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paradoxumfilum · 5 years ago

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Old partners and new bounties

Inspired by prompt 1194 by @daily-prompts

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“What are you doing here?”

“You asked me to come”

“That was a long time ago”

“Well, I’m here now. Just like old times,” I said with a smile, “I still want to help, and you wouldn’t have asked me here if you didn’t need my help.”

“Ok, I guess I still need you. It has been six months you know, and you didn’t even give me a reply to the message I sent you. So things may have... changed a little”

A small look of annoyance came over Ellie's face, it was clear she had wanted me to at least have given her a reply to the message she sent rather just showing up unannounced.

“What would have been a relatively simple bounty between the two of us has developed,” she continued, “Klark has retreated into the local asteroid field of this sector using it as cover to prey of the freighters that pass by between here and Xylon-22b. He is being harboured by his old gang who won’t hesitate to come to his defence when we go in there.”

“So, whats the plan then?”

“I was thinking to join the crew of the Eagle again, they know how we work and so shouldn’t be too difficult to convince. Plus they picked up a contract with the refineries on Xylon a month or two ago so will be heading that way anyway, we can ask them to disable one of their defence turrets to make them an easier target.”

“Sounds good, when do we leave?”

***

It took little convincing for the crew of the Eagle to allow us to join their crew for this bounty. We had worked together in the past and had complemented each other very well.

“How are my two favourite humans!” Greeted Zerg as we walked onto the ship, Zerg was the captain of the Eagle and was a Tauk. The Tauk are a six armed, bipeadal race with a short tail, they often are found working on freighters as Zerg does.

“We’re doing well Zerg! How has business been?” I called as we walked up the ramp into the cargo bay.

“Good, good, this new contract is very promising. I am assuming we have our usual deal?”

“Yes, of course. You and your crew will be getting a 30% cut of any bountys, hopefully this should be profitable for you as some of the gang members have outstanding bounties as well.” Ellie said.

“Fantastic, fantastic, glad to see you two are still together. You seemed to be arguing alot the last time we worked together.”

Me and Ellie shared a look, “Well... we aren’t really working together any more, this is more of a one time thing.” Ellie started, “Things weren’t working out so we parted ways, this is just a challenging case thats all.”

A look of surprise crossed Zargs face, “Oh, I do apologise, I hadn’t realised. Come into the galley and get yourselves a drink, we shall have a little catch up once I’ve helped with the undocking.”

***

The next morning the whole ship was on edge as we approached the asteroid fields, everyone knew that we were a suitable target. The only question was when would the ship be attacked.

The previous evening I had stripped and reoiled my rifle, a ritual I settled into with vigour. My rifle was old, battered and clunky, but she worked and had enormous stopping power. It was one of the few rifles around that still used kinetic rounds rather than energy pulses which made it much more suitable to bounty hunting where having to worry about the energy core didn’t matter. I had one made the mistake of stripping my rifle the same day we guessed we were going to be attacked, and it stayed in its disassembled state the whole day as we were attacked whilst I was still cleaning it. Not a mistake I made again.

Strolling onto the bridge I cocked the rifle, finding satisfaction at the sound of a round being chambered.

“You still use that clunky old thing? Not heard of modern weapons James?” Ellie jibed, gesturing to her sleek blaster that was slung across her back.

“Of course, Shelly is still reliable as ever” I said with a chuckle as Ellie shook her head remembering what I had named my rifle. “Any sign of Klark yet?”

“Nothing yet, the scanners still show no movement from the asteroid field” Said Zarg.

“Sounds like its time to play my favourite game then! The waiting game.” I said, taking a seat in one of the chairs on the bridge.

***

A few hours later the console started beeping, indicating that it had detected movement from the asteroid field.

“Alright, looks like its go time. Off to the bolt hole we go.” I said, rising out of the chair. “See you shortly Zarg” I called over my shoulder as me and Ellie walked out of the bridge.

The bolt hole was in fact a small space behind one of the wall panels near the airlock, there was just enough space for me and Ellie to squeeze into. The plan was generally to hide in the bolt hole until the pirate ship had docked and their docking party disembarked allowing for whoever was hiding to slip onto the docked ship whilst everyone was distracted. A short bit of shooting later and the pirates found themselves on a one way trip to prison, if all went to plan.

It was this short bit of waiting that was the worst part, being in a small dark space hearing only your own breathing and the clunking of ships docking together. It seemed to take forever and being in such a space with Ellie there too and our situation made it particularly uncomfortable. But eventually the sound of the airlock door opening was heard.

The muffled voices of the pirates drifted through the panel as they made their way onto the ship, they were shortly followed by the sounds of resistance by the crew as they were rounded up by the roaming pirates. It was time, slowly opening the panel we slipped out into the corridor. With adrenaline rushing every movement seemed to echo down the corridor into the pirate ship.

“Same as usual?” I whispered to Ellie, with a quick nod of confirmation I headed into the bowels of the docked ship as Ellie turned to head back into the Eagle to provide the docking party with an unwelcome surprise. Walking between the two ships I hit the emergency undocking button feeling the airlock doors slam shut behind me, now it was just me and a ship of pirates.

As the inner door of the airlock opened up I bought my rifle to my shoulder ready for whatever the door revealed. The thumping of people running towards the airlock was the only warning I had before a trio of pirate rounded the corner in front of me, the cacophony of blasters and rifle fire filled the room as the two groups opened fire. Diving to the console that controlled the airlock I took cover as the three pirates retreated around the corner, poking my rifle above the console I waited for an appendage to reveal itself. Without a conscious thought my finger pulled on the trigger as my mind registered that something revealed itself from around the corner, as whoever it was retreated back I kept up my fire and pressed toward the corner letting the sound of the rifle cover my movement.

With a shout I rounded the corner quickly firing off half a dozen shots into the three pirates, with shouts of pain they fell to the floor. Pausing I kicked away their weapons before pulling out their energy cores. Turning back to the three pirates, all three of them were Gucae. A silicone based race they looked very similar to Cuttlefish, they walked upright on their tentacles and were able to change their pigmentation to reflect their mood. Happy that these three Gucae were not in a condition to continue fighting I continued heading deeper into the ship.

Heading in the general direction of the bridge there was a flash of movement as a door closed ahead of me, I reached across to take hold of a stun grenade hanging from my webbing. Pulling the pin I hold the spoon down as I walk the few paces to the door. Reaching out I hit the button for the door, as soon as there is enough of a gap i throw through the grenade turning aside as I await the blast. Hearing the krump of the grenade I charge into the room firing at the stunned pirates inside. I had found the bridge, but the grenade hadn’t managed to catch all the pirates in the room as a flurry of hasty shots whizzed past.

Quickly diving to the floor I crawled behind a chair listening for any movement giving away anyones position. Hearing the creak of a chair behind me I leapt aside. An energy round smacked into the space I just was, leaving a scorch mark of the back of the chair I had taken cover behind. Levelling Shelly I let off a burst of shots in the direction of the shot, the bark of the rifle filling the room in stark contrast to the whine of the blasters.

“This would be a lot easier if you just gave yourself up” I called out, “much less pain for you as well”

The wet cackle of a Gucae came from the other side of the room. “Oh you silly human, who do you think that you are facing? I am Klark of the Ethereal Abyss, fear me!”

“I know exactly who I am facing, and it is me you should be fearing. Not the other way around.”

Spinning the chair I was behind around I raised myself up to kneeling position, resting my rifle on the arm of the chair. Dropping my hand down to my left leg I felt for my knife, pulling it from its sheath I reached forward and placed it over the muzzle of the rifle. Feeling it click into place I said “Last chance” hearing no reply I lifted myself into a crouched position. “So be it”

With a surge of movement I leapt forward, vaulting over the console. A battle cry coming from my lips I charged forward using the few seconds of surprise to rush the figure of Klark leading with my bayonet. A grin comes over the face of the Gucae confident in his close combat abilities, as who in their right mind would rush a Gucae.

Lifting up four of his tentacles I stabbed forward managing to nick one of them. Klark responded by jabbing forward with two of his tentacles from opposing sides, I quickly ducked underneath them. As I stood back up I took a pace forward attempting to shoulder barge Klark, he pushed back as I swung the butt of the rifle around smashing it into his body. With a grunt he shoved me off, two more tentacles shot out. One hitting me in my shoulder causing me to stumble back, the other I batted away with the rifle.

Planting my feet I thrust forward with the rifle, instinctively Klark put up two tentacles to stop the thrust. The blade cut through them with ease severing the limbs from the Gucae. Klarks body flushed a deep blue with pain before he responded with a flurry of blows that I was barely able to block. He slowly pushing me back. I swung with the rifle, firing off a few shots as I did so. As Klark flinched from the sound I flipped the rifle over catching the barrel with two hand, grimacing as the heat burned my hands. Swinging low I knocked the tentacles out from beneath him. Reversing direction I swung the rifle back down to hit Klark in the body before sliding my hand up the rifle to hold it properly once more. As Klark scrambled to push himself back up I gave a savage thrust downward.

A piercing shriek filled the room as the blade pinned Klark against the floor. “Do you yield? It would be such a shame to have to kill you” I growled. Klark cowered beneath my gaze as I gave the rifle a twist, blood starting to pool on the floor.

“I yield” He said meekly.

Releasing my grip on the rifle I walked across to the console, opening a comms channel to the Eagle.

“I’m all done here, permission to come alongside”

#space pirate #creative writing #writing prompts #scifi story #humans are terrifying #humans are space orcs #daily writing prompt #prompt 1194 #Story Shorts #short story #bounty hunter

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official-alan-dabiri · 5 years ago

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First and foremost, Falstad and Artanis have been slightly underperforming, especially in autoattack-focused builds. Not because they’re not being picked, but because those builds suck. As such, we’re buffing the generic talent Seasoned Marksman. This way, we can buff these two underperforming builds without actually putting either of their names on the patch notes. Checkmate, Flavor of the Month players.

Q build Arthas has been terrible for a long time, outside of extremely specific circumstances. Despite this, we need it to be worse. The level 4 talent Deathlord now no longer increases the range of Death Coil. Instead, it refunds mana when used on an enemy hero, but honestly, the only time Q build was good was against hypermobile ranged assassins, and the range was propping that edge case up.

Charge Build Diablo sucks. It still will after this patch, but slightly less. It’s a shame, since this is clearly supposed to be the meta build over Flame Stomp. But it’s too hard to buff the post-charge move speed duration, so we’re just gonna let it stay trash.

Leoric was only the smallest buff away from being a strong solo lane hero in the current meta, instead of a strong situational pick into a good match-up. So we gave him an unspeakably enormous buff. Literally huge. We’ll see what happens!

Sometimes, power creep leaves heroes behind. Sonya, a once-dominant force in the offlane and in teamfights, has been severely outpaced by tanky solo laners who can endure their damage, and diving solo laners who can one-up her blowup potential in teamfights. So we decided to give her some buffs. Including one that is, as the kids say, nice.

With another dragon entering the nexus soon, Alexstrasza needs some buffs so that... Um... Maximum dragon. We’re also adjusting Brightwing for the same reason. More dragons. Chromie? Why? Chromie’s a gnome, right?

We ran into a hero fantasy issue with Rehgar. With his level 4 Feral Heart talent, players had incentive to stay towards the back of the teamfight to safely regenerate mana. You know. Like a healer. With the new adjustment, he’s going to feel a lot more like a melee dive assassin. Which he is supposed to, as the healer you pick when you didn’t want to be a healer, but your team made you do it.

Tyrande has remained very powerful for a while, but, due to difficulty to play - and definitely not other reasons - she is not seeing as much play. So we’re buffing her talents like across the board. And not doing anything about the dominance of Johanna. Because that’s what Tyrande needed, talent adjustments.

After our very successful rework of Whitemane. And the balance adjustment that was not another rework that brought her back in line, she is in a very good place. As such, we are making very minor adjustments. Including a 2 second CD adjustment baseline, and a ton of straight buffs to talents across the board. Very minor adjustments to a hero that was just fine after the rework. Absolutely fine. Did not need another rework and a huge suite of buffs. Including a 30 second CD reduction on her heroic. JUST FINE. THE REWORK WAS GREAT.

So that the terran and zerg can understand, the Highlord has prepared a simplified statement about the next change: Alarak too strong. Alarak made less strong. Still good though. Complain less please. Protoss very balanced.

Genji has fallen out of the meta a little bit, since the people playing him don’t want to suffer consequences for their terrible life choices that led to them being Genji players. In order to tempt people to the dark side, we’re giving Genji some small buffs. Embrace the anime bullshit. Do it.

We realized - just now, because nobody knew this - that Junkrat is overpowered. Nobody knew this. This is entirely new information. Luckily, we caught this now, and have made some minor adjustments to bring him more in line.

Kel’Thuzad. Talent diversity. That’s it. That’s the change.

Nazeebo and Zagara have basically vanished from most levels of play. Earlier reworks and talent adjustments made them much more difficult for less payoff than easier heroes. As such, we’re giving them some small, very small- what? Not small? Okay, okay. We’re giving them some modest- What? Not- 20% spellpower and 30% attack damage? Does that stack with their other- it does? And- and what? Well. Say hello to your new SL nightmare splitpush gods.

#Heroes of the Storm #Patch Notes #We also adjusted Lunara's damage scaling #because her scaling niche deserved to be totally destroyed #Especially with Nazeebo becoming scary again #There's only room for one late game DOT nightmare hero

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razieltwelve · 5 years ago

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Terror (Final Effect/Gate AU Snippet)

When not one but two gates into other worlds had opened, the Saderan Empire had been convinced that the gods were on their side. It didn’t take them long to realise how wrong they were. Alnus Hill soon fell to the enemy, but even worse news was to come from the other gate. At least their opponents at Alnus Hill were human. The same could not be said of the beings that came through the other gate.

Not a single soldier had returned from the other gate. All twenty thousand of them had been lost. The empire had mustered a further forty thousand to try to hold the gate. They had died in less than an hour, overrun by a swarm of monstrous creatures that poured out of the gate in numbers beyond counting.

By the end of that first disastrous day, the entire area around the gate was coated in a strange purple slime and pulsing, quivering structures made of flesh were rising up toward the sky. Late that night there was an explosion. The gate itself had been destroyed - something that should have been impossible. Yet from the ruins, the strange creatures constructed a gate of their own, and from it emerged still more of the foul beings.

Within a week the entire province had fallen. The creatures slew any who dared to oppose them, and it wasn’t long before the empire began to notice disturbing similarities between new breeds of the creatures and the war beasts the empire had deployed against them. These… these things were assimilating the war beasts and taking the best characteristics of each to increase their own power.

Worse, the creatures had demonstrated the ability to counter magic. Not all of them could do it, but amongst them were powerful beasts capable of bending reality and unleashing storms of psychic lightning that could slaughter entire formations of troops in a few moments of horror. Soon, the skies and even the seas were full of the creatures, and the empire’s forces were annihilated time and time again.

For centuries, the Saderan Empire had prided itself on the discipline and skill of its troops. But against these creatures that combined brutal and unrelenting fury with unnatural cunning, they found themselves rendered all but helpless. At the forefront of the assault were titanic creatures so large that they could simply trample entire legions beneath their feet. They seemed immune to even the heaviest bombardment, and the great blades they wielded could cleave entire buildings in half with ease. Not even the empire’s mightiest fortresses could resist them, and a single such creature was responsible for levelling a renowned fortress that had stood unchallenged for more than a thousand years.

As the Saderan retreat turned into a complete rout, their fleeing troops were ruthlessly run down by packs of swift, nimble creatures that could cover ground at speeds that put even the fastest horses to shame. Worse, these creatures were even faster on the strange purple slime their fellows constantly spread, making any attempt to ambush the creatures impossible. They would strike with impunity, ripping and tearing into vulnerable groups of soldiers, only to retreat when help arrived. If the soldiers tried to form into larger groups, they would find themselves boxed in by the swifter creatures while stronger, more heavily armoured foes crushed them without mercy.

In less than a month, the Saderan Empire had lost more than half of its territory with military losses placed in excess of two hundred thousand legionnaires and more than double that number of militia and emergency levies. The creatures were tireless and fearless, and each battle only further refined their tactics. Grimly, the Saderans realised that the creatures did not behave as individual soldiers. Instead, they fought as though they were all part of one gigantic organism, every one of them fighting in perfection harmony and unison.

With nothing left to lose, the collapsing empire turned to its other foes for help, to the ‘green men’ who hailed from a country they called Japan. The creatures paused for the first time when they encountered the Japanese. From amongst their number came one of the inhumanly intelligent creatures that served as a leader. It reached out with psychic powers far beyond the understanding of either the Japanese or the Saderans, and the message it sent was simple.

Stay out of our way.

And with the words came visions of a swarm numerous beyond counting and of massive starships that could smash solar systems and turn planets into dust.

The Japanese retreated.

And then creature spoke again, this time to the Saderan Empire.

We are the Imperial Zerg. Surrender or be consumed. You thought to attack one of our colonies. You failed. Surrender or be consumed. Mercy will be offered only once. Resistance is futile. Surrender or be consumed. You have three days to decide. What can you hope to do against us? You are fools, and we are the children of an empire that has conquered universes. Surrender or be consumed.

On the second day, the Saderan Empire offered its unconditional surrender.

X X X

The Dia-Farron frowned. “I think we might have a situation here.”

“Oh?” Her superior raised one eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“You know how we sent that punitive force through the gateway after some dimensional anomaly appeared near one of our Imperial Zerg colonies?”

“Yes…?”

“Well, we wouldn’t normally wait a month before asking for a formal report, but things were going so smoothly after the initial engagement that we decided to let them handle things themselves. We have been meaning to test how capable the new Coordinators are, but I think they might have gone overboard.”

“…” Her superior sighed. “Please tell me they haven’t exterminated the locals. I know they started the fight, but extermination seems a bit extreme considering they inflicted about, what, a hundred casualties before we wiped out their expeditionary force?”

“It was a hundred and five casualties,” the Dia-Farron replied. “And we just got the first formal report back. Have a look.”

The older Dia-Farron read through the report. “Oh… crap.”

“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?”

“You think? They’ve basically conquered most of the world, wiped out just about anything even vaguely resembling a military force in this ‘Saderan Empire’, and they’ve also encountered what appears to be people from an unmapped alternate version of Earth.”

“On the upside, the Coordinators did offer the Saderans a chance to surrender, and they were smart enough to take it. They didn’t just go nuts and wipe out the Japanese either.”

“That would have been awkward considering a decent proportion of the people who live in this sector are descended from Earth. Sure, it’s a different Earth, but I doubt they’d have been happy if they got wiped out.” The older Dia-Farron sighed. “At least we know the Coordinators are capable if a bit aggressive. The tactics and strategies are all sound if not necessarily subtle. But we’re still going to have to explain this.”

“Technically, we were within our rights to launch a counterattack.”

“I know, and by all accounts, the Saderans are a nasty bunch who seem to believe they can pillage, murder, loot, and whatever else they feel like doing without consequences. However, the Imperial Zerg aren’t exactly known for their restraint, especially if we’re not around to keep an eye on them. For crying out loud, they’ve been assimilating mages and using them to create Imperial Zerg who can use magic.”

“In fairness, those variations do seem very handy to have around. Sure, we’ll need to test them and review their genetic sequences more closely, but I’d give them high marks for the modifications. If nothing else it shows that the Imperial Zerg are more than capable of performing genetic alteration without our assistance although it’s far less sophisticated and way more instinctual than it would be if we were involved. It’s a bit blunt too - like trimming a hedge with a bazooka.”

“Yes, we’ve collected a lot of useful data, but we need to think about how we’re going to explain this.” The older Dia-Farron grimaced. “I might have to call in a few favours. Still, the current emperor is a quarter Dia-Farron. We might actually be able to make this work if we can just frame it correctly.”

“Let’s hope so.”

X X X

Author’s Notes

This is a little snippet detailing what might happen if a gate from Gate opened on a world occupied by Imperial Zerg. After annihilating the invading force, the Imperial Zerg were given free reign by the Dia-Farron to execute a counter attack, so they could test the competence of a new form of Imperial Zerg. These coordinators are much like cerebrates in that they function as tacticians and strategists in command of the Imperial Zerg forces. Note that the Coordinators are heavily socialised. Indeed, they are reared in basically the same way as children to ensure their loyalty to the Empire. And much like children, they are eager to prove themselves to their parents, which is what led to the Imperial Zerg getting a bit overenthusiastic against the Saderans.

In practical terms, there was nothing the Saderans could have done. The Imperial Zerg have been genetically enhanced to fight the worst the Grimm can offer, along with nightmares and power-mad species from countless other universes. They have faced technologically advanced species with firepower comparable to the Grand Empire Alliance and proven their worth, and they have faced biological horrors that make even the Tyranids look like cuddly puppies and emerged victorious. A bunch of people in Roman-era armour with a bit of magic aren’t even a speed bump.

Still, the whole campaign is actually extremely important since it provides the Dia-Farron with a data on how the Coordinates behave when unsupervised. They are, in typical Imperial Zerg fashion, prone to aggression toward those they view as enemies, which means it is likely necessary for Coordinators to be supervised by Imperial personnel throughout their campaigns in much the same way that titanolisks are generally personally hand-reared and supervised as well.

You can find me on fanfiction.net, AO3, and Amazon.

#final effect #gate #fanfiction

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ptitdrogo · 6 years ago

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In the mind of a “Top Tier” Protoss player

Hey guys, PtitDrogo here, after reading a really amazing post tournament write up by one of my favorite Magic player ( https://twitter.com/lsv/status/1105124626429079552 , seriously, if you’re even slighty into magic go read this) I felt like it would be kind of cool to write down how the past month went for me in term of strategy preparation for the last few tournaments I played, mainly focusing on wesg and WCS ro8.

You win some you lose some

To set the tone, before wesg I was of two minds about my play, I managed to qualify for the ro8 of WCS after beating Mana and Namshar, but I got seriously owned by Bly and Nerchio at IEM, not taking a single map and going home with 0 dollars.

It’s still honestly a little bit confusing to me, the same confidence in my ability to play a defensive style against mana completely failed against bly, and my faith in my timings that worked great against namshar just got dismantled by nerchio. I could go on longer about this but sometimes you just don’t play well, and I’ve learned that dwelling on it is the worst thing you can do.

All eyes on Spaghetti boy

Looking at the groups of WESG, a top 1 finish in my group would give me a good shot of having a “beatable” opponent in the bracket, and winning that match would mean winning 5k, so it was my objective coming into the event.

The man to beat being obviously reynor, who previously kind of walked on me in the last group stage of wcs, I had a couple of ideas in mind and also discovered some new cool stuff beforehand.

I now knew that he actually really liked hydralisk midgame, and I actually really liked it, what was once the bane of my existense is now a pretty manageable opening in my opinion since the hydralisk got quite a bit weaker, you really don’t have to play scared and can even pressure yourself.

I was practicing some kind of 3 base high eco Chargelot archon pressure and having so-so success with it, I kind of wasn’t sure if I wanted to go for it, but without a better idea that’s what I was gonna go for.

“Wow, he actually does open hydralisk every game”.

There’s a bit of a difference between telling yourself something and seeing it for yourself. After watching Probe vs Reynor It really hit my that reynor was playing hydralisks not only on big maps but on everymap, add to that a tendency to add some zerglings to deny the third, and 15 minutes before the start of my match I’m changing strategy without practicing it.

EDIT: Watching the vod of the Bo3, I actually was completely wrong, lol, I looked at the game at the only time he made some hydralisks, to secure a game already won by a roach nydus, and the other game was just a ling queen nydus, I guess I saw what I wanted to see !

“The Yoloswag build”

It’s honestly such a terrible build, it’s not a particulary strong push, and it relies on your opponent not going roachs and REALLY thinking you’re going for a macro while also being a little bit of a bad player for not using your prism.

This is just an 8 gate that wants to cancel its third base in the first place to being able to afford 8 gateways production in the first place, the idea is you poke with 2 archon, run away from the queen, cancel your third because of the nasty zerglings, and while you pretend to being completely owned you warp more archons and zealot in a corner and you go kill the guy, a classic really, and I knew it would be very effective againt lings into hydras, sometimes last minute change of plans do work, color me surprised.

“Oh no you canceled my third dang it”

“Nothing going on over here”

“The 420 Blazing it DT drop”

This one has kind of a funny backstory to it, I was practicing with a zerg for IEM, and he really wanted me to play DT drop because he thought his opponent would do it for sure.

“Alright, but I really think it’s shit” is what I said.

2 hours later and a LOT of wins later, I had to concede that it was pretty good, to quote my practice partner “your Dts being 7 seconds faster is actually a pretty big problem”.

Sometimes you’re very wrong about what is good. Here’s the thing tho, I didn’t have time to check a vod to do the build, so I went by memory, old memories of 2017 in fact, and the way I remembered it you would have to cut a lot of workers and do a lot of little adjustements to get a very fast DT drop going even if it meant sacrificing some economy.

Turn out not a lot of protosses were doing it. The end result was 4 Dts being warped at 4:23, and most games they would just kill the third hatch. So I was feeling pretty confident it would work.

In my game against reynor I warped my Dts at 4:21.

They killed the third hatch.

I was honestly so confused as to why or how I managed to have a better timing than in the game I was practicing against the ia, but hey I’m not complaining.

Later Reynor told me he didn’t know Dts could come this fast, and the 4:20 DT drop kind of became a meme among players for the rest of the tournament, I haven’t warped exactly 4 Dts at 4:20 yet, but hey maybe next wcs I’ll do it without meaning to !

So I ended up with a very pretty to look at 10-0 score, wasn’t easy of course, Iasonu and Probe were two players I was also scared of but I thought that playing standard was my best bet and indeed it was, also almost lost a game to PsiArc where I was very behind in economy but managed to attack right before his bunker finished, sometime lucky.

There is no way the Germans can cross the Maginot Line

My opponent for the ro16 was Lambo, not a bad draw but not the best, I was confident I could win tho, and the new variation I was trying out in practice were going great, I had a great plan for the best of 5 and a build for every single maps.

All of that preparation came crashing down with a pretty swift 3-0 LOL.

Game 1 was death by 12 pool, Cuz here’s the thing, to get a 4:20 DT drop, you can’t probe scout, little guy needs to work overtime ! I actually was mainly hoping he wouldn’t have the balls to 12 pool game 1 and I was going to scout after core anyway, whats the worse that could happen?

Game 2 was a very good game until it all came crashing down, I actually very like this double stalker opening poke, I was practicing against a zerg and made 2 stalkers by mistake on this map, and the overlord that usually always manage to run away died this time, and the very confusing double stalker oracle move out forced quite a lot of lings. So I decided to run with it in the tournament

When I was trying to explain it to the other protoss as a “great opening that looks very confusing to the zerg but doesn’t actually do anything” they were unconvinced; Haters; when it becomes the norm in 2020 don’t forget about me.

In the actual game the 2 stalkers squad worked great, I actually even killed an overlord at his base ahahah. I was in a VERY strong position in the midgame, and thought there was no way I could lose.

Well, nydus happened, no warpin available, no recall, an awkward attempt at a basetrade and a very long death animation trying to rebuild my templar tech to spend my gas bank later, It’s 2-0.

“Money in the bank pimping ain’t easy”

Game 3 was just a standart 2 base nydus that if I was a few second faster to recall my oracle or if I wasn’t supply blocked on 53/54 to then warp one more stalker I would have won, oh well, sometime it’s just not going your way.

“The correct play here is to go alt tab and go complain on Bnet forums”

It was obviously very annoying to lose one step short of making 5k, but there was a silver lining to losing to hard and so quickly to cheese.

All of my preparation could still be used for WCS.

An FFA would pretty much have been the same right ?

The big Round robin was here, and good god is it spooky. All of the players there are good and even if 6 players out 8 makes it it is very very scary.

My goal coming into the group was to barely make it, “maybe 2 wins is enough to squeeze in” is what I thought.

The first thing that is interesting to note is that I got pretty lucky in the order of my matchs, my 4 first matchs were all PvZ, then on day 2 I got the two PvP and the PvT.

That made practice fairly easy and nobody was able to prepare for me for day 2 as I didn’t have any of the same match-ups.

“You lose some…

Against Serral, I had a pretty good first game to be honest, even tho I didn’t do flashy damage with the DT drop I still kept the pressure with the archons and was in what I thought a pretty good situation with the army I wanted.

Here’s the thing tho, Serral is annoying, like VERY annoying with his mutalisks, so before moving out for a strong attack I overmade defensive structures by quite a bit (3 canons in natural mineral line lololol) because I felt like I could afford it. So when I pushed, as you might expect it, broodlords were already out, and even if it might not be a well known fact in the community yet, Lategame PvZ is pretty unwinnable, at least against serral, gg.

Game 2 was just an embarrassing game of me messing up my build order and losing my prism to 6 queens to then die to mutalisks and roachs. Not the most interesting of games and the kind of showing you really don’t wanna produce but it sadly happens too many times.

“Queens defend everything reeeeeee”

Against Reynor I’m actually blaming the first game loss directly onto serral. I actually very efficiently dealt with the mutalisks while teching to storm extremely fast (more on that later) and was in a very decent position. But I subconsciously felt like I needed to attack much faster than I actually had to because of the previous game (Check the Hive Drogo !! Scouting is allowed reeee) And just made the game extremely easy to play for reynor with a reckless attack.

The second game was just a meme, another case of 12 pool, but this time even tho I scout it very late I pull all of my probes and take a very efficient fight against the zerglings, and at this exact moment I am in a very good position.

The correct play was to make a stargate in the wall and just move out with the adept and leave the zealot home.

I didn’t finish the wall and moved out with 2 units, Reynor did a runby with some more lings and I had to go home.

I then proceed to not finish the wall and moved out with 3 units, Reynor did a runby with some more lings and I had to go home.

I then proceed to move out with 2 adepts leaving 2 at home, Reynor did a runby with some more lings and I had to recall home

I then proceed to try to finish the wall but Reynor did a runby with a LOT of zerglings and I had to gg back to the lobby.

This is the kind of game where you just feel very stupid, I like to call these games failing an IQ test, because thats what they truly are.

… You win some”

This is where I finally get the talk strategy, because there’s kind of of prerequisite to win games to be able to brag about how great of a strategical mastermind you are.

“The triple triple”

After all the hype about the 420 DT drop, the first thing I obviously was looking for was a build that would look like a DT drop, but was actually a complete blind counter to the usual DT drop response from most zergs.

Thus came to life the triple triple, 3 gate, 3 oracles, warp twice (not 3 times rip symmetry ) and then you just go for it. The gas timing is very similar, only one adept and stalker are produced by the gateway, you have a proxy pylon from your main that can directly warp low ground so that the overlord at the natural cant see it, and the one adept boy can walk around to deny lonely lings from getting vision. All of that for an explosive cocktail that will kill a zerg making roachs expecting Dts, not having enough spores or queens to handle the triple triple squad.

Also, I’ve come to realize in practice that it’s not even that bad of a build in the first place even if scouted really early for some reason.

“Sometimes it kills 10+ workers”

“Sometimes a lot more”

This amazing innovation of the PvZ metagame that I’m sure will be a staple in the metagame (it won’t) allowed me to take a map off Lambo and Elazer, for the other map I had to resort to the amazing build that comes next.

“This is totally an archon drop I swear you better make roachs”

I really don’t know how to call this, You just go for the normal archon drop build except you mine more mineral and make an early forge, then take a third slightly faster than an archon drop timing and just make 4 templars super early so they can bank energy so you can do a +2 push with 8 storms extremely fast. While you’re doing the build you run around with your first few units to deny vision so the zerg gets scared and think he might have missed the prism.

Oh, and you also make a LOT of probes, I’m talking non stop, enough probes to fully saturate the third when its done.

“But Drogo, wouldn’t it be strictly better to just go storm drop? Zerg would actually see a prism and be scared and you would also do economic damage even if they make roachs !!”

And to that I say, I like to keep it simple ok, maybe next year when I actually get good at the game.

Anyway, This build actually gives you a pretty powerful set-up in the midgame, I used it to kill the Hydra bane of Lambo and succesfully defend the nydus onslaught of Elazer (I didn’t strictly do this against elazer actually, I was pretty scared of a spooky all-in), which is usually not possible unless you were a greedy boy in the early game. So all of that gave me 2 points on the board.

“4 templars just chilling at home, Safe working conditions are too rare in the Starcraft universe”

When the Zerg is away the Toss will play.

For the second day I had 2 PvP, a PvT, and a lot of times on my end to prepare. So I did, I watched a ton of rail footage, and observed that he wasn’t afraid to play his ladder builds in tournament, so I was feeling fairly confident I could just win by having stronger build orders.

Little did I know this would be the hardest series of the tournament by far.

The first game felt like a walk in the park at first, you’re going 3 phoenix against fast expand forge first? There is no way in hell I am losing this. I played it a little bit safer than I could have but I was very confident in my ability to hold his 2 base push.

Turn out, I was wrong, very wrong, Rail just made a bigger army and kept warping in, and eventually our armies got to a size where his two untouched immortal he had over me actually packed quite the punch and our upgrades were equal. So even with a third nexus mining for a while, I’m losing the game.

The second game I was sure of what he was going to do, some adepts with an expand and robo follow up, so my plan was pretty much to play with a lot of gates units and go Stargate to have good control of the game, simple plan, but effective.

The issue is, I forgot to prevent him from pylon blocking my wall, then I didn’t realise he let his pylon finish, I built my Stargate in vision of his pylon …

So yea I canceled that real fast and improvised a blink opening, a build I haven’t practiced in a really really long time, without any possibility of scouting, turned out I didn’t need to, since verdi went for his robo opening into constant presure with adepts sentry immortals, with me sitting and pure useless stalkers, down 1-0 and 30 supply, disruptor knocking at my front door, I didn’t like my odds one bit.

Oh well, sometime lucky.

I’m sure the third game will be much smoother.

Oh no (not pictured here, 3 sentries also died)

This has to be a record for the most amounts of units lost to the 2 initial adepts in a professional game

There’s almost something peaceful about being so far behind, you can just try out wacky stuff and see if it works.

Which is somehow did, after two pretty successful adept and a basetrade clearly going in my favor, I brought back an impossible game and was very happy with myself.

If you’re wondering how on earth I managed to get surprised by 2 adepts, all I can say is that I was way too confident in my preparation, as I was so sure that he was going for his safe expand double probe scout strat, I didn’t have adepts on my mind until the last 3 seconds.

Overall I would say that my preparation for this serie was very bad, even tho I spent the most time on it, even if you can tell yourself beforehand to not mindgame yourself by thinking too hard, it can still very much happen.

So after that emotional roller coaster of a series, it was time to play a PvT against big Gabe, and I had quite the revolutionary strat prepared.

“The triple triple… Again...”

Sometime you watch one series that makes you fall in love with a strat, for me it was Zest vs Innovation where Zest defended a marine drop with 2 oracle and a phoenix, warped more adepts across the map and immediately killed Innovation, I thought to myself “I can do that” as it didn’t look too hard.

I hate Stargate openings in PvT, I truly hate them, I’m always in a good position with them but I always lose anyway, but on the other hand, I’ve loved shading adepts and oracle at random times since LOTV beta, so I thought it was worth to give it a shot, especially because I thought Gabe wouldn’t expect me to play stargate.

Worked just as planned, a refreshing turn of events after the last series.

The second game (what game on kairos ? never happened Protoss doesn’t lose PvT remember) is what I like to call “New Year Zero, the movie”. I really think this map is incredibly protoss favored, it’s really not on everymap that starting 2 forges because you’re supply blocked and can’t start your first colossus ends up being a the best decision you could have made.

After killing the Raven and a decent chunk of bio in the middle of the map, I thought I had a real timing there, I had 5 seconds of hesitation after seeing so many liberators, but after sending an hallucination and seeing that Heromarine was Still 1/1, I decided to A move into him anyway, it was either gonna be a genius, killer instinct like move, or another brick to the monument that is the ThrowGo Legacy, a win win really.

“Sir, this is Hallucinated phoenix speaking, Terran is 1:1 you’re clear to go”

“Roger that”

It went great and the twitch chat of that game had a very reasonable discussion about game design talking about how great it was that protoss could attack into this many liberators.

I don’t have much to say about the last Serie vs Showtime really, I was already qualified so all the presure was off and I felt great, and I don’t think I could talk at length about great of a strategical mastermind I am for faking going phoenix and actually going Dark templars !

He didn’t exactly do what I expected to him to do so this was pretty much freestyle that worked in my favor and not anything prepared.

“Artosis favorite unit showing us what peak starcraft is all about”

The second game was a cheese that I had seen before, Double proxy gate zealot with canon rush, I was fairly confident that it was overall pretty bad, and this game didn’t change my mind.

“The best unit against canons is actually the probe”

Amazing Gaming

So overall it’s a 5-2 Score !! This wasn’t what I expected at all and I was obviously thrilled, too bad I failed so many IQ tests otherwise the first place would have been easily in my grasp.

I have a lot of cool new strats with weird names prepared for LA, I hope I’ll win so I get to brag once again about how smart I am ! (not really).

Hope you guys enjoyed this blog, and I would like to dedicate this victory to this chinese Stuff bear, he kept his promise and without him I would never have survived those nyduses.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvPWIAvhKSl/

For more Yee https://twitter.com/PtitDrogo

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lairocortfrig1984-blog · 6 years ago

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Also, in the UK I have never seen a phone that displays LTE. All phones display either 4G, 3G or E. I've never seen LTE apart from when I was in Canada. ArenaNet have been running WvW for almost seven years now and they done both optimizations to how the servers work as well as added more servers (this happened around the time that culling was removed, back in the gory days when most of the enemy zerg didn render until they were on top of your corpse). I don think ArenaNet would have pulled the trigger on a mount in WvW if they didn think the servers could handle it. From my experience, ArenaNet handles large scale combat better than BDO and ESO, so for all their flaws, they are doing a pretty good job when compared to competitors.. Another one of my pet peeves is saying that rabid fans who attack others are the responsibility of the person with the fans. She is not their parent. It's not like she was telling her fans to go and do it, which I have seen people do. It does seem weird that they put a $35 dollar speaker in an almost $1,000 amp though. That being said the cannabis rex isn crazy expensive either and sounds great so who knows. So many factors.. I just want to say thank you for pointing out that even a STEM degree is useless, my major was Environmental Science and 청주출장마사지 the only jobs that exist in that are seasonal. People who have not actually studied or tried to find work in it love arguing with me that I must not be doing something right, because they are still convinced there are tons of great jobs in that field. Meanwhile I watch more recent graduates freak the hell out because there is truly nothing.. Lactic Acid has a natural odour that some people find unpleasant. Lactic Acid 5% + HA and Lactic Acid 10% + HA was updated in October 2017 to use a grade of lactic acid that has no odour per customer feedback. Additionally, this update removed the use of carrageenan, a seaweed based viscosity enhancer, also due to feedback from customers. You show the spots to your roommate and he says it could mean you have a calcium deficiency. Or wait, is it zinc? It's definitely some sort of nutritional deficit, of that he's certain. 청주출장마사지 But you start to wonder if he's right because just last month, he told you that washing your face in egg whites will decrease the size of your pores. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (2008), there were over 11 million cosmetic procedures performed in 2007, a 59% increase from 2000. Medically, cosmetic surgery is the subspecialty of surgery that uniquely restricts itself to the enhancement of appearance through surgical and medical techniques. While in the US, 43% of men and 56% of women are dissatisfied with their appearance, just over 3% choose to undergo plastic surgery (Grossbart Sarwer, 2003). The towns, indeed, were achieving their freedom. Thanks to compact organization, they were loosening the bonds of their dependence on the lords or bishops to whom most of them paid taxes; and the alliance of their representatives with the knights of the shire (country gentlemen) in the House of Commons, now a separate division of Parliament, was laying the foundation of the political power of the whole middle class. But the feudal system continued to rest cruelly on the peasants.

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dekko-61 · 6 years ago

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The hearts of Mansome... (Now discovered as realm#78)

Realm#78's current Century: 4500-5000 Mike:"sully what is that thing?"

Sully:"he looks like a wooden type of small puppet?"

Mike:"Something about this feels wrong Sully."

Mike:"Hey Mike remember we can handle this." Mike: ....

Buzz Lightyear:"Wait a minute two fowl beast have approached me! Probably creations of that evil Zerg!"*grips his toy fist furiously*

Mike:"Sully is he looking at us?"

Sully:"....hm I think so?" Buzz:"Silence feinds!" Mike:"ah he's angry!" Sully:"Mike quickly get begin me." Buzz:"neither of you are getting out of here unless in Space Ranger Custody, now you better start telling me we're Zerg is hiding!" Sully:"who?" Buzz:"don't play dumb with me scum!"

*We cut to....*

Hogwarts (Omniverse war) Year:1991 Month: August Day:Tuesday

School of witchcraft and Wizardry...

Mcgonnigle:"Professor Dumbledore, I would like to tell you that they are on there way within a few hours around nine."

Dumbledore:"Thank you Professor Mcgonnigle." Dumbledore walks to the side of a window steering outwords thinking they are on their way. He wondered would they perform a summoning Jutsu to arrive or perhaps travel by tree jumping, something he was familiar with seeing the Shinobi military system travel.It has been a while. He was curious to know the life of an old friend of his. Iruka the third Hokage. He then slumps back to the ground, and has brief moment of fear. For he sees a future he hoped to never be true. This has been haunting his mind for the last couple of months. He's had a nightmare of his death. A betrayal at the hands of someone he's trusted for years. He didn't know who out of all the people he trusted the most it was but he had a feeling one of them would do it.

He could see the image flash between his eyes multiple times....

A huge crashing sound was then heard throwing Dumbledore out of his thoughts.

He, and the other professors of the school head towards where they sense the incident happened.

They all come across the damaged center of the school.

Something feel from the sky and caused destruction to the roof.

Dumbledore and Snape placed this information together and told the others before they all took out their wands in defense of whatever creature could have fallen from the sky and is currently getting up from the damaged school floor before the smoke around it clears.

The smoke clears and two their surprise they find, a barely naked man with ripped up shorts slowly getting up.

The Wizards look shocked but still holds their wands out in defense against the man.

The man slowly breathes while looking at all of them in shock.

The man then mutters a word... that made all of the Wizards confused. One of the wizard instructors figured out the man was referring to a name.It was an odd one. Odd one indeed.

This instructor was non other than Finn tanin. The young chap who visited Professor Dumbledore the day before. Instructor Finn Tanin:"who?"

The Man muttered the name again...

The Wizards than all looked at each other oddly.

Out of a surprise a portal opens shocking all the Wizards. They hold their wands out to find a man in a red cape instantly float out of the portal and land on the damaged debree of the castle. The fear begins to grow in the other Wizards except for Dumbledore as they instantly start casting spells to attack the caped man. Fin then cast the final attack spell, as a finisher. Fin:"Expecto Potronum!" The magic spell as well as the others skyrocket towards the Caped mystery. He then opens small portals absorb the spells with ease.The Wizards looked in shock and instantly. Caped Man:"calm yourselves everyone, we mean no harm." Dumbledore:"we?" Caped Man:"yes you see that man over there that fell through your castle is an associate of mine..."

GOTHAM CITY...

Year:1991 Month:August Day:Tuesday...

We open on the dark streets of the very famous Gotham City as we get a high angle view, of a Bat like figure looking down at the people of Gotham from a very high building. We now cut too a Television found within the apartment being viewed by local Gotham citizens.... Ben:"mommy can you please turn the TV up?" Mother:"of course sweety."*cuts up the volume* The TV:"Here on Gotham news we would like to remember that two years ago the city was almost underattack by the infamous Criminal the Joker, who fell to his doom, on one of Gotham's tallest Towers, after trying to kill our city's hero The Batman. Today we are remembering that very night Batman, saved us by lighting up the new two year old Bat signal,our Mayor Harvey Dent and Mr.Wayne agreed to activate right above our Clock Tower.It was quite a jarring incident, Luckly we all pulled through!Remember this very night as one to remember when that evil fiend fell and the battle was one for Gotham!This is john oh Hera signing out." We cut to within the news studio where the news report just took place...

John leaves the news set only to be faced by a woman.

John:"come on , you know I could not have been responsible for this discision.They wanted me to have this spot."

Woman:"Save it o'hera, I already know which side your on. If you really wanted to help me you would have fought for my position!"

John walks over to his co workers who were paying attention to the little argument he had. John:"what's wrong with her.She's never acted like this since the last few months."

Bill:"well John you know, that rich kid Bruce Wayne."

John:"of course he's Gotham's main attraction to visitors and the main stay."

Bill:"well you remember her relationship with him a while back?"

John:"oh yeah, I almost forgot about that, how long has it been, ....wait what does this have to do with her attitude?"

Bill:"He dumped her a while ago, I'm sure somewhere at the end of last year."

John:"oh it didn't work out."

Bill:"She's been harboring feelings about it for months,Ahahahahahaha."

John:"I'm sorry .....you think this is funny?"

Bill:"well of course, y'know women with all they're nagging... the lot of em deserve heart break just for being in the same position as us."

John:"....so I don't get this, at all, what do you have against her?... your a Sexist?"

Bill:".... what the... why how dear you even think of such a word o'Hera, I'm just standing up for what's right!"

John:"okay okay, it's not a big deal, I'm neutral in these situations, I just asked a question..."

Bill:"well O'Hera I suggest you keep that noise of yours to itself!"

*Bill then walks away angrily*

John just looks confused and picks up a newspaper he finds on the break room table. He holds the paper carefully. "Wait a minute."He says getting a closer look at the paper. He then looks frozen before getting up really fast and starring from the window. "THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!!!" He yells before hearing a really loud 💥 EXPLOSION! The entire room goes silent before another one sends all the news reporters to the cold hard floor. Screams are now heard as small growing Fires 🔥 have covered the corners of the break room. The explosion left a nice gigantic hole where a bunch of men in ski masks walk in with rifles in hand! "Hands up!" One yelled. "Nobody move!"yelled another!

John in fear crawls under a computer desk and hides as the thieves start looting the entire break room.

"Call the police!!" A female reporter yelled *BAM!* only to be shot in the chest by one of the criminals!"

Now the room was covered by small squelling and crying as another thief yelled "SILENCE!" Only to be hit and fall to ground unconscious... One of the criminals noticed a small tool hit their partner. One of them picked it up to see a small sharp like blade in the shape of a bat! 🦇 He then screams and holds up his rifle yelling "Nobody move!"

The entire room grew stiff.

Now full of fear the Criminals start angrily muttering at each other while keeping the news reporters at bay with their fire arms. Criminal#1:"Well this is your fault for convincing us to do this, now the bat will have our heads." Criminal#2:"how is this my fault, we could have snuck in undetected but you suggested using the explosives, which we were only supposed to use when we had to escape." Criminal#3:"ssh... calm down boys,I already have the news studio blocked by the gang to keep the Bat busy while we get outta here, ahaha!Now are you with me, boys?" Criminal's 1 and 2 look at each other and then both nod.Criminal#3:"Good, Good.Lets get outta here, we have what we came for!" All three Criminals prepare to escape while the reporters continue to hide in fear.

We cut to the Batmobile now speeding towards the news studio! Batman driving the car now sees a bunch of other mobiles with criminals in em guarding the studio while holding Giants guns waving them outside their windows. Batman noted that this is possibly the same group that stole cars from the Gotham Car sale last week. He identified all the missing cars shown on Tv as the exact same ones being used. Except all of them were bent and somewhat damaged. They didn't match their former shiny new design. Within a week these thieves wrecked them and now rode them like they own them. Batman's face then grew more angry under his mask. He starts pressing a few buttons within the Batmobile while heading towards the cars guarding the studio. Guns start to pop out from the sides of his mobile as he sets them off and the bullets start shooting everywhere to gain the criminals attention!" They all looked to see the Batmobile heading their way. They then aim their own guns at it.

He speeds up the Batmobile to avoid the bullets while still firing. He then speeds up towards the criminal's cars. They all look in fear. Batman gives a creepy smirk.

(Part One)

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blizzweirdo · 7 years ago

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StarCraft Fanfiction: “No Omen, No Country’s Cause”

A few months ago, during the StarCraft 20th anniversary celebration, I created a blog for the sole purpose of remedying a great injustice: according to an infographic I saw here on Tumblr, fanfiction involving my favorite character, Vice Adm. Alexei Stukov, comprised only 1% of StarCraft fanfiction (in English, I’m assuming).

And so I embarked on a months-long odyssey, putting together what I thought would be a short story about how Stukov would react to the UED returning to the Koprulu sector. What it turned into is a multi-perspective, most likely novella- length text that I think would work well as a serial.

In “No Omen, No Country’s Cause,” I seek to reconcile discordant parts of Stukov’s personality, give him something to live for, flesh out his backstory, make him to engage in some badassery, and get him back to where he was in SC: Brood War (personality wise). Along the way, expect a lot of battles, new characters, and interactions with other canon characters like Adm. Matt Horner, Valerian Mengsk, Alarak, Zagara, and others.

This teaser is rated T, but expect some chapters to be M for language, violence, sexual content, and zergy squish-squish. I’ll probably post small bits once or twice a week, releasing what I’ve written so far and giving me a chance to write more. I do see myself finishing it (I’ve already written the ending but not the middle) unless there’s just zero interest.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. If you’d like to view this in a different format, it is also available on FanFiction.net, Archive of Our Own, and Wattpad under the same username.

Note: someone pointed out this sounds like it’s going to get political. I promise it is not.

“No Omen, No Country’s Cause”

TARSONIS CITY, TARSONIS: 09:55

"Five minutes to air time, people. Let's get moving!" Kate Lockwell paced behind Adm. Matthew Horner as he stood at his podium. From the side of the makeshift stage, she shouted at a few people in the wings. "Tim! Where's Kallie with the other camera?"

"The replacement lens didn't come in. Wasn't a 'priority' shipment and didn't make it through customs. She knows a guy uptown and she's going to borrow one. She'll be back in fifteen minutes."

"Fifteen?!"

"We'll start without her! It'll be fine. No one will notice we're down a camera."

"They'll notice if we're down two presidential debaters... Where're my challenger candidates?" Kim Lockwell stopped on her heel and put her hand on the shoulder of Horner's blue suit.

"Well, if there's one thing that I can say for you military types, at least you're punctual, Mr. President." She winked at him, and before he could respond, she was gone.

Horner leaned over the podium and looked into the "audience." In the makeshift broadcast room, there were about two-dozen seats, all of which were full of journalists from around the sector-Umoja, Moria, and even some of the outlying colonies. All were there to see the beginning of Tarsonis's new government as it shifted from the Terran Dominion to the Terran Republic. After defeating Amon and negotiating peace with the zerg under Zagara, Valerian Mengsk had begun focusing on rebuilding Tarsonis and Korhal, and that's when the political shitstorm started. The Dominion needed the Umojan Protectorate's help, but they refused to acknowledge a "medieval monarchy spawned by a dictator" as a valid government even though it was constitutional. The Umojans also released more information about Valerian that was potentially damaging-that the labs run by Mobius Corp. had been more closely supervised by him than he had originally said. Skygeirr Station was the most egregious. Horner had asked him, man-to-man, what he actually knew. He had told him that he was only aware they were performing experiments on zerg and xel'naga tissues-he didn't know about the hybrid breeding program. But he did know about what they were doing to UED POW Vice Admiral Alexei Stukov. Valerian said that he willingly turned a blind eye to what they did to him because he thought it vital, at the time, to finding a way to neutralize Sara Kerrigan. Whether it was because he was UED or because he was infested and technically zerg, news reports focused on the hybrids and glossed over the torture of someone he knew to be a decent man. If it bothered Valerian, it was hard to see, which made Horner watchful of him now, waiting for more of his father to emerge. The Umojan Protectorate has a point, Horner thought.

Valerian was forced to step down, and his cabinet named Horner as his interim successor until the Terran Republic could build its infrastructure enough to hold an election. The Umojan Protectorate began helping Tarsonis pick up the pieces of the coup against Arcturus Mengsk and the invasion by the Queen of Blades. It had been five years, and Horner was just now thinking that he had the hang of governing-and now he would have to publicly debate other candidates and run for the position to keep it for another five years. Even so, Horner had doubts about his leadership capabilities. Raynor should be up here-not me, he thought. But he knew that would never have worked. Jim Raynor had not wanted to lead even when he was with the Raiders. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them, he thought, Valerian was the first, Raynor the second... But Valerian was disgraced and Raynor had vanished. Hopefully I'm the third... After Valerian stepped down and the smoke cleared, there weren't many other options.

Horner took a deep breath and thumbed again through his notes on the datapad in front of him. His main talking points were those of national security. They had been burned before by outside threats. Other than a few outlying factions, the protoss were their allies, but on the other hand, the zerg, even with Zagara leading them, could be fractured by a new leader-just as Abathur almost had done. Worse, if Horner had learned anything, it was the threat that could not be predicted that always ...bites you in the ass. Restructuring was also critical. The military needed its academies back online, and the education system-especially on Tarsonis-needed new buildings, updated materials, and staff that were not praising the "glory of the Dominion." Trade deals with the Kel-Morians and the Umojan Protectorate to bring food and other resources to people who needed it were his other sticking points. Things we can all agree on, not too detailed, and enough to talk about but not enough to make me look like a boring, stuffed uniform-I hope.

Finally, one of the other candidates entered the studio. The journalists all stood at once, their cameras flashing as she strode in. He recognized her; It was Dr. Joan Slavens, a philosophy professor at Tarsonis City Colonial University, the largest and most prestigious public universities on Tarsonis-before it was shut down by the Dominion. She had settled into being a nuisance via private broadcasts during the war. Horner had watched a few of them. Dr. Slavens was a good speaker, and she had the air of a rumpled intellectual with her barely-tamed blonde curls and wrinkled tweed jacket. She waved warmly to the journalists. This made him even more nervous. Dr. Slavens was a well-known personality and respected. She already had a following, and it would be easy for her to build a bloc of voters. He, on the other hand, had name recognition, and was known as a war hero on one hand but a compatriot of the now-controversial Valerian Mengsk on the other-his alliances could make someone's decision either way.

Dr. Slavens took her place at the podium next to his and adjusted her microphone, tapping on it to test it. She put her hand over it and turned to Horner, giving him a rueful smile.

"Of course, Mr. Marinakis isn't here yet. I hope his freighters are timelier than he is."

"You have some experience with Marcos Marinakis?"

"Unfortunately, yes. He told me he would let me interview him for my vids a half a dozen times... He was a no-show on half of them and more than an hour late on the rest. We could be here a while. I mean, this only a presidential debate, after all. I'm sure his business brunch was much more pressing."

"Well, if he's much later, we'll have to start without him."

Marcos Marinakis was a shipping magnate-one of the few that wasn't Kel-Morian. He had a reputation of being loud, obnoxious, but shrewd in business. Some people would believe that would make him good at guiding the Republic, but Horner didn't really see him as a threat. Because of his manner and what inevitably comes out about anyone who runs a large company, he was by far a long shot.

Horner's thoughts were interrupted by a low rumble far in the distance. It shook the building, and a little bit of plaster rained from the ceiling.

"What the hell was that?" Lockwell said. Horner's security detail, two marines in street combat gear, came in from outside the room.

"Mr. President, we have reports of an attack on the outskirts of town heading inward to our position. We need to get you all to a secure location."

"Where?" Horner said quickly.

"The basement of this building is a nuclear bunker. We should be able to hide out there."

Horner sprung into action.

"All right everyone, listen," Horner said into the microphone. "We're all going to do this quietly and without panicking. Please follow these gentlemen downstairs. Keep aware of your surroundings..."

There was another rumble and the power went out. Horner shouted over the din of fighting and the journalists talking nervously among themselves.

"And don't panic."

The journalists filed out of the room with Horner taking up the rear. He paused to look out the window. Republic troops had began flooding into the streets, and before them, a nydus canal had opened. The infested crawled from its maw, waves of them flooding over abandoned hovercars and the makeshift barriers troops had constructed along the way. In the distance, a siege tank and a platoon of Terran Republic troops began firing at them, but were overwhelmed by the sea of flesh and claws almost instantly. With dread, Horner realized there could be only one person responsible: Stukov.

And there's the threat we didn't anticipate.

#starcraft #fanfic #fanfiction #alexei stukov #stukov #matt horner #no omen no country's cause

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foxtable767 · 3 years ago

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Starcraft

Starcraft Bus is actively seeking vendors who qualify as DBE’s to supply parts and services at fair market prices. We are expanding business opportunities to those who qualify. You must be reliable and have proof of certification and financial standing. Interested parties are to contact: Donall Hasty at [email protected]. StarCraft puts you in charge of a small group of humans exiled to the edge of the galaxy. Your mission is to acquire the resources needed to train and expand your military to defend against the Confederate Nations, who are also battling for control of the galaxy's precious resources. This game is designed for multiplayer use. Return to Glory Prepare to rediscover a classic. StarCraft: Remastered upgrades Blizzard Entertainment’s original sci-fi real-time strategy game and its acclaimed expansion, StarCraft: Brood War, from beginning to end. Experience the intergalactic battle between the terran, protoss, and zerg with improved graphics and audioand the same classic gameplay that made StarCraft a global.

Download my games here: http://dz2001.newgrounds.com/news/post/181452 - there you will find the latest version with difficulty settings

**Warning this game has high system requirements **I would recommend Pentium 4, 2.5-3Ghz **Press Q to adjust quality if the game is running slow

*28.nov.2006* (Version 1.1) Fixes: You've asked for this: ingame menu transitions are now optional - you can turn them off in the OPTIONS and switch between menu sections instantly. I've fixed 2 major bugs: Elder Brain bug (you could get double mana without having it installed) and Construct Mode bug (the respawn rates are now set to 0 when you quit to menu) Some spelling mistakes are also fixed. *26.nov.2006* In response to the reviews: - I know that the game is slow, and there is no way that i know of to make it faster, sorry about that. - Stop bitching about difficulty (regeneration rates, respawn rates, dmg, hit points, too strong dragoons, etc). I am not going to change anything in the balance. If you are afraid of challenge and like to play games in which you dont die - go play something else. This game is not about random clicking and shooting - you'll have to find strategies to beat certain waves. These games I make are not for everyone =3 - There are some bugs caused by Construct Mode which wasn't tested properly and some spelling errors - I'll fix them soon. - Hotkeys.. I'll think about that... don't really like the idea though. *24.nov.2006* I've asked whether I succeeded In creating the best defence game ever... and now its on the first place in Defence Games Collection and on the fron page!!! I guess that answers my question, hehe %))) Thanks for the front page, Tom =3 *22.nov.2006* StarCraft Flash Action 5 is finally finished, after almost a year in development =3 I started working on this game several months after relatively successful release of my first defence game - StarCraft FA3. FA3 was my first try in making defence games and it was rather primitive and boring (yes I admit it). This game is nothing like that, this is my ultimate defence game as I see it: - enemies wont just walk into your base and explode (or pass by like in fa3) as in many games of such kind; in SCFA5 all the enemy units will be actually attacking your base %) there are 13 unique enemies with different attack types and different aims! - There are 8 buildings that you will be able to build on your base: 4 'defence towers' and 4 'special buildings' that will unlock new features (like making infested terrans out of marines) - the gameplay is divided into 27 waves, you will be able to SAVE after each wave - there are numerous ways of killing enemies - not just building towers and watching them shoot (you'll loose this way). There are also 8 psionic spells, mines, infested terran etc... - you will earn experience, levelup -> gain new spells and improve your abilities!

My goal was to create the best defence game ever and now its up to you to decide whether I succeeded or not!

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razieltwelve · 8 years ago

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School Project (Final Craft)

The instructor, a Dia-Farron, prowled through the classroom with his net gun. Given the hijinks his students got up to, it was only sensible to have it around. “You should all have familiarised yourselves with the basic Zerg genetic matrices. For this term’s project, we will be asking you to come up with possible variations to the standard zergling.”

A hand went up. “Can we -”

“No, you cannot grab zerg larvae and actually implement the changes. Despite how some people may view them, the Zerg are living things. Although we have heavily modified their genetics since we first encountered them, we are not about to start letting students actually implement their ideas without screening them properly.”

The instructor gestured and an intricate hologram of the Zerg genetic matrix appeared in the air. “When you are using the simulator to model the effects of your changes, pay close attention to the key parameters given under this menu.” He pointed. “If any of them start entering the red zone, it is likely that your modifications will either fail or produce a nightmarish abomination that will have to be put out of its misery for its own good. As you can imagine, if that happens, you will not be receiving a passing grade.”

Another hand went up “Are we allowed to make modifications to existing modifications?”

“That will be assessed on a case by case basis. However, we require a minimum level of change from any currently widely employed design. If you’re not sure, send it to me, and I will evaluate it.” His eyes narrowed. He knew how this particular student thought. “Thinking of incorporating more Dust into your zergling design?”

There was sheepish laughter. “Uh… yeah.”

As creatures that originated from non-awakened worlds, Zerg creatures did not originally have access to Aura. However, enough tinkering and fiddling, had allowed them to develop organs that could act as Aura batteries of a sort. They could not produce their own Aura, but they could store Aura and use it to activate Dust.

One of the first modifications after that success had been to include some gravity Dust in their diet. Triggering it temporarily reduced the effects of gravity on the zergling, allowing them to leap incredible distances or scale vertical surfaces without difficulty using their claws. Naturally, they had to replenish their store of gravity Dust regularly, but that was easy enough to arrange. Over time, they’d even learned how to use gravity Dust in the opposite way, making themselves heavier to add force to their blows or to make their leaping attacks more devastating.

Over the years, more additions had been made. Zerglings could now do things like ingest wind Dust to make themselves faster and more agile or earth Dust to make themselves more durable. Given how many variants of Dust there were, there were countless possible genetic modifications to make to allow zerglings to perform new feats with Dust.

“Are we allowed to use cybernetics?” someone asked.

“No. This is about genetic manipulation. Although cybernetics have proven to be quite handy - just look at the hydralisk variant called the cyberlisk - they are not the point of this exercise.”

“Aw…”

The cyberlisk was a hydralisk variant that used cybernetic enhancement to basically make it a living rail gun that could see through walls and could aim over distances that made it worthy of being called a sniper. They were less mobile than normal hydralisks, and their cybernetic parts required maintenance, but they filled a niche that the zerg had previously had issues with.

“And before anyone asks,” the instructor continued. “No splicing genetic matrices from other zerg.”

There were disappointed groans from the class.

One of the most popular spliced zerg strains was the Ultrahydra, a hybrid ultralisk-hydralisk creature. Although it was not as adept in melee combat as an ultralisk, it retained the tremendously armoured carapace and added the ability to shoot spines that made even the cyberlisk’s attacks look puny. It was, in most respects, walking, armoured artillery and anti-air support that was capable of launching deadly impaler spines with rail-gun-like force, a shotgun-like blast of spines that broke apart mid-flight, or explosive spines that formed a deadly cloud of shrapnel after piercing their target or striking the ground.

“Now, you have the next two months to work on this project. I expect you to do your best. If you can’t think of anything, I suggest you organise a visit to the nearest hive. We happen to have one on this world, so you’ll be able to see a lot of the different strains in action.” He paused. “And before any of you ask, no, they will not let you bring a lurker home with you.”

#final craft #fanfiction

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birger-wuvs-elsa · 8 years ago

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A Hell of a Lot of Excitement

Day Four of OCWatch17, Excitement – Theme B: AU

You are far too excited for this.

That’s what Nikolai Reynaldé’s girlfriend had told her, before the brunette had been deployed. The renowned medic, Angela Ziegler, had not quite approved of her anticipation to be sent to the field. Though, she never really did in any situation, if Nikolai was being honest.

But ever since zerg attacks began anew under Amon’s control, the blonde’s disapproval had grown.

Nikolai fully understood her love’s reasoning, it was actually quite obvious. The zerg swarm was single-handedly responsible for the deaths of planets—along with billions upon billions of human deaths. Even the enigmatic Protoss, with their mind-blowing advances in technology and military, weren’t always successful in their strikes against the swarm.

But Nikolai would be damned if she didn’t do everything in her power to blast those insectoid demons back into the hell they spawned from. Luckily for her, she was the pilot of one of the most advanced models of Viking aircraft that the Dominion had manufactured; probably because it was the lovechild of Rory Swann, Torbjörn Lindholm, and Cid Mizushima. That, and Nikolai’s own skill and talent with the transformative aircraft, constituted to a sense of security for the pilot.

Though the brunette never dared to assume success until the last zerg lay dead and burning.

Which was why Nikolai was cursing herself fiercely, for not only had she assumed the zerg around them were dead...but so had her now screaming and dying comrades. The barrels of the twin gattling cannons that acted as the “arms” of her viking were glowing like embers as Nikolai held the trigger down, and had been for the past several minutes. How they hadn’t melted into slag by now was beyond Nikolai, but she had more important matters to tend to—like the ultralisk that was bellowing fearsomely as it charged her.

Nikolai wasted no time; letting one finger off the trigger, only to press a button on her console with another. Instantly, a cacophony of clanging, shifting, and metallic humming sounded around her as the thrusters in the mech’s underbelly began to push it into the air. Though most viking pilots only trained for one mode or another, Nikolai was one of the few who not only mastered both...but could switch modes on a dime in the middle of a firefight, and survive. The dangerously twisting metal around her, as newly settled turbines revved to life and the wings stiffened appropriately, didn’t scare Nikolai in the slightest. She’d long since become one with her precious mech, and had learned how best to work with it (or “him”, in her words).

The moment the shift into fighter mode was finished, Nikolai immediately “put the pedal to the metal”, and shot off through the air and went straight into a bank. As she peered out of the window of her cockpit, the brunette grimaced; almost none of her unit remained, and the few who did would not last long. They’d long since sent a distress signal—the moment the battle so much as seemed like it was going south, they’d SOS-ed the hell out of their transponder.

Where the hell is our backup?!

Nikolai had no time to ponder, as without warning, multiple Hydralisk spines buried themselves in her viking’s chassis. One actually broke the windshield, and the brunette stared at it in shock where it sat, embedded in her seat but centimeters from her face. Then she heard the hissing roar of a Mutalisk, but before she could react, an explosion shook her and the entire mech as a shot struck the side. It was Nikolai found herself all but choking on excitement as her viking started losing altitude.

Luckily for her, her baby was built for hellish situations like this; so she prayed for the chance to pay the engineering trio who’d built it for her back as she hit a big red button.

Almost instantly, two sets of hidden wings jutted out on the under-sides of her viking, and several flaps raised up all over as well. The mech’s velocity immediately started going down, and as the flaps lowered but the extra wings remained, Nikolai just barely managed to ease herself and her viking into a controlled crash. As the mech gracelessly settled on the desolate landscape, the brunette also hoped she’d be able to thank the trio for the abundance of padding they’d included.

But as the silence following the crash was sliced through by loud and all-around hissing, Nikolai could’ve cried. Without looking, she reached out for the picture of Angela she kept in her cockpit at all times, and gazed sorrowfully down at it. Her blonde hair was shining in the sunlight of the image, her blue eyes shining as she smiled at the photographer...that having been Nikolai herself at the time.

Nikolai closed her eyes as she laid her head back, the helmet lightly butting into the headrest.

I’m sorry, Angela...the excitement has finally caught up with me, it seems...

The brunette waiting, then...waited for the carapaced demons to tear her beloved viking apart to get to her.

...suddenly a loud, very familiar BOOM echoed, followed by inhuman screaming.

...wait...is...is that a siege tank?

Nikolai instantly sat up and looked out her cockpit windshield—this time, she could’ve cried from sheer joy and relief. For not too far away, she spotted the beautiful sight of a line of tanks in siege mode, bringing the rain down on the horde surrounding Nikolai. A screeching sound brought Nikolai’s eyes up, gracing her with the sight of a formation of Banshees. The anti-ground aircrafts swooped down not unlike their namesake, and let loose wave after wave of rockets that decimated the zerg below.

Though the banshees were effective, they weren’t fast, and Nikolai smiled as she recognized the unique markings on one of the aircraft currently strafing the hell out of the zerg.

“Are any Dominion Units still alive down there?”

Nikolai could’ve have hit her intercom button any faster. “Fareeha Amari, this is Viking Pilot Nikolai Reynaldé, you could not have come at a better time!”

A loud, bellowing laughter that wasn’t Fareeha nearly deafened Nikolai as it burst over the intercom. “But of course, o’ mighty Kalahan!” Reinhardt Wilhelm, siege tank extraordinaire. “None of us vant to be the ones to tell Angela her girlfriend finally got herself killed!”

Another new (but familiar and welcomed) voice sounded. “Luckily for me, I already called not it!”

Nikolai smiled, and started laughing from her old pal Lena’s jab that got everyone else arguing over the intercom. The brunette didn’t have to wait long before her old teammates located her position and set up a perimeter around her, quickly clearing out the now suffering zerg while giving her time to relax after...well, nearly dying. She also didn’t have to wait long till another viking swooped down and gracefully transformed into assault mode, landing with a thud before the cockpit popped open.

A small, equally graceful form ran up to her own viking, quickly finding a hidden emergency latch on the outside of the cockpit. In a moment, the latch lifted off and Nikolai looked up at the bright smile of Lena “Tracer” Oxton.

“Come on now, luv,” Lena said as she held one arm down for her. “The cavalry’s ‘ere, and we better be getting you back to your girl.”

Still gripping the picture of Angela in her glove, the image itself flashed in her mind’s eye as Nikolai eagerly raised her other arm to grip Lena’s.

Merely a few hours later found Nikolai sitting on an infirmary bed, legs hanging off the side. She was in naught but a tight tank top and army-issued slacks, though quite a bit of her was wrapped in bandages. Despite the immense layers of padding in her viking’s cockpit, the intensity of the battle still managed to beat her up. As well, she didn’t notice that some of the Hydralisk spines had actually managed to pierce her suit and cut her. But being the girlfriend of an extremely talented medic had its advantages: such as supplements that included high poison resistance.

Nikolai was currently waiting for the inevitable, forearms resting on her thighs as she gazed blankly down at the infirmary floor. Angela hadn’t been the one to attend her, rather it had been standard medics—though even they had done their utmost, afraid of what wrath “Mercy�� would’ve wrought on them had they not healed her girlfriend properly. Fareeha and the rest of the gang had gone to fetch her once Nikolai was declared stable...and the brunette was making full use of the time by bracing herself.

Though focused on that task, Nikolai immediately took notice of the sound of frantic heel-clad steps that echoed in the halls outside of her room. She looked up just in time to watch the door slam open, poor thing nearly breaking off of its hinges (Reinhardt would be proud). Nikolai instantly met her angel’s eyes, and it hurt her to see tears well in them. She was just about to stand and run up to the blonde, but as if sensing this, Angela beat her to it and in the blink of an eye, arms were wrapped tightly around her shoulders.

“I-I...I th-thought you w-w-were dead!”

The anguished cry from Angela struck Nikolai deep. She closed her eyes tight as her brow furrowed, and she returned the blonde’s embrace in equal measure, though her grip was around the medic’s waist. They stayed in that position for a while–Angela struggling to stifle her sobs as she buried her face in Nikolai’s hair, while the pilot rubbed her back gently and whispered soothing words into her ear. Promises she was okay, promises she was alive and well, and with Angela, and not planning on leaving again anytime soon.

The pair were eventually visited by the rest of their crew, and while Angela had provided polite replies, it was clear her only concern was the woman she refused to let go of (and who reciprocated). Even when their commander, Jack Morrison arrived, it was with an order that came all the way from James Raynor himself—the pair were to abstain from combat for a good month. At first both women objected, given their statuses as being some of the best of their respective fields. But Jack merely shook his head and left the room, and once he was gone, Ana Amari appeared in his wake...

...and reminded them of what had happened in Raynor’s own past, that was similar to the situation they just endured, but with a far less happy ending.

As their objections died out as they remembered the tragic event, the older woman gave them a kind smile. “Besides, you two have had enough excitement for two lifetimes. Now go home, rest, spend some quality time together.”

Her daughter, Fareeha, went to her side and offered them her own smile. “If we haven’t already stopped this Amon character by the time you two get back, you can help us finish the job.”

Nikolai and Angela glanced at each other, and smiled. The Amaris were right—they weren’t the only best the Dominion had to offer. Their friends would take care of things till they returned to active duty...after all, it wasn’t everyday that James Fucking Raynor ordered a leave of absence like this.

Though...they decided to loosely interpret “had enough excitement” when it came to what they did at home.

#ocwatch17 #Overwatch OC #Overwatch #Mercy #Kalahan #Angela Ziegler #Nikolai Reynalde #StarCraft AU #Bee escreve historias #nothing satisfies me quite as much as writing Blizzard fan fiction #except apparently #writing fanfiction that crosses over two different Blizzard games #hehehehehe

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biofunmy · 5 years ago

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Federal Agencies Thought Stories From A White Nationalist Site Were Necessary Reading For Employees

Leah Millis / Reuters

U.S. Attorney General William Barr

An arm of the Justice Department regularly sent summaries and links to articles from an online white nationalist publication over the last year, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. In addition, similar newsletters sent to the Labor Department, ICE, HUD, and the Department of Homeland Security included links and content from hyperpartisan and conspiracy-oriented publishers.

In daily bulletins about media coverage for the department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the nation’s immigration courts, a government contractor sometimes included links to VDare, an anti-Semitic and racist site whose editor has claimed that American culture is under threat from nonwhite peoples. That contractor, a Dade City, Florida–based company called TechMIS, also compiles newsletters for other agencies, including the Department of Labor, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Office of Housing and Urban Development.

While these newsletters typically shared articles from local and mainstream national news outlets — including BuzzFeed News — they also regularly delivered content from partisan publications touting anti-immigration rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Among these publications: the Western Journal, a hyperpartisan publisher whose founder once questioned if then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was Muslim, and the Epoch Times, a newspaper associated with the Chinese Falun Gong movement and whose related media properties have backed QAnon, a conspiracy theory claiming a group of high-ranking officials known as the “Deep State” is subverting President Donald Trump’s goals.

On Thursday, BuzzFeed News reported that an immigration judges union sent a letter of complaint to EOIR for its inclusion in an August newsletter of a VDare blog post that attacked its members with anti-Semitic slurs. After publication of that story, an EOIR press secretary said that the Department of Justice “condemns Anti-Semitism in the strongest terms” and that the post should not have been included. A former senior DOJ official said that the email in question was “generated by a third-party vendor that utilizes keyword searches to produce news clippings for staff. It is not reviewed or approved by staff before it is transmitted.”

“That’s absolutely incorrect,” said TechMIS CEO Steven Mains, adding that EOIR was the most specific and particular of the company’s clients. The agency’s staff would review its work “down to misspellings” if there was anything wrong before sending, he said.

A cursory review of EOIR newsletters by BuzzFeed News found two more mentions of VDare articles; Mains confirmed those and noted there were four others, saying that VDare had been included on seven occasions out of about 20,000 links and articles sent from September 2018, when TechMIS’s relationship with the organization began.

“These discoveries are deeply disturbing,” said Becca Lewis, a research affiliate at Data & Society, who studies online radicalization. “Unfortunately, they mark a continuation of a long history in which government agencies, and particularly law enforcement agencies, have promoted and enforced white supremacist and racist agendas. This also unfortunately shows that many white supremacist and far-right publications that seem to be on the ‘fringes’ of society actually have huge mainstream influence and impact.”

“Many white supremacist and far-right publications that seem to be on the ‘fringes’ of society actually have huge mainstream influence and impact.”

On Friday afternoon, immigration court employees were informed that they would no longer receive the briefing and were told to subscribe to a DOJ-wide briefing if they were interested. This instruction was sent hours after BuzzFeed News reached out to DOJ officials for comment on the discovery of the additional VDare links.

“After review of our daily news aggregation emails, we have determined that the sampling was over inclusive and contained non-news sources,” EOIR spokesperson Kathryn Mattingly said in a statement. “EOIR will no longer be distributing a daily news briefing to its staff. EOIR strongly condemns anti-Semitism and white nationalism. Those hateful beliefs do not reflect the views of EOIR employees and the Department of Justice.”

She aded that EOIR would not be renewing its contract with TechMIS.

One immigration court employee told BuzzFeed News they perceived a shift in the news sources included in their emailed media briefings after Trump took office.

“It shows an increasing effort to politically charge the perspective of immigration judges who are being tasked with being neutral judges who apply the law,” said the employee, who was not authorized to speak on the matter publicly. “The administration has been taking steps to make the court a political weapon in various ways, some big, some small, this is just one example.”

BuzzFeed News found that the Department of Labor also linked to VDare in a February 2017 newsletter. Daily bulletins for EOIR, the Labor Department, ICE, HUD, and the Department of Homeland Security included links from the Western Journal and Epoch Times. Links to the New American — the magazine of the John Birch Society, a far-right group that pushed conspiracy theories that Obama wasn’t born in the US — were also in some of those newsletters.

Mains said that TechMIS uses a combination of automated systems and human editors to find stories around certain keywords that are relevant to each agency. He noted that his company was “not chartered in any way to censor the news” and had not heard of VDare until Thursday when he was asked by EOIR to no longer include the white nationalist site on digests moving forward.

“We presented the news — the entire universe of news,” he told BuzzFeed News on Friday. “Including a link did not mean there was in any way an endorsement of anything that was in there. There was stuff from the left, far left, right, far right.”

Among other publications included in the newsletters were the Washington Post, New York Times, HuffPost, the Intercept, Fox News, Breitbart News, Daily Caller, and Daily Wire. Of the fringe and conspiracy sites, the Epoch Times was by far cited the most number of times. BuzzFeed News found citations of the publication in more than 120 EOIR newsletters.

TechMIS / Via TechMIS

An EOIR newsletter from July 24 included this summary and link to a VDare post. The linked story includes a mention of a “zerg rush” of immigrants coming across the border.

In one VDare post sent to EOIR employees in July, a blogger wrote that the “deep state” had scuttled previous efforts to enforce fast-track deportations. The post includes a mention of a “zerg rush” of immigrants coming across the border.

“We will see if Kevin McAleenan will implement this expansion. I think not. Sabotage is his specialty,” the piece concludes. The sentence links to posts about McAleenan that feature anti-trans comments about the acting DHS secretary, describing him as a “Ladyboy DACA, #DeepState operative” and “Tranny Kirstjen Nielsen,” a derogatory reference to the recently departed Homeland secretary.

In a story posted on New American and circulated to ICE staffers earlier this month, an author references an “invasion” of immigrants at the border. “Border patrol officials have said as much for months, but House and Senate Democrats, who hope to keep illegals coming in to swell the ranks of the party, have ignored them,” the post read.

Shawn Neudauer, a spokesperson for ICE, said the agency sends the clippings to a subset of its employees. The news briefing is delivered through an email service to the employees after the agency receives the brief from the contractor. He said the agency scans the briefings, which also include links to mainstream news outlets, as a way to understand how they are being written about online.

“Most federal agencies monitor news and clipping services capture headlines from web-published stories,” he said in an email. “It says absolutely nothing about the value of the material received — only noting whatever source said whatever ‘thing’ — which happens to be fairly useful in combating false narratives about the critical work our special agents and officers do every day.”

When asked about publications including the Epoch Times, the New American, and the Western Journal, Mains said he had never heard of or read them. TechMIS, he said, had been working with government agencies since 2012, and while most newsletters are sent to agencies without review, the EOIR staff is more “hands on” than the rest.

“We’re here to react to the needs of the government,” Mains added.

In April, a VDare story about the “border asylum crisis” found its way into the EOIR newsletter. Railing on the current state of the practice of asylum in the US, it also excerpted part of another article that mentioned the “deep state” for open borders.

“Like I say, I hope somebody in the administration is reading this,” the author wrote.

Sahred From Source link World News

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flairina · 7 years ago

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Flair’s Dreams, January 2018

Certainly been a while. Some of these are written in shorthand, so if you bother browsing through these, forgive me for that. It gets better later on.

1/3/18: (2:00-6:45)

I end up inside Shin Megami Tensei world (again- it's apparently happened at least twice before) due to someone taking an unwanted photo of me, and thinking that I'd like it to do such. The SMT world in this case is a giant, ever shifting tower of some sort, which rumbles as if hit by an earthquake while changing. I end up in a section controlled by Alice (the demon) called "Tick Tock Goes the Clock", with decor describable as the inside of a building from Alice in Wonderland where the main colors are pink, white, and gold. I have some sort of feud with the White Rabbit (the guy/demon who brought me in here?) before I'm finally left alone. I try to remember the way a few demon conversations proceed (the short mushroom demon likes men and alcohol, the four winged cerulean bird thing thinks pants are kind of cool, etc) when the tower shakes, and an 8-demon procession turns down the hall. Some are the bird thing but there are two kinds I've not seen before, one of them a sort of floating blue horse thing. They enter the room on the left (structured like a classroom) and emerge from the other door, behind me, singing and generally unaggressive. Two girls who are permanent residents here are also part of the line, and notice me. Brooke (a black girl with long, thin pleats/braids) says hi, while the other girl (a white girl with her hair curling up at the front off of her head like a squirrel's tail) asks her how I keep getting here. I tell her it's sheer random chance, as is how I keep getting out of here. The demon's singing appears to be summoning a wedding chapel, which I stop through my own music somehow, causing it to make a weird whiffling noise as it blinks back out of existence.

1/5/18: (Powers Dream?)

I'm either "playing" as, or actually am Samus (Metroid), and am currently in the middle of Metroid Prime 3, which requires me to ascend a space pirate "tower" ("urchin"-like room was notable). This is a late game area, and the entire 3D outline of it can be seen on the map. I make it to a normal office room (somewhat out of place) filled with space pirates, and use the photon beam to eliminate them. The charged shots are purple, and track/hone in on the enemies. There is a "tooth" language that only the pirates can access/understand, but by pulling them out of the stomach of a dead one in the corner (it ATE the teeth for some reason), I should be able to understand it soon. I'm no longer Samus, and decide to raid the nearby wardrobe for something to wear, but mom is suddenly in the room, trying to move stuff out. In the closet behind me, there are lotions on the top shelf, including a "snuggling" lotion.

A strange species of creature catches four DnD-type characters (all human men) and intends to transform them, allowing a single last request from each. They then twist the requests to make the transformations ironic, turning the group into a girl, a mutant raccoon, Princess Daisy (request involved a sneer), and a ____ (ICR what, but it wasn't human). The non-humans alleviate this by make themselves look like copies of the girl and Daisy member, and progress on, thinking that someone can reverse this in the area below a nearby canyon. Just as they're about to head down, they all transform back- but as each other instead of themselves, which shocks and frustrates them.

1/8/18: (2:??-7:20)

There is a person who is repeatedly turning into combinations of three different animals in order to fight something in a dark, pseudo-futuristic room. I can see them on screen to shoot at one point, and the twins from Flip Flappers are involved.

A giant snake "person" (just looked like a two-story tall snake) attacks me and others in a city alley. It can't tell people apart easily, but recognizes me from smelling my runny nose somehow, and comes after me.

The tent I was sleeping in outside an apartment is torn apart by the weather, which picked it up and proceeded to rain, HARD, solely above my stuff.

I need to give an example of something I have "triumphed in" for a required stage show. I'm slightly late, and the first example I give has something to do with electric powers? I then switch to saying I triumph in comedy itself.

1/10/18:

2D version of a 3D game, sand "castle" area, stars to collect Mario-style, giant mantis creature (boss?) in 3D Pikmin-esque leaf area, fought using morph ball (Metroid)?

1/11/18: (9:00-9:45 and 10:00-10:22, naps) (1:17-6:45)

Endbringer attack (Worm), it’s The Simurgh, “sometimes they stay dead for days, but they always get back up” (the Endbringers can be killed, but they don’t stay down), I’m at work, Blasto’s stuff turns everything inside purple and monstrous, and dogs become zerg-dogs, I’m Taylor, I run outside, “unlike inside, here, the bodies were real” I think to myself, envisioning them, except there actually aren’t any, I can’t even see the destruction, find some old guy and walk with him, there’s a giant model of earth to the right, see places on the continents being struck with poofs of red smoke, it represents something that’s actually happening, one barrels right into us, something to do with the endbringer attacks, some other guy with us now, old guy climbs into treehouse, which is thankfully unoccupied, speaks a little about how fire extinguishers are less effective in the arctic, then falls asleep in a bed in the back, me and the other guy sleep ourselves, and wake to the kid and his friend recording something nearby, they don’t notice us until I stand (I’m me again), they protest my presence, tell the kid to help me wake the guy in the bed up, they’re related?, go to scientist guy’s large yellow house, guys named Rick and Ray live here, they have a “human tainting” chamber/tube, think I’m watching videos at class/work and just getting really immersed, stop and wake as a result

I’m in a movie theater watching an animated movie, and become convinced that because the movie has characters named Rick and Ray and I JUST dreamed about that that I got the info about the future, movie ends, person in snake cosplay, accidentally head off in a sideways moving elevator for 50 minutes, come back, see giant gel monster things, fancy plaza with tennis courts and such, night sky looking ceiling, family has been waiting

I receive information that implies I am the girl who “won the game” and left for Heaven 6 months ago. I took “The Lilac Path”, was compared to a flower, and either literally was or was represented by a white, harsh featured woman’s mask with thorned briars behind it.

1/12/18: (1:??-9:30) (Powers Dream)

Fast vampire guy with long hair and Klaus (BBB), huge and intricate mansion, they’re after me/her (multiple tenses- I was “playing” as the female MC from a forum quest?), there’s a person cannon in the next room which is somehow Homestuck related, vote on song to play as we send off to another house, decide on Here from The Ancient Magus’ Bride, I still have pills left, but didn’t realize until I literally bit into them.

Five story playground equipment in backyard of house me and two girls broke into, we go inside, Yoda uses Spaceballs to distract a bunch of stormtroopers so he can turn them into water, I ask how that makes any sense, The Force can’t do that

Filthy purple room with green stringy things everywhere, on a team playing “hide and seek” (keep three items away from other team), room is too small and empty for this, novel new strategy, I distract the seeker when he comes in by fighting him with a rubber sling ball, and time runs out

A black guy with dreads/braids is sitting in a mostly black room at the top of a tower, a silver staircase leading inside. I’m not him, but can feel him comb his hair, somehow. He threatens Hannah Montana, until I, as Ayumura Tamako (but seen from a third person perspective), along with some tall guy, break through the outside wall (which has only air beneath it) and interrupt. I throw some sort of purple laser boomerang at the black guy, the results of which ICR, before I start to feel as if I’m just imagining this part, like I’m just daydreaming. Not liking this, I decide to leave this dimension, and fly(?) outside to do so.

1/13/18: (1:??-9:30) (Taste Dream)

There is a "Dream Dungeon" game, played in the style of SMT: Strange Journey, with a black and white map. There are small, reddish-pink bipedal creatures with oversized arms called "Neebles", that are extra powerful compared to the normal enemies, but I beat the first one fairly easily all the same.

In order to change fate, I need to alter a teddy bear/my alarm/my phone, which allows me to wake up early.

Card game where pictures must be matched, in a kitchen, blue and white buttercream doughnut I can taste, need Dad to help me snap a lobster's neck, which I think I'll be able to taste as well, something about planetary alignment and 413, I suck root beer from a fish grenade thing

1/14/18:

List of chapters, two centered around betrayals by cultists with red robes, Mom and I in a light white-greenish hallway, star projections on our feet, they signal that this is the spot to leave from, we spin to teleport out, we were on chapter 6, but then chapter 9 happens

Good, bad, and normal dream all forced to revolve around the same thing: a yellow and red thing with scales.

Make it to "banned" area by getting banned, made completely of sand colored blocks (seamless), indoor confinement with a single reception desk, place a portal there so it's a good thing (would have taken forever to get there otherwise).

Competition, sports style events, grannies and ___ on one side, robots and ___ on the other, I end up winning (most were gun events), take granny as prize, it'll all be connected soon anyways so it doesn't really matter...

1/15/17: (2:00-6:30)

I'm in my house, upstairs, while everyone is sleeping. I head downstairs, and Mom (who was asleep upstairs) sits up from the couch and screams at me, seriously startling me.

I'm playing/editing a game, from the inside, via the dev mode. The beginning mostly consists of large colorful platforms (with things on them) and floating bars (balance beams), some of which have yellow "slowdown" pads on them, all floating in the sky. There are two large, worm-like dragons with dark blue shell armor flying in the sky above. I passed by the Sun and Moon God area before, and end up going back to interact with them. They stand on small platforms above a larger central one. The sun god has eight arms. They speak to me, but their dialogue implies that you shouldn't be able to see both at once- I can, because I'm still in dev mode, which I'd forgotten. Cursing, I restart in normal mode, with a lot of progress lost.

The setting is a school, where many of the teachers are special (supernatural or otherwise) in some way. A wiry black "electric gremlin" locks 33 other monsters in with it in a room to play hide and seek, or rather "hide and shock" with them. In the hallways, there are several vocaloid-like beings who have "load" put upon them whenever a video starring them is uploaded. This existence is hard on the original/first of them, a girl with shoulder-length brown hair and a yellow and pink outfit, as because of the other's popularity they won't ever leave or fade away (while she will?). Phoenix Wright is nearby, and becomes angry with her, rushing at her to attack. I'm also there, and try to hold him back, but he begins transforming into a giant blade armed monster thing, making this difficult. I try disabling him with elbow strikes to the head, and ICR what happens after. Elsewhere, in a giant gray stone cavern with a thin spread of water covering the floor (possibly in the school), there are a ton of people milling about. A mouse cursor (moved by someone unknown) that can jet water out of its tip climbs up a rock near a big deal villainess woman in a black dress. Her name is revealed to be something familiar (something with "night" in it), just before she grabs and restrains a tall black man with pink dreads, who slashes at her with his hands and wounds her arm. She's intrigued, as that hurt her more than she's been hurt in the last ___ (some number of hundreds of) years. She tears away his disguise, revealing him to be Death the Kid (Soul Eater). Because he's in danger, a portal forms and teleports him out. I'm left somewhat confused however, as the "disguise" person is still around. The scene then plays out again, fully animated this time (it wasn't originally), no different except that DTK briefly turns into an orc. Above/upstairs, a group with bulky red and yellow cloaks (like bulky, darker versions of the Journey characters) and names based on angels have been waiting to leave this place, and are disappointed when the portal (the upper half of which was sticking through the ceiling) quickly closes. Later, an older male teacher fed up with doing nothing, along with me, decide to go looking for whatever is going on around here after hearing about the animal colonies that were here being gone (only the moving pictures/drawings remain). A horse and maid were previously kidnapped from here; if we could find the horse we'd have a lead. We proceed down a long hallway with rooms in the middle, but I keep getting ultra tired, and have to keep resisting sleep. We get to the front area, which has a setup like a shop with fully stocked shelves (mostly wigs?). The teacher decides we need wigs, and steals one. I grudgingly take another (a tokyo ghoul one), but don't think I'll be able to fit my hair under it. The teacher tells me to just do the best I can until we get downstairs. I think to myself that I'm glad he's having fun at least.

1/19/18:

Game with woman in blue who dies, I wonder how it affects Mom and Ian's dreams, Ian wants me to watch Castlevania "M___ of Blood" because it ties up plot threads from Dawn of Sorrow, but I don't want to, part of it plays out IRL in front of us, guy in white suit fights the boss on an altar at the back of an elementary school library like place, using millions of spears from the walls and floor, the boss counters with vines and just as many swords.

A familiar (as in a witch's familiar) sort of thing is floating over the sink, but I don't want to accept it as one (as mine?) because I know it won't listen to me.

There are giant piles of snow stacked in mountains outside the house, in the middle of spring, the huns from Night at the Museum are going around the neighborhood hitting everyone in the face with snowballs, I get excited (this is apparently an annual event), I go outside to change my panties for some reason, dude with a sharp object in hand comes after me, I flee through tall grass back to the house, recent argument between me and Elizabeth?

1/20/18: (2:00-9:??) (Powers Dream)

I'm in a small (less than 20) group of people with "God" powers, allowing us to fly, and giving us various other abilities as well (some of us, at least?). I'm relatively new to the group (and the area?), and worry that they dislike me, especially after I did something that I didn't think was rude, but they did. I try to find a moment to apologize, but can't seem to- there are too many kids in the house that all (or at least most) of us are living at, leaving precious few moments that everyone is available at the same time. Later, I'm at a sort of futuristic store, full of white plastic tubes and such, where I pick up two small items I didn't mean to. The one in my right hand is small, white and pink, and semi-triangular, and somehow shakes me when I hold it. Nearby, a girl from my group who sort of looks like Miu (DRv3) points out a tiny hammer either in or near something on the floor, which was relevant to the adventure/plot that happened previously where we attained said flight/godhood from. Later, I'm walking with Josuke (JJBA) under a winding overpass. It starts raining the second we step under open sky, and stops when we step under the pass, repeatedly. This indicates to both of us that we're under attack, thus we summon our stands. Josuke's looks kind of like Frieza (DBZ), while mine is long and kind of insectoid, with at least six limbs and enough flexibility to curl through the air. I then warn myself, still also back at the store somehow, and am that version of myself again. I tell the girl from my group about it and she goes to get the others, before I realize that it hasn't actually happened yet (there are two different time versions of me running around, and I'm currently the earlier version). I run out of the store and down the stairs, trying to talk to someone telepathically as I do(?). I come across a girl I know/have talked to on the stairs, and tell her I need to break her arm (which we discussed previously) in order to draw "their" attention, as I can't think of any other way. She's not happy about this for obvious reasons, and so tries to jump from the stairs and break MY arm to prove that will also get their attention. This fails utterly (my arm fails to break with her weight), and I tell her that's why it won't work with me before lifting up the girl (the crowd gasps) with the same arm and tossing her into the bookcase on the nearby wall, feet first. This makes her body turn cartoonish, and other people around pull her out as I hope that's enough and rush out of the building. Even later, there are many floating pillars high in the sky, with a central larger pillar meant to be reached by jumping from the smaller ones. A guy from my group is up here, doing just that (landing on the sides), and upon noticing the three golden glints in the central pillar, starts making his way there (they indicate either treasure or entrances). He doesn't manage it via jumping, and so ends up just flying there. I follow him in, and it turns out this is just the temple of the "Jungle boss" we beat already, so there's no new treasure here. The boss is basically just moving circular sawblades on a slope that descend slowly on a conveyor belt, which need to be broken by being "bowled" over. There are cardboard cutouts of rocks that turn real when bowled off to the side for this explicit purpose. The guy didn't do great on this before, but he just didn't get it I don't think, because I do very well with no practice at all. Also, by clogging the entryway, you can basically win automatically. Once we do, the guy who monitors this place asks if we want to go up to the top again, to which I say nah, we've got it, and just fly up on my own. While doing so, I think to myself that I'm getting too used to flying, and won't know how to go without it soon, to the point that I've memorized how it feels (like being "lifted" by the inside of the back of the shoulders/heart area). It then "slips" out of me in midair, which I panic about ("Hey!")- it feels as if God (who I envision as a long haired black guy made of stars and space) is lifting me up by my shirt.

In Grandma's room, whole slabs of my leg meat suddenly fall out, causing me to fall to my knees. My leg looks like raw chicken on the inside, and a large shard of rough, bloody bone comes out from just above my ankle, along with a chunk of the side of my foot. It doesn't hurt, but I still panic, and ask Mom what to do... and she just tells me to put it back.

Girl with seven different voices in her head, she's a parahuman, she sings to Lung (Worm), which is hilarious, on the Christmas before, a nerdy boy (who was the girl?) is driving, his different personalities are taking over intermittently, he gets in trouble due to something that happens in the car.

Sentient, pyramid shaped guy made of rock called Mr. Volcano, he's actually really tiny, church area where the ground is covered in high dark water that can partially(?) be walked over, all the buildings are black, giant orb building I get on top of, see family below and wave, will have to backtrack all the way if I want to get to them though.

1/21/18:

I get out of (my) bed, wander out to the theater area, starscape ceiling everyone is staring at, find family in the crowd, was backstage earlier (metal area with green room in back) that I was seen in.

There's a weird researcher looking guy in my bed, he all but tries to molest me, I know he's not real but still feel him poking me under the armpit, to get rid of him I sit up fully, say when I look up he'll be gone, and he vanishes.

1/22/18: (Powers Dream?)

Check-in room for an unfinished movie (early access?), I look like a woman with dark hair in a suit and have a fake ID/page to get in (the result of disguise magic?), guy with "Taurus" in his name tries to get in, I can tell he's also disguised/fake by what he says, somehow he's revealed to the rest of the room, he escapes into the dark-bluish dungeon/labyrinth outside, Ben 10 (or someone similar) pursues in a tiny, fast, white spider form (Kumoko?)

1/23/18: (1:3?- 6:40)

Four people meet up at the center of a town after a period of time, and show off proof of what they beat in order to let them proceed. Two did the normal version, one did a lesser version, and the last did something strange. They enter an aqua green palace, and somehow complete several “incorrect” fights.

1/26/18: (2:50-10:00)

Giant waterfall with bumpy, multicolored ground all around, the waterfall itself and the ground goes all around the area, it has a complicated "fall", Ian and I are there?

Robin, Jason, and Anne (The Wotch) are in a pink, cluttered bedroom, Robin is wearing a weird ninja outfit thing, they transform, Robin turns female and his clothes constrict into a really tight dress, later, on a lawn, Anne straight up admits to a guy (cheerfully) that she's altered his memory, with a display on a laptop that has a bunch of gold rectangles together and flashing, missing red ones to display the missing memories.

Someone is coming after an enemy “boss”, but it's actually a decoy, being issued commands by a scientist girl (the real final boss, so to speak). She goes through the underneath of her base to change the wires and such, where the light is dark purplish.

Guy who makes those around him extremely clumsy and can make himself Happosai-sized, making him very hard to hit or catch, I was on a team to guard against/catch him previously, one of the girls on the team gets frustrated enough to suggest arming everyone with guns, I corner him in a mall, in an area that's sort of like a giant tube, I still can't manage to hit him though, he goes on to be an ice skater, in the same mall someone is trying to use their henchman to kill people, but they're too incompetent, I'm on to them.

1/27/18: (2:00-9:30) (Powers Dream)

In a flat, "outer space" void, there is a spiral of gymnastic mats that leads to the Five God Dragon (Yugioh) at the glowing center, you can step outside the spiral of mats too, but that's no fun, there are enormous, whale-sized fish under the blackness that you can catch.

I'm a beautiful female ninja with shiny black hair and an elegant pink and green (seemingly peach inspired) outfit that looks like a mix between a dress and robes, walking through a town. It is possible to obtain small chests there (both normal brown and aqua green ones) from events, the latter only being openable with keys obtained from fights. There is a free hot spring that I want to go to, but I get interrupted before I can, and end up stuck going to a snowy mountain area for a mission. The entire time I just want to get back to the hot spring, to the point that I keep letting my clothes partially slip off. The guards, of which there are two lines on either side in front of me, find this very weird. I drop into the below-ground snow tunnel they are standing over to begin my mission.

I'm in a mansion/dungeon that anyone who enters supposedly only has a single night to escape. However, you actually have an endless amount of time, because time will stop progressing outside it the moment you enter. I'm dressed in a black leotard with gold accents along the sides. Coming up from a dark below ground area, I progress through an area of enemies that are no longer tough for me to beat (though they're destroyed before I can encounter them, via horizontal lightning), picking up the lightning items they drop. I think to myself that I need something blunter to kill them, since I want the kind of items they'll drop if I use a blunt weapon. I've explored most of the place, but have no idea where to go now. There is a rule that I need to stay out of the sight of the mansion's guards/servants, which poses a problem as there is one crouched right in front of the door to get back to the entryway (their stare is seen as a red cone of light). I hit the lights from my end (which only lasts a few seconds) and scamper out, climbing up a ladder across the way on to a catwalk. There are buttons on the wall to the left to press, and a gathering of people up ahead of me, one of whom is a kid who will alert the adults in 7 seconds that I'm here. It's possible to bribe him, and I have before, but I don't this time, instead swinging to a slightly lower catwalk, followed by another. I then fall/slide down a pit that leads to a furnace, turning into Bendy (Bendy and the Ink Machine) and moving off into a smaller side-tunnel.

1/29/18:

Video game/board game/obstacle course, Mario-like bit with aqua blue flooring and small electrified bits to jump around, upper area with movable present like boxes.

1/30/18:

The Protagonist (DDLC) was meant to be a girl from the start, but was changed. He enters a mall where there is a large flashy display overhead with the DDLC girls on it. Later, it turns out Monika has been with us (in the real world) the entire time, possibly due to a game glitch caused by a poster. Furthermore, because of someone's severed hand, she is omnipresent/everywhere at once at all times. She can control things by using her left hand for the mouse and her right for the keyboard (or the cursor, which is separate from the mouse?), which she reveals while in a car with me and _____ while suffering from awareness overload.

In a store, I "hatch" shriveled, radioactive bats. There are bats that "counter" them that look more like bluish, quadrapedal lizards the size of large dogs, most of which are sealed off in a toxic/radioactive factory mostly composed of tunnels, which ends up becoming the "endgame" area we have to traverse. Inside, the Homestuck trolls are sprawled out in a tunnel to the left, looking dead (they aren't), and for some reason we start a cookout just inside the entrance.

#dreams

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dampgaming · 7 years ago

Text

Part of my motivation for restarting this blog is Wooden Potatoes new contest, signal boosted previously. I was somewhat hyped for the contest, with the idea for subject matter, twists, humor, and well timed visuals... and then I realized I could never put something like that together with zero video editing skills.

Still, my inability to compete doesn’t change the fact that Guild Wars 2 is a great game in need of some grassroots evangelizing. So the obvious altruistic thing to do is let my words do the talking and to write out my idea without witness or reward... and failed Doctor Who quotes.

So what is the twist with a top ten list? It’s the fact it’s not a top ten list, but two top five lists. The top five things great about Guild Wars 2 and their achilles heels, and the top five worst things about Guild Wars 2 and their silver linings. Nothing is perfect, and if I send you charging into Guild Wars 2 it’s all sunshine and roses you’ll just come trudging right back out the second you get a thorn in your paw.

Small disclaimer before your baptism by fire, these points are only my opinion and not supported by any statistical data outside of my experience. With that aside, prepare yourself for twenty opinions on the best and worst of Guild Wars 2.

Best #1 Open World Cooperation

In Guild Wars 2, you don’t need a group to play together. In fact, the most common form of playing together is often just running competing events in zergs of various sizes. Squads and Commander tags are used and encouraged on certain maps, but on the individual level they aren’t required. Head out into the map, do hearts, complete events, and play the game other people.

Achilles Heel #1 Alone in a Crowd

Just because it’s easy to play together doesn’t mean it’s easy to group for for all challenges. Personal Story help, Living Story Achievements, dungeons... it’s sometimes very hard to get people together to do the little things. Even with a guild it’s hard to get help at times, as often if it isn’t daily reset or weekly Guild Missions your guildies just might not be around. This isn’t game breaking, but it’s certainly less... fluid than following the zerg.

Best #2 Joy of Movement

Latest buzz word for the up and coming expansion, but it applies to more than just the soon to be released mounts. Guild Wars 2 is all about movement. The combat is like an adventure game, where even when you can just stand still and auto attack you find yourself strafing just a little bit to be ready to dodge out of something. Add onto that jumping puzzles, guild rushes/puzzles, and various movement related masteries... you’ll quickly find yourself mostly standing still when you need to park yourself for a bio break.

Achilles Heel #2 Eight Fingers and Two Thumbs

Everyone has their limits. Some jumping puzzles are just hair pulling frustrating; one is literally called the Chalice of Tears. Every once in awhile you’ll run into a mob that will stun lock you if you make a mistake, wait for you come back with stun breaks and stability, and just stun lock you once those are all on cooldown. And don’t get me started on PvP; the cyborg age must already be here because some of those people can’t be using human hands to maneuver around you the way they do. Challenge is great, up until the point it breaks you.

Best #3 Fashion Wars 2

Everyone wants to be a pretty snowflake, and while those starter dyes you use in character creation might seem stifling, you’ll soon grow past them. The base dyes in Guild Wars 2 is simply huge and very encouraging for you try out new things. The wardrobe system is a bit more limiting, as they (mostly) require transmutation charge, but there are a decent amount of ways to get those for free. There are also various ways to earn otherwise premium items for free as well, though your mileage may vary with those.

Achilles Heel #3 Those Pants You Never Wear

All the various customization options are great, spectacular and wonderful... and you’ll very likely end up not using even a tenth of it. Seriously, sometimes you’ll find just the right skin to slap on your hard fought for ascended weapon or armor, but often you’ll leave it either as is or stick to certain staples across all characters. And the amount of times you actively work for a skin only to never use it... it’s mind boggling.

Best #4 Horizontal Progression

While there is value in being able to do something over and over again, there’s also value in doing something once checking it off the list. Horizontal progression provides for this need. Wardrobe skins, dye unlocks, achievements, and masteries. All are important aspects of Guild Wars 2 were you need progress just once and then it’s unlocked for good. Some complain about masteries at times, but nothing is more rewarding than jumping on an alt for a hero point train and having all your various jungle movement masteries right away.

Achilles Heel #4 Elusive Stat Perfection

Guild Wars 2 has a level cap of 80, and as part of Horizontal Progression that isn’t changing. The armor you should be wearing will change, and that will be trail of tears. Ever since they triple tapped with the nerf hammer on leather, crafting exotics new exotics is a pain. Crafting in the new stat combination that is just right for you even more so. And yes, changing ascended equipment is easier, but you still need to be at the point where ascended armor is a thing for you. Not to mention be will to reacquire all the runes and sigil, and sink another half dozen transmutation charges. If you solo one character to perfection, that may be workable. But if you’re an alt-aholic... be ready for disappointment when a change in the skill craft invalidates your current gear in playing the way you want to play.

Best #5 You Can Play For Free

Guild Wars 2 has always been buy to play, with no subscription fee. With Heart of Thorns they retired the ability to purchase the base game in lieu of free accounts... and we should really just focus on the no subscription fee thing. Yes, the new model where you buy either expansion to upgrade a free game into a full game is nice, but the only thing to upsell free accounts is the fact you can log in every few months to unlock the Living Story Episodes for free. Even the major ability to trade gold for gems from Arena Net itself is locked out to free accounts, so you can’t get everything and be completely free.

Achilles Heel #5 Your Mileage May Vary

As stated above, free accounts are more for trying out the mechanics to see if things like combat and movement in the game are things you can enjoy. No map chat for asking for help, limited bag space, and denied access to the currency exchange... yeah, it won’t get you much for actually playing the game. Currency exchange also takes sacks of gold to get decent purchases, so be ready to cook up a gold making routine if that is a path you want to take.

Worst #1 They’ve Given Up On Underwater Combat

Underwater combat hasn’t has a major balance pass in years, choices are limited to any and all of the underwater weapons your profession has, and a good chunk of utilities that might be critical to your build are turned off underwater. Reverents in particular are limited to just two of your legends underwater, which with one weapons means you know exactly what a Rev will bring to the table for underwater combat. Heart of Thorns didn’t have any underwater sections of note, and Path of Fire takes place in a desert... so yes, it looks like we aren’t going to be taking on the Elder Dragon Steve any time soon.

Silver Lining #1 It’s Better Underwater Combat Than Any Other Game

You have not fought underwater in a video game till you’ve fought underwater in Guild Wars 2. The unique skills and lack of breath meter are both amazing. If anything the problems are mechanics clashing with aesthetics. Barracudas, for instance, were pocket raptors before pocket raptors existed. It’s visually pleasing to see certain enemies traveling in densely packed groups... less so when they hit as hard as their solo strength counterparts. Weapon diversity in regards to power and condition damage needs to be addressed as well. And hopefully they will be addressed when we are ready to fight where the quaggans called home.

Worst #2 Raid Contamination

Raids have come to Guild Wars 2, and they’re single handedly the reason one of my guilds don’t do Guild Missions anymore. Spirit, we always joked about you being the raid mom, but now that raids are actually a thing we miss you. (Yes, I know you moving to Australia was also a factor, but still...) But yes, raids are a thing, and even with the legendary armor being unlocked for WvW and PvP, there is still a lot of things locked behind that raid wall. Not least of which is story.

Silver Lining #2 Stories We’d Only Get With Raids

It has been said by the developers, that if it wasn’t for raids we would not have gotten the conclusion to Saul D’Alessio’s story arc. Similarly, while the story of the White Mantle was told in Living Story Season 3, it’s prequel story was told in raids. A prequel story that was cool on several levels... but realistically might not have been told at all if not for raids, and the game would be lesser for it.

Worst #3 Solves Surpluses With A Triple Tap

Sometimes there is an imbalance in the economy that results in too much of one resource in circulation and costing comparatively nothing. The proper reaction is to take one action at a time gradually to nudge things back into equilibrium. Arena Net has on more than one occasion done multiple solutions at the same time. They did it with cloth, and then they did it again with leather. It really needs to stop.

Silver Lining #3 Always Monitoring The Economy

First thing, overreacting is better than not reacting at all. Nothing is worse than watching the economy spiral into disrepair. Second... they will eventually correct an imbalance created by their actions. We did eventually get a leather farm to help get the leather we desperately needed. Yes, we would have prefered if some of their previous actions were undone rather than waiting several months for an injection, but help eventually came.

Worst #4 Spam 2 To Kill Elder Dragon

The Core World Personal Story has all kinds of small things wrong with it that just add up to a big frustration. Certain parts of the endstory only make sense if you play multiple characters of multiple races and select almost every single story path, with many of those paths not paying off the personal connection when the time comes if you selected that path. When they revamped the story for the Chinese release, they cut an entire chapter for several months before adding it back.

But most of all, the battle with Zhaitan is just the underwhelming use of an environmental item, taking aim and spamming skill two. After eighty levels of content and several grand sub bosses, and then suddenly the big bad can be auto attacked away. Arena Net has said that they are unlikely to come back to this, with the maybe acceptable reason it would take a team the size of a living world episode to work on for about the same time as a living world episode to do right. With that said, it isn’t going away on it’s own and hangs like an albatross over Guild Wars 2’s neck.

Silver Lining #4 Constant Improvement

Quality has really picked up during the Living World and build up to where we are now. Season 1 had some growing pains, but from the get go they still had epic bosses like the molten twins, and the season ended with the epic battle for Lion's Arch. Season 2 was a little shaky at times, but we had two epic fights against the Shadow of the Dragon with the final death definitely satisfying. And while I’ve heard some people complain about HoT’s Mordremoth battle, I personally find it mostly perfect; we actually get to fight the thing, and when we finish him it is satisfying. Season 3 meanwhile started strong and had a chain of three epic bosses. I don’t know what lies ahead in Path of Fire, but I look forward to it.

Worst #5 Particle Spam

The best times is Guild Wars 2 are when you are running with the Zerg. The only problem with that is that two hundred players all firing attack skills on a mob... tend to obscure the action. Yes, one could argue that this flurry of blows actually is the action, but such arguments fall on deaf ears when you're flat on your face because you missed the bosses big stomp animation. They did introduce culling for particle effects that you can turn on, but it’s efficiency is sometimes debatable.

Silver Lining #5 Telegraphs Do Work

Arena Net are aware of particle effect spam, if only because two hundred players in one area is also a server load issue. Because of this, they have been designing around it. Giants make big bold clear actions that can be seen when they are literally on fire. Wyverns mouths light aflame just before they breathe fire onto the ground right in front of them. AoEs are now signaled partially with big huge orange fields rather than red fields for clearer visibility through the spam. Pay attention, and you’ll know at least what killed you if not how you could have avoided it.

#Guild Wars 2 #Opinions

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dorothyd89 · 8 years ago

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How to Increase Your Actions Per Day (APD)

This is an article from NF Rebel Writer, Daniel Thrasher

Have you ever watched a professional gamer play Starcraft on the computer? Seriously, just watch a few seconds of this:

These guys are insane… their fingers fly over the keyboard like hummingbird wings, and their pointer finger taps the mouse button so fast it sounds like a machine gun going rat-a-tat-tat. When professionals play a real-time strategy game, they’re always doing something; usually they’re juggling five or more competing goals at the same time (attacking, defending, building, scouting, and so forth).

In fact, one of the most common ways to measure the skill level of a professional real-time strategy player is in “actions per minute.” In a game of Starcraft, it doesn’t matter whether the player is researching new technologies, issuing commands to their military units, or training a new worker – every click and stroke of the mouse or keyboard counts as an action!

These players usually hit hundreds of actions per minute, up to 300 (APM) being normal for pros and some even top out as high as 600 APM! That’s up to 10 actions per second in a typical game, which is crazy fast! (In fact, I strongly urge you not to try this at home. Your wrists will hate you…)

Professional or a newb, any player in a real-time strategy game cannot afford to be paralyzed by choice… sitting around in a state of inaction and thinking instead of doing something, right now, is going to get you clobbered.

Sound familiar?

Every action we take in these games, or on the quest to lose weight and gain muscle, takes us one step closer our goals. When we fail to take action, we slowly get overtaken by the enemy swarm of inaction, laziness, and a sedentary lifestyle.

You don’t need to be a fan of these RTS games to take advantage of this “actions per” mindset, and today I’m going to show you how it has been the missing ingredient from you taking action in your own life.

Simply focus on raising your Actions Per Day, and start winning life.

Success Based on Actions Per Day

The gamers use actions per minute (APM), but we’ll be using actions per day (APD).

STOP stressing so much about any single decision.

Instead, look at your total actions over a month. How? By measuring progress in actions per day for at least one week – ideally, for a full month.

For instance, if you’re going to tackle a new exercise goal, here are some actions you can count…

Did you weigh yourself? That’s one action.

Did you hit the gym for a workout today? One action.

Did you click the order button on a new pull-up bar? One action.

Did you swap out veggies for fries at dinner tonight? One action.

By consciously focusing on taking as many single actions as you can each day, you’ll make so much more progress than you ever could with the haphazard “when-I-feel-like-I-have-time” method.

Some actions you will take are going to be habitual. It might be difficult to start running or eating veggies, but eventually it’s going to be a breeze. These are the best ways to accrue actions because while they may difficult at first, they get easier and easier until they don’t even feel like work. Eventually, you are living a healthier life on auto-pilot.

One-time actions are basically anything else that helps you pursue your fitness or health goal, like signing up for a gym membership or learning to cook a meal. (FYI: Research and reading are great, but for this challenge, they don’t count as an action. Nice try!)

Hopefully, you’ll start counting habitual and one-time actions like these:

Did you go for an afternoon walk?

Did you cut out one soda from your normal consumption today?

Did you make yourself a healthy lunch?

Did you try a new veggie?

Did you finally try deadlifting or that new exercise you’ve been researching?

Did you do yoga today? Or do those mobility stretches?

Over the course of a week, those points really add up, and all it takes is a point here and there to make some serious progress on the path toward a healthy, fit life.

Now, just like in Starcraft, not ALL actions you take are going to be perfect, correct, or even move you in the right direction. But the more times you take action, the more you’ll learn how things change as a result, and the more likely you’ll be in the future to learn and take more informed action. BUT ACTION IS THE KEY!

Remember, we need to get you out of your head and out in the real world DOING stuff.

I want you to start by promising to do just one action per day toward your health and fitness goal. It can be anything – but you have to start somewhere. If you’ve accumulated even just a few total actions by the end of the first week, then you’ve already taken those precious first steps on your journey.

Helpful hint: After coming up with your APD strategy, schedule those actions. If you them on your calendar, you’re more likely to follow through and get your actions counted.

An Example Week of APD

Here you are reading this article. I know what you might be thinking. “How the heck is this going to get me healthy?”

Having tried to get healthy once, twice, or more than a few times, tomorrow you’re going to do at least ONE thing (you’re not just going to try). Then, apply the APD strategy, and focus just on a single action per day, or a total of 7 total actions for your first week.

Here’s an example of what a full week looks like.

Remember, every day that you do an action that improves your health – or deliberately avoid an action that hurts it – you can count each of those actions as an APD!

Day 1: For your first new health habit, you decide to ditch one of your afternoon sodas at work – one of the ones you use to get through the afternoon slump. That’s 1 APD you can count on your first day.

Day 2: You stick to the new habit and avoid a soda, but you find yourself lacking energy and want a boost, so you snack on some nuts and fruit at 3 pm. A healthy snack and no soda counts as 2 APD for your second day. Nice! You’re already at 3 actions total for the week.

Day 3: Still no soda, plus a healthy afternoon snack, and you’re feeling pretty good. Pumped about your progress, you decide to go for a quick walk around the neighborhood after work. Nothing too big, but you feel good about it. You pick up 3 APD on your third day, bringing your total for the week to 6 actions so far!

Day 4: These new habits are sticking, and you think 7 total actions by the end of the week was too easy (just one per day, pssh!). Way to crush it! You start brainstorming how to get your total actions up to 14 by the end of the week (maintaining an APD of 2). Should you focus on moving more? Or eating better? Well, you know you eat too much sugar with dessert after dinner, so that’s your next goal: cutting your dessert calories in half. It’s a step in the right direction, so with the skipped soda, healthy snack, and walk after work for at least 15 minutes, you clock a whopping 4 APD today, which makes 10 actions for the week.

Day 5: Uh oh. Your day is stressful today, and you slip up and have a soda instead of your healthy snack. With no more motivation, you skip your walk and have a big dessert after dinner too. Just when you want to throw in the towel, you remember you committed to a daily goal of just 1 APD, so you look for something… and do these four yoga movements before bed. You may not be converted into a yogi, but it just took a few minutes and felt good to do something for the day and try something new. That’s 1 APD for Day 5 and 11 APD for the week.

Day 6: Even though yesterday wasn’t your proudest day, you realize you’re still sitting at 11 actions that improved your health so far this week. “Holy crap, I did 11 things this week? Yesterday is just a blip on the radar” you think. With renewed confidence, you stick to your habitual actions of skipping the soda, walking after work, and cutting dessert altogether to make up for yesterday. That’s 3 APD and you’re back on track with 14 actions total this week. (You also research some gyms in your area, which is wonderful, but doesn’t count towards your APD until you actually take action and join one.)

Day 7: It’s the end of your first week, and you really want to boost your APD for the final day. In addition to the other four new habits you’ve been keeping up with, you take the plunge and sign up for a gym membership. Hey, signing up may be a one-time action, but it counts too! That makes 5 APD for Day 7, a total of 19 actions in just one week, and a whole lot of progress toward your health. Isn’t it amazing how quickly these actions add up when you stop focusing on any single thing?

From Zero (APD) to Hero

“Got No Patience For Sitting Around!” – Starcraft Siege Tank Guy (1998)

After several false starts on my own fitness journey, the exercise habit finally stuck when I just started doing one simple bodyweight workout three times per week – no overthinking required. That really just added up to a goal of 3 actions the whole week, but it was doable enough, and it changed everything.

Soon I was off to bigger things, but it all started with zero actions per day. From zero, doing the beginner bodyweight workout three times a week was an epic win.

This is the story of literally every person who is now in shape. They started with zero and went from there.

Remember: You’re a battle-hardened military commander, you don’t have the luxury of sitting around and thinking about any single decision. Instead, start making decisions NOW, and adapt as you go.

Whenever you can, it’s smart to devote some attention to reconnaissance and scout what the enemy is up to – after all, it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to execute a plan without any planning whatsoever. But without doing something, anything right now, you’re destined to be destroyed by the zerg swarm inaction and doubt.

Remember: Just take some sort of daily action – no matter what!

On the plus side, the stakes are rarely as high in real life as they are in a military space battle… you probably aren’t going to be blamed for the extermination of your entire civilization (probably).

So, if you have a million things you want to accomplish, just pick ONE goal, and get going now.

Why? Because that’s how you win this real-time strategy game we call “life”!

Tomorrow is a new day. Which action will you take first?

Let me know in the comments.

-Dan

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Photo: skeeze, Juggling Balls

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