I have a main tex file which has the main document definitions, and which includes other documents which define chapters. So far, it's working well.
I'm using Cambria font for main text and math text. The math is displayed as Italics.
How can I remove the default Italics font-style for math, and just have the normal style as default for the entire document?
Code for that main document below.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
```
\documentclass[

10pt, letterpaper, oneside, hyperref={colorlinks=true,linkcolor=blue}

]{book}
% Packages
\usepackage{xcolor} % Support defining colors.
\usepackage{pagecolor} % Allow changing the page color.
\usepackage{comment} % Support multi-line comments.
\usepackage{amssymb} % Extra math symbols
\usepackage{bookmark} % Support creating bookmarks based on section markers.
\usepackage{common-unicode} % Local package: map common unicode math chars to latex commands.
\usepackage{sectsty} % For changing the color of sections.
\usepackage[Glenn]{fncychap} % Fancy chapter style.
\usepackage{fancyhdr} % For changing header styles.
%\usepackage{layout} % For display layout side.
\usepackage[margin=0.6in]{geometry} % For changing the margin size.
\usepackage[most]{tcolorbox} % For drawing box around math.
\usepackage[skip=10pt plus1pt, indent=0pt]{parskip} % For spacing between paragraphs.
\usepackage{graphicx} % For drawing images.
\usepackage{unicode-math}
\usepackage{fontspec}
% Font
\setmainfont{Cambria}
\setmathfont{Cambria Math}
% Header and footer
% INFO: https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Headers_and_footers
\pagestyle{fancy} % Turn on the style
% Change the page header style
% NOTE: Some pages are still displaying with a bad header.
% Also, want to right-align odd/even page headers.
\renewcommand{\chaptermark}[1]{\markboth{\thechapter.\ #1}{}}
% Theme Stuff %%%%%%%%%%%
\definecolor{myPageColor}{rgb}{0.1, 0.1, 0.1}
\definecolor{myTextColor}{rgb}{0.8, 0.8, 0.8}
%\definecolor{myChapterColor}{rgb}{1, 0.0, 1}
%\colorlet{mySectionColor}{cyan}
\definecolor{mySectionColor}{rgb}{0.6, 0.7, 0.9}
\definecolor{mySubSectionColor}{rgb}{0.6, 0.9, 1}
\definecolor{mySubSubSectionColor}{rgb}{0.8, 0.7, 1}
\definecolor{myMathBoxColor}{rgb}{0.15, 0.15, 0.15}
\definecolor{myMathColor}{rgb}{0.3, 1, 0.3}
\definecolor{myInlineMathColor}{rgb}{0.3, 0.8, 0.3}
\definecolor{myBoxedMathColor}{rgb}{0.9, 0.9, 0.9}
\definecolor{myMathBoxEdgesColor}{rgb}{0.15, 0.15, 0.15}
\definecolor{myEmphColor}{rgb}{1, 0.6, 0.6}
\pagecolor{myPageColor}
\color{myTextColor}
\setlength{\headheight}{16pt} % Size of header font.
%\chapterfont{\color{myChapterColor}}
\sectionfont{\color{mySectionColor}}
\subsectionfont{\color{mySubSectionColor}}
\subsubsectionfont{\color{mySubSubSectionColor}}
% Draw a (non-inline) math box, left-aligned.
% Optional argument #1 is the title.
\newcommand*\Mbox[2][]{

\\begin{tcolorbox}\[math,colback=myMathBoxColor,colframe=gray!30!myMathBoxEdgesColor,title={#1}\] \\color{myBoxedMathColor}#2 \\end{tcolorbox}%

}
% Draw a (non-inline) math box, centered.
% Optional argument #1 is the title.
\newcommand*\Mboxc[2][]{%

\\begin{tcolorbox}\[ams align\*,colback=myMathBoxColor,colframe=gray!30!black,title={#1}\]#2\\end{tcolorbox}%

}
% Add emphasis to text.
\newcommand*\Memph[1]{

\\textcolor{myEmphColor}{#1}

}
\newcommand*\Mi[2][myInlineMathColor]{{\color{#1}$#2$}}
% Change the color of the math expressions.
%\everymath{\color{myMathColor}}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Start the actual document structure.
\begin{document}
% The title page stuff.
\begin{titlepage}

\\begin{center} \\huge\\textbf{Mathematics}\\\\ \\large\\textit{A Compendium}\\\\ \\vspace{2mm} \\scriptsize{May 7, 2023} - \\today \\end{center} \\vspace\*{\\stretch{2.0}}

\end{titlepage}
\large
\pagenumbering{roman}
\tableofcontents
\include{Introduction.tex}
\include{Fundamentals.tex}
\include{SetTheory.tex}
\include{Algebra.tex}
\include{Trigonometry.tex}
\include{Formulas.tex}
\end{document}
```

Hi all, I'm having trouble finding an app/service for mind mapping that I just saw somewhere in Reddit a while ago. I will describe as much as I remember and hope that someone knows it!
It was a tool for mind mapping, but not the typical ones where you can create, move and edit blocks and connections with a graphic UI. It was all done by writing down stuff and making the connections by placing a symbol between concepts. Something like Parent concept > Child concept.
Then, the app would make the concept map in some sort of 3D space, where all the concepts were floating and moving around, and if you hovered or clicked one of the concepts it would show all the child concepts attached to it.
I also remember it was all in dark mode, with a fancy vibe to it. Really nice font, soft shapes...
I think the name of it was something including "brain" or "mind", but I'm not sure.
Thanks!

Font Design is essential to effective communication. The fonts you use while building a website, writing a social media post, or creating marketing materials significantly impact readability and accessibility. Fancy Text Generator is a great tool for achieving clarity and ensuring that your point of view is effectively delivered to your target audience. Here are some key tips for using font generators to create clear and accessible typography.
● Focus on contrast and readability: When picking fonts, focus on contrast and readability. The background and text should contrast well, especially for those with visual impairments. This tool provides options for adjusting contrast levels, which allows you to improve readability across multiple platforms and devices.
● Select the Readable Fancy Fonts: Although fancy points might improve the appearance of your designs, you must choose ones that are still easy to read. Font design generators offer many Tiny text generator, including elegant scripts and attractive types.
● Try the Trendy Fonts: Explore trendy and cool fonts to help your ideas stand out. Unlimited options exist if you need a sleek, modern stylish texts or retro-inspired font. Customize the appearance of your fonts to create a unique visual identity for your brand.
● Use the Font Changer Feature: Font tools have features that let you modify typographic properties such as size, weight, and spacing. Use these choices to tune your typefaces finely based on your design needs. Changing font size and spacing can improve readability, especially on small displays.
● Consider Instagram & Social Media Font Requirements: When creating content for social media platforms like Instagram, It is crucial to be mindful of their specific font requirements and limits. Font design tools frequently have pre-set choices tailored for social media platforms, ensuring your postings are visually appealing and readable across various devices.
● Test on multiple platforms: Before finalizing font choices, make sure they are compatible and readable across all platforms. Font design generators often include preview options for displaying fonts in various settings. Make any changes based on these previews before publishing designs.
Our Name4Brand offers a tiny text generator that converts regular text into stylish fonts. Designed with various fancy HTML fonts and symbols, our username generator makes it easy to copy and paste into social media platforms or anywhere else on the web.

Welcome to our second discussion of Thinking, Fast and Slow! The Marginalia post is here. You can find the Schedule here.
This week, we will discuss Chapters 5-10. If you're feeling a little overwhelmed or frustrated by the content, just hold a pencil in your mouth pointing left to right and you'll be primed to feel better in no time! You can also read through the chapter summaries below for a refresher.
This is a nonfiction text so it's obviously not plot-driven, but we still want to be respectful of the experiences of other readers. So, if you've read ahead or made connections between the concepts in this book and other media, please mark spoilers using the format > ! Spoiler text here ! < (without any spaces between the characters themselves or between the characters and the first and last words).
Chapter Summaries:
CHAPTER 5 - Cognitive Ease: Kahneman shows us how System 1 and System 2 work together to create states of cognitive ease or cognitive strain when we are presented with information or other stimuli. Cognitive ease is a state of comfort where things are going well, while cognitive strain is the opposite end of the spectrum where there is a problem which causes discomfort.
Our brains constantly assess how things are going, using automatic System 1 processes, and monitoring whether the extra effort of lazy System 2 is needed. When experiencing familiar inputs and in a good mood, our brains are in a state of cognitive ease, which leads to positive feelings and trust of the situation or information. When System 2 needs to get involved, we experience cognitive strain and can develop negative feelings and skepticism. Kahneman asserts that these states can be “both a cause and a consequence” of how we feel about things and relate to them.
On the “cause” side, cognitive ease can make you notice and believe things more readily because your brain is already used to them. (Cognitive strain can make you reject unfamiliar messages.)

An illusion of memory is caused by more easily noticing things that we have recently been exposed to. An example would be picking out a few names as minor celebrities from a long list just because you recently saw those names in a different context.
Similarly, an illusion of truth is experienced as more readily believing something just because you've heard a certain phrase or sentence often. System 2 will sometimes slow this down a bit to comb through relevant background information that could verify or refute the statement, but cognitive ease will result in belief if it can't be quickly confirmed. (Remember, System 2 is lazy AF.)
Our brains default to the good vibes of cognitive ease, and Kahneman points to the career of Robert Zajonc whose research on the mere exposure effect drives this point home. Zajonc proved that just by exposing people repeatedly to a word or object, they would develop a more positive association with it. The more exposure, the more likely people are to favor something. This is true of a random word on a newspaper cover, a pronounceable stock market symbol, or even stimuli provided unconsciously. It is also true for nonhumans, as tones played for chicken embryos will get a more positive response from the chicks after they hatch. This is because, evolutionarily speaking, it is safer for animals to be initially skeptical of novel stimuli, and also to learn to trust repeated stimuli as safe. Darwin would be proud!

On the “consequence” side, cognitive ease can be induced if we are presented with things that feel easy and familiar, or if we are put into a good mood first. (Cognitive strain can be induced in the opposite ways.)

When psychologists ask their subjects to think of happy or sad experiences first, it affects how intuitive they are and whether they experience cognitive ease or strain in the tasks that follow.
Experiments have also shown that no matter the content of a message, people will intuit it as more or less believable depending on how much cognitive ease or strain results from the presentation of said information.
Kahneman points out that the effects of cognitive ease on people's beliefs might have been proven by psychologists, but authoritarian regimes have always known it works. (Gulp!) Let's assume you are not a dictator and you have a truthful, impactful message that you want people to pay attention to. If you keep in mind that System 2 is lazy and people will avoid things that cause cognitive strain, you can bolster the efficacy of your message with the following tips: use an easy-to-read font, high-quality paper, simple phrasing, bright colors, and sources with easily pronounceable names. Yes, System 2 will balk at your report if your sentences are too fancy and your font is too small or squiggly. You can also add rhymes. Apparently it is proven true if rhyming's what you choose to do! (Please enjoy this relevant sitcom clip.)

Now here's where things get surprising. Cognitive ease and strain are not binary good/bad things. Sure, cognitive ease makes you feel happier and more confident, but you're also more likely to be duped and rely on your automatic System 1 impressions. Cognitive strain feels uncomfortable and makes you work harder, but it also boosts your creativity and gets you to think more analytically, so it can lead to better decisions and outcomes. You would probably do better on a test printed in a challenging font because your brain would be forced to pay more attention! Maybe I should've written this summary in a smaller font…
CHAPTER 6 - Norms, Surprises, and Causes: System 1 is compared to a powerful computer in this section, because it can quickly make links between networks of ideas. System 2 is our ability to set search parameters and program the computer to detect certain bits of data more easily. Let’s check out how awesome - and limited - System 1 is!
Surprise is the spice of life, and System 1 works with surprising events to help explain what we observe and decide if it is “normal”. Surprises come in two kinds: consciously expected events that will surprise you if they don’t happen (eg, your kid coming home from school), and passively expected events that are normal in a given scenario but it won’t surprise us if they don’t happen (eg, when I give my students a test someone will probably groan). System 1 helps us adjust our expectations: an event may seem normal if we’ve been exposed to it before (such as bumping into the same friend unexpectedly on two vacations) or become an expected occurrence (such as looking for an accident in the same stretch of road where you saw a big one earlier). Linking up events is another talent of System 1. Kahneman and his colleague Dale Miller worked on norm theory together: when observing two events, the first may be surprising but when a second event occurs your System 1 thinking will work out a connection between the two, making a narrative of sorts that diminishes how surprising the second event seems. This also makes it hard to pick out small errors, but easy to pick out glaring ones, such as the difference between reading “Moses put animals on the ark” and “George Bush put animals on the ark”.
System 1 likes to create narratives with these linked events. It helps us understand stories in a common way across the culture, and it allows us to make sense of the events in our daily lives and in the world.

Associative coherence creates links between events to help make an understandable story about what is going on. If a friend tells you they had fun sightseeing in a crowded city but later discovered their wallet was missing, you would probably jump to a conclusion about pickpockets (rather than assuming your friend absent-mindedly left it at a restaurant) because of the associations between crowds, cities, and crime.
The illusion of causality occurs when we “see” physical causation in scenarios even if there isn’t an actual cause-and-effect relationship. Having seen that an object will move when something bumps into it, psychologist Albert Michotte explains that we will transfer this assumption even to pictures of objects. We know there was no real physical contact, but if picture A moves immediately after picture B “touches” it, our System 1 thinking still explains picture B as causing the movement.
We assume intentional causality because humans are excellent at personifying nonhuman subjects. Heider and Simmel demonstrated that people do this by assigning things feelings and personality traits, forming a narrative around what might be happening. Here is a video of their animation of the bullying triangle. Considering it is a bunch of shapes, I think it is quite harrowing!
We separate physical and intentional causality, and this may be an explanation for how humans are wired to easily accept religious beliefs. According to Paul Bloom in The Atlantic, we are born with the capacity to conceive of “soulless bodies and bodiless souls” which allows us to accept religious explanations of God and the immortal soul. Religious belief may be baked into System 1 thinking!

Unfortunately, relying on causal intuitions like these can cause misconceptions, especially where statistical thinking is necessary to draw appropriate conclusions. Guess who we need for statistical thinking? System 2! Too bad for us that it’s easier and more pleasant to just go with the narrative of System 1.
CHAPTER 7 - A Machine for Jumping to Conclusions: System 1 is that machine, and it does this without our awareness. This works out just fine when making a mistake wouldn’t be a big deal and our assumptions are probably going to be correct (such as hearing “Anne approached the bank” and thinking of an institution of finance rather than a river’s edge). It gets more serious - and needs the help of System 2’s analysis - if it would be risky to make a mistake and the situation is unfamiliar or vague. We rely on System 1 to draw conclusions about ambiguous information without ever having to ponder the uncertainties, and most of the time this works out just fine! But it can also lead to biases.
Confirmation bias occurs when we fall back on our associative memories to evaluate information. System 1 likes to confirm things and will rely on examples related to the wording of a statement or question. It is gullible and will try to believe things if it can. Fortunately, System 2 is deliberate and skeptical; it can step in to help us interpret things more correctly or “unbelieve” things that are false. The bad news is that, if System 2 is already busy or feeling lazy (eg, if you are experiencing cognitive strain) then System 2 might not kick in and you might be duped. Don’t watch those influencer marketing posts while exhausted, kids!
Even when not under strain, System 2 will still default to searching for evidence that proves a statement or question rather than seeing if it can be disproved. This is contrary to the science and philosophy rules for testing hypotheses, but hey, Systems 1 and 2 are gonna do what they’re gonna do. If someone asks if a person is friendly, you’re going to think of times they did nice things; but if someone asks if they're unfriendly, all their jerky behaviors will come to mind.
The Halo Effect is another bias to watch out for. We are prone to make assumptions based on our initial experiences and observations. For instance, a fun conversation at a party might lead you to assume your new friend is generous, even though you have no knowledge of their charitable behaviors (or lack thereof), and in turn their assumed generosity will make you like them even more! This is the halo effect, where we generalize about something based on initial impressions: if you like a person, you tend to like everything about them (and vice versa). Your mom was right: first impressions are important!
You can avoid the halo effect by decorrelating errors. This essentially means you should crowdsource information and opinions from a lot of independent sources who aren’t allowed to collaborate before sharing their thinking, and the average of this information will provide a clear understanding. It is the reason police don’t allow multiple witnesses to “get their stories straight” and why Kahneman believes everyone should write a short summary of their opinions before engaging in open discussion at a meeting. It is also a great way to cheat at those guessing jar challenges: just wait for everyone else to write down a number, then sneak a peek at the guesses and take the average as your own guess! (You can also use math if you’re a goody-two-shoes.) You’re welcome!
The principle of “What You See Is All There Is” (WYSIATI) leads to many other biases. Sure, it’s beneficial to think quickly and make sense out of complex situations using System 1 and the evidence at hand. It’s not always prudent or possible to stop and mull over whether we have all the information, so usually we rely on WYSIATI. The downside to this is that, when System 1 jumps to conclusions, it doesn’t care about the quantity or quality of the information it has to go on; it simply wants a coherent narrative. Since we almost always have incomplete information when making decisions or judgements, we rely on System 1 to put together the best possible conclusion based on what we see. We never stop to ask what we don’t know. This creates biases that can lead to incorrect assumptions. These include:

overconfidence: we love a good story and will stand by it even if we don’t know very much at all
framing effects: we will feel different ways about the same scenario based on how it is presented to us
base-rate neglect: we disregard statistical facts that can’t be readily brought to mind in favor of vivid details we already know

Detecting errors like these is the job of System 2, but you may have heard that it is LAZY! This means that even System 2 is often relying on the evidence at hand without considering what else we don’t yet know. This reminds me of a silly-sounding statement by a certain American politician from the early 2000s.
CHAPTER 8 - How Judgments Happen: Like a curious toddler, there is no limit to the number of questions System 2 can ask. And like a teenager, there is a good chance that System 1 will make a snap judgment in place of the real question being asked. System 2 is good at both generating questions and searching memory to answer them, while System 1 is good at continuously and effortlessly making quick decisions, literally without giving it another thought. System 1 has features that support these basic assessments of intuitive decision-making, and they lead us to substitute one judgment for another.
Basic assessments are the immediate judgments that human brains have evolved to make constantly to ensure safety. Whether you are dodging taxis while crossing a city street or avoiding lions while trekking through the savannah, your brain can immediately judge a situation as threat (to avoid) or opportunity (to approach). We do the same with other people’s faces, immediately deciding whether they are friend or foe based on face shape and facial expression. While this can be great for deciding whether to talk to that intimidating guy on the subway, it’s not so great that voters tend to fall back on these System 1 assessments when picking a candidate. Basic assessments of candidates’ photos showed that politicians with faces rated more competent than their opponent (strong jaw + pleasant smile) were likely to be the winner of their elections. Apparently we could save a lot of time and money with campaigning and just hand out headshots. Yuck.
Here are some other examples of basic assessments that System 1 uses to answer an easier question in place of System 2’s more complex query:

Sum-like variables: finding the total (sum) of a set is a slow process, so System 1 will use the average or think of a prototype (representative image) to get an immediate idea
Intensity matching: System 1 is great at matching where things fall on different scales such as describing how smart someone is by relating it to a person’s height (reading at 4 years old would be like an impressive but not outrageous 6’7” man while reading at 15 months old would be like an extraordinary 7’8” man). In an experiment straight out of Dante’s Inferno, participants match the loudness of tones to a crime or its punishment and increase them based on severity (murder is louder than unpaid parking tickets), and they report feeling a sense of injustice when the tones for a crime and its punishment do not match in volume!
The mental shotgun: Just as you can’t aim at a single target with a shotgun because of the spray of pellets, so your System 1 is constantly making basic assessments that it wasn’t asked to and should probably have minded its own beeswax about. It’ll slow you down when identifying rhyming words that are spelled differently (vote/goat) and it’ll make you pause in looking for true sentences when a false statement could have a metaphorical meaning. You weren’t asked to think about spelling the rhyming words or making metaphors out of comparative statements, but System 1 just can’t help itself! Thinking about one aspect of the question triggers System 1 to think about a bunch of other connected associations.

CHAPTER 9 - Answering an Easier Question: You are almost always right, and you know it. Admit it, your System 1 keeps you pretty sure that you know what to think about most people and situations. Kahneman points out that we rarely experience moments when we are completely stumped and can’t come up with an answer or a judgment. You know which people to trust, which colleagues are most likable, and which initiatives are likely to succeed or fail. You haven’t collected detailed research and statistics or swiped anyone’s diary; your System 1 just knows. That’s because it answered an easier question!
Let’s talk heuristics. According to George Pólya, a heuristic is a simpler problem that can be solved as a strategy for tackling a more difficult problem. Kahneman borrows the term to describe the substitutions made by System 1 instead of answering a tricky System 2 question. If you don’t get an answer to a question pretty quickly, System 1 will make some associations and use those to come up with a related and easier question. You won’t even notice that your brain has pulled a switcheroo, and you’ll feel confident in your answer to that tricky question (even though you did not in fact answer it). Here’s how System 1 pulls it off:
Brain: Hmm, I don’t know the answer to this complex question. It requires some deep analysis!
System 2: Hard pass. You may have heard I’m hella lazy.
System 1: I got you, bro! That deep question reminds me of this super fun fact I know, so I’ll throw this out there instead. Does your fancy schmancy query make sense now?
System 2: Umm, probably? It’s good enough for me. I’m gonna go back to my nap.
System 1: Eureka! We’ve got an answer!
Brain: I am so smart! I totally answered this really complex question thoughtfully and reasonably.
Here are some example heuristics:

3-D Heuristic: This is an optical illusion. When you are shown a drawing that appears to give a three dimensional perspective, your brain will automatically interpret it as if you were looking at objects in a 3-D setting. You didn’t forget that the paper and drawing are 2-D and you aren’t confused about the questions asked. You just automatically substitute 3-D interpretations because that is how your brain is used to seeing the world and it’s easier to continue that way.
Mood Heuristic: It would take a lot of consideration to give an accurate answer to how happy you have been feeling lately, because there are so many factors to evaluate. When asked about happiness and then about dating, there is no correlation between the two answers: overall happiness is not really influenced by how many dates people have recently had. However, if someone primes you by asking about your dating life first, your answer about happiness will be very strongly correlated to your love life because System 1 is actually using the easy dating question to easily answer the more complex happiness question. This also works with other topics like family relationships and finances.
Affect Heuristic: Your opinions or feelings about a certain topic will affect how you judge its strengths and positives as well as its weaknesses and negatives. Things you view favorably will seem to have many benefits and few risks, while things you are averse to will appear riskier and less beneficial. Your political preferences will influence your attitude towards policies and other countries even if there is evidence to the contrary. This doesn’t mean that we can’t learn or be convinced by new information, and that we will never change our minds. It’s just that lazy System 2 is also not very demanding; it tends to apologize for System 1’s snap judgments and emphasize the information that backs it up, rather than seeking out and examining the evidence to the contrary.

We end Part I with a chart listing the characteristics of System 1. This is a good review of how System 1 tends to operate. Then, we embark on Part II: Heuristics and Biases.
CHAPTER 10 - The Law of Small Numbers: People are bad at statistics - we struggle to draw intuitive conclusions based on a statistical fact. Even statisticians are bad at intuitive interpretations of statistics! This is because of the law of large numbers. Keep in mind that large samples are more precise than small samples. When randomly sampling a group, a large sample will yield more predictable results (less extremes) than a small sample would. Kahneman gives us two examples: rates of kidney cancer could seem unusually high or low if the populations of the counties sampled are small, and getting all of the same color marble instead of half and half will occur more often if you’re pulling just a few marbles from an equally mixed jar instead of pulling a big handful. (Your System 2 is really working hard right now, isn’t it? I had to bite a pencil just to make myself feel better in the statistics section. I’m not crazy; please refer to Chapter 4!)
The law of small numbers is the belief that the law of large numbers applies to small numbers, too. (It doesn’t.) Not only do average people fall for the law of small numbers, so do researchers and statisticians. There is a mathematical way to compute the number of participants that researchers need to sample in order to avoid statistical anomalies and ruin their results. Instead, researchers trust their intuition and go with traditional sample sizes, never stopping to calculate the number of participants actually needed for a safe sample size. Even authors of statistical textbooks couldn’t manage to avoid falling for the law of small numbers. This explains why my math-teacher-husband always pops a blood vessel when I quote him statistics from a newspaper article.
We are biased towards confidence rather than doubt. System 1 is not wired for doubt because it looks for coherent messaging. System 2 is wired for doubt, but not very good at it because it’s hard work. When we analyze and draw conclusions, we tend to put too much emphasis on coherent explanations. We are “not adequately sensitive to sample size” and end up believing that even a very small group matches up with the truth about the entire population. Essentially, it’s us saying “Kids these days…” because one random toddler was being obnoxious at the grocery store.
Statistics do not indicate the cause of an event; they only describe it in relation to what could have happened instead. But people are predisposed to make associations and creative coherent narratives, so we look for patterns and assume causality where none exist. Many events in life are random chance and this is true whether you consider the sequence of the sex of babies born in a single day, the bombing locations in a city or fatality rates of air squadrons during war, or the “hot hands” of a basketball player who appears to have a streak of success. The problem is that we fall for the law of small numbers in our small samples, we create associative narratives to explain what we see, and we are biased towards believing our own conclusions because they ring true. Even really smart and successful people like Bill Gates make these mistakes, and sometimes this results in millions or billions of dollars wasted and national educational policies shifted on the basis of random chance. Oops! WYSIATI, even in statistics!

Recently, there was a big hullabaloo about a very specific book called The Rage of Dragons, made by a small publisher through a kickstarter. The art on the cover can easily be described as hideous and their post about how you should shell out over $1k for the art of a book was quickly discredited by indie writers. The book was already liked by a crowd, this kickstarter was for an illustrated version of the story that came out in 2017, with the original publisher being Orbit (same company that reprinted The Witcher in English). This book, with over 33k reviews on Goodreads, was able to receive $88k for its kickstarter.
This is where I come in to say both the small publisher and the indie writers are WRONG.
Cover art is a new thing, barely being a thing in the 1800s and finally becoming common in the 1930s thanks to the publisher Penguin. Before that, there were a few Russian magazines trying to be avant garde and put outlines of drawings on their covers, thanks to the popularization of paper bindings over the leather bound books. Through the 30s onward, cover art became more extravagant and eye-catching as we engaged in competition between pulp magazines and comic books, both focused on action and human poses. Harlequin novels focused on real humans posing for a camera, with them being traced over for the most part. Later on, faces like Fabio became real-life photos that could be processed easily into a glossy cover and not appear strange or smudgy.
In this toss between drawings and models, digital art started to be used to make up backgrounds and fancy lettering. Manga started to become popular, mostly online, with a lot of light novels sharing the art style of manga. Once we get into the freelancer and authortuber stage of cover art, we start to engage in what is essentially a mockery of what covers once were. People will find an image online, hope it’s free to use, and slap it behind a bunch of pre-made font. This lack of production requirement allowed people to start making books for little to nothing, because now a single person could make a million books on their own.
The AI argument is where people are willing to use AI to create their cover art, with the opposition saying that AI is still treated as taboo. Personally, I disagree with both of these arguments because the taboo is only among artists who draw and their opinion is in the vast minority. The average reader doesn’t care and won’t notice, meaning that excuse is a way for an artist to fight for their job. However, the pro-AI side is also equally foolish because of how AI handles art to begin with. It doesn’t understand things like symbolism and focus, and so there won’t be a knowledgeable basis to create effective art that captures the reader and symbolically suggests what is hidden behind the main page.
Both the pro-artist and the pro-AI arguments are part of the psy-op to keep indie writers poor and out of the way. When your opponent is unorganized, there is no structure or institution to attack. Instead, the attack is aimed within the heart of your opponent in order to get them to stop fighting or stay away from the fight. A culture war is based on a media battlefront, with major corporations holding a substantial amount of both organization and funding. They ensured there is a price requirement to engage in media and they ensured there is going to be a way to convert human labor into automation.
It’s not that books need a cover, but a cover was normalized for the sake of second stage marketing. It makes people think that more money was spent on it or there is something to it, with AI showing that zero money was spent on it. Indie being plagued by bad or derivative covers is WORSE than if they sold stories with no cover at all. The fact that a self-publishing site like Amazon forces a cover image to be placed during publishing shows that the institution wants covers to be treated as important. In reality, the only important parts of a book are the title, blurb, and the story itself.
We can make the argument that a cover gives a visual glimpse to what’s lurking around the digital pages within, and that’s a great point. Readers want something to assure them and catch their eye, with a leather bound cover something that feels too old fashion to bother with. Yet, I would counter this by saying anyone could make an eye-catching cover by being symbolic and minimalist, in the same way Jurassic Park was. That cover was a plain black and white picture with the outline of T-Rex bones, bringing everything that the reader needed to know to the table. In fact, I would say that good writers are able to make themselves stand out by being symbolic and showing they know what storytelling is all about.
No matter which way you prefer to go, extravagant or minimal, the cover should be based around your expectations. There are so many people who don’t expect any money and they “write for themselves”, only to shell out thousands of dollars to sell a book nobody wanted and they have no idea how to market. This romanticization of pleasing yourself with your own work and ignoring the audience is why indie suffers from daily attrition in droves. If you’re not sure of what you’re doing, make it practice and make it free. Having $0 coming to you is better than having $2k leaving your pocket because you wanted to play with the big boys.
Really think to yourself: could I sell this story with the title alone? The elevator pitch? The first few sentences? Could I go around and have people beg me to read this story after I mention it? Then you ask yourself: can they pull this story out of a line-up?
If you’re really thinking of making a physical book, at the very least, allow the reader to know what book they’re holding by having the spine legible. The spine, the front, the blurb in the back; we just want to know what the hell it says. This $88k book that people were going bananas over has a terrible cover because I didn’t even know it was called The Rage of Dragons. I thought it was called Rage Dragons with how poorly done the lettering is. But that’s the thing: the book already sold itself with the story alone!
Worrying about your cover and changing it a million times is pointless. A big waste of money. All you’re doing is foolishly obeying the psy-op. Indie just needs to live below its means, pay out less than what it makes, and grow from constantly looking attractive. If indie writers were honest with themselves, they wouldn’t be trying to copy mainstream covers or blend in with some expensive liability.
Use AI if you know it will bring you more money, and use a professional looking cover when you’re making professional royalties. There’s no reason to pretend you’re something you’re not, or gamble your money away on a roll that has all the odds against you with little pay. I’m sure 99% of indie is self-aware of how many people will read their writing. If you think you’ll be selling to everyone in the world once you are able to pay millions for advertising, then word of mouth would be having your royalties increase daily in a never ending way, nullifying the need for millions. For the rest of you who have functional brain cells, stop killing your writing with the cost of cover art.
When your cover costs more than what you make, you’re doing it wrong.

Green Reality

The green recording light cast an eerie glow on Nicholas Applecoda’s face as he boomed, “Hey guys, welcome back to another Mukbang Monday! Today’s a little different, though. We’re taking a healthy turnip twist!”
Nicholas, a stark contrast to his former, heavier self, grinned and flexed a bicep. A colorful stack of turnip dishes dominated the table in front of him: roasted turnips with rosemary, turnip fritters with a side of vegan tzatziki, and even a steaming bowl of turnip noodle soup.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Nicholas chuckled, picking up a glistening roasted turnip. “Turnips? For a mukbang? But trust me, guys, these lil’ guys are underrated. They’re packed with nutrients, low in calories, and surprisingly versatile!”
He took a large bite, his eyes widening in mock surprise. “Whoa! Don’t knock it till you try it, chat! This rosemary roasted turnip is actually…really good. Like, earthy, slightly sweet, and the rosemary adds this amazing kick!”
Nicholas munched through the turnip fritters with gusto, dipping them generously in the tzatziki. “See, these fritters are crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and the vegan tzatziki adds this coolness that just cuts through the richness. Perfect combo!”
Chat, ever the comedian, flooded with messages.
“Nicholas gonna turn into a human turnip by the end of the stream! “
“Plot twist: Nicholas secretly sponsored by the Big Turnip.”
Nicholas laughed, shaking his head. “You guys are relentless! But for real, turnips are a great way to add some variety to your diet. They’re cheap, easy to find, and can be prepared in so many ways. Plus, they keep you feeling full for longer, which is a win-win for anyone trying to stay healthy.”
He slurped down a spoonful of the turnip noodle soup, a satisfied sigh escaping his lips. “And let me tell you, this soup is the ultimate comfort food. Warm, hearty, and packed with flavor. Plus, it’s guilt-free! How awesome is that?”
Nicholas continued his turnip exploration, sharing recipe tips and funny anecdotes in between bites. The chat, though initially skeptical, seemed to be warming up to the idea.
“Okay, Nicholas, you convinced me. I gotta try those turnip fritters now!”
“Never thought I’d say this, but that turnip soup actually looks good.”
As Nicholas polished off the last turnip dish, a wide grin spread across his face. “There you have it, guys! A healthy and delicious mukbang that won’t leave you feeling like a sack of potatoes. Remember, it’s all about balance. You can still enjoy yummy food and stay on track with your fitness goals.”
He winked at the camera. “So, what are you waiting for? Grab some turnips and get cookin’! And don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell for more healthy (and maybe some not-so-healthy) mukbangs in the future!”
A rogue turnip slice flung from his fork mid-sentence splattered harmlessly onto the table. Nicholas, ever the showman, chuckled and tossed it towards the camera with a wink. “See, even healthy eating can get messy, chat! Now, where were we…”
His playful banter was cut short by a jarring thump from the floor above. It wasn’t a thud, a dull impact, but a series of frantic, pounding noises. Nicholas’s brow furrowed, the smile momentarily faltering. “Huh, that’s weird,” he muttered, glancing upwards. The sound of his own voice echoed slightly in the confined basement space, amplifying the unsettling rhythm of the banging.
Chat, ever quick to latch onto anything out of the ordinary, exploded with speculation.
“Nicholas having a dance party upstairs?”
“Maybe it’s just the wind…right?”
“Uh oh, sounds like someone broke in!”
Nicholas, despite his usual bravado, felt a prickle of unease crawl up his spine. He lived alone. There shouldn’t be anyone ‘up there.’ The banging continued, growing more insistent, punctuated by the unmistakable scrape of something heavy being dragged across the floor. Nicholas swallowed hard, a cold sweat forming on his brow. The green recording light, once a comforting presence, now seemed to cast an ominous glow on his increasingly pale face.
He forced a smile, trying to project a sense of normalcy for the live stream. “Alright chat, looks like we’re gonna have a little intermission. Gotta go check what that racket is all about. Brb!”
He rose from his chair, his movements stiff and tentative. The camera remained fixed on the turnip-laden table, capturing the unsettling silence that had replaced the rhythmic pounding. A single turnip fritter, forgotten on a plate, seemed to cast a grotesquely long shadow in the flickering green light.
Then, with a deafening crash that sent a jolt through the camera, the live feed abruptly cut to black. The only sound remaining — an eerie silence, punctuated by the faint hum of unseen electronics.
Abrupt silence
Panic, cold and sharp, clawed its way up Nicholas’s throat. The basement, the turnip mukbang, everything felt like a lifetime ago. He stumbled again, the sensation more like a float than a fall. There was no floor beneath his feet, no resistance. The air, if it could even be called that anymore, was like thin, metallic soup offering no purchase for his lungs.
The lack of oxygen, a terrifying concept he’d only ever encountered in horror movies, should have left him gasping, desperate. But here, the absence of air felt strangely muted, a dull ache behind his sternum rather than a burning scream.
His eyes, wide with terror, searched the endless abyss. Inky blackness stretched in all directions, a suffocating void devoid of stars, light, or even the faintest outline. It wasn’t just silent; it was a silence so profound it seemed to press against his eardrums. No wind, no hum of electricity, not even the frantic pounding of his own heart. Here, in this featureless, soundless void, even fear itself seemed muted.
He clawed at the emptiness, his hand encountering nothing but a chilling resistance, like pushing against a thick, invisible fog. There was no ground, no walls, no up or down. Just Nicholas, suspended in a black, suffocating nothingness, utterly lost and utterly alone.
A horrifying thought pierced his mind. Was he dead? Was this some bizarre afterlife? Or something far worse? A whimper escaped his lips, a sound that died as quickly as it formed, swallowed by the endless silence.
22 days. Time, a concept once measured by steaming mugs of coffee and the click of the record button, had become a blurry expanse. Hunger gnawed at Nicholas, a dull, persistent ache that never quite blossomed into the full-blown roar he expected. His breaths, shallow and ineffective, felt like a fish desperately trying to breathe air. Yet, here he was, a morbid anomaly, existing in this unending void.
The initial, panicked thrashing had given way to a chilling stillness. He wasn’t sure if he’d accepted his fate, or if the very concept of acceptance had dissolved in the endless black. His mind, once a whirlwind of chaotic energy, was now a slow, churning pool, desperately trying to grasp at the threads of memory.
The last vivid scene — the green recording light, the half-eaten turnip fritter — flickered at the edge of his consciousness. How? Why? The questions bounced around the emptiness of his mind, unanswered and echoing.
Movement, a concept he barely understood anymore, came through sheer will. It wasn’t walking, not in the traditional sense. It was a slow, deliberate pushing against the thick, black resistance that surrounded him. Like wading through a vat of molasses that defied all physical laws. He could propel himself forward, a sluggish dance in the void.
Direction? Up, down, left, right — these were meaningless concepts here. Yet, a strange intuition guided him. He pushed forward, a silent scream trapped in his chest, searching for anything, a flicker of light, a change in the oppressive blackness.
As days bled into weeks, a sliver of a thought, fragile as a spiderweb, snagged on the edges of his mind. Was this a punishment? A twisted reflection of his past life, a life spent obsessing over food, over his image? The thought brought a flicker of something that might have been despair, a cold ember in the void.
He continued his silent trek, a lone figure adrift in an endless sea of nothingness. The turnip mukbang, his life, his very existence, seemed like a distant dream, a reality as insubstantial as the ground beneath his phantom feet. Nicholas, the fitness guru, the internet sensation, was gone. All that remained was a solitary consciousness, trapped in a chilling purgatory, forever adrift in the black.
A spark, a flicker of emerald in the endless black, pierced Nicholas’s despair. A green light, faint at first, but growing steadily in the distance. Hope, a forgotten sensation, surged through him, propelling him forward with renewed focus. Hours bled into one another as he strained towards the light, his “willpower walk” a desperate crawl through the thick blackness.
Finally, as his perception began to blur at the edges, the source of the green light came into focus. His own equipment. Microphone, computer tower, and there, the unmistakable green glow — the camera. Relief, sharp and unexpected, ripped through him. “What the hell,” he rasped, his voice raw and disused, “This thing’s still working?!”
He lurched towards the monitor, a surge of disbelief washing over him. The computer was on, the battery life a mockingly full bar. But the most bizarre sight was the chat window, still flickering with activity. All caps seemed to be the new norm.
“NICHOLAS WHERE U AT??”
“IS THIS SOME KIND OF STUNT??”
“BRO THE BLACK SCREEN FOR 25 DAYS IS CREEPY AF”
Twenty-five days. The realization hit him like a physical blow. The stream had been live this entire time, broadcasting nothing but oppressive black punctuated by the occasional flicker of the green light. His audience, trapped in a nightmare they couldn’t explain.
A morbid fascination seemed to have gripped the chat. Theories, wild and outlandish, filled the screen. Conspiracy theories, alien abduction, even a bizarre performance art piece. A cold sweat prickled his skin. How long had he been gone? What had happened upstairs? Was there even an “upstairs” anymore?
He reached out a hand, tentative at first, then with growing urgency, towards the monitor. His hand passed through the cool glass, a phantom limb encountering an invisible barrier. Panic clawed at his throat. He was trapped, a prisoner not just of this endless void, but of his own equipment, a disembodied voice broadcasting his silent scream to the world.
A single tear, unseen and unfelt, traced a path down his cheek. The green light, once a symbol of connection, now mocked him with its cruel indifference. He was a ghost in his own machine, lost in the endless black, his only connection to the world a horrifying testament to his bizarre disappearance. The question that echoed in the emptiness of his mind was no longer where he was, but how, or even if, he could ever get back.
A strained cough wracked Nicholas's form, the sound echoing eerily in the void. He forced a smile, stretching his lips into a grotesque parody of his usual cheer. "Hey chat," he rasped, his voice a rusty hinge protesting its use. "Yeah, everything's...going great! Just a little technical difficulty, that's all. We're back on track now, though!"
The chat exploded with skepticism.
"NICHOLAS THAT DOESN'T SOUND ALRIGHT."
"Dude, what WAS that for 25 days? Did you, like, fall asleep??"
"This is messed up. We're calling the cops."
Nicholas ran a hand through his hair, the sensation muted and distant. How could he explain a reality that defied explanation? He desperately searched for an answer, a plausible lie, but his mind was a wasteland.
"Look," he began, his voice tight with a mixture of fear and frustration. "I...I can't really explain it right now. But trust me, I'm fine. Just a bit…out of it. Maybe some bad internet or something?"
The lie tasted like ash in his mouth. The chat, an ever-watchful eye, wouldn't be fooled. They knew something was terribly wrong. But what? Trapped, with no way to explain the bizarre reality of his situation, Nicholas felt a new wave of panic rising.
His eyes darted to the reflection in the monitor, catching the haunted look in his own eyes. He was a pale specter, a ghost broadcasting from a machine that held him captive. A horrifying thought wormed its way into his mind. Was the stream even real? Was he broadcasting his silent scream into a void, or was this a cruel illusion, another layer of this bizarre purgatory?
Suddenly, a new message blazed across the chat, sent by a user with the name "ADMIN_MSG."
"NicholasAppleCoda," the message boomed, the font a harsh red, "Explain. Now."
The blood drained from Nicholas's face. A new player had entered the game, and the stakes had just been raised. He was no longer just adrift in the void; he was caught in a web, and who held the other strings was a terrifying mystery.
Nicholas swallowed hard, his throat dry and scratchy. "Okay, chat," he started, his voice hoarse. "Listen. I know this all looks crazy, but I swear, I'm not messing around. For the past...well, it seems like 25 days, I've been stuck in this…place."
He fumbled for the words, the concept of the void still eluding a simple explanation. "It's black. Empty. No air, no ground, nothing. But I'm…here. Somehow existing."
He recounted the details, the turnip mukbang, the sudden darkness, the strange survival without food or air. His voice trembled as he spoke, the horror of his situation finally spilling over.
The chat predictably erupted in chaos.
"OMG NICHOLAS IS SERIOUS?!"
"This is some next-level ARG man, props to the production value!"
"Yeah right, like we're gonna believe this ghost story."
The skepticism stung, but Nicholas pressed on. "Look, I know it sounds crazy. But I can't explain it any other way. I'm trapped, and this…this stream is the only connection I have left."
He gestured at the monitor, the green light mocking him with its normalcy. "This computer, it's still working. The internet, somehow it's still connected. I don't know why, but you guys…you're all I have right now."
A tense silence descended on the chat. The trolls, for a moment, seemed silenced by the raw fear in Nicholas's voice.
Nicholas stared at the blank space on the screen, a cold dread creeping into his gut. Escape? How could he escape from a place that defied definition? And who was "they"? The questions swirled in his head, unanswered and terrifying.
One thing was clear. He was no longer just a performer, a fitness guru trapped in a bizarre online stunt. He was a prisoner, a pawn in a game he didn't understand, and the only audience he had was the ever-watchful eye of the internet, a sea of faces both concerned and skeptical, all waiting to see what bizarre twist his digital purgatory would take next.
Relief washed over Nicholas, a fleeting wave in the endless black. The red message, the ominous "ADMIN_MSG," turned out to be just his regular moderator, a power user with fancy chat privileges. A small victory in a sea of confusion.
He ruled out the obvious culprits. No fancy VR experiment gone wrong – the lack of physical interaction with the void was a dead giveaway. Coma dream? No way. His thoughts were too sharp, his fear too real. And a government experiment? The paranoia was tempting, but the sheer absurdity of it all made him scoff.
His only solace, his lifeline, was the chat. He poured out his story, his frustration, his existential dread into the ever-scrolling stream of messages. They were his audience, his jury, and his only connection to a world that seemed to be slipping away.
The chat, in turn, offered a mixed bag. Support, skepticism, and the occasional conspiracy theory swirled in a digital maelstrom. But some, a dedicated few, started digging. Tech-savvy users pointed out the anomaly – the live stream functioning flawlessly with a full internet bar, yet any attempt to access other websites resulted in a "No Internet" message. It defied logic.
Nicholas, fueled by a sliver of hope, decided to experiment. He typed a message directly into the chat, a simple question. "Anyone else experiencing one-way internet?"
The response was immediate, a chorus of confused affirmations. Viewers from all corners of the globe confirmed the same bizarre phenomenon. Their internet functioned perfectly, except for accessing anything outside the stream. It was like a walled garden, with Nicholas as the unwilling centerpiece.
A new message flashed across the screen, this time from the moderator. "Nicholas," it read, "We're trying to help. We're contacting tech experts, anyone who can shed some light on this."
A sliver of hope flickered in Nicholas's chest. He wasn't alone. The internet, his bizarre prison, was also his potential lifeline. Maybe, just maybe, with the combined forces of his audience and the outside world, he could unravel the mystery of the black void and find his way back.
But a chilling reality lurked in the back of his mind. If the internet connection was controlled, who was controlling it? And what did they want with him, a washed-up fitness guru trapped in a digital purgatory? The questions remained, unanswered and terrifying, as Nicholas continued his silent scream, broadcasted live to a world teetering between fascination and fear.
7 months, 21 days. The stark black void had become Nicholas's bizarre reality. The green light, once a symbol of connection, now cast an eerie glow on his gaunt face. He'd become a prisoner of routine, the endless stream his only purpose. Mukbangs, though lacking the usual gusto, continued. He reviewed weird canned rations sent by curious viewers, experimented with recipes concocted in the chat, all the while keeping the conversation flowing, a desperate attempt to stave off the encroaching silence.
Then, a sensation. A faint tingling, like pins and needles, spread across his face. It wasn't painful, not exactly, but a persistent itch that wouldn't be ignored. He patted his cheeks, searched his scalp, a frantic hope blooming in his chest. Was it…?
He typed a message, his fingers trembling with anticipation. "Guys," he rasped, his voice dry with disuse. "Anyone else feel…tingling?"
The chat exploded. A flurry of messages, a mix of excitement and disbelief, flooded the screen.
"OMG NICHOLAS IS IT HAPPENING?!"
"He's feeling something? Maybe it's a sign!"
"Don't get your hopes up, chat. It could be nothing."
Nicholas closed his eyes, focusing on the sensation. It was faint, a whisper on his skin, but undeniable. A flicker of warmth, a subtle pressure…was it air? Could he finally…feel?
He opened his eyes, a single tear tracing a path down his cheek. The void remained, black and endless, but for the first time in months, a sliver of hope pierced the despair. The tingling, a tiny spark in the darkness, was a beacon, a promise of something more.
He continued his stream, his voice regaining a hint of its former enthusiasm. The mukbang, once a chore, became a celebration. He savored every bite, the flavors somehow brighter, more real. The chat mirrored his mood, a collective breath held in anticipation.
Was this the beginning of the end? A way out of the void? The answer remained a mystery, but for the first time in a long time, a future stretched before Nicholas, a future filled not just with endless black, but with the possibility of sensation, connection, and maybe, just maybe, escape.
The stream continued, a testament to human resilience, broadcasted live to a world waiting with bated breath to see if the faint tingling on a man's face in the void was the flicker of a flame rekindled, or just another cruel illusion in a digital purgatory.
A year, a month, and two days. The faint tingling, once a beacon of hope, had become a distant memory. The void remained, an oppressive presence that had begun to warp Nicholas's sanity. The endless black, his only companion, had morphed into a canvas for his fracturing mind.
It started subtly. Flickers of movement in the corner of his vision, fleeting shadows that vanished upon closer inspection. He dismissed them as tricks of the light, a symptom of the eternal darkness. But the chat, ever-observant, noticed the subtle shift. Their messages, once filled with hope, started to carry a new undercurrent – concern.
Then came the nightmares. Monstrous figures, birthed from the depths of his loneliness and fear, materialized in the void, their gnashing teeth and glowing eyes a terrifying hallucination. He screamed, a raw, desperate sound that echoed in the emptiness, his voice hoarse from disuse. His hands clawed at the air, desperate to push back against the unseen attackers.
The chat erupted in a frenzy of worry and confusion. Their messages, a cacophony of concern, scrolled across the screen.
"NICHOLAS WHAT'S HAPPENING?!"
"IS HE HAVING A VISION??"
"CALL SOMEONE, ANYONE!"
Nicholas, oblivious to the virtual world outside, ran. He ran in circles, his phantom feet pounding a nonexistent path. His lungs, unused to exertion for so long, burned with a phantom pain. The laughter of the unseen demons echoed in his ears, a maddening chorus that fueled his terror.
The line between reality and hallucination blurred. Was the tingling real? Was the void real? Or was it all a figment of a broken mind, a cruel joke played on a forgotten soul?
He slumped to the ground, his gasps for breath echoing in the silence. Tears, hot and silent, streamed down his face, a testament to his despair. The once-flippant performer was now a broken man, lost in the endless black, his only connection to the world a stream filled with worried strangers.
The future stretched before him, an endless expanse of uncertainty. Would the void claim him entirely, or would a sliver of sanity, a flicker of hope, manage to pierce through the encroaching madness? The stream continued, a silent scream broadcasted into the unknown, a testament to the fragility of the human mind and the enduring power of fear.
Eight agonizing months crawled by. The Nicholas AppleCoda livestream remained a static image, a black screen with a single red dot pulsing ominously in the corner, a grim reminder of the internet personality's disappearance. Theories swirled online. Had he been rescued? Was it all an elaborate stunt gone wrong? The chatroom, a ghost town of unanswered messages, became a monument to a lost connection.
Then, without warning, the screen flickered to life. A gasp echoed through the reconnected chat as a gaunt figure materialized in the familiar frame. It was Nicholas, but a shadow of his former self.
His once-boisterous face was gaunt, hollowed out by months of hardship. Scrapes marred his pale skin, a testament to his descent into madness. His eyes, usually sparkling with mischief, were now sunken and vacant, filled with a raw vulnerability that silenced even the most cynical viewers.
He didn't speak at first. Tears streamed down his face, silent and unchecked. The chat exploded, a mixture of relief and horrified curiosity flooding the screen.
"NICHOLAS ARE YOU OKAY?!"
"OMG WHAT HAPPENED?!"
"Don't cry, buddy. You're back!"
Finally, a choked sob escaped his lips. His voice, when he finally spoke, was a hoarse whisper. "I…I don't know how long it was. The void…it…it took me."
He recounted, in broken fragments, the horrors of his mental breakdown. The hallucinations, the gnawing loneliness, the desperate clawing at the nothingness that had become his prison. He spoke of self-inflicted wounds, a desperate attempt to feel something, anything, in the face of overwhelming numbness.
The chat, once a forum for amusement, became a sea of virtual arms reaching out to offer comfort. Words of support, stories of shared struggles, and promises of help filled the screen. Nicholas, overwhelmed, wept openly, the sound a raw, cathartic release.
The stream continued, a stark departure from its past. No more mukbangs, no more boisterous laughter. This was a testament to survival, a raw and honest portrayal of a man grappling with the aftermath of a terrifying ordeal.
What had happened in the void remained a mystery, but the experience left an indelible mark on Nicholas. He spoke of a suffocating darkness, a complete absence of sensation, a loneliness so profound it felt like a physical weight pressing down on him. The days bled into one another, devoid of time or purpose. He tried to scream, but no sound escaped his lips. He tried to move, but his limbs felt heavy and unresponsive. The only constant companion was a faint tingling sensation, a cruel reminder of what he had lost.
Then came the nightmares. Horrific visions, born from the depths of his isolation, materialized in the void. Grotesque creatures with gnashing teeth and glowing eyes tormented him, their laughter echoing in the endless darkness. He ran, his phantom feet pounding a nonexistent path, but there was no escape. The line between reality and hallucination blurred. He wasn't sure if he was clawing at the unseen demons or inflicting wounds on himself, a desperate attempt to feel something real, anything real.
The once vibrant stream of Nicholas AppleCoda had become a chilling testament to his ordeal. The familiar green glow of the camera now flickered erratically, displaying a scene of unsettling distortion. Static lines danced across the screen, morphing into swirling patterns that seemed to writhe with an unseen energy.
The chat, once a cacophony of voices, had become a worried murmur. Messages popped up sporadically, punctuated by long stretches of silence.
"NICHOLAS, IS THE CAMERA BROKEN?"
"These glitches are creepy..."
"Is he okay? Can he even see the chat?"
Nicholas himself, a gaunt figure with sunken eyes, remained largely motionless in the distorted frame. His blank stare seemed to pierce through the camera, a chilling disconnect from the audience. At times, a flicker of recognition would cross his face, a hint of his former self struggling through the veil of trauma.
Then, as abruptly as it started, the video feed would cut out entirely. The screen would plunge into darkness, leaving behind only the now-ominous red dot, pulsing like a beating heart. Minutes, sometimes hours, would crawl by, filled with a suffocating silence. The chat would erupt in worried speculation, only to be met with an unsettling quiet.
Finally, with a flicker and a burst of static, the image would return. Nicholas would be back in his chair, his vacant expression unchanged. The cycle would repeat, a macabre dance between normalcy and terrifying glitch.
The internet, ever the breeding ground for theories, ran wild. Technical malfunctions? A desperate plea for help encoded in the static? Or something far more sinister? Was the void clinging to Nicholas, even in his return? Was the distorted reality a reflection of his fractured mind?
The questions hung heavy in the air, unanswered and terrifying. The stream continued, a chilling reminder that the line between reality and the horrors of the void had been irrevocably blurred. Nicholas, a broken shell of his former self, remained trapped, a prisoner not just of the void, but of the distorted echo of his own experience, broadcasted live for a world to witness.
A tremor ran through Nicholas's skeletal frame, a stark contrast to the stillness that had become his norm. He stared down at his hands, his vacant eyes flickering with a flicker of nascent horror. The familiar flesh, once plump and pale, had begun to distort. The fingers, stretched and elongated, resembled skeletal spiderwebs, their skin pulled taut over protruding bones.
A choked gasp escaped his lips, the first sound he'd uttered in hours. He flexed his hand, a grotesque parody of the movement, the papery skin straining against the unnatural tension. A message flickered across the screen, a chilling testament to the horror unfolding.
"NICHOLAS WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR HANDS?!"
The question hung in the air, unanswered. Nicholas, overwhelmed by the sight, could only stare, his mind struggling to comprehend the physical manifestation of his ordeal. The void, it seemed, wasn't content with just his sanity. It craved a piece of him, a permanent reminder of its touch.
Panic, a long-dormant emotion, stirred in the pit of his stomach. If the void could warp his flesh, what else could it do? Was this the beginning of a gruesome transformation? Would he slowly become a grotesque reflection of the horrors he'd witnessed?
The chat, a silent observer to his descent, erupted in a frenzy of speculation. Medical anomalies, digital manipulation, even a bizarre new form of body horror – theories swirled in a digital maelstrom. But beneath the speculation lay a core of undeniable fear.
The once distant horror story had become an unsettling reality. Nicholas, a living embodiment of the void's power, was a stark reminder of the price he'd paid for his return. He was no longer just a performer trapped in a digital purgatory; he was a cautionary tale, a living testament to the fragility of sanity and the enduring power of the unknown.
The distorted camera feed continued to flicker, capturing the silent scream on Nicholas's face. His eyes, once vacant, now held a flicker of desperate intelligence. He was trapped, not just in a distorted reality, but in a decaying body, a grotesque reflection of the void's hold on him.
The stream continued, a horrifying evolution of what it once was. No longer a platform for entertainment, it was a window into a nightmare, a chilling glimpse into the price of survival and the horrifying cost of returning from the endless black. The question that echoed in the distorted silence was no longer "where is he?" but a far more terrifying one: "what has the void done to him?"
A flicker of his old self, a morbid echo of his past routines, sparked in Nicholas's vacant eyes. A cruel joke, a desperate attempt to reclaim a sliver of normalcy. He contorted his face into a familiar caricature of mock pain, gripping his middle finger with exaggerated force.
"Hey chat," he rasped, his voice a rusty hinge protesting its use. "Just gonna, uh, pop this bad boy right out. Don't worry, it's just a prank, bro!"
He yanked, expecting the usual simulated yelp, the canned laughter echoing in his head. But there was no pain, no resistance. His eyes snapped open, his vacant stare replaced by a jolt of raw terror.
In his hand, or rather, what remained of his hand, was a mangled nub of bone. Hovering beside it, detached and glistening, was his middle finger, a grotesque parody of itself, the flesh stretched thin over the skeletal digit.
A choked scream, the first truly genuine sound to escape his lips in months, tore through the distorted video feed. The chat erupted in a horrified cacophony.
"HOLY SHIT WHAT WAS THAT?!"
"Dude, is this real? Is this some special effect?"
"NICHOLAS CALL AN AMBULANCE!"
But the pleas were lost on him. Nicholas stared at the detached digit, his mind reeling. The void, it seemed, had not only warped his flesh, it had rendered him impervious to pain, a horrifying mockery of his former self.
He reached out, a tentative tremor in his hand, towards the floating finger. It bobbed gently in the air, defying gravity. As his spiderweb-thin fingers brushed against it, a jolt of…something, not pain, but a cold, alien sensation, ripped through him. He recoiled, a whimper escaping his cracked lips.
The realization crashed down on him with the force of a collapsing star. He wasn't just decaying; he was changing. The void, in its perverse way, was remaking him in its image, a grotesque reflection of its unending darkness.
The distorted camera feed continued to capture his descent. Tears, silent and horrifying, streamed down his gaunt face. He was trapped, not just in a digital purgatory, but in a body that was no longer his own. The void's hold tightened, and Nicholas AppleCoda, the streamer, the prankster, the broken shell of a man, screamed a silent scream into the endless black, a horrifying testament to the price of survival and the true cost of returning from the void.
Three years. The number held no meaning in the distorted reality that Nicholas now inhabited. The once-familiar room had become a warped reflection, the camera feed a flickering nightmare of static and distorted shapes. His audience, if any remained, witnessed a horrifying descent into the unknown.
His hands, once spiderwebs of stretched flesh, had become phantasmagoric appendages. They passed through each other with an unsettling ease, the paper-thin skin rippling like heat waves. The defiance of reality was constant, a chilling reminder of the void's hold.
One day, a flicker of morbid curiosity sparked in Nicholas's vacant eyes. He stared at his hand, a skeletal parody of its former self. With a detached curiosity, he reached for his own forearm, the intent unclear even to himself.
Then, the impossible happened. His hand, insubstantial as smoke, phased through his flesh. He gasped, a raspy sound that echoed in the distorted silence. He could feel…something. Not pain, but a strange sensation, a coldness that seeped into his core even as a phantom warmth washed over the point of contact. He was inside himself, a horrifying explorer in a grotesque landscape of bone and warped flesh.
The experience was brief, a terrifying glimpse into a reality that defied comprehension. He recoiled, his form trembling, a whimper escaping his cracked lips. The chat, if anyone was even watching, erupted in a flurry of horrified speculation. Glitches in the matrix? A descent into madness given form? The questions hung heavy in the distorted air, unanswered and terrifying.
The horror show continued. Nicholas, a living embodiment of the void's corruption, explored the boundaries of his warped existence. Objects flickered in and out of existence. The walls seemed to breathe, pulsating with an unseen energy. His reflection in the distorted screen was a grotesque caricature, a skeletal figure with eyes that burned with an alien light.
The stream, a monument to human resilience and the horrifying cost of survival, continued. It was a chilling testament to the power of the unknown, a glimpse into a reality where the very fabric of existence could be twisted and molded by forces beyond human comprehension. Nicholas AppleCoda, a name that once evoked laughter and controversy, now represented a chilling cautionary tale – a man forever trapped in a distorted echo of his own existence, a broken soul broadcasting his silent scream into the endless void.
A year. 365 agonizing rotations of a broken world. The Nicholas AppleCoda stream remained a static canvas, a testament to the horrifying transformation that had consumed the streamer. Whispers lingered online. Had the void finally claimed him? Was this some elaborate, morbid performance art? The unanswered questions gnawed at the hearts of those who’d borne witness to his descent.
Then, without warning, the screen flickered to life. A gasp, ragged and raw, echoed through the speakers. But the sight that greeted the viewers was enough to turn their blood to ice.
Nicholas, a grotesque parody of his former self, filled the frame. His body, once a canvas for excess, was now a horrifying sculpture of exposed bone and pulsating organs. A gaping hole in his torso revealed a single kidney, suspended in mid-air like a grotesque balloon. His remaining eye, bloodshot and bulging, stared vacantly into the camera. Where his skull should have been, a horrifying sight unfolded – his brain, a wrinkled mass, pulsated in two distinct halves.
The chat, a place of amusement and camaraderie now, erupted in a cacophony of terror and revulsion.
"OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED?!"
"This is too much! I can't watch!"
"Someone call an ambulance! Or a priest!"
But Nicholas remained oblivious to the horrified audience. A single, broken sob escaped his lips, a sound devoid of hope or despair, simply a primal expression of a shattered existence.
In a raspy, alien voice, he spoke. His words, fragmented and nonsensical, hinted at unspeakable horrors. He spoke of a hunger that no food could satiate, of a loneliness that echoed in the endless black, and a pain that transcended the physical.
The video feed devolved into a chaotic mess. The distorted room pulsed with an unnatural light. The remaining furniture seemed to writhe and warp. Nicholas’s screams, a horrifying mix of human and something else entirely, filled the speakers.
Then, with a deafening crackle, the screen cut to black. Silence. An unnerving silence that stretched into what felt like an eternity.
The internet, abuzz with a morbid fascination, spun theories. Had the void finally consumed Nicholas, not just physically, but fundamentally? Was this the true price of his return, a fate worse than death?
The answer remained a horrifying mystery. The Nicholas AppleCoda stream, a monument to human curiosity and the horrifying cost of venturing into the unknown, now served as a chilling reminder. Some truths are better left unseen. Some realities are better left undisturbed. The darkness of the void, it seemed, had claimed its prize, leaving behind only a grotesque echo, a broken and horrifying testament to the streamer who dared to look into the abyss and live to see the true cost of his survival.
(Bonus points to those who can guess what story is this inspired by)

Green Reality

The green recording light cast an eerie glow on Nicholas Applecoda’s face as he boomed, “Hey guys, welcome back to another Mukbang Monday! Today’s a little different, though. We’re taking a healthy turnip twist!”
Nicholas, a stark contrast to his former, heavier self, grinned and flexed a bicep. A colorful stack of turnip dishes dominated the table in front of him: roasted turnips with rosemary, turnip fritters with a side of vegan tzatziki, and even a steaming bowl of turnip noodle soup.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Nicholas chuckled, picking up a glistening roasted turnip. “Turnips? For a mukbang? But trust me, guys, these lil’ guys are underrated. They’re packed with nutrients, low in calories, and surprisingly versatile!”
He took a large bite, his eyes widening in mock surprise. “Whoa! Don’t knock it till you try it, chat! This rosemary roasted turnip is actually…really good. Like, earthy, slightly sweet, and the rosemary adds this amazing kick!”
Nicholas munched through the turnip fritters with gusto, dipping them generously in the tzatziki. “See, these fritters are crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and the vegan tzatziki adds this coolness that just cuts through the richness. Perfect combo!”
Chat, ever the comedian, flooded with messages.
“Nicholas gonna turn into a human turnip by the end of the stream! “
“Plot twist: Nicholas secretly sponsored by the Big Turnip.”
Nicholas laughed, shaking his head. “You guys are relentless! But for real, turnips are a great way to add some variety to your diet. They’re cheap, easy to find, and can be prepared in so many ways. Plus, they keep you feeling full for longer, which is a win-win for anyone trying to stay healthy.”
He slurped down a spoonful of the turnip noodle soup, a satisfied sigh escaping his lips. “And let me tell you, this soup is the ultimate comfort food. Warm, hearty, and packed with flavor. Plus, it’s guilt-free! How awesome is that?”
Nicholas continued his turnip exploration, sharing recipe tips and funny anecdotes in between bites. The chat, though initially skeptical, seemed to be warming up to the idea.
“Okay, Nicholas, you convinced me. I gotta try those turnip fritters now!”
“Never thought I’d say this, but that turnip soup actually looks good.”
As Nicholas polished off the last turnip dish, a wide grin spread across his face. “There you have it, guys! A healthy and delicious mukbang that won’t leave you feeling like a sack of potatoes. Remember, it’s all about balance. You can still enjoy yummy food and stay on track with your fitness goals.”
He winked at the camera. “So, what are you waiting for? Grab some turnips and get cookin’! And don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell for more healthy (and maybe some not-so-healthy) mukbangs in the future!”
A rogue turnip slice flung from his fork mid-sentence splattered harmlessly onto the table. Nicholas, ever the showman, chuckled and tossed it towards the camera with a wink. “See, even healthy eating can get messy, chat! Now, where were we…”
His playful banter was cut short by a jarring thump from the floor above. It wasn’t a thud, a dull impact, but a series of frantic, pounding noises. Nicholas’s brow furrowed, the smile momentarily faltering. “Huh, that’s weird,” he muttered, glancing upwards. The sound of his own voice echoed slightly in the confined basement space, amplifying the unsettling rhythm of the banging.
Chat, ever quick to latch onto anything out of the ordinary, exploded with speculation.
“Nicholas having a dance party upstairs?”
“Maybe it’s just the wind…right?”
“Uh oh, sounds like someone broke in!”
Nicholas, despite his usual bravado, felt a prickle of unease crawl up his spine. He lived alone. There shouldn’t be anyone ‘up there.’ The banging continued, growing more insistent, punctuated by the unmistakable scrape of something heavy being dragged across the floor. Nicholas swallowed hard, a cold sweat forming on his brow. The green recording light, once a comforting presence, now seemed to cast an ominous glow on his increasingly pale face.
He forced a smile, trying to project a sense of normalcy for the live stream. “Alright chat, looks like we’re gonna have a little intermission. Gotta go check what that racket is all about. Brb!”
He rose from his chair, his movements stiff and tentative. The camera remained fixed on the turnip-laden table, capturing the unsettling silence that had replaced the rhythmic pounding. A single turnip fritter, forgotten on a plate, seemed to cast a grotesquely long shadow in the flickering green light.
Then, with a deafening crash that sent a jolt through the camera, the live feed abruptly cut to black. The only sound remaining — an eerie silence, punctuated by the faint hum of unseen electronics.
Abrupt silence
Panic, cold and sharp, clawed its way up Nicholas’s throat. The basement, the turnip mukbang, everything felt like a lifetime ago. He stumbled again, the sensation more like a float than a fall. There was no floor beneath his feet, no resistance. The air, if it could even be called that anymore, was like thin, metallic soup offering no purchase for his lungs.
The lack of oxygen, a terrifying concept he’d only ever encountered in horror movies, should have left him gasping, desperate. But here, the absence of air felt strangely muted, a dull ache behind his sternum rather than a burning scream.
His eyes, wide with terror, searched the endless abyss. Inky blackness stretched in all directions, a suffocating void devoid of stars, light, or even the faintest outline. It wasn’t just silent; it was a silence so profound it seemed to press against his eardrums. No wind, no hum of electricity, not even the frantic pounding of his own heart. Here, in this featureless, soundless void, even fear itself seemed muted.
He clawed at the emptiness, his hand encountering nothing but a chilling resistance, like pushing against a thick, invisible fog. There was no ground, no walls, no up or down. Just Nicholas, suspended in a black, suffocating nothingness, utterly lost and utterly alone.
A horrifying thought pierced his mind. Was he dead? Was this some bizarre afterlife? Or something far worse? A whimper escaped his lips, a sound that died as quickly as it formed, swallowed by the endless silence.
22 days. Time, a concept once measured by steaming mugs of coffee and the click of the record button, had become a blurry expanse. Hunger gnawed at Nicholas, a dull, persistent ache that never quite blossomed into the full-blown roar he expected. His breaths, shallow and ineffective, felt like a fish desperately trying to breathe air. Yet, here he was, a morbid anomaly, existing in this unending void.
The initial, panicked thrashing had given way to a chilling stillness. He wasn’t sure if he’d accepted his fate, or if the very concept of acceptance had dissolved in the endless black. His mind, once a whirlwind of chaotic energy, was now a slow, churning pool, desperately trying to grasp at the threads of memory.
The last vivid scene — the green recording light, the half-eaten turnip fritter — flickered at the edge of his consciousness. How? Why? The questions bounced around the emptiness of his mind, unanswered and echoing.
Movement, a concept he barely understood anymore, came through sheer will. It wasn’t walking, not in the traditional sense. It was a slow, deliberate pushing against the thick, black resistance that surrounded him. Like wading through a vat of molasses that defied all physical laws. He could propel himself forward, a sluggish dance in the void.
Direction? Up, down, left, right — these were meaningless concepts here. Yet, a strange intuition guided him. He pushed forward, a silent scream trapped in his chest, searching for anything, a flicker of light, a change in the oppressive blackness.
As days bled into weeks, a sliver of a thought, fragile as a spiderweb, snagged on the edges of his mind. Was this a punishment? A twisted reflection of his past life, a life spent obsessing over food, over his image? The thought brought a flicker of something that might have been despair, a cold ember in the void.
He continued his silent trek, a lone figure adrift in an endless sea of nothingness. The turnip mukbang, his life, his very existence, seemed like a distant dream, a reality as insubstantial as the ground beneath his phantom feet. Nicholas, the fitness guru, the internet sensation, was gone. All that remained was a solitary consciousness, trapped in a chilling purgatory, forever adrift in the black.
A spark, a flicker of emerald in the endless black, pierced Nicholas’s despair. A green light, faint at first, but growing steadily in the distance. Hope, a forgotten sensation, surged through him, propelling him forward with renewed focus. Hours bled into one another as he strained towards the light, his “willpower walk” a desperate crawl through the thick blackness.
Finally, as his perception began to blur at the edges, the source of the green light came into focus. His own equipment. Microphone, computer tower, and there, the unmistakable green glow — the camera. Relief, sharp and unexpected, ripped through him. “What the hell,” he rasped, his voice raw and disused, “This thing’s still working?!”
He lurched towards the monitor, a surge of disbelief washing over him. The computer was on, the battery life a mockingly full bar. But the most bizarre sight was the chat window, still flickering with activity. All caps seemed to be the new norm.
“NICHOLAS WHERE U AT??”
“IS THIS SOME KIND OF STUNT??”
“BRO THE BLACK SCREEN FOR 25 DAYS IS CREEPY AF”
Twenty-five days. The realization hit him like a physical blow. The stream had been live this entire time, broadcasting nothing but oppressive black punctuated by the occasional flicker of the green light. His audience, trapped in a nightmare they couldn’t explain.
A morbid fascination seemed to have gripped the chat. Theories, wild and outlandish, filled the screen. Conspiracy theories, alien abduction, even a bizarre performance art piece. A cold sweat prickled his skin. How long had he been gone? What had happened upstairs? Was there even an “upstairs” anymore?
He reached out a hand, tentative at first, then with growing urgency, towards the monitor. His hand passed through the cool glass, a phantom limb encountering an invisible barrier. Panic clawed at his throat. He was trapped, a prisoner not just of this endless void, but of his own equipment, a disembodied voice broadcasting his silent scream to the world.
A single tear, unseen and unfelt, traced a path down his cheek. The green light, once a symbol of connection, now mocked him with its cruel indifference. He was a ghost in his own machine, lost in the endless black, his only connection to the world a horrifying testament to his bizarre disappearance. The question that echoed in the emptiness of his mind was no longer where he was, but how, or even if, he could ever get back.
A strained cough wracked Nicholas's form, the sound echoing eerily in the void. He forced a smile, stretching his lips into a grotesque parody of his usual cheer. "Hey chat," he rasped, his voice a rusty hinge protesting its use. "Yeah, everything's...going great! Just a little technical difficulty, that's all. We're back on track now, though!"
The chat exploded with skepticism.
"NICHOLAS THAT DOESN'T SOUND ALRIGHT."
"Dude, what WAS that for 25 days? Did you, like, fall asleep??"
"This is messed up. We're calling the cops."
Nicholas ran a hand through his hair, the sensation muted and distant. How could he explain a reality that defied explanation? He desperately searched for an answer, a plausible lie, but his mind was a wasteland.
"Look," he began, his voice tight with a mixture of fear and frustration. "I...I can't really explain it right now. But trust me, I'm fine. Just a bit…out of it. Maybe some bad internet or something?"
The lie tasted like ash in his mouth. The chat, an ever-watchful eye, wouldn't be fooled. They knew something was terribly wrong. But what? Trapped, with no way to explain the bizarre reality of his situation, Nicholas felt a new wave of panic rising.
His eyes darted to the reflection in the monitor, catching the haunted look in his own eyes. He was a pale specter, a ghost broadcasting from a machine that held him captive. A horrifying thought wormed its way into his mind. Was the stream even real? Was he broadcasting his silent scream into a void, or was this a cruel illusion, another layer of this bizarre purgatory?
Suddenly, a new message blazed across the chat, sent by a user with the name "ADMIN_MSG."
"NicholasAppleCoda," the message boomed, the font a harsh red, "Explain. Now."
The blood drained from Nicholas's face. A new player had entered the game, and the stakes had just been raised. He was no longer just adrift in the void; he was caught in a web, and who held the other strings was a terrifying mystery.
Nicholas swallowed hard, his throat dry and scratchy. "Okay, chat," he started, his voice hoarse. "Listen. I know this all looks crazy, but I swear, I'm not messing around. For the past...well, it seems like 25 days, I've been stuck in this…place."
He fumbled for the words, the concept of the void still eluding a simple explanation. "It's black. Empty. No air, no ground, nothing. But I'm…here. Somehow existing."
He recounted the details, the turnip mukbang, the sudden darkness, the strange survival without food or air. His voice trembled as he spoke, the horror of his situation finally spilling over.
The chat predictably erupted in chaos.
"OMG NICHOLAS IS SERIOUS?!"
"This is some next-level ARG man, props to the production value!"
"Yeah right, like we're gonna believe this ghost story."
The skepticism stung, but Nicholas pressed on. "Look, I know it sounds crazy. But I can't explain it any other way. I'm trapped, and this…this stream is the only connection I have left."
He gestured at the monitor, the green light mocking him with its normalcy. "This computer, it's still working. The internet, somehow it's still connected. I don't know why, but you guys…you're all I have right now."
A tense silence descended on the chat. The trolls, for a moment, seemed silenced by the raw fear in Nicholas's voice.
Nicholas stared at the blank space on the screen, a cold dread creeping into his gut. Escape? How could he escape from a place that defied definition? And who was "they"? The questions swirled in his head, unanswered and terrifying.
One thing was clear. He was no longer just a performer, a fitness guru trapped in a bizarre online stunt. He was a prisoner, a pawn in a game he didn't understand, and the only audience he had was the ever-watchful eye of the internet, a sea of faces both concerned and skeptical, all waiting to see what bizarre twist his digital purgatory would take next.
Relief washed over Nicholas, a fleeting wave in the endless black. The red message, the ominous "ADMIN_MSG," turned out to be just his regular moderator, a power user with fancy chat privileges. A small victory in a sea of confusion.
He ruled out the obvious culprits. No fancy VR experiment gone wrong – the lack of physical interaction with the void was a dead giveaway. Coma dream? No way. His thoughts were too sharp, his fear too real. And a government experiment? The paranoia was tempting, but the sheer absurdity of it all made him scoff.
His only solace, his lifeline, was the chat. He poured out his story, his frustration, his existential dread into the ever-scrolling stream of messages. They were his audience, his jury, and his only connection to a world that seemed to be slipping away.
The chat, in turn, offered a mixed bag. Support, skepticism, and the occasional conspiracy theory swirled in a digital maelstrom. But some, a dedicated few, started digging. Tech-savvy users pointed out the anomaly – the live stream functioning flawlessly with a full internet bar, yet any attempt to access other websites resulted in a "No Internet" message. It defied logic.
Nicholas, fueled by a sliver of hope, decided to experiment. He typed a message directly into the chat, a simple question. "Anyone else experiencing one-way internet?"
The response was immediate, a chorus of confused affirmations. Viewers from all corners of the globe confirmed the same bizarre phenomenon. Their internet functioned perfectly, except for accessing anything outside the stream. It was like a walled garden, with Nicholas as the unwilling centerpiece.
A new message flashed across the screen, this time from the moderator. "Nicholas," it read, "We're trying to help. We're contacting tech experts, anyone who can shed some light on this."
A sliver of hope flickered in Nicholas's chest. He wasn't alone. The internet, his bizarre prison, was also his potential lifeline. Maybe, just maybe, with the combined forces of his audience and the outside world, he could unravel the mystery of the black void and find his way back.
But a chilling reality lurked in the back of his mind. If the internet connection was controlled, who was controlling it? And what did they want with him, a washed-up fitness guru trapped in a digital purgatory? The questions remained, unanswered and terrifying, as Nicholas continued his silent scream, broadcasted live to a world teetering between fascination and fear.
7 months, 21 days. The stark black void had become Nicholas's bizarre reality. The green light, once a symbol of connection, now cast an eerie glow on his gaunt face. He'd become a prisoner of routine, the endless stream his only purpose. Mukbangs, though lacking the usual gusto, continued. He reviewed weird canned rations sent by curious viewers, experimented with recipes concocted in the chat, all the while keeping the conversation flowing, a desperate attempt to stave off the encroaching silence.
Then, a sensation. A faint tingling, like pins and needles, spread across his face. It wasn't painful, not exactly, but a persistent itch that wouldn't be ignored. He patted his cheeks, searched his scalp, a frantic hope blooming in his chest. Was it…?
He typed a message, his fingers trembling with anticipation. "Guys," he rasped, his voice dry with disuse. "Anyone else feel…tingling?"
The chat exploded. A flurry of messages, a mix of excitement and disbelief, flooded the screen.
"OMG NICHOLAS IS IT HAPPENING?!"
"He's feeling something? Maybe it's a sign!"
"Don't get your hopes up, chat. It could be nothing."
Nicholas closed his eyes, focusing on the sensation. It was faint, a whisper on his skin, but undeniable. A flicker of warmth, a subtle pressure…was it air? Could he finally…feel?
He opened his eyes, a single tear tracing a path down his cheek. The void remained, black and endless, but for the first time in months, a sliver of hope pierced the despair. The tingling, a tiny spark in the darkness, was a beacon, a promise of something more.
He continued his stream, his voice regaining a hint of its former enthusiasm. The mukbang, once a chore, became a celebration. He savored every bite, the flavors somehow brighter, more real. The chat mirrored his mood, a collective breath held in anticipation.
Was this the beginning of the end? A way out of the void? The answer remained a mystery, but for the first time in a long time, a future stretched before Nicholas, a future filled not just with endless black, but with the possibility of sensation, connection, and maybe, just maybe, escape.
The stream continued, a testament to human resilience, broadcasted live to a world waiting with bated breath to see if the faint tingling on a man's face in the void was the flicker of a flame rekindled, or just another cruel illusion in a digital purgatory.
A year, a month, and two days. The faint tingling, once a beacon of hope, had become a distant memory. The void remained, an oppressive presence that had begun to warp Nicholas's sanity. The endless black, his only companion, had morphed into a canvas for his fracturing mind.
It started subtly. Flickers of movement in the corner of his vision, fleeting shadows that vanished upon closer inspection. He dismissed them as tricks of the light, a symptom of the eternal darkness. But the chat, ever-observant, noticed the subtle shift. Their messages, once filled with hope, started to carry a new undercurrent – concern.
Then came the nightmares. Monstrous figures, birthed from the depths of his loneliness and fear, materialized in the void, their gnashing teeth and glowing eyes a terrifying hallucination. He screamed, a raw, desperate sound that echoed in the emptiness, his voice hoarse from disuse. His hands clawed at the air, desperate to push back against the unseen attackers.
The chat erupted in a frenzy of worry and confusion. Their messages, a cacophony of concern, scrolled across the screen.
"NICHOLAS WHAT'S HAPPENING?!"
"IS HE HAVING A VISION??"
"CALL SOMEONE, ANYONE!"
Nicholas, oblivious to the virtual world outside, ran. He ran in circles, his phantom feet pounding a nonexistent path. His lungs, unused to exertion for so long, burned with a phantom pain. The laughter of the unseen demons echoed in his ears, a maddening chorus that fueled his terror.
The line between reality and hallucination blurred. Was the tingling real? Was the void real? Or was it all a figment of a broken mind, a cruel joke played on a forgotten soul?
He slumped to the ground, his gasps for breath echoing in the silence. Tears, hot and silent, streamed down his face, a testament to his despair. The once-flippant performer was now a broken man, lost in the endless black, his only connection to the world a stream filled with worried strangers.
The future stretched before him, an endless expanse of uncertainty. Would the void claim him entirely, or would a sliver of sanity, a flicker of hope, manage to pierce through the encroaching madness? The stream continued, a silent scream broadcasted into the unknown, a testament to the fragility of the human mind and the enduring power of fear.
Eight agonizing months crawled by. The Nicholas AppleCoda livestream remained a static image, a black screen with a single red dot pulsing ominously in the corner, a grim reminder of the internet personality's disappearance. Theories swirled online. Had he been rescued? Was it all an elaborate stunt gone wrong? The chatroom, a ghost town of unanswered messages, became a monument to a lost connection.
Then, without warning, the screen flickered to life. A gasp echoed through the reconnected chat as a gaunt figure materialized in the familiar frame. It was Nicholas, but a shadow of his former self.
His once-boisterous face was gaunt, hollowed out by months of hardship. Scrapes marred his pale skin, a testament to his descent into madness. His eyes, usually sparkling with mischief, were now sunken and vacant, filled with a raw vulnerability that silenced even the most cynical viewers.
He didn't speak at first. Tears streamed down his face, silent and unchecked. The chat exploded, a mixture of relief and horrified curiosity flooding the screen.
"NICHOLAS ARE YOU OKAY?!"
"OMG WHAT HAPPENED?!"
"Don't cry, buddy. You're back!"
Finally, a choked sob escaped his lips. His voice, when he finally spoke, was a hoarse whisper. "I…I don't know how long it was. The void…it…it took me."
He recounted, in broken fragments, the horrors of his mental breakdown. The hallucinations, the gnawing loneliness, the desperate clawing at the nothingness that had become his prison. He spoke of self-inflicted wounds, a desperate attempt to feel something, anything, in the face of overwhelming numbness.
The chat, once a forum for amusement, became a sea of virtual arms reaching out to offer comfort. Words of support, stories of shared struggles, and promises of help filled the screen. Nicholas, overwhelmed, wept openly, the sound a raw, cathartic release.
The stream continued, a stark departure from its past. No more mukbangs, no more boisterous laughter. This was a testament to survival, a raw and honest portrayal of a man grappling with the aftermath of a terrifying ordeal.
What had happened in the void remained a mystery, but the experience left an indelible mark on Nicholas. He spoke of a suffocating darkness, a complete absence of sensation, a loneliness so profound it felt like a physical weight pressing down on him. The days bled into one another, devoid of time or purpose. He tried to scream, but no sound escaped his lips. He tried to move, but his limbs felt heavy and unresponsive. The only constant companion was a faint tingling sensation, a cruel reminder of what he had lost.
Then came the nightmares. Horrific visions, born from the depths of his isolation, materialized in the void. Grotesque creatures with gnashing teeth and glowing eyes tormented him, their laughter echoing in the endless darkness. He ran, his phantom feet pounding a nonexistent path, but there was no escape. The line between reality and hallucination blurred. He wasn't sure if he was clawing at the unseen demons or inflicting wounds on himself, a desperate attempt to feel something real, anything real.
The once vibrant stream of Nicholas AppleCoda had become a chilling testament to his ordeal. The familiar green glow of the camera now flickered erratically, displaying a scene of unsettling distortion. Static lines danced across the screen, morphing into swirling patterns that seemed to writhe with an unseen energy.
The chat, once a cacophony of voices, had become a worried murmur. Messages popped up sporadically, punctuated by long stretches of silence.
"NICHOLAS, IS THE CAMERA BROKEN?"
"These glitches are creepy..."
"Is he okay? Can he even see the chat?"
Nicholas himself, a gaunt figure with sunken eyes, remained largely motionless in the distorted frame. His blank stare seemed to pierce through the camera, a chilling disconnect from the audience. At times, a flicker of recognition would cross his face, a hint of his former self struggling through the veil of trauma.
Then, as abruptly as it started, the video feed would cut out entirely. The screen would plunge into darkness, leaving behind only the now-ominous red dot, pulsing like a beating heart. Minutes, sometimes hours, would crawl by, filled with a suffocating silence. The chat would erupt in worried speculation, only to be met with an unsettling quiet.
Finally, with a flicker and a burst of static, the image would return. Nicholas would be back in his chair, his vacant expression unchanged. The cycle would repeat, a macabre dance between normalcy and terrifying glitch.
The internet, ever the breeding ground for theories, ran wild. Technical malfunctions? A desperate plea for help encoded in the static? Or something far more sinister? Was the void clinging to Nicholas, even in his return? Was the distorted reality a reflection of his fractured mind?
The questions hung heavy in the air, unanswered and terrifying. The stream continued, a chilling reminder that the line between reality and the horrors of the void had been irrevocably blurred. Nicholas, a broken shell of his former self, remained trapped, a prisoner not just of the void, but of the distorted echo of his own experience, broadcasted live for a world to witness.
A tremor ran through Nicholas's skeletal frame, a stark contrast to the stillness that had become his norm. He stared down at his hands, his vacant eyes flickering with a flicker of nascent horror. The familiar flesh, once plump and pale, had begun to distort. The fingers, stretched and elongated, resembled skeletal spiderwebs, their skin pulled taut over protruding bones.
A choked gasp escaped his lips, the first sound he'd uttered in hours. He flexed his hand, a grotesque parody of the movement, the papery skin straining against the unnatural tension. A message flickered across the screen, a chilling testament to the horror unfolding.
"NICHOLAS WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR HANDS?!"
The question hung in the air, unanswered. Nicholas, overwhelmed by the sight, could only stare, his mind struggling to comprehend the physical manifestation of his ordeal. The void, it seemed, wasn't content with just his sanity. It craved a piece of him, a permanent reminder of its touch.
Panic, a long-dormant emotion, stirred in the pit of his stomach. If the void could warp his flesh, what else could it do? Was this the beginning of a gruesome transformation? Would he slowly become a grotesque reflection of the horrors he'd witnessed?
The chat, a silent observer to his descent, erupted in a frenzy of speculation. Medical anomalies, digital manipulation, even a bizarre new form of body horror – theories swirled in a digital maelstrom. But beneath the speculation lay a core of undeniable fear.
The once distant horror story had become an unsettling reality. Nicholas, a living embodiment of the void's power, was a stark reminder of the price he'd paid for his return. He was no longer just a performer trapped in a digital purgatory; he was a cautionary tale, a living testament to the fragility of sanity and the enduring power of the unknown.
The distorted camera feed continued to flicker, capturing the silent scream on Nicholas's face. His eyes, once vacant, now held a flicker of desperate intelligence. He was trapped, not just in a distorted reality, but in a decaying body, a grotesque reflection of the void's hold on him.
The stream continued, a horrifying evolution of what it once was. No longer a platform for entertainment, it was a window into a nightmare, a chilling glimpse into the price of survival and the horrifying cost of returning from the endless black. The question that echoed in the distorted silence was no longer "where is he?" but a far more terrifying one: "what has the void done to him?"
A flicker of his old self, a morbid echo of his past routines, sparked in Nicholas's vacant eyes. A cruel joke, a desperate attempt to reclaim a sliver of normalcy. He contorted his face into a familiar caricature of mock pain, gripping his middle finger with exaggerated force.
"Hey chat," he rasped, his voice a rusty hinge protesting its use. "Just gonna, uh, pop this bad boy right out. Don't worry, it's just a prank, bro!"
He yanked, expecting the usual simulated yelp, the canned laughter echoing in his head. But there was no pain, no resistance. His eyes snapped open, his vacant stare replaced by a jolt of raw terror.
In his hand, or rather, what remained of his hand, was a mangled nub of bone. Hovering beside it, detached and glistening, was his middle finger, a grotesque parody of itself, the flesh stretched thin over the skeletal digit.
A choked scream, the first truly genuine sound to escape his lips in months, tore through the distorted video feed. The chat erupted in a horrified cacophony.
"HOLY SHIT WHAT WAS THAT?!"
"Dude, is this real? Is this some special effect?"
"NICHOLAS CALL AN AMBULANCE!"
But the pleas were lost on him. Nicholas stared at the detached digit, his mind reeling. The void, it seemed, had not only warped his flesh, it had rendered him impervious to pain, a horrifying mockery of his former self.
He reached out, a tentative tremor in his hand, towards the floating finger. It bobbed gently in the air, defying gravity. As his spiderweb-thin fingers brushed against it, a jolt of…something, not pain, but a cold, alien sensation, ripped through him. He recoiled, a whimper escaping his cracked lips.
The realization crashed down on him with the force of a collapsing star. He wasn't just decaying; he was changing. The void, in its perverse way, was remaking him in its image, a grotesque reflection of its unending darkness.
The distorted camera feed continued to capture his descent. Tears, silent and horrifying, streamed down his gaunt face. He was trapped, not just in a digital purgatory, but in a body that was no longer his own. The void's hold tightened, and Nicholas AppleCoda, the streamer, the prankster, the broken shell of a man, screamed a silent scream into the endless black, a horrifying testament to the price of survival and the true cost of returning from the void.
Three years. The number held no meaning in the distorted reality that Nicholas now inhabited. The once-familiar room had become a warped reflection, the camera feed a flickering nightmare of static and distorted shapes. His audience, if any remained, witnessed a horrifying descent into the unknown.
His hands, once spiderwebs of stretched flesh, had become phantasmagoric appendages. They passed through each other with an unsettling ease, the paper-thin skin rippling like heat waves. The defiance of reality was constant, a chilling reminder of the void's hold.
One day, a flicker of morbid curiosity sparked in Nicholas's vacant eyes. He stared at his hand, a skeletal parody of its former self. With a detached curiosity, he reached for his own forearm, the intent unclear even to himself.
Then, the impossible happened. His hand, insubstantial as smoke, phased through his flesh. He gasped, a raspy sound that echoed in the distorted silence. He could feel…something. Not pain, but a strange sensation, a coldness that seeped into his core even as a phantom warmth washed over the point of contact. He was inside himself, a horrifying explorer in a grotesque landscape of bone and warped flesh.
The experience was brief, a terrifying glimpse into a reality that defied comprehension. He recoiled, his form trembling, a whimper escaping his cracked lips. The chat, if anyone was even watching, erupted in a flurry of horrified speculation. Glitches in the matrix? A descent into madness given form? The questions hung heavy in the distorted air, unanswered and terrifying.
The horror show continued. Nicholas, a living embodiment of the void's corruption, explored the boundaries of his warped existence. Objects flickered in and out of existence. The walls seemed to breathe, pulsating with an unseen energy. His reflection in the distorted screen was a grotesque caricature, a skeletal figure with eyes that burned with an alien light.
The stream, a monument to human resilience and the horrifying cost of survival, continued. It was a chilling testament to the power of the unknown, a glimpse into a reality where the very fabric of existence could be twisted and molded by forces beyond human comprehension. Nicholas AppleCoda, a name that once evoked laughter and controversy, now represented a chilling cautionary tale – a man forever trapped in a distorted echo of his own existence, a broken soul broadcasting his silent scream into the endless void.
A year. 365 agonizing rotations of a broken world. The Nicholas AppleCoda stream remained a static canvas, a testament to the horrifying transformation that had consumed the streamer. Whispers lingered online. Had the void finally claimed him? Was this some elaborate, morbid performance art? The unanswered questions gnawed at the hearts of those who’d borne witness to his descent.
Then, without warning, the screen flickered to life. A gasp, ragged and raw, echoed through the speakers. But the sight that greeted the viewers was enough to turn their blood to ice.
Nicholas, a grotesque parody of his former self, filled the frame. His body, once a canvas for excess, was now a horrifying sculpture of exposed bone and pulsating organs. A gaping hole in his torso revealed a single kidney, suspended in mid-air like a grotesque balloon. His remaining eye, bloodshot and bulging, stared vacantly into the camera. Where his skull should have been, a horrifying sight unfolded – his brain, a wrinkled mass, pulsated in two distinct halves.
The chat, a place of amusement and camaraderie now, erupted in a cacophony of terror and revulsion.
"OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED?!"
"This is too much! I can't watch!"
"Someone call an ambulance! Or a priest!"
But Nicholas remained oblivious to the horrified audience. A single, broken sob escaped his lips, a sound devoid of hope or despair, simply a primal expression of a shattered existence.
In a raspy, alien voice, he spoke. His words, fragmented and nonsensical, hinted at unspeakable horrors. He spoke of a hunger that no food could satiate, of a loneliness that echoed in the endless black, and a pain that transcended the physical.
The video feed devolved into a chaotic mess. The distorted room pulsed with an unnatural light. The remaining furniture seemed to writhe and warp. Nicholas’s screams, a horrifying mix of human and something else entirely, filled the speakers.
Then, with a deafening crackle, the screen cut to black. Silence. An unnerving silence that stretched into what felt like an eternity.
The internet, abuzz with a morbid fascination, spun theories. Had the void finally consumed Nicholas, not just physically, but fundamentally? Was this the true price of his return, a fate worse than death?
The answer remained a horrifying mystery. The Nicholas AppleCoda stream, a monument to human curiosity and the horrifying cost of venturing into the unknown, now served as a chilling reminder. Some truths are better left unseen. Some realities are better left undisturbed. The darkness of the void, it seemed, had claimed its prize, leaving behind only a grotesque echo, a broken and horrifying testament to the streamer who dared to look into the abyss and live to see the true cost of his survival.

I was getting annoyed with the site deleting certain fonts when i click "save". found a few that works so im sharing it. this site https://www.aestheticfonts.net/ a few work, you just have to go down the list.
squiggle was tested Vɾƈԋαƚ ʋʀƈɦǟȶ a lot of them work
cross above and below V͓̽r͓̽c͓̽h͓̽a͓̽t͓̽ round top Vͦrͦcͦhͦaͦtͦ probbaly a lot of the border types work
unfortunately script font doesnt work from here, sad.
Just go down the list and see what works.
If you want symbols that still work, like ඞ or ପ ๑ଓ , ʕω ʔ , ¸୨୧、 , ღ or ༒ this post was helpful. i wont copy all the symbols from the og post, they worked hard to search so check it out https://www.reddit.com/VRchat/comments/17wlhbz/supported_symbols_in_bios/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Windows: Download
macOS: Download
Android: Google Play.
iOS: App Store
This release is considered as a stable one. Also you can download a 'Testing' release with newer features

Changelog

v0.15.6

New content: Easter, Foil Surfer, Snowboarding
Performance fix for playlists with a lot of content
Fixed issues with exporting timelines with "." symbol in the name
Fix exporting of timelines from Windows in case if they include non-ascii characters. You'll have to reexport them again from Windows if you want to use them on other platforms
Beat effects are fixed
Speed is fixed for some dancers
Fix crash in draw app
Desktop: fix current index indication in some cases
Android permission fix
iOS: fix camera rotation

v0.15.5

Fix issues with 2d preview
Show warning message on Android in case if there is no required permissions.
Fix settings popup for visualizers on mobile platforms
Fix drawings layers to always start from the beginning and respect the global BPM value
Fix storing settings on Android
Fix rename playlists issues
Fix potential crash after SVG folder import

v0.15.4

Fix crash in "Search"
Fix closing question dialog logic to consider it as "no" reply.
Fix crash on macOS on start with some GPU usage
Fix crashes on android with USB cubes

v0.15.3

Fix crashes after playlist delete
Fix 'empty' playlist view that could happen when you switch between empty and non-empty categories
Fix default enabled state for visualizations
Fix beam creator issues with power fader, speed, editing
Fix crash in timeline editor, forbid editing of items during playing
Fix compatibility with old timeline shows from "Beam Show" category
Fix storing settings on iOS
Fix crash during cube connection on Windows
Animated previews are disabled on iOS for now

v0.15.2

New content: Psychodelic animations
New timeline shows from Jarek Kral and Andrea Chan
Fix timeline autostop after show is finished
Latest WiFi cube firmware v0.21 now performs a WiFi channel search at power-on to always choose the best channel for WiFi server mode (manual channel selection can still be set from the internal web page).* Fix android permissions access
Fix android permissions access
Fix move to the correct playlist on import
Fix timeline export for cases with dots in the name, fix colorize effect
Fix freeze on slider movement on Windows
Shortcuts fix

v0.15.1

New content: new category 3D Objects, NY 2024 animations, Banksy in Animations -> Graffiti, new content in "Motus"
Regenerate edited previews for beams creator and drawings
Beam creator: allow beam dropdown toggle via bar click
Fix playing demo timeline on mobile platforms
Fix crash in burn load complex pattern screen
Fix issue with reloading edited Drawing propery
Fix import issues on Android in burn, light painting and draw background image

v0.15.0
Common:

Add built-in demo timeline with demo beam creator visuals
New FormFlex generator is added for "Abstracts" app
Two new one-line-fonts are added (OLF)
New LaserOS firmware 0.19 is added

Desktop:

A lot of beam creator updates
"Search" option is added
Laser ON/OFF scheduler is added
You can assign multiple hotkeys per slider for different values now
APC Mini MK2 support is added with fancy colours and digital dial control

Mobile:

Sliders have popup with manual input and reset button now
Allow to manage custom playlists

Windows:

On Windows x64 version is the defalt version now. Since 0.16 Win32 will be dropped. You'll be proposed to update to x64 release if you still use x86 one.

Other updates:

In Draw app second arrow is shown on the left side for both hand usage
On mobile move trace settings to "Settings" -> "Tools"
On mobile "Global" and "Per app" shuffle modes are changed to more clear "Global" and "Local" modes. "Global" mode is desktop-like, "Local" - shuffle only the currently visible panel
Beam show new folder hierarchy
Content is sorted alphabetically always now
In Playlist editor mode non-related apps are hidden now
Animated previews are supported for lasershow, beam creator, text and draw visualizers now
Play/pause buttons are changed for lasershow and timeline to be more clear
For games now both joystick controls are available for usage
Minor UI improvements

How to install android manually:

Download and install apk file. Do not launch LaserOS yet.
Download and put into dir Android/obb/com.wickedlasers.laserOS obb file. If you don't have this dir create it. Case is important here!If you have android command line tools installed you can do it from terminal:
Launch LaserOS

Min supported OS versions:

Windows 7
macOS 10.13 High Sierra

Min specs:

~ i5-6200U CPU @ 2.3GHz, 8GB RAM
macOS min version 10.13 iOS min version 12 Android 7.0

How to get logs:

On macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/LaserOS/laseros.log
On Windows:
C:\Users${USERNAME}\AppData\Roaming\LaserOS\laseros.log

How to get crash reports:

On macOS:
Open Applications -> Utilities -> Console. Choose "Crash Reports" on the left panel, the latest LaserOS crash and share it with "Share" button on the top.
On iOS:
Open Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Analytics & Improvements -> Analytics Data -> LaserOS-…$Date.ips file, press "Share" and send via email.
Download deprecated 32-bit Windows version

Tomb bricks images in link:
https://www.zhihu.com/question/322682932/answe2063037723?utm_id=0
Let's take a look at the evaluation of Cao Cao by the people at that time. They have the most say on the evaluation of Cao Cao.
The tombs of the Cao Cao family in Bozhou are very interesting. Many workers in the Cao family carved their thoughts on the bricks, sometimes to vent their emotions, and sometimes to pass on news. These bricks recorded the real speeches of the workers at that time, reflected the thoughts and feelings of the people at that time, and were truly "ancient tomb inscriptions".
Due to the ransacking of tomb robbers, the reverse side of the bricks were lifted, giving us a chance to glimpse the people's views on Cao Cao in the late Eastern Han Dynasty.

Tomb No. 1 in Yuanbaokeng (tomb owner: Unidentified Lord Cao of Kuaiji, construction manager: Cao Teng or Cao Song)
"The sky is dead" brick

This brick was unearthed in 1976 from the tomb of Cao Cao's clan in Yuanbaokeng Village, Bo County (now Bozhou City), Anhui Province, and is the No. 1 Yuanbaokeng Tomb. It is 37.5 centimeters long, 7 centimeters thick, 19.2 centimeters wide at the top, and 15 centimeters wide at the bottom. There are 26 Chinese characters engraved on the bricks by the wall maker. These few Chinese characters not only contain cursing of close relatives, but also involve the thoughts of Taiping Sect/Yellow Turbans.

王复，汝使我作此大壁，径冤我，人不知也，但抟汝属。仓天乃死，当搏！
Wang Fu , you made me build this big wall, and have wronged me. Others don't know, so I damn your family. When the Vast Heaven is dead, I will fight!

Translation: You son of a bitch, Wang Fu, you ordered me to come here to repair the tomb, you are outright deceiving me. I have nowhere to ask, I can only insult your mother here. On the day when the sky dies, I will fight (with you) to the death (to tear you apart)!
Paraphrase combined with the then events: Cao dogs , when will your mother die!
The brick inscriptions were carved by a cultured craftsman in the tomb. When Cao clan's eunuch faction were building their luxurious tomb, the victim was abducted by a henchman named Wang Fu and forced to build a brick wall for Cao clan's eunuch faction. The craftsman was so exploited that he had nowhere to vent his grievances, so he took advantage of the gaps in his working hours to vent his anger and pain on the brick.
As an ironclad proof of the Yellow Turban thought, this brick is much more valuable than ordinary gold, silver and jewelry in the tomb. It also deeply records the people's hatred for the Cao clan's eunuch faction, and is a unique national treasure cultural relic.
But if you think about it carefully, this thing is really scary. The people longed for a revolution to eliminate the powerful and influential clans like the Cao family. As a result, the revolution not only failed to reduce exploitation, but the Cao clan's eunuch group, which the people hated the most, became the supreme ruler. After taking power, the Cao Wei regime continued the family tradition of the eunuch period. Not only did it not lighten the tax, but instead raised the tax rate from 50% to 80%. Corvée is not only open all year round, but also the whole family is implicated if one person escapes from the service (see till the end of the article)...
A vigorous national revolution ended in more ferocious exploitation, and the eunuchs took the opportunity to climb to the throne of the emperor. Is there a more terrifying dark humor in the world?

"Unforgettable" bricks

There is a five-character poem carved on this brick:

《岁不得陼》: 人谓作壁乐，作壁正独苦。却来却行壁，反是怒皇天。——壁长契。
"Unforgettable at the age": People call it wall music, but wall music is suffering alone. But to arrive and build the wall, rather that the imperial heavens rage. —— Wall length deed.

Translation: "The Wall of Bad Harvest"

Lie to me that repairing the grave is a beautiful job,
It is so hard to repair the grave.
Tossing and turning (for Dog Cao) to build the wall,
Begging the emperor to release his rage (to kill Dog Cao).

——The work of the foreman on this wall
The foreman, like the craftsman above, was tricked by others to work for Cao's relatives. Obviously, the foreman still has land to cultivate at home, but he is forced to waste time underground, in a distraught state. So he begged the Emperor to be angry and kill Cao Cao's family so that he could go back to farming.
This inscription clearly tells us that these workers have the ability to read and write. Some of them are rich peasants and have the ability to learn culture in their spare time. As a result, he was tricked and forced by the Cao family to do hard labor underground.
It seems that Cao Cao also has a family tradition, and his family are all masters of deception.

Also translated as: Someone set up a tomb for (underground) long-term happiness, (but ignored) the pain of the tomb repair workers. (This pain) accumulates on the tomb wall over and over again, and it will surely call the wrath of the emperor (retribution on the tomb owner).

"Bull head Lord Cao" brick

“牛头也曹君”砖
Translation: Lord Cao is a bull head.
Well, it shouldn't be necessary for me to say anything. It is said that the Chinese saying of "ox head and horse face" has already existed in the Han Dynasty.

"Alliance with the Dwarf/Japanese People " Bricks

有倭人以时盟不
There are Dwarf/Japanese people who will be allied with each other.

Although it is a broken brick, it is of great significance. Because it clearly records that the Cao Cao's family had a special relationship with the Japanese in 170 AD. Since these words were written by cemetery workers, it means that these Japanese nobles who came from afar also graciously participated in the construction of the Cao family’s tomb—such as digging a shovel of soil symbolically. And this kind of thing is generally not handed over to people other than relatives.

Other brick fragments

顷不相思”“顷不相见” “掩辛（心）间，五内若伤，何所起”（元：35) “当奈何”（元： 34) “又为奈何，吾真愁怀”（元：39）
"I don't love each other for a while" "I don't see each other for a while" "Hiding my pain (heart), if I feel hurt in the five internal organs, where do I feel ?" "(Yuan: 39)
Translation: "I can't love each other for a moment", "I can't meet each other for a moment" "Holding my heart and sighing, my internal organs are hurt, where should I place these emotions" "What should I do" "What can even I do, I'm so worried about this!"

There is no doubt that Cao Cao's cruel nature did not come out of thin air. His family that is full of corrupt officials and eunuchs is equally cruel. Cao Cao himself is nothing more than "the colour green coming out of the colour blue".

Tomb No. 1 in Dongyuan Village (tomb owner: Cao Song, person in charge of construction: Cao Cao)

This tomb was built by Cao Cao for his own father, Cao Song. Let's see how Cao Cao treats the working people.

"My husband forget it" brick

My husband forgot it, now my body is covered with ropes, I know it will be long and I will never return (Dong: 30)

Translation: Husband, forget me. I am now tied to the ropes and will stay here forever, never to return.
This is a last word from the victim woman to her husband!
I really hope her husband isn't caught working in the grave with her.

Death of Aide-de-camp Wang Zuo

“咄尧（或作“戈”）王左甚不（否）”（董：8）、 “别驾从事王左叩头死”（董：5）、 “唯念王左及朱”（董：7）、 “王左死，奴复死，苛”（董：60）
Duyao (or "Ge") Wang Zuo is passed on (No)" (Dong: 8), "Aide-de-camp Wang Zuo kowtowing to death" (Dong: 5), "Only thinking of Wang Zuo and Zhu" (Dong: 7), "Wang Zuo dies, slaves coming back to life, harsh" (Dong: 60)
Translation: "Have you heard? The foreman scolded Wang Zuo very fiercely today"; "I (Wang Zuo) kowtow (please forgive me)"; "I am very worried about Wang Zuo and Mr. Zhu"; "Wang Zuo is dead, and his wife will no longer live. What a harsh government!"

It can be seen that Wang Zuo is actually an official with a high position (Zhang Song who contributed maps to Liu Bei was an Aide-de-camp). Because Wang Zuo offended Cao Cao, his whole family was sent to repair the grave.
But Cao Cao's hatred did not subside. He asked the tomb management staff to mistreat Wang Zuo during the work process (such as increasing the workload).
In the end, Wang Zuo was buried alive. His wife scolded the that the government was tyrannical and committed suicide.
The nature of this case is horrific on closeer inspection. It can be seen from Wang Zuo's being called by his position - that he was still in office at the time and had not been dismissed from his position. Even if he was to serve a crime, he should only build projects for the country, and there is absolutely no reason to build Cao clan's personal tomb. In other words, a court official and his family were forced by Cao Cao to repair his private building for petty reasons, and finally died of exhaustion.
It can be seen from the article "Only Thinking of Wang Zuo and Zhu" (Dong: 7) that Wang Zuo is not alone. There is at least one official with the surname Zhu in a similar unlucky situation.
The essence of Cao Cao is a corrupt official who is above the law and dares to bully the very heavens. His state's history books may be able to cover it up a bit, but his evil will always show a little or two from the (literal) cracks in history

Other miscellaneous brick texts

“纪绝事止食”（董：29） “谊相炤（照）我，身将损腐”（董：5，或作“留相焰我，劳将损死”） “成壁但冤余”（董：66） “作苦心丸”（董:17） “嫌道漯（缧）躯”（董：31） “日夙且休干”（董：25）
"Starving to death" (Dong: 29) "Friendship will burn (illuminate) me, and my body will be damaged" (Dong: 5, or "Leave a flame with me, or work will damage me"). "Completed tomb, but holding resentment" (Dong: 66) "Lives making Bitter Heart Pills" (Dong: 17) "Dislike the roped (Zhou) Bodies" (Dong: 31) "Daily work without stoppage" (Dong: 25)
Translation: " Statistically count those who can't work and can't eat (the dying people)" "Remember to leave me a fire to bake (the wound), otherwise the limbs will rot together" "The tomb will be completed, and the resentment will be hard to quell" "(Our lives) are like painstaking pills" "A loathsome tomb walks with roped bodies" "Morning (working) till evening"

It seems that Boss Cao's tomb building is more ruthless than his ancestors. The masses are basically working on the verge of death.

Analyzing the changes in the conditions of the workers from the culture of the common people in the two tombs

In the original tombs built in the Cao Teng or Cao Song eras, most of the workers who worked in them were conscripted and deceived by other people. These people are engaged in heavy hard labor, but they can still maintain their lives. They are very rebellious, longing for the arrival of "the death of heaven", and scolded dog Cao as a bull-headed evil spirit.
Most of the workers in the tomb built during Cao Cao's era were forced into it labour by Cao Cao himself by abusing his political power and use corruption-related means, and some of them even had offended Cao Cao's confidant officials. In terms of exploitation, Cao Cao was more vicious and cruel than his ancestors. He tied these slaves with ropes day and night, forcing them to work under extreme conditions. Due to their long-term unhealthy condition, the workers may be buried in this tomb that does not belong to them at any time. Hovering on the verge of life and death, they couldn't even maintain the idea of resistance.
Under the deterrence of the imperial power of the Han Dynasty, Cao Teng and Cao Song still had a fraction of conscience, but Cao Cao had no such worries. The tortue chamber handed down by generations of the Cao clan was developed by Cao Cao into a hellish concentration camp. So when the Cao clan really usurped the throne and became emperor, would the exploitation of the people be lessened?

Follow-up of Cao Wei's governance

Of course it is impossible. After seizing power and usurping the throne, the Cao Wei government has even more contempt for the lives of the people. Although Cao Jun's tomb and Cao Song's tomb are luxurious, they are far inferior to the later Cao Cao's tomb . Cao Cao's own tomb is currently the largest tomb for the Three Kingdoms.
According to the above construction method, how many innocent souls will there be in this tomb of Cao Cao?
In addition, according to historical data, the tax rate in the Wei and Jin Dynasties rose without stoppage, and did not stop rising until after the unification of the Three Kingdoms. In other words, Cao Cao's exploitation is just the beginning, starting with Cao Rui is a bigger exploitation.

《三国志明帝纪》:帝盛兴宫室，留意于玩饰，赐与无度，帑藏空竭；又录夺士女前已嫁为吏民妻者，还以配士，既听以生口自赎，又简选其有姿色者内之掖庭，乃上书谏曰：“臣伏见诏书，诸士女嫁非士者，一切录夺，以配战士，斯诚权时之宜，然非大化之善者也。臣请论之。陛下，天之子也，百姓吏民，亦陛下之子也。”
" Records of the Three Kingdoms: Ming Emperor Biography ": The emperor prospered the inner palace, paid attention to playing ornaments, bestowed gifts endlessly, exhausting his treasury; he also recorded that married officials and civilian wives were taken away and they were married to soldiers, and briefly selected to bolster his harem those that were beautiful. The Shangshu remonstrated: "The minister Fu Jian petition, all married women will be captured to match the soldiers. This is not the right time, and it is not benevolence. Please further discuss it. Your Majesty is the son of heaven, the common people are also the sons of your majesty."

Corresponding to this is the ever-decreasing peasant uprising in Wei.
From the end of the Han Dynasty to the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the exploitation of the rich and powerful became more and more serious, and the status of the common people became lower and lower. The vast heaven is dead, and the yellow heaven is also dead, and in the end even the spirit of resistance of the common people is gone along with it.
China at that time was just another big tomb.

A ray of sunshine in the grave

In the tomb of Cao's family, there are not always curses complaining about the harsh government, but there are also some warm words with a little humanity.
There is a picture of a sun which makes the underground workers who do not see the sun regard it as the existence of light.

“沽酒各半各”。
"The bought and sold wine each having half".
Two workers are discussing to share drinks. The drink may be a reward for finishing the work early, and the two workers agree to finish the work together quickly and share the drink equally after receiving the reward.

There is also a brick with the word '文' with high calligraphic value. There are three more dots on the right side of the word "文", which should be a new fancy font created by a victim.
They are very similar to those crude works of art born in fascist concentration camps, expressing their warm humanity with a ray of sunshine.

As I understand, the VimtexView command opens the pdf reader with the associated pdf (if it is not open already), and then navigates to the same point that the cursor is at in the tex file. This is not working for me, for some reason. My configuration is below...

return { "lervag/vimtex", dependencies = { "micangl/cmp-vimtex", }, lazy = false, init = function() vim.g.vimtex_compiler_method = "latexmk" vim.g.vimtex_compiler_latexmk = { callback = 1, continuous = 1, executable = "latexmk", options = { "-shell-escape", "-verbose", "-file-line-error", "-synctex=1", "-interaction=nonstopmode", }, } -- Disable imaps (using Ultisnips) vim.g.vimtex_imaps_enabled = 0 -- Do not open pdfviwer on compile vim.g.vimtex_view_automatic = 1 vim.opt.conceallevel = 2 -- set conceal level to 2 (see :h conceallevel) vim.g.vimtex_syntax_conceal = { accents = 1, ligatures = 1, cites = 1, fancy = 1, spacing = 1, -- default: 1 greek = 1, math_bounds = 1, math_delimiters = 1, math_fracs = 1, math_super_sub = 1, math_symbols = 1, sections = 1, styles = 1, } -- Disable quickfix auto open vim.g.vimtex_quickfix_ignore_mode = 0 vim.g.vimtex_compiler_progname = "nvr" -- PDF viewer settings vim.g.vimtex_view_general_viewer = "okular" vim.g.vimtex_view_general_options = "-reuse-instance -forward-search @tex @line @pdf" -- Do not auto open quickfix on compile erros vim.g.vimtex_quickfix_mode = 0 -- Latex warnings to ignore vim.g.vimtex_quickfix_ignore_filters = { "Command terminated with space", "LaTeX Font Warning: Font shape", "Package caption Warning: The option", [[Underfull \\hbox (badness [0-9]*) in]], "Package enumitem Warning: Negative labelwidth", [[Overfull \\hbox ([0-9]*.[0-9]*pt too wide) in]], [[Package caption Warning: Unused \\captionsetup]], "Package typearea Warning: Bad type area settings!", [[Package fancyhdr Warning: \\headheight is too small]], [[Underfull \\hbox (badness [0-9]*) in paragraph at lines]], "Package hyperref Warning: Token not allowed in a PDF string", [[Overfull \\hbox ([0-9]*.[0-9]*pt too wide) in paragraph at lines]], } vim.g.vimtex_fold_enabled = 1 vim.g.vimtex_fold_manual = 1 vim.g.vimtex_fold_types = { cmd_addplot = { cmds = { "addplot[+3]?" }, }, cmd_multi = { cmds = { "%(re)?new%(commandenvironment)", "providecommand", "presetkeys", "Declare%(MultiAuto)?CiteCommand", "Declare%(Index)?%(FieldListName)%(FormatAlias)", }, }, cmd_single = { cmds = { "hypersetup", "tikzset", "pgfplotstableread", "lstset" }, }, cmd_single_opt = { cmds = { "usepackage", "includepdf" }, }, comments = { enabled = 0, }, env_options = vim.empty_dict(), envs = { blacklist = {}, whitelist = { "figure", "frame", "table", "example", "answer", "titlepage", "cvskills", "cventries", "cvhonors", }, }, items = { enabled = 0, }, markers = vim.empty_dict(), preamble = { enabled = 1, }, sections = { parse_levels = 0, parts = { "appendix", "frontmatter", "mainmatter", "backmatter" }, sections = { "%(add)?part", "%(chapteraddchap)", "%(sectionsection\\*)", "%(subsectionsubsection\\*)", "%(subsubsectionsubsubsection\\*)", "paragraph", }, }, } end, }

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Hello CFB! Welcome to the 2023 Big XII Uniform Season Review! In this historical/bittersweet year, we saw some impressive ball, added four teams, 2 are gearing up to leave, while another 4 are on the way. It’s been wild. We’re all proud of our Big XII teams, let’s check it out.
In this edition of the tracker, we’ll review each team’s different suits, my favorite and least favorite looks (helpfully labeled by Helmet/Jersey/Pants color), and a brief summary of my thoughts moving forward, uniforms and otherwise. And remember, “worst” is not an indicator of being a “bad combo” unless I explicitly say so, and apart from one or two, I’m sure they'll be alright. After that, I’ll give out my favorite content of the season in THE Big 12 2023 Uniform Awards, which will be a hoot. Later on, I’ll rank each team’s uniforms (that sweet offseason content) but for now we’ll get into it.
I’m u/matte_purple, and let's 3,2,1 go!
#3 University of Texas Longhorns(12-2)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/Adp4Tky
Number of Combos: 2 Best: White/Orange/White Worst: White/White/White
The last time UT Football produced a 12-win season and a Big 12 Title was 2009 with QB Colt McCoy. The program is - say it with me everyone! - BACK. From a Big 12 fan perspective, it's a bittersweet. You have a nationally recognized program with wide appeal that had several exciting games, tons of success, a tough but fair path to the Big 12 Championship, and a playoff appearance to show for it. But, they're also leaving for the SEC. It stings. I, for one, am a little sad about them leaving. They have a great roster, Quinn Ewers returning for another round, and a top 10 class on the way. Short of a Natty appearance, this was about everything a UT fan could have wanted. Your only losses being OU and the eventual CFB runner-up? That's a sweet deal. Here’s to your time in the SEC.
Obviously, UT doesn’t switch it up very often (in fact, it's been the same overall template since the 50s). There were a few changes introduced in 2022, notably removing the Longhorn on the collar, as well as the TV numbers on the top of the shoulders. Both design features appeared in 2013, when Texas upgraded to Nike’s Pro Combat Hypercool template. By virtue of my own template, I have to pick my least favorite of the two combos, so I’ll pick the away. The power and recognizability of the burnt orange jersey really does it for me. But of course, both looks are very nice (obviously, otherwise they wouldn't have stayed the same for nearly 75 years). The bold “Texas” on the front, which was first added in 1959, and reappearing in 1983-present, takes the cake. That's it for the Longhorns. What a season, now go kick some SEC butt!
#16 Oklahoma State Cowboys(10-4)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/zBT21Da
Number of Combos: 13 Best: Black/Black/Orange Worst: Orange/White/Black
Roller coaster. Struggles at the start of 2023, including a rotating QB carousel, and hard losses to South Alabama and ISU, put a severe damper on the mood in Stilly. Then followed a domination of some Big 12 heavy hitters - including an excellent Bedlam win - before dropping an inexplicable 45-3 loss to a battered UCF. How do you have so many highs, lows, and nail-biters in a season? Ultimately, HC Mike Gundy, QB Alan Bowman (who will come back for his 7th season!), and game-breaking RB Ollie Gordon II led the Cowboys to a nice season, culminating in a pretty great bowl game, a tough Big 12 champ game, and a build-up to what should be a wild 2024 season. Don’t count out the Pokes, because they’ll still find a way.
The Cowboys did something I did not expect. They refreshed their already incredible uniforms this summer into ones that may not be beat. Oklahoma State always manages to get the balancing act of honoring brand and tradition while also fostering an exciting variety right. My favorite is the Black/Black Orange from Bedlam. It has all of the benefits of a blackout while keeping the sweet splash of orange. It’s mean as hell, gets the color ratio right, and exemplifies the new update really spectacularly. Last on my list was their combo worn against UCF. Not only was it the same combo worn in KSU’s blowout last year, but it was also featured in the disastrous 2023 UCF game. It feels unbalanced for a tricolor, the black weighs it down. It’s a shame that the orange shell helmet has to be put this low, as it’s my favorite Cursive shell. Some of my other favorites from the Cowboys include their all-blacks worn vs UT and KSU, their W/W/O option in Week 2, and their orange suits versus KU. Give them a look!
#15 University of Oklahoma Sooners(10-3)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/Vnt1z8I
Number of Combos: 3 Best: Red/White/White Worst: Gray/Gray/Gray
The other half of the SEC bound duo didn’t fare quite as well as UT, but they still did alright! Obviously, the season was a step up from 2022’s 6-7. HC Venables schemed his way to 80th nationally in total defense and 49th in scoring defense and his youthful team showed great execution in most of their games. QB Gabriel even had a game against WVU where he threw for 5 TDs and ran for 3. That's the real deal. They only lost to OSU, KU, and AZ, which were all great teams this season. They are in a great position heading into the SEC, and are slated to play some very tough teams next year. I’m going to miss OU, just like Texas. I have enjoyed KSU and OU’s recent history, but seriously, good luck in the SEC, Sooners.
Uniform-wise, this year was actually rather similar to last year for the sooners. The last time OU updated their suits - even in a minor fashion - was 2018 in their move to the Jordan brand. They also filled out the OU logo on top and changed the font on the “Sooners” up front. The anthracite uniform was released last year and was the only alternate worn this year, so overall it was a fairly pedestrian season for uniforms. My favorite of the three was the away look, simply for the fact that the home uniform has many similar looks across the nation. The white has a little bit more originality, it’s got a nice bit of color, and really pops against the home team. Since I have to pick a “least favorite,” I went with the “Unity” uniforms. I actually like it a lot. I think the color is great, and the story is even better. They honor OU alum Prentice Gautt, the first Black scholarship player for the Sooners, starring as a RB from 1957 to '59. And he played in the NFL! The anthracite uniforms sport the word "unity" on the nameplate, with "together" sewn on the collar. Also featured is the OK state outline on the pauldrons. I especially love that. But the stripe down the helmet doesn’t match the other stripes on the shoulders/pants, and it looks like there were a few helmets that were painted matte, not glossy, so it finds itself in my least favorite OU uniform of the year. Maybe we’ll see more alternates in the SEC? I’m just glad we didn’t get the “Lay Down the Wood” alternates this season.
#18 Kansas State University Wildcats (9-4)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/FlLUvZm
Number of Combos: 2 Best: SilveWhite/Silver Worst: SilvePurple/White
Should this season feel like a disappointment for Wildcat fans? It’s hard to say. They had some VERY good games that went close. The Missouri game was lost thanks to a SEC record-breaking 61-yd FG, OSU was a weird case of black magic in Stilly, and their UT game was lost thanks to some odd OT play-calling and crucial special teams errors. Change around some possessions and you would have had a hell of a season. Sprinkle in some magic from true-freshman QB Avery Johnson (5 rushing TDs against TTU - the first to do it in the Big XII since Collin Klein in 2012 - and an efficient Pop-Tart MVP Bowl showing), and QB Will Howard, who led K-State to a wild 246-72 against losing opponents at home and broke KSU’s passing TD record. The lone loss at home was to ISU in a snowy version of Farmageddon. Some staff turnover, QB Will Howard leaving for Ohio State, and some tough NFL Draft and transfer exits will make things hard, but remember, they still have a great RB in Giddens, good WR transfers, proven QB Avery Johnson, and former TTU coach Matt Wells to work as OC. Weird, but still good, season for the ‘Cats.
Well, it’s another average year for the ‘Cats. K-State wore 3 combos last year and cut out their one alt this year. Just like UT, KSU has a style, and they stick to it. Bill Snyder introduced this look in ‘89, his first season at KSU. He threw in a helmet for military appreciation three times, but that’s it. HC Chris Klieman and his EQ team have maintained much of the same idea, only releasing alternates 2 times in his 5 years (changing silver to white twice doesn't really count in my book). That could change with a renewed Nike contract though. He’s been quoted as saying they can “start exploring those options” earlier this year. Just like last year, I chose the away look as my favorite because it looks so good against most every home uniform out there. I mean, take a look at that OSU vs K-State look? Or vs KU’s black alt? That silver shines nice above the white. The home is definitely good as well, just not quite as dashing. From here on out, we get lots more variety in our teams!
West Virginia University Mountaineers (9-4)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/h4SHYPS
Number of Combos: 11 Best: Blue/Yellow/Blue Worst: Yellow/Yellow/Yellow
One of the most surprising Big 12 teams in 2023. Just months after Neal Brown rumors swirled, QB JT Daniels transferred, and hope seemed lost, they rose up and made a pretty great run. WVU was slotted at the bottom of the preseason poll, and they took that personally. QB Garret Greene was promoted to starter, the defense survived some tough injuries, and RB Jahiem White emerged, who will no doubt become a big part of the offense moving on. WVU closed out the season winning ⅘ games, losing to OK-State, OU, Penn, and a miraculous Hail Mary from Houston. Closing out the season with Neal Brown covered in Mayo with 9 wins is a lot better than what many Big 12 fans expected. They are riding high into the offseason!
WVU really knocked it out of the park. They only had a few looks that I thought were okay. For the most part, every look they wore had a lot of style. My least favorite were the “Gold-Rush” uniforms, simply because it’s so yellow. I think they tend to be most fans' least favorite. My favorite was the new version of the “Country Roads” suit introduced vs Pitt last year. While that version was primarily white, this year’s was a beautiful home variety that was perfect for the Backyard Brawl. It was also worn against UNC to great effect. The sublimated road map, the state outline logo with the Flying WV on the inside, the consistent striping on the helmet and pants, all topped off by the “Mountaineers” on the chest. This isn’t as retro as, say, the new OK-State suits or Texas Tech throwbacks, but they aren’t meant to be. It’s modern without looking corporate, and feels genuine. It's a sleek way to end their uniform year. Other stars include their standard home outfit of B/B/Y and my favorite away look, their W/W/B with the state-outlined flying WV on the helm from Week 5.
#23 University of Kansas Jayhawks(9-4)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/JamagD0
Number of Combos: 12 Best: Blue/Blue/Red Worst: Blue/Red/Blue
The last two seasons of KU football have been the best since 2007. HC Lance Liepold inherited a demoralized program after Les Miles was removed, but he’s turned it into something promising. They finished the season ranked for the first time in 16 years, and finished with a winning record and bowl victory for the first time in 15. KU opened the season with four wins, upset #6 OU in an instant classic, and won a bowl game against UNLV. Aside from a weird loss to TTU, a heartbreaker against KSU, and “normal” losses to UT and OK-State, KU continues to be a rising star. With new uniforms and alts, competitive Ws and Ls, a new stadium coming soon, and some star talent, this team is a phoenix. I’m excited to see what happens next year! This is about as nice as I can be to KU, so moving on!
The Jayhawks were one of three Big 12 schools that updated their uniforms over the summer. And to wide acclaim, I might add. It’s clean and cohesive, and the “Kansas” wordmark projects a confidence that was severely lacking with the old look. The “KU” letter logo is thankfully going away. It was only worn once last year and zero times this year. The shoulder stripes outlined in red is another great touch. Speaking of Trajan font, it’s the main reason I picked the Blue/Red/Blue as my least favorite combo. First, why would you continue to use an “outdated” jersey when you have a revamped blue jersey? It just reminds fans of the old KU. Second, why did they decide to wear primarily red against TTU? The whole combo reminded me of 3D glasses, and just felt disjointed. The B/B/R combo vs UCF was actually my favorite. It got the ratio of blue-red right, with the facemask tying the pants and the shoulder stripes together. No stripes on the helmet helps, too. My 2nd favorite was the all-white worn against Nevada in Week 3. It’s beautiful (and the winning combo I chose last year). The stripes on the helmet not matching the rest of the design puts it down one peg. Their blackout suits will definitely make an appearance in the Uniform Awards, so stay tuned.
Iowa State University Cyclones (7-6)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/OUycgfa
Number of Combos: 8 Best: White/White/Red Worst: Red/Red/Red
With six winning seasons in seven years, ISU under Campbell is having its best years since the 1910s. They bounced back from some gambling scandal news, ended with high performing and record setting play by QB Rocco Becht, four-straight road W’s - a school record - and 21 underclassmen and six true freshmen making big plays this season. Aside from some head-scratching losses to Ohio, Memphis, and Iowa, the others were competitive and fun (especially that Farmageddon game, right Cyclones?) I look forward to seeing their path in the new Big 12!
This was ISU’s most ambitious uniform year since their 2018 refresh. Apart from “blackout madness” that was the year 2020 for the ‘Clones, we saw lots of new ideas here, including two alt helmets. Their new black and cardinal helmet was worn twice in 2018 and once in 2019 before returning in Week 12 of 2023. I personally like it way more than the black/white Block I helmets (my main gripe with the blackouts is the lack of cardinal accents). But the next suit was BEAUTIFUL. The Jack Trice throwback featuring the chevrons that Trice and his team wore in 1923 was executed well, and brought us the best helmet they’ve worn since 1994 and 2007. The Ames helmet is simple and a beauty. Sure, this suit isn’t the sleekest alternate uniform out there. But the legacy, and history more than make up for the slightly odd tan pants look. My subjective best look is certainly that White/White/Red look worn against BU in Week 9. If ISU is going to continue to use the Block I logo, they may as well put it on a helmet that pops, and the cardinal accents paired with the bold pants looks smooth. Their worst - IMO - was the all-red suit worn in the bowl. It’s just so much red. Hot colors all in one big block looks clunky without suitable accents, and a primarily red logo doesn't stand out. Perfect time to add a vintage more yellow logo to the helm, perhaps? Overall felt like a sweet spot season with good throwbacks, fun spins on the regulars, and a perfect use of the black uniforms.
Texas Tech University Red Raiders (7-6)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/kRrjnXk
Number of Combos: 10 Best: Black/Black/Black Worst: Red/White/Red
The much hyped Red Raiders had a tough year. 2016 with Mahomes was the last time a TTU QB has started every season game. 2023 QB Tyler Shough suffered a broken leg in the season’s first Big 12 game. The injuries were tough for TTU through 2023, but to have to play three different QBs for several consecutive years is the equivalent of a dead man’s hand in modern CFB. Apart from the QB heartbreak, I think Tech finished strong in Nov. for Joey McGuire’s 2nd year. We saw some needed maturation from both QB Behren Morton and OC Zack Kittley. We saw some promising snaps from young guys, which will be important with some big seniority turnover on the sideline. Add on a top 25 recruiting class for 2024, and there is still plenty of reason to be optimistic for 2024. Hopefully the witch doctor in charge of the QBs can stop messing around. A disappointing season for TTU, but it may set up the pieces for something great.
I found myself looking ahead to the 2024 Adidas refresh during many weekends of the tracker. Not to say that TTU’s current closet is bad, it’s just lacking. We’ve seen what a great update can do for KU and OK-State, and Texas Tech deserves it. They struck gold in 2022 with their throwbacks (including this year’s 1978 throwback in Week 3), but we really need a clean slate. Luckily, the Adidas x Mahomes deal can swoop in and save TTU from the odd dual-tone stripes on the pants, chevron shoulder stripe, and small font on the chest. My standouts on the season were the Black/Red/Black combos worn 3 times this season, the 1978 look, and my top choice, the blackout worn against KSU in Week 7. All-black looks great when it’s actually a school color, and the red and white feels punchy on a black canvas. I’m excited to see it redone next season! My least favorite was the Red/White/Red worn against WVU’s all-yellow. The yellow did it no favors, but the Double T logo is literally 99% red. Putting it on a red helmet just isn’t right. It was the only time red helmets were worn this season. Keep your chin up, Tech fans. We’ll get through it!
University of Central Florida Knights (6-7)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/gYErwiN
Number of Combos: 11 Best: White/Blue/Blue Worst: Gold/White/Black
By far the most successful of the new four, they had a rocky season as well. After a steady non-con, they suffered loss after loss until the UC game, and then a magical blowout upset at home against Bedlam-winning OSU. They then suffered two more losses, including a one against GT in their bowl. Not a horrible start to their Big 12 career, but there’s lots to improve. Helping in the offseason are returning stars RJ Harvey, one of the better RBs in the Big 12, and WR Javon Baker, both important cogs in the UCF siege engine. They'll have a busy off-season in Orlando, but in Gus we Trust!
One thing that always rubs me the wrong way in most teams are “tri-color” or “mismatched” looks.Teams usually look best with some symmetry or majority color to them. The one exception to the rule is UCF. When your colors are all “intermediate” like white, gold, or black, as opposed to teams with bolder colors, you can squeak over the line. UCF wore a tri-color three times and looked decent in all of them. The mismatched lightmode suit versus Cincy in Week 10 was the only one I didn’t care for, due to the odd font style. The lightmode concept worked okay when paired with all white and similar accents, but it just looks cobbled together when pieced with other templates. Their best combo is, of course, the Space U game combo. The specialty suit has a unique shock of canaveral blue, a fantastic new helmet, and tons of Easter eggs and fun design choices make this one a treat. I’ll talk about it more in both the uniform awards and the UCF uniform ranker that will come later in the offseason, but just know I absolutely adore it. My favorite non-alternates are the White/Black/White combo worn in Week 9 against WVU and the all-black stunner with the alternate knight logo worn vs Houston.
Texas Christian University Horned Frogs (5-7)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/1WgQy8H
Number of Combos: 12 Best: White/White/White Worst: White/White/Black
What a fall from grace for the Horned Frogs. After being America’s darling in the last months of the 2022 season, they won only 3 Big 12 games. Their DC was let go, OC Briles felt inconsistent, and a few hopeful NFL departing draftees makes for an interesting off-season. The team failed to qualify for a bowl game, marking the first time since 2010 that a team who reached the CFP Title game failed to earn bowl eligibility the following season. On the bright side, redshirt Freshman QB Josh Hoover has some promise. The youth of the team as a whole has promise. Once he gets more experience and competition with Morris coming back in the spring and can get better at ball protection, I think there’s some opportunity for a higher ranking. Plus, TCU has a record of 53-11 following a losing season, so history is on their side!
TCU carried over 4 combos from the 2022 season, including the all-white combo that is definitely my favorite uniform of their season. But for the most part, aside from the bright spots of the new “frog-only” logo helmets and some novel new combos (like the all-purple, White/Black/Black, and Purple/Black/Purple), the season felt like a tad downgrade over last year’s uniforms. I can’t put a pin on it. But in my opinion, TCU looks great in black with purple accents. The inverse just feels off. The exceptions are the all-white and the White/Purple/White worn vs CU. My least favorite combo (W/W/B at K-State) really felt bland. The plain black pants make me sad when added to the white canvas. They throw off the rest of the suit balance wise, especially considering the only other black on the suit are like 3 of the collar’s diamonds. This suit could have really raised some eyebrows with a black helmet, or another all-white rendition. Slightly worse than last year, but I still really enjoy the variety from the ‘Frogs.
Brigham Young University Cougars (5-7)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/Vl4CqIL
Number of Combos: 11 Best: White/Royal/White Worst: Black/Black/Black
There was a lot of hype for BYU’s inaugural Big 12 season. The Cougars waited 12 years for an invite since going Independent from the Mountain West. Behind transfer QB Kedon Slovis, the Cougars were able to go undefeated in their non-conference play, highlighted by an exciting road win over Arkansas. And then reality struck. They won against Cincinnati in their conference home opener, and Texas Tech in a home night game, but lost every game afterwards. They had very real chances to knock off Oklahoma and Oklahoma State (in 2OT) at the end of the season, but couldn’t finish. A tough time full of questions for BYU, but I think the most glaring issue is a lack of experience in this conference. With some playing time, both coaches and players alike WILL be better next year.
BYU does the whole tradition thing very similar to K-State, Texas, and OU, with the only variety being the colors. All of these looks - except for the black uniforms they introduced this year - feel very traditional and classic. In fact, I’d bet you could show any one of the royal or navy combos to a non-football fan and convince them they were the preeminent BYU look. But one of them takes the cake: The White/Royal/White combo dates back to 1969, was worn by BYU in their 1984 national title season, and were brought back to wide acclaim in 2009. They have been worn frequently ever since. And boy, is there a reason for it. The beautiful color, the symmetry, the consistent striping, the iconic logo, this is the one. I love variety in uniforms, but this one should be celebrated. I also really enjoyed their Navy/White/Navy and even their all-navy look. Their worst look, as mentioned before, is the all-black. Why? Simple: Black is not a BYU color. I know the age of “Black for Black’s Sake” uniforms never really went away, as shown by Houston, KU, and a few other alternates in CFB, but it feels especially egregious here. BYU has an absolutely gorgeous color palette, and instead of leading with royal, they made it a secondary color. Plus, why on earth wasn’t the Stretch Y logo royal? The uniform itself is fine, but it just isn’t “BYU.”
University of Houston Cougars (4-8)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/N2AevXy
Number of Combos: 9 Best: White/Blue/White - Oilers Worst: Red/Red/Red
There were glimmers of hope for this Houston team throughout the season, winning games vs UTSA and Sam Houston, grabbing a surprise win against WVU, and winning in OT vs Baylor. Other than those scant few victories, it was a rough one for the Coogs (luckily, basketball is soothing some of those burns).Dana Holgerson continues to be a tough case. We’ll see how they recover next season.
Houston has always struck me as a team that didn’t really mind what they wore from game to game. Most of their combos feel standard, a little plain. They don’t have that much of a logo history to fall on, their color scheme is pretty regular, and usually, their alternate attempts are different varieties of black. That changed this season with the introduction of their Oilers-inspired suits. It’s historical. It looks incredible. The striping and coloration is PERFECT. Their look is a tribute to the rich history of a football-mad city, not a reminder of a franchise leaving a fan base behind. It's a shame the No Fun League issued a cease and desist to Houston for the color scheme (even though Rice also has an Oilers “throwback” that didn’t get in trouble). I really hope these come back. My least favorite look, much like Iowa State, is that all red look. It’s so bold and there’s no break in color. It’s compounded by the monogram logo and odd leg stripes. These uniforms feel like the other side of the BYU combo coin in a lot of ways, with one major color, all very “Houston” like, but without the history or magic of the royal blue. Maybe we’ll see another surprise like the Oilers look next year.
Baylor University Bears (3-9)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/b1ZMIR4
Number of Combos: 9 Best: Yellow/Yellow/Green Worst: Yellow/White/Yellow
The skid continues for Baylor. Two years removed from the Big 12 championship, Baylor does not look good. HC Dave Aranda is 23-25 in his fourth year in Waco, with a wide margin between his best and worst moments. The Bears had wins against Long Island University, Cincinnati and a miraculous comeback versus UCF, which is pretty slim pickings. Coupled with some heartbreaking losses, it wasn't the year to be in the Baylor line. At least the only way forward for the Bears is up. The Bears have a surprising 2024 class but still feel enigmatic.
Last year, Baylor fans consistently echoed a need for variety in their uniforms. The only time an article of yellow clothing was worn in the 2022 season was the all-yellow suits, which is a WILD fact. The whole premise of the 2019 update was interchangeability, and it was finally utilized here. This year was a breath of fresh air. They introduced three new combos, one of which was my favorite for the season. The Yellow/Yellow/Green combo was worn in Week 1 and Week 13 (A perfect beginning and end to the season - uniform wise, that is). They totally flipped the script on combos and made me a very happy uniform tracker. These have the perfect ratio of green to yellow while maintaining a nice simplicity. These are wonderful! My least favorite was also a brand-new combo: The Yellow/White/Yellow. It starred in what looked like a football acid trip on the TV vs TCU’s “Blood Red” threads, and I just don’t really like these. The green collar especially bugs me. I know these uniforms were much anticipated by the fanbase, and I wanted to see them, too, but the timing and the way the format just doesn't match up with this particular combo irks me. Almost every other combo is a win for me. Next year, more variety and logos would be a very welcome addition. After all, there’s 27 possible combos with their current wardrobe, and more when you add alternate helmets and such. This is probably one of the most improved teams uniform-wise in the Big 12.
University of Cincinnati Bearcats(3-9)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/gKXdRQW
Number of Combos: 11 Best: Black/Black/Red Worst: Red/White/White
A rough entry for the Bearcats, in large part due to mediocre QB play from Emory Jones and a rocky first season for HC Scott Satterfield. In the end, it was just poor timing for both realignment and signing a new coach. Facing brand new teams is a tough pill by itself. The Bearcats won their first two non-con games against EKU and Pitt before promptly dropping 7 games in a row. Their sole Big 12 win came against Houston. And hey, just like BU, there’s no other way but up for Cincy.
The Bearcats were the last Big 12 squad to get new uniforms this summer. And yeah, they look pretty plain, but it works for them! It allows for a sleek, versatile look where each piece can be subbed out for another with little fuss. The only problem with that is this: Cincinnati definitely has a signature look. The all-black or black with red accents is the primo Bearcats style. This means that red jerseys and helmets kind of feel odd. Case in point, the worst look. The Red/White/White uniform has such promise. The helmet has some sort of unique paint on it that makes it seem almost velvety. But something about this look just feels wrong to me. I can’t pinpoint it. Anyway, my favorite look from them is the Black/Black/Red from Week 4 vs OU. Man, I guess red is a good pants color. It provides the right punch of color to a uniform without offsetting the balance of it and works great as a secondary color. Both these and KU, same story. Both of them went through the same simplification process this summer. Also, the C-Paw logo being scattered abundantly really helps out, as it’s the most recognizable symbol UC has. It's a good, clean look with the right pop of color. What else can I say? A good job uniform wise for Cincy. Maybe not award-winning, but stylish - if conventional.
Now, let's check out our Four Corners friends, joining in this summer!
University of Arizona Wildcats (10-3)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/m6CGYB5
Number of Combos: 8 Best: White/Blue/White Worst: White/Red/Red
What a surprising year for the Wildcats! After finishing 1-11 just two years ago, the Wildcats ended their season with a victory in their first bowl appearance since 2017 before heading to the Big 12. Their record included some very impressive wins against ranked teams like Washington State, Oregon State, UCLA and Utah. If one possession would have changed, they could have grabbed ranked wins against USC and Washington as well. Arizona was a giant slayer this year. I’m a little scared to see them in the Big 12. Fifita the breakout QB star and a large upperclassmen squad is back for 2023, and I think new hire Brennan can bridge the gap by riding momentum, while adding in some hires like former UNM/ASU (he he) coach Danny Gonzales for support. Bear down!
Arizona’s uniforms are a brilliant revitalization of the uniforms worn in the Dick Tomey era of football. In 1987, Tomey became head coach at Arizona, earning Pac-10 "Coach of the Year" honors in 1992. He coached five future NFL first-round draft picks, 20 All-Americans, and 43 Pac-10 first team players. His teams were highlighted by a tenacious "Desert Swarm" defense, where the uniform name comes from. His 95 school wins is the most in Arizona school history. These particular suits were introduced as alternates in 2019 after the Wildcats experimented from 2012 on with gradients. They were updated full time in 2021 to great applause. It’s timeless! And that goes for each variation of them. For the most part they remain consistent with the mismatched stripes, white “A” helmet, and sleek template. Aside from the stripes on the white uniform not being “mismatched” like the White/Blue/White uniform (my favorite, by the way), I feel great about each uniform worn, except for one. Much like other teams with a red secondary color, the red uniforms are a lot. It’s manageable with just one piece of red, but it feels like a lot even with the striping. Beautiful work still, and unique!
University of Utah Utes (8-5)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/ZEWfa7f
Number of Combos: 10 Best: White/White/White Worst: Black/White/Black
Utah had a bad case of the injury blues. TE Brant Kuithe and tailback Micah Bernard were both tough losses. QB Cam Rising was banged up bad during the 2022 Rose Bowl. The sixth-year senior hoped to return at some point in 2023 but was unable to do so. With a medical redshirt in hand, he has an opportunity to carry Utah to great things. Hopefully the transfer and recruiting trail can help the Utes, though: 4 sophomores and one freshman started on the offensive line in the bowl game. Jackson, the team's leading rusher with 797 yds, entered the transfer portal, as did backup QBs Barnes and Johnson. Three starters will have to be replaced in the secondary. The Utes have talked up some serious game, but they can certainly rise to the challenge. After all, Kyle Whittingham and his entire Utah program boast an 8-5 record in a “down” year. Also, I am VERY excited to see a Big 12 rendition of the Holy War.
I hadn’t done much research on the Ute’s uniforms before this season, and I was very pleasantly surprised. Utah has some of the nicer Under Armour templates I’ve ever seen. Updated in 2017, they go toe-to-toe with many other “updates” from the time period. Mainly, this is due to the no-nonsense and unique striping on the shoulders, the pleasing and easy to work with color scheme, and the easy font. The chest plate gets a little busy with the captain's patch, bowl patch, “UTAH” wordmark, and UA logo, but that's the only real issue I have. My favorite look by far is their all-white throwbacks worn in Week 8 and 11. They draw from various designs, including 1970s-1990s shoulder stripes, the interlocking UU logo from the 1960s, and - my favorite touch - the unique font from the 1970s. These are incredibly sexy. Other standouts are the home throwbacks worn in Week 4, the Ute Proud suits from Week 7, and their all blacks worn against ASU. But their home suits are excellent as well! I would put their Red/White/Red standard right at 4th on the season. The Black/White/Black suit just didn’t tickle my fancy. I think the gray stands out in it, which feels a little disjointed. But it’s still a pretty great suit. Damn good work from Utah. Keep an eye out for them in the Uniform Awards.
University of Colorado Buffaloes (4-8)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/7SCSU5A
Number of Combos: 12 Best: White/White/White Worst: Black/White/Gold
Coach Prime dragged his team to the finish line, ending with a final record of 4-8. The Buffaloes went 1-8 in Pac-12 play and ended the season with six consecutive losses. While it was a tough way to end Colorado's Pac-12 time, the finale at least provided some positives. Two-way star Travis Hunter has solidified himself as a great talent, the Sanders brothers will go back in action next year (assuming there aren’t too many fashion shows during the football season), and RB Dylan Edwards had a few grand slam runs that could lead to even more growth. They have a season under their belt and undeniable hype building for their Big 12 return. I’m excited to have K-State play against them this year!
Similar to TTU, I found myself anxious for the next rendition of CU’s uniforms that Deion said would come in 2024. They still wore some heaters, especially the Gold/Black/Gold (TBT the 1990 Colorado squad) and my favorite look, the all-white smoke show from Week 1. What is there to say? This is the perfect mix of gold leaf and black. The all-white field against TCU’s purple is gorgeous. I think this combo has the best flow in the line-up. My issue with CU’s uniforms this season stems from a lack of standardization. It felt like there were lots of uniforms from various years being thrown around. We know Coach Prime wants to add bling with the gold leaf/chrome, but it felt jarring throwing in a new helmet to a clearly older design sometimes. Look through the album to see what I’m talking about. My least favorite is the Black/White/Gold worn in Week 13. Tri-colors don’t do it for me. The different shades of gold make this feel way too jumbled. Which is your favorite?
Arizona State University Sun Devils (3-9)
Season Gallery Link: https://imgur.com/a/eXCLv20
Number of Combos: 12 Best: Yellow/Maroon/Yellow - Sparky Worst: Maroon/Black/Black
ASU had one non-con win and 2 PAC-12 wins. But they were still an enjoyable team to watch! There were 3 incredibly close losses where Arizona State looked like a team that could blow things up! I’m excited to see where first year HC Kenny Dillingham takes the program, and they have some very fun games versus Texas State and Wyoming in 2024’s non-con, and - selfishly - I am very excited to see them against the Wildcats. Lots to do in the offseason and a tough schedule ahead make for a busy Sun Devil crew. Watch out for sunburn, Big 12 bros!
What a stylish season for ASU. For the first time in 5 years, ASU had a white helmet option to go along with the gold and maroon. My least favorite suit was a product of the ASU’s earlier uniform refresh worn in Week 2 against Oklahoma State. It’s an older suit, has that knit sweater look (which some people love, but I don’t). The color scheme would have looked great using the new suits. I do like the Arizona Flag design on the chest though, it’s one of the things I missed about the new template. Speaking of the new template, it’s a sleeker design. They removed the large subliminal flag on the chest, most of the striping, and much of the other chest clutter. They added a large pitchfork on the leg (a move I go back and forth on), but the whole refresh seemed to have “simplify” in mind. Which works great! ASU is known best for its color scheme. That’s why my favorite suit works so well. Yellow/Maroon/Yellow, sparky on the lid. A great color combo that really just feels like the Sun Devils. The simplified uniform really does great. My second pick has to be the White/White/White, utilizing the sweet new white shell, and my third pick is probably between the White/White/Maroon suit worn in Week 5 and their “Ghost Story” uniform from Week 9. The black/yellow and white all combine for a fantastic alternative. Not very valuable as an every-day wear, but a nice suit for special occasions. The black pitchfork looks exemplary, and you can really see the Arizona flag on the side of these.
Well, everyone! That’s it! I can’t believe the 2023 season is over. 18 damn teams’ seasons and uniforms reviewed. I hope you had as much fun as I did! I want to thank u/CockADoodleBOOM and u/holytrolly_ for providing me inspiration. I appreciate the opportunity to continue the tracker, and I'm excited to again next year! Over the offseason, I’ll post a team specific uniform ranking, as well my “2023 Uniform Awards” sometime soon. If you have any questions about the tracker or a team, feel free to PM or comment, and leave an upvote! I appreciate every single one of you, from the constant commenters to the casual lurkers. Until next season, in America’s most exciting football conference!

Introduction:
In the dynamic realm of social media, the need to stand out and capture attention has never been more critical. In a sea of content, the key to making an impact lies in the details. One such detail that often goes overlooked is the font used in your posts. Enter the Font Keyboard – a revolutionary Fancy Font Generator designed to transform mundane text into eye-catching, stylish fonts that elevate your social media presence.

Unveiling the Font Keyboard:
Our Fancy Font Generator is a user-friendly tool that empowers you to convert simple text into a diverse array of attractive fonts. Whether you're crafting a tweet, Instagram caption, or Facebook post, this tool allows you to infuse a touch of creativity into your messaging. The Font Keyboard is a game-changer for individuals and businesses looking to make a memorable impression on their audience.

How it Works:
Using the Font Keyboard is as simple as typing your text into the designated box and letting the magic unfold. With just a few clicks on the 'View More' icon, you can explore a vast collection of stylish fonts to find the perfect match for your content. The tool ensures a seamless experience, enabling you to effortlessly generate text symbols that can be copied and pasted directly into your social media bios.
Diverse Font Options:
What sets the Font Keyboard apart is its extensive library of fonts. From elegant scripts to modern sans-serifs, there are hundreds of options to choose from. Whether you're aiming for a sophisticated look or a playful vibe, our font changer has you covered. The diverse range of fonts allows for versatility, ensuring that your text aligns perfectly with your brand personality or individual style.

Enhancing Social Media Presence:
In a world where attention spans are fleeting, making an impact in the first few seconds is crucial. The Font Keyboard provides you with the tools to transform your text into a visual masterpiece that captivates your audience. Whether you're a content creator, influencer, or business owner, this fancy font generator is the secret weapon to enhance your social media presence.

Let's cut to the chase. You've got mad tech skills, but if your resume looks like it was drafted in a '90s word processor, you're not going anywhere fast in this cutthroat industry. Here's the real deal on crafting a resume that won't end up in the digital trash:

Font Finesse: Choose Wisely or Perish Arial, Calibri, Helvetica - Heard of them? You should. They're the holy trinity of fonts for tech resumes. Easy on the eyes, and recruiters love them. Want to get a bit edgy? Try Montserrat from Google fonts. But don't get too fancy, this isn't a calligraphy contest.
Tech Resume Builders: Your New Best Friends Why struggle with formatting when you can have it spoon-fed to you? Online resume builders are a godsend for tech pros. Kickresume, Enhancv, Novorésumé - pick one and get that resume shining in no time. Seriously, it's like having a cheat code.
Legibility is King Remember, your resume isn't a novel. Recruiters are speed-dating with these documents. Use white space like it's going out of fashion, add some columns, stick to simple fonts and icons. Pro tip: throw in some slick symbols or arrows to make the important stuff pop.
PDF or Bust Ever seen a messed-up resume format? Yeah, not pretty. Save your masterpiece as a PDF. And for heaven's sake, name the file like a professional - AlexEbert_Resume_ABCInc.PDF sounds about right.

There you go, the down and dirty on making a resume that doesn't suck. First impressions are everything in this game. Don't just talk the tech talk; make sure your resume walks the walk.
Now, let's hear it from you:
What's your go-to trick for making a tech resume stand out? Any resume horror stories or success tales you're dying to share?

[Poster]
[First Part] ; [Previous Part]

Part 3: Humbug Fiance

Shida sighed again.
“You know what? I changed my mind. Shut your face again, Doodle,” she said, before also stepping out of the car, briefly walking around it to help Chak get out, only briefly seeing the angered elf wave his fist at her while making unheard comments that probably weren’t all too nice.
Once she had gotten the Cali out, she put her hands on her shoulders and looked into the red-glowing eyes.
“Listen, Chak, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m going to need your help here,” she said quietly and brought her face very close to that of the princess. “So…please…try to ignore this weird magic stuff and come back to us, alright? I don’t want a Rudolf. I want my friend. I need my friend. Can you do that?”
Chak’s glazed eyes flash independently from her new nose, sharpening in focus and blinking rapidly.
“I’ll do my best, Sanda- Shida! Shida. I’m Chak. Chakalat- Chak-” she said before rubbing her eyes with her lower limbs and shaking her head, “Chakalata’Motaas. Runaway Princess of the Cali people. Yes, I can do that. And I’ll always be your friend.”
At first, Shida’s face lit up in excitement after hearing her friend seemingly snap out of it, and she was about to pull her into a hug, however…something still seemed wrong about this. Her tone just…still wasn’t quite right. It seemed almost robotic, even if it was hidden between a vague layer of jollyness.
Slowly, the feline exhaled. This would have to do for now.
“I’ll fix you, Chak,” she said, pulling the princess’ head even closer and putting her own forehead against it. “I promise. They won’t get you. Not while I have anything to say about it.”
Then she stood up and turned towards the house, where at the end of a long walkway, the front door was already opened, with happy embraces taking place all over the place.
Mary still looked uncomfortable when presented with the warm welcome of her folks. Then again, she had also just left them standing there while going ahead, so Shida’s sympathy-well was kind of bottomed out at this point.
“Let’s go,” she said, the command immediately registering to both her companions as if it was law, even if she didn’t even speak it as an order.
On her way, she took a few deep breaths…and got her gameface back on.
“Santa’s here!” she exclaimed loudly and took the sack over from Chak as she approached the door, swinging it over her own back. “Sorry to keep you waiting! All the toys in the world are quite heavy to carry, even for a short way!”
She laughed loudly. At this point, she just let her mouth do the talking. She had no real idea what she was even saying, but at least it seemed to work.
“Let me make it up to you,” she then added and, before fully thinking about it, she stuffed her hand into the barely opened sack, before pulling out what looked like a gift-wrapped bottle, that was heavier than the entire thing once she held it in her hand, neatly packed into dark-green paper with red dots across it and tied up with golden band. Instinctively, she held it out to the large man wrapped in a horrible sweater, who she assumed to be their host from now on.
“Well whad’ya know!” the man huffed in merriment before partially unwrapping the gift, “Ha-haa! I was just running out of this! Thank you-uh Santa! Mary, you didn’t tell us that you- Mary?”
From her vantage point, Mary happened to see directly into the sack as Shida dug into it.
Her face was almost reminiscent of the doctor at the hospital upon the realization. However, instead of screaming or running away, she mouthed in a whisper that only Shida could pick up.
“Oh… my god… Santa’s real… and she’s a Cat-girl*…”*
“Mary?” her presumed mother spoke up, seeming to shock her back in the moment.
“What? Oh, right. Yes these are my… well I… you see we met up outside of town and both happen to be working on parade business so I invited them over. I hope that’s okay?” she recovered.
“Of course it is! They are all just adorable! I’m so glad you’ve made some good friends!” her mother replied, giving Mary another hug, though the word ‘good’ felt like it had some weight to it.
“Aww, thanks mom! Is it okay if they hang out in the basement while we’re here? They have a lot of rehearsing to do and could really use a private space.” Mary requested.
Her mother placed a hand on her chest as if about to cry.
“Anything for Christmas sweetheart!” she accepted before turning back into the house, “Dagon! Mary’s here!”
The presented smile on Mary’s face grew but hardened in place as a stunningly handsome man dressed head to toe in a satan black business suit stepped out from a living room.
“There’s my business partner and beloved fiance!” he warmly welcomed in an impossibly rich voice before taking her into his arms and kissing Mary’s cheek.
His dark eyes glance at the other colorful visitors, especially liking who he sees holding the sack.
“Ahh, wonderful. It’s oh so lovely seeing people embrace the holiday spirit.” he added with a respectful nod, keeping an arm at Mary’s hip.
“Christmas spirit.” the mother playfully scolded.
“But of course…” Dagon replied with a dark chuckle before focusing on his fiance, “Honey there’s something we must discuss. Mind accompanying me into the kitchen for a moment?”
“Oh.. uhm.. Sure. Mom, could you show my friends here to the basement?”
“Right away! Come along now, kick off the snow before you track it in.” her mother directed before leading the trio through parts of the house. If the outside was decorated to a splendorous degree, the interior was just outright sickeningly decorated. They passed by more than two fully decorated trees before the stairway down into the basement was even within reach.
“Just down there. Feel free to anything behind the bar and if you use the pool table I ask that everything is placed back where it was.” the mother said before turning back towards what must have been the kitchen.
“Uh…thanks,” Shida said, but momentarily waited, her ear flicking in the direction of the kitchen, where muffled voices could still be heard. With everything that was going on, she didn’t appreciate conversations happening behind closed doors, so it would probably be prudent to at least see exactly what Mary was spilling there, now that her fiance had pulled her aside.
Maybe she had only feigned the oblivious airhead before, after all, she was apparently in some sort of business, and quite successfully so. And besides that, she also knew that crackpot Officer from earlier.
This all might still be a trap, even if it seemed somewhat unlikely. Better safe than sorry.
“Thank you, Ma’am!” Chak said in a wave before starting to walk down the steps first.
Doodle trailed right behind her humming out an upbeat song, dancing a bit with his arms in merry swings.
Once down, Chak looked around at the less decorated space. A bit confused she peeked back up past the others and back into the basement. Although it could be explained by quirky design, she noticed that the basement had absolutely no common aesthetic to the first floor. As in, in every conceivable way. Different building materials, paint schemes, and all the decorations looked far cheaper in construction and all placed to be appreciated at very specific angles.
Perhaps the space being underground and out of sight had something to do with it, but if Chak didn’t know better she would assume this was a completely different property altogether. Yet the upstairs still seemed to exist, with the muffled voices of their hosts still audibly chatting away,
“I… think I like it much better down here…” Chak mumbled as she passed by a strange table with corner holes and… green fuzzy fabric?
As Shida waited atop the stairs while trying to listen in on the private conversation, she noted that, despite her finer hearing, the voices coming out of the kitchen were way too loud. Despite their voices sounding mostly calm, those two must’ve basically been screaming at each other in the kitchen for her to be able to hear them so clearly.
She was used to humans being quite loud, but this was honestly ridiculous, as it almost sounded like they were talking right next to her, just slightly muffled, as if a piece of fabric was spanned out in between them.
At least it made things easier for her.
“-ave you been getting any of my calls?” Dagon asked, “You had me worried, darling. Didn’t even know if you made it to town or not.”
“Oh uh, no. I guess I just missed them. I hardly even checked my phone all day. See I got a bit lost and ran into an old friend. So, you know, I’ve been a bit distracted.” Mary replied in a simultaneously dismissive and nervous tone.
“Ah, I see… Darling I’m sorry but, you got lost on the one road coming into town?” Dagon said in concern and skepticism.
“Yes. I mean… There was a lot of snow and you know, there’s trail roads.” the woman defended.
“Why would you take- never the matter. So, what friend did you meet with?” the fiance moved on.
Mary released a disbelieving scoff, as if she was just accused of murder.
“A friend, Dagon!” she said indignantly.
There was then an uncomfortably long pause.
“Alright… apologies, I’m being too pushy. Anyways, I’ve just got back some concerns with going over budget and I thought we could sit down and try to work it out before it bites our behinds. This Holiday parade is important to me, and I’m worried that-” Dagon corrected, his tone livening up a bit with a rich chuckle.
“Oh right! Sandra was just touching base with me on that eariler! I think I know what we can do to mitigate costs with a few of the more ‘showy’ floats.” Mary said, matching his tone.
There was another long pause.
“Sweetheart… I thought you weren’t checking your phone? Is everything alright?”
“I’m sorry I’m not perfect Dagon!” Mary sigh-snapped, “I’m just… thinking about things okay!? I’ve had a weird day!”
Sheesh. There was a lot to unpack there. But that really didn’t and probably shouldn’t involve Shida, therefore she decided to high-tail it into the basement, seeing as apparently no trap was planned against them here.
Hurrying down the steps after closing the door behind her, Shida glanced around at the mismatched room for a second.
One of the main things her eyes landed on was a large shelf with rows and rows of very samey looking books, each of which had some variant of the word ‘Christmas’ in its title. The books looked old and were quite thick, with yellowing pages and slowly withering covers.
As obsessed as these people appeared to be…maybe that was a place to start.
“Doodle, you can speak again, but keep comments and opinions to a minimum,” she commanded while gently taking one of the old tomes off the shelf, titled ‘A Christmas Carol’. “I want info out of you, not fluff, got it?”
Then she moved to sit down, ready for a long session of skimming considering the book’s size and thickness. However, as she opened it, she was surprised to find the page’s font to be ridiculously large, to the point that almost only one or two full sentences fit on every single page, which was even further restricted by the sheer amount of pictures and decorative fanciness that surrounded the pages.
She had expected something like that in a kid’s book, but not in an old, dusty tome like this. Well, maybe the other books would be more professional. At least this one would not take too long to read.
“Let’s see what this Christmas thing is all about,” she thought, her eyes digging into the words.
“Once upon a time of all the good days in the year, -ugh, couldn’t they get to the point?- upon a Christmas eve, old Scrooge…”
Poking around the bar, Chak curiously looked over the small decorations and bottles of liquor. Most of which had completely blank labels, and the few that did were poorly printed and didn’t match the quality of the bottles themselves.
She listened to Shida tell the story of an old man suffering from visions of paranormal entities showing him his past, present, and a grim future probably to pass if he didn’t change his greedy mindset. However near the ending, she got a bit distracted as she grabbed something from the wall. A paper planetary calendar of sorts.
However as she flipped through it, confusion and a dread came over her. To such of an extent that the invasive effect slowly settling root in her mind took a bit of a back seat. As the feline wrapped up the story, the Cali walked on over with the calendar in her claws.
“You’re a natural story-teller, boss!” Doodle complimented, “I especially liked the voices you chose for the ghosts!”
Shida slammed the book shut and sighed, moments away from just tossing it to the side before she remembered that it wasn’t hers and she should probably respect her host’s property. Then she listened up.
“Voices?” she asked, not even fully aware that she had even read aloud at all. “I did voices?”
However, since time was tight, she didn’t wait for an answer before standing up and picking the next book from the shelf while putting the first one back where she found it. Hopefully this one would have more useful info. And this time, she would make sure to just read it quietly to herself.
However, opening it, she immediately saw the same, fancy yet wasteful page layout, immediately making her roll her eyes.
Chak opened her mouth to speak, but seeing the focus on Shida’s face caused her to decide to wait. At first she awaited in silence, perking up a bit as her friend started to mindlessly mumble utterances as she read. Then about a third of the way into the story the feline’s voice started to fully read aloud. It was very droning at first, but as she went along a bit enthusiasm was gradually injected. By the end, Chak was enraptured by the story being told, her earlier dread all but forgotten about.
Her lower limbs tapped in a clapping fashion as her uppers squeezed the item she recovered close to her chest.
“Are all Christmas stories so whimsical?” she asked the elf sitting down next to her on the floor.
“Uhh… no, a lot really miss the mark. But the ones that do capture that magic of Christmas to fill your heart? Ain't nothin’ like it!” Doodle replied
Shida once again slammed the book shut with a deep breath.
“At least we now know who Rudolf is, I guess…” she mumbled, reminiscing about the book’s contents. “Though it said nothing about a magic sack in here. Nor the fact that Rudolf isn’t just one reindeer.”
She didn’t even think much about it as she pulled out the next book. Despite the ridiculously large font, she was honestly surprised how fast she managed to fly through the books’ contents. It was like no time had passed at all while she read two whole stories.
Briefly she glanced down at Chak, ruminating on the whole Rudolf thing. Then her eyes caught something.
“What’cha got there, tiny?” she asked, while sitting back down with the new book in one hand. “You in the business of thieving now? Because I’m not gonna scold ya’, but you should probably hide it better than that.”
The Cali tilted her head not quite understanding what Shida was getting at. She looked behind her and around before noticing the very thing in her own grasp.
“Oh… I uhm… uhh…” she said as she looked over the item, trying to recall why she had it. The printed painting of snow forested landscapes on it was very pretty. Perhaps she just wanted her friend to appreciate it?
“Oh!” she chirped in a near shout, as the context came rushing back all at once, “Shida! Something is very wrong! Very, very wrong! This calendar… There's so much wrong with it. Look!” Standing up in a hurry, the Cali flipped through it at Shida’s side, “Every ‘month’ is labeled as ‘December’. December is one of the winter months of Earth, but it’s the last of eleven others that make up the entire year! It could be a gag or misprint or something but- look here,” she then pointed to the front showing the marked year being ‘20XX’ and then flipped it over to the bottom back corner, “It says ‘Made in China’, China was a country nation of Earth’s past. At least on my side. Regardless, this whole calendar is filled out with marks crossing out the daily cycles, but the current one prematurely stops at the 25th… six cycles from now. With all this magic being… real… I fear what will happen by the end of this calendar… and what it means for us.”
Shida stared at the item, pondering, and trying to recall how much she knew about Earth. Well, at least Chak seemed to be somewhat normal right now, so that was a relief at least. However all of this was pretty concerning…
Her eyes darted over to the elf.
“Explain shi-...shi-..urgh, explain, crapbasket!” she demanded, and out of all the curses being denied to her, not being able to insult the strange being was by far the worst.
Doodle crossed his arms.
“Despite that being rude, I’m going to answer you instead of making a witty remark. Ahem- No clue.” he shrugged before something itched at his brain, “Well… With you as Santa this year I don’t really see Christmas being a success. I mean, the old boss was on his way here to find his chosen successor, some brat kid I think? You know, help the kid feel the magic of Christmas with a whole message about responsibility and traditional family values so he could perform a miracle to save the rest of the town’s Christmas spirit? Saving Christmas in its entirety. Pretty normal stuff ‘round here.” he explained before shrugging again, “But you put a stop to all that with your little stunt, so… I have no real purpose anymore now that I think about it.”
Shida’s ears flicked upwards.
“Wait, does that mean I can ditch this gig at any point?” she asked, suddenly interested in what the elf had to say. “Sounds like the old guy was already in the process of doing that, so what’s keeping me from doing the same? If I can just tell the sack to shove it and pick someone else, why are we not doing that right now?”
“I mean, you’re free to try! Every instance I can think of Santa has to, you know, bite it first. Not like, bite the sack, but you know.” Doodle made a cutting motion over his neck, “So if we get the kid to accidentally push you into traffic, or cause you to fall off a high roof... Something like that then maybe we can get somewhere. But your friend here would be inherited along with me and the magic. The last Santa planned on slipping on the frozen lake and sinking into the frozen depths when the kid would come up and mistakenly ‘spook’ him.”
“That sounds… so morbid… I-is there really no other way?” Chak said, taking hold of Shida’s hand.
“Uhhhhhhhmmm…” Doodle drew out as he leaned back in thought, “I think some Santa’s in the past could pass the magic on to their kids? I don’t know, it's not like I question how rules work, I just do what I’m told.”
“So there are avenues to take that don’t involve death!” Chak pointed out in genuine frustration, “Who’s to say there’s not even more!?”
“Well… you- sorry, we got six days to figure it out I guess!” the elf figured.
Shida sighed and opened the book she still had in her hand.
“Time to study up, I guess,” she mumbled, and immediately groaned as she once again saw the ridiculous text on the page. “Seriously, are there no normal books around here?”
Flying through one sappy story after another, Shida at some point stopped caring about her seemingly blossoming narrator skills, as reading aloud didn’t seem to slow her down all that much, and it also seemed to somehow shut doodle up whenever she did it, as if her reading itself was hypnotic in some way. Too bad that the same seemed true for Chak most of the time.
Anyway, she began to get some idea about what Christmas seemed to be…even if there were big parts where she still felt like she was missing major context. For example, a guy named “Jesus” was often mentioned, but never elaborated upon, leading her to the conclusion that people were expected to go into these stories with prior knowledge to some degree.
Apparently he was born on Christmas though.
After what usually should’ve been hours of reading, but somehow felt like little more than a few minutes to her, her ear suddenly shot up at the sound of footsteps, second before the door atop the stairs was opened gingerly.
The gait of the human slowly trudging down the stairs indicated that something was heavily on his mind, and his apprehensive and solicitous expression matched it, as the large man in the black suit from earlier descended into view.
Seeing the scene below, he stopped for a moment, while Shida looked up at him, leaving her hand inside the book so she wouldn’t lose her place.
“Forgot we were down here?” she then asked, after he stood and stared for a moment too long for her taste, and she inspected him suspiciously. “Came to get something or are you here to ogle?”
The man blinked and shook his head as he chuckled to himself.
“I may have been eager to separate myself from the, uh… busy-ness up there. And to be quite honest the flashing lights give me migraines. And apologies for staring, whoever does your makeup and prosthetics is first rate. Very convincing. Do you mind if I take a breather down here for a short while?” he said, putting his hands down in his suit pockets.
Shida thought for a second, but then nodded her head invitingly.
“As long as you behave yourself. Watch out, apparently, I got a list for naughty people somewhere,” she joked, briefly lifting up the half-closed book before throwing it open again to continue where she had left off. “Not that it seems like anyone’s ever actually naughty in these…also I haven’t seen coal in…well I’ve only ever seen pictures of coal.”
Her nose buried in the book, her ears flicked for a second, as the bobble of her annoying hat fell onto them uncomfortably, kicking the fluffy thing away in the process.
The man barked a laugh as he made his way in and directly to the bar.
Chak’s eyes cracked dazily open, having at some point fallen asleep leaning up against another chair.
“Well, I think I’ll take my chances. Besides, coal is pretty useful. Well, not to me in particular maybe, but I’d take over another mass produced sweater that I’m never going to wear. Want anything? My first job was bartending, so I doubt you could surprise me.” Dagon offered.
“Neither of us should have alcohol for health reasons,” Shida informed casually, lifting her eyes from the pages for a second. “And the elf is banned from having any.”
She ignored the indignant look Doodle gave her at that as she scanned over the man once again.
“My boyfriend usually wears suits like that when he’s meeting with world leaders,” she commented after a second before her attention waned again. “For a setting like this, a sweater might be more fitting if you ask me. Unless you’re planning on inviting any Councilmen.”
Dagon’s thick and sharp eyebrows lifted up, rather impressed. He bent down and pulled out several bottles with metal cups.
“World leaders, huh? Man, I can only imagine the pressure.” he said as he poured parts of liquid into one of the metal cups, cracked in ice, and then topped it with the other cup to shake, “Sweaters are fine, it’s just… I mean you saw the ones Mary’s folks were weaning. It’s a bit much for me. I might be guaranteed a spot on your naughty list for saying so -and please don’t mention it in front of our gracious hosts- but, I’m just not a big Christmas guy. Never really was.” he then tilted the cups apart enough to drain the chilled liquid into a shallow round glass.
Shida chuckled briefly.
“I’m literally learning what Christmas is right here, right now,” she mused and waggled the book again, her eyes flying across the page. At least talking helped with keeping her from reading aloud. “I’d say you’re good. I don’t even know where that darn list is supposed to be, it always just says that ‘santa has it’...somehow. Can’t help but start to feel that it’s a bunch of hogwash at this point.”
Leaning over slightly and stretching her arm far out, she then briefly patted against Chak’s shoulder, while the Cali was still groggily glancing around.
“Wake up, sleepyhead. We’ve got company,” she informed, and decided that this book was already not worth investigating, closing it up and putting it to the side, while looking back at the many, many more that still remained with an exhausted exhale. Following a brief hunch, she turned over to Dagon again, while pointing at the shelf. “Any of these you can recommend me for better info? So far, it seemed like all of these expect you to have done your homework beforehand.”
Lowering his drink from his lips and maneuvered around the bar the man leaned up against an island. It was clear from his facial expression he didn’t quite believe her but was willing to humor.
“Ooooh boy… well… seems like you’ve read through most of the classics. But all this-” he motioned his drink hand over the whole array of books, “Is just corporate fluff and invention to sell you on the more marketable parts of the holiday. Even if some didn’t start that way, well, you’ve seen how boiled down these books are… standard fare these days I’m afraid. Not just books either, most things really. That very suit you’re wearing? Popularized by a soda company. If you want to learn about the strict religious origins of Christmas, just crack that one open for a read.” his gesturing hand fell on a thick, high quality book with bold eye-catching letters stating ‘The Holy Bible’, “But… little of it actually relates because a lot of the practices are derived from other other belief systems and- Uh… well I better quiet down before I land on the Super-Naughty list.” he darkly chuckled before taking another sip,”But if I was to be personally charitable. The ‘intended’ point is to be with friends and family, to exchange gifts to show appreciation and love. And to give to those less fortunate, because we are in this wild world together and supporting one another is something we do need to be reminded of.”
Doodle cleaned out one of his ears with his pinky as he rolled his eyes.
“Do I look like ‘corporate fluff’ to you?” he grumbled under his breath intentionally for no one to hear.
“Do you want an honest answer to that?” Shida, who had of course heard him anyway, asked in return, before turning back to Dagon to allow him to finish his thoughts. “Too bad none of that sounds all too helpful here. Guess these books won’t give me more than a vague idea either.”
She shoved the one she was holding back onto the shelf without taking a new one out, and then dropped back into the chair, her face in her hands.
“There’s gotta be a way to find out something useful…” she lamented silently, glancing out of her fingers to look at Chak worriedly. “If this shi-...stuff has really been going on forever, there’s gotta be some form of real documentation about it, right?”
“I would assume so!” Chak nodded as she rubbed her eye with a lower limb, “But with very real ‘magic’ at play, it might be tricky to find something reliable,” she pointed out “I believe Earth had a basic equivalent to the Net around this time. Maybe we can gain access to that?”
Still not buying the ‘act’ but still feeling like humoring these strange people, Dagon hummed and dug a rectangular screened device from his pocket.
“Would you like to borrow my phone? I got full bars, here let me just unlock it for ya…” he offered, tapping a code onto the screen and presenting it for either person to take.
Chak accepted it happily.
“Thank you!” she said as she closely inspected it. She attempted to tap and scroll, but her claws didn’t seem to receive any sort of input response from the device, “Oh, uhm.. Uhhm…” she mumbled before trying her lower limb’s ‘skin’, finding more success, “Ah! There we go! Now… uhm… What’s a ‘Instant Gram’?” she asked, realizing the interface was completely foreign to her.
“Give it here,” Shida mumbled with a roll of her eyes and snatched the device out of Chak’s hand, since she had way more experience with using human gadgetry than the Cali did. Of course, it was still true that most of the symbols and specific applications on the device were foreign to her, however, she had a lot more success discerning what different symbols would ultimately mean.
Games were easy enough to distinguish. And so were messengers usually. That down there were contacts and calls. Using the process of elimination, she had ultimately brought it down to three possible applications.
“Which browser do you usually use,” she then asked the man casually to get past the last hurdle. “Wouldn’t want to accidently open any old tabs without your permission.”
“It’s fine, I always bookmark anything important and my go-to is FireFox. Just… don’t judge me on my previous searches, you know how the brain asks questions that must be answered in the middle of the night.” Dagon replied into his glass as he was about to finish his drink.
Shida nodded and pressed the correlating symbol, coming face to face with what basically had to be some form of search engine. Then, lifting her hand to the screen, she just kind of…stopped.
“What the hfil do I even search for?” she asked with a confused glance over at Chak. She was pretty sure that the buzz surrounding them on every angle was a good indicator that just looking for “Christmas” or “Santa” was probably going to lead to a dead end.
“Hmm… news articles? Search for top stories of previous months? Just so we can confirm or dismiss the calendar abnormality. If this place is repeating ‘December’ over and over, maybe there will be something to learn from other ‘Christmas’’.” she proposed.
Dagon furrowed his brow at that, looking like he was about to ask a question. But he didn’t seem to settle on what question to ask, or how to ask it, or even if the question should be directed at them. Turning away to set the glass back by the bar he started rubbing the side of his head.
Shida let out a breath through her teeth.
“Christmas parade…Christmas parade…Christmas parade…oh, would you look at that! More Christmas parade…Does anything interesting happen in this town?” she asked after scrolling through headline after headline about how big of a success the last parades had been and how good it was for the town. “At least this confirms the whole commerciality thing, I guess. Seems that’s how this place makes all its money. I’m feeling the holiday spirit indeed.”
“Yeah… from what I understand this town holds their parade every year.” Dagon said, leaning on the bar island again, “But… I wouldn’t really call them ‘profitable’. I mean, that’s why Mary and I were brought out here from the city. We’re here to glam it up and make it into more of a marketable event. Sorry, I-I lost the narrative here. What’s this really about?”
Chak leaned closer to Shida curiously.
“Does it give credit to the parade organizers?” she asked in a whisper.
“The town-council of Flakeville…I guess. Though if I had to guess, there’s a bunch of contractors that are getting left out here who do the actual work. That’s usually how it is,” she mumbled while her eyes scanned the page. “And this year, we seem to have one of them right here.”
She looked up at Dagon.
“The last guys we told ran off screaming,” she elaborated. “Not keen on repeating that to be honest. But in short…I don’t know, I guess we’re trying to save Christmas, but only since it’s determined to take us down with it, should it fail.”
Dagon’s mouth parted open a bit, giving the two a grimace-analytical look. It was like he was trying to decipher a joke or find the hidden context of what the feline just said.
“Save Christmas? I’m not certain as to how that would make people run and scream around here… And Christmas is a bit too big to ‘fail’…” he initially said before holding up a hand as if to reset himself, “Look, I’m pretty good at reading people and I can tell you all actually need help. I’m going to need something to understand what that ‘help’ should be. Tell it to me straight. First, what made people run and scream? Swear on my mother’s grave I’m not going to do that.”
Shida exchanged a long look with Chak, and even looked over at Doodle. However, it seemed that the magic had spoken, and she had the final say here.
She inhaled deeply and pinched the ridge in between her eyes. Then she let all the breath out at once.
“Oh, what the heck,” she said with a shake of her head and stood up, sauntering over to the man with quick steps, and glaring directly into his eyes.
“It took the other guys ages to get it, so I will make this quick,” she said, and grabbed Dagon’s arm tightly, pulling his sleeves back slightly so her fingers would make contact with his skin, where she then extended her claws so their sharp tips would start digging into his arm. Not enough to cause damage, but certainly more than enough to be felt. At the same time, she turned her ears around, making them as wide as possible as they faced the man, and her flat nostrils twitched as she took in the primate’s scent, before pulling her lips back to reveal her sharp and pointy teeth up close. “I know you’ve never seen an ‘alien’ before, but I’m not going to boil your skin or squash your brain or…steal your Christmas. All I want is to get rid of this stupid costume, have my friend go back to normal, and leave this crazy place so I can get back to my own life. Got that much?”
The man’s eyes shifted from scrunched confusion to a wide realization as the feline showed her very real features. Despite tensing up from an instinctual rising surge of fear, he remained in place listening to every word she spoke. His shocked gaze then fell on Chak, who had walked up behind Shida for him to get a close look as well. He could see every micromovement of their very real faces and bodies that no costume could ever hope to replicate.
“I… believe you.” he found himself saying, though not quite believing that he was saying it, “Wow… okay… Uhm… one moment please if you will allow it.” he twisted around and grabbed the bigger bottle he used for his drink, but this time he downed a gulp straight from the source.
His hair fell partially on his face, as he removed the bottle from his lips and set it down on the table. Brushing the hair back with his now bottleless hand he chuckled through the aftershock of the situation he was in right now.
“And um… Christmas… is a real thing? Like, Santa, magic bag and…” he asked as he looked down at the smug Doodle, “Elves… wow… Heh… my whole speech earlier must have made me appear so-dumb… Wow… Talk about a double-whammy… Wait! Was that why Mary was acting so… odd?”
At that, Shida had to shake her head in sympathy.
“I think that girl just has some issues,” she broke to the man, putting a hand onto his shoulder. “Maybe the stress is getting to her, I don’t know. Got nothing to do with us, however.”
“Right… okay… I hope you understand that this is a lot to take in.” he chuckled.
“You’re telling me,” Shida grumbled and crossed her arms, looking at Doodle with malice in her eyes. “I didn’t know what Christmas was until today.”
“Makes… sense. In the crazy current context I find myself living in.” Dagon mumbled as he slightly pushed the bottle further away, “Well I didn’t get to where I am now by not being a good problem solver. And part of my work in this town I’m already drowning in the marvelous abundant ‘Christmas Spirit’, so I’m at your service.”
The man then scratched at his short, immaculately groomed beard.
“First off, have you tested the limits to your magic? If you’re going to go galavanting around this town you’ll need to know what tools you have at your disposal. A way to disguise yourselves might prove to be a priority if you already have people running and screaming. Surely something like that would be useful for… Santa to have for the rest of the year.” he pointed out.
Shida scratched the side of her head.
“So far we only have floating, the sack thing, and some cold resistance,” she mumbled, before glancing at Doodle again. “Oh, and the fact that apparently, other ‘magic’ doesn’t work on me. At least that guy couldn’t weasel out of my grasp with his.”
She then looked at her hands. How would she even test something like that? She concentrated, but nothing happened. So far everything had happened subconsciously, so it probably wasn’t a matter of willpower or something like that.
However, there was another thing she had neglected to mention.
Glancing over at the sack, she tilted her head. Well, it was worth a try.
Even at the risk of looking like a complete idiot, she turned towards the item and cleared her throat.

Fonts in Discord:

Discord looks pretty with a font called "Helvetica Neue."
When you chat, your messages just use a regular easy font, depending on your device.

Colors in Discord:

You can color your text with codes. Here are some colors:
- Red: #FF0000
- Green: #00FF00
- Blue: #0000FF
- Yellow: #FFFF00
- White: #FFFFFF
- Black: #000000
Some roles in Discord can have special colors for usernames.

Making Text Fancy:

To make your words bold or fancy, use symbols:
- **Bold Text**
- *Italic Text*
- __Underlined Text__
- ~~Strikethrough Text~~
- [Hyperlink Text](URL)

First thing first. What I've got is heavily based on u/Tempest_42 's work on a scan script for version 1.1.0, found here:
https://www.reddit.com/Bitburnecomments/rhpp8p/scan_script_updated_for_bitburner_v110/
Second thing second. This script may, or even straight up will, spoil the joy of discovery this game the first time through. I would suggest against using it until you reach the point where the game probably won't surprise you anymore. It will work from the very start if you insist, but it may negatively impact your impression of the game.
I would hide the rest of the post in spoilers if I could, but it does not seem to work with the code block, so keep reading at your own risk.
My modifications lets the script remain on screen, automatically update, immediately show if your hacking level is high enough to hack the servers, give an indication of the security level of the servers, shows you the current money available on the server, as well as what percentage of the servers maximum money that represents. Furthermore, it shows you if there is a coding contract on the servers, and if you hover over the symbol for the coding contract, it will tell you what kind of contract it is.
Finally, it will automagically navigate you to any listed server if you click on it, without the need for any fancy (and expensive) late game functions.
It will do all this in 7.75 gigs of ram, or, if the coding contract identification bit is unnecessary to you, 2.75 gigs. If you consider const doc = eval('document') to be cheating, it will jump to 32 or 27 gigs instead, though.
Script:

let facServers = { "CSEC": "red", "avmnite-02h": "cyan", "I.I.I.I": "cyan", "run4theh111z": "cyan", "w0r1d_d43m0n": "red" }; export async function main(ns) { let output = `Network:`; let list = ["home"]; let temp = []; let tempfiles = []; while (true) { await ns.sleep(1000) output = `Network:`; for (var i = 0; i < list.length; i++) { temp = ns.scan(list[i]); for (var j = 0; j < temp.length; j++) { if (!list.includes(temp[j])) { list.push(temp[j]) } } } let order = [["home"]]; let list1 = list.filter(item => item !== "home") let temp2 = []; let temp3 = []; while (list1.length > 0) { temp3 = order[order.length - 1]; temp2 = []; for (i = 0; i < list1.length; i++) { for (j = 0; j < temp3.length; j++) { if (ns.scan(list1[i]).includes(temp3[j])) { temp2.push(list1[i]); } } } order.push(temp2); temp3 = order[order.length - 1]; for (i = 0; i < list1.length; i++) { if (temp3.includes(list1[i])) { list1 = list1.filter(item => item !== list1[i]); i--; } } } let depthchart = ""; for (i = 0; i < order.length; i++) { depthchart += "" + i + "," + order[i].toString(); } let depthlist = depthchart.split(""); depthlist.shift(); for (i = 0; i < depthlist.length; i++) { depthlist[i] = depthlist[i].split(","); } for (i = 0; i < list.length; i++) { let name = list[i]; let spacer = "-"; let depth = 0; for (j = 0; j < depthlist.length; j++) { if (depthlist[j].includes(list[i])) { depth = depthlist[j][0]; } } let steps = [list[i]] while (depth > 0) { depth-- for (j = 0; j < steps.length; j++) { let temp = ns.scan(steps[j]); for (let k = 0; k < temp.length; k++) { if (depthlist[depth].includes(temp[k])) { steps.push(temp[k]); k = temp.length; } } } } steps.reverse(); let goto = "" for (j = 0; j < steps.length; j++) { goto += ";connect " + steps[j]; } let hackColor = ns.hasRootAccess(name) ? "lime" : "red"; let nameColor = facServers[name] ? facServers[name] : "white"; if (nameColor == "white") { let ratio = ns.getServerSecurityLevel(name) / ns.getServerMinSecurityLevel(name); if (ratio > 3) { nameColor = "Red"; } else if (ratio > 2) { nameColor = "orange"; } else if (ratio > 1) { nameColor = "green"; } else nameColor = "lime"; } if(ns.getServerRequiredHackingLevel(name)>ns.getHackingLevel()){ nameColor="darkRed" } let hoverText = ["Req Level: ", ns.getServerRequiredHackingLevel(name), "
Req Ports: ", ns.getServerNumPortsRequired(name), "
Memory: ", ns.getServerMaxRam(name), "GB", "
Security: ", ns.getServerSecurityLevel(name), "/", ns.getServerMinSecurityLevel(name), "
Money: ", Math.round(ns.getServerMoneyAvailable(name)).toLocaleString(), " (", Math.round(100 * ns.getServerMoneyAvailable(name) / ns.getServerMaxMoney(name)), "%)" ].join(""); let ctText = ""; tempfiles = ns.ls(name, ".cct"); for (j = 0; j < tempfiles.length; j++) { ctText += "©"; } while ((name.length + spacer.length + tempfiles.length) < 20) { spacer += "-"; } let monratio=ns.getServerMoneyAvailable(name) / ns.getServerMaxMoney(name); let money = " " money += ns.formatNumber(ns.getServerMoneyAvailable(name)) + " ("; if (Math.round(100 * monratio) != 'Infinity') { money += Math.round(100 * ns.getServerMoneyAvailable(name) / ns.getServerMaxMoney(name)) + "%)"; } else { money += "∞%)"; } let moneyColor = "red"; if (monratio > 0.1) { moneyColor = "orange"; } if (monratio > 0.6) { moneyColor = "yellow"; } if (monratio > 0.9) { moneyColor = "lime"; } output += '
' + `----■ ` + `${name} ` + `${ctText}` + `${spacer}` + `${money}`; } const doc = eval('document'); const HUDElement = doc.getElementById("root").firstChild.nextSibling.firstChild.nextSibling.firstChild; try { if (HUDElement.firstChild.innerHTML.includes('Bitburner v2.5.0 (b87b8b4be)
`) const lista = doc.getElementById("hook"); lista.innerHTML = output; } } } catch { } }

}
Any feedback is welcome. Have an image.
https://i.imgur.com/wMrlkAc.png
EDIT: I wanted some more immediate info regarding cash level added. Have another image.
https://i.imgur.com/W5kfRjv.png

*You can find the TL;DR at the bottom of this post.\*
This is going to be an unusually long post, but I promise it'll be well worth reading from beginning to end.
As a UI/UX designer, I've had the opportunity to contribute to the design and development of products shipped by early-stage startups, serial entrepreneurs, and fast-growing scale-ups.
It's always an exciting process that comes with its fair share of ups and downs—usually more downs than ups, but the small wins consistently lift everyone's spirits, regardless of the team's size.
I've only worked once as a full-time UI/UX designer at a company. The rest of my design career has been as a contractor, offering the versatility and freedom I value the most.
In addition to the typical benefits of freelancing, I've also been privy to the mechanics involved in both the development and marketing stages of new rollouts or entirely new products.
At a certain point, I observed how design can directly impact a product's appeal and user retention.
Surprisingly, the elements contributing to a product's design success are often overlooked. I believe this occurs because, in a project, things tend to be unnecessarily complicated due to the perceived difficulty of achieving success.
This sentiment usually trickles down from project stakeholders and can become a significant detriment to a product's success.
I can't tell you how often I've come in to fix designs that made absolutely no sense or made the product look like it launched 10 years ago.
There are also instances where the product designer spends too much time on research and Information Architecture (IA) but not enough time making the UI designs intuitive enough.
Based on my experiences, several elements can help a product look appealing enough to attract early adopters, which, for the entrepreneurs in this sub, translates to new paying customers.
Here are the 4 essential design principles you should strive to meet before shipping your product.

1. Think like a mailman

When a mailman delivers mail to your door, they'll open your mailbox and slide in the mail. If the mailbox is stuck or broken, they might ring the doorbell and wait for someone to open the door to hand them the mail.
If the bell is broken, they might knock on the door or a window to get anyone's attention inside. If still no one opens the door, they might drop the mail right in front of your door.
The point of this analogy is to demonstrate how a mailman focuses on one solution at a time and does not bother themselves with any alternative options that exist at the moment they're trying a specific solution. The act in which they engage is simple, and the manner with which they go from one possible solution to the next is based on logic. It's highly intuitive and highly effective.
You need to apply this to your users as well. Consider them mailmen. They need to achieve a simple goal as part of a larger objective. You want to make it easy for them to try one solution (feature) before the other, and to have them see the logic in it.
Just because you have several fancy features doesn't mean you have to display them all on one screen, even when they all relate to a specific part of your product.
The best products can get a user from A to B in the fastest way possible without many distractions. Determine a hierarchy from the most essential to the least essential features.
Prioritize the ones you deem most essential, give them the most real estate, and use logic to make the secondary features available in an intuitive way, through gestures or active engagement, without cluttering up a screen.
A good example of this is the way you can write and publish an article on Medium. The only focus on the screen is the cursor that's ready for you to write the actual sentence you're about to write; the rest is hidden from view.
A bad example of this is using Wordpress to create a blog post.
Make the experience sequential, logical, intuitive, and spacious. Keep the environment clean, just as you would a desk. Don't be afraid of introducing more steps for users if it means the majority can get things done faster and easier within the initial step. If anything, introducing more steps is more skeuomorphic and therefore more intuitive.

2. Styles are tools

Please, for the love of all that is holy, do not use more than 1 typeface. Sure, you can always use different fonts to establish hierarchy (semibold for headlines vs. regular for body), but using different typefaces in the same product creates a disconnect between elements, breaks consistency, and prevents a unified product experience users can differentiate from other products they're using.
Using a single typeface saves you time in trying to make several match each other, and if you're going with premium typefaces, it will also save you costs.
Don't get me wrong—there's absolutely nothing wrong with using a pair of different typefaces for your landing pages to spice things up and get more creative. But in your product, focus on a single typeface to reinforce cohesion.
The same should be applied to your color scheme. Pick one primary color and one accent color. Use the accent color like an actual accent color, and not as an alternative to your primary color.
Colors play a huge role in your brand identity and product experience. Picking the right set of colors helps users mentally remember the product, which makes the user experience easier.
Again, you could go a bit more creative with landing pages, but for the actual product, you don't want to distract a user with a whole lot of colors or a lack of hierarchy in the colors they observe.
My best advice is to go for a simple typeface and neutral colors. You can still make everything look good and introduce a bit of character to your product. It'll also make it less trend-reliant, which means the UI can last longer without needing a visual update.
Use styles as a means to make your product more practical. Secondary to practicality is clean and original aesthetics, which can easily be achieved when the product itself and your design system come together in a coherent way.

3. Literalism before icons

Because icons can sometimes make an interface look better, many designers have become too reliant on iconography in UI design. Don't get me wrong—icons can be helpful in saving space and encouraging intuitive interactions.
However, just like eating too much broccoli can still be unhealthy, too many icons will lead to an adverse effect where they no longer become helpful; they become an obstacle to a user connecting with a product.
Icons are a figurative way to inform a user there's something specific they can do by clicking it. Icons can also be used to reinforce a text with something that evokes a specific emotion.
And while some icons are super clear in what they stand for, to the point it's quite literal (e.g., a flag icon can mean "flag this item" or a right arrow can mean there's another item to the right), many creative icons are figurative and not as clear, which means a user would need to first figure out what it could mean by clicking on it.
This is fine, as once they do that and see where it leads them, they have a good understanding of it. However, where it becomes too much of a problem is when there are too many icons involved throughout a UI, and a good portion of the user's time in-app is spent on figuring out what the icons do.
That's when the user starts getting annoyed, thinking the interface is being too lazy in using figurative signs instead of literal texts that they can understand instantly.
Furthermore, because icons are visual cues, they can also overwhelm a user in needing to process all the visual cues at once.
The best way to incorporate icons is to prioritize being literal. Since you've followed principle 1 (think like a mailman), adding text-based action buttons or links makes the translation of your IA to an interface even clearer, practical, and more pleasant to experience, leading to higher engagement and user retention.
A good example is a button with the text "Invite Friends" instead of just having a button with an icon symbolic of sending invites. You could make it more emotional by adding an icon before it, if the button remains proportional to the screen's hierarchy.
A bad example is using a plus icon to indicate they can add or create something when you have multiple different types of items a user can create. In that case, it's best to be literal and write "Create board" or "create team" so users instantly understand.
Use icons wisely but prioritize being literal with your UI elements.

4. Hierarchy is order

Once you've made your product easy to use, navigate, remember, and understand, while ensuring it all looks and feels clean, you'll automatically have a premium-looking UI that's appealing to users. It's a direct consequence of applying these principles. Nice aesthetics become an effect, an inherent result of the underlying fundamentals.
But to really bring it home, ensure there's a clear design hierarchy between aesthetics, function, and experience.
Contrary to most conventional understanding, especially among designers, aesthetics can never be the highest goal within the design hierarchy. Design itself translates a concept into a usable solution through elements users can engage with.
This means we have to think in reverse, especially if you're a developer needing to design your product yourself.
These are the three questions you need to ask yourself, in this exact order:

What do I want the users to experience?
How do I structure the functions (features) to enable the aforementioned experience?
With which look and feel do I enhance the structure of functions and the experience I want to create?

You can incorporate your research, like user interviews and market research, to answer these questions more intelligently.
Say I want to create a new search engine for the web and I'm about to ask myself these three questions. Here's how I would answer them:
Instant gratification through easy and focused digestion of the most relevant information served in small bites, one at a time.

Each search produces a single result, presenting a short contextual summary of the top 100 web results most relevant to the search query. From there, users are shown the best recommendation (web result) and its relevancy score in relation to the query.
A futuristic look and feel symbolizing computational power and accuracy.
Of course, there are unlimited ways to answer these questions. But by focusing first on experience, then function presentation, and lastly aesthetics, you'll naturally establish a built-in hierarchy where the user senses how you've prioritized what's essential to them rather than how it looks.

Notice that there's no principle in this list that aims to dictate what's "pretty" or not. That's because styles come and go, but the fundamentals never change.
I want to clarify that these principles are simply the ones I follow based on my past experiences. There are other principles or frameworks one could follow as a startup or solopreneur to achieve a similar result.
I also did not aim to define for every designer or developer what good design is or isn't. My goal is to help you make it easier to design your product, not only to find your users more efficiently but also to optimize and maintain higher user retention.
I'm quite passionate about it myself. That's why I started my UI/UX as a subscription service, taking care of designing new products for startups, serial entrepreneurs, and scale-ups.
I charge an affordable monthly fee, and in exchange, clients can request unlimited designs on-demand.
I hope this post makes sense, but feel free to ask questions, raise concerns, or challenge my principles. I'd be happy to engage in a discussion with you.
Thanks!

TL;DR

As a UI/UX designer, I've worked with startups and scale-ups, where I was able to experience and see the significance of design in product success. Four design principles stand out:

Think Like a Mailman: Prioritize simplicity in navigating features, focusing on essential functions first and presenting secondary features intuitively.
Styles Are Tools: Use one typeface and limited colors for consistency. Reserve creative styles for landing pages; keep the product simple and practical.
Literalism Before Icons: Limit the use of icons; prioritize clarity over visual symbols. Utilize text-based actions for better user understanding.
Hierarchy Is Order: Focus on user experience, function structure, and aesthetics in that order. Build a design hierarchy around user essentials.

These principles prioritize user-centricity and practicality over aesthetics. They foster efficient design, user engagement, and retention.

*You can find the TL;DR at the bottom of this post.\*
This is going to be an unusually long post, but I promise it'll be well worth reading from beginning to end.
Here are the 4 essential design principles you should strive to meet before shipping your SaaS.

1. Think like a mailman

When a mailman delivers mail to your door, they'll open your mailbox and slide in the mail. If the mailbox is stuck or broken, they might ring the doorbell and wait for someone to open the door to hand them the mail.
If the bell is broken, they might knock on the door or a window to get anyone's attention inside. If still no one opens the door, they might drop the mail right in front of your door.
The point of this analogy is to demonstrate how a mailman focuses on one solution at a time and does not bother themselves with any alternative options that exist at the moment they're trying a specific solution. The act in which they engage is simple, and the manner with which they go from one possible solution to the next is based on logic. It's highly intuitive and highly effective.
You need to apply this to your users as well. Consider them mailmen. They need to achieve a simple goal as part of a larger objective. You want to make it easy for them to try one solution (feature) before the other, and to have them see the logic in it.
Just because you have several fancy features doesn't mean you have to display them all on one screen, even when they all relate to a specific part of your product.
The best products can get a user from A to B in the fastest way possible without many distractions. Determine a hierarchy from the most essential to the least essential features.
Prioritize the ones you deem most essential, give them the most real estate, and use logic to make the secondary features available in an intuitive way, through gestures or active engagement, without cluttering up a screen.
A good example of this is the way you can write and publish an article on Medium. The only focus on the screen is the cursor that's ready for you to write the actual sentence you're about to write; the rest is hidden from view.
A bad example of this is using Wordpress to create a blog post.
Make the experience sequential, logical, intuitive, and spacious. Keep the environment clean, just as you would a desk. Don't be afraid of introducing more steps for users if it means the majority can get things done faster and easier within the initial step. If anything, introducing more steps is more skeuomorphic and therefore more intuitive.

2. Styles are tools

Please, for the love of all that is holy, do not use more than 1 typeface. Sure, you can always use different fonts to establish hierarchy (semibold for headlines vs. regular for body), but using different typefaces in the same product creates a disconnect between elements, breaks consistency, and prevents a unified product experience users can differentiate from other products they're using.
Using a single typeface saves you time in trying to make several match each other, and if you're going with premium typefaces, it will also save you costs.
Don't get me wrong—there's absolutely nothing wrong with using a pair of different typefaces for your landing pages to spice things up and get more creative. But in your product, focus on a single typeface to reinforce cohesion.
The same should be applied to your color scheme. Pick one primary color and one accent color. Use the accent color like an actual accent color, and not as an alternative to your primary color.
Colors play a huge role in your brand identity and product experience. Picking the right set of colors helps users mentally remember the product, which makes the user experience easier.
Again, you could go a bit more creative with landing pages, but for the actual product, you don't want to distract a user with a whole lot of colors or a lack of hierarchy in the colors they observe.
My best advice is to go for a simple typeface and neutral colors. You can still make everything look good and introduce a bit of character to your product. It'll also make it less trend-reliant, which means the UI can last longer without needing a visual update.
Use styles as a means to make your product more practical. Secondary to practicality is clean and original aesthetics, which can easily be achieved when the product itself and your design system come together in a coherent way.

3. Literalism before icons

Because icons can sometimes make an interface look better, many designers have become too reliant on iconography in UI design. Don't get me wrong—icons can be helpful in saving space and encouraging intuitive interactions.
However, just like eating too much broccoli can still be unhealthy, too many icons will lead to an adverse effect where they no longer become helpful; they become an obstacle to a user connecting with a product.
Icons are a figurative way to inform a user there's something specific they can do by clicking it. Icons can also be used to reinforce a text with something that evokes a specific emotion.
And while some icons are super clear in what they stand for, to the point it's quite literal (e.g., a flag icon can mean "flag this item" or a right arrow can mean there's another item to the right), many creative icons are figurative and not as clear, which means a user would need to first figure out what it could mean by clicking on it.
This is fine, as once they do that and see where it leads them, they have a good understanding of it. However, where it becomes too much of a problem is when there are too many icons involved throughout a UI, and a good portion of the user's time in-app is spent on figuring out what the icons do.
That's when the user starts getting annoyed, thinking the interface is being too lazy in using figurative signs instead of literal texts that they can understand instantly.
Furthermore, because icons are visual cues, they can also overwhelm a user in needing to process all the visual cues at once.
The best way to incorporate icons is to prioritize being literal. Since you've followed principle 1 (think like a mailman), adding text-based action buttons or links makes the translation of your IA to an interface even clearer, practical, and more pleasant to experience, leading to higher engagement and user retention.
A good example is a button with the text "Invite Friends" instead of just having a button with an icon symbolic of sending invites. You could make it more emotional by adding an icon before it, if the button remains proportional to the screen's hierarchy.
A bad example is using a plus icon to indicate they can add or create something when you have multiple different types of items a user can create. In that case, it's best to be literal and write "Create board" or "create team" so users instantly understand.
Use icons wisely but prioritize being literal with your UI elements.

4. Hierarchy is order

Once you've made your product easy to use, navigate, remember, and understand, while ensuring it all looks and feels clean, you'll automatically have a premium-looking UI that's appealing to users. It's a direct consequence of applying these principles. Nice aesthetics become an effect, an inherent result of the underlying fundamentals.
But to really bring it home, ensure there's a clear design hierarchy between aesthetics, function, and experience.
Contrary to most conventional understanding, especially among designers, aesthetics can never be the highest goal within the design hierarchy. Design itself translates a concept into a usable solution through elements users can engage with.
This means we have to think in reverse, especially if you're a developer needing to design your product yourself.
These are the three questions you need to ask yourself, in this exact order:

What do I want the users to experience?
How do I structure the functions (features) to enable the aforementioned experience?
With which look and feel do I enhance the structure of functions and the experience I want to create?

You can incorporate your research, like user interviews and market research, to answer these questions more intelligently.
Say I want to create a new search engine for the web and I'm about to ask myself these three questions. Here's how I would answer them:

Instant gratification through easy and focused digestion of the most relevant information served in small bites, one at a time.
Each search produces a single result, presenting a short contextual summary of the top 100 web results most relevant to the search query. From there, users are shown the best recommendation (web result) and its relevancy score in relation to the query.
A futuristic look and feel symbolizing computational power and accuracy.

Of course, there are unlimited ways to answer these questions. But by focusing first on experience, then function presentation, and lastly aesthetics, you'll naturally establish a built-in hierarchy where the user senses how you've prioritized what's essential to them rather than how it looks.
Notice that there's no principle in this list that aims to dictate what's "pretty" or not. That's because styles come and go, but the fundamentals never change.
There are other principles or frameworks one could follow as a startup or solopreneur to achieve a similar result.
I also did not aim to define for every designer or developer what good design is or isn't. My goal is to help you make it easier to design your product, not only to find your users more efficiently but also to optimize and maintain higher user retention.
I'm quite passionate about it myself. That's why I started my UI/UX as a subscription service, taking care of designing new products for startups, serial entrepreneurs, and scale-ups.
I charge an affordable monthly fee, and in exchange, clients can request unlimited designs on-demand. You can learn more about it here: archiemax.com
I hope this post makes sense, but feel free to ask questions, raise concerns, or challenge my principles. I'd be happy to engage in a discussion with you.
Thanks!

TL;DR

Four design principles stand out:

Think Like a Mailman: Prioritize simplicity in navigating features, focusing on essential functions first and presenting secondary features intuitively.
Styles Are Tools: Use one typeface and limited colors for consistency. Reserve creative styles for landing pages; keep the product simple and practical.
Literalism Before Icons: Limit the use of icons; prioritize clarity over visual symbols. Utilize text-based actions for better user understanding.
Hierarchy Is Order: Focus on user experience, function structure, and aesthetics in that order. Build a design hierarchy around user essentials.

These principles prioritize user-centricity and practicality over aesthetics. They foster efficient design, user engagement, and retention.

Fancy font (symbols)

Merged with r/Symbology

Top 8 AI Design Tool You Should Try

Adcreative AI

Topaz Labs

DreamStudio

Google AutoDraw

Khroma

Looka Logo Maker

Uizard

Green Reality

Green Reality

Changelog

How to install android manually:

Min supported OS versions:

Min specs:

How to get logs:

How to get crash reports:

1. Think like a mailman

2. Styles are tools

3. Literalism before icons

4. Hierarchy is order

TL;DR

1. Think like a mailman

2. Styles are tools

3. Literalism before icons

4. Hierarchy is order

TL;DR