#one of the devs confirmed this in the discord server and then someone made a height chart using Filbo as reference im assuming

[orb-the-watchman]

I've seen some people talk about how they enjoy seeing people reactions to the twist at the end of bugsnax but personally my favorite reaction to whitness when people join the bugsnax fandom is when they learn Filbo is canonically 6 feet tall and Wambus is almost 8 feet tall

[peculiar-potato]

Among Us animated series trailer analysis post!

(+ a theory on who dies first and who the impostor might be!)

here’s the trailer if you want to watch it yourself :)

This is going to be pretty long, whoops.

~~~~

Firstly, overall impressions on the tone/artstyle!

I mentioned a lot about the art style and everything in my first analysis post, but I just want to reiterate that it’s fun and I like it, and I like seeing how they take details of the game and translate them into the show.

From what I can tell the tone seems pretty lighthearted, well, as lighthearted as a murder mystery can be. It’s a little silly but in a charming way- but with a slight hint of dread. Kinda what I expected.

I think there’s still probably a little way to go before the show is ready considering there were no voice lines in the trailer, and it seemed more like “these are the characters look how fun they are” then actual plot/scenes, but that’s okay I actually really like that we’re not really seeing any glimpses of the plot or voice acting yet!

Anyways, now to the actual trailer!

So opening shot here is The Skeld. We already kinda knew it was going to be set there, but confirmation! At the moment I don’t think the planet/moon/asteroid thing behind them is important, it’s probably just to fill up the background, but who knows, it could be something!

Maybe impostor(s) come from there or something… or maybe it’s just a rock in space.

(My theories get better I promise)

With this image, we finally have an answer to my question from last time- what kind of pizza do the beans eat?

I noticed immediately that there was prosciutto and arugula (a specific kind of bitter lettuce) on the pizza, and with a little googling and a few subsequent suggested searches, I managed to find recipes for fig and prosciutto pizza with, you guessed it, arugula and cheese. (There were multiple kinds of cheese it could be- goat, gorgonzola, mozzarella to name a few)

So those round things are figs. Who would have thought?

Next up we see our first glance of the additional room they added to the Skeld for the show- the kitchen! And the first glance at a depiction of an impostor!

Yellow and Brown seem like good buddies. I wonder how long that friendship will last when impostor stuff starts happening.

My guess is the depiction of the impostor here is a bit more figurative- Nobody really notices them (expect one bean, but we’ll get to that later), and they just kinda seem to be lurking around being scary. Feels more like, idk the idea of an impostor than the actual impostor? I don’t know if I’m explaining that super well.

Maybe this is like the impostor checking out the crew before they start actually impostoring. Idk.

Also, seems like one shadow (although who knows honestly). Maybe it’s a sign of there just being one among the crew? …or maybe I’ve flipped the other way and am interpreting this too literally now.

Regardless, the impostor(s) do/does certainly seem very alieny.

(Alternate impostor conspiracy theories- impostor switches between crewmates/they’re all impostors (which would kinda defeat the purpose tho) or everyone’s just paranoid and there is no impostor (I feel like people would get disappointed by that though so they wouldn’t do it)).

After that we head to navigation.

Here, Red is slacking off playing video games (oddly enough with a human in them- as someone pointed out in the Innersloth discord server, which has some interesting implications. To expand on that myself, it seems like a kind of ancient-civilization human, which is interesting. I tried to figure out what game this is with a reverse image search but I couldn’t, I wonder if it’s a real game or something one of the devs made or something else.)

Anyways Red receives a call from a shadowy figure, presumably a boss of some sort, and scrambles to look like they’re doing what they’re supposed to. The image looks kinda similar to how they’re animating the impostor, but this could be an intentional red herring or just how they’re showing an unrevealed character or an “everyman” type being. Regardless, vaguely ominous.

As for navigation itself, I like the vibes honestly. I want to go there. I love the little headslug bobble head and a lot of the details in the background. Can’t assign everything there directly to a task, but it does have the three consoles and the chair. Also I noticed the bright yellow sticky note- like the “dum” visor cosmetic! I wonder what those papers on the floor say.

Next we’re in the cafeteria. (You can tell by the coloring of the wall, this is probably the vent near weapons)

A couple things I noticed here!

First of all, everyone’s very nonchalant about Lime venting. That seems to mean it’s established that Lime is an engineer like the role in the game (honestly I’m a little surprised a new role was included here!) and that the crew knows this and doesn’t think Lime traveling though vents is a big deal. Will this extend to other crewmembers? Will this put suspicion on Lime as things progress? Who knows!

Also, small thing here, but Cyan signs Orange’s waiver (on the clipboard they seem to carry with them everywhere) simply as “Cyan”. I assumed they would just be going by colors the whole time and not have names or anything, but this kinda confirms that.

(By extension, maybe colors aren’t even codenames or anything for them lore-wise, maybe their names are literally their colors. Also makes me think there may be just one of each color in the entire series if they sign simply as a color. Then again, here I am over analyzing small details again.)

We follow Lime through a vent and into the reactor, which is being watched on the cameras by Purple.

I don’t have a ton to say about Purple, they just seem to be doing their job here. I do find it interesting that the shadow blocks out the reactor camera and then makes it malfunction (is something going to happen in there?) but it may just be a kind of moving the trailer forward type thing.

Also, side note, what’s Lime’s deal with the reactor? They run up to it and snuggle it with hearts floating above them. Engineer really loves their engine I guess haha. I know people have to have already been meming this.

Next is a scene in the medbay.

They do seem to have the medical scanner in the background there, so I wonder if that visual task will ever come into play.

Also I see the MIRA logo on a poster in the background, so my guess is they are somehow under/related to the MIRA corporation.

Green is blushing as Blue checks their reflexes. I remember Blue’s character being described as very attractive, so it could be possible that everyone gets that way around them, or it could just be Green. Idk I’m not here to navigate the minefield that is shipping beans.

White is busy swirling around wine(?) until of course, the impostor shadow thing creeps in as with all the other scenes.

This time, however, someone notices. White.

My guess is White is going to die, and they’re going to die pretty early on.

I was already kinda suspecting White was going to die first simply because of how their character is described. Rich, here because they won some kind of contest, seems to be a bit of a jerk. Feels like the kind of person who would die first idk, just a vibe I’ve had for a while.

Also, I was thinking that 11 is kind of an interesting number, especially considering there were 12 original colors. (Side note, my guess is they’re waiting to include Pink alongside Coral and Rose as “the pinks” or something if they add the new colors in a later season). I feel like maybe they wanted a main crew of ten (because that is what the original lobby size is and thus what a lot of people associate with the game), but needed someone to die early to set up the plot so they needed up with 11.

Now, White being the first and only one to notice the shadow creeping around, and to immediately look terrified and be overtaken by it on screen? My guess is they’re the first to go.

One could also argue that this is an indication of them being an impostor, but idk that feels too obvious of a way to reveal that. (Also I have a different theory as to who it could be). My guess is we won’t know who the impostor is as the audience for a while.

Finally we have this image. I have quite a bit to say about this one!

First of all, I just love this image in general. Makes me so happy to see all the beans!

Anyways, the impostor shadow thing comes in and covers the “not” in “we’re not dead” and I love that I think that’s fun. Also, again, love the falling apart blinds (why are there blinds on a spaceship?) and the balloons duct taped to the window.

We also see them eating the aforementioned fig and prosciutto pizza. There are also a lot of red spheres on the table, which I haven’t quite figured out yet. Fruits of some kind? Or decorations perhaps? Maybe all red gumballs? Whatever they are, Orange is holding one. There’s bologna or summer sausage or something near Brown, and a gray disk in front of it. Not sure about that either, looks kinda like a giant coin, or one of those round lights you tap to turn on and off. Red’s reading what seems to be a rule book (they really don’t seem prepared aha), and there’s also an image of a crewmate on the other side. I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be Pink or Tan.

Blue has a piece of paper with a skull on it which looks pretty ominous, and Brown is holding a knife, but I think those are just red herrings related to their professions. Blue’s a doctor and Brown’s a chef, and Yellow is also holding a cooking implement.

Also, once again, no sign of an emergency meeting button. (Unless the weird gray circle is related somehow?)

With that I was almost ready to wrap up the analysis…

but then I noticed something.

Idk if it’s just me but this image is giving the vibe of the Leonardo Da Vinci painting The Last Supper. I don’t know where my mind pulled this from, but I just kinda looked at it was like… wait this looks familiar. At first I thought it was just my brain making connections, but when you look at the two images right beside each other, it seems like a pretty deliberate parallel.

If it is intentional… Orange is in almost the exact same position that Judas (the betrayer) was in in the painting.

Just saying ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe the red gumball thing made them an impostor /s

Also, just spitballing here, not really part of the theory, if Orange is working against the crew (either as an impostor or an accomplice), and they’re apparently affiliated with HR… what kind of implications could this have for the lore as a whole? Red’s probably just talking to their boss or something, but it feels ominous- what if MIRA (assuming that’s who’s in charge here) is in on the whole impostor thing?

But again, this is also kind of obvious of a hint, so I’m slightly skeptical of it.

Anyways, lots to think about with this, as you can tell I’m pretty excited.

[tinysatansierra-blog]

Markiplier manor is toxic here’s why

So Markiplier manor (Markipliers official discord server) has gotten a surplus of new people in it, this happened a few weeks ago the manor itself though has been up for awhile. originally a members only server it was eventually opened up for everyone and yes there are alot of genuinely good people and the mods are alright but unfortunately its becoming a toxic environment. 

SO EDIT i have discussed with the mods that being said ... im keeping this up as a reminder of we can do better we can help people who are struggling through something instead of shutting them down we can listen to people who are being oppressed and bravely point out new media that only worsens that oppression and stigmatization and not just the mods who i was kind of harsh towards but who are human everyone as a community can do better and this is a large community think of the work we can do just doing the basics like boycotting problematic content and helping those who cry out for it who need it (and noticing and shutting down manipulative/toxic behaviors) ... i dont know if im going to go back to the manor yet tho im going to let this sit give it a week yall can agree or disagree but know that if you try to be an ass your going to get shut down and your feelings are going to get hurt 

lets start with the basics “triggering topics” triggering topics can be anything in particular but it generally means a topic that relates to another persons trauma. Now while it is important to acknowledge a persons trigger words and try to keep the conversation respectable ive also noticed people use it to shut down people who come on freaking out because their dealing with a stressful situation/something traumatic just happened. This has happened to me personally and to a friend with me it was about being pro choice and having to in short make that actual choice. i was discussing this in the bathroom because i (like anyone else who comes in with baggage) did not know about any pro choice discords at that moment and was afraid of being stigmatized or going onto a discord that says its a safe space only for it to be filled with trolls. Mark manor is labeled as a safe space and many people come on there looking for support with me no one told me that the topic was triggering to them (which apparently it was because a friend of theirs had to make the choice not her herself think what you will) they just went to a mod early on when i just found the server as a member a friend (who i wont name) had gotten.... assaulted majority of her werent online and as someone who has been there and yes when she told me it did trigger my own trauma she needed moral support... the mod shut her down and deleted her comments and didnt give her a pointer to any other discord where she could discuss the topic openly and get moral support and be pointed to resources (it actually took me ten minutes to find and confirm a lgbtq therapy chat earlier this year for another individual discussing mental health) this was before i had gotten on for that day but i noticed those messages and i contacted her when she told me what was up yea it triggered my memories and its not fun but I FUCKING HELPED HER i made sure she went to the police to atleast file a statement (while the police dont always help it is good to have it on file) i even made her a plush and shipped it out to her and i would do it again and again because its not good to basically tell another person to shut up because it triggers others not without atleast trying to help them find another fucking place and making sure their actually ok and in a physical safe place  next is them claiming the manor is a “safe space” a safe space is by definition  “ a place or environment in which a person or category of people can feel confident that they will not be exposed to discrimination, criticism, harassment, or any other emotional or physical harm.” you would also think that the manor would be a safe space in the fact that marginalized and oppressed groups of people would be able to point out problematic content and have an open and free discussion about it and how it makes them uncomfortable. especially people of lgbtq community which alot of people in that chat are. yesterday (and this was what caused me to officially turn away from the server) in the patio (which is the members only chat) a Transgender individual pointed out the problematic content that is huniepop and how it fetishizes trans people as well as other minorities now this game i hear tries to make itself out as a “parody” .... its not its a sexual dating sim what would make it a parody is if sex noises were replaced with donkey sounds and the lewd pictures were replaced with poorly drawn doodles of tits or what have you its a game for incels marks hilarious when he plays it because he doesnt take the game seriously my issue isnt with him its with the developer. and if you did not know (which apparently people dont) the character poli is described as “a girl with a dick” the individual pointed this out because they felt like it dehumanizes them and paints them as nothing more than a fetish... and also apparently you can “choose” is poli is trans which kind of gives off the message that people can ignore trans peoples identity if it makes them uncomfortable... or if they dont sexualize them. and the muslim community is more or less in the same boat i come from the bible belt in usa im not muslim i am not trans but i do have a reason for standing with both and i will get to that in a bit so i was raised in a christian household in a christian setting like muslim women were basically told we cannot have sex and any sexual thought is sinful and we will be punished blah blah blah your even more closeted if your gay or bi because then you can face ... violence that being said to make the woman from the middle east hyper sexual like they did is kind of shitty even for a incel pleasing sex game. the individual who thought it would be ok to discuss this in the server because its labeled as a safe space and is generally “lgbtq” friendly thus believing he would have people agree and discuss ... was unceremoniously shut down by their peers and a mod was notified this person was not hostile maybe a bit frustrated because he wanted to talk about it and thought he would have this genuinely helpful conversation and people would listen and spread the word because to have problematic content be popular can isolate the oppressed group even more so WHEN NO ONE WANTS TO LISTEN TO THEM. if a group of marginalized people notice something problematic with content and you claim to be an ally of said group then you need to acknowledge and support what they say. they told him to go to twitter where he could potentially be bullied and written off ... because again its an INCEL PLEASING SEX GAME.(which means incels if you ever dealt with them will go and say anything to justify the game even using slurs and bullying) and to put the icing on the cake to change the topic they brought up robin ... i actually dont know who robin is as i dont really focus much on youtube creators personal stuff (it feels off for me to not personally know an individual but know their personal stuff without having actually talking to them its weird i know its a thing i have in my head) but apparently they recently came out as female and good for them im super proud of him and the patio members were discussing how they were proud of him as well for beginning to wear makeup and making themselves more feminine which would be great if they werent trying so hard to shut down the trans male who was trying to spread awareness on problematic stuff .... something he pointed out ... and something they gaslighted and said he was being hostile. really its almost as if they only care about trans issues when its someone famous discussing them  so what can we possibly do about huniepop being transphobic and the answer is very easy BOYCOTT IT like... yall were up in arms and boycotted jk rowling with snap and a turn do we only cancel the old and ugly? do we only cancel those who we dont think is funny? mark is not at fault he probably doesnt realize it and any comments made on the issue are talked down upon or drowned amongst other comments im not saying to cancel him im saying to cancel the game HARD. ignore the posts bitch at the dev demand refunds for your game. like consumers have infinitely more power than corps want to admit.  so you basically have a community that claims to be a safe space but only if you want to talk about sunshine and rainbows and its highly hypocritical of them to claim safety.  another thing is emotionally abusive/manipulative people hide in the server and the mods dont ever seem to acknowledge it. i cannot tell you how many times ive gotten into arguments with people who seems nice then turn into assholes then claim to be the victim when i or others go off on them. if you recognize my name you know i dont stand down when it comes to having a snarky or rude comment thrown at me if your going to be an ass were fighting i dont care how nice you seemed beforehand and you dont get to call a mod just because i actually stood up for myself or others sorry not sorry dont be a bitch nuff said.  now why would i care so much about problematic content? why would i care and stand by the transgender and muslim people (aside from being ya know... an actual ally and not someone who claims it for sympathy and brownie points?) its because i am autistic i am also able to function well on my own but there is a movie created by the famous singer sia it is called music it is a movie frowned upon by the autisitic community because infantizes and dehumanizes non verbal autistic people i am fortunate and unfortunate in not having to deal with much stigma unfortunate because i wasnt diagnosed until i was 17 alot of answers about my behavior could have been answered if i had been diagnosed earlier but considering society loves the quiet timid female and i functioned “well” for neurotypicals i was ignored. so yea you bet your ass im standing with them and raising awareness about huniepop and their was this one person when i mentioned this point i cant remember there name nor to do i give a shit about them because when i mentioned how autistic people ... how i was in the same boat with music by sia (again i advise that no one target the actress who was under contract target sia and please boycott her so she knows she cant get brownie points or money for a movie that stigmatizes who she claims she wants to “help” (*cough* profit off of *cough cough*) and only serves as a feel good movie for neurotypicals and ignorant people)  they said “i heard people who hated the movie i heard people who found it alright people are ALLOWED to like problematic content” ... and like ... does anyone else see the problem here? its not hard at all to boycott celebrities for making content  and im going to repeat this point  IF A GROUP OF MARGINALIZED, STIGMITIZED AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE CALL OUT SOMETHING FOR BEING PROBLEMATIC AND YOU CLAIM TO BE AN ALLY YOU FUCKING LISTEN TO THEM AND DONT SHUT THEM DOWN I DONT GIVE A SHIT YOU DONT HAVE A FUCKING EXCUSE. if you cant bring yourself to boycott a piece of media and replace it with the infinitely more suitable forms that supports the group you claim to be for your not an ally your a fucking hypocrite  and that is why i left markiplier manor i am still a youtube special ... thingy member and i will continue to be a member to support mark i want people to overall listen to those who speak up against a creator and a piece of media and listen to us all no matter how “good” something seems. .. also there is a video called listen it was created by nonverbal autistic people  and communicationFIRST a group that sia apparently communicated with for her movie... and then ignored  https://youtu.be/H7dca7U7GI8

[pochapal]

You don't gotta answer this publicly, but what on earth happened/is happening RE: Dogpiling?

this is long but there’s a lot to cover and i don’t know how much information is pre-known going into this.

basically breadtuber sarah z made a 2 hour fandom postmortem video on homestuck. instead of being a genuine look into what made the comic and the fandom so massive and so relevant for so long, she kind of glosses over all that in the first thirty minutes, then spends the rest of the video discussing homestuck’s two major controversies in the least tactful way imaginable. 

the first one she talks about is the hiveswap development hell fiasco, which on paper is an interesting thing to bring up in relation to a lack of content contributing to fandom decline, but sarah’s primary source for all this is a pseudo-anonymous blog run by giovan_h, someone who is notorious for treating dangerous and baseless accusation as fact and for obsessively stalking current and former whatpumpkin staff members to obtain information for said blog. she supposedly tries to bring a balanced argument on what exactly happened in the three year dark period between hiveswap’s supposed release date and when act 1 actually came out by pitting ipgd’s tumblr post (the one that made the odd gentlemen embezzlement claims vis a vis king’s quest) against giovan’s blog (claiming through anonymous and unverified sources that hussie deliberately dicked around and failed to meet a single deadline, then broke contract terms by using the kickstarter money to commission the odd gentlemen to animate act 7 instead of working on hiveswap. there are a lot of other unsavoury claims about hussie and certain other wp members among these blog posts, but that’s the primary relevant gist). 

neither account can actually be verified (ipgd’s post claims their information is spotty because they’re talking around a pretty strict settlement nda and giovan’s sources and accounts are deliberately vague and unverifiable to “protect various parties from retaliation from hussie/wp”) but sarah ultimately comes down and says that she’s inclined to take giovan’s blog as more truthful for. reasons. this is obviously bad because within minutes of the video dropping several wp team members reveal sarah never once tried to get in contact with them, which has led to attacks on the team members because a lot of zealous people looking for an excuse to keep being mad at homestuck in the wake of hs^2′s semi-permanent hiatus were emboldened by a video essayist treating the ugliest speculation as hard fact. as of right now, the hiveswap kickstarter has released a statement clarifying the development situation as best they can (from what i’ve read it does point to them legally being unable to point to/discuss certain things) which has had all the impact of dropping a match onto an oil spill. the anti homestuck zealots firmly believe every word of that post to be bullshit and are accusing the wp team of covering for hussie and his super heinous evil crimes (keep in mind we are still not privy to the internal workings of wp because why the fuck would we be) so the wp team in turn are putting these people on blast for this dangerous harassment (it doesn’t need to be said that as a professional being publicly accused of covering up fraud is a very bad thing) and then as a counter counter response the angry fans are now accusing the wp staff of abusing their power to direct mass harassment towards specific individuals (this amounting to people getting into wp members’ private discord servers and publicly posting mean things they have said about giovan et al which imo only serves to bolster the stalking claims) and the whole thing went very ugly very fast.

the second controversy that sarah brings up is everything involved in post canon homestuck (epilogues, pesterquest, hs^2). here she reverts to more of a passively pro-fandom stance, asserting time and time again how horrible and evil the epilogues and everything else were because of how they took the characters and stories everyone knows and loves and warped them into something unrecognisably terrible, that post-canon homestuck was universally reviled. in a very bad and awkward placement of information she then segues into a kind of hand-wavey discussion of the intense backlash towards certain post-canon trans interpretations (of vriska, june, and roxy) in a very I Am A Cis Woman So I’m Not Qualified To Make Any Statements Here Other Than Transphobes Fuck Off <3 But Also This Is Indicative Of A Growing Fandom Resentment way, which honestly begs the question of why she needed to include this at all. another bad thing here is how she super glosses over the “controversies” surrounding “the advocates for june egbert” and “the writer for vriska’s pesterquest route” - she is obviously referring to former creative director kate here (she kind of confirms this on twitter by saying she didn’t want to mention kate by name in order to not stir up further drama which uh... yeah) and the inexcusably terrible chain of events which led to every single out trans woman working on homestuck to resign to protect themselves from further mass harassment and dogpiling from the fandom.

she instead, for some reason decides to focus on how post-canon homestuck has been a total commercial and creative failure, that homestuck^2 basically shouldn’t have even happened after the fandom’s distaste for the epilogues and that it was not only controversial but also was a low quality mess everyone agreed sucked. she then goes on to compare the hs^2 team to the wp hiveswap dev team, and passively applies the same giovan-esque assertions to the internal workings of hs^2, kind of but not really implying the reasons given for the shutting down of hs^2 were bullshit. this is super bad for the fact that the post canon homestuck team is the most openly marginalised group of people working for hs is in an official capacity, and we have seen time and time again what drawing undue, speculative negative attention towards these people has done. again, reminder sarah did not reach out to a single person who worked/is working on homestuck for what is essentially a drama video disguised as a fandom postmortem. the upshot here is that her post-canon section served to embolden yet another wp-hostile section of the fanbase - those who adamantly believe that only the fandom itself can create worthwhile homestuck projects, and that all writers are evil people who want their queer fans dead (only a partial exaggeration) and produce spite projects which are driven by the steadfast belief that their work is inherently superior to official content by virtue of their fan status. among this group were a lot of people who latched onto any accusation against a team member as fuel to push them out of “ruining” such a beloved franchise so sarah’s video serves as proof that all the hs^2 writers were morally corrupt monsters ruining a fandom space that was meant for minors and queer people (this is all very anti/anti-anti carousel of bullshit nonsense that i have no time for) and thus they’re confident to once again tear down the remaining public facing staff members, ignoring how all this crusade has done so far is drive a handful of trans women and people of colour off of official homestuck projects for their own safety.

then she ends the video with a “oh btw this video is proudly sponsored by audible <3″ bit and it’s just. beyond unbelievably awfully stupid that she deliberately reignited this aggression which has caused untold material harm on marginalised people (that happened less than a year ago!!!) just for the sake of quick clicks and ad revenue. she consolidated the most dogshit takes as fact within the general fandom consensus, sided with some of the worst people to engage with homestuck, potentially detonated the last shreds of stability of this independent marginalised media project, and wrapped it all up with a sponsorship from an amazon subsidiary company of all fucking things. this is obviously a case of an incredibly short sighted decision to cash in on a very complicated and unwieldy fandom history but still the potential consequences here are unfathomable.

[obscurewatch]

The Three Teddybears of Overwatch

You’ve noticed Zarya has one. You see it in that one emote where she opens gifts

You may have also noticed there is one on Sombra’s bed in Castillo

EDIT : Apparently Sombra calls her bear “Arturito

(there’s a new interaction she has with Hammond where she mentions him

“ Sombra: You remind me of my stuffed bear, Arturito.

Hammond: squeak

Sombra: I like him better. “

Arturito, spanish for Arthur which means “bear”, “protector”, “guardian” in a bunch of languages.

Makes sense for a teddybear given to children in times of war.

And the third is really hard to notice. I’ve played Uprising dozens of times and never noticed it until one day I decided to just explore the map and take it slow in Normal mode.

This third teddybear is NOT there in regular King’s Row. It only appears in Uprising and it’s the only teddybear I found on the whole Uprising map.

Blizzard loves doing clues in sets of three. Three Moira books in Oasis and then the same three books in the Diablo Section of BlizzardWorld, three Hammond wall panel stashes in Horizon Lunar Colony, three ana wanted posters on Anubis and many others. I don’t think there are other teddybears out there but keep your eyes open :D

This right here is the texture file of the teddybear. All three bears have the same texture.

Notice the faded Overwatch logo? It’s on the bear’s chest, on all three of them.

See it?

My theory is that Overwatch was never a purely military organization, they likely also had a humanitarian branch who helped the dislodged population, the injured and the sick during and after the Omnic Crisis.

We know Sombra’s parents died in the Crisis. She was made an orphan by war young, probably around age 7-9.

The way I see it, Overwatch used to give those teddybears to children to help them cope with the loss of a parent and as such, young Sombra received one.

20+ years later, she still has that teddybear, which proves two things : Overwatch knows how to make quality plushies that won’t fall apart in 6 months and that’s really commendable AND Sombra never really got over the loss of her parents and has kept her whole life that bear who’s likely been her only “true” friend while growing up.

She keeps it on her bed. Not on a shelf, not on display behind glass, not in a toy chest or some random cardboard box, forgotten. No, on her bed. She sleeps with it, at age 30. And there’s only one teddybear. Not a dozen others that she’d have added to her collection over the years, just this one, that she was given by Overwatch when her parents died. It clearly means a lot to her. That bear is the cornerstone of Sombra’s personality and a daily reminder for her of the cost of war. Which is just, beautiful. It adds so much depth to her already rich character.

She probably looks at it every day and thinks about her place in the world, what she can do to make sure something like the Omnic Crisis never happens again. She’s on a mission and that bear is helping her stay focused.

 Well, that’s how I see it.

There’s also a theory by CowboyVigilante that I love because it add yet more depth to her relationship with the bear.  

Sombra could also be using that bear in a process called "Rubber duck debugging” which is a practical tip coming from a book called “The Pragmatic Programmer”. Basically when as a programmer you are stuck with code that won’t work, the idea is to explain the code line by line to an inanimate object, for example a rubber duck, which has zero knowledge of programming. By explaining the code line by line to “someone” who knows nothing about coding with very simple words, your brain will take another look, a fresher look, on what is wrong with the code and you’ll eventually pinpoint the problem, whereas, had you kept on going insane over what was wrong from your point of view, you’d have missed it. You just tricked your brain into thinking about a problem differently, congrats ! Best part is that this can be applied to everything in life, not just programming.

Sombra might be doing that with her teddybear when she can’t figure out how to hack something ! It would explain why she has kept the bear for 20+ years, he’s been her silent partner in crime all those years :D

She also might have hidden a USB drive inside of it, something with critical info?But that’s a massive reach and I don’t see what use she could have for it. Anyway there’s not much happening when you shoot the bear in game. The head pops off and that’s it.

The Overwatch logo on the bear’s chest and the fact that Sombra didn’t sew something on top of it, or removed the logo, makes me think Sombra is at the very least neutral towards Overwatch. She doesn’t seem to have anything particular against Overwatch as an organization, maybe it’s the only “good” one she sees out there, and her hacking skills probably provided her with the opportunity to see for herself what Overwatch was really about internally.

Remember the devs said that someone was working very hard to decrypt the old Overwatch Archives. It’s likely Sombra. Now we have to wait and see why she wanted those archives.

Emotes aren’t canon. However Zarya keeps talking about what happened to her village. Did she lose relatives in the Crisis? Probably. No confirmation about her family situation, we don’t know if she’s an orphan. 

In the emote, she opens a present and finds the teddybear which she then hugs tight until its head pops off. It could be just a joke about her voiceline “I want to hug you like big fuzzy siberian bear”. If I remember correctly, Russia has always refused Overwatch’s help during the Crisis. While I understand why they wouldn’t let a foreign military force on russian soil, I like to think they would still accept humanitarian aid. And Zarya might have received a teddybear after her village got destroyed by omnics, I don’t think only orphans are entitled to a teddybear. The emote could be a way to show that Zarya as a child grew up to “love” or at least see the good in Overwatch (hugging a bear with the Overwatch logo on its chest) and hate omnics (crushing a robot toy in disgust). Or maybe the emote is showing adult Zarya reunited with the teddybear she lost years ago? I’m reading too much into it.

The teddybear in the Uprising subway could belong to anyone. It could belong to the young child of someone who got it during the Crisis, or to another adult who, like Sombra, never quite managed to forget what happened and takes it around with them at all times. But it’s in the subway, on a bench. So I think it makes more sense that it belongs to a young child who was in the subway with their parents during the Null Sector attack, had to evacuate the city quickly and just left it behind in the panic.

Maybe Overwatch never stopped to give those teddybears away to kids, maybe through a kind of organization like Make a Wish that they would operate themselves after the crisis. Maybe the Uprising one is simply merchandise that parents bought for their kids. There are posters of Genji and Tracer in game, they seem canon, maybe Overwatch had a merch shop before they were disbanded x)

Either way, those teddybears are heavily linked to the suffering caused by Omnics turning against humans, be it Null Sector or older units during the Omnic Crisis.

If we ever see new teddybears added in game, or in shorts or comics, we can take that as a bad omen. I’m sure they’ll eventually become something, so many clues out there that seem random until something else is introduced and suddenly everything makes sense.

If you’re open minded and if you enjoy wasting time hunting for the many obscure things the devs have put in the world of Overwatch, I have an all new discord server :D

https://discord.gg/Eg8pZdn

[berserker-official]

Livestream 5/3

Now this was a beefy stream, so for this post I’ll focus on the gameplay aspects. There were cool interviews with the execution team as well as the CEO of the Canadian Ubisoft Branches, so you might want to check those out when you have time.

Season 6 will be called Hero’s March, and will start May 17th.

A big thing about today’s stream was helping introduce new players to the game. To do this, A free weekend is going on now, as well as the Training Program. If a veteran teams up with a new player, or vice versa, and play five matches, both players will get 2 weeks of a new, revamped champion status. The new champion status has increased XP gain, so if you know someone that is interested, team up with them! You’ll help each other, and potentially make new friends.

If you’re a veteran/new player that wants to help/find someone to help you, a good place to head to is the For Honor subreddit. There you’ll find posts to help you team up. There’s also a discord if you prefer that.

They also had some pretty famous community players on the stream to showcase Dominion and Duels for new players, and the best way to play in team modes, as well as just fighting.

May 10th will introduce new executions for content of the week. The stream’s transitions had small clips of all the executions, and I have to say, there are some really good ones in there (Raider and Warlord are great)

Next, Damien and some of the team onion people talked about the results of dedicated servers.

75% reduced connectivity errors

Next step is dedicated servers for custom matches

Finally, the Season 6 reveal segment

The first rework revealed is the Peacekeeper. Roman says while she is strong, parts of her kit are undervalued, so this is a small rework. The first change is her dagger cancels. They were easy to block, and predictable. Now any dagger cancel will come out on top. This means that dagger cancel can be more prevalent, and hopefully some of her attacks will actually be used, like the zone’s second hit, and heavy finishers. Speaking of which, her heavy finishers will have dagger cancel, guard cancel, and dodge cancel. Unfortunately, because of these new additions, some nerfs had to be applied. Zone attack damage for the first hit is reduced to 15. Light openers are now 13, heavy are 20. Heavy finishers are 25. Dashing thrust are 15. Gouge is 10 bleed. Finally, her bleed mechanic has been changed. Now it stacks. This gives the incentive to continue to attack to apply pressure and bleed to the opponent. She’s strong, but not op strong, nor is she using her full kit to her potential, so these changes might help balance her out.

Next is Orochi. Orochi’s have been feeling left behind with the parry changes, but now is the time. Storm Rush can now be changed directionally. The top SR is undodgeable. The guardbreak cancel is gone, but you can cancel and then guardbreak. It can also be chained. Riptide Strike is now back dodge light, so it’s faster. This makes the possibility to mix SR and RS. His chains have been changed by way of timing. This gives incentive to attack with top light and then move to sides. He also gets 3 new chains. You can cancel recovery of finishers into dodges. Finally, some rebalancing. LO damage reduced to 15. 2 chain lights are 12. Side light finishers are 17, side heavy finishers are 30.

Roman said that next week we’ll get more patch notes, and confirms that there will be new heroes, as well as more reworks, and right now some heroes are in the middle of RIFTs, or Rapid Iteration Fight Tests.

Beachhead is the new map for the season!

This is made by a separate team from the FH devs, which is interesting. This map is playable on all game modes except for Tribute. This is a samurai map, and defenders spawn is behind a large gate, similar to the Sanctuary Bridge map. Zone A is dubbed the Armory and is closest to the defenders. When you step out, you’ll notice that it’s reminiscent of the story chapter when the Vikings arrived in Samurai territory, but it’s not a carbon copy of that map. Attacker spawn is at the beach, near beached Viking ships. The points are located in asymmetrical areas, again, like Sanctuary Bridge. There are multiple navigational choices to move around easily, and it’s also a smaller map, which means it’s fast pace. Zone C is dubbed the Ballistae. The two points have a nice view of the middle area. I personally think a smaller map will be fun to play, so I’m excited.

New gear! A new addition to these armor pieces is that some aspects will be changed based on your color swatches. Future gear will add material changes.

Progression changes! Now introducing, the Visual Collection. When you go into the change look section, you can see every item you collect will be added to your visual collection, so you can change the look of your gear. This means you can get rid of all the gear you don’t want, but keep the visuals. You can also now apply visuals from lower rarities to your higher gear, including event items! There are also hidden items, that will hint at how to get those.

Most importantly, the team has saved all visuals for you, so even if you scrapped stuff previously, you will still get them. However, they’re aware of problems with this so don’t scrap your stuff now. Wait until the season starts.

Next are new reputation rewards. When you hit Rep 40, you get a special ornament, and a special outfit at 50.

Finally we got to hear from the execution team, and then the new content of the week this week was three new elite outfits.

That’s all for this week, but next week will be patch notes for Season 6.

[alilybit]

Steam Scam Documentation

improved readability + table of contents on my website: https://phal.io/hackers/stean (free easter egg included!)

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TLDR – What To Do

Prevention

- Never sign in using Steam anywhere unless it’s a well known site that you navigated to yourself, preferably by manually typing the URL into your browser and saving that URL as a bookmark for later, NEVER sign in on links others sent you, even your significant other whom you would trust with your life because their account could be hijacked or they don’t know they’re sharing a malicious link

- Optionally send the link to an internationally approved computer expert you trust (me?)

- When you confirm trades in the app, always double check both trade contents AND the person you’re trading with (level, friend date) because hackers can automatically replace outgoing and incoming trade offers to go to a different account with the same name and pfp as your original trade partner

When It’s Too Late

- Warn your friends not to click on any link that might be sent on your behalf, check active chats for messages you didn’t send, send/tell them this

- Change your password (if you use your Steam password elsewhere, change those as well, you should be using unique passwords and a secure open source password manager like KeePassXC)

- Log out all sessions in the Steam desktop client by clicking on your name in the top right corner next to notifications and navigating to account details -> account security - manage Steam guard -> deauthorize all other devices

- Open https://steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey in your browser (if you don’t trust my link, which you shouldn’t, simply find out if steamcommunity dot com is the real domain for Steam and then manually type the complete link into your browser), revoke any API key there is if you haven’t created them or don’t know what they are, if you did make them replace them

- Optionally report the link at https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en to make all common web browsers display a warning before loading the malicious site

(Source + further info: https://forums.steamrep.com/pages/hijacking/)

When a Friend Sends You a Malicious Link or Acts Suspiciously

- Try to contact them somewhere outside of Steam and send/tell them this to save their account and to prevent the hijack from spreading further through their friends list

- Warn their friends

Pro Tip

The interwebs are full of malicious links/downloads, even/especially search engine results. To make sure you get the proper installer for programmes/the proper link to log into/purchase something, ALWAYS use the Wikipedia Technique™:

- Open wikipedia.org

- Search for the programme/site/shop/whatever

- Look for the website link either on the right in the summary box or by navigating to the external links section at the bottom

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I will now describe and show how a friend of mine had their account hijacked. I’ll also keep adding other forms of scam attempts to this post/site as I come across them so you can look at examples and be prepared for when it happens to you.

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Incident 1 – Can You Vote for My Team?

It was the night before my first vaccination. I was still doing something on my PC, I don’t remember what, even though it was past bedtime, when I got a message from a Steam friend. I’ll call them Ingeborg. My brother, Ingeborg and I had met a month earlier on a TF2 rocket jump server and we added each other. We played together a couple more times but beside that I didn’t know Ingeborg that well. You can see the chat from that day in the images below.

The first cropped message from Ingeborg at the top is “hey u free rn?” or something. I assumed they just wanted to ask about playing a game of TF2 with me, as it has happened before. When they dropped the question about voting for their team and getting keys in return, I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t know of any competitive team they were in and I also didn’t know Ingeborg well or that alleged tournament at all. It also didn’t seem like they could just throw expensive keys around. I took some time to process the information and to think about what I should reply, but Ingeborg didn’t leave me much time to think, following up with “?” and “u here”. So I asked, feeling stupid for not knowing what they’re talking about.

Then, they also set a time limit of less than 30 minutes and kept asking why I’m not immediately replying or “voting”. I have to admit, I nearly fell for it. I want to help people and I can’t think clearly under pressure, especially when it involves other people. And, for the Permanent Record, I of course wouldn’t have taken anything in return for helping a friend. I wanted to tell them that but they didn’t even give me the time to type that. I had already put my name and password in the form, after a lot of thinking, but something prevented me from pressing enter, it just didn’t feel right. I had even briefly searched the web for that tournament and didn’t really find anything. But what finally made me realise that there is something wrong and what made me think clearly again was the border and title bar of that alleged pop-up window. (Edit: Thanks for 1 likes. I compared genuinely signing in through Steam on scrap.tf and it did not open a pop-up window, it simply completely sent me to steamcommunity.com. I guess that means pop-up Steam sign ins are always fake.) I already tried clicking on the HTTPS information earlier which didn’t work for some reason but which still didn’t make me 100 % realise that this is a fake site. Until I noticed that the title bar is a Windows 10 default light theme title bar. I’m on Linux and I use dark themes, the title bar should look completely different. I tried moving the window around and it moved choppily and I could only move it within the Firefox window. I checked the source code and it was true: It was merely an iframe within the site that contained a fake Steam login form from a different URL that’s not steamcommunity.com. This is the site in the iframe:

As you can see, it’s the Steam login form, but the address at the top is not a Steam address. I took a look at its source code and found that it was a lot longer than the original and also contained a lot of dialogue lines about removing the Steam mobile authenticator. This apparently didn’t come up when actually putting in password and username, but you should look out for fake sites telling you to remove your authenticator, they could get complete access to your account that way.

I confronted Ingeborg with this and they stopped replying. But they didn’t immediately remove me from their friends list, like that one time I was actually scammed. I wasn’t sure what to do now. Was Ingeborg really a scammer? Was everything we did together so far just to gain my trust to scam me? Like that one time I was actually scammed? The funny thing is that out conversation before this was about scammers. Some usual random scammer put a usual comment on my profile and Ingeborg warned me. But I believe in the good in everyone and I didn’t want to just assume they were a scammer without making absolutely sure. I thought about what else I knew about Ingeborg. They gifted my brother some items because he barely has any. They invited me to their Steam group. They subscribed to me on YouTube and put my channel on their home tab. Coincidentally, earlier that same day, I also took some time to take a look at their YouTube channel and subscribed. So I thought that me subscribing to them was the sign they were waiting for, signalling that I trusted them enough to fall for the scam. I checked their channel and I was still on their home tab and subscriptions. I checked their Steam group and was still a member. This convinced me that there really is a possibility that this wasn’t actually Ingeborg trying to scam be but that they’ve also been phished and someone else is now trying to also gain access to their friends’s’s accounts.

Ingeborg’s friends list and profile comments were now set to private, so I couldn’t comment or directly message their friends to warn them. But there was the Steam group. One other member was online, one with a Pokémon profile picture and I believe I also remembered noticing them on Ingeborg’s friends list because of the Pokémon theme. So I put a comment in the group and added the Pokémon person, who unfortunately had their comments disabled as well, so I put an explanatory message into my profile to let them know why I’m adding them. I warned them and asked them to tell Ingeborg that someone has access to their account, should they know Ingeborg better than me. On YouTube, Ingeborg had their Discord name listed. I tried to add them but friend requests were disabled. There was also an Instagram name. I technically don’t have Instagram but I made a test account a while ago to test a YouTube scam comment with a link to an alleged Instagram password hacking site. I logged in with that account, changed my profile picture to my real one, added an explanation to the bio and added Ingeborg. But they didn’t react. So I wrote a comment on a YouTube video. I think it took three attempts for the comment to pass the automatic spam filter. It could of course also have been Ingeborg deleting my comments exposing them for being a scammer. But the third castle stayed up. And a while later, they actually responded. I then tried to tell them to add me on Discord, that also took many attempts and extremely careful wording to get through. Not even my Discord tag with numbers spelled out and 1447 speak, as Jeremy 900 800 500 would say, went through, but a carefully camouflaged link to my website did. By then, they also messaged me on Steam, asking for help and asking me to temporarily take their valuable items to secure them. I told them to add me on Discord so I know it’s actually them I’m chatting with. As it turned out later, it was really good that they didn’t trade me their stuff.

Apparently, Ingeborg wasn’t home at the time and only had access to their phone. And they allegedly fell for the exact same scam a day before. The obvious first thing that had to be done was changing the Steam password. But it seems that the password can’t be changed in the app itself. So I had the idea that Ingeborg could log into Steam on their phone’s web browser and change the password there, which worked. We kept chatting and I kept researching. I still wasn’t sure if this was still part of Ingeborg’s ingenious plan to regain my trust to scam me again, but I believed in them. Eventually Ingeborg got home, and I stayed awake gladly until 3:47 in the morning, I… I sang as time went off. Because as long as menly men like me are prepared to give their time, a flower grows. And that flower, that small, fragile, delicate yellow flower, shall burst forth and defeat interwebs criminals. On the “next” day, the vaccine had a side effect of making me a little tired. Strangely enough, that side effect already started before the injection itself.

I also kept thinking about what the actual purpose of this series of hijacking accounts is. Ingeborg’s Steam wallet and inventory seemed to have been untouched but there must be some way for the criminals to profit off of this, if only to pay for the costs of the website and domain. On Vaccinator day, I finally found an article on https://forums.steamrep.com/pages/hijacking/ that explains it. When you give them your password and current authenticator code, they obviously get access to your account, but you still have the authenticator, so what they can do is limited. Apparently, they use the opportunity to create an API key that allows them to keep accessing your account even after you changed your password and they use it to immediately replace incoming and outgoing trade offers with ones that go to a fake version of your original trade partner with the same name and profile picture. You might then not notice the difference when confirming the trade in the app and give them your items, unknowingly and without them having to have access to or remove your mobile authenticator. A brilliant idea. You might as well check if you have any API keys which you usually shouldn’t, the details are explained on the steamrep link and in the “when it’s too late” section at the top of this piece of medium literature.

And the moral of this story: Always be careful, educate yourself on how they trick you and on digital security in the sense of safety, never assume you won’t fall for it, don’t shame people who fell for it and don’t feel ashamed if you fell for it. And always have an internationally approved technical support character on your team.

——————————————————————————————

Incident 2 – Simply Building Trust AKA Social Engineer

We write the distant year of 2016. Two… œ… six… one. Oh, I’m an idiot, I held the pen upside down. Never mind. I don’t recall the incident in as many details, but I still know the most important things. It started on a TF2 tdm_hightower community server, rocket jumping and Market Gardenering around. I don’t remember exactly how one of the other players started conversing with me, I just remember that they, I’ll call them Wincohn, added me, chatted with me and wanted to trade one of my items that was not yet tradable. We chatted over the course of multiple days. Eventually, we also chatted about bad things that happened in our pasts, like the divorce of my parents and how their dad allegedly died when they were young. And we comforted each other. They also asked me if I was religious at some point, I guess because religious people are easier to scam. When I took a look at their inventory, I saw TF2 competitive matchmaking beta passes. I don’t remember exactly how that worked, but I was excited about matchmaking and you could only get in if you have the beta pass item, but having it also gives you some invites to give to other people. So I offered to take a beta invite in exchange for the item they wanted. My item, a festive Rocket Launcher was still not tradable though, so they offered me to temporarily give them something else and they would immediately give me a beta invite. Since the beta invite is not an item, I had to trust them they would actually invite me in return. We were on the aforementioned community server again and they agreed to make our trade public to the server members so they could witness it and report one of us, should we not keep our side of the bargain. So we opened a trade and I gave them one cosmetic drop I didn’t need, one cosmetic I used and two non-strange festive weapons so I don’t lose my stats, which were apparently in total about equal in value to the Rocket Launcher. Right before the trade went through, they left the server, which I only noticed when the trade window closed. And they removed me from their friends list. No beta invite. I told the others on the server that we traded but he left before it went through and he scammed me but nobody cared. The chat where we agreed that I would get a beta invite was also gone. I lost my items and I didn’t even have proof that it was a scam and not just a gift or tax dodge. Steam rightfully doesn’t return scammed items, because the scammers of course immediately sell them and taking them away from the buyer would be unfair for them and giving the victim a duplicate would be easily exploitable, but getting them banned would at least prevent further scams. The worst part, though, is that everything they told me was a lie and only served the purpose of gaining my trust. Fascinating.

After it happened, I was of course sad and angry. But only temporarily. I don’t hold a grudge against them, I’ve long since forgiven them. Quite on the contrary, I’m even thankful because I didn’t lose that much virtual material value (like 3 $) and it was a valuable experience. I only hope that they have changed since then and don’t do this anymore. The comments on their profile are disabled to this day, not the best sign. They also don’t have a Steam or third party ban. Either them scamming was not a common occurrence or nobody was ever able to prove it.

——————————————————————————————

Incident 3 – Wanna Join Our Tournament Team? (Incomplete)

I got another one of those friend requests on Steam from a suspicious looking profile. One of those that have TF2 comp stuff in their profile description. This time, I accepted it to see what they would do, to document more methods used by interwebs criminals.

This account had 1200 hours of TF2 playtime. So it looked like they’re an actual player, or maybe a hijacked account. Their inventory was public as well, but nearly empty, not even regular weapons or anything. They were playing TF2 the entire time and when I checked the server they were on, it always said no server. I guess that means they just have TF2 open the entire time to farm playtime that is publicly and prominently displayed on their profile to appear like a real player.

I tried to go along with their chat but it didn’t go well. I even prepared my long unused Gibus Cap Discord account that I used to use to test roles on our server. But apparently, I asked too many questions. I was too eager to get a nice phishing link into my net. After that last message, they removed me from their friends. Next time, I won’t ask questions.

[fyperia]

why i am angsty™ this week

@questionably-gay

so there’s this guy i’ve been talking to. we go to school together, he’s a year ahead of me in the same major so we’ve had a number of classes together over the last few semesters. we’re also both huge nerds (expected in a game dev program) and play a lot of the same games so we were what you might call “friends”

i will say, we’d been getting pretty close over the last month or two; he’s fairly attractive, responds to being sassed with equal or greater sass, is pretty good at overwatch and wow (but not better than me, so i can still shit talk him), and Definitely Not A Neckbeard. or so i thought? not sure on that one anymore.

tl;dr boy i was moderately interested turns out to be kind of an ass, freaks out that i don’t answer his message and deletes me from everything.

i won’t bore you with the details, but here’s a list of the offending topics i failed to connect as they happened, under a nice readmore because holy hell it’s long:

-when i said i was reporting someone after a sexual assault joke was made during a match of overwatch, asked what i was reporting him for

-his brothers made a lot of Not Funny ‘jokes’ while we were on discord (that I heard over his open mic) and he never really responded to them but he did always laugh at them

-didn’t understand why blizzard “had to go and make tracer gay, i mean was it really necessary for them to do that?” until i was like well i’m bi and i think it’s pretty cool that they did that (he shut up about it and then got quiet whenever people would be excited about it in front of him)

-when symmetra was confirmed as autistic, he told me this. conversation was basically: “so symmetra is autistic” “people didn’t know that?” “i dunno, but they just announced it” “yes and?” “she’s autistic” “ok so?” “i dunno, she’s autistic” “what’s your point?” “the character, not the people who play her” “....” (someone else changed the subject at that point, i was just too caught off guard to respond)

-not really an Offense™ but some more explanation before i get to the end: i’m really terrible about answering messages. always have been. i have a lot of things going on with my brain so if i am not in messaging mode/mood i just will ignore non-essential messages, especially when i’m trying to catch up on school work i’ve fallen behind on due to said brain things. for a week or so i barely answered his messages, though i always made an effort to at least reply with like a sticker or a gif whenever he sent me something. after a few days of that he sent me The Dreaded Message: “hey are we ok?”

-i did not answer this message. i did not open this message. this message gave me way too much anxiety (and it was a weekend that i had someone visiting from out of state, so i was not prepared to deal with it right then.) less than twenty-four hours later, he sent a followup: “guess not :/”

-so i was pressured to explain the state of my mental health, why i forget to answer messages and then get anxiety about answering them late, why i am often too depressed to answer, etc. so that he would not feel personally targeted by my lack of response. it was honestly the most open i have ever been with anyone who is not one of my closest friends or s.o. about my mental health. because, i figured, we were friends so he deserved to know why i was being unresponsive.

-he sends back an equally large wall of text explaining why he gets anxiety about being ignored or w/e and how unlucky he’s been with relationships in the past and he just doesn’t want to screw it up because he always thinks it’s something he did. i’m like ok, i understand, but you need to bear with me because i usually just Can Not from february to april. he agrees. we’re good again. at this point when we’re in the computer lab at the same time he begins sitting next to me instead of across from me as we play my horse prince together (amazing game btw, check it out for mobile devices, a+++ localization)

-at some point he discovered i’m ticklish and decided it’s funny to tickle me. i don’t really think it’s funny! poke me in an area that i’m ticklish, sure, ok, that can be funny, but do not continue. that’s just rude. especially when i constantly tell you to not do that please. jeez.

-here’s the event that was my actual last spoon for this shit. i was in the middle of an all-weekend meeting for the rules design for the larp i play. (he knew this, because i talked about it a lot with him, as a fellow nerd, and he recently played an event with us.) i had also recently posted a humorous status update on facebook (which he saw and liked) making fun of myself for wanting to talk to people but never answering any messages i receive. he sends me a message like “can i ask you something?”

-although i am busy i fire back a “sure what’s up” assuming i can get to it whenever i have the chance as per our previous agreement. this was apparently not the case. he asked me if i wanted to go do a thing that i was just not prepared to be asked. (nothing major, this one actually wasn’t any fault on his part. knowing my interests, you would assume it was a thing i want to do.)

-however, i had/have been recently in a slump about a certain person who i miss very dearly unfollowing me on tumblr and just generally not talking to me ever. as this was a thing she and i had promised we would do together, but never got around to before falling out of touch, i got really upset about it. like had to compartmentalize to finish my meeting but had like three complete breakdowns over the next few days about it, i was an utterly inconsolable mess, missed work and class the next day, i don’t know how i managed to pull myself through class on that tuesday, i think i told everyone i was sick? i don’t often go out without at least filling in my eyebrows, but i was an Unshowered Mess for a few days. it was gross. i felt gross. (i stopped feeling gross after the person in question accepted my insta follow request and i just decided to tell myself she probably unfollowed me on tumblr when i wasn’t posting for a while. i still have not fortified to message her. i am a weenie but i will get there eventually. baby steps?)

-every other hour for about thirty six hours, i got a “?” or some derivative thereof from this boy in question. like “you there?” “hey you’re cute” “tooooori” etc. but i was legit super busy and ignoring literally everyone, and also trying to not have a panic attack about the last bullet point up there^. it was really obnoxious but i didn’t really know how to say “hey your question triggered a very bad response from me so that’s probably not something i want to go do with you” for whatever reason. probably because i knew in my brainspace that he would not take anything with the word “triggered” in it seriously.

-and then the glorious last straw: because i hadn’t answered (in under forty-eight hours, mind you, it was still the weekend) he sent a message that was just “*autistic screeching*” and i was like ..............................................

-i did not know how to answer this. i did not know how to list this entire rant i have written here and be like “wow, are you secretly an asshole?” because wow. i was literally stunned. so i didn’t answer.

-cue me skipping school on monday because of aforementioned response to the question and not wanting to interact with him. he did not show up in my computer lab (which i work in) for the last three weeks.

-cut to yesterday morning: i got a text from one of the officers in my wow guild (and a very dear friend) asking why he quit the guild. i was like huh, that’s weird. i also noticed he had left a facebook group chat that he was in with me, though the chat had served its use and was done with weeks before. so i go and check around, to discover he’s unfriended me on facebook, unfollowed me on insta, deleted me from battlenet, and of course quit the guild. (he joined only a few months ago, at my encouragement to switch servers and raid with us. should've known not to trust him, he’s horde.) he probably blocked my number too, though i haven’t checked because honestly? i don’t really care. i explained this all to my friend who asked me about it and we made fun of him for like half an hour. we had a good laugh about it. very therapeutic. i’m not even upset, i think it’s hilarious that we’re apparently in fifth grade.

[obscurewatch]

The Retribution Newspaper

The newspaper is visible at 1.53 in the video.

We can see the silhouettes of Reaper, Mc Cree and Genji. On the left, security camera footage showing Mc Cree when BlackWatch’s Rome base gets destroyed in an explosion. 

Surprise surprise, it’s not blurry nonsense NOR lorem ipsum ! Took me a while but I got to to the bottom of it, here’s what it says :

"Nations around the world are hit by Islamist terrorist attacks, starting with New Year’s Day, when a gunman from Uzbekistan opens fire in a nightclub in Istanbul killing 39 people. The so-called Islamic State claims responsibility. The gunman had trained in Afghanistan according to Turkish authorities. On March 22, a man drives a car into pedestrians on a pavement along Westminster Bridge in London. Four people are killed. The perpetrator, a Briton who had converted to Islam, stabbed a police officer to death before being shot dead by the police. Two months later, a suicide bomber kills 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert at the Arena in Manchester. The dead include ten people aged under 20. Hundreds are injured. In early June, eight people are killed when a van strikes pedestrians on London Bridge. After the van crashed, its three occupants ran to the nearby Borough Market area and began stabbing people in and around restaurants and pubs. Its three occupants are eventually shot dead by police. St Petersburg underground is the target of a suicide bomber on the third of April. Fifteen people die as a result of the attack."

It’s actually a copy-paste of a real news article on euronews from december 26th 2017. So 4-5 months before the Retribution event.

 http://www.euronews.com/2017/12/26/2017-terrorist-attacks-natural-disasters-and-political-upheaval

My theory is that they put that in because of the title of the article.

“Terrorist attacks, natural disasters and political upheaval” to me, it sounds like a summary of the big themes of what’s to come in the lore of Overwatch.

Terrorist attacks : Null Sector and Talon things. Maybe Volskaya too. She’s not above stirring up conflicts, as Doomfist says in Masquerade, she’s more useful to Talon alive than dead, she will “keep the fight going” to make sure the world needs her and her mechs.

Natural disasters : The “anomalies” Mei is warning everyone about and perhaps an explanation as to why it seems that people are living in gigantic circular cities 100km diameter. Did global warming get so bad that people have fled the countryside and smaller cities because of floods, rising sea level, droughts, etc to take refuge in mega cities? Are those cities the only living alternative nowadays? Hopefully we’ll get to find out more “soon” !

Political upheaval : In his comic “Destroyer”, Torbjorn stops a titan mech controlled by his old engineer friend turned nemesis Sven who’s currently showing the world how to get rid of a dictator in Kurjikstan using godly firepower without a thought about the civilian casualties. Sven’s real motive is to show how strong his mechs(s) are to the world so states, governments and other entities will be impressed and commission him a few of those, two birds one stone though. Kurjikstan is a made up country supposedly in the Middle East/Eastern Europe region. To quote Sven “Kurjikstan is a corrupt dictator ship bent on expansion. Its methods are ruthless and immoral. It is a dangerous, increasingly unpredictable player on the global stage”. So surely, there’s going to be quite a lot of political upheaval after this whole thing. Kurjikstan, what’s left of it, will probably get desperate and do something dumb and relentless. It could be the start of the second Omnic Crisis. 

This sign from the Destroyer comic says “аэропорт” which means airport in russian. Is Kurjikstan Russia’s puppet? Or do they just speak russian over there.

Political upheaval is a common theme in the Overwatch lore. The tensions between humans and omnics, the inflation that allows for a bottle of water to cost 600$, Overwatch’s dismantlement, the U.N. being in charge of everything, the assasinations, etc. Political upheaval could be anything.

Back to the Retribution newspaper !

This one is a work in progress. I’d need help from italian speaking folks. Yes, the entire right side of the newspaper is in italian !

This is the part under Mc Cree’s silhouette.

It says 

“ I funzionari veneziani hanno chiesto la calma all'indomani della sparatoria in città. Hanno assicurato che è in corso un'indagine completa e che la causo e i responsabili saranno scoperti. Inoltre, i funzionari insistono sul fatto che non esista una minaccia maggiore per la città e il paese e che cio rappresenta un incidente isolato, piuttosto che un problema più grande

I funzionari sono stati riluttanti a ??? una connessione tra il recente attentato dinamitardo a Roma, tuttavia non hanno escluso la possiblità che i due eventi siano collegati. “

which means

“ The Venetian officials have asked for calm in the aftermath of the shooting in the city.They have assured that a full investigation is underway and that the cause and the perpetrators will be discovered. Furthermore, officials insist that there is no greater threat to the city and the country and that this is an isolated incident rather than a bigger problem. 

Officials have been reluctant to ??? a connection between the recent bomb attack in Rome, however, did not rule out the possibility that the two events are connected. “

So, the Venice officials are covering for Talon, they’re blaming it all on Overwatch. Venice officials confirmed corrupt :/

The other paragraphs are just the first two being repeated.

This is at the bottom of the page, also a work in progress 

it says

“ dei? partecipanti all'attacco sembra essere un ??? che ha subito ??? profonda cibernetica?. Al momento non sono stati rilasciati? dettagli sulla faccia? “

which means

“ the attack participants appear to be ??? that has received ??? serious cybernetics. So far details about the face have not been released. “

So the italian journalists know one of the people on the Blackwatch team “responsible” for the chaos in Venice is a cyborg and the authorities apparently have pictures of the face of one of them, or the faces of all of them, it’s not clear.

Surely the italian authorities know it’s Genji.

So, this newspaper. What to make of it. Huh.

The english part could be a teaser of sort for the upcoming lore, or at least an indication of the general direction the lore will be taking. And the italian part is about the Venice Incident itself, how the media perceived it, what the authorities knew and decided to hide and what it meant for Overwatch as an organization.

I’m sure the first part of the italian page that’s still a work in progress has the most interesting information of the whole page so if you speak italian or know someone who does please contact me !!!

Please double check the newspaper. Don’t take anything I claim for granted ^^

Zoom in, squint your eyes, figure out as many words as you can see, it’s fun, I swear !

If you’re open minded and if you enjoy wasting time hunting for the many obscure things the devs have put in the world of Overwatch, I have an all new discord server :D

https://discord.gg/Eg8pZdn

(free tin foil hat for all new members)