saw the dividends from making the simple play. Coach Jenkins found the right combinations to ensure good half-court offense, while coming up with great defensive schemes. Then, its franchise point guard Ja Morant had his first moment to be a go-to scorer down the stretch in a playoff atmosphere.

These clutch moments are what expedites the growth process for a young team.

Photo by Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images

All season long, Taylor Jenkins preached the importance of growth opportunities. Whether it was a losing in the clutch to a contender, dropping a game against an inferior opponent, or a big-time win over a bonafide playoff team — the vision of sustainable success was preached repeatedly throughout the year.

Those close losses to Milwaukee and Denver back in March prepared them to perform in the clutch in a “do or die” situation.

Dillon Brooks’ battles against the league’s elite prepared him to do so in games where the best players are expected to unload the clip.

All season, the players and coaches preached locking in for all 48 minutes, and that was backed up with strong 4th quarter play and staying active with the defensive gameplay.

For a season full of growth opportunities, the play-in tournament was a growing experience you cannot beat. The young Memphis Grizzlies grew up a lot in those two games — as well as the Utah series — and they’re more ready for whatever lies ahead.

For more Grizzlies talk, subscribe to the Grizzly Bear Blues podcast network on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and IHeart. Follow Grizzly Bear Blues on Twitter and Instagram.

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