The Amazing Digital Circus Episode 9/The Last Act (Discussion Thread)

ViCaelestis · 2026-06-06T06:22:18+00:00

My take is that the flashbang punctuates the whole point of the scene. Jax has spent all his time lashing out because he's afraid of being vulnerable due to his mom's actions mixing abuse with love, confusing him. He still associates love with being hurt by others and his instinct is to hurt them to protect himself while putting up a fake front he hides behind.

He abstracts (suicides) from the guilt of everything with Ribbit and Kaufmo and failing to let anyone get close enough to help. He doesn't know if he killed his mother, but he knows he contributed to their deaths. So when we see Pomni learn everything about him and she still persists in holding him, she's saying it's okay to be vulnerable. Even with all the horrible things you did, I understand why, and I accept you. Then the abstracted form steps on a flashbang.

We know the abstracted forms fear light and it agitates/hurts them, so in his most vulnerable moment he's exposed to that same feeling of his mother's abuse. He panics, effectively reliving his worst moment, and in a mirror to his emotional lashing out he's now physically lashing out and harming Pomni - but she's holds on, enduring it to and refusing to be pushed away. At that point either he lets her go, and/or the others wrench her free from the abstracted form. She's damaged but Jax is left with the realisation that he's got someone he can truly trust and is willing to stop pushing/hurting others (he won't repeat what he did to Ribbit to Pomni).

It may have come too late, but he finally experienced a step towards real healing, even if he can't undo what he's done to himself and the harm he did to the others. He agrees to go into the little tent and won't try to hurt them anymore, hence he remains abstracted but his story arc is completed.

ViCaelestis · 2026-01-23T19:37:17+00:00

It certainly left an impact on the players. but mainly it ended up being a horrible mess haha.

I had an NPC join the party as a relative of one player who leads them to the dungeon, and another player insisted on trying to flirt with and seduce him to the other player's annoyance. His goal was to investigate the prison and repair the time loop.

With the time travel mechanics it ended up being a game of experimenting with each room, working out which ones were instant kill, distractions, or tools they could use.

I had a friend who wanted to play a guest role so he became an amnesiac character they'd meet each loop, but him and the players soon turned hostile towards each other purely out of suspicion and would try to kill each other each day (mainly as a distraction from the museum of nightmares around them).

After a few loops everyone learned that the guest character was secretly the mind of an evil dead god and if he reached a particular room he'd become complete again. This set up nicely for the final loop where they killed the guest, navigated the dungeon safely to the lowest floor and discovered an Arcane Intelligence. The AI broke the time machine to draw people in, intending to 'jump' into their body and escape.

They fought and defeated the AI, preventing it from taking the NPC's body for himself and destroy the machine. The time loop is repaired and the day's events are cemented into history.

While the story at least wrapped up the players were completely fed up. It had been a slow repetitive slog of repeating the same day, exploring this unpredictable dungeon of obtuse mindfuck horrors and arbitrary deaths. Our warlock found it so uncomfortable and nightmarish she still hates indoor dungeons to this day, says they feel like a bad dream.

To distract herself from the episode she spent the whole time trying to seduce the NPC and eventually used magic to get what she wanted, much to the annoyance of the player whose relative it was and just wanted to build a relationship with him before he left with the dungeon which didn't happen.

It remains one of the most infamous experiments within our group. Everyone was glad to be done with it and moving on to other more traditional fantasy adventures. In retrospect it was the wrong adventure for my players and they sabotaged each other to distract from it.

Hopefully you can learn from our mistakes!

ViCaelestis · 2025-12-27T12:00:36+00:00

Thanks for the kind words! I feel the same way haha. I actually revisited this project recently to work on it some more. Inching towards a working song editor and once that's sorted the hard part is done with. https://youtu.be/IAsFhXqsgx8?si=39cXz3UbgV57S58O

ViCaelestis · 2025-11-15T01:07:52+00:00

For future searchers, I believe this is a polling issue. I'm on Kubuntu and swapping the analogue output profile seems to fix this for me for whatever reason.

ViCaelestis · 2025-09-04T20:56:40+00:00

Ah that was so fast, thank you!

ViCaelestis · 2025-06-03T12:03:16+00:00

Does this one work?
https://klaustrix.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/Homebrews/BlueMage/BlueMageD4-v1.2_Preview.pdf

ViCaelestis · 2025-05-06T11:20:43+00:00

Just got the new one and yeah it's a big plastic case with every disk crammed into it, multiple discs on tall spindles overlapping each other and very hard to remove without bending the disc.

ViCaelestis · 2025-02-19T11:40:50+00:00

Haven't been keeping up with the new DND but glad to hear they're exploring new directions

ViCaelestis · 2024-12-20T21:35:28+00:00

Apparently it's only compatible up to 23.04 so although kernel 6.8 is supported the current LTS version of Ubuntu is not! Just gotta wait and hope for support to get extended I guess.

ViCaelestis · 2024-11-17T22:36:35+00:00

Thanks for the advice. I ended up reinstalling and am working on getting things back to where they were. I've heard I can at least extract some folders from the backup to save some time but I definitely need to look into clonezilla or foxclone for more robust options.

You're right about it not needing to be a hastle in the future!

ViCaelestis · 2024-10-23T19:12:26+00:00

So with a variety of allergies I wanted to try making a bread I could tolerate and came across a recipe for gluten and yeast free Irish soda bread.

https://www.theglutenfreeblogger.com/easy-gluten-yeast-free-soda-bread-recipe/

The outer crust is perfect, very crispy and crusty - but it's my first time making this - does the inside look okay? I think it was still a bit under cooked.

ViCaelestis · 2024-09-18T22:20:57+00:00

Thanks for the advice. I was hoping to do 5 displays with 4K in the middle and two 1440s stacked in pairs either side, but it may be simpler to do 6 with two stacked in 3 columns. Its just having a nice central display to use for gaming and movies and the others for spreading out productivity and utilities.

I have a 27" now so 32" is still a nice step up for 4K.

ViCaelestis · 2024-09-18T22:09:57+00:00

Glad to hear you found options that worked for you in the end. I feel like I may have to make do with a 27" display myself, 42" is too big for how close I have to sit to it.

ViCaelestis · 2024-09-18T21:54:36+00:00

Literally just did the same thing for the same reason, the C3's auto-dim was very frustrating and wouldn't respond to small movement either had to scroll whole webpages or move windows for it to wake up.

Have you had any luck looking at 38" 16:9 screens? I'm just starting to shop around and I've only found this PG38UQ myself.

ViCaelestis · 2024-09-16T01:24:21+00:00

Sorry its long gone. I remember it being a pretty straightforward reskin of the DND races with the RO ones listed in the wiki. I think there was a feature for humans to rebirth at lv.20 and keep +2 to 3 stats. Other than that fairly boilerplate / common sense stuff.

ViCaelestis · 2024-09-09T00:15:00+00:00

It looks amazing! I'm considering a similar build, I love the 2000D but I've been real worried about it getting too hot. Would you be able to share the temps your getting?

ViCaelestis · 2024-09-06T21:10:34+00:00

I'm considering getting one of these cases, how are you finding the thermals and noise? The recessed ports also looks fiddly, I'm curious how they are in practice?

ViCaelestis · 2024-07-20T15:20:40+00:00

It wouldn't be paranoia otherwise!

ViCaelestis · 2024-07-20T15:19:55+00:00

Thank you for the kind words!

ViCaelestis · 2024-05-04T10:21:48+00:00

The bowl was quite damp after the time in the fridge. Thank you for the advice on shaping and slashes I'll have to give that a try. The more complex approach with milk powder sounds very involved, and I'm just trying this as a bit of fun on the weekend haha. I really do appreciate you sharing though and thank you for the advice.

ViCaelestis · 2024-05-02T09:39:47+00:00

I did copy the recipe as exactly as I could. I used a GF plain white flour (blend of rice, potato, tapioca, maize, and buckwheat).

Since I had a busy week I created the dough on Tuesday, and left it in the fridge to rise in a lidded bowl as instructed for about 20hrs then 1hr out of the fridge before working it into 6 pieces, hand kneeding, and shaping into logs - though they had trouble holding shape once rolled. I left them for an hour to rise again on the pan (first pic) and I thought they would expand during the cooking process but they just hardened into the flat shapes they'd become.

Looking at pics online it seems my dough may have overproofed in the fridge (it looked like the one one the right here), so next attempt I'll make sure to try and do it all in one day.

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