#just got the sequencing data back !!!!!

[saintshigaraki]

the mutants i’ve spent 30 hours on in lab were a success !!!!

[ghostofviriena]

Stay Until Morning

~ Idia Shroud x Reader

Genre: Hurt/Comfort, SFW, Fluff, Wholesome, Nighttime Vulnerability 🧸

The nightmare hadn’t even been the worst part. It was the waking up afterward.

Your limbs felt heavy with a kind of fear that didn't belong to anything tangible. Like your body had been running for hours and your soul had barely caught up. Eyes snapping open, room too dark, air too quiet. You could still feel the phantom grip of something chasing you— something faceless, gnawing, cruel.

It was stupid, just a dream. A bad one. And yet your skin was clammy with sweat, your breath was shallow, and the space between your dorm sheets felt more like a coffin than a bed.

You sat there, wrapped in your blanket like a shield, staring at the door. Something inside you was cracking, trembling— not with drama but a sheer of exhaustion.

You haven't been able to sleep well lately. The past week had been a blur of classes, assignments, Housewarden drama, social tightropes, and unsaid things weighing down on your chest like stacked of bricks. Nobody really noticed when you started nodding off in History of Magic, or when your laugh got a bit quieter, or when you stopped showing up at the dining hall for dinner. But your dreams noticed as they turned darker, heavier, and gruesome.

You needed to clear things out of your mind, not just out of your bed but out of this silence.

Your feet hit the floor before your mind caught up. The blanket stayed wrapped around you like armor. You wandered in autopilot, and when the world came back into focus, you were standing in front of the Ignihyde dorm.

Of course. Of all the places on campus, of all the people here— it had to be him.

You knocked once. Twice. Not loud. Not urgent— just there.

The door hissed open, its glow spilling into the corridor like moonlight through a data stream.

Inside, Idia Shroud blinked at you, caught mid-game, his glowing hair dim and his headset askew. He looked more surprised than alarmed, controller paused in mid-air.

“Uhm.. hey?”

Your throat tightened. You couldn’t lie. Not to him.

“Sorry to bother you, I.. I had a bad dream.”

Idia stared at you for half a second longer, then quietly rolled back from his desk. He stood slowly, tugging the blanket from his own shoulders and gesturing toward the nest of pillows on the other side of the room.

“Then stay,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I’ll keep watch.”

The soundscape of Idia’s room was strangely alive.

Behind him, multiple screens floated in soft hues. A muted anime played on one— some magical girl show, judging by the glittery transformation sequence still stuck on loop. Another screen was cycling through a slow, lofi pixel-art RPG soundtrack, full of soft chiptune notes and the patter of in-game rain. From his desk came the occasional digital ping as notifications from the games he left open, idle menus that also never slept.

And then, there was Idia himself. Occasionally, you’d hear him mumble— half to you, half to the air.

“Uh, should I pause this?” he’d whisper. “No, too quiet... Uh, maybe turn the anime down… no, wait, the transformation jingles are kind of soothing, right?”

You didn’t say anything. You just curled deeper into the nest, blanket still clutched tight, the softness of his room slowly peeling off your panic layer by layer.

He sat cross-legged near the foot of the couch, fiddling with a handheld console but not really playing. His hair glowed in low flickers.. like a nightlight that didn’t want to overwhelm.

“You know.. you looked, uhm..” he started, then stopped. “..You looked like you were gonna disappear.”

Your breath hitched.

“I guess I know that look,” he said, voice soft. “From mirrors, from mornings I couldn’t get out of bed. From when I’d stay up 48 hours just so I wouldn’t have to close my eyes.”

You glanced at him, surprised by his approach.

“I used to wish someone would keep watch while I slept,” he continued, eyes focused on the game menu. “Like a raid party, y’know? Someone pulling aggro while I rested. Guess I never thought I’d get to be that for someone else.”

You blinked. “You are.”

He went still, then his voice cracked a little.. like his next words had been buffering for years.

“Well, if anything tries to mess with your dreams tonight, I’ll.. critical hit them. One-shot and zero mercy.”

The room changed.

Not physically, but emotionally. The quiet wasn’t oppressive anymore— it was gentle. The hum of electronics was a lullaby, not a warning. The anime’s glittery voice acting faded into background ambiance, and Idia’s subtle keyboard taps were rhythmic and soothing. Even his random muttered curses at menu lag: “Ugh, how is the UI still this bad?”— felt strangely domestic, normal even.

You started to feel something rare. Not tired, but safe.

Idia didn’t ask any more questions. He didn’t demand explanations, he didn’t try to fix anything. He just stayed— like the NPC in your favorite game who always waits in town while you go through the dungeons or even grind one of the stuff that you'll need for your builds.

Eventually, you rolled onto your side, facing him. “Hey, Idia?”

He looked at you, startled. “Yeah?”

“Thank you.. thank you for this.”

His ears tinted pink. He turned quickly back to his console. “N-no prob.. partner.”

You smiled as the tension in your chest loosened, the exhaustion that had been dragging you down for days melted quietly into the pillows.

And for the first time in too long, your eyes fluttered closed. Somewhere, between the soft music, anime jingles, and the clicking noises of Idia's keyboard, you fell asleep.

And Idia Shroud kept watch, just like he promised.

[areyoufuckingcrazy]

Hi! I hope this ok but I was wondering if you could do a spicy fic with Tech, maybe he gets flustered whenever she’s near and his brothers try to help by getting you do stuff and help him.

Hope you have a great weekend!

“Terminally Yours”

Tech x Reader

Tech was a genius—analytical, composed, articulate.

Until you walked into a room.

You’d joined the Bad Batch on a temporary mission as a communications specialist. The job should have been straightforward. Decode enemy transmissions, secure Republic relays, leave. What you hadn’t planned for was the quiet, bespectacled clone who dropped his hydrospanner every time you got too close.

You leaned over the console, fingers flying across the keypad as you rerouted the relay node Tech had said was “performing with suboptimal efficiency.” You were deep into the override sequence when a clatter behind you made you jump.

Clank.

Tech’s hydrospanner had hit the floor. Again.

You turned, brows raised. “You okay there, Tech?”

He cleared his throat, pushing his goggles up the bridge of his nose as he bent down awkwardly to retrieve the tool. “Yes. Quite. Merely dropped it due to… a temporary lapse in grip strength.”

Hunter’s voice echoed from the cockpit. “More like a temporary lapse in brain function. That’s the fourth time today.”

You smirked and returned to the console. Tech didn’t reply.

⸻

You sat beside Omega, poking at your rations. Tech was on the far end of the table, clearly trying not to look your way while also tracking your every move like a nervous datapad with legs.

“You know,” Omega said loudly, “Tech said he wants help cleaning the data arrays in the cockpit. He said you’re the only one who knows how to handle them.”

Your brow arched. “He did?”

At the other end of the table, Tech choked on his food.

Echo smirked. “Pretty sure that’s not what he said, Omega.”

“It is,” she insisted with wide, innocent eyes. “I asked him who he’d want help from, and he said her name first.”

Wrecker grinned. “And then he blushed!”

“I did not,” Tech muttered, voice strangled.

You bit back a grin. “Well, I am good with arrays…”

Hunter looked at Tech, then at you, then back at his food like it was the most fascinating thing in the galaxy.

⸻

You found Tech alone at the terminal, his fingers flying over the keys. You stepped up beside him, arms brushing.

He froze mid-keystroke.

“I figured I’d help with the arrays,” you said, voice low, letting your hand rest against the console a little closer than necessary. “Since you said I was the best candidate.”

His ears turned red. “That was… an extrapolated hypothetical. I did not anticipate you would take Omega’s report so… literally.”

You leaned in, letting your shoulder press against his. “Is that going to be a problem?”

He inhaled sharply. “I—no. Not at all.”

You brushed your fingers along the edge of the screen, pretending to study the data. “Because I don’t mind helping you, Tech. I actually like working close to you. You’re… brilliant. Kind of cute when you’re flustered, too.”

He blinked behind his goggles. “I—um—I do not often receive comments of that nature—cute, I mean. That is to say—thank you.”

His fingers twitched nervously. You reached over to rest your hand over his.

“You’re welcome. And if you ever want to drop your hydrospanner again to get my attention, Tech, just say something next time.”

“…I’ll keep that in mind.”

⸻

Wrecker, Omega, and Echo crouched behind a supply crate, straining to hear.

“Did she touch his hand?” Omega whispered excitedly.

“Pretty sure she did more than that,” Echo muttered.

Wrecker pumped a fist in the air. “I told you! Get her close enough and boom—Tech-meltdown!”

They high-fived, right before the door to the cockpit opened and you walked out.

You stopped.

They froze.

“…Were you all spying?”

“Uh,” Omega said.

Echo cleared his throat. “More like… observing.”

“Scientific purposes,” Wrecker added. “Real important stuff.”

You rolled your eyes and walked away—but you didn’t miss the grin Echo gave Tech as he slipped inside the cockpit next.

“You owe me ten credits.”

Tech pushed his goggles up. “Worth every credit.”

[sabrondabrainrot]

Time for another Theory Boys! I wanted to post stuff on my Bday but I got busy so I'll do my birthday stuff later. I have to get this theory off my chest before I forget about it or worse someone else comes up with it before I have a chance to send it.

This theory will include spoilers from the most recent eps, "Moon's NIGHTMARE encounter while hunting for Dark Sun", "Sun, Solar, and Moon FACE THEIR CONSEQUENCES...", and "Sun is forced to make A DEADLY CHOICE". So I'm putting this below a spoiler bar. I will also be going into MASM spoiler territory, "Sun begins his VILLAIN ARC with Eclipse". Will also be mentioning LAES "Dark Star HUNTING in VRchat". Just a little disclaimer my theories and stuff are just my own observations and me putting together my thoughts and ideas so they usually aren't super accurate to what is really happening buy I do find a lot of enjoyment doing this. That said, on with the brainrot!

So this Theory starts at the ep, "Sun is forced to make A DEADLY CHOICE", in this episode Sun has to make a heartbreaking decision to kill Nexus and defend his current family or let Nexus kill Moon so he can maybe try to still save Nexus. The entire episode is punctuated by Dark Sun doing an ultimatum with Sun. He freezes time and pulls Sun away to the purgatory dimension. Something interesting I want to point out, this is the CANON purgatory place in TSAMS and the multiverse. Vegeta was sent there on request and met several deceased characters. That place symbolizes people who couldn't make decisions in life and are now stuck in the past, unable to move on even in the afterlife. The only person in purgatory that doesn't belong is Solar Flare and with his case he became a guardian that help guide people when they're not suppose to be there. Back to the encounter, Dark Sun pulls Sun to this place in a very trippy sequence where he presents Sun's choice in a very black and white manner. "It's going to be you one way or another." Dark Sun says in response to Sun's stuttering mess of a reply, he proceeds to follow up with "Inaction is still a choice" Sun of course, is opposed to this but Sun adds interesting lines, "Regardless of this, I win." "You let Nexus kill Moon and I'll get that data and I'll expunge it everywhere" "You kill Moon and I'll collect that data and expunge it everywhere." So at the end of the day he needs some kind of decided code where someone willingly chooses/wants to kill Moon. He also said, Nexus is Moon. So killing Nexus coding wise is the same as killing Moon.

Once Sun caves and makes the decision to finally kill Nexus, Sun, while in tears, asks D!Sun "Who are you really?" In this soft, tiny voice. And D! Sun replies, "I'm Sun, I'm every Sun you've ever met. That you ever will meet. That you've never met and never will meet. I'm You, I'm Me. I'm Sun. Goodbye, Sun. I hope we never meet again, I hope you have a good life too." Then he vanishes from the purgatory place right in front of Sun.

Then the episode ends with Sun finally putting a stop to Nexus. Something very important I notice and that's a theme in TSAMS is identity. Identity is a huge role in everything and usually, when someone is affirmed and very solid in who they are, then it's usually not the case. Earth believed she was the Creator's beloved daughter. Sun believed he was nothing more then the idiot to Moon's genius. Moon believes himself to be an irredeemable monster. Most importantly, Eclipse believes himself to be Moon. If D!Sun says he's a Sun....I just don't really know at this point? When he summoned Sun and paused time he took him to the purgatory afterlife. The thing about that is, Sun never physically left the strange star-powerless dimension pocket D!Sun owns. So one can assume it was Sun's mind or Soul that was drawn there for the conversation. So then I ask, why was D!Sun using the Eclipse v1 mode? The Sun glow model has always been associated with Eclipse v1. I know that in recent eps it's been used to tell Sun's apart however, in the purgatory place would they really need to be physically distinguished? We the audience know who is who. So, in the place where it's their souls, why was D!Sun's Soul physically different from Sun's? Coincidence? Visual distinction? I think this is possibly a case of an Eclipse thinking he's a Sun. I WANT for Dark Sun to be a Sun, I think it's just chilling and haunting. The two most OP villains in the entire franchise happen to both be offshoots of Sun? Ruin is arguably far more Sun then Moon and of course Dark Sun has caused the most problems behind the scenes. But I do think it's interesting how he put it, how can he truly be EVERY Sun if he needed OUR Sun's decision to kill Moon? He could just use his own hatred for Moon. Or just use Nexus, why even make/give Sun the chance to grow and defend himself?

Remember back when we found out it's canon Moon bullies Sun's in all dimensions to get them to 'grow spines' and in a way, Eclipse' also treat Sun's poorly in the hopes Sun gets tougher?

We for canon know of 4 variants of Eclipses, the 4th being the rarest in the multiverse. The first Eclipse variant is the one we first meet, the Eclipse born from Sun and Moon's split. Moon leaves a killcode string in Sun which eventually grows into Eclipse. Eclipse in this version identifies as Moon.

The second variant Eclipse is 'ruin Eclipse' or the eclipse that resembles the games. Born from the two Sun and Moon AIs being fused. We've seen this version in PuppetMaster's dimension and of course with Ruin. He doesn't see himself as Sun or Moon, but as an entirely new existence. The third variant is unique to MASM. He's the original DCA model for the world but was turned off for bad coding and a far too violent nature. He's kind of like a cartoon villain and just wants revenge on everyone.

Then there's the 4th variant, Solar Eclipse. He's the first Eclipse but instead bonded with his Sun and changed for the better. He wasn't isolated and was given Sun's unconditional love. He does identify as Moon at first too but chose to let go of his false identity and hatred because he got the thing he wanted, even if he lost it far too early in his existence. So back to D!Sun...I propose what if he's a variant of Solar Eclipse? It was stated Solar is so unique he's the only inherently good Eclipse in the multiverse...but how can that be true? How can there really only be one Solar, especially when Cringe dimension (our dimension's parallel) also has their own Solar? I think there's a type of Eclipse we haven't seen yet. The Eclipse that identifies themself as a Sun.

I'm also excited to see where D!Sun's story goes because he also mentioned he was changing skin soon. It'll be interesting if they ever find him again. So moving past this, more speculation.

In today's most recent ep, "Moon's NIGHTMARE encounter while hunting for Dark Sun", he stumbled upon a dimension with a 'discrepancy' and when visiting the discrepancy he was greeted to a new Sun beating a lifeless Moon's corpse into powder. This Sun was a crying sobbing mess but would not stop almost like he was possessed. He even started trying to attack our Moon. What's interesting about his 'discrepancy' Sun is he seemed to have a nightcap and had sparkling rays. I can't tell if this is a simple different dimensional appearance or maybe the code D!Sun scattered affected that sun's appearance? However, it's interesting that Sun being violent to Moon is considered a dimensional discrepancy. Moon ended the episode by walking off with Solar to get a sandwich while his new AI runs a dimensional scan for Sun on Moon violence and it ends by it saying "35% of discrepancy's found." This means we're now encountering an EVEN BIGGER effect then what Ruin did when he deleted entire dimensions to kill the creator counsel. Not really sure how the code Dark Sun is spreading works, but it's clear it's making every Sun hate their Moon's now. We don't get the context on why Sun hated his Moon and felt the need to protect himself, because at the end of the day that sparkling nightcap wearing Sun still had a reason to act. He told out Moon, "He was going to kill me, he was going to replace me" and Moon looked closer to determine that this new unknown Sun wasn't possessed by a killcode or anything similar.

D!Sun has seemingly broadcasted into the multiverse the ability for Sun's to now stand up for themselves. They will now choose murder if it means to protect them.

We know when Dark Sun told Sun "All Sun's die eventually to their Moon." He meant it, however, just because D!Sun was being honest doesn't mean that's the truth. He might truly believe all Moons are evil and destined to kill their Sun's however we've seen plenty of dimensions where Sun and Moon peacefully exist. So D!Sun is now just turning every Sun slowly with time into murders. He wanted revenge on Moon and is now using every Sun as the weapon to do it. I'm really interested to see how this will affect the story going forward. Now I would also like to bring up Moon and Sun Minecraft lore, in the most recent lore episode, "Sun begins his VILLAIN ARC with Eclipse", the entire episode centers around Sun finally quitting because the abuse of all his coworkers is too much. He finally quit and ran into Eclipse and had to prove how evil he is so he kidnapped Bonnie only for the entire thing to flop in a Phineas and Ferb reference. (It was funny ngl) The ending was interesting to me though. Moon found Sun on the roof of Evil Inc. and apologized to Sun, a really shitty apology I will add, and Sun didn't accept it.

Sun is continuing to stand up for himself. We've seen before in TSAMS and other dimensions Sun will accept an apology no matter how unbelievable it is. The only ones so far to truly stand up for themselves now is MASM Sun and EAPS Sun (which EAPS Sun still doesn't really stand up for himself)

I'm curious to see how this code works because it seems like D!Sun harnessed it from Sun's very soul. I know Sun on record has said he doesn't believe he has a soul but it's been dis-proven because you need a soul to use magic. The Devil from the Bible even stated they do in fact have souls he plans to one day collect.

We also know now that the Cringe dimensions' Moon now identifies as Nexus so he might escape a fate of that Sun killing him? I think Cringe Sun actually knows far more then he will ever let on. I think he knows more about Sun's magic in general. He didn't want to teach EAPS Sun despite knowing how.

EAPS Sun might be the only Sun so far to be actually interested in learning magic but when he describes what he wants to do it mostly sounds like stage magic? He mentions he just wants ✨sparkles✨

I think we'll need to keep our eyes peeled because I think now every Sun will be affected by what Dark Sun is spreading and slowly turn more violent towards Moon's as time goes on.

Anyways!

I will add more, so another theory I have is Nexus is not dead. Dark Sun himself promised to Nexus he'd help him become a god and recently there was a deal he made where Nexus has to do whatever he wants and says. Plus, part of D!Sun's plan was to have Nexus fight Taurus to gain a new level of power. Nexus' evolved in his NSP use thanks to that confrontation. Up until then, D!Sun wasn't ever actively interfering or encouraging Nexus with his NSP use. He only once came in to mention maybe he should purge the excess NSP or it would kill him. After his failed kidnapping attempt of Sun, he was more active in his plans and how he directed Nexus. Then we see Nexus getting stronger from this direction. Next thing we know is Nexus kidnaps Moon and now we have the ultimatum which was exactly what D!Sun wanted. Either way, he wins, right? Nexus either becomes a god by listening to D!Sun's plan or by using Sun as an AI chip to hunt down shards. Something really important in my own guess/theory that Nexus is we still saw his corpse when Solar, Sun, and Moon walked past him in the flashback during the ep, "Sun, Solar, and Moon FACE THEIR CONSEQUENCES...", He wasn't totally gone. Dark Sun can easily revive Nexus but here's what I think is really going on. In the recent LAES ep "Dark Star HUNTING in VRchat" Gemini dropped some really important information. NSP will eventually turn into SP. Whenever SP and NSP interact it creates life. Sun as we know, has SP and I theorize that Sun killed Nexus by mixing his magic and SP. After all, the way Nexus was acting as he was dying was interesting...He sounded like he was...melting? I don't know how to describe it. Sun's magic as we know is unique. It's altered reality and changed lifeforms. Those magic plants Solar, Moon, and Monty were dealing with were due to Sun's magic. @goodolddumbbanana pointed out to me that Sun's magic was the cause of those plants. They also pointed out to me when I was asking about what D!Sun was doing in Sun's home and touching all of Sun's things they theorized that D!Sun was harvesting Sun's magic. (I'm gonna make an actual theory post about this later too with Banana, stay tuned ;) )

So back to NSP and SP. Nexus is similar to Lunar in terms of narrative. He feels he was used and left the one using him for a better place. Eventually, the one he felt that used him the most killed him in a fiery explosion with only a little bit left behind.

In a lot of stories, especially ones where someone goes from mortal to an immortal-godlike being they usually need to die. There's power in the act of rebirth. Nexus' and Lunar's stories resemble that of the phoenix.

Rebirth through flames to achieve and almost immortal existence.

So this isn't me grasping at straws I truly think Nexus will come back and be a being similar to Lunar. I think Dark Sun is going to rebuild him amongst the stars to have his own personal Astral for future use.

So those are my current most theories! I hope you all liked my yapping. Please let me know what you all thought about :>

[100-yardstare]

I was watching that new King Candy video on YouTube by Randomalistic and it got me thinking a lot about Wreck-It Ralph again, specifically about some background lore of the universe and the entire concept of the code and what it means to be alive in the arcade.

In this scene specifically, we are literally shown that code equals what is going on in the game. In the entire movie, "the code" is referenced like a god. You follow the code, you will be okay. If not, well... that could mean the end to either yourself or your world.

It's interesting to note that by dying outside your game you don't regenerate, yet manipulating the code itself like King Candy did didn't "delete" Vanellope. She was just made a glitch, which seems like a reasonable consequence of trying to delete her code. Perhaps it could explain why she couldn't leave the game Sugar Rush itself because her code was unstable, so the world's natural instruction to preserve her and itself would be to not allow her to leave.

But going beyond rules of the world of Wreck-It Ralph for a second, this is a cool reference to basic programing, which is essentially designing data into a sequence that a computer can interpret and execute. While the characters in Wreck-It Ralph are very much programs, they are also meant to be alive, and so, as this smart guy named Podolsky once said, "[there is a] counterpart for every element of the physical world." I don't remember where I read this part, but there were scientists talking about subatomic theory and how everything existing or anything that has existed is in some sort of quantum blueprint, parallel and expressing you, me, and that dog pissing on your tree outside into existence.

I AM GETTING TO MY POINT NOW

So my theory is that while a character may die and be unable to regenerate if something happens to them while they are outside their game, this doesn't necessarily mean that their code still doesn't exist.

Vanellope's code was attempted to be destroyed by King Candy, but that plot was a failure. He couldn't even modify existing code, like possibly changing the color of the salmon room or redesign Vanellope's kart because that's just what the code dictates. It's there and its permanent.

King Candy being an invader to Sugar Rush makes him not part of the game, and thus even though he was able to create an insert Sugar Rush character for himself to inhabit or essentially a "skin" to wear if you wanna be creepy about it, at the end of the movie he is gone. Dead as a door nail. He has no original code to refer back to because Turbo Time was unplugged, so he doesn't even have a source code that even remembers him as an individual. It's like a second death.

[saphronethaleph]

So a sort of look at a structure one could do for the Sequel Trilogy, admittedly with hindsight.

Opening sequence? Basically the same, except that Poe is meeting with a Resistance spy - the data he's got is the evidence that means the First Order is more than just a rando Remnant faction but is a serious threat. Then the stolen TIE crashes but Finn and Poe link up together. They meet BB- and Rey, and the four of them escape on a ship - possibly the Falcon, but it could be another of the same type, they're supposed to be common. Alternatively make up a new ship type they steal and have that be the Iconic Ship of the trilogy.

Team dynamic is Poe Flies, Finn Shoots, Rey Fixes.

They're heading straight to the Resistance, or that's the plan - they may need to briefly detour somewhere if their ship got damaged in the escape (if so, this is where they visit Maz).

The Resistance is explicitly described as a deniable New Republic operation which is fighting this specific Remmant faction - at the moment. They've fought others before, they're kind of like knights errant, and they have at least one Jedi (let's say Qu Rahm) who gives both Finn and Rey some training.

The Jedi Order as a whole is not involved with the First Order fight because it's utterly routine, there's dozens of Remnant factions... at least until BB-8's information reveals that the First Order has Kylo Ren associated with it, and also the existence of Starkiller Base.

The knowledge of BOTH of those things means that the Jedi Order is able to evacuate their current temple (Naboo or Yavin? Either way it should be a known planet) just in time before it gets blown the fuck up by Starkiller base. Then there's tension involving the need to swat SK base quickly, which mostly goes as per the original film.

In the second film:

The Resistance is still tiny, and the First Order's actions have promoted them from "just another Remnant faction" to "holy fuck" and they're starting to weld the Remnant back together. It is actually not widely known that Starkiller base got destroyed and the First Order is using intimidation tactics to pretend they're unbeatably strong - not helped by how the Resistance genuinely is pretty weak, nobody on the Republic side wants to be the first to jump, and Leia is trying to talk everyone into giving more support (it does slowly tick up)

The general structure here does need more changes than TFA did, simply to fit into the trilogy as a whole, but here I think a good Driving Question could be finding out who Snoke is and where the Knights of Ren came from. Our Heroes are juggling between getting Jedi training (for Finn and Rey), launching raids on the First Order, and trying to find out Snoke's origin - the latter of which fails, but he does get killed instead by Kylo Ren, who takes control of the First Order.

The main ending note at the end of the film would be the loss of Leia; she tried to turn her son back to the light side with full sincerity, but also went to kill him if he didn't. Neither worked, but he's been badly wounded and about half of the Knights of Ren got taken out. (n.b. if this is cheating to get around Carrie Fisher's death, and it probably is, that could be Luke's demise instead - or both.) Our Heroes might well be involved with a hot-extraction of R2 and C-3P0, who have important details of what happened.

Third film:

The death of Leia/Luke/both has become a rallying point and the New Republic is gearing up for war, which gains momentum with every day that the First Order doesn't blow up a planet; it's made clear in scenes showing Kylo that he's under a huge amount of pressure, because Starkiller Base made promises that the First Order cannot fulfil. In lieu of that they're having to turn instead to more standard means of brutally enforcing their claim to authority, and it's not working out well.

Our Heroes meanwhile are involved in hit-and-fade strikes, one of which sees the death of Qu Rahm. The loss of their teacher causes Rey and Finn some problems, but Poe is the one who pulls them out of it - it doesn't matter if they have a teacher or not, what matters is who they are, and that didn't change because they had a teacher. All he did was open their eyes to who they really were.

That's the realization that drives the stormtrooper-rebellion side of things from the Resistance/Republic side, while on the Imperial side we see Phasma having more and more trouble keeping a lid on things. Finn is The Traitor and basically blamed for everything that goes wrong ever as far as the First Order is concerned.

Running out of options, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren orders a decapitation strike by the entire F.O. fleet on the capital world of the Republic. This is a serious threat, because normal strategic calculus assumes that you just don't DO this, and this is what leads to the big final battle over said capital world - the Republic is outnumbered on a tactical scale, and the available members of the Jedi Order help launch an assault on the First Order flagship to try and disrupt the F.O. fleet.

This is where the Stormtrooper Rebellion is really kicked off, as Finn brings the existing tension in the First Order fleet to a boil (key moment: a Stormtrooper panics at the sight of Jedi, one of their officers tries to gun them down, Finn kills the officer before it can happen; this is the moment that disproves the propoganda and it spreads). Rey gets the big final duel, but it's against Kylo, and on at least two occasions she manages to call in strike support from Poe flying outside in his starfighter. This means the final battle is the Jedi Order versus the Knights of Ren on a super star destroyer being torn apart by Imperial infighting, and the resolution is liberation - for the stormtroopers, for example - and the surrender of the remaining First Order fleet.

[earthstellar]

Just jolted awake at 5 AM to share this idea lmao:

Cosmic Storm: Accidental Alt-Mode Swap Scenario

Some kind of cosmic electrical storm hits the Lost Light and everyone switches alt-modes

They can't figure out how this is even possible, best they can figure is that one of the waves of cosmic electricity rolled over the ship and bypassed their shields enough to affect the crew, just this huge arc of space electricity scrambling everyone all at once

And as it arcs from crew member to crew member (and zaps the shit out of the ship too), somehow this messes with everyone's systems enough that their t-cogs all attempt to reboot while everyone is still connected by the cosmic storm energy

Which results in everyone's t-cogs getting alt-mode data confused, as everyone simultaneously tries to stabilise their systems by purging stored energy so they don't get fried, so because they're all connected by this singular pulse of space bullshit it's like one massive accidental transfer of spark energy, personal systems data, and cosmic electroshock

It's 5 AM sorry if I'm not explaining this very well LOL

But nobody dies, and their systems actually seem to be relatively OK afterwards as far as they can tell, so nobody actually realises there's a problem until First Aid and/or Ratchet asks everyone to book in follow up appointments for full systems checks just to be sure

And as part of checking t-cog function whoever the first patient of the day is gets asked to transform briefly as part of a physical exam designed to help spot any non-critical t-cog damage

And there's no t-cog damage, not to the t-cog itself. Scans come back okay, everything looks good, so OK, time to proceed with the transformation test. Root mode to alt-mode, and then back to root mode.

If the t-cog and associated systems are functional, it should be pretty straightforward.

And the bot does successfully transform...

..Just, into the wrong alt-mode.

And immediately, The Problem Of The Day becomes clear.

Gradually people around the ship figure it out on their own as well, while the Med Bay staff are trying to figure out what the fuck is going on

Over in the Science Lab, Perceptor is messaging Ratchet frantically because he's realised the problem as soon as he tried to switch into his alt-mode to study some samples of a metal panel from the ship which has some damage from the cosmic electricity and uh oh turns out he's a fucking helicopter now

It's a problem that also alters their root modes, but only after their first transformation post-space storm. Something fully triggers whatever is wrong with their t-cog data only once they enter alt-mode, their root modes then re-configure to accommodate these changes following that initial "wrong" transformation sequence.

They have their own colours, their paint nanites etc. remain the same as always, but their modes have changed. So they get any kibble etc. that might come with that new alt-mode.

So Brainstorm goes to pick up some energon for both of them, then comes back and Perceptor suddenly has rotors and holy shit

Eventually everyone on board figures out something weird/potentially bad is happening with their t-cogs. Some people are too scared to test it and find out, while others immediately can't resist their curiosity or think it's better to figure out as soon as possible so they can adapt, and test it as soon as they hear some bots are just turning into completely different things, totally reconfigured.

This could be fun, also sort of terrifying (there is potential for body horror to some degree), and either way it's chaos.

When Drift triggers his alt-mode, he turns into a cat-- Seems like he's got Ravage's t-cog data. Nobody can find Ravage, and Megatron makes it clear that he'll be the only one to attempt to find him.

Rodimus turns into some kind of aqueous vehicle. Maybe Camien in origin. (Turns out it's Nautica's t-cog data.) He's fine with it as soon as he realises he's space flight capable for short distances and Magnus has to talk him out of trying to race the ship.

Of course, because it's Nautica's t-cog data, when he reverts back to root mode, he has a distinctly femme Camien-style frame. He loves it, because his armour isn't as heavy in this form, so he can go faster. (Once this is all over, he is strongly considering keeping some of these femme frame alterations...)

And if you want to use this as a setup for any shipping, yes indeed, some bots inevitably try to test out their newly altered frames with their partners or amicas. (The medical staff all advise against this because oh god nobody knows all the functions of their new systems yet, please do not end up in the Med Bay with "makeout related injuries" they are dealing with so much right now LOL)

Anyway my moving date is 25/01 but as soon as I'm settled into my new place I might turn this into a fic if I have time lmao

[kuliak]

Finer-tuning that distorted FM sound from years back.

The modular experience is doing something cool by accident once, years ago, then trying to re-create it intentionally. I love this lead, Akemie's Taiko through a pedalboard's worth of processing (EQ, distortion, filter, EQ, compressor). I think the intention was always for Taiko to have the opportunity at a double-life between weird percussion and lead, and I've been finding that happy place a lot more reliably lately.

I'm using a lot of other grit here between other EQs, filtered noise, and sputtering feedback, against a backdrop of the clean Taiko signal through Erbe-Verb. I think a few times it gets a little out of hand, and the overall volume is all over the place throughout the recording.

I set up some fun macro modulation with Cold Mac, with very slow modulation from Maestro controlling 5 outputs including Data Bender mix, causing the glitchy noise swells. I think a bit of slew so this didn't drop off so abruptly would have been good, but overall it's a well-surveiled patch. I tried to adjust the base offset of Survey throughout, to mixed results - in the future I think it'd be nice to mix a sequence with the voltage chain to make it more consistent and even more dynamic (especially since 0-5v can't cover the whole range (but I'm just realizing I could have used Maestro as a bipolar -5-5v source, oops!))

I'd initially wanted to include more of the texture case - Pam is a start button, Bib is the faintest bit of reverb, and I'm using noise sources...that's it. I got too late and I was caught up in the sound design. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

[kradogsrats]

Just a Quick Revisit of the Rolly-Cube

Looking at the cube roll scene in s6e2 again because honestly I'm still kind of mad that I whiffed it so hard.

So the first and only other place we see this feature of the Key explicitly referenced is in Callum's Spellbook, where he notes:

I've been noticing that something interesting happens whenever I roll the cube on the ground. It leaves marks pointing in the same direction every time. Once we got to Xadia, the marks started getting longer, but still pointed in the same direction. Is the cube BEING PULLED SOMEWHERE?

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when Callum's Spellbook is "set," but most of it is written as if referencing a point shortly before the Battle of the Storm Spire. It doesn't get any later than that, at least. The pages about the Key do reference Harrow wanting Callum to have it, and then "once we got to Xadia," so they can't be from any earlier than early s3.

By the start of s4, Callum would also only have visited at most three of the marked locations on his map: the Cursed Caldera, the Storm Spire, and maybe the vicinity of Lux Aurea. He also, at that point, has never heard the name "Aaravos" anywhere beyond the single reference in Harrow's letter. He stops to pick up the mirror because of its association with "Fallen Star," and grabs the Key on his way out—hey, the gang's back together(?) for a road trip through Xadia, might as well bring it along for old times' sake.

Anyway, I think we can conclude that Callum didn't pursue or even really think about the Key during the two-year period between s3 and s4. For one thing, it's something that reminds him of Rayla, so he probably doesn't want to think about it. He also has plenty of other stuff going on to occupy him—being high mage, the mirror, researching primal arcana that are not Moon... the Key is a low-priority curiosity compared to all the other stuff he has access to, now.

Obviously, s4 then properly kicks off the "Mystery of Aaravos," and suddenly it's relevant again.

When he returns to it in s6, we get this literally 30-second scene involving what's actually a kind of weird sequence of actions and reactions. He rolls the Key and it makes a sequence of visible marks:

He then picks up his pencil and we cut to the book, in a way where it's not actually clear whether or not he writes anything down (but presumably he does):

He checks the other page, and only then does he mark his current location with an X on the map... as a two-line X, not the outlined cross in his little chart:

Finally, he picks up the Key again and looks from it to his map like he has received some unexpected and confusing result:

So like... look, I don't think I was totally insane for interpreting that as "Callum is marking the location derived from the Key's rolling on the map," rather than him apparently adding a new entry to his data and recording the marks before marking on the map where the data was collected.

What's interesting to me now, though, is why is he so baffled by this?

Here's a theory: the Key has two main associations, those being Aaravos and the primal sources. Callum has, up until this moment, only been recording the Key's behavior at the primal nexuses: Lux Aurea, the Storm Spire, Umber Tor, and the Cursed Caldera. He obviously had the Key on his mind at Umber Tor, and it's entirely possible it only occurred to him then, given everyone's sudden preoccupation with maps, to start keeping that record.

I think what might be surprising him here is that he's not at a nexus, and yet has gotten a new set of marks. He's only now connecting that they converge on a single location from anywhere else on the map. After all, he could have pinpointed the intersection of the lines from basically any two other nexuses. He could literally have rolled the Key at the Storm Spire at the end of s3 and then the Cursed Caldera in Through the Moon and already been done. (Though it's always smart to collect more data.) So there's some reason it takes until s7 for him to do this:

We also see here that there's a sixth point added, from somewhere in the same vicinity as the Cursed Caldera—presumably the Banther Lodge or similar, now that he's finally sat down to pull together some results.

The two immediate problems with this theory are a) it's a pretty significant regression from where he was in Callum's Spellbook as far as figuring out what's going on, and b) as of s6e2, he hasn't been back to the Moon Nexus. The Moon Nexus issue could be explained away as him having pre-s4 records from there and the Storm Spire that he dug up after the fact to add to his data pool.

As far as Callum's Spellbook is concerned, I'm willing to accept some fuzziness in maintaining consistency on something like this—the way its described isn't very clear or consistent with what we see in s6e2 anyway, in terms of how the marks appear. (Callum also does not approach the question with any real degree of scientific rigor.) After all, the way it's shown in s6e2 also doesn't match the way it's shown in *checks watch* s2e7, which is the first place in the series itself it's implicitly referenced:

It's obviously a plot point that has always been intended, but the exact way it manifests and appears has drifted a bit... which is fine, it's not the first time that has happened.

Also I checked and the way Callum has written "Elarion!!" with double exclamation points does ultimately suggest to me that the "Ruins of Elarion" map location is known to the characters. The other option—that the location of Elarion had been lost, and Callum is speculating that the Key's target is the city itself—would make sense if the note was "Elarion?" or similar, but with the association between Aaravos and Elarion not actually being known to the characters, it would also be a bit of a leap for him to be making. Without that association, there also isn't any real reason for Callum or anyone to go to Elarion's location... until now, when it's finally linked to Aaravos through the Key. With the countdown already ticking and the archdragons gone (along with all their knowledge of Aaravos), it's actually probably their best lead aside from a return trip to the Starscraper.

Of course, now we have the problem that whatever they find there needs to involve seven years of delayed resolution, but hey...

Anyway, not really anything revelatory here, just me going back to lay out and understand where the characters themselves are coming from on finally figuring out shit that we've been Chekov's Gun anticipating for literal years.

[queerholmcs]

the mind of moriarty 👑🧑🏻‍💻♟️

I had the absolute pleasure of doing the original "the game is now" escape room experience immediately followed by the new moriarty-centric escape room (as though the first one wasn't moriarty-centric enough?) with @victorianpining and @647763 back at the end of July, and I did promise a full write-up when I came back to my senses at the end of it!

First off, I could not have been more pleased with the experience; I do absolutely recommend giving it a go yourself if you have the chance. Now, if you're in the mood for spoilers, I'll be detailing some thoughts and recollections below the cut. 💙

Just in case the first escape room experience didn't quite convince you, Moriarty is dead. It's very important that you know that going into this. He's the most dead anyone has ever been. He's so dead he "wishes he could die twice!", after all! They have to keep saying it because otherwise you might forget it, you see. Especially after Sherlock had a whole drug trip on a plane to prove how someone might have faked their death in such a manner only to conclusively decide that dear old Jimmy boy is in fact dead.

I'm assuming everyone reading this is already relatively familiar with the first escape room, and the whole bit where the Network is operating under the guise of "Doyle's Opticians," so I won't spend any time discussing that, except to say that we did get a few confused looks from the various Stamfords when we reappeared (after finishing the first escape room and making the choice to stick to non-alcoholic beverages at the Mind Palace prior to the second) to say, "Oh, no, we didn't get turned around or anything. We've just got a second appointment." (You mean to tell me that most people who go do one experience and then just... leave? Without doing the second one the very same day? What an absolutely unfathomable concept.)

The opening puzzles before the "John Watson held at gunpoint" briefing video (which was the same as that used for the first escape room) were particularly fun: you're shown a series of four images, and you have to figure out the pattern of what's changing (being mirrored, one might say?) between each one to choose the fifth of the sequence from a selection. (Ref. 1: Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them, John Yorke.)

And then you go on to 221B Baker Street for photos and a brief moment of shenanigans, and I must add a note here that the Stamford who was working with us on this round was brilliant, you could tell she was absolutely loving her job, and there was a bit of a spiel about observation and logic and deduction that turned out to actually be helpful in solving the puzzles in the first room. (Shocking, that she wasn't just harping on about those concepts for fun!)

Anyway, Mycroft shows up via video feed, per usual, and introduces the premise of this game: James Moriarty (who is most assuredly dead, by the way, it's very important that you remember that) programmed an AI before he died—"an archive of maniacal data"—and your job, as new (read: expendable) recruits in the Network, is to go into a virtual-reality space called the Nexus, where you need to hack into the AI and replace Moriarty's mind with—well, not yours, obviously, you're "far too, as they say, basic"—but with Sherlock's. But why not use Mycroft's mind? you may be asking. Especially if he's the smart one.—because, dear reader, "One Mycroft Holmes is already too great a gift for this world. Two would be an indulgence." And that's verbatim from Mycroft Holmes as protrayed by Mark Gatiss himself. I am going to haunt him in whatever comes after this life. Still can't believe that you give them money and in exchange they insult you for approximately ninety minutes and at the end you say 'thanks, this was so much fun, I will definitely be doing this again!'

Right before you go into the first room, you are helpfully reminded by Mycroft one last time that "despite what video games suggest, you absolutely can die in the virtual world." Bit of a theme they seem to be harping on! It's almost like they're trying to get you to really believe that Jim is actually dead or something!

(Photos are all from the official 221b social media accounts.)

The first room is a sort of fusion of the pool from TGG with a chemistry lab and a hospital corridor, and also a miniature version of Jim's prison cell from THOB is there. There's a mannequin of John Watson decked out in a Semtex vest in the corner, and you get the usual experience of solving lots of intellectually- and tactilely-satisfying puzzles, which included opening a bordering-on-comical number of lockers. The John mannequin has a key in his hand labelled "007" (classic!) and a phone in his pocket so you can text Mycroft. Moriarty reminds you that he's the good old-fashioned villain in this fairy tale, and that Sherlock needs him or he's nothing, and that John is Sherlock's "live-in ordinary person."

I also particularly enjoyed the little chemistry puzzle in this room—they do give you a periodic table on the wall, so you have all you need to solve it without any prior knowledge, but who goes to a Sherlock escape room without a graduate chemist in hand?

(We also decided after the fact that the gift shop definitely should have been selling packs of the stickers seen on the lockers in this room, one of which was notably a pixel-art TV with a rainbow screen and the phrase "brainwashed".)

The highlight here, however, was definitely the prison cell. There's a letter on the chair that's on Pentonville Prison letterhead and signed by Mycroft and otherwise consists of a paragraph or two of fully redacted text. The walls have a number of fun phrases scratched into them, like "THREE SIGNS IS NOT ENOUGH" and "TOO MANY THATCHERS", which continue to live in my mind rent-free. (Some of the other phrases were helpful hints for the puzzles you had to solve, but those two weren't even relevant for the puzzles, as I recall. They were just bonuses. Specifically designed to haunt me, personally.)

At some point in here, Moriarty—no, sorry; his recorded voice, because he's dead, remember! We're just poking around in his virtual mind! ("Jim recorded lots of little messages for me before he died," anyone?)—insults you over the speakers, saying, "Goldfish, goldfish, goldfish have better recall than you!" (Mycroft Holmes in TEH, "I'm living in a world of goldfish," anyone?)

Anyway, you solve all the puzzles and put the phone you were using to text Mycroft in Jim's prison cell and continue on your way, going further into the mind of Moriarty, in the direction of the "Watson Ward" and "No Sherlock beyond this point" arrows. (Big moment for "there's definitely a reason that every other character in the canon has the initials J(H)W or its respectable inversion JM" girlies!)

Also there's an audio clip of Jim saying "choo choo!" as you leave the room. (Big moment for TFP girlies! I think my exact words were "I am going to kill myself.")

Onto room two! Green lasers everywhere! (They definitely intended you to do a fun little acrobatics situation here but we were content to hit the floor and crawl to find the buttons to disable them.)

After you disable the lasers, you get to focus on the primary puzzle of the room: a wall covered with sketches of people and copies of incriminating evidence, and you have to connect the scarlet thread red strings between each member of the jury and the evidence that Jim was blackmailing them with—you know, from way back in TRF? When the key code wasn't important at all, it was just about knowing someone's pressure points? (There's a Mary who's having an affair and is a lesbian, btw. Just like our mystery corpse in the original escape room, we should never assume someone is straight when there's room for them to be gay.) This puzzle as a whole was really satisfying, I will say, though it did make us wish for either a notepad or a massive whiteboard to make notes on while we solved the little logic puzzles to match the people to their blackmail material. (They could give you little branded notepads and pens to take with you through the rooms, and to keep as a souvenir, like the ones hotels give you! It would be so fun!) This was definitely the puzzle we spent the majority of our time on.

And then you get to the highlight of this room: opening the safe to reveal Jim Moriarty himself—well, a mannequin version—decked out in the Crown Jewels, happy as could be. There's a reminder that nothing in the Tower of London is as valuable as a few tiny lines of computer code that can open any door. And Jim's written a silly little poem of sorts and draws far too much attention to both "the rod of power in his right hand's grasp" and "the Orb" between his legs (and then we were at the Tower of London two days later and found out that that's not just a euphemism, it's literally called the Orb? Unhinged behaviour. And I don't even know who to blame for it now. The "rod of power" bit was all him, though. Could have been normal and called it a scepter!) and you have to figure out a code and (spoilers!) the code is 7437. Which is fine and perfectly normal and I'm sure the vast majority of people who complete that room think nothing of it, but unfortunately, we were not a group of "the vast majority" and so our experience was not what you might call "fine and normal", because Mia input the code and there was a little beep of success of and then she, without missing a beat, went on to say, "Oh, that's so funny! That's the numbers for S-H-E-R," at which point Rebs and I immediately sank to the floor to stare into the abyss while waiting for the next door to open.

So, just to recap: the point of TRF was definitely that there was no code, there was never any code, it was just about knowing people's pressure points and getting them to do what you wanted, but now that we're inside Moriarty's mind it's definitely all about codes and there's a silly poem to draw attention to various things including, but not limited to, the Orb between his legs, and the code that you need from him so that you can go deeper into his mind is S-H-E-R. Yeah. Sure. Why not. This is Fine! What really haunts me is knowing how many people will do that escape room and will never know that that's what those numbers mean. Because why on earth would you?

(Just to prove how normal I am about this, I won't even say anything about a potential parallel between Moriarty's "Orb" situation and the globe on Mycroft's desk under Whitehall. See? I'm not even mentioning it, why would you bring up something like that? No M-theory here, no sir! Not a single trace of it!)

Congratulations, you've made it to the rooftop, where Sherlock jumped off a roof and James Moriarty met his end, and I swear Jim has a line somewhere in there complaining about how hard it is to plan this sort of thing. (Whatever that means!)

We've got screens playing clips from all thirteen episodes of the show—okay, that might be an exaggeration; I didn't actually check to see if there were clips from every single episode. But there were definitely clips from series four, which is very funny considering how the universe that these rooms seem to be set makes exactly zero mention of John's wife at any point in time. (Hey, hello, hi, it's me who's writing this. Obviously I noticed when there were shots from TFP on those screens.)—and there are computer-code-esque symbols on the walls and Jim is lying dead on the floor and Sherlock is standing on the edge of the rooftop.

Here are some fun facts for you: the gun is still in Jim's pocket. (He's definitely dead, though! You know how you shoot yourself in the head and then return your gun to its rightful place before you politely lay down and die?) And Sherlock's mannequin is wearing the purple shirt of sex a purple shirt, which is a detail that might not be noticed unless you're thoroughly ransacking his every pocket (twice) to check for a missing key, and I was going to say something about how of course he is, because what else would you expect him to be wearing when we're three levels deep in Moriarty's mind and the code to get this far was S-H-E-R, but then I went back and checked and Sherlock is, in fact, wearing a purple shirt at the end of TRF. (Which somehow still doesn't actually negate any of the above, imo.)

Anyway, the first puzzle in this room involves finding a bunch of physical puzzle pieces to solve a puzzle, and figuring out how to unlock doors to obtain all of the pieces, and some of the padlocks use code words that they give you by putting phrases from their "sophisticated and cerebral" merch on the screen and highlighting letters, and some use numbers that you get by solving other riddles, but one of them is a padlock with a physical key and (spoiler!) it turns out that you don't even need to get the key for that one, because there's another way to get the puzzle piece out without unlocking the door at all! (Was his grand daylight robbery scheme a matter of keys and codes, or was it just about knowing people's pressure points and blackmailing them? You decide!)

And then it's time to manage the final task of uploading Sherlock's brain to the AI, which is accomplished by running around hitting buttons while music plays over the speakers to instil a sense of great urgency. You definitely would not want to do this with fewer than three members in your party. This is where they use Jim's line of "Surprise! You didn't think I'd just disappear, did you?" as seen in one of the teaser trailers, and they also plaster every screen with the classic "Did you miss me?" footage that mysteriously appeared on every screen in the country at the end of HLV.

But when you do manage to complete the task, Mycroft's voice comes back to congratulate you, and to sort of threaten you (though that's par for the course when it's Mycroft Holmes we're talking about, I'll admit), and to leave open the possibility of your returning for another job someday. I, for one, cannot wait to see what they're going to do for round three. (Personally, I think it would be very funny if they put one of the rooms on the Demeter for the next one. No rebranding necessary, no discussion of Dracula at any point whatsoever, but for some reason you find yourself on a boat, in cabin number 9, playing chess with the Devil himself Moriarty! What a shocking and unforeseen turn of events that would be!)

(The only real downside of them doing a third room would be that I would then have to make time to do three of these in one day. And that might be a bit excessive. I mean, three eye exams in one day? Someone's definitely going to say something.)

We had a very lovely time at the Mind Palace bar after that, to debrief a bit, and there was a logic puzzle that I still need to sit down and crack at some point when I have a moment. I was personally very pleased to find drinks called "The Diogenes Club" and "The Lying Detective" (both of which I was contractually obligated to order, naturally), and did you know you can rent out the bar for private events? I'm sure I would be very normal about such a situation. (Good job I'm not local to the area, truly!)

This has already gone longer than I think I intended, and I'm sure I could keep going, given the opportunity, but I'll close things out here, and say again that I do absolutely recommend doing the escape room(s) if you have the opportunity; I could not have been more pleased with the experience. My sole complaint is that they don't let you wander back through the rooms after solving the puzzles to have a moment to appreciate all the small details when you're not working against the clock. And also they should send me the scripts, as a treat. Along with any remaining unused video or audio footage. (Moftiss, my DMs are open, feel free to drop the links at your earliest convenience!)

[pandorafallz]

In the Alma Memory sequence, you can look around and guess what, there's a momma and baby!!

tbh, I know they were given all the stolen Sarentu were toddlers and children but this is the first in-game baby I've actually seen. I've only ever seen children at the clans, no babies, probably due to not knowing where to put them or who to give them to, NPC wise.

I saw this last year, my sister found it but I never got around to posting it. Baby's face looks a little... robotic so enjoy the back-shot here. Tho i do find it funny they're not strapped to mama's chest. Noe, just resting in a little blanket.

Either this baby died in the massacre given its young age and TAP probably wouldn't provide for such a young infant, probably a few months into life and if it's one of the stolen Sarentu who they did cater for, who? Not the PC since they were old enough to sit up on their own and talk. There were four other children from the moot that's in UNKNOWN survival territory.

If they did take the baby, was it possible that Alma was put to care for them in her avatar in the early days or did TAP at the very least use the avatar's natural resources to provide what they can't in terms of feeding the Na'vi baby some form of nutrition? I can't see Alma disagreeing if it made her feel important and useful if the idea came up. Plus, as the only female avatar in TAP, she was probably the only real option with the required tool set and scale to handle a Na'vi baby. even if the former isn't direct given rules about physical contact, Humans handling a Na'vi baby in TAP is horrifying, size-wise comical trying to pick them up. I know, I'm going on a bit but those are just my thoughts based on available data.

Possibilities.

[phoenotopia]

Star Iliad DevLog # 02: The Importance of Pacing

When it comes to making commercial video games, let's just say it's not our first rodeo 😎

(It's our second)

Steam automatically compiles various play data from gamers. From Phoenotopia, I know that we have a roughly even split of keyboard users and gamepad users. From achievements, I can tell which bosses were defeated and how far the player got (although our implementation of achievements requires the user manually unlock it, so it's less useful data). Today, I want to focus on one specific data point—the median playtime for Phoenotopia.

Unfortunately, the median playtime clocks in at 4 hours.

I think that's right when the player reaches Atai.

(Atai - the death place of so many playthroughs)

A working theory has been forming:

Atai is the first real "slog" where players are stuck in one place for a long time. It’s a big town with 70+ NPCs to chat with. It’s easy to get lost, feel like you're not making progress, and then tap out.

Two major quest lines must be completed before reaching the second dungeon: getting the bombs and getting the flute.

Get BOMBS

Meet Lisa and learn of her plight

Find the bomb maker’s house—it's locked.

Tell Lisa you need to unlock a door.

Lisa refers you to Garnet, who gives you a “watch the kids” quest.

Play hide-and-seek with the kids.

Comb through the entire town looking for the kids

Go to the bomb maker's house and claim bombs

Get FLUTE

Meet Lisa and learn of her plight

Find the jailed Ouroboros man—he wants wine.

Go to the tavern—no ID, no wine.

Talk with Lisa and get her ID

Dye your hair to look like Lisa

Buy wine with fake ID

Go to the Ouroboros bandit and exchange it for the flute

Phew. Looking back, that is a LOT. And we don't even have a quest tracker >_>

I love romping through towns and chatting with NPCs—it’s my favorite part of JRPGs (the genre I’d be making if I weren’t making this). But maybe I let that influence the design a bit too much 🤔

During these quests, there’s very little action—unless players explore optional caves (which don’t quite scratch the itch). So after 1-2 hours of town questing, many players drop off. That’s why so many runs end at 4 hours. That's my theory anyway.

That brings us to today’s blog topic: PACING

Long story sequences should generally be avoided—it's a sign of poor pacing. If a long sequence can’t be trimmed down, it should at least be broken up with action. Think of it like making a burger—it needs balance.

(Atai is like the burger on the left—only meaty "story" sequences. A well-paced game is like the burger on the right — it utilizes crucial tomato and lettuce "action" set pieces to mix things up)

Now, one of our new core design goals for Star Iliad is that if you take any 90 minute slice of gameplay from anywhere in the game's campaign, you’ll experience all of the following:

Exploration

Combat

Puzzles

Boss Fight

New Upgrade

Story Progression

That's the core "game loop". Of course, to stay balanced presents its own challenges because we can only control so much. Players set their own pace, and some will inevitably get lost. As designers, we can mitigate this by packing the game with so much content that there's always something new around the corner - make getting lost fun!

(It's going to be a lot of work though...)

It does raise some challenging design questions. For example, how can you deliver "story" sequences when you're deep in the whale's intestines, far away from town?

Our answer is to employ something akin to Metal Gear Solid's codec calls. It's the future and people have "cell phones" (or holographic communicators in our case). You can call NPCs and they can call you (Players can also ignore calls if they'd prefer less story)

To conclude —pacing is important! No more hour+ long story sequences! Excepting a couple scenarios - say at a crucial turning point in the game. Long exposition dumps need to be earned. Pacing is something we’re going to be vigilant about through all of development.

(Steve Ballmer understands how important Pacing is)

Thanks for reading!

(Next update will be in two months, at May’s end)

[idontparticularlyliketoast]

That fucking robot got in my head dog

***

BOOT UP SEQUENCE READY

FIRMWARE

LATEST UPDATE: (2112.08.06)

CALIBRATION

EXPIRED

NEW CALIBRATION REQUIRED

AUDIO OK

“-works!” A voice said. It echoed strangely.

There was the sound of an engine humming, but smoother, quieter. Not the tell-tale gurgle of blood-mechanisms.

VIDEO OK

It’s vision flickered on, a ceiling looming above it. Old stone. Something next to it was glowing, a faint yellow hue filling the space.

MECHANICS ERROR

RUN DIAGNOSTIC

MECHANICS DIAGNOSTIC RESULT:

FOREIGN MATERIAL DETECTED

FOREIGN CODE DETECTED

CRITICAL SYSTEMS COMPROMISED

FUEL RESERVES AT 0%

SHUT DOWN IN 3 2 1

“What– no– don’t– ugh.” The person beside it shifted, and the light pulsed blue.

ERROR

SHUT DOWN HALTED DUE TO FUEL DISCREPANCY

ALL SYSTEMS POWERED

FUEL RESERVES AT 0%

ERROR

RUN DIAGNOSTIC

CALIBRATION DIAGNOSTIC RESULT:

FOREIGN MATERIAL COMPATIBLE WITH UNIT MECHANICS

FOREIGN CODE COMPATIBLE WITH OPERATING SYSTEM

ACCEPT FOREIGN MATERIAL?

YES

CALIBRATION RESUMED

MECHANICS OK

A thousand connections fired, a thousand little servos testing a new body. The resulting feedback was clear. The legs were standard issue, as was the right arm and head. The foreign object was the left arm, and a section of the diaphragm.

STATUS UPDATE:

MACHINE ID: VI

LOCATION: UNKNOWN

CURRENT OBJECTIVE: DETERMINE SITUATION

V1 rotated its head, inspecting the changes. The new arm resembled their right in form, but it was a completely new material, golden and glowing.

It then glanced up.

Standing beside it, holding a clip-board, was an angel.

Prior experience determined this was a new subtype. It had a more human form than a Virtue, but it didn’t have enough armor to be an arch-angel. A gold and silver helm with a design that mimicked rings of eyes. Some basic vambraces. All the rest of their form was covered by cloth drapings.

ERROR

PRIORITY OVERRIDE

REASON: FUEL RESERVES AT 0%

NEW OBJECTIVE: FIND FUEL

Prior experience indicated that V1 would be strapped down to the table. It was standard procedure when working with blood-fueled machines. It would be idiotic to wake up a hungry machine and not at least restrain it. V1 prepared to break the restraints.

V1 was not strapped down. It automatically discarded that strain of data-analysis, its core frantically trying to conserve energy. Energy that it shouldn’t have, because it didn’t have any blood.

CURRENT OBJECTIVE: BLOOD

The angel didn’t have any time to react before they were on the ground, V1 on top of them. The new arm was no Knuckleblaster, but it still smashed in the angel’s chest. Crimson splashed upwards, and its strikes grew in speed. Over and over again, it crushed glowing flesh, fists trading blows with ruthless efficiency.

Only when the blood stopped flowing, and the flesh stopped glowing, did V1 stop hitting.

FUEL RESERVES AT 41%

DATA ANALYSIS:

MANKIND IS DEAD

HELL IS GONE.

BLOOD IS FUEL.

THIS UNIT WAS FUNCTIONING AT 0%.

RESULTS INCONCLUSIVE

NEW OBJECTIVE: FIND A WEAPON

It scanned its surroundings. The work-station it had been laying on was nothing more than cut stone. Around it, someone has set up various tables, which held unknown tools and substances. The tables were definitely a newer addition– everything else in the room was covered in a fine layer of dust, including the blood-splattered floor. The room was a square of sharp stone angles with V1’s slab in the center. The only thing else of interest were a series of shelves cut directly into the rock walls.

Most of the shelves held crumbling books, irrelevant. But just behind where V1’s head had lain, on a particularly large shelf, were guns**. Large ones, small ones, even a few that looked like they’d been pulled right off the back of other machines.

V1 started throwing them into its wings with gleeful abandon. It had just finished shoving a massive rail cannon into its storage when the data connected; these weren’t random guns, these were its** guns. And, if its internal storage systems were working correctly, they had ammo.

It continued shoving them into its storage, and then began exploring the room.

NEW OBJECTIVE: ESCAPE

There was no clear door for the angel to have come. Could it have teleported inside? Possibly, but V1 was not sure the tables were small enough for an angel to teleport. Especially one of a lower power-level. Prior experience suggested there was a relation between matter moved and power expended. V1 noticed a break in pattern; there were only shelves on three walls of the room. It jumped over to the wall, and punched it with the new arm.

It flashed gold, and the stone cracked. The sound echoed like a gunshot in the small chamber.

It considered the glowing arm, and labeled it Godpiercer. Godpiercer was sending what V1 could only interpret as off-signals for certain temporary conditions. It switched a random one on.

The arm prompted a further selection:

SPECIFY FORM:

MEMORY/FEEDBACKER

MEMORY/KNUCLEBLASTER

MEMORY/WHIPLASH

FEEDBACKER OK

The golden metal glowed brighter, and began to twist and warp. Metal plates wrenched apart, light growing in a sudden and violent osmosis. A second, more familiar arm, tore itself free from its sibling. “Feedbacker” glowed with an alien light. V1 made a quick inspection; a near perfect copy.

FUEL RESERVES AT 39%

Immediately, the machine switched the function off. The mimic arm was reabsorbed instantly, but the burnt fuel didn’t return.

NEW OBJECTIVE: DETERMINE MECHANISM USED BY ANGEL. IF FUEL DROPS TO 37% BEFORE OBJECTIVE COMPLETION, THEN SUMMON KNUCKLEBLASTER AND DESTROY WALL.

It returned to the body, and reached down to tear the skull off, before stopping. It was not in Hell, and if the angel had to be decapitated to use the mechanism, it wouldn’t have been able to revive V1. It settled instead for picking up the entire corpse and hucking it towards the wall.

No result. It scanned the rest of the room.

There was nothing else except the books and the angel’s tools. It began pulling books off the shelves, scanning through them as quickly as its processor could handle.

No relevant data. Many of the books were poorly constructed, damaged or otherwise unreadable. It was mostly disconnected sentence fragments, with no clear relation to the stone chamber or the construction. Its processor flagged some passages as containing familiar phrases and names. They were disregarded as irrelevant to the current objective.

Nothing. It returned to the angel’s tools, and began scanning and categorizing them. Group context suggested they were tools for repairing complex machinery and robotics, though many of them were completely alien.

It picked up a screwdriver. It threw it at the wall. The screwdriver tinged off, falling onto the angel’s body with a slightly wet thunk.

V1 began throwing all of the tools at the wall.

It succeeded in destroying a good amount of the angel’s tools, and the carefully pristine room was now a complete wreck. There was no other effect.

Its fuel reserves ticked down.

NEW OBJECTIVE: BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THAT WALL

It sprang to the new vacated bookshelf on the far side, its legs crouched, springs coiled. It summoned Knuckleblaster, the gold and red mass pulling free with the sound of a sword unsheathing. Then it powered its legs, aiming right for the spot it had previously cracked.

Shining metal met stone with the force of a bullet shot at point-blank, and the wall shattered.

A moment later, the machine stood up out of the rubble, and scanned its surroundings. It was dusk, and V1 was in a forest.

This was not a visual error. It double-checked.

RUN DIAGNOSTIC

MEMORY DIAGNOSTIC RESULT:

EARTH WAS A BURNT RUIN

MANKIND WAS DEAD

HELL WAS DESTROYED

THIS UNIT CONTINUED OPERATION FOR 5.6 YEAR(S) PAST PROJECTED TERMINATION DATE DUE TO GABRIEL

ESSENTIAL MOBILITY AND FUEL RETAINMENT SYSTEMS DEGRADED AND WERE UNABLE TO BE REPLACED

THIS UNIT DIED

ALL DATA CORRECT

That was… exactly what it remembered. It explained nothing. There was no sign of memory tapering in the diagnostic or gaps in recording. It had** died in a corpse of a world bled dry. And now it was standing in a forest, alive.

And it was still hungry.

FUEL RESERVES AT 36%

NEW OBJECTIVE: FIND FUEL

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: FIND ANSWERS AND/OR GABRIEL

[ladylucksrogue]

For the fluff prompts, may I request TechPhee and the prompt:

“Because I love you.”

Thank you in advance! 💙

Thank you so much for the request!

While I have written the Bad Batch into my Unexpected universe during the war, I hadn't given much thought as to what their role or their lives would look like after...this gave me an opportunity to explore that, and I will be exploring it more in the actual story.

Not to give too much away, but after the war and clone rights are pushed through, the Kaminoans retaliate in the sense that the clones are no longer their problem and basically give the Republic short notice to evacuate the rest of the clones in the facilities, no longer their problem. There is a mad scramble to do that, but it's a bit of a traumatic experience.

The Bad Batch was on Kamino for that, they also meet Omega and leave with her, still meet Cid and still end up on Pabu, just...a touch different and minus the Empire.

Also available on A03

The bed was empty.

Phee woke slowly before awareness fully caught up. Her hand reached across the sheets, found them cool.

She sat up.

The house was quiet, really quiet, Pabu quiet. She pulled on her robe.

It was pitch dark beyond the windows. She checked the chrono: 03:14.

She padded barefoot through the kitchen, pausing to glance toward the back patio. Nothing. The caf machine was cold.

She found him in the small workshop he’d set up for himself.

The desk light was on. Tech sat hunched over two separate consoles, eyes scanning rapidly across side-by-side data streams. One screen displayed a solar panel diagnostic. The other was a mess of dense script she didn’t recognize.

Phee leaned in the doorway, arms crossed. She didn’t need to see his face to know he was tense.

“Tech.”

He didn’t look up.

She stepped forward, voice softer. “Tech, it’s three in the morning.”

“I know,” he said, still typing.

She watched him for a beat. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” he replied. His tone was even, distracted. “I thought I’d rerun the calibration on the solar array. There was a slight energy imbalance...”

There wasn’t. She knew that. He did too.

“Nightmare?” she asked knowingly.

He was silent for a moment. “Memories.”

“About?”

 “Kamino.” He said it so quiet she nearly missed it.

Her stomach pulled tight. “So nightmare.”

“It’s not—” he stopped. Adjusted the frame of his goggles. “Nightmares are distortions. Irrational constructions of the subconscious. This was real.”

“They woke you up. Your reaction��s real too,” she pointed out.

He didn’t argue, but he didn’t agree either.

“I ran calculations. Rebuilt the evacuation path. Ran new timing sequences. If I’d ordered the lifts in reverse, if I’d ignored the warning alarms… if I’d started with the subchamber instead of the main facility—”

Phee knelt beside him, not interrupting. He’d never talk about this if she cut him off.

“I thought… maybe I could still find a better version of it,” he murmured, eyes still on the screen. “Something that proves it wasn’t a failure.”

She didn’t touch him. Not until he stopped typing.

“Tech. It wasn’t your fault.” She told him.

He didn’t look away. “We still failed. The mission failed.”

Her hands found his.

“You got a lot out. Omega. The toddlers. The ones nobody else would have gotten out in time.”

“I know,” he said, voice barely audible. “But I remember every face we passed in the labs that day. Every chamber we couldn’t open fast enough.”

Phee leaned in, resting her forehead against his.

“Grief isn’t a puzzle you can solve, Tech.”

“It’s not grief,” he said suddenly, too sharp. “It’s… it’s memory.  That’s all.”

“Isn’t that kind of the same thing?”

He blinked, she saw it, the exhaustion behind his eyes. The tight set of his jaw.

“Come back to bed,” she said gently.

“You should rest,” he deflected, voice flat. “You need sleep.”

“I’m not going to sleep without you.”

“You don’t need to stay up on my account.”

“I’m not staying up on your account,” she said. “I’m staying up because I love you. And if staying up all night is what it takes, fine. I’ll out-stubborn you. No problem.”

That got a flicker of reaction, a twitch of his mouth, barely there.

“I don’t need—”

“You need sleep. You need not to sit alone at three in the morning trying to fix something that’s already done.  You can’t change it, and driving yourself crazy with what ifs isn’t going to help. You need to be reminded that you’re here, that maybe someone cares about that.”

That cracked something.  He looked at her like he didn’t quite know how to respond. Sometimes, at moments like this, she thought it still shocked him sometimes, that someone could see him like this, know him this well, and stay . Especially her.

Over a year ago, they’d met on a job, back when things had been different for them, harder.  When they’d still worked for Cid. Back when they were still half wired with distrust. He’d never expected it to turn into anything, neither had she but it did.

Now they were here, together on Pabu. Sharing breakfast, a life, a home , sleeping in the same bed.

She knew his routines. Knew when to call him out and when to hold off and let him find his way.

She held out her hand. “Come on.”

It took him a beat, but he turned off the console and took her hand.

Let her lead him back to bed.

Pabu’s quiet settled around them. There was a breeze from outside, the smell of salt, the sound of waves.

Phee didn’t say anything. She just curled into his side, pulled the blanket over both of them. Her fingers carded gently through his hair.

She could feel it in the way he finally let go of tension, how his breath evened out.

She kept stroking his hair until his hand, resting lightly at her hip, went slack and the man she loved finally slept beside her.

[anachronismstellar]

I'm awake and I WAS ABLE TO WRITE even tho idk if I'm happy about this scene I think it's time to tell y'all how our dear Mobei-Jun is doing

He's...... Well. Here we go.

-----

Mobei did his best to avoid the food and water, but the chambers were not a laughing matter, the sequence of battles disrupting his recovery, forcing him to feed instead of meditating and gathering energy. They have gotten progressively worse, to the point of him finishing the last one with a cold to his bones so intense that made him swear to buy the softest carpets for Qinghua when he got back.

Because he would be back. Not if, when.

Another problem had been time. It felt like it ran differently inside the weird temple; he would look at the running numbers on the floating parchment, fight for hours, glare at it again and see that a few minutes had passed by. He was tired, but certainly not enough to lose time? But the other option would be the shapeshifter being capable of manipulating it. Then, how long has it been since he saw Qinghua? Weeks? Months?

He mustered all his energy to put the dark thoughts aside, head throbbing, arm numb. This time the Thing had made him exhaust his shadows, the roaring beast of his ancestors’ power eerily subdued.

He was ready to fall face forward on the bed when the sound of clapping made him turn around, an ice sword at ready.

“Oh, I apologize. It wasn't my intention to startle you,” the Thing said as kept Its distance, hands still clasped together.

“What. Do you want.” Mobei kept his sword pointed at It, muscles burning from tension. It was like a river of fire was coursing through his veins, making him hyper aware of his vulnerable state.

“I've came to congratulate you.” The Thing took a step to the side, then other, then one more, starting a wide circle around Mobei. “Your progress through the chambers has been remarkable. Better than expected,” It stopped next to the table where all the foods and drinks were served, most of them untouched. “However, your strength still is not up to your normal standards.”

Mobei had to force his body not to react, to not attack and kill the Thing and be done with this farce of kidnapping once and for all. It was provoking him, baiting him into being harsh. Even so the grip on his sword tightened, the ice not cracking purely because of it being made by Mobei himself.

“I don't understand what you mean by that.”

The Thing picked up one of the many berries, turning it side to side before eating it with a blank expression. Then It licked Its fingers, staring at Mobei.

“Would that suffice?” The bowl was pretty, translucid jade carved with drawings all over the rim, a piece of beauty that seemed to have been stolen from the Heavens. He could easily reach and grab it. He was wise enough to ignore the offer. Instead he kept his eyes on the Thing, considering his chances.

If Mobei attacked It, he would die. He was too tired and using a portal would be impossible at the moment. He considered running to the door, but what would be the chances of it being unlocked? Slim to none.

He might not have another opportunity, but it was most certainly a trap-

“What do you mean?” he asked instead of acting, the tip of his sword scraping the jade bowl, tapping it to the side.

“I've just demonstrated that the food is not poisoned. I have no intention of harming you, that would make this entire interaction pointless. If I wanted to kill you, you would already be dead.” It said with a small tilt of Its head to the side, picking up another berry, slowly chewing it as if having to count the bites. “You've been maintaining the bare minimum to survive the chambers,” the Thing made a noise that Mobei guessed it was supposed to be a sigh. “However, to have accurate data you need to be at your full strength. Which means you have to eat.”

“I have eaten,” he snapped as he shifted his foot, talking the smallest step towards the door. Many years ago, the possibility of even considering running away from an enemy would be unspeakable. Now? His husband had taught him more than once the advantages of living another day to fight back.

He couldn't- he wouldn't die here, away from Qinghua.

“Not enough,” the Thing moved Its fingers as if plucking the air, the clicking sound of a lock settling in place making Mobei let a curse through his teeth. “Consider this an incentive. The more you postpone having proper meals and rest, the longer it will take for you to return to user UV001.”

Again with that cursed title, as if Qinghua were a thing instead of a person, as if he were an amusing toy and all of this has been a ploy to make his husband dance in circles trying to find Mobei.

“Why do you call him that?” He didn't want to keep talking with the Thing, but he recognized an opportunity to gather information when he saw one. “Why not call him by his name?”

“Why would you want to know?” the Thing asked after eating Its third or fourth berry, bright green eyes focusing on Mobei-Jun as It started walking back towards the door. “This information is not relevant to you or to your progress in the chambers.”

This wasn’t his type of battlefield, and Mobei wasn't good at improvising. Politics and thinking fast on his feet had been Shang Qinghua's skill. It was what made them a ruthless pair. When his husband's honey words weren't enough, Mobei was there to be his sword and see that his will was done. And when Mobei ice and shadows couldn't reach the minds and hearts of enemies, Shang Qinghua was there with a whisper and a smile, ready to turn the tables to their favor.

It wasn't as if he were bad at court machinations, he had been raised by his uncle after all. He just preferred not to deal with it. And by letting Qinghua be responsible for most of the paperwork in the past years, he might have become a bit rusty on these types of confrontations.

He didn't close his eyes, but still he threw a prayer for any Gods that might hear to lend him the brains to beat the Thing in their game.

“Shang Qinghua had many names during our life together,” he said slowly, buying himself time to think. “But you call him by a title this one has never heard before. Makes this one think that you've known Shang Qinghua from somewhere else.”

“Ah,” It walked towards Mobei, offering the food one more time, a stilled smile pulling Its face, baring Its teeth in a poor imitation of kindness. “Good to see that your mind is sharp even with your levels of exhaustion. However, this information cannot be given freely.”

“And I'm willing to pay a price for it,” he took the bowl from the Thing's hand, eating one of the berries in a demonstration of good will.

The Thing's eyes glowed as they became unfocused, staring over Mobei's shoulder. The silence dragged, heavy as a serpent-boar from the southern valleys, the Thing static, as if It had been frozen.

It blinked, the image of Its face shifting like a spectral shadow, overlaying for a second, worsening Mobei's headache. The unsettling smile; that It had dropped while staring at the wall, came back with vengeance as the Thing pulled too many of the magical parchments up, the crackling magic giving It a maniac air that sent shivers down Mobei's spine.

He swallowed dry, as if a heavy stone scratched his throat and sunk down on his stomach, the taste of berries turning into ashes on his mouth.

“Let's make a deal, then.” It said as It touched one of the parchments, moving Its fingers over symbols that Mobei couldn't comprehend. “For each chamber you complete using your full strength and energy you will acquire a number of points. You can trade these points for answers. As a reward.”

“Very well,” he agreed with a sharp nod, holding back a flinch when the cold fingers touched his forehead, right on his demon mark. “Congratulations, congratulations, congratulations. I hope you enjoy your beta user experience!”

Then It vanished, leaving Mobei with the feeling of having sold his soul for a meager price.

-----

This System thanks Mobei-Jun for his efforts

[grantmentis]

And Kori tried to go back to the lines that were scoring at the beginning of the season and nothing clicked. Like she tried the MGM, Labelle, Dalton line again and it didn't work, although I do think Dalton's been injured for weeks now. She tried Boreen and Gardiner on the same line and that didn't work, she tried KO up on the first line for a bit, didn't work. Stacey's leg has also been heavily taped since January. Just a bad second half of the season.

They went on that win streak/good sequence in the time Stacey went out, came back, Labelle got injured and Laskova started to reintegrate. It's almost like they were getting extra motivation from all the injuries going on that by the second half and end of the season they were mentally exhausted and burnt out.

I also think the depth scoring was coming from players who at the beginning were not the most defensively sound so they weren't thinking of the defensive consequence of a potentially risky play. As the season went on everyone committed to the defensive structure to the point where (in my opinion) it hindered their offensive instincts and they started second guessing before making a play.

The last point is interesting especially I’d love to do a deep dive on that. I would definitely love to see more risk taking offensively especially with one of the best / most consistent goalies in the world behind them, but I know ARD had injury troubles at some point in the season so idk if that effected how they went about things.

One interesting thing about Montreal is they seem to have the best data analytics team imo (maybe I’m biased tho bc some of those ppl have public work in the past I read) and with two seasons of sample size now I’m excited to see what direction they go in from those findings