Title.
We have a group of 5-6 friends and we usually play and end up 3-4 each friday.
2 of them are newer and are still getting used to MTG. Myself and the rest of the group have been playing for 2-6 years, we're somewhat competitive but our rules are pretty simple: No infinite combos, No proxies.
Outside of that our decks are pretty straight forward, we all play staples and whatnot.
I mostly play Yuriko or Edgar Markov Vampire Tribal. Most decks are pretty strong but get real momentum on turn 3+.
One of them has a relatively cheap Fynn, the Fangbearer deck.
Holy shit!
Turn 1: 1 drop 1/1 deathtouch Turn 2: Fynn drop + attack = 2 poison counters Turn 3: +1-2 additional 1/1 deathtouch drops (more if sol ring or other mana ramp because green)
By turn 4 it can get pretty devastating, had an enchantment that made creatures with low power unblockable, he could basically 1 shot anyone at that point. He also rocks proliferate so even if you lock Fynn down, he can sometimes just proliferate and kill everyone after a few turns if the game ends up being a drag.
I know most people will say just remove him or counter him, but turn 2-3 removal is often not possible. Also, if our pod happens to have 1-2 of our newer players, they dont really have time to see shit coming haha.
What would you do in this situation? Build a bit more around removal? Most games we can manage him and focus him, but with deathtouch, it almost seems like removal is the only way to go. We still love playing against it and see it as a challenge. It's funny as the deck costs pennies compared to some of our other decks lol.

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https://preview.redd.it/g3b20ejnsl0d1.png?width=376&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a3c1dda8f20997a4fb41fc36b9891fd7d9f07f1
https://preview.redd.it/t0fz4djnsl0d1.png?width=3202&format=png&auto=webp&s=d5dc65fa740a94d44b58f18b1b867aceecc056ff
https://preview.redd.it/xf01cdjnsl0d1.png?width=1885&format=png&auto=webp&s=2500e8d6fb8e9e10e4fac3aebafd1b1c2bf02c80
Hello everyone, I have really poor timeline realtime frames per sec, despite having none of my GPU/CPU/RAM/Drives being maxed out in terms of usage/performance.
Also it seems DVR tries to use the iGPU from my CPU (Intel UHD Graphics 770) no matter what my preferences are set up like.
I have attached pictures of the issues, it's kinda self explanatory but if you need me to add any details let me know.
Good to know : - Windows 11 up to date, freshly formatted (yesterday) to install new RAM & Drives - Only Da Vinci Resolve is running - Da Vinci Resolve Studio version 19 (beta) - Footage is h.265 4:2:2 10 L5.0 / 4K 24fps S-log3 / from an A7IV - I did not make proxies nor optimized media, and the timeline is full resolution, and there is no cache used - Clips are color graded + some effects in fusion (Dkeyer, drop shadows, noise reduction) - Da Vinci is installed on main drive C: (PCIE4 NVME M.2 Samsung 980 Pro) - Cache/Proxies are located on drive I: (PCIE4 NVME M.2 Samsung 980 Pro) - UNUSED ! - Media files are located on drive M: (SATAIII Samsung 860 EVO)
Yes I know making proxies or lowering the resolution of the timeline would help, but I'd like to do this IF I'm maxing my PC's specs, which is not the case here, at least to my understanding.
Anyone knows what's happening there ?

Hey everyone!
I recently dove deep into the fascinating world of web unblockers and thought I'd share some insights that might just change how you see internet restrictions and web scraping. You might already know that web unblockers are like secret passageways that let you sneak past internet censorship or geofencing. Think of them as VPNs on steroids, allowing not just encrypted data transfer for privacy but also unrestricted browsing freedom.
But here's where it gets really interesting, especially for folks in the web scraping arena. Web unblockers serve as these powerful APIs designed to outsmart anti-bot protections. They’re like the ninjas of the internet, using tactics such as IP rotation, browser fingerprinting, CAPTCHA solving, and even Javascript rendering to access the data we need.
Now, you might think a proxy does the job by changing your IP address. But web unblockers? They're the whole package, offering a bunch more than just a disguise. Yet, it's not all smooth sailing. No single web unblocker can claim victory over every anti-bot mechanism out there. Tech giants like Cloudflare are in constant evolution, crafting more complex defenses to keep bots at bay.
This is exactly why I conducted the Great Web Unblocker Benchmark. It's a showdown to see how different web unblockers stack up against the toughest anti-bot solutions in the wild. Sure, there's a price tag attached to these unblockers, but picking the right one isn't just about spending money—it's about investing in seamless data access for our projects.
In the end, the key takeaway is weighing the cost against the potential to maintain an uninterrupted data flow for our customers. Let's keep pushing the envelope and finding the best tools to navigate these challenges together.
Cheers to an open and accessible web for all our scraping needs!
Linkt to the full article: https://substack.thewebscraping.club/p/what-is-a-web-unblocker

I stumbled across this subreddit and although I'm strictly not over 40 myself, my relationship lends to being with someone older than me, so I'm looking for thoughts and opinions from people in that demographic. Hopefully that's okay....
For a little context, I was in my first and only relationship which lasted 18 months. It was an age gap relationship, she was 43/44 at the time, so 12 years older than me — I'm 33 now and she had a little daughter who was around 10 who I treated like my own. She was married for 14 years, divorced for 3 before I come along and was a breath of fresh air and “put the wind back in her sails” as she put it and the "love of her life" and "soulmate" and all that stuff…But ultimately, in August 2022 after our holiday as a trio to Mallorca, she told me she no longer found me attractive, or attractive anyway, she was never in it from day one when she met me, only saw me as a friend.
She told me she thinks she should be with someone more her age, established, has the executive job title (as she finds the self made type an “attractive” quality), fancy car, house, body. I think she saw a power imbalance because of the age gap and she was a high earner herself.
I think she has/had her own issues she never dealt with, because I was never toxic or abusive or shouted or argued and did everything to try meet her needs. I would've moved mountains and walked over broken glass for her. There were these emotional wobbles every few months, where she would burst into tears upset telling me she wasn’t sure what she wants, she doesn’t want a relationship and can go through life focusing on her career, daughter and doesn’t need or want a guy. But being nieve would ignore that, calm her down, reassure her I’m there for her, sleep on it and go again and then the cycle would repeat after a few months - another wobble and another. I guess ultimately I'll never really know the true reason as I guess people say things in the heat of the moment.
She turned incredibly cold and heartless after I tried to save things, be reasonable and text, and then all of a sudden we were in no contact at all. After a year of being blocked everywhere except for WhatsApp, she unblocked me on Instagram just before the most recent Christmas, but never reached out. Could be something, could be nothing. I guess 6 months later, it's nothing.
I guess I'm a little lost still, all this time later, and would welcome thoughts and an open conversation for comfort..

It is awful to see but that lying, charmless, hypocritical piece of human garbage SJ is winning. His super chats have been really good lately. I know that a few whales are a part of that but ever since VTL told that dummy to unblock everyone on youtube so they could hate super chat him he's done great.
Here is the thing, just like he fell into his job on the Stern show by stuttering & having Jackie & Fred write questions for him, he fell into a record a deal because of being on the Stern show & he got the Tonight Show because he was on Stern. None of those took any talent. He got those opportunities because of others. He has virtually no talent and the charm of a fresh piece of shit on the sidewalk. Now he is doing well on Youtube because of the funny super chats of people hating on him. Again he is succeeding through none of his own talent but he is undeniably succeeding. I had to shut him off last night. I was really sickened by him.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Season Information

• Airdates: 30th August 1980 - 21st March 1981
• Doctor: 4th (Tom Baker)
• Companions: K-9 (V/A: John Leeson, S18E01-20), Romana II (Lalla Ward, S18E01-20), Adric (Matthew Waterhouse, S18E09-28), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton, S18E21-28), Tegan (Janet Fielding, S18E25-28)
• Other Notable Characters: The Decayed Master (Geoffrey Beevers, S18E21-24), The Tremas Master (Anthony Ainley, S18E24-28)
• Producer: John Nathan-Turner
• Script Editors: Christopher H. Bidmead

Review

In retrospect I really shouldn't have called Season 15 "The Transitional Season". Because, well, Season 18 is obviously the Doctor Who season most clearly transitioning between eras. So much so that by the end of the season the only thing left of the 4th Doctor era is the 4th Doctor himself. Through this season, the 4th Doctor, Romana and K-9 become the 5th Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan. And it leads to kind of an odd feeling.
It's also notable that there's a serious tonal change that happens this season. While Graham Williams never quite got to make the comedy era of Doctor Who that he wanted to, he did give it a more relaxed and free-flowing atmosphere. Under new Producer John Nathan-Turner, as well as new Script Editor Christopher H. Bidmead, the story veers right back into being a more serious show. And for the first time, there was real effort being put into grounding a lot of the stories in real science. And while the actual science involved isn't really accurate, I do think it has a positive impact on the season as a whole. The science on Doctor Who is always made up, but at least this way it feels like we're pointing in the vague direction of something real.
It's certainly a refreshing change of pace from the rest of the 4th Doctor era. The 4th Doctor era, at least from Season 13 onwards had a tendency to feel very gimmicky. During the Hinchcliffe era it was taking popular horror stories like Frankenstein or The Mummy and adapting them for Doctor Who. During the Williams era, that shifted more towards genre parodies, with some journeys in to Greek mythology. Season 18 feels kind of refreshing in large part because…there's not really any obvious influences. Sure we're pulling from real science, both in individual episodes and in a more general sense with the broad theme of entropy, but that feels a lot less invasive than pulling from more famous media.
Which leads us nicely to the entropy thing. Season 18, at least in theory, has an overarching theme of "entropy". Or more accurately it has an overarching theme of "decay" that sometimes takes on the form of entropy. Because look, there's nothing especially entropic about the vampires in State of Decay or the way the Argolins are dying out in The Leisure Hive, but it still falls into the larger umbrella of decay. Which gives this season a fairly melancholic tone to it on the whole. Throughout the entire season, things seem to be falling apart, especially once we get to E-Space. Warriors' Gate is full of all of this imagery of past riches fading into nothing, Keeper of Traken is literally about an entirely way of life nearly falling apart, and Logopolis is where we, really and truly, get the entropy theme, for real this time. But also…
Logopolis, in which the Doctor dies, briefly turns into a man with white cracked skin only to sit up looking about a decade younger, is probably the best indication of the other half of our decay theme. Because Doctor Who is a show where things generally work out for the best, this is a season that is as much about rebirth as it is about decay. The Argolins from Leisure Hive are given a chance at new life for their civilization. The peoples with meet in the E-Space Trilogy all ultimately get delivered from their decaying societies and given a chance to build back up to something new. In Meglos…I guess at the end there the people of Tigella do ultimately get to live on the surface of their planet…somehow. Even in Keeper of Traken the story leaves the Trakenite people on something of a hopeful note, with a new Keeper installed to look after it. Sure, in Logopolis we learn that the Master apparently blew up Traken off screen (if I had a nickel for every time the Master blew up a planet off screen…) along with its entire solar system, but at least at the end of Keeper things are looking hopeful.
And that idea of renewal kind of extends to the show itself right? Like this is clearly a season that's transitioning into a new, renewed version of itself, at least in theory. That's why we lose Romana and the robot dog, and replace them with a couple of kids and a fairly young flight attendant. John Nathan-Turner felt that the trio of Romana, K-9 and the Doctor were too invulnerable, which is why he decided to write out the two surplus geniuses. You can see this in how stories are structured. Generally speaking in the five stories that Romana and K-9 are in this season, Romana is either confined to her own subplot or taken out of commission, while K-9 is so constantly dismantled or on very low power, it begins to feel like a running gag by the time he leaves.
And at the same time, this season shows us Romana at the absolute height of her competence. She's basically the Doctor's equal by the time we enter E-Space. I think that's why I feel like it was the right time for Romana to leave: she'd done all the developing she needed to. There was nowhere to take the character without making the show just as much about her as it was about the Doctor. So while losing Romana, and Lalla Ward with her, is a shame, it was the right time to drop her. Losing K-9 on the other hand…look the TARDIS is already about to get exceptionally crowded and unless you don't bring Nyssa back in Logopolis there really isn't time for the robot dog, but I'd argue that there was no need to drop K-9 from the show. His presence making the TARDIS team "unassailable" just doesn't hold up, as him continually being dismantled throughout this season proves. And, as Tom Baker once observed in one of the funniest outtakes in Doctor Who history "you [K-9] never fucking know the answer when it's important".
But we do eventually have to introduce the younger folks. It starts out with Alzarian teenager turned TARDIS stowaway Adric. Adric has a reputation as an awful companion, though personally I've never been that down on him. I don't love the character, but he's perfectly acceptable in small doses. The biggest issue I take with him is that he plays into the sullen teenager a bit too much. The moody teenage genius is just not an enjoyable character to follow along with, and it's only going to get worse next season. However, there are moments, particularly in Keeper of Traken where the student/pupil dynamic with the Doctor makes him genuinely likable. Also, his obvious crush on Nyssa, more seen in Logopolis is fairly endearing. But a lot of the time he's just, and I've used this phrase before, an arrogant little shit. And I think it is fair to point out that Matthew Waterhouse, inexperienced as he was, often gives a very wooden performance.
Nyssa is introduced in Keeper of Traken. There we see her interacting on her own homeworld. She takes initiative a number of times in that story, mostly during the jailbreak section which she organizes. In Logopolis she's out searching for her father and that's when she has the rug pulled out from under her. She learns that, in short order, the Master killed her father and then that he destroyed her home system. Between the two stories we get a really solid setup for Nyssa, and Sarah Sutton is really solid in the role, though whether the show will follow through on any of this in the next couple seasons…is a story for another time. And speaking of characters whose somewhat tragic first couple stories often get overlooked, in her first story Tegan learns that the Master has killed her aunt, who she was clearly quite close to. Sure, it's not on the level of Nyssa's loss, but it's not a competition. Tegan, like Nyssa, gets a strong introduction, and like Nyssa we'll see in the future how successful the followup to that introduction is.
And then, there's the Doctor. Amidst all of this change, he's the one thing that stays constant from the prior era, and he ends up feeling a bit out of place by the end of season as a result. Some of this is in retrospect of course. It's only weird seeing the 4th Doctor with Nyssa and Tegan because we think of these two as 5th Doctor companions. But I do think that there's something to the idea that the 4th Doctor belonged to the 1970s. We've now reached the 1980s and the scarf man has somewhat been left behind. Or that may be because Tom Baker just seems tired this season. He's not putting in bad work, because he knows the character too well to do that, but he does seem more disconnected than ever. Of course if I'm going to mention this, I should mention that Baker was getting over an illness during the filming of the E-Space trilogy. And he has his moments of higher energy, particularly in Keeper of Traken for whatever reason. But there are also times, even before the illness, where Tom looks like he's sleepwalking through all of this. I think it's fair to say it was time for him to leave.
On a technical level there are some changes. The Doctor's costume changed substantially, and the rest of the cast will be wearing the same clothes they were introduced in for the rest of next season (well okay, Nyssa's outfit will undergo some minor alterations). It's one of the less well-handled elements of the JNT era: people stop dressing like people, but end up stuck in costumes. This will somewhat ameliorate as time goes on, but it's something worth noting: it starts early, and was very intentional. JNT explicitly wanted all of his main cast to be wearing "uniforms". Musically we've undergone a big change as well. Dudley Simpson is gone and he's been replaced by a rotating cast of composers from the BBC Radiophonics workshop. These are all solid at bare minimum, with my favorite probably being Paddy Kingsland. As a result of this change, the style has changed considerably. Over the course of Simpson's time as composer, the show became more and more orchestral, whereas under the Radiophonics composers we've gone in a more electronic direction. It's a big shift, but by the end of the season it feels natural, and I think Doctor Who does well with a synth sound.
Season 18 begins the reign of Doctor Who's final producer. Eventually JNT will stay on too long, as even he would admit, but at this point all of his ideas feel new and fresh. They aren't all improvements, though some are, but Season 18 does feel entirely different from what came before it, and there's value in that. More than that though, other than enforcing a more serious tone than the Graham Williams era, Season 18 ends up feeling like it's going back to basics. Sure it's got an arc (two of them in fact) but all of the stories feel a lot less constrained by a style than earlier 4th Doctor era stories, which works to it's advantage. Genuinely, this is a strong season, a strong start to John Nathan-Turner's run as producer, and a strong end to the 4th Doctor era.
Even if, you know, it already felt like the show had left him behind well before he regenerated.

Awards

Best Story: State of Decay
What can I say, I like it when old Uncle Terry does horror. It's odd, I'll admit, to have talked up so much how refreshing it felt to have a season that didn't rely so much on gimmicks and then to say that my favorite story from said season to be the vampire pastiche but…I'm allowed to be self contradictory if I like. And genuinely, State of Decay works so well that it's worth highlighting my own inconsistency to highlight the story.
Worst Story: Meglos
Meglos (the character) has no motivation, the stuff on Tigella is the most boring version of a conflict we've done…probably dozens of times at this point, none of the characters are at all memorable…what a waste of the return of Jacqueline Hill.
Most Important: The Keeper of Traken
Logopolis has the regeneration and introduction of block-transfer computation, so this was a closely run thing. But Keeper introduces the version of the Master that will be sticking around for the remainder of the show, sets up a lot about Logopolis, and introduces a new companion. Like I said it's close, but this feels like the right call to me. I also could have gone with Warriors' Gate, but Keeper and Logopolis both feel much more significant to me.
Funniest Story: N/A
Often times when there's not really a comedy in a season, I go for the strangest story as a sort of proxy for the funniest story. But the strangest story this season was Warriors' Gate, and it's not the right kind of strange to qualify for this award. So we're leaving this space blank, as JNT intentionally tries to move the show away from what Graham Williams was doing with it.
Scariest Story: State of Decay
I had to chose which was scarier between the destruction of the universe via entropy or vampires and went with vampires. I think my sense of scale might be borked.

Rankings

1. State of Decay (8/10)
2. Warriors' Gate (8/10)
3. The Leisure Hive (7/10)
4. The Keeper of Traken (7/10)
5. Logopolis (7/10)
6. Full Circle (7/10)
7. Meglos (1/10)

Season Rankings
These are based on weighted averages that take into account the length of each story. Take this ranking with a grain of salt however. No average can properly reflect a full season's quality and nuance, and the scores for each story are, ultimately, highly subjective and a bit arbitrary.

1. Season 7 (8.1/10)
2. Season 10 (7.5/10)
3. Season 4 (7.0/10)
4. Season 11 (6.5/10)
5. Season 18 (6.4/10)
6. Season 12 (6.3/10)
7. Season 6 (6.3/10)
8. Season 1 (6.2/10)
9. Season 14 (6.2/10)
10. Season 13 (6.1/10)
11. Season 3 (6.0/10)
12. Season 5 (6.0/10)
13. Season 15 (5.9/10)
14. Season 2 (5.8/10)
15. Season 9 (5.8/10)
16. Season 8 (5.8/10)
17. Season 17 (5.8/10) *
18. Season 16 – The Key to Time (5.6/10)

* Includes originally unmade serial Shada
I'm genuinely considering abandoning the season/doctor era rankings portion of these posts. Do I think that Season 18 was good…absolutely. The 5th best season of the first 18 though?
What's happened here is that a lot of very solid scores (4 sevens…) have skewed the results up higher than they would otherwise have gone to the point that, even me giving Meglos a 1/10 hasn't affected it that much. The end result is a season going much higher than I would otherwise put it. Granted if I were as high on Warriors' Gate as some, I'd probably feel better about this, but if I were as high on that story as some it probably gets a perfect score and borks these rankings even further. I don't know, I guess the rankings serve their purpose as a snapshot of how good I felt any given season was on average, but I less and less feel like they're a reflection of my actual rankings of the seasons
Next Time: Somehow, I've reached the end of the 4th Doctor era. Now I just have to write about him. That's…going to be a lot.

So when I was about 10 years old, I began hanging out with this kid (I'm gonna use his real name cause fuck him) his name was Sawyer, we met through me friend Luis, and I don't really remember how we first met or talked too each other cause apparently after the first time we met he blocked me, but ended up unblocking me, me him, Luis and Josh (The kid from the other story) used too hang out a lot and play fortnite or minecraft, I remember he used too complaint about the dumbest shit and had the dumbest opinions on things, like he said new minecraft sucked cause you could emote, but after about 3 months of playing with him, he became a dick, but not too me, but too Luis and Luis only, he would always start shit with him for no reason and brag about random things, and for some reason he just praised me, we confronted him like 5 times about this but he never changed, that's when I was 10, when I was 11 me and Luis got r6 on playstaion and we began playing that a lot soon after we got it, it was on sale and Luis was gonna give Sawyer a gift card for him too buy it, but were still not sure about this, but Luis said his dad's card got charged for $300 and someone was trying too buy a vr headset, he blamed Sawyer and when Luis confronted him, he didn't deny it, when me and Luis started playing on xbox, Sawyer also had an xbox and would be on a lot, soon after we me Jack, after a while it was clear Jack and Sawyer didn't get along which we were ok with cause we started too hate Sawyer
So like back in August Sawyer heard me say the n-word he had known I was biracial, he saw a picture of me soon after (He had always know what I looked like, my skin is more white than brown) so when I got off the next day, Luis told me that he called me racist after that we just made fun of him cause he said some real stupid shit, now the funniest thing is.......HE WAS A FUCKING RACIST Luis is Pacific islander and knowing this he made a lot of racist jokes about Asian people, and had also scream the n-word, (I wasn't around when that happened) and said a lot of racist things about Mexicans
The most recent thing that happened with him, is from the pov of Jack and Luis, so they were playing with this guy who was friends with Sawyer, and Sawyer joined, they were ignoring him cause they were playing warzone, but soon Luis just said "Y'know gggamer9000 got a girlfriend earlier this month" and Sawyer said "Is that a good thing or a bad thing" and also said "I'm fresh out of a relationship bro" This man get's no bitches, he looks like Ethan gamer, but after that we've never spoke too him again

Last week my laptop was working fine. I went to access a file in my OneDrive account and was unable to open it. All other files were accessible. Restarted my computer to hopefully resolve the problem. Since then a few things have happened:
1) I cannot log into my OneDrive account - Everytime I enter my login information it reprompts me to enter it The error code is 8004de44 which indicates a connection is being blocked. I updated to Sonoma 14.4 and still does not work.
2) My Mail app keeps signing me out of both of my email accounts (gmail, Microsoft Outlook) after a few hours. Never had this issue before which makes me think this is all related
3) I created a guest profile and OneDrive is able to work on that profile.
This is my work computer and I have had my IT people look at it and they can't figure out the issue other than thinking something is blocking the connection based on the error code from OneDrive. Their suggestion is to wipe my laptop and start fresh. I want to avoid doing that if at all possible.
I only really use this laptop for work so am careful with what apps and program I install on it and can't think what I could have done to cause this. I disabled the firewall, antivirus, and enabled auto proxy discovery based on a suggestion. Is there anything else I might be missing to try?

does anyone have an unblocked proxy website that doesnt have any sorts of limits? I use the proxies available at sites.google.com/view/undergroundkids but they all have some sort of data restrictions. I want to play fnaf during school. I used to play on Yandex.com, but it got blocked because of everyone knowing about it (nobody knows how to gatekeep)

Hello!
Identity: 24F, asexual, sex repulsed, demiromantic biromantic.
Location: Dominican Republic, I will be pursuing a master's degree in Europe starting this year.
Interests:
Getting lost in music is my favorite way of spending my free time. I like cooking/baking special things when I feel inspired to. Sometimes I get caught up on random rabbit holes of information, I bing read web comics knowing they're incomplete. I like taking pictures, watching the sky and stars; sometimes just standing there, breathing the fresh air at the countryside makes me feel fulfilled. Oh and I write poetry. I also like outdoonature activities such as swimming, running, hiking. It's been years since I had a bike but I want to get back to it.
I don't really play video games anymore. Maybe in the future I'll get back to it. Same with tv shows, I have a long list of things I watched/played in the past, so maybe we could talk about both of these things. And I'd be open to recommendations.
Shows/cartoons I've liked:
Live action: Orphan Black, Teen Wolf, the OA, Sense8, New Girl, Skins, Fleabag, Warrior Nun, Anne with an E, Super Girl;
Animated: Kipo, She-Ra, Inside Job, Arcane, Dragon Prince, Hilda, Violet Evergarden, Edén, The Owl House, Teen Titans, Young Justice, Disenchantment, Harley Quinn, ATLA, LOK, Bocchi the Rock!, Ergo Proxy, Cowboy Bebop, etc.
Games: Life is Strange, The Walking Dead Series, Kirby and Super Mario games, Minecraft, Stardew Valley, GTA, The Sims, Unpacking and Need for speed.
About me:
I'm an ambivert, a private person but I can open up easily, sometimes it happens fast, sometimes it takes time, it depends on the person. I've dealt with anxiety and depression in the past, but nowadays, it's mostly social anxiety that lingers. Still I can function in society and be a good add-on in others lives.
I'm open to talk about things like that and I can be pretty understanding of other's struggles. I don't like being bombed with heavy information without warnings first though.
I don't have my life 100% together, so I don't expect you to be at your "prime" either, but someone with a drive to get and be better would be nice, so we could support and motivate each other to keep thriving. So I can understand if you're struggling or have had in the past. I'm striving for my independence, personal and career growth, and living a peaceful life.
Right now I'm unemployed, I get by trying to be as useful as possible (I live with my family); getting gigs here and there while I find a steady job; I also have various business ideas that I honestly don't know what I'm waiting for to try bring them to life lol; apart from that, I spend time doing things that I like, and every once in a while I enroll in virtual classes, short courses of different things. I live in a sub urban area, and honestly, there's not much to do here besides clubbing (not my thing), eating out, going to the beach or parks. Or maybe there is more and I'm not aware yet lol.
I express my feelings through acts of service, quality time, words of affirmation, compliments and flirts, cuddling and open/honest/healthy communication. I like to communicate and I hate when people leave me hanging on/waiting for answers that never arrive, I like being honest and talking things out, even if it won't work out.
Physically: I'm hispanic, 1.73m tall, average weight. My hair is short but my sense of fashion isn't really masc, nor too femme either lol. I just prefer to dress comfortably, but if things have to get fancy I can get fancy, you'll never see me wearing dresses though. Comfort > looks.
Happy to send pictures and expecting to get them in return, like to put a face to whom I'm talking with, so I would like to exchange pics early on, so if you're too big on anonymity, I don't think we'd be a match. For friends this isn't necessary though but if you want to, I'm fine with it.
Looking for:
you + me 😏🤭 /JK... perhaps?👉🏼👈🏼
I've never been in a relationship but I feel ready to explore that part of myself that I've been neglecting haha. I kind of crave emotional connection and I enjoy cuddling. I put that pink flair but friends are welcomed too.
Friends: anyone between 22-28, sharing things in common or anything at all, I can talk about anything honestly lol.
More than friends: 22-28, who's also looking for something similar; we don't need to have a lot in common, but if we share some interests it would be great; someone who can hold a conversation and communicate openly and with honesty; can get serious or be a silly goose when necessary :v, likes to constantly text/voice chat/video calls. I haven't had any luck finding aces here so I'm open to a LDR, even online for a while, though I would like to close the gap some day, I wouldn't be comfortable with an online relationship forever. Also I will come back to my country for a bit to do some things but I'm open to moving elsewhere depending on a lot of factors, feel free to ask me about this..
I like to communicate and I dislike when people leave me hanging on or waiting for answers that never arrive, specially in the online world. I like being honest and talking things out, even if they don't work out. But I don't chase people who gets hard to reach out to.
Deal-breakers include:

• age range
• toxic positivity
• toxic masculinity
• hate towards lgbt+
• passive aggressiveness
• unhealthy levels of clingyness
• hard drugs , heavily drinking, somking
• Ignoring the age range I have stated above

I'm sorry for the length, I always start writing short bits but I'm the type to give as much information as possible lol. I don't leave anything up for imagination XD
Happy to provide more (more !!!? XD) details privately.
If I caught your attention don't hesitate to dm, comment, pm, send me a pigeon or a smoke signal.
See ya!

Fresh install of Fedora 40 on a fifth gen Intel NUC Kit with an Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265. For some reason, the network menu is only showing me options for wired, VPN, and proxy. Tried reinstalling but the problem persists. Not entirely sure what to do.

I've had a small homelab running successfully for a few weeks using traefik and wildcard ssl on a local only domain. Everything was going well until yesterday I noticed that traefik dashboard would not load - it would try connecting for about 10 minutes and then eventually say there was no response. There was nothing in the traefik logs since it was clear that the call was never making it to the dashboard at all.
I thought that maybe the container just got in the wobbles and brought traefik docker down, waited a few minutes and the brought it up again. Same behaviour. All of the services using docker resolved and worked fine over https but not traefik-dashboard.
I noticed that the kernal was out of date so I did an apt update and upgrade and a system restart. Now I cannot start the traefik container at all.
After a fresh reboot
Error response from daemon: driver failed programming external connectivity on endpoint traefik (abbc5460c0f81dc4259a5da9be62ff4fd467377112b84677bbd4689b656bb719): Error starting userland proxy: listen udp4 0.0.0.0:443: bind: address already in use
This is odd as it is a vanilla ubuntu setup used soley for docker containers.

me@home:~/docketraefik$ sudo netstat -tulpn grep LISTEN grep :443 tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:443 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 58693/docker-proxy tcp6 0 0 :::443 :::* LISTEN 58699/docker-proxy 

So I can see that something is listening from docker-proxy but I don't know where that is coming from or why it is only there now? I originally set up a docker network called just proxy and it is still there

me@home:~/docketraefik$ sudo docker network ls NETWORK ID NAME DRIVER SCOPE 329d6ffd8d43 bridge bridge local 6fb3cf3fb193 host host local c3f2587a4790 none null local 666cab2088a0 proxy bridge local 

I killed all the processes holding those ports. docker compose up --force-recreate and the same bind error, even though netstat shows that nothing is listening.
I restart docker
sudo systemctl restart docker
And now docker-proxy is back and listening but there are no containers running - its a fresh restart.
I'm running out of ideas why something was working yesterday and not today (even before I did the system upgrade).
At this stage I just want to get Traefik being able to run again.

services: traefik: image: traefik:v3.0 container_name: traefik restart: unless-stopped security_opt: - no-new-privileges:true networks: - proxy ports: - 80:80 - 443:443/tcp - 443:443/udp # HTTP3 - 5432:5432/tcp #postgres environment: CF_DNS_API_TOKEN_FILE: /run/secrets/cf_api_token TRAEFIK_DASHBOARD_CREDENTIALS: ${TRAEFIK_DASHBOARD_CREDENTIALS} secrets: - cf_api_token env_file: .env # use .env volumes: - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro - /varun/docker.sock:/varun/docker.sock:ro - ./data/traefik.yml:/traefik.yml:ro - ./data/acme.json:/acme.json - ./data/config.yml:/config.yml:ro labels: - "traefik.enable=true" - "traefik.http.routers.traefik.entrypoints=http" - "traefik.http.routers.traefik.rule=Host(`traefik.${LOCAL_DOMAIN}`)" - "traefik.http.middlewares.traefik-auth.basicauth.users=${TRAEFIK_DASHBOARD_CREDENTIALS}" - "traefik.http.middlewares.traefik-https-redirect.redirectscheme.scheme=https" - "traefik.http.middlewares.sslheader.headers.customrequestheaders.X-Forwarded-Proto=https" - "traefik.http.routers.traefik.middlewares=traefik-https-redirect" - "traefik.http.routers.traefik-secure.entrypoints=https" - "traefik.http.routers.traefik-secure.rule=Host(`traefik.${LOCAL_DOMAIN}`)" - "traefik.http.routers.traefik-secure.middlewares=traefik-auth" - "traefik.http.routers.traefik-secure.tls=true" - "traefik.http.routers.traefik-secure.tls.certresolver=cloudflare" - "traefik.http.routers.traefik-secure.tls.domains[0].main=${LOCAL_DOMAIN}" - "traefik.http.routers.traefik-secure.tls.domains[0].sans=*.${LOCAL_DOMAIN}" - "traefik.http.routers.traefik-secure.service=api@internal" secrets: cf_api_token: file: ./cf_api_token.txt networks: proxy: external: true 

nslookup resolves to the correct IP
but traefik container is unstartable because of a port bind issue.

me@home:~/docketraefik$ sudo docker info Client: Docker Engine - Community Version: 26.1.2 Context: default Debug Mode: false Plugins: buildx: Docker Buildx (Docker Inc.) Version: v0.14.0 Path: /uslibexec/dockecli-plugins/docker-buildx compose: Docker Compose (Docker Inc.) Version: v2.27.0 Path: /uslibexec/dockecli-plugins/docker-compose Server: Containers: 1 Running: 0 Paused: 0 Stopped: 1 Images: 3 Server Version: 24.0.5 Storage Driver: overlay2 Backing Filesystem: extfs Supports d_type: true Using metacopy: false Native Overlay Diff: true userxattr: false Logging Driver: json-file Cgroup Driver: systemd Cgroup Version: 2 Plugins: Volume: local Network: bridge host ipvlan macvlan null overlay Log: awslogs fluentd gcplogs gelf journald json-file local logentries splunk syslog Swarm: inactive Runtimes: io.containerd.runc.v2 runc Default Runtime: runc Init Binary: docker-init containerd version: 3dce8eb055cbb6872793272b4f20ed16117344f8 runc version: init version: de40ad0 Security Options: apparmor seccomp Profile: builtin cgroupns Kernel Version: 5.15.0-106-generic Operating System: Ubuntu Core 22 OSType: linux Architecture: x86_64 CPUs: 4 Total Memory: 15.53GiB Name: home ID: f46eb241-7307-4453-a1c5-a3c86baac273 Docker Root Dir: /vasnap/dockecommon/var-lib-docker Debug Mode: false Experimental: false Insecure Registries: 127.0.0.0/8 Live Restore Enabled: false 

Thanks in advance.

Well I just finished the campaign of Homeworld 3 today and I have to say I am massively dissatisfied with the presented story. I feel utterly disappointed that after 20 years of waiting for a sequel to one of my favorite game franchises; we got something like this.
I feel like this game's story and narrative direction went in a direction that goes counter to the fundamental experience the first 2-3 games delivered that made them memorable so many decades after the fact. I honestly think it is the worst/weakest game of the franchise narratively speaking. All the other aspects of HW3 are fantastic. I 1000% understand what Rob and the rest of the folks at BBI were trying to accomplish here when they said the tech wasn't available 20 years ago with HW2. This game is beautiful and it shows. Visuals, Audio, ship design, UI, are fantastic. Gameplay and mechanical issues are fixable so I'm not going to fault them for that being a bit rough at launch.
I'll try to explain as best I can, but I'm not the best at fully expressing my thoughts out into text, so (BRING SAJUUK TO BEAR) with me.
For context, I've been in the Homeworld community for a LONG TIME. Since the Relicnews days. Not as long as Uber, Shin, or some of the other folks, but long enough to have made many friends from this community I still know to this day, and also I am one of the moderators on the HWU Discord server. So I have spent the better part of my entire life a part of this community in some way.
Here we go... (quote shameless stolen borrowed from The Way of Kings)

Journey Before Destination

The ancient code of the Knights Radiant says “journey before destination.” Some may call it a simple platitude, but it is far more. A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us.
But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination.

Why do people love HW1/HWC to this day? What about those games made them so well loved by the community that they are widely considered the de-facto games of the series when it comes to their story telling? But what about it was good that made it that way?
DanVanCrone wrote a fantastic piece on the old Relicnews forums that the entire forum base loved to referenced for many years of how heartfelt and masterful the story connected with its audience.
For me and many others. it was the experience of the story; the journey that took place within those games that gave us the player something to connect with; to relate with. The story of Homeworld presented a simple premise. A people on a planet who discovered their home was not their own. Their true home was out somewhere among the stars. The reasons how they got here or why lost to time and ancient memories turned to myth and legends. Their struggle to survive, their rise out of near extinction to climb into the heavens and stumble upon a lost secret that would transform their entire society in such a way that would drive them across the galaxy.
So we set out on this journey not as a third party viewing Commander Shepard do his thing, or as a specific character; but as someone who had their place right along side the entire Kharakian people as they set out to find their home. Sure we had Fleet Command/Intel, as they were voiced and spoke, but their agency as a character was done in such a way presented them moreso as proxies or acted as a voice for the entirety of the Kharakian (Kushan) people. Karan did have her own voice due to the nature of her linkage to the Mothership and so she had a sort of duality with her position. But both her and Fleet Intelligence were able to act as a means to deliver the emotions for moments of pain, grief, anger, sadness, revenge, hope and everything we experienced as we played the campaign.
We experienced the journey to Hiigara along with the entire crew of the Mothership. We had the welling of anger and sadness when Kharak burned. The anxiousness and anticipation at the Bridge of Sighs as we gained entry to the Hiigaran system. Panic, concern, worry as we fought to survive in orbit around our Homeworld.
The story of Homeworld was never about a character or about chasing 'a thing' but moreso the exploration and experience of an idea that resonated with everyone; to find your home. In doing so, the story unfolded naturally of uncovering the history of what happened in their past of how they came to be on Kharak, experiencing loss, exacting revenge, hope for the future and eventually tears of joy at the accomplishment that the did in fact find Hiigara. And we were there along the way as an active participant to experience all of it along the way as if we were there with them.
The glorious vistas of the galaxy as we jumped from mission to mission. We cried at the end NIS as we saw the epilogue of our journey. The lives lost from the conflict of the fight to gain our Homeworld. The awe and wonder of seeing a lush world to those who knew only endless sands, and especially when we saw Karan insisting that she be the last person to disembark and set foot on the Homeworld.
The agency we had as a player was not viewed through the lens of one person; but through the eyes of an entire people and the journey they took. The universe had enough backstory written within the manual to lay the foundational ground work just enough that you didn't need a lot of technical exposition dumps, or have to have things blatantly explained to you right to your face. So in a sense, you were like part of the crew going on the journey along with them, as part of them.

Homeworld Catacylsm

HWC worked much the same way within its own twist. For this game, the focus was much smaller in scope and placed you with the crew of the Kiith Somtaaw mining vessel.
Here HWC built upon the foundations that HW1 put in place with the lore of the Kiiths, the fallout of returning to Hiigara, and touched upon and provided interested world building elements about the universe. From the aspects of Kiith politics; and the explorations of galactic geopolitics resulting from the Return of the Kushan people.
It was an underdog tale and also one that mirrors and parallels aspects of a Hero's Journey. Only again the hero here is not a person but a group of people. The story aspect of The Beast acted as narrative driving force to drive those concepts of the growth and journey of the Kuun-Lan and her crew as they had that Hero's journey.
You fight alongside the Kuun-Lann, you feel and hear the fear in their voices of the ship engineers as they struggle to understand the Beast when it captures and subverts ships. The tension as the story progresses as the circumstances get more dire. The interactions with the Bentusi and seeing a culture so powerful be shook to their core was a fantastic element of exploring who the Bentusi were as a people. We saw the horrors of the Imperialist experiments and their alliance with the Beast. We got the the thrill of victory with the Siege cannon working as we fought back in the last mission. And lastly at the end of the epilogue sequence where the Somtaww fought, died, and earned their place among the great martial Kiith; the naming of their children as Beastslayers. Truly it was fantastic story telling under the guise of using science fiction and some space horror.
All of the gameplay, and the emotions come out as the story and narrative is experienced. Everything that is told within the game, works within the confines of the established lore of the game, and the prior game. Nothing is over explained, nothing is just hand-waved away. We saw them grow as a crew, saw their fear, stumbles falls, and triumphs along the way. All this while exploring and growing the established lore of the Homeworld universe.
In my view those two stories worked so well for so many people because fundamentally, they were a story of the Journey; not the destination. We lived through those experiences as if we were there with them; we experienced the ups and downs of the emotions of the stories told about the people and their growth within those stories. We were able to connect and relate to those experiences in our own way. And in my view, the ability to connect to those stories made them so fantastic.

“And so, does the destination matter? Or is it the path we take? I declare that no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it. We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived.”

The Stumble

"What you saw belongs to you. A story doesn't live until it is imagined in someone's mind."
"What does the story mean, then?"
"It means what you want it to mean," Hoid said. "The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think , but to give you questions to think upon. Too often, we forget that.”

In my view Homeworld 2 is where things started to have problems.
Many of us in the community know of the development of Homeworld 2, its cancellation, its rushed story and development. However the story of HW2 mostly throws out the concepts mentioned before. While the story and gameplay is presented in the same way as the prior two games; in my view it fails to present the user a story and experience they can truly and fundamentally connect with and is more 'generic science fiction'.
The driving force of the story is some prophecy we've never seen or heard of before this game in any of the lore. And the main reason for all of it is the now retconned nature of the hyperspace cores. Throw on top of this heavy leaning into the religious themes and mysticism focusing on Karan and Makaan who now and take the stage as the primary protagonists and antagonists of the story.
The character motivations of the Makaan/Vaygr, Karan, and the Bentusi are in my view mostly shallow or very hollow to the point its basically cookie cutter tropes without a lot of nuance to it. The story becomes and is less about the people and more about a MacGuffin game of Hide and Seek. The prior exploration and expansion of the HW universe is entirely ignored in favor of this hide-and-seek of the cores that the entire game has driving it forward. There's no understanding of the growth of the world, of the Kushan people, geopolitics, or anything like that. Just lots of woo-woo mysticism about the Cores and the Progenitors.
With regards to the plot; we're mainly just told 'hey the bad guys are coming, keep the cores away and go find the others'. The Bentusi are unceremoniously killed off without any real build up or explanation. Why are they the last? What happened to them? None of that is explored in a way that gives us any sort of satisfying reason to why this makes sense when they detonate their Harbour Ship to give us their Magic Space Core.
To me there's no personal emotional connection to the story. Why should I care about a magic space prophecy I've never heard of until now? Why are the Vaygr the way they are? None of that is given time to breathe or has enough depth to make me care beyond superficially. The narrative doesn't make you feel less of an active participant in the journey you are going through, and makes you more of a passive viewer of a conflict that has little explanation as to why you should care or understand the importance of said driving forces. The reasons for getting to and through the the game feel rushed so much that the narrative doesn't have a lot of depth or time to breathe in my view.
While the backstory in the manual does give context to the pre-exile events and how it does relate to the events in game which helps with overall universe world building; it's done so in such a way that is retconning the fundamental established soft-rules of the universe that HW1 and HWC laid the ground work on which further compounds or allows the weak story of HW2 to take place, and undercuts the accomplishments of the Kushan people as I will explain shortly.

The Fall - Homeworld 3

However the worse crime is what was squandered with the ending of the HW2. The epilogue of Homeworld 2 put forth a massive chance for some incredible story options to take place with the opening of the Hyperspace Gate Network across the galaxy. A chance for exploring stories that can connect with the player on that personal level like HW1 and HWC and the explorations of what could be explored in this new open universe. What will the Hiigarans do now, what about the Taiidan, the other Inner Rim species, what now will the galaxy look like with the Bentusi gone, why were the gates closed in the first place?! So many fantastic ideas were possible with scopes as large or as small as possible. The discovery, exploration of the Homeworld Galaxy would have been tremendous.
Instead we got the story of Homeworld 3.
Now I don't want to be unnecessary harsh or mean to the writers or the team at BBI/Gearbox for the effort they put into the work for Homeworld 3. This game is a niche title and not anywhere near popular like COD, or Warcraft or Zelda. But to be frank, I really truly feel that y'all need to have some direct constructive criticism of this story's campaign. I don't know what the motivation was for putting this story together, or what was attempting to be told here, but whatever story you were trying to tell did not land well.
I backed this game on fig at the Admiral level, so I threw down hard for this and am truly grateful we got the game at all. I truly want BBI and Gearbox to take this to heart in a way this is not demeaning, but a cold bucket of water that I feel needs to be throw.
The best way I can succinctly put this is that the story of Homeworld 3 lacks the fundamental soul that made Homeworld 1 and Homeworld Cataclysm the absolutely best in the franchise. This game makes Homeworld 2's rushed narrative and slight stumbles look somehow not that bad by comparison. Those on the HWU discord know my passionate dislike of the overall story of HW2 and the retcons that introduced that were further compounded by HWDOK. The story of HW3 makes HW2 look polished and well thought out by comparison.
So I'll be straight with my gripes on this.

• More and worse of the same that came from Homeworld 2. Retcons of established lore, de-emphasizing and diminishment of the motivations of the persons and people's in the prior games. Putting the Progenitor hyperspace cores as the singular driving force of the entire franchise
  
• Everything is now about KARAN SJET. Karan saved the Kushan people. Karan lead the revenge against the Taiidan, Karan found the magic space cores. Karan opened the hyperspace gate network, Karan tries to stop the anomaly. Karan probably cured cancer and saved JFK from assassination for all I know.
  
• The compounding of the Progenitor hyperspace SpaceMagic and making Karan the primary protagonist of the series continues to massively undercut the accomplishments of the Kharakian people off at the knees. The entire back story of HW1 that details their struggle and clawing up the tech tree, the struggle to survive on the harsh conditions of Kharak, how the discovery of the Guidestone and the goal of Hiigara the singular unifying goal of reaching their lost Homeworld uniting their entire population. Everything the HW1 manual details and gloriously shows the accomplishments of their PEOPLE to get to where they were at the start of HW1. All of that is diminished because 'magic hyperspace core'. I could go on but you get the gist. (I won't get into the further compounding retcons of HWDOK, but this just furthers that same narrative direction.) In my view, the Homeworld series has and never been about a person, but the story and journey of a group or people whose plight or experience is something that can be emotionally and personally related to by anyone.
  
• Karan was only a small person out of her entire population and only ONE person of the entire crew of the mothership. She was not some messianic figure, but someone who sacrificed for her people. Now I get the messianic implications of that, but the first game was never about her.
  
• HW2 already crossed over the line of making the story about a person rather than about the people. HW3 takes that and makes it worse. Gone is a story about the Hiigaran people and how their place in the Inner Rim has taken hold a century after landing back home. No explaination of how the inner rim has changed since the gates opened. Nothing about the Galactic Council. Nothing about other species or factions.
  
• The world building of HW3 is basically non-existent or is very poorly done as compared to the last games. No real understanding of the world at large since the ending of the last game or how the events have unfolded and affected the universe as we have come to understand it. Unless you go on the HWU website to get some level of backstory to get an idea of what's going on leading into HW3, you'll have no idea what the hell is happening.
  
• The antagonist of HW3 makes the life-size cardboard cutout of Makaan win the Oscar for best actor in a science fiction video game. They are bad and lack any sort of depth at all as a character. They instead come off at worst as cringe at and best cliché trope-y bad. Throughout the entire campaign we have no idea how/why/what they are doing the things they are doing. Nothing is explained that makes any sense. They just monologue at us with some over the top badguy speeches without any real understanding of what they are after or what their motivations are. Seriously, the the cut scenes from Homeworld 1 with Emperor Riesstiu IV the Second or Makaan from HW2 had more narrative depth and in universe understanding of their motivations than the antagonist of HW3. I have seriously no idea how this Incarnate Queen got the power she did, or why she was doing what she was attempting. No reasons why beyond I AM BADGUY WITH ULTIMATE POWER. JOIN ME OR DIE. It was the equivalent of 'Somehow Palpatine has returned levels of bad. How did she get the Progenitor tech she did, how did she live as long as she does, how does she have magic hyperspace cores that let her go into the Magic Hyperspace Navigator Mind Realm?? No idea Something the OG Homeworld games did very well was of show don't tell, and telling just enough for it to make sense without having to go into crazy techno battle or massive mystical assumptions of how things worked. This is one of those moments I feel like it did the opposite of that. We're shown a WHOLE LOT OF STUFF, but have no way to reconcile it in game in a way that narratively makes sense or resonates with the playeuniverse.
  
• The massive in-universe violations of established lore regarding hyperspace. Holy shit this is so bad I don't even know how this came about. The Progenitor hyperspace cores and their special spacemagic look mostly normal by comparison. There is no lore or story elements that help explain how any of this is possible. It's never explained at all beyond 'it happened just go with it'. Absolutely nothing, nada, not a bit of information is explained or made attempts to understand at how the Incarnate Queen is using hyperspace as a weapon. The violation of the mass override safety interrupts or gravity blocking or interfering with hyperspace is never explained at all. Nothing to show how she is THROWING PLANETS AT OTHER PLANETS. This is the equivalent of the Holdo Manuver from 'The Force Awakens'; massively cool to see on screen; but holy shit this violates so many in-universe conventions of how FTL travel works that it fundamentally causes problems.
  
• MASSIVELY more leaning into the mysticism aspects and moreso science fantasy side of storytelling are done within this game than the prior four games. I am not sure on the motivations here, but I feel like it was done in such a way that that leaves much to be desired for HOW/WHY. I get that they may have been trying to lean more into the nature of the Unbound and how the Navigators of the mothership class vessels are connected to their ships and have a much more profound view of the universe (similar to what the Bentusi alluded to). But this just felt very out of place and didn't make a lot of sense to me why it was presented in this way. I feel like it could have been done better or in such a way that helped it link up better to the ideas of the Unbound, but this was not it.
  
• The way HW3 story plays feels like someone only had a cursory understanding of the Homeworld lore and just did their own thing with it irrespective of the established lore and world building that was previously done. Shutting down the gate network??? WHY. This just takes the ending of HW2 and throws all those chances I mentioned and just throws it in the trash.
  
• No explanation of why the Incarnate Queen thinks she can make a new race of Unbound?? Why is this important? Don't know! Why are Karan and Imogen somehow special and able to stop her within the Hyperspace Mental universe? No idea and it really pushes things way into Science fantasy.
  
• Imogen as a character I feel is 'okay'. I am not sure if its the relationships she has with the other characters in the game, or if its just the story as a whole doesn't give her a lot to work with. To me it feels like there some aspect of her story and character I feel is missing from the game. Again its probably my displeasure of the game focusing on individual characters instead of larger abstractions of people like the prior games before HW2.
  

Final Thoughts

Fundamentally I know this is a personal opinion of mine and not everyone will agree with it. That's fine, but for me I have so many issues with the story and many of the pillars that are supposed to hold it up that at a certain point I can only say that the story is for me very bad and goes against the grain of what the foundational games to me setup for the franchise. It does nothing to grow or expand the HW universe lore in any interesting ways. I say this as someone who's been in and grown up with the Homeworld community for the last 26 years.
Story-wise; it's disappointing, bland, and generic at the very least and doesn't live up to the GOAT levels of quality the originals of HW1 and HWC (and to an extent HW2) put forth; to being insultingly bad at worst. I don't mean this as an slight to the writing staff as I know that a LOT of the OG folks involved with the first games were involved, but I really feel like there was a misstep here. It plays well and the pacing is kinda faster than I'd have wanted within a Homeworld game. However the core story ideas that make up the game are poorly explained, weak, or are so counter the established lore that for me it doesn't hold up well. This is magnified by the antagonist motivations and actions being poorly explained which in turn doesn't give the story or world to grow in any meaningful way.
I honestly don't know where or how the path the franchise has taken can be corrected. In my personal opinion, its gone off in a direction that gave the first games their unique style that made them attractive in the first place. Without doing massive retcons to entirely course correct to bring the game to where I personally think would be more akin to the original games I don't know where they'll try to take the game. This recent game I feel it has pushed more into the generic bland science fantasy genre with this newest entry into the franchise; rather than taking the careful slow burn, grounded science fiction based abstract story approach that connects with a player on a deeply personal level.
For me, while may it may have the gameplay mechanics and RTS genre DNA of seasoned devs in the industry that have been involved with Homeworld and other games over the years, it lacks the soul that made the first games who they were and is Homeworld game in name only.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Years ago, end of 2020 and very early 2021, I (at the time 19M) became friends with a guy (at the time 26M) through an online server we were in together. After chatting a little, we eventually formed a rapport where we’d text daily and throw jokes at each other. After some time, I started forming a crush on him, which I didn’t entertain because I felt like there was no chance it would come to anything good - he’d constantly make jokes sexualizing me and talking about my (very lacking) sex life, but he clarified once that it was all jokes. He was, in general, much more “active” than I am and would always toss around comments about how many guys he slept with and how good he was at laying pipe or whatever.
He still continued to make jokes sexualizing me, and in-between our dynamic, we had a lot of moments of genuine connection. We texted daily for a really long time and most nights a week, we would send each other “good morning” and “goodnight” messages. He’d ask for me to stream video games for him because he liked watching me play them, he even started buying and gifting me scary video games for me to play since he knew I was a fan of the horror genre. We would watch movies and shows together and have long, long phonecalls into the morning hours since we had a few hours timezone difference. I gave him ideas for planning for his friend’s Vegas bachelors party, and my recommendation actually made it in. I draw for fun and he’d always ask about what I was making and he’d practically beg me to show him if I ever let on that I was working on something. When I was going through the grief of a passed family member, he was there for me and made it clear that he wanted to keep me company so I could feel better.
He worked out and he would sometimes send me photos of him shirtless in the mirror, or sweaty after a session. I’d never really know what to say so I just tried to be supportive.
At the start of summer 2022, I confessed my feelings to him out of a desperate attempt to get the weight that was crushing me off of my chest. I wasn’t expecting anything and I made sure to clarify it - he was kind in his response but something I keep remembering is that he never actually said that he didn’t like me back or not. I don’t know why that stuck out to me.
A month later, he “admitted” to me on a late night phone call that he “didn’t think he was actually gay” and that I was the first person he ever admitted it to. I silently stared at the ceiling and cried. He had only ever told me stories and jokes and comments about how he’d have sex with men. He’d never told me a single moment about having sex or real interest in a woman. He told me that he didn’t feel any emotional connection with any man. His jokes sexualizing me on and off continued. Part of these jokes were how my want for a romantic relationship and my want for safety and affection were somehow more “explicit” than him having sex with people.
We got closer that summer than we had before. We called each other more, we watched movies more often, and he insisted on us marathoning Cowboy Bebop together because it was his favorite anime. I caught COVID for the first time in August due to my fuckhead relatives not telling me that someone had it during a wedding, and I was bedridden for a week. He kept me company for so much time - nearly streaming video games for me every night. I’d hobble downstairs after everyone had left the area so we could play Fall Guys together, and even when he teased me he was kind because every time I tried speaking more than a sentence I would break into nonstop bouts of coughing. He’d wanted to do a DND campaign for me where I would be the only player, and that we’d have fun together where I could play in a sandbox world he’d create for me himself.
After that summer there was suddenly this distance. I’d reach out to ask to watch movies but he was more busy. The streams stopped being regular and he stopped asking for them. The good morning and goodnight messages stopped and the conversations dried up into five-message exchanges where I’d try to engage him but they’d eventually peter out from his end. He started just sending me Twitter memes without any real comments, or the comments he did send were bland and basic jokes.
My father was admitted to the hospital for sudden complications that nearly killed him and I realized I didn’t tell my friend. That was the first nail in the coffin for some reason. Even though he was kind, he wasn’t good at using comforting words - he knew how to comfort me through trying to make me smile and laugh. I didnt tell him and I still don’t fully know why. The distance became more apparent when summer 2023 came and went because I was excited for it. I was hoping we would be able to do stuff and more, but we didn’t. I could have asked him but for some reason I felt like I couldn’t - he was the one that usually asked in the first place. Our text conversations were reduced to him sending me memes on Twitter and he’d turn down my requests to watch movies, even if I asked because I needed the company after a bad day. Out of the blue, one day, he texted me that one of his dogs died. I’d seen photos of his dogs near-daily for years and this sudden revelation shocked me because of how it was just dropped on me out of nowhere - months of this emotional distance suddenly precluding this bombshell announcement. It really upset me and I tried offering comfort but he just brushed it off again when I tried.
At one point I stopped answering his messages because I wanted to see what would happen if I ignored them. The guilt went away for some reason - it vanished and I felt like I was free from the shackles of the situation and like I could breathe in the fresh air. I accidentally messed up though, and after five days of not answering him he chirped and asked how was I, and I broke down. I blocked him before unblocking him a few hours later to confess to him that I was completely melting and that I couldn’t be his friend anymore. I blamed my reaction on myself and my inability to tackle my own emotions, but everyone I’ve explained this to and shown conversations to say that he was emotionally toying with me, even if he didn’t actively realize it.
I explained everything as best as I could through my tears and then told him goodbye. After a few months I wrote a detailed Google doc explaining everything as best as I could and I sent it to him through a social media profile of his that I suspect is dead and inactive now.
I miss him. I miss him so fucking much. I miss his nose and his laugh and his stupid stiff awkward smile and I hate that I ever loved him and that I think I still love him now. Being around him wasn’t good for me but I want him back so badly - I want to go running back to him begging for his forgiveness because I still feel like all of this is my fault. I feel like I pushed through a boundary but the more I look at the big picture I wonder if that boundary was ever really there. He’d make jokes about having sex with me to mutual friends but never having a relationship - hed joke that my need for comfort and emotional vulnerability was because I was a “bottom” and it’s just normal “bottom things”. I miss him so much and I want to contact him again even though everything in me is screaming that that is not the right direction. I see when he’s on Steam sometimes because we’re still friends on that platform and I can’t bring myself to unfriended him even though I unmerged our game libraries.
I miss him. I miss him so so much and I wish he could tell me that everything’s going to be ok, but I think him shoving himself back into the closet broke something so deeply about how I see him that I can’t trust his words anymore.

made this for my narrative essay in american literature, but one of my friends said i should share the story
“But I Still Need You” Throughout my life, I had always fallen easy for girls. The elementary mindset of, “she’s cute, so I have a crush on her,” prevented me from developing a legitimate relationship with any girl I tried to talk to. The few times that my feelings were reciprocated, I had no idea because I was already on to the next girl, and this continued until I was left with a multitude of friend-zone situations and a list of “crushes.” My charisma already lacking, it seemed each year that passed, previous to 3rd grade, I grew in weight and therefore awkwardness. The struggle to interact with women lessened as I grew up, while the fat remained. So, by the 8th grade I was the ideal guy friend; easy to talk to, kinda funny, understanding, and unintimidating. My approachable “funny fat friend” nature had its ups and downs. While guys, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, suspected me to be gay, girls found it intriguing and it made them want to be friends with me more. Back then I didn’t know, but now I know that by being forced to be friends first, after finding out I was in fact not gay, the right woman for me would want to be with me for my personality. In the winter of 2021, I fell hard for a girl named Madeline. Maddie was no different than many of the other girls in that she had a bland personality and I thought she was cute. She had brunette hair with bangs, big glasses, way too much makeup on, and a unique fashion sense. Her sense of fashion was one of the few interesting things about her, yet it was disregarded by the public. Not too many guys found her appealing, but I did, for whatever reason. I was dead set on getting to know her better in hope of becoming more than friends. Unfortunately, she hardly paid attention to me, but I didn’t give up. I merely slowed down because of my interest in her friend, Isabella. Isabella is the Spanish and Italian variation of Elizabeth (derived from the Hebrew name Elisheba). The meaning of Elishiba can be translated to, “God is my oath.” In Arabic, the beginning of Isabella, “Isa,” is the classical Arabic name for Jesus, while in the French language, the shortened version of Isabella, “Belle,” translates to “beautiful.” I had met Isabella in the sixth grade, and grew a tiny crush on her, in the elementary sense, before we all went into hibernation (COVID). I barely knew her though, and she had no idea who I was, so when we interacted in my last two classes, if we did at all, it was like two strangers who kept running into each other. I sat by her in my sixth period, and one seat up and to the right from her in seventh. We only ever made small talk and the occasional joke, but when I spoke with her I felt content. Still barely knowing her, all I could admire was the little things in the way she laughed and spoke. I longed to know more about Isabella, she was mature, intelligent, and very opinionated, but still light-hearted and made time pass at the speed of light. It wasn’t until she was in my group in sixth period one day that she began to open up a little by sharing the details of her current long-distance relationship. The shards of my heart stabbed and crushed my stomach; hope, the oxygen to my mind, depleted faster than the air of a broken space shuttle; palpitation, nausea, asphyxia, and neurosis bombarded me like Persian arrows on the Greeks. Then, all at once, the excruciating tidal wave evaporated, but instead of calm waters, I was left with a drought. Every emotion muted or gone, my body went numb while everything I cared for vanished from my mind. I didn’t speak throughout the rest of that day, and went directly from the bus to decaying in my bed. I was devastated, so I retreated to my pointless crush on Maddie. Unrelated to the rather sad lovelife, my anxiety and depression worsened throughout 8th grade, and while I was going to therapy, most of my issues wouldn’t and still haven’t been worked through. Throughout the school year I had developed a toxic system of self pity, in which I would spend hours a day cycling through the feelings of hope, anger, and despair- never that of joy. I knew what I was doing, gathering enough hope to face the school day just before I reflected on the doubts and grievances going on throughout my life. I’d bring myself up just for a greater fall because honestly, overtime I became numb to the natural pain. If I were going to fall into the pit that is depression, the higher I peaked in terms of optimism the more excruciating the freefall of nausea and the heavy flow of salt water. At that point in my life, I saw no point in getting out of bed to do anything, school or even my own mother’s birthday. By the end of eighth grade I had spent almost a total of six weeks absent, two of which were from me being quarantined. Typically over the span of one or two days, others up to four, I would be in my bed “sick.” During these mini-vacations I would sleep all morning, if my mom let me, and stay up all night, oftentimes listening to Radiohead or Cigarettes After Sex while staring at my ceiling. I wanted to stay up, I wanted to feel the bags grabbing and pulling towards my cheekbone, I wanted to feel empty, emotionally and physically. During the day, my anxiety attacks became panic attacks and I would get sent home for vomiting. I'd throw up to give Mom a reason to let me stay home. I’d throw up to feel something, anything. I’d throw up to keep my stomach empty. I’d throw up because I had to, because the nerves and overthinking forced me to. Every morning, I’d drag my black air force ones across cement, carpet, tiles, and marble, each step leading towards Mrs. Clements’ homeroom. For every step, a different worry or insecurity flashed through my brain. But then, out of the blue, I’m “Lincoln” again. I walk into homeroom with an ear-to-ear grin and dap up “the boys”. I’d spend the morning building up hopes of making Isabella laugh today, or maybe calling her once I got home, but I knew that nine times out of ten my hopes were delusional. To “Lincoln,” this was no problem, he would make a gay joke, join the boys with teasing a cute girl in my class, and laugh until just for a moment, the despair was gone. Finally, the sixth period would come and I’d get to see Isabella. In here I got the least work done out of all my classes as I would find myself strategically planning my next interaction with her, just for said plans to go out the window when I was brought face to face with her. Typically seventh period followed the same pattern except Ms. Shirley Davis could never allow small talk in her classroom. When the last bell rang, I went straight to the buses. I’d sleep on the way home, dreaming of a call that would hardly happen. On the off chance my phone didn’t reach its feared 11th cry, we’d talk for hours at a time. On a weekday or not, it seemed that, when we did call, it was guaranteed to go into the early morning. It’s hard to put my finger on a specific topic, or even general. In our conversations, we discussed anything and everything. Everything, except her own love interest. I admired this, as my inability to keep who I’m thinking about at the time a secret is a major flaw of mine. The more that me and her spoke, the more I grew to love her. Our talks were so honest, so raw, that the secret I held began to eat away at me. My core collapsing like a dying star, each day it felt like the pain got worse. To cope with the feelings I had buried deep inside me, I’d turn to my friends. At first, they said to come forward with my feelings, but I knew that’s what any friend would’ve said. The relief I got from venting the conflicting hurricane within me was brief. Overtime, their words of encouragement turned to annoyance, and understandably so. When people grew sick of the same old sadistic untold love, I turned to Isabella. I wrote a text so full that, to read it, one needed to tap on an arrow at the bottom right corner of my message. The essay was compiled with the confliction I had, developing feelings for a friend, and the sorrow that filled me each day that passed without her. I described the perfect imperfections that I admired about her, how life was complete when I spoke to her, the beauty that paralyzed me every time I saw her in person, and the character that I felt God had curated specifically for me. Sitting there unsure if I should press send, a fear grew within my chest that Isabella would see right through me. I could hear the music that so often triggered tears; the vocals of Thom Yorke or the beats of Kanye West, they faded in and out. What if she didn’t even respond? What if she thought I was a creep? What if- then she responded. Suddenly, the ominous 808s & Heartbreak pounding vanished, my respiratory chaos became paralyzed, and time stood still. I couldn’t breathe until I finished reading, and once I did, my sigh was all but relieving. Isabella explained to me how unhealthy my habits were; even in comparison to the anguish that would follow, I’d suffer far more and far longer should I suppress my emotions. She told me how that level of affection, in the context of the warped concept of romance most men had, was something she had only dreamt of. Isabella said that holding these feelings would eat away at me, exponentially increasing in severity, until I broke. Not only would I be hurting myself, but I would be depriving the person I care about most from the appreciation they deserve. I became bloated with fear of the friendzone, those insecurities, all based upon inference, became a reality with Isabella’s last piece of advice. She said, “If she doesn’t reciprocate those emotions, then don’t worry. I’m sure there’s a girl out there who can appreciate your compassion.” The blame had no other place to go than my shoulders, after all, I got what I asked for, advice on another girl. Isabella, even if she saw the crush I had on her, is far too kind to address it. She cared for everyone, and to her, she was merely boosting up a friend who’s down. For the rest of the night her text echoed through my mind; pain, regret, and admiration caused my mind to sporadically leap from conclusion to conclusion. Two years later, those words still haunt me, reiterations of that phrase torturing me when I least expect them. The school year progressed, but my aspirations with Isabella didn’t. Over time, the frequency of my writings grew to be weekly, at times reaching two a week, and the weight of my confessions depleted. I opened my audience to a mutual friend of Isabella’s, Miley, with the intention of acquiring useful advice. Eventually, my choice to try concealing what I felt for Isabella became too heavy of a burden, weighing down on me in forces I had not endured before. Soon, the love I had for Isabella turned to hatred for myself. I was relentlessly criticizing every aspect of myself and my mind. I hated how fat I was, my smile, my voice, my laugh, and most of all my personality. What I had thought was my greatest strength, was revealed as my worst trait. The gullibility I exhibited when thinking for a second Isabella could possibly like me; the lack of confidence that caused me to chicken out of confessing my feelings to her; my insufferable need to make people laugh; the hyperfixation I would develop for those that I love. Everything about me was wrong. I stopped eating, stopped sleeping, stopped caring, and eventually I stopped living. The “Lincoln” my friends had grown to recognize, the only remnant of the joy I felt when I was younger, died, and I was left with only my love for Isabella and resentment for myself. I began testing the limits of what was left of me, praying for relief. At first in the middle of the night, an anaconda would find its way to my throat, wrapping around my neck. Its cold black scales gracefully gliding across my skin before silencing my cries with the swift tug of its metallic USB head. The snake would maintain pressure until I let go of it, the entire time whispering into my ear, begging me to hold on. Some nights it came with what must have been a full stomach for it was drastically wider, it was brown these nights, with leather skin, and a slight warmth, but it behaved the same. Most visits from the snake ended with my vision blurry, my breath short, or my head dizzy. The only consistency of our transactions was Asia’s Death Lake that streamed down my face from start to finish. Eventually, the snake seemed closer and closer to silencing me forever, but I also became used to its visits. I began writing letters to everyone I loved so that, should the snake come out victorious, they’d have a final goodbye. Once I had sorted out my notes, I called the snake to my room. This time it came striped with shades of blue, its skin a soft fabric. For once, I controlled the snake, because our intentions finally aligned. I locked the door, sent out my texts, placed the written notes on my dresser, and joined the snake at my closet door. Holding onto the doorknob, the snake wrapped itself around my neck just as it had done in nights of the past. It whispered to me, “let go,” for I had been on my knees in hesitation. I followed the snake’s order by making a sort of plank with my body, the bottom half resting on a stack of dirty laundry and pillows while the top was supported by my elbows. Pressure swiftly fell down on my neck and didn’t stop. “This is it,” I thought to myself. My eyes seemed to pop out of my skull, and my tears, falling down like summer rain, became blurry dots as my vision went dark. Next thing I know, I’m waking up, snot, saliva, and tears strung between my face and the carpet floor. My head pounding and my eyes burning, I looked up at the “snake” that was the tie my mom had gotten me for Sunday service. Although my mind was more clear, it was not out of revelation, but from a muted sense of the world around me. Other than Isabella, nothing mattered anymore, and the little emotion I felt was squashed by my immortal love. The following day I get called to the counselors office on charges of suicidal thoughts and self harm. I said what I had to in order to escape her grasp, but left infuriated. Not only had my own friends betrayed me, but the lady who was supposed to guide me essentially scolded me for being sad. Throughout the day my anger faded out and my focus became making an excuse as to why my parents got a weird call from my counselor, then I’d find the traitor who sold me out. That afternoon, I lost two friends, and for the first time ever got mad at Isabella. Apparently, Miley, Maddie, and Isabella all reported me to the counselor that morning. They said I had been traumatizing them with what was going on in my life, being normal and messing around at school, then detailing my thoughts and actions to them outside of school. I felt like I had been tricked. I thought they were my friends. I thought they understood me. They asked me if I was okay, they said they wanted, cared, needed to know, but now I had scared them? I addressed what had happened with Miley first. She immediately lashed out at me, saying I should be thanking them, not be mad. While I didn’t want to accept it, I understood the core of her choices. On the other hand, Maddie’s response to my confrontation was disgustingly cruel. She said I had been unfair and just seeking attention, that no thirteen to fourteen year old should hear about what I was going through because it was unnatural. Before she continued, I apologized, that’s all I could think to do, because deep down I believed her. She told me it wasn’t all my fault because my brain was messed up, and that opening up to the girls would only make them not want to be friends with me. The one word that rang through my head then, and still does today, was “creep,” she claimed that what I felt wasn’t love, but I was just mentally unstable and creepy. Any remnants of the sweet kid from elementary school who just wanted a friend and loved everyone were obliterated. Maddie was right, all I had done was hurt and scare them, it didn’t matter what I thought. I told her all I could, that I didn’t know what to say other than I was sorry for the damage I had done, and I would try and get better. Her response, like a branding iron on my mind, was, “It’s not damage, it’s baggage. Imagine if the roles were reversed.” It was only then that I stopped texting back. I wish I could say it was out of frustration or self respect, but the reality of my manipulative traits is what silenced me. Shockingly, the response that hurt the most was from Isabella, yet it somehow meant the most to me too. Isabella told me that she needed me in the world. She told me that if I ever got those thoughts again, to think about her as well; to think about the pain I’d be causing her; to think about the trauma she’d live with for the rest of her life. After repeating the phrase, “I need you in my life,” she acknowledged how selfish it was, but still didn’t care. Isabella continued elaborating, she didn’t care because no label of selfishness outweighed the value of my life. What she said that night has been vivid in my mind since, but my only wish is that she had needed me as I needed her. Tears began to hide my freckled cheeks as I texted her about how much her words meant to me, how much she meant to me, and I apologized to her. I said sorry for the baggage I caused, the “creepy” behavior, and any other ways I had wronged her. I said sorry for loving her, and told her I’d do better. She disregarded my apologies, telling me that I could always talk to her because no matter the baggage she could carry, it’d be worth taking the smallest bit off of me. Her words meant so much to me, yet hurt me just the same. I hated myself for it. I couldn’t see a life without an affection for her, it was pathetic. If I truly loved her, I’d let my feelings go, right? What kind of person did that make me? Summer came and went. Hoping that time would kill the crush I had on Isabella, I prohibited myself from contacting her. Instead I spent time with my family and a few friends, but Isabella never left my head. Even when accompanying my dad to Berry College for the Governor’s Honors Program, she’s what filled my head. At first I felt frustrated because before I had come forward to her, she had known about the feelings I had. I came to the conclusion that she had been dragging me along, but even then I knew how easily that thought would be abandoned. First day of High school, I got in touch with her. For maybe two weeks, I maintained a platonic relationship before free falling into the ominous pit once again. This time felt different though, it felt like what I had thought about everyday, for what seemed eternity, could be more than a daydream. We texted each other throughout the school day and facetimed after her cheer practice and my band practice. Eventually, Isabella was falling asleep on call. Before, we’d talk long into the night, and it began to drain the energy out of the both of us. Now, we were listening to music, playing Roblox, watching Netflix, or just sitting in silence. I had never felt comfortable with silence, but she made it seem better than having a conversation with anyone else. It’s a beautiful thing when words aren’t required to appreciate someone. The moment I had the courage to do so, I asked her out to Steak n’ Shake. It’s just my luck that the restaurant was hardly a shell of what I remembered as a kid. At first the conversation was awkward because we hardly spoke in person, but as time progressed so did we. I still remember the tightness of my cheeks as I failed to suppress my ear-to-ear grin. The euphoric nausea and beating heart that disappeared throughout our conversation. I remember the booth we sat in, the fact that she wanted me to swap seats with her because of her creaky seat, the way she giggled, how I fought tooth and nail to pay for such a small bill, the way she smiled when she said, “next time you’ve gotta let me pay,” and the shared excitement for our next hangout. Even though Isabella and I were still friends, even though the restaurant was a disaster, even though the fries were stale and the milkshakes chunky, that moment is one of the best in my life. With how well things were going, I thought that it was my best chance at making something more out of this friendship. So, I shot my shot. I told her that despite my efforts the summer before, she still held a special place in my heart. Isabella responded with her own struggles with recovering from a past relationship, detailing the trust issues and pain she still felt almost a year later. I was yet again, devastated. Then she added that despite her own feelings, she had to be careful and the risk of losing our friendship scared her. I understood her reasoning, but it made me sick to think of how close I was. In response, I expressed how I could relate to those feelings, and the conflict I had with them. It felt ridiculous having opened myself up once again, to just be friendzoned. Her response struck me with both hope and devastation, “I f*cking love you a ton Lincoln, but I’m struggling to differentiate my admiration as a friend and as something more. I’m terrified of losing you.” Previously I would have seen this as a sign to keep trying, but at that moment, I couldn’t see past the blatant friendzoning. After pursuing her for so long, it felt cruel of her to continue dragging me along like this, even though she was being honest. My reaction to the straw that broke the camel’s back is one of, if not, the biggest regrets in life. Homecoming was a little over a week away and she was going (as friends) with my buddy, Davis, so in a storm of hatred for myself and the situation I was in, I gave up on her. Our conversations grew to be minimal and far apart. Soon, I started to resent her. Each day since then, I have somehow felt more remorse than the last for not asking her to Homecoming. Homecoming night is when I began flirting with Claire, a sweet redhead from gym class. We connected on not going with the person we had hoped for. All it took was me joking that I should’ve spent more time around her, instead of leaving the dance early, for Claire to lose her mind. Over the next month or so, I was becoming closer and closer with Claire, despite her irritable “quirks”. I only spoke to Isabella if she reached out to me first with the only exception being when I would ask her for “advice” about Claire, which was a shameful habit I started as petty revenge on Isabella. Eventually, Isabella blocked me on Snapchat, but it didn’t matter. Things with me and Claire were going great, she made me feel like I didn’t need to starve myself to be good enough for her. She made me feel like I was enough. For the next two and a half months, life was great. After the first couple months of ignorant bliss, I was sick of her. Sure, there were a variety of reasons to find her annoying, most people I knew could list more than they have fingers and toes, but she didn’t do anything wrong. I shouldn’t have gotten into the relationship in the first place not only because of Isabella, but also the speed at which me and Claire started dating. She was still growing out of the elementary relationship phase, so while it was nice to connect with someone so quickly, it was rushed. Another issue being that I was her first real boyfriend, the baggage that followed me was detrimental to her and I couldn’t give her the attention she needed. As me and Claire began our month long drift apart, I was unblocked by Isabella. She and I caught up, and we quickly began to talk trash about Claire while on call. It was unbelievably toxic, and I’m embarrassed of how I handled things to this day. Eventually, with the support of Isabella, I decided it was time to break up. The only issue was the guilt I had in such a terrible choice, I could never do it. So I began to get more distant by the day, ignored texts and calls, and stopped walking her to classes because “I had to pee.” Eventually she caught wind of my plans and called me after school one day. Sobbing, she told me what she had heard and how she knew it wasn’t true, but it still worried her. I began to get ready to break the news, but she was already crying so what's the worst that could happen? I wish I had never asked myself that, because next she told me she’d been cutting herself. My heart sank in remorse for what I knew I would do. If I led her on longer, the aftermath of my cold actions would lead to even more catastrophe. I was scared, but knew the lesser of the two evils I had to pick from. I calmed her down, quickly notified her friends to be keeping an eye on her, and then dumped her. To this day, I am disgusted by my actions. Throughout the past three months, Claire expressed how she had loved and trusted me, yet I threw that all away. There are so many ways I could’ve handled the situation differently, but two stood out the most. Showing respect by speaking to Claire the moment I realized my feelings had fleeted was the bare minimum that I disregarded, but the second was far simpler. I had known from the start that I was still in love with Isabella and that love never faded, but was only suppressed. The entire relationship we developed, while we both enjoyed parts of it (her more than me), was a lie, and essentially a cruel joke played on Claire. There’s no excuse for my actions, and even worse, I could’ve cared less back then. It was only when time had passed that I began to understand the damage I had done. Without Claire holding me back, my newfound freedom led to a closer friendship with Isabella. I dove headfirst into the familiar pit all over again. A friendship was not enough, I appreciated every interaction I had with Isabella, but my life depended on a future with her. It’s likely she felt this as she slowly began to drift away from me. Before I had stayed up speaking to Isabella, but now I couldn’t sleep out of the tormenting absence of her voice. The only path to good health was time; distance was best for the both of us, and I knew it. For the rest of that school year, everything around me was going, but I stood still. It was like my life was just a sitcom, and I was no longer the main character. The summer that followed was just the same, I was living but dead, moving but still, speaking but silent. I was dissociating from my friends and family, but the absence of that violent snake made my depression insignificant. Living a life without her was more punishment than death itself, and I didn’t deserve relief. Even now, I think of that summer and remember almost nothing, for my life isn’t worth remembering without Isabella in it. Sophomore year began, and so did my conversations with Isabella. This go around, I was subtle with my feelings for her. The excitement I had for speaking with her was under control, but it was because the spark inside me had faded, even when it came to Isabella.The years of self pity and depression had left a toll on me that could never be reversed, and it didn’t help that Isabella began to build a relationship with another guy. When we spoke, if we did, Isabella’s concern for my mental state outweighed the friendship we were struggling to preserve. I had come to the conclusion that pursuing Isabella would only make things worse, and I needed to just be her friend. Since I couldn’t lose the feelings I had for her, I just sat in them. While I sat in the pit, Isabella and I had one particular Facetime call in which I brought up how much I regretted dating Claire. To that, Isabella added, “Yeah, she’s so annoying. I can’t remember if you told me why you got together in the first place, what led you to her?” I paused with the thousand-yard stare of an American private fresh out of West Point. “I guess I was just so disappointed with myself for not being able to go to homecoming with you and being stuck on you for so long that I impulsively got with another girl to forget about my shortcomings,” I said with reluctance and stuttering every few words. She told me that she would’ve said yes to homecoming without a second thought, but I knew she meant as friends. Then, to my dismay, Isabella revealed that whenever I got with Claire, she still had feelings for me. It was me talking to Isabella about how great things were with me and Claire that led her to block me and cut contact with me. The piano melody from “No Surprises” by Radiohead began looping through my mind as tears ran down my face. I forget how I ended the call, but once I did, I broke. I lost my breath, my head got light, my eyes became blurry, my stomach was nauseous, and my insides sank as far as they could. Everything I wanted, dreamed of, needed had been so close, and I blew it. Everything was my fault. Later I would ask her why she lost them, and her answer proved how much better she was than me. Isabella answered, “I had been hurt, so I moved on. Just got over it.” We hardly spoke anymore, but one text message has found a permanent home in my mind. After asking me how I was, Isabella wasn’t satisfied with, “it’s complicated.” She asked that I explain it to her so that she could try to understand. I told her about all the issues going on in my life, except the torch I still held for her. She wrote, “I know you’re not religious, so it may not mean anything, but I pray for you every night, Lincoln. Even though it sounds bad, I think that I've known you weren’t in the greatest mental place for a while. I want you to know I'm not judging you, I want you to feel comfortable enough to share that with someone. You have to be able to recognize how you’re feeling in order to even fix it.” These words broke me despite their simplistic appearance. Reading that she prayed for me hit me hard as she had always tried to get me to believe in God again. I’m agnostic, and nothing has come closer to bringing me back to faith as Isabella did. The idea that if God were real and I could see her in heaven was appealing, but should Christianity be the wrong choice, I wanted to be wrong with Isabella. In the following days, Isabella told me about Alex, a guy she had been talking to a lot, and how they were at most a month away from being together. I hated everything about Alex, which is a stupid name in the first place. I hated his choice of friends, I hated how white-washed he was, I hated how he dressed like a conservative cowboy, I hated the underbite that made him look like a pug, I hated his short curly hair, I hated the fact that he was a diehard Trump supporter while people of his race were being oppressed, I hated how he pretended to be someone else when he was around Isabella, I hated how he hid unhealthy habits from her, I hated that a guy like him garnered Isabella’s affection when I couldn’t. I barely knew the guy and I was wasting my energy with hatred for him, when in reality, he was just a mind-numbingly basic douche among the hundreds just like him at our school. Isabella regularly complained about Alex, but hardly did anything. Instead she stopped bringing it up, saying that talking about her issues with others only makes it worse and that she was just wining. The monotone delivery of her reasoning hurt my soul, it was like she was reciting a text from Alex. Each day that passed, I felt the urgency of expressing my feelings one more time rising. Soon Isabella and Alex would be official, and I would lose my chance to try and express how I felt one more time. I reached out to Isabella and asked if she was free to hangout that friday. On November 10, 2023, Isabella picked me up around 5:30 in the evening. She kept the inside of her SUV looking brand new in contrast to the familiarity of her smile. My nerves left me winded after every sentence and shivering in her passenger seat. Quickly our conversation became more natural as I cracked jokes to ease my anxiety, but my shaky breathing never stopped. We went to Publix to grab some snacks and drinks and headed right back to my neighborhood park. At the Grove Point Park, we found a swinging chair to sit in. Due to the time of the year, the sun had already set, but Isabella’s beauty was indifferent under the moonlight. I haven’t the slightest clue how long we sat there together. When I’m with Isabella, even Father Time gives me grace, for he knows that he is as powerless as I am to the frequency of these moments. After a while, I mentioned that it was getting late and she agreed. On the ride back to my place, I mustered the bare minimum of strength it took to confront my feelings. As she drove over the speed bump before entering the roundabout, I began to open up. I briefly told her that I still felt the same way I did two years ago, that I had tried to forget about the feelings I had with no success, and that I was sorry to once again ruin our unstable friendship. She told me it was fine and my feelings were natural, nothing to regret or be ashamed of. Her words meant nothing to me this time because I had already heard them. Defeated, I paused for a moment, then said, “Isabella, you reciprocated my feelings in the past, so after Alex, do you think that maybe we’d have a chance?” She looked at me with pain in her eyes, not for herself, but for me. She quietly said, “I- Lincoln, you know I can’t answer that. I’m with Alex now, it wouldn’t be fair.” All I could get out was, “Oh- I- I’m sorry. Uh yeah no, you’re uh- you’re right.” Everything in me pulled and begged at my lips to say what I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I still look back on that night and wish I had said the few words I never got to tell her. What if saying them could’ve changed something? Realistically, it wouldn’t have, but the regret remains. I doubt Isabella would have even remembered where my word choice stemmed from. Regardless, the words rang in my head then, and never stopped. All I wanted to say at that moment was, “but I still need you.” Today, 1,725 days since I first saw Isabella, 822 days since I first facetimed Isabella, and 178 days since that heartbreakingly beautiful night, I still love her the same. Looking back on my experience with her, I regret many things (oversharing, Claire, the snake, etc.), but the one thing I have never regretted was meeting and loving her. It was only recently that I realized that loving her has been one of the biggest mistakes in my life. For three years, day in and day out, I’ve thought about her. Three years where I could have met other people, worked on myself, enjoyed my friends and family, but instead I’ve loved her and nothing, nobody else. The one lesson that was essential for me to take away from my experience was impossible. In eighth grade I was 5’7 and 215 lbs, today I’m 5’10 and 165 lbs. In eighth grade I spent time with my parents, today I hide in my room. In eighth grade, I told people how I felt, now I’m too scared. In eighth grade, I talked about my depression, now I am left alone to deal with it. In eighth grade, I had many friends, now I rarely speak to them. In eighth grade, I needed Isabella, but the one lesson I should’ve learned never took effect. I still need her.

[Hopefully a week and a half is enough to let everyone catch up, so I can talk about all the episodes here without spoiling them for anyone]
The third and final edit of this show, and I’m sad to see it end. Like the others, I’ve grouped the season’s episodes by what feel like the most appropriate story arcs, and made two versions of each to accommodate the individual season’s alternate logo – as I like to differentiate, like my work with ‘The Mandalorian’.

There are a few surprises in this season though, I’ve found opportunities to link the three seasons together through flashbacks from archive footage that I’ve created to tether the show together as a whole. Like other flashbacks/flashforwards I’ve put in other projects, I’ve made the anachronism as visually distinct as possible from the rest of the story there, with having zero colour saturation and a vignette filter.
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For clarification: the arcs numbers here are based on, and following on from, the edits of the first 2 seasons I’ve done– 7 from Season 1, and 9 from Season 2 with the arcs themselves and the standalone episodes I added the alternate logo to. Those episodes came with the “[V2]” label of course, as will be the case here too for the same reasons.

The colour of the alternate logo this time around is more off-white – but more like a very light gold colour, since just the off-white was a little too close to the original grey to be actually visually distinct, especially from across the room.
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Arc 17: “A Fresh Start”. Episodes 1 “Confined”, 2 “Paths Unknown” and 3 “Shadows of Tantiss” all grouped together. They were all released together and worked perfectly well together (probably by design), so having them as the first arc was very easy and made a lot of sense.
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The name has a few valid references in the 3 episodes: Omega adjusting to Tantiss, what Project Necromancer could mean if it’s ever successful, Hunter and Wrecker’s search, the Clone Cadets they rescued from the jungle planet Setron – and Crosshair and Omega’s escape & what it could spell for them going forward.
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Finally, in the second episode, when H+W are walking through the jungle with the cadets they’ve found, there’s a small flashback all the way back to the end of Season 1, which I think works well and ties things together in a good way.
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Arc 18: “Cross-Purposes” – episodes 4 “A Different Approach” and 5 “The Return”.
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I slightly changed the chain of events in episode 4 to, I think, improve the story somewhat. A fair bit of episode 4 feels like it’s bulked out by people going out of their way to be self-centred assholes and – I don’t know if it’s just lingering frustration from Season 2 with all the Cid missions that always yielded no results – but can the good guys just win UNconditionally for once??
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Now, after Omega wins the money gambling, Imperial Captain Mann doesn’t fleece them, undoing their progress – he just gets the transmission about the shuttle crash and leaves to investigate immediately. Secondly, when the duo discover Batcher’s been kidnapped, the street urchin now tries to bribe the information out of them, but Crosshair intimidates him and he immediately relents, telling them where the Imperials went. I think ideally, I would cut the kidnapping out if I could because the captain’s just being an annoying sore loser and it bloats and segues the plot when the duo already have a shuttle they can bribe themselves onto. But that doesn’t match the vessel they eventually steal and escape with, and the background doesn’t match the commercial shuttle depot, so I can’t “invent” a firefight there instead and kind of must keep the kidnapping and such for consistency reasons.
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Later, on Barton IV, there are 3 very brief flashbacks to the episode “The Outpost”. This is very much deliberate because this is a site of a major event in Crosshair’s arc in the last season, it makes sense that when he returns there, it would be stuck heavily in his head every second he’s there – hopefully this conveys that effectively.
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It does feel like the first 4 episodes work well as one giant story instead, but that comes to 1 hour 40+, even with the last episode slightly shortened somewhat. This feels very long – especially with the show already having 1 “mega-arc” already with the first 3 episodes of Season 1. So having this duo instead feels like it works better as a more Crosshair-themed story – as with the name: “Cross-purposes”.
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To be specific, “Cross-purposes” is an expression where 2 or more people are at odds and have different goals/methods concerning the same thing. This feels very apt for CROSShair and Omega having to work together after their shuttle crash, and Crosshair with the squad on Barton IV learning to work together again and getting to the bottom of things between Crosshair and The Empire. In the latter episode, there are some flashbacks to the previous season – they’re very short, but hopefully with the way I’ve crafted them, they each have a big impact in making the shot/scene deeper.
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Arc 19 is split into two versions: a four-episode story from episodes 6-9, and two self-contained two-parters, because I find the four episodes actually work very well in both formats. As usual, you download and view whichever you agree with the most and works well with the rest of your collection. Also, just having the former could apply here if you like the latter half, but disagree with the choice to muddy the waters with how the ‘Dark Disciple’ novel left things on the Ventress front, so excising the latter half works better for you.
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The four episode arc: “All That Counts” is all of E6 “Infiltration”, E7 “Extraction”, E8 “Bad Territory” and E9 “The Harbinger” as one long sequence. There’s a brief flashback to Season 2 when ‘M-Count Targets’ are being discussed with Phee from Pabu, and that’s where the connection across all 4 episodes comes from, as it’s a consistent thread through them all.
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The name “All That Counts” is a play on the M-Count aspect of course, but it also as other meanings it can apply to in the four episodes. The Clone Assassin has to silence his own brother for silence’s sake and recover Omega for Hemlock – that’s all that counts, no matter the setback or the injuries. Wolffe has a clear change of heart when he meets Rex again, hears his story, and the reality of his orders sinks in: hunting a child – being loyal to his brothers, doing the right thing, and letting the target go as a show of both is all that counts, no matter the consequences. When Hunter and Wrecker meet Fennec Shand again after Pantora, the past doesn’t matter, only the present and them needing each other’s help does: the mutual benefit, especially for Omega’s sake, is all that counts. Lastly, when Ventress appears on Pabu, there’s a lot of distrust for obvious reasons, but the squad need answers and help and she’s the only one who can give it to them – all that counts is that they trust her and let her do what she needs to do.
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The first two-parter: 19a – “Teths of Patience” is just E6 “Infiltration” and E7 “Extraction” back to back, no flashbacks. The name is another play on words, because in these two episodes we see a few characters going through TESTS of patience of one kind or another at the old ruined B’Omarr Monk Monastery. Mostly the members of Rex’s Clone Underground trusting Crosshair in their presence, and the Clone Assassin trying to complete his objective despite some setbacks and injuries.
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The second two-parter: 19b – “New Allies and New Information” is just E8 “Bad Territory” in Space-Florida, and E9 “The Harbinger” with Ventress back to back, containing a short flashback in the former. The name ties into the first two-part story featuring Fennec back in season 1 “More Enemies and More Opportunities” as a kind of deliberate mirror. The allies (even just situationally) and information are both pretty self-evident with Fennec & Ventress, and everything they need to learn about this ‘M-Count’ phenomenon that’s presented itself.
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For the remaining episodes of the season: numbers 10-15 essentially create one long unbroken chain of events where each episode leads very comfortably right into the next. But this obviously creates one giant story that has a very dragging runtime of at least 2h40m, which is a huge story for a series which was made for TV and not film, and was designed to fit into ~22 minute chunks from the start.

To this end, I broke things up into smaller stories – à la The ‘Liberation of Lothal’ in my “Rebels” edit – to make the home stretch of the season, and show, much more easily digestible.
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Arc 20 begins with E10 “Identity Crisis” and goes right into E11 “Point of No Return”, and continues with E12 “Juggernaut”, before finishing with E13 “Into the Breach”.
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Conveniently, I’ve found the episode title ‘Into The Breach’ actually works very well for the entire arc for one reason or another. First, we see the moral ground Emerie finds herself on with the subjects that arrive at Tantiss, and the fact that they’re just children. Secondly, there’s the TK’s mobilising and disembarking on Pabu and the subsequent fighting and recapture of Omega after that small battle. Third, there’s a stealth-op with The Squad and Phee going to a secure Imperial world to recover a former Imperial asset, with very few options left on either side at that point. Finally, there’s going to Coruscant at the heart of The Empire to get Wayland’s co-ordinates.
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As stated above, episode 10 onwards is just 1 giant chain that runs unbroken, so having a self-contained Tantiss trilogy right at the end to keep everything very grounded and straightforward was good, and these 4 episodes before fill the gap well by proxy, so it all works out well.
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Arc 21: “Ground Zero”. The last of the show, consisting of E14 “Flash Strike” and the double-length E15 “The Cavalry Has Arrived”. It’s named as such because it’s the last trilogy’s worth of episodes self-contained to Tantiss itself and the last mission, which I think is a very fitting name.
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There’s only 1 version of this arc, since the all-grey logo from the finale, to reflect the paint-blasted armour they adorn themselves with from E13 onwards, looked great and felt greatly relevant to include. Including this for the final arc felt like a no-brainer.
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This arc does include the epilogue attached to the end this time. This is because it doesn’t contradict anything that chronologically comes afterwards in animation terms, as far as I know at least. The Rebellion pretty much began as soon as Saw Gerrera disagreed with The Empire on the very day of its founding, which we saw in the very first episode of TBB, which obviously precedes Rebels and Andor by a way, so there’s plenty of wiggle room for where the epilogue can fit in the timeline with everything else.
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Footnote: I’m merely a self-taught or VFX artist here, so some areas are visibly *mostly* good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don't be an ass about it.

(Ps, this is mine, I’ve posted it on another AITA subreddit)
AITA for letting my manipulative ex message me for more than a year?
I (17m) am trans and I’m happily in a gay relationship with my boyfriend also trans (16m). But almost 2 years ago I wasn’t with him. I was with someone else named F (privacy reasons) but it was long distance.
I’m an Australian and he’s an American. We did a long distance relationship like that. We dated end of 2022 to the beginning of 2023. It was completely fine and everything was okay. Until he cheated on me. He would manipulate and just emotionally waste me. Eventually I broke up with him in mid March of 2023 and I didn’t want to hear from him again. During the entire year start to end he would send me messages, unblocking me on different media’s and asking how I was. If we could become friends. I would say yes and things would always go back to things being intimate. I decided I didn’t want to hear from him at all last October. He wasted my entire 2023 and I wanted a fresh new start. Plus, I gained a huge crush on my boyfriend.
F had gotten into a relationship with my ex friend in December. I was unaware as none of them were in my life until F messaged me January this year saying this (I’ve shortened it)
“Happy new years, I hope you have a good year.” I replied asking what he wanted as he’s messaged me similarly during 2023 wanting me back. He said he was sorry and that the following month would’ve been our year anniversary (or something) and it would’ve been hard on both of us.
At this stage, I wasn’t aware he was already with someone. We spoke for a few weeks, he was flirting with me, telling me he ‘liked someone’ and would describe me. Then. Once more. I was randomly blocked. And that’s when I found out he was with my ex friend. It was getting ridiculous. Then, February, I got with my lovely boyfriend. Then. April. F messaged me. He had broken up with his partner because he liked me. He said he loved me, broke down over it. And eventually told me that he’s been ‘manifesting’ me, doing spells, and tarot cards on me to make me think of him. I was weirded out but I let him continue. (I would send every chat to my boyfriend). I told him “I love you as a friend.” Which was a crave mistake as he took it literal. Then, I was blocked.
Recently, he’s been stalking me, creating accounts, finding my socials as I’ve blocked him on everything. He’s gotten his friends to hunt me down, comment on my TikTok posts and stalk my Instagram. (Btw every time he blocked me, he would create groups to shit talk me and then message me again)
Also during this time. He had emotionally manipulated me once more, saying how he was going to S/H etc. and I didn’t want that to happen obviously so that’s why I didn’t block him sooner. But he also sent me gifts (before I was with my bf). He sent me a bouquet of flowers, bracelets, jewellery etc.
Going back on all of this I realise how wrong it is. And I should’ve had a clear mind. AITA?

My bf of 4 years broke up with me in March. We talked a few weeks later & we’re intimate but ultimately ended beginning of April.
He still had my location. Bc of this I would let him know if I were going somewhere (it helped him in the past). I had a gut feeling I should wait. He ended up going on a trip & we started talking right away. He unblocked me. He was saying how much he missed me & how I’m his person & home. We talked for almost a week & he was very consistent with everything he was saying. We were going to have a brand new start. We talked about the future & marriage.
I saw him the day after he got back. It was so good, except we got into a little argument. He said he was all of a sudden doubting us but that maybe he was jet lagged & needed sleep. I went over the next night & when he came home from work he told me he slept with a coworker three times. That they were dating but she ended it bc I still had insta highlights of us & she didn’t want to be involved with him. He said he likes her & wants to try with her. He said he meant everything he said at the time to me, but not anymore.
I tried to ask as many questions to process it, & he wouldn’t tell me the exact dates, but he was either talking to her while we were still something or right after he ended it. I’m trying to understand how he could be so about me & wanting a fresh start, as well as being intimate multiple times to taking it back. I also wonder why he would always ask what I did while we were apart & always checking on my location, & even saying thank you when I told him where I was going.
As much as I want to hate him, we were talking about a future two days ago. I know he meant it, & maybe he’s confused on what he wants. To start a new relationship (if she doesn’t reject him again) or try again with me & hope it’s not the same issues again. I’ve contacted him asking if I should be tested, about my things that are still there, & ultimately a bye letter. No response.
I know I’m going to be judged on this, but will he come back, especially after saying all those things to me the day before he ended it? Is this just a rebound (it was a very short amount of time they were dating)? We talked all day every day for a week…I’m assuming he’s going to miss that? Also, even after all of this, he was cuddling me & trying to have sex with me (we both stopped it). He obv still cares ?
Will nc work to help him realize everything he did tell me? I want our dog we share too…but he told me to leave him alone for two months & he’ll reach out to me about him. My dogs bday is in 2 1/2 weeks. Can I reach out then? I’m so sorry, I’m a mess.