The Queue: Aurora

I have spent almost all of Monday crying.

My cat Aurora, the eldest of our brood of cats, has been sick for a while. Yesterday she died. Righty up until that moment, she was the same beautiful, wonderful cat who taught me that cats aren’t the aloof, unknowable creatures we’re told they are. She was so many things — smart, beautiful, a bit weird, completely incapable of judging a dangerous situation, and amazingly affectionate. Aurora would come when I was playing a game on the Xbox and lay down on my hand — not enough to interfere, just enough that I knew she was there.

She stole a piece of roast beef off of my plate once that was so big she couldn’t run with it, and tried to scamper away anyway. I remember the shock on her face when I retrieved it and ate it anyway.

I love you, star kitten. I will always love you. You were best kitty. And it is bitter to know you’ll never lay down on my arm while I play a game again. There were so many more I wanted to share with you.

I’ve actually proposed this exact thing, potentially as a thing we’d let people in the Blizzard Watch community play along with us. So if you’re at all interested in playing in a game with Joe or myself running some of the writers here and you as a starship crew, the comments here are a great way to let us know.

Not very long at all, as we see the team get assembled and the people that show up include Echo (from the Cole Cassidy short back when he had a different name) and both Reinhart and Brigitte show up acting pretty much exactly like we would expect them to if they just got Winston’s summons. I can’t give you an exact time period, but it’s clearly not been a very long time.

The Chaos gods of the Warhammer setting are a pale and bloated attempt to create something equivalent to the true lords of Chaos. Invoke names like Arioch, Chardros the Reaper, Mabelode the Faceless, or even Pyaray or Xiombarh and you’ll soon bring Chaos in a way your cats have yet to understand.

Also, seriously, do like Yahnati siggests and make sure you get another litter box. One simply isn’t enough for four chaos gods. Or cats.

It’s pretty indicative of rationalizing, a way humans have of starting with the conclusion they want to draw — “I like this person and want to keep supporting and defending their behavior” and then torturing the facts until they come up with a justification that for whatever reason they think sounds good enough to do the job. It has nothing to do with drawing an actual conclusion based on the facts of the situation, it’s all about creating a rationale for what they’ve already decided to do without really considering or caring about those facts.

I’m sure somebody’s gonna drop that Heinlein quote in here, have at it, but it’s a topic in both philosophy and psychology that has yet to be solved — the way humans often make decisions purely based on emotion and then try desperately to justify that emotional decision. In this case, that X person that they like for whatever reason can’t be a bad person because they like said person, and therefore can’t be racist or misogynist or whatever attribute they’ve already demonstrated repeatedly.

He’s a 78 year old man with COVID. He’s looking pretty good considering.

Why on earth can’t you play a Barbarian?

I admit I think it’s weird we don’t have some version of the Holy Warrior archetype, but considering the fall of the Zakarum faith all the way back in Diablo 2 and that Diablo 4 is likely to be set years after D3 when the angels showed up and murdered almost everyone in Westmarch, followed by them nearly killing off all human life via the Black Soulstone — an act that fractured most of human society and has essentially made life in Sanctuary like a medieval version of Mad Max, maybe it’s not so surprising.

I mean, first the church of Zakarum was revealed to be corrupt and influenced from within by Mephisto, and then an actual Archangel decided to kill off humanity. That’s kind of a one/two punch that’s really had for a faith to come back from. That could even be part of the narrative of Diablo 4, ultimately.

As for Druids, based on the 2019 preview I played, yeah, they can be spellcasters doing stuff from range or shapeshift and get up on things with claws and teeth. I mean, Diablo tends to blur the lines between ranged and melee and Druids definitely seem to be that all over.

But why can’t you play a Barbarian? They’re the best class. Play a Barbarian.

Okay, that’s the Queue for today. I’m sorry if I was a bit of a downer, I just really needed to let the world know that Aurora was here and she made life better. She mattered. I love her, my wife loves her, and we’ll never forget how beautiful and special she was. I’ll be back tomorrow and hopefully we’ll be a little less sad.