Rukarath was one of only a few thousand left.
Though the galaxy at large made overtures of how the Andaran genocide was horrible, how his people did not deserve to be slaughtered, how there must be something that can be done.
Little attention was brought to the fact that many of these fair-weather allies refused to release their Andaran slaves out of the kindness of their own hearts, so that his people could rebuild and repopulate. Little attention was kept on how refugees were turned away, because they didn't want overpopulation, they didn't want people who might be unwilling to assimilate into their society.
Their planet taken, overrun by their aggressors who continue to flaunt their victory, their ships badly damaged and barely capable of sustaining so many people... If it weren't for the Humans, the history of his people would have ended in tragedy, burned away by the fires of war.
Sanctuary Cities were established, starting with temporary prefabricated housing and cheap, mass-produced bedding, clothing that- no matter how large it was made, was still too tight to be worn. Gardens replete with food that was just barely enough to feed everyone with rationing.
It was still far more than any other had given, and it was explicitly stated, written in contract, that this aid was given freely, with no expectation of reciprocation, no debt.
But beyond this, they would have to work, to pay for their own needs, or accept the charity of those who wanted to do more.
The Andarans were a proud species who were well-known for being capable of working for days on end without needing sleep- though they would need to sleep at least an entire day, depending on how overworked they were.
Nobody took advantage of this quirk in their biology to force them to work entire days at a time- there were labor laws, of course, and there was a set amount of time they could work. It was still far better than their brethren in bondage got.
Rukarath was not able to work most jobs, due to his PTSD. Not wanting to be a burden, he desperately searched for something- anything- that would allow him to support his people- even the most meager of work would suffice.
His heart sank when he saw the advertisement, but he knew it was his only option on such short notice.
The zoo was full of Humans, among which were non-Human tourists wanting to see Terran animals from the safety of the outside of the enclosure. He was given free admission- just this once- because he had inquired regarding their advertisement, he had a right to know what he was getting into.
The Alien Fauna exhibit was divided by a wall, only a few visitors were allowed at a time. Rukarath was allowed entry with no fuss, aside from an irate Human who loudly asked why he was given special treatment.
He ignored them, and simply observed the enclosures.
There were sapients inside, their habitats effectively being housing equivalent to what was expected on their planet, with appropriate flora. He observed a Tuvati in the process of undergoing spiritual cleansing, undoubtedly a fascinating sight to those ignorant of their ways.
In a way, it was upsetting. To be displayed so openly to the public, barely allowed privacy for spiritual peace.
He wasn't certain if he wanted to go through with this, but he knew it was his only option.
He hadn't noticed the visitor section had emptied, hadn't really registered the passage of time as he stared into each enclosure. It was only a voice, speaking his mother tongue in a halting manner, that caught his attention.
<'You must be', taajan.> Rukarath answered. It was a male Human, tall for his species, but still shorter than he.
"Apologies, I don't often have opportunities to speak Adata." The Human attempted a respectful bow, but it was sloppy. Rukarath responded in kind with a more fluid and graceful movement.
"Who are you to know me, taajan?" He asked.
"I'm Seymour Anderson, my parents called me Ajantar." The Human replied. Rukarath understood. It wasn't common for other species to be adopted by non-members, it explained Ajantar's halting fluency, and lack of practice.
It was entirely likely he volunteered to meet with him.
"Allow me to correct a grave dishonor, kuujan Ajantar." The way the Human smiled indicated he preferred his Andaran name.
"There is no dishonor." Ajantar answered. "I understand you're here regarding the position." Rukarath nodded grimly. "You don't want to do it, yet honor dictates you must." Rukarath nodded. "I understand. I do not want to subject you to anything that is unpleasant, kuujan. Honor dictates that I must."
It was heartening to have understanding in his situation. He simply gave him a slight dip of the head in acknowledgement.
"The contract we have with our enclosure employees and fairly straightforward, but I'll go over the most important details." Ajantar spoke. "You are here of your free will, and are allowed to leave at any time of your free will. While giving a two weeks notice is preferred for quitting, you are under no obligation to do so. You are free to retreat to a more private area if you are overwhelmed, you will be provided what comforts we can, and you are more than welcome to bring with you anything that allows for that. And most importantly, you have the right to refuse service to any visitors for any reason."
This last tidbit startled Rukarath. "Yet the Tuvati was undergoing spiritual cleansing before us, is that not a breach of their privacy?" He asked.
"Avathan has expressed he wishes to do so, to teach us that- though it may seem strange to us- it is a deeply religious and spiritual act, and he has on more than one occasion spoken to our guests about it." Ajantar replied. "It is understood our visitors are not allowed to harass our enclosure employees, and that doing so will result not only in immediate removal from the premises of the zoo, but they will be banned."
This made Rukarath less concerned. "I understand the pay is double the galactic standard." He said.
"Of course, you're being displayed in front of hundreds of people wanting to gawk at something they've never seen before. Even then, that's only the starting fee. Some of our enclosure employees work here full time, using this as their primary residence simply because the payment is enough to support their family elsewhere. You're guaranteed full medical coverage- both physical and mental- culturally appropriate food is provided at the appropriate meal times, and family is more than welcome to visit for free- whether that's in the enclosure, or as guests. We can go over the finer details, kuujan, over a cup of rugata, if you are comfortable with this."
Rukarath nodded. He would do anything if it meant ensuring his people were taken care of, and though this man was another species, he was no less family.
Honor dictated he would be cared for.

Nestled in northern Lawrence County, Indiana, just six miles from Bedford, lies Ramsey Ridge Road. Just under three miles in length, the rural pathway once referred to as “Skin Ridge'' winds through the sparsely populated area’s dense woods atop a hill overlooking Little Salt Creek and nearby Bartlettsville. In the 1970’s, two completely unrelated deaths occurred within the confines of a modest green house that once stood along the ridge. Referred to by locals as “The Mysteries of Skin Ridge,” this is the story of the unusual deaths of Dennis McArthur, and Gerry Lee.
Dennis McArthur
On April 11, 1976, 44-year-old Pearl McArthur returned home after a lengthy stay at Madison State Hospital. Pearl, who would later be diagnosed with schizophrenia, had committed herself to the hospital in early December, leaving her 18-year-old son, Dennis, to care for the house in her absence. Accompanied by her 23-year-old daughter, April, who lived in nearby Bedford with her husband Gary, Pearl made her way inside the small two-story farmhouse.
Inside, Pearl and April found the home in complete disarray. Trash laid strewed about, lamps and furniture were overturned, and the stove was caved in, its exhaust pipe torn from the wall. It was unusually cold inside as though no heat had been recently used, and a strange smell permeated the air.
Alarmed, Pearl and April began to frantically search for Dennis. As they made their way over to a small couch located in a bedroom on the second floor, they noticed a pile of blankets lying on the sofa. As Pearl peeled back the layer of quilts, she was met with a horrific scene; Dennis’s decomposed body lay beneath the bedding. They immediately summoned police.
Dennis was found in a fetal position on the couch, facing inwards. Although covered by quilts, he was nude from the waist down. The coroner estimated he had died one to two months prior, however the cold weather had, in part, delayed the decomposition process making it difficult to give an exact time of death. During an autopsy, it was discovered that Dennis was severely emaciated, to the point of starvation. No evidence of external or internal injuries were found.
Police discovered several bottles of pills in the home; vitamins used for energy, an antidepressant, and a drug used in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. All of the pills were prescribed to Pearl, and were still relatively full. A toxicology test was conducted and proved negative, however the state pathologist who performed the test admitted that the test was incapable of detecting substances such as LSD. He also explained due to the amount of time that had passed since his death, the tests might not be one hundred percent accurate. Dennis’ cause of death was listed as malnutrition and exposure.
Investigators found several clues at the scene that struck them as odd. Although the cabin appeared ransacked, nothing seemed to be missing, including a small amount of money that was found within the disheveled home. Along with money, a small amount of, now spoiled, food was found in the cabinets and refrigerator. An upstairs window was found to be broken from the inside. Also upstairs, investigators discovered several large pools of blood, including one beside the couch where Dennis’ body was found. They also found blood on the backside of the couch, on a rug, and on the kitchen door frame, along with splatter on a wall. Testing confirmed the blood to be human.
Dennis was well known to both police and the county’s social workers. His mother, Pearl, was frequently in and out of mental institutions leaving Dennis and his two siblings to fend for themselves. The children’s father, Walter, had abandoned the family and moved to Georgia years prior. In 1972, Dennis was arrested for theft and truancy. That same year, he was expelled from school and never returned.
He was again arrested in 1973, this time for driving without a license, fleeing from police, possession of alcohol, and curfew violation. After his release, Dennis was sent to live with a man named Al Hagopian, a case worker for the Youth Services Bureau. Al was quoted as saying; “Finding him a place to stay was hard. The house where he had been staying was pretty grubby, and the state thought he was too young to live alone. His mother was in and out of hospitals a lot and he worried about her constantly. He didn’t want to return home, but said he had to go back to help care for his mother.”
Al discovered that Dennis “read and wrote backwards,” and was “practically illiterate.” After reviewing Dennis’ school records, he found multiple instances where teachers labeled Dennis as having disciplinary problems when it came to schoolwork, however not once did they mention he had a clear learning disability. Al further explained that attempts to secure employment for Dennis were nearly never successful. Aside from being unable to read or write, he had no vehicle. He also had no stable address or phone number and was oftentimes dirty and dressed in near rags.
Dennis’ unfair hand he had been dealt did not stop him from trying to act like an average kid most of the time, Al added. He explained that Dennis had an interest in cars, enjoyed hanging out with his friends, and was always chasing girls. He had also told Al he wanted to someday save up enough money for a new guitar, as he loved to play music. Al admitted that Dennis was also into the “street scene” and had dabbled in drugs and alcohol. Dennis returned home after two months of living with Al.
In 1974, after another arrest and his subsequent release from a youth detention center, Dennis went to live with his father for a short time. Dennis’ arrest had made headlines when it was learned the young man had been kept with adult men for a long period before being transferred to the youth detention center. Dennis and Walter reportedly couldn’t get along, however, and Dennis ran away to Florida. He lived there for a few months, washing cars to make money, before returning to the home on Ramsey Ridge in Indiana in 1975. He was again arrested, this time in Bloomington, Indiana for carrying a concealed weapon, alcohol consumption, and curfew violation. At the time of Dennis’ death, the charges against him were still pending.
According to his sister, April, she had gone to visit Dennis at the home on Ramsey Ridge on Christmas Eve. April said Dennis was sitting on the couch, playing his guitar. He also showed her a new rug he had purchased for the home. According to her, he seemed his usual self and the home was clean. April offered him some money, however Dennis refused claiming he had enough to get by.
Lucy Lively, an aunt of Dennis’ who lived “within hollering distance,” claimed she entered the home on February 1st to turn off a lamp that had been left burning. While she did not see Dennis, she claimed the home's interior was in normal order. Joe McArthur, Dennis’ paternal grandfather who also lived nearby, said it was not unusual for Dennis to disappear for long periods, so he thought nothing of the youths' absence as of late.
When Walter, Dennis’ father, was informed of his son's death, he informed police that Dennis, along with two male friends, had come to visit him in Georgia in mid December. He gave a description of the two teens and told police they had been introduced to him as “John Boy'' and “Blonde John.”
Police were able to track down “Blonde John” who was identified as 18-year-old John Fonk of Bloomington, Indiana. John told investigators that he and Dennis had driven to Florida together in October, not December, as Walter had stated. John explained they had stopped by Walter’s home in Georgia on their way back home. He was confident in the date as he had joined the Air Force in December. He also explained that “John Boy” had been a hitchhiker they had picked up along the way. According to John, “John Boy” rode back to Indiana with the pair, but he had not seen him, or Dennis since. He described him as being in his mid 20’s. After learning of the discrepancy in Walter’s story, police again tried to contact him, however phone calls and letters went unanswered. Unfortunately, they were never able to identify “John Boy.”
Further questioning of social services showed that Pearl had filled several grocery orders provided by state services, however the orders ceased when she had been again hospitalized. Eventually the Lawrence County Welfare Office had taken control and promised to look in on Dennis, however they could provide no evidence they had followed up on the case. They suggested that Dennis, overwhelmed with his impoverished lifestyle, had simply starved himself to the point of being comatose, before succumbing to the harsh cold of winter. They were quoted as saying “We were aware of him of course, but he never came to us. We don’t go looking for people if they don’t come to us for help. Now if he had, we would have done something.”
The local sheriff as well as members of Dennis’ family were unsatisfied with Dennis’ listed cause of death and continued to pursue the investigation for several months. Unfortunately due to a lack of funds, more elaborate tests that may have presented some clue as to how Dennis died could not be conducted. Sheriff Robbins was quoted as saying, “This is a very disturbing mystery, because even if someone confessed to killing him, I doubt we would have the evidence to prove it. But it sure is hard to believe he could kill himself like that, by just laying down and dying. We aren’t closing the case, it will remain open. But until we have something more to go on, there’s not much more we can do at this point.”
Dennis was laid to rest at Heltonville’s Gilgal Cemetery. Few attended the modest closed casket funeral and subsequent burial. One journalist gave a last description of Dennis’ final resting place,
“The dogwood trees are in full bloom on the hillsides of Gilgal Cemetery, and though Dennis’ body now rests peacefully beneath a carpet of fallen petals, his soul will surely never rest until the reasons behind his death are discovered.”
Pearl, Dennis’ mother, passed away in 2000 at the age of 67. Walter, Dennis’ father, died in 1988. His sister, April, passed away suddenly in 2006 at the age of 53. Dennis also had an older brother, Gordon, who passed away in 1994 at the age of 42.
Gerry Lee
On the evening of May 28, 1978, police were again summoned to the little green house on Ramsey Ridge. The home was now occupied by 27-year-old Gerry Lee, a divorced self employed carpenter, and his roommate, 25-year-old Michael Davis. When police arrived, Michael informed them that Gerry had committed suicide.
Gerry was found hanging from a maple tree located 20 feet from the home's front porch. The rope had been tied off to a branch approximately 10 feet above the ground and fashioned into a noose. His feet were found to be touching the ground, and his knees were bent. Blood was discovered on Gerry’s hands and pants, despite having suffered no visible wounds. An autopsy would reveal that Gerry had died of asphyxiation as a result of a fracture to his cricoid cartilage located at the base of his larynx. The coroner stated this was not an injury normally associated with suicidal hangings, but instead blunt force trauma to the throat. Inside, more blood was found on a television set, the phone, and on the kitchen floor. A window on the home's back door had been broken from the outside, leaving shards of glass lying on the kitchen floor.
When questioned, Michael gave an explanation for the unusual findings. He claimed that he, Gerry, and two other friends, Mike Oakly and Roberta Chandler, had spent the day in nearby Bedford before the foursome returned to the home on Ramsey Ridge. There, Michael told police that he and Gerry got into a “friendly scuffle” that resulted in Michael falling into the window in the kitchen. He suffered a deep laceration to his forehead that left him bleeding profusely.
According to Michael, Roberta and Mike accompanied him to seek medical treatment in Bedford, while Gerry stayed behind at home. Michael returned home alone from the hospital, having left Roberta and Mike in town. It was then he discovered Gerry’s body and summoned police. He added that that evening Gerry had threatened to shoot himself multiple times with one of the loaded guns kept in the home.
When Roberta and Mike were taken in for questioning, they gave similar accounts of the night's events. Both were released. Aside from having a visible wound, medical staff confirmed Michael had been to the hospital that evening, having sought treatment for a laceration to his forehead.
Still, both the prosecutor and the county coroner stated they were not entirely satisfied with a verdict of suicide. The coroner stated “Some things have not fallen into place like they should with a suicide case. Although it looks as though it could be a suicide, there are so many angles that do not fit in with the suicide verdict.” The prosecutor agreed, “I’m not satisfied with how the investigation was handled,” he said, “and there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Several months later, Gerry’s case was brought before a grand jury who ultimately returned a verdict of “probable suicide.”
Gerry was laid to rest in Bedford’s Breckenridge Cemetery. Despite his death being declared a suicide, many locals, including Gerry’s friends and neighbors, continued to believe that something more sinister may have happened that evening, and the suicide was in fact staged. The community’s more superstitious elders shared a similar belief, however adding that a “strange ethereal force” inhabited the room where Gerry once slept, and where two years prior the body of Dennis had been discovered.
Whatever your opinion may be, it seems for some the books will never fully be closed on “The Mysteries of Skin Ridge.”
Sources
Newspaper Clippings, Death Certificates, Photos- https://imgur.com/a/4kQ3rEl
Find a Grave Dennis- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/63100083/dennis-scott-mcarthur
Find a Grave Pearl- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/254365281/pearl-m-mcarthur?createdMemorial=Yes
Find a Grave Walter- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/80652726/walter-rufus-mcarthur
Find a Grave Gerry- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/47074796/gerry-wayne-lee
National Library of Medicine- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22442828/#:~:text=Overall%2C%20neck%20structures%20fractures%20were,the%20cricoid%20cartilage%20of%2020.6%25.

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My name is Blade River Boettcher. I'm 31 born 12/19/1991 and I'm looking for a friend. Someone too correspond with through mail and emailing. I'm currently incarcerated in STANLEY CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION in Wisconsin until 3/18/25 for OPERATING VEHICLE WITHOUT OWNERS CONSENT/USE OF FORCE and BATTERY. My whole record can be looked up on 'CCAP' I'm from Green Bay Wisconsin and was raised there by my mother. Never had a father figure in my life. My mom did the best she could do. I love the out doors, fishing, nature, driving and animals and TATTOOS. Tattoos are my true addiction and I'm covered literally..... I've had long hair my whole life and did LOCKS & LOVE 4 times. And recently I dreaded my hair. So now I have 12 big dreads. But I like them and that's all that matters really. YOU WERE BORN ORIGINAL, DONT BE A COPY. As of right now my hobby's are drawing and beading. I'm looking for a friend I can draw for, make bead work etc. I'm very genuine, honest, humble, understanding and a UNIQUE person. Please don't judge me before you give me a chance too be your friend. I want a friend who can handle the truth. Cause I've truly never in my life met someone who actually can handle the truth. Everyone says they want the truth but when that time comes, can't handle it. I'm a blunt and upfront kinda person. I have a very interesting story of life and I'd love too share it with you and I'd love too hear yours. Id love someone too hold a conversation with and help me escape my reality of being locked in this 15 by 7 foot box 24/7. Please inbox this Facebook with your phone number or email address. Once you in box this Facebook posting this, I'll receive the message shortly after. To email me though it does cost .10 a email through CORRLINKS. Or id like too write letters too. So if that's better for you please send your address or just write me at
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What makes the Abyss hard?

There are many complaints about the Abyss. One particular complaint that commonly appears is the Abyss being “hard” or having “unfair mechanics”.
Tackling difficult content requires players having an understanding of how game mechanics and how players can express skill. Without this, players cannot actually engage with the challenge game designers come up with.
I believe many (but not all) complaints about Abyss combat are due to low player understanding of skill expression. This is due to several reasons:

1. Outside of Abyss there's very little actual content that requires you to be good at the game

• This means there are very few places for players to actually practise game mechanics
  • Event combat is often designed to be facerolled to avoid players being locked out of Primogem and Event currency rewards
  • The game also does a poor job of explaining the technical details of game basics such as elemental reactions

2. Genshin gives you very little feedback when you fail in the Abyss

• When you get stunlocked by something, do you know why?
• If you fail a Floor by just 2 seconds, do you know where you might have made a 2 sec mistake when playing the game?
• The Abyss therefore becomes frustrating because people don’t know what they have done wrong or how to improve
  • People are willing to take on frustrating repetitive tasks and find it fun doing so (e.g. roguelike games learning from failure)
  • But this requires either players to be good at identifying their own mistakes, or the game giving you clear feedback about what those mistakes are

3. Content creators don’t focus on this topic enough

• The level of understanding within a playerbase is dependent on the content created around the game itself (i.e. paratext)
• Many content creators don’t discuss gameplay skill in detail (potentially for many reasons such as lack of their own skill, inability to explain it, or lack of popularity of this type of content)
  • For example, most discussion about being a “good player” is about knowing what the right team compositions and artifacts are. But not fundamental gameplay skills such as AI manipulation
• The result is the equivalent of people trying to be a good player in League of Legends / DotA by knowing what the best character to pick or the best items to buy, but not knowing the basics of last hitting and wave management
  • Or not knowing how to play neutral in a fighting game but obsessing over knowing every single combo for a character

So let’s talk about what some key gameplay techniques are for Genshin. And then I’ll walk through Abyss design and how to think about beating the Abyss.
I will assume you are already familiar with basic techniques such as funnelling energy particles, and using I-Frames from Bursts / Dashes.

Key gameplay skills to learn

1. Grouping

Key idea: Killing multiple enemies is often as fast as killing one enemy if they all stand in the same place, saving you time
Even when using an Anemo character, the AI can be manipulated to group themselves together. This makes killing them much faster.
The core idea is that if the enemy isn’t in range to hit you, it will try to walk forward to do so. Therefore, you can position yourself in a way to encourage the AI to move together. This avoids you having to chase them around and waste time.
How to do this: When a pack of enemies spawns, move to one extreme side of them. The enemies on the opposite side will walk closer to get in range and bunch up together.
An easy trick: The first time you do an unknown Abyss layout, just load and don’t even try to fight it. Watch where enemies spawn, and how long their attack range is. This lets you observe if there are any grouping tricks you can abuse.
Example: Spiral Abyss Patch 3.4 Floor 12-2-2 (2 min 28 sec onwards)
After blowing up Wave 1 with Raiden, the player runs to the far left side of the Abyss. This causes Wave 2 of the Husks to begin to group up.
Running to the opposite side of the Abyss then gets the Husks to all stand right next to each other perfectly. This zig-zag manoeuvre means they can be extremely efficiently AoE’ed down much faster.

2. Camera Angle Management

Key idea: Always stand in a position where you can see all enemies. This means you can never be surprised by an attack from off-screen.
If the enemies are always in front of you, you can watch for the most important attacks to either Dash or cast Bursts to immune the damage / knockback.
You should never be in a position where you are hit by an attack you did not see coming.
How to do this: The easiest way to do this in the Spiral Abyss is to stand with your back towards a wall and the enemies in front of you.
Example: Spiral Abyss Patch 2.7 Floor 12-2-1 (1 min 50 sec onwards)
The player immediately runs to the back wall of the Spiral Abyss. This means despite enemies spawning in a circle around the starting point, everything can be seen by the player camera.
This has the benefit of grouping everything up to eat AoE and die efficiently.
After Wave 1 dies, the player always looks at the Cryo Slime facing the Frost Lawlachurl. Always keeping the Lawlachurl in front of them means every attack is extremely telegraphed and can be casually dodged for a clean kill.

3. Stamina Management

Key idea: Keep enough Stamina so you can always dodge important attacks.
Melee characters must trade their Stamina for distance and speed to clear fast. Therefore, you want to position carefully in the Abyss to minimize the distance you have to travel.
(This is also why Yoimiya is sometimes favoured over Hu Tao at very high levels of investment. If you are strong enough to one-rotate things anyway, the range advantage means you spend no stamina attacking enemies that spawn far away from each other instead of needing to chase them down)
How to do this: Know where enemies spawn. Kite towards spawn locations so you don’t spend time and stamina chasing up with enemies.
If you face enemies that charge you, stand with your back to a wall. The enemies will charge into a wall. This way you don’t need to chase after them.
Example: Spiral Abyss Patch 3.4 Floor 12-1-1 and Floor 12-2-1 (1 min 40 sec onwards)
On Floor 12-1-1, the player knows where all enemies are spawning. They move in a way that minimizes stamina usage and can spawn camp the enemy.
On Floor 12-2-2, the player stands with the wall at their back when the Consecrated Beasts spawn. This means they charge towards the player. Camera angle management means the attack is extremely obvious and easily I-Framed.
Keeping both Beasts near the wall means they can be easily AoE’ed down for a quick kill.

4. Pre-cast long animation Skills / Bursts

Key idea: Bursts take up time. Cast the ones with long animations when enemies have downtime so you don’t use up your DPS window.
Enemies that are targetable can also be cheesed by hitting them for some extra Energy from skills / Favonius procs.
How to do this: Many enemies have animations for spawning into the Abyss. Instead of waiting for them to spawn in, use the time to set up things such as Nahida Burst so you minimize the time not spent doing dps.
Example: Spiral Abyss Patch 3.4 Floor 12-2-2 (3 min 55 sec onwards)
By the time Dorito King ASIMON has even fully loaded into the Abyss, the player has already set up Yae turrets, Nahida E and Burst, and funnelled energy on Yelan to get back her Burst.

Learning the 3.7 Abyss specifics

1. Overview of Abyss design

Mihoyo creates Abyss layouts to encourage or discourage a specific type of gameplay, or put pressure on team compositions.
The most common approach is creating one side with an AoE mob focus vs one side with a Boss killing focus.
However, more recently Mihoyo has been introducing specific challenges to target specific ways players play teams.

• Patch 3.4 Abyss Floor 12-1-1 has 4 waves of single target enemies. This is designed to target Burst focused teams such as Ayaka Freeze.
• Hyperbloom and Nilou Bloom are broken because the base numbers are too high and Mihoyo knows this. So we have seen an introduction of many Dendro-resistant enemies to slow down low investment teams.
• The Wenut punishes teams with long set up times by having on / off DPS windows. This rewards players to move towards more flexible rotations or teams which have more front loaded DPS windows.

The reason Mihoyo does this is because it's one of the few ways they can balance content in the game. They can't retroactively buff / nerf things. So the primary lever they have is to create Abyss designs that encourage or discourage certain types of play.

2. 3.7 Abyss Design

The 3.7 Abyss is structured as a team composition building test. It rewards players who have built a variety of characters they can flex, and punishes people who have narrow character pools.

Right Side: The Shield Breaking Challenge

• If you want to use the same team for all Floors and not do the method where you rerun the Abyss with different teams to get 3-Stars per floor, the Right side pretty much demands a Hydro, Pyro, and Dendro char
• Bennett is the premier Cryo shield breaker thanks to 2U Pyro application on both Burst case and Press-E spam standing in Burst. Therefore the double Cryo Lector right side is designed to be a Bennett “sink” for players.
  • This means you are pressured to play Bennett-less teams Left side
• The DPS check on the right side is fairly low. Therefore, it is worth breaking up “traditional” teams to fit in a dedicated shield breaker
• The most popular teams in CN therefore include wonders such as:
  • Hutao with yolo Nahida
  • Nahida National
  • Hyperbloom with yolo Bennett
• The challenge on Right side is therefore about player skill and execution. The lollygag of random teams allows for significant player creativity (e.g. Yanfei Hyperbloom).

Left Side: The Time and Character Pool Challenge

• The Right side forces high demand characters such as Nahida and Bennett to be broken up and used in dedicated shield breaking roles
  • The Left side therefore asks: “Hey, who do you have left to run the DPS gauntlet?”
• The multiple Dendro resistant enemies (Dendro Chicken and Dendro Tigers) are here to prevent you from answering “My low investment yolo Hyperbloom team made from random F2P chars”
  • There are otherwise few constraints on team building here. Ideally you should just play whatever your strongest remaining characters are.
• The split of AoE mobs Floor 12-1-1 and a Boss on Floor 12-2-1 partially punishes players that cannot group efficiently or have a very strong team
  • However, because you can just rerun the Abyss with different teams and the game only looks at your best clear per Floor, this is not that big of a deal

3. Floor specific advice

Floor 12-1-1

• This Floor is designed as a time killer floor to make you feel pressured on Floor 12-1-2
  • By making you chew through 4 waves, it challenges your potentially crippled team (if your good chars were Bennett / Nahida / etc. and are stuck Right side)
• The difficulty is not the enemies, but using time saving techniques to efficiently clear each wave

Grouping techniques:

• If you have a team that can stay in the middle (e.g. Ayaka Freeze) you can just Kazuha or Venti everything and yolo this floor
• If you want to play it safe, turn 180 degrees and run to the South wall to lure the Whopperflowers all to you and AoE both waves down
  • The first wave of Dorito Robots spawn at the South side. So running South at the start means you walk a very short distance North to then kill them when they spawn. Better for Stamina management than doing grouping in other directions
  • Second wave spawns North of you, but will also filter in one by one as you kill the robots. So preferably want to kill first wave all in one go so second wave spawns in a nice Kazuha groupable bunch rather than wandering around
• If you don’t have Kazuha, run to the East / West
  • The Whopperflowers will still chase you. But the Dorito Robots will spawn in a line in front of you, causing the far back robots to move forward and group with the Robot closest to you
  • See this solo clear as an example for positioning

Floor 12-1-2

• Shield breaking floor does shield breaking things
• This floor is designed as an execution challenge
  • The biggest problem on this floor is Stamina management.
  • The Cryo Lectors will reduce your Stamina so you can't just mindlessly dash around or else you end up with zero Stamina, Cryo on you (reducing your speed), and then the Lector fun house bouncy castle spin ride will stun lock you
• If you get stun locked, this is 100% your own fault and a skill issue
  • Use camera angle management to never be hit by something off-screen
  • Lector moves are actually very telegraphed. So you goal is to keep them on-screen, and watch for any dangerous moves
  • Bennett is very clutch here because the self-Pyro application on your Ult will clear away any Hydro / Cryo on you preventing you from getting frozen
  • Jean is also good here for that reason, and with Bennett can Sunfire down the Lectors very fast
• Abyss Mages are whatever. They spawn in front of you and you just nuke them
  • Lectors spawn behind you. When you face backwards to run to the Lectors, Hydro Lector is on the right (mirror-ing the Abyss Mage Left / Right)

Nahida National comments:

• Cryo Lector shields have 56 Cryo gauge units. This means you need 28 Pyro units to break them fully.
  • Xiangling Pyronado is 1U Pyro with no ICD and hits 13 times for nearly half your Pyro needed
  • Guoba applies 1U Pyro in an AoE with no ICD. 3 hits = 3U Pyro
  • Bennett Burst is 2U + 2U per E in Burst for up to 5x2 = 10U extra Pyro for 12U more Pyro
  • 13 + 3 + 12 = 28 so just a single National rotation here deletes both Cryo Lectors from existence
  • So ideally you want to position so that both Cryo Lectors to sit on your face and eat AoE Pyro for a fast double kill
• Hydro Lector shields have 28 Hydro gauge units. This means you need 14 Dendro units to break them fully
  • My preference is to run to the right and fight the Hydro Lector first to put it into shield mode fast so then Nahida E procs while you’re killing the Cryo Lectors will auto-kill the Hydro Lector for you
  • Nahida E applies 1U on skill application and 1.5U per Tri-Karma proc per 2.5 sec
  • Nahida N1C is another 2U
  • So a quick E N1C means you only need 7 Tri-Karma procs over 17.5 sec to erase the Hydro Lector
  • Completely doable while you beat up the Cryo Lectors since a Xiangling rotation is 20 sec so it lines up very cleanly.

Floor 12-2-1

• Mushroom Chicken is mushroom chicken
• This is a big dumb boss with highly telegraphed moves and you’ve faced this before
• If you're using a yolo team Right side for shield breaking, saving time here is huge to give you more time breathing room for fk ups on Right side

Floor 12-2-2

• Thunder Manifestation returns. Does Thunder Manifestation things.
  • It has a set attack pattern where it does set up -> Collapsing Wall -> Beyblade x2 -> Homing Cage -> Repeat
  • Take advantage of this and don't waste your Stamina chasing after it if you don't need to
  • It takes a pause before each move. This is your DPS window if you are melee / short ranged

Floor 12-3-1

• Consecrated Beasts x4 doing what they do best
  • Stick to the Hydro beast. The Tiger will try to keep leaping towards you, but the Crocodile does not really care / its targeting doesn't track you very well
• You can wall hug for better camera management as well as less chasing by making them charge into the wall behind you
  • One approach is to lure them towards the wall by positioning yourself in between the Crocodile and the wall and kiting backwards and letting them chase into the wall
• The key to this fight is careful positioning
  • Good positioning = Don’t die to something you can’t see = Easier to dodge attacks
  • Keeping them close together = Easier to DPS down
• The Hydro Crocodile will spawn on the East on Wave 1 but West on Wave 2
  • However, if you’re hugging the East wall when the Crocodile spawns, its first move will be to gap close towards you anyway
• Iniquitous Baptist is a pushover. So you can afford to spend 2 min (or even a little bit longer) on this Floor if you need to

Floor 12-3-2

• Iniquitous Baptist is basically Simon Says Shieldbreaking
  • Pattern is always Cryo -> Hydro -> Pyro -> Repeat
• Shield Gauge Units:
  • Cryo Shield is 12 gauge units requiring 6U Pyro or 12U Electro
  • Hydro Shield is 12 gauge units requiring 6U Dendro or 12U Cryo to break
  • Pyro Shield is 12 gauge units requiring 6U Hydro or 12U Electo to break
• Use the initial spawning in animation to funnel some energy or pre-case Bursts if you need it since it is targetable
• It has surprisingly low HP… just match damage to its shield type and the fight is pretty free
• The Iniquitous Baptist has about 4 sec vulnerability after each Shield phase, and then about 10 sec after all Shields are down before it repeats the Shield cycle

Nahida National comments:

• You can delay your full rotation until it fully spawns. Xiangling can snapshot Nahida Burst EM buff so that’s the big one to pre-cast
  • Bennet 2U Burst -> 2U E -> Xiangling Burst + Guoba almost instantly crushes the Cryo phase
  • Nahida Charge Attack can be animation cancelled quite early if you want to really shave like half a second every Normal Attack pattern
  • You can also delay casting Xingqiu Ult until after you've done Bennett + Xiangling. You don't need Hydro to break the first few shields, and it will give you some extra uptime to clear Pyro shield faster
  • Stand close and hug the Lector so Xingqiu orbiting Rainswords can also eat elemental gauge for you while you attack
• Don’t hold your skills after the first Cycle. Just go to town and DPS it since the Cryo phase dies so fast to Xiangling Pyronado + Guoba + Bennett E anyway to get to the post-Cryo Shield DPS window to fill it faster

GL HF clearing the Abyss~! (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

Line Score - Game Over

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	R	H	E	LOB
MIL	0	2	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	5	7	1	10
CIN	0	1	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	4	3	2	10

Box Score

CIN		AB	R	H	RBI	BB	SO	BA
3B	Newman	4	0	0	0	1	0	.282
SS	McLain	5	0	0	0	0	1	.329
2B	India	3	1	1	2	0	0	.278
RF	Fraley	4	1	1	0	1	2	.245
DH	Stephenson, T	4	1	0	0	1	2	.241
LF	Senzel	5	0	0	1	0	2	.258
CF	Fairchild	5	0	0	0	0	3	.231
LF	Benson	3	0	0	0	1	2	.139
C	Casali	1	0	1	1	0	0	.179
PR	Barrero	0	0	0	0	0	0	.224
C	Maile	2	1	0	0	1	1	.250
1B	Steer	2	0	0	0	0	0	.286

CIN	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	P-S	ERA
Williamson	6.2	5	3	2	2	6	90-59	4.29
Farmer, B	0.1	0	0	0	0	0	6-4	2.57
Sims	1.0	0	0	0	0	2	14-8	3.93
Díaz, A	1.0	0	0	0	1	0	13-6	1.61
Young, Al	0.2	1	0	0	1	2	16-11	2.78
Cruz, F	1.1	1	2	1	1	1	23-14	7.41

MIL		AB	R	H	RBI	BB	SO	BA
1B	Ruf	1	0	0	0	1	1	.224
1B	Tellez	4	0	0	0	0	2	.238
3B	Miller, O	5	0	2	0	0	1	.331
DH	Contreras, Wm	5	0	0	0	0	1	.234
LF	Yelich	4	2	2	0	1	2	.258
RF	Anderson, B	5	1	0	0	0	3	.233
2B	Monasterio	4	1	2	0	1	0	.417
CF	Wiemer	3	1	1	2	2	0	.201
C	Caratini	5	0	0	2	0	0	.200
3B	Brosseau	2	0	0	0	0	1	.214
SS	Turang	2	0	0	1	0	0	.203

MIL	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	P-S	ERA
Burnes	6.0	2	3	3	4	7	100-59	3.75
Payamps	1.0	0	0	0	1	2	17-11	2.30
Strzelecki	1.0	0	0	0	0	2	14-7	3.86
Williams, D	1.0	0	0	0	0	1	14-9	0.48
Peguero, E	1.0	0	0	0	0	1	16-9	2.89
Wilson, B	1.0	1	1	0	0	0	17-9	2.45

Scoring Plays

Inning	Event	Score
T2	Joey Wiemer homers (6) on a fly ball to left center field. Christian Yelich scores.	0-2
B2	Nick Senzel reaches on a fielder's choice, fielded by second baseman Owen Miller. Jake Fraley scores.	1-2
B3	Jonathan India homers (6) on a fly ball to right center field. Luke Maile scores.	3-2
T4	Victor Caratini grounds out to first baseman Kevin Newman. Christian Yelich scores. Andruw Monasterio to 3rd. Joey Wiemer to 2nd.	3-3
T11	Victor Caratini grounds into a force out, second baseman Jonathan India to shortstop Matt McLain. Brian Anderson scores. Andruw Monasterio to 3rd. Joey Wiemer out at 2nd. Victor Caratini to 1st.	3-4
T11	Brice Turang grounds into a force out, pitcher Fernando Cruz to shortstop Matt McLain. Andruw Monasterio scores. Victor Caratini out at 2nd. Brice Turang to 1st.	3-5
B11	Curt Casali doubles (2) on a sharp line drive to center fielder Joey Wiemer. Tyler Stephenson scores.	4-5

Highlights

Description	Length	Video
Bullpen availability for Milwaukee, June 2 vs Reds	0:07	Video
Bullpen availability for Cincinnati, June 2 vs Brewers	0:07	Video
Fielding alignment for Cincinnati, June 2 vs Brewers	0:11	Video
Fielding alignment for Milwaukee, June 2 vs Reds	0:11	Video
Starting lineups for Brewers at Reds - June 2, 2023	0:09	Video
Joey Wiemer: Home Run Statcast Analysis	0:09	Video
A deep dive into Joey Wiemer's home run	0:09	Video
The distance behind Jonathan India's home run	0:14	Video
Analyzing Jonathan India's home run through bat tracking	0:09	Video
Breaking down Brandon Williamson's pitches	0:08	Video
Brandon Williamson's outing against the Brewers	0:25	Video
Breaking down Corbin Burnes's pitches	0:08	Video
Corbin Burnes' outing against the Reds	0:23	Video
Joey Wiemer crushes a two-run homer (6) to left field	0:30	Video
Jake Fraley scores on a fielder's choice	0:30	Video
Lou Gehrig Day is honored in Cincinnati	2:26	Video
John Driskell Hopkins joins the booth to talk ALS	1:53	Video
Jonathan India smacks a two-run home run (6) to right	0:27	Video
Darin Ruf leavis the game in the bottom of the 3rd	0:29	Video
Victor Caratini hits an RBI groundout to first base	0:27	Video
Nick Senzel makes the sliding stop to get the out	0:26	Video
Joey Wiemer is mic'd up for his 2nd-inning home run	0:22	Video
Corbin Burnes strikes out Jake Fraley in the 5th	0:12	Video
Brandon Williamson strikes out Christian Yelich	0:09	Video
Corbin Burnes slides to make the catch, gets ejected	0:29	Video
Corbin Burnes strikes out seven over six innings	1:18	Video
Brandon Williamson tosses a quality outing	1:01	Video
Caratini drives in a run	0:21	Video
Brice Turang drives in the run	0:21	Video

Decisions

Winning Pitcher	Losing Pitcher	Save
Wilson, B (2-0, 2.45 ERA)	Cruz, F (1-1, 7.41 ERA)

Game ended at 7:46 PM.

Brewers @ Reds - Fri, Jun 02

Game Status: Game Over - Score: 5-4 Brewers

Links & Info

• MLB Gameday
• Game Graphs
• Savant Gamefeed

	Brewers Batters	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	K	LOB	AVG	OBP	SLG
1	Ruf - 1B	1	0	0	0	1	1	0	.224	.333	.286
	Tellez - 1B	4	0	0	0	0	2	3	.238	.323	.488
2	Miller, O - 3B	5	0	2	0	0	1	2	.331	.366	.496
3	Contreras, Wm - DH	5	0	0	0	0	1	4	.234	.331	.399
4	Yelich - LF	4	2	2	0	1	2	0	.258	.352	.399
5	Anderson, B - RF	5	1	0	0	0	3	5	.233	.329	.413
6	Monasterio - 2B	4	1	2	0	1	0	2	.417	.500	.500
7	Wiemer - CF	3	1	1	2	2	0	2	.201	.271	.366
8	Caratini - C	5	0	0	2	0	0	5	.200	.291	.286
9	Brosseau - 3B	2	0	0	0	0	1	2	.214	.267	.414
	1-Turang - SS	2	0	0	1	0	0	2	.203	.250	.297
	Totals	40	5	7	5	5	11	27

Brewers
1-Ran for Brosseau in the 7th.
BATTING: 2B: Monasterio (1, Williamson). HR: Wiemer (6, 2nd inning off Williamson, 1 on, 2 out). TB: Miller, O 2; Monasterio 3; Wiemer 4; Yelich 2. RBI: Caratini 2 (9); Turang (13); Wiemer 2 (16). 2-out RBI: Wiemer 2. Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Brosseau 2; Wiemer; Miller, O; Anderson, B 2; Turang. GIDP: Contreras, Wm. Team RISP: 3-for-15. Team LOB: 10.
FIELDING: E: Miller, O (2, fielding).

	Reds Batters	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	K	LOB	AVG	OBP	SLG
1	Newman - 3B	4	0	0	0	1	0	3	.282	.349	.382
2	McLain - SS	5	0	0	0	0	1	3	.329	.390	.486
3	India - 2B	3	1	1	2	0	0	0	.278	.368	.431
4	Fraley - RF	4	1	1	0	1	2	3	.245	.335	.390
5	Stephenson, T - DH	4	1	0	0	1	2	4	.241	.332	.337
6	Senzel - LF	5	0	0	1	0	2	4	.258	.335	.387
7	Fairchild - CF	5	0	0	0	0	3	2	.231	.326	.364
8	Benson - LF	3	0	0	0	1	2	1	.139	.184	.194
	Casali - C	1	0	1	1	0	0	0	.179	.270	.214
	1-Barrero - PR	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.224	.305	.336
9	Maile - C	2	1	0	0	1	1	1	.250	.311	.464
	a-Steer - 1B	2	0	0	0	0	0	2	.286	.355	.495
	Totals	38	4	3	4	5	13	23

Reds
a-Popped out for Maile in the 9th. 1-Ran for Casali in the 11th.
BATTING: 2B: Casali (2, Wilson, B). HR: India (6, 3rd inning off Burnes, 1 on, 2 out). TB: Casali 2; Fraley; India 4. RBI: Casali (4); India 2 (26); Senzel (27). 2-out RBI: Casali; India 2. Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Steer; Stephenson, T 2; Senzel 2; Newman 2. Team RISP: 1-for-17. Team LOB: 10.
FIELDING: E: Maile (2, fielding); McLain (1, throw). DP: (Senzel-India-Newman).

Brewers Pitchers	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	P-S	ERA
Burnes	6.0	2	3	3	4	7	1	100-59	3.75
Payamps	1.0	0	0	0	1	2	0	17-11	2.30
Strzelecki	1.0	0	0	0	0	2	0	14-7	3.86
Williams, D	1.0	0	0	0	0	1	0	14-9	0.48
Peguero, E (W, 1-0)	1.0	0	0	0	0	1	0	16-9	2.89
Wilson, B (S, 3)	1.0	1	1	0	0	0	0	17-9	2.45
Totals	11.0	3	4	3	5	13	1

Reds Pitchers	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	P-S	ERA
Williamson	6.2	5	3	2	2	6	1	90-59	4.29
Farmer, B	0.1	0	0	0	0	0	0	6-4	2.57
Sims	1.0	0	0	0	0	2	0	14-8	3.93
Díaz, A	1.0	0	0	0	1	0	0	13-6	1.61
Young, Al	0.2	1	0	0	1	2	0	16-11	2.78
Cruz, F (L, 1-1)	1.1	1	2	1	1	1	0	23-14	7.41
Totals	11.0	7	5	3	5	11	1

Game Info
HBP: Brosseau (by Williamson); India 2 (by Strzelecki, by Peguero, E).
Pitch timer violations: Payamps (pitcher).
Pitches-strikes: Burnes 100-59; Payamps 17-11; Strzelecki 14-7; Williams, D 14-9; Peguero, E 16-9; Wilson, B 17-9; Williamson 90-59; Farmer, B 6-4; Sims 14-8; Díaz, A 13-6; Young, Al 16-11; Cruz, F 23-14.
Groundouts-flyouts: Burnes 4-3; Payamps 0-1; Strzelecki 0-0; Williams, D 2-0; Peguero, E 0-1; Wilson, B 2-1; Williamson 10-4; Farmer, B 0-1; Sims 0-0; Díaz, A 0-1; Young, Al 0-0; Cruz, F 2-0.
Batters faced: Burnes 25; Payamps 4; Strzelecki 4; Williams, D 4; Peguero, E 4; Wilson, B 4; Williamson 28; Farmer, B 1; Sims 3; Díaz, A 4; Young, Al 4; Cruz, F 6.
Inherited runners-scored: Farmer, B 1-0; Cruz, F 3-0.
Ejections: Brewers pitcher Corbin Burnes ejected by HP umpire D. J. Reyburn (7th).
Umpires: HP: D.J. Reyburn. 1B: John Libka. 2B: Clint Vondrak. 3B: James Hoye.
Weather: 92 degrees, Clear.
Wind: 8 mph, In From LF.
First pitch: 5:12 PM.
T: 3:31.
Att: 34,073.
Venue: Great American Ball Park.
June 2, 2023

Inning	Scoring Play	Score
Top 2	Joey Wiemer homers (6) on a fly ball to left center field. Christian Yelich scores.	2-0 MIL
Bottom 2	Nick Senzel reaches on a fielder's choice, fielded by second baseman Owen Miller. Jake Fraley scores.	2-1 MIL
Bottom 3	Jonathan India homers (6) on a fly ball to right center field. Luke Maile scores.	3-2 CIN
Top 4	Victor Caratini grounds out to first baseman Kevin Newman. Christian Yelich scores. Andruw Monasterio to 3rd. Joey Wiemer to 2nd.	3-3
Top 11	Victor Caratini grounds into a force out, second baseman Jonathan India to shortstop Matt McLain. Brian Anderson scores. Andruw Monasterio to 3rd. Joey Wiemer out at 2nd. Victor Caratini to 1st.	4-3 MIL
Top 11	Brice Turang grounds into a force out, pitcher Fernando Cruz to shortstop Matt McLain. Andruw Monasterio scores. Victor Caratini out at 2nd. Brice Turang to 1st.	5-3 MIL
Bottom 11	Curt Casali doubles (2) on a sharp line drive to center fielder Joey Wiemer. Tyler Stephenson scores.	5-4 MIL

Team	Highlight
MIL	Bullpen availability for Milwaukee, June 2 vs Reds (00:00:07)
CIN	Bullpen availability for Cincinnati, June 2 vs Brewers (00:00:07)
CIN	Fielding alignment for Cincinnati, June 2 vs Brewers (00:00:11)
MIL	Fielding alignment for Milwaukee, June 2 vs Reds (00:00:11)
CIN	Starting lineups for Brewers at Reds - June 2, 2023 (00:00:09)
MIL	Corbin Burnes' outing against the Reds (00:00:23)
MIL	Joey Wiemer's two-run homer (6) (00:00:30)
CIN	Fraley scores on fielder's choice (00:00:30)
CIN	Lou Gehrig Day pregame ceremony (00:02:26)
CIN	John Driskell Hopkins talks ALS (00:01:53)
CIN	India's two-run homer (6) (00:00:27)
MIL	Darin Ruf leaves the game (00:00:29)
MIL	Victor Caratini's RBI groundout (00:00:27)
CIN	Nick Senzel's sliding stop (00:00:26)
MIL	Joey Wiemer is mic'd up (00:00:22)
MIL	Corbin Burnes K's Jake Fraley (00:00:12)
CIN	Brandon Williamson K's Yelich (00:00:09)
MIL	Burnes' sliding catch, ejection (00:00:29)
MIL	Burnes strikes out seven in start (00:01:18)
CIN	Williamson's quality outing (00:01:01)
MIL	Brewers take the lead in the 11th (00:00:29)
MIL	Brice Turang drives in the run (00:00:30)
CIN	Curt Casali's RBI double (00:00:23)

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11		R	H	E	LOB
Brewers	0	2	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	2		5	7	1	10
Reds	0	1	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1		4	3	2	10

Decisions

• Winner: Elvis Peguero (1-0, 2.89)
• Loser: Fernando Cruz (1-1, 7.41)
• Save: Bryse Wilson (3, 2.45)

Division Scoreboard

STL 5 @ PIT 0 - Middle 6
CHC @ SD 09:40 PM EDT
Next Reds Game: Sat, Jun 03, 04:10 PM EDT vs. Brewers
^{Last Updated: 06/02/2023 08:55:18 PM EDT}

I’m brainstorming some ideas on how i could completely over prepare for the Wall of flesh on my get fixed boi world, so far I’m thinking either star cannon or gray zapinator, terraforming hell to either bunch all the WoF segments together or just to have a huge pool of lava so I can use the lava shark (tbh I might use TEdit for that, I’ve already done at least 10 hours of clearing out the area around the dungeon of crimson). I’ve already got terraspark boots and a bundle of balloons, and in general have some of the best gear I can get, but I’m just wondering about other good ways to overdo it. For example, the best way to farm fallen stars or fire imp banners, maybe some wiring tricks i could do to keep fire imps from spawning, etc. This is a first for me, I often just skip improving my world because I just end up rushing through everything, so I’m using the sheer difficulty of Legendary mode to force myself to put in actual effort, lol

Earlier this year I committed to a few things outside of my (demanding) full-time role during an "I'm finally going to get my life together" phase. Things like volunteer work, an expensive fitness studio, and a PT remote job.
Well, surprise surprise, whatever energy I had when I made those commitments quickly vanished and I've found myself drowning ever since. My day-to-day life since March has been sitting at a computer from 9 a.m. - 10 p.m. every weekday and then trying to do everything else for my life after that/on the weekends. It's affected everything. My house is a disaster, I'm not taking care of myself, my sleep is a joke, I'm isolated because I don't have energy for any social plans, my appetite is gone, my muscles are constantly tense from stress. I just feel like I'm physically falling apart. And it caught up to me - this week is the sickest I've been in years. It's like my body had to force me to stop everything so it could finally rest. But even taking sick time left me riddled with guilt and stress.
After much urging from my partner, I'm finally walking away from the commitments I made. The volunteer work and fitness studio were fairly painless. But leaving my part-time job has me feeling AWFUL. I just sent the message and my stomach is in knots thinking of their reply. I feel like I've let them down. I made promises I didn't know I couldn't keep. Everyone else will have to pick up my slack in the meantime. And of course I'm feeling the usual "if I were just more disciplined and a better person I would be able to do it."
My brain will not stop spinning out with the guilt I'm feeling. Can someone please just tell me I'm not a completely awful and disappointing human being? Can any of y'all relate?

From The Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium (1998).
​
"Nothing in the strange world of Buster Keaton's comedy is stranger than the ending of College (1927). In that picture Buster plays a bookworm who strives to become a jock. The top student in his high-school class, and so averse to sports that he makes his graduation speech into a diatribe against athletics, he yet arrives at college the next fall with suitcases full not of books but of athletic equipment. With the dauntless determination characteristic of the Keaton hero, the little scholar involves himself in a pursuit for which he's quite unsuited but which is, under circumstances equally characteristic of Keaton, what's expected of him in his courtship of the girl he loves. Outraged like all his other classmates by his diatribe at graduation, she'll see no more of him, as she promptly informs him after the speech, unless he changes his attitude and takes up sports. And so he changes his attitude, neglecting all his studies at college and instead spending most of his time on the sports field. Although he seems inept beyond hope at the various athletic activities he doggedly tries out, he succeeds in winning her in the end, for he summons up unexpected abilities when she's in danger and he comes to the rescue, running much faster and jumping much farther than he ever could before, managing with no trouble now an obstacle race over the hedges in his path and a high pole-vault into the window of her room. With undiminished momentum, he quickly disposes of the villain, a brawny dolt who has been his rival for the girl's affections, and proceeds with her to church forthwith, not even pausing to change his athletic clothes before they are married. Then follows a very peculiar epilogue. No sooner are the newlyweds out of church than a dissolve transports us many years later to the middle-aged couple in their home, sitting among their several children; this in turn swiftly gives way to the couple in their advanced years, abidingly sitting at home beside each other; this in turn to the closing shot of their adjacent graves.
​
"The element of sadness in Keaton's comedy has often been noted, and it certainly emerges in that brisk final depiction of aging and death. Coming on the heels of the triumphant happy ending, the sudden sadness of the epilogue takes us by surprise; but I don't think it constitutes such a break with the rest of the film as some believe. "'What is this abrupt slap in the face doing at the end of an otherwise unquestioning love story?' wrote Walter Kerr in The Silent Clowns. "It takes no more than eleven seconds of playing time to deliver its chill, and yet it undoes on the spot all of the yearning, the struggle and the victory, of the narrative."1 Evidently perturbed by the chill, Kerr misrepresents the epilogue as portraying a disappointed, even embittered couple, when nothing of the sort is suggested: all that we get is a brief summary of a long, uneventful marriage. It seems to me wrong, or only half right, to view the epilogue as a brusque reversal of a hitherto romantic story. Although the hero is unquestioning in his devotion to the girl, the romanticism of the story has been tacitly called into question all along by the conveyed sense that the girl is as unreasonable in her peremptory demands as is the hero in his stubborn pursuit. If Keaton is a romantic, he's a singularly unsentimental one. Granted, we'd have expected the story to end with Buster's getting the girl, but the epilogue merely shows us that he gets to keep her: surely not the undoing but the exact fulfillment of his wishes. If the epilogue brings about a reversal of the happy ending, it does so by way of being a logical continuation of it, indeed a visual equivalent of those famous romantic last words: and they lived happily ever after.
​
"Seeing the couple's whole life together go by on the screen in so short a time has, of course, none of the reassuring effect of those words. Yet even the disconcerting briskness of those final eleven seconds carries forward unbrokenly the haste of the climactic rescue and ensuing wedding, as if confirming Buster's aim to get things settled once and for all. College is not the only one of Keaton's films to conclude with the grave. In Cops (1922), a short film in which he's surreally chased by every cop in the city, "The End" appears inscribed on a tombstone capped with Buster's porkpie hat. The plot of Cops, however—unlike that of any of his full-length movies—has an unhappy outcome. Rejected by the girl he loves even after he manages to elude all the cops who have been after him, Buster suicidally puts himself back in their midst: an unusual ending for a comedy, to be sure, but not so strange as the way that in College the romance turns sad, in spite of its triumph, by being literally carried out to its conventional conclusion in the couple's staying together for the remainder of their lives.
​
"Although not quite in the class of Keaton's very best— Our Hospitality (1923), Sherlock Junior (1924), The Navigator (1924), The General (1927), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)—College seems to me a splendid film that has been generally underrated. It surpasses, I believe, Harold Lloyd's better-known college comedy, The Freshman (1925), which preceded it and no doubt influenced it. The hero of The Freshman is also an incompetent athlete who redeems himself in the end by performing unexpected feats, in his case by winning the decisive football game of the season. (Apparently to avoid too close a comparison with the Lloyd picture, football is one sport omitted from College.) In giving such prominence to athletics, however, both comedians were merely reflecting a fact of campus life—in which sports are often more important than studies—and making use of material naturally befitting the physical comedy of the silent screen. Their comic conceptions, in any case, are fundamentally different. For Lloyd, athletics are part of the image of the big man on campus his ambitious but unknowing hero wants to become, whereas Buster only wants the girl, a more realistic goal as well as a more romantic one. Lloyd's hero is a thoroughgoing incompetent, a classic fool, whereas Keaton's is only a fool for love, a bookworm out of his element on the sports field and quite aware of his problem. When, after knocking over every other hurdle along the racing track, he succeeds in clearing the last one, Buster, instead of deriving any satisfaction from that success, gravely appraises it as a fluke, and then tips over that last hurdle too, feeling that it might as well conform to the pattern of the others. Such disdain for flukes is inconceivable in the Lloyd hero, who'd get nowhere without them. Unlike Lloyd, Keaton never plays the kind of comic character who is preposterously deluded about himself and what's going on around him.
​
"Buster usually has a good grasp of his situation, as good a grasp as one can expect from, as Kenner put it, 'a visitor, not native.' He is a visitor to the sports field in College who knows that the odds are against him there but nonetheless keeps trying because he also knows that the girl won't have him any other way, because he is a compliant visitor desiring to participate in a situation in which a girl's ideal boyfriend must be a jock.
​
"Why should Buster unprotestingly comply with the undue requirements laid upon him by others? One answer is provided in College by the figure of a dean, friendly to the promising young scholar and built small like him, who may be regarded as an embodiment of what his scholarly future would be like. Disappointed that Buster has been doing poorly in his studies, the older man, when he hears the explanation, tearfully reveals that he himself loved a girl once but lost her to an athlete. Buster would rather take on the alien territory of sports than end up alone like the dean. If all comedians are outsiders, Keaton is the outsider who will not give up the attempt to join in, to connect with others. Chaplin's Tramp, by contrast, is more or less self-sufficient, "an aristocrat," as Robert Warshow put it, "fallen on hard times." Lloyd's bespectacled democrat is a blundering free enterpriser, motivated by self-interest, patently inferior to his fellow men but aspiring to rise above them in the land of opportunity. Buster is unique in earnestly seeking a genuine togetherness. If he seems the loneliest of all comedians, it's because he's the one to whom companionship matters the most.
​
"That loneliness is hauntingly conveyed in those distant long shots, typical of Keaton, in which he appears as a tiny figure amid large empty surroundings: in the river town during the storm, or practicing by himself in the college stadium, or—in The Frozen North (1922)—coming out of a subway exit into an arctic wilderness.
​
"Robert Bresson—another practitioner of the deadpan approach, in a different way from Keaton's but with a similar sense that life is not a matter of personality—once defined originality as the failed attempt to do the same as everybody else, a definition that applies exactly to Buster. For all his efforts to join in, and all his eventual successes in meeting the forces outside, inside he cannot shake off the sense of his singularity. He thinks, therefore he stands alone in a world where no other minds are discernible, only systems of behavior. Ultimately he remains even more isolated than Chaplin's Tramp, since it's not Buster's individual qualities that single him out—these he hardly lets interfere in his transactions with others—but the very fact of his individuality, of his possessing the inner dimension of a self in the realm of the formula.
​
"Buster is not, then, Grierson's "romantic achiever of all things" but a bewildered equilibrist whose mind runs counter to the achievements of his body: a new kind of clown who may not so often trip over physical objects but who, so to speak, keeps tripping over his thoughts. The charming incompetence of the traditional clown was the conception of an earlier time, with more room for eccentricity than has been allowed in our ruthless century. Things were not so good then, of course—things never have been— but at least the clown could thumb his nose at the world and expect the world to let him be. He would puncture our lofty pretensions with his reminder of the claims of the body, of the fact that in our flesh and blood we all fumble our way through life. That conception hasn't lost its validity, and Chaplin can still use it to portray a doughboy in Shoulder Arms (1918) or a factory worker in Modern Times; but he was looking back to a Victorian humanism that decidedly fails him when portraying a Jew under the Nazis in The Great Dictator (1940). Keaton reverses that conception: to our age of increasing mindlessness he offers a comedy of mind. Although he never dealt with contemporary issues as Chaplin did, he accurately depicts the landscape of our time in its vast inhuman organization. He reminds us of the claims of consciousness against a mechanistic order, of the fact that our expert procedures and outward accomplishments take no account of our inner nature. Whereas the old clowns would assert our right to our idiosyncrasies, he asserts our need to live with one another in a community that does justice to our individuality. The sadness that emerges at the end of College underlies all of Keaton's happy endings: it is the sadness of inescapable isolation, of knowing that he does not in the end, any more than he did at the beginning, belong in a world where happiness is available only as a convention. Yet Buster has done his best, and leaves us with the haunting image of his solemn and solitary figure, at once purposeful and detached, bravely attempting the impossible."

1. Avatar: $976.1M
2. Avatar 2: $738.1M
3. Titanic: $677.7M
4. The Force Awakens: $597.3M
5. Skyfall: $497.5M
6. Return of the King: $473.6M
7. The Lion King (2019): $465.6M
8. Deathly Hallows Part 2: $444.8M
9. No Way Home: $442.4M
10. Avengers Endgame: $433.8M
11. Ice Age 3: $422.5M
12. The Last Jedi: $422.3M
13. Spectre: $409.4M
14. The Hobbit 1: $404.5M
15. No Time to Die: $399M

These numbers only count the initial box office runs for these movies. These numbers do not include Russia or Ukraine.

I'm not very good at beating around the bush, so I'm gonna be very blunt about this. Just fair warning.
Index of shorthand for people:
T - My brother
M - Our half brother
J - M's other half brotheT & my quarter brother
K - A female (but significantly older) cousin
A - A male cousin
D - A male second-cousin
C - An uncle
W - an aunt from clear on the other side of the family
Starting when I was 4, T (a bit less than two years older than me) used to abuse me in just about every sense of the word, most commonly with gaslighting and other forms of manipulation, threats to my safety of I didn't do whatever he told me, and a lot of violence. It was too early for me to remember, but my parents have recounted to me a time when they found us with his penis in my mouth in the bathtub as very small children - the current theory is that he may have learned that from M firsthand, but there's no evidence or testimony to support it, and M and J live way far away. However, once I was 10 and T was 12, he got a lot more into the sexual stuff, and started threatening to grab the nearest knife and start stabbing everyone he saw if I didn't let him do what he wanted, which mostly included making me suck him or jerk him, or letting him use my ass, and he was usually still very violent before, during, or after the fact.
Now, also during this approximate decade, there were a lot of times when T, K, and W would be abusive in plenty of other ways, along with more isolated instances with family members from other States (M, J, A, C, and D) that were mostly sexual in nature, but the most relevant thing here is that when K or W would be particularly bad, usually by way of violence, my brother often liked to use the opportunity while I was still reeling from whatever they had done to me at any given time to force himself on me yet again.
The stuff with M, J, A, C, and D, as I said, were fairly isolated incidents, since they all live really far away, but they've had their chances to visit, or else my family had visited them, which gave them their opportunities - only T, M, and J ever earnestly raped me, but all the others have molested me in some capacity or another, though the others usually stuck with other forms of abuse.
My parents only know about the stuff with T and M, and they only learned years after it all stopped. T was still living with us at home though - my parent's agreed to kick him out if he ever acted badly towards anyone in the house again (he was just an asshole in general), but they never took any action because "they couldn't bring themselves to do that to their son".
I don't think there's anything else to put here, so, there you go.

So, quick check in, I'm right at my 2 week mark and I'm feeling so good and clear, I will not drink with you today!
After my one week mark, my wife told me how proud she was of me, and told me I should start taking the money I spent on booze every day and put it aside for something, doesn't matter what because that money would have been wasted anyway. I'm feeling very supported right now.
I figured at a bare minimum, I spend 10 dollars a day, whether that was a six pack of beer after work, or the handle of tequila that usually only lasted about 4 days. That doesn't include bar prices of the after work drinks, or going out to dinner and having multiple 12 dollar drinks, or a fancy bottle of wine on holidays, etc. Nor does it include the dumb purchases while drunk lol. I'm going to go low end and save $3650 a year. Today was my first trip to the bank and I got it all in $10s to symbolize every day I've been sober so I can watch it grow. This doesn't feel at all like the driving force for me quitting, but it does feel like a huge perk.
How many of you guys have done something like this? How did you spend your booze money after it accumulated? It blows my mind that I could buy a Rolex or a new motorcycle in cash by just not drinking for 4 years. I've wasted so much time andoney, I'm glad to be pointed in a different direction today.

Timestamp and Photos: https://imgur.com/a/ndTvsfd
In immaculate condition, no scratches, carefully maintained and kept safe in a thick padded sleeve anytime I wasn’t using it. No issues mechanical or otherwise, runs perfectly.
Still have over 4 months left on a transferable SquareTrade coverage plan active thru Oct 13th 2023, if anything goes wrong with it under normal use.
Re-pasted CPU and GPU last year with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, helped temps and runs very cool. Not easy to do with the inverted mobo design. Now when gaming the CPU and GPU temps almost never go above 90°C, often below 80°C. I’ve overclocked and undervolted very well with it.
Comes with a brand new 330W power adapter, which was only used twice to get the laptop ready to sell.
Repairs: None.
Local to Harrisburg PA area.
Asking $1600 OBO.
Send me an offer, and please comment "PM" before messaging. Thanks, and have a great day!
Dell Alienware M17R4 Gaming Laptop: - RTX 3080 16GB Gsync - i7-10870H, 2.2GHz base w/ 5.0GHz turbo freq. - 17.3” FHD 1920×1080 360Hz GSync 300 nits. - 32GB (2x16GB) RAM DDR4 2933MHz - 2TB NVMe M.2 SSD - Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 - 2.5GB/s Ethernet port - RGB AlienFX Keyboard - Win 10 Home 64 - 6-cell 86WHr “smart” lithium-ion battery - $3035 purchase price

I wanted to take a minute to talk about something we've experienced as a new corporation in Eve Online. Catskull is rounding out about our third month in game as a corporation and are still going pretty strong bring in around 5-10 new players a week with around 150 unique pilots across many time zones.
But, before you start playing Eve you hear all about how toxic the community is, how you're going to continuously get dunked on by players with more SP and more ISK, and it is going to be miserable.
This couldn't be further from what we've experienced. We've had donations of expensive skill books that are pretty required, had different groups reach out to advise us on building a doctrine, and leaders of various organizations willing to answer questions on how to set up corp level programs.
And then we moved into a wormhole to try to offer our players a unique experience we never got in Echoes. And because that SouthEast seems to have a lot of capitals and supers dropped around that we just cannot keep up with. I'll always dream of null sec. And maybe one day. We just couldn't beat the attractiveness of a new type of experience for our pilots though.
So we dropped a Raitaru without incident and have been living out of it for a while. Then we tried to drop an Astrahus and a huge force showed up and rolled over us and blew it up. Afterwards they spent weeks with us coaching us on how to properly set up hole control, advisable ships to use, and so much more.
So today we tried again. A much, much smaller force this time. But far more experienced and we had no FC at all available. So we whelped a metric ton of ships into them and they walked out up 8.7b in kills to our 49m. And then they started chatting with us and spared our structure. And gave us some tips on fits, where we went wrong, and just laughed about how high our morale was after taking such heavy losses.
So, Eve Online community, you have absolutely failed to live up to your reputation. You're full of class act folks and our enjoyment of your game will continue to poach Eve Echoes members over to here. Thanks for the warm welcome. And thanks for the fights. Getting spanked like we did today you'd expect to hear that our pilots walked out heads hung low but people were cracking up in comms, talking non-stop about how we all need to skill into Leshaks now (a pipe dream as most of our pilots are still between 2-10m SP) and how overpowered they are, and just in general enjoying playing the game together. Structures are cheap. Ships are made to be blown up. But I'm positive that'll be a fight we never, ever forget.
Here's hoping I make it FanFest in 2024 or Eve Vegas because I certainly owe a lot of folks a beer.

string theory postures 11 dimensions, our bases for counting are 10 and 12 for math and time, their midpoint is 11. there are 10 general forces in physics and 5 versions of 10 dimensional string theory this could simply imply 5 positive forces and 5 negative forces to make 10 dimensions. under this assumption (i know it’s a big one) then we could say some fraction of E = mc² is positive and some is negative or the energy of the universe is an AC signal. for one example of this take 2E = 2mc² and consider 2 as the magnitude of a signal with strength 1 in both positive and negative directions. then to solve for the speed of light we would get square root (E/m) = c so c is either + or - E/m. then another assumption consider they are in superposition with each other so (E/m) - (-E/m) = c. then square both sides and you get (E/m)² + (E/m)² = c^2. now we have (E/m) = c and square root of (2) * (E/m) = c. divide both equations by (E/m) and you get 1 = c/(E/m) and square root of (2) = c/(E/m). i know i broke some rules but they were rules we made based on a cartesian coordinate system which assumes 0 exists, but we don’t know if absolute 0 exists so why can’t math be superpositional. seems like it’s all arbitrary to me, especially when you consider how integral imaginary numbers are to our math, almost like we made a mistake and were too scared to go back and correct something that worked so we branched off a new arbitrary rule instead of redefining the base.