#pc users are not allowed to look at this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[felassan]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard info compilation Post 1

Post is under a cut due to length.

There is a lot of information coming out right now about DA:TV from many different sources. This post is just an effort to compile as much as I can in one place, in case that helps anyone. Sources for where the information came from have been included. Where I am linking to a social media user's post, the person is either a dev, a Dragon Age community council member or other person who has had a sneak peek at and played the game. nb, this post is more of a 'info that came out in snippets from articles and social media posts' collection rather than a 'regurgitating the information on the official website or writing out what happened in the trailer/gameplay reveal' post. The post is broken down into headings on various topics. A few points are repeated under multiple headings where relevant. Where I am speculating without a source, I have clearly demarcated this. if you notice any mistakes in this post, please tell me.

as this post hit a kind of character limit, there will probably be at least 1 more post. :)

Character Creation

CC is vast [source] and immensely detailed [source]

We will enter CC straight after Varric's opening narration [source]

You are given 5 categories to work your way through in CC: Lineage, Appearance, Class, Faction, Playstyle. Each of these has a range of subcategories within them. There are 8 subcategories within the "head" subcategory" in "Appearance" alone [source]

Lineage dictates things like race (i.e. human, elf, dwarf, qunari) and backstory [source]

Backstories include things like factions. Factions offer 3 distinct buffs each [source]

There are dozens and dozens of hairstyles [source]

There are separate options for binary and non-binary pronouns and gender [source]

"BioWare's work behind the scenes, meanwhile, goes as deep as not only skin tones but skin undertones, melanin levels, and the way skin reacts differently to light" [source]

CC has a range of lighting options within it so that you can check how the character looks in them [source]

There are a range of full-body customization options such as a triangular slider between body types and individual settings down to everything from shoulder width to glute volume [source]. There are "all the sliders [we] could possibly want". The body morpher option allows us to choose different body sizes [source]

All body options are non-gendered [source]

They/them pronouns are an option [source]

Rook can be played as non-binary [source]

Individual strands of hair were rendered separately and react remarkably to in-game physics [source]

Special, focused attention was paid to ensuring that hairstyles "come across as well-representative, that everyone can see hairstyles that feel authentic to them, even the way they render" [source]

The game uses strand hair technology borrowed in part from the EA Sports games. The hair is "fully-controlled by physics," so it "looks even better in motion than it does here in a standstill" [source]

The ability to import our choices from previous games is fully integrated into CC. This will take the form of tarot cards - "you can go into your past adventures" and this mechanic tells you what the context was and what decision you want to make [source]

In CC we will also be able to customize/remake our Inquisitor [source]

A core tenet of the game is "be who you want to be" [source]

There are presets for all 4 of the game's races (human, elf, dwarf, qunari), in case detailed CCs overwhelm you [source]

Story

The story is set 9 years since Inquisition [source]

The Inquisitor will appear [source]

Other characters refer to the PC as Rook [source]. This article says they are "the Rook" [source]

The ability to import our choices from previous games is fully integrated into CC. This will take the form of tarot cards - "you can go into your past adventures" and this mechanic tells you what the context was and what decision you want to make [source]

The prologue is quite lengthy. A narrated intro from Varric lays the groundwork with some lore and explains about Solas [source]. In this Varric-narrated opening section, the dwarf recaps the events of previous games and explains the motivations of Solas [source] (Fel note/speculation: this sounds like this cinematic that we saw on DA Day 2023)

What happens first off is that Rook, who is working with Varric, is interrogating a bartender about the whereabouts of a contact in Minrathous who can help them stop Solas. The bartender does not play nice and we are presented with our first choice: talk the bartender down or intimidate them aggressively [source]

The first hour of the game is "a luxurious nighttime romp through a crumbling city under a mix of twinkling starlight and lavish midnight blue" (Minrathous) [source]. The game begins with a tavern brawl (depending on dialogue options) and a stroll through Minrathous in search of Neve Gallus, who has a lead on Solas [source]. Minrathous then comes under attack [source] by demons [source] (Fel note/speculation: it sounds like the demo the press played is what we saw in the Gameplay Reveal). Off in the distance is a vibrant, colorful storm where Solas is performing his ritual. [source] Eventually we come upon Harding. [source] and Neve. Rook and co enter a crumbling castle, where ancient elf secrets pop up, "seemingly just for the lore nerds". [source] Then we teleport to Arlathan Forest, have a mini boss fight with a Pride Demon, and there is the climactic confrontation with Solas. After a closing sequence, at this point it is the end of the game's opening mission. [source] (Fel note/speculation: So the Gameplay Reveal showed the game's opening mission)

The action in the story's opening parts starts off quite quick from the sounds of things: the devs wanted to get the player right in to the story. because, “Especially with an RPG where they can be quite lore-heavy, a lot of exposition at the front and remembering proper nouns, it can be very overwhelming.” [source]

BioWare wanted to make the beginning of Dragon Age: The Veilguard feel like the finale of one of their other games [source]

Rook's Faction will be referenced in dialogue [source]

Minrathous is beautiful, with giant statues, floating palaces, orange lantern glow and magical runes which glow green neon. These act "like electricity" as occasional signs above pubs and stores [source]

The story has a lot of darkness tonally. These dark parts of the game contain the biggest spoilers [source]. However, the team really wanted to build in contrast between the dark and light moments in the game, as if everything is dark, nothing really feels dark [source]

Our hub (like the Normandy in ME or Skyhold in DA:I) is a place called The Lighthouse [source] (Fel note/speculation: I guess this screenshot shows the crew in The Lighthouse? ^^)

Each companion has a very complex backstory, their own problems, and deep motivations. These play out through well-fleshed out character arcs and missions that are unique to them but which are ultimately tied into the larger story [source]

We will make consequential decisions for each character, sometimes affecting who they are in heart-wrenching ways and other times joyously [source]

Decisions from previous DA games will be able to be carried over, it will just work a bit differently this time [source]. The game will not read our previous saves. For stuff pertaining to previous games/choices, players will not have to link their accounts [source]

Characters, companions, romance

Varric is a major character [source]

Every companion is romanceable [source]

BioWare tried to make each character's friendship just as meaningful, regardless of romance [source]

If you don't romance a character, they may end up romancing each other [source]

There will be some great cameos [source]. Some previous characters are woven into the game [source]

Companion sidequests/optional content relating to companions is highly curated when it involves their motivations and experiences [source]

We could permanently lose some companions depending on our choices [source]

Our choices can influence if characters get injured and what they think about us [source]

The bonds Rook forges with companions determine how party members grow and what abilities become available [source]

Each companion has a very complex backstory, their own problems, and deep motivations. These play out through well-fleshed out character arcs and missions that are unique to them but which are ultimately tied into the larger story [source]

We will make consequential decisions for each character, sometimes affecting who they are in heart-wrenching ways and other times joyously [source]

Gameplay, presentation, performance etc

Each class (warrior, rogue, mage) has 3 specializations. The ones for Rogue are duelist, saboteur and Veil ranger [source]. (Fel note/speculation: Veil ranger reminds me of Bellara. Maybe this is her 'spec' too?)

Duelist gameplay involves a sharp combination of dashes, parries, leaps, rapid slashes and combos [source]

Faction-related buffs include being able to hold an extra potion or do extra damage against certain enemies [source]

Individual strands of hair were rendered separately and react remarkably to in-game physics [source]

Playstyle settings include custom, distinct difficulty settings for options as granular as parry windows, meaning "players who might fancy that playstyle but typically struggle with the finer points of combat can give it a go" [source]

Combat mechanics is a mix of real-time action and pause and play. Pausing brings up a radial menu split into 3 sections: companions to the left and right, Rook's skills at the bottom, and a targeting system at the top which helps get in focus on certain enemies. [source]. In the pause system you can queue up your whole party's attacks [source]

Tapping or holding the shoulder button pauses the game, allowing us to stop the action and issue orders to companions [source]

There is a system of specific enemy resistances and weaknesses [source]. Weaknesses and resistances plays a big role in combat and abilities are designed to exploit these accordingly [source]. An example is that "one character might be able to plant a weakening debuff on an enemy, and another enemy might be able to detonate them" [source]

There is a vast skill tree of unlockable options [source]

You can set up specific companions with certain kits, e.g. to tackle specific enemy types, to being more of a support, or as flexible all-rounders [source]

Healing magic returns [source]

Abilities can change together with elaborate results, e.g. one companion using a gravity well attack that sucked enemies together, another using a slowing move to keep them in place, and Rook using a big AOE to catch them all at once [source]

A shortcut system lets you map a few abilities to a smaller pinned menu at the bottom of the screen [source]

There are class-specific resource systems. For example, Rogue has "momentum", which builds up as Rook lands consecutive hits [source]

Each class will always have a ranged option [source]

Rogue Rook can do a sort of 'hip fire' option with a bow, letting you pop off arrows from the waist [source]

Warriors can throw their shield at enemies, and can build an entire playstyle around that using the skill tree [source]

There is light platforming gameplay [source]

The game runs on the latest iteration of the Frostbite engine [source]

The game targets 60 fps

On consoles it will feature performance and quality modes so we can choose our preferred visual fidelity [source]

The game is mission based [source]. Some levels that we go to do open up, some with more exploration than others. "Alternate branching paths, mysteries, secrets, optional content you're going to find and solve." [source]

Everything is hand-touched, hand-crafted and highly curated [source]

Some sidequests and optional content is highly curated, especially when it involves the motivations and experiences of the companions. In others we may be investigating for example a missing family, with an entire open bog environment to search for clues and a way to solve the disappearance [source]

Gameplay, presentation, performance etc continued, after the above bullet list hit a character limit

There is sophisticated animation cancelling and branching. Gameplay is action-like, and the design centers around dodging, countering, and using risk-reward charge attacks designed to break enemy armor layers [source]

The dialogue wheel returns [source]. It gives truncated summaries of the dialogue options rather than the full line that the character is going to say [source]

The bonds Rook forges with companions determine how party members grow and what abilities become available [source]

For stuff pertaining to previous games/choices, players will not have to link their accounts [source]

We can play the game fully offline [source]

There are no microtransactions [source]

The game itself is not as cell-shaded in look as the first trailer looked [source]

[☕ found this post or blog interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

[sexhaver]

definitely one of the most difficult moments of my professional career was when i was doing tech support for [REDACTED]'s automated biomed research lab and like. hang on lemme greentext this

>tell them i can fix this issue in half an hour with a remote support session (aka Teamviewer)

>"you want to... control our computers???? over the internet????? like some kind of HACKER???????"

>their IT submits my request to upper management and after two weeks they reluctantly allow me to get remote access to their systems

>by logging into a virtual machine using a 20-digit password and then using a specific program inside of that virtual machine

>while sharing my screen with someone from their IT team the entire time

>finally get remote access to the PC with the issue

>go to open log files to start troubleshooting

>ERROR: User does not have read permissions.

>what the fuck

>ask their IT guy why it's saying that

>"...because we don't want you looking at our stuff, duh?"

>take deep breath before calmly explaining that i need to open files in order to fix their problem

>IT guy submits my request to upper management

>after another week i go through the whole process again but can actually open the log file this time

>cool, it's exactly the issue i thought it was and i know exactly how to solve it

>open the relevant settings file, change a single number, hit Save

>ERROR: User does not have write permissions.

>what the FUCK

>ask IT guy how i'm supposed to fix their system if i can't change literally anything on it

>takes 20 minutes of arguing to get him to admit that maybe i need write access

>he submits the request to upper management

>a week goes by

>upper management denies it

>says i can just verbally tell the IT guy on the call what to type and he'll do it for me

>deep breaths. deep breaths.

>start third remote session

>go to open the relevant .log file in notepad, which isn't the default program it opens with for some reason

>they fucking disabled right clicking

>[REDACTED] has a $118 billion market cap btw

>manage to walk the IT guy through using the command line (which he had never seen before and was scared of) to edit the relevant file

>three weeks go by

>new support ticket in my inbox

>"why didn't your fix fix this completely unrelated issue?"

>they still won't give me write access

>VP of [REDACTED] yells at me in our weekly meeting for taking so long to fix a third unrelated issue they never submitted a ticket for and is also not actually an "issue" but an intended feature of our software that they don't like

>i went to college for this

[centrally-unplanned]

Japanese website Forest Page is shutting down ~today, a tragic loss of "Heisei otaku memories", as so many are calling it. Launched in 2003, Forest Page was a "Geocities for mobile", a site that hosted user-created websites and gave them tools to allow non-coders to make them. In practice, it became one of the premiere places for fanfiction in Japan, with the stories hosted on author-created sites.

It wasn't quite the Fanfic.net of Japan, as for one the Japanese fandom just never centralized quite the way the 2000's western one did, instead being spread out over a half dozen or so sites. But additionally, it wasn't initially popular for fanfic so much as cell phone fanfiction, because in 2000's Japan the "cell phone novel" was a specific thing. These websites were being made for flip phones, not smartphones, and not only would people read them on those phones, they would often write them. None of that was very conducive to the creation and consumption of a "traditional" novel; so starting in the 2000's Japanese writers started making stories fit for the medium, namely:

Very short

A huge focus on dialogue and inner thoughts, with no/minimal description or scene detail

Using a limited POV of a specific character

Often employing the medium-as-message, like using emojis, structuring the story as IM's or emails, etc.

Also they all had huge gaps between lines, I'm not really sure what that is about:

Probably for readability on the phone given the small screen size? But it was absolutely part of the genre. A few of these novels actually made it big, got movie adaptations, people wrote articles about the "cultural phenomenon", it was the 2000's so Hiroki Azuma had a take on it of course, and so on. It slotted neatly into the vibe of the time of technology changing culture, paralleling discourse around otaku in the same era.

In fanfic those trends met up, and anyone familiar with fanfiction probably read that list of traits of the cellphone novel and thought "oh, this is perfect for fanfiction". Skipping out on description? I don't need it, I know what they look like already. Focus on conversation and POV? Perfect for shipping fics. Short lengths? Yeah, we are shortcutting to the good stuff, that is the point. Mirroring trends in the west, Forest Page's userbase was ~95% female, and the most common content on the site was romantic or edgy-dramatic stories in the franchises you'd expect. The closure page linked above actually summarizes the site's history by year, and lists the biggest fandoms:

Which is exactly what I would expect from a female otaku fanfiction website. Congrats to Pirates of the Caribbean for making it though, freeaboo's represent.

I do think the fact that the site was a website hoster as opposed to a fic hoster did align with the way the Japanese fandom was more "creator focused" and embraced the media mix more. There were "fic circles" a la doujin circles who made their own pages, people would make fanart, fan video games, and so own to host alongside it, and all of it was centralized to the creator; it made following them-as-a-person just a little bit easier. Most websites were simple text, but others did have the full Geocities experience:

Something that was somewhat common were basic visual novel concepts where the reader could make choices, or even insert their own name so they would be the "MC" of the story:

(Dream novels are in fact their own thing in Japan) My understanding is the site was quite popular through the 2000's and into the 2010's, though over time the "cellphone novel" as a concept fizzled out. People got smartphones, more people got PCs, and the constraints didn't make sense anymore - you can read ebooks and normal websites on your phone now after all. You can probably draw a line between these kind of stories and the webfiction/light novel boom of the late 2000's/2010's, something that was equally born on the internet, that streamlines the novel to "shortcut to the good stuff" but without the need to fit on a flip phone's screen. Though I will admit my own understanding of their histories shows them more as two sides of the same "youth demand for new literature" coin.

In 2017 Forest Page launched Forest Page Plus, a new service fully optimized for the smartphone era; but it did not transfer over all the old content, starting the clock ticking on the original Forest Page. My understanding is that in June they announced Forest Page was officially closing down; and from what I have gathered from reminiscing writers on twitter, they did not provide any easy, one-touch way to save any of the content, so people are archiving Wayback Machine links or sharing tips on how screenshot-save stories (I think the rub is they gave people a way to transfer content to FP+, but most don't want to do that, as places like Twitter & Pixiv are the content kings of this era).

As of tomorrow I would bet the large majority of the content will be gone; quite sad given both the quantity of stories there and how many got sometimes millions of readers. I am sure most of the biggest stories are archived at least, but particularly the early stuff was a very ephemeral genre, one that doesn't make sense to revisit once you aren't a 16 year old teen writing and reading fics on a flip phone in between classes. Which means another legion of the ghosts of the Wired is being born today. May we pour one out for a fellow online community that lived and died!

[fangirltothefullest]

I find it fascinating seeing the use of tone indicators circle around so much back to a similar way that my mom used them in early AOL message board days. Tone indicators are useful to us because they help people read how we are talking and the tone we intend so as to not alarm people when talking online. We don't have the ability to tell if anyone is serious by playful manner of facial and physical expression so they're useful to us online even now!

But the fact that they evolve and change is fun to watch even as I watch it circle around.

So here's some examples of American tone indicators and outside influences to them that I've seen since first being online:

My mom's age- AOL users/early message board system used a fabulously straightforward way of indicating tone:

::::begin sarcasm now::::, ::::laughing::::, ::::shaking my head::::

The usage of colons was an easy way to identify a tone indicator was coming. There was a very limited way of creating text and often message boards did not come equipped with rich text formatting so this was a perfect way to show what you meant. They tended to have indicators fully worded with no short/chatspeak.

Then two things happened near each other- cellphones and rich text formatting being more prominent in online spaces.

Starting with cellphones- when they became a more accessible thing, tone indicators changed and abbreviations of the sayings became prominent, originally known as "chat speak" which began to form much more readily in texts and online. These indicators tended to be indecipherable unless told what they meant and the indicators had to be memorized:

Rofl, lol, smh, istg, wtf, ruok,

These tone indicators persist today, but part of their legacy was the limitation on character counts. Most places had a 140 character limit, meaning you had to get your message across fairly quickly. A way to indicate tone was either go the abbreviation route, or use the rich text editing.

Rich text allowed for italics, bonding and underlining so people could use these tools to indicate tone. These also had to be learned, because not everyone read them the same way and sometimes different places online would have different etiquette on what each tone meant. Freeboards would often have one board to specify what each one was for:

Sarcasm was popularly italicized

Anger was often bolded

Underlining was used often for seriousness

CAPSLOCK WAS YELLING!!!!

BOLDED CAPSLOCK WAS REALLY FUCKING ANGRY!!!

ITALICIZED BOLDED CAPSLOCK WAS A CATACLISMIC EVENT EVEN WITH A PERIOD.

If you had the ability to strike through, it was a whisper or afterthought.

Doubling your rich text with different punctuation could change the tone.

But the internet also let people in America see other people's cultures more readily. We are notoriously bad for teaching about other cultures here but the internet did allow us something fun! An exchange of faces if you will.

In the West, we were using emoticons with other things (note that this was dependent on if it would not work if your HTML or CSS confused the brackets and parentheses etc. as coding):

:), :(, :O, >:(, =), =D, D8, D:<, O_O, ( • )( • ), >.>, 8===D~~~, [̲̅$̲̅(̲̅1̲̅0̲̅)̲̅$̲̅], ಠ__ಠ, ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ,

But now we could see that other people were making faces in different ways and the anime crowd caught on very quickly:

OTL, (^_^;), (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄), (/◕ヮ◕)/, \(^o^)/, (✿◠‿◠), ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, (づ￣ ³￣)づ, (OwO), (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻,

Boy do I LOVE emoticon indicators! A lot of them are still used today as well.

And then things shifted again when cellphones gave us emojis! Now tone indicators were colourful!

🥺🤞🙂😔❤️😝🙄😨😱😣💀🤏👍👎🤞

But they were not accessible as easily to PC users so there becomes a nice little divide between who is and isn't using them. Also there are so many now sometimes it's hard to figure out what the intended emotion is, considering they look different on different devices! But the younger age groups of my students are trained on emojis! So much so that if I ask them to draw happiness, they draw the happy emoji.

I'm sure I'm missing a few but right now we've been back to a combined group of tone indicators! Here on tumblr we are using the slash to indicate tone much like the original AOL message board users used the colon and we are shortening the words AND using abbreviations and some write out the whole thing! Its FASCINATING seeing it come full circle.

/gen, /pos, /jk, /srs, /serious, /genuine, /positive, /happy, /encouraging

I just love how languages evolve! 8D

What are some tone indicator trends YOU noticed in your online spaces?

Edit: FIXED all of the stupid phone spelling errors.

[sky-scribbles]

What is Essek's Wisdom score?

(aka, a totally unnecessary ramble about one drow and his dnd mechanics by me, a tumblr user who should be asleep)

Last episode, we got a rare hint about Essek’s Wisdom score, in the form of Fearne’s attempt to sneak a look at his feet while he slept. Whatever Essek’s passive perception is, it was ‘just enough’ to catch Fearne, with her Sleight of Hand check of 9. I made a joke about this giving Essek a pretty low Wisdom score, and several people pointed out that because Matt halves his characters’ passive perceptions when they’re sleeping, Essek’s Wisdom would actually be around the 18-20 mark. But this… might not necessarily be the case.

Now, I did honestly mean that post as a joke and not any actual theorising on Essek’s mechanics, but since people got me thinking, let’s crunch some numbers! (Huge thanks to the folks over on the Essek discord for helping me with the maths here! Also, disclaimer that all of this could be disproven next episode, and I am fine with that. I enjoy doing dnd maths anyway, because I am a nerd.)

So: if Matt remembered the house rule about halving the passive perception while a character sleeps (and he doesn’t always), this would give Essek a passive of 18-20. But does this mean his Wisdom is 18-20? Actually, no! For a start, if he had no other bonuses to perception (and I’ll get to that in a second), this would give Essek a bonus of +4 or +5, which would make his awake passive just 14-15, and his sleeping passive 7. Not enough to catch Fearne. But: it might well be the case that Essek simply has Perception proficiency, in which case, he wouldn’t need a Wisdom of 18+.

While Essek, being an NPC, obviously doesn’t conform to PC rules, it’s worth bearing in mind that all elf PCs get perception proficiency for free from their Keen Senses trait. Perception would therefore be a pretty reasonable proficiency for Essek to have, even if it didn’t make sense from a character perspective – which it does. He is, after all, constantly having to look over his shoulder for assassins (and even before he was, having a keen eye out for trouble would be a useful asset in his former courtly intrigues.)

So what does this mean for his passive perception? Well, he appears to be the equivalent of a level 17-20 wizard, if his use of a ninth-level spell slot is anything to go by. With the caveat that he doesn’t have to use player rules (just attach that caveat to, uh… everything I say in this post) that would give him a + 6 proficiency bonus. If this is true, then all Essek needs for a waking passive perception of 18 is actually a Wisdom modifier of just +2, i.e. a Wisdom score of 14 or 15. (A baseline of 10, plus 2 from his Wisdom, plus 6 from proficiency). This would allow his halved passive to be at least 9, and let him catch Fearne in her sneaky feat of feet-peeking. If we make his Wisdom any higher than this, I don’t think we can qualify Matt’s ‘just enough’ statement.

But wait! There are more options! Unlikely ones, but options worth bearing in mind, nonetheless. We know Matt is on board with giving his allied NPCs feats; indeed, Essek himself has the War Caster feat. So it’s entirely possible that he might also have the observant feat. This would be a very logical choice from a roleplaying perspective considering Essek’s current status as a fugitive.

Having this feat would add +5 to his passive perception. Let’s say Essek has no Wisdom bonus at all, but has this feat and is proficient in perception. In this case, his passive while awake is 21 (a baseline of 10, plus 5 from Observant, plus 6 from profiency). That's a sleeping passive of 10: just enough to catch Fearne in the act. We could actually dump his Wisdom into the negative and he'd still be able to just barely notice her.

If you shook me and asked me to tell you what I actually think Essek’s Wisdom is, I’d guess at his Wis being at that ~14 mark I pitched earlier. I think this would make sense from what we’ve seen of him – yes, he has done some completely dumbass things, but he’s shown a level of self-reflection and self-awareness, especially after his redemption arc kicked off, that I think a Wisdom of about this number is justified. I wouldn't be surprised to find it was lower or higher, though; Wisdom is a wibbly stat to define at the best of times and you can make a case for Essek being just about anywhere on the number scale.

A stat of ~14 also works for me from a character construction perspective: we already know he has an Intelligence of around 22, and a decent Charisma; back in campaign 2, the Nein regularly had to roll Insight checks of 20+ to see through him, indicating a high Deception. So I’m hesitant to pitch his Wisdom too high; this might just be my own personal preference as a DM, but I’d be unlikely to roll up an NPC ally with high numbers in all three mental stats. Give ‘em some lower scores to keep things spicy, y’know?

(As a side note, Essek’s Dexterity is a very serviceable 16, and I suspect that his Charisma is at least equal to that. Having scores of 16+ in four stats would be a bit much, imo, even if his Strength and Constitution are probably much, much lower.)

A final point: one thing we can rule out is Matt allowing Essek to use his regular, un-halved Passive while trancing, since he didn’t remember that Essek could trance until Laura reminded him (bless them both), and I’m pretty sure the Fearne incident happened before she did. Though I should say again, considering that Matt can and does forget rules from time to time… it is also true that Matt might’ve just forgotten about halving the passive score. If he did just forgor, this entire ramble is meaningless but oh well.

Tl;dr: we don’t know, but a reasonable guess would be to say that his Wisdom is about 14. I guess I’ll just sit here and hope that Matt may eventually release his statblock (and an explanation of how he made his dad so mad he died. Hi, Matt Mercer, not to beg but please –)

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

What do you think of afo giving shiggy decay

Oldest and favorite theory now to (very possibly) turn true in the manga. This was seriously one of my first theories when I joined the fandom!!!

Tumblr sucks at helping you find your own posts, meaning I have no way to link my old posts about it in this ask :( but anyway.

At first it was purely born from the frame of the shadow man with the hat delivering Tenko home and how strange it was that Tenko happened to awaken his quirk that day. There's also the fact that the man looked a lot like AFO, with the body structure, the suit and the face in shadows.

This is the panel that started it all:

I remember a lot of people went against it 'cause it was anticlimactic for them. They thought that if AFO gave Tenko decay, that event was taking something from Tomura as a character, making him less interesting.

For me, it made sense because there were too many factors that you couldn't explain otherwise. Some of them are exposed here. There are too many variables for it to be a coincidence. Now, if AFO gave Tenko decay or if he did something to activate it that day... That's yet to know.

But for example, look here. AFO had a room fully prepared for Tomura. He had shelves full of books, a bed, a chair and a desk... He even had toys!

* it looks like some of the action figures had arms or even the head missing. One of them is fully on the ground.

It wasn't long until Tomura had a PC installed too:

It's clear that AFO was expecting him. For what I know from the Vigilantes manga and bnha, AFO didn't treat every kidnapped kid like that. He had a hospital full of kids to turn into nomus after all. He wasn't that involved with every experiment.

Tomura was clearly different from the star. He knew who Tomura was, he expected the tragedy to happen, he expected the quirk too. AFO never reached for Tomura's hands. He acted like he had already seen the state the Shimuras' house was left in. He knew where to look for Tenko, like he was following him.

And the way he spoke... It was too premeditated:

He created that situation so he could play the role of Tenko's saviour. He needed Tenko to hate every hero, every citizen, he needed to feed his anger, his hurt. Or well, at least how's the theory goes.

AFO gave Tenko decay, waited for the result of an abused 5 years old reaching his limit and then he appeared like a knight in shining armor. He made sure to allow Tenko to walk around, he was also probably using his influence to interfere so a) the Shimuras deaths wouldn't become a scandal and b) no one would rescue Tenko before he could.

But going back to the "AFO gave Tenko decay" theory, I think the canon fact that supports that theory the most is that Tenko was already 5 years old. Here are the panels I'm referring to:

There's always the question if the Shimuras had a quirk. We know Nana had hers, but nothing is said about Kotaro or Nao or even Hana. We don't know if they were mostly a quirkless family or if Tenko would be the first one of them.

For the way Tenko recounted his day to Nao, we know that he was at the park playing with some friends. Here:

Between AFO picking Tenko up from the park and taking him home to his family, he must have done something. I don't know about the timeline... and if Giran could have already been associated with AFO... I just remembered that his quirk was the ability to muddy the memory of anyone up to five minutes prior or after he used it.

You see, Tenko never said anything to his family about the man that brought him home. We don't know what Tenko did when he "played the hero". We don't know what AFO told Nao. This is just theorizing, but giving someone a quirk by force doesn't hurt? From whom did AFO take decay if Tenko wasn't the original user?

Doc Garaki said it was a quirk never seen before...

I don't know. Since you asked me my opinion, I'll say that I'm still not very sure if AFO gave decay to Tenko or if it was Tenko's quirk from the start. It's not unheard of, since his case sounds a lot like Eri's, who developed a weirdly aggressive quirk on her own.

We're getting closer to being absolutely sure 'bout AFO's involvement with Tenko prior to the deaths of the Shimuras.

I just wonder what option fits better thematically.

[stellaralignment]

After reading @kira-serialfaggot 's post about inaccessible menus and @butterfly-sapphire post about non-customizable menus figured I now had sufficient excuse to rant about how I hate how every big restaurant's ""solution"" to these two problems is somehow always the worst fucking app I've ever had to use in my life.

So, to clarify real quick. I agree with both previous posts. Places that serve food should have their menu easily accessible somewhere if they have an online presence, and places that let you customize your order need to have that as a feature of any digital ordering solution they implement. Good? Good.

So, a lot of places I've seen (Wendys, Taco Bell, and McDonald to name a few) Have tried to get around how fucking horrible the DD app itself is by making their own apps with DD integration for the actual ordering/serving of delivery orders. Great, this lets them provide their own menu customization options, serve discounts/coupons, and generally have more control over the user experience. Fantastic. As a bonus, this usually also allows you to just look at the menu whenever you want.

Small issue. All of these apps were written by the worst fucking programmers I have ever witnessed in my life. I havn't gotten angry enough to de-compile or try to reverse engineer one yet, but my user experience has been so consistently bad and I've encountered issues that, as a software engineer, I honestly could not tell you how fucked their system has to be in order to allow that to happen.

Allow me to tell you the worst of these. I'm trying to order delivery from a store. It's late, like 7pm, but I know the place is open till 10. I can confirm this on their website (I do later for reasons that will become apparent) and google maps. So I punch in my address, make my order, and go to checkout. Unfortunately, the app tells me "Your payment method failed. Please select a new method and try again". Which was odd, but not unimaginable. I've had issues with my bank in the past. So I swap cards and try again, thinking nothing of it.

Except, my other card doesn't work either. Nor does using PayPal, or Google Pay, or any of the other payment options I tried. I'm getting desperate. I buy some games on steam just to make sure some of these are working, which they are. I was worried, but now that I've confirmed all my money hasn't been siphoned away somehow, I'm just confused and getting annoyed.

So I start going insane. I buy digital gift cards from several different sites and try using them. No dice, payment failed. I try using the website instead of the app, on my phone and PC. Payment failed. I boot up an android studio instance with a brand new virtual phone, install the app on it, and try to order. Again. Payment failed.

I'm starting to wonder if their servers are just completely down. A friend in a different state can order with no problems. A friend in the same town can order with no fanfare.

But my roommates can't. They have the same issue

Payment failed.

So. I'm going insane. I've now spent almost 3 hours attempting to order food, and I'm starving. It is at this point that my anger finally overcomes my social anxiety, and I do the one thing I never thought I'd do.

I call the store in question.

Now, in all of this there was one crucial mistake I made. See, that friend in the same town? Lived on the other side of town. And there's 2 different stores of this franchise in town. We didn't control for this, because the app doesn't let you pick a store anyways when doing delivery. It's hard locked to whatever one is closest, which isn't a terrible thing to do. You need to get the delivery address anyways, and you know where all your store are, so it cuts out a step for me. But having to choose a store might've clued us in to what was going wrong.

Because the store? Was closed. Not just closed, like mega closed. It was being shut down. It hadn't been open for two weeks, and would never be open again. The order was failing because they'd already taken all the computer systems out, and it couldn't confirm to have received the order.

So there was nothing wrong with the payment. Literally nothing I could have done about this. I am just barred completely from ordering because the app defaults to the nearest location for orders, and my nearest location didn't exist anymore.

And you'd think that there would be some way to communicate this to the user when making the app. But for reasons I can only assume are profit motivated (Though I have no idea how the fuck this is more efficient/profitable), the app just defaults to saying the payment failed.

Now, I wouldn't be this mad if this was just "oops edge case lol" where I suffered the unfortunate consequences of some procrastinator forgetting to do the thing that removes stores from the database. Unfortunate but not really anyone I can blame for it. But no. This is just the most extreme example, and it's not even confined to the one app.

Almost every single app like this I've used defaults to saying the payment failed and to try a new payment method when anything goes wrong. No drivers out on DoorDash to actually move the order? Payment failed. You're trying to order a seasonal item that got dropped today? Payment failed. The companies servers actually are down? Payment failed. You're not connected to wi-fi like an idiot and there's actually something you can do to fix the issue that's not related to payment whatsoever? Payment failed.

What the fuck is up with this lazy ass programming? I seriously doubt there's enough technical debt from these apps to justify not having a robust error catching system that communicates with the user what the issue is. By the fucking stars these people love collecting intrusive data, I'm surprised they havn't used this as an excuse to harvest everyone's fucking location at all times and send "error data" back to central.

But just don't tell me my debit card was declined when I'm trying to order a burger and you closed that store two weeks ago.

[delta-orionis]

i'm on pc for a change and i just looked at your askblog AND OMG THAT IS SO PRETTY?????

it looks so good and the little interactive details? so cool so cool i don't know how hard it was to make it look like this but it definately paid off

pc users are eating so much better than mobile

I'm glad you like it!! It was a lot of fun to put together. I know most people use tumblr on mobile these days and won't ever get to see desktop themes, but I've always really liked custom tumblr themes and I try to use them on all of my blogs.

This theme was pretty easy to set up, I used the theme "Glitch" by glenthemes. They have a ton of other pretty themes in their portfolio as well.

(Full disclosure, I was inspired to use this theme after I saw it used on the blog ask-jewels-against-the-sea, I thought their setup was really pretty. Hopefully they don't think I'm copying them, I just thought their theme was very nice.)

Also, it's worth mentioning for people who are newer to tumblr/only ever use it on mobile, but setting up custom desktop themes is extremely easy. While on desktop, go to your blog's settings page, scroll down to "Custom Theme", toggle the "Enable Custom Theme" button ON, and then click "Edit theme".

It will open your blog's theme customization page, which looks like this:

Settings are on the left, and a live preview of your theme is on the right. (Any changes you make to your theme aren't reflected on your actual blog until you hit the blue "Save" button.)

Tumblr has a few first-party themes in the "Browse themes" tab you can use, but most of them are pretty limited, and a bunch cost real money (ew). There are literally HUNDREDS of custom themes that people have made that are completely FREE. They're not that hard to find if you know where to look; you can literally just type "Custom Tumblr Theme" into the Tumblr search bar or Google. A lot of people have portfolios with live previews of all of the themes they've created, with links to the HTML code. Also if there's a specific theme from someone's blog that you want to use, almost all themes have a "Theme" button you can click that leads to the artist's portfolio:

Installing the theme is literally as easy as copying and pasting. Portfolios and live theme previews usually have a "code" button you can click that will take you to the raw HTML of the theme.

Select the entire code by hitting CTRL+A, and copy it.

Then go back to your theme customization page and click on the grey "Edit HTML" button under "Custom Theme".

It will open up the HTML editor tab, which looks like this.

All you need to do is hit CTRL+A again to select the code that's currently there, delete it, and paste the code from your clipboard into the editor. Then hit the green "Update Preview" button to update the live theme preview on the right so you can see how it looks.

Most themes require zero knowledge of HTML to use. If you click on the back arrow, it will take you out of the HTML editor, and back to the theme customization tab. Scroll down to the "Theme Options" header.

Here you can change the colors, fonts, toggle settings on and off, upload background or sidebar images, etc etc. The settings of some themes allow you to get very granular with the customization, with custom fonts/image sizes/colors for different elements of the theme, so you can make your theme unique.

Once you're satisfied, hit the blue "Save" button and the theme will be reflected on your blog.

I highly recommend looking around for a custom theme you like and adding it to your blog, it's a lot of fun!!! I've been on tumblr for over a decade and custom themes used to be completely ubiquitous; everyone wanted to have a unique theme that reflected their personality and interests. Themes are a very fun form of self-expression. Even if most people these days won't see your desktop theme, it's a nice little treat for yourself when browsing your own blog, so make it something that you enjoy.

[hurgablurg]

im just starting to watch the aeor episodes, but based on all the spoilers and thinkpieces ive seen here, I have to say that humanizing the gods was not just a poor decision, but poorly done.

the conflict in the main campaign at least had some complexity to it when the gods were abstract overlords:

they were not responsible for making the world, there are powers older than them and are potentially far more responsible and kind

the gods are imperfect AND omniscient and WERE omnipotent, which is an abominable combination that lends itself to degradation and cruelty, at minimum through inaction, and at maximum through intentional action, and arguments could be made that they very well deserve to die for those cruelties

while defeating ludinus and stopping him from ascending (we all see where its going) was never in question, allowing predathos to consume the gods (and some of the PCs have motivation to do so) was a crapshoot on whether or not it would turn it's attention to mortaldom afterwards, or if it really will just purify the world of parasite-gods as a failsafe for something beyond comprehension.

However, now that the gods are imperfect individuals who are NOT all-powerful or all-knowing, and are just Some Aliens who are NOT responsible for their own cruel inactions because they are not ALL-powerful, it becomes unconscionable to let them be murdered.

HOWEVER, because they ARE conscious people and not forces of nature, and ARE still responsible for their own cruel actions, it becomes unconscionable to allow them to live because while they are not ALL-powerful, they are still more powerful than anything else in existence but have unchallenged reign, stymied only by the big-ass wall between them and their toys! With such power, they lose their humanity, they lose the right to be given the benefit of the doubt

This is because it seems to be really poorly done - every player character is a "good" god and every "bad" god is played by the DM. Just right out of the gate saying that "we aren't going to force/allow any of our players to play the really icky people we don't like and who are evil so they are going to play wispy, boho-ass conventionally attractive people while the bad gods are evil and spiky or look like a paedophile priest" and "they have to stop these evil mortals and also their victory is assured. They will have some character drama, but it won't be too important because they are known characters and this is a prequel and they all have places and ways they need to be to remain canon".

Calamity worked because it was people dealing with the consequences of their backstories and actions. Downfall is gearing up to not work because these aren't people. These are powerful idiots playing dolls like the mean kid from Toy Story.

And mind, this is based off of what tumblr users have said. So either they're stupid and missed some grander point, or this assumption of mine is correct and this is just a bad story.

[walks-the-ages]

Jasmine Sherman (they/them) has their official campaign website claiming that they have Ballot Access in 48 states.

Tiktok user @ arrdubs has done multiple deep dives into how Jasmine Sherman's claims are false, and why the claims of 48 states cannot be verified on any official state websites they claim to have Ballot Access in.

This is their shorter, original video, which the above longer one is a sequel to, and if you look in the comments of this video, you'll see people from Arizona, New Mexico, Tennessee, and more who have confirmed Jasmine Sherman is not on their state's ballot despite the claims to the contrary on the official campaign website:

https://www.tiktok.com/@arrrdubs/video/7376416978921131306?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc I literally less than 24 hours ago heard about this candidate and wanted to vote for them based on the surface-level information I'd heard about them, but it was pointed out to me that the "48 state ballot access" claim could not be verified, it only took a few hours to find swathes of websites that refute the claims on their official website, including the two different sites that Jasmine Sherman's own website recommends.

Jasmine Sherman's website, as of July 29th 2024, explicitly states for all states except Alaska and Georgia:

Jasmine is on the ballot under the Unicorn Party.

On the applicable states that allow write-ins, there's this little note:

Write-ins are also allowed for all candidates, so you can write in Jasmine's name if you don't see them on the ballot.

This is, in my mind, a planned cop out, for when Election Day rolls around and inevitably, thousands of people discover the candidate who's been promising them they're on their state's ballots for months actually isn't.

So now, "Unicorn Party". if you try to find any official state websites (or otherwise) with "Unicorn Party" on the Ballot, what do you find?

Zip. Zilch. Nothing.

The "Unicorn Party" is not on the ballot for any of the 50 states.

Every single Third-Party Ballot Access tracker out there shows all the other popular Third Party candidates, including ones I've never heard of til now..... except for the candidate who claims to have 48 states with ballot access?

Jasmine Sherman, officially, is literally still part of the Green Party when it comes to Ballot Access in the states -- but they claim to have more than double the amount of Ballot Access that Dr. Jill Stein has??

If you click on their big bold Palestine, Congo, and Sudan flags on their home page, are you expecting to go to a piece written by the candidate who's website we're on where they're running for President?

Well, instead of anything that makes sense like that, Jasmine Sherman's website just links to random news articles that don't even mention Jasmine Sherman in any capacity??

This is what comes up when you click on their "stance on Palestine":

Here's their "stance on Congo"

and here's their "stance on Sudan":

Literally none of the above were written by or affiliated with Jasmine Sherman in any way shape or form.

plain text: Literally none of the above were written by or affiliated with Jasmine Sherman in any way shape or form.

The link for Sudan is from May 2023 and is a single paragraph that says

May 14, 2023, 10:00 AM In mid-2019, after the ouster of Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir, political analysts hoped that Washington might be able to help Sudan chart a path to democracy. That hope was short-lived. In late 2021, Sudan’s generals staged a coup, and after 18 months of controversial U.S. policies attempting to revive the country’s democratic transition, armed conflict erupted again in Khartoum last month.

That's it. That's the official link for "Jasmine Sherman's Stance on a Free Congo".

The link for Palestine is just an overview of what kinds of weapons had been sent to Israel as of February 2024, with an off-hand comment about (an unnamed) Aaron Bushnell.

It literally looks like for the Official Jasmine Sherman Campaign Website , they just did a quick google search in the first few months of 2024 and pasted whatever random article sounded promising, and literally have not given any actual writing by themselves on their official campaign website.

And this is someone who is running for President of the United States, who is literally copying and pasting random news articles onto some flags hoping no one will click on them to seem legitimate instead of actually writing out clear and concise statements on their own website??

Don't forget, they're so modern and quirky and in-touch with young people!

That's why they want, instead of banning guns from being owned by every other random person in the USA, the country with the highest rate of mass shootings in the world, that instead, every single child in the United States should learn how to handle and aim a gun from before Kindergarten age upward and make it as easy to own a gun as getting your driver's license:

They also claim they want to Abolish the Police, but they also support the Death Penalty, specifically and explicitly by Firing Squad or Morphine Overdose:

They've got a footnote above this policy, saying how they've "evolved" passed this........ but they haven't actually updated their policy to reflect what that "evolution" has turn into. Do they want to Abolish The Death Penalty now? Do they support different methods of executing human beings? Do they accept having more than their stated single year for due process? Who knows!

It's had this footnote about "evolution" since at least May 2nd 2024, because that's as far back as the Wayback Machine goes.

They've also had literally zero writing on their "policy" for Landback, because it's been "currently being drafted" since April 2024 at least. Not even a basic statement to be had on the policy page, just "being drafted".

If you've been seeing posts about Jasmine Sherman and want to vote for them, read up on all their policies, then check with your local State governments and check to see if they're actually on your Ballot like their website claims.

I've now seen multiple people from multiple states confirm they contacted their respective state offices and Jasmine Sherman is not on their ballot, including in areas that the deadline has already passed.

[felassan]

A new blog post from BioWare in which they talk about the PC experience for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The blog covers display features, graphics settings and controls. "We're PC players ourselves and have a dedicated team focused on PC."

"Journal #4 PC Features for Dragon Age: The Veilguard A look into the PC Experience in Dragon Age: The Veilguard Hello everyone, Today, we want to specifically touch on the PC experience for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The Dragon Age franchise started out on PC, and we wanted to make sure PC is a great place to play our game. Many of us at BioWare are PC players ourselves, and when testing, PCs made up 40% of our platform testing effort, with over 200,000 hours of performance and compatibility testing. Getting the PC experience just right was crucial to us and we created a dedicated team to focus on PC. We can’t wait for you to experience it for yourselves! Let’s talk about inputs first. We wanted to ensure the controls and UI are a good experience for both KBM and controllers; so we did close to 10,000 hours of user research testing to make sure of it. Dragon Age: The Veilguard will feature native support for PS5 DualSense controllers with haptics support in addition to the standard of Xbox controllers & keyboard + mouse. Additionally, you can seamlessly transition between controllers or keyboard + mouse while playing or in menus. There are many different ways to play our game; so, in order to allow you to find the most comfortable set-up, we’ve added the ability to customize class-specific keybinds that you can easily switch between. This means that your Rogue Rook can use a different set of keybinds than your Warrior Rook, if you’d like! Along with the standard resolution options, we also have full support for 21:9 Ultrawide monitors. Don’t worry; we didn’t forget the cinematics, either - just disable the option titled “Cinematic Aspect Ratio.” This will remove the enforced black bars; so you can watch the cinematics in full ultra widescreen glory. No matter what size monitor you’re rocking, you can adjust your FOV with an FOV slider in the Settings. There will be an option for uncapped framerate, as well. We’re also launching with full HDR support. Most changes to Graphics and Display Settings are reflected in real time, and you can see the impacts of those changes through the cutout in the UI. This will help you make informed decisions as you tweak your game to look exactly how you want. For a full list of Settings, check the rest of the blog below! We know a lot of you play on Steam, and we wanted to meet you where you are. We’re happy to be completely Steam Native for Dragon Age: The Veilguard! We’re already Steam Deck Verified; and with Cloud Save on Steam supported, you can seamlessly switch back and forth between your PC and your Steam Deck as much as you want, with no interruption to your progress. We also have Remote Play enabled if you’d rather play on your TV! If you’d like to utilize it, there will be a completely optional linking process to your EA Account."

"If you want to hear about a few advanced settings and options for the PC community, let’s go over that now. We support a suite of Ray Tracing features, as well as an “Ultra RT” mode for extremely high end rigs. We have several types of upscaling available: NVIDIA DLSS 3, FSR 2.2 which has been heavily modified, specifically for the game, and XeSS. We also support DLSS 3 with frame generation and NVIDIA Reflex. As we have more PC features to share, we’ll circle back on those before launch. We’re inching closer to our release date of October 31, 2024! We still have more information coming on Combat, the Companions, Exploration, and more; so keep your eyes peeled on our socials. We are eager to see your battle stations running Dragon Age: The Veilguard and the resulting screenshots. Chat soon!             — The Dragon Age Community Team"

"To summarize the above, check out an overview of the PC specs and features we’re ready to unveil now: DISPLAY FEATURES - Full Support for 21:9 Ultra Wide Resolutions  - Ability to Uncap Frame Rate - VSync, including fractional rate VSync - HDR Support - Optional Upscaling (DLSS 3, FSR 2.2, XeSS) - NVIDIA Reflex  - DLSS 3 Frame Generation - Optional Dynamic Resolution Scaling  - Cinematic Aspect Ratio (Disable this option for cinematic 21:9 ratio) GRAPHICS SETTINGS - Presets Available (Low, Medium, High, Ultra) Texture settings: - Texture Quality, Texture Filtering Light & Shadow Settings: - Lighting Quality, Contact Shadow, Ambient Occlusion, Screen Space Reflections, Volumetric Lighting, Sky Quality Ray Traced Settings*: - Ray-Traced Reflections, Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion, Ultra Ray Tracing Geometry Settings: - Level of Detail, Strand Hair, Terrain Quality, Terrain Decoration Quality, Visual Effects Quality Camera Effects: - Depth of Filed, Vignette, Motion Blur, Post Processing Quality, Field of View Controls: - Class-specific Keybinds, Keyboard + Controller Bindings *  Ray Tracing can be “ON” or turned to “Selective”. Selective Mode enables Ray Tracing features in specific areas that can best take advantage of the feature."

[source] <- at the source link there is also some new screenshots/clips

[themarydragon]

So my friend sent me this link to a youtube video about why the TotK lore isn't interesting. I couldn't get through it without a ten-screen discord rant (on my PC monitor, not my phone) so I thought I would put some thoughts here.

I don't delve too deep into TotK story but there are def some spoilery statements below, consume at your own risk.

The initial assumptions here seem to be that (1) BotW was more respectful of "The Lore" than TotK, and that (2) TotK made some unforgiveable sins that BotW absolutely avoided.

Both of these are completely false. And I am NOT saying that neither BotW nor TotK shat upon accepted lore. They did. There is no recovering the Hyrule Historia timeline, objectively. Instead I contend that the truth is the precise opposite: Nintendo has NEVER actually cared to try to make LoZ games have ANY amount of continuity.

Take the slide at the 5 minute mark of the video linked, above, in which we see the Master Sword was created specifically to be used against Ganon, and then the 7 sages set out to find somebody valiant enough to wield it (this is from the user manual of A Link to the Past, from the SNES, which also was about The Imprisoning War). Which, if you're playing the home game, you know got ret'conned TWELVE YEARS AGO by Skyward Sword. He's using the slide to explain why it was ridiculous that Ganondorf was able to shatter the Master Sword in the prologue to TotK, which tells me they didn't pay much attention to the mechanic in BotW in which the Master Sword "runs out of power" if you use it too much. If Ganon is an aspect of Demise (again from Skyward Sword, far more recent lore than the slide being used in the vid) then the secret stone he's wielding is amplifying DEMISE (WAY stronger than just some dude), which is why he's able to shatter the blade - but still isn't enough to destroy the sword. His entire complaint about the Sword being broken suggests to me he either didn't play Skyward Sword or has forgotten it existed, and has DEFINITELY forgotten the 'weapons breaking' mechanic started in BotW.

He makes another complaint later about there not being an explanation for the disappearance of the Divine Beasts. Which, sure. I wondered what happened, and figured the 5ish years since then made it old news nobody was talking about it anymore. I get why that might have been a breaking point for somebody else. But it's not just a TotK problem; BotW didn't address it, either. We see the Divine Beasts being dug up by the Sheikah in Rhoam's flashback - how did they get buried? The towers shoot out of the ground, how did THEY get buried, after the last calamity? Who put the guardians underground? How? HOW, if nobody is allowed into the tunnels under Hyrule Castle? It didn't get explained for BotW, so why is that an unforgivable sin in TotK? They give more than a passing suggestion that Purah has repurposed the guardians - just LOOK at the Skyview Towers. The jumpscare for BotW players when you get grabbed in the Lookout Landing tower TELLS YOU where the guardians went.

There is a significant section in which video creator is quoting an interview I haven't seen (and don't give two shits about), and I think it needs to be said: what is in the game is canon. What is in the interviews from other people is, by definition, not game canon. If it was meant to be game canon it would be in the game. Neil Gaiman talks about this when people ask him for clarification of his stories, go check his FAQ if you want a really good delineation of canon from somebody with way more clout than me.

So let's just look at the lore he's defending from BotW. The map is wrong. Straight up wrong, from all the earlier Zelda games. Nintendo cannot decide where the Lost Woods should be, much less Spectacle Rock. The Temple of Time, which again is mentioned early on as a clear homage to the lore, is in the wrong damn spot. If this is the new Hyrule formed post-WindWaker (as indicated by the existance of Rito), the Temple of Time should have been destroyed. And why do the Rito and the Zora both exist? According to WindWaker, the Rito evolved from the Zora, who couldn't live in the salt of the sea. Which is a pretty big jump from the original game that had Zora in the ocean, and the two games following THAT in which they were straight-up monsters. I don't want to get into ALL the ways BotW breaks from the established lore, but there's a LOT. They don't mention the fucking Triforce ONCE, ffs, that's sort of a big damn deal.

I get there was a canon timeline published in Hyrule Historia. I bought that book for that exact reason. And, as someone who has loved this franchise since I got that first golden cartridge in 1987, I looked at that timeline once, laughed at it, and moved on with my life. BotW de-canonized that timeline already, in a LOT of ways.

So saying that TotK is evidence that Nintendo no longer cares about continuity or lore, and by NOT villifying BotW (or TP or SS) for the exact same problem is disingenuous at best. Saying that TotK is just nostalgia-baiting is ignoring the BotW map (Lake Saria, anyone? Ranch Ruins, anyone?) in general, as well as all the game-specific loot that had NO other reason to be there but straight-up nostalgia. The only reason for Zelda to mention the other heroes in the blessing we hear in the first memory is to (1) destroy the established timeline (skyward bound, adrift in time, or something about twilight, all in a world where Rito exist), or (2) prey on our nostalgia. TotK isn't any worse for putting the WW shirt and the Awakening armor into the game, in terms of wrecking the timeline or trying to feast on our nostalgia.

I'm not going to try to hypothesize what this person (or all his commenters) didn't like about the game, or why they're so willing to overlook all these problems in BotW to villify TotK. And everybody is welcome to like to dislike a game for whatever reason they want, IDGAF, you do you. What I AM saying is that for someone who's upset about the lore, he really doesn't seem to actually be aware of how inconsistent it's ALWAYS been. If TotK is the game that taught you that Nintendo isn't trying to follow their own lore, then I don't think you have been paying attention to the lore for a good long time.

tl;dr this is still my favorite series and if you hate that it breaks its own continuity then you've been asleep for the last 12 years of lore drops my good dude.

[zenless-zone-zero-updates]

Version 1.1 "Undercover R&B" Pre-Download & Update Notice

Dear Proxy:

Version 1.1 is now available for pre-download. Proxies can follow the instructions below to download part of the files in advance. This will allow you to access the game faster once the update maintenance ends.

[Pre-Download Details]

● PC The pre-download file is about 12 GB.

● Mobile (Android and iOS) The pre-download file is about 8 GB.

Due to the large size of the download, please ensure that you have sufficient space on your device and that you download the files using Wi-Fi.

※ The Voice Pack(s) installed on the client will affect the space required for the pre-download.

[How to Pre-Download]

● PC Open the HoYoPlay Launcher, and the "Pre-Download" icon will appear next to the "Start Game" button. Click the corresponding icon to being the download.

※ PC users can continue playing the game during the pre-download.

● Mobile (Android and iOS) Open the game, tap the "Pre-Download Resources" icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen to start downloading.

※ Mobile users will not be able to play the game during the pre-download. Please plan your pre-download time accordingly.

In addition, the dev team are scheduled to perform version update maintenance. During this time, you will be unable to log into the game. Please stay tuned for info related to the game update.

[Version Update Time]

2024/08/14 06:00:00 (UTC+8) We estimate this will take five hours.

For details on aspects such as new gameplay, optimizations, bug fixes, and compensation, please look out for future version update info.

[Version Update Compensation]

Server Update Compensation: Polychrome ×300

Server Update Compensation Eligibility: Proxies who are lv. 4 or above before 2024/08/14 06:00:00 (UTC+8).

Server Update Compensation will be issued via the in-game mail after the update has been completed. The claim deadline is before the end of Version 1.1.

[How to Update]

Once the update maintenance starts, Proxies can follow the in-game instructions to update their game.

● PC Exit the game, restart, then select update.

● Android After entering the game, follow the in-game pop-up instructions to complete the update.

● iOS Go to the App Store and select update.

● PS5™ Open the PS5 home screen > Highlight Zenless Zone Zero > Press the Options button on your controller > Select Check for Update.

[scaththefloof]

Why the year of Linux isn't actually happening

This is a long post so make sure that you have some time to actually read it.

I'm going to say some things that linux users may hate, but it is the fucking truth.

we all hope for the year of the linux desktop, but the thing is it will never happen until it gets more user friendly. Yes you heard it right, it has to be USER FRIENDLY.

This is the reason that ubuntu, mint, elementary, etc. are so popular. Because mint is good if you're transitioning from windows, elementary OS is good for if you're transitioning from MacOS. And Ubuntu is User-friendly and has a high amount of support. It doesn't have a familiar UI, but the learning curve is relatively easy. Plus if you're me, you have actually riced Ubuntu and made it look 100% different from what ubuntu looks like

This was my Ubuntu rice, it is completely derailed from the original look which is this:

this is Ubuntu 24.04 LTS "Noble Numbat"

Now yes there are some shitty things Ubuntu has done, like sell user data to amazon. However that was in the past and my views are if someone (or in this case a company) has actually changed their ways, they deserve a second chance. Ubuntu has telemetry yes, but if you actually look at the source code for the telemetry (they let you do that at the installer) you will actually notice there is no user data reported. They only report the specs of your PC to Ubuntu, and the reason for this is to help better Ubuntu and expand support. Ubuntu is actually making an effort to make the year of the linux desktop actually happen.

Now yes people may have their opinions on Ubuntu and their implementation of GNOME, but really in this version of Ubuntu, canonical has fixed the issues they had. See the Buggy GNOME desktop environment was from this weird move they did in the name of stability. They would roll back the version of GNOME so you were 6 months behind. Yet use the latest extensions for GNOME, thus causing some frankenstein, GNOME thing. This is why GNOME is so buggy. the thing is Ubuntu did this for stability when even Debian didn't do this. If Debian, the mother of linux distros didn't do this weird frankenstein GNOME, then why did Ubuntu need to. But Canonical changed this and is now on the right track with Ubuntu 24.04. Now the other thing is the forcing of snaps down people's throats, this is a very shitty thing to do. To be honest with you, I would actually try snaps out if Ubuntu did NOT do this move that they do.

This is the same thing with some distros only allowing open source software, otherwise they just crash (yes there are some out there). Yes FOSS (Free and Open Source Software for the people who don't use linux, or use linux but don't know the term yet) is really great, but that doesn't mean become Ubuntu with their snaps and force FOSS down their throats. It is really nice when you have freedom, when you have the choice to not use FOSS and use Proprietary Software. Because now you have made the choice instead of had a gun pointed to your head and FOSS was the only thing you could choose to use otherwise the trigger would be pulled.

Now these distros are the minority and you don't really have to worry about that. But the thing is Ubuntu, I would actually take a bite out of the snap package cake, if you weren't shoving it in my face. I have actually heard of a new feature that canonical has released for snaps that fixes these slow boot times. And I have heard that some snaps actually run faster than flatpaks. such as some video editors. But these instances are most likely few and far between. Canonical making snaps is similar to another project that they did a long time ago. and that was create unity. They suffer from Not Invented here syndrome. Now Unity was actually a great move that they did when you consider why they did it. GNOME 3 just released and it changed the entire desktop environment and made it completely different. And Ubuntu didn't want to go with this new change. Because they didn't want their users to have to adapt to an entirely different workflow. So canonical made unity instead. Now eventually Unity failed and so they decided to instead, modify GNOME. But if you look at what they did when they made this move. Unity influenced what Ubuntu is today. Look at unity, and then look at Ubuntu 24.04. you can see what they took from their loss and made into a success.

Now if you made it this far, congratulations here is a cookie for you! 🍪. But now we're going to start talking about things other than user-friendliness. And that is what people use computers for. See the average Joe uses a computer for browsing the web and doing maybe a few word documents and that's about it. But if you're anything like me. You one, have differing opinions that highly oppose even the 1% (literally this entire tumblr post), but you also want to use a computer to go into a world where you rip and tear demons to shreds deep in the depths of hell, or you want to use a computer for killing greek gods. Or use a computer to open a portal to an alien world and destroy society. If you can't pick up on the references, what I'm saying is you use computers for a niche such as gaming. gaming is widely known, but the most common platform for gaming is the phone. not the console or the PC, the phone. Linux PCs are used more for getting work done. Hell, my dad who works at lenovo, installed ubuntu onto a mid 2012 macbook (btw that is the best laptop I have owned so far, it is so fast it scares me, how tf is a 2012 laptop that fast), he also has a hard drive with ventoy installed on it to boot other live environments so that he can work on his other projects (which he has a blog and he is working on a home lab setup).

funny thing is he doesn't specify on his blog what he uses ubuntu on, he just says he has a machine that uses it. So yeah he uses a Macbook Pro 9,2 (Mid 2012 13 inch), same as me

But the thing is, Yes linux gaming has come a long way. It really has, but the thing is that it's still not there yet. If you watch SomeOrdinaryGamers/Mutahar you would know that he plays games on Arch Linux (BTW) but he still has to fire up Windows in a Virtual Machine to play some of the games he has just because they do not work on Linux. If you want linux to take the market share. If you want this year of the linux desktop, you need to have games and such actually run on linux.

Now like I said linux is great for the average joe. If you gave the average Joe three laptops with a browser open and told him to just surf the web for a little bit, he would not be able to tell the difference between the OSes other than the UI being a little different (taskbar position, taskbar design, Icons, you know things like that).

The only people who would know what OS you just gave them are the people who engage in these niches such as cybersecurity, Development and Gaming (there are other niches I haven't covered, but let's keep it simple). Linux has two of the three listed here 100% covered. it's the third one that is the problem. The thing is let's use roblox as an example just because why not. They never actually made their game for linux. they just enabled wine support and told their linux playerbase to use wine (recently they disabled this wine support because people were using vinegar, a popular wine wrapper used to run roblox, to cheat in the game).

Now the Proton project has done an AMAZING job at this. In fact the steam deck had our hopes high for the year of the linux desktop. And honestly, I think we're close to if not on the home stretch here.

Alright so we understand the user friendliness and the gaming piece of the puzzle, but let me elaborate more on the user friendly.

I have recently seen this video where people asked Linus Torvalds some questions on why he doesn't use Debian or Ubuntu and he said something here that really resonated with me. he said that he wants a distro that is easy to install because he has a life. And this is the thing. look at MacOS, look at Windows, fuck look at ChromeOS for that matter and look at their installation experience. You see how user friendly it is.

Now look at installing apps, Windows you install a .exe file, hope and pray that it's not a virus, run it and you're done. you can also use a .msi file to install your app if you want to. MacOS, you download a .dmg file and copy it to your applications directory, simple as that. Hell it even gives you a fucking window that tells you "drag to install" and you drag the program into the applications directory.

this is from Livakivi's MacOS challenge video down below

Now this video shows me one: reasons why I shouldn't use MacOS, and two: user friendliness features that if put in Linux, it can cause the year of the Linux desktop we've all been waiting for.

Now installing stuff on linux, you have to type in one command. But for some people, that terminal is a scary place that they don't want to be. And so there is the way of installing it using a .deb file or a .rpm file. But the thing is that way is the wrong way. That is how you get malware, yes even though linux doesn't have much malware, it still has some. Hell, when I used Ubuntu (I use Kubuntu now) the Ubuntu software thing would actually WARN ME, that .deb packages had the capability of installing malware. But another point to make is that, deb and rpm files are only available for Debian and it's billions of forks, and fedora (and possibly it's forks, idk if it has any though).

Now there is a solution to this problem though, and that is the Discover app, (or the GNOME software app). these apps basically use the terminal method of installing the apps, making it more secure because they install packages that are checked for malware. But they just make it easier for your average joe to install them. They make it so easy that even your grandmother can do it. But the issue doesn't appear when you look at how not every desktop environment has the software app, meaning not every distro has the app because you can just use a distro that has the app. But the issue arises with the fact that some apps require you to add the repository in order to install it. There has to be some way for the software app to look at all repositories without adding them until you install a piece of software from it. Sort of like how a browser skims through the websites or something like that.

Yes there is documentation on how to do this type of stuff, but the thing is. With Windows, it just does it. Now I'm not saying linux should be like windows or Mac OS hell nah. What I'm saying is linux should be as noob friendly as windows and Mac OS.

The conclusion to this entire thing is that the year of the Linux desktop will never happen until the noob distros become as noob friendly as Windows and MacOS. Where you don't need a manual to use it. All you do is click a button and "oh that's what it does". It needs to be able to be used by someone who doesn't know shit about computers, and has never touched a command prompt in their life. Yes you might say "BuT tHe CoMmAnD pRoMpT iS tHe EnTiRe PoInT oF LiNuX!!!11!11" yes, but the thing is there has to be a distro for the ones who don't want to touch the command prompt

[choochooboss]

Magma event details!

Please check the rules below if you plan on joining our events!

A few words about Magma for newcomers:

Magma is a free browser based art program where participants can collaborate and draw on the same canvas at the same time! Magma works on both PC and mobile devices! Magma has most useful art program tools! But some are a little difficult to find, like layer opacity lock. You can export the images as PNGs and PSDs so you can save and keep all your layers etc.!

Hosting a session is easy! Set up a new canvas and share the link and that's it, you can start drawing. You can do public sessions like mine, or private sessions just with your close group. Update!! Previously you were able to use Magma anonymously without making an account, but this option does not exist anymore.

Our Magma event rules

Have fun! These events are meant to get you inspired, get to know other artists and create awesome art and ideas together!

Everyone is welcome to join my sessions! Doesn't matter where or when you join. You don't need to draw anything there, you can also just come and chat with us and watch others do their magic! Lurking is totally fine too!

Avoid drawing too big! Make sure to leave enough space for other people's drawings! Mind that there are 40-80 people partaking in these weekend events! (Max. 1/6th of the canvas per drawing is ideal!) We recommend to zoom in at 100-150% before you start drawing to avoid this. However! If you have an idea that others can contribute to, I'd be excited to hear it!! Those are highly appreciated!

Avoid drawing over the canvas frames!This is for possible future use in i.e. collages & personal aesthetics. They are there for a reason.

Keep it PG!

You are allowed to paste reference images in the session to use as a base etc.! Please remove them when you don't need them anymore and make sure not to cover areas where others are currently drawing!

When you are finished with your piece, please flatten your layers! The Magma total layer limit is 60 layers per canvas and it gets full rather fast. We have set a 8 layer limit per user/canvas. (If you have used layer effects in your piece, start flattening from bottom to top so they get preserved correctly!)

If you want to post/share Magma art that features other artists' works, you must ask for their permission first! This is very important!! Simple blur/solid color to hide them is ok, otherwise editing other people's art is not!

If you need more time to finish your piece, please let me know as soon as possible! If you know you aren't going to finish yours, please release the space for others to use!

Don't hesitate to ask anything! We are very happy to help out make the most of your session! Our regulars are all friendly and helpful, and my co-admin and mods are able to assist with i.e. getting your layers back!

Other tips!

Some users have experienced disasters losing layers for good by pressing CTRL + X, we recommend avoiding that for now!

Save regularly! Magma is a server based program so it's not as stable as your usual art programs, and also when the program refreshes you might lose some of your progress. Better saved than sorry! You can export the whole canvas as PNG, JPG & PSD!

You can have up to two Magma sessions open in your browser at once!

If you log out of the session you might lose rights to your layers. Please ask either the admin or approved users to give your layers back to you!

If Magma is going slow for you, it may be fixed by turning off the graphics accelerator. Go to Edit > Settings > Turn off Graphics Accelerator.

Merge layers with layer effects starting from bottom to top! For some reason Magma messes them up easily otherwise and the results will not look like you want.

Magma has a text chat we love to hang out in, it's of course optional but we would be happy to have you there!

You can send private messages to others by being on the same canvas with the receiver and clicking their icon!

Magma also has a voice call option. We prefer not to use it, but it's easy to misclick the button! Don't be alarmed!

We're continually figuring out new features and bugs in each session, I want to note down all of them to make the sessions as smooth and fun for you as possible! Let us know if you have any issues!

Also something notable: it's always well appreciated if you draw official Pokémon characters! Most of my followers are into submas or Pokémon in general so as the host I'd like to offer content most would enjoy! Some events welcome OCs but the free doodle session will always stay open for your characters!

After everyone is done I start post-processing the images. It may take a while until they are ready to be posted, please be patient! I will post the art on both my Twitter and Tumblr. You can use #jun's magma events for tagging your posts!

See you in our next event!! All aboard! <3

[rin-and-jade]

hey. I've always had trouble leaving the front and did lots of research plus looking through your profile while discussing with my headmates but recently I've been feeling dissociated almost like I'm about to faint from dizziness which i associate it with someone trying to switch with me but I'm not sure how to let go and pass it to the next person. any tips? thank you

Using triggers that associates the next person who is willing to be out is a great start to solve this issue.

That faint or weakness you may have felt is something called 'catatonic dissociation' which i ever made a post on it, if you have not read, heres the linkie link.

-- (LONG ANSWER) --

The reason i suggest you to use triggers is because dissociation resembles the user logging out from the computer. As you detached from your current sense of self, only leaving an apparent idle state of yourself to be active, to continue off from the analogy, the login screen with username and password input. The next person who wants to log in should know it's username (sense of self, idea, characteristics) as well as the password that will finalize the logging process (triggers, idea of its personality, general mood/role associated) .

If this process were to fail, it would be akin to how computer autofills your information when you try to re-log. You must detach whatever auto settings you turned on in your pc so others can log into it. This 'autofill' is also the same mechanism i described on how the next person should log in, and you re-associated your own username and password because there might be something you're still stuck with, that made you be active.

These 'autofills' can be a plethora of things, such as anxiety, or worry, or sensing danger, even unfinished problems,,, the computer knows what you associate, and it thinks you didn't mean to log out by accident.. so it puts you back in, in hopes you didn't miss your job or part. Solving the problems would greatly help the computer think that you've done your part, and will disable the autofill so other users can log in.

the steps, in conclusion:

Note down triggers and its associated identity/or name if any

Attempt to 'log out'

Allow the next person to input 'user and pass' from the notes, or you do it for the person

If the computer autofills the previous fronter, get the job done first and return here to retry the process

I hope this thorough explanation helps you figure out your own computer software. I've literally just woke up and chose to answer asks in my inbox and,, if the words are funny, you know why now.

- c