The Queue: Queue’s out for summer!

That’s right, we’re putting behind a fully digital year of distance elementary and preschool, and now my kids are just… directionless urchins who still need my help and guidance at every turn. So, that’s great. At least I don’t need to remember how to do area multiplication ever again.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions, and if they’re about area multiplication, SO HELP ME YOGG…

For me, this is one of the best parts about playing the Bethesda RPGs, especially on PC. It’s like Rule 34, only mods for Skyrim. My personal favorite is the Thomas the Tank Engine mod, which turns all the dragons in the game into firebreathing British locomotives.

(NSFW warning for the beheading at the beginning of Skyrim)

I know it’s kind of stepping on Mitch’s whole thing of eldritch Old Gods and whatnot, but there’s nothing I love more than completely off-the-wall juxtaposition, especially if it involves something wholesome being a bigbad in a much more adult game.

“Oh no, Thomas, have mercy!” Classic.

That’s easy. Demon Hunters are a class skin of Warlocks. BOOM.

That’s kind of a joke, but kind of not. Thematically, the two are incredibly similar. Demon Hunters have an emphasis on martial combat, and a much deeper affinity for their demon, but beyond that they’re kind of two sides of the same coin. Even the whole grimdark “gouging their own eyes out” thing kind of tracks with Warlocks.

But, that particular horse is out of the barn. If I were to make Demon Hunter class skins, I’d probably make them align more closely with a chosen demon, though in terms of the game itself they all battle the same one. I’d bet that a Demon Hunter with a satyr inside them would be much more wily and lithe, maybe borrowing a bit from a Rogue, with some teleports and some DOT infections from their unclean claws. Maybe their affinity is closer to a Voidwalker, with lots of tanking capability, a more hulking frame, and maybe a bluish tint. Even something like a lowly imp provides a lot of flavor, and due to their fire abilities and phase shifting it could all but mirror the satyr DH, just with the tooltip saying “fire” instead of “contagion” or whatever.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about human nature and telling jokes, it’s that people will absolutely do this. It reminds me of when an item won’t scan, and how the customer always says, “oh, I guess it’s free then,” and it makes the cashier die inside, but they outwardly laugh because that’s how human interaction works. If you push back on the corny joke, you’re the one who’s the jerk, because even though you just reached your breaking point after hearing the same damn line literally a thousand times, they just made that one joke. That one, stupid, pointless joke.

You can trust me on this one — my first name is Anna, but my last name definitely isn’t banana, despite the repetition. Ha ha haaaa. And no, I’m not the Taco Bell heiress, either! So funny. Definitely didn’t suck in my breath through clenched teeth just then. Just, great.

Because I know y’all are jokesters, it’s a way of doing multiplication of double digit and larger numbers in a drawn table to help a kid keep the numbers straight. Conceptually it’s the same as breaking down, say, 24 x 37 into (20 x 30) + (20 x 7) + (4 x 30) + (4 x 7) in order to solve it more efficiently than my own method of, “uhhhhhhhh.”