#this is basically an archive for the players that have been traded

[cellysbookshelf]

A03 | @knightsofsliverandgoldstory | @the-slapshot-series

Knights of Silver and Gold Marc-Andre Fleury x OC

A story where a world famous goaltender with a heart and soul of gold becomes a knight in shining silver for a female hockey player in the NHL who is trying to balance being a single mother and athlete after just being traded to the Vegas Golden Knights.

Can Marc-André Fleury show Barlow Kane he can be the father her daughter never had, help her make a home and a life in Nevada and be the love of her life she never thought she would find?

Archive of Our Own Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Somebody's Today Mordan Reilly x F!Reader Summer Fic Exchange

Y/N and Morgan had grown up next door neighbors from the time they were babies. Best of friends until they both went off as teenagers to find their path, swearing they would find each other again someday as adults. Y/N's path lead her to to America, to study art and photography. Morgan's took him to Toronto to play NHL Hockey. But one day in Toronto they run into each other after years of not seeing each other, and soon see just how much they missed one another.... Someday just became today.

Archive of Our Own Tumblr

Impact Mitch Marner x OC

Kodiak "Kody" Andersen is the younger half sister to Freddie Andersen of the Toronto Maple Leafs Hockey Team. She is a pro snowboarder for Canada and has been to the Olympics twice for her country. Her older brother basically raised her since she was 13 and she is forever greatful for the things he has done to let her life the life of her dreams. One night she is at the rink practicing some Hockey stuff with Freddie to make him happy when she takes a shot for the goal... and ends up hitting none other the Mitch Marner with her puck.

Mitch as no idea what kind of impact he is going to have on Kody's life, and Kody has no idea how she will impact his. Two kids, trying to prove they deserve to be where they are, trying to make a team and country proud, will impact each other in ways they never dreamed possible.

Archive of Our Own Tumblr Chapters: 1

Garding her Heart Jake Gardiner x OC

Bailey Slavin had it all, an All Star Softball Pro career with the USSSA Pride, a wonderful family to support her, a college degree, 3 world series titles, 3 college titles, she felt like nothing could stop her.... Till it did. A freak accident durning a softball game put Bailey in the hospital and out of the 2020 World Championships. To help her recovery along she goes to spend time with her brother Jaccob Slavin in North Carolina and get her mind off the tragedy. With the possibility of never playing again, Bailey is left cold and bitter. But when she meets Jake Gardiner, one of her brothers teammates, he helps her slowly tear down her walls and find joy in her life again. Jake and Bailey soon find themselves falling in love, but Bailey will soon have to decide on if she stays in North Carolina with Jake and the chance to start a new life, or move back to Florida to remain in the Softball world. Only time will tell how long this defenseman can guard this broken softball players heart.

Archive of Our Own Tumblr Chapter: 1

What We Had TJ Oshie x OC Winter Fic Exchange

Emerson or Emmy as she went by, never expected to be a single mother living on her own in Nova Scotia working as a social media detector. But for the last 6 years that's what she did, raising her daughter Ivory on her own. But when her dad tells her that his best friend who works for the Washington Capitals is in need of an assistant manager of Social Media and Networking for the team, it gives her a chance to move back home and work in a bigger and more exciting Field and to work around the sport she always loved.

The catch?

Her ex boyfriend and the father of her daughter is one of their star players: TJ Oshie. Is Emmy ready to face the past and tell TJ about their daughter? Will TJ be about to handle the truth, knowing he missed out on 6 years of his daughters life or will the past and the truth be the things that keep them from being a family once more?

Archive of Our Own Tumblr

A Wish Upon Confetti Stars Erik Jonson x OC

"In the 2011 Entry Draft, the Los Angeles King are proud to select with our 3rd round pick, from the Seattle Thunderbirds, goaltender Avalon Redmoon."

She had it all, Two Stanley Cups, a Conn Smythe Trophy, a team that supported her as only the 2nd female goalie in NHL history. Everything was perfect.... Until it wasn't. The summer of 2020 Avalon got the news that she had been traded in a bombshell deal between LA and Colorado. Now she is moving back to her hometown, and has to face the fact that not even a superstar goalie is safe from a trade. Filled with anger and hurt that her old team would just pass her aside for the next hotshot to hit the ice, Avalon isn't quick to make new friends on her new team. That is till Erik Johnson or EJ as he goes by, decides to take the new star goalie under his wing, and show her how life can be just as good in Colorado as it was in LA. Avalon and EJ never planned on anything more then friendship over the next few years, but when the thoughts of retirement cross minds, risky plays put players on the line and the Stanley cup right within their reach, they need to hold on to each other more then ever to make it to the end goal.

"Sometimes the best wishes come from nothing more A Wish Upon Confetti Stars."

Archive of Our Own Tumblr

Triple Axel Celly Sidney Crosby x OC Summer Fic Exchange

Sidney is tried of loosing year after year. After watching his close friend Nate lift the cup a year before and then missing the playoffs all together this season, he goes to Nate asking him to give him the name of his skating coach to try and help him oit next playoffs. Only Nate didn't tell him that Hunter Queen wasn't a Mr. Hunter and Sid bash heads like to bulls for weeks before they finally Nate finally tells Sid to make things right. So Sid goes to Hunter in hopes to finally make peace, but instead they end up in his bed for a wild night.

Archive of Our Own Tumblr

Slapshot Series

That's Why God Made Airplanes Tyler Seguin x OC

Tyler Seguin thought he found the woman of his dreams. A perfect girl, a perfect engagement and the soon to be perfect wedding, he had everything down to a T.

Or so he thought.

Just a few short weeks before what was supposed to be the most perfect day of his life, turned into him booking a one way flight to Pittsburgh to spend the summer with his Best Friend and forget about his cheating ex fiancee. Wanting to shut out the world, his parents and most of his friends for the time being, Tyler find refuge with the only person who really seems to know the real him, Arabella Kerfoot, who plays for the Pittsburgh Penguins. While spending his summer hiding away, his best friend not so sneakily plays match maker with her childhood best friend, Quinn Canton.

Sparks soon begin to fly, and a whirlwind summer romance takes hold of these two burnt out hearts. But when hockey starts back up, and old partners come back to burn them to ashes, can they withstand the distance between them, or will it be to much for them to handle?

*** Loosely based around the song "God Made Airplanes" by Jason Aldean ***

Archive of Our Own Tumblr: 1

Hockey-Ella Morgan Rielly x OC

Arabella Kerfoot is the younger sister of Alex Kerfoot and she one of the only female hockey player in the league. Ella as she likes to go by is the wild child of the family and also of the Pittsburgh Penguins. With a reputation of the "Wild Cinderella" Ella is the media's #1 target. Her best friend is Tyler Seguin, who had a bad reputation in Boston before going to Texas, so he understands her better then her own family and is trying to help work through her rebellious reputation. After a wild and not so pretty night out on the town Ella is quickly not the favorite anymore in Pitt and is soon traded to Toronto who is looking for a power forward with the speed and risky skill set she brings to the table. The catch: they need to fix her tarnished reputation before the Toronto media tears her apart. The solution: have her fake a relationship with Morgan Rielly to show she is determined to settle down and leave her wild Cinderella life behind, and make a fairytale lifestyle in Toronto instead. Only Ella wasn't planning on falling for the red haired man who offered the solution to her problems. With the media and her brother breathing down her neck to fix her past, her best friend telling her that a fake relationship will only hurt her and the man she never new she needed in front of her, she is about to ether live out a Hockey-Ella fairytale or an ultimate disaster.

Coming Soon.

Coming Soon

These Roots Lead Home - Mitch Marner x OC

The Goaltenders Ice Dance - Freddie Andersen x OC

Ruin Me Right - Martin Necas x OC

Sparks Fly - Marc- Andre Fleury x OC

Eye of the Storm - Teuvo Teräväinen x OC

From Oceans and Mountain and Anywhere Inbetween - Ross Colton x OC ** This masterlist was created for the lovely @callsign-denmark who is having some trouble with creating links from her blog.

[shirtshawaiian]

hi there! I'm the op of that animal jam post and I saw your tags, so I've come with answers!

71 is a glitched item that could be obtained through a specific process back in...either 2012 or 2013? I don't remember, but it was in one of the early years of animal jam. I don't remember what the exact process was, but it had something to do with trading, and it also yielded other glitched items, but 71 is the most interesting.

I found out about 71 from an old animal jam blogspot blog I used to be a huge fan of that is no longer available for public viewing (though some of it has been archived on the wayback machine.) That blog was the only instance I'd ever heard of someone talking about this glitch, it seems to be a pretty obscure bit of aj trivia.

71 was a clothing item that took the appearance of the "boy" eyes a player could customize their animal with. It could be worn and occupied its own item slot, meaning it could be worn even if you also had a head item on. When put on the player's animal, it just looked like the "boy" eyes but fully maroon, exactly as the item icon is. (the blog post i found out about 71 from had an image of 71 being worn on a monkey, but I dont have that saved.)

The maroon color is in fact important ! Maroon is basically animal jam's "default"/missing texture color (thats why items like "magenta" furry hats/"magenta" festive lights exist, they were accidentally released without their proper colors set. I have no idea why the whole aj playerbase calls it magenta when its really maroon though.)

If I remember correctly, 71 and the other items the glitch yielded couldnt be traded, and would disappear from the player's inventory shortly after being obtained.

Glitches in video games, especially ones that were such a huge part of my childhood like Animal Jam, have always been a huge interest of mine, so thats probably why I still remember 71 after all this time. It stands as one of my favorite AJ glitches of all time, even though I wasn't around to experience it myself.

thats really neat i never knew that about animal jam especially the maroon/magenta color thing /gen

[broadstflyers]

The Philadelphia Flyers: A Saga, Section IX: Traded But Not Forgotten

Link to Table of Contents

Trade season has emotionally wrecked us all. after the 2020-2021 season, we as fans knew changes were for sure to come. so, this is basically an archive for the stuff I wrote for them back in march 2021. yes, this hurts.

FORWARDS:

Michael Raffl, #12

Nickname(s): Raffy

Position: Right Winger

Draft class: undrafted, signed in 2013 by the Flyers

Time On Team: 7 years

Where He Is Now: Washington Capitals

It seems as though Raffy tends to take on a mom role with the younger players.

source

After Gritty threw his hat on to the ice for Joel Farabee’s hat trick against the Islanders on 1/18/20, Raffy thought it would look better on himself instead, so we got this lovely gif.

source

Raffy is pretty laid back on the ice, but don’t you worry, he still pushes and shoves quite a bit. He’s a solid forth liner, and when he’s injured, he’s tough to replace on that bottom six.

Here’s a link to that Giroux and Raffl interview in that top gif.

Nolan Patrick, #19

Nickname(s): Patty, baby cat (Hayesy gave him that one), Nolpats

Position: Center/Wing

Draft class: 2017, 2nd overall

Time On Team: Roughly 4 years

Where He Is Now: Vegan Golden Knights

Patty is a relatively reserved player, but he isn’t afraid to retaliate if someone does him wrong. Some Penguins player laid a nasty hit on him in the Stadium Series, and he shook it off on the bench and went back out there and hit him back.

Multiple players are happy to have Patty back.

TK and Nolan are inseparable best-friends. TK is the loud, feisty short one and Patty is the tall, intimidating, quiet one. TK always sticks up for Nolan. Simple as that. When Nolan couldn’t play last year because of his migraine disorder, we were all upset because a) no one deserves something like that, b) Nolan had to miss the season and c) that meant no TK and Nolan interactions. But now that Nolan’s back, we just can’t get enough of how TK missed him and how he’s always by his side now.

Do y’all see how how happy TK is for Nolan? Tears.

source

Here’s them stuck in a parking garage. I think this will suffice for the friendship dynamic feel.

And here’s an article about their best bromance moments.

Here’s Nolan mic’d up at the Stadium Series. Just like TK, some of Nolan’s iconic moments came from here, such as “I’m 200%” and “Bro, how did he score?” Because he didn’t know how Giroux scored. If you’re unfamiliar with the Stadium Series game, this will honestly give you a quick rundown on how that went.

Jakub Voracek, #93, Former Rotating Road Alternate Captain

Nickname(s): Um..I can’t think of one? I think Kevin Hayes messes around with his first name lmao but I’m not sure

Position: Right Winger

Draft class: 2007, 7th overall

Time On Team: 10 years

Where He Is Now: Columbus Blue Jackets

Ahhhh, Voracek.

source

He has absolutely NO time for ANYONE’S shit. I think that’s fantastic. Context for the tweet below is that reporter wrote a crappy column on how Voracek was the reason why the flyers were collapsing back in 2016 and has been overall not nice to the team (Voracek doesn’t forget).

source

He also isn’t afraid to step in and fight someone. When Nolan had the guts to go after a player for a crappy hit on G, Voracek was like “No son, you’re gonna die” so he went in WITH Nolan.

For years, he blocked fans on Twitter and had some beef with them here and there, but he left us a parting statement, one that reassured us through his classic voracek humor that he will always be a flyer.

ITI

source

let's hope I don't add anymore people because I would become more mentally unstable.

______________

DEFENSEMEN

Philippe (Phil) Myers, #5

Nickname(s): Mysey, Leaf Eater (because he’s as tall as a giraffe, says Kevin Hayes), I call him Philly Myers lmao

Shot: RH

Draft class: Undrafted (!!)

Time On Team: Roughly 2 years

Where He Is Now: Nashville Predators

Yes, he was undrafted. He was invited to the Philadelphia Flyers rookie development camp in about 2015, and they signed him to his first professional deal in September 2015. He finished out that season in the QMJHL (Quebec Major Juniors Hockey League). They called him up in 2019 against the Detroit Red Wings. He started the 19-20 season in the AHL, but he worked his way into a permanent line-up spot.

source

He also scored the OT winner vs the Islanders in the 2020 SCP.

Read more about Philly Myers here.

Robert Hagg, #8

Nickname(s): Bobby

Shot: LH

Draft class: 41st overall, 2013

Time On Team: 4 Years

Where He Is Now: Buffalo Sabres

He blocks a lot of shots for us and is one of our physical guys. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know much about the guy, because as Gudas (a former Flyers D-man) said, he speaks three words per game.

source

BUT- I did find this mic’d up, so you can watch that if you want.

Shayne Gostisbehere, #53

Nickname(s): Ghost, he has Ghost Bombs (his “bomb” of a shot from the point), his name is represented by the ghost and bear emojis

Shot: LH

Draft class: 78th overall, 2012

Time On Team: 6 Years

Ghost! He’s had a tough season or two with his knee surgeries and trying to bounce back. He’s been looking more or less a lot better, and we’re happy for him.

source

Him and his fianceé (soon to be wife) have three french bulldogs who he loves very very much. You can meet him and his little family here.

Erik Gustafsson, #56

Nickname(s): Gus

Shot: LH

Draft class: 93rd overall, 2012

Time On Team: 2 months

Where He Is Now: Montreal Canadiens

This is Gus.

source

He was signed after the retirement of Matt Niskanen. Not much to say about him, as he’s in and out of the lineup.

[onthevirgeofdestruction]

Tied in Green

Words: 5,858 Content Warnings: Food, Lonliness, Magical S//H in a weird way?  Characters: Remus (POV), Roman, Virgil Ships: Dukexiety Rating: T Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort

FFN Mirror - Playlist 

   Remus isn’t ashamed of himself. He agrees that sometimes he doesn’t like the things that suck him in. The things that he can’t get out of his head and make him feel horrible for even thinking. Those things upset him, too. But ultimately, he’s not ashamed of who he is or what he likes. But he’s pretty certain everyone else is. 

   He doesn’t keep friends for very long. His mom pushes him aside more often than not. Remus can be himself in private, but not here, she says. It’s what she always says. People will laugh at his jokes in school, but they never actually want to hang out. Remus is alone again, listening to his brother and friends laugh in the other room. They sound like they’re having fun and he’s jealous. But he knows better than to ask to join. He would do something to ruin it for Roman, anyway. Remus knocked twice at his desk.

   Roman gets all awkward and weird and it’s clearly just a pity invite even if Remus did ask to join. They don’t make fun of him, but there’s not much of an effort to include him either. Roman and his friends don’t let him in on inside jokes, don’t ask his opinions, and sometimes talked like he’s not there. They acknowledge him if he talks, but that’s it. Remus doesn’t get included, which hurts more than sitting alone, sometimes.

   Remus only wanted to spend time with his brother. His friends are always over and Remus never has the chance anymore. He’s too busy with his homework when they’re not over. He missed Roman. And Remus couldn’t deny that it hurt that Roman always seemed to make time for his friends, but never for Remus.

   They used to be inseparable. His mom used to joke that they were twins because Remus never acted his age and they looked so alike. They weren’t supposed to grow apart. When they were kids, they planned on having adventures together. But this was the third time this week alone that Remus is stuck listening to Roman playfully bicker with his friends the next room over.

   The headphones weren’t enough sometimes, and tonight was one of those times. Remus sighed and dropped his computer headphones on his desk. He wasn’t paying any attention to this book, anyway. They were playing a four-player game with three players and kept lamenting that the game was too hard. But they never asked him to join. He kept hoping they would. He considered just going over and inviting himself, but he didn’t feel like being pitied today. And what if he said something? What if he did something? Remus rapped his knuckle on the desk again.

   Remus slipped on his boots and a windbreaker and headed out of his room, glancing into Roman’s open door as he passed. They were laughing at a TV show together. He headed down the stairs with a sigh. “I’m going for a walk, ma,” Remus called into his mother’s office as he passed and she held her finger over her lips while she was on the phone. Right. Remus headed out the front door and locked up behind himself.

   The fall night was enchanting. It was somewhat chilly for a windbreaker, but Remus welcomed it. Remus enjoyed having sleeves to play with, so he liked fall and winter. This windbreaker has a zipper on the cuff that Remus fiddled with while he walked down the street. He didn’t have anywhere in mind to go, honestly. He just wanted to get out of there. It didn’t feel right. 

   He could go to the corner store that was near his house that had a great selection of weird gummy candies. He could also go for some pizza-flavoured chips. This was a stomach ache waiting to happen, but Remus wasn’t exactly known for self-control. He was known for taking dares from strangers and getting suspended for scaling the wall of the school just to see if he could.

   He kicked at an acorn as he walked down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets. He was going to eat an entire package of pizza chips and he knew it. And they always made his breath smell like throw up, which Remus thought was incredibly cool that the flavourings could taste so good and smell so bad as soon as they got wet. 

   No one else liked his pizza-chip breath, though. Actually, he was the only one he knew who liked those pizza chips. Sour cream and onion sounded good, too. He liked to eat them with the pizza chips. If you got the right brands of chips, it was like eating pizza and ranch. His mom might get mad at him for just leaving to buy snacks at the corner store, so he’d need a way to hide the bag from her.

   Remus wished he knew how to reign himself in, he honestly did. He was always running his mouth and getting himself in trouble before he even knew what was happening. He knew he could be unpleasant, too. And he was worried about what he was capable of. Remus had some bad thoughts and dark knowledge and he didn’t want to act on them, but they were there. He knew how to do lots of bad things. In a weak moment he could, right? He didn’t want to… but…

   He tried his hardest, but he wasn’t soft and cuddly. Roman’s friend Patton was sweet and nice and Remus would give anything just to sit with him and watch a movie sometime. Patton talked through movies, too. They could whisper to each other and split a bowl of popcorn. It would be amazing. Patton smelled like fabric softener and made Remus feel bubbly with delight.

   But Remus unsettled Patton. He was too nice to say it, but Roman asked him to dial it back for Patton’s sake more than once. Logan at least was interested when Remus brought up interesting things that popped into his head. But Remus had seen Patton recoil before. And Roman would sigh and roll his eyes and tell Remus that they shouldn’t talk about that. Patton would apologize sometimes. 

   That generally made Remus feel worse because it’s not like he intended to freak out Patton, but it wasn’t Patton’s fault for not liking the subject matter, either. They just came out of Remus’s mouth and it was his inability to not run his mouth that was the cause. Remus pulled at the zipper a few times, feeling bad all over again for it. It had been a while since Remus’s last fuck up with Patton, but Remus never forgot. He knew he should stop pining pointlessly.

   Someone was coming up on the sidewalk drew Remus’s eye and out of his self-pity pit. It looked like there was a fellow weirdo out tonight. Someone in a stylistic fox mask and a trench coat was coming down towards Remus on the sidewalk from over the small hill Remus had to walk up to get to the corner store. The outfit reminded Remus of a comic book villain. Actually, if they flipped the fox mask for a kabuki one, they’d basically be Yokai from Big Hero Six. Remus wondered what a cosplayer or whatever was doing on a nighttime walk, and also if Remus could join them. Remus had a mostly put-together Deathstroke cosplay in his closet he could go put on.

   “Hey, can I ask what the costume is? It looks great,” Remus waved when he got close enough for the stranger to hear.

   “Thanks, but this is just me,” The stranger shrugged, walking up to Remus. “How would you like to be someone else, though?” The stranger asked out of absolutely nowhere.

   “I’d give anything,” Remus replied before he even considered it.

   “Even your soul?” The stranger asked, and Remus stopped to weigh his options. What was Remus doing with his soul, anyway? “I kid, you don’t actually have to think about that,” The stranger chuckled out a deep rattling noise that shook their whole torso while they shook their head. “Nothing so permanent. How about some time?” They offered again, an amused smile barely peeking out from under the mask.

   “Like sitting through a seminar or something?” Remus asked, shifting his weight on his feet and furrowing his eyebrows.

   “No, that’s so dreadfully boring. Just a bit off the end for as long as you use what I’m offering. It’s a very fair trade,” They reassured him dismissively. This was red flag central for some grade-A weird, dangerous shit. Awesome. Not awesome? Remus wasn’t sure. He still wanted to be someone else.

   “Oh, is this some deal with the devil shit?” Remus hummed curiously, still not sure how to parse this situation.

   “No, no. Not affiliated. Just someone that gets called the devil often. I’m sure you can relate,” The masked stranger waved their hands.

   “Boy, do I ever,” Remus agreed and crossed his arms. Remus’s stupid suggestions often got him in the hot seat. Not that he didn’t deserve it, but… “The exact amount of time? Not some stupid equation where I’m getting screwed like a prom date?” Remus did the smart thing and double-check for once instead of his impulsiveness taking the wheel.

   “Damn, who are you dealing with usually? No, the exact amount of time. Second per second off the natural lifespan. If you started taking better care of yourself, you’d barely lose a thing,” They shrugged, speaking as if they didn’t understand the distrust.

   “What’s in it for you?” Remus furrowed his eyebrows at the masked stranger, tapping his finger on his crossed arms.

   “I get the time and the entertainment value of it all. The paranormal gets boring without doing this kind of thing every once in a while,” The stranger twisted their hand in the air and leaned on one leg. They put their hand on their hip and looked Remus up and down. 

   Remus was still suspicious about the whole thing. Something-something and deals with the fae? Not that this looked like a fairy or anything. Actually, how would Remus know how to identify the fae? The fae could look like anything, and Remus doesn’t have any iron on him. 

   “Iron does nothing to me, anyway. Soft and cuddly, right? Something Patton would like? I’ve got just the thing,” They held up a finger and a bright green ribbon materialized around it.

   “Ah, didn’t realize you were listening,” Remus chuckled to himself. The stranger clearly knew what Remus wanted. He hoped that was the only thing they heard, though. “You know what, fuck me up, fam,” Remus declared, holding up his hand in the air triumphantly. The ribbon appeared in Remus’s hand and he gripped it enthusiastically.

   “Just tie it onto yourself. Take it off to be human again, so put it somewhere easy to reach. And if it goes more than a small distance from you, it’ll show up in your hand again. This is only yours, so don’t bother trying to use it on someone else or giving it away. It’ll never work. If you try to show it off, it also won’t work, because that’s a fucking headache. You’ll have to change somewhere private. Have fun and try not to get yourself killed, please. That sucks for the both of us,” They sounded delighted while Remus looked at the silky ribbon. It was a bright green, like fresh leaves in spring and not subtle at all. Exactly his style. Remus shoved the ribbon in his pocket and bowed deeply, twisting his hand in front of him and stepping one leg to the side.

   “So what does it do?” Remus asked, looking up to the masked stranger from his bow. They had lifted their mask just enough for Remus to make out a sharp-toothed grin as they faded from existence. Well, that was delightfully creepy. “Oh, points for style,” Remus hummed, and he made out the faintest deep cackle that also faded away. 

   What a nice… whatever that was. Mysterious entities that could read thoughts and create things from nothing were good in Remus’s book. He felt the ribbon between his fingers in his pocket. It felt pleasantly warm. He could find out what it did by putting it on. But this probably wasn’t private enough to use it. He was out in the open. Maybe it only mattered if people were looking at him? Well, he still had his chip-acquisition duty to get to.

   Remus resumed his walk down the street. He couldn’t have anticipated a depression walk resulting in a deal with a demon or whatever, but it certainly was a better outcome than usual. He continued to feel the toasty ribbon in his pocket as he walked down the road. The possibilities filled his mind as he trekked on. Soft and cuddly, huh? Another Patton? That would be weird. A bear? Bears probably aren’t cuddly for very long. Remus would love to be a bear, though. Remus, but capable of fighting his impulsiveness? Unrealistic, even for magic.

   Were there… weird magic people always listening to his thoughts? He really hoped not. Remus had some awful thoughts. Terrible, horrible, sickening thoughts. Thoughts he was always thankful that at least no one could hear. And someone heard. Magical beings probably wouldn’t listen all the time, right? If they were listening to all of his thoughts, they never would have talked with Remus. Or they would have treated Remus way worse. He also couldn’t imagine some weird magical entity wanting to listen to Remus thinking about what cooked stink bugs might smell like and what he would look like with a giraffe neck even when he wasn’t having shitty thoughts. Maybe they only listened out for random wishes. Was that a genie? No, there weren’t three wishes and the fox mask demon got something in return.

   He should be more concerned about literally cutting his life short with a magic ribbon, but he wasn’t. Remus couldn’t think out that far. Every time he questioned if it was the right idea, he wondered what he got to turn into. It was something non-human, and it seemed like the random magic stranger didn’t like things that would make a big kerfuffle, so it was probably something that would blend in. It made the most sense with what they said. Unless it was all a trick, anyway.

   Remus opened the convenience store door and made a bee-line to the snacks aisle. He grabbed some gummy brains and rats and examined the shelf for anything else. Candy moustaches? Sure, why not? Remus turned aisles to grab chips and headed up to the register, also tossing up a bottle of soda from a cooler near the register. 

   The cashier kept one eye on the TV while checking Remus out, not even acknowledging him. That was normal, at least. Remus waved after he picked up his bag of snacks, but the cashier was staunchly watching the TV again. He cracked open the bags of chips to snack on as he walked down the sidewalk, taking a handful of each flavour and shoving them all into his mouth at once.

   It was a tasty combo. If Remus ate them down enough, he could roll the bags and make them easier to sneak past everyone, and since they were open, he’d have to eat them evenly, anyway. It was a win-win. Maybe not for Remus’s life span, but that was years out and Remus didn’t know how to even conceptualize that. He could start jogging or something. That’s healthy, right? Probably not enough to cancel out eating an entire bag’s worth of potato chips on the way home. But he already planned on doing that and just because he got a magic ribbon didn’t mean he needed to go changing his very important impulsive plans.

   How did his lifespan work, anyway? Mm, chips. Remus decided he didn’t care. Was that an awful thought? Well, maybe as long as it was only Remus’s life span. It’s kind of like deciding to only eat fast food or something. He could ask the mysterious fox mask person if he ever saw them again, but otherwise, there wasn’t much else to do about it. He had more important things to do, like make sure he ate the same amount of chips from each bag.

   The walk back to his house went much faster as Remus gorged himself on chips. He rolled up the remaining chips bags so they wouldn’t stick out of the shopping bag. Perfect, now he shouldn’t have to share if Roman saw and his mom won’t see and he won’t get in trouble. He still had a random grocery bag, but maybe luck would be on his side. He didn’t want to share any of this. It would throw off the balance of the bags.

   The front door unlocked with a click and Remus stepped in, locking up behind himself. He glanced at the wall clock and realized the trip took a solid forty-five minutes longer than it should have. Does talking with weird demons warp time? He hoped he wasn’t in trouble. He could legally be out, but his mother didn’t like him wandering around at night getting in trouble. Remus walked down the hall, waving to his mom in the office. She didn’t even look up from her computer. What was she doing working that late, anyway? 

   Roman’s bedroom door was closed as he passed it. Remus sighed as he stepped into his bedroom and closed the door behind him. He had no reason to worry; it seemed. Nobody cared that he came home safe. Remus kicked off his shoes, which thudded on the floor, and dropped off the snacks bag on his desk.

   Remus looked around the room and reached into his pocket. Well, it was the moment of truth. Did Remus hate being perceived in the manner he was so much he was willing to literally shorten his lifespan to be something else? He stared at the ribbon. Finding out what it was he could turn into would help him decide, right? This should be an important decision. Or something. He didn’t care anymore. Remus put his foot upon his desk chair and tied the ribbon into a bow on his ankle. As soon as the ribbons pulled into place, Remus felt overwhelmingly dizzy. Like he did a backflip into another dimension and out again.

   His brain wasn’t working at first. There was so much new input he didn’t expect that it took him a moment to settle into even comprehending. Things were brighter and louder and stronger smelling. And… taller. Or he was significantly smaller. He did not know yet. Remus stumbled and fell over, reaching up for his head. There were no fingers, though, only a paw pad pressing into a damp nose. Huh. Remus closed his eyes and tried to get his bearings. He swore he had better senses and spatial awareness. Remus wobbled over to the floor-length mirror after he pulled himself up.

   That was the largest cat he’d ever seen, staring back at him with bright spring-green eyes in the mirror. It was not a cat breed he’d recognized. He was thick with fluff and had tawny grey fur spotted with black tabby markings. Remus swished his tail and spun around, looking at himself before turning back to the mirror. A big fluffy cat certainly fit the bill. Remus wanted to pet himself, even. 

   Walking on all fours didn’t take any adjusting to after he gained his bearings, and there was no pile of clothes where he was, so magic must have been helping Remus to adjust. His tail was weirding him out, though. He could only control it if it consciously focused on it, but otherwise, it swished about without his input.

   He licked his paw and ran it across the top of his head to make the big gray tuft there stick straight up. Other than being probably three times the size of his nana’s house cat, Remus was pretty cute. He sat on the floor and examined himself. He should turn back, right? No, he should check stuff out to help him decide. Remus headed around his room.

   Things were bizarre at this height, but it was an interesting type of strange. Remus weaved under his desk chair and went under the desk. It was a nice hidey-hole as a cat. He disliked small spaces less; it was comfortable under here. He pushed his head on the corner of the desk and his eyes widened. Fuck, that feels nice. No wonder cats do it all the time. Remus pushed his head against the side of the desk a few more times.

   Remus looked up at his loft bed. Could he get up there? Remus backed up across the room to get a running start and had to swerve to dodge the bed frame. Fuck, he was faster than he expected. He backed up to jump on top of his dresser instead and made it easily in a single leap. Remus primed himself for the wide gap at the edge of the dresser and bounded, landing easily in the middle of the bed. Wow, he could leap farther than he thought, too. It might have helped that he was big. He dug around in the sheets and curled up. Being a cat wasn’t the most fun possible choice when magic was involved, but he was loving every second of this.

   He hopped down with silent ease off the bed and jumped up to work the knob. It took him multiple tries to grip it, but he got the door open and walked next door to Roman’s room. The door was closed, but that was no match for his monster kitty paws now that he knew the trick. Remus opened the door with ease and strutted into the bedroom. Roman was doing homework with his headphones on at the floor-height table. He bounced his knee while he sat bent over the textbook and his notebook, humming along to the music.

   “Yeah?” Roman’s eyes moved to the door after a lag while he finished writing something. “Oh!” Roman chuckled to himself. “Did Remus bring you home or something?” Roman asked, holding out his hand. Remus walked up and sniffed Roman’s hand to keep up the act. It smelled strongly of pencil graphite and notebook paper, but there was a faint hint of some sugar cookies under that. 

   Remus bumped his head into Roman’s hand and Roman pet him. Remus thought it would feel more like a massage, but it was mostly that the motion was soothing. It made Remus feel safe and comfortable and loved. The petting was smooth and made his brain tingle in the best way. Remus flopped down on the floor next to Roman, who kept petting him. Roman leaned to look into the empty hallway.

   “Re?” Roman called out, and Remus meowed in reply. “Hm. You’re very smart to get the door open, but stay out of my mom’s office. She won’t mind if you visit us, but she doesn’t like pets,” Roman warned Remus. He was well aware. Can’t please everyone. Remus laid his head against Roman’s leg and started purring. It must have been reflexive because he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to.

   Roman continued petting Remus slowly while he went back to his homework. Remus’s ears twitched at the small noises the pencil made against the paper. He wouldn’t mind just sitting here doing homework quietly with Roman as a human, either. Maybe he could try again. But not right now. He couldn’t describe how happy he was to relax with Roman and get affection like this. It was honestly worth any minutes he lost off the end of his life. 

   What were minutes, anyway? They didn’t make a difference in the long run. Remus wasted minutes of his life on absolute shit. This was worth it. Remus closed his eyes and relaxed, listening to the muted sounds of Roman’s music and the rustling of pages while Roman worked. The time passed and Remus never second-guessed the use of his time again.

   “Hey, kitty. I’ve got to get ready for bed. C’mon, let’s get you back to Remus,” Roman alerted him, standing up. Roman stretched out his legs. Remus meowed in objection and rubbed against Roman’s jeans. Roman moved past Remus and headed out his bedroom door into the hall. Remus followed, rolling his eyes. Roman pushed open Remus’s door the rest of the way and stuck his head in. “Remus—” Roman stopped talking and looked around the bedroom. 

   “Huh. I wonder where he is,” Roman hummed. He squatted down and signed, picking up Remus. “I guess I’ll take you back out myself,” Roman told him, and Remus meowed in objection again. “Sorry, kitty, we don’t have food or a bathroom for you. You can come to visit again, though. I don’t know exactly where Remus found you,” Roman explained evenly and headed downstairs. He unlocked the backdoor and dropped Remus outside. Remus spun around to glare at Roman before bolting back into the house.

   “Cat, no!” Roman shot quietly, holding out his hand. Remus bounded up the stairs and rushed into his room. He couldn’t pull the door closed, so he rushed under his loft and yanked at the curtain before pulling off the ribbon with his teeth.

   That dimension-hopping sensation overwhelmed Remus again, and he fell against his desk while the world did a triple somersault and took him with it. Remus ran his hand through his hair and exhaled hard, the air hissing through his teeth. He held his head with both hands and filled his lungs completely. The world didn’t smell as strong as a human. He let out the air slowly.

   “Kitty,” Roman whispered, sticking his head into Remus’s room. “Kitty, where are you?”

   “I’ll handle it, Ro,” Remus informed him, pulling open the curtain on his loft bed to look at Roman.

   “Oh! I didn’t see you in there. Cute cat. It’s almost bedtime, so hurry,” Roman waved and stood up straight.

  ��“G’night,” Remus waved back.

   “Oh. Yeah. You too,” Roman sighed and turned into the hall. Remus slowly pulled himself up to his feet. The dizziness was all gone, but he was still disoriented from the missing senses and the height. Remus was so tall. How did he never notice?

   Remus needed some contingency stuff. He pulled a fashion scarf out of his dresser and tied it onto the doorknob so Remus could pull his door closed. Well, there was still the potential of getting locked out if he left and couldn’t turn back… Remus glanced at the window. It’s the second story, so it’s not a big deal if he left it unlocked, right? Remus didn’t know how he’d get up there just yet, but maybe he could jump from the tree? The gap was wide for a human, but as a cat, he should be okay. Maybe he could change back and move some stuff around in the backyard. Remus unlocked the window with a small nod to himself.

   He started to get ready for bed but ended up glancing at the window again. Maybe he should make sure he can make the gap, right? Remus kicked off his socks and opened up the window enough to get out, pulling out the screen and leaning it against the wall. He crawled through and sat on the slanted roof and closed the window again. He took a deep breath of the night air and looked up at the moon. 

   A good night to prowl. He tied the ribbon on his ankle and turned into a cat again. It was much easier this time, though it was still extremely disorienting. Remus waited to regain his sense of up and down before standing up and walking along the ledge of the roof towards the big honkin’ American Elm in the backyard. Roman and Remus’s tire swing still hung from a low, thick branch.

   Remus primed himself and took a running leap of faith towards the Elm. He soared across the gap easily and ended up overshooting just barely able to sink his claws in another branch in time and avoided hitting one that was on his lower left and tumbled to the ground. Remus scrambled to pull himself up and took a deep breath for his pounding heart.

   He looked down, and it looked like he was miles from the ground. He suddenly understood how cats got caught in trees because this was freaky. Remus knew intellectually that he could hop down to a lower branch or jump for the tire swing. The branch he was on didn’t allow for much mobility, so he made a hail-mary for the tire swing, landing in the net over the hole and getting his paw caught while the tire swing swung from the motion. Remus hissed at the net and pulled his foot out carefully before hopping down to the ground.

   Well. That was scary-awesome. But Remus was a free cat right now who happened to be able to jump farther than Remus could even comprehend. Remus made a run for the fence and used his back claws to propel himself up the fence and bounded over easily. He jumped down into the grass and ran for the sake of it. 

   All the fun of running away without actually doing so. There was a playground they used to go to as kids that Remus wanted to check out. It was long since not fun anymore, but as a cat, who knows? Remus wanted to feel like a kid again. He was too amped up to sleep anyway, and he was once again at a height he could enjoy a playground at and it was all he could think of.

   He bounded across yards and down the lane. The public park was between Remus’s neighbourhood and the apartment complex next door, so Remus had to make two blocks on much smaller feet. He was moving much faster, though, and had more endurance. He enjoyed the wind in his face as he ran down the lane.

   The playground’s parking lot was lit, but the playground itself sat shrouded in darkness. That was no problem for Remus’s cat eyes, though. They adjusted almost instantaneously as he stepped into the shade and walked into the park. The playscape was probably not comfortable on his paws, but there were other things to check out, still. Remus walked past the play structure. The web might be fun. That was still kind of fun as an adult. The park was technically closed, though, and he couldn’t play on it while kids were here. He could hurt one of them or someone would think he’s a pervert, and he’d get in trouble and go to jail.

   Remus wasn’t alone out here. There sat a person who looked Remus’s age sitting on the swings. Their head hung limply, and they held onto the chain at eye height. They were barely swinging at all. It was more like a minor despondent sway. They looked really miserable. Remus couldn’t swing as a cat, but he also was curious about the other stranger. One stranger tonight gave Remus magic powers, so random night strangers were much more interesting now. 

   That fact alone made Remus also wanted to return the favour to the universe if he could. The fox-masked being cheered Remus up. Maybe Remus could cheer up the sad person who appeared to be 70% hoodie by volume and kicking at the pebbles under the swings. Remus walked up in front of the person and sat down, meowing. Their head was down and their hood was up, so Remus couldn’t see their face.

   The stranger didn’t look up from soundlessly staring down at nothing. Remus stepped closer, meowing again. He looked up at the stranger’s face from the ground. They looked empty. Their eyes were unfocused and their expression was somewhere between numb and desolate. Remus meowed louder, and the stranger blinked. They recoiled their head and rubbed their eyes, blinking a few more times before their eyes focused enough to notice Remus.

   “Oh. Hey,” The stranger greeted Remus. Remus rubbed against the person’s legs. He hoped they weren’t allergic. They watched Remus weave around their legs for what felt like an eternity, but they never sniffled, so it seemed okay for now. “You’re really friendly, huh?” The person reached down their hand and Remus bumped into their hand right away.

   The sad person let out a weak chuckle through their nose and scratched at Remus’s chin. Remus froze for a moment and pushed down into the stranger’s hand to help them scratch harder. That was better than pets. That made Remus feel like his entire body was tingling with elation. The stranger stopped scratching and sat up on the swing. But Remus wasn’t having that. He jumped up and deposited himself right on the person’s lap.

   “Woah,” The stranger seemed amused and went back to gently scratching behind Remus’s ear. Remus purred like a motorboat idling on a lake. One that might explode and kill twenty bystanders and sink a dinghy named Frank. Remus’s back leg twitched automatically as he settled down. He was probably vibrating the entire stranger he purred so hard.

   When the stranger stopped again, Remus meowed and licked at their hand, sitting limply next to Remus again. “You’re kind of needy,” The stranger sounded amused, switching to petting Remus with their other hand instead. Remus carefully laid down and licked the stranger’s hand again. 

   Remus liked it when cats did this, so he hoped this person would, too. They reached up to rub their eyes again and paused, sniffing the air. They sniffed again and tried smelling where Remus licked them. 

   “Fuck, cat, that’s noxious. What the hell did you eat?” They snickered, putting their hand back down. Remus tried to say ‘chips’, but a weird meow came out instead, so he rested his head on the stranger’s hand.

   “Do you belong to someone?” The person asked curiously. They sat up more and looked around the area. They dug around at the thick fur on Remus’s neck and hummed in dissatisfaction. “A nice cat like you deserves a good home. It’s not safe out here for you,” They shook their head and went back to petting them. “But thanks for visiting,” They smiled down at Remus. “I’ve got school, I should get going,” They sounded sad, but Remus jumped off and spun around to sit and watch them get up.

   The stranger dragged themselves off the swing and waved to Remus. Remus meowed and waved a paw back, which made the stranger give a small smile in return. Remus had school too, so he should probably get home. But he got them to smile, so it satisfied the need to do something nice for the world in return as he bounded down the street back towards his house.

---

personal taglist: @elizabutgayer @ollyollyoxinfree 

The Taglist Repository (ask to be removed): 

Everything: @katelynn-a-fan @dwbh888 @royal-stormcloud @thefivecalls @awkwardjester @intruxiety@brain-deadx0 @the-grounded-raven@just-your-typical-trans-guy

Remus-Centric: @thatgaydemigodnerd @aceawkwardunicorn @hekking-happy-nonsense

Dukexiety: @a-fandom-trashdump

Hurt/Comfort:@callboxkat @nonasficcollection @supernovainthenightsky @evoodo123 @idont-freaking-know @hekking-happy-nonsense @cottonwoolsocks @aceawkwardunicorn @somehow-i-got-an-account @enby-ralsei

Cuddles: @idont-freaking-know @aceawkwardunicorn @enby-ralsei

[marcilled]

5 years

It was 5 years ago today that a humble little minecraft server first opened its gates. 5 years ago, I started @quixol​ with a team of 8 friends. Today, only 4 of those original friends are still on our Staff team, and the server is a shadow of its former self.

There’s a lot I could talk about with Quixol, but before I get into it, I just want it to be known that this is a highly personal post from me. This isn’t an official announcement, but seeing as I’m an admin, it’s definitely of pertinence if you are someone who is a part of the Quixol community.

If you’re new to following me, or just don’t know what I’m talking about: Quixol is a trans-friendly minecraft server started by me and a few pals back on November 16, 2015. It’s primarily populated by folks from here on Tumblr, and is an LGBT+ only community. Over its 5 years, it’s gotten over 1600 unique players. And... Well, there’s a lot of history that took place during and after that, I can’t hope to summarize it here. You can see more on the about page on our blog.

So, yeah. Today is the 5-year anniversary of Quixol. Pretty big deal! And... we have nothing in store for today to celebrate that huge milestone. Pretty big bummer. The prior 4 years, the anniversary was the single biggest celebration of the year. We typically tried to schedule large server updates to coincide with the anniversary, just to make it feel that much more special. So, on the day that marks a whole half-decade of being online, why do we have no plans? It’s a long, complicated story. I’ll only be able to tell you my side of it. Everything written below is from my perspective, and doesn’t necessarily reflect how others think or feel.

Regardless of the lonely feeling on the server now, I just want to say, I’m really glad I could host such a fantastic community for so many years. Thank you everyone who has made the past half decade so special.

Long retrospective below (plus, discussion about Quixol’s future):

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Where to begin... All I can say at the start here is, don’t expect anything coherent, I typed this up while sleep deprived just the night before posting this, without much forethought of what I’d say in it. I just feel I need to get these feelings off my chest before I can mentally move on, you know.

Before I delve into this, I just want to put this sort of disclaimer at the top here: Despite how gloomy I make things sound throughout this post, Quixol is and was an amazing place, that I’m so glad to say I got to play such a pivotal role in. I wouldn’t trade my time here for anything. It’s been an honor to serve as an Admin over such an incredible community. I’ve seen countless new friendships forged, plenty of laughs and fun times to be had... I’ve even known several couples that met through their time on Quixol, I’ve known several people that came out or discovered more about their identity/gender/sexuality while on Quixol. It’s a great community, despite its flaws, and what we did over these past 5 years is nothing short of spectacular. I’m forever thankful for everyone who helped make this place as special as it is- you’ve all been such great friends. Thank you.

While I may speak a great deal about some of the lowest lows that happened on Quixol, you better believe it had some of the highest highs as well. Keep that in mind, so you know why I’m spending this much time and effort to commemorate this server that I’ve called home for so long.

I’ll start here with a rough timeline of Quixol... I’ll even include some screenshots for you all.

Old World (Nov. 2015 - Mar. 2017, mc 1.8 - 1.9)

Quixol began back in 2015 like I mentioned- whitelisted at first, but moved on to being unwhitelisted at a later date (I believe it was summer of 2016). Hundreds of people joined after the whitelist was removed, in just the first month or so. We owe that initial success to how much our blog post about the server got shared around, it served as a nice advertisement for the server. It was only posted to tumblr, so everybody who joined then was from the same sort of social sphere of 2016 tumblr. It was pretty lively, and we made lots of friends very quickly. A lot never logged in again after the first initial burst, but a fair amount stuck around.

The server started on minecraft version 1.8, which was before the end update that introduced elytra & all the controversial combat changes. Most people never even saw the server on this version, though, since it was still whitelisted when we updated to 1.9. The world we used back in 2015-2016 eventually got deleted at a later date, however we did provide an archive of this old world to download, it’s... somewhere on our blog, you can go find it if you poke around a bit. (Assuming the download hasn’t been removed from the website I uploaded it to, which would make sense since it’s just 20 gb sitting on some server doing nothing).

While there was plenty of merriment, there was also the fair share of drama. I can’t even hope to recall all the drama that happened in 2016, but one of our og mods got banned completely after the rest of the staff sort of woke up to the realization they were incredibly abusive. There’s lots of other stuff that happened then- I wish I could tell the “full tale” as it were, but it would be so long-winded that almost nobody would bother to read. Plus, my memory isn’t very good, so I would need to dig through old blog posts, discord messages, screenshots, etc etc to jog my memory... way too much work.

Protos (Mar. 2017 - Nov. 2018, mc 1.11 - 1.12)

2017 came around, and that’s when we updated the server to 1.11 and created a new world (Protos). That update happened on March 26, 2017- I remember because march 26th is my birthday, and the other staff made a cute little celebration for me on that day and I literally cried from how happy I was. It was the nicest thing anyone’s done for me in a long time. (God, I miss those times.)

A lot more happened during this time period, and honestly I’d consider the period in which Protos was our main, active world to be the most consistently active the server has ever been. It wasn’t always exploding with activity, but the people who joined and played during this time were consistent. And we had a relatively consistent influx of new players.

There was a lot more drama that happened during this time... More staff members left, mostly of their own accord (but never on a wholly positive note). Drama amongst some of the veteran/long-time players, arguments over how to interpret and enforce our rules.

Regardless of the troubles, I’d say this period was overall quite positive for Quixol. We even brought in our first batch of new staff members during this period.

Ghalea (Nov. 2018 - Present, mc 1.13 - 1.15)

I believe late 2018 was when we updated the server from 1.12 to 1.13. We rushed the update to this version quite a lot, which was a shame since it ensured the server had an egregious amount of bugs to work out, and lots of missing plugins/functionality. With this update, we made another new world (and, our current main world): Ghalea.

Regardless of buggy behavior, we managed to hit what I believe is the all-time peak concurrent player count we have ever gotten, which is something like 54-56 players playing at the same time. The server chugged so hard, I’m surprised it didn’t crash. All of those parties were so stressful to put on, but at the same time, incredibly fun and fulfilling to see when lots of people showed up and had a good time.

Funny, though: despite the success of the server, 2018 and early 2019 are the closest the server has ever gotten to absolutely tearing itself apart from internal staff drama. By early-mid 2019, several staff members ended up getting banned one after the other. So that left us with very few staff by that point (only 6 active staff, myself included, if I remember correctly).

2019 should have been a great year for Quixol, seeing as it was what many people referred to as the “minecraft renaissance”, “the great minecraft revival”, etc etc etc. However, the drama amongst the staff, coupled with drama in our personal lives, and just an all around lack of staff members to kick things into gear, resulted in a pretty lackluster year compared to the previous 4 years.

Despite all of that, we worked tirelessly to complete our greatest project yet, Chroma Park, just before our 4th anniversary on Nov 16th, 2019. It took a whole team of builders to complete, and several months in preparation/building.

With such a grand project completed, you would expect it would result in a flurry of new activity on the server... unfortunately, it ended up being almost the opposite. Because we called upon our “build team” to help with it, (several talented veteran players who volunteered their building skills), nearly all of our active players suffered some serious burnout after the major project they just completed. Lots of people just weren’t feelin’ up to minecraft anymore... And, that spelled the beginning of the end, really.

The culmination of this was that, going into 2020, activity on the server just... plummeted. Then, we all know what a shit year 2020 turned into. That just furthered feelings of burnout. I made another personal post about this, back in April- explaining why I had been relatively absent from the server for a while. It goes into more detail about the “hiatus” at that time, what caused it, why it continued so long, and how my personal feelings were at that time. Give it a read if you want. It even goes more in-depth about some of Quixol’s former staff, and how toxic behavior from them may have negatively impacted the community (especially in 2018-2019).

So, basically nothing has happened on Quixol in 2020... I took the time to update the server from 1.14 to 1.15 back in July, just so that the server was on a more stable version of minecraft- but all the effort poured into that resulted in basically nothing happening. Barely anyone even noticed, because it was such a minor update focusing on bug fixes. I hoped it would get the ball rolling again, but it just wasn’t enough.

While I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet, I decided it was for the best if I put any plans on the backburner for a while, and focus more attention on building infrastructure back up again. I spent some time researching sysadmin stuff, and looking into upgrading my PC. I set up a new discord bot that we’re currently using on Quixol, & have in a few other discord servers I’m active in.

Then, I got tossed one of the most difficult months of my life in a long time pretty recently. It’s very recent/fresh, but suffice it to say, a decent chunk of what made it such a horrible month was related to drama within the Quixol friend group, particularly... me being a shitty friend. I made another post about this a while back, but I won’t link it since it’s a bit vague and not super relevant to what I’m talking about here. Just know, September this year pretty much demolished any feelings of hope I had for continuing work on Quixol.

So, that leads us to... Today. The 5th anniversary of Quixol.

Where did it all go wrong?

Now that I’ve laid out as quick a summary of the past 5 years as I could, I want to talk about some of the mistakes we made along the way. The people that made Quixol what it is, and how that history always seems to tie me down.

To tell you the truth, saying that “it all went wrong” sounds horribly pessimistic to me. Sure, I felt pessimistic going into writing this, but... Just looking back on everything we’ve accomplished, there’s never really a point where it “went wrong”. Moreso, Quixol has had its fair share of flaws baked in from the very beginning. But, perhaps those flaws are what made it what it really is. I can’t go back and change the past, and neither can you. Perhaps the best we can do is just accept Quixol for what it is, and acknowledge its shortcomings while allowing ourselves to feel happy about the good memories we do have.

While I’m not going to cast away every pleasant memory I have of Quixol, I must admit I find so many of them tainted and forever changed, just because of how many people entered this community, made their stay known, then left or were cast away on a sour note. There are countless people that were a huge part of Quixol, of my life, my friends, that I don’t speak to anymore. People that hate me. Maybe even some that I hate.

If I go back and think fondly of those times, I remember how the people in those memories largely don’t think fondly of me anymore. I remember all of my mistakes, all of the ways I could have avoided that outcome. All the ways I could have worked with those friends, to work out our differences, to just fucking communicate. Sure... some of those friends, there was nothing I could do for them. Nothing I could do to make things work. But, all the same... it stings, thinking of everyone I used to know. Not knowing who is still a friend, or who simply has no need for me anymore...

So much of Quixol’s history is tied up in knots this way. Complicated webs of emotion, suffocating in the tethers to its past. So many things built on the server, just wasting away, never to be touched again... New players won’t even know it. They don’t know, can’t know the history behind those blocks that were placed. It sounds a bit silly talking about it this way, but that’s how it feels to me. There’s real history behind each of these blocks, all of the little farms and structures and silly signs. So much of it, nobody even knows. But it wears on my heart, knowing all of that history, and feeling so disconnected from it. Feeling cast away by the people who forged those memories.

It’s a disconnect that’s always hurt, to me. Maybe I’m just too sentimental, nostalgic. Maybe I cling to the past too much. But it feels impossible to ignore... So much of what made Quixol what it is today was left there by people who want nothing to do with me, us, anymore. What does that say about Quixol? About me...? About our group?

There’s a lot I could say about this, but it’s stuff I’ve mentioned before. I hang on too tightly to the past, and am often too critical of my own mistakes. But, sometimes the past is just the way it is, and there’s not much that can be done about it. Regardless, I find myself feeling regrets about every little thing that went wrong, and thinking about where all those people are now... Maybe one of them is even reading this right now. If you’re out there, hey. We can still talk. I’m not going to hold a grudge on you forever. It’s ok.

My influence

Since Quixol began in 2015, I’ve tried my best to be nothing more than an “Admin” of Quixol... not the “owner” or “lead admin” or “founder”, just “admin”. I hoped I could encourage the other admins to be leaders in their own rights. While each of the admins we’ve had has been great leaders in their own respect, I feel that every one of them has been, unfortunately, tied down by my influence to some extent.

In most aspects of life, I’m a very timid, indecisive person. I’m incredibly anxious, and lack confidence to a worrying degree. However, a different side of me can be seen in the safe, comfortable environment that Quixol provided for me. Surrounded by friends and people who I felt really got me, I became comfortable enough to show some level of confidence in myself... In all honesty, for a long time, I was never able to recognize this self confidence for what it was. I really was not, and mostly still am not, used to feeling confident in myself or my own abilities. Like, at all. So when I actually feel good about myself, like I actually know what I’m doing... Well, for a really long time, I didn’t even process it as such. I just felt like I knew the right answers, and that was it.

On Quixol, this often manifested in a specific way... Being proud of my own knowledge & skills with minecraft, I would insert myself into any discussion about Minecraft, the server, or just anywhere I could, and offer up my knowledge, opinions & help. This hardly sounds like a problem, but... The problem was just in my unwavering presence. I was everywhere on Quixol, you couldn’t escape me. I dominated the space with my presence. Not that I interrupted people (usually...?), I just would try to put myself anywhere a conversation was happening, assuming it was, like, appropriate for me to do so on some level.

Whenever I chimed in with my thoughts, eventually there became this sort of air of almost... superiority about it. This feeling that my word was “final”, or that I had some layer of expertise on everything, and that if I said what you said was right, that was a pretty good indicator you were on the right track. I didn’t pretend like I was infallible, and I don’t think anyone ever saw me as that. But the perception was generally that if Vivian says it, that holds weight to it. Perhaps this is somewhat unavoidable of a staff member, but... it was this way even amongst the staff.

I never really realized that I was creating this environment within the community, because it happened rather slowly. But as things moved along, other staff began to pick up on this (perhaps subconsciously). Including even the other admins. Quickly, my own insistence on doing things a Specific Way, became “the Right Way” to do things on Quixol... Whether I intended it or not.

Now, this is something I didn’t know until quite recently, but I actually have OCD (undiagnosed, but it’s glaringly obvious to me at this point). My ocd comes out in minecraft, and specifically Quixol, quite a lot. I have very ritualistic ways of doing things, whether it be while building a project in-game, to managing specific parts of the server- we have a very detailed format in which update logs are written, and I have very specific rituals related to updating plugins on the server, taking backups, etc. Even just the way I play survival minecraft has sorts of rituals in a way, like specific patterns in which I place torches. I’m not too educated on ocd, so excuse me if I’m using some terminology of this wrong, or if I’m spreading some sort of misinformation about it. This is just my experience.

Anyhow, with the extremely regimented way I manage things on the server, coupled with my constant presence in things, you can understand how this might lead to other admins, who have their own mental illness issues, to become very averse to doing a lot of admin-related duties. After months and months, years, even, of this sort of stuff... and... yeah. That leads to where we are now.

With my selfish behavior in the past, I’ve unintentionally created this staff environment where people are reluctant to make their own decisions, show their own creativity, etc. And that must feel incredibly frustrating if you actually want to do something to make a difference on Quixol...

I’m not even accounting for all the times I’ve butted heads with the other staff before, either. While much less frequent, I’ve definitely had arguments with folks in the past. And with the great amount of influence I hold over the server, it takes a lot of courage to stand up to what I say.

I’ve always resented that I hold this position of power over everyone else, and tried many times to address it. However, I don’t think I ever quite had a full picture of why things were this way. Now, I think I understand it better. Sadly, it feels too little, too late to make any significant changes without uprooting pretty much everything we have set in place already. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m being too pessimistic here... But, this is how I feel at the present moment.

I’m sincerely sorry to any current or former staff members, who have wanted to do something great for Quixol, but felt they could never convince me to go through with your idea... Or who felt pushed away from doing something they otherwise would’ve liked to, just because the attitude I gave, the environment my presence created, made you feel like you weren’t good enough or qualified enough to do it. You are good enough. I’m so sorry that my actions made you convinced otherwise...

I will say, this sort of mindset of mine, that I have to be the Most Right about anything relating to minecraft, or any hyperfixation/special interest of mine, has caused problems elsewhere, too. I talked about this in another post I made. I’ve only really come to realize all this stuff within the past few months, but I’ve been a really terrible friend to a lot of people. I never even realized until recently just how often I struggle with empathy, and how that’s colored so many of my friendships. Needless to say, it’s affected things on Quixol before, sometimes without me even realizing it.

My influence over the community also means if anybody’s relations with me in particular ever become marred, it must inevitably result in them leaving the community because there’s simply no escaping me. There’s not really anything I can do about this, though, aside from doing whatever I can to become a kinder, more

I’m far from a perfect person, and my imperfections seeped into so much of what made Quixol what it is. However, it’d be silly to suggest that I’m the singular reason that Quixol is flawed, if anything, that would be another form of arrogance- assuming that I singlehandedly shaped the way Quixol took form. No, it was always a team effort, and every single staff and community member held great influence of their own.

The Future

This part is probably why many of you clicked on this post... You want to know what’s going to happen to Quixol. You likely noticed I’ve been referring to Quixol in the past tense a lot in this post. Honestly, I’m not sure why I did that, it just felt the most natural to type it that way. But, I will be honest- the future of Quixol right now isn’t looking very bright.

This is a personal post, so I don’t want to deliver any sort of formal announcement about plans for Quixol here, especially since I haven’t run this post by the other staff before posting it.

For the past 2 and a half months, I’ve been taking a very long break from Quixol. Much greater than any previous break of mine... I’ve neglected to even log in for weeks at a time. I still keep an eye on the discord server, and check the mc <-> discord bridge channel to see which players have been logging in. But I have little to no motivation to play, even just casually.

While I’d love to give you some fun cool news about how this hiatus is ending soon and I have a million and one projects planned, that simply isn’t the case. I’ve gotten to this point where I’m rethinking everything about myself, who I am, and what I’m doing with my life. Surely, I can’t dedicate all my time and energy to running a minecraft server for the rest of my life, even though I do care deeply about this community. But at the same time, it’s not really my call to shut down Quixol, and I’d hate to pull the plug just because of my own lack of motivation.

So, for the time being at least, you can probably consider Quixol to be on a sort of “indefinite hiatus”. I am generally the one to update plugins, do major server updates, etc., and I likely won’t be doing any of that any time soon. I fully entrust the other staff to handle that stuff if they really want to, and I’ve expressed that to them already. But as things stand, nobody else seems to want to pick up the torch right now. Shit is rough for pretty much everyone, and we’re all equally burnt out. We’ve all grown up quite a lot since Quixol began, too. So... Don’t expect anything anytime soon.

If there are any updates, they’ll come in our Discord server first.

As for me, personally... I just need time away from all of this. It’s clearer than ever to me that I have a lot of personal problems I need to work on, and I think that the cozy safe environment provided by Quixol didn’t challenge me enough to really address those issues. I need time to focus on myself & my own growth. At the same time, I also feel like I need more experience being a part of a team, instead of just running the show. I’m not getting the kind of enrichment I need from running Quixol, so I’m trying to turn my attention elsewhere.

I’m doing this not because I want to abandon you guys, or because I feel like I want/need to move on from this community. It’s just... Something I need to do, for myself. And I’ll still be around, I’m still gonna be posting to my tumblr & twitter and stuff, and you can still reach me on discord. I’m just focusing my time elsewhere for once.

What does that mean for the future of Quixol? I don’t really know yet. But, for now, it’s not going anywhere. It’s just... also not changing anytime soon. Not even a little bit. I’m sorry to give you this disappointing news, but I hope you all understand.

I miss the good times on Quixol, too. I really do. Maybe we can share them again sometime? Who knows...

For now, that’s all.

It breaks my heart that we don’t have anything glitzy and glamorous to do to celebrate Quixol’s 5th anniversary... But it would be asking far too much of the staff to set anything like that up right now. Maybe we can have some sort of celebration later...? I dunno.

I hope you’re all staying safe & healthy out there. Thank you so much for reading this. I love all of you.

Happy birthday, Quixol.

[theoutcastrogue]

The Thief Class

[by Michael J. Tresca]

The term “thief” is related to the Lithuanian word “tupeti” which means “to crouch down” (Ayto 1990:527). The thief is strongly connected to both hobbits and dwarves. The thief class presents a manner of approach to adventuring “that is basically individualistic and unobserved (as differing from indirect)” (Gygax 1987:29).

Although there have always been thugs, bandits, pirates, and assassins of all stripes in fiction, it is the thief who has been singled out as a hero (if not heroic) fantasy archetype (Aeon 2001). Part of the thief’s appeal is his everyman quality, and it is that same quality that manifests in hobbit thieves. If hobbits are the everyday farmer, the thief is a starving farmer who has to resort to desperate measures to survive. He is us, fallen on hard times.

The thief first appears in Dungeons & Dragons in the Greyhawk supplement. His skills include opening locks, disabling traps, listening for noise behind closed doors, moving quietly, picking pockets, hiding in shadows, striking silently from behind, and climbing sheer surfaces. At tenth level he is able to read scrolls, with a 10 percent chance of seventh-level or higher spells backfiring on the thief (Gygax 1976:4).

Beyond Tolkien, Gygax drew upon several sources for the Dungeons & Dragons–style thief. There is the adventurer in Fritz Leiber’s Grey Mouser, who debuted along with his barbarian ally Fafhrd in Two Sought Adventure (1957). The Grey Mouser shares the thief’s penchant for daggers and the ability to wield them against unwary adversaries. There is also Jack Vance’s “Cugel the Clever” (Wetzels) and Roger Zelazny’s “Shadowjack.” These spellcasting rogues influenced the thief’s ability to read scrolls in the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s evident that the thief archetype harkens from a more cynical, pulp-like fantasy setting, a setting that certainly inspired Gygax, who was a fan of Vance’s work.

The thief has a particularly important role in the creation of interactive fiction; two of the programmers who helped create Zork played thieves. They valued exploration and puzzle solving, challenges eminently suited to the thief role. When dungeon crawling was the preferred mode of adventure, dungeons often had traps that could only be surmounted by a thief using his ability to detect traps and disarm them.

This fascination with the thief class continued in Zork, with the creation of one of the first nonplayer characters controlled by a computer, the everpresent thief, described as “a seedy-looking individual with a large bag” and “a man of good breeding” (Montfort 2003:112). The thief was an adept pickpocket who would wander in, steal an item from the player, and leave—all features common to Dungeons & Dragons thieves. These traits made the Zork thief a constant irritation to the player and a challenging obstacle to overcome.

~ Michael J. Tresca, The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2001)

REFERENCES:

Aeon. 2001. “Episode 3 - Thick as Thieves”

Ayto, John. 1990. Dictionary of Word Origins. New York, NY: Arcade Publishing

Gygax, Gary. 1976. “The Dungeons & Dragons Magic System.” The Strategic Review II:2. Lake Geneva, WI: Tactical Studies Rules; 1987. Role-Playing Mastery. New York: Perigree Trade

Montfort, Nick. 2003. Twisty Little Passages. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Wetzels, Remy A. G. 2002. “The Jack Vance Archive.”

[multishipperlove]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Critical Role (Web Series) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Caleb Widogast, Bren Aldric Ermendrud Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Transmutation Magic, Starvation Mentioned, zemnian, Since this is pre-canon Caleb is continously referred to as Bren Series: Part 6 of Zemnian Roots Summary:

Bren is barely a few weeks out of the Sanatorium, trying to keep himself afloat while getting as far from Rexxentrum as possible.

*

Growing up, Bren had heard many stories of the Eisfus River. Springing from high up in the Dunrock Mountains it ran through the Empire like a pulsating lifeline, leaving giant cities and lush fields in it's wake, swamps and trading ports, gouging it's way through the land like only natural elements were capable of. But he'd never actually seen it. As important as the river was to the fields, to the orchards and pastures that sustained his old home village, Blumenthal was too far away from it to justify the time it would take to travel there. And for what reason anyway, as long as it didn't dry out there was no issue. During his time at the Academy, there hadn't been time either. There had never been time for anything, really.

Now it was ten years later, and with a feeling of his mind still only being half his own, maybe it was fate that Bren had ended up travelling along the riverbanks for the last couple of weeks. At least he knew that the river was leading away from Rexxentrum. Away from Vergessen. From everything he knew. Right now, Eisfus was his lifeline. Wandering from one small town to the next, trying to avoid bigger crowds, he was slowly making his way further into the Empire than he ever had, still trying desperately to try and make sense of what his life had become.

For the first few weeks, basic instincts had been enough. From Vergessen he had first managed to flee into the Pearlbow Wilderness, where his frantic mind had latched on to shelter, food, and water, drowning out anything that wasn't immediately needed for survival. It was how he had found his way to Eisfus in the first place, frozen over just thick enough to walk on without leaving any traces behind, but not impossible to break through either for food or water if he needed it. Following it had been a easy choice.

Back in civilisation though it wasn't as easy, he actually needed coin to survive. And while he might not have a lot of morals left by now (he had long proven what kind of person he was) it still didn't feel particularly good to swindle other people of their hard earned money. In every man's face who bought one of his tricks, smiling and not yet realising he'd been duped, he saw his father counting his silver at the end of the month, wondering if they would be able to pay rent. Every woman holding a child's hand turned into his mother, questioning if they could afford to send him to school for another year. Some nights he told himself he didn't need to eat, almost relieved to chose hunger over any painful reminder of his past.

On other days, it wasn't a choice though. He had tried, standing in the same corner of the market place for hours now as he ignored the steady drizzling of rain to give his usual spiel, barely even getting a glance though from the people busily passing by. But just as he turned to leave, deciding he'd have better luck curling up somewhere and saving his energy, he felt a gentle tug on his coat.

“Hey Mister... can you really turn copper into silver with your pot?”

Bren looked down. A little boy was looking straight back, maybe ten years old, buck teeth poking out from behind his lips as he spoke with a thick Zemnian accent. It took Bren a moment to answer, and he stayed in Common in the hopes of not drawing any attention to himself. “Well, it- I mean, once a day, ja. It is a difficult thing to do.”

“And have you done it today?” he asked curiously.

Bren was really wondering where this was going now. Also, children had a habit of making him feel uncomfortable. Too perceptive, sometimes, even if adults didn't tend to believe them. “I have not, no. Why are you asking?”

The boy looked down for a moment, scuffing his shoes against the mud. “I have copper... and it looked like you were 'bout to leave and not sell the pot, so I thought you might not need it today.”

“Ah. And you want me to turn a copper piece into silver for you?” he asked, understanding now. The kid nodded, grinning a little as his expression turned hopeful, and Bren sighed softly. The way the trick worked, he would have to let the boy wander off with one of his last silver pieces. To assure the illusion of an instant transmutation, instead of having people wait ten minutes during a presentation, he had a silver piece in his pocket turned into copper, which he could simply drop concentration on if needed. It also helped that people only realised the scam 24 hours later, instead of less than an hour when he couldn't hold the spell anymore. Usually it was enough time to get out of town.

And of course, loosing a silver piece was well worth the sum he usually got for selling the little bowl he used for his trick. Only that this time, he wouldn't get that. All it would get him was a happy child he would never see again.

With another deep sigh he dragged a hand through his hair, taking the bowl out of his coat pocket. Leaning down a little, he took the transmuted copper piece out as well, showing it to the child. “Okay, I will do it. But you can not tell anyone I did this for you, and you have to help me with the incantation. Alright?”

The smile in front of him grew three sizes as the boy gave an enthusiastic nod. “Yeah! Of course I wanna help, how do I do that?”

“Well, come here,” Bren muttered, motioning for him to step a little closer before guiding small hands to hold the bowl and placing the coin in the middle. “I noticed your accent. You speak Zemnian?”

Another excited nod. “Ja.”

“Very good. If your parents have read you some fairytales before, I'm sure you'll know the magic words that activate this little device,” Bren told him, smiling a little as well as he saw the wonder in the boy's eyes. “I'll start, and you just have to speak them with me, okay?” Another nod, and Bren started to speak, slowly, pronouncing every syllable clearly so the boy could join in. “Sim sa la bim, bam ba, sa la du, sa la bim.”

As they finished the last part Bren dropped his concentration on minor alchemy, and the coin glistened and almost started to vibrate for a moment as the deep copper turned into a lighter, vibrant silver. The kid gasped and immediately grabbed for it, turning it around and in ever direction as if trying to see if any of the old copper was left on it. It wasn't.

“Whoa... this is amazing,” he finally mumbled, looking back to Bren again with obvious awe. “Did we do that?”

“Of course,” Bren assured him. “You saw it with your own eyes, didn't you. And it's all yours now.”

The boy still looked like he couldn't believe it, not taking his eyes off the coin at first, and Bren saw that as his cue to leave. Straightening up he smoothed his coat out, already starting to feel awkward, but before he could walk off the boy stopped him again, pressing a piece of copper into his hand . “Here, this is for you. Because you used one of your coins instead of mine... and I promise I won't tell anyone!”

And with that, he ran off. Not very far, Bren could see him join up with a group of other children just on the other side of the marketplace. Gesturing excitedly, showing them his silver piece. From the sceptical expressions Bren could tell that he had most likely told at least something of the coin's magical origin, and the others didn't seem to believe him. He didn't blame them. Whether they believed him or not, after a few minutes of discussion they seemed more interested in getting back to playing, though the coin did not disappear yet. Instead they formed a circle, the boy in the middle, and started a game that was very familiar to Bren. Everyone held their hands out in front of them, allowing a small item to be passed to them from the player in the middle without being seen, while singing a short song. Whoever could tell where it had ended up by the time the song was over was usually allowed to keep the item, a game more commonly played with pocket change or candy. Maybe the silver had gotten them excited.

Despite it having been decades since he had played anything like it, the words came back to Bren easily as he finally turned away. Pulling the hood of his coat deep into his face he started walking, away from the marketplace and the children, out of the town. Back towards Eisfus to follow the winding path it had freed for itself, leaving the little boy and his silver piece behind.

Taler, Taler du musst wandern, Von dem einem Ort zum andern. Das ist schön, das ist schön, Taler lass dich ja nicht seh'n.

[thereluctantinquisitor]

Sorry @frenchy-and-the-sea​ but Tumblr keeps ruining my read more attempts if I dare to save a post as a draft or edit it... anyway here it is again but with the PROMISED CUT in the right place:

Permission to ramble about Ciphers? Why THANK you! Mostly under the cut because that’s how I [try to] roll these days.

Ciphers

So, a Cipher is basically a rare individual who is able to learn languages at a ridiculous rate, only needing to be taught words and phrases once before they are dedicated to memory. It is a hereditary skill, and there are nine Cipher families currently in operation, which is down from what used to be over twenty In some cases, the ability just disappeared suddenly. In others, the Cipher died before having children and it never manifested again. In others, it skipped too many generations and was effectively ‘lost’ because, even if it did reappear, no one was actively looking for or fostering the ability and it just sorta… flew under the radar.

Ciphers generally have a pretty straightforward life-path. They are born, their ability is discovered at a young age (typically by their Cipher parent, who will test their ability to learn language periodically). The first years of their life are largely dedicated to the explicit teaching of all the languages known by their family, which can vary based on location, exposure and issues mentioned in the previous paragraph. Then, when they are old enough, they go to work for a member of the nobility (royalty, lords and ladies, etc.) who will act as their patron until they grow old enough to tire and be replaced by the next Cipher in their line.

In the earlier days after the Divide, Ciphers played an extremely vital role in translating and deciphering texts, documents and inscriptions, determining what should be kept of the old world and what should be destroyed. They were essentially the gatekeepers of information, as they were the only ones who could actually understand what was written, and if the language was utterly unknown, they had the best chance of decoding it based on languages that share geographic and  linguistic similarities. They were also key players as the world began to establish its new order, privy to the highest meetings and negotiations, serving as trusted translators between royalty as the kingdoms began to form. They were, essentially, essential.

However, almost 600 years post-Divide, things have changed. Trade Tongue was developed in the mid-second century, which has opened communication significantly across the known world. Languages have also consolidated considerably, particularly with the expansion of the Khathi Empire, meaning there are fewer one must learn in order to serve as a functional translator. Majority of texts have been located, decoded, and sent away to the various archives to be locked in dusty rooms. Basically, Ciphers have found themselves in a world that has largely outgrown them. They are a convenience, rather than a necessity. Where they used to deal with incredible artefacts of the past, tasked with uncovering lost knowledge, they are now more likely to be found performing general bureaucratic services to ‘earn their keep’.

The tradition of patronage has continued largely due to the generational bond formed between Cipher families and their noble patrons (who often remain loyal to a single Cipher family, and visa versa). This allows current Ciphers to still live comfortably, but there is no real prestige associated with their abilities anymore. In fact, they are often actively disliked, as when their services do happen to be required, their patron sets the price (and that price is usually very high). So, many now view Ciphers as little more than lapdogs whose main function is to line their patron’s pocket. And they’re really not wrong.

Delver is the only active Cipher who lacks a patron. He basically acts as a freelancer, strutting around the kingdoms, spreading word when he is in the area. His general practice is to undercut the local cipher for work needed by the lower classes, and overcharge the nobility for his discretion (given his lack of affiliation). He is also from the only Cipher family where the ability has not skipped a generation, but that comes with its own cost that has only recently begun to manifest. There are theories that the Cipher ability skips generations as a kind of biological safety mechanism, as over time having that many languages at your fingertips can become overwhelming for any one mind. If a generation was skipped, the Cipher’s knowledge had to be consolidated and written down as best as possible, all while maintaining regular day to day work and duties. As a result, a lot tended to slip between the cracks, and often large portions of knowledge were lost in the process. While this meant that less languages were passed on when the ability reappeared, it alleviated some of the strain on the individual’s mind. There had been no real consequences for Delver’s line until his great-great grandfather, who was said to have gone mad in his seventies. Then his great grandmother, at about the same age. Then his grandfather, in his late fifties. Then his mother, in her early forties.

TBH I know it’s nothing particularly exciting on paper, but I think what excites me about the whole prospect is because I like the idea of change, and how time and development causes people and places and skills to fall in and out of favour. The joy I get out of it is writing from the perspective of someone who is trapped in a place of impotent bitterness, and how that jaded feeling changes the way he approaches the world. Delver longs for a challenge - dreams of the days when everything was mysterious and exciting, and people looked to Ciphers as links between the past and the present. Now, people just look to him for a seal and a signature, and he desperately wants to be more than that.

[asklondinium]

This is Algy Huddleston, founder of the Huddleston Players, a group of six writers and comedians that he named for his grandfather, an amateur Shakespeare scholar. I’ve talked about Algy and the Huddleston Players a bit on this blog before, but I think it’s worth bringing him up right now because the presence of the Huddleston Players in the story was inspired by Monty Python and Algy, in particular, represents Terry Jones, who we’ve tragically lost this past week.

Although I’ve probably drawn Will more than any of the others, Algy has always secretly been my favorite of the six. We work in the same field - Algy works at the British Library (then still part of the British Museum; it would remain so until 1973) under famed library director Anthony Panizzi and, as a historian by trade, spends most of his time doing something approximating archival work there. Algy basically does what I do for a living, so there’s a certain closeness I feel with him when I’m writing for him; I understand him and his work and his life because it’s mine.

Algy’s specialty areas are Classics and medieval history - his knowledge of Greek and Latin enables him to read medieval manuscripts and volumes with ease - and that, of course, comes from Terry, who was legitimately a historian with an emphasis on the medieval period (hence why Holy Grail itself is actually weirdly accurate in certain aspects compared to other depictions of medieval life or Arthurian legends). Algy tends to direct productions the Huddleston Players put on, and he’s a sharp researcher and phenomenal writer, but above all he’s devoted to bringing his friends together and keeping them that way. He’s the heart of the Huddleston Players, and that’s because of the genuine warmth Terry had (which Michael Palin has spoken to in many interviews and which absolutely obliterates my heart).

Londinium (and many other writing projects of mine) have been a way for me to celebrate the comedians I love so much, who were there for me in my formative years, and to keep their memories alive in my heart, and every time we lose one of them I cling just a little bit harder to these characters who represent the people who I hold in such esteem and admiration.

[writersrealmbts]

Con Amore: Part 4

Bulletproof Melody Sequel

Description: Con Amore– A directive to a musician to perform a selected passage of a composition tenderly, with affectionate emotion, or in a loving manner; an instruction to the player of an instrument meaning ‘with love’ or ‘lovingly’. Three years with all seven of your loves, three years of relative peace. But now everything is threatened as darkness surges from the horizon.

Originally Posted: 07/24/2019

Tags: Superheroes, Ot7

Fluff/Angst: 1,959 words

A/N: Well, at least people are reading it. Are you guys at least enjoying it?

“A light priestess?” Jimin looked surprised. Taehyung looked confused. “She runs a sort of temple or sanctuary, she brought one of the healers when we made our escape from the hospital three years ago,” You told Tae. His eyes lit with recognition and he nodded. “Anyway, she got word that the people who took Jin did so in a misguided form of protection. He was being tracked down by the agents of the Oasis Initiative.” Tae’s head jerked back up. Yoongi took a deep breath. “And the people who have Jin?” You shifted. “Have any of you heard of the Conservatory?” “Whispers here and there,” Namjoon tilted his head, “But nothing substantial.” “Jin-hyung talked to me about it once, after someone asked me if I wanted to improve my abilities. They said they wanted me to join,” Jimin replied. You nodded a little. “They’re a training school. Sort of. They’re good for some things, but there’s corruption and poisonous teachings as well. It can feel like a sanctuary to someone without direction, and prison to those who know their purpose. I…I went there to hone my fighting abilities right after my parents…well, my mom…” Jungkook wrapped his arms around your shoulders. You sighed softly. “Anyway, when I got out I made sure they couldn’t trace me and then I started striking out on my own. I never wanted to go back. They tried to recruit Nightingale, but I’d found out even more about them and basically threatened the school and the dean. When everything was going down, our first mission together, I went back. With Jin.” “The files,” Jimin murmured. “Yeah. Anyway, Jin went there too. Long enough to become an instructor known as Siphon. They kidnapped Jin to protect him. The Conservatory might be the best place to fight the Oasis group.” “Okay, and what if they don’t agree?” Yoongi asked warily. “You just…you’ll have to trust me, okay?” You looked into each of their eyes. “I’ll go first, then—no. That won’t work. We’ll have to go together, but you have to let me do the talking.” “Okay. Now is there anything else we should know before we go?” Namjoon asked, careful not to use his power. You took a deep breath, nodding. “There is one thing.” “Yea?” Tae looked surprised. “Mmhmm. I’m pregnant.” They all froze. “Which actually explains a lot, like why I’m so weepy when I’m stressed, smell aversion, why I’ve been so tired—I mean, the past few retrieval missions have been way more exhausting than usual—and, the piece de resistance, the nausea.” You rubbed your temple. “Stress tends to aggravate the symptoms.” “Are you kidding?” Hobi asked. “Because if you are, it’s not funny.” “The test is on the counter in the bathroom. And it really isn’t funny. The timing is crappy and I’m absolutely terrified because I know I can’t fight this time, but I also need to see Jin safe and see all of you together.” Hoseok gently cupped your face and kissed it. “I love you so much, Tinny. It’s going to be okay. We’ll protect you and our baby and…” He choked up and seemed to decide that kissing you was the only option he had. The others were still too stunned or conflicted to react, all gathered around the positive test. “Okay. It’s going to be okay. We have a plan. Her and Tae in the safe-house, while we fight….” “Namjoon, first we need to go to the Conservatory. Then after I’m assured you’re all okay, I’ll stand as far from the fighting as possible. We need to pack up and move on, though.” You eased a crutch under Jimin’s arm. “Jungkook, help Jimin. Hoseok, help Namjoon. I’m going to change. Tae, can you check us out of the hotel?” He nodded, gathering the room keys while Yoongi made sure you had everything. You switched to your signature fighting suit, making sure Yoongi hid it from people before exiting the hotel. Jimin was sitting across Hoseok, Jungkook, and Namjoon in the very back seat. You chewed your lip, trying to figure out how Yoongi and Tae would fit into the small car. It was another reason you had wanted to trade in that vehicle for one that was more spacious, but all of you had thought that having one car that got good gas mileage was a good idea. So, of course, the vehicle you used when trips didn’t take you out of the country or a few days drive away was the stupid sedan. For a second you were almost glad that all seven of them weren’t there, then your anger toward the Conservatory and the Oasis Initiative roared up. Yoongi gently moved Jimin so that he was only on Jungkook and Namjoon, climbing onto Hoseok’s lap. Tae got into the front passenger seat as you started the car up, out of breath and slightly annoyed. “Lady wouldn’t shut up. But we almost have enough points for a free night in one of the hotel branches.” “Wonderful. Seatbelt.” “Huh? Oh.” You whipped out of the parking space, humming no particular tune as you tried to think of what may lie ahead. You were glad you had canceled your job for today with an excuse of getting strep throat. You slammed on the brakes, ignoring the protesting squeaks and grunts from behind you. “Forcefield.” The weapon was leveled at the car and you grasped at the shift. “Forcefield,” You squeaked again. Jungkook finally understood, thankfully, but the car still moved with the explosion. You slammed on the gas, heading straight at the jerk trying to kill you and almost all of the people you care about before the flames and smoke dissipated. There was a satisfying thud, and the windshield had a webbing of cracks in it from him rolling over the car. “Damn, Tinny,” Hoseok muttered. “Glad we didn’t leave any later. You okay?” “Just glad the airbags didn’t go off. Joon, a little warning would have been nice. “I was just about to warn you when you hit the brakes. We’re still in trouble.” “Take a left,” Yoongi instructed. You did as told, pulling the map from the console. “Tae, find the nearest hot pink mark on there. It’ll be our transport point.” “Right,” He started searching. “Phones off, batteries out?” Yoongi asked. “We better,” You agreed. Tae tossed your purse back to them, causing Jimin to hiss in pain, then he made a triumphant sound. “Got it.” “Good.” You moved your seat back. “Switch me. 3, 2, 1.” Taehyung transported both of you into each other’s seat and hit the gas. You started mentally sifting through storage to find both the object you would use as leverage against the Conservatory, and the object you would use as a peace offering, if need be. “Chim, how you feeling?” “Carsick,” He grumbled. “Don’t worry, we’re almost there,” Tae replied, taking a right turn. “Joon?” “I don’t sense any danger right now. Yoongi?” “I think we lost them. I don’t think they expected their first plan to fail.” “Then we need to drive under the radar. Yoongi, hide us.” “Baby, you okay?” Hoseok asked, sounding concerned at your distracted voice. “Looking for something,” You murmured. “Got it. Remember, when we get there you have to let me do the talking. They will target every weakness, so don’t give them any more than we already have. And for now, don’t say a word about me being pregnant. Act as if the walls have ears unless I tell you otherwise, because they very well might. And whatever happens, don’t go into section 36. If they try to take you there, you fight for all you’re worth because fighting them is much easier than fighting what waits there.” “Should I shift?” “I think so. Something small. We’ll need Kook to help Joon.” Tae drove into a surprisingly rural area, pulling onto a dirt road. “We should ditch the car.” “We need to burn it,” Namjoon said. “Stop here, then. Everyone out. We’ll walk the rest of the way to the transport point.” You unbuckled and got ready to take Jimin “Yoongi, can you report it stolen?” You asked, getting out of the car, but holding onto the door as another wave of nausea washed over you. “Yeah, give me a minute.” Hoseok handed you Jimin once you nodded that you were okay. Yoongi finished the call. The boys went through the car, pulling out everything even slightly useful and shoving it into a duffel bag that Hoseok slung over his shoulders. They left in the papers that one would normally find in the car, and an umbrella, for authenticity, along with the car keys minus a few of your special keys. “So, how bad is this really going to be?” Yoongi asked in a low tone while Tae, Hobi and Jungkook worked to set fire to your car. “Well, first we have to hope that they don’t just shoot us on sight.” “Oh.” “It’s not likely, but they may be easily startled. Hence me doing the talking.” “Right. So it’s for everyone’s safety.” “Exactly. Plus I want Jungkook to have us in a forcefield, if you’re okay to do that?” You looked to him. Jungkook nodded. “That’s easy.” Namjoon came over from the tree he had been leaning against, limping slightly. “You said your friend, the light priestess, was sending one of her people to confirm things?” You nodded, mind worrying over who the man could be and what kids might be in trouble. “Once we get into the conservatory I may have Taehyung and Yoongi head to the children’s homes where we’ve identified supers and pull them. Take them somewhere safe.” “Such as?” “Maybe the Temple. I’m not sure right now.” You felt like you were forgetting something important, but couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Maybe something in the archives that could help? Or maybe it was something you had been taught about the Oasis Initiative? Jungkook ducked under Joon’s arm, supporting him so that he didn’t put weight on his injured knee. Yoongi led the way down the road after Taehyung showed him the map, more than likely checking all around to make sure no one was watching. You kissed the top of Jimin’s head, stroking his fur with your nose. “You okay, Jimin-ah?” He meowed and rubbed his face into your arm. You took that as a yes, because even if he wasn’t there wasn’t anything you could do for him. “Is that it?” Taehyung asked, pointing ahead. You nodded. You all gathered around it, and Jungkook prepared to put a forcefield around all of you. Then you all entered the portal as one. Jungkook put the forcefield up. “State your business!” A guard from the Conservatory had a weapon leveled at you. “My name is Nightingale, and you have something of ours. I request an audience with the dean,” You said in a sing-song manner that would hopefully make them less trigger-happy. “And why should we believe that?” “Because I bet Siphon hasn’t exactly been cooperative and he will once I talk to him. Also, I have something she might be interested in.” He consulted with the other guard by his side. “Fine, but one wrong move and we shoot all of you!” “Sounds fair,” You replied, knowing that they wouldn’t get very far if they tried. “Lower your weapons.” They did so reluctantly. You nodded slightly and strode purposefully behind the guards. The sight of the building only made you want to run away, but the promise of seeing Jin again was pressing at your heart and forcing you forward. He was so very close now.

~~~~~

Part 3.   Part 5.

Masterlist.  ~  Series Masterpost.  

[harveyali0517-blog]

Privacy policy and technical support

Privacy policy and technical support

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[joycelittlejohn-blog]

Convert CDA Files To MP3 Or WAV?

The Any Audio Converter can be a classy CDA to MP3 Converter, which reads audio tracks out of your CDs and permits you to save them to your laptop computer in a variety of digital codecs including WMA, MP3, Ogg, Wav, or FLAC audio files, serving to you trade CDA recordsdata from a CD to MP3 format successfully. It is vital for audio converter software to work rapidly and effectively in addition to to have all kinds of file format options, including lossy and lossless formats. Every music streaming service has a preferred format for streaming and archiving music - sadly, not every service uses the identical format. WAV is an appropriate lossless format for most services. However, depending on the service, that file might be converted and compressed to a different format. MP3 recordsdata might be uploaded to all the popular streaming providers, however there is not any cause to convert a lossless file format, comparable to WAV, to MP3 if you do not have to. The strategy for ripping audio CD on Mac isn't that totally different, because the VLC interface and others do not change much. However, nonetheless to take you thru the method listed below are the steps to comply with on Mac. Step 3 Enter the file vacation spot and name with extension as CD file. Be sure to select the fitting profile on your output file. Select whether you want it asmp3 CD or different format. Audio formats differ, but many units like iPhone, iPad, Android devices only support some specific formats. So we want an audio converter, which will help us eliminate incompatible formats issues. HD Video Converter Manufacturing unit Pro can help all sizzling audio codecs like MP3, WAV, FLAC, ALAC, AAC, AC3, and many others. and rare audio formats like AMR, MPC, Opus, VOC, QCP, and so on. A: It is simple! Just click the CDA to MP3 Converter download button at the page. Clicking this hyperlink will begin the installer to download CDA to MP3 Converter free for Windows. Pokud je vaљe CD audiokniha, mщћete jej pшevйst do formбtu audioknih M4B, kterэ podporuje i iPod a iTunes. Je moћnй spojit vнce souborщ CDA do jednoho souboru, jako je M4B, MP3, WMA atd. I can see the tracks listed on the music CD in WMP's pane and I have a checkmark subsequent to the observe I want to rip and I also have it highlighted. There are also many free MP3 Tagging software titles round that can be used for writing the tag knowledge to saved MP3 information, but you continue to have the same points with tagging as you'll have with ripping in case your supply discs are house-burned compilation CDs. Step 2Hit "Basic" > "Import Settings". Select "MP3 Encoder" from the "Import Utilizing" tab. Click "OK" to apply the settings. Step 3 On the next window, select the output destination of the file and its name. While writing be sure you add the extension of the format to the title. Under settings just remember to have selected the profile mp3 or different preferred audio format to save the tracks on output cd file. Is it potential to convertcda recordsdata towav recordsdata? Powerpoint, Videowave, and Http://Www.Audio-Transcoder.Com/ MovieXone don't acceptcda information, so I needwav recordsdata as a substitute. Do you wanna save Spotify music to native computer or transfer it on your music player as plain MP3 files? But Spotify doesn't have this selection for you, fortunately with Spotify Music Converter , you could possibly make them come true. This Spotify Music Converter is nicely-designed to transform Spotify music to plain MP3 for listening in your music player or other moveable devices. On the progress window of CDA to MP3 Ripper (CDA to MP3 Converter), you possibly can decide what the pc should do after the conversion. The default setting is to Do nothing. Tips and recommendation concerning the net copyright registration of audio recordsdata. We strongly advocate using the downloadable audio converter applications in our comparability, like Swap or Audials Tunebite , to make sure your information aren't in danger. Utilizing a desktop utility utterly removes the concern of data privacy as a result of the file never leaves your computer until you need it to. We downloaded every program we tested and noticed no signs of adware or further malicious software program in the downloaded file.

The generic file naming convention for Audio CD Ripping software program is to only title the tracks one thing like "track1.mp3", or comparable. You would have to verify this to make sure that the ripped file names have been in a format where they would type in a way that you just discovered most useful and where the ripped tracks from one CD did not find yourself with the identical file names as these from the subsequent CDs (obviously in different folders), or else you'd end up with a headache. After deciding on the proper profile, click on on the Browse button and choose your vacation spot folder and the identify of the brand new MP3 file that will probably be created. Step 4Click "Modifications" button, and change the file folder where you need to save the ripped CD monitor. Click on "OK". Notice: Earlier than you rip a CD, ensure you are linked to the Internet as a result of WMP will look up data on the album and observe and add that metadata to the file. When you're utilizing a Mac pc, Leawo Music Recorder for Mac might help you simply convert CDA to MP3 audio on Mac OS 10.6 and later. Step four: Now on the left facet choose the Icon to your Audio CD. Proper click on it and then click on Rip CD to library. It's possible you'll the select the person tracks in case you like. Specify the rip music location, online cda to mp3 choose output format as MP3 and determine the Audio Quality. Spotlight Windows Media Participant in this system list window and click on the "OK" button. Change is the fastest audio converter software we tested. To check the speed of each converter software, we timed how long it took to convert a 625MB WAV file to a 26MB MP3 file. Use Wondershare Video Converter Final to Edit Movies. Click on "Converter Now!" button to begin changing all CDA files to MP3. One of many typically uncared for features of VLC is its capacity to transform media recordsdata. Not solely can it convert just about any audio format, it could possibly also extract audio from video information, which is very handy for transcription work. On this article, we're going to be speaking about how one can convert WAV recordsdata to MP3. Right click on on the file and hit Convert selection to MP3".

[betswap]

BetSwap: Provides efficient, secure and trusted decentralized digital gaming services

With the development of the Internet, digital assets are circulating in a more efficient way. At present, the new generation of information technology is gradually maturing, and the characteristics of blockchain such as decentralization, transparency and credibility, and self-organization have injected new connotations into the Internet of Value. BetSwap has pioneered the use of blockchain technology to build a new value decentralization platform. With a new way of playing to achieve the identity transformation of "user is shareholder", and under the blessing of decentralization brought by blockchain, whether it is product quality, investment income or financial returns, it has been greatly improved, and the advantages of decentralization are fully displayed.

Decentralize to protect user rights and interests

And because the blockchain decentralized wallet manages funds, the wallet private key is only controlled by the user himself, and the platform cannot operate the user's wallet, thereby effectively ensuring the safety of funds. At the same time, users bet, open, pay lottery, business are executed and processed by smart contracts, without human interference, relevant data can not be tampered with, open and checkable, to avoid the emergence of traditional centralized gambling deletion and other situations, effectively protect the rights and interests of users.

Traditional betting fee payments are often delayed or remote, but betSwap asset protection systems distribute earnings instantly through smart contracts, often processing payments within the Ethereum network in less than a minute, giving players more peace of mind and peace of mind.

The risk control model is all-encompassing

Data is the core of big data risk control, and the real value of data can only be reflected in the large scale, multiple dimensions and rapid iteration of data. The data packages used in big data risk control are everywhere.

Faced with structured/semi-structured data from different sources, BETSWAP uses Linkedin's open source camus to collect message data and kettle to collect RMDB data.

The collected raw data is stored in the distributed file system of the Hadoop cluster. In addition, under the premise that the HDFs file system is not very friendly to small files, the historical files are regularly merged, compressed, and archived.

BetSwap asset trading network is the basic platform supporting betSwap decentralized sports betting platform, with Trontron as the storage basis, BetSwap digital identity system as the unique identification, through the DPoS entrusted equity proof consensus mechanism and cross-chain protocol, to build an efficient, concurrent and secure public chain system, carrying digital economy business for multiple industries, multi-projects, frequent transactions, providing digital currency offline rapid payment and hybrid payment solutions.

[thesevenseraphs]

Bungie Weekly Update - 6/21/18

This week at Bungie, we welcome back the Factions.

Everyone is back from E3, and we’re heads down, working hard on Forsaken. Several thousand players already got to play Gambit, and we’re extremely excited for more to play it, both at GuardianCon and when Forsaken releases on September 4.

Meanwhile, the Iron Banner rages on. You have the rest of the week to rank up with Lord Saladin and earn the Season 3 ornaments for your gear. Make sure you turn in everything before the reset on June 26 at 10 a.m., or you will have to wait until the next Iron Banner to claim your rewards. Your tokens and ornament progress will carry over.

What Is Dead Orbit May Never Die

As one event winds down, the next one ramps up. Faction Rallies is starting up again. Dead Orbit dominated the first event of Season 3. We will see if they defend their position at the top, or if New Monarchy or Future War Cult step up to take their spot. Faction Rallies will be available Tuesday, June 26, at 10 a.m. PDT through the following weekly reset. 

In a previous TWAB, we told you that Winner’s Offering weapons would be added to the event reward pool after the first event. That was incorrect for Season 3, which will operate differently than past seasons. During this season, the factions will continue to feature their original Winner’s Offerings for all three events.

If you didn’t make it to Rank 50 with your faction of choice during the first event, you can pick up where you left off by pledging to them again. Or you can opt to start up with new blood, but remember that your pledge is account wide. Choose carefully.

Wear It like Armor

Last month, we did a tuning pass on Exotic armor in Update 1.2.1. We’ve been working on more changes to more gear and wanted to give you a peek at which armor pieces we have plans for next. Here is Sandbox Designer Victor Anderson with the details.

Victor: We’re bringing another set of changes to Exotic armor with Update 1.2.3. As we continue to iterate on Exotic armor, we hope that you will also continue to provide feedback. You’ve heard the goals from the last TWAB, where we introduced the changes, so let’s get right into them. Like the Update 1.2.1 changes, anything written below is in addition to any existing benefits that the Exotic already provides, unless it’s explicitly mentioned otherwise.

Hunter

Lucky Raspberry

Increased chance to fully recharge your Arcbolt Grenade on Arcbolt Grenade hits.

Guarantees a recharge on getting a full chain that hits four targets.

While just about everybody could appreciate the theoretically infinite grenades Lucky Raspberry could generate, its purely random nature made many people shy away from it. With this change, your input will now affect the outcome, so plan your throws accordingly.

St0mp-EE5

Increased benefits when using Strafe Jump and Triple Jump.

The usage rate of St0mp-EE5 in the Crucible was fairly good, but since it mostly affected High Jump, people were somewhat pigeonholed if they wanted to change up their air game, so the other double jump variants were tweaked to have more impact.

Young Ahamkara’s Spine

Removed marking functionality. 

Improved the Tripmine Grenade’s blast radius and throw speed, and made it so your Tripmine Grenades are harder to destroy.

Solar ability hits now grant some Tripmine Grenade energy.

The marking functionality, while useful in some circumstances such as in the Crucible, did not have much merit in PvE, so we removed it to head in a better direction. Now, your Tripmine Grenades are punchier, and you can get access to them faster.

Titan

ACD/0 Feedback Fence

Now grants Fury Conductor stacks on melee hits instead of kills. 

Fury Conductors now grants stacking melee damage resistance.

These changes were mostly aimed at making Fury Conductors better in PvE encounters. While the Feedback Fence could protect you from hordes of Thrall by keeping them staggered, it just wasn’t that much use against something like a Hive Knight wielding a sword. The changes also make this Exotic better in the Crucible, but the solution of just shooting opponents still works.

Doomfang Pauldrons

Void melee kills now grant more Super energy.

Shield Throw hits will now extend the duration of your Super.

Titans have a lot of Exotics that help with punching things. To differentiate this one from the rest of the herd, we’ve increased the impact this Exotic has on your Super and on how you use it.

Dunemarchers

Reduced the time to activate Linear Actuators while you are sprinting to 1.5 seconds (down from 5 seconds). 

Increased the damage of the chain lightning effect (+70% in PvP, 440% in PvE).

While the lightning effect of Dunemarchers was novel, the time needed to start it up and its fairly low impact led to many players simply seeing these as “the sprint pants.” So, we’ve made the lightning much more deadly and frequent.

Warlock

Crown of Tempests

Collapsed the total number of stacks of Conduction Tines to 3 (with the same total effect), and each stack of Conduction Tines lowers the upkeep cost of Stormtrance.

Nezarec’s Sin and this Exotic were quite similar, so we pushed harder on this Exotic for Stormcallers who want to invest heavily in ability use. Warlocks also don’t have many Exotics that modify their Supers, and not receiving the full benefit of Conduction Tines during Stormtrance was a little disheartening, so we added a benefit during the Super’s duration to alleviate that.

Karnstein Armlets

Removed melee hit effects (resilience/mobility/target highlighting). 

Melee kills now instantly heal you, then grant continuous healing for 8 seconds.

In this iteration of Karnstein Armlets, we’ve simplified the Exotic to be about death and healing. Previously, the effect was split between hits and kills, providing inconsistent experiences. While the effect is much more basic now, it should be more reliable and more effective in most situations.

Starfire Protocol

Empowering Rift weapon damage hits now grant Fusion Grenade energy (20%).

Much as with the Lunafaction Boots, we felt like giving a bonus to players who decide to go on the offense with Empowering Rift, rather than playing it safe with Healing Rift.

The Old Gods

There are some relics of a different time still being hosted on our servers. Next week, we're retiring a few legacy services from the Halo era and consolidating others.

Resident Archivist Roger Wolfson will explain what's changing and how it may affect you.

Roger: We're doing some (once a decade) spring cleaning on the halo.bungie.net site. First off, it's time to retire those old, read-only forums. If you have some archived threads bookmarked that you like to revisit for nostalgia purposes, please take some screenshots before we say goodbye to those forums. 

Do you remember Bungie Pro Video? We said back in 2008 that we'd keep your renders available to download for a couple months. Ten years later, we're getting around to cleaning them up, so grab anything you want to keep around in the next week. Finally, the "details" views of old Halo matches will be trimmed down to just the line-item scores; your career pages will still have your overall medals chest, but individual games won't.

These changes go into effect on June 28 at 10 a.m. PDT. If you need to save anything, get it done before then.  

Watchers on the Wall

The Destiny Player Support team keeps watch over the health of the live game. They were quick to respond to a few issues that rose up this week. The full details are in their report below.

Fighting Lion and the Iron Ornament Bundle

Destiny Player Support investigated an issue impacting players who purchased the Iron Ornament Bundle on Tuesday, June 19, in which the included ornament “Lupus Visage” did not properly unlock on Fighting Lion after it was activated. 

We have identified all impacted accounts, and this issue will be resolved for all affected players in an upcoming hotfix. To prevent further impact until a hotfix is deployed, this bundle has been pulled from the Eververse Trading Co. storefront. 

In the meantime, players who have successfully equipped this ornament will not be impacted as long as they do not unequip the ornament or dismantle the specific Fighting Lion that the ornament has been applied to.

For players who encounter this issue before the hotfix is released, here’s what you should expect when this hotfix is available:

The Lupus Visage ornament will already be unlocked, and you can find it by directly inspecting Fighting Lion from your vault, collection, or character inventory.

For affected players who do not yet own Fighting Lion, the Lupus Visage ornament will not appear in your modifications inventory, postmaster, or vault. It will appear when previewing Fighting Lion once it has been obtained in game.

As with all Exotic weapon ornaments, once owned, it can be applied and removed on the Fighting Lion freely without cost to materials or currency.

Battle.net Maintenance for European Players

On June 20, between 02:00 CEST and 07:00 CEST, our partners at Blizzard Europe conducted scheduled global authentication maintenance. During this maintenance, European players were unable to login to Destiny 2 on Battle.net. For notices regarding scheduled maintenances before they occur, players should follow @BungieHelpon Twitter or monitor our support feed on help.Bungie.net. For issues related to Blizzard services, players should reach out to Blizzard Support.

[miniwank-blog]

Egretia - Amazing Concept For Future

Creating an Ecosystem With True Token Circulation Content

 What is HTML 5?

 BlockChain Industry

 What is Egretia

 Vision of Egretia

 HTML5 Egretia BlockChain Engine & Platform

Reasons Why you should invest on Egretia

 Team

 RoadMap

                                                      vision:

 “Bring 200,000 Developers and 1 Billion HTML5 Devices to The Blockchain World.”

                                            What Is HTML5?

HTML5 is a markup dialect utilized for organizing and displaying content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and current real form of the HTML standard.

HTML5 incorporates definite handling models to support more interoperable usage; it expands, enhances and justifies the markup accessible for records, and presents markup and application programming interfaces (APIs) for complex web applications. For similar reasons, HTML5 is likewise a contender for cross-stage portable applications, since it incorporates highlights outlined in light of low-controlled gadgets.

Top 10 Reasons to Use HTML5 Right Now

1 – It’s the Future, Get With It! 

The number one reason why you ought to begin exploitation HTML5 nowadays is this: it’s the long run, begin exploitation it currently thus you don’t get left behind

2 – Mobile, Mobile, Mobile 

Mobile browsers have totally adopted HTML5 therefore making mobile prepared comes is as straightforward as coming up with and constructing for his or her smaller bitscreen displays — thus the recognition of Responsive style. There ar some nice meta tags that conjointly enable you to optimize for mobile:

3 – Legacy/Cross Browser Support 

Report a bugYour fashionable, in style browsers all support HTML5 (Chrome, Firefox, campaign IE9 and Opera) and also the HTML5 doctype was created so all browsers 

  4 – Game Development

Yup, that's correct, you'll develop games victimisation HTML5’s <canvas> tag. HTML5 provides an excellent, mobile friendly thanks to develop fun, interactive games. If you’ve designed Flash games before, you’ll love building HTML5 games 

  5 – Better Interactions 

Beyond <canvas>, HTML5 likewise accompanies a huge number of incredible APIs that enable you to fabricate a superior client encounter and a beefier, more unique web application

6 – Smarter Storage 

7 – Cleaner Code 

On the off chance that you are enthusiastic about basic, rich, simple to peruse code then HTML5 is the brute for you. HTML5 enables you to compose clear and graphic code, semantic code that enables you to effectively isolate importance from style and substance. Consider this run of the mill and basic header code with route

8 – Doctype 

<!DOCTYPE html>

Correct that is it, that is the doctype, not much, not much. Quite straightforward right? Not any more reordering some long indistinguishable line of code and not any more messy head tags  loaded with doctype qualities. You can just and effectively type it out and be upbeat. 9 – Video and Audio Support 

Disregard Flash Player and other outsider media players, make your recordings and sound genuinely open with the new HTML5 <video> and <audio> tags. Getting your media to play effectively has dependably been basically a bad dream, you needed to utilize the <embed> and <object> labels and dole out a tremendous rundown of parameters just to get the thing unmistakable and working accurately.

10 – Accessibility 

With new semantic tags screen readers can better inspect the HTML archive and make a superior affair for the individuals who utilize them.

                                    What Is BLOCKCHAIN?

By permitting digital data to be distributed however not traced, blockchain technology created the backbone of a brand new form of web. Originally devised for the digital currency, Bitcoin, (Buy Bitcoin) the school community is currently finding alternative potential uses for the technology. Bitcoin has been known as “digital gold,” and for an honest reason. To date, the whole price of the currency is on the brink of $9 billion North American nation. And blockchains will build alternative sorts of digital price. just like the web (or your car), you don’t have to be compelled to savvy the blockchain works to use it. However, having a basic information of this new technology shows why it’s thought-about revolutionary

                                                  What is Egretia

Egretia may be a HTML5 blockchain platform that makes a whole, open, and easy surroundings for internet, Game, and Apps developers. operating with one in every of the world’s leading HTML5 developers, Egret Tech, Egretia intends to bring a secure, fair, secure and low-priced development scheme to the complete community. Developing HTML5 round the world. Egretia features a foremost team of game distributors and applications through the prevailing egret diversion platform with forty million monthly active users, operationalcontent that integrates the token asking system. Egretia to confirm the world circulation of Egreten. Egretia features a well-established advertising platform to advertise games and merchandise supported Egreten with strategic partners equivalent to Facebook and Google.

                                              Vision Of Egretia

World's First HTML5 Blockchain Engine and Platform

In partnership with Egret & the HTML5 business, the Egretia is committed to assembling the world's initial HTML5 blockchain engine and platform, combining blockchain technology with verified tools, communities and content of partners, getting to bring two hundred,000 developers and one billion mobile devices into the blockchain world.

Building a Decentralised HTML5 User Ecosystem

The blockchain of the egretia Network are combined with Egret HTML5 workflows. employing a token mechanism, each player can have a singular ID in games high-powered by the heron Engine. this may build a solid foundation for a stable user scheme

Creating an Ecosystem With True Token Circulation

Based on the user ecosystem of the Egretia Network, there's the aim of shaping a new virtual currency token that may be employed in all content high-powered by the egret Engine: Egreten.

                  HTML5 Egretia BlockChain Engine & Platform

Key Products and Services

           The World's First HTML5 Blockchain Game Development Workflow

The work flow includes fourteen products like the engine itself, associate degree IDE visual editor, animation tools, crossplatform packaging tools. All tools square measure cross-platform and support each Windows and macintosh.

                The World's Largest HTML5 Blockchain Platform: Egretia

The platform of the Egretia Network includes a development work flow supported blockchain technology, four core product associated an apparatus, providing comprehensive blockchain solutions and services for players, content suppliers, channels and advertisers, providing creation of associate inter-connected ecosystem.

Benefits

Egretia Incubator 

Egretia Ad Platforms 

Virtual Goods Trading Platform 

Game Distribution Platform 

Distributed Communications and Storage Platform 

Blockchain Game Dev Workflow

Features of the Egretia Network

                                  Self Developed public chain

The Egretia Network can embody a self-developed, economical public chain supported the DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) agreement mechanism, geared toward optimising HTML5 game performance. Through the blockchain interface layer, together with the Egret engine tools, developers will quickly produce blockchain-based DApps.

                                      Consensus Mechanisms

The public chain of the Egretia Network are going to be employing a DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) as consensus mechanism. The DPoS mechanism is analogous to a board vote, wherever holders of coins solid a certain variety of nodes, victimisation the mechanism for verification and accounting

                                           High Performance

The public chain of the Egretia Network may be a public chain with high synchronic processing power, wherever performance is optimised for the wants of the sport industry. it's designed to own a quick TPS (Transaction Per Second) rate. Nonetheless, in blockchain technology, Associate in Nursing "impossible triangle" exists, which means that scalability, decentralisation, and security can't be achieved at constant time

                                   Real time parameter adjustment

The Egretia Network will modify system parameters while not bifurcation: Instead, the Egretia Network are going to be ready to amendment blocktime, blocksize, transaction fee etc. via voting.

                          Convenient and efficient Development suit

The evidenced tools of egret lays a solid foundation for the blockchain project of the Egretia Network, creating blockchain application development easy, convenient and efficient.

                        Reasons why you must invest in Egretia

- Egretia is that the world’s 1st HTML5 blockchain platform and repair platform, leading forever to form market direction and direction in any industry, therefore i believeheronia can integrating the blockchain technology into Egret Technologies mature HTML5 development workflow are going to be a brand new explosion. -Egretia owns a proficient team, a in project. investigate the event team, Egretia Blockchain workplace with core members from Qualcomm, Adobe, Microsoft, etc., as well. Blockchain consultants to mix blockchain technology with the highest engineers of the HTML5 technology platform can certainly bring success once launching the project. - owning an oversized, reliable partner, heronia is currently partnering with Egret technical school to integrate and access the prevailing community of over two hundred,000 programmers and partners. adore Microsoft, Tencent and seventy fifth of the HTML5 game market. China.                                                          

                                                         Team

                                                       Advisors

                                     Road Map & Milestone

More Information

Website: http://egretia.io/

Whitepaper: http://egretia.io/static/Egretia_White_Paper_V1.0.pdf

Reddit Page: https://www.reddit.com/r/Egretia

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/egretia_io/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Egretia_io

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Egretia/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Egretia.io/

Medium: https://medium.com/Egretia

Author: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1583686