Luminara

Cats experience fear and respond to it accordingly (being small mammals, that typically means hiding until the perceived danger has passed), but they don't have panic attacks in the same way that we do. Panic attacks result from over-thinking situations, responses, behaviors, et cetera. Cats don't over-think anything (and yes, they do think, and learn, and are intelligent), they never would've evolved to become the top land predator if they had nervous disorders and experienced fits of paralysis or breathing issues every time they stopped to consider the possibilities in front of them. What your cats are experiencing is perfectly normal transitional anxiety. They're in a new home, with new people, and cats... well, they like things to stay the same, and things aren't the same right now. They'll adapt. You'll adapt, too, by learning to understand them when they're communicating with you (body language, eyes, ears, tails) and responding appropriately when you know what they want. Time and patience. Speak softly when they're near. Give them pets and scritches when they ask, play with them when they're playing (or encourage them to play, with something crinkly, or a stick/fishing toy, or even something as mundane as making faint scratching noises with your fingernail), but don't go out of your way to force them to accept you. The cat decides when it's time for interaction, but don't distance yourself from them (unless they're explicitly warning you not to touch them). Very few human-cat relationships are "love at first sight" situations, most develop the same way human-human relationships do. Learn to hear their voices (again, body language, eyes, ears, tails (vocalizations tend to be... punctuation, rather than primary communication)) and interact on their terms. Either in this thread or in another, I talk about May, one of the two cats I have now, not wanting to be picked up or held when I first met her and brought her home. At this point in our relationship, if I leave the cabin, she's standing on the love seat when I return. If I don't pick her up, she launches herself into my arms. That change came over the course of about eight months. I didn't try to desensitize her to her aversion to being held, I didn't make a single attempt to coax her into my arms, she decided that she was ready. I gave her affection, I played with her, and I gave her the time she needed to trust me. That trust was worth the wait. With time, patience and learning to understand what an animal is saying, you can develop a rapport with any animal, even wild ones. Cats go out of their way to make it easy on us... apparently, we make great pets.

Fund foster homes for abused and molested children. Provide grants for dementia research, cystic fibrosis research and cancer research. Build a cat rescue village. Buy the BBC and hand it over to Jeremy Clarkson. Begin colonization of the moon and Mars.

Whichever group worships fictional aliens and stages naked protests. If I'm going bad, I'm going big. And bat-shit crazy. In the buff.

There are a few Arena pet badges with no progress text, only a placeholder counter like that. 100 Sky Raider Force Field Generators would be my guess. Edit: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Hero_Gladiator_Badges#Independent_Gladiator_Badges Those. You can isolate which one it is by defeating one relevant foe of the appropriate type for each badge and checking the counter.

👍

Repel with a tesseracted magnitude.

Repel with an inverse magnitude.

Carnival/circus strongmen were the original inspiration for the external underwear. Tights were added for color and modesty so the comics could be marketed to children.

Blubmarines? BLUBMARINES!

Taxi driven by a slender, brown friend. Dragon who bonds for life when it hatches and can go between. Motorboat. No, the other motorboat. Vroom vroom motorboat, not brown chicken, brown cow motorboat. Heli-carrier. Marbles. Lots and lots and lots of marbles.

Major pluses to living in Paragon City: All citizens have super strength, above and beyond what even Incarnates have. Pesky heroes interrupting your daily stroll with a fight on the sidewalk? Move them. All citizens are invulnerable to all damage. Hug that giant octopus! Meander casually in and out of burning buildings! Smile and wave as highly toxic radiation passes through you harmlessly! All citizens can phase shift at will. Locked out of your apartment? No problem! Worn out after the walk to work and anxious to reach your office? Take the straight path, right through the walls! Cute neighbor taking a showe- wait, no, don't do that.

You tying one hand behind your back and proceeding to split a cord of wood, versus someone else tying one of your hands behind your back and you proceeding to split a cord of wood. Difficulty is difficulty. Having someone else impose the restriction on you doesn't magically legitimize it, in any way.

Issue 28 fascist patch notes: Inspirations, which are at least 10,000 times more detrimental to the gaming experience than gaining one level, and are all but unconstrained in usage, have been removed. All enhancements provide a "very strong incentive to use them", and players shouldn't have to choose not to use them, or to use SOs instead of IOs, or to use common IOs instead of set IOs, or any other variation thereof, so they have been removed. Teaming has been redesigned. Teams now consist of one General and seven expendable troops. Failure to be on a team at any point after logging in will result in permanent deletion of the character. Any team with fewer than eight characters will be penalized. Archetypes, and all corresponding powers, have been removed. All characters will now have access only to Brawl and Rest. Sprint is still in the game, but it's only usable by Generals. Expendable troops can't be permitted to run. Individuality was creating discord amongst players, so all costumes will now consist of a black shirt and tan slacks. You may recolor the shirt to black, black or black. The pants will remain tan. All missions, story arcs, *Fs, trials and other content not specifically listed has been converted to Personal Missions. You may move your character in Personal Missions. Enjoy the game. But not too much, or we'll send the politzei to your house and have them beat you with a sack of cancer-riddled dicks. Oh, we left the level shifts active. There's no point being a fascist asshole if you can't backstab your own supporters, after all.

Do you have a design document which no-one else has ever seen? No? Then that's an opinion. Unsupported, and contrary to the existing evidence, no less. The presence of levels 41-50 in the previous end-game content took away from all of those experiences and none of those tasks were designed with those levels in mind. Progression isn't always smooth, but it's better than stagnation. No-one's twisting anyone's arm to force them to push to T3 Alpha immediately. That's the player's choice. The player is doing that. The player chooses to mail him/herself Empyrean merits so he/she can blitz through the Alpha process, or to run Heather Townsend's arc ten times in under an hour, or whatever their preferred method is. If anyone doesn't want to churn through Alpha tiers at breakneck speed, then they don't have churn through Alpha tiers at breakneck speed. It's their choice. No-one has to dash straight to T3 Alpha, because nothing in the game forces the player to do so. And nothing in the game requires the player to use that Alpha enhancement in regular content. That is also a choice. Furthermore, once you arrived at T3 on the original servers, the exact same situation was in effect. You apply some meaning to the existence of a couple of weeks of grinding, but there was none. Whether it takes you a year to hit T3 Alpha, or a couple of minutes, the end result is identical. You're still +1 in the end. The problem is not, in fact, the +1, it's that there's no longer a large and well-funded development team continually working on additional content to make use of that +1, but that doesn't make the +1 itself a problem because it's optional. It may not be the option that you prefer, but it is an option and you do have the freedom to utilize it. Choices have consequences. Want the T3/T4 Alpha boosts? Slot the enhancement and deal with the +1 level. Don't want the +1 level? Remove the enhancement and deal with the loss of the boosts. Want limitations applied to everyone so you don't have to make choices and accept consequences? Start your own server and Mussolini it up.

Indeed, but the other aspects of Alpha enhancements can have profound effects on characters which are just as impactful as +1 level. Going from struggling to manage endurance to never having to glance at the bar again is a real game-changer, for example, and completely unrelated to the level shift despite being functionally attached to it in the rare and very rare tiers. Being 50+1 makes defeating critters easier, but having a pile Recharge Reduction applied globally also makes defeating critters easier, and, again, they're a package deal on Alpha enhancements. Yes, critters are going to miss more frequently when you're +1, but 4.5-5% extra Defense (from Agility) is also causing them to miss more frequently. The +1 is not the only function of the Alpha slot making your end-game experience different, and specifically targeting that +1 is like insisting that the frosting on the cake is fine, it's just the rosettes, which are made of the same frosting, that you object to and would like removed... from everyone's cake, because, again, you think we'd all be better off without them. It abrogates the freedom to choose that already exists and ignores the reality of the other aspects of the Alpha slot being just as responsible for giving players a feeling of being over-powered. Taking away peoples' ability to make that choice isn't a solution, and arbitrarily denying them the level shift because you don't want to exercise your ability to make that choice isn't good, it's fascism. That would be perfectly acceptable.

Take your Alpha enhancement out of the slot and require your teammates to do the same. That's a choice that you can make, and that you can revert that later. A game-wide disabling of the level shift outside of Incarnate content is not a choice, and it can't be reverted unless the HC team rolls it back. /jranger

🙄

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_knife

I didn't know how to build anything when I decided to move off-grid. I didn't know how PV arrays worked. I didn't know how to make water come to me, instead of me going to fetch the water. What I didn't know vastly outweighed what I did know, but the one thing I did know... was that I could figure it out. And I did. Just like I figured out how to work on 2t and 4t engines, and how to build and repair computers, I figured out how to build a cabin, how to size a PV array and battery bank, how to build a ram pump, how to build a dam, how to use a chainsaw, how to fell trees properly, and more. We're all capable of doing what we imagine to be impossible, if we try. In making the attempt, we learn. In learning, we discover that the limitations we perceived in ourselves were illusory. And sometimes we fail, but failure isn't something to be ashamed of, it's just another step in the learning process. Trying and failing is more worthwhile than never trying at all. It's not "too hard". It's not "boring". It's not cutting into your valuable time. It's an opportunity. Don't squander it by handing it off to someone else, do it yourself and develop greater self-reliance and confidence. Neither. Throw him into the wilderness with nothing but the clothes on his back and a Mora. He'll figure it out.

Eh. Some of the water I bring up to the cabin is pretty chunky. Thank goodness for Brita.

Jenna glanced surreptitiously at the man across the table. He was swirling the amber liquid around in his glass, watching as it flowed and swirled, occasionally pausing to sniff and flicker his eyes delightedly at the scent. He gave every appearance of truly enjoying his drink, in every way, and struck her as putting on a most elaborate performance. This was how she got by in the world, reading people, and what she read from this one had the hair on the nape of her neck standing on end. He was just a little too disinterested, too casual in his disregard of her, never quite displaying any real distraction to convince her. No easy mark, this one, he was playing the same con game she was. Others with half her skill and experience would walk away from the deal as quickly as they could... but that was why she was better. She was the best. And this chump, he'd lose, just like everyone else who sat where he was now. "Do you really expect me to believe this... thing works?" Jenna asked, slipping a hint of boredom into her voice. "Come on, I'm not stupid." "It works," he replied, peering at her through his glass of scotch. "You've heard of Desdemona, haven't you? Infernal? Did you honestly believe they control demons with chants and chalk art? This," he tapped the shard of crystal, "is how they do it. This little piece of their home, they're drawn to it, and the person who controls it, controls them." "It's never that simple. I've seen crap like this on the black market, there's always a catch. People buy stuff like this and turn into giant slime monsters, or the things they think they're controlling turn out to be sizing them up for lunch, or they have to sacrifice kittens or something to make it work." "Do I look like a slime monster? Do you see blood on this?" he held the shard up, allowing the light to catch it from various angles. "Look," he pointed at one of the twisted creatures sitting in the corner near the bar. Jenna stared at its eyeless face as it shambled over, somehow certain it was looking at her and, oddly, that it was almost pleading with her. "Open your mouth, little one," he said, and stuck his fingers into the toothed maw. She saw blood welling up from the pricks of the creature's teeth as he carelessly brushed his knuckles over them. The entire time, the little monstrosity seemed to shy away, not driven into the frenzy she'd expected. "Okay, so it works and it's not immediately or obviously fatal to the user. Still doesn't explain why you're selling it." "I'm settling down. Raising a family." He waved the creature away. "I've got no use for this now. I'm ready to let it go and provide a good life for my children." "And what is it I'd be paying for it?" Jenna couldn't keep the skepticism out of her voice. He shrugged. "Not much. Your word." "My word... what? That I'll use it for 'good and noble' causes?" Again, he shrugged. "Whatever." She managed to keep herself from smirking, but only just. She'd been prepared to pay handsomely, and sweeten the pot with an offer of a roll in the sack, a tactic she'd used to cut the price in half more times than she cared to remember, but this fool was apparently giving his trinket away. Whether she kept it for herself or fenced it, she was practically guaranteed a fortune. She donned her most serious and thoughtful expression, gazing into the crystal, as she let him believe she was trying to reach a decision. "Okay," she finally said, "you have a deal." "Your word?" "Given." She stretched out her hand and shook, sealing the bargain. Her eyes on the crystal, she didn't notice that the man had gestured to the piteous, eyeless demon. When it finally arrived at the table, she looked up and was about to tell him, and it, to go away, when he pointed to her and leaned close to it. "Manners," he whispered in the gnarled ear. The needle-toothed mouth opened, gnashing on the air, then an oddly familiar sound emerged from the mouth. It took her a moment to place it, and she was so focused on it that what was said didn't sink in immediately. "Thank you for your word." That was her voice. Her word. He hadn't wanted a promise, he'd wanted her word. Her words. Her voice. The man reached down and picked up his daughter, listening to her chatter excitedly in the woman's velvety voice. He'd have to find some eyes, next. She'd enjoy that, being able to see. A terrified, unintelligible wail drifted out of the bar as he meandered away.

On tonight's episode of Inquiring Minds: how dangerous are breast implant explosions? Special guest Dr. Raymond Keyes gives us the inside scoop!

Suckers. I just grew my own tentacles and <redacted> <redacted> my <redacted>.

The rest of the time, you hit the thesaurus.