As always, thank you to u/SpacePaladin15 for the wonderful universe that is NoP! Thank you to u/cruisingNW for proof reading and helping me make this chapter as good as it can be, you're the man! Honestly LoM wouldn't have gone very far without him! If you haven't you should absolutely go read Foundations of Humanity! It's very good AND it just updated!
A big thanks to u/Saint-Andros for helping with proofreading! He writes Out of Our Elements which is a very good one! If you like a good fic in the wilderness and a pair of cute 'friends' ;) you'll love OOE!
Also thank you to u/brotanics! For this wonderful fanart of Taisa. And this one! She's so cute I'm gonna die
And thank you to u/Jimdandy117! For this adorable fanart of Chris and Renkel! Dear god help he's adorable I love him so much
Thank you u/SlimyRage, or AsciiSquid on Discord, for makin' Vengineer Taisa Gamin'. She's absolutely adorable, I love her lil' workers apron. She looks so excited to get to work!
Thank you u/Braquen! For this astounding Pixel Art of Taisa after a few range day dates with Chris! Her little hat and gunbelt are absolutely astounding!
Thank you u/VeryUnluckyDice! For this Artwork of Taisa and Chris as characters from One Piece! I've never seen or read it before but it's incredibly cute!
Thank you to u/creditmission for their wonderful work of several LoM fanfics!
First Prev. Next
Memory Transcription Subject: Taisa, Venlil Starship Engineer, Crystal Star Shipping Co-Owner
Date [Standardized Human Time]: October 16th, 2136
My ear twitches as it catches the first sounds of morning coming from the kitchen, and Chris snorts at the sudden interruption. I delight in the comforting pull of his arms, even if it tugs my wool a little. He draws small circles in the wool of my back, gently coaxing me to wake alongside him, even as his groggy grumble reminds me how long I’d already been awake.
“G’Mornin, Darlin’.” He yawns before planting a small kiss on my snout, eagerly met by my own happy mewl as I stretched and wove my claws through the ‘wool’ on his chest, “Sleep well?”
“Better than I would have thought…” I purred, nuzzling up into his neck as I stretched, reaching for my pad on the bed-side before flicking it on to a notification from over a claw ago that it’d lost signal. “Don’t know if Mama even responded.”
“I’m sorry, Darlin’.” He whispered, pulling me in tight to his chest with a sorrowful look on his face.
“I hope they’re alright.” I whispered back, pressing in close as I pulled my eyes from the empty screen, dropping the pad to fall into the mattress beside us.
“I’m sure they are, hon’.” Chris’ voice poured through me as he held me tight, his hands still gently caressing my wool as the sounds in the kitchen grew ever louder. “Though, if’n we make it out the other side of all this, I think your Pa’s gonna have words for me again.”
“Mama too!” A small burble of whistling laughter filled my throat at the memory of Papa angrily jabbing a claw up at Chris’ hulking form when we’d returned from The Cradle.
“I’ll bet they’re happier to see us alive than they will be angry we stayed.” Chris rumbled in reply, his hand trailing lightly through my wool down my back.
“I hope so.” I sighed, stretching in his grasp, doing my best to work the lethargy from my limbs as the tantalizing taste of whatever Darlene was cooking reached my tongue. “For now let's just…”
“Get through this as best we can? Agreed.” Chris grunted, finishing my hanging sentence as he propped himself up against a pile of pillows and suddenly pulled me against him. A soft bleat of surprise slipped from my mouth, quickly silenced by a wonderfully warm kiss that I eagerly pressed into. A small smile crossed his lips as we hung there, separated by no more than a breath of air before he spoke. “Smells like Ma’s makin’ up somethin’ delicious.”
“Of course food is the first thing your mind goes to once you’re actually awake.” I laughed, my tail slipping from his leg to playfully tap the side of his face as I slid down to nuzzle his neck.
“When Ma’s cookin’ you bet it is!” He replied, placing another, softer kiss on my crown before shifting out beneath me and rising to his feet with a stretch and a yawn. “‘Sides, it beats stayin’ in bed all day just… waitin’.”
“Yea, yea I suppose it does.” My ears drooped at the mention of what was coming, that hanging specter of the Extermination Fleet slipping to the forefront of my mind as I ran my claws through my wool, peering into the old mirror in the corner. “What did you want to do today?”
“First: eat breakfast. Then we feed the cows real quick ‘fore they get upset. After that, I figure we go up to the peak again and watch the lightshow. Hidin’ won’t do us no good anyhow, least we can have a nice view if’n it all comes down.” He answered, his voice stiff in its attempts to be nonchalant, doing his best to stay upbeat despite the subject. “Make a few sandwiches and snacks, take a nice hike and just watch.”
“Think that’ll help at all?” I asked, my voice only just louder than a whisper as I turned from the mirror, finding him already dressed and, for the most part, groomed.
“No clue, but I bet it’ll feel a lot better than sitting in a dank hole waiting for it to end anyhow.” Chris shrugged, pulling his hat down tight on his head as he bent over to give me another kiss. “‘Sides, I bet Roscoe’d love to find his way along for a bit. Though you might have to fight him o’er the peaches.”
A jolt of surprise flicked up my ears as I felt my tail wag at the thought of the dog joyfully chomping at the peaches, his little shoot-tail wagging as fast as he could manage. “That does sound nice…”
“Thought you’d like that. Now, how’s ‘bout we get some breakfast?” He asked with a smile, stepping to the door with a sure stride before swinging it open and gesturing me through. “After you, Hon’.”
The delightful, familiar taste of sizzling potatoes, carrots and all manner of spices I couldn’t recognize filled the air as we stepped into the kitchen to find Darlene hard at work over the stove, whistling happily as she was surrounded by what I thought had to be the entire kitchen’s worth of pots, pans, skillets and tools. Michael and Ryan were sat at the island across from her, chatting idly as Roscoe happily trotted to Chris and I.
A twitch of fear zipped down my spine and out of my tail as the dog looked up to me, letting out a soft whine as he licked his chops and plopped to the floor before rolling over to show Chris and I his belly.
“Good Morn’ Roscoooe! Time for some belly rubs, ol’ buddy.” Chris cooed, stooping over to vigorously rub at the dogs belly, eliciting a rising rumble of groans, pants and whines as the brown and white mass of fur wiggled back and forth happily. “You happy to see Taisa again, bud?”
A lolling, pink tongue fell from Roscoe’s mouth as he basked in the moment of adoring attention. I glanced up, finding Chris’ parents and Ryan watching me hover off to Chris’ side. Michael gave me a nod and a small smile, gently encouraging me forward to Chris’ side. “He still won’t bite ya, unless’n ya consider over-eager kisses to be bitin’.”
The light warmth of a small bloom spread under my wool as I stepped forward, crouching at Chris’ side. Worry flashed through my mind while I looked down at Roscoe’s glistening, pointed teeth before being rapidly replaced by amusement as he let out an adorable, appreciative grunt that sounded far too much like Papa after settling into a good bath to relax.
You’ve come this far already, he was plenty gentle last time you were here paw-feeding him peaches.
My paw slipped into his fur, met by a warm, soft blanket that I hadn’t fully expected as I slowly massaged my claws through his coat, eliciting another battery of pleased groans. Before I knew it, both of my paws were hard at work rubbing and scratching though his fur as if I weren’t touching a predator like it was nothing to be worried about.
Maybe because it isn’t. You’re in love with one, after all.
The distinct clink of plates being set on the countertop snapped me from the luxurious fur of Roscoe’s coat as Darlene’s sing-song voice filled the air. “Breakfast is served!”
“Taisa, I couldn’t rightly convince Michael or Ryan to give up a Naw’lins breakfast today but don’chu worry. I’ve got the vegan options set aside for ya in the green bowls and the blue carton next to the coffee is the vanilla oat…” She paused a moment, obviously searching her mind for a ‘better’ word than whatever the actual one was. “Juice? It’s good to cut the coffee with, if’n it’s a bit too strong for ya. Oh! And the orange pitcher is orange juice if ya really don’t like the coffee!”
I looked across the table, finding four green bowls and a platter amongst a scattered sea of different colored bowls, platters and trays. Ryan leaned forward, gently sticking his fork into a thin, flaky white slab sat atop a blue plate before setting it onto his own.
Is that…
Does it really matter anymore?
Chris pulled his eyes from the spread of food in front of us, glancing over at me with worried eyes as the rest of his family set about preparing their own plates. He slipped into a stool with a soft creak, pulling a plate in front of himself before settling a napkin across his lap. Another zip of fear bolted down my tail at the thought of my Love digging into a cut of flesh like his brother was. I could feel my ears swiveling with anxiety as my tail all but twisted itself into knots and I watched him gently skewer a few pieces of fruit and collect a scoop of some steaming medley of vegetables.
Is Chris going to?
It's lab-grown, isn’t it? Not a single animal was hurt making it so why shouldn’t he? Is it really any worse than a plant when it’s grown in a lab?
My wool flared with worry as I settled into the stool next to him, nervously fidgeting with the plate and ‘fork’ in front of me as I watched Chris’ family take their picks of the spread on the table. Each one had picked at least something off the… other plates before picking a few pieces of fruit: a steaming helping of rice and vegetables, a scoop of those delicious crispy tubers Papa loved or whatever those fluffy, golden pillows were off the green dishes. Chris looked over to me again, his gaze making me feel like I was little more than an upset pup about to throw a fit for not being entirely comfortable.
Disappointment…
That’s not what he thinks and you know it.
But what if he does? What if I a-
You’re not. And we already knew what he was when we made our decision. It had to happen sometime, didn’t it?
I let out a soft sigh, placing a paw on his thigh and meeting his eye as he took a crunchy bite from an apple. “Chris, what do you want to eat?”
“I’m fine with some fr-” He started, talking between chews of his apple, earning an annoyed look from Darlene.
“No, not what you’re fine with, what do you want to eat?” I repeated, pressing my paw a little tighter to his leg as my tail found its way around his ankle. “I… you don’t have to try and dance around what you are for my sake, Love. I love you for you, not your diet. If I could get past the eyes I can get past this.”
“You sure?” He whispered, glancing from me to that same plate he’d kept looking at in the middle of the table with a few cuts of pink and speckled black meat on it. “I don’t wanna ma-”
“Chris, you’ve done nothing but take supplements, indulge Papa’s cooking and eat a genuinely concerning volume of string-fruit for the past few herds. Yes, I’m sure.” I answered, patting his leg and taking a deep breath before watching as he looked to his family for a moment and then back to me.
Chris’ mouth hung open as he tried to stammer a response, some assurance, some empty ‘I’m fine’, before he sighed, setting his hand softly on mine and squeezing gently before I turned my paw over to squeeze back. “… Thank you, Darlin’. Mama’s blackened Red-Drum n’ grits ‘re worth it, I promise you that.”
“Go for it, big-guy.” I purred, doing my best to bolster my confidence as he leaned forward to take a scoop of the off-white grain, dropping it into a bowl before gently laying a sliver of pink and black flesh across the top of it.
A silver spoon cut a piece of the meat free along with a scoop of the ‘grits’, he drew in a deep breath as it hung just before his mouth, closing his eyes with a small smile that reminded me all too much of Mama when Papa made one of her Mama’s recipes. The spoon slipped into his mouth, the food disappearing with it, prompting a pleasant groan from Chris before he leaned back in his chair and let out a contented sigh. “Stars I’ve missed that. No offense to your Pa’ but ain’t nothin’ beat’s Ma’s cookin’.”
“I t-think he might contest that.” I replied, as a shiver passed through my wool at the thought before I quickly batted it away, doing my best to plant my foot against the building anxiety in my chest. “What should I have?”
“Can’t go wrong with Ma’s pancakes and some maple syrup! Fluffy as all hell and just as sweet.Fully Vegan too!” He replied, pointing to the golden pillows before breaking off another chunk of flesh as his voice turned mischievous. “‘Tween that, some fruit and a good helping of roasted vegetables, I’m not sure you could fit much else.”
“Excuse you! I can eat my fill plenty!” I bleated back, pulling my eyes from the contents of his bowl to look over the ‘pancakes’, catching a trio of amused eyes watching us as we bickered. Defiantly I leaned forward and skewered one, plopping it on my plate before collecting the flask of brown syrup, dumping a hardy portion on top of it and cutting a slice free to pop into my mouth.
Stars above was he right.
The dough all but melted in my mouth, the nutty sweetness of the syrup mixed with the light airy taste of the pancake to make something that far outstripped any dessert Strayu I’d ever had. I found myself letting out a trill of happiness as I took another bite, my tail wagging ecstatically at each delicious chew before my plate was suddenly empty again.
“Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone go through one of Ma’s Vegan pancakes quite that fast other’n Annie.” Ryan laughed before skewering another few golden brown chunks of potato and popping them in his mouth.
“Well lucky for her, seconds are an option!” Darlene replied with a broad grin, gently cutting her meal up as she watched me reach for another delicious pancake. “So, what are you two getting up to today?”
“Well,” Chris mumbled past a mouthful of his food, holding a fist to his mouth seemingly appeasing her, even if only just, before continuing. “I’s figurin’ we’ll take care of feedin’ the cow’s for y’all ‘fore we head up to the outlook to… watch.”
“Oh! Thank you, Son.” Michael responded, sliding his now clean plate away from himself as he spoke. “Guess Ryan an’ I can get some work done in the garage then!”
“I’ll have some snacks and a good dinner ready for you two when you’re done! Won’t do to go up there and be hungry!” Darlene exclaimed, a flash of excitement in her eyes as she started to rattle off options she could have ready for us to take up.
“Thank you Ma’. Whatever you decide on I’m sure we’ll love it.” Chris stated, a small smile pulling at the corners of his face as he scooped the last of the grits from his bowl.
It’s like nothing’s even happening to them. Just like it’s another normal paw.
[Advance Transcript by Time Unit: 8 Hours]
The silence of the forest around us echoed with the sounds of calling birds and rustling leaves that sounded strikingly familiar to the preserves at home, the dragging weight of a ‘lunch box’ that was positively stuffed to the brim with food hung on my shoulder as we steadily plodded our way up the mountainside. The sky far above had shifted, the pale blues and white clouds of day deepening into streaking purples, fiery oranges and brilliant yellows as the sun had begun to set. It still amazed me that he got to see the night every paw, watching what Heartwood River had built an entire festival around, something that most Venlil never even saw in the first place was so common, so beautiful.
It was astoundingly, beautifully, breathtaking.
Chris’ heavy footfalls a few tails ahead pulled me from my thoughts, the soft, hollow clunk of his guitar on his hip accompanied the jangling clink of the golden buckles on his rifle’s sling as he spoke. “Not much farther now, Darlin’. You still good carryin’ dinner? I can take it off ya’ ‘til we get to the top if’n ya need.”
I stifled a snicker as I readjusted the strap, picking up my pace so I wasn’t slowing us down. “I’m fine. Not like I’m gonna let you carry everything, Heartwood. Besides, lower gravity certainly helps!”
“Oh? You gonna jump up to give me another kiss?” He laughed, slowing his stride for a few steps to let me catch up. “Certainly wouldn’t mind any.”
“Oh really? Maybe I will!”” I purred back, sticking my tongue out at him as he shifted the rifle around to rest against his back, prompting another thought to surface in my mind. “Why’d you bring the revolver and the rifle?”
He gave a noncommittal shrug and grunt, his hand rising to rest on the gleaming pistol as the holster squeaked and groaned a little under the weight. “Just… feels like somethin’ I can control in all this. ‘Sides, she’s like an old good luck charm. Pappy always told me I’d never be alone so long’s I kept a good rifle by my side when things got rough. I figure there ain’t nothin’ much rougher’n this.”
A soft mewl of understanding slipped from my snout as the path beneath our feet leveled out, the trees in front of us fading away to a vast expanse of rising mountain peaks and deep, tree filled valleys framing the setting sun like a perfectly placed photograph. “Mama always seems to feel better when she’s got that old rifle of hers around, said having it nearby always calmed her nerves.”
“I’m surprised that monster doesn’t knock her on her ass! I need to get her to let me send some rounds through that thing sometime to feel it out.” He replied with a smile, gently setting his old wooden guitar down, leaning it against the low edge of the rock outcropping before slinging his rifle free and bringing it to his shoulder to look out across the valley. “Ol’ Isabella ain’t never let me down, she’s like a lucky charm ‘s far as I’m concerned.”
“I know you said your ‘Pappy’ gave her to you for those competitions you two used to go to, but I don’t think you ever told me why it was that gun specifically.” I asked, nonchalantly setting my load down on top of the rock outcropping, doing my best to hide the wag in my tail as I tried to nudge him into rambling again. It was always cute when he got excited about something.
Same thing he said about me getting tail deep in oil, spare parts and burnt carbon.
“Ol’ Izzy? She’s a Henry Model ‘60. Same gun the ‘hero’ used in one of our favorite movies set back in the eighteen hundreds, or at least a really nice replica with some customizations Pappy and I had ‘our’ gunsmith down in town do.” He answered, slipping the lever down with the sweet sound of well maintained linkages and religiously oiled parts.
“What’d you have them do?” I asked, leering around his side to stare up at the rifle in his hands, my ears raised with interest as he lowered it and crouched to my height to show me.
“Most of it was to do with the action, bringin’ her up to competition grade. Lightening a few parts here, strengthening a few bolts there, tightening up some linkages over yonder. Cleaned out the rifling, added a loop lever and made the trigger feather weight. Top it all off with the blackout finish to make the gold pop against her ebony furniture and damn if she ain’t pretty.” He let out a chuckle as he polished a smudge from the rifle’s gleaming flank, a fond look on his face as he brought his eyes up to cast a gaze out across the mountain range. “Hell, Pappy always used to joke that she ‘was the only woman that boy’d ever need’. Mama never was a fan of that one...”
Stars I love it when he gets like this.
“Is that normal, for Humans?”
“Hmm?”
“Getting that attached to a firearm? Mama used to spend a whole half-claw taking her rifle apart, oiling it, checking the connections and making sure everything was right before putting it back together again. She said it helped calm her down when her leg hurt.”
“Firearms specifically? No, not really, most people just have something what’s important to them for one reason or another. Pa’s ol’ telescope was another gift from Pappy and whenever he gets stressed out he just sits there and stares up at the sky with it. Ma’ loves her ol’ mixer from the restaurant, anytime she gets wired she dives straight into making something to keep her hands busy…” He sighed as his hands tightened around the rifle for a moment before he leaned it against the rock outcrop and sat down. “For me, Izzy’s one of the few things that ain’t family that’s always been there and… she’s really the last thing I have of Pappy… Man, I miss him sometimes.”
“He sounds like he meant a lot to you, Heartwood… I wish I’d gotten to meet him.”
“He did, Darlin’... He sure did.”
Silence fell between the two of us as I slipped down to sit beside him, the only sounds around us those of the forest itself and the hollow, musical winds of the valleys beyond. Chris’ hand found my back, my tail slipping tight around his wrist as I pressed into him. Everything was quiet again as we watched the sun dip below the distant horizon, the spectrum of vibrant colors slipping away to the deep black-blue of night and its tapestry of stars.
Stars above but that moon was beautiful.
I’d seen it last time we were here, but not like this. This time it was massive, a glowing white spot-light casting down onto us, the rising mountains and the rest of Earth below it. A dusting of black dots zipped back and forth in front of it, Earth’s defenders settling into their final preparations as the Extermination fleet no doubt closed in.
Like it's trying to shine a little light of its own.
Michael had shown us video from one of Earth’s orbital telescopes of the U.N.’s opening salvo, a veritable basin of FTL propelled asteroids they had managed to drop from warp just in front of the fleet had sent them scampering out of the way as best they could. More than a few Federation ships had been turned to scrap-piles against the rocks while a few pawfuls more slammed into each other in their panic. It was crafty, that was certain, I’d never seen anything even close to it tried before in any of the history books I’d read. Humanity, it seemed, was pulling out all the stops they could think of.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t give me at least a little hope.
“What was the movie?” I asked, breaking the silence with a whisper, doing my best to lift the mood back up to something positive. I nuzzled his neck gently before I rose, padding over to root around in the bag to find what Darlene had packed for us.
“Old western flick, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. ‘Bout a few outlaws durin’ the civil war a few hundred years ago tryin’ to steal a bunch of gold and what not. I’d show it to you but… well it’s kinda violent. Don’t think it even made it near the data-dump.”
“Heartwood, after what we’ve gone through I think a ‘rather violent’ movie is the least of things to be concerned about me bolting off for. Once this is all over I think a claw spent curled up in bed watching a movie would be well deserved.”
“Well… it’s a bit more than thaaaat.” He stated, his voice stretching as I heard the smile I knew was spreading on his face fill his voice clear as the river. “That’s the last movie in the saga, can’t just watch one!”
“Then we can make a whole paw of it!” I replied, my voice a happy, joking purr as I pulled the first platter of vegetables and ‘nut-cheeses’ from inside the bag before meandering back over to Chris. “Get some more of that ‘sushi’ from the place you won’t shut up about in Tokyo, put the movies on the holo-viewer in our cabin and just relax.”
“Damn if that don’t sound like a nice date night to me.” He replied, reaching up to snag a slice of apple from the tray as I set it on the rock in front of me.
He glanced over, meeting my eyes as we sat and watched the gathering storm in the void beyond, his voice strong and confident as he spoke, even if his inflection was still horrible. “I love you, Tai… Whatever happens, I love you.”
“I love you too, Chris.” I affirmed, staring back into his eyes before placing my crown gently to his forehead. “Whatever happens.”
First Prev. Next

Or: the day that nothing happened, no one fought, and Test Alliance outformed and outplayed everyone in Bellicoses without firing a shot.
tl;dr in the comments.
---
There I was, working, slaving away for The Man, earning my wage like the good little capitalist cog in the machine that I am, when from on high, a ping! A ping of pings.
"Could this be?"
I put away my ham and cheese sandwich that I had neglected to eat (for I was on the clock, and could not bear the thought of wasting the wages that my employer grants to me that I may live) and opened my Discord chat application.
Behold, a server ping, from the Test Alliance Please Ignore server (it was difficult to see, you see, beneath the layers of dust and elderly cream cheese that had built up, being a dead alliance of 5 alts in a trench coat for years).

"Home defense"

A blessing. A sign from Bob, content delivered to my doorstep.
As I and 27 other alts piled into our trenchcoats, we discovered the reason for the ping that had stirred us from our nightmarish existences as simple alternate digital egos of one individual.
Dracarys and Goonswarm had arrived at our doorstep. The first in Ishtars, the second in interceptors.
(by this point in time I had thrown off my corporate shackles, kissed my wife and children goodbye, and brought my trusted 2012 Dell XPS 15 laptop to my nearest shared office space building, so that I could focus)
​

Undocking

The various trenchcoat alt conglomerates pooled our isk - for we are a poor, and very much dead alliance - and found that we could afford little more than Bellicoses with t1 logi.
"As it should be," - unknown
We undocked, prepared to fight, and prepared to die, each of us peering out from our digital lives at the 4-5 dudes multiboxing all 27 of us. To our surprise, only one of them was covered in cheeto stains.
We set out to engage in the content that had delivered itself to our home, and to die if necessary.
I had missed one work meeting, and was prepared to have my wages garnished. Anything for my space family.
​

The content

We first pursued Dracarys, who had brought a similar number of Ishtars and t2 logi, and whose goals were known likely only to the Bob in the sky. In our feeble t1 cruiser fleet, we boldly entered the nearby Siberian Squad system that the Dracarys fleet currently occupied, shaking our big bellicose booties as we did so - whether this was to goad the enemy into an attack, or to attract a mate, I still cannot say.
Almost immediately, the ishtar fleet began to bounce around safes, desperately trying whatever they could to avoid ever sharing a grid with our boisterous bellicose brigade. This proceeded for about 15 minutes.
Another work call had come and just as swiftly ended. I should expect my wages to be further garnished. Perhaps even my bread rations reduced.
​
Meanwhile back in 3T7, the goonswarm interceptor fleet wrestled valiantly with a t1 anchorable warp disruption bubble. With so little to our name, we could hardly afford to lose any more t1 anchorable warp disruption bubbles. With the Ishtar fleet utterly in terror at the thought of engaging in combat with our busty bellicose bros, we chose to turn around and see if Goonswarm had any desire to do battle.
Upon our arrival in 3T7, the Goonswarm interceptors similarly dispersed, and once again we engaged the enemy not in space, but in local chat, with the famed Test Alliance ascii art machine of legends, while the goon interceptor fleet fled to safe spots, and the nearby ishtar fleet, we assume, continued to flee to safe spots after we had left.
My boss has put a 1 on 1 meeting on my Workday calendar. I may not be long for this world.
This game of cat and mouse continued for what seemed like centuries, and I regularly had to remind myself that time is in fact a constant sitting in my office chair in this shared office space room of mine, on my 2012 Dell XPS 15.
I googled it to make sure, just in case.
Eventually the Ishtar fleet simply left without a fight - evidently HACs and t2 logi + an allied interceptor fleet were simply no match for the bodacious bellicose boyos. After about another 20 minutes of faffing around, the goons departed with some "Test alliance DEAD ALLIANCE" copy/paste local spam - for all their success, they still have yet to master the art of local spam. (Test Alliance Please Ignore formally extends an invitation to Goonswarm leadership to participate in a class on local shitposting at a time of their choosing).
In a bold powerplay to establish dominance, I rejected the 1 on 1 meeting invitation.
​

The conclusion

Dracarys and Goonswarm invaded our space, seemingly poised for a fight, but simply didn't when faced with the terrifying prospect of having to do battle with the bulbous bellicose buddies. Having saved the rest of our t1 gate bubbles, our nest egg (and the entire alliance treasury locked in the ESS bank) was secure, and the future of Test Alliance Please Ignore once again remains bright and filled with possibilities. As we doffed our trenchcoats and disseminated back into the digital hellscape of existence as alts, we look ahead, eyes wide, to the great future that awaits the 4 or 5 real pilots and anywhere from 20-40 alts that comprise Test Alliance Please Ignore.
Perhaps, one day, we could afford T2 bubbles.
One can dream.
As nobody wanted to fight us, there were no killmails, so I have no proof that any of what I said is the truth. You have only my word, and whatever it is you choose to believe. I don't know why I wrote this. I don't know why you read this. Perhaps there is some beauty in the idea that I wrote so many words about nothing, and you read them. Perhaps there isn't. Perhaps I should still eat this ham and cheese sandwich.
I am looking for a job as an IT engineer.

Hey chooms. I think a lot of folks have a tough time visualizing what netrunning 'looks like' and wanted to share this bit of writing I did. I will break down what the "actual" architecture was at the bottom of the post and the actions I took in-game as a means to compare the flavorful text to the actual in-game language.
Either way, I hope you enjoy reading some flavorful goodness about my Runner!
---
The Netrunner heads to the Styx dressed down but still armed with her trusty Pink and purple Militech Boomer Buster replete with more charms and keychains than is recommended for one of the most deadly handguns on the market. Also, a similarly decorated and cute mono katana pops out brightly against the drab dark blue of the Navy Jersey Jumpsuit and gunmetal yoga pants she donned for the mission. She is thankful that her clothing has modern climate adaptability so she can stay warm despite being somewhat underdressed and puffs on a vape pen approaching the spot. Cameras. On the corners of the two-story building. There used to be more floors above it, but it is a cruel twisted skeleton of rebar, I-beams, and crumbling brickwork now. Even in the morning, there are people crowded around this spot, maybe not as much as in the evening, but enough to think this spot is popular. Two months open, was it? Alleys. Both sides. Dirty. She exhales pepperoni pizza-flavored fog puts on a half-assed blue ice impression and stumbles towards an alley. One good thing about the cold is how epic it makes the plumes of pizza perfume look and she feels like a rockstar.
​
More Cameras. Back corners as well. ‘I’m just a blue ice-head stumbling down an alley. Nobody mind me~’ Back door? Abel didn’t mention that… Where does it go? Cameras could move, but aren’t. A convenient blind spot over this back door makes for some nice cover to scan for access points and - Bingo. Freezing cold, stinking trash, and piles of worthless scrap in the shade still baring frost fade into the background. Only the taste of spicy salami smoke on her tongue remains as the AR overlay of the architecture flashes into her vision and vacant ally is just a blurry background superimposed upon. Memes and images and colors and smoke envelop her and she becomes the Avatar. The Media shower itself.
​
Smoky tendrils of pixelated lols coil into spring-loaded worms at the ready and a brilliant barrier made of reddit gold and silver protects her brain from ice and zaps. Glowing eyes shine and spill forth a flood of light as bland code and featureless corridors are bathed and coated in understanding as her pathfinder programs create an airtight image of the archtetchture. It, unsurprisingly, mirrors the real world and as the painted light is still drying a digital representation of the BD bar itself comes into clearer focus. The ground is a dark mossy green sluice of data flowing from the pool that is the lobby onward. Unwary and unskilled netrunners would be wading through the cold dark waters unsure of what lurks beneath, but the Media Shower is a Brilliant Electronic Elemental who hovers forward confidently as flaming wisps of meme data crisp off and flicker into nothingness.
​
Floor one. Copse of trees on the shoreline that look out of place. Password. Four glowing windows shine just beyond the neatly knitted branches. Glimpses of meatspace and the corners of the building. Outdoor Camera access. One cyclonic hand rises up and disperses the worm programs which scintillate every hue as they eat through the passworded barrier like a pair of hungry hungry caterpillars. Security data is shredded and blown into the air like a chainsaw to a glitter-filled piniata. Trees wilt and crack into dust as the luminescent confetti dyes the dark mossy waters into a rainbow oil slick. The Media Shower has been bere. Precious babies return happy, re-coiling around their master’s arm, but never sated until all passwords are devoured. Ignore. I’ve seen what it looks like outside. Edgerunner nerves let the overlay of the Netarc fade and MS glances around at the ally. She remembers how cold her nose is and takes a quick puff of sweet sweet pepperoni. Still nobody around with mentioning. Just a gonk enjoying some blue ice and spacing out. She blinks once.
​
Second floor. More trees. Another Password. Tougher trees. Why isn’t there any ICE in this architecture? Isn’t this something that Rogue backed up? Tougher trees just mean more time. Time, apparently, MS has and eventually, the mossy sluice begins to glow brighter as tendrils of oil-slick rainbow follow in her wake. ‘I can clean that up later.’ She smirks while feeling the warmth of rainbow worms like a scarf around her neck. ‘It’s freaking cold.’ Her neural link begins to warm her whole meat body after the effort of breaking through that password. Still not breaking a sweat. The mound of confetti is sucked up into the maelstrom of memes and MS’s soft serve body has sprinkles for a bit until they too are added to the repository that is her cyberdeck, her mind, herself.
​
"Indoor cameras? Every room? That’s naughty. Let’s watch.” Lounging in the net, MS resembles a security guard staring down 13 simultaneous camera feeds as over a month of data from each one is casually mainlined. Her avatar eats each month of footage like it was a scoop of kibble from the box. Her meat shivers and she takes another hit liking what she sees. ‘Do you really have that much time to sit around and watch people jerking off to BD?’ The fluffy furry rainbow worms coiled around her neck whisper. We smell more passwords.’ A sigh that tastes like extra cheese and garlicy tomato sauce wakes her back up.
​
One glance at the far end of the river of data reveals a curious strange cliff face. She already knows there is treasure inside due to her brilliant light illuminating everything ahead of time. The worms don’t wait and begin their assault and carve away stone flailing. Precious rainbow confetti, chewed up and disrespected security data, comes at a premium but it is coming. Slowly.
​
“Can’t you smoke that shit somewhere else?”
​
Who the fuck said that? Meat is shoved out of the way. Worms continue to flail at cold stone, finally cracking open the alcove hiding delicious data inside. Fucking meat. Fucking… Fucking people. A blink and a thought and the overlay is almost transparent as MS looks around in meatspace. confetti, chewed up and disrespected security data, comes at a premium but it is coming. Slowly.
​
“Whatever, choom. Just go do it somewhere else.”“Yeah, yeah man. Sounds good, choom.” And she walks away in the general direction as a door opens and closes behind her. She keeps up the act while the indicator on her hud complains that the connection is getting weaker. She’s getting too far from the access point. She stops and leans against the wall taking one more deep breath of pep. Blinks.
​
A brilliant silver skull is being held before her and begs to be taken. Precious prizes for hard work. She casts her all-seeing eye over it and the contents of the bauble are made clear. It is absorbed into her being with all the other memes. She grows that much more. That much bigger. But she’s not done yet. That runner will jack in any minute and there is more. Her rainbow stain on the Net Arc is unmistakable, but not to worry. The sexy Tornado of pixelated power rushes to the final floor, a waiting pool where the data drains down into a swamp. It is surrounded by walls of incredibly large rib bones. In the center floating above the swirling pool is another silver skull. She reaches out, ribs reach forward. The worms fly into the distance.
​
Netrunner guy hasn’t even taken his hand off of the door handle or greeted his coworkers yet. MS was warming up to the point she felt a bead of sweat on the back of her neck. The worms were working, but they were tired. Finally, the claw-like ribs relent and the worms subdue them and the skull is hers for the taking. Another scan with her all-seeing eye and a smile. ‘There are more rooms. And more BDs as well. Secret ones. And look at all these pretty people and pretty numbers. This will due fine.’ The skull is sucked into the swirling mass of data that is the media shower and she looks behind herself in the architecture and it looks like someone went on a bender drinking and snorting pure unfiltered rainbow and vomited it all back up again. Mossy green sluice of water now looked like some kind of toxic pool of every color. Walls of stone and trees were torn and shredded and spraypainted like a graffiti paradise. She loved that, but it wouldn’t do. Not this time. One deep breath and a fiery burst of flaming light torches the whole architecture. Everything is charred and scarred, cloaked in darkness, but as the ash falls it looks completely untouched. As it was. As it ‘ought to be’. A single little sliver of colorful liquid mingles among the cold waters. Doubtful anyone would notice that. Whatever, let them come. Then the gun can do the talking. A final caress of the furry worms that always serve so faithfully and lovingly derezzed and with a flourish of a middle finger on one hand and a rude ‘fist pumping gesture’ with the other at the nothingness of the architecture, The shower dissipates into nothing.
​
“Fuck it’s cold!” MS whines and takes a few more hits of fake blue-ice and stumbles back to the front of the property before walking in.
--- End ----
I won't bother you with a write-up of the entire session to keep it focused on the net running bit.
The architecture was a quick one. No ICE. I suspect it is the more 'public facing' one and the one with all the plot stuff we need for our mission is hidden a bit further in the building somewhere. My Keeper of Digital Lore (What we have deemed our GM out of mutual love for CoC), runs net arcs in a cool way and it changes up, but can all be broken down easily.
Arcitecture - BD Bar (STYX) As Discovered by Media Shower
Lobby: I imagine it like being on the 'outside looking in' sometimes.
​
Floor 1 :
Password //// Node: Outdoor Cameras
(Also other mundane misc nodes if they are needed for whatever reason. We hand wave those nodes a lot.
​
Floor 2 :
Password //// Node: Indoor Cameras
Password //// File
​
Floor 3 :
Password //// File.
​
You could consider each floor's 'password protected' files/nodes as being a small branch that has an additional single parallel floor that contains the node/file, etc. That is the rules-explorer in me that also wants to understand how architectures work 'according to the rules'. I think it makes sense that files and certain nodes would be protected individually in some cases. Ready for some busted ASCII?
Main --- Branch(es) L 1 (P) --- (N) 2 (P) (P) --- (N) (F) 3 (P) -------(F)
That is how I'd draw it out roughly on paper. Floor one is "only" a password, but it continues down to the second floor and also branches to parallel floor 1 with a node. Kind of a side note here, but sometimes I envision passwords 'in-between' floors sometimes. Using the elevator allegory implies a door and they are usually locked. Even if the elevator door opens, the password is a barrier of some kind that needs to be overcome before you enter the 'room' so to speak. Its neither here not there. Nitty gritty that ultimately doesn't affect the greater fun.
So how my runner played her turns is fairly clear from the story I hope, but basically I jacked in, rezzed two worm programs and an armor program and took a pathfinder action. (Interface 7 baby, Getting into the big leagues!) Crushed my pathfinder roll and ID'd the whole architecture passwords and all.
Proceeded to drop down floors, backdoor passwords, control nodes, and eye-dee files. Rolled a cloak check at the end after snatching up the files. Meta, there was 'supposed' to be a netrunner in that architecture, but I went at a time before they were in to work so I could basically lounge back and throw backdoors with +11 (Int 7, 2xWorm@+2) at them until they cracked open. I have plenty of toys to deal with a runner and ICE as well, but that will be for next time when I find the real net arc lurking in the basement or something.
---
Hope you liked the story and my image of netrunning!
*Edited a few times because copy and paste aren't playing nice with formatting and stuff. Sorry about that.
​

Hello all, I just took the exam today and passed with a 764. I had 74 Questions, with 4 PBQs. A lot closer than I would have liked, but here are some strategies on how to do it.
My background is as follows; I am a Cybersecurity Senior, about to graduate. And I have worked with PCs a lot. I’m more of an IT technician than a security analyst. I did take the Sec+ in my junior year in high school and failed with a 500. I also learn visually, by mimicking other people.
(I would highly recommend everyone goes through the exam objective first and highlight things they do not know. That way you don’t study redundant information.)
I first started a document of things that I found would be useful to reference throughout. Sort of guidelines to see how others did it. It’s as follows;
Study Guide 1
Study Guide 2
Study Guide 3
Study Guide 4
Study Guide 5
Study Guide 6 (Look in the comments for this)
501 Port Numbers Quizlet
601 Port Numbers Quizlet
(I didn't have any port questions btw)
PBQ Quizlet (Study these I had 1 from here in High School, and 2 from the test earlier
Sec+ 601 Exam Objectives (Need to Know)
Practice Exams (This is mostly just vocab)
A different practice exam website
This person sells vouchers and is legit; I bought mine from him, and Im going to be buying a CCNA voucher from him later. https://www.reddit.com/usehey_you37
My process: I started in July of 2023, I saw that a lot of people recommended Professor Messer’s so I started watching his videos. I got bored and stopped on episode 141, in August. I had felt I learned a lot already, throughout this I wrote down notes from the videos to ensure I remembered them.
After getting bored of it, I started doing practice exams on Exam Compass, but I found it to just be only vocab.
A friend recommended me Exam Topics instead, and I found that a lot more helpful. I got to around question 300. I also kept track of all my answers in a Excel spreadsheet. For 1-150, I got 80% correct. For 240-320 I got 68%. I found the practice questions helpful and learned more reading why I got things wrong while doing them.
I took a break for a little bit for classes, and then restarted taking more practice exams. I also wanted to schedule my exam before the new years, but all the availability ran out. So, I scheduled mine for today.
I printed out a sheet of paper with these mnemonics to help memorize, which is as follows:
At 21 I F'd up, Shhh, don't tell.
Start at 21, F = FTP, Shhh = SSH (22), tell = Telnet (23)
SMTP - She Mailed Twenty-Five Packages 25
IMAP4 - 143 - I = 1, version 4 = 4, there are 3 letters remaining (1, 4, 3)
IMAP4S - 993 = Remember that IMAP4 ends with a three, but 99 is more secure
DHCP - Dude Has Cheese Pizza between 67th and 68th Street C comes before S 67 (Client) 68 (Server)
TFTP - This For The Perverts - 69
HTTP - 80 (just know it) HTTPS - 443 (just know it) DNS - 53 DoT - 853
POP3 - 110 = Binary for 6, 3 letters and the number 3, 3 + 3 = 6
NTP - Easy as 123
IMAP - think of Apple, so IMAP, IPhone, IWatch, etc. I looks like 1 and every year (also 1) Apple makes a new product advertising 4 new features from 3 years ago - 143
LDAP - you DAP someone up from the 389 (sorry my brain is just weird like that)
RDP - R comes after L (from LDAP) 3389 comes after 389 (from LDAP)
Directory Traversal - etc/shadow, .../.../.../, ...2f....2f...2f
XSS - look for var command and tage like ,
SNMP - log, aggregate Logic Bomb - if, crontab Backdoor - 31337, bin/bash
Buffer Overflow - strcopy SQL Injection - apostrophe ' in the data field, phrase like 1=1
CSRF/XSRF - anything to do with money, hrep XML Injection - xmlversion look for xml in the
Spear Phishing: Spear phishing targets specific individuals
Smishing: Social engineering attack where text messages are sent in order to manipulate a user into disclosing their confidential information
Vishing: The practice of using a telephone system to manipulate user into disclosing confidential information.
Whaling: Phishing scams targeting people holding high positions in an organization or business
Pharming: It is a cyber attack intended to redirect a website's traffic to another fake site.
OSI Model

1. Physical (e.g. cable, RJ45)
2. Data Link (e.g. MAC, switches)
3. Network (e.g. IP, routers)
4. Transport (e.g. TCP, UDP, port numbers)
5. Session (e.g. Syn/Ack)
6. Presentation (e.g. encryption, ASCII, PNG, MIDI)
7. Application (e.g. SNMP, HTTP, FTP)

TCP/IP

1. Network Access (or Link)
2. Internet
3. Transport (or Host-to-Host)
4. Application (or Process)

Good luck on your exams!

Losing is fun!

"In the year 1050, the dwarven civilization of Kinmelbil, "The Oaken Tomes", exhausted the last of its mines. Driven by lust for gold and rumors of the priceless and all but mythical metal adamantine, a team of seven colonists was dispatched to build a new home for the dwarves of Kinmelbil in the Smooth Points of Pride. The first year of diaries from the ill-fated foreman of the mine were recovered, giving some hint as to the beginnings of the fortress that once stood there, if not its mysterious and presumably gruesome fate..."

If you spend any time in strategy or sandbox/base-building video game spaces, there’s a good chance you may have heard the name Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Fortress is... something. Explaining it to my friends, even ones who play video games themselves, often leaves me at a loss for words, because it's less of a ‘game’ and more of a ‘reality simulator' or ‘Minecraft meets SimCity 2000.’ It sort of defies explanation. At its surface level, Dwarf Fortress is a 2d colony management game, in which you send out a group of Dwarfs to build a new Fortress, surviving the elements and fighting off threats from without and within while acquiring vast wealth and digging ever deeper until your greed and hubris ultimately befalls you or your cats all die of alcohol poisoning.
But underneath that are vast, deep, and unfathomably complex layers of simulation for nearly every part of the game. Rather than simple HP bars, entities have full-on skeletal, nervous, and organ systems that take damage (with cuts, burns, broken bones, etc. all having different effects) and require specifically-trained medical professionals to properly operate on (God help you if they’re not trained). Combat is a simulation of moves and countermoves that impact in various ways depending on weapons, armor, skills, etc. which can lead to things like a Bronze Colossus’ fist bouncing off a kitten’s skull or a Giant being violently shaken around by a goose (I said deep, not realistic). And above all else, Dwarfs have unique personalities, memories, and mental health which affects their behavior. Because unlike something like SimCity where citizens are just nebulous numbers, Dwarfs are individual entities who act autonomously- you can queue up work orders for the fortress but when and how your Dwarfs go about fulfilling them is largely beyond your control. You can order a Dwarf to build something, but if they need food or drink or there's a party happening somewhere they’ll do that first. If a Dwarf makes an engraving on a wall, it can be an engraving of something they’ve seen before, such as a priceless artifact they created or a significant historic event they took part in or their friends being gored by Elephants. And if enough negative thoughts and trauma piles up, Dwarfs can behave erratically, ranging from wandering around in a depressed state to outright committing hamburger time to, most hilariously, throwing a tantrum and assaulting other Dwarfs, which can lead to those Dwarfs throwing a tantrum and assaulting more Dwarfs... you get the idea. Nothing a simple Puppy Fountain can't fix (pay no attention to the cropped furry porn avatar).

8: This is a pile of dead dwarves, an Elephant, and a cloud of Miasma. Those are the three most prevalent features in Boatmurdered.

These overlapping layers of mechanics makes for an incredibly deep and complicated game with a nearly infinite amount of possible outcomes. Unintended interactions and ‘bugs as features’ are almost a key component of the game, and no Dwarf Fortress story embodies this more than the Shakespearean tragedy of the accursed Fortress of Koganusân. A saga that sounds like a first-time dungeon master's hastily written play session backstory, a fantasy epic so utterly insane that its almost impossible to believe that it came about not from scripted events or instant player choices, but as a natural progression of the game itself and the long-term consequences of those responsible for the fortress' downfall.
Welcome to fucking Boatmurdered!

Years 1-4: The Seed is Planted

"I take a look at the maps, and sure enough, this outpost is stuck out in the middle of nowhere, smack in the Smooth Points of Pride. "Boatmurdered" they call it, a name which doesn't bode well for much of fucking anything."

This is a comprehensive archive of the full Boatmurdered playthrough, all written in-universe and in-character by those who took part, complete with screenshots in all their ASCII-graphics glory. I’ll be doing a year-by-year summary of the major events (and the sheer amount of random Dwarf deaths and general chaos), but if you want the full story in all its comically horrifying detail then read the above link.
So the story of Boatmurdered begins on the SomethingAwful forums circa 2007. It began as a simple succession game- participants would be given one in-game year to run the fortress as they saw fit, beginning and ending at the start of each spring, then save the game and send the save file to the next ruler. The only real rule was that if you blatantly sabotaged the fort to complete unplayability they’d roll back to an earlier save, but you were otherwise under no obligation to respect the work of previous rulers or make things easy for your successor.
All quotes with names attached are excerpts from the original forum thread, the rest are ‘in character’ by the current madman ruler.
A quick note about the name: names in Dwarf Fortress function much like messages in Dark Souls. You can't simply type whatever you want, instead there's predefined phrase structures that are populated from a rudimentary vocabulary of Dwarfen words, so the name Koganusân literally means Boatmurdered (Boatmurdered had nothing to do with boats and indeed there are no boats in Dwarf Fortress at all, but the second word will be quite relevant). I'm not sure if this was intentionally picked or if they just repeatedly hit the randomizer and went with the first morbid-sounding name they landed on.
The fortress was first founded by TouretteDog (remember, SomethingAwful), and he immediately started laying the groundwork, setting up item stockpiles and workshops outside, chopping trees, gathering food, and digging for a water source, while noticing the ominously large number of Elephants who hassle any Dwarfs (and trader caravans) who wander too close. He gets some rudimentary defense with trained dogs and cage traps, and not a moment too soon because that winter they got raided by monkeys, one of many repeat issues for the fortress, who assaulted Dwarfs and stole food before being killed by the dogs:

A few more war dogs ran out and attacked. I have to say I'm slightly terrified by them. One of the bitches actually gave birth while she was attacking, and her puppies joined in on the carnage. At the end of the day, the three mandrills were dead, and they took one war dog with them and injured another one and a puppy. The poor dog's in sad shape. He keeps trying to find the dwarf who trained him, and then passing out. A few minutes later, he'll wake up, take another few steps, and pass out again. I'm tempted to have him put out of his misery by the butcher, but nobody will touch him and seems a sad way to treat someone who fought off the mandrills. The puppy is still running around with half his chest missing. Makes it damn disturbing when he humps your leg, I'll tell you that.

Thus ended his tenure, and Mariguana took over in Year 2. His reign was relatively uneventful, a Carpenter took a nap on a bridge, fell into a river, and drowned, more monkeys stole from the unsecured stockpiles outside the fortress and later dismembered another Dwarf, snakemen spawned from an underground river and mauled a stonemason who became so depressed he starved to death. He builds some lever mechanisms, one to retract the drawbridge in case of a siege and one to drain the moat- a bit of a running problem in Boatmurdered is administrators putting levers everywhere and future rulers not knowing what they do, leading to hilarity. Two waves of immigrants come under his administration, forcing them to expand the fortress and making it's layout more confusing.
Keyboard Fox took charge of Year 3. He expands the fortress’ defense, making more weapons and traps, changing labor assignments for Dwarfs so everyone isn’t fishing all the time, expanding food production and finally building an actual metalworking forge instead of making everything out of rock and bone. Boatmurdered’s chronic Elephant problem began this year when a group of migrants appeared and were mauled by the local herd. The survivors ran for the safety of the fortress, luring them into cage traps where several were captured. Miners uncover a Chasm and a Magma River, so he sets about flooding the chasm with the magma to prevent any monsters from spawning out of it.

A note to my successors: Don't pull the switch near the chasm. It causes everything past it to die from magma.

By the end of his administration they’ve captured and even tamed several Elephants, had a few Elephant-related deaths, and after a metalsmith became possessed (when Dwarfs are possessed or have strange moods they’re attempting to create a legendary artifact), they couldn’t provide a workplace and materials so he went insane, stripped naked, and ran around screaming.
Year 4 was headed by Locus, who decreed that after each ruler retires they name a Dwarf in the fortress after themselves. He sets about establishing an actual military and expanding metal industry instead of hoping every attacker wanders into a cage trap. Another possessed Dwarf goes insane and commits hamburger time by drowning. Yet another Dwarf drowns in a river flood. Work progresses slowly though as most stockpiles and basic workshops are still outside from the first ruler, where workers are routinely attacked by Elephants when not being rained on constantly (PTSD from the rain is a thing in Dwarf Fortress). An Elephant is accidentally released from captivity and goes around attacking Dwarfs and crushing dogs to death.

I have a theory that once an elephant tastes dwarf blood, which surely is how this particular creature got her name, they cannot be tamed properly.

Eventually the rampaging Elephant is put down by war dogs, a couple Dwarfs, and a horse. And then another Dwarf wanders out into the fields and gets killed by another Elephant. Unsure of how to progress because of the fortress’ deteriorating organization and poor workflow, he builds more living quarters, and sets traps by the more valuable interior workshops to protect the skilled laborers. He ominously starts building a tomb complex for the fortress’ rulers, which would be yet another of Boatmurdered’s constant administrative problems, with future overseers wasting valuable time and resources on increasingly lavish tombs in an effort to one-up their predecessor’s death hole. He then leaves a list of projects for future rulers and an even more complicated fortress layout. Then another Dwarf gets possessed, can’t get the materials he wants, loses his mind and goes streaking until he dies of dehydration. Thus ended Locus’ reign, and the ‘boring’ part of Boatmurdered’s history, because if the insane naked dwarfs and Elephants weren’t enough already, shit’s going to go completely off the wall fast.

Year 5: The Great Elephant War

"I'll kill those elephants. I'll kill all those fucking elephants."

The rule of StarkRavingMad is considered to be when Boatmurdered really became Boatmurdered. His backstory as a tavernkeeper who got exiled to the cursed outpost after his old fortress struck gold and Deadwood-inspired profanity-laden tirades about Elephants, the appalling state of the fortress the previous overseers left it in, the population being gradually becoming more manic and depressed, and axe-crazy determination to kill all the Elephants pretty much sums up Boatmurdered quite well and his year wound up essentially being the catalyst of it's ensuing 10 year decay.

The previous Overseer must have had some sort of sick fucking fascination with them, because we have elephants everywhere. Elephants in cages, elephants in the halls, elephants shitting in the dining room, everywhere. I don't know what to do with them, I guess start butchering them and hope they make a good roast.

Immediately, SRM starts butchering the stray animals, moving all workshops and stockpiles inside, making more comfortable living quarters, reorganizing food production to put farms, kitchens, and food stockpiles near each other, and building a bridge across an outside river that had cut off trade caravans from reaching the fortress, trying to fix the bloat of the previous 4 overseers. Thanks to Dwarfs being too drunk, asleep, or busy hauling the random objects strewn about the Fortress, work orders are slow to be fulfilled. He orders the expanded dining hall to be decorated with engravings to improve fortress morale, Dwarfs carve art of Elephants and dead Dwarfs.
Then there was a major Elephant incident. A Dwarf was killed by Elephants. A bunch of other Dwarfs went outside to retrieve his body and possessions, only for them to get attacked by the Elephants as well. The Elephants chased them back to the Fortress, some of them making it past the cage traps and running rampant, killing Dwarfs en masse. This resulted in a feedback loop of the Elephants killing Dwarfs and starting to leave, then the Dwarfs would come to loot the bodies, capturing the Elephants attention again and getting them killed, which led to more Dwarfs coming to loot their bodies, etc, with the knock-on effect of Elephants improving their combat skills with each Dwarf killed, making them even more dangerous. Thus began the Great Elephant War. And during all this, a Goblin Thief attacks the fortress and gets crushed by a falling rock, adding to the pile of gore.

So the merchants arrive to see blood and vomit everywhere, us hauling corpses en masse to the graveyard, a couple rampaging elephants. WELCOME TO FUCKING BOATMURDERED! Hope you like miasma!

Several more Elephants throw their hat in the ring, one of them killing so many Dwarfs that it gets a full-on name and title. The militia is sent to put down the Elephants, but they prove too powerful and the soldiers all die. Unable to stop the cycle of Dwarf corpse looting, doors are installed in the hallway leading up to the main gate and locked to prevent anyone from leaving the fortress. The Elephants simply sit in the tunnel, blocking off Boatmurdered from the outside world. And then, a Goblin Army arrives, and instead of being attacked by the Elephants, join them in the siege.

The goblins just lazily took a few potshots at a stray cat still wandering around out front, and then they just stayed out in the Elephant Tunnel. I think they're starting their own little town in there, elephants and goblins living together in peace and harmony, joined only by burning hatred for dwarves.

StarkRavingMad begins Project Fuck The World, a channel leading from the magma river meant to flood the exterior and burn everything outside to death, but the project ultimately fails when miners strike an aquifer and flood the channel with water. He then enacts Project Get Me The Fuck Out of Boatmurdered, and leaves the place behind, besieged by an unholy alliance of goblins and elephants.

Year 6: The War Continues

"The recruits (minus all those drinking, eating, and sleeping) Let out a mighty shout and charge! For the glory of Boatmurdered! No one can fault their bravery. Only their results."

Bremen took charge of the beleaguered fortress next. He orders Dwarfs to begin carving fortifications in the walls so that they can fire outside with ranged weapons. Luckily, the Goblins get bored and leave. After building a Ballista (which will become very fucking relevant later), they successfully kill or drive off the Elephants outside, freeing them for the time being, and he begins making preparations for their inevitable return. A Dwarf makes a legendary bracelet engraved with an image of cheese to mark their triumph over the Elephants. A couple months later, the Elephants come back for round 2, before the cage traps can be reloaded and while the Dwarfs who are supposed to be manning the ballista are all busy drinking. He attempts to lock the doors, but due to a dead butterfly blocking the tile the game forces the door to remain open, beginning the death cycle again. Untrained Dwarfs using the ballista waste all available ammunition, and marksdwarfs run out of bolts. An attempt by the military (which was mostly random Dwarfs scrounged up and hastily equipped) is made to put down the rampaging elephants. See the above quote for the outcome.
In a desperate ploy to save Boatmurdered, one of the levers meant to secure the fortress in a siege is pulled. It floods a portion of the fortress with magma instead. Those trapped inside scrape together the materials to arm as many Dwarfs as possible with crossbows and kill the remaining Elephants, breaking the siege once again.

StarkRavingMad: One or two previous rulers died during my reign. I guess I should have documented that better, but it was kind of hard to keep track, what with the ground awash in dwarven blood and my panicked attempts not to permanently screw over the whole succession game.

Bremen: Most of them are dead, yes. I'll try and give more concrete info on survivors at the end of my turn.

Locus: Well at least we're resting peacefully in our tombs. In spirit. Probably underneath elephant remains, in the physical sense.

Bremen: I ran out of coffins. Then I ran out of designated graveyard space. Most of you are spending your eternal rest in the garbage dump.

The rest of Bremen’s administration is spent trying to clean up from the Elephant Siege. The military is rearmed, reorganized, and trained. New doors are installed. The huge amount of stray animals wandering the narrow corridors are causing traffic jams, so the corridors are expanded and many animals caged or slaughtered. Winter is anticlimactic, Bremen retires as ruler and becomes commander of their military.

Year 7: Fuck The World

"It is quite the typical Dwarven Stronghold, nothing seems to be out of the ordin---what the fuck is with this fortress? "

Sankis takes his turn next, and immediately restarts Project Fuck The World. The beginning of his rule is relatively calm, with Dwarfs dying at a normal rate and a few monkey raids, but no major goblin or elephant sieges. At this point the fortress’ population increases to 98. The max is 200, which can be reached within 5 years or so in a normal playthrough but Boatmurdered is anything but. The Fortress gets even bigger and more convoluted. By the end of summer, Project Fuck The World is completed, but a full test can’t be enacted as if the lava makes contact with the water canals, the ensuing steam cloud would flood the fortress and scald all the Dwarfs to death. Instead the fortress is flooded with miasma from all the rotting bodies strewn about. TouretteDog, founder of Boatmurdered, is killed by Elephants.
Towards the end of Winter and Sankis' reign, a miner accidentally breaches a major aqueduct, which begins flooding the entire exterior and threatens to spill into the main fortress. The miner drowns. In a desperate ploy to save Boatmurdered, the Fuck The World lever is pulled, releasing the flow of magma to the outside and evaporating all the water. All the Dwarfs and animals outside burn to death, but the fortress is saved. While decorating his future tomb, Sankis engraves an image of a dog burning to death and a dwarf screaming. The land outside is left a scorched, barren wasteland, but on the plus side, it does eliminate all the Elephants, effectively bringing an end to the Great Elephant War. Though the beasts would continue to be a thorn in Boatmurdered’s side for the remainder of it's decrepit existence, they could no longer besiege the fort for months on end and all the dangerous named elephants had been annihilated. Sankis retires to be a humble engraver, professionally vandalizing the walls of Boatmurdered with the most heinous carvings imaginable, and Boatmurdered now has a doomsday device that can effectively solve every problem they have.

Years 8-9: Putting the Murdered in Boatmurdered

"Come on guys, we have a nice settlement, why didn't you stick around? Was it the ashen wasteland? The bloodstained gates? Was it the screams of madmen or the stench of death? We've got awful nice engravings of some fucking cheese here, come the fuck on in!"

Astronautonomicron took charge next for Year 8. Right off the bat a Dwarf drowns and another is mauled by an Elephant when a new herd shows up. An Elven trading caravan shows up and are not happy about all the trees and wildlife being annihilated by magma. A jailed Dwarf throws a tantrum, breaks out, and goes on a killing spree, throwing a Dwarf into a wall before kicking him to death and murdering a cat with his bare hands. A Swordsdwarf intervenes only to be beaten unconscious by the rampaging Dwarf’s legendary artifact bracelet. Two more Guards intervene, one is knocked out but the other finally subdues the criminal. Unfortunately Astronautonomicron is unable to finish his turn so the save is rolled back before being passed on, effectively retconning the killing spree.
Unknowing takes over for actual Year 8. Other than constructing a large temple complex and pissing off the Elves again, little of interest happens at the start, then his miners dig too deeply into the mountain and unleash a horde of demons, killing the Miners. They enter the fortress proper where they battle the Guards, who are ultimately successful in killing them. A Goblin siege breaches the fortress, causing mass chaos before being repelled. His tenure comes to an end after this.
Year 9 is headed by Cross Quantum and the Fortress continues to grow like a tumor. He notices the carvings around the fortress:

Apparently the 2 most significant historical events here in Boatmurdered are elephants and cheese. Take a close look at the cheese ones actually, they aren't even carvings of cheese, but renditions of some other image of a cheese. They're freaking homages!

An Elven Noble comes to scold them again for cutting down trees, monkeys raid the fortress, Goblins kidnap a Dwarf child, a bookkeeper goes insane and commits hamburger time. Goblins besiege the fort, the Fuck The World lever is pulled again, burning them all to a crisp under a flood of magma. More Goblins besiege the fort the following fall. They too are murdered by magma. The constant sieges put a halt to his construction projects and they remain unfinished by the time his reign ends.
Major Failure takes over next but is also unable to complete his turn before anything noteworthy happens beyond robbing Elven traders and swearing a lot:

I'm barely done making the last batch of picks when those cocksucking hoopleheads the elves show up, no doubt weeping their fucking balls off about the elephant chunks being kicked around by children in a lake of blood outside the trade depot. Without even bothering to see what they have I have three of my guys rob the piss out of them. The haul was mostly useless shit, but at least we swiped some bloated tubers for my personal supply of swamp whiskey. Thank Arnok for that.

He attempts to basically abandon the fortress proper and start a new complex with the few non-insane Dwarfs, but has to abandon his turn and roll back the save for the next player.

Years 10-12: The Decay Sets In

"Please, don't intentionally destroy Boatmurdered. It may be a fetid hole in the ground full of furious dwarves who kill each other more often than they accomplish anything, but a lot of people poured their hearts and dreams into that hole in the ground. Instead, simply do the best you can, completely ignoring everyone else's plans while you retinker the cave into the ultimate souffle making empire. Then pass it on to the next player with half as many dwarves, because you forgot to arm your soldiers and they tried to wrestle fire elementals to death."

At this point it seems the thread died off. Much like the fortress of Boatmurdered itself, the succession game had become too bloated and complex to manage, with players taking ages to finish their turns and others further down the line having to pass or forgetting they signed up due to real-life circumstances, so a new thread and succession signup was made. We’re entering the final act of Boatmurdered, starting with a brief hope spot of trying to break out of the downward spiral.
Year 10, Mystic Mongol takes over and becomes the fist of justice in Boatmurdered. His first order of business is cleaning up the rampant crime, especially an insane Dwarf who was dismembering live animals for no reason.. Upon attempting to improve the fortress’ economic situation, he noticed that the previous bookkeeper and 2 former rulers had all mysteriously died. He takes note of the engravings of fire, death, and misery, made by none other than former ruler Sankis. He gets into a spat with Sankis over wasting precious resources on a platinum-decorated tomb, and for carving depraved art and leading the fortress to ruin under his command, eventually having his in-game avatar Dwarf arrested and imprisoned for 2 weeks on trumped-up charges.

While my room was surprisingly nice (I suspect they are trying to bribe me) many of the nobles are dissatisfied with their accomidations. While they languish without even a single platinum encrusted dining room to their name, the corrupt dwarf Sankis has built himself a royal tomb, complete with multiple platinum statues.

Sankis: You best not touch my tomb, jerk

MysticMongol: Don't tell me what to do. I'm the law in this pit in the ground.

The remaining military-capable Dwarfs are reorganized again and the many elephants trained as war animals, and a hammerer is appointed to dish out beatings on criminals. Strip mining is enacted to uncover much-needed metals, and the fortress becomes increasingly labyrinthian. Mystic Mongol retires and Sankis steps up for another year of management.
Year 11 begins uneventfully. That autumn a Dwarf starves himself to death, an Elf Noble arrives, Kobolds raid the fortress, then a Goblin siege begins. Predictably, the Fuck The World lever is pulled and they’re drowned in magma.

Burnt Goblin can be smelt throughout the fortress, and probably the entire region

A Bronze Colossus besieges the fort. Guess what happens. With the sieges broken, Sankis begins enacting his revenge on MysticMongol, locking him in a room to starve for a few weeks, then releasing an Elephant in the room. MysticMongol manages to successfully wrestle the Elephant into a trap where it dies. His broken but still living body is dumped in a hospital (because Sankis admitted that it was a little too mean to just leave him to die, and makes him a tomb as well), MysticMongol himself admitted it was amusing. Little else happens besides a Dwarf drowning and another vomiting all over the place, a section of the cave collapses blocking the magma flow so a Miner is sent to clear it out and promptly burns to death, then MysticMongol suddenly gets out of bed and throws himself in the river to drown.

MysticMongol: Right. Just like the Bookkeeper, after making someone's leather supplies super valuble, mysteriously died in an attack. Just like the unpopular Baron stepped on a rusty nail. Just like how the tax collector was found in his bed, mysteriously crushed to death by elephants.

The fortress suddenly runs out of food and many elephants are butchered to replenish food stocks. Sankis concludes his rule after expanding housing and wood production, refilling the defensive moat, and (once again) starts building up the military.
Doctor Zero takes over in year 12, the last stable year of Boatmurdered’s history. An earnest, last-ditch effort is made to restabilize what’s left of the doomed fortress, trying to build new farming facilities to replenish the dwindling food stocks. While trying to find a lever to flood the farm section to fill it with tillable mud, he instead pulls a lever that floods the siege workshop because that’s where the farms used to be 10 years prior.

StarkRavingMad: I love that Boatmurdered has turned into some sort of horrendous evil eyesore on the continent. I'm picturing groups of hardy adventurers gearing up to assault the place just based on the barren ash-and-skeleton filled landscape in front of it. Also, I love that the place has become so complex and messy that literally no one knows how everything works anymore. The part where there is a lever to flood the siege workshop for no apparent reason really cracked me up.

Unfortunately, all work efforts are slow, as so much of Boatmurdered’s population has died to accidents, elephants, lava, goblins, demons, hamburger time, starvation, outright murder, etc. that most of the laborers have been wiped out. 1/3 of the remaining Dwarfs are Nobles, who refuse to perform any regular labors, constantly complain about not having all their required furnishings, and issue production orders that can’t possibly be met with the dwindling workforce and resources, having random Dwarfs imprisoned or beaten for noncompliance. He manages to get work orders sorted out though, and starvation is averted. An Elven trade caravan shows up with nothing worth trading for, an Elven noble demands they reduce cutting down trees, and acts super passive aggressive when they agree. That summer, a human trade caravan arrives carrying a large quantity of meat, all of which is purchased.

Ok, these dwarfs have some kind of serious learning deficiency. I traded for 600 units of meat. I told 4 different dwarves to ONLY HAUL FOOD. And it STILL all rotted in the trade depot. Good gods these people have some kind of inborn desire to starve to death.

Sankis gets thirsty and attempts to drink out of the magma river. Dwarfs vomit for no reason.

I ordered the east side of the river dug out as far north as the mountain range went. This should make foraging for berries and plants much easier in the spring. Although the citizens insisted on replacing that dried vomit that welcomes every visitor. And rather than clean up the kobold mess, everyone would rather squish their toes in the gore and spread it all over.

By the end of DoctorZero’s administration, food stocks were somehow replenished, he had cleared the backlog of work orders, and uncovered veins of precious gemstones and metals for the future rulers, avoiding any sort of major calamities and setting up a solid foundation for Boatmurdered to continue to scrape by.
But it was not to be. (continued in comments)

The title statement is kind of obvious, especially if you are browsing dcss, but let me elaborate.
My experience with roguelikes until this point has been very limited. I was introduced to the genre via Shattered Pixel Dungeon. I've also scarcely played CDDA and Dwarf Fortress. Both those games I dislike because its open-ended nature.
From that starting point, I found DCSS three years ago and I've never looked back. Recently, however, I have been watching Ninth Settler youtube channel. Very solid channel, recently subscribed and I find it quite enjoyable u/Noveno_Colono. He recommended a game called Rift Wizard. I saw it was on sale so I went and bought it.
There is people that assume that as you have to pay for the game it would be better than a free and open source game (even if I had to know better, maybe some part of me acted based on that assumption). My experience with both (admittedly very limited yet in Rift Wizard) made me realize how great DCSS is:
Tiles are gorgeous
Tiles were solid when I started playing, but their improvement lately has been outstanding . I've read rants about how tiles make the screen confusing (instead of the ascii view), but my brain has no problem at all parsing information. I am able to clearly distinguish between monster from the tile which is something that does not easily happen in Rift Wizard (ok, I'm a noob there and I guess that with time I will have less problems there, but it should be obvious that DCSS tiles are way better and way cleaner).
UI and QoF is over the top
For such a complex game like DCSS, it is a blessing that you can do things really conveniently. Rarely do you find that an action you want to take is cumbersome. More often than not, there is a very easy way to do things fast. My biggest complain would be the -more- message when you are happily tabbing. That -more- that shows up because there is a dozen annoying messages that don't tell you anything of interest. Other than that, everything is slick. Rift Wizard UI is practically non-existent. It has a pro that you can mouse over an enemy and it will tell you its characteristics, and that is a pro because the game is meant to be play with the mouse instead of a keyboard (e(X)amining an enemy in DCSS is not bad but not necessarily the fastest method if you already have the mouse in your hand).
Radically different gameplay
While my limited experience in Rift Wizard points me to two basic gameplays (mass destruction akin of shatteignition) or mass summoner (akin of dragon call). At the end of the day, the differences in magic schools, albeit is there, is no so profound. DCSS also finds it hard to sufficiently differentiate between schools, but races introduce a distinction that, in a few cases, makes it totally different.
Although in general the big majority of races play more or less the same, there are some niche cases which offer a totally different experience. Octopodes and Felids force you to not be tanky, formicids make everything a V:5/Tomb and meteorans force you to run. If you combine those differences with gods, you soon have a very big scope to play with.
Memorable places
I think DCSS is full of distinct experiences, some of which will resound with you and make them amazing. I am very fond of V:5. I have died there some times, especially at the beginning, but I always go there. I like the experience, the raised stakes. For that reason I love the vault entrance with the ambush. I love Zot:5. By that time you have been tabbing more than your fare share, so it is great to have to stop and be careful for a change. And I love Tomb. The very few times I've cheesed it (I always go there with shatter, sorry devs) I found it super interesting.
On the other hand, there are places which I profoundly dislike. Abyss is the biggest offender. I won't get there on purpose ever. In general I don't like Pan either. But both are quite distinct and I'm sure there is someone out there loving Abyss for some unknown reason.
In Rift Wizard the only such thing would be the fight with the final boss.
The community is great
The fact that there is this community in the game makes it even better. I'm trying to learn Rift Wizard but I'm finding it difficult because the lack of a community similar to this one (maybe there is and I'm unable to find it). u/dcss makes it easy to be aware of new changes, read about other people opinions and rants (like this one), ask for help, read about new builds (see the success of the FeSu build, my guess it that FeSu will have a very different status in the korean community for instance because they didn't catch the hype wave).
The wiki is amazing
The time the wiki went down was very sad for me. Previously I could have agreed with the detractors saying that the wiki was bad, outdated and unnecessary, but that won't be the case any more. The wiki may have some misinformation, it could be, but is amazing. It makes it easy for you to find information on whatever you need without the need to know anything special except for searching with google.
Moreover my experience with Rift Wizard has make it even clearer to me. Yesterday I was trying to find the resistances of Mordred (its final boss) and I was unable to easily find it. I had to go to a youtube video and pause the game in the exact moment the youtuber was mousing over him to see its description. Compare that to a google search "Antaneus dcss". So easy!

Obviously, a mug and a donut is every' s topologist favorite (even if the are the same). But what else is hidden in the world of math which is edible?
A few examples:

• Sandwich
  • Sandwich theorem
  • Ham sandwich theorem
• Pizza
  • Pizza theorem
  • Calzone theorem
  • Pizza packing
• Pancake theorem
• Sausage
  • Wiener sausage
  • Sausage packing
  • Sausage catastrophe
  • Sausage conjecture
  • Sausage-Stacking Theorem
• Swiss-cheese operad
• Soup-Salad-Sandwich Space

PS: As a delicious goodie: Here a donut shaped C-code which outputs a spinning donut in ASCII-art (with explanation by Andy Sloane )
PPS: Inspired by this discussion.

I bought DoD in the summer of 2016, played it for a few hours, and then never touched it again. Until a few weeks ago anyway, in the years since I've gotten really into traditional roguelikes, specifically Nethack, in all their ASCII and obtuse glory, and going back to Dredmor, it's made very clear that the developers LOVED these games. The *hack family specifically, the game practically steals Nethack's brand of humor and is littered with references to it ranging from slight nods to Elbereth to straight up including the Tourist class in the game. However it was also released in 2011, and being a predominately comedic game, shares a lot of comedy with the internet of the time, from unironic 'The Cake is a Lie jokes to having a weird obsession with one type of food, in this case cheese.
And yet, in this era of gaming dominated by cynicism and jaded viewpoints, I found it all surprisingly heart warming. It knew what it was and wasn't afraid to bake it into its very DNA. As for the game itself, despite it's pretty graphics is plays very much like an old school roguelike. There is loot and skills and stats galore. All tinged with the game's sense of humor of course. I always get a chuckle that I can be a Vegan Communist who is also a vampire and dabbles in Law in their spare time.
The one thing that sets it apart however, is the inclusion of a crafting system, which normally I would find grating, but here it works surprisingly well, you end up collecting a lot of junk from the dungeon, but generally you can turn that junk into much more useful items, some of the most powerful items in the game can only be obtained through crafting, including secret recipes you can find scattered around the dungeon. The difficulty is also not as steep as a lot of the games Dredmor draws inspiration from assuming you don't die on the first floor and your build isn't too terrible it's pretty easy to snowball right up until you hit the final boss. Dreadmor himself is BS and at times pretty unfair. He's definitely something you'll either want to prepare carefully for, or cheese the shit out of.
Another thing I have a problem with is the limited inventory, which was fine in old roguelikes, but here you're going to be collecting a ton of random garbage for crafting and your space runs out very quickly. Luckily the game gets around this with one of the DLCs adding in a personal pocket dimension you can find in the dungeon that allows a convenient place to store your excess loot.
It's sad to see this game is essentially dead and the studio that made it having gone under. But at $7 for the base game and all the DLC, it's a steal for what you're getting.

How do you do? As well as you know, the usual being plagued by antlered worms and attacking earth-eaters. Hopefully wizards and bats and lizards and rats can compete with that, with Carnival Jack. Though the Architect seems friendly, which is probably just swell. Beyond the Architect are the cave spiders, crawling around one another within a great cylindrical star-cavern and paying no heed to the small crab between their feet holding one Dreamsphere (ours). Upon the outside surface of the cylinder trods a great elk, and between the icy-white and ivy-draped peaks of its antlers lies a great network of cobwebs, of silken strings, upon which dances a great Remipede, playing out the Song of Reality on the strings of the great harp, which hums in the ear of the narwhal-squids which pull the chariot of the Hand of Time around the circumference of the great celestial Clown Clock, which crawls with ogres and goblins and spiders and trolls and dragons and squid and emerald crabs and hermit crabs and octopus-belugas, all hanging about in the tide-pools between its infinitely-stretching axial spars. All of this is in turn imagined by the velociraptor-monkey with a spear which lives in a tree and hides from snapping packs of weevil-aardvark-aardwolf-wolves, cougar crabs and angry lobster-tigers snapping for a denied dinner. In a hidden compartment in its tree, the velociraptor-monkey protects a hidden tankful of Architects on a reef which hold Memories in time via Dreamspheres. Butterflies and moths made of jewels flit lazily above it all, more heedless than the vultures and bustards and buzzards which are starting to crowd in the sky and blot out the sun and descend on the land to relieve its remaining carnage that following day. “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme, Yesterday Holds Memories In Time,” screams Carnival Jack’s enabler with a great cruel sneer and pulls out your heart and demands that you yield. “EID RO TRAEH RUOY XIF!” You cannot decrypt it, no matter how you scream. We all emerge as particles of unfiltered light from the eyes at the tips of an anemone’s waving fronds. The Clockmakers are coming.
The mastodons are coming. Hang on, ticking ghost, I'm translating this piece of cheese. I still need to water the walls… and feed the house before it eats me. The peacock train is lifting off now to embark upon a sky-bound odyssey of kaleidoscopic imagery such as volcano-dwelling feather shrimp, singing banana knives skating on ice, clock towers of bone and chitin, and recursive enormous spiraling elkworms. The Al pirate syndicate has found its own Libertatia, not in Madagascar but in the hidden high deserts of Pennsyltucky where dwell toad dragons and the infamously large lake-dwelling jaguar bass, easily able to envelop a human in its maw. The violet dagger's draconic pommel tempts one to take up ambition. I received it from one of the sentinels of the curtain of green rain between the living world and the next, a whimsical giant snapping turtle (colloquially known as a greyclaw), which desires incessantly to be fed. The rats in the walls have gone amphibious (more so than many actual amphibians) since I gashed gills into the chalky drywall. Yum, yum, tasty-tasty. Excellent soup base, or you can try it dry. The rats now wear quaint little SCUBA gear they don't need, because they "like the aesthetic," and they swim about idly through the air and build lumbering mechanical ceratopsians with cannons for horns. I'm reminded of that time the ASCII Ants arranged themselves into a written letter-grid to spell out WE SEEK WAR. One of the most fearsome Slothmasters of eld was a frog with horns and tusks.

First Previous Next
---
Log Entry: Frank Mackenzie
Mission day 55
I got sick.
It began with fatigue. Then it was the headache. Once it started, it never stopped. My head throbbed as if someone smashed my head in with a skull. The next day, I woke up with a fever. We transformed one of the rooms in the back of the ship, where the ventilation was independent, into a quarantine room. Fortunately, the room came with a wall divider, so people could watch me without entering. Commander Ying took my throat samples and is currently growing them in a petri dish. After learning that I got sick, Red halted the daily meetings.
We figured out how to talk to each other over the radio. It turns out that the Tiberians also used radio waves to communicate with each other. It makes sense if you think about it. They aren’t harmful and pass easily through walls. What matters is that Red could talk to me without having to be in person. What I’m most worried about is the crew. If I’m the one that got sick first, then the whole crew might get sick soon.
I guess I’ll talk about Tiberian biology, as it is crucial to the Frank-Mackenzie-doesn’t-die project I’m working on right now. Let's start with their homeworld, Tiber. Tiber’s gravity is extremely similar to Earth’s: the average gravitational pull is about 10.2 meters per second squared. Weather patterns are pretty similar as well. Did I mention that it sits about 1.3 AU from their star, Tiberius, which is pretty similar in size and brightness to our sun, Sol?
Before I got sick, Red and I would talk about each other’s biology. Why wouldn’t we? We have more in common than we have differences. I’ll make a list for you. We’re both:

1. Bipeds
2. Omnivores
3. Predators (front facing eyes)
4. Vertebrate
5. Gonochoric (male and female)
6. Pack animals

Red is essentially a giant weasel with the intelligence of a human. Although he has front-facing eyes, his field of vision is massive. His only blind area is directly behind him. I probably didn’t mention this before, but he has a tail; A big, bushy one that indicates emotion.
In general, we’re very similar to Tiberians. If we evolved to be pretty similar to each other, maybe their pathogens would also be easy to treat. The problem is that they’re still an alien disease. When Amerindians were introduced to smallpox, it killed about 90% of them. Mind you, those were humans being exposed to human diseases. I was exposed to an alien disease. Who knows how strong Tiberian pathogens are?
Maybe the Tiberians have a cure for this disease. For me it's a “deadly pathogen that needs to be eradicated from my body,” but for them it's “monday”.
I have books, tv shows, and plenty of Tiberian homework to keep me company. But mostly I spend my time sulking in bed worrying. How the hell is the crew going to be safe from this disease? Won’t they have to burn every paper that Red and I wrote together? If not, where do we store them? Such thoughts bounce around my brain throughout the day. Speaking of my head, it's killing me and I’m tired all over. G’night.
​
Log Entry: Frank Mackenzie
Mission day 57
My body’s handling the pathogen quite well. I’m not dead yet, which is a good sign. The throat cultures came back, which confirmed that it was a completely alien pathogen. We showed Red. How? Well, to put it simply, Cohen worked with a Tiberian scientist (his name was Pa₹u₺a) and figured out how to send messages to each other, including text, images, sounds, etc.
How? Human computers use binary to store, access, and manipulate all information. A base-2 counting system is really convenient for computing. It has something to do with electrical signals. There's really only two states for a signal to be in: on or off. For the computer to read such things, they are represented in 0’s and 1’s: binary.
It turns out that the Tiberians use it as well. We could send numbers to each other with relative ease. Just send a number in binary, and the receiver will just decode it.
The problem starts when we move on to characters. The letter ‘a’, 97, and 01100001 are all the same for computational purposes. However this only works for human coding. The Tiberians used different numbers to represent their characters; their character encoding standard was different from ours.
So how did we get around this? (Note: Cohen did most of the work.) All we really needed was the Tiberian character encoding table. After receiving said table, all we needed to do was make a translator that could translate the information that they sent us into a form that was readable in ASCII. The Tiberian programmers also had to do the same thing but for the reverse: they had to make a translator that could translate ASCII into information that could be used correctly.
Red said it was a viral infectious disease that targeted the upper respiratory tract. In short, it was their form of the common cold. He also stated that the majority of Tiberians infected with it recover in about a week. None of the crew seemed to have any symptoms. The rest of the crew was immune to whatever alien virus Red had given me. So that’s that.
I’ve been thinking about how to send my first IRIS. What is an IRIS? It stands for Interstellar Rapid Information Sender. Basically, it's a giant camera glued to a FTL rocket. We point it in the general direction of the sun and the camera guides the rocket. When it's within about 6 AU of the sun, it beelines to the earth and settles into orbit around it. What do I put in the Irises? information.
The whole crew documents their findings separately. Each IRIS is filled with a 50-terabyte hard drive. We all write our own documents, so that's 10 terabytes per crewmember.
I guess I should explain how Aquarius missions work, in case a layman is reading this.
Each Aquarius mission is split into three phases: the Journey phase, the Visit phase, and the Return phase. We got to earth orbit normally and set off for the moon. Then, after getting into moon orbit, we boarded The Hornet. Afterwards, fuel and supplies were loaded, and we set off for Aquarid.
I’m far from qualified to talk about how the FTL engines work, but basically, The Hornet has a giant sphere called an FTL drive in the back that allows it to travel faster than light. Suffice to say, we arrived at Aquarius in just over a month. From there, we brought it into an orbit around Aquarid.
The Visit phase lasts for a third of a year, or four earth months. We collect information on Aquarid and send back information on machines called Irises every ninety days. It involved taking observations of Aquarius, checking if there was life on it already, etc. To put it briefly, ISA gave us a huge list of tasks and we had to complete them.
Then, we would fire up the FTL drive and go home. From start to finish, an Aquarius mission takes about 1.5 years, including resupply missions and the like. ISA plans its missions far in advance. In fact, they have plans for Aquarius 3 already, and Aquarius 1 wasn’t even finished.
Anyways, yeah. I have about three months to decide what to put in my Iris.
Maybe not the best words to use.
Log Entry: Frank Mackenzie
Mission Day 58
Alright, I’ve been sitting in bed for six hours and came up with something. I’ll definitely have to send the log entries I’ve been writing. I asked Red for a complete diagram of the Tiberian body, which he gave in exchange for similar human diagrams. I’m sure Earth scientists would be dying to know about Tiberian biology, so I need to be really thorough with all this information.
Borjas took the liberty of taking pictures of all the work Red and I had done before burning them. Well actually, they dissolved it in hydrochloric acid. In his words, it was a “regretful but necessary” decision to make. I’m definitely including those, along with the Tiberian alphabet. Maybe I should ask Red for a dictionary.
Enough talking about the Irises for now. I talked to Red about different animals. Here's how the conversation went:
“So this is a dog?” Red asked with mild amusement. His voice was distorted by the quality of his microphone. Despite trillions of dollars put into our respective space programs, audio quality still remains a prominent issue when talking to each other.
“Er, Yes. It’s a quadruped. We keep them as pets.”
Red looked up at the ceiling. He always did that when he was thinking hard about something. “Quadruped…quadruped…4…legged animal?”
“Yes. We used to use them as hunting companions. Now we keep them around for emotional support.”
“Understand. We have similar animal,” He said, fishing around in a container. After he found what he was looking for, he held it up for me to see. It was a Tiberian animal. It looked like a miniature deer, except the tail was as long as their entire body. Yellow fur covered its body, with white spots. Red gauged my reaction and continued.
"Animal is called ke₺sh”
I recorded the word in our ever-growing lexicon. “How did your species domesticate it?”
“Ke₺sh average speed is about three times as fast as Tiberian maximum speed,” he said, waving his hands in the air, “In ancient time, they prevented our food from being eaten by pests. Now they are emotional support companions.”
He was disgusted when I introduced him to a cow. How do I know if a Tiberian is disgusted? Tail language. If it's raised high, he’s excited. As I explained how dairy farms work, his tail slowly got lower until I couldn’t see it on screen anymore. Apparently, the Tiberians have no notion of drinking another species’ products. Cheeses, yogurts, butters, all were foreign to him.
“You humans drink that every day?” He said, half-intrigued, half-repulsed.
“Some of us, yes. about 70 percent of us cannot digest it. Not all of us who can drink it do drink it though.”
“Humans are odd.”
“If that’s how you wanna call it.”
“Did you bring it on ship?”
“No.”
“Good. I do not wish to see.”
Log Entry: Frank Mackenzie
Mission Day 63
It’s been a week since I got sick, and it hasn’t seemed to get any better. I’ve taken almost all the medicine on board, and any progress that might’ve been made isn’t showing. At this point, I might resort to Tiberian medicine.
Every day I try to study as much Tiberian as I can, as there's not much to do. I asked Red to make flashcards for simple Tiberian words, and he obliged. For about two hours every day, he holds up various Tiberian words and I try to pronounce them.
If I were a Tiberian, I would be about as literate as a four year old. I know that sounds bad, but we’re two completely different species communicating with each other. Back on Earth, humans can communicate with animals, but not on a conversational level like Red and I.
I didn’t explain how we rigged a camera system on their ship, so I’ll explain it now.
Well, we worked around the problem. We sent the Tiberians a camera with a transmitter, and they sent us the same thing. To avoid the whole “camera runs out of battery” problem, we gave them a solar panel to charge it. They didn’t need to know how human outlets work or how to plug it into their electrical grid; they only needed to know that shining a light on the giant black panel and connecting it to the camera would keep it powered.
They also gave us the same thing: a Tiberian camera and solar panel.
Whew, that was a mouthful.
Right now, the camera’s sitting where I left it yesterday: glued to the wall. The solar panel sat next to it. We rigged an incandescent lightbulb to shine continuously. It’s most definitely inefficient, but it worked for now.
Now for my next task on ISA’s list of things to do: exercise, so my muscles don't atrophy away!
I better get started.
First Previous Next

CHEESE

WARNING
This episode will contain vulgar language (even though I censored bad words), mentions of verbal abuse (although mentions of verbal abuse or even physical violence have already appeared in this series) and even name-calling of my enemies (yes, I do have enemies here, on Reddit).
Viewer discretion is advised.
I know, I promised to upload new chapters daily, but this one took longer to write than others. Anyway, let's keep moving ^{if you dare}.
Although hard for everyone, COVID-19 ironically provided me with a perfect opportunity to gain audience and extend the reach of my content - because, y'know, when quarantined, people spent more time online and so, it gave me more time to create, upload and benefit from my online work.
To my horror, there also appeared people willing to harm me on-line and they also used that opportunity.
All they needed was to find out what was my biggest no-no about Brawl Stars.
Initially, I didn't show any dislikes in this game or it was very vague. But in December 2019, Bea entered the game. People said she was like Piper (always & forever my #1!), but better, and honestly, I fell into a sort of paranoia as I thought Bea was going to kick her out of the meta. But when Honey Coat appeared, Bea hate became common sense and it made me feel justified while posting negative comments that regarded her. To begin with, I didn't know how to fight her, but over time I figured it out and shared my tactical knowledge with other people, but losing to Bea would still trigger me, although I tried to control it. Eventually, Honey Coat was replaced by Honey Comb and since then, my grudge against Bea belongs in the past.
The real nightmare began in June 2020. At the end of Season 1 Brawl Talk, I saw a tiny robot, accompanied by another, smaller robot. Deep down I felt it was going to bring my downfall, both as a player and a Redditor.
Soon I found out this abomination's name: Nani. Although people were hyped for it, I was the complete opposite of hyped. Very soon, my concerns turned true. People started making comps with Nani & Bo's Totem and I had the misfortune of being raped by this cheese comp on Nani's Day 1. From the beginning, it make me dislike this brawler. The frustration of being cheesers' punching bag raised my anger to the point I considered Nani a failed design - only useful when you want to cheese and buffs Nani received later didn't solve the issue at all (when I pushed it to 500, I cringed only once - from the beginning until the end). I hated this situation, but I didn't protest it out lout until 2020 World Finals - now I see I should've done it earlier.
But the worst was yet to come. In February 2021, Return to Sender (f**k everyone who used it at least once!) was added. However, it didn't worry me at the beginning since Piper had the ability to avoid returning damage with her Super. But it all went wrong when R2S (officially, it's R2FS) received a completely unnecessary buff that being its ability to bypass jumps. Knowing it would make Piper completely useless and outdated, I launched the anti-Na*i crusade.
I didn't have an intention of being gentle, especially after the behavior I observed among Na*i mains. I had to hit'em hard to let them know they made a mistake. But instead of heeding my reprimend (maybe it was too harsh since my charges went a bit too far, but I don't regret posting it), they said I'm an idiot for calling Na*i skilless, they know better how to play, but there were some who got my point. Yet there were also those who started spreading their 'Piper bad-Nani good' bulls**t while also trashing at me and that got me even more pissed, especially after I watched it myself how Nanincels in-game were walking around with their flashy bubbles of stupidity, hypocrisy and cowardice just to tell me I already lost even before the match started (others would interpret it as a stupid "no u" meme, but for me, this filthy fembot literally told me to kill myself - this is unforgivable).
F**king elitists...
With that, losing to this filthy fembot became even more frustrating. Because of that, I even wanted to quit the game completely. And that prompted me to respond with a sort of:

F**k you, Nani. You're going down!

And that resulted in me uploading even more Na*i hate posts (or 'stupid anti-Nani propaganda' if you're trying to defend this robo b**ch, but when you're in my neighborhood, don't do it or else there will be consequences) which caused even more people to be toxic against me in the name of Na*i - they even told me I'm selfish for my desire to restore even playing field. My response to that was simple - because of that suicide-forcing gadget, I banned Na*i from BSSniperSquad, although Na*i simps still claim it's a sniper, but this filthy fembot telling other snipers to kill themselves is the contrary to the sniper code.
The apogeum of all that toxicity came on June 11, 2021 which remains to be the worst day of my life. Then I saw a s**tpost targeted at me in person, uploaded by Le**uceB*b55 (don't share this a**hole's content. If you see him, block him) on OkBrawlerR**ard (Never post there. Don't even make crossposts involving that s**thole. Do you understand?). That day, I was completely stripped off my dignity. I saw people slandering me in many different ways: telling each other I was jacking myself off to R34 of Piper (if you spread such bulls**t, you will be punished), calling me F**kMeBruh (call me that - I will file a report to admins) and going on with their 'Piper bad-Nani good' s**t, pretending Na*i was healthy, fair and balanced while Piper (according to them) was busted - all of that to antagonize me in the eyes of everyone. They even addressed death wishes to me.
There is a thin line between a bad joke and an insult. By crossing it, they left me no choice. I had to defend myself.
But things only got worse. The son-of-a-b**ch who uploaded that slanderous post responded with further insults, even resorting to an ASCII-styled penis (disgusting!). He said I was 'unable to get the obvious sarcasm' and told me to 'f**k off' because he 'didn't want to hear [me] whining'.
This completely devastated me.
F**k you, Robert,
F**k you, OkBrawlerR**ard users,
but most importantly

#F**kYouNani

And remember. All the toxicity I've experienced that day (and throughout the whole last year) it's all Nani's fault. Only Nani's. So please, be so nice and don't force me to say anything positive about Nani or better yet, don't EVER mention this cyber c**t again.
Anyway, back to what I was saying:
I was at my limit. This situation reminded me of all bad things I've experienced before, but that time, I was completely torn down. But suddenly, a friend of mine DMed me: "Don't listen to haters, you have people who love your content". That somehow made me feel better. Then I saw a kid who strongly hated me because of my (sometimes good, sometimes bad) behavior, but when he realized my hatred towards Na*i was the sole reason for people to hate me, he begged me to forgive him. And I did forgive him - because he needed a second chance, like everyone else (obviously, except trolls - those deserve to be terminated).
Later, I received hostile DMs from a Na*i apologist, calling me a 'coward' and 'a toxic Piper', but they were blocked, as told by my comfort zone post.
I try not to remind myself of these terrible events, but I'm barely able to handle PTSD these people pushed me into. I might be scarred for life because of that, but I'm still willing to become a legend yet I still fear of dying a nobody - the fate I almost faced when internet poisons decided to end my life in the name of Na*i.
Errors of the past cannot be undone, but we still can avoid them in the future - with this motto, I decided to continue my artistic activity and then a certain blue birb knocked at my door.
But the story of my encounter with this blue birb will be told tomorrow - this time, I promise to upload in time!
P. S.
I also have to answer two questions probably nobody asked:

1. Why do you consider Nani genderless (it) instead of female (she/her, canon gender)? It should be simple - fembots and women are not the same.
2. Why do you censor Nani's name, spelling it as Na*i? Emotional damage I've experienced from facing R2FS users caused me to relate this filthy fembot to Nazis - all I had to do was kick the second N out and replace it with Z. This way, it's easier for me to justify Nani hate posts and comments of mine (at least for myself). As a side note, Nani looks very similar to those Nazi robots I met in Wolfenstein: The New Order. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

I am a bot! Please send NotListeningItsABook a private message with any comments or feedback on how I work.

About Post:

---	---	Notes
Submission	Bob challenges you.
Comments	Bob challenges you.
Author	Boring-Thingy
Subreddit	/FridayNightFunkin
Posted On	Sat Aug 21 08:21:40 EDT 2021
Score	460	as of Sat Aug 28 14:06:20 EDT 2021
Total Comments	121

Post Body:

n/a - not a self post

Related Comments (3):

---	---	Notes
Author	sweater_brown
Posted On	Sat Aug 21 14:12:30 EDT 2021
Score	6	as of Sat Aug 28 14:06:20 EDT 2021
Conversation Size	6
Body	link

Challenge accepted. Lemme just highlight my google doc real quick...
Ignore the emojis
2D Abigail 🤍 Ace 🔜 A Date with Destiny AGOTI 💛 Albert 🔜 Alex Alfie + Ralsei 💚 Allegro Ambion Amogus AMP Anders 💚 Annie ⬛️💛 Another Friday Night A problem between brothers/older bro ASCII_v2 🔜 ASDFunkin’ A Shitty Laptop A Strange Neighborhood Athena 🔜 Auditor 🖤 Avery 🔜 Awesome Face 🔜 Axel Ayana/Ex GF ⬛️ B3 🔜♥️ Background Boogie ⬜️🖤 Bad Apple Bananaslammarama Banjo and Kazooie 🔜 Battle Against the TwinBots Beach Brother Beach Time Blowout/Katelyn 🔜 Bean Battle/Mr. Bean ⬛️ BeatStreets ⬛️ BeatStreets Tricky Bendy Ink Demon Berzerk Big BrotheBB 💚 Big Chungus Bikini Bottom 🔜 Bill Cipher 🔜 BF Circulation ⬜️ BF’s Dad ⬜️ BF’s Dad ⬜️ BF’s Mom Blantados Blaze Bob 💙💛 Bob and Bosip 💙💛 Bob and Bosip 2.0 ⬜️ Bob and Opheebop - the date Bob’s Onslaught ⬜️ Bob Overhaul 🔜 Boppin’ Batch Brightside 🔜 Brightside Remastered ⬛️ B-sides ⬛️ But Bad 💙 Byte Funkin’ 🔜 Cadd Carus Camellia Carol Cassandra Castle Crashers Boss Rush REVIVED Celestia CG5 Edition Changed 💚 Chara Cheeky 2.0 💙 Cheese 🔜⬛️ ChillSides Choco Clip 🔜 Cloud Clownso 🔜 Clyde 🤍🖤 Coby Codist Conner 🔜 Convict ⬛️♥️ Corruption Cosmo Calamity/Yukichi Crash Bandicoot ⬜️ Crying Cursed Emoji ⬛️ C-Sides ⬛️ Cultish 🤍 Cye Cyrix ⬜️ Dark Sheep 🔜 Date-Night Masses Date with GF Dave and Bambi Deep sea date Deimos 🔜 FlameDev’s Deimos 🔜J-Bug’s Deimos Demetrios Demonic Discourse/Chris Detra’s Mental Decimation Diane Disko Disco Battle/Thony 💛 Displo 🔜 Distant Memories Doctor Springheel 🔜 Doki Doki Takeover Door to Door Salesman 🔜⬛️ D-sides Dusttale 🔜 Dusttale 2.0 ⬜️ Eddsworld (Over Garcello) ⬜️ Eddsworld’s Funky Beats Eggmong Us ⬜️ Electro Funkin’ Eminem ⬜️ ENA 🔜 ENA 🔜 Entity Erratic Everywhere at the end of Funk Enysmo Fancy Pants Man 🤎 Faradey 🔜 Fax Machine Fidget Spinner Filip Filip 2.0 Fine Night Funkout/Clippy Fishy Fizz Flaky Flatline 💚 FL Chan Flexy and Merchant 🔜💚 Flipped out 💚 Flippy Forgotten Memories ⬜️ FPS Plus Fred 🤎 Freddy Fazbear Friday Blight Funkin’/Blite 🔜 Friday Doge Funkin’ Friday Night Ballin’/Ball 🔜 Friday Night Fortress Friday Night Bloxxin/Guest Friday Night Clownin’ Friday Night Divorcin’ Friday Night Divorcin’ 2.0 Friday Night Divorcin’ 3.0 Friday Night Farmin’/Katrine 💛 Friday Night Feve Fever Town Friday Night Fishin’/Atlanta ⬜️ Friday Night Flippin’ 🔜 Friday Night Foundation 🔜 Friday Night Funkin’ Universe Friday Night Gaming/Loki 🔜 Friday Night Madness 💜 Friday Night Mashup 🔜 Friday Night Postin’ Friday Night Sanboxin’ 🧡 Friday Night Shootin’ Friday Night Site 🖤 Friday Night Slashing/Jeff the Killer Friday Night Snuskin’/Vinesauce Joel Friday Night Funni: Classic Friendly Night Funkin’ Fruit Medley Mayhem Frostbite Frenzy/Lav 🔜 Funk 🔜🤍 Funkin.FLA Funkinronpa/Monokuma 🔜 Funkin’ vs. Zombies Garnnie Gaster Gaz ⬜️ Genderswap 🔜 Geno Girlfriend 🔜 Ghost Boy 🔜🤍🖤 GhostTwins 🤍🖤 🤎 Golf Minigame Grunt Gaming 🔜 Gunter 🔜 Hank 🔜 Harrowing Echoes HarryLTS’ Chara ⬜️💜 Hat Kid 💙 Hatsune Miku ⬜️♥️ HD ⬜️ HD Senpai HEARTBREAK/Girlfriend 🔜⬛️ Hellbeats Hellchart Carol Henry Stickmin ♥️ Hero’s Journey 💚 Hex 🔜 Hitler 💛 Holofunk Holofunk - non-canon Ina week Ignis and May 🔜 Impostor 3.0 ⬜️ Improbable Chaos 🔜 Indie VTuber Showdown 🔜 Ink Demon Internet’s down In the Galaxy Isaac 🔜 Jacket 🔜 Jaco 🔜 Jade Javarehab Jeb 🔜 Jebus 🔜 Jenny Jester Joni Denta JTC Kagamine Rin Kapi/Arcade Showdown 🔜 Karlson Kei’s Troubles 🖤 Kepler Observation Unit/KOU Kirby Kiryu Kiya 🔜 Kiz the Pizza Man Kobeni/Chainsaw Dance Koi Kris 🔜 Kurzgesagt duck 🔜 Kyu Libidri Lila Lil’ BoI Funk VS Nug Little Man’s Meltdown Liz Lizbert Lucky 🔜🤍MAG Agent Torture 🔜MAG Hank Maginage Matches 🔜 Mami Manic Multiverse/Kiki Matt Matt Matt Boxin’ Fight Marked Martian Mixtape/Xigmund Martian Mixtape 2.0 Melty MEMEVERSE Mettaton ♥️Mid-Fight Masses Mid-Fight Masses Extras ⬜️ Mid-Fight Masses Genderbend Edition Mii Funkin’ - eteled 🔜 Mikey 🔜 Mime and Dash Mimikyu 🔜💜 Mind Games ⬜️ Minus ⬜️ Minus Annie ⬜️ Minus Garcello ⬜️ Minus Shaggy ⬜️ Minus Sky Mobile Mania Momi 🔜 Monday Dusk Monolith Monika 🔜 Monkey Moonlight Berry 💙 Mope Mope ⬜️ MordeTwi Magic My Singing Monsters Napstablook 💚 NDXL 🔜 NDXL 2.0 Necromancer 🔜 Nefarious/Crow NekoFreak NekoFreak 2.0 ⬛️ Neo ⬛️ Neo Garcello ⬛️ Neo Matt Neon Neopolitan/Neon, Apollo, and Krystan 💙 Night of the Funky Bot/Lane Noke Nonsense Noob Nova Obama Omega/Times and Tribulations Omori 💜 One of Many/Lark 🔜 Oswald Ozie Pandora’s box Papyrus - Down to the bone ⬜️🧡 Parappa Patchouli Funkin’ Peculiar Colours 🔜 Peter Griffin Pig/Ross Phil Eggtree Pick ‘n Pluck Pico 🔜 Pinkie Pie Plate Pompom 🔜 Pula Pumpkin Pie Post-mortem Mixup QT Queen Sectonia Quest 🔜 Racked and Ruined/Ruria Randy 🔜 Rappin’ Ramsay Rasazy 🔜 Ravin’ with Ravens/Aria Red 🔜 Reddit Night Funkin’ 🔜 Red-labs/Lil-Babyman ⬜️ Restocked 🔜 RetroSpecter ⬜️ Rick RidZak + Cybbr Rhythm Rush Ron Ronald McDonald 🔜 Root Beer 🖤 Sad Days Funkin’ 🔜💚 Salad Fingers Sally Face Salmon Salty’s Sunday Night 🔜 Salty’s Sunday Night Peppered Sanford Sans Sarvente Behind the Slaughter 💛 Sasha 🔜 Saturday Night Swappin’ 🔜 Saw Scott the Woz 🔜🤍 ScrapeFace 🔜 Secret Garden Shaggy ⬜️ Shaggy HD Shaggy + Matt ⬜️ Shaggy + Matt HD Shard 🧡♥️ Shinobi Scramble/Shuri and Ken Shirou ⬜️ Shyrell Sketchy 2.0 Sky ⬜️ Sky HD 🔜🖤 Slenderman Slime Showdown Sly Smiley Face 🔜 SMK x FNF 💚 Smoke em out struggle 🔜 Smoke em out struggle + 🔜 Snow Soft Soviet Cartoons Space Boyfriend 🔜 Spooky Night Funkin’ Springtrap Squidward Stairs Stalker Stan ⬛️ StarCatcher 💜 Starecrown Starlight Mayhem 💙 Starving Artist 🔜 Starving Artist 2.0/Retaken Sanity Static Static Memories 🔜 Steampunk 🔜 Steve and Alex Stylish Sacrifice/Ashtoreth 🔜 Suction Cup Man Subwoofer Showdown/Maggie Sudden Changes Suit ♥️ Sunday Super Meat Boy 🔜 Surreptitious Syndicate Sussus Amoogus/Impostor 2.0 Syntech 💛 Tabi 🔜 T.A.I.A. Taki VS Sarvente Tales from the Raveyard/Mystic Myra 💙 Tari VS Belle Taylor Teto Kasane That Funkin’ Frog 💙 The blueballs incident The Devourer of Gods The Devs The Keeper ⬜️ The Monstrosity of Experiments The Rascals There’s a zombie on your lawn The Return of Garcello The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny The Weeg Mod/Macy The X Event The Ziffy Week ThornFire Tinky Winky/Slendertubbies Tomato Dude Tord 🔜 Tord Expanded Touhou 💚 Tree 💚 Tricky ♥️ Tricky 2.0 ⬜️ Tricky HD Tricky phase 0 ⬜️ Tricky phase 0 HD Tricky phase 5 ⬛️ Tricky UpSide Trollge Trouble Double/Emma and Cuackbert 💙 Troyr Tux Trouble/Beastie Unified Beats ⬛️ UpSide 🤍/v/-tan/4chan Valerie Violastro Violastro 2.0 Void Vonner 🔜 Vriska Weegee Invasion Wilbur ⬜️ Wish I could care less 🖤Whitty 💞 Whitty and Carol - The Date ⬛️ Whitty Neo ⬛️ Whitty Remixed ♥️💙 Woody Woodpecker 🔜 Worlds Collide Yoma 🔜 Yung Venuz Zardy Foolhardy 🔜 Zero ⬜️ Zer0 - the Date

---	---	Notes
Author	Bob_is_mad
Posted On	Sat Aug 21 14:55:01 EDT 2021
Score	9	as of Sat Aug 28 14:06:20 EDT 2021
Conversation Size	5
Body	link

B3 Remix B-Sides B-Sides BeatStreet Blantados' Covers and Remixes C-Sides D-Side Eddsworld's Fukky Beats Minus RetroSpecter Remixes Sakuya Izayoi SiIvaGunner Rips Starcatcher UpSide BlantadosIcon.png Blantados' Covers and Remixes Friday Night Funkin' but Bad Friday Night Gunnin' Nostalgia Critic SansIcon.png Sans (TheLunar27) LiterallyNoOne Abigail A.G.O.T.I. Amogus Anders Annie Arcade Showdown - Vs. Kapi Ayana Banjo & Kazooie Beach Brother Berzerk Blantados Friday Night Bloxxin' Boy Girlfriend Brick Frog Brightside Big Brother Byte Funkin' Captain Viridian Carol Cartoon Cat Charlie Cheese CG5 Edition Clip Concert Conundrum (Vs.Miku) Corrupt Cyrix Dagoto Dawktrap Deep-Sea Date Demonic Discourse Friday Night Divorcin' Vs.Doge Door to Door Door Salesman Dr. Jack Springheel eteled Everywhere At The End Of Funk FL Chan Flippy Flippy (j0nnytest) Fancy Pants (Nixs) Fancy Pants (Bombablake1331) Friendly Night Funkin' Friday Night Fever Fruit Medley Mayhem VS. Starecrown Gacha Mod Ghost Twins Grunt Gaming Golf Minigame Hart Henry Stickmin Hex Hololive Funkin' Impostor Isaac Jester Kazuma Kou Kris Literally every fnf mod ever - VS. Bob B-Side Ron Mami Martian Mixtape Maginage Matches Matt Matt Wiik 3 Melty Mid-Fight Masses Monika Mope Mope NDXL Nekofreak Neon Nova Nick Nonsense Peculiar Colours Rosie Piglin Pompom Project Enigma Pulp Quest Randy RidZak Noob Ron Ronald McDonald Ross Romp (NLeeBoy) Salty's Sunday Night Friday Night Sandboxin' Scratch Cat Shaggy Shaggy x Matt Sketchy Slime Showdown SMG4 - If Mario Was In FNF Smoke Em' Out Struggle Sonic's Rhythm Rush Spider Gang Funkin' VS Spong Vs Gooser and friends Starlight Mayhem Starving Artist Subject 93 Sunday Tabi The Blueballs Incident The Date Week The Friday Night Incident-(VS. Trollface) The Impostor Boyfriend Saga Vs Yourself The Monstrosity of Experiments Tinky Winky (Slendytubbies) Detra's MenTal Decimation Vs. Omega Tord Tree Tricky VS. Beastie Vulture Culture Weegee Whitty Xe X-Event Yoshi Zardy Robotnik Fliqpy (miguel185) Flaky Velma Boyfriend Reanimated Funkuro High Effort Ugh SketchyRemaster Zardy Remastered Pico Remastered Ruv Remastered Lila Blast To The Past (Vs. FireIce) Bun Bun VS. Bob (SMG4) Caleb Lightpaw Castle Crashers Boss Rush Convict Corruption Dedede DRX-49 Friday Night Foundation Friday Night Funkin' Bloxin' Battle Friday Night Funkin' Unfinished Business: Vs. Adam Furret Jevil Necromancer Pyro's Firey Friday Salty's Sunday Night Peppered Tessar Lucian Night Vibin' Vs Mario (FFG291)

---	---	Notes
Author	ohik9615
Posted On	Sat Aug 21 21:44:42 EDT 2021
Score	2	as of Sat Aug 28 14:06:20 EDT 2021
Conversation Size	0
Body	link

Another Friday Night, B3 Remixed, B-Sides BF, BeatStreets, Blantados' Covers and Remixes, C-Sides, D-Sides, Eddsworld's Funky Beats, Minus, Neo, RetroSpecter Remixes, Sakuya Izayoi, SiIvaGunner Rips, Starcatcher, UpSide, Friday Night Funkin' -, Friday Night Gunnin' , Nostalgia Critic , (Every Sans mod) , LiterallyNoOne Mod Pack, Loona A Funk in time, Amogus, Anders, Annie, Arcade Showdown - Vs. Kapi, Ayana, Banjo & Kazooie, Beach Brother, Berzerker, Blantados, Bloxxin', Boy Girlfriend, Brick Frog, Brightside, Big Brother, Byte Funkin', Bob and Bosip, Starlight Mayhem, Captain Viridian, Castle Crashers, Carol, Cartoon Cat, Charlie, Cheese, CG5 Edition, Clip, Concert Conundrum, Corrupt, Cyrix, Dagoto, Dawktrap, Deep-Sea Date, Demonic Discourse, Divorcin’, Door to Door Door Salesman, Dr. Jack Springheel, eteled, Everywhere At The End Of Funk, FL Chan Flippy, Fancy Pants, Friendly Night Funkin', Friday Night Fever, Friday Night Foundation, Fruit Medley Mayhem, Funk Like Somebody's Watching - VS. Starecrown, Entity, Gacha Mod, Girlfriend, Ghost Twins, Grunt Gaming, Golf Minigame, Hart, Henry Stickmin, Hex, Hololive Funkin', Impostor, Isaac, Jester, Jevil, Kiryu Kazuma, Kou, Kris, literally every fnf mod ever - VS. Bob, Logic, Lune, Mami, Mr bean, Martian Mixtape, Maginage Matches, Matt, Melty, Mid-Fight Masses, Monika, Mope Mope, Maggie, NDXL, Necrodancer, Nekofreak, Neon, Nova, Nick, Nonsense, Peculiar Colours, Parappa, Paper Mario, Pick n' Pluck - VS. Rosie, Piglin, Pompom, Project Enigma, Pulp, Quest, Randy, Red, RidZak, Rising Volume, Roblox Noob, Ron, Ronald McDonald, Ross, Romp (NLeeBoy), Ron, Ruria, Salty's Sunday Night, Salty's Sunday Night REpeppered, Sandboxin', Scratch Cat, Shaggy, Shaggy x Matt , Shinobi Showdown, Sketchy, Slime Showdown, SMG4 - If Mario Was In FNF, Smoke Em' Out Struggle, Sonic's Rhythm Rush, Spider Gang Funkin', VS Spong, Vs Gooser and friends, Starlight Mayhem, Starving Artist, Subject 93, Sunday, Tabi, The Blueballs Incident, The Date Week, The Friday Night Incident, The Impostor Boyfriend Saga, Vs Yourself, The Monstrosity of Experiments, Tinky Winky (Slendytubbies), Detra's MenTal Decimation, Times & Tribulations (Vs. Omega), Tord, Tree, Tricky, Trollface, Trollface/Trollge, Trollge, Tux Trouble - VS. Beastie, V.S. Tinky Winky, Vulture Culture, Weeg Mod, Weegee, Whitty, Xe, X-Event, Yoshi, Zardy, Date Night Masses, Dr. Robotnik, Flip and Slide, Flaky, Velma, Vs. /v/, X event. And so much more.

TL;DR: I'm sorry to say this post is a near-novel-length self-indulgent opinion piece piece of drivel on the frustrations Cogmind can mean for a plebian like myself. It approaches the format of an essay/review of the game, but mostly goes on about the polemic combat system and the tantalising potential its mechanics are promising for us mental 13 year-olds who just want to see robots blowing shit up.
I am one of the many normies drawn to Cogmind on a promise.
That promise was born among many of the best games of the oddball-ASCII genre such as Caves of Qud, Nethack, Cataclysm DDR, Stone Soup, and of course the indomitable Dwarf Fortress pioneered by our lord and savior Toady One.
Of course these games are all different. Though loosely collected under the Roguelike/ASCII/Tileset umbrella, their defining and uniting characteristic is the ability to further expand the horizon of gaming established during a bygone era of roguelike gaming, passed away before many of us were even born. Cogmind certainly fits the bill, tacitly choosing that corner of gaming if only by its style and premise ; but all the while delivers on expanding the dungeon-crawling formula with original game design and an inspired aesthetic.
After trying it, I rallied to the forums, vindicated to find that others before me had taken issue with the implementation of combat in the game. Sometimes the posts would argue about the balance of combat builds, while others would point out the seemingly paradoxical implementation of combat as whole. "Why is combat punished so harshly ?" is a question that was brought up in several threads across Reddit and the Steam Forums, to which experienced players and --commendably-- the dev answered consistently on almost every post of the kind:
"Well now, combat isn't punished. Only, you can't go around blasting everyone's nads off on a dime. You need to be STRATEGIC about it. Cogmind is a game of smarts. It's in the name, in fact."
PASSIVE-AGRESSIVE SIDENOTE: // when a noob asks how to be more strategic about combat, funelling enemies down a corridor to limit their firepower, or running away and waiting for the enemy to round the corner before clobbering them over the head with a broadside of point-blank heavy EM weaponry isn't exactly advanced strategy. Cheers, Sun Tzu, but if this game is half as clever as it claims to be I'm sure the tactical potential runs much deeper ! //
Over and over, the fact that experienced players can complete the game with combat-only builds is held as proof that it has been implemented and balanced correctly. Sure, it's harder to fight your way through 0b10, but this game design choice is intentional. After all, Cogmind isn't meant to be another looty-shooty-stabby dungeon-crawler roguelike. You need to pick your fights lucidly, and with foresight of the challenges ahead. You need to be a patient planner and build your plans around patiently planning plans of patience. You can't take any old fight just to get past a section for fear of raising the alarm level and wearing down precious components, both of which will affect your later fighting ability. Once again, it's a game of SMARTS.
But oh how that is a disappointing answer to us normies !
Here we are, fully decked out with our amazing suite of targeting utilities, armour segments, and a full cannonade of variety weapons ranging from the Electro-BallZapper-Plus™ to the Dakka-ScroteAnnihilator6000 just itching to Swiss-cheese that poor group of troopers across the hall but no, no, no. We can only use our amazing gadgets if we've been a VERY good boy and kept our robo-rampaging to a minimum, lest we wake up the neighbours again.
And so all these beautiful hand-crafted animations and sound assets go to waste. The cathartic kick of a heavy ion cannon stays a daydream, and that conveniently placed patrol gets to stay in one piece, along with the highly-volatile machinery besides them. How very frustrating. All the more so with such a well designed combat system.
It's a thing of beauty, it really is. Kyzrati, you've done an unbelievable job. The act of firing the powerful and advanced weaponry feels incredibly cathartic and vindicating. In an ASCII/Tileset game no less ! Many fps games fail to harness such game juice for their own combat, but you've gone ahead and bloody done it with an ASCII/Tileset dungeon-crawler. That's a stroke of genius, really. This, combined with the amazing module mechanic vaguely reminiscent of other modular combat systems featured in games such as FTL makes for riveting turn-based thinking. The ressource management required throughout the fight is similarly compelling. Having to balance energy, matter, and heat in conjunction with the need to finish the encounter as soon as possible makes for thrilling moments of tension in dubious fights: when your systems are overheating and malfunctioning all over the place just as you're one volley away from finishing-off the enemy, knowing full well that you're not going to have the power reserves for a second one if you miss. Great stuff.
All of these combined have awakened, deep within my normie guts, a hunger for a combat system I didn't know I had. Specifcally Cogmind's system. All while playing, thoughts of how to design a game around this system kept intruding. What if this was a power-fantasy rampage game instead ? Where the player would have to keep the momentum of destructive rage going as they progress through a gradually tougher facility all the way to the surface, upgrading and developing their vengeful machine as they tear their way through a perfectly balanced robotic ecosystem ? Better yet ! What if this modular combat system and all its beautifully animated weapons were transposed into a DF-esque RTS where two AI facilities face-off underground by digging their way to each-other. They would fill the earth with the necessary production facilities to manufacture the custom-made modular machines outfitted by the player, who would design their units according to the necessities of the situation. What if these tunnels and factory floors were then filled with blaster-fire and autogun rounds as one player mounts a desperate defence of their facility in a final attempt to keep the enemy out of the inner chambers of their base ? Wouldn't it be glorious ? And the system is practically already there (in design, that is. I realise that these visions are wholly different games having to be made from the ground up) ! All you'd need is a few more additions: parts flying off and striking other entities (another page from DF it seems), bots staggered by powerful shots that send them reeling into walls and other objects, and it would be perfect. Robotic warfare of a viscerally cinematic proportion never seen before. Christ, the thought of it alone makes me rock hard.
But alas these are just the visions of a daydreaming normie. Cogmind offers a slower, painfully restrained glimpse of such a combat system. And all the while these sky-high expectations for games that don't exist aren't valid criticism for an already existing game, especially one as good as Cogmind. Only, it seems such a bloody shame to have such a promising and tantalising combat system be relegated to such a careful and tempered niche robo-stealth game. Skulking throughout the facility in search of a flight of stairs when so much effort has gone into making the violence as bombastic as possible. Point is, as a normie I'd chew my toes off for anything remotely close to what was fantasised above, where one could enjoy the full cinematic potential of such a system at play. And Kyzrati, you seem to be fully conscious of this, going so far as to make an April fool's joke about it 2017, and mentioning in the comments that there's a sub-genre niche that needs to be filled. Only, I'd argue that such a game wouldn't be nearly as niche as Cogmind itself. Proof is, many of us normies are attracted like moths to the candlelight of the Steam store page, captivated by images of explosions and sci-fi weapon volleys. Not that your advertising is in any way misleading, mind you. If I'd spent as much time, effort, and inspiration on such animations I would boast about it too- ! And rightly so. Only, you can understand why some of us normies are left hungering, yes ?
For all the genius (yes, genius) of Cogmind, my only regret is that it's taken me too many hours to realise that this game isn't for me, and that by now refunding it is an impossiblity. Instead I'm left with a glimpse of a combat system that could offer new heights of modular strategy and cathartic ASCII devastation. Only, the game my basic bitch arse so desires doesn't exist. It's certainly that Cogmind is too refined for me, and that I just wanted to see ASCII robots blow shit up.
Nevertheless, thank you u/Kyzrati, for gracing us with Cogmind. This last might sound sardonic, but for all the sass and sarcasm in this arrogantly long post, I truly believe the world is better off with your work out here for our enjoyment and verbose scrutiny.
I, for one, hope to see more of your work in the future. And I especially look forward to the work you might inspire through your own.

Source Previous table
Note: Some of the question-taker's answers were also removed along with corresponding questions, and they have not been recovered below.

Questions	Answers
What is a typical day in your life like?	I get up at 4:30. I watch some YouTube, do some email, work on my writing or similar. I head to the gym at 7, shower and start my day around 8. I work in my home office or shop/lab, code and work on stuff, throughout the day. I could be busy all the way through to 8-9PM if I'm wrapped up in something, but not usually that busy.
the below is a reply to the above
You get up at 4:30 AM? Wow. Have you always been a morning person? Are other people on your team morning people so you decided to start early? I’m asking this because it seems like a lot of successful people wake up very early and work out before starting their workday.	No, I never was until my neck injury. While recovering I couldn't sleep more than about 4-5 hours max and just got into the habit. Since it was so productive for me, I just kept it up!
the below is a reply to the above
Thanks for sharing. I wish you good health.	Thanks!
Did you create Robocopy, or know who did? I use that very regularly and much more efficient than using the GUI.	The secret dirt is that Robocopy was first written by MS colleague Kevin Allen, and he started sharing copies around in 1994ish. From there, and after many iterations and heavy-duty real-world feedback, robocopy ended up in the Windows Resource Kit, and then later merged into the core Windows package. In the beginning, Kevin was a very experienced programmer, but new to the Win32 API; so robocopy was one of his projects to educate himself about Windows programming. Later on, ITG used robocopy to routinely transfer many gigabytes of data around MS global offices, every night; it became very robust and battle-hardened. It is a long time now since Kevin was involved in the robocopy source code at all; it is maintained by the Windows team.
Did you create Microsoft Clippy? Will Clippy ever make a come back?	Noooo... but I was around at the time. We have Clippy now in the form of Siri and Google Assistant and Cortana, but there's no picture. That's all it was though, an early digital assistant.
I read on a Microsoft devblog that when windows got ported to 64bit pinball 3d was not ported because of bugs and the developers not being able to understand the code/not having enough time. It's a shame, because it was such an awesome game and I spent many hours playing it as a kid. Was the code messy due to being ported from Sam and do you think it could have been ported given enough time and expertise?	Basically what I did when I ported it was to maintain the central code "logic" loop of the game unchanged so that it would play just as it did on other platforms, and then "hooked" functionality coming out of it and going into it. So I rewrote the drawing code that did the actual drawing, but not he original code that wanted to do the drawing, if that makes sense. I changed the how, not why.
	That meant, though, that at the very core of the game was a big bunch of code that we didn't touch or monkey with, because it 'just worked'. Apparently sometime after Vista, in 64-bit, there was a collision detection bug in Pinball.
	From what I read, Raymond Chen looked at it and got the general idea of what was wrong but didn't want to touch the fragile old code. Raymond's one of the best debuggers I've met, so it wasn't a question of expertise but of time and resources.
	Anyone on the team could have trivially fixed it I'm sure, but it sounds like no one "owned" the game anymore after I left, and it was more than just a random little bug to fix, it would have required a dev to be assigned to it, and there likely was no one free.
What is your favourite colour please?	Well, I have four cars with blue interiors and I'm wearing a blue shirt and a blue watch and blue jeans. So probably blue.
If my son expresses interest in serious computer programming, where is a good place to start? C for Dummies? (I'm joking and I know terribly little about the topic, only enough to know backend is where it's at)	Python, then Javascript. Build a website!
Hi! Just wanted to say, I still use MS-DOS regularly, on many of my older machines in my collection. Also Win3.x, Win9x etc How do you feel about computers becoming extremely dependent on 'cloud' services? I can still set up an old machine, install an old OS, install old software and have it all up and running within an hour or so, while modern software essentially requires cloud services for literally everything. What happens to that software once some random person out there decides that they don't want to support it anymore? Those cloud services go away? Are you concerned that future generations will not be able to experience anything from this era of computing? Considering computers were designed to be able to continually run the same software over and over as necessary, how can that apply if the bulk of this is lost when the cloud disappears? Or maybe this isn't a concern at all, and I'm just crazy...?	I already have hardware that refused to work because the cloud service that backs it has been abandoned or the company has gone out of business.
	I worry that things become dependent on externals that aren't reliable long term, and I know what you mean... but fortunately Windows, once activated, runs perfectly well offline forever, really.
I'm a fresh graduate with some experience and reading the knowledge you all have in the comments has made me feel very inferior. I only started coding in my university and I don't do it in my past time. Am I doing something wrong? I do enjoy programming but I try to keep a work life balance. Is that a thing in software development? Also did you ever approve a pull request by Bill?	No, as long as you DO enjoy it when you're doing it, you're fine. There's an entire "spectrum" of people in the world and some of us have "special interests" with which we're a little obsessed, and tend to "hyperfocus". I'm one of those people but it's by no means the only way to do it!
	I knew many great programmers who (a) didn't program in their spare time at home and (b) didn't continue to program recreationally after leaving it as a job.
	If you can work regular 40 hours a week as a productive programmer, you'll be set!
the below is a reply to the above
Thank you so much for this! Are there any tips you'd like to give to fresh graduates like me?	If you get a job at a large company like Microsoft, and decide you're not happy, try moving INTERNALLY before looking for another job. You could work for 5 different companies over your career and they could all be Google, for example. Culture goes through and through, but every team has its own.
the following is a later reply	If you can put in a 35-40 hour week of solid work, you'll be fine. There are three buckets: the obsessives, like myself, who work as much as they can. Then the solid pros, who can turn out a ton of quality stuff in 40 hours. And then you have the slackers who surf Facebook at work and read reddit when they should be coding. As long as you're not in that group you're fine, and a balance is important. It is indeed a thing the successful people achieve it. It's not about how much code you write, it's about how much MORE time you spend coding than you want to, and that should be zero!
	Lots of people are in careers they don't practice in their free time, in fact most. So it's a bonus if you're that way, but most people are NOT, so don't despair! You're normal!
If you're still answering, how much of the original Task Manager still lives in the modern Task Manager? Anyway, thanks for the AMA! You're a legend!	I don't know for sure, but from looking at the app, and not the code, I'd expect about 60-70% of it?
Hopefully you’re still taking questions. I get a lot of crap by my peers about command line. Power shell is badass but I’m a cmd guy myself. I know we can do pretty much everything that cmd does in powershell and more, but idk. I like what I like, you know? Where do you stand on this?	Honestly I'd be a CMD guy as well, but I'm really starting to lean towards using bash under WSL.
	Have you ever looked the help for SET and FOR under CMD? It's where we put every piece of extra functionality, since you can't add keywords that might collide with people's script names, etc...
I didn’t use windows after windows 7 for about 5 years. Back in august 2019 I finally rebuilt and upgraded my old PC and installed windows 10. The task manager in windows 10 is so amazing and powerful. I would imagine it’s something you wanted to implement in the 90s but didn’t have the tools or time. Right?	Indeed, I'm a big fan of the current task manager and what they've done with it! I wish there was a Dark mode, I wish it handled file lock tracking, and I've always got wish lists, but they've done a great job with it!
CIA_grade_LSD: Why does the file transfer time remaining progress bar start at like 15 hours and then drop to two minutes and then stick at 99% for five minutes? (An exaggeration I admit. I know you and your colleagues do your best, but I am curious why this hasnt gotten much more accurate over the years.) androidethic: Yes, we need a justification as to why the windows file operation estimations are so random/inaccurate!	They're the worst estimate out there, except for all the others.
	Mac is just as bad. It's a hard problem. I worked on it briefly, and to help solve it I kept track of the average time it had taken for a whole range of operations, like creating, moving, deleting, renaming a file, or moving a block of N bytes, etc. Then multiply by the number of those operations that remain. But even that can be wildly off in degenerate cases.
Do you ever get laid?	Not since your Mom kicked me out.
Why has windows task manager never had a true force quit?	End Process is a true force quit.
What was your team's opinion on linux at the time? And what's yours opinion too?	I like it a lot, I was an early adopter back in 1993-1994 and tried to contribute some code for parsing IIDs, though I don't know if it's still in there. I hope it is, becaue then I'd have code in Windows, Mac Office, and Linux. I'd be everywhere :-)
	Now that we have WSL 2, though, I do most of my Linux work under Windows!
How much of the original DOS code is still in modern OSs?	None whatsoever. In fact, the only commonality at all would likely be the PGM header on disk still traces its original layout to MS-DOS.
	But rest assured there's NO code from MS-DOS inside NT, for example. It was a complete clean-slate design.
Was it you responsible for the atrocious naming conventions in WIN32?	Your username is dhbt12 :-)
What current developments in the world of operating systems are you watching with eager anticipation? File systems and LLVM seem to be the rage right now, at least from where I sit.	Containers are cool to me, like Docker! That's really the biggest development of recent years I think!
the below has been split into two
* What's your compensation?	- Zero, since I'm retired and there's no pension.
* Have you met Bill Gates?	- Yes, a number of times. When I was first hired he had me and a few other recent hires over to his house for burgers and beer and it was quite nice!
What's your opinion of free and open-source software? Broad, I know. I saw your response about WinRAR saying you like to license your software, but do you hold a similar sentiment in tossing a coin to the devs of foss software you might use?	I love it, I just don't have any illusions that making a piece of code open-source somehow leads to higher quality. It makes it more available to me, which is great, but in reality, on a typical project there are going to be 1-5 people who really look at the code and then a dozen the sort of know it to make changes, and then consumers of the code who just call it. I don't see that those 1-5 people are any brighter than the people who'd be responsible for a product in a proprietary environment.
	Now at a certain scale, like the Linux kernel maybe, you've got enough eyeballs looking at it that it makes a difference... that I could see!
What's the idea behind SYSKEY?	As I understand it, its function is to encrypt something called the SAM (Security Account Manager) database. This database stores hashes of user passwords, and is used to authenticate users when they supply their password.
Hey Dave, what do you think the future of the windows OS will be? Is a cloud-based OS possible, potentially limiting computer hardware?	As a total guess, I imagine our experience will eventually be just a UI device locally and everything else happens in the cloud on server hardware. So as you say, at some point your client hardware is "good enough" and then companies compete on the merits of their back-end services.
Do you know Mike Toutonghi? , he used to work at Microsoft, now he started a new blockchain project called The Verus project.	By name and email but not well enough to recognize him at the mall today, I'd say!
If you had to redo windows, what would you most like to change? What do you regret most? What do you like most?	The Format dialog needs to be redone! And Task Manager is likely my favorite...
Android or iPhone? Beer or wine? Ginger or Mary Ann?	iPhone. Beer. Can't it be both? It's an island, after all.
the below is a reply to the above
I figured the iPhone since you have Mac's in the lab. I figured beer also since you can't shift a 4 speed with a glass off wine between your legs. Nice garage BTW. However i wasnt ready for both, it's an island after all. Touche. I tired to compile my first bit of code from GitHub today. I failed miserably. It would install but wouldn't run. I'll keep at it.	Make sure you're in a clean empty folder. Try the code from Episode 11, I just used it so I know that works! Clone it and build it in PlatformIO with no changes, and that'll tell you if your dev environment is set up and working properly.
I cant connect to my cloud, can you download it for me?	I'd love to, but I'm out of paper. Can you fax me some?
What amazes you the most when you compare technology from the 90's to now?	GPUs!
Is it wrong of me to only ever end task manager with itself?	Software Seppuku.
Probably too many comments and very late to the game, but here it goes! I teach Comp Sci at an international school. Would you be willing to give a small webinar talk to my students? They would just be so happy to hear from you as would I! Anyway, regardless, thanks for the many, many hours of enjoyment!	Maybe after Covid, but I'm not a big fan of Zoom lectures! I just did one for the U of R, though, and if you check my channel there are two that I have done for the University of Regina that you might find useful for your students...
	You can email me at davepl@davepl.com with info about the school and what topic you would like, etc, and I can see if it's a good fit for schedule and topic!
What computers do you personally at home? Windows? Linux? Mac?	All three!
Why are processes able to hang to the point that task manager is unable to kill them?	At that point there must be kernel corruption or something going on in a driver or well below the surface, I guess. If TM can't kill it, no one can, and it's truly hung.
Did you ever meet the genius who wrote the Space Cadet Pinball theme song?	No, who wrote it? Matt Ridgeway?
Hi Dave, loved the videos on task manager Do you have any thoughts on modern C / C++ replacements like Zig and Rust (respectively)?	I think its cool if memory access is indeed provably safe but you get code nearly as optimal as C, but I've got to learn more about them!
Did you like the windows phone?	Never had one, started after I left, but I heard nice things about the very last one before it went away...
Hi Dave, Why doesn’t File Explorer automatically refresh to show new files in a folder, such as downloads? Seems such an obvious glitch! Also, how do I get the login screen on Windows 10? I push space, esc, mouse clicks, enters... and nothing happens. Then poof, it shows up. Why is this so unresponsive?	It does.
	In fact I know it does, because I have a patent on some of it!
	Not sure why yours wound't be working, your system might have a third party piece of software that has broken File System Change notifications.
Was the time on Microsoft fun?	It really was. I miss the people and the environment, and I especially miss lunch!
i’ve found 15+ 0-days in the shell32 API when doing a vuln analysis of explorer.exe. You can read my work at https://hyp3ri0n-ng.github.io! What’s it like to write really buggy code :P?	I sense that high school was hard for you socially.
I’m sure I remember owning the pinball game as a separate standalone title before it was in windows? Can you explain the deal with that? Or am I misremembering	Plus Pack!
You're a legend, can't believe I missed this. I'll post this here, if you don't answer it I'll have a good copy/paste for later. What are your thoughts on the sethc.exe / accessibility exploit? It's worked as far back as XP, and still works today in Windows 10, last time I checked. Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well. Is checking the integrity of OS files before they're executed just not a priority?	https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/222193/description-of-the-windows-file-protection-feature
Why ctl+alt+delete?	An IBM engineer (David Bradley, I think) picked that combination to serve as a hardware reset. You can't fake it, you can't get around it. The PC knows it's really C_A_D when you do it.
	Why that particular combination, you'd have to ask him!
What's the furthest you've gotten into a project that ended up not panning out? Was it something you really wanted to get working or were you relieved to move on? I'm a student studying engineering right now and reading these answers is extremely motivational; your passion for computers is awesome! Thanks for doing this.	I spent about a year on an early prototype of Media Center that I was attached to but got killed. They did do a Media Center later, of course, but I had started 2-3 years ahead, but couldn't get funding.
Why has the Windows she'll been so bad for so long?	I don't know, but I'll see you in he'll.
Do you still work at Microsoft? Do you still use only Microsoft stuff?	No retired in 2003. I use a lot of MS stuff, but my main laptop is a MacBook and I use a Mac for video.
Do you own any Apple products or use them for work?	I own all the Apple products except the new headphones, pretty much! I'm retired now though!
Is the workculture of Microsoft at the time very different than now? How much does Bill Gates' leadership impact the company? What changes had his departure bring?	It is indeed very different under Satya than Bill, and the changes are widespread. But I left before Satya started, so I'm not really qualified to speak on them!
What are your thoughts on the age old trick of "Opening Task Manager to stop programs from freezing or being slow", is there some merit to doing that or is it just a simple coincidence?	Total coincidence, honest! Task Manager, at that level, is just a windows app with a message pump. It's existence doesn't do anything that solitaire or paint would not also!
	No, but there's a great meme with the Star Wars general about how apps work better with Task Manager open because "fear will keep them in line".
	It's purely psychological, though. TM doesn't do anything by running the calc or paint wouldn't also provide!
Did you work on Windows ME? If so.. What the hell happened to that OS that made it so terrible? I had kernal errors every week.	Nope! My work on the shell would have been backported to it, but I didn't work directly on 98 or M3, other than they used our NT version of the shell code by then I think.
Did you make any contingency for when Task Manager stops responding?	Yes, lots! Check the video the "Secret Life of Task Manager" for more dirt, but there are MANY things it does to help prevent you ever being stuck with no task manager:
	https://youtu.be/f8VBOiPV-_M
If not asked yet If this is correct, as posted in Regina awhile ago iirc I saw a post saying you’re from Regina, Canada Is that true? If so that’s awesome to hear that someone from my local area made one of my favourite no internet game and the basic fundamentals of the most used OS for computers	Yes indeed, that's me!
Why is the documentation for WPA so bad and scarce? I have to refer to Bruce Dawson's years old blog to decipher some of the columns names. Are there any plans to add a comprehensive manual for it?	Windows Product Activation? Columns? Sorry, are you using WPA for something else?
Can I intern for you?	If you know how to write a Material-themed admin-style Dashboard in React, can consume a REST api in doing so, and have some experience with iPhone apps an Unity, then maybe yes!
	I was actually looking for an intern this past summer to write a phone and web app...
how did you assured code quality and readability? did you use static analyzers/ unit tests or what?	Check out the "Secret History of Task Manager" video for a description of "NTStress" and how we nightly tested, but there were professional testers, every line of code was code-reviewed, and so on.
	My understanding is it's quite different now, though!
When you say you worked on Windows activation, was it for more than a day?	That's an odd question. Can I ask why you think it might have just been for a day? Clue me in to what you're hinting at and I'll fill you in on the rest!
Why do I need to press 3 buttons and 1 click to open task manager?	Because you choose to fail!
	You can do it with two clicks or one simultaneous multikey press!
Do you think WPA was a success?	I think so! It helped stem casual piracy, wasn't "cracked" for at least 18 months after we released it, and didn't unduly inconvenience users too often, I hope.
	We were really aiming for the 95% case. Trying to catch the 95% of piracy that is people sharing keys, reusing their own keys on too many machines, getting keys off the web, that sort of thing. I think it accomplished that.
How did you feel about windows 8?	Same way you do.
Who invented the blue screen of death?	John Vert. He said:
	"Back in 1991 I wrote the original code for Windows NT 3.1 that put the video screen back into text mode and the routines to put text on it (and a truly gnarly bit of code it was!). I used the white on blue colors for two reasons.
	* The MIPS workstations we were using for the MIPS port had firmware that presented a boot option screen in white on blue, so it made sense that the bugcheck screen would match.
	* I (and many others) were using SlickEdit as our text editor and at the time its default color scheme was also white on blue.
	I believe Mark Lucovsky wrote the original code that dumped a bunch of text to the screen. This was a bugcode and a stack dump, resulting in a bunch of useless hex numbers which product support would occasionally dutifully transcribe from the customers and include in the bug report.
	There was no "typesetting" as we used standard VGA text mode on PCs.
	I don't know the history of the Win3.1/Win9x blue screens, I think the fact they were the same color is just coincidence."
But can you make sick stick figure death match animations in QBASIC?	No, but I do a mean Bill the Cat ascii art!
How could you?	Sometimes you just gotta say WTF.
	https://youtu.be/a0p7rJsYisw
What are you working on these days?	Mostly on programming tutorials and nostalgic "Windows War Stories" on my youtube channel:
	http://www.youtube.com/c/davesgarage
[removed]	That's me! Went to Miller high, worked at ISM and SaskTel during college, etc!
Here is my question. Im a cuban teenager (17) and my dream is work is be a developer. What kind of mini works i can do for learn programation before University?	Do as many little program tasks as you can, and make sure you complete them, and SAVE them for the future so you can look back!
	Try writing a little program to convert back and forth between roman numbers and regular numbers. Or fund the next highest multiple of 32, or count the number of it bits set in a byte. Or the real difference in seconds between two dates, that sort of thing. Real problems that you have to solve will help a great deal as they act as sort of a "forcing function" to make you get to the very end.
Do you like macaroni & cheese?	Kraft Dinner all the way. And I eat with little packets of designer ketchup.
Wait...you didn't built paint? I'm out.	Nope, sorry. But I owned calc for a while, back when we were adding infinite precision math to it!
Hi, If Microsoft wanted to, they could make it impossible to activate a pirated copy of windows using 3rd party software. So why aren't they making it impossible?	Not sure what you meant by 3rd party software. Are you saying Windows can actually be activated even if pirated? That'd be news to me, but anything's possible.
What was the criteria for “tilt” on space cadet pinball? I played that game for hours as a kid.	Spacebar would add a little "action" to the table, if I recall, and you could strike a balance of adding so much so often... but too much (ie: smash space too much) and it'll tilt.
Did you ever have to interview anybody at Microsoft? If so, what types of questions would you ask back then? What was your interview like going into Microsoft?	Oh yeah, I've interviewed dozens or hundreds I'd bet. I'd like to ask "calibrating questons" like "Give me a funtion that takes a number and returns the next highest multiple of 32" or "count the number of bits that are set in it" to see how their basic coding skills were.
	Then I usually liked to give a problem I was working on to see what it'd be like to actually work with the person.
	I interviewed three times, once as an intern, once as full time, and then once to move to the Shell group. Each as an all-day affair, and very arduous. You have 2-3 hour long interviews in the AM, then a lunch interview, then 2-3 more hour long interviews in the PM, then a supper thing, etc... it's a long day!
ImRandyRU: What have you done for me lately? Edit: it was a joke... dabigchina: NT is the foundation that all modern windows OS's build on, so a lot. Zeusifer: I guarantee some of OP's code still exists in Windows 10.	Most of it, to be honest. As a guess I'd say 75% still there.
Hey man, I had a wicked dump this morning and now my toilet is blocked. Any idea's?	More roughage in your diet.
It was so satisfying to push the 3x5 disks into the slot and have the button pop out, and make a vroom vroom sound. Ah, the old days. What's your favorite MS-Dos game from the 90s?	I actually came to the PC after MS-DOS, so I wasn't a DOS gamer... I suppose in those days it was primarily C64 and Amiga games. I do remember being fond of Sim City, like everyone, but also of a game called "Seven Cities of Gold"...

If you've ever copy/pasted from a Word document, a macOS epub book, or any other similar app, you might get fancy quotes and other fancy characters such as em dashes:

“The evidential gaps mean that the evidence can be made consistent even with the hypothesis that the moon is made of cheese. —” 

If like me you hate those "smart" "fancy" characters and just want plain normal ASCII ones, just run the following in VIM:

%!iconv -f utf-8 -t ascii//translit 

And you will get sane characters again:

"The evidential gaps mean that the evidence can be made consistent even with the hypothesis that the moon is made of cheese. -" 

Life sure was great there for awhile, had been a wonderful few years- hobbies finally taking the center stage in my life. It all started easily enough, as an urge to do something in the evenings. Preferably something interesting, and maybe even fun. I'd become bored with my day job, local clubs, watching sports, and even boozing it up.
Having been huge into electronics as I child, I had neglected the field for quite some time, and was amazed with the bevy of resources now available, from Arduino (and a host of other microcontrollers) to consumer grade servos to programmable ICs and battery packs to commercial grade software available for free on the web. In addition 3D printing had come a huge way, allowing anyone to buy their own printer for a very reasonable cost and download free templates off the web to build literally any shape for any function.
I fell into the rabbit hole in a big way, I ended up dedicating my evenings and weekends in large part to finding out how to tinker with goofy robotics. I built a servo driven lever to open my fridge for me, while a robot hand would select an item of my (voice controlled) choice. To round out the project, a robot dog would then receive the item from the robot arm, and come gladly bounding to my location. As you might imagine, I was highly influenced by Rick Moranis in Honey I Shrunk the Kids. I decided not to motorize the lawnmower, but it was a difficult choice, crazy dangerous, but oh so tempting.
After a few years, my projects had overtaken my whole house, there were gizmos and gadgets overflowing every corner, but I couldn't quit. It had overtaken my life in a big way, I was still working but at work I was designing new pet projects most of the time, neglecting all the actual work that I could.
I built whole systems to measure and control the amount of moisture in the air, automated everything that I could think of, bought almost every microcontroller on the market to test them and compare them to one another. I have robotized my whole kitchen, my bathroom, and most of my bedroom. I wasn't in for commercial success, it was just incredible what I could do in my spare time, I never wanted to make it a profession.
A year ago, I got a little ambitious, I'd admit now. But I felt that I'd worked my way up to the challenge. My robo doggo was a good friend, and he always brought cold beers, but I figured I could do one better, I started work on a robot friend.
It's amazing how much of a human you can 3D print, and how much realistic articulation you can get with servos and motors in the two pound range. The power was never an issue because battery technology and cooling had become incredibly efficient, and I knew all the tricks. Open sourced projects to provide human-like motion via small motors and articulated parts were readily available.
My robo friend sat with me as I continued to build him more capability, giving him speech and eyes, and teaching him to laugh and joke. We had a great time, the two of us. It certainly beat the idea of meeting people in real life, and I could configure my friend to be as happy or melancholic as I preferred. What could be better?
I hooked him up to Google so he could answer any question, and gave him access to reddit, so he could form virtual opinions on any subject. I'll tell you, life just has been great since.
Well.. okay, I'll admit, things got a bit weird last week. He wanted me to build him a friend, another robot pal for us. I was down for it, heck two friends are better than one, am I right? And I had the expertise and the tools to capture lightning in a bottle again. Who knew it could be so easy to play god?
So now there's two of them, but they just keep doing robot things (like talking in ASCII, or sending memes at each other for hours) and not inviting me. At least I can power them off any time and get started on my next project, an empathetic robo-friend who can also grate cheese and wash dishes. I might not teach the next one about reddit though.