u/Zombiepotato6

I just need to get this off my chest and wanted to share with a community that would understand. I moved to LA in 2021 to go college and study theatre, because performing was the only thing I cared about and I wanted a career in film/tv. I grew a tremendous amount as an actor at school, but in the two years since I’ve graduated, I’ve been having a rough time. I know the industry isn’t in a great place for anybody right now, but even by those margins I’ve been having a dry couple years. In 2025, I only worked on a handful of student films being made by friends/classmates, so they weren’t even projects I submitted for. I thought things were finally looking up in early 2026 because I booked an independent short, an appearance on a daytime court show, and a day player role on a vertical short all in quick succession. But since then, it’s been crickets. The past few months I’m lucky if I even get more than one self-tape request. I know the big step I need to take is to get representation and audition for big casting directors so they can see the talent I know I have, but my package just isn’t interesting enough to attract attention from agents/managers when I send emails or use talentlink. A pretty average looking white guy in his early 20’s with an uninteresting resume isn’t in demand.

As much as I want to keep pushing, especially because I’m making my short right now that I’m very proud of, I’m going to have to leave LA in the next couple of months. The regular job I work doesn’t make nearly enough for me to support myself here even with help from my family, and I can’t get hired for a better position no matter how many applications I submit. I know in this day and age, a 20-something moving back in with their parents after school is pretty normal, but it takes me completely away from anywhere I want to be. There will be opportunities to perform in local theatre and perhaps in independent films, but nothing that would help me make headway in the goals I had set for myself when I moved here. The only thing I really have to dedicate myself to is trying to work more in Voiceover because it isn’t limited by location, but that’s just as much of an oversaturated market as LA is.

Generally, I’m just finding it really hard to not see this as failure, when I’m suddenly having to put all my goals and ambitions on indefinite hold. I know there’s absolutely no reason to compare myself to others, but it doubly hurts when I watch many of my classmates from university posting about their projects they’re booking through agents and managers they seemed to get without any issue. I just needed to say all that, and voice the frustration and disappointment I’ve been stuck with.

Thanks to anybody who actually read all this.

Came back to the game to play Edge of Fate and Renegades since they were on a huge sale and I left for a while after Final Shape. I’m playing Edge of Fate at the moment, and I can’t help but feel like I missed some crucial dialogue or am misunderstanding something because a critical plot point feels like it came out of nowhere.

How do we/Ikora know that III is on Kepler and beyond the Altar of Relativity?

I’m already familiar with the broad strokes of the story from watching vids even when I wasn’t actively playing. I know Maya kills III by dragging it into the 3rd dimension on Kepler, and I know III’s corpse is the thing that the Exiles call the giver and the Aionians call the Holy Anomaly. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that the singularity was always there because of III technically always being dead (some weird effect of how the Nine interact with time?) even though the physical death only occurs at this moment.

What I don’t understand is how we suddenly decide III is there during the events of the story. We come to Kepler because of the invitation, and find the singularity that could hypothetically threaten the system if it expands. We know there’s some shenanigans with the Nine going on, and Ikora pieces together that the Singularity and the Invitation we received are connected because they’re the same energy source or whatever. But at some point there’s suddenly dialogue where Ikora says “III invited us here” and we’re talking about intentionally reaching the other side of the Altar to find III and receive the message it wants to give us. Am I just stupid or did I miss the point where this became a known part of the plot? People just start speaking with the knowledge of III specifically being here, and I don’t know why.

Any help?

Ok that’s an exaggeration, Iron Fist is still probably worse… but wow.

I was expecting an increase to Phantom Pursuit cooldown to make it less of a crutch, a cooldown on shop items to make invisibility less spammy, and probably taking away bonus health from claw whip to punish survivability. This is just…

I’m not a high rank player. I don’t see how this character will even be usable anymore for people who aren’t celestial+ or just cracked at the game.

Let me preface this by saying me and my usual crew aren’t very good at this game. We’re split across platforms so we can’t all play ranked together, but we generally hover around gold on our own. I’ve sunk a decent amount of time into this character by now, and I’d like to believe I understand how she works and how to play her… but it is incredibly frustrating to try and make this character work at these lower rankings.

It’s not surprising that she’s meta defining and frequently banned at high ELO because of the versatility and skill expression her kit allows, but so much of her playstyle relies on the team ALL playing well to give you the opportunity to make your moves on the backline. In Gold, people still don’t know how to team fight all that effectively, so the “ideal” black cat playstyle ends up with you out of the fight most of the time. In 90% of engagements, the general order of events is that I land a grapple, set up a Flame Orb, go for another grapple to build money, and then the fight is pretty much over. Either 3/4 of my teammates are dead from poor positioning which means I’m not able to effectively move in, or 3/4 of the enemy team are dead from bad positioning and I just hop in for 1 quick clean up kill.

The stats by the end of the game make it look like I’m throwing or getting carried because I’m barely part of the fight, and it’s kind of embarrassing. Since I’m not cracked at this game and able to single-handedly run the lobby, how should I approach a fight to actually do something meaningful? Any other Lower ELO players got their own methods? (this is on console btw)