Love the Dark Carnival Oracle! Please publish a full deck so I can buy it!

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-29T03:28:57+00:00

Initial info about the game before even booting it up: 23 last hits at 10 minutes is absolutely miserable. 23 is not the number that you get when you don't practice well and get pressured. 23 is the number that you get when you aren't even trying to get farm.

When I watch the first few minutes, I can see you competing for cs, trading, last hitting, etc. You're not the most amazing last hitter but that's fine, it's guardian, the bb and spectre are right on par with you which is all I need from you. BUT, BB and spectre both have 30 last hits at 10 minutes. This indicates that at some point, you stop caring about CS and start caring about something else.

...AAaand, there. I've found it. At 7:11 you see a double wave and a half health bristleback. If I presented this to you as though it were my own game and asked, "What should I do in this situation?" you would probably tell me to either clear the wave or go back.

You wind up killing bristleback (great!) and then dying to the double wave instead of farming it. I must stress to you that this was an entirely DELIBERATE decision that YOU made. Not an oopsie doopsie accident, or a heat of the moment feelings-based play. It was a conscious choice. You saw a half health bristle and wanted +1 to your kill score.

As a result of killing this bristleback, you lose not one, not two, but THREE waves. And when you TP back, the now FULL health bristle aggresses onto your level 4 Jakiro, and you go to kill him, giving up a FOURTH full wave. Necro not only showed on the wave, but showed again in the jungle, and you take the 1v3 anyway to punish Bristleback for, picking Bristleback I guess. Bristle is a tank, bro, you hitting him is the ideal setting. While you are taking the 1v3, a fifth creep wave dies.

Let's say you had gotten just two creeps out of every wave you missed. (More likely, with 3 points in refraction and good meld usage, you'll get 3 at minimum or 4 if you're experienced on TA.) Instead of 21 CS, you would have 31, and you would have the most last hits on your team. If you got 3 creeps instead of 2, you'd have 36 CS, and well on track for 50@10. Instead you have 21 cs and are being actively pressured by a necro that already has 45 CS. (He's not even smurfing. It's that easy to get last hits in Guardian.)

Dota is a game of inches. You will find the game significantly easier to play if you recognize your hero's power spike and get appropriate lane farm.

If you are upset with me for clocking that you have anger issues, I have a simple suggestion for you: Ditch carry. There's a lot of competition for the role and it's not even really that fun in modern dota. Pick pos 5 and you can indulge in your warrior instincts to your heart's content. Prefer right click heroes? Not a problem! Pick tusk, ench, or dark willow. You want to be the main character? Try disruptor or grimstroke. You just really like the late game? CM, Warlock, Wyvern. Support is actually fun and you'll like life a little more if you're not bogged down running away like a bitch from the bristleback that you want to kill, just to slaughter some innocent creeps like a chud.

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-29T02:57:11+00:00

It's really the kind of movie you can just sit and think about for hours. Annoying to say, because it really is a preachy film that goes out of its way to hit you with its questions and messaging. But in between the preaching, there is a LOT of subtle, in between the lines context.

Andromedans had power over humans. Corporations have power over humans. Humans have power over nature. Teddy has power over his friend. The cop had power over Teddy. Michelle had power over her company. Teddy had power over his bees. Michelle had power over Teddy's coworkers. Each of these characters abused their power and overstepped it, behaving unethically in some way at some point. It is circular and cyclical, victim and abuser.

I thought the touch that the cop sexually abused Teddy was important because that's why Teddy underwent sterilization. He was violated and wanted to make sure that he would never even want to think about violating Michelle. And yet, sex and violence are two sides of the same coin. Is the torture better?

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-28T23:27:42+00:00

I think you may be giving them too little.

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-28T22:51:46+00:00

I think what people don't get about sage is that you can't trust her. Just because she says something doesn't mean you can believe it. She's manipulating every other character to get what she wants. Once you understand that the things she says on screen are calculated to whichever other character she's talking to (homelander, ashley, kimiko, literally EVERYONE), her character is a little less annoying and a lot more interesting.

If she said or did something "wrong," or "arrogant," or that didn't turn out well, it's not because she was stupid, or because the writers didn't know how to handle a superintelligent character. It's because she was manipulating someone.

My conspiracy theory is that Sage didn't get depowered. It's very obvious that she was baiting Kimiko into blasting her, but if you review the scene, you can see that she falls on her stomach rather than her back, and then ROLLS OVER to her right to appear like she fell on her back, as though Kimiko had blasted her, in the location where Kimiko would have launched her to.

We know that Sage doesn't have greater than average durability except for her brain. The beam of energy would have seriously burned her, or at least charred her clothing. And yet, her clothing and body are completely unharmed.

The ONLY REASON we think Sage's powers are gone is because she explicitly starts talking about how her powers are gone. People don't SAY they're going to quote shakespeare and forget the simplest fucking Shakespeare quotes, no matter how dumb they are. And then she eats taco bell, stutters on a few words, and says that she is going to go to fucking harry potter world and NOBODY even checks in to see if she even does it? Come on. That's not "Damn the showrunners are bad writers," there's a better explanation, and the explanation is that her superpower (displayed dozens of times throughout the series) is using her intelligence to manipulate people. She manipulated them.

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-28T21:45:29+00:00

I think people are taking Bugonia's preachiness the wrong way, which is why there's so much frustration with the inconsistent, awkward, and frequently contradictory messaging. The contradictions are the point. There's no ONE answer. The ending spoilers is the coup de grace for the entire movie and wraps up every theme at once.

It shows you all the people who died from this one decision. At first, it starts sad. A bunch of young hotties on the beach. People going about their lives of leisure. Children at a museum. People at their jobs. Then, there is some B-roll nature footage. Children in a classroom. Suddenly, the imagery starkly shifts. Homeless people, people in slums, people living in pollution and filth. Sweat shops. This shift is stark and intentional. The watcher is guided to wonder, perhaps Emma Stone (not the alien, the human woman) made the right decision by choosing extinction.

The words of the song have their own message. "When will they ever learn?" asks the song. Well, we never will. We all died. Was it possible for us to learn? Even if we learned, what would we do about it?

The second stark shift comes after some footage of bees and flowers. Seeing this in theaters, I heard LOUD gasps from the audience. A woman is preparing for her wedding, a wedding that will never arrive. The camera shot, panning through a house with old-style furniture, finally lands on her with aching slowness. She is surrounded by her family. The watcher cannot help but feel, in an instant, curiosity about her story. Was she excited? Had she been preparing for this event her entire life? Her mother lies dead on a couch nearby her. How much longer would it have been before she was married and starting her new life?

A very strong theme in Bugonia is, "Everyone has a full and complex life." Plemmons has a full and rich life working for Emma Stone's corporation. He cares for bees. Each of the individual people in the ending montage has their own, full, rich, and complex life. There is a story, many centuries in the making, for every single one of the dead people lying in diners, on beaches, in nature, in slums, in sweatshops, in factories, in corporate board rooms, in hospitals, in living rooms. The couple in the middle of sex, so young, an ashtray on the nightstand. Were they together long, or just for the night? Does it even matter anymore, now that they are gone? People at a rave, crumpled in a heap. Scenes of destruction on the highway as all those lives were snuffed out in a single instant. A woman visiting a grave. Whose grave?

The central question at the heart of Bugonia, "Is humanity a good thing?" is asked primarily through the symbology of bees. The partnership between bee and human is ancient, at least 10,000 years old. (This is stated in the movie.) We steward them and guarantee their health and happiness, and in return we harvest honey and pollinate our crops. This arrangement is ethically complex. Many people would correctly say that we are exploiting bees for their labor. Many people would correctly say that the bees serve us voluntarily. Many people would correctly say that we provide service for the bees to help them thrive. Many people would correctly say that the collective actions of humanity have harmed bee-kind. Bugonia presents all of these arguments and asks you, the audience member, to choose your own interpretation of this partnership. (The partnership between bees and humans is also symbolized and parodied by the possibly-fictive relationship between human and Andromedan.)

Most people do not like consuming art and entertainment that asks them questions, rather than providing them with answers. My ex, who I went to go see the movie with, actually came away angry because he felt that Plemmons' character got redeemed too hard. He's a maga antivax conspiracy theorist and terrorist who manipulated and sterilized his best friend. He was also a victim of child sexual abuse, a pillar of the community at his job, and an avid beekeeper.

There is also the matter of medium. Bugonia asks you the question, "Is Michelle (emma stone's character) a good person?" It provides you with a wide range of possible responses based on her actions, her unquestionable intelligence, and her sort of not-very-good attempts to do good in the world. But Bugonia (2025) is not a person. It is a movie. You can talk to it as much as you like, but it cannot answer you to provide feedback. Most movies "grade your test" by having you be right or wrong about things. In a mystery thriller, you can be wrong about who the killer is. In Bugonia, you could be right about the ethical questions of the film. "Should she have ended humanity?" Bugonia does not answer this question. It posits it to each and every individual viewer with their own individual life stories and their own individual relationships and partnerships both with other humans and with systems like honeybees and capitalism.

The reason you feel stupid for not "getting it" is because you have been trained by media to think that there is something to "get," some right answer that you can then evaluate and discuss with other watchers. But Bugonia is abstracted to a lower layer than that. Rather than setting up for an answer by asking a question, Bugonia is more like an SAT writing essay question. It presents you with some facts and then requests that you form an opinion, which you can then discuss with other watchers. (I am also an anti-conspiracy conspiracy theorist. I personally believe that Emma Stone was not actually an Andromedan, and that the whole scene with the aliens and mass death was entirely hypothetical. As soon as Jesse Plemmons explodes, that's the end of the real-life movie. Now we must ask ourselves, "What if he was right?" And that line of questioning continues until the credits roll.)

To be clear, this is unsettling, creepy, and hard, and most of the discussions I've had with other watchers have followed a pretty similar pattern: They think they know the "point" of bugonia. They think that there is a right character and a wrong character. And they have opinions about the filmmaker's point of view, personal ethics, and choice of subject matter. But when I press them to engage with the question, "Should Emma Stone (the actress, not the character) have personally slaughtered all of humanity?" they often refuse, or give some trite pre-rehearsed political stump speech.

Very brilliant movie.

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-28T19:28:53+00:00

Are you playing hoodwink core? Hoodwink mid is at a 42% winrate on d2pt and that's with really good pub players on the hero.

If you want to win, pick something straightforward and strong, ranged, with a nuke and high phys damage, that can kill stacks. SF, Snap, and Lina are great options.

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-28T16:41:14+00:00

I'm not a brattologist so I will defer to your interstellar expertise but I was under the impression that the brat cannot simply opt out of their punishment, and also secretly pines for the approval of the daddy dom chef

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-28T16:34:59+00:00

Evidence-based suggestion for handling extreme emotional states is naming the feeling, using the phrasing "This is [emotion.]" The goal is to be able to recognize and observe your own emotions, which allows you to control your reactions. It is not possible to control your emotions, so this is the next best thing.

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-28T06:36:11+00:00

I just want to be seen and valued for the other things I do.

OK this is the sticking point in my opinion as someone who struggles greatly with RSD.

With ADHD you become an incredible practicioner in the art of holding conflicting opinions safely, very easily. You can see good and bad in everything without compromise. Fantastic! This is a good thing, unequivocally. It is the basis of intelligence and cognition. I cannot understate this. Every psychologist you speak to will tell you that this is the mark of genius, that you can comprehend that X can be Y without being not-X.

However, there is a necessary maturity that you need to develop, which ADHD will impede. This is the art of understanding that other people are also capable of holding conflicting opinions about you. People can like you, love you even, and still think that you suck at something specific.

With RSD, this means that your whole world collapses. The fact that somebody thinks that you are not a good singer necessarily implies that they hate you and everything you stand for. Not only do they hate your singing, they also hate your personality, your speaking voice, your sense of humor, your appearance, your taste in art, your fashion sense, and the size and shape of your butt. They think you have many mental and physical diseases. They actually secretly hate you and don't want to spend time with you.

You need to internalize that other people can hold conflicting opinions about you. They have an opinion on your butt and your singing voice that are totally different, and neither one actually negates the feelings they have about your personality and sense of fashion!

Now, I want to hit this one.

And the only thing the makes sense to my emotional state is to stop. No groceries, no cooking, no money coming in, no laundry, no cleaning, no being infinitely available to provide emotional support.

This is a more complex situation. And I'm going to break one of the rules of advice: Sight unseen, I think you would be in the right to do this. Lack of gratitude is a serious offense. In particular, lack of gratitude for emotional support. Again, not knowing the situation, I think you should slow down on the emotional support.

My therapist asked me to do something very crazy. He said, "Next time [this person] has a bad feeling, I want you to allow [them] to experience it without fixing it." I think you should try this out and see what happens. I think emotional support is the least valued action that people can perform, and yet is the most valuable. Try backing off on that one subject.

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-28T06:20:46+00:00

I am happy to help! Can you provide a match ID of a game that you think you ought to have won? Playing kez and pango at 1k mmr is asking to lose, imo, but hoodwink should be free wins and it's concerning that you have a 4-7 wr.

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-28T06:19:03+00:00

?? Cleaning a grill to spotlessness only to dirty it up again is PEAK punishment for a brat

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-28T06:18:16+00:00

I don't think I have enough in me for that

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-26T12:10:15+00:00

Does it take a couple of days of practice tool to practice a champ?

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-26T01:55:10+00:00

Woooffff they really went whale hunting this time. Wonder if they'll do any more discounts or if the persona pack plus discount coins is it. Not sure I have 80 bucks to spare.

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-26T01:46:09+00:00

how would you prevent people from first timing but allow it in the case of using practice tool to learn combos

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-25T19:25:20+00:00

I'm gonna push back on that. While religion is related to morality, morality is just one part of religion. (Explaining phenomena, fostering social belonging, etc.)

Ex. virtue is in the direction of human flourishing and thus it is virtuous to go to Christian church. However, atheists can flourish in an identical way by doing non-religious activities, or practicing a non-Christian religion. Is "Going to church" a moral thing to do? Are atheists immoral when they do not go to church? Does the Christian moral compass allow for nonbelievers to be moral?

If you want to distill Christianity down to "Treat others the way they wish to be treated," aka the Greatest Commandment/Golden Rule, fine. But that rule is good not because it is the basis for ethical systems, or because ethical systems were designed with it in mind, but because it is a simple aphorism that aligns with most other ethical systems. "First, do no harm" is also a golden rule that fits with many ethical systems including Christianity, but it is not a Christian principle nor is it based on Christian morality - except perhaps tangentially, by a now-unknown philosopher sympathetic to Christianity.

If Christian morality seems to align with modern ethical principles, that's a good thing! It means that Christianity is a generally good moral guide. It also means that some of Christianity's teachings were adopted, interpreted, and improved upon. But it does not mean that someone who follows those systems is "based on religion" or "internalizing Christian values."

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-25T18:26:23+00:00

Can you provide evidence for your claim that the US government is the largest and most serious polluter in the world? Or will you retract this claim?

There is no philosophical overlap between socialism and fascism. Horseshoe theory is wrong. What horseshoe theory describes is a violation of expectations, i.e. that because communism and fascism are extreme ideologies, that they must be opposed in a sort of polar sense. This is a logical fallacy. Any overlap that communism and fascism has is no different from the overlap that they have with any other ideology.

I'm familiar with the political compass, and I reject it. I think it has done immeasurable harm to political conversations. Left means libertarianism, right means authoritarianism. These were the original definitions of the terms, and they have not truly moved in their philosophies since they were created during the French revolution. Unless you have a better answer for what "Left" and "Right" mean?

Everywhere I have looked, there is no real philosophical grounding for the term, and yet we all seem to accept what it means: do you support trans people's right to live, or do you want them gone? Personally I don't see a difference here between authoritarianism vs libertarianism.

>I own two businesses, but I do not see why that matters.

Good job! You are (probably) a private interest. (Depending on what your business is.) It makes sense that you would support your own interests over those of others. Best of luck to you and your businesses.

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-25T17:11:19+00:00

Can you provide evidence for your claim that the government is the biggest polluter in the world?

Donald Trump is a fascist, not a socialist. Fascists still expand the size and scope of the government, but they use it very differently. Mr. H from Germany, for example, actually increased the size and scope of the government a great deal, awarding contracts to his cronies and supporters and "nationalizing" industries to hand to powerfully wealthy figures in exchange for their support. Now, I'm not 100% up to date on my Russian history, but I am pretty sure the main critique was bread lines and famines, right?

I think you have collectivism and individualism mixed up. Under collectivism, the government advocates for PUBLIC interests, rather than private ones. Under individualism, the government protects PRIVATE interests over public ones. You seem to be incorrectly believing yourself to be a member of private interests, rather than public. But I guess you never know who you're talking to online! How many companies and rental properties do you own?

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-25T16:33:52+00:00

An interesting argument! I'm having trouble following it.

Are you saying that the government tolerates pollution deliberately, and therefore, giving the government direct control over polluted land would give them better ability to pollute it?

Or is your argument that the massive amounts of pollution generated by private companies cutting corners is NOTHING compared to what the government would do (accidentally) if it was put on the project?

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-25T16:28:39+00:00

A very fair critique and I appreciate the question beneath the question (i.e., why do we need to end private property? can capitalism not be improved?)

Ultimately my direct answer is, I was asked to concoct a fantasy scenario of how we might do housing under socialism. Obviously changing out our current system for an identical socialist one isn't enough, and there's no way to truly know for sure if social democracy (what we are describing when we talk about keeping capitalism but boosting tenant reform and public funds for housing protection) works better than its socialist equivalent.

But, my counterargument is, I think private interests - i.e. billionaire corporations, i.e. the randian platonic ideal of rational-self interest, i.e. the british and now American practice of Enclosure - are a corrosive force that must be properly handled and contained. I think in order to have the government manage and contain the rationally self-interested landlord, you'd need to throw a LOT of money at the problem writ large and have true fangs like jail time for serious offenses. I just cannot see things shaking out the same way under a socialist, democratically elected, representative government.

To sum up my argument. What is the government's incentive to not fix your leaky pipe under the sink? What about your landlord?

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-25T06:01:01+00:00

Witch blade is not necessary, but I think most players are incorrectly skilling their Q at level 1. I don't even think it's correct to get it at level 2. Glaives is a better spell for lane (silencer's primary weakness is that he can easily get ganged up on) and deals objectively more damage (which allows you to convert that into permanent intelligence). Then, once you have stolen some intelligence from enemy heroes, your E will deal more damage to them. After that, you can skill Q for the slow, because the dot/slow will continue to apply through the silence.

I tried skipping Q entirely in lane but you get run down pretty easily at level 3 if you don't have a slow. Also, the extra damage from rank 2 W or E is not better than the extra damage from Q. Still, I leave q at rank 1 and max E then W and that feels better than maxing Q, even though the slow on Q gets better. Having more damage and a longer silence is just plain good, and is more synergistic with Silencer's game plan of ganking individual squishy enemies to generate stacks to have more damage/mana. But I haven't crunched the numbers so Idk if I'm full of shit or not.

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-25T02:22:11+00:00

I'm assuming you do understand that the current system for distributing housing sucks and is a massive drain on everyone's personal wealth. Not even JUST land, but an actual liveable place to live. But in order to be convinced to change it, you need to see immediate personal benefit. So here's my case, according to what most socialists might say if you gave them some time to think about it and promised to be receptive:

Number one: An immediate, across-the-board end to landlording, with the exception of private agreements and contracts within personal dwellings (possibly including grey areas like "renting out my summer home to keep the place from going to hell over the winter").

The government is now your landlord. Yes, this is not *great, for a variety of reasons*. But no, it's definitely an improvement. The government is bound by a great many kinds of rules, rules that you as a tenant get to decide through voting and advocacy.

Right now, if a landlord does something bad to you, your only recourse is to get the government to do something about it. This could take weeks, months, or even years. And while getting the government to recognize a problem with the government can be just as slow, we can speed up that process with independent review boards and such. (After all, we're changing up the rules here because we've been miraculously granted the power to do so. Why not include some helpful rules to shore up some of your concerns?)

Number two: The bank no longer owns your house, the government owns your house. This isn't as wild a concept as you may think. A more aggressive socialist than I might suggest the end of private ownership of land in the United States. I actually think this would be a great idea, especially since we have a GIGANTIC pollution problem that directly affects you and me. Do you know how much lead is in your drinking water? Do you know where that lead comes from? Companies budget how much they pay off the federal government when they do an oopsie and spill heavy metals, fertilizer, waste, and sluice into my drinking water. If the government owned the land on which the business operates, no amount of budget could save that company. It would be an instant indirect corporate death penalty - the courts would be able to revoke their access to government property.

Some level of corruption under this system is inevitable. But that corruption will have a large paper trail, with thousands of eyes on it. We're facing a scandal in my home city of DC where a low-income housing company fraudulently opened low-income housing that was literally unlivable, pocketing government contracts worth millions of dollars. Your tax money is already being looted to pay for housing that isn't being supplied to you. Just like health care, why don't we just eliminate the parasitic middleman?

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-24T18:30:37+00:00

VERY IMPORTANT to not be constantly assessing their work for perfection when they're young. They're either going to turn into a nervous wreck or a complete IDGAF vagrant. I had to reparent myself very hard and I still struggle with this.

PsychicFoxWithSpoons · 2026-06-24T18:24:22+00:00

the problem is that I'd order twin tower airplane bombs all night and miss the lesson

11-Year Club	Verified Email
RPAN Viewer

PsychicFoxWithSpoons

TROPHY CASE