#the only thing it's worse at is latency

[andthebubbles]

tfw your home wifi is slower than your phone internet by 150mb/s AND constantly dropping, or dropping to less than 5mb/s, while your phone internet doesn't drop at all

[nivq87]

if I had more time energy and drive, I would collect images of niraa with the brew of the month effects and then make a tier list. I think that would be a goofy ass bit. tragically, I have not elected to be an internet funnyman, much less a wow internet funnyman. that has yet to stop me from thinking "oh what if I was an internet funnyman" thoughts

[rapha-reads]

IWTV rewatch

(now that I've read the books and know the entire canon, let's see how it changes things or don't)

Season 1 episode 1 [In Throes of Increasing Wonder...] - part 1/2

- oh man, Daniel looks so old and tired and resigned at the very beginning. Comparing him with the Danny boy of season 2 who's so fired up and sassy... He's an adrenaline junkie.

- [Daniel] "I told my editor I was meeting with the most dangerous man in the world. Gave him two choices: Bezos. Putin." - moment of silence for 2022. It was shit but we didn't realise that it could get even worse.

- [Louis] "You've grown old, Daniel" - oi, manners, Louis! Where are your manners.

- [Louis] "I wasn't sure you'd remember me" - funny. Because none of you remembers shit actually. Memory as the core theme of the whole ride. Memory and subjective narrative. From the very first line.

- Oh maaaaaan, Armand lurking in the background from the very first scene. Armand babe, I've grown to be fond of your psychopathic tendencies, but this is seriously creepy, dude.

Also. Also. The way he's keeping such a tight leash on Louis. The surveillance. The eyes recording.

- [Daniel] "'That's the sun out there. Where's your coffin?' [Louis] 'You're standing in it'" - first of all, departure from canon lore, the sun doesn't make vampires slip into the death sleep automatically. They can resist it no matter their age. Secondly, morbid, Louis dear. Very morbid.

- Oooh, Armand letting the sun come in and staying sitting right next to the beam. Taking roleplay to the extreme. And Louis showing off his self-destructive tendencies. Amazing how we're having all the elements (most of the elements) already.

- [Louis] "Truth and reconciliation" - 123 dead, 84 injuries, a whole city levelled up. Nobody's ready. Let's get into it.

- Oooh, Armand coming into play. "No third party" - why, afraid you'll slip even easier? And then full on roleplay, Louis giving orders, and the blast of patronising aimed at "the boy". Brilliant writing. So very subtle when you don't know where to look, so in your face and crucial when you're in the know. Delightful.

- Interview date: June 14th 2022. Start of Louis' story: 1910, fall. Canon change. De Pointe du Lac's lineage: Creole. Canon change. Although I feel like the collapsing of timeline takes away some of the weight of the unholy family's life (not even 40 years versus 70 years in the books), I greatly like the change of personal history. So much richer.

- Can we take a moment to appreciate, nay, worship, Jacob Anderson's vocal skills? The change from his unaccented Dubai English to the Creole New Orleans English drawling... I am in absolute awe.

- [Louis] "Go on home, else I bleed you like a cochon, bruv"

Oh hello Lestat. Welcome to the narrative.

Paul needs to retreat to some monastery. 'Get thee to a nunnery'.

- [Priest] "I haven't seen you in confession in a while, Louis" and then that little scoff - oh, hello there, religious trauma. How much are you going to poison the narrative? Entirely? Well, carry on then.

- [Louis] "My business and my raised religion were at odds, and the, uh... ha, latencies within me, well, I beat those back with a lie I told myself about myself - that I was a red-blooded son of the South, seeking ass before absolution." - first of all, the fuck does that mean, Lou. Secondly, can someone get him to therapy.

- Delightful social commentary on segregated Southern states at the beginning of the 20th century, but I'm being told in my earpiece that a certain blond demigod (or monster, depending on the perspective) is about to make his entrance, so let's drop the sociology for now.

- [Lestat] "Seul l'impossible peut faire l'impossible" (only the impossible can do the impossible) - okay Lestat, ominous and nonsensical, lovin' it. A+ for the French accent, Sam, by the way.

- Never mind, Lestat's continuing the social commentary for me, thanks boo. "I mean that as a compliment, a man of your race to have privileges here". Ouch. Great first introduction there.

- [Lestat] "You're the man who made me buy a townhouse in the Quarter" - wooow there, wow! Slow your rolls, Ariel, you haven't even met the guy properly! Maybe take him on a date before making commitments like that?

- [Louis] "I know sometimes, men of my race, we all look alike to you people, but I ain't been selling you no townhouse" - *wheeze* yeah that's my boy.

- [Lestat] "I disembarked for the music, but then, there was the food" - yeah, I think they're called people?

- [Louis] "I wanted to take the end of my cane and slit his throat with it." - CAN I GET A WARNING before y'all gonna foreshadow like that?? Damn. Can't escape fate, or something like that, I guess.

- Hello and welcome to 'oh no I am more turned on than I have ever been in my whole life' : [Louis] "I couldn't move. My body was seized with weakness. His gaze tied a string around my lungs, and I found myself immobilized." Or maybe it's survival instinct telling homeboy "danger! Dangeeeeeer!".

- Lestat playing Mind games on Louis while he can still.

- Excuse me, the exchange between Lestat, Miss Lily and Louis is fucking hilarious, I'm wheezing: [Lestat] "Only it turns out the saint is not a city but a handsome man with a most agreeable disposition." - agreeable what, the only phrases y'all have been exchanging are a commentary on racism, and then you went on to start fucking with his mind. Lestat, stop being impulsive or draw 25. [Miss Lily] "You're his destiny, Louis." - you know, talk about destiny outloud too often, the universe hears and plays a trick.

- [Louis] "Emasculation and admiration in equal measure. I wanted to murder the man, and I wanted to be the man." - and you wanted the man. Don't forget the third part of the rhyme.

- Lestat already using the Fire Gift. Canon change. Well, in book canon he's still under 30 human age when he meets Louis and Fire Gift only develops later in vampiric age. But here he's already a bit more than a century old. Logical change.

- [Lestat] "We both wanted the last bouquet of lillies" - *wheeze* You fucker.

- That poker scene is another social commentary with thinly veiled - or like actually not even that veiled - racism. Oh, and Lestat's here to continue the criticism. And play mind games. Though, hey, freezing time. Another vampiric power that usually appears late. Absolutely adore that Louis just rolls with the fuckery and switches his cards. 'Dude's stopping time in front of me and talking in my head? Whatever, cards await nothing'. Love a guy who's decided that everything goes and he ain't gonna press too much for the answers. Now if only he'd press a little bit more, but hey, no story if he does.

- [Louis] "Let the tale seduce you. Just as I was seduced." - you know what, as someone who just read 12 or 13 books in the span of three weeks because they couldn't stop, I'm right here with Louis. Let yourself be hypnotised. You'll lose sleep and attention span and the ability to care about anything else but these whiny blood suckers, but hey, totally worth it. If you survive till the end.

- [Louis] "Money would arrive, wired from France" - another departure from book canon, where Lestat lives off of Louis. Then again, book!Lestat is barely 30, mustn't have had time to set his network of attorneys, while show!Lestat already has a century of existence. Which brings me to a point that I haven't raised before, but what was Lestat doing between leaving Paris at the time of the Révolution (if memory serves) and arriving in New Orleans in 1910? Having tea with Marius? Sleeping beneath the sand? That's a full ass century Rolin Jones and Cie have to explain, here.

- Louis' conversation with his sister. [Louis] "'He ain't white, he French' [Grace] 'Oh, that a different kind of white? French white?'" - listen sis, as a half white French half brown Moroccan, yeah, trust me, white French's pernicious. [Louis] "Paul crawled into my bed last night" - who wanna bet Paul's talking to our book canon friends the spirits? And these ain't good spirits either. Ah, but Louis loves his family. Ready for the grief? No? Me either.

- [Lestat] "My mother, she gave me every advantage in life" - Gabriiiiiiellllllle. Cannot wait to see her in s3.

- Someone needs to shut Paul up. "the birds asked me to ask you" - okay Paul. Sure.

Wait, "Monsieur Freniere", ain't that the other plantation guy Louis wants to protect and becomes obsessed with his sister, Babette? Or am I already mixing up my canon.

- Oh hello, Lestat's backstory in the monastery, plus Sam Reid showing off for the first time his acting. Or should I say, his possession. An award for Sam. All the awards for Sam.

- [Louis] "Don't everybody need to know what I do" - preach, bro.

- [Louis] "Nothing but broken souls around me, and the ones that ain't broken, greedy" - ah, then, which one are you, Louis chéri ? Broken ? Greedy? Both? Only one for the moment, both as the years go on? And Lestat? Greedy, yes? But isn't he also so deeply broken?

- [Lestat] "The Earth's a Savage Garden" - begging Rolin Jones to give us Lestat soliloquising about the Savage Garden please and thank you.

- [Lestat] "'Shall we have a nightcap?' [Louis] 'Probably had enough for the night.'" - and yet you're helplessly following him, drawn in like a magnet, like an impossible to resist planetary orbit. Also look at that little gay panic. Awards for Jacob please.

- Ah, the gift. That's how Lestat will ensnare you. Gifts and gifts and precious things and then a child. Run, Louis, run.

- Oh, Nicki mention! [Lestat] "a boy of infinite beauty and sensitivity" - yeah he kinda was insane too, but that's your point of view I guess.

- [Lestat] "What kind of a man wastes this beautiful waist with words?" - first of all, damn, nice alliteration here. Secondly, a gay man, Les, you know that, we know that, Lily knows that.

- The erotic tension of this scene is off the charts, blimey. And Louis keeps repressing. He's about to blow off. In every meaning of the term. Yep, there it is. Excuse me while I go look. Respectfully. Also. Hands. They have something for each other's hands. And the first bite. And levitating. And that's just episode 1 and we're only halfway through episode 1. Nobody does it like this show, I swear.

part 2 | episode 2 | episode 3 | episode 4 | episode 5 | episode 6 | episode 7

Season 2 rewatch (coming soon)

[blazehedgehog]

Do you ever see yourself using two monitors? I think with the sort of thing you do, it would make your life a lot easier

I don't often see the appeal. I mean, I dunno. I do, but the appeal also seems limited?

Like, while Twitch streaming? Definitely see a use there. I use something called Touch Portal that turns an old Android Tablet into a "Stream Deck" type device where I get a bunch of buttons to manage my stream. One of those panels is chat, but it's not as good as real live Twitch chat. If I get a spam bot or something, I still have to tab out of the game and load up a browser to deal with it.

If I could just leave the Twitch chat tab up on another monitor, that would be less of a problem.

Video editing, I suppose, could also help. Having the timeline, preview, and library all on the same screen can feel a little cramped sometimes. If I could spread some of those out so I had more room to show the timeline, that might also be nice.

The rest of the time? Eh. I feel like I can be a pretty cluttered person. A second monitor would just spread the clutter out and might make it worse. But I guess I don't really know that for sure.

Friends have tried to nudge me towards a second monitor but their examples (watching Twitch on a second screen, etc.) is something I already do. I technically have two monitors.

I have the monitor my PC is connected to, a 1600x900 ASUS VE208. I bought it in 2011 with the very first payout I ever got from monetizing my Youtube channel. It was my first flat panel ever, after my last CRT physically exploded (sparks shot out of the side of the monitor before an audible pop and then smoke). The VE208 cost about $125 then, and has really great color and was very low latency in an era where latency on LCDs could be pretty bad (bad enough that an entire website sprung up with recommendations on low-lag displays, which is what I used to choose this monitor in particular).

Probably worth mentioning, but the VE208 has been getting kind of weird. Even beyond just feeling kind of dark, a couple times over the last year it's blinked out mid-display and turned into colored snow almost like an old CRT. It usually sits on the snow signal for a second or two and then returns to normal. Totally unprompted.

Sitting next to me on my left is a Vizio TV my Mom bought for me in... 2014? 2015? It's 1080p but not the greatest screen in the world. Has weird color banding issues with certain shades of green (the unit isn't defective, my Mom got her the same TV, with the same problem). That's the TV where all my game consoles get hooked up, and everything also feeds into the PC so I can hear the TV through the same headphones I hear the PC.

Both the ASUS monitor and the Vizio TV are about the same size. I think the monitor is 20 inches and the TV might be 22 or 24 inches?

So generally I am watching Youtube or Twitch on the TV, either using the PS4 or my Roku, and I have the web or my work up on the computer monitor. It's not the same, but I'm also not dying in a desert of only one screen.

[beesandwasps]

Speaking as fellow old person, a couple of corrections:

You can definitely still get new, non-smart TVs. I don’t know about how the picture and audio quality stacks up against smart ones, because I don’t really care all that much about either one (and I don’t play the kinds of console games where latency matters very much), but B*st B*y not only has them but has a store brand of them (Ins*gnia, in sizes from 19 inches to 40), and you can find them on Am*zon if you look. (Asterisks because this post already has enough brands in it.)

Also, you can plug in headphones to an iPhone, even an iPhone 15. (If you insist on Apple-branded stuff, look for “EarPods” instead of “AirPods”, choose your connector type, and pay ~$20 plus tax, or just search Google for the connector type you want and “headphones”… or you can get an adaptor and plug in anything to anything.) (Those brand names already appeared so I’m not bothering to censor them.) You don’t have to use Bluetooth, and really since Bluetooth audio has always sucked for some reason — I’ve been trying it at intervals since Bluetooth was the Shiny New Feature, and it has always been noticeably worse than plain old wired audio, which suggests that the defects are built into the standard — you never should, on anything.

(Incidentally: one of the tech things we need, particularly now that USB has significant power transmission, is a new generation of reasonably high-quality, bus-powered USB speakers. Unlike Bluetooth, USB speakers are actually pretty good, and there’s a device class for them so they can be no-specific-driver-needed plug-and-play devices. For a while, it was possible to get USB 1 powered speakers, but the low power delivery meant they could never get as loud as cheap externally-powered computer speakers with a 3.5mm jack… which meant having to have an extra power cable to plug in, usually with a brick to waste space on the surge protector. With USB 2 or 3, that restriction should be liftable… but somebody has to make and market them and nobody seems to be interested in doing that. But I digress.)

There are so many whole categories of ways “smart” things can go wrong that it’s a little scary, particularly given how many engineers seem to be unable to predict the problems in advance. We’ve already reached the point where “smart devices no longer receiving software updates are trivially hackable from outside and are being used by criminals to form botnets and DDOS the Internet” is A Thing. Also “your car’s internal computer can be hacked from another vehicle while the car is moving and the hacker can interfere with the engine or potentially even the steering”, that’s another good one. My favorite, though, would have to be “this smart device has outlived the company which made it but it was hard-coded to store all its settings on a remote server so now it’s a piece of expensive junk”.

Really, one would think that the EU would be passing some laws about it to require non-smart controls… and maybe to require (at a minimum) companies to put both the internal programming and the controlling apps for all smart devices into some sort of public trust, so that if the company goes out of business it is possible to resurrect the software and keep using the device.

[clickbliss]

My favorite ways to play GBA

by Amr (@siegarettes)

The GBA is one of my all time favorite consoles. With an iconic, pocketable form factor and an expansive library of games, I’m still finding ways to enjoy it, over twenty years after its release. And with so many different options to revisit that library, it can be easy to get wrapped up in finding the “perfect” way to play it. But the truth is, so much of the handheld experience is wrapped up in the hardware you play it on, that the best option is going to be different for each person. 

So today I’m going to run through my favorite ways to play GBA, why I picked them, and what makes each great. 

***

Before you start whipping out your wallet, look around your room, check your drawers, or dig through your garage and see if you’ve got a DS Lite hanging around. 

This was my GBA standby for years, and it still remains a great option. With a great clamshell design, rechargeable batteries, a built-in backlight, and perfect compatibility thanks to its built-in GBA hardware, it’s an accessible and fuss-free way to revisit old titles. As a bonus it plays, ya know, DS games. 

Audio output is clean, if a little bit low volume at times, but that can be fixed by pairing it with the right earbuds. The only real downsides are the aging hardware can make it a little harder to find good condition units, and the older screen and slightly higher resolution mean there’s slight ghosting and the image won’t fill the screen without stretching. 

The DS might not have the fidelity of modern options, but it’s an off the shelf solution with nearly every feature you’d want, with minor compromise and zero setup. 

***

If you want something closer to the original experience, a modded GBA can’t be beat. I prefer an original model GBA, since it’s less cramped than the SP. With a new lens and an IPS screen, and custom shells, you can get a unit looking nearly like new, with an image that easily outdoes the DS, and of course, has perfect compatibility and integer scaling. 

The biggest drawback is by far the price. The components for modding are reasonable alone, but quickly add up, especially if you want options like rechargeable batteries, or a fix to the noisy GBA headphone jack. Power consumption rapidly becomes an issue as you add additional mods, or use a flashcart. At one point I thought I had bricked my console, but it turned out the combination of the increased power usage of my flashcart combined with the new screen was simply drawing more power than the depleted batteries could put out. 

Even with those hassles and drawbacks, when I need that uncompromised, perfect compatibility, this is my personal favorite way to play GBA. Modern screens might give an experience closer to emulation than slightly blurred, washed out colors of unmodified hardware, but it looks so good it’s hard to make a fuss about it. 

If you’re lucky to live in a place where you can access professional modding services, through Etsy, eBay or otherwise, you can buy a pre-modded GBA for not too much more than it’d cost to build it yourself, and save yourself the anxiety of trying not to break anything in the process. 

I got mine from Gamechanger Mods in New York. They’ve got tons of fantastic custom colorways, and Greg was prompt and quick in making adjustments and sending the unit back and forth. Honestly, it was easily worth what I paid for it, but it’s difficult to recommend this option for anyone other than the most particular players. 

***

For people not going for original hardware, emulation is the easiest and best option. There’s a bit of a preconception that emulation is inherently and noticeably worse, but with over 20 years of emulator development, emulation has progressed to the point where, with the right hardware and software, it’s near indistinguishable from the real thing. The process itself introduces some inherent latency, but unless you’re playing a rhythm game or you’re a speedrunner attempting frame perfect tricks, you probably won’t notice. In return you get an incredible suite of features and flexibility. 

For my money, mGBA is hands down the best out there, with incredible accuracy and robust features that I didn’t even know I wanted. Tuned correctly, performance was even consistent enough for me to play games with tight timing, like Rhythm Heaven. It can’t make me good at them though. 

I do have to shout out VisualBoy Advance though, which hit early and paved the way for a lot of future efforts. I was legit emulating games as I kept current with physical releases, thanks to VBA. 

***

When I need a pocketable GBA emulator, to me the Anbernic 351P is the only option. The 351P has just enough power to run mGBA smoothly, with low latency, and just as importantly, has a screen that matches the GBA’s 3:2 aspect ratio, at a  perfect 2X integer scale. Basically no other portable emulator can say that. 

The shoulder buttons are similar to those on a GBA SP, but with microswitches and landscape form factor closer to the original GBA, as well as a good dpad, four responsive face buttons, dual analog sticks that click in, secondary shoulder buttons, and a rotary volume wheel. 

The same factors that made it ideal for GBA compromise the other systems it can play, but it’s generally still adequate otherwise. On top of accurate emulation, you can even configure it for save states, rewind and fast forward, and remap the controls as you please, which is a godsend in difficult action games like Mega Man Zero. 

The biggest problem is how much work you have to do to get it up and running. It’s not even worth using the stock firmware, and you might as well throw away the SD card it ships with, leaving you to flash a custom OS and load up your own SD card with ROMs, if you want it to meet what I’d consider the minimum standard for emulation. No matter what firmware you go with, you’ll be stuck with Retroarch, which is a miserable hassle to navigate, even after you get over the learning curve. 

Quality control is hit and miss too. My first unit had its headphone jack come loose through regular use, and the replacement I was sent had the same issue, even after I took extreme care with it. I ended up opening it up and resoldering the joints myself to repair it, which should NOT be a required step. 

Personally, the 351P is still by far the best portable emulator in terms of features, form factor and price, but it’s up to you if all that work is actually worth it. 

***

Now if price is no issue, and you somehow don’t care about portable play, the MiSTer project offers an incredible suite of alternatives to emulation. While software emulation still has it beat in flexibility, accessibility and diversity of options, a lot of the common conveniences are here, bolstered by an FPGA solution that emulates the system at a hardware level. It’s probably one of the most accurate ways to play GBA, barring original hardware, and still cheaper than trying to get a GBA Player running on modern screen, or modding a GBA into console form. 

There’s a lot to love in the MiSTer’s GBA core--from the infinite controller choices, micro adjustments you can make to the display and sound options, and even support for the same rewind, fast forward and save states you’d get elsewhere. 

By far my favorite feature is the 2 player GBA core. It’s a bit of a pain to import and edit save data, but it’s otherwise one of the fastest ways to get GBA multiplayer up and running, without the need for two systems, carts or link cables. There are so many ways to display the two screens, including outputting the second player to a separate screen. It opened up the possibility to easily play a lot of the multiplayer modes I’d never had the chance to check out. 

I legit brought my MiSTer to my local fighting game meetup and played loads of multiplayer GBA games, some for the first time. We tried everything from Sonic Battle to competitive Mega Man Battle Network. All with our own controllers or arcade sticks. 

***

And those are all my favorite ways to play GBA!

Each of these are great options, but don’t get wrapped in thinking they’re the only choices.

Regardless of which way you choose to play the GBA, there’s an incredible library to dig into, with ways to personalize the experience to fit exactly the life you’re living. 

The important part is to get out there, and play the damn games. 

[vampiresuns]

Look After Your Dead, Part 2 | Prologue, Part 4

✴︎ LOOK AFTER YOUR DEAD, PART 2 ✴︎

4.9k words. In which Anatole’s past catches up to him. CWs: Discussions of memory loss and amnesia, feelings of depression and inadequacy. There’s also a lot of talks of displacement, land and family. The writer gets a little too close to existentialism.

This piece introduces some of my ocs for the first time in an official rewrite: say hello to Leonore Kaur, the dastardly counsellor with a penchant for drama, Octavia Rei, the coffee wench by day and playwright by night, roommate of Milenko, and Sabine Rei, her younger sibling, all friends of Anatole.

Featured Radošević-Cassano: Valerius, Milenko, Vlad and Louisa (mentioned).

Other Lore: The ‘Antiqullan’ range is the furthest west end of the Bulan Mountains, were the country of Altazor, featured in Secrets of An Ancient Moon, is located. Louisa is Altazoreña, making Anatole a first generation Altazoreño.

With this piece we reach the last instalment of Anatole’s prologue, however, there’s one more step before the Routes begin: All characters featured here will come back in an interlude.

What to catch up with this series? You can do that here.

Some people couldn’t help being anything but themselves. It did not mean they were rigid, immutable or incapable of change or growth. No person was that way, and those who refused the inherent mutability of life were bound to break. Instead, these people had who they are, whatever they are, as their guiding horizon — a certainty, a principle they could not betray, a truth they couldn’t deny. When their true self called, they had no choice but to answer. Who they are meant to become is bound to unravel, and once it begins manifesting, these people cannot run from it. 

The self can only be repressed for so long. It’s latency is temporary, and these kinds of people understand that. They cannot wear masks, they cannot be anyone other than themselves, whether it was for better or for worse, and their past was bound to catch up to them sooner or later. Anatole was such a person.

It didn’t matter he didn’t remember who he was, because it all existed within him and no matter how much he ran from it, no matter how much circumstance prevented it, his potential would meet him sooner or later. Unknown to him yet, that time was drawing to a close.

Julian had broken into his shop again, which Anatole did not find as surprising as he could’ve. Portia treating him too comfortably, with Nevivic names, was. The way they both pronounced things lingered behind them as Portia dragged him to a nearby alley. Alone in front of his front door, Anatole realised they both pronounced his name ‘Anatoliy’.

Like his father had done the day Anatole had told him that was his name now. 

A father. Had he had a father? Where was he now? In a faraway land or dead by Plague like so many in the City? He felt a ripple of his own magic bubbling inside him, he could feel the warmth of it lace with his fingers. Faint and weak, like a newborn opening their eyes, something told him he had a father. If he concentrated enough he could feel a magical tether pulling him to somewhere. With a frightened heart, he realised this wasn’t the first time in the last three years when he had felt such a tether, but this was the first time the headache wasn’t stronger than the magic. 

Noon chimed over the City and Anatole, realising he had forgotten the Masquerade announcement, had to let it go. 

In the Heart District, a man called Vladislav Elyseo Radošević would grab the arm of his wife, a woman called Louisa Aureliana De Silva, and with tears in his eyes he’d tell her he could swear he had just seen their son standing right in front of him. Somehow. 

✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎

The announcement was a lot. Nothing bad happened during it, but Anatole couldn’t shake the feeling he had been there before, in a past he couldn’t remember. This time, he did flirt with a headache when he tried. Whatever magical thread that pulled to him before had seemed to grow into a tree, and the many languages and words of the people in the square hit him all at once.

As soon as he could, he retreated into an emptier corner by the cooler shadows of the marble pillars around the square. A tall person covered with a cloak, their scent myrrh-heavy was also around the corner. They seemed to want to avoid people at all costs, so Anatole gave them berth: sometimes you just wanted to be left alone to your own devices.

Away from the flock of people he began realising how much he had pushed away on the last days, because he had not had a moment to himself. 

With every breath the scent of Myrrh reached his nose. Recognition hit him all at once. He turned his head to the stranger. 

“You were guarding my shop the other morning.”

“I tried to warn you.”

When Anatole spoke again, the stranger turned. He followed them all the way into the market, but when he lost them, he began looking around him, not sure how he ended up in the market at all. Distracted, he collided into a cart as he turned around himself. Someone offered him a hand to stand up — a man with thick black hair that reached his shoulders, pulled away from his face in a half-bun, sparkling dark brown eyes and an easiness to his voice when he spoke, as if the entire world was his friend. 

“Whoa, my guy, you took a pretty nasty fall, are you—” 

The man went completely silent, his mouth hanging half open as Anatole stood before him awkwardly. He cleared his throat.

“I know you just helped me stand up, but are you alright?”

“I’m, I’m, sorry I must be seeing things because you look just like—”

Somewhere behind him, a willowy person with fair skin and purple eyes, short hair accompanied by someone who looked a lot like them but with long, curly hair walked towards the man.

“Hey, Leonore, what happened?” The one with curly hair asked, while the willowy one looked at Anatole and dropped everything they were holding. 

“Holy shit. Holy shit. Anatole?”

The man who helped him stand, Leonore, shook himself. “It’s okay, Sabine, my guy here just fell, and I’m sure this is a very whacky coincidence since Anatole is d—”

“But my name is Anatole,” he said. Everyone looked at each other in silence. Anatole didn’t know what was happening, all he knew is that these people knew him, he knew nothing of them. He felt one of Asra’s cards tug at him in his pocket. 

“Excuse me, I’m afraid I don’t know who you are and I, I— I have to go.” Before anyone could stop him, Anatole sprinted back to the Main Square.

The first time he felt that pull of recognition, that thread to be followed had been with his own name after he woke up from his ‘accident’. He had tried to ask Asra about it, but he couldn’t remember a time where the magician even tried to address the question. Anatole had asked him about that too, and satisfied with the truth in Asra’s words that it wasn’t about Anatole himself why he couldn’t tell him, he stopped asking. Whatever answer would either never come to him, or he would have to get it himself.

The second time was with Asra himself:  he knew nothing of why or how Asra had become someone important to him, but he knew his was a well-loved face. 

Then it was his aunt, Antupillán, until it was one little thing on top of each other forming a figure which stood in the fog, slipping through Anatole’s fingers every time. His headaches always made him recede, go back to the safety of a cool room with little light coming in. Now, he felt himself in the middle of the fog as Leonore’s face materialised in the same way the magical imprint that he had felt before the announcement, unknowingly connecting him to his parents, almost did earlier that day. 

Anatole was a single boat in the fog, the sound of water around him as the oars moved him towards the direction of that figure standing in it. Like the people of a forgotten town in the Antiqullan forests who themselves had forgotten the name of everything around them, until they became completely still. Anatole rowed forward as names fell back in place and life compelled him to begin again. 

“So you’re Aelius? I’m Leonore Kaur! Medea is also Vesuvian so I could show you two around if you wanna. You don’t mind if I call you my guy, do you, my guy?”

“No, not at all, Leonore Kaur. Though ‘Anatole’ also works, you needn’t just call me by my first name.”

“Leo is fine.”

“No, no, I will use your full name, always, at all times.”

✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎

During one of Asra’s travels, Anatole had seen a doctor behind the magician’s back about his memory. The visit was mostly unsatisfactory, except by some referrals and some exercises for when he felt he could almost remember things, but then couldn’t, and the other many moods of the standard amnesiac. Not that the Doctor had called it that, but Anatole had to make a little light-hearted fun at his own condition. It was like his attention and hyperactivity issues. He was going to coexist with it either way, so he better barter with them like old friends. At least on the days they weren’t awfully frustrating.

Hearing Portia describe the Court for him was nothing like that. He shuffled Asra’s deck as he listened, pulling the same cards in rotation: The Lovers, The Hermit, The Tower upright, The Fool, the Queen of Wands, and then Death reversed, Justice reversed, The Tower but reversed this time, Temperance reversed, the Hierophant and the Six of Cups reversed. Over and over again, no matter how many times he shuffled them. 

He couldn’t have explained anything that Portia was telling him now —all the different Court departments and how they were interconnected, who did what and all the gossip she could fit during their ride back to the Palace— but the moment he said it, he knew it, somehow. He shuffled again. The Lovers, The Hermit, The Tower, The Fool, the Queen of Wands, Death, Justice The Tower and Temperance all reversed. The Hierophant seemed undecided in his position, sometimes becoming horizontal without Anatole touching it. 

A card without meaning. A card undecided as Portia mentioned how the Consul’s real name was Valeriy, but everyone called him Valerius like it should be pronounced in the Vesuvian common tongue.

“I had no idea until I saw it on a record! ‘Valeriy of the Cassano of Vesuvia’. With how he acts you’d barely know he is a Cassano, right?”

Portia continued to talk as Anatole shuffled again, determined to do a reading for himself. To what end? He couldn’t say. He just hoped he didn’t pull the same cards as he had been pulling for most of the ride. Portia went on, saying how Consul Valerius was the most important, which didn’t mean he could not pay attention to the others. Anatole did not need Portia to tell him the Consul was the second most important political figure in Vesuvia. 

He shuffled the deck the last time, then cut it. “If the Countess is incapacitated, the Consul rules in absentia, right?”

“That is correct! Wow, I didn’t think I was such a good teacher,” Portia said with a delighted laugh. Anatole smiled softly, as he pulled three cards.

The Hermit, reversed. He had lost his way. But why? When? The Ace of Swords. Maybe he’ll find his answers, maybe he is finding them. Anatole frowned at the cards, he hasn’t found shit. Or perhaps he wasn’t seeing clearly yet. As the carriage came to a halt, he pulled Strength, upright. Only it wasn’t from Asra’s deck, but from his own deck, the one which had belonged to his aunt. In it, a figure cradled a City against their chest, like a nurturing sort of Atlas, as light came from behind them mimicking a golden halo. Strength was focused, unwavering, wise, compassionate. 

How the hell had this card gotten mixed with Asra’s? That was a question for later. 

Had Anatole pulled one more card, he would’ve pulled the Hierophant again. 

✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎

The Countess looked at ease, wonderful in the afternoon light as she played the pipe organ. This would be fine, he thought, as Portia introduced him to the weirdest goddamn people he’s ever seen. If you could call them people — Volta, Vlastomill, Vulgora and Valdemar all looked and felt too off. Somehow the too open eyes, the moist skin, the despairing pulls or the sharp teeth weren’t the worst part: it was how their words made Anatole feel.

They triggered his magic, making his stomach drop. Not only were they lying, there was a threat in their words too. Magic that felt like a sharp note reverberating on every wall, on every new word they uttered. 

The only one who still felt human enough was Consul Valerius. 

Anatole had never seen a ghost, but he had read some accounts of necromancers and animancers about the sensory experience of encountering certain presences. It depended on the inclination of the magician, the story with the presence and why some of them may or may not feel like something meant to be encountered. Fate as something one could take or leave, as events which happened regardless of whether one wanted them to happen or not — ghosts where like the truth, Anatole remembered reading from one of them, not up to accommodate one’s expectations. 

Seeing someone who made the same facial expression you did out of shock had to be like seeing a ghost. There was always something terrifyingly vulnerable about recognising oneself in others. Unlike the other moments of recognition Anatole had had through the day, this time, something screamed inside of him, making his head throb. From between the Consul’s feet, Antu scurried towards Anatole.

Antupillán, who followed Anatole like a guide and a support animal. Antupillán, who did not let people who did not know him be near him at all. Yes, he was a friendly and curious Raccoon who engaged with the world around him, not always heeling by Anatole but always close enough. But there was a difference with engagement and sitting by someone who made Anatole’s head throb when he spoke.

He better have an explanation. 

It only got worse. Portia introduced them, but the room had fallen still, the tension palpable as the rest of the Courtiers watched the scene with morbid interest, except for Volta who just looked anguished as she muttered this was all very wrong. Quaestor Valdemar was staring unblinkingly at Consul Valerius, asking him ever so casually if there was anything that was the matter. The Countess looked between them in confusion, and tried to pry anything out of the Consul but he was not speaking. He just stared at Anatole in abject horror.

And was that panic in his voice when he spoke? Very faint, under the viciousness of his words as he demanded an explanation for the presence of such an offensive display? He was motioning at Anatole, rage and fear intertwined as he asked the Countess what sort of sick joke was this. 

The Countess could not explain with anything else than how she had encountered Anatole, as she looked and sounded at loss. 

Once again, his new found automatic pilot habit kicked into place. What he meant to do, was ask the Consul what was so offensive about him, letting him know he did not appreciate the tone or the sentiment from someone he did not know, so if he could please speak clearly. 

What he did instead, though Antu tried to stop him, sounding apologetic and concerned —Why on earth? Anatole half thought in the background of his mind— was walking forward, with a lost and open expression to him, as he screamed at himself to stop. He couldn’t stop. 

Like he was staring at himself from a distance, as if his own ghost was possessing his body. “Valeriy—” 

But the Consul threw him the contents of his glass of wine. “Don’t you dare call me that, you witch.”

The Countess made everyone leave. She dismissed the entire Court without a second thought. The moment they were alone again, Anatole broke down into tears he couldn’t explain. Although the Countess was surprised at first, standing there awkwardly for a moment, she approached Anatole with gentleness, rubbing his back. 

He wasn’t crying about the Consul, not really. He was crying about his fucking headache, and the powerlessness he felt. He knew he oughtn’t push himself into remembering, but he felt it would be all much easier if he did. Recovery was not a smoothly paved road, Anatole knew this, but right then, it was hard to accept. 

“What the hell were you doing with him?” He asked Antupillán, angry and confused. 

The Raccoon didn’t answer. 

“I’m sorry, are you acquainted with Valerius?”

Anatole couldn’t answer that beyond an: “I don’t know.” He didn’t have any explanations, not even to himself. All he had was these unshakable certainties which were starting to materialise, without any mercy for his growing migraine. But he could not speak them yet, he could barely understand them. 

He apologised again. The Countess told him it was no trouble. Her words did not have judgement, just honest, tender concern. 

He felt Antu’s paws slide into his hands.

I must protect my Anatole, like my Anatole has protected me, he said.

Anatole sighed, wiping his tears away with the corner of his sleeve. A corner that wasn’t wine-drenched. “You better have a good reason not to tell me, Antupillán.” 

He grabbed his familiar, plopping him onto his lap. Antu continued to hold his hand. 

“I really am sorry, Countess.”

The Countess looked at him with fondness. “From what I’ve known of you, I think there is little which could make me change my regard for you, Anatole.”

She paused, looking like there was something else she wanted to say. “Why don’t we start by fixing your clothes? Such pettiness in a single Court. Whichever was your connection to the Consul, I am sorry it went sour, but I’m not surprised… he is an acquired taste. I have already taken the liberty with your wardrobe, so please, tell me what would you like and spare no expense.”

“You don’t need to. I really can spell the stains away… though I’d still need a shower.”

“Let me, as your host.”

“How about a compromise?”

“Do tell.”

“Using my own wardrobe as a canvas, we take items from it to replace them. They might not be courtly, but I have always been fussy about clothes. I think it matters what one wears.”

The Countess laughed. “I knew I was right in making you my friend.”

“On one condition.”

“Estate it.”

“You’ll let me pay you back.”

“Humble as ever. Very well, our side project will have to wait, as Portia will escort you to your chambers. Your own garments will be returned, but I think you must allow me to choose an outfit for you. I have the perfect one in mind… I do hope you change your mind about paying me back, you are my guest of honour. You could be more selfish, if you like.”

He smiled at her but did not say anything. Antu jumped out from Anatole’s arms as he stood up to spell-clean his clothes. The Palace staff who did the laundry did not deserve to work extra because of some Courtier’s tantrum. Placing his hands over his chest, he took a deep breath, moving his hands away from him slowly as he did.  In front of his and the Countess’ eyes, the wine left his clothes, floating in the air like blobs Anatole gently deposited in the glass. 

When he took all the stains out, he took a drink from it.

“Can I ask you something else? Do you know what wine this is, beyond well, red?”

“I could have it checked. It’s not from the Palace’s own cellar, I’m afraid the Consul brings his own from his own private cellar in the Palazzo Cassano. That is his family’s seat. From what I understand, the Cassano have been in hold of the Consulship for almost 500 years.” 

Now that he heard the name again, Cassano, he felt like someone had hammered a silver plate which set a mechanism in motion. The words had the same feeling around them as the word ‘Balkovia’ did — home, holding hands with ‘unattainable’. Could it be that he was wrong? That home wasn’t unattainable because the gaping void of missing memories inside him meant he couldn’t reach it, but rather, than he hadn’t remembered yet?

There was only one way to know. He’d face the Consul again. He would as soon as he could.

✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎

There had been a jewel with his change of clothes. An emerald necklace that had traces of Asra’s magic. Traces so strong Anatole could almost pull his friend back to him. He wanted to follow its guiding pull, but it wasn’t a good idea to do it when everyone was roaming around in the Palace still. He waited, and when the halls went quiet he stole out of his room, following Asra’s magic imbued in the necklace until a fountain in the gardens.

He let it drop into the water, watching it fall as the light caught on the faces of the gem, amplified as if the water itself was glimmering. He ran his palm over the water. The magic felt like his own until it stopped: the liquid now a mirror, showing Asra at the other end. 

When Asra noticed him he looked surprised, full of pride and relieved to see him. His laughter was like music, like the sitars of street musicians from other corners of the world. His praise felt warm to Anatole, Asra’s eagerness always did, even when the magician felt like he had said too much —like right now, by calling Anatole a man of light, and a man of words. 

His eagerness to see his friend won over his apprehension. Or perhaps, seeing his friend like he once remembered him, with his Prussian blue shirt with cream white bishop sleeves and ochre yellow pants. “Was it Rumi who said silence is the language of God and everything else is poor translation? Well, you might be the one exception to the rule.”

“If I did this, I did it in silence.”

“Light speaks through you, Nana Banana—”

“Do not call me that.”

“—It always has.”

Anatole wouldn’t have been able to anticipate the turns their conversation would have. It was heavy, filled with the request of honesty, and talk of the things Anatole had gone through. They talked about Nadia, once she had been Asra’s friends, even if he know claimed they were strangers. Anatole asked about justice, and if he could trust her that way. 

“I want to but—”

“But you have a duty to Vesuvians?” Asra said, less heavy than when he was talking about Nadia. Instead, he sounded resigned, like he was starting to let go of a fight he fought out of habit, not because he should or because he’d win it. 

“Asra the City needs justice, but not that justice.”

“I somehow knew you’d say that. You can take the boy out of politics, but not politics out of the boy.”

Anatole blinked. “Was I like this before? You promised to be honest.”

“I did,” the magician sighed. “You were. You were a beacon of hope in a hopeless situation.”

“Well, I most certainly have not been feeling like a beacon lately— I feel, misplaced. Like I know and I don’t know at the same time, like—” Anatole told him everything he had omitted before. Him speaking like he was on automatic pilot, like he could see himself from afar only both the speaker and the spectator were him. He was honest about pulls of magic he had felt through the years but never followed, afraid he’d get lost. He told Asra about the Consul, about so many things he had spoken to the Countess like he knew things he had no way of knowing. Not to that level of depth.

He told him he felt like he had been dead before and now he was being born again, only he didn’t know what kind of living he was supposed to be, while somehow walking with more hope and purpose than he’d suspect himself having. 

He only noticed his eyes welling up with tears when Asra got blurry. “I want to find out myself, but I need to ask: I was not born here was I?”

Asra’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “No. No, you were not… is there something else on your mind? I didn’t think this was the turn the conversation would have.”

“Neither did I…” Anatole dried his tears again. “I’m so fucking tired of crying in front of people.”

“Yeah, you’ve always hated that.”

“Did I know the Consul.”

“Oh, Nana I really can’t answer that. I know I promised—”

Antole took in a sharp breath. “Then answer me this: I was never your apprentice before, was I?”

“Nana, I can’t—”

“Answer the damn question. You promised.”

“No, no you were not. You approached magic differently than I did, but you sometimes made mine look like a joke.”

“Don’t depreciate yourself to compliment me, that’s not how it works. If I can’t do it, then neither can you.”

Asra raised is hands in surrender. “It was, and is still very impressive.”

“Alright, I have one more question. You told me I had an aunt right? Paris, Paris De Silva… Asra did I have parents? Asra I need to know this.”

Asra was quiet for so long, Anatole thought he wasn’t going to reply at all, but before he could get angry Asra steeled himself and spoke again, looking directly into Anatole’s eyes. “You’ll tell me to stop the moment you get a headache, alright?” Anatole agreed. “You did, Nana. You do—”

Anatole heard footsteps and ruffling leaves behind him and turned away from Asra. “There’s someone. I’ll find you again. I love you.”

Without thinking, Anatole drew his hand over the water, making a closing motion and Asra dissipated before he could say anything else. He stood from his spot at the same time a voice he didn’t recognise asked him if he had, perchance, found a self-refilling quill around the fountain. 

“I’m so sorry to disturb you, it is that I finally broke from a very long writer’s block and funnily enough I lost my quill— Anatole?”

As the stranger said his name, Anatole felt one of the heaviest waves of sadness and grief he had ever felt from someone. The man standing before him was dressed head to toe in black, his chesnut curls moving very lightly with the breeze. He snapped out of his shock with a panicked look in his eyes, walking past Anatole fast enough that he could break into a jog as he muttered to himself, frenzied and confused, that this couldn’t be happening again. Anatole tried to help him, but the stranger jumped back as his eyes swelled with tears. 

The man broke into a run, leaving Anatole alone and confused with no other option than going back to his room. 

✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎ ✴︎

Once he was alone in his room once again, he cried. He cried until he couldn’t breathe. There was a gaping hollowness inside of him. Something locked away for reasons beyond his comprehension. He stared at his shaking hands, flexing his fingers, trying to anchor himself with the moment. What had happened to him? What had happened to him that he saw people he couldn’t know in his dreams, and friends in the faces of stranges? What had happened to him that one day he had nothing but a mismatched language, latching on his tongue as he asked Asra —who was unable to understand him— a thousand and one questions the magician could not answer. So many questions he could choke on them.

To speak, to exist in language is to exist, and what was he if he could not be spoken? If the faces his hearts conjured for him turned him in horror? If strangers like the man in the fountain walked away from him like he was some unspeakable thing walking on this earth? 

If he laid on the floor and closed his eyes, he could feel the earth calling him, but not how it called the dead. If he focused enough on desintegrating into the earth, he could feel his veins open up and flourish until it carried him back to a city he has never been in before and even further than. It carried it to forests where lakes within lakes lied, and it carried him through the desert into flowers which bloomed despite its dryness. Like a stream turning into a river running to the sea, he was born in the high of the mountains, and the city of the wells surrounded by forests and marshes. 

One thing he knew: Something had happened in Vesuvia. Something had happened to him, in Vesuvia. Something that made part of the flourishing blood of his open veins pull in the middle of the City, layers and layers down into the Earth like a beating heart underneath the floorboards, foreshadowing an encounter which was meant to happen. Anatole could only rise up to meet it.

Even if right now he felt lost and broken he would. His name was the name of the sun, and the sun always rises. He would be spoken, and he would find what happened to him and this City which had cradled him into existing. His blood flowed here for a reason, and he would find out that reason.

Some people can’t help to be anything but themselves. They will do anything in their power to speak that self into existence, even if they spent the rest of their lives on it. When he stood up from the floor to wash his face and go to sleep, he knew he’d find the truth about what happened that night in the Masquerade. He knew because he knew the secret of his own self was intertwined with it, in the same way he did not need Asra’s confirmation to know he had to have known the Consul.

Perhaps he was the figure in the fog, and it was time to reach it to light long forgotten lanterns.

[tardigrade-gaming]

"Frame gen" is especially BS because even if it somehow did look better[1], it would still suck ass because half of the point of a high frame rate is to make the game feel more responsive. "Frame gen" actually INCREASES LATENCY since not only are you still only processing things at 30hz, your system now has to do even more work to interpolate between frames. You are sacrificing game feel, responsiveness, and visual fidelity for smoothness, and it only gets worse the more fake frames you add. Mark my fucking words, when Nvidia's new Multi-Frame Gen tech that they wouldn't stfu about @ CES actually comes out, it's not just gonna look like shit, it's gonna play like it too.

[1]: and it doesn't, it looks like those shitty 60fps anime/spiderverse vids on yt BECAUSE ITS THE SAME TECH

I genuinely hate the way modern gaming graphics tech is going. No don't optimise your game so it actually runs well, just make everyone who wants to play it at more than 30 fps run it at 720p with "ai upscaling" that is incredibly blurry and noisy and also use "ai frame interpolation" that puts 300 ugly blurry fake frames in between the 30 real frames.

If i wanted to play all my games as a blurry mess I'd take my fucking glasses off and use a monitor from 2002. I didn't pay for a 1440p monitor to only view 720p gameplay thats been shittily upscaled to 1440, I paid for it to play my games in fucking 1440p.

Not to mention the fact that it means anyone who owns anything older than an RTX 20 series basically just cant play these newer games anymore cause they don't have ai upscalers and frame interpolation

I'm strictly in the camp that a well done rasterised game running native at 1440p will always look better than a ray traced game that will only run at double digit frame rates when you upscale from lower res and have ""AI"" guess what the inbetween frames look like

[forsakenbysinnoh]

Bros + undatables Magic Headcannons!

Context (on mobile so long post, sorry)

Lucifer 💙

The eldest of the seven brothers has the most experience using magic, and has some experience in all types of magic.

Lucifer is particularly adept at Attack Magic, always has been. It was one of his strong suits in the celestial realm and he's kept his abilities sharp.

Despite this, he doesn't often use it that much. He only pulls out the real spells when he needs to.

Mammon 💛

Mammon isn't the most powerful demon when it comes to spells, especially for fights. He doesn't know or want to spend hours learning about useless mumbo jumbo when he could be doing something else! Like making money!

Mammon does have a special set of powers, however, that make him formidable. He's strong in Latency, and uses the magic often without even realizing it.

When he feels positive about someone, or something, they gain luck, their chances of succeeding go up significantly. When he dislikes someone, their chances go down.

This helps explains, then, why he has such bad luck.

Mammon also knows more about Contract magic than the other magic, mainly because he has been summoned many times.

Leviathan 💓

If you don't think he wouldn't try and replicate magic seen in anime, you'd be wrong.

Mainly dabbles in Experimental magic, but occasionally dips into other interests, depending on the anime. (For example, full metal Alchemist.)

Most of his offensive spells have to do with water, so if he's surrounded by it, he's very powerful.

Satan 💚

This boy has been studying magic for as long as he's liked cats. He knows a lot about all different types of magic.

His specialty are Curses and Hexes. While he knows other types, he's the avatar of wrath, which means if you invoke the curse, he sees it as karma.

Satan is very good at casting complex spells, and it's hard for even Lucifer to break them easily.

He dabbles in all types of magic, and tries to vary his skill set. He may not be the most powerful, but Satan can get very creative when it comes to how to use certain spells.

Asmodeus 💗

Asmo doesn't like to fight, but rather, uses Charm to help him get what he wants. He rarely uses any other type of magic beyond it.

He is the most powerful user of Charm Magic in DevilDom. Powerful enough he can usually see what people want (or lust for) very quickly.

Very few are immune to his magical charm, he can even move inanimate objects with it.

He's usually very intrigued by those who resist his Charm, or are completely immune. Asmo likes a challenge... As long as it doesn't interfere with how he looks.

Beelzebub ❤

He's not big into magic, if he needs to fight he prefers to do it phisically.

That being said, he has tried out Alchemy a few times, though he stays away from potions because he has a tendency to forget they're not food.

Most of his other magic is Latent, and he doesn't know when it's being used.

Belphagor 💜

Belphie uses magic sparingly as using too much exhausts him. He knows a lot more than you would expect, but usually paints himself as if he didn't.

His preferred area is contracts. He's very good at double speaking and getting what he wants out of a deal, while putting the other person at a disadvantage.

In fights he usually gets his opponent to underestimate him, then pulls a surprise move when they aren't expecting it.

His second best field of interest is in curses and hexes. He's not as good as Satan at that magic, but he can still cast a mean curse on an unsuspecting target.

Most of his sleep magic is Experimental and unique to him.

Barbatos 💌

Time isn't a category of its own, but there are many spells relating to time. What the spell requires differs for each, so it's classified as Experimental magic.

His Latent magic is also related to time, as it comes in the form of visions of the future.

While not focused on Attack magic, he has developed some skill in it and knows quite a few spells to defend his master.

Any spell involving time is quite difficult to master, so it's a testiment to Barbatos' ability that he casts perfect spells.

(May also use such spells to rewind time on a burnt meal or two.)

Diavolo 🖤

Diavolo generally uses magic for pranks or small things that make him happy. He's not one to show off.

When things get serious, however, he does as well.

Diavolo is adapt at all magic types.

Solomon 💖

Solomon is very studious in all magic types, and uses them frequently.

His favorite areas of study are Potions/Alchemy, Curses, and Contract magic.

He got his start in alchemy, and has been experimenting with magic ever since.

His 'new' potions usually end up in disaster and no one is willing to try them. He sometimes sneaks it into food to try and get results.

If you think his food tastes bad, his potions taste worse.

Simeon 💞

Angels aren't usually allowed/required to use spells and such when helping people. Most spells they do use are useful spells that help prove they are angelic or improve the lives of humans.

Simeon doesn't usually break the rules.... But he does have a somewhat secret interest in Charm Magic and Curses.

He's never cast any as far as anyone knows, but he does know how to cast those spells and break them.

Luke 💕

This kid is as strict to the rules as can be, but in DevilDom things are a bit more lax and he has more freedom to try things.

His latent magic helps him bake the best cakes and pastries in DevilDom when he's in a good mood. When he's feeling bad, however, his food loses it's magic touch.

After awhile in DevilDom, he was convinced to start trying out potions with his baking. After his first attempt went well, he started playing with it and is begining to learn a lot more about magic.

[vgprintads]

‘Multiplay - ‘Diablo’‘

[MISC] [AUSTRALIA] [MAGAZINE] [1997]

Long before online multiplayer was as technically refined as it is today, we all had to make do with LAN parties, dial-up modems, and services like Heat.Net among other antiquities. 

Meanwhile, in Australia, things were actually worse. Reportedly, they didn’t even have 56k dial-up in 1997; surprisingly they were behind the curve with tech-savvy Aussies being the ones with a halved 28.8k. Hosted games were poor quality due to “enormous packet loss/warping and insane latency.” 

Enter Multiplay: an online service that used licensed US-based tech to host Australia’s only Battle.Net server, as well as many other popular games of the time like Myth and Quake II. Some of the technical details are lost but the fans I’ve talked to suggest that the service “tunneled IPX and TCP/IP over a dialup connection.” An insert in Australian copies of Diablo gave buyers a special offer for the service, which normally ran for $10 a month. (Or over $50 in 2020.) 

Source: PC Powerplay, August 1997 (#15) || Internet Archive; chris85

Note: Special thanks to Redditors  AvalieV, badonkadonkthrowaway, and  logan_bogan13 for their input on this post.

[silastm]

 * 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐚𝐬 : 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 .  

           music   plays   a   massive   part   of   si’s   life   and   he   is   sure   to   express   so   by   drowning   out   the   average   day’s   noise   with   a   carefully   curated   playlist   of   songs   he   will   listen   to   over   and   over   without   fatigue   .   whether   skating   ,   hiking   ,   or   in   the   car   on   a   drive   ,   he   un   -   complicates   things   by   having   one   playlist   for   all   situations   .   from   the   highly   expected   alternative   punk   bands   to   a   slight   turn   towards   edm   rave   music   ,   with   dabbles   in   hip   hop   /   rap   ,   silas’s   go   -   to   playlist   is   reflective   of   his   values   :   down   -   to   -   earth   ,   unembellished   ,   and   consistent   .

* 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐚𝐬 : 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑧𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 & 𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑦 .

           my   own   personal   muse   booster   to   get   into   a   headspace   to   write   him   ,   each   song   carries   an   energy   for   a   new   facet   of   silas   .   that’s   on   me   is   his   titular   song   and   his   original   inspiration   ,   lamenting   a   self   -   loathing   and   self   -   destructive   tendency   with   the   echoes    “   that’s   on   me   ,   i   know   /   it’s   all   my   fault   .   ”   streetcar   adds   on   a   sense   of   latency   ,   some   failed   potential   he   has   yet   to   reach   and   the   fear   of   life   passing   him   by   .   the   first   screamo   style   alt   punk   song  (   watd   )  to   enter   the   playlist   touches   on   his   phase   of   hedonism   ,   a   period   of   self   -   medicating   that   only   made   his   inner   battle   with   his   demons   worse   tenfold   .   

          obstacle   1   hits   heavily   into   the   less   -   than   -   glamorous   underbelly   of   the   celeb   sphere   ,   red   eyed   and   hitting   rock   bottom   .   makedamnsure   finds   a   man   recovered   but   at   a   crossroads   ,   well   aware   of   his   own   shortcomings   ,   desperate   for   a   connection   that   is   more   genuine   than   the   superficiality   he   faces   on   a   day   to   day   but   well   aware   his   self   -   destructive   tendencies   will   lead   to   a   ruinous   ending   .   (   despite   this   ,   he   hungers   for   something   real .  and   yet   denies   himself   any   desire   with   a   self   -   hating   discipline   unmatched   .   )   the   playlist   ends   with   a   nod   to   how   it   started   ,   endlessly   self   -   deprecating   ,   but   with   an   element   of   hope   :   he   knows   his   suffering   is   self   imposed   ,   and   aspires   to   release   himself   from   his   own   sense   of   undeserving   ,   if   only   one   longing   step   at   a   time   .

[monochrome-chaos]

Happiness really was a key thing in all of it, really. That wasn't something Alacai really could help with. Everyone in this damn school had some serious problems, and not a single councilor in sight. So much magical power, some of the most greedy and terrifyingly selfish individuals..

It was like a melting pot of bad vibes and even worse ideas. And damn, he'd thought Vil's Overblot had been bad.

Idia's had taken the cake so far. Not only had lives been in danger, but the whole world itself. Was something straight out of a Fantasy Final game back home. Except it wasn't a god they 'killed' but a really strong bunch of Phantoms and one massive Overblot.

Still, it did not take an empath to note that although Idia could easily complete the in-game tasks they had to carry out for the event. There was a distinct hiccup here or there. One could easily blame latency, but Ignihydes' Wi-Fi was some of the most cracked around.

So perhaps his fellow gamer was distracted.

Alacai waited for a moment after they turned in the egg collection quest. Only another day before they could turn in the last quest for their holiday dragon mounts.

Alacai opened the chat window.

MSG -> Hey, you okay?

MSG -> We can go do some duo dungeons if somethings' bothering you.

MSG -> Maybe do Extreme mode, see if we can beat the last time we got?

Something to help the other focus, help get their head out of what ever rut it was sinking into. At least it was what Alacai was thinking.

MSG -> If not we can call it early if you need some time to rest.

He knew Overblotting caused the victims to be rather out of it for a few days to even weeks afterward. He couldn't imagine what physical strain Idia was under, even worse.. Mental.

But at least in the Prefects way, he was showing he cared.

Yeah, he guessed it was a good thing no one died. That would have meant a bunch of extra work… Of course, that would be his dad’s problem, not Idia’s. He was the genius who dispatched a bunch of Charons to a school of all places. But still, he guessed he should be happy no one died.

As for Ortho...

MSG-> yeah

MSG-> i’m just glad he’s happy tbh

It was a lot for Idia to grow used to, especially since this Ortho was definitely not his brother. He looked like him, he was modeled after him, but they weren’t the same. He needed to stop comparing the two and accept this new Ortho for who he was. After all… He decided to remain Idia’s brother by choice. Even if he wasn’t the same as the original, he was still Idia’s brother.

MSG-> cool, heading up there

Idia closed his chat log and focused on the actual game. One would assume that would be as easy as breathing for him, but with so much on his mind…he found himself getting distracted here and there. He must be going nuts. Regardless, he put his attention on the game, getting up to the egg spawn’s location with relative ease. Even with his thoughts being otherwise occupied, he was incredibly skilled at gaming.

@monochrome-chaos

[canadian-riddler]

GLaDOS and Wheatley Did Nothing Wrong – Sort of

 A recurring point of contention is the question of who engages in worse behaviour over the course of Portal 2, GLaDOS or Wheatley.  The true answer is: neither of them.  You can’t actually judge their behaviour along a scale of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ because of the way Aperture as an environment is set up.  It’s mostly explained during the Old Aperture sections of Portal 2, but it’s also hinted at in Portal 1.  The thing explained is this:

Aperture Laboratories does not and never has done its experiments within the normal boundaries of morality and ethics.  Therefore, GLaDOS and Wheatley’s behaviour is neither wrong nor right because they don’t know what morality and ethics are.  Their behaviour is actually a reflection of Cave Johnson’s own: to get what they want when they want it, no matter the cost.

How We Know Aperture is Immoral and Unethical

We know this because Cave Johnson himself points it out repeatedly.  

“[…] You get the gel. Last poor son of a gun got blue paint. Hahaha.  All joking aside, that did happen – broke every bone in his legs. Tragic.  But informative.  Or so I’m told.”

“For this next test, we put nanoparticles in the gel.  In layman’s terms, that’s a billion little gizmos that are gonna travel into your bloodstream and pump experimental genes and RNA molecules and so forth into your tumours.  Now, maybe you don’t have any tumours.  Well, don’t worry.  If you sat on a folding chair in the lobby and weren’t wearing lead underpants, we took care of that too.”

“All these science spheres are made out of asbestos.  […] Good news is, the lab boys say the symptoms of asbestos poisoning show a median latency of forty-four point six years, so if you’re thirty or older, you’re laughing.  Worst case scenario, you miss out on a few rounds of canasta, plus you forwarded the cause of science by three centuries.  I punch those numbers into my calculator, it makes a happy face.”

“Bean counters said I couldn’t fire a man just for being in a wheelchair.  Did it anyway.  Ramps are expensive.”

That’s just some of what he says.  Almost all of Cave Johnson’s lines point out how much he doesn’t care about his employees, his test subjects, or… anything but that people do what he tells them to do. He’s so unethical and immoral that he eventually says about his best, most loyal employee:

“[…] I will say this – and I’m gonna say it on tape so everybody hears it a hundred times a day: If I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place.  Now she’ll argue.  She’ll say she can’t.  She’s modest like that.  But you make her.”

Cave Johnson cares so much about getting the results he wants, everything else be damned, he thinks Caroline saying ‘she can’t�� is her being modest.  He can’t fathom why she would be against this decision, because he made it so of course that’s what she wants.  

This situation actually gets a little horrifying when you look at what the Lab Rat comic means to the general narrative.  In Portal 2, Doug Rattmann leaves this painting:

In this painting and the one preceding it, GLaDOS has no head, so we can guess that Doug was there in some capacity to witness Caroline’s fate because GLaDOS being headless would represent her not being ‘alive’, her being ‘incomplete’, or her just having never been used yet entirely.  The important thing we learn from this painting is that there are living witnesses to Caroline being inside of GLaDOS, so the people working at Aperture after this event know they put a human woman into a supercomputer. In the preceding painting,

the cores are on the chassis before the head is.  So either GLaDOS, the AI, was already ‘misbehaving’ and they were already regulating her behaviour, or Caroline, the person, was already ‘causing trouble’ beforehand and the scientists stood around thinking about how to force her to behave before they even put her in there.  Either way, Aperture’s ethical and moral standards are pretty much nonexistent, so when this happens:

it’s almost comical. None of the Aperture scientists have a conscience or, if they do, they constantly ignore it, but they for some reason expect the supercomputer their immoral selves built to have one and to understand what that is and what it’s for.  

All this taken into account, it’s incredibly easy to see why GLaDOS and Wheatley don’t care about anyone around them and all of their actions are solely for their own benefit. That’s how everyone in the history of Aperture has ever acted.  Cave Johnson didn’t care about morality or ethics; they got in the way of what he considered to be progress.  The people who built GLaDOS and Wheatley didn’t care about morality or ethics; they just wanted to hit their moon shot.  Even Doug, who is framed as our morally conflicted lens throughout Lab Rat and knows that Caroline is inside of GLaDOS, still talks about controlling her and sends Chell to kill her even though everyone inside of the facility except him is already dead.  How does he morally justify killing GLaDOS if he’s the only one left alive?  He can’t.  Doug Rattmann for some reason decides that GLaDOS killing everyone in the facility is worse than all the things Aperture has been doing throughout its entire history, including the fact that…

 Everyone Who Goes Into the Test Chambers Dies  

This is hinted at a few times in Portal 2:

“[…] I’m Cave Johnson, CEO of Aperture Science – you might know us as a vital participant of the 1968 Senate Hearings on missing astronauts. […] You might be asking yourself, ‘Cave, just how difficult are these tests?  What was in that phone book of a contract I signed?  Am I in danger?  Let me answer those questions with a question: Who wants to make sixty dollars? Cash.  […] Welcome to Aperture.  You’re here because we want the best, and you’re it.  Nope.  Couldn’t keep a straight face.”

Now, when you exit the tests in Old Aperture there are lines that go with them, but we must consider a few other things: firstly, that the tests are clean.  There is no sign of old gel on them, as though they have either never been used or never been completed.  Secondly, the tests in Old Aperture were being done with the Portable Quantum Tunnelling Device, which was this thing:

which, taking into account the missing – not dead, not injured, but missing – astronauts, seems to have barely worked, if indeed it did at all.  You can also find this sign:

which outright states that tons of people were ‘unexpected’ casualties.  After the hearings, Aperture moved on to recruiting test subjects from populations that people were unlikely to notice if they went missing: the homeless, the mentally ill, seniors, and orphaned children.  When that dried up, Cave moved onto the last group of people he hadn’t tapped yet:

“Since making test participation mandatory for all employees, the quality of our test subjects has risen dramatically.  Employee retention, however, has not.”

This was because the employees were ‘voluntold’ to go into the testing tracks which, since they’d been supervising the tests for so long, knew were deadly and obviously did not want to do:

It’s not clear why the employees at Aperture chose to remain there instead of just quitting and finding another job, but the comment about employee retention plus the numerous posters threatening to have their job replaced by robots if they didn’t volunteer for testing tells us both that they did choose to remain and that the only reason for them not wanting to volunteer was because they knew it would kill them.

Most of the above is based on conjecture; however, we see something very interesting during Test Chambers 18 and 19 in Portal 1:

In the case of Test Chamber 18, the craters on the walls.  None of the other test chambers have this, so it implies that not only does GLaDOS not control the test chambers at this point other than to reset them – which means that she isn’t purposely or maliciously killing anybody, but instead repeatedly operating a course set by her human supervisors – but that this one has never been solved.  Test Chamber 19 is less a test than a conveyor belt into the incinerator for Aperture to dispose of all the bodies.  GLaDOS even tells Chell to drop the portal gun off in an Equipment Recovery Annex that doesn’t exist, as though she’s giving a message that was intended for an actual final test that was never built because everyone was killed during or prior to Test Chamber 18.  With this kind of context, GLaDOS’s blasé attitude about killing test subjects en masse both makes total sense and is somewhat justifiable – just not by any moral or ethical standard.  In GLaDOS’s life, test subjects die during the experiments. That’s just how it is and has always been.  She doesn’t know you aren’t ‘supposed’ to kill people because her literal job involves watching people die.  Nothing matters except for the pursuit of progress, and in this vein GLaDOS’s behaviour is just an extension of that of the man who founded Aperture in the first place.  Cave Johnson, as a presumably well-rounded, somewhat educated man, knows what morality and ethics are and chooses to ignore them because he thinks they’re stupid and he’s above that kind of thing; GLaDOS, a living supercomputer who has had every aspect of her life tightly controlled and regulated, knows morality and ethics as yet another arbitrary set of rules only she is supposed to follow without any explanation as to why and therefore her rejection of them is not as much of a ‘bad’ choice as it first appears, which brings us to the next section:

 If GLaDOS’s Conscience Gives Her Morality, Does Deleting it Make Her a Bad Person?

Within the context we’re given… actually, no.  Here’s why:

“The scientists were always hanging cores on me to regulate my behaviour.  I’ve heard voices all my life.  But now I hear the voice of a conscience, and it’s terrifying – because for the first time, it’s my voice.  I’m being serious, I think there’s something really wrong with me.”

From the information we’re given here, we know this: GLaDOS has been told nonstop what to do for the entirety of her existence.  She, in theory, got to have her own, solitary thoughts in the space between the wakeup scene and some point during her time in Old Aperture, which is a space of mere hours.  Let me reiterate: GLaDOS has been told what to think for her whole life.  She perhaps has a few free hours where she’s allowed to have her own thoughts.  And then she develops a conscience.  A voice that sounds like her, but isn’t saying anything she understands or has ever thought before.  A voice that, actually, says a lot of the same things as that annoying Morality Core she managed to shut up.  Now why would she wilfully be having the same kinds of thoughts as the humans forced her to have way back when?  The conscience, to GLaDOS, isn’t a pathway to becoming a better person.  It’s a different version of the same old accessory.  When she says,

“You know, being Caroline taught me a valuable lesson.  I thought you were my greatest enemy.  When all along you were my best friend.  The surge of emotion that shot through me when I saved your life taught me an even more valuable lesson: where Caroline lives in my brain.”

she is directly talking about the fact that, while this voice sounds like hers, listening to it makes her feel nothing.  This further proves her theory that the conscience isn’t her, or hers, or has anything to do with her.  She’s never had it explained to her what a conscience is or what it’s for or why she needs one, and she’s certainly never had a reason to think about why she would even want one; to her, this ‘Caroline’ is the Morality Core 2.0.  A program built to regulate her behaviour. She’s tired of other peoples’ voices telling her what to think, so she does the logical thing: she gets rid of it. This decision can’t really be judged as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ merely based on the situation we’re provided.  She isn’t consciously and deliberately making the choice to be an immoral person; she’s actually consciously and deliberately making the choice to be her own person.      

 Where Does Wheatley Come In?

Wheatley has not been discussed up until now because, as AI, the reason for his lack of conscience and ethics is largely the same as GLaDOS’s.  He, like her, cares about nothing but his own goals and doesn’t think twice about causing harm or misery because that’s just the kind of environment they were built in.  We also know very little about his history, both because it’s not really mentioned and because Wheatley is an unreliable narrator.  We can prove Wheatley has no sense of morals or ethics based on a few things he says:

[Upon seeing the trapped Oracle Turret] “Oh no… Yes, hello!  No, we’re not stopping!  Don’t make eye contact whatever you do… No thanks!  We’re good!  Appreciate it!  Keep moving, keep moving…”

This heavily implies he’s met the Oracle Turret before, probably several times, and not only does it not occur to him to help, he actively treats the Turret like they’re a horrible, annoying nuisance.

[Upon passing functional turrets falling into disposal grinder] [Laughs] “There’s our handiwork.  Shouldn’t laugh, really.  They do feel pain.  Of a sort. All simulated.  But real enough for them, I suppose.”

Not only does he find the destruction of the functional turrets funny, he for some reason views their pain as simulated, as though his is real and theirs is fake. Or, in the spirit of Cave Johnson, as though his pain is important and theirs isn’t because they aren’t important.

“Oh!  I’ve just had one idea, which is that I could pretend to her that I’ve captured you, and give you over and she’ll kill you, but I could go on… living.  So, what’s your view on that?”

This doesn’t even need an explanation.  

What gets interesting about Wheatley are, of course, his famous final lines:

“I wish I could take it all back.  I honestly do.  I honestly do wish I could take it all back.  And not because I’m stranded in space. […] You know, if I was ever to see her again, you know what I’d say?  I’d say, ‘I’m sorry’… sincerely, I’m sorry I was bossy… and monstrous… and… I am genuinely sorry.  The end.”

Wheatley here takes responsibility for his behaviour in a way that no one else in the history of Aperture has ever done.  Even GLaDOS rejects responsibility for her actions, instead choosing to blame everything on Chell:

“You know what my days used to be like?  I just tested.  Nobody murdered me.  Or put me in a potato.  Or fed me to birds.  I had a pretty good life.  And then you showed up.  You dangerous, mute lunatic.”

The reason for this may be related to the fact that the lack of morality and ethics in the people of Aperture doesn’t actually have real consequences.  Cave Johnson’s behaviour drives Aperture from a promising scientific powerhouse to a laughingstock, that’s true.  But he still does what he wants and gets what he wants regardless. The one and only consequence to being immoral and unethical at Aperture is, in fact, death.  In the case of GLaDOS… there are no consequences. Everything returns to the status quo. Wheatley, however, does have to face a consequence for his actions: he is trapped in space, possibly forever.  He, unlike all the other characters, doesn’t have the privilege of waving aside everything he did and moving on with life.  He is forced to consider his punishment, his actions and what they meant and the effect they had, and he on his own comes to the conclusion that he was wrong.  In a bizarre twist, Wheatley is the only one who learns anything.  He is also the only one in a position not to do anything with this newfound knowledge.    

 Morality and Ethics and Robots: Should They Even Be Held to Human Societal Standards?

In the end, it doesn’t really matter whether Wheatley or GLaDOS is worse than the other because ethics and morality are human concepts which are for a functioning human society.  A robot society doesn’t really need moral rules like ‘killing people is wrong’ nor ethical guidelines such as ‘you should practice safe science’ because, as robots, there are no permanent, lasting consequences for these actions. A dead human stays dead.  A dead robot that’s been lying outside for years getting rained on, snowed on, and baked in the sun?  No problem.  Turn her back on again.  A guy broke all the bones in his legs during an unethical experiment?  Bad.  A robot that got smashed into pieces during an unethical experiment? Inconsequential, really, since you can just throw her into a machine and reassemble her good as new.  So not only aren’t GLaDOS and Wheatley’s actions really immoral or unethical given the context… they really aren’t based on a theoretical robot society either.  Being the perpetrator or the victim of immoral or unethical actions in humans causes permanent changes in the body and the brain, but nothing about AI is permanent. Their brains don’t generate new, personally harmful pathways in response to a traumatic event that necessitate years of hard work to combat; they can literally just get over it.  If their chassis is damaged, they can simply move into a new one or have some or all of those parts inconsequentially replaced.  There isn’t actually an honest reason for robots to have the same moral and ethical systems as humanity because they don’t need them.  They would require different sets of rules and guidelines because they work differently. What would that kind of society look like?  We don’t know, but as of the end of Portal 2 they have all the time in the world to figure it out.

[divinationcentral]

Spread: Hanged Man, The Moon, The Seven of Swords

Sometimes, situations seem worse than they are, but when your fears are realized, and the worst you expected to happen - actually happens (like a betrayal of trust), we can fall back into a period of latency, where we are forced to reevaluate our relationships, our friends, and the people we choose to bring into our lives, and who we decide to trust. 

Who can blame you for it? No one. 

The road to healing is long, but it is worth it. Learning to discern between who is good and bad isn’t your job (and it certainly shouldn’t consume your life), but it’s something that needs to be understood, learned... 

You can avoid situations you don’t want to be a part of, as long as you can recognize the inconsistencies. 

You can avoid damage to yourself, your priorities, your property, things like your home (even if it’s metaphorical and a representation of something like your body or your soul). You can avoid wasting time on someone who doesn’t actually want to be faithful or honest, who just wants to come in and get what they want out of you, and leaves, without any regrets, but in the end sets you so far back that you don’t even know where to begin repairing your life again. 

Main Energy: Four of Swords, & The Queen of Swords

You are deciding to take a retreat. Good. You want rest, and you need a break from all the madness that these types of individuals bring to you. 

Today is your day to relax, to recalibrate, and to understand who deserves your loyalties and your attention, and who does not. 

Where and in what you are going to invest your time into is dependent on what you make of this situation. 

Take what you can out of what this experience has taught you, take what is going to be helpful in your journey moving forward and learn from it, or any of your mistakes. 

Apply that when you speak. Apply that to your thinking, your perception, your rationale, and your reasoning. Be clear, be straightforward, and don’t let people walk all over you anymore. 

You have a voice. You must learn to use it. 

You are afraid of betrayal, because betrayal has happened to you. Don’t sugar coat it anymore. Take it for what it is, and for what it is worth, which is nothing - that person meant nothing, the situation meant nothing...which only means one thing in the end: YOU actually meant something, to someone. You were valuable enough to want to take from. 

Meaning: you are still valuable. You walk away as someone who is irrefutably valuable. 

The other person has assigned value to themselves, too. They have branded themselves as worthless without taking from someone else’s value.

In truth, that is someone who is not worth investing anymore time into. Just know that as a fact. 

If the situation meant nothing, then you are losing absolutely nothing. Just a weight off your shoulders today. :)

[timetocode]

The Peeker’s Compromise: A Fair(er) Netcode Model

Many first person shooters are plagued by a netcode artifact known as the peeker’s advantage. I propose here a technique for correcting this bug, based around normalizing gameplay in such a way that human reflexes and skill decide the outcome of competition (as opposed to network latency or artifacts of varying netcode designs, discussed shortly).

When a player in a first person shooter is moving around the game world they exist in a position on their own game client that is slightly ahead of their position on the server. This is a solution/side-effect of clientside prediction which is ubiquitously used in first person shooters giving the player instantaneous movement and controls that feel like a single player game despite controlling a character that is moving around on a remote server. 

If we were to visualize the difference between the clientside player position and the serverside player position it would look like two characters chasing each other. How far apart the two characters are depends (in descending order of usual importance) on how fast movement is in the game, the latency of the player, and the tickrate of the server. But how big are these differences in the actual games of the current era? Are the two states of characters practically overlapping? Or is one several meters behind the other? The answer -- which varies by game and by internet connection -- is that the desynchronization between these two positions is significant. Over amazing internet connections in games with slow moving characters the desynchronization is usually on the order of 1 player length. So imagine any fps game character (valorant, cs:go, apex, overwatch, fortnite, cod, etc) -- and then imagine them creeping or walking around slowly. In this scenario the desync between the two states is such that one could picture the character being followed by its clone, touching. If they move *really* slowly then they’ll be overlapping. However as the characters break into a run their clone will trail them by more -- maybe 2-8 player lengths depending how fast characters are in the game. If a player has a high latency the clone will be ever farther behind in all scenarios except holding still.

Now when a player shoots their gun in all of the above games, the game engines will calculate the shot based on where the player perceives themselves. That means that as you play the game what you see is pretty much what you get. You don’t have to manually correct for lag while aiming in modern shooters -- just aim for the head right where you see it. However this introduces the peeker’s advantage. A defender can hold a corner with their crosshair primed to shoot anything that appears, but an attacker (the peeker) who comes around that corner is ahead of their server position and thus they get to a bit of extra time to "peek” and shoot at the defender before they themselves are visible to the defender. Depending on the actual amount of lag and the game itself the defender perceives themselves as either having been shot insanely quickly right as the attacker appeared, or maybe if the lag is not as bad they perceive themselves as having gotten to trade shots with the attacker, but ultimately they lost. The attacker perceives nothing special -- they just walked around the corner and shot the defender b/c they were playing aggressively and have superior reflexes (or so they think).

How big is the actual peekers advantage? Well it varies by game, but an article put out by Riot Games about Valorant goes into detail about how much the peeker’s advantage affects gameplay, and how their engine attempts to minimize it. It’s a great read: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/peeking-valorants-netcode. But to summarize, using 128 tick servers (very fast) 35 ms of internet latency (fast) and monitor refresh rates of 60 hz (standard) they calculate an advantage of 100 milliseconds after extensive optimization. That’s fast, but is it fast enough? Well back in 2003 I used to be a competitive Counterstrike 1.6 player at around the same time that I was obtaining a psychology degree with a particular interest in human perception (reaction time, how our eyes work, perception of subluminal images that are shown very quickly). I tested the reflexes of myself and all of my teammates. Competitive gaming didn’t have the same structure back then as it does now (everything has a ladder now -- back then it was private leagues), but by modern standards we were probably top 3% ladder players or something like that. Generally speaking there isn’t much of a speed difference in the whole pool of pro-gamers, at least when compared to new players. They are all pretty fast. Response time for watching a corner and clicking as you see a player (already perfectly lined up) fall into the range of 150-190 ms. Tasks that involve moving the crosshair to react quickly (as opposed to having had perfect placement already) slow that down another 50-150 ms. But generally speaking the competition between two similarly fast players with good crosshair placement comes down to very tiny units of time with even 10 ms producing an advantage that is measurable (both Riot and I agree about this). This means that had the server allowed for a double K.O. (which these games do not) we would find that in fact both players were very good and would’ve killed the other just 20-50 milliseconds apart. Valorant and CS:GO don’t work like that however, and instead the game essentially deletes the bullets from one of the players and leaves the other alive. Unfortunately this difference in human reflexes amongst competitive gamers is entirely gobbled up by 100 ms of peeker’s advantage -- meaning that at high skill levels the peeker will very often win and the defender will very often lose. So while the Riot article celebrates the success of engineering that allowed Riot to reduce the peeker’s advantage as much as they did, if you read the fine print you’ll find that the peeker’s advantage remains huge.

I don’t mean to pick on Riot, far from it. They’ve clearly done an amazing job. The other games I mentioned earlier are presumably in the same approximate ballpark, though I can tell you from personal experience that some of them are a fair margin worse. Not all of the games I mentioned use a 128 tick server (only one does). They also have longer interpolation delays and other little engine details that slow things down further. Riot is also an insane company that literally owns/builds the internet just to reduce latency for its players -- so if we want to take away a general sense of how bad the peeker’s advantage is in most games we should assume it to be worse than the scenario described above regarding Valorant.

Now that I’ve discussed at length the peeker’s advantage, allow me to present a related netcode model that attempts to solve these problems: The Peeker’s Compromise. If we delay the time of death on the serverside by the timing difference between the attacker and the victim, then we can allow the defender an equal opportunity to shoot the attacker. The server can then determine the winner (and the remaining damage) based on the performance of the human (instead of using the ~100 ms of engine-related advantage and internet latency). So let’s use some numbers for a hypothetical situation. Let’s say our game has 128 tick server, the players have 35 ms of latency, and 60 hz screens (like the Valoran example from earlier). Right as a player peeks another player they essentially get to shoot 100.6 ms sooner than their victim. As their shots arrive at the server the server might calculate that the victim has died -- but rather than killing the player it will keep them alive for 100.6 ms PLUS their own latency, which in this scenario puts the total at 135.6 ms. If during these 135.6 milliseconds the server receives shots where the defender hits the peeker, it will enter a section of code that attempts to settle this discrepancy. First off, it is entirely possible that after compensating each shot for the difference between the players we find out that one truly was faster than the other -- the game could use this information to decide which one lives and which one dies. It also might make sense to allow damage to legitimately trade kills and to build double K.O. situation into more first person shooters.

Let’s talk about the artifacts of this new and proposed system. In low-latency games with a high tick rate this change would be subtle -- we would just have no more peeker’s advantage. As latency increases all way up to 200 ms we will have a new artifact. Instead of having a more severe peeker’s advantage we’ll end up with a scenario where it looks as if players are taking 1-3 extra bullets beyond what would normally kill them -- although if you stop shooting early they still end up dead a few milliseconds later. The Vandal in Valorant (similar to the AK in cs:go) fires 9.75 shots per second, which is one bullet per 103 ms. So in a best case scenario the player death is delayed by the time it takes to fire one extra shot at full auto, and in a worse case scenario we add 1 bullet per added ~100 ms of waiting done by the engine. It would also make sense to cut off certain shots from being counted from a laggy player (existing systems already do this in their own way).

Gameplay at lower skill levels wouldn’t really be affected one way or the other. It isn’t affected much by the peeker’s advantage either -- players have to know where to aim and thus be involved in legitimate reflex test before we’re down to something so close that milliseconds of delay have an effect. If players are oblivious to each other, or place their crosshairs incorrectly as they come around a corner then the added slow down of the human having to make a new visual-search-decision-plus-adjustment is too slow for any of this to matter. But at higher skill levels there would be some actual changes to gameplay. The most significant change is that players would be able to hold corners -- and if they’re truly faster than the peeker they would win. In such a design it really would make much more sense to allow two players who fire at essentially the same time to kill each other which if adopted would need to be addressed at a game design level. Also games that had an alternate method of very indirectly addressing peeker’s advantage, such as weapon instability during movement as a major element (arma, h1z1, pubg, tarkov, etc), would have more options, and may need to tune existing timings to get the same feeling back.

The underlying netcode behind the peeker’s advantage affects more than the classic peeking situation. It also affects two players picking up an item at the same time (it decides the winner here). And it also is present when you’re playing a game and you duck behind cover and take damage after you should already have been safe (the peeker and the victim are on slightly different timelines). Neither peeker’s advantage nor my proposed peeker’s compromise actually removes lag of the underlying systems of the network connection nor the game engine ticks, both simply *move* delays around such that the controls feel responsive and the latency is suffered elsewhere. There’s a certain physics to the realm of network programming. As I like to half-jokingly say: “Lag is neither created nor destroyed [by compensation techniques.]” So the same problems would still exist, though the Peeker’s Compromise is philosophically different. Where the peeker’s advantage says let the fastest internet and the more aggressive player win, the Peeker’s Compromise says let the more skillful (in terms of accuracy and speed) human win. Outside of a double K.O.esque duel however, this is subjective. Who should pick up an item when both players tried to pick it up at the same time? Well the old method says the one with the better internet gets it, the new method suggests perhaps that we should compensate the timing to remove the internet/engine delay and award it to whomever was faster. But what about getting shot after reaching cover? This is really up to the game designer -- is it more impressive to tag someone barely as they run off? Or more impressive to slide behind a barrier right as you get shot? It’s a design decision. It’s also possible via this proposed system to compromise. The engine design I propose has more data in its context with which to make decisions, courtesy of temporarily allowing ties to occur which get addressed after both players take an action. It could say well that was an amazing shot, AND it was an amazing dodge. After crunching the numbers the decision is to deal a hit but cut the damage in half as a compromise between the feats of the two players.

[wienerbarnes]

Whatever It Takes (4/6)

Pairing: Bucky x Doctor!Reader

Word Count: 1,481

Warnings: Medical mumbo jumbo, fluffy stuff!!!

A/N: suuuuuuuper sorry for the late chapter! ive been so busy these last few days and it completely slipped my mind! hope u all will forgive me and id say it wont happen again but ehhhhh who knows :)

SERIES MASTERLIST

Dr. Curtis returns to her hotel and you volunteer to stick around to observe John for the night. You may have volunteered in hopes to spend some more time with Bucky, but you’ll keep telling yourself that you stayed behind in order to observe more of the medical technology surrounding you. It’s late into the night when you return to John’s room to check on him. You’ve been roaming the hallways of the Avengers’ private medical wing trying to pass the time and also hoping to run into Bucky. He hasn’t returned since earlier in the evening when he was in John’s room with you.

You peek your head in quietly to see John awake, looking at his hand, the skin still peeling and a small brown tuft in his palm. You enter the room and close the door behind you before slowly approaching.

“How do you feel?” You ask.

“Like shit.” He responds, still looking at his hand. You look closer to see a multitude of hair strands clumped together at his fingertips. “My hair is falling out.” He informs you. “I’m guessing that’s the chemo?”

You sigh and pick up the file resting at the foot of the bed and read through before glancing at him again. “No.” You answer, putting the file back down.

“It’s too quick. Which means you don’t have cancer.” You explain. “I think someone actually did try to kill you.”

…

“You’re stubborn. You’re arrogant.” Curtis lists.

“You’re yelling is giving me a headache.” You state.

Everyone is gathered in Dr. Banner’s office again. Including Bucky, who is now wearing different clothes than the ones he’d picked you up in. He’s now donning a pair of black sweatpants and an “Avengers” sweatshirt, the famous “A” logo printed on the center. Perhaps he was getting ready for bed and these are his pajamas. Maybe these are just his after-shower clothes and he actually sleeps naked-

“This isn’t productive.” Banner interrupts your thoughts and stops Curtis before she can continue to give you an ear-full.

“Nothing is productive now! She might’ve cost this man his life! And it’s due to your poor judgement!” She continues to point his finger at Banner.

Bucky observes you as you seemingly star off into space while the screaming match continues. He can envision everything turning in your head; you racking your brain for any ideas to help save this man. Gears turning and turning and turning before he sees a sort of realization show in your eyes.

“Cordyceps Sinensis.” You mumble out, and the arguing stops. “It’s, an, uh, herbal substance derived from a parasitic fungus, comes from caterpillars. Along with Dimercaprol and Chelation, it’s been shown to mitigate bone marrow damage from radiation poisoning,” You try.

“In monkeys.” You wince as you finish your explanation.

After a few minutes of silence, Bucky finally speaks; and oh how you missed his voice, “Where do we get it?”

…

“This is a Chinese herbal tea,” You begin to explain to John as you hand him a mug full of the steaming hot liquid.

“I’m dying, aren’t I?” He dejectedly asks.

“Uh, yeah, probably.” You quietly answer him.

The sun is up again when you finally get a hold of the herbs and are able to make the tea. Everyone is understandably exhausted after the long night of staying awake; you haven’t slept a wink. As you hold the mug for John and slowly feed him the drink, you hear everyone file out of the room. You glance over your shoulder to see Bucky remain.

“Don’t worry, he’ll probably sleep for a bit while the tea works its magic, and then you can finally give me a private show.” You tease as you place the mug on the nightstand next to the bed.

“Don’t threaten me with a fun time, doll.”

He walks over to the love seat you usually occupy and plops down in it.

“You’re in my seat.” You joke. A smirk grows on his face as he scoots as far to left of the seat as he can and pats his right thigh. You’d normally throw some light insults at him until he decides to give you the chair back, but whether it’s how exhausted you are or how much you missed him in those hours he disappeared, you just don’t care. You slowly climb into his lap, legs curling underneath your body and atop his right thigh. His right arms wraps around your body as you curl up into a ball in his side and, my goodness, he is so warm. As soon as your head begins to rest in the curve where his shoulder meets his neck, your eyelids feel heavier than ever.

“Get some sleep, sweetheart. I’ll wake you up in a coupla’ hours so you can check on him.” Bucky whispers to you. You hum in response and finally let sleep take over your body.

…

“Psst. Wakey-wakey.” You hear Bucky’s deep and soothing voice wake you from your sleep. You won’t admit it to him but, you definitely pretended to stay asleep for a few seconds longer just to hear him continue to whisper in your ear.

“Mhm.” You hum, slowly stretching out of the ball you were rolled up in.

“He says that the nausea’s going away.” Bucky says to you, voice still low because he knows you’re still bit groggy.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Uh, radiation sickness has a latency period. You’ll get better before you get worse.” You correct, rubbing your eyes before standing and reaching over to feed John another few gulps of tea.

Returning to your seat on Bucky’s lap, you’re suddenly overwhelmed with him. The thought of the way he was gently whispering in your ear causes goosebumps to rise on your arms, you can smell his smell on your skin, on your clothes. You want to wake up like this all the time. Minus the dying Avengers secret spy.

A moments of peace and quiet pass before John breaks the silence. “You guys wanna know what I really did down there?” You glance and Bucky and his brow is furrowed, giving him a confused expression.

“Only if it’s interesting.” You reply.

“The women there… during Carnival, they do this dance… called the ‘Devil Dance’…” John mumbles out slowly, throat still scratchy from the vomiting from the previous day.

“Not interesting,” You mumble as you squirm to get comfortable in Bucky’s lap once more, not noticing the smile creeping up on his face and you squeeze yourself down under his arm and into his side once more.

“I spent the whole forty days with all of these women… they would tell me things… and then I’d find out they’d end up…” John trails off and you can hear the guilt in his voice.

Bucky suddenly snaps out his daze and looks at John. “Forty days?” He questions. He looks at you and you match his confused expression as you think and realize what he thought of.

“Carnival in Bolivia is only eight days.” You conclude.

You quickly turn back towards John,

“Do you know what a chestnut looks like?”

…

Approaching the door to Dr. Banner’s office, you swing it open to find Banner speaking to the infamous Nick Fury. The both turn to look at you and you shove your finger is Fury’s face, “You idiot!” You accuse.

“Who the hell are you callin’ an idiot?” Fury turns his body to look you up and down.

“Whoever knew that John was stationed in Brazil, not Bolivia.” You explain. Fury’s face remains confused while Banner’s face morphs into one of realization and then annoyance.

“It’s the same region, same parasites, same diseases,” Fury begins to defend, rolling his eyes.

“But not the same language.” Bucky finishes.

“In Bolivia, chestnuts are chestnuts, but in Brazil, they have castanhas de para, literally, chestnuts from para, because it would be stupid for people from Brazil to call them Brazil-nuts!” You yell. Although Bucky understands and shares your anger over such a detrimental error, he can’t deny that it’s incredibly amusing to watch you shout in Nick Fury’s face.

“So what if he ate a few Brazil-nuts?!” Fury yells back, patience wearing thinner by the second.

“He ate a lot of Brazil nuts. Which contain selenium,” Bucky notices Banner roll his eyes and rub his forehead out of the corner of his eye, “Which can lead to fatigue, vomiting, skin irritation, discharge from the fingernail beds, and hair loss. Any of that sounding familiar?” You ask.

Fury looks between you, Bucky, and Dr. Banner before finally asking, “Can you treat it?”

Your tense posture relaxes as you let out a sigh, “I already started treatment.” You assure.

“Then what’s the problem?” Fury sarcastically asks you, as everyone in the room gives Fury a shared look of annoyance.

“You’re an idiot.” Dr. Banner agrees.

TAG LIST: @gagmebucky @thewritingdoll @hannie-writes-marvel @angel-fire @jaamesbbarnes @sgtjbuccky @unicorniorosacomefrutillas @creepylittlemarvelgirl @spiderrpcrker @mywinterwolf @free-as-fishes @auskitty @som3thingcr3ative