#yes I use two computers for my stream setup

[bit-b]

I updated my workstation setup! I moved the stream PC closer to where the sound booth is. So hopefully, this will make collabs and recording a lot easier than it was.

This is what MANY years of tinkering and reiterating does to a man.

[razorblade180]

Streamer AU 6

Number 5 <-

Weiss:*rolls into view*….I’ve returned.

Yang:The bitch is back.

Weiss:Wow! Okay, rude. It’s not like I really left. I was in your streams all the time. I just don’t feel like doing my own after missions.

Yang:And yet somehow you still have more subscribers than me.

Photo Bunny gifted 30 subs

Weiss:Oh my gods! Velvet, thank you so much!

Yang:And the rich get richer!!!

Weiss:She says, knowing I’m not rich anymore.

Yang:And yet the money still pours in. Chat, make her play a horror game for being gone for so long.

“Yes!”

“PLEASE!”

“Alien Isolation.”

Weiss:Absolutely not. We have plans already. I’m just waiting for my co-host.

Yang:What am I then?

Weiss:A person who saw me hit the “live” button and immediately hopped into call to call me a bitch.

Yang:It’s in all in good love.

The Reaper: “Ayo! Look who’s back!”

Yang:Ruby, call Weiss a bitch.

Weiss:I’ll un-mod you. I’ve learned to do that recently.

Ruby: *enters call* Oh gods, chat, she’s learning computers. Tech savvy Weiss is dangerous. Who taught her such power?

Weiss:Your girlfriend.

Ruby:Oh, sorry chat. My girl can do no wrong.

Protector of Friendship: “💚”

Ruby:What’s the gameplan today? “Just chatting?” We can play Uno again.

Weiss:You hate teamwork. I swear you do.

Yang:Sends us on a life threatening mission where trust is needed, just to ruin it a day later.

Thunder Thighs: “How was mission? Everyone okay?”

Weiss:It was just bandits. Lots and lots of them. Unfortunately they ruined a village so most of the expenses went to rebuilding the town.

Yang:Chat, this woman is only on camera right now because her power bill is scaring her. This cute face has a price tag.

Weiss:Hey! I actually missed gaming. It’s oddly relaxing when I don’t listen to Ruby’s suggestions. Or Blake’s.

Ninja of Love: “League actually isn’t that bad.”

Ruby:That’s what I’m saaaaaying!

Yang:Don’t listen to them. They’re ill and can’t be cured.

Weiss:*looks at scroll*…Oh, I’ll be right back. Yang, you’re in charge. *gets up*

Ruby:Why not me?

Weiss:Because Yang doesn’t play League!

Ruby:You two lack vision. The four of us could be our own team! We could grab a few more friends and train for tournaments.

Ren: *enters call* Ruby, you are way too toxic for that. *leaves call*

Yang:Hahahahaha!

Ruby:You can’t just show up to say that!?

Weiss walks back into view rolling a second chair next to her. She’s then handed a coffee cup she gladly sips as she sits back down, all nice and cozy. Sitting next to her is Jaune, chilling in her merch hoodie as he waves.

Jaune:Hello…

“Whaaaat?”

“Oh it’s the guy.”

“Hi Jaaaaaaune!”

“Nerd alert”

“Co-host?”

Yang:I can’t believe you chose the other blonde over me. How cruel. What does he have I don’t?

Jaune:*holds up Kingdom Hearts*

Ninjas of Love: “FINALLY!”

Yang:..I would’ve bought it.

Ruby:Alright, maybe you chose better than Uno.

Weiss:Okay everyone, you can guess tonight’s game. It’s not like it hasn’t won several polls.

Ruby:Oh! Oh! Weiss, sub goal idea! 80 subs and you have to do a cover of the opening!

Weiss:I haven’t even heard it yet!

Jaune:You might like it more than the song from FFX.

Weiss:….

Yang:She’s setting you up for success.

Weiss:…We will circle back to that. Speaking of FFX, same rules apply. I don’t need back-seating from chat. My wonderful co-host here will help manage the stream and aid me with anything I ask.

Blake: *enters call* Jaune, what version is that?

Jaune:It’s from the 1.5 collection, so final mix. Post the patch.

Blake:You’re a good man.

Weiss:Do you want the camera on you or is that uncomfortable?

Jaune:I’m okay. This setup is nice.

Ruby:Questions like these wouldn’t be an issue if you got a VTube model. Penny could hook you up.

Weiss:I only recently learned how to fix normal PC problems. Don’t put that burden on me.

Yang:What does OBS stand for?

Weiss:I saved your life yesterday. What’s your damage with me?

Big Bags & Miniguns: “Is this the mystery boyfriend we’ve been searching for?”

Weiss:Cocoa, you’ve known Jaune forever. He’s always been around as a mod.

Thunder Thighs: “That wasn’t a no.”

Jaune:I literally showed my copy of the game. You all know why I’m here.

Cardinal Pride: “As if she’d date someone as lame as-

Message Deleted

Photo Bunny: “Please remember the chat guidelines before typing”

Ruby:I would’ve blocked him.

Weiss:He gets one more chance. I’m in a good mood.

Jaune:That’s the Kingdom Hearts spirit. *puts disc in*

Weiss:This won’t make me cry like Final Fantasy did, will it?

Blake:Oh….sweetie….

Weiss:*inhales* Great.

Yang:I already made a crude layout for the singing goal. I swear graphic designers should be thankful I like cars and fighting Grimm more.

Jaune:Don’t have any lower goals?

Weiss:I’m 20 away from having to cosplay a character from a game I’ve played. They also get to vote on an emote.

BB&MG: “How many subs for a boyfriend reveal?”

Weiss:…*rubs chin*

Ruby:You’re thinking about it!?

Weiss:I mean I’d have to talk it over with him to see if he’s comfortable with others knowing, but also that goal has to be high enough for Cocoa to be scared.

Jaune:….This game isn’t terribly long, and you have new followers. Personally I’d shoot for no less than 300.

The Monkey King: “Bleed her dry. 350”

BB&MG: “I thought we were friends Sun?”

Weiss:350 it is! After I discuss it of course.

“You’re on!”

“You underestimate our power!”

“I swear if it’s Neptune.”

“Just wait until payday!”

Yang:Like I said, the rich get richer.

[pennotfound]

Inspired by George's stream the other day, a bit of DNF fluff for you all

somebody like you

1000 words

Some days were difficult to be productive. Dream knew the hills and valleys were a normal part of content creation. Some days were a struggle to keep his head above water, and others he’d be flying high on a wave of hyperfocus. When he got zeroed in and nothing could stop him.

He liked those days, and although they took Dream away from George and Sapnap for a day or two at a time - he knew they could find plenty of things to entertain themselves with.

Most of the time.

Today was a mixture of the two, a day when his inklings of hyperfocus tried to shine through the fog of distraction.

When he called Mom earlier, Drista answered and suggested something called body doubling.

“Body doubling?” Dream repeated, confused. “What’s that?”

Drista sighed on the other end of the line, clearly exasperated by her big brother. “It’s this thing, a lot of people with ADHD use it, where you do your work with someone else in the room. Just sitting there. To hold you accountable. I do it all the time here at school.”

“Hmm, sounds interesting. Thanks, sis,” Dream replied.

“Anytime, dork.” Drista laughed, and he could picture her sticking out her tongue before she ended the call.

Body doubling. Huh. It was worth a try.

Which brought him to now, George sitting on his office daybed, staring at him.

How was he supposed to get any work done this way, with his best friend sitting there, smelling and looking like he’d just showered, his dark, damp curls sticking out in all directions.

Maybe he should have asked Sapnap instead. Except he was packing for that trip.

Dream sighed, vowing to make the most of it. He stretched out his hands, cracked his knuckles, and began his editing.

And he didn’t know what it was, but after a couple minutes, George’s soft even breaths behind him spurred Dream on.

His hands flew over the keyboard with increasing quickness and Dream smiled, excited that he’d finally hit his stride.

Well, almost.

“Dream,” George whined from his spot on Dream’s office bed.

Dream heaved a sigh, hoping that if he ignored George, he’d stop.

He didn’t.

“Dream,” George whined again,

“Yes?” Dream turned around in his chair, the strain on his neck and back apparent with the motion.

“I’m bored.”

“I’m Dream,” he held out his hand, a smirk on his lips. “Nice to meet you, bored.”

“Oh, ha ha,” George rolled his eyes. “That’s sooo funny.”

“Thanks,” Dream grinned, then turned back to his setup. “It’s one of my favorites.”

A pause, the only sound in the room the whirring of his computer fans.

“Dreeeeeam,” George whined again, more annoying than before. “I’m so bored,”

“Body doubling isn't supposed to be exciting.” Dream tried to ignore him and focus on his task at hand. “Why don’t you find something to do? Maybe bring that new laptop in here. Then I can body double for you and we can both get some work done.”

“But I don’t have any work to do,” George flipped his phone over in his hands a few times.

“Liar," Dream replied. “I know for a fact that you have at least two videos you could be working on right now.”

“But my laptop is all the way up in my office,” George slumped against wall. “And this bed is so comfy.

Dream turned to look at him again and immediately wished he hadn’t. It wasn’t often that his boyfriend used his puppy dog eyes on him, but this was one of those times.

Although…

“Okay,” Dream stood up from his chair and stretched his legs. “If you need help getting your laptop, then I’ll help you get your laptop.”

“Really? What do you… Dream!” George squealed as Dream scooped him up off the bed and slung hum over his shoulder.

And yeah, George’s ass being inches away from his face might have provided a completely different distraction, but it was one Dream was willing to live with in the short time it took him to climb the stairs to George’s room.

“Dream!” George wiggled in his grip as Dream climbed the stairs two at a time. “Dream, what are you doing?”

He laughed, carrying George past the pool table and towards the corner where his bedroom and office were. “We’re going to get your laptop, idiot.”

A few more steps and he pushed through George’s bedroom door, into a room he rarely saw anymore, with George spending most of his time in Dream’s room downstairs.

A hint of nostalgia hit him at his first time in this room with George, the day he’d arrived in Florida.

Enough of that though.

Two more steps brought Dream to the edge of George’s bed, where he dropped his boyfriend onto the mattress with a soft thump.

“Wait!” George reached for Dream’s leg, barely catching his fingers on the fabric of his sweats. “I got an idea for something to do!”

“Oh really?” Dream looked down at George, trying to wriggle out of his grasp. “And what would that be?”

George didn’t say a single word. He didn’t have to. He only inched forward on the mattress to wrap his fingers around Dream’s calf and looked up at him.

That look.

One brow raised, a smirk on his lips that Dream would recognize anywhere.

“George,” Dream sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I need to work. I want to get this video out later today.”

“Please?” George pouted out his lips, the ones he knew Dream couldn’t resist.

Dream sighed again, then walked to the door to lock it, thankful that Sapnap was out running a few errands right now but not taking any chances in case he got home early.

“Five minutes.” Dream said as he kicked off his shoes.

“Five? That’s hardly anything.” George whined. “I can barely kiss you properly in five minutes.”

“Okay, then.” Dream sat down on the bed and nudged George’s leg. “Ten. Final offer. Take it or leave it.��

“Oh, I’m taking it.” George kicked off his own shoes and wiggled back towards the wall he used as a headboard. “Now come here.”

An hour later they lay cuddled in bed, on the verge of sleep while Sapnap stomped up the stairs.

“Dream,” he called. “You left your office door open and Milo got in there again.”

Dream pulled George closer and kissed his cheek. “You’re cleaning that up.”

“Later?” George wrinkled his nose. “Kinda want to stay here.”

“Yeah,” Dream snuggled into George’s side. “Later.”

[w2soneshots]

Stream -Angry ginge

words: 0.5k+

warnings: light smut.

summary: you and Morgan have some fun after he finishes a long stream.

I unlocked the door and stepped inside, I pulled my coat off and hung it up before heading upstairs. "Morgan!" I shouted through the house. "In here. I'm streaming!" He shouted back. I walked the rest of the way up the stairs and opened the bedroom door which Is currently also where his streaming setup is (until he can find a house). "Hi chat!" I said bending over slightly to wave at the screen. The chat began to fill up with people asking me questions so I sat down on his lap and began answering some of the questions people were asking. "no Daniel I'm not mad at him because of the 20vs2, that was filmed in December when we weren't even together plus it was a joke." I said replying to a comment.

"Have you had se- Uhh that's really inappropriate Louis, never ever say that again… but yes." Morgan said sarcastically replying to a comment. I slapped his arm "Morgan!" I said eyes wide. After a little while I said bye and got off of Morgan's lap,”. Then I jumped onto the bed, put my headphones in and scrolled on Instagram while he finished up his stream. "Bye, I won't be streaming tomorrow but I'll see you on Saturday!" he said before turning off his computer and lighting.

"Done." he said lying down on his back across the bed. "finally!" I said climbing on to him so my legs were either side of his thighs. having already pulled out my headphones. I lent my body down so our faces were inches apart he smirked and I immediately attached my lips to his. Now making out he grabbed my ass with his large hands while I worked on getting his shirt off. We separated our lips for a few seconds while I pulled his shirt over his head. I kissed him quickly then used my hands to push myself off the bed. I stood in front of him and slowly took my clothes off so I was left in just my underwear and bra. "you're so beautiful." he said as I climbed back onto him. I quickly started pulling his sweatpants off his legs and throwing them onto the floor then his boxers revealing his hard cock.

The next morning I woke up in Morgan's arms, completely naked. I slowly stood up, threw on my underwear and one of his hoodies that landed at the top of my thighs. I went downstairs to make some breakfast in the pub looking kitchen. As my toast popped out of the toaster I felt two hands travel around my waist. I lent my head back onto his shoulder. "morning." I said closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. "good morning, sleep well?" He asked. I turned around in his arms. "yea, you?" he nodded and I pecked him on the lips. "Do you want some toast?" I asked as I turned back around to attend to my breakfast. "yes please."

[theycallmebecca]

Drabble: Video Chat

The other day @nomadicpixel​ and I were thinking about what it would be like to video chat with Chris... and I knew I wanted to write a drabble about it. I’ve written a naughty video chat drabble (Digital Get Down) with Chris... but that was before we had all the fantastic gifs of him actually doing video chats... so anyway... here’s a drabble!

Title: Video Chat

Pairing: Chris Evans x reader

Rating: PG

Warnings: loneliness?

Disclaimer: This work of fiction is not to be reposted, used or translated without my permission.

The computer “rings” as it tries to connect with Chris’s computer and you suspect it will soon alert you that the connection cannot be made.

You grab your phone to text your boyfriend, but as you start to type, his video appears on the screen.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says as he gives you a dashing smile. “I had to make a quick phone call.”

“It’s ok,” you reply with a content sigh. “It’s good to see your face.”

“It’s good to see yours, too,” he says with a chuckle.

You open your mouth to ask how his day was, but the sound of the doorbell distracts you.

A confused expression crosses your face as you try to figure out how someone had gotten through the security gate without you knowing.

“Hold on, there’s-” The words die on your lips when you see Chris’s face. He is trying way too hard to appear innocent. “What did you do?”

“Relax, it’s nothing crazy,” he replies. “Just go answer the door. It’s the boys.”

Leaving the video up, you make your way to the front door and, sure enough, his teenaged cousins are standing on the other side. One holding a bouquet of flowers and one holding a couple bags.

“Hey guys,” you greet them with a smile. You hold out your arms for the stuff but they shake their heads.

“We’ve got it,” the older of the two says. “But Chris said we could borrow some movies. Will you grab them for us?” He rattles off the names of a handful of movies.

“Sure, you can just put that stuff in the kitchen, I’ll sort through it after you leave,” you tell them.

While they go to the kitchen, you go downstairs to grab the movies for them. By the time you come back upstairs, they’re in the hall waiting.

“Thanks,” the younger one says after you hand him the movies. “Have a good night. Tell Chris we said hi.”

Closing the door behind them, you return to the living room  where you left the laptop, only to find it not there.

Smelling a setup, you go into the kitchen, but the laptop isn’t there either. Then you see flickering lights in the dining room.

Curious, you make your way into the room and roll your eyes at what you see.

“I see you’re paying your cousins well,” you tease Chris.

While sending you on a wild goose chase for random movies on opposite ends of Chris’s movie collection, the boys had moved the laptop to the dining table and set it up so Chris was on the “other side” of the table from where a togo container waited for you. On either side of the laptop were two fake candles.

“They’re teenage guys who don’t want to drive their mom’s minivan to school anymore,” Chris replies with a shrug. “They’re motivated.”

Sitting down in your chair, you see that Chris has also adjusted his side of the video screen. His meal is in front of him and he, too, has fake candles adding to the ambiance of the video chat.

It all makes tears pool in the corner of your eyes. “I wish you were here,” you tell him. You know he is working, but sometimes it’s really hard to be away. And the fact that he took Dodger with him makes it even harder.

“We’ll be home soon,” he promises. “Just a few more days.”

You nod your head, even though you know it will only be for a weekend before he heads to Europe to keep filming. But when that happens, you’ll have Dodger and he’ll be by himself.

“Tell me about your day,” Chris says, cutting through your thoughts.

Your eyes meet his and you know he knows where your mind was headed. You nod your head and then open your dinner, finding your favorite dish from a restaurant nearby.

Grabbing your fork, you take a bite, savoring every bit of it.

Once you’ve swallowed, you start talking, telling Chris about your day and asking about his.

In no time at all, it feels like he is in the room with you, both of you eating take out because you were too lazy to cook anything.

You laugh.

He laughs.

You flirt.

He flirts.

It’s exactly what you needed after a long week of work and coming to a beautiful but empty house.

Then it all ends. The shrill echo of a timer goes off on his side and you know it’s time to say goodbye.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he says. “We can do dinner again, if you want.”

“Your cousin will kill you if you keep slipping cash his sons way,” you point out. “But I have to make cookies for a picnic. Maybe you can keep me company.”

“Perfect,” he replies. He gives you one last heart stopping look before he blows you a kiss. “Love you.”

“Love you, too,” you reply, blowing him a kiss in return.

Then he disconnects and you’re all by yourself again.

The two of you talk every night for the next few days, the longing to be together getting stronger and stronger with each conversation. Video chats and phone calls aren’t enough for either of you.

The night before he is due home, you’re waiting for him to join the video chat.

Then the doorbell rings, once again catching you off guard. Chris had confessed last time to helping his cousins get through the gate without allowing the system to notify you.

But, you realize, he had been present for that doorbell.

Then another sound reaches your ears.

A dog bark.

Racing out of the living room, you reach the front door and throw it open.

There, standing on the other side of the door, is Chris and Dodger.

“We’re home,” he says.

You throw yourself into his arms and he lets go of Dodger’s lease to wrap his arms around you.

Tears of joy stream down your face as your lips meet his in a long awaited kiss. You part your lips, welcoming him to deepen the kiss, but it all comes to an end when Dodger tries to push between the two of you.

Laughing against Chris’s lips, you pull away and then bend down to greet Dodger.

“Yes, yes,” you tell him. “I’m happy you’re home, too.”

[bisexual-horror-fan]

i am not onky waiting to hear you out for amber cortell, but am actively kicking my legs n twirling my hair as i (respectfully✨️) impatiently wait for you to elaborate 😍😍😆

Welllll lemme tell you some of my ideas about Amber Cottrell Cam! AU! Basic warnings for camming, sex work and toy use under the cut.

Amber’s cam girl screen name is An_Actual_Accountant. She is known as a Triple AAA girl for fun, you know An All Access kinda girl, wink wink. 

She is well known for her expansive lingerie and costume collection along with her long fiery red hair. She is sweet, friendly, personable but can turn on a dime when someone wants that sweet verbal degradation. 

She owns a two bedroom apartment and one bedroom is her dedicated streaming space. It is red and pink and white. Lots of LED lighting around, you know that look. She has a big plush bed, a desk and computer setup, a vanity, toy chest, stripper pole, soft carpet and the room just screams a mix of comfort and sex, very inviting. 

She remembers her regulars and actually gives a shit and remembers things about them and checks in. Her warmth is a big draw.

Literally though Amber has a closet full of outfits for streaming. She wears a lot of red, black and white lingerie and a few pink pieces. Lace, leather, vinyl are favoured fabrics, she loves thigh high stockings and garter belts and her collection of heels is unmatched, talking tall stripper shoes and high fetish looking stilettos and more. 

Amber caters to kink hardcore, naturally. She typically takes a more dom role in her streaming. Due to her day job of being a higher up at her intensive money based business job she can do a great stern voice and has the posture and can really embody the vibes. Guided masturbation streams in this persona where she leans into humiliation do big numbers.

She is very flirty and fun. She does tons of themed streams that do really well. Stripping shows, toy nights, has interactive game nights too! One in rotation is letting the chat be in control of a vibe via tips while she does karaoke or a dramatic reading from an erotic book. Her favorite and well known and best game is where cam fans pay to enter and play “Edge To Edge” where you can go head to head in an edging contest with Amber. If someone outlasts her they get a personal stream for free of their choice! 

Amber streams a few times a week. Wednesday streams are called “Happy Hump Day!” where she comes on in a more casual fit and all the show is grinding or humping based, will usually use a plug too or ben wa balls or both at once. Sometimes she grinds on a pillow, her pole or her sybian because yes she invested in one, and talks to her fans and answers questions. She usually streams Fridays, and Saturdays too. 

She also has a collection of BIG toys, people love seeing five foot two little Amber taking massive toys. 

Amber is a top ten streamer on her site of choice easily and has worked hard to get and maintain that position.

She does eventually do collab streams like with Alan Sharpe and also with a Mr.Fred Krueger who is also another well known streamer. They get involved at the behest of her fans and it is the best thing either of them have ever done, but that is something to talk about another time.

[cyberloops]

I think it’s not just pandemic fatigue that’s been making it hard for me to work lately. I think I’ve been feeling disconnected from my music. I keep sitting down with a guitar or at my keyboard and noodling around. Lately I just haven’t been able to sit down and open up Acid or any other DAW and start fiddling around in there.

I was thinking about using my stimulus money to finally take the plunge and actually buy some equipment. Up until now the only real equipment I’ve bought are things like keyboards that plug into computers that I already own, and software to do things with it. But there’s a disconnect. There’s a layer of abstraction between me and the sounds I’m making.

I tried to see if I could solve that by making my own digital synths, so I downloaded Synthedit and played around with it a while back... but all it really did was make me want to get into making actual modular synths, not just emulating them. And in the long run, that’s a hell of a deep rabbit hole for me to fall into, both in terms of time, space in my house, and money.

I’ve spent most of my life on the edge of poverty, so the idea of just... spending money on something that I want is completely foreign to me. I know in my head that I have the money. It’s there to be spent. I can afford it. I can’t afford actual vintage synths, of course, those are way too *&%ing expensive. I also don’t have much space in the house, since both my spouse and I had to set up an office in the house during the pandemic. The space on my desk next to my computer keyboard where I was going to put my small MIDI keyboard is now taken up by my work computer. The room that was supposed to become half art studio for my spouse and half recording studio for me is now half office, and the drawing table and the spare desk that were supposed to be for our personal use are shoved in the corners. So whatever I buy will have to be small.

But the last couple of days I’ve been looking at what’s there. Looking at what’s within my price range. I don’t expect to spend thousands on a modular synth right off the bat, hell, I’d barely know what to do with it. But I think I can afford a small setup. Something that I don’t have to boot up and start a program and fight with audio drivers to use. Something that I don’t have to stop playing, go back, listen to the track, and click with a mouse to add points where I want to raise or lower one single attribute at a time.

I think if I start with a couple of cheap Behringer analog clones, I can at least get some bass and drums for pretty cheap, then figure out what else I want from there. It looks like the TR-3 and RD-6 are coming out in new colors, so I can even get them in purple. (which is generally the first question I have when I’m deciding whether to get something. Does it come in purple?) A decent synth that can do polyphony for chords will be a little difficult to find in my price range, I might have to settle for something like the Yamaha CS or DX Reface for that. (Yes, I know that the Korg Volca FM is half the price, and is a great imitation of the DX... but it only has 3 note polyphony. I like having the option to make richer chords, or to have a solo or bass line in the same instrument going while I do chords with the other hand.) And I definitely want at least one decent analog synth, but anything within my price range is only going to be monophonic, or like the Korg Volca line, they won’t have enough polyphony to do more than three note chords. The only decent ones that are polyphonic are generally over 300 dollars, and even with the stimulus money, I’m not sure I can justify spending that much on something that will likely not earn me any real money. And on top of everything else, just getting a decent multi-track recorder will probably cost as much, if not more, than a small synth. Most of the ones that are under 300 dollars will only record two tracks at a time, which won’t work well if I’m trying to hook up 3-4 synths and maybe a microphone. I’ve got a few spare speakers around the house that I could probably use as a monitor, so at least I’ve got that covered. (I hope. I haven’t actually plugged any of those speakers into anything in years, who knows what condition they’re in?)

On top of all of that, my spouse is trying to find an excuse to actually use the art table, and so we’re thinking about also using their half of our stimulus money to get a couple of webcams to stream video of them doing art. So if I do set up a small live synth studio in the desk in that room, we can stream together, with me making music on one screen, and my spouse drawing on another.

Over the last decade or so, I’ve been so afraid to actually spend any money. And for probably 8 out of those last 10 years, for good reason. I genuinely couldn't afford to. I only have an electric guitar because it went on sale and was incredibly cheap. I only have an effects pedal for it because I got lucky and found a halfway decent one that had multiple functions on sale used. I only have a full sized MIDI keyboard because my spouse gave it to me as a combined birthday/christmas present. But not being able to spend money just to survive meant that I couldn’t afford to get the things that I need in order to really live, and not just survive. I need musical instruments that I can touch and feel and use. But I think right now I also need to set up a spreadsheet and figure out what I can actually afford.

... anyway, I realized I got to the end of this huge rant and never mentioned anything about the piece I just uploaded. Short version - I was trying to use digital instruments similar to the sort of things I was looking at buying, and seeing what kind of music I could make by just quickly working up a sound and  a couple simple loops for them. So one of the basses is just a pretty generic synth that happens to have a sequencer that is similar to some of the analog synths I was looking at. The other is a digital clone of the TB-303, which is also similar to one of the synths I was looking at. I only used one drum machine synth on this one, since I can’t justify buying more than one when I start this physical setup. And the solo, chords, and arpeggios were all using similar sorts of synths to the real ones I’ve been looking at and researching online lately. All of the loops that I would have put into a sequencer while using a physical synth setup were the ones that I went into the MIDI files and manually quantized everything to match exactly what I would have done with a sequencer. For the solo lines and a few other sections I only fiddled with the MIDI timing enough to fix any errors due to input lag. And I tried to throw in a few tweaks to the synth settings on the fly like playing with the filter or whatnot, y’know, the kind of thing that I’d literally be able to do with one hand while I’m playing with the other if these synths were actually sitting on the desk in front of me. But of course I had to actually do those afterward with the mouse, since I didn’t have the actual synths in front of me, with actual knobs and sliders that I could touch.

[luo-not-lou]

Hey! Can you do an hc of an kenma x reader whenever his S/o live streams on his channel with his hoodies on without him knowing?

Kenma With an S/O who streams in his chanel

Warnings: a dumb reader, crack, little to no angst, fluff

Tbh, I dont think Kenma will ever allow you to Stream in his account because he takes it very seriously, but, after a dumb mistake, you did

Kenma and you are both gamers

A really cute gamer couple

He started streaming because after he tried because Kuroo insisted, he realizad he enjoyed it and plus, he gained profit, and since you were a gamer too, you decided to give it a try

And of course, you wanted to use his setup tbh who wouldnt im jealous

Kenma Is a really good bf, so of course he allowed you to use his gamer chair, his special cat headphones, his límited edition mouse, and his two screens because he luvs you

He was out the day you decided you wanted to try streaming, and whenever he was out, you wore his clothes to feel close to him

He adores when you do that so he buys hoodies he knows you would like more than he does to see you in his clothes

Anyway, Kenma gave you a vague explaniation of how Twitch worked, showing you how to start the stream, read the chat, and all of that because you hardly ever used the platform

However, one thing he didnt say was that you HAD to change accounts because if you didnt, the stream would start on his chanel and all that

Of course, you were oblivius to that detail

So when every follower of KozuKen got a notification of him playing CoD nobody thought much of it until they went to the stream

You were kinda surprised that the stream got so many viewers in such a short time, however, since you werent really familiar with Tiwtch you thought it was normal, and decided to focus on the game to impress your viewers and make small talk while the chat was literally SPAMMING CRAZY and you were gladly ignoring it

However the 30K viewers were not pleased

Everyone there was so confused

Nobody knew you of course

"Is this a Joke or sm from Kozu?" "lol it's probably his roomate making a prank on him"

Everybody was making theories of you but nobody thought that you were his significant other, because he said multiple times he didnt have one

However, everyone agreed that you HAD to be close to him, because you were wearing a Hoodie he wore in a special stream for Halloween with a original desing on the shoulders and chest

One he chose with his follower

So...

After two hours and a lot of donations of people asking you random stuff about you, you decided it was enough for the day and for your first stream

You were turning the stream off and going to the kitchen to eat something when all of the sudden the door slamed open

You screamed of course

Kenma rushed to the computer without even saying hi how rude Kenma

Turning his head fast and almost glaring you he goes

"Did you stream in my account?"

"I dont know??"

"How do 'you dont know'?!?"

"I dont know how Twitch works babe!"

"THEN WHY YOU STARTED THE STREAM WITHOUT ME"

"I DONT KNOW"

Yup it would be probably something like that

He just turns his head and growls in frustration

He was scrolling through Twitter while walking home and saw his name on trend, but the trend wasnt about him, but rather who was streaming with his account

He panicked and rushed home

Thats what happend

He's not really angry at you he just doesnt want to face the concecuences of this problem because it's one of his worsts fears

Now you're a little angry at him for just coming home and screaming at you after being out all day, so you leave the kitchen and go to bed without a second glance

He sighed and watched a little of your stream in the platform to see what the fuck happend

Even tho he was annoyed, the cute faces you made when someone donated and talked to, or the fact that you were wearing his hoodie you was just too cute, but the sounds of Twitter exploting in his phone for answers about you dragged him down to talk to you

You on the other side, were already in bed a little upset and angry at your boyfriend

Of course your intention wasnt making Kenma angry, you knew how serious he takes this, you wouldnt do that to him on purpouse, didnt he saw that? Did he really tought you would do that to him? yes you fucked up but it was technically his fault since he didnt explained correctly but-

"Baby, are you up?"

You didnt respond to him, still angry and didnt face him

That didnt stopped Kenma tho, he crawled to your side of the and hugged you from behind, speaking soflty to your ear

"Im sorry babe, I should have teached you how Twitch worked properly, it wasnt your fault" he said with his head buried in your shoulder

You were at the verge of tears, so your voice sounded a little weak

"...I didnt do it on purpouse, im sorry ko-"

"No babe dont apologize, just next time be around me when you stream ok? The... The reason I was angry was because now everyone knows about you and I.. I just wanted to protect you from my fans, even if they eventualy were going to find out about you"

You turned around facing him and he held you tighter, smiling lazily and whiping your tears with kisses

"My Hoodie feels good on you"

"Does it?"

"Yeah, wear it for me more often" was the last thing he said before kissing you and turning the lights off to drift to sleep in your arms

This feels More like a drabble than Headcanons but i wanted to try something new UwU, anyways i hope you enjoy

[colossaldame-a]

   HEADCANON BUFFET !

   for the 50 headcanons challenge that @bnharpchub​ made i’ll be reposting the ones i posted in my main blog the other day ,  since they are pretty recent still ! !  beware that some of these might have spoilers ,  both for the main manga and for the vigilantes manga --- not all obviously ,  but a few !

she eats A LOT ,  it helps with her quirk since she has a giant hehehe appetite !  no seriously ,  she probably eats almost as much as taishiro ( fatgum ) ,  but due to her transforming a lot and training it doesn’t look as much ( neither does she want it to be noticeable ) .

she actually loves to play video games !  first person shooting games are the ones she is better at ,  but she will play everything !

her favorite solo game of all time is the last of us ,  and her favorite co-op one is gang beasts !  although just dance will always have a special place in her heart .

she has the animal crossing switch !

yu swears A LOT too ,  usually when playing though ,  it’s pretty funny to see her lose her cool ,  actually -

her setup looks like this !

she streams ,  but actually doesn’t show her face or reveals her identity at all !  it’s like a little safe spot for her it’s also a good way of getting money for the damage she causes while working !

on that note :  one time on a stream ,  yu got told that ladies shouldn’t swear as much as she did ,  so she spent the next 30 mins somehow managing to get a swear in every sentence .  she only stopped because she didn’t know how to continue anymore .

since in her original design yu had blue hair ,  i’m going with the idea that she had a tiny little bitsy emo phase back in middle school .  that’s also when she started to play more on her computer !

she has two older brothers ,  who are twins !  taichi’s quirk is the ability to make things big by touch ,  while koba’s to make things small !  her mother ,  tsukiko ,  her quirk is to make any part of her body grow :  hands ,  feet ,  ears !  anything !  her father’s ( his name is kimio ! ) is the ability to touch anything and be able to mold it into something else !

her brothers ( now both 29 ) ,  they used to participate in the fighting matches that rappa and miruko participated in !  yu is aware of this due to the fact that they would ask her to distract their parents while they sneaked out ,  or to cover up for them in case anything happened !

know how astronauts have trouble adjusting to life on earth again ,  because of how they let go of things in the air thinking they’ll stay there ,  but get confused when they drop to the ground because gravity ?  that’s kinda what happens with her ,  but with the size of things !  while in her normal form ,  she envisions things as smaller than what they really are ,  and ends up getting surprised each time !

since yu is the youngest of 3 children ,  she always grew up in a competitive environment and mindset .  that didn’t change much the moment she became a hero ,  always aiming for the top and to be the ‘winner’ .  HOWEVER ,  that began to change the more she grew as a hero ,  not having that mindset as her priority anymore but in the back of her head ,  and due to the recent events of the manga ,  it’s almost completely gone .

she actually knows a lot of puns ,  usually doesn’t say them often but she knows them !

the fight between her and nemuri ( midnight ) that happened on that talk show ?  completely fake ,  they planned it before hand !

yu’s favorite hero since she was a teenager was ,  in fact ,  midnight !  the mask she wears with her hero costume is in her honor ( now more than ever ) !

like momo and itsuka ,  her first internship as a hero student was with uwabami .  it’s thanks to her that she wears the curls in her hair bangs now !

she likes to jog at night ,  when it’s chilly !  this does not apply in the winter ,  though ;  too chilly !

as the only daughter in the family ,  as well as the youngest ,  she is spoiled .  it happened ,  it’s okay -

the only reason why yu got mineta as an intern after the sports festival was because of his color scheme being similar to hers .  the moment she met him for real she wanted to kick him to the sun ,  but alas couldn’t and shouldn’t and she knows that ( unfortunately ) .

the way yu and her family found out about her quirk was one time in a picnic ,  when she was 5 years old .  thankfully ,  they were far away from people ,  but it took her 30 minutes to be able to turn back to her normal form .  from that day on ,,  her parents started to buy her clothing that fit her quirk .  she had control over her quirk one year later ,  and since she was 15 she didn’t need to wear that special clothing .  although sometimes she still has certain outbursts and it causes for it to activate .

to everyone’s surprise ( not really ,  if you remember that she dyed her hair ) ,  her favorite color is blue !

her favorite song is timber ,  which is pretty ironic in itself ;  although she also vibes to wap !

yu records and takes pictures a lot !  and due to that ,  her tiktok account ( because lets be real ,  she has one ) is filled with videos of funny things happening while working .

she is bisexual ,  and usually goes for men that are older than her ,  and women around her age !  obviously this doesn’t apply if she meets someone she really likes ,  but that’s usually how it goes !

yu really likes asmr !

her nickname in high school was sharpay evans ;  she took it as a compliment !

since kamino ,  she wears her suit under her casual clothing --- her mask usually kept either inside a pocket of her jacket ,  or inside a purse she has at the moment .  that experience ( mostly best jeanist though ) taught her that she can’t let her guard down .

she knows how to play the violin !

one time she entered a competition of people dressing up as a heroes ,  mostly as a joke :  she lost ,  and the judges told her that her hair looked fake .  it took a lot to keep things calm then .

yu prefers to not wear much makeup ,  on contrary to popular belief !  eyeliner ,  mascara ,  lipstick and a bit of concealer under her eyes usually does the trick !  although she has tons of makeup and will often do looks when she is at home ( and if there’s any formal event happening ! ) .

yes ,  she liked one direction when in her emo phase .  nobody knows ,  it’s her dark secret ;  even darker than that whole phase itself and yes ,  she cried when zayn left .

yu doesn’t like kids ,  at all .  teenagers are alright though ,  she supposes .

yu ,  tsunagu and keigo ( best jeanist and hawks ,  or rather :  @fiibermaster​ and @perditus​ ) have weekly meetings to spill the tea .  honorary members are katsuki and neito ,  though .

continuing from above ,  that’s how she always knows the spiciest drama that happen .  it’s pretty funny ,  actually .

continuing of from 33 ,  @perditus​‘s keigo is absolutely her best friend .

since her quirk only allows her to have those two heights ,  yu has taken upon herself to learn and and know more of 1v1 combat ,  meaning beginning to train more martial arts .

her favorite movie is legally blonde !  and her favorite series is new girl !  although her favorite character of all time is tanya from mamma mia ! !

her favorite animal are squirrels !  she finds them cute and that’s why she has caroline in her island in animal crossing ! !

yu’s taste in music is very sporadic ,  although a lot of songs end up being slightly suggestive .  here’s her playlist .

yu has met both @explodeking​‘s katsuki and @shockingtm​‘s denki through gaming online .  when she heard their voices she went pikachu shocked face !

mentioning katsuki ;  you bet your ass she absolutely went and asked about the kids first thing after waking up after kamino .

she might have gotten a few scars from kamino ward ,  but she actually absolutely cherishes them .  because those scars reminder her of how they trusted her for such important mission ,  to be able to work along heroes that were in the top 10 .  it actually means a lot to her ,  although if asked yu will just shrug it off .

she likes to camp and hike !  granted ,  she hates it because no wifi and no games ,  but that way she can use her quirk without much trouble of hurting people or destroying things and therefore relax a little .

yu naturally smells of roses and surprisingly ;  rain .

unlike many ,  yu doesn’t even think on quitting her job after the war :  in fact the whole thing that happened made her grow more stubborn about it .  also made her realize how much she still has to grow as a hero ,  and she can’t wait to leave the hospital and start training and helping those who need it right now .

it took her one day to wake up after what happened too ,  and while she did have many injuries ,  the worst ones ended up being on her head .  right now it’s mostly wrapped up ,  and she has been having many headaches even with the pain killers .

she doesn’t like spicy food that much ,  but she will eat it either way .

in her giant form ,  she will often whisper ;  since if she speaks normally ,  it’s already pretty loud .

and finally !  the glare that machia gave her right before grabbing her head and throwing to the side ;  it scares her still .  in that moment she realized he was basically just playing around ,  while she was doing her most to stop him .  she has nightmares about it still .

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Reviews: Let’s Get Dangerous!

The Duck Knight Strikes Again as our Darkwing Double Feature concludes! Scrooge, the Kids and Launchpad visit the fair city of St. Canard. While Huey tries to work out how the seemingly world changing project Scrooge is financing for researcher Taurus Bulba .. um.. works, Launchpad and Dewey visit Drake, whose struggling to find any crime to actually fight, but soon finds himself tangled up in the case of a plucky young orphan, her missing grandfather and Bulba’s dark secrets and soon Darkwing and his new family find themselves the only three people standing between the world and it’s untimely end. Let’s Get Dangerous with a full review with recap and spoilers under the cut.

It’s time! I’ve been obviously, being a fan of both darkwing duck, if only finally watching it in full now, and superhero stories in general, and this show having told some REALLY good ones over the past 3 seasons including darkwing’s previous episode “The Duck Knight Returns!”, which I sadly didn’t get to in time before this episode. But this is a worthly replacement to conclude our double feature so it all works out. But yeah a big one hour special that changes the course of the season, brings Goslyn in, and brings in Darkwing’s old rogue’s gallery? Sign me up. And it’s also VERY clear that Disney has plans for a revivial/spinoff for darkwing. Besides this episode setting it up and Frank being very clear he has plenty of ideas for this big duckverse as a whole and is a massive fan of the series, there’s the fact Disney conspciously posted a trailer, 4 preview cilps (Though to their credit none really give the game away entirely and all but one take place in the first act, and the one that didn’t is so they could show off Stephanie Beatriz as Goslyn, which is fair enough). And if that werent’ enough, the killing stroke is that the episode is FREE TO WATCH on Disney Now, and likely on Youtube sometime soon given they usually do that when the make an episode readily avaliable as done with most series premires and, for some weird reason, the season 3 premire of big hero six. But wheras that’s probably just to drum up hype for an aging-ish series, this feels like a delberate move to drum up hype for the episode among both fans of the ducktales reboot and the old darkwing fanbase. The only way they could’ve been more transparent is if they put a giant sign at the end of the episode that says SPINOFF COMING SOON.. MAYBE.. DID YOU LIKE THIS? TWITTER US IF YOU LIKE THIS.. THAT’S THE RIGHT TERM RIGHT?. 

That being said I can’t blame them as Darkwing’s a beloved property, superheros are big right now thanks in large part to disney themselves with the MCU, and the fandom reactied with overwhelming praise to “The Duck Knight Returns!”, which is one of season 2′s best episodes even if the cliam that scrooge never went to the movies nor saw one on cable after 1938 is implausable at best and really dumb and I hate it at worst. I mean I get he wouldn’t love rising prises, but I seriously doubt Della wouldn’t have dragged him to one at some point or that someone wouldn’t of tried to get him to invest in theirs long before boorswan. It just dosen’t fit the character and it was dumb.. it’s also unrelated to this episode but I had pent up rage from preparing to review that episode and I might as well get it out of the way now. Point is this episode has a lot riding on it and had all the hype. So did it live up to it? Let’s take a look. 

We open in St. Canard, former wretched hive of scum and villiany and soon to be home to the second John Oliver Memorial Sewage Plant. Launchpad’s narrating and nearly getting everyone killed in a car accident as Scrooge argues with Bradford over the project Scrooge is on his way to see.. with the boys in two naturally. And since eveyrone else is missing and I had fun with it last time i’m assuming Webby is with Violet helping Lena with her burdgoening superhero career and trying to ask her out,  Beakly is tending to the house ,  Della and Penny are working out and trying not to admit there’s clear sexual tension and Donald is once again in the Pantry because he never learns. HE NEVER LEARNS. 

Anyways we learn their going to visit Tarus Bulba, in this continuity a famous and well loved scientist who I’m sure defintely won’t turn out to still be evil... yeshewillletsmoveon. Huey and Louie are excited about it because of Huey’s well established love of science and Louie smelling the money in a big inavation with Scrooge likely smelling both. As for Launchpad and Dewey their going to check in on Drake, whose living here now: Launchpad because he’s his best budy and possibly future boyfriend and Dewey because he needs more hits for his channel as he’s finally taken Dewey Dew Night to the masses. Bout time. Now he just needs a streaming deal. Make it happen Disney, D+ needs some animated series of it’s own. They also do a naturally terrible job of keeping the fact h’es a superhero a secret. We also breifly see drake doing a superhero dive before also comically tripping up and getting injured off screen. Cue.. Darkwing Colored ducktales logo as we don’t have time for the theme this week! And given this episode is an hour long that’s saying something.  Anyways Scrooge and the boys sans dewey head to meet Bulba whose a charming, gregarious man who quickly hugs the boys, puts them on his shoulders and snaps a selfie with the group. And he’s also familiar with the boys: Huey for wining the junior woodchuck science award and Louie for Louie Inc which ended before it’s time.. on public record. He’s a fan of both. And even given later reveals this seems genuine which I did not expect it to end up being anything resembling that. But we’ll get more into Bulba’s character when the time is right for now he shows off his invention: The Ramrod! While it shares the same name as Doctor Waddlemeyer’s device from the original, and as we’ll soon learn he made this one too, instead of a gravity device it instead can make ANYTHING you ask for, with Taruus wisely using Haggis to demonstrate. Huey however can’t help but wonder how it does what it does as surely what it makes has to come from somewhere though Louie tries to shut him up as he dosen’t want him to look a gifthorse in the mouth. I mean Horace gets self concious about it.  Meanwhile Launchpad and Dewey meet up with Drake at the reboot version of Darkwing Tower, where he’s set up nicely: Multiple costumes, gadgets, including arrows with his face on them, and the ratcatcher in all it’s glory. Seriously I do love motorcycles even if I’m terrified of riding one. It’s part of why yugioh 5d’s holds a special place in my heart despite card games on motorcylces being patently nuts.. but it’s in the best way possible. As for how Drake got this sweet setup turns out  Launchpad introduced him to Fenton who designed all his gadgets and presumibly his HQ as well as his snarky crime detecting and st.canard monitoring computer, W.A.N.D.A. Naturally he also is unaware he’s gizmoduck and freely shit talks gizmoduck again, though apparently Fenton does too. Granted Fenton could just be doing it to awkardly agree but it’s just as likely fenton uses it as an excuse to vent about his superhero alter ego, as we’ve seen that while Fenton loves being Gizmoduck he also resents it at time for keepiing him from doing science and getting glory just for punching people. But I love this dynamic, as Fenton’s just too nice for the old “they both hate each other and want the glory” dynamic to work, so Fenton untetionally pissing DW off as Gizmo but secretly supporting him as Darkwing is great and I can’t wait to see where this goes.  Before we get back to the main plot, and there is a LOT of it to get to, I just wanted to point out that Dewey seems an awful lot like drake.. i’m not saying he’s the boys father and Della simply didn’t knoow who it was mama mia style nor did she, in her more selfish form of 11 years ago want to know.. but that’s exactly what i’m saying. THanks to whoever sent me that theory, it got more fire this week.  Back on the actual plot turns out Darkwing dosen’t really have any foes to fight as while St. Canard has a reputation as a crime hole, Zan Owlson has taken over as mayor and cleaned it up. I assume in part because Glomgold seems to have no idea where she went and thus hasn’t done some elaborate scheme to show how much better off he is/kill scrooge mcduck. I mean let’s face it it always involves killing scrooge mcduck. His charitable contributions involve killing scrooge mcduck, his team ups with scrooge involve killing scrooge mcduck, his breakfast cereal came with a free knife and a map to scrooge’s house. Though I do defintely want to see Darkwing vs glomgold. I mean he’s not DW”s normal type of supervillian but still, tell me you wouldn’t see that.. and if your serious there’s the door. 

Anyways despite having no crime to fight and trying to bluff past it despite WANDA trying her best not to help his case, DW goes out on patrol with his boys anyway.. and procedes to just pose for several hours before trying to stop what turns out to be two guys moving furniture and being force to admit he’s not in a great place. He just wanted to fight crime and inspire people the same way Jim inspiried him.. before he you know went insane, tried to murder Drake and everyone on a film set then seemingly died but is now presumibly still in duckberg’s sewers.. or just as likely hiding in glomgold’s house hider in the house style.

And yes that’s a real movie in which a real gary busey lives in the walls of someone’s house. And funner fact it’s on amazon prime and I was unaware of this or I would’ve watched it sooner and will be as soon as this reivew’s finished. Possibly while this review is going on I dunno. Point is your lives are richer and we might have another possible spinoff/gay love story for Disney. Just saying Disney. 

Point is Drake is breaking down, but thankfully he landed in the right alleway as a small figure is breaking into the mcduck industirie’s st.canard branch, i.e. where Bulba is. Also I gotta admit while McDuck industries having a branch in St. Canard wasn’t a huge stretch, it was set up all the way in the pilot meaning Frank had the backdoor to set up an episode here since day one, along with every other major location really. Nicely done. 

Darkwing follows her and confronts her, stopping the seeming intruder from stealing the key to the ramrod device and finding out she’s a.. little girl? It’s goslyn everybody!

.... I .. why was this under clap. I mean it’s a very good message with a very nice garfiled head but i jus... what. 

Okay that’s better. Thank you Genie and thank you ghost of robin williams.. I miss you man. She escapes, though sans key and security storms in, with Drake looking guilty. After some banter with Scrooge who fails to recognize him which would be funny if it wasn’t utterly nonsencial. And utterly nonseical can be funny it just comes off less as “haha scrooge still dosen’t remeber him” and more “Wait you seriously don’t remember the guy who was crucial to one of your plans during the moonvasion and who got beat up on your behalf.. I expect better from you. “ Scrooge just dosen’t seem like the type to forget someone helping him in such a big way. He can be stubborn, stingy and selfish, but he’s not that forgetful. 

However Bulba enters, says he knows exactly who he is.. and we cut to a press confrence where Bulba is lauding him for stopping a dangerous intruder. Presumibly he vouched for Darkwing since he knew about Goslyn and it was an easy way to cover up her involvment and it’s probably not the first time she’s tried this. He’s awarded the key to the city by Mayor Owlson who, while not wanting more costumed vigilatnes, is happy to reward someone doing the right thing. And I .. love this. I was worried she’d be your standard I don’t like superheroes type mayor, the kind gotham keeps getting with predectable results despite you know, the bat family being vital for gotham not becoming more of a hellscape. Instead Mayor Owlson is grateful, respectful and only reasonably dosent want St Canard overun with heroes it dosen’t need.. yet. She may want to use the proper channels but she’s not going to try and run someone out of town or grumble out of them for trying to help her city. She gets it.  Meanwhile Huey’s hat explodes with with notes and what not, to Louie’s annoyance, though my boy’s excuse is utterly hilarious “It’s dewey’s hat”... boy still cannot lie. Louie is of course annoyed at him wanting to know how it works and possibly runining his dreams, but Huey is rightly concerned that he has no idea just how the Ramrod works or what powers it or what prinicpals it runs on. And it makes sense: Besides Huey always wanting to know how things work being his deal at this late point in the series there have been quite a few times, both involving huey and not involving him where something seeming to be too good to be true in fact was and had some dark secret behind it. Counting them off:

The House of the Lucky Gander: A seemingly swanky casino with the best water show ever turned out to be mostly an illusion created by a luck vampire. 

The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks: Beloved tech icon Mark turned out to be the con artist we all know and love as well as the jackass we also know and tolerate. 

Beware the BUDDY System: Beaks new driving robot turned out to be stolen bulb tech that Beaks hadn’t bothered to fix properly. I know Huey wasn’t there for that one but still. 

Day of the Only Child: Again Huey wasn’t involved but probably heard about it later but since Louie WAS, he should know better. Louie befriends rich kid Doofus Drake only to end up nearly kidnapped because he’s creepy as shit. 

Who Is Gizmoduck?!: While Huey wasn’t the target here, he and Fenton are close friends at this point and he was direclty involved. Beaks trying to sponsor Fenton turned out to be a scheme to steal the Gizmoduck Armor. 

The Town Where Everyone Was Nice: A seemingly central american town having a friendly festival turns out to be a carnverous plant monster that wanted to eat them. 

The Dangerous Chemistry of Gandra Dee!: Fenton’s seemingly nice date turned out to be an industrial spy for .. Mark Beaks. Seriously he seems to love this type of scheme. Mark Beaks alone is reason for Huey not to take Bulba at face value. 

A Night On Kilmotor Hill: The kids being able to go into their dreams ends in Magica stalking and nearly taking back Lena. 

Quack Pack: A wacky sitcom wish nearly gets everyone eaten by horrifying versions of humans. 

The Lost Harp of Mrivana: While the Mirmaids werne’t responsible for the dark secret this time, their society was built on the philosphy of a man who turns into a giant sea monster and nearly lead them all to the same fate. 

The Trickining: A lost horde of candy ends up being a trap by a bunch of monsters to steal candy that nearly got them all eaten and hurt Huey’s feelings. 

The Forbidden Fountain of the Foreverglades: A two-fer as the resort their at steals youtha nd the fountain of youth they went to find turns out to need to drain it from someone first. 

And Louie was present for 9 of these! And the only one around for one of them! That’s what makes this frustrating: Huey and Dewey have grown, but Louie instead of learning from his mistakes, blindly trusts something too good to be true despite the fact he has a running tally of when that’s happened!  I get he’s lazy and dosen’t want this to turn out to be too good to betrue, but he’s too smart for him not to see the red flags or see that Huey’s not “ruining this for them” but has been through this enough, mostly with mark beaks or people around him, to see a pattern. It’s frustrating when Louie was given a whole season arc, and didn’t seem to have any of it stick despite you know nearly murdering his family and nearly getting murdered by a zombie. The show is better than that and knows it’s better than that and it’s one of the weaker points of the episode. 

Back to the stronger stuff though, it’s time for the moment you’ve been waiting for IT’S DEWEY DEW-NITE WITH DARKWING DUCK! I figured after the preview clips this was the one Frank had been hinting at all season and it’s finally here! Dewey, now fully on team darkwing, interviews the terror that flaps in the night.. and has a picture of him just coming out of the shower for some reason.. okay are Launchpad and Drake already together and no one told us? Whatever the case, Darkwing’s first big interview is interupted by Gosalyn. As for how she found them, she followed a combination of the resedue from his smoke bombs and Dewey’s livestream that’s been going on this whole time. As his attempts to hide Drake’s identnity and really this entire show up to this point has shown subtley is not Dewey’s strong suit. 

Gos, after snooping around a bit and even letting out a “Keen Gear!” for old time’s sake, and finding Drake’s lunch box and first darkness poster, reveals she came for help since she figures DW owes her one for last night.. or earlier tonight. The timescale in this special is really hard to figure out and only gets worse.  Gosalyn fills in her side of the story and why she broke into two places in the span of 24 hours. Turns out the Ramrod was in part created by Gosalyn’s grandpa, who was working under Bulba on the project. But one day Dr. Waddlemeyer found out the Ramrod was critically unstable and went to warn Bulba.. and never came back. Gosalyn wants to find him, and wants to DW to punch Bulba into telling her where he is. DW.. naturally does not and raises valid concerns: He’s an upstanding citzen whose offered his full support, has done nothing wrong in the public eye, and is nothing but nice to everyone and Gosalyn.. is a kid whose clearly in mourning, broke into two places, and has no evidence to back her up. He wants to help but he simply can’t and Gosalyn prepares to storm off herself.  However in a VERY nice moment, Dewey goes to her and offers to help, as obviously missing parents are a big button for him and he appricated the fact he had someone when he needed to look into his own missing parent and wants to be Gosalyn’s webby.. his exact touching words. It’s a nice call back that really ties Dewey into this story well: He has a solid motive besides crimefighting stuff to help here. Granted Gosalyn’s confused as she hasn’t met webby, yet, and Dewey’s puns don’t help, but as Dewey explains his Dewey puns to her and his name, Launchpad talks to Drake and encourages him to help her. Drake is in fact reluctant like Gosalyn thought for his image but also because as mentioned Bulba seems to belive in him And that’s. understandable. Since starting out, he’s had no crime to fight, no villians to vanquish and only one person acknowledge his work and existance and that person is standing right there. Bulba is the first person besides Launchpad to not only enourage his Darkwing Duties, but to honor that and got him cleared of possible tresspassing charges, a key to the city and an interview on the hottest show on the internet. This risks all of it. But Launchpad makes a good point.. that he needs to help those who can’t help themselves and while he dosen’t have to fight bulba, he can at least look into him. A look at his dented lunchbox reminds Drake that his best friend/future husband is right, and that he became darkwing to protect people like he used to be.. to help the helpless.. and Gosalyn is helpless right now.. plenty capable, but someone who clearly can’t do this alone. So the four take off in the ratcatcher.

The four sneak into Bulba’s office and root around, but end up having to hide when Taurus comes in, with DW hiding in his massive filing cabinet that resembles Darkwing’s own from the original series, that was retired since by now computers have made that kind of thing obsolete. Still it’s a nice nod. Turns out Huey is confronting Bulba as he genuinely dosen’t know how it works and Bulba is annoyed at all his questions. Really Terry there’s an easy way to fix that. 

But instead Scrooge comes in and while Terry TRIES to use him to brush off Huey.. Scrooge dosen’t bite and has learned to take Huey’s inquires seriously. And it’s something I didn’t notice about the series but love dearly now i’ve realized it with this bit: The Adults almost always take the kids concerns into considration and when they are brushed off it’s more due to personal issues, like scrooge’s pride, than because their kids. And given just how many hundred series have had the adults just brush off the kids issues like nothing, it’s REALLY refreshing that even reckless adults like Launchpad usually listen and that the kids competence isn’t entirely ignored just because of age. 

Bulba brushes them off by giving them the map to the ramrod.. speficially extensive notes on it that they have to carry out as a team. He then adresses Darkwing as he somehow knew he was there but again, is more than happy to help him with any investigation.. and it just so happens evidence Gosalyn was at least telling the truth on some level flies out of Bulba’s files as it shows a picture of him happily playing with Gosalyn and Dr. Waddlemeyer. 

Darkwing asks if he knows them and surprisingly Bulba is completely upfront about it or at least his version of events: Waddlemeyer was his best friend his close partner until one night he ran in raving about a problem with the ramrod and in trying to fix it, it backfired and then he was gone. Gos takes this well.. and tackles Bulba while calling him a liar and pockets the key toossing it to dewey as the two soon run from a pissed off Bulba. While Launchpad tackles Bulba away from the kids, Gosalyn TRIES to trigger the ramrod only for Darkwing to stop her. “I’m Sorry Kid but this isn’t going to bring your grandfather back” it’s then the entire episode is turned on it’s head. While, unfortunatley, the trailer gave away other dimensions would be involved, it didn’t however set this up “He’s not dead, he’s in another dimension!”

Yeah while it makes perfect sense in hindsight I dind’t see him being ALIVE ever being a thing, so well played frank.  Back with the rest of the family, Huey, Louie and Scrooge are diving around a stack of papers and Louie is sitll being a little shit, and not in the fun way in the “well not everything’s a missing mystery blah blah blah”... when you .. you learned tolerance for your brother two episodes ago. Thankfully this ends here..mostly because Huey ends up being right as Louie mentioning the misssing mysterys gives Huey his eurkea moment. Turns out the Ramrod uses one of them, Solego’s Circuit. Solego, based on the chaos god from the disney afternoon crossover something I missed on first watch, was in this universe a mad thinker who belived in the old theory that fiction is just a mirror to another universe and everything is real and found a way to open portals to other worlds. Problem was his methods were unstable, and could destroy the world, and likely the universe, if used repeadtly. Wuh-Oh

Back at the Ramrod, Bulba has launchpad on him, while Darkwing aand Gosalyn discuss things and come to the obvious conclusion: If Dr. Waddlemeyer was caught in a ramrod explosion then he’s likely out there somewhere and Darkwing clearly wants to help. Bulba TRIES playing diplomat again and mentoning that even if he’s out there the trillions of dimensions out in the multiverse mean he may be nigh impossible to find.. and the ramrod’s too unstable for that. This however finally backfires on him as Bulba had previously said it was perfectly stable, and has now fully confirmed gosalyn’s side of the story.. and since it is stable, if he’s not lying that is, then that means they can find Dr. Waddlemeyer and get the full truth.  Naturally at this point Bulba finally stops playing nice and knocks both over and triggers the ramrod which is now very clearly unstable from use and prepares to throw both into another dimension, also confirming that what happened to her grandfather was no accident. Thankfully Dewey arrives in the nick of time with a well place smokebomb and bulba gets hit with lightning from the machine giving him a scar and cleaving one of his horns. While Gos is able to escape thanks to launchpad it dosen’t last long and Bulba confronts her.. but soon makes the classic mistake of saying no one can save you now.  Cue Darkwing with the classic terror that flaps in the night speech. And unlike the original darkwing’s fights with Bulba, this fight is entirely in darkwing’s favor, as in a thrilling fight Darkwing beats the crap out of them then escapes Bulba’s fist , the only blow the man gets in this time. While Bulba still is a legit threat, he can’t match Drake’s speed or misdirection skills. However when trying to get the key, which Bulba grabbed earlier in the scene, Goslayn falls and Darkwing goes to save her. And while our heroes celebrate for a second with launchpad joining them.. Bulba has escaped AND still has the ramrod key. Uh-Oh

Bulba is of course activating the ramrod with SCrooge and the boys telling him to stop.. it’s too dangerous... but Bulba decides to get dangerous and pissed at darkwing, unleahses the fearsome four! Cue act break. We’ll be right back. Let’s have an intermission shall we. 

Okay break’s over. St. Canard isn’t doing great as the fearsome four have locked down the city, with Gizmoduck barely holding his own against bushroot and unable to get past, and thus meaning implicitly no one else from duckberg can either and with scrooge and the boys missing, Mayor Owlson calls on darkwing to save them, again giving her more points in my book as she rightly figures the guy dressed up as the hero from the tv show and playing him for reasl is the best person to face four villians from a 90′s tv show suddenly out and about and holding her city hostage. 

But Drake is spiraling a bit as these are super villians with super powers. This dosen’t quite work for me as A) He’s a super fan and thus should know their weaknesses and B) What.. what did he expect. Even the vast majority of Batman’s Rogues Gallery is super powered. But it’s a quick speed bump, understandable as Drake probably didn’t grasp the very real reality of fighting super crime. We also get to see all 4 classic DW Badguys int heir glory, and beating up bonkers, who apparently exists in this universe which is more suprising than it should be. HOwever Darkwing, ends up accidently coming up with a plan: capture one of them, get them to let them into bulba’s heavily foretfied lab turned lair, and use the ramrod to send them home and find dr. waddlemeyer. Easy. Well okay not so much as the two argue over Gosalyn coming along but Launchpad’s experince has taught him kids are the best adventuerers at all and they just need to be an adventure family. Gosalyn’s dewey, Darkwing’s launchpad and Launchpad’s the uncle.. not quite the right congifuration but his heart’s in the right place.. even if Gos refuses a family since she still has one.. even if you know she can always add the two of them in. Eh semantics point is WANDA found Quackerjack and Goslyn rightly points out they can handle just one villian. So they head out. Also during the scene Fenton tried to contact them but Darkwing semeingly brushed him off.. we’ll get to that later. As the camera closes in on Scrooge and the boys being seen as missing we find the boys at least as Bulba throws them in jail. Scrooge is still missing, though we’ll find out where he is soon enough. Bulba returns to his office to find Bradford. Unsuprisingly finding the circuit wasn’t an accident and Bulba was working out the circuit for F.O.W.L. this whole time. However Bradford also isn’t remotley happy about how big and bombastic things are getting. After all his modeus operandi is stealthy and quite not you know hyjacking an entire city with an unstable super science device and 4 villians from an old cartoon show. Bulba points out hey he wanted the world, this is the way to do it and when Bradford continues to push back against him Bulba rants: he’s just like scrooge or the waddlemeyers or darkwing no vision. Bradford may not see fowl as supervillians, which no dude you are just because you don’t operate in the open dosen’t make you not supervillians. one of you wears a hood for fucks sake. Supervillians don’t have to wear costumes just ask the kingpin.. or his lookalike bulba who has his newfound minons take out bradford and throws him in with the kids. Yeah maybe.. don’t downtalk the well intentioned madman. This is why you haven’t taken the world yet. But with both his bosses gone Bulba feels they need a big splash and takes Liquidator’s suggestion of killing darkwing duck, and sends everyone’s faviorite dog shaped liquid pitchman to bring him to Bulba. Side note I watched a few episodes to see if the series gets darkwing’s villians  down.. what changed. and .. yeah it ended up being irrlevant as while the four do get to show their stuff and liquidator, my faviorite so far and sadly the most underused, relaly gets time to shine, they aren’t really that diffrent. Except for bushroot who weirdly only uses godzilla noises now. Thanks I hate it. Otherwise though it’s pretty accurate to the series and hopefully wtih a reboot we’ll get full on reboot versions of all four. 

Meanwhile Team Darkwing stakes out quackerjack, with Darkwing still unsure of what to do, and Launchpad having brought snacks like a good uncle. Yeah while he did immitate scrooge for a second it’s clear he’s taking after donald. Awwwwwww. The two then procede to think over one of quackerjacks episodes and while gos goes to find him, they sing the theme song. Great. They do end up finding him.. and as in the episode it’s inside a giant mech.. that probably wasn’t cgi in the show.. or maybe it was but god it’d be awesomely horendous.. somebody make that. They narrowly escape him.. but run into liquidator instead. Wuh-Oh.  Meanwhile, literally as these bits are intercut but it was just easier to do it this way, Bradford is thrown in his cell and the kids are curious why he’s here, with Huey assuming he’s getting money and the kids breaking out with Bradford forced to follow, though caling Heron for an evac. Dewey actually has a plan: Since he knows Darkwing an Gosalyn won’t stop till they get to the ramrod, they simply need to find the ramrod and wait for them to show up and offer a way out, though Bushroot bars the way. Thankfully Dewey knows who he is as Launchpad naturally made him watch a LOT of darkwing duck but hey it came in handy and gives him something to bond with his birth dad over so that’s a bonus. 

The three make their way through, with Dewey singing the darkwing theme song.. and naturally being the one to trip the vines. our heroes make it out alive but bradford  is pisseeeeedddddddddd. And in his rage accidently says maybe a bit too much after dewey incorrectly assumes he’s never felt this alive in years. 

“I’ve never been closer to death thanks to your foolhardy adventuring! If you didn’t meddle with forces you didn’t understand Magica De Spell wouldn’t have broken the bin, the moon never would’ve invaded earth and all of reality wouldn’t be in jeopardy! SOMEONE HAS TO PUT AN END TO THIS!” Yeah this speech .. is damn good hence me quoting it in full and Mark Evan Jackson really sells it. While granted we knew this was what started FOWL trying to elimiate the ducks, that’s how we found out FOWL existed still after all at the end of last season, here it becomes clear that despite Bradford saying it’s just buisness and seemingly being business minded.. this is PERSONAL. He genuinely seems to hate the ducks and their adventuers and the damage they cause and seems to blame them and soley them for everything that goes wrong.

And I was going to say “Well he’s not entirley wrong” as their adventures have had consequences.. but as I looked through the episodes.. I realized I was wrong. Out of 60 episodes so far, the ducks actions have only threanted duckberg or Scrooge’s buisness a handful and most of those are Louie. They are :

Louie misusing little bulb in the great dime chase wrecking parts of the bin

The beanstalk incident from Jaw$, which Scrooge was called out on in the public. 

Gizmoducks messy bank robbery prevention in who is gizmoduck, easily outweighed by everything since. 

Destroying an underwater research station in the depths of cousin fethry which was in part due to natural wildlife. 

Scrooge’s flu and stubborness tanking stocks in “The 87 cent solution” not to mention destroying property. While yes Scrooge was being played by glomgold his own stubborness and the kids refusal to call beakly lead to it playing out longer than it should have. 

Ruined an expensive movie production (Which is partly Jim’s fault, but scrooge still didn’t get intolved at any point or have anyone more experinced oversee boreswan or even ever contact jim about a cameo. )

Louie nearly destroying time itself in timephoon.

Della giving the moonlanders the blueprints for the spear

And as you can tell almost all of them aside from louie’s two incdients involve some form of extenuating circumstances. While Chaos has insued it’s never been intentional and always been cleaned up. Even the invasion, as close a call as that was, was solved BY the family and their allies.. and glomgold, but hey sometimes you need an x factor.  Most of the duck’s actions have only backfired on themselves of people nowhere near duckberg or scrooge’s intrests and most villians gunning for them would regardless if scrooge was active or not: Glomgold hates scrooge for entirely personal reasons, Magica was locked up for good reason and while she got out due to the family’s rift, she would’ve done what she did with the bin regardless, the beagles just want their land back even if Scrooge rightfully owns it, Beaks maniuplated fenton to get the armor and now goes after him out of jealousy, and Lunaris was already going after earth Della just sped it up and did so in good faith entirely unaware he was a invader. These nuts would be gunning for scrooge anyway, and while some of it’s due to his life as an adventuerer, said life was started before Bradford was born. Scrooge isn’t responsible for guys coming after him any more than batman, or spide-rman. Sure a hero being around gives them reason to keep trying but it also means there’s someone to STOP them.  And more importantly, as I always intended to prove, their adventures have done more good than harm: Beisdes the obvious mending and extending of their family, with Donald and Scrooge patching things up and Beakly, Launchpad and especially webby being warmly welcomed in and Della finally finding a way home, not to mention their various allies, over the last 60 episodes our heroes have, and yes another list and a long one so buckle up. In chrnological order:

Brought clean, limitless water to duckberg, if through scrooge’s water company. 

Defeated a luck vampire that was kidnapping innocent people (Okay Gladstone’s probably mildly incident but even he didn’t deserve that) and likely left him unable to continue his scheme. 

Freed a lost and enslaved Egyptian civlization from a tyrant and brought them quite literally into light.. and gave them burritos. 

Defeated Zeus.. not really a huge change for humanity but given what a dick he is I’m counting it. 

Through Gyro’s invetion of the gizmotech armor and Fenton’s use of it, gave duckberg a superhero whose since cleaned up crime, keeps the city safe while scrooge isn’t around and is beloved by the city. 

Stopped a known super spy.. who works for Bradford but still. 

Defeated Magica, saved the entire city, and depowered her all in one day and all together.

Found an entirely new and giant species of plankton and gave their cousin a purpose

Destroyed an evil plant monster that had likely eaten dozens before that. 

Helped a man find his family’s treasured lamp

Opened a museum wing to share Scrooge’s various treasures with the world. 

Hundreds of years ago stopped a robber baron from bleeding a town dry. 

Donald selflessly possibly sacrificing himself in a dangerous rocket to try and get home to warn earth and his family of the coming invasion. 

Taught Lena how to love herself, got her to turn against magica, and then with Violet’s help Webby helped her return to life, and find a home where she’s actually loved and wanted and finally happy and free. 

Stopped beaks rampage.. granted it was with stolen gizmotech, but he still stole it int he first place. 

Gave the Drakes an adopted son who genuinely loves them and sucessfuly gave them finacial freedom from their cruel, sociopathic biological son. 

Stopped an army of scrooge’s greatest foes from stealing his company. 

Formed a resistance against the moonlander invasion, stopping it eventually with glomgold and the cousins help. 

After that stopping Lunaris backup plan to destroy the earth itself along with his own people. 

As a result of all of this, despite the invasion, introducing a new population of happy, repentant for their invasion of the world aliens into duckberg who have been loyal and hardworking. 

If unknowingly stopping Fowl’s own agent from killing everyone in duckberg. 

Saving a lost society of mermaids and helping them start over

Sucessfully saving a charity gala from hyjackers. 

Helping Daisy start the career she wants. 

Saving BOYD from being hyjacked by dr akita

Saving all of Tokyok from Akita’s plans for boyd.

Finally letting BOYD be his own boy and break free from his past. 

Defeating team Ragnarok and saving the earth from the end of days. 

Defeating the phantom blot while unlocking Lena’s powers, both saving an innocent child from death and giving duckberg protection from Magica once and for all. 

Helping penny adjust to earth giving Duckberg another defender besides Gizmoduck and the clan mcduck. 

Stopping ponce de leon from draining the youth from anyone else and restoring all his victims. 

So yeah five times the number of bad things they’ve done or money they’ve lost. For all the chaos it causes the ducks have changed so many lives and not just their own for the better. And I think that’s the problem: Bradford only sees thing in the terms of possesion in money, and helping people gets him NONE of that. To him all of this is just more risks to the world and his control of it. To him Scrooge has near complete control of duckberg, thousands of buisnesses, the potetial to grip the world.. and he uses it to seemingly endanger it and better lives instead of his own. I mean he has enriched his own but still. Bradford simply CAN’T see past himself or his own saftey and greed to see any benifit for anyone else. ONly himself and with scrooge gone the world is his, the world is safe, and the world is better. In other words.. he’s who scrooge ALMOST became, minus the effort to get things himself. A bitter old man who cares only about himself and his possesions and wants nothing else. We’ve seen it here and we’ve seen it in the life and times: Without his family scrooge grows cold and alone.. and without anyone to really care about Bradford is what he’d become.  He’sd also forced to eat his transmitter after blaming his outburst on his lack of medication. Wah Wah. 

Back at Darkwing Tower, after what feels like 80 years, our heroes squabble a bit as Gosalyn wants to run off after another villian to get to her grandpa while Darkwing wants them to get some rest while he takes care of some buisness> Gosalyn balks at this, all but shouts YOUR NOT MY REAL DAD! and then runs off to the overlook of hte tower. While Darkwing takes a call with Fenton at long last, Launchpad goes to comfort the girl. She admits straight up she was a bit hard on the guy she’s just desperate to find him. And it turns out darkwing as over hte last.. few nights? Wait....

I’m genuinely confused as the time skip at the end of act one indicated a day at most yet i’ts apparently been several and drake’s been loosing sleep over it? And even WITH the lockdown the rest of the duck family hasn’t barged in? I mean yes the four are keeping the gates shut but even with fenton trying, I highly doubt della has the patience to wait while her kids and baiscally dad are in serious danger, and they still have the cloudslayer/sunchaser and while yes bushroots pplans could stretch up it’s as simple as della flying up and then landing somewhere. I don’t think mayor owlson would complain TOO much about property damage and while scrooge would grumble he’d pay for it. Point is the timescale here is confusingingly worded. At most i’d say a day has passed and darkwing hasn’t slept since last night, as that makes more sense than “Whelp I guess our famiy’s been missing for days nothing weird about that. As I said the timescale for this episode is really weird and one of it’s few problems, the other being, now we’ve met them might as well get out of the way, how throwaway darkwing’s foes feel. They all, minus mega volt, get a moment to shine but they all feel like interchangable goons. Like any of them could’ve done any of their scens just swap out the gimmick. I do get this episode has a LOTTTTTT going on at once, so I get any character bits with them probably got shoved out and odds are we’ll get “real world” throughly updated versions next time, it just feels weird to make such a big deal and bring the fearsome foursome in and not either give them a bigger roll or have them stick around for the future, though as I said frank will probably remake them from the ground up for the reboot with new origins and what not, and some might intentional take after them like drake did with tv darkwing, so fair enough, just felt it was a bit of a waste but I understand it given the sheer amount of stuff to fit into a 45 minute special. 

Back on the actual plot though Darkwing’s been up all night conversing with Fenton trying to find dr. waddlemeyer. And Fenton sadly has no good news: Not only does the Ramrod have only one shot left in it before it breaks reality, but even if that gives them one shot to find Dr. Waddlemeyer.. there are trilions of universes out there. The odds of finding it before reality goes bye bye are slim to none. But Darkwing refuses to give up as he refuses to let Gosalyn down. It shows that despite his earlier fear.. Drake is a damn good person and wants to make up for not beliving in gosalyn, to help her anyway he can no matter what it takes. Gosalyn realizes she’s been kind of a dick and helps darkwing and herself get some sleep, and in a reversal of the scene from Darkly Dawns the duck, hums little girl blue to him. Awwww.. my heart.. it’s too full!. 

Back at the tower, the boys and bradford find the ramrod and bradford grumbles as he finds where scrooge is: trapped in the ORIGINAL ducktales reality, though using the remastered proportions and blue eyes. It’s a good gag especially since Bulba specifically trapped him in this scene. 

Beautiful. Bradford wonders how the hell he’s going to cover this up.. and Huey overhears him, having already been suspcious because while good at running a massive shadowy conspiracy, he didn’t you know, tell heron to keep it down on the transponder as the boys were around and her continuned interputions and his outburst earlier made Huey suspcious. Before Bradford can cover he starts coughing (With Dewey’s pricless injection of “Oh no we killed him!”) and coughs up the transmitter.. with Heron inconvently pointing out he’s fowl high command. He’s the bad guy.. from the kids point of view at least. But Bradford just chucks them into the 87 dimension where they stare blankly at scroog’es rampage. So now it’s all down to team darkwing.  Speaking of which their all asleep but Wanda wakes darkwing up and in another ddtd parallel, he leaves to take care of this himself, if without Gosalyn waking up this time. His reason is simple though: The ramrod has fired up and this is their only shot at getting her grandpa back. So Darkwing strolls in.. and once Bulba and the fearsome four marvel at his directness, Bulba sends them to knock his brains out and drag him in. Thankfully Gosalyn and Launchpad wakeup and while Gosalyn is mad for a second, she sees him getting drug in and finally realizes just charging in isn’t going to do it. .and since Launchpad knows DW like the back of his hand, he gets them in by dressing them up as Jumbalya Jake and the Bugmaster. I’ve heard of both though why the hell Frank chose Jumbalya jake over .. ANYONE else, is beyond me. Bugmaster is fairly popular, Jumbalya Jake.. is basically a less intresting fuzzy lumpkins. Regradsleess it works and our heroes make their way inside. 

Bulba is preparing to his big hyjack the airways villian speech, contacting the leaders of the world.. and killing darkwing, whose none to happy about it to show their serious with an ultimatium: either let him use the ramrod to change the world for hte better or else. And this seems a good as time as any to talk about Bulba.. whose utterly EXCELLENT in the reboot. And I loved the original but instead of just being a super comptietn villian bulba is instead a well meaning one. While he embraces the supervillian lifestyle and flunkies and flamboyance, he’s also just trying to remake the world, to make it BETTER than it was beofre, to end hunger, no traffic acidents. It dosen’t make him a good person, much like magneto or disney’s own toffee, the ends do not jusify the means and he’s likely going to destroy reality in the process, and it’s clear his own arrogance is at much at play as his desire to do goo dand anyone with valid concerns is just a doubting asshole. He’s a compelling villian and James Monroe englehart REALLY fucking brings it, creating a villian with style, a mission and competence galor. He’s really damn good and easily tops the original which is not easy at all, but props to frank for doing it. 

But before he can get started, Gosalyn throws the smoke bombs down all around and does Darkwing’s terror that flaps in the night bit for him, and the distractoin allows DW to escape and kick bulba in the face. A HELL of a fight insues. That’s one of the best things this series does is fight corpegraphy as while battles aren’t in EVERY episode, whent hey do happen their spectacular as Darkwing and Launchpad take on the fearsome four in one hell of a beautiful sequence. Darkwing and Launchpad plan to take the four on while Gosalyn gets to the ramrod. Gosalyn understandably questions how an actor and a launchpad are going to take on four villians with the two piping in that bushroot really isn’t na villian which .. I mean he KINDA is but the symapthetic kind that would probably give it up eventually but fair enough. I still like that nod even if this version is less adorakable traumatized plant and more...

Still Goslyn realises their power! THeir nerds! And with the power of fanboyness, and taking a few hits and refrencing the just us justice ducks episode I haven’t seen yet, their triumphant. Singed but triumphant. 

Meanwhile Gos continues to try and find her grampapapapapapapappapappaaaaaaaa while Bulba engages Darkwing and Launchpad. Jokes on him their already engaged to each other! She fails to find him but does find the ducks, who wonder what quackaroonie means and why their heads were round.

As the Ramrod rips a massive hole in time and space that threatens to suck everyone in. While Dewey encourages Gosalyn to keep going Huey tells her to stop... which.. Huey you lost your parent too, end of the world or not you can phrase it better. Otherwise top notch youv’e been the best this episode. And in one of the best scnees of the episode Gosalyn realizes what she has to do and despite Bulba tempting her with another relality she ddosen’t even consider it.. she shoots the ramrod with her crosbow, destroying it, with the final portal taking the fearsome four .. somewhere. I dunno? Cleavland..antis? I’m sure their fine. Bulba is knocked out though, and Gosalyn slowly weeps while her new dad consoles her. It’s a touching scene.

Thattt’s soon interupted with one last bit of unfished buisness as Huey suddenly realizes OH CRAP BRADFORD”S MISSING. They find him heading off in a marked FOWL helicopter, which Bradford points out the stupidity of but with Scrooge now having concrete visual evidence his head investor is running one of the oldest and deadliest spy agencies in the world, and their gunning for him decides to give a big of a gloat and tells Scrooge his adventure fantasy is ending while Scrooge remarks their world got a lot more dangerous. And yeah.. while I doubt Bradford will still brook over the top villiany, he now no longer has to hide his agents from scrooge or dance his operation around him and likely has enough embezlled funds to keep fowl going long enough to take out scrooge.  And yeah before we get to the end, thank god as while I love this review it’s been one of the longest writing experiments of my life., let’s talk about the FOWL overarching Plot and the interlocked missing mysteries subplot. The progress up till now has.. not really been great. Understandable but wheras season 2 had way too much plot this season took until thsi episode for the plot to really kick in. It’s been aggrivating and both fowl agents after you only crash twice .. really had nothing to do with them in their missions, with both only really using their resources. However.. as slow as it’s been, I will give credit in two places: 1, htis was likely done to get plots out of the way that were lighter and less tied into things, with only two exceptions in the next 6 episodes judging from the just released synposis for novemeber. And 2) the fowl episodes that WERE there set things up brillinatly. You Only Crash Twice set up heron’s lack of stealth and overt villianly, so her calling bradford a ton and bringing a marked helicopter did’t come out of nowhere, while last week’s episode hinted at the fact that FOWL somehow has acess to their own copy of finch’s diary or an equivleant. While we don’t know all the details. This episode also got the plot into overdrive by fleshing out bradford anymore, adding into his lack of liiking cartoon supervilliany by giving him a well and true hatred for scroooge and co. It’s not just the risk, he truly hates their lifestyle and LOATHES all of them and wants them gone.. and now he’s getting his chance. Overall it hasn’t been a bad plot and I get why it’s mostly in the back, but it still could’ve used some build up. But they worked well with what they had. I will also say the focus on Huey is ramping up with the last batch of episodes, so this really has turned out to be his season afterall. Good.  So we wrap our story back at Darkwing Tower as Gosalyn bemoans the fact her grandpa is gone. But Drake, for the first time this episode in his civies, softly encourages her to, much like him at her age, get back up again. She got blown up, buffeted around and lost a lot. but they WILL find him. Afterall Drake has a scientest friend who knwos another scientest, and until then.. she can be his crime fighting partner/implicit daughter. So Gosalyn, after so much rejection of it finally accepts her new family while Launchpad runs in to join them with dewey’s blessing. He’s not leaving the show ind, he’s just going to spend days in duckberg, nights in saint canard and sleep on the drive over, to Drake’s pitch perfect “What the actual shit bud” face. Gosalyn is happy, ,and Wanda has a crime for them to chase and our hapy family , back after way too long, heads off into the night to get dangerous. Wheew. 

Final Thoughts: God damn this was a long one. I mean it was an hour long but god damn I had a lot to say. But it was a good one. Minor flaws aside, a second watch showed off the pacing, great jokes, amazing emotoinal core, perfomances and plot progression. Unlike the Duck Knight returns the episode wisely ballances darkwing with the boys and scrooge, and interweaves them beautiful as well as finding a credible way for them to find out about FOWL. The game has changed.  I also saved the best for last as Stephanie Beatriz was fucking amazing as Gosalyn. While i’ve always loved her, she’s nice, bi and utterly fantastic on brooklyn nine nine why wouldn’t I?, and was excited I was both suprised by how diffrnet her gos voice is from her regular one, though shouldn’t have been as her rosa voice is also vastly diffrent.. seriously stephanie do more voice work your great at it, and Gos was rebooted well, sanding a bit of her hellion streak off while still feeling like the character and instead of just ignoring her grandpa’s death after one episode, making it inot a major part of her character arc here and likely in the future. It’s damn good stuff. The special really overall gets the spirit fo darkwing while making something, new , fresh and bold out of it and easily holds it’s own among the other specials. Nothing much else to say that hasn’t been said, this special was utterly amazing, go watch it. 

Now with that done if you like my weekly ducktales reviews, you can follow me for more, comment to tell me how i’m doing and i’m proud to announce.. follow me on my brand spanking new patreon! 2 dollar patrons get a poll once I have enough to do one of those, a discord once I get any, and 10 dollar backers get to pick a review for me a month! If you have the dough, please check it out and if not tha’ts okay. Until next time get dangerous but in the safest way possible, don’t forget to vote trump out and happy halloween! Play us out  Jeff Pescetto!

[antoinesylvia]

My Homelab/Office 2020 - DFW Quarantine Edition

Moved into our first home almost a year ago (October 2019), I picked out a room that had 2 closets for my media/game/office area. Since the room isn't massive, I decided to build a desk into closet #1 to save on space. Here 1 of 2 shelves was ripped off, the back area was repainted gray. A piece of card board was hung to represent my 49 inch monitor and this setup also gave an idea how high I needed the desk. 

On my top shelf this was the initial drop for all my Cat6 cabling in the house, I did 5 more runs after this (WAN is dropped here as well).

I measured the closet and then went to Home Depot to grab a countertop. Based on the dimensions, it needed to be cut into an object shape you would see on Tetris. 

Getting to work, cutting the countertop.

My father-in-law helped me cut it to size in the driveway and then we framed the closet, added in kitchen cabinets to the bottom (used for storage and to hide a UPS). We ran electrical sockets inside the closet. I bought and painted 2 kitchen cabinets which I use for storage under my desk as well.

The holes allowed me to run cables under my desk much easier, I learned many of these techniques on Battlestations subreddit and Setup Wars on Youtube. My daughter was a good helper when it came to finding studs.

Some of my cousins are networking engineers, they advised me to go with Unifi devices. Here I mounted my Unifi 16 port switch, my Unifi Security Gateway (I'll try out pfSense sometime down the line), and my HD Homerun (big antenna is in the attic). I have Cat6 drops in each room in the house, so everything runs here. On my USG, I have both a LAN #2 and a LAN #1 line running to the 2nd closet in this room (server room). This shot is before the cable management. 

Cable management completed in closet #1. Added an access point and connected 3 old Raspberry Pi devices I had laying around (1 for PiHole - Adblocker, 1 for Unbound - Recursive DNS server, and 1 for Privoxy - Non Caching web proxy). 

Rats nest of wires under my desk. I mounted an amplifier, optical DVD ROM drive, a USB hub that takes input from up to 4 computers (allows me to switch between servers in closet #2 with my USB mic, camera, keyboard, headset always functioning), and a small pull out drawer. 

Cable management complete, night shot with with Nanoleaf wall lights. Unifi controller is mounted under the bookshelf, allows me to keep tabs on the network. I have a tablet on each side of the door frame (apps run on there that monitor my self hosted web services). I drilled a 3 inch hole on my desk to fit a grommet wireless phone charger. All my smart lights are either running on a schedule or turn on/off via an Alexa command. All of our smart devices across the house and outside, run on its on VLAN for segmentation purposes. 

Quick shot with desk light off. I'm thinking in the future of doing a build that will mount to the wall (where "game over" is shown). 

Wooting One keyboard with custom keycaps and Swiftpoint Z mouse, plus Stream Deck (I'm going to make a gaming comeback one day!). 

Good wallpapers are hard to find with this resolution so pieced together my own. 

Speakers and books at inside corner of desk. 

Speakers and books at inside corner of desk. 

Closet #2, first look (this is in the same room but off to the other side). Ran a few CAT6 cables from closet #1, into the attic and dropped here (one on LAN #1, the other on LAN #2 for USG). Had to add electrical sockets as well. 

I have owned a ton of Thinkpads since my IBM days, I figured I could test hooking them all up and having them all specialize in different functions (yes, I have a Proxmox box but it's a decommissioned HP Microserver on the top shelf which is getting repurposed with TrueNAS_core). If you're wondering what OSes run on these laptops: Windows 10, Ubuntu, CentOS, AntiX. All of these units are hardwired into my managed Netgear 10gigabit switch (only my servers on the floor have 10 gigabit NICs useful to pass data between the two). Power strip is also mounted on the right side, next to another tablet used for monitoring. These laptop screens are usually turned off.

Computing inventory in image:

Lenovo Yoga Y500, Lenovo Thinkpad T420, Lenovo Thinkpad T430s, Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 12, Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 14, Lenovo Thinkpad W541 (used to self host my webservices), Lenovo S10-3T, and HP Microserver N54L 

Left side of closet #2 

**moved these Pis and unmanaged switch to outside part of closet** 

Since I have a bunch of Raspberry Pi 3s, I decided recently to get started with Kubernetes clusters (my time is limited but hoping to have everything going by the holidays 2020) via Rancher, headless. The next image will show the rest of the Pis but in total:

9x Raspberry Pi 3  and 2x Raspberry Pi 4 

2nd shot with cable management. The idea is to get K3s going, there's Blinkt installed on each Pi, lights will indicate how many pods per node. The Pis are hardwired into a switch which is on LAN #2 (USG). I might also try out Docker Swarm simultaneously on my x86/x64 laptops. Here's my compose generic template (have to re-do the configs at a later data) but gives you an idea of the type of web services I am looking to run: https://gist.github.com/antoinesylvia/3af241cbfa1179ed7806d2cc1c67bd31

20 percent of my web services today run on Docker, the other 80 percent are native installs on Linux and or Windows. Looking to get that up to 90 percent by the summer of 2021.

Basic flow to call web services:

User <--> my.domain (Cloudflare 1st level) <--> (NGINX on-prem, using Auth_Request module with 2FA to unlock backend services) <--> App <-->  DB.

If you ever need ideas for what apps to self-host: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted 

Homelabs get hot, so I had the HVAC folks to come out and install an exhaust in the ceiling and dampers in the attic. 

I built my servers in the garage this past winter/spring, a little each night when my daughter allowed me to. The SLI build is actually for Parsec (think of it as a self hosted Stadia but authentication servers are still controlled by a 3rd party), I had the GPUs for years and never really used them until now.

Completed image of my 2 recent builds and old build from 2011.

Retroplex (left machine) - Intel 6850 i7 (6 core, 12 thread), GTX 1080, and 96GB DDR4 RAM. Powers the gaming experience.

Metroplex (middle machine) - AMD Threadripper 1950x (16 core, 32 thread), p2000 GPU, 128GB DDR4 RAM.

HQ 2011 (right machine) - AMD Bulldozer 8150 (8 cores), generic GPU (just so it can boot), 32GB DDR3 RAM. 

I've been working and labbing so much, I haven't even connected my projector or installed a TV since moving in here 11 months ago. I'm also looking to get some VR going, headset and sensors are connected to my gaming server in closet #2. Anyhow, you see all my PS4 and retro consoles I had growing up such as Atari 2600, NES, Sega Genesis/32X, PS1, Dreamcast, PS2, PS3 and Game Gear. The joysticks are for emulation projects, I use a Front End called AttractMode and script out my own themes (building out a digital history gaming museum).

My longest CAT6 drop, from closet #1 to the opposite side of the room. Had to get in a very tight space in my attic to make this happen, I'm 6'8" for context. This allows me to connect this cord to my Unifi Flex Mini, so I can hardware my consoles (PS4, PS5 soon)

Homelab area includes a space for my daughter. She loves pressing power buttons on my servers on the floor, so I had to install decoy buttons and move the real buttons to the backside. 

Next project, a bartop with a Raspberry Pi (Retropie project) which will be housed in an iCade shell, swapping out all the buttons. Always have tech projects going on. Small steps each day with limited time.

[turqrambles]

I watched all 26 episodes of an obscure Australian cartoon in one week and I’m not okay - My journey with Wicked! (2001) PART 1

Here it is, the reason I started this blog in the first place. I need to talk about this cartoon I ran into completely by chance. 

It all started, like you would, with Tubitv.

Good ol’ Tubi, the free streaming service that makes you either an expert at being able to find diamonds in piles of garbage or a connoisseur of said garbage. It’s thanks to Tubi that I put down that I watched Alpha and Omega: Family Vacation on Letterboxd for all to see and judge, but it’s also thanks to Tubi that I finally ended up watching Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

Anyhoo, one day I was browsing their family film selection when I ran into this selection. And that was the day my life changed forever.

What you see before you, posted to a streaming service accessible in the United States, is the movie adaptation of an Australian TV show that never made it to the United States, which is based off a series of Australian children’s books from the 90′s that also never made it to the United States. It made it to other territories like Germany and the United Kingdom (and it apparently did super well in France but don’t quote me on this) but the TV show ran for one year and then disappeared without a trace after one 26 episode season.

How obscure is this franchise? Well, for starters, at the time I’m writing this in 2020, the books, the TV show, and the movie all don’t have a single Wikipedia page to call their own, and the easiest way to get info about this thing is to find the (rather tiny) TvTropes page. 

Let’s just get right into this shall we.

What is Wicked!?

Before you try to be all cute and make any references to the hit musical, there’s a reason I’m putting that exclamation mark there.

Wicked! started out as a series of six children’s books written by Paul Jennings and Morris Gleitzman. I actually grabbed a kindle copy of all six books (because I’m in this thing too deep and I wanted to see how the cartoon compared with the source material) and I gotta say, they’re very charming.

The best way I can describe them is that they’re in the kid horror genre, but they’re less Goosebumps and more The Weenies book series by David Lubar in terms of gore and child endangerment. Wicked! has some artful depictions of blood and gore, but in a way that can be digested by the grade school crowd.

Being a former child, I can proudly proclaim that I would’ve adored this series when I was younger. Just look at these covers!

The plot of the books is that there’s a widower with a daughter and a divorced wife with a son who get married, and the two new step-siblings Rory and Dawn absolutely hate each other. They can’t stand the fact that their parents are getting married! Gross!

But then, on the day of their wedding, creepy things begin to happen after Rory receives an appleman doll in the mail, and then, over the course of six books, a deadly single-minded virus that feeds on hate and is targeting Rory’s bloodline begins to spread across wildlife, creating crazed mutant animals that try to kill everyone in the household. It’s up to Rory, Dawn, and Dawn’s grandfather Gramps to stop this virus before it kills Rory and his mother, and to do so, they have to seek out Rory’s father, who seems to be the mysterious cause and/or the solution to the virus.

I’m not sure how well these books did, on account of the whole “not Australian” affliction I seem to suffer from, but they seemed to do well enough to get a TV show adaptation.

And surprisingly, the TV show is a very close adaptation of the books, only they changed the plot in two big ways so that it fits an animated series with a “monster of the week” setup.

The first big change was that, of course, they toned down the blood and gore and removed the deadliness of the virus, choosing to go with a more cartoony mutagenic approach. Rory gets infected by the virus several times in the show, just like how he does in the books, but unlike the books, he never thinks that he’s going to die from it and it’s definitely treated as a more temporary thing. There’s no race against time either. Everyone is trying to live their lives except every so often, the virus shows up. A wacky cartoon virus with cartoony stakes.

That brings me to the other main change that they make in the show. Unlike the books, where the main villain is a mindless virus that feeds off of hate, an invisible foe that can only be defeated at the end of the last book with the help of Rory’s father, the TV show decides that that’s no fun and instead makes a main villain out of one of the main plot points in the books. Say hello to The Appleman. (Apple-Man? Apple Man? Fuck it, I’m going with the first one from now on)

Instead of having the virus mutate mysteriously and having the main characters constantly hypothesize what’s going to happen next, the TV show made a main villain who constantly reinvents new strains of virus in a laboratory that he set up in an abandoned refinery.

What then happens is a basic plot set-up that the show follows pretty consistently in every episode. The family is trying to do something, we get the theme for the episode, and The Appleman, who is a spiteful bastard who is trying to ruin this one family in particular (and I’ll get to that), decides to make a virus that will infect the theme of that episode.

Pretty standard cartoon stuff, right? Ah, but then you don’t realize the beauty of this show. But first, I gotta introduce the main stars of this show.

The Characters

(quick note: this bus is incredibly important to the plot, but only in the books)

First we have Rory (the boy holding up the tin) and Dawn (the mad red head).

Dawn is the step-sister who lost her mom, a bus driver, in a gruesome bus accident, Rory is the step-brother whose parents got a divorce and then his dad went missing, believed to have run away from his whole family. Both of them are meant to be the dual protagonists, but I feel that there’s just a tiny bit more focus on Rory. There’s a reason for this that I will mention later.

What is interesting to note is that they make Rory the smart, non-athletic little nerd that gets picked on a lot at school for being a dork while Dawn loves sports, is failing science, gets made fun of for not being as girly as the other girls in her class, and likes violent computer games. I wouldn’t exactly call them “fleshed out” but they did enough to make these kids feel like actual kids.

Also, they fight. Constantly. This is the main complaint of anyone who actually looks into this show judging by my brief skimming of Internet comments because these two constantly bicker and insult each other and that makes up like 40% of the dialogue in any given episode. While this is one of the main story conflicts and they’re like this in the books too, it just feels super exhausting to see these two constantly at each other’s throats in every single episode.

They get mean too. Which, surprisingly, makes them both more realistic (I babysat multiple times and kids can be pretty verbally awful to each other) while also making them just a tiny bit unbearable at times. Here’s some actual dialogue.

"My dad sent it to me!" "Gee, he must think a lot of you to send you a doll full of worms." "Your mum thought so much of you she drove this bus over a cliff and into the river to get away from you."

GEEZ, guys...

Eileen, Rory’s mom.

It feels out of the three adults in the family, she gets the least amount of character development, but she does get a fair amount of screentime, so you can’t really say they’re intentionally ignoring her. She divorced her previous husband and works as a mail courier. Instead of owning a car, she drives a motorcycle, and, in the first episode, even drives it to her own wedding while dressed in a bridal gown. Rory’s mom rules.

She tries to bond with Dawn because she always wanted to raise a daughter, but Dawn clearly doesn’t like her new stepmom very much. Dawn is also afraid of the motorcycle and it comes up a couple times in the show.

Eileen is the adult that gets targeted the least by The Appleman’s schemes. There’s a very pointed reason for this, and I swear, I’m getting to it soon.

(quick note: yes, the show uses real photos to put in picture frames in the backgrounds and it’s real weird and never addressed)

Jack, Dawn’s dad.

Jack is a sheep shearer, just like in the books, and he’s a big easy-going dope that is hard not to love. Look at him hammer in this carpet. A true champ.

Out of the three adults in the family, he seems to be the one that nearly dies the most, with The Appleman going out of his way to specifically target Jack in some episodes. If you know Appleman’s backstory, this reads as absolutely petty spite and I love every minute of it.

Gramps, Dawn’s grandfather and Jack’s dad.

He’s an aging WWII veteran (one that has killed people in combat no less) who radiates constant Boomer vibes and, unlike Eileen and Jack, he actually sees some of the crazy shit that happens and will sometimes sense when something is infected with virus when the other two adults can’t.

In the books, he’s suffering pretty badly from dementia, but thankfully the cartoons drop that completely. I’m glad too, because I don’t have the confidence that they would’ve written it with enough sophistication to make it not seem ableist. Instead, he’s just your typical kooky cartoon grandfather.

He’s probably the adult that gets the most screentime because he will actually help Dawn and Rory out. Again, this ties into the books, where he was the main adult ally for the kids.

He says a lot of army-themed catchphrases. It’s a tad overplayed but it never really gets to a point where I would call it “annoying”. Also, instead of living in the house, he lives in a tiny granny flat on the property. Sometimes Rory spends the night there.

Last but not least, we have the star of the show, and the reason why the easiest way to find information of this show is to google “Wicked The Appleman”.

The Appleman, as explained, is the main villain of the story. Dressed in a very fancy suit complete with dress shoes and a nice blue tie, he lives in an old refinery full of rats, bats, and giant worms (called Slobberers), and he’s rocking a voice that can be best described as “Australian Mark Hamil” with an absolutely heavenly evil laugh. He has gross clawed hands, a rotten apple for a head, and likes making people miserable, because he’s basically the living puppet for a virus that feeds off of negative emotions. The main goal of each episode is to either defeat him or to stop the mess he’s made. Usually both.

Since all of his minions are non-sentient animals, a lot of his dialogue is him lurking behind something while he monologues to himself, sometimes turning it into a creepy little rhyme. He’s a pretty lonely guy, so him hanging out with this family can be seen as a very non-subtle cry for help.

The best episodes are the ones where he tries to lurk about in public with a very poor attempt at disguising his hideous features. Somehow it always works, you know, despite the fact that he has yellow eyes, the skin like a moldy apple, and no ears.

What Makes Wicked! Unique

(no, The Appleman doesn’t actually use that axe)

The first thing this show does that most of the formulaic shows don’t do is that it does, in fact, have a beginning, a middle, and an end. That’s why this show was packaged into a full-length movie - you can glue scenes together and actually make a pretty decent narrative, even if the resulting movie definitely had a “glued together TV show episodes” feel ala some of the bad Disney sequels like Cinderella II and Atlantis II. 

This show even has some plot-heavy episodes that dive into just why this whole Appleman situation is going on and why he seems to have it out for this one family in order to flesh out the characters more.

Because that’s a thing that this show does. The Appleman is a cartoon-y villain who cackles in his lab and constantly invents new strains of viruses that can mutate things like animals and household appliances, but he doesn’t do it to take over the city or to “destroy the world”. He does it purely to inconvenience this one Australian family, who he stalks pretty regularly. This is a thing that comes from the books and honestly, it’s a thing that elevates Appleman from “ugly-looking cartoon villain” to “pretty damn creepy, if also still cartoony in execution”.

Sure, a lot of cartoon villains target the main protagonist in their evil schemes, but this one is definitely more personal.

He regularly follows Rory and Dawn to school and, when the family goes on a camping trip, he comes too. If Rory decides he’s going to hang out in the wrecker’s yard, The Appleman will be cackling and hiding behind totaled vehicles. If Gramps takes the kids out to the bay to go fishing, The Appleman will pull an ice cream truck out of his garage and follow them there. That’s how the main conflict is really set up.

I think if a scarier cartoon tried, they’d make him out to be this grotesque stalker, but instead, since this show is kinda goofy in execution, he’s like the shittiest cryptid in the world, constantly crouching behind trash cans and on top of rooftops while constantly cackling about how clever he is and how, miraculously, no one notices anything’s amiss.

This alone would make this villain interesting, but then they set up something about this show at the beginning if you watch the intro and the first episode and put two and two together.

Right from the start, the opening shows that The Appleman was once human by depicting his transformation by the virus. They don’t even try and pretend that he’s some demon or some sort of supernatural monster - he’s specifically a blue collar worker who had a nasty run-in with fate and mutated into this hideous apple-headed creature that now has to hide out in an abandoned refinery. You see why he’s dressed like that - he’s still wearing his work uniform.

Right after you watch that intro, the first episode of the show has Rory receiving a mysterious package from his father on the day of his mother’s wedding. It’s the first time that Rory and his mom Eileen have heard from their dad after he mysteriously vanished years ago. 

What’s inside? An apple-headed doll, which contains the first virus-infected monsters, The Slobberers.

When The Appleman makes his first dramatic appearance, he never says Dawn’s name, but he does know Rory’s name.

And, in case you didn’t pick up the hints from the first episode, the fourth episode really drives it home without spelling it out. Then the last episode of the series decides to say it out loud.

That’s right. Rory’s father, the man who mysteriously vanished from Eileen and Rory’s lives, is still an important part of the cartoon’s storyline, but instead of being the man who appears in the last book that knows how to cure the virus while also being the first victim of the virus, he’s the main antagonist.

The Appleman is Rory’s father.

And honestly, because of this little plot point, this show becomes a much richer experience once you look at the unhinged appleman who keeps unleashing horror on these kids and realize that he’s a divorced dad who constantly keeps tabs on his ex-wife's unstable dysfunctional family in order to make them more pissed at each other because that feeds the virus that mutated him.

This is a very cool concept. This is where Wicked! shines when, for all intents and purposes, it is otherwise a pretty average turn-of-the-century Australian cartoon that can be best described as “it’s okay, I guess” in terms of quality.

Because that’s really the rating I can give this show. It’s Okay.

It’s a very solid Okay, but I think any adjective more powerful than “Okay” is really pushing it. It’s not Great, it’s not Amazing. It’s Okay. Alright. Kinda Good.

But man, is it a wild ride.

Next time, I’m going to start discussing the actual episodes as well as this show’s pros and cons. Dividing this up into multiple parts partly because I feel like these things are more easily digested in smaller chunks and partly because I’m pretty sure tumblr now has a size limit on posts soooo...yeah.

Follow this handy link for Part 2 - The Actual Review!

[augustwash1]

Latest iPhone Phones Continue Getting Significantly Better

Users more than likely are in agreement with me personally that iPhone X design was among the very best, and that is exactly why Apple decided to keep the identical look for their next set of exclusive cell phones. Introduced a year ago, it's the very first Apple cellphone to take out the main button. In the other, I held its own brand-new successor, the Iphone Xs. My eyes squeezed shut, I passed them back and forth between my hands, rolling each phone above, feeling the curves, glass springs, dual lens camera bumps, and radar vents. I realized that I couldn't tell the difference between the two phones. This is not a criticism. It is just a simple fact of S version years, in which Apple locks at the iPhone design and concentrates, rather, on upgrading key internal parts. Therefore, the biggest changes to the 5.8-inches Iphone Xs and its big brother, the 6.5-inch iPhone XS Max, each of which I analyzed, can be seen in functionality (thanks to this new A12 Bionic CPU), photographs and movies, (new digital cameras and a new ISP endorsed by the A12), along with functionality (iOS12, the last version of which came pre-applied in my test units). The outcome is a pair of fantastic, tasteful, and high-performing devices that will please iPhone enthusiasts and receive over a few glances out of Android smartphones. It still has the exact rigid surgical steel frame wrapped into a brand new glass material which Apple stated was devised to be scratch resistant and heavy duty. I gave the phones a couple half-hearted drops on a thin-pile rug but wasn't prepared to let them slide away . So far I have discovered just one very nice scrape on your iPhone Xs Max. So let us consider them scratch-resistant, however still not scratch-proof. The bigger iPhone Xs Max shares all the iPhone X's substance and layout attributes, but does this in a 6.2-inch x 3.05-inch x 0.30-inch human anatomy. In 208 grams, it is substantially thicker than the Iphone Xs. The Xs Max is really a hair shorter (0.04 inches) and thinner (0.02 inches), however, it's also a couple of grams bulkier when compared to the Iphone 8 Plus, the big-screen telephone that from a space the Iphone Xs Max most looks like. Button positioning power/sleep, quantity controllers, ring/silent switch -- will be exactly the same. However, there is one minor chassis difference. At the bottom edge of the telephones sits the lightning connector. It's book-ended by means of a pair of drilled holes that accommodate one half of their stereo speaker program and among the telephone's microphones. There was six openings on either side. Now the ideal side includes six slotsbut the left, that just houses a microphone, has just three. This small change was done, in part, to adapt the new inner antenna configuration which includes 4x4 MIMO and License Assisted accessibility, which utilizes unlicensed 5 GHz range to provide 1 Gbps chip over LTE. Apple updated the water and also dust-resistance rating to IP 68, which translates to the handsets residing in 2 meters of water for up to half an hour. I did not get to go swimming with all the iPhone Xs or Xs Max, but didn't run the latter phone below normal water, juice and milk. Afterward, as advocated, I rinsed and dried off the smart phone. I was careful not to plug it back into a lighting cable (that is a no-no after a dowsing) but didn't put it on a wireless charging foundation at which it had no problem accepting a fee. Apple, incidentally, said it put some effort in making the wireless charging platform (basically the hidden coils within the phone) more forgiving. This is great news, since I have, on more than 1 occasion, woken up to find that my iPhone X did not charge because I placed it a modest off-axis about the charging base. I have never ran into that issue with the iPhone Xs or Xs Max. The Iphone Xs and iPhone Xs Max body frames are somewhat rigid and solid-feeling, but torqueable, particularly the bigger telephone, which actually creates a tiny clicking sound once I attempt to twist it. Apparently, I've just had those iPhones for a week, but based on a calendar year's experience with the original iPhone X (granted, mostly in a thin instance ), I consider this design framework tough and ready for the long run. Even now as Samsung follows Apple to the dense black cutout at the peak of this iPhone Xs and Xs Max, Apple shows no traces of going backwards in the multi-option technology, which neither grew nor slipped in the most recent iPhones. Just like the original TrueDepth Module, that one is still packed with all the exact components (none of that, as much as I can tell, have been updated). There is a 7 MP camera, dot projector for depth sensing, infrared camera (depth sensing), flooding illuminator (yes, too for depth-sensing), proximity detector, ambient light detector, the second half of the stereo speaker program, plus a mic. On the backs of the iPhone Xs and Xs Max, there is more of the custom glass, the Apple Logo, the word Iphone (but no"X" or"s"), along with the 12 MP dual camera system. This vertically-oriented, pill-shaped camera module appears exactly the same as it did to the last iPhone X. It is still a prominent bulge, but it didn't get any bigger. Within the module is new hardware backed by new image technologies, but more on that later. I've always considered that the 5.8-inch Iphone X an fantastic tradeoff involving a big-screen phone and hand-friendly ergonomics. The screen is large and immersive, however, the body is comfortable to hold and pocket. The iPhone Xs Max in comparison can, particularly if you're used to holding a more compact phone, feel big. It is not embarrassing to hold, however people with smaller hands will probably fight with one-handed use and will likely want to turn Reachability, which with a swipe down on the flat bar moves all halfway down the screen, which makes it longer accessible. Still, the trade-off might be worth it. I forgot just how much I like the larger iPhone display, and about the iPhone Xs Max, you get much more screen without contending with a bigger phone (there is just that 0.04-inch height difference between the Iphone 8 Plus and the iPhone Xs Max). Apple's full-stack management of the iPhone layout, development, and production process pays dividends throughout the handset. However, it's most clearly from the silicon, which can be designed and developed in conjunction with the software and hardware components that will rely on it. Last year, Apple revealed the A11 Bionic, a powerful cellular CPU with built in Artificial Intelligence Power. The newest A12 Bionic assembles on that short legacy with a more powerful Neural Engine and much more impressive graphics performance. When I discuss a brand new Iphone, I begin using Geekbench 4 to check out the raw CPU operation. To ensure that there are minimum background processes going, I usually run the exam before I've set up a single app. I ran the Geekbench CPU benchmark and (together with understanding that Apple stuffed an additional gig of memory within the brand new Xs course iPhones) found that the single core scores had improved marginally between the A11 Bionic along with A12 Bionic. However, that the multi-core score was inexplicably lower. Not by a good deal, but I hadn't ever seen that happen. The amounts were still much higher than what I obtained from Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845, however a lower result on the new Iphone didn't make sense. However, once I reran the Geekbench CPU evaluation per day or so after, the A12 multi-core numbers beat those of the A11. My guess is that, though I set up the iPhone Xs and Xs Max as fresh iPhones, there may nevertheless have been some background setup process going on that dragged down the CPU amounts. The bigger leap in functionality is in the Geekbench Compute Metal Score, which jumped from 15,145 on the Iphone X into 22,245 about the Iphone Xs and Xs Max. Apple's done a great deal of work to beef up graphics performance, particularly for the raft of ARKit two (and Surface 2) software heading into the stage, some of which can support multiplayer gaming. While there aren't a lot of ARKit 2 programs in the program store, I did get a hands-on time using an Iphone Xs operating Galaga ARthe identical demonstration Apple showed off during the iPhone Xs unveiling. To play with, me and a couple of other writers stood on a desk and pointed out our telephones at the Galaga video arcade game console. Soon, alien attackers began streaming first from the video game display and from all round us. I swung the phone from side-to-side up and up and down to watch and then shoot the incoming assault. It had been fast-paced and a lot of fun. In the same way, I've seen how, together with ARKit two, the telephone can set, say, a very realistic digital pressure stove or sneaker to a real table or at my toes, the illusion broken only when I slid my hands to the framework and, about the iPhone Xs screen, it looked just like my notes had been stuck beneath the pot. You can't encourage these kinds of real-virtual combinations without ample graphics horsepower, thickness mapping, and the AI required to identify how surfaces, shadows, and even reflections will work on virtual shapes in a real open space. This processing ability also helped amp more ordinary operations such as Face ID. While the procedure for registering my head was unchanged from the original iPhone X, opening either phone with my face, in addition to utilizing Face ID to access password-protected apps and services, is significantly faster than it had been about the iPhone X. Overall, in actual programs, both Iphone Xs and Xs Max run reliably. Apple place massive work into enhancing the photo and movie experience on the Iphone Xs and Xs Max. Along with brand new lenses and a bigger sensor, both the cameras (rear and selfie) are all backed by a fresh picture signal cpu. The technical specs on the double cameras are untouched by the iPhone X (and would be the same on either the iPhone Xs and Xs Max). There is the 1.8 wide angle lens along with the f 2.4 2X telephoto. Both of those comprise optical image stabilization and will shoot around 4K video at 60 fps. They still take slow-motion video in up to 240 frames per second. If you'd like insane 960 fps super-slo-mo, then you are going to have to look to Samsung. In the pure-play photography race, though, Apple requires the head. The Smart HDR uses detector, ISP, and neural engine enhancements to catch a number of the finest high-dynamic range photographs I've ever seen. The gap between what has been possible on the first iPhone X and the Xs and Xs Max is stunning. Apple produced a system suitable of shooting 2 frames each thirtieth of a second, and immediately analyzing and combining them into a single image that preserves not only foreground and background detail, but that can freeze actions without presenting tremendous grain. In multiple images, I saw that the iPhone Xs and Xs Max find colour and detail in dark spaces without wasting out the lighter areas. The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is also an excellent low light shooter, however I think the Xs line is a little better. I'm particularly impressed with how Apple's built upon its own position position in Portrait Mode digital photography. Apple created Portrait Mode in 2016 using the iPhone 7 Plus (the applications lagged from the hardware). Since that time, Apple's elegant the technology, adding items such as Studio Light, Contour Light, Stage Light, and Stage Light Mono. All these attributes remain, and are somewhat enhanced. That which I love and, as an amateur photographer who regularly performs with f-stops to get just the perfect depth of field effect, is that the newest Depth Control. Depth Control lets you choose a Portrait Mode photo and correct the Bokeh, or depth of field attention, after you shoot the photographs. This works with both front and rear cameras, which means that the image chip is using two different types of depth details. On the rear, it's the benefit of two lenses to find stereoscopic info. The front camera relies on the depth-sensing hardware. I understand, Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 gives the capability to correct background attention as you're shooting the image, as well as after. But, there is an essential difference here that is evident in the iPhone Xs and Xs Max Depth picture editor. It's a slider that lets you adjust smoothly from an electronic f 1.4 aperture to a virtual f16. At a real camera with a mechanical aperture, higher numbers interpret to sharper focus from the background along with reduced numbers imply the focus thickness is significantly shallower. About the Galaxy Note 9, Live Focus basically sees the pictures as two planes: the foreground and background. The slider blurs the background plane. The Iphone Xs's depth slider is based on all of the depth advice to reduce or enhance background focus through all of the planes between the very front of their subject and the background. Together with the enhanced Portrait Mode stitching (handling how the subject and a blurred background fit together), the subtlety of this effect through the selection of virtual f-stops is remarkable and, Apple's explained, is modeled on how actual lenses together with hardware apertures would influence each image. For most people the smartphone is their only camera. This places a pro-level command from the hands of millions of individuals, who are about to begin taking some really awesome portrait photographs. Just after capturing normal pics, movie, and even 4K, I continue to be stunned with the standard of photos and videos coming out of their iPhone Xs and Xs Max. Sure, it is strange that the larger Xs Max doesn't, as might be tradition, have any enhanced picture capturing features, however I doubt anyone is going to be dismayed with the photo quality delivered by either new mobile phone. There are a couple of other hardware-related enhancements, such as the guaranteed dual-sim technology which allows for multiple telephone numbers (believe work and individual numbers of one phone) via the support of eSIM technology. Unlike ordinary SIMs, you don't require a carrier card just for the provider to confirm it and allow it on your phone. It's a wonderful characteristic which, for obvious reasons, I could not test. For sound aficionados, there's also the new stereo recording and wider-stereo playback. This can be relatively hard to check, and I occasionally worry my ears aren't good enough to notice what could be a more nuanced difference. However, I'd find a method. I recordedin landscape mode, a few cars driving by. They begin on the left of this screen and push to the right. In video I recorded together with all the iPhone Xs, the noise travels from one side of the telephone to the other. Playback about the iPhone X is loud but lacks the identical degree of separation noise. Clearly, films with a great deal of sound engineering aren't just great displays for the amazing displays, but highlight the new, wider stereo playback abilities too. As hardware/software relationships go, you can not do better than the Apple iPhone Xs and iOS 12. I have been running betas of their new mobile OS for months on my iPhone X and found it incredibly smooth and stable. About the iPhone Xs and Xs Max, it becomes even better spouses. In addition to butter-smooth and lighting fast operation (in matches, video, and internet browsing), the augmented reality abilities first released into iOS 11, ARKit, along with the iPhone X tend to be far more refined and easy to customize from iOS 12 and the Iphone Xs. The smart assistant is a much better listener than ever, and getting smarter. Her address is much more conversational and she is requesting follow-up queries. Siri can also be more proactive, putting connections between benign items such as locations and schedules and offering them beforehand. There are also a number of third party programs tapping into Siri, allowing you to use only your voice to access program features and data without even launching the app. You can set up iOS 12 on your older Iphone (down into this iPhone 5s), however not all of attributes, particularly those involving AR, will operate on the older devices. Still, I clearly advise the upgrade with anyone operating an Iphone 7 and up. It is simply a much better, more polished, educated, and smart user experience also, to be fair, I have hardly scratched the surface of all of the updates and feature improvements you'll find. Apple claims 30 minutes more battery life involving the iPhone X and Xs and 90 minutes more with the Iphone Xs Max. In my experience, either new phone might get you through the majority of the afternoon on a single charge. I spent one day using only the iPhone Xs Max. I retained the brightness high and ran all types of programs and procedures. It lasted a strong 10 hours. Perhaps a tiny bit less than I expected, but still enough for me through the majority of the working day. In all honesty, with less than a week under my belt, it is difficult to give a full assessment of battery performance. There are so many variables and, obviously, battery life will be good on new mobile phones. Talk to me in 6 months or one year, and we're going to see if I am still satisfied with battery life. It is not strange that Apple did not bring down the cost for the brand new $999 iPhone Xs (or hold onto the original model and market it at a lower price). I'm not even shocked that we finally have a nearly $1,100 version or that we're able to cover a whopping $1,449 for the 512 GB iPhone Xs Max (which happens to be the version that I tested). Apple's already proven that individuals will pay almost anything to get their hands on the latest iPhone. Is $1,000 or more to cover a mobile phone? Perhaps, however many people think about the entire cost instead of monthly payments? I am, however, a little annoyed that Apple stopped the lightning -to-3.5 mm adapter. It's as if, in the last 12 months, we've gotten rid of our audio and Bose headsets, such as it is a solved issue. Memo to Apple: It is not. What I will say is that these are the iPhones you desire. The iPhone Xs does not mess with that which I consider a traditional layout, and also the Xs Max simply takes all that's amazing about the iPhone X and expands it. As a set, they are just as beautiful as the original home-button-free Iphone X. The plan looks especially elegant in a gold finish. Photographers will love the new camera, and gamers and content consumers will want the big-screen iPhone Xs Max. Even if you own the iPhone X, I still wouldn't upgrade unless you absolutely need more realistic augmented reality and full depth control on your portraits. For iPhone 6s, 7, 8, as well as 8 Plus owners, the iPhone Xs and Xs Max is going to feel as a massive leap to the foreseeable future.

[weshallneverrevolt]

In-Home Streaming, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Couch

I’m a longtime PC gamer for many reasons. Yes, there’s the snob factor: PC games can look better than consoles almost all of the time. But it’s also because of the customizability. You pick your framerate, your resolution, your graphical settings. But you also own a machine, not an appliance: you learn its quirks, its inner workings. It’s something you take care of. For an enthusiast, a custom built computer is like a tailored suit.

And yet, there’s something I have missed for a long time: gaming on the couch.

Couch gaming is how I grew up. Huddled with friends around a tiny TV and N64, controllers in hand, shouting and laughing. Or leaned back in a chair with a cold soda, savoring every moment of a lengthy Final Fantasy cutscene. An office chair just isn’t the same. It’s rigid and harsh. It says “at attention,” not “relax.” It was the antithesis of my ideal gaming experience.

But after I got my PC, I never bought a console. For one, I couldn’t afford them. In college my money was precious, and my computer – already cobbled together from low-end or used parts – was expensive enough to maintain. The idea of dropping hundreds on a console and proper television was out of the question.

As an adult with more disposable income and now a home of my own – complete with an awesome living room my wife put together – I wanted to have that experience again. But my budget-mindedness and graphical snobbery hadn’t changed, and my PC was upstairs on the other side of the house. What to do?

I wanted couch gaming. And I managed to get it without buying a console or moving my PC to the living room thanks to a hugely underappreciated technology: in-home streaming. Here I’ll share what I’ve learned, discuss setups, and evangelize one of the coolest tech tricks I’ve discovered in homeownership.

What is In-Home Streaming?

You’ve probably heard of Google Stadia, Google’s uh…interesting new streaming game service. The basic idea is that your console isn’t in your living room. Instead, it’s located in a Google datacenter, which streams the game as a video through the internet. It sort of works, with the hiccups you’d expect with streaming a game over the internet: lag, input delay, graphical glitches. It’s like having very, very long HDMI and USB cords.

In-home streaming is basically that, but in your house. With the distance being just a few rooms instead of across state lines, latency becomes much less of an issue. It finally gives PC gamers the one thing we were missing: the couch.

Because it encodes video in real-time, in-home video streaming is a pretty new technology, and it requires certain hardware and software. The two dominant solutions are Steam and Moonlight, and they’re different in important ways.

Steam Remote Play

Steam Remote Play is by far the simplest method. For one, it integrates directly with Steam, so there is no complicated setup. Just install Steam on both devices, boot em up and you’re good to go. It pairs well with Steam’s “Big Picture” interface for a console-like experience.

Steam streaming also runs on just about anything, including very small computers like a Raspberry Pi. This is because it uses H.264 encoding, a standard that has been around for a long time. Just about any computer made since 2008 can play H.264 video, meaning that your old laptop or a $25 PC from Goodwill can be turned into a stream machine. Encoding H.264 on the host machine also has little performance cost.

Where Steam hits a limit is in resolution. Steam can only stream games at the resolution they use on your native monitor. So if your computer monitor is 1080p, you can’t play in 4K when it’s streamed to your TV. You can go lower resolution, which is fine if you’re streaming to some laptop screens.

Steam works with all Xbox controllers, as well as the Dual Shock 4 through DS4Windows.

Moonlight

Moonlight is what I use for in-home streaming. It’s an open-source implementation of NVidia’s “GameStream” technology, originally developed for their Shield devices. My main PC has a GTX 1070, which supports GameStream.

Moonlight has a number of significant advantages over Steam. For me, the most important is its ability to stream in a different resolution than your desktop. So while my desktop monitor is 1080p, I can play games in native 4K on my TV set! For newer games that my PC can’t run at full 4K, I use NVidia’s dynamic super resolution feature to run at 1440p or another resolution, then upscale it to 4K.

GameStream can also encode in HEVC, a cutting-edge video codec that offers superior quality with lower bandwidth. There’s virtually no artifacting, and colors usually look better than with Steam streaming. There is also HDR support. Because HEVC is lower bandwidth, it’s also ideal for wi-fi streaming.

If you’ve been keeping up with all the NVidia mentions, you’ve probably figured out the most significant drawback of Moonlight: hardware exclusivity. GameStream can only encode certain NVidia graphics cards. For instance, the 10-series locks GameStream to the 1050ti or higher, so budget gamers with a 1030 or 1050 are out of luck. Good news is that the receiving PC can run non-nVidia graphics.

GameStream also supports H.264, but for HEVC you need more powerful hardware on the receiving end. So while any old shitty laptop could stream with Steam, it would choke on HEVC.

Moonlight has the same controller support as Steam.

My Setup

When I first built my setup, I set a few standards:

4K, 60 frames per second

Option for “upscaled” 4K similar to the PS4 Pro/XB1X

4K Blu-ray quality HEVC (around 100mbps bitrate)

Quiet

An unobtrusive look, like a home theater appliance

A hard-wired setup for low latency

Less than a week after we moved in, I hard-wired my house for internet. I ran an Ethernet cable all the way from my office, through the garage, under my crawlspace and into my living room. I then crimped the ends (badly) and installed a wall outlet in my office (barely.) If I were to do this now, I’d buy a pre-made 200-300ft CAT6 cable on Amazon and just run that. That said, my cable still works for what I need.

For my streaming PC, I knew that I had to go small form factor. The credenza in my living room didn’t have space for a full-size PC, and the aesthetic of most of those would offend my non-gamer wife. I considered building one, but most SFF hardware is targeted at enthusiasts and so doesn’t come cheap.

But small form factor PCs have a particular application: offices. When offices dump their old hardware, you can get it for almost nothing. I found just such a deal on reddit’s /r/buildapcsales for a Lenovo ThinkCentre m58p, refurbished from Staples for $20 shipped. It was small, simply designed, and not too flashy. But it is from 2008, and needed a few cheap upgrades:

I swapped out the dual-core E8400 processor for a quad-core Q9400 I had on hand.

I replaced the loud, slow hard drive with a small, cheap ADATA SU635 solid state drive.

For my quiet living room setting, I also replaced the cooling fan with a high-quality Noctua model.

But chief among these upgrades was a graphics card. This PC, being more than a little old, could not play HEVC video without specialized hardware. And it had to be silent, not require much power, and be able to fit inside this small case.

So I turned to the NVidia GT 1030, specifically the MSI low profile silent model. Targeted at home theater PCs and poor gamers, the GT 1030 is not gonna blow anyone’s socks off. But it does 4K, and it does HEVC, and it does all of this over HDMI so it plugs straight into my TV with no issues. One quirk with my model is that the heatsink didn’t fit in my unusual case, so I had to take a hacksaw to it.

For a truly 1%er experience, I wanted to be able to start my upstairs PC remotely. That way when I want to play, I don’t even have to walk up there. For this I used an Android app called Unified Remote, which allows you to remotely control a computer from a phone. Unified Remote is free, but I bought the premium version with Play Rewards points.

The Value Question

Let’s get the first question out of the way: if a NVidia Shield is $150, why not just buy that? A few reasons:

It has hard-wired ethernet. No matter how good your wifi is, hard-wired is better.

Moonlight’s interface is more flexible than the Shield’s.

This also runs YouTube with a full keyboard remote for easier searches.

I can install a Blu-ray player at some point, if I choose.

I can emulate many games on the living room PC; the GT 1030 is great for that.

It runs party games like Jackbox just fine.

This is more fun.

So let’s run a tally. I’m not counting the hard-wiring, since I needed that for my office computer anyway.

The PC itself: $20

GT 1030: $75

Noctua 92mm fan: $15

Bluetooth receiver: $10

SSD: $15

Q9400: free to me, but you can get one on eBay for like $10

So for $135 – less than a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X – I get 4K couch gaming at higher framerates and higher settings. And for certain games, like Overwatch or Cities: Skylines, I still have a killer keyboard and mouse setup.

You can easily make this cheaper, especially if you use Steam and aim for 1080p instead of 4K. A Raspberry Pi – around $60 with accessories – can do 1080p Steam streaming flawlessly. Most Intel CPUs made after 2011 can decode H.264 without a graphics card, and the 6000 series and higher can even decode HEVC. You could also go for a GT 1030 with a fan, which are usually cheaper.

So How’s It Perform?

In short: great!

I’ve played everything from The Outer Worlds to Slay the Spire to Rocket League on my streaming setup, and they all work perfectly. Sekiro – which requires extremely precise inputs – does suffer a bit from the input lag, but I can’t detect lag with most games. Visual quality is excellent with very little loss in color saturation. You will notice artifacting on grass or leaves when you’re up close, but this is less visible at 1440p or higher.

I would not play competitive games on a streaming setup. The only one I play seriously is Overwatch, and there is definitely a difference in my performance when streaming. Competitive first-person shooters also suck to play on a controller, and a proper couch desk is not an investment I’m prepared to make.

Be prepared to tweak graphical settings if you’re shooting for 4K on most setups, as the video encoding does have a slight performance cost. This is not true for older games; Dark Souls and Dishonored run at a locked 4K and 60fps. For modern games, Forza Horizon 5 runs at 1800p on High, and Resident Evil 2 is smooth as silk at 1440p.

One final tip: if you’re streaming over wi-fi, be prepared to make some compromises. I would stick to 1080p to avoid lag, or do 4K only on HEVC with lower visual quality. Also streaming basically requires 5ghz wifi, so if you have an old router you should probably cut back to 720p.

So that’s in-home streaming! If you’re already a PC gamer, it’s an affordable and easy way to achieve a console-like experience. Feel free to DM me with any questions you have about hardware or software setup.

[all-i-know-is-pouring-rain]

My First Letter to Taylor

Dear Taylor:

Did you receive the letter I sent to you in April? It’s okay if you didn’t, because I’m going to tell you what I wrote in my letter here. But I still hope you have received the cat sticker I attached to the envelope (I’ve been trying hard to improve my English handwriting.)

Last May, when you came to Los Angeles for your Reputation Tour, I wrote letters to you, your mom and your dad, and gave you cat bookmark and panda bookmarks as presents. Pandas are my favorite animal. What they do all day is sleep, play and eat bamboo––the perfect ideal life.

I only hope this will be an interesting story. It’s really long, but I promise you will be intrigued once you start it. If you want, you can read it for relaxation when you are going to bed or using the bathroom. I don't want to waste your invaluable time. And could you read it on a computer? I feel like the setup on phones is kind of weird.

⬇️ Below is the first letter I sent out to you ⬇️

Dear Taylor:

I’m sitting in the tree, writing this letter for you. Today's sunset is really stunning. I lean on the branches as I look into the sky, tinted in orange, pink, and golden like the enthralling flowing of the tide. I hope the sunset tonight at your place is also as gorgeous as this.

It snowed yesterday. Snowflakes were fluttering in the air, falling on my hair, on my eyelashes, and on the tip of my nose. I sang in the snow. I danced in the snow. I was as happy as you seeing the snow in London. It was fully snowing.

Since the birds haven’t returned, I’m going to stay in the tree for a while. Those birds are good friends with me. They didn't quite like me at first, probably feeling that I was disturbing their peaceful life. But as I often help them pick the fruit, collect the branches, and repair their nests, we have gotten to know each other pretty well. They also did me a favor once.

You may ask, dear Taylor, what kind of favor did those birds help me with?

Oh, they did me a huge favor. They helped me deliver the letter I wrote to you.

Last May, when you came to Los Angeles for your Reputation Tour, I wrote letters to you, your mom and your dad, and gave you bookmarks as presents. I would like to copy down the first paragraph of that letter here, because this is what I want to say to you over and over again.

I just want to remind you what an amazing, warmhearted, fearless and enormously talented human being you are. So please never, ever belittle yourself. You have your family, your friends, and thousands upon thousands of fans who will fight dragons with you and stay till the last page and support you and never leave you.

Today, I would like to tell you a story, a story about me, and a story about you. When you performed at the iHeart Radio Music Festival for the first time in Las Vegas, you said, "When you sing along to my songs, you are singing along to the stories of my life." But do you know? When you sing, you are also singing along to the stories of our lives. I only hope this will be an interesting story. If you want, you can read it for relaxation when you are going to bed or using the bathroom. I don't want to waste your invaluable time.

__________________★★★__________________

The story begins during a summer break, a summer break that belongs to soda, lollipops and cartoons. That year, I was in second grade. That year, you released your first album.

The coolness of the early morning had not fully melted away. I shuddered as soon as I threw back the bedclothes. Outside the window, the silky rays of glowing sunlight gently washed against the lotus flower; dewdrops were rolling in the emerald lotus leaves. I jumped out of my bed and hurried to put on my old swimsuit. I felt in the pocket of my jacket, pulling out a few coins, enough for a bun.

I finished the last bite of my bun when I arrived at the pool. There was a newcomer here today, a girl, but taller than most of the boys at the pool. She was wearing her hair tied back in a messy ponytail. I wiped my greasy mouth and looked down at the rolled-up sleeves of my jacket. I was short. My sleeves always covered my hand.

The girl’s name was 严穆.

I didn’t ask. She told me herself.

Dear Taylor, in order to make you feel more connected to the story, I will use her English name. Her English name was Coco.

Coco said, “Let’s be friends.”

I said, “Okay.”

Every noon, I climbed out of the pool and ran home as fast as I could. I had been waiting for Coco to knock on the door ever since I finished my lunch. We paddled in the stream, played on the swing, and took shelter from the rain under the leafy oak tree. Raindrops were patting on the leaves; we seemed like two little frogs.

Coco told me she would not go to this school anymore next year. She was moving to America, because her dad was going to work there. America, I nodded, seemed like a far away place. But how far exactly? I knew Disneyland was far, the airport was far. America, that should probably be even farther. Anyhow, I didn’t see her again after school started.

And then I went to fifth grade. That year, you released your second album. I attended the craft club on the first day of school. There was one kid in class who raised her hand to ask a question. As soon as she spoke out the first word, I felt like I had been stung by a bee. Her voice was so familiar. Her face was so familiar. I just couldn’t remember who she was.

Of course, dear Taylor, you must have already guessed that surely this was Coco. But how could I know it back then? I didn’t stand from God’s point of view to look at my script of life.

I fretfully held a pen between my teeth. A thousand voices were quarreling in my brain. I had to ask my friend. My friend said, “Don’t you know? The kid from class three. She just came back from America.”

I thought, It’s her. I do have a memory like a sieve.

I thought, Her hair is still so messy.

Coco turned to me and waved mildly. "It’s been a long time."

Looking up at the shallow smile on her face, I swallowed back my excitement of the reunion. I nodded, "It sure has."

And then we went to middle school. That year, you released your third album. When the big iron gate of school crunched as it slowly opened, I took a deep breath and walked in. I did not expect––of course––Coco and I were in the same class. Watching that tall girl get up from her seat and step onto the platform to introduce herself, I lay on the desk soundlessly, as disturbed as a lump of entangled algae. For some reason, I wished I could become smaller, even smaller, small enough that Coco could not see me.

Two months after the school started, our grade went on a military training trip. Oh dear Taylor, you must have never experienced this when you were in middle school. Back in my home, we have military training in middle school, high school and college. We stayed in a military camp for one week to practice boxing, marching, standing and so on. I can continue on counting those exhausting events forever. I confess that I hate exercise of any kind. But the nights were fun. We resided in those large dorms with sixteen kids in one. We took turns telling stories or just kept chatting until everyone drifted to sleep.

Ah yeah, I was still that short. Though I had already entered middle school by now, I didn’t seem to grow much.

Coco was still that tall. So it was weird that she slept next to me during military training. It was weird that she lent me her jacket (too big) in the chilly nights. It was weird that she wasn’t huffing nor puffing while we were doing squats under the blazing sun––I was dead on my feet. It was weird that she treated me to frozen waxberry from the snack bar. Dear Taylor, have you ever tried frozen waxberry before? Boy, that’s delicious, more delicious than cookie dough and cinnamon rolls. If one day I get to meet you, I will definitely bring some for you.

That was the fourth day of the military training. The dewdrops didn’t yet roll off the leaves, and the reveille had sounded. I crawled out of my warm bed. Coco seemed to get up very early, standing outside the dorm straightening her military uniform. Actually there wasn’t much to be straightening up, since we were all wearing those distributed uniform that were as big as sacks. Especially for me. My sleeves already covered my hand.

I finished washing up and walked out of the dorm with a yawn. Coco patted my head when I passed her. She was much taller than me; this gesture was such a piece of cake for her. "Wanna hear a song? It might cheer you up."

“Yeah sure.” I nodded as I rolled up my sleeves.

Coco reached into her trouser pocket and pulled out a blue iPod. She must have caught the sparkles in my eyes like scattered moondust in the sky––She has an iPod! That’s so cool!––because I saw the corner of her mouth curve up into a slight smile. She didn't say anything, just plugged an earbud into my ear.

The moment the song started, I couldn't help widening my eyes. I had never heard something like this, so... so… Please forgive me, dear Taylor, I wasn’t able to find an accurate word to describe my feelings at that time. I guess what I was trying to say was probably so brisk and vivacious, refreshing and gripping. All in all, I was attracted to it at once. And that was an English song. I didn’t listen to English songs often.

"Do you like it?"

"Yes!" I clapped my hands together, "I love it!"

Coco chuckled. The number of times she had laughed these past few days was extraordinary. In fact, she looked pretty delightful when she laughed. I didn't know why I had never noticed it before.

“It’s called Speak Now, sung by Taylor Swift. She’s my favorite singer.”

The team leader was blowing the whistle, ordering us to gather up. This was the last sentence Coco said before running towards the field. Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift, I felt the bounce of the name on the tip of my tongue. That’s a really beautiful name. My English name is Cherry. I picked it for myself in kindergarten, because I liked cherries. But what was even more fascinating to me was that pure voice, like a stream in the forest hopping between the rocks, gurgling out a cheerful tune, and gushing forward with waves of shining light.

That year, dear Taylor, I was twelve. You were twenty.

Nine years have passed. When that military training full of laughter and romping around gradually faded into the shadowy past, I still remember so distinctly that Thursday morning, when I met you for the first time, as transparent and luminous as the autumn sky. You were wearing that purple dress from the tour, with your hands clasped behind your back. Your skirt was swaying in the breeze. The warm sunlight caressed your red cheeks. Strands of your golden curls fell on your shoulders. You were looking straight at me with those bright blue eyes. The way your lips lifted upward. The way your dimples crinkled. The way your teeth were perfectly aligned.

In the splendid rosy blush of morn, you raised one hand and waved toward me, like what you always do in every show, in every performance, enunciating each word clearly and carefully.

“Hi. I’m Taylor.”

So I was won over by Coco's iPod, maybe also because of the frozen waxberry she treated me, maybe also because of the stories she told me before bed, maybe also because she helped me finish those nasty beans at lunch––Oh, how I hate eating beans. A short one-week military training thus inexplicably melted the inexplicable barrier between Coco and me. We soon became close friends once again.

I seemed to have a crush on her.

Yes, dear Taylor, I was as surprised as you are right now when I came to this conclusion. Over time, Coco and I had a better and better relationship, to the point that it felt a little bit different from normal friends. One day, I just suddenly realized that. So I sat down on a rock and pondered with knitted brows. That was when the big word “LIKE” jumped into my mind. It gave me such a huge shock. Not to mention anything else, the two of us were both girls. I was afraid that I would scare Coco away if I confessed. I could not afford the embarrassing rejection and the despising glare.

I told Coco that I started listening to your songs. She was really happy, and asked which one I was listening to.

"The Outside."

"Oh? I thought you would begin with the more famous ones, like Tim McGraw. Why this one?"

I smiled and didn't say a word.

And I can still see you; this ain't the best view

On the outside, lookin' in

I've been a lot of lonely places

I've never been on the outside

I was too scared.

However, I didn’t end up keeping the secret for long. It was a council period during the spring of seventh grade. The whole class was playing a game. Everyone had a lined paper pinned on their backs; others were free to write down whatever they wanted to say, but you didn’t know which comment came from whom. The classroom was full of cheers and laughter.

After the class, I took off the lined paper from my back. My gaze was fixed on four average-sized words in the center: 我喜欢你, which means “I like you.” Who wrote it? My hands were shaking. Was it Coco? Was that even possible? I didn’t dare to ask.

But Coco said, Yes.

Thus we have shown our hearts to each other. Ah, those sweet and innocent good old days. I couldn’t wait to go to school every morning, so that I could see Coco, so that I could talk to her and hold hands with her. Even if we just sat down under the enormous leafy oak tree doing absolutely nothing but breathing, I prayed secretly inside my heart that this moment could last forever.

That summer break, we did something crazy––you can say I was silly, dear Taylor, I know I’m silly––going out for a walk at two in the morning. We slipped out of our homes, and passed through lanes after lanes, roads after roads, blocks after blocks. Sometimes we chatted, sometimes we walked side by side quietly. As long as Coco was beside me, I could hear my heart thumping wildly in my chest. All kinds of colorful and glamorous butterflies were flying inside my stomach.

The streets of the city rested in silence as the starry black sky wept over it. Even the birds returned home to sleep. Only the lamps were gleaming in creamy yellow. Coco reached into her trouser pocket and pulled out the blue iPod. She plugged an earbud into my ear and squeezed my hand.

There's somethin' bout the way

The street looks when it's just rained

There's a glow off the pavement

Walk me to the car

And you know I wanna ask you to dance right there

In the middle of the parking lot

Yeah

The moonlight scattered in the air, woven into a soft net, covering all the creatures in their dreams. Amid the absolute silence of the night, the only thing I wanted to do was hold Coco’s hand and dance in the boundless darkness in my best dress.

Fearless

After summer break, everyone became eighth graders. We always had those general cleanings at the beginning of the year. I fetched a large bucket of water, ready to mop the floor. Coco walked up to me with a broom in her hand. She was so tall. I felt like one of the seven dwarfs in Snow White. She leaned down to my ear. I thought she was trying to bite my ear. I didn’t know what she was doing. But she said, I love you.

I spent a century trying to collect every piece of myself. I blinked dumbfounded, as if being struck by lightning. Coco’s voice seemed to come from miles away, yet she was standing there right in front of me. I forgot who I was, where I was, what I was doing. In the midst of my completely vacant mind, only one melody was echoing.

We were both young when I first saw you.

We were indeed too young.

I turned fourteen. The birthday present my mom and dad gave me was a silver iPod. Though I had begged them for a long time, I still yelled out the moment I unwrapped the gift box.

I invited my friends, including Coco. We played tag, Red light, Green light, and hide and seek in our yard. Coco always won in tag, because she was tall and ran fast. My sister always lost, because she was the youngest and ran the slowest. We chased each other before dinner started. During the cheering and blessing and happy birthday song, mom and dad brought in the chocolate fruit cake.

I closed my eyes, put my hands together, and made a wish before the candles. To be honest, I have forgotten most of the wishes I made that day. Except one, and only this one.

I hoped to God that Coco could kiss me for once, just once would be enough.

I even had dreamed of our wedding at Disneyland. We would both wear white wedding gowns and come down from a crystal pumpkin carriage. The harp and flute would start playing while we walked through a path of rose petals. The fireworks would bloom above the Sleeping Beauty Castle.

Dear Taylor, I think you would’ve liked me at that time, because I was a dumb kid, dumb and naïve.

And then, the days passed by the same as they used to. The life of a student was actually quite fixed in form. Gradually, I found out that when Coco chatted or played with other friends, my heart was always burbling with jealousy. We had agreed to go to the stationery store to buy compasses for math class. Coco probably once again dismissed the matter from her mind, and rushed to the basketball court as soon as the bell rang. Perhaps she shouldn’t be blamed for this; some kids are just forgetful. Nonetheless, I learned to use the compass to carve my arm, which seemed to vent some of my anger.

No, no, dear Taylor, please don't put this letter down. I don't mean to scare you away or make you feel uncomfortable. As I said before, I just want to tell you an interesting story, a story about me, and a story about you. This is simply one of the episodes that cannot be skipped. Believe me, it will end soon.

I pushed open the door. In the dusk of the silent house, the dim light was swaying from side to side. I lay on the floor; my fresh wound was oozing drops of blood. It hurt, of course it hurt, otherwise how could it be called cutting? At first, this did work. Coco was really distressed. But over time she became numb. Humans become numb easily.

That was a day of an endless, dreadful, piercing cold winter. After school, Coco called me to the outside of the classroom. She said, “Let’s break up.” She opened her mouth glacially, “胡玥然.” From the second I heard my full name, I knew something was definitely going wrong. Those three words were engraved on my ear with the abruptness of a blow. Every inch of the echo was ripping and gnawing at my heart.

That afternoon, I didn't go home right after school got out. I walked towards the park with my school bag over my shoulder. I crossed the meadow, passed the playground, rounded the lake, heading straight to that enormous leafy oak tree. I put my bag under the tree and began to climb up, up high, so high that you couldn’t see me from underneath. Coco once asked me with surprise how I was able to climb so high. I had no clue. I suppose it’s an instinct.

I finally stopped. I sat down between two branches. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the silver iPod. Putting on my headphones, I opened one song. Dear Taylor, could you guess which one?

He's the reason for the teardrops on my guitar

The only thing that keeps me wishing on a wishing star

He's the song in the car

I keep singing, don't know why I do…

I cried. As much as I tried to hold it in, the pain rushed out like an uproar from my throat in the form of a mute scream. That was so cruel, so cruel, so casually cruel in the name of being honest. I huddled down with two hands pressing over my stomach. My entrails seemed to have been tied in hard snarls. Salty drops fell from my chin one after another, drenching my shirt, ripping through my muscles, bones, and guts.

I don't know why I chose this song. I should have chosen a brighter one like Stay Beautiful. Anyhow, it became the first English song I learned to sing from beginning to end, because that afternoon, I listened to Teardrops on My Guitar a thousand times, until every melody was twining around my mind, until every lyric was spinning on my tongue, until the sun dipped below the horizon and stars began to poke out of the clouds. I climbed down from the tree, wiped away my tears, carried my bag and ran towards home.

I was not strong, dear Taylor, I was not strong at all. I just pretended to be.

So you could probably imagine how thrilled I was when I learnt that you sang Teardrops on My Guitar in Denver as the surprise song. "When you sing along to my songs, you are singing along to the stories of my life." But more importantly, you are also singing along to the stories of our lives. Teardrops on My Guitar is definitely in the top three of by-far-the-most-meaningful-song-to-me-among-all-of-your-songs ranking list. Perhaps the top one. I think my biggest dream––besides bringing frozen waxberry to you––is that one day I can watch you perform the original version of this song with my own eyes (or the version with ‘You’ instead of ‘Drew’).

Drew talks to me

I laugh 'cause it's so damn funny

That I can't even see

Anyone when he's with me

There was another thing I did before going to bed that night. When Shirley called, I said, "Are you satisfied now?"

__________________★★★__________________

This letter should probably stop here for now. I’d better climb down from the tree since the sky is getting dark. The birds finally come back and greet me amiably, "Writing another letter, Cherry?"

"Yeah, I’m writing to Taylor."

"Awesome. We can help you deliver it to her after you finish."

"That will be wonderful. Thank you so much."

Dear Taylor, I hope by far this story is tolerably interesting, perhaps providing some enjoyment for your bedtime or bathroom time. As you can tell, clearly this story is not finished yet. I will continue it in my next letter, then I have to trouble the birds with another trip.

Sincerely,

Cherry

PS: I apologize for my awkward English. Please forgive me if I made any mistakes.

PPS: My sister says if one day you come to visit us, she will do the chicken dance while singing Welcome to New York as she opens the door to welcome you. I don’t know if there is even a tiny relation between the chicken dance and Welcome to New York. Plus we live in Los Angeles, not New York.

PPPS: My tumblr name is called CherrywholovesTaylor. I’m terrible at giving names. I’ve been trying hard to make my life not so boring.

PPPPS：If you receive two identical letters, please don't be surprised. I find two of your addresses. I don't know which one will work, so I write two letters. I hope you have received both of them, then you can get double cat stickers.

@taylorswift @taylornation

[hgfstreamchats]

Halloween (2018)

Hello! Night human, hello! Are you playing music, or is it coming from somewhere else? It should be coming from my end. If it's not, well... Ah, good Follow the sound of the unexplicable Halloween theme for a magical adventure. I LOVE magical adventures! I like how some of the whipped cream disappeared mysteriously before they put the nutmeg on Very mysterious indeed. I assume the answer involves licking. The answer always involves licking. Is that considered humane? Just keep them standing around in the sun? I... have no idea what the exact setup is supposed to be, but presumably they're not outside all the time Wuh oh So the mask is supposed to be... a magic artifact now? Good old Pumpkin! It's... un-rotting! It's got things to do! Things to watch! Yes.  Things.

The slit between the nose and the mouth kind of weirds me out there. You too? "well, surely they don't mean us" "Not us! We're starting things on a respectful note, comparing her to her almost-killer and a caged animal all within under the space of a minute!" "we've traveled a very long way... we didn't feel like trying to contact you ahead of time or make an appointment or anything, though" unbiased as SHIT "Here's 3000 dollars, now let us make a rubbing of your scar." IKR? "how the fuck should I know" I kinda hope this guy is the first victim. "We did, but we were sort of hoping to snap off a few shots of you crying." Likewise. I have a bad feeling about those mousetraps I hope they go off on Podcast Man's person. Somehow. That sounds like a lie That's Pumpkin's polar opposite, the disgusted one. The one who kinkshames. Kast, I swear to various gods, I will destroy you. Victim #2 Starscream! Hello! I finally beat the blasted thing into working. I did not want to miss the shenanigans. You haven't missed much! And so you didn't! A couple of idiot journalists went to bother the final girl from the first movie I'm glad. Today requires dead teenagers. And upset Michael's fellow patients for no reason. Ah, that is always a good idea. Ah, that is always a good idea. This one is aware she lives in a horror movie universe, isn't she. Yeah. Is *anyone* going to approach her and her very obvious trauma in anything resembling a respectful way? Probably not! Doubtful. wow awww man She clearly is not handling herself well. "It's not like this is a difficult day for you or anything." What kind of person doesn't shrug off a whole lot of her friends getting murdered and nearly getting murdered herself? Shiiiit I mean, we knew it was coming, but "don't get murdered" Who gave that child a rifle? Oh good, the kid has a gun I bet it'll do him a world of good I bet he startles and shoots his own father. cool, cool, investigate by yourself Well, you guessed close, anyway! And who's in the backs....yep That's about right. "And, don't forget, just naked enough for """fanservice"""" Let's see.... known serial killer on the loose on the night he's known for being extra murderous... Yes, maybe you should cancel Halloween. What can possibly go wrong?! Oh, great Lovely! Ugh He's very strong for an older fellow. Maybe should have given him a little less fresh air and healthy food. So, that's four more corpses. Think they will cancel Halloween yet? Says the soon-to-be-corpse Whatever you say, Corpse Number 5. Just think of how squirrelly she will be when her stupid family gets murdered for not listening to her. :( And journalists intrude on her privacy to ask her about it. Does no one in this town lock their door? Apparently not? Ham, never eaten. Oh, jeez He doesn There's no effort needed to get in. Oh, I like this little human. Awww. Yes, leave the door open. Every door in this town must be left open, so murderers can get in. Welp. "If you're cold, they're cold. Bring them in." Wow. What the fuck. I hope he is stabbed nineteen times. Uhh. "a noise like... a murderer?" Oh goody, dry! fuuuuck cue murder ...really, dude So I guess she didn't QUITE check everywhere That kid is going to need so much therapy. Run, sensible child! Run! Again, they know that they have a murderer problem. Why does he have no backup? Backup is for losers I think he wants to be murdered. "Captured" "so in a way, all this is his fault" It is not paranoia, if there really is something out there to get you. If only some shithead hadn't dropped her phone in the punch bowl, or soup, or whatevr that was facepalm . . . . Oh, I've heard that one. oh my god. dude stop Look at that, she managed to not be killed for the moment. ...Well, that took care of that! Double tap. Is it Ben Tramer? .... Well, that's a problem. Damn it. So did he survive that after all?  Are there two of them now? Oh, he's not going to be happy about that. Now his mask has old man stink inside it. I admit I don't quite get how he did that through the grate He kicked the grate out. Ohhh His head was...overripe, apparently? I guess? That was a strange plot cul-de-sac ...I feel like taking the van would've been a better bet It's Pumpkin! Well, damn it Oh. No, no it isn't. Oh, no!  That guy I hated is dead now! Hopefully she didn't like him too much. I don't like that he gets to survive most of the movie and Fun Babysitter didn't. I feel like it's a bad idea to leave that remote up there. I feel like her just leaving the remote on the counter there is a bad thing urgh I hope she brought it down with her, at least Well, that gave you away. But what do I know? It's not my paranoia cellar. I feel like she should have forced him into a chute, for a clean kill. Oh, crap Don't be impatient... For someone planning this for forty years, she's done a poor job of building a trap house. That is a creepy target practice area Why have a scary mannequin room, if you know one day this situation is coming? Right? For that matter, why not install proper indoor lighting, to see who you're trying to shoot? That would spoil the jumpscares! When you're planning on facing off with your supernatural attacker someday and plotting things out to the minute, but you need to keep the atmosphere Spooky. About time. hey Hello and goodbye, Nude Human. Keep shooting him. I feel like this is a kill that should be confirmed before they relax. No more relaxing for any of them ever. But on the plus side, they no longer think Grandmother is crazy. Now they love Grandmother and her room full of non-jamming guns and canned corn! Grandmother who they all call grandmother for some reason. Why *did* she stock rations? Did she think Michael would just pop a seat down on the kitchen floor for a month on end and they'd have to wait him out? Perhaps she was planning for zombies as well, given she knows at least one creature that refuses to stay dead. She likes to cover all bases. Michael, zombies...got a couple of hobgoblin defenses lined up just in case. If one is going to be prepared, might as well cover all bases. Except when it comes to well lit rooms and moving the mannequins out. Who has time for that? Sigh. My computer froze and I missed everything after the spooky mannequin rom. What happened? They eventually got him into the basement, and lit him on fire. Which he'll almost assuredly walk off. Oh, good. Less good. And we hear his spooky breathing at the end of the credits, so... And Allison has a knife. Of course we do. I haven't been able to pull up a light note to end on, so I'm open to suggestions! Goose game! Goose game it is! How about a fun goose game highlight reel? Beautiful! He's enjoying the moment. Sun hat! put it in the pond! What did this old man ever do to anyone? He dared try to get work done. Tried to keep the goose out of the garden! Unforgiveable! Unforgourdable! I'm having this great idea for a game for you to stream sometime! I'm thinking the same thing! I thought he did too! no, no, it's floating back! Somebody do something! Oh this kid gets TERRORIZED What kinda scam is she running here! Clearly she knows how to make the money. oh my gosh I wonder if you could make him buy back his glasses... His evil delight is infectious. He is having too much fun. What kind of person walks right up to a goose to take a ribbon off it I want to play this, but I don't think it's on steam... yet. That's going to be a beautiful day when it is. Right? Well, that wraps it up, I'd say! I am very glad I did not miss out. Your streams are definitely a highlight. Goodnight, and thanks for the stream! Oh, hush! But don't, of course, never hush. Thank you for coming! Good night!