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stella-888 · 2 years ago

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DIAMOND GLOW: IT’S USE, BENEFITS & TREATMENTS

Diamond Glow Facial

The Diamond Glow facial is a powerful but gentle skin resurfacing treatment. It is meant to improve and reverse lifestyle-related skin problems quickly.

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Saying Goodbye to Wrinkles

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Evens Discoloration & Dark Spots

In addition to reducing fine lines and wrinkles, the Diamond Glow facial exfoliates the skin, gently removing the top layer of dirt, dead skin cells, and other debris.

This also helps make the skin’s color more even and lessens the look of dark spots like hyperpigmentation, age spots, and sunspots.

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The Diamond Glow facial helps to clean clogged pores by exfoliating with diamond tips and pulling out dirt and oil. Patients often start seeing their large pores getting smaller as they get treatments over and over.

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No Pain To Experience

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Minimal Downtime

The technology and serum formulas behind the Diamond Glow facial are powerful and effective. Still, the treatment is gentle enough to get results without hurting the skin. You may have mild redness or irritation depending on your treatment’s strength and intensity.

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Customize Anytime You Want

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You will choose the products after carefully looking at your skin and discussing your concerns and goals, among other things.

Quick Results

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Best Results Overtime

Men and women can keep, improve, and extend their results by getting the DiamondGlow facial repeatedly. Most people start with two to four sessions that are two weeks apart.

This helps improve the health and appearance of their skin so that treatments can be done less often, and the results usually keep getting better with each session.

This facial treatment is an introduction to clinical skin care. It includes a complete skin analysis and is tailored to the needs of the client’s skin.

It is an excellent place to start for all clinical facials because it prepares the skin for highly therapeutic skin care products. This facial is perfect if you need to know what you need.

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Schedule a Consultation Now!

Suppose you have a long list of skin problems but don’t want to undergo invasive treatment. In that case, a clinical DiamondGlow facial could be the answer you’ve been looking for. Call the friendly staff at Mivaglo to set up a private in-person or online consultation.

We have a team of highly experienced and certified Diamond Glow technicians. Take the first step toward a more youthful, healthier, and glowing complexion today!

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apiratewhopines · 3 years ago

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Thanks to @teamhook for the artwork and for helping me pick a movie that wasn’t already done!

Midnight

Chapter 6 — The Mice

Summary: In which our heroine wins the battle but loses the war

Chapter 6 of 7 on AO3

“The way you changed my life

No, no, they can’t take that away from me”

-They Can’t Take That Away from Me, Fred Astaire

After the excitement of the morning passed, Sidney grumbled until they returned to the table. Still shaken by whatever Arthur said on their brief phone call, Killian declined to join them and returned to their room. No doubt to dream up a make-believe pregnancy for her. Most probably twins this time.

“I thought you told me we would have smoked salmon for our bagels,” the man complained to Guin, face upset as if the plentiful choices offered on their breakfast buffet were insufficient.

“I’m sorry, dear. I know it’s your favorite, so I made sure it was on the menu I gave to our chef,” she murmured coaxingly. Looking at the butler who was filling Arthur’s coffee cup, she asked, “What happened to the salmon?”

“There was a mistake, ma’am. It was left out of the last delivery, and since the phones have been out all morning, we couldn’t contact the market. I’ve sent one of the girls into town to buy some, so we will have it tomorrow morning. If the gentleman prefers, we can prepare a plate for him this afternoon.”

“Nonsense,” she replied. “The phones are in perfect working order. We just made a call to Europe to check on the Baron’s daughter.”

“No, ma’am, only the internal phone system is working. An accident took out the lines last night.”

Emma reached over and grabbed Arthur’s hand under the table as they shared an uneasy look when the other three people at the table all glanced at her with questions in their eyes. Lance broke the silence. “I don’t understand…”

“I’m afraid he’s right. I wasn’t on the phone with my mother-in-law. In fact, I don’t— No, I don’t want to burden you with my problems,” she said haltingly, her mind racing with ways to get out of this mess. The words tumbled from her mouth so quickly she didn’t have a chance to think through the consequences, which seemed to be the way she operated these days.

“Oh, please, you can’t stop now. This little mystery is the only thing distracting me from my lack of fish,” Sidney countered. He was studying the wide variety of fruit compotes and toppings for his pancakes and sounded desolate. “Please.”

“Well, let’s just say the Baron’s family has a touch of eccentricity,” she continued with a grimace. She had their rapt attention; even Sidney abandoned his food and gawked at her. “My first hint was at the wedding. I was opening the gifts, and his grandfather gave us a broken compass covered in Thousand Island dressing.”

“Yes,” Arthur broke in, determined to help. “Now I remember hearing there was a streak of madness in the family. His father was known as the Mad Baron of Cambridge. He liked to give people roller skates with missing laces instead of flowers.”

“The truth is…we don’t have a daughter.”

“Oh, this is much more delicious than breakfast,” Sidney gushed, pushing his plate away and moving to the seat across from her. “Tell us more.”

“I don’t want you to think bad of him. Most of the time, he’s lucid and the sweetest man in the world. That’s the man I fell in love with. But when he’s having one of his episodes, like this morning, he can get quite aggressive if confronted. It’s best to go along with whatever he’s saying. It always starts when he first wakes as if he can’t shake some odd dream in his mind,” she grabbed her napkin and dabbed at fake tears. “There was one time about six months ago he woke up convinced he was Captain Hook. He wore eyeliner for weeks and refused to use his left hand. When I tried to make him see reason, he insisted I call him Captain and tried to have me arrested as a mutineer.”

“You poor thing,” Guin said, genuine sympathy in her expression. “I wondered why you called him that. I thought perhaps he served in the Navy.”

“And you’ve stayed with him all these years?” Lance’s gaze, which was always admiring, held a new respect for her now. It didn’t make her feel any better. “You’re wonderful.”

“Hmm, yes, absolutely amazing,” Arthur murmured under his breath. The smirk was back, and she could tell he was enjoying her web of lies. At least someone was. “Is there some medication he can take? Perhaps you should have him committed.”

“No, I would never. I promised to stay with Killian in good times and bad. It will pass eventually. It always does,” she bit out, kicking him under the table. Before anything else could be said, she heard the Captain whistling as he practically skipped out of the house toward them dressed in the sky blue scrubs of a surgeon. The color made his eyes even more beautiful, and the tiniest smattering of hair visible above the v-neck of the shirt did things to her heart.

“Arthur, Guinevere, thank you for the hospitality, but we really must be going. I have to get back for my shift at the hospital.” Everyone jumped at the pronouncement, exchanging loaded glances and trying to figure out what to say or do next.

Guin smiled at him shakily and in a calm voice asked, “The hospital, Baron?”

“Not a baron, I’m afraid. And this woman isn’t a baroness. You notice I didn’t say my wife because she isn’t that either,” Killian informed them as he stopped by her chair and reached down to place a hand on her shoulder.

“Killian, you don’t mean that,” Emma responded. She would have laughed at his look of confusion at the lack of reaction to his revelation if she wasn’t so sure it would come back to bite her in the ass.

With an admonishing look, Lance said, “See here, Baron, there’s no need to insult the woman who has stayed by you through thick and thin.”

“Thick and thin? We met five nights ago, and she couldn’t wait to be rid of me. She’s an imposter. And I’m a doctor who has real things to do in the real world. Come on, Swan, let’s leave these lovely people to their breakfast.”

“Oh, I get it. You think she’s Elizabeth Swan from Pirates of the Caribbean.” Sidney snapped his fingers as if all the pieces had fallen into place.

“What? No, I think she’s a bounty hunter and the most impossible woman I’ve ever met,” Killian argued, determined to make them see the truth. The more he spoke, the more their faces cleared of all emotion like they were afraid a smile or frown would push him further into his delusions. He pulled her from the chair gently, and since she felt like pond scum for the lies she told, she let his arms circle her waist. As an added benefit she didn’t deserve, the position allowed her nose to be tickled by the chest hair so temptingly on display.

“Maybe she’s a mutineer,” Arthur offered.

Looking at the group, Killian shook his head in disbelief. “I think you’re all crazy.”

“Yes, that must be it,” Guin said soothingly. “Why don’t you have some breakfast, Baron?”

“I’m not sure how I can be more clear. I’m not a baron. We’re not married. We met in the middle of the road a few nights ago, and I pretended to be her Uber driver so I could give her a ride to a strip club. It turned into the best night of my life.”

Undeterred, Guin patted his arm, which was still wrapped tightly around her. “What a lovely courtship you’ve had. Now, let’s get you something to eat. Do you prefer coffee or tea to drink?”

“Are you not listening to a word I’m saying? We’re fakes! We haven’t known each other for more than a week. She twisted me around her little finger in two minutes. As infuriating as she is, I fell in love with her smile. The sound of her laugh makes my blood pump faster, and when she talks about not believing in love, it makes me want to prove to her that it exists every day for the rest of our lives.”

She was fading, her will to stick it out with Arthur and give him a happy ending melting in the heat of Killian’s honeyed words. His genuine concern at how nonchalantly they were accepting his confession should have been funny, but all she could think about was how he said ‘the rest of our lives.’

Like he meant it.

“Well, fakes or not, I’m still hungry,” Sidney answered, trying his best in the face of impossible odds. “Maybe your patients could wait a few hours until the salmon arrives. It’s quite good.”

“Bloody hell, this is a madhouse. Come on, Emma, enough is enough. Let’s go,” he urged her again. Taking the napkin from her hand, he threw it on the table and switched his grip to gently hold her upper arm and guide her away from the group.

They were immediately halted by Lance, thunder in his expression and lightning in his eyes. “She’s not going anywhere with you, Baron. We know all about your illness. She won’t be safe.”

“My illness?” Understanding dawned on his face and his head tilted back like he was searching the morning sky for answers. With a wry chuckle, he sighed. “Bravo, Swan. You told them I’m crazy. And I played right into it, didn’t I? Because I’ve been acting crazy, a man driven out of his mind at the sight of his most cherished dream waltzing away from him like he was nothing. Like everything he felt was nothing as far as she was concerned.”

She choked up at the bitter twist of his mouth. He was so brave, declaring his feelings in front of everyone, even convinced she would reject him again. Was it any wonder she had fallen head over heels for him?

And what did she do? She lied. She tricked. She ran. Then she rinsed and repeated.

“Captain,” she whispered, her hand moving to cradle his face when a sickening crack was heard and he crumpled at her feet.

Behind him, looking proud of himself, Sidney was still holding a pan aloft like he thought Killian might jump to his feet and demand a second round. Fear flooded her and she dropped to her knees to cradle his head in her lap. Helplessness, her hands fluttered over his body, her mind trying to sort out the impossible situation that was entirely her fault. “Why the hell did you do that?”

“He looked homicidal.”

Shaking him gently, she begged, “Killian…Killian, come back to me. Don’t leave me here alone.”

“You aren’t alone, sweetheart,” Lance promised, trying to move her away.

She swatted at his hands and refused to leave. The movement caused Killian’s head to lull to the side, and she saw a smear of red dripping from his hairline. “Someone call 911. He’s bleeding!”

Sidney glanced down at them with a mildly alarmed look and then at the weapon he still held. He ran his finger across the bottom and, with some relief, announced, “That’s not blood. It’s raspberry compote.”

—

Arthur’s personal physician made a house call to attend to the victim. Of course, the woman knew Killian Jones, MD, who was apparently the Director of Pediatric Oncology at Storybrooke General and one of the foremost experts in his field.

He was a saint in addition to being her Captain.

He deserved so much more than a lost girl who was too scared to know a good thing when it stopped on the side of the road to save her.

“This couldn’t have worked out better, my dear,” Arthur commented with an eyebrow wiggle. “Lance is beside himself. He just announced he plans to hire a divorce attorney this very afternoon. Run along. I’ll make sure the good doctor makes it back to town safely. I’ll even throw a couple thousand his way for his performance.”

“Shut up, Arthur. This is terrible. An innocent man got hurt, and it’s all our fault. My fault,” she corrected with a whisper, running her hand softly through Killian’s hair. He regained consciousness as the doctor checked him out but fell asleep while she assured them no permanent damage was done. Replacing the ice pack against the goose egg forming on the side of his head, she silently pleaded with him to wake up so she could grovel properly and beg for forgiveness.

“He seems quite taken with you.”

“Maybe he’s crazy after all,” she joked, but her heart wasn’t really in it. She doubted she would find anything funny until she saw his electric blue eyes again. “Can you leave us alone? I want to be able to explain when he comes to.”

“Of course, just call if you need anything.” He gave her a probing stare as if trying to decide whether to say something else before he left.

When she heard the door click shut, she leaned over and brushed a soft kiss across his lips. “I’m sorry. For running. For lying. For putting you in a situation where you got knocked out. I know that’s not nearly enough, but I am.”

“It’s a start,” he groaned as her hushed tone drew him from sleep, one hand moving to cover hers where it held the ice to his head and the other reaching out to play with the ends of her hair. “What happened?”

“I happened. This is why we don’t work, Captain. I’ve brought you nothing but pain and suffering since the moment we met.”

“I didn’t figure you for the melodramatic type, Swan. We had some good times before this farce began,” he reminded her as he shifted into more of a sitting position. “Are you ready to admit there’s something between us, or do I need to jump back into the fray and take a punch bowl to the face?”

“I never denied there was something between us, just that it was a good idea. I believe a raspberry-flavored concussion proves my point perfectly.”

His hand drifted to her cheek, calloused fingers glancing over soft skin. She wanted to look away from his intense gaze, but he tenderly grabbed her chin and held her in place. “Love, come away with me. It doesn’t have to be forever; we can sort that part out later. I’m simply asking for your company now, to give us a chance before you decide against it.”

“I want to, Captain. I want the carrot and everything else behind Door Number One,” she murmured with a watery chuckle. His gentle caresses grew hotter and more insistent. Finally he pulled her to him, her body half-covering his, as he claimed her mouth in the kind of scorching kiss that would burn through her memory forever.

She had nothing to offer him, and she had a long way to go before she would be worthy of this kind of love. Unconditional. All-encompassing. The kind she didn’t even know existed until he rescued her.

“I sense a but coming…”

“But—“

With a sad smile, he interrupted her. “On second thought, don’t. Please. I can’t bear to hear you say the words. To watch you run one more time. Let’s call it a day now so we can remember it fondly in the years to come.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am.” He tapped her nose lightly with his fingertip, observing the tears in her eyes as she fought to keep them from falling. Giving her a bittersweet grimace, he added, “Just promise you’ll take care of yourself, Swan. No more skipping meals. No more pretending to be anyone other than the amazing woman you are.”

The tears that were a threat until then slipped past her defenses, leaving trails down her face. He swiped at them and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

Then he was gone.

Arthur found her later in the exact same place, not having the energy to move. He slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a hug. “This is the last time you’ll ever have to live this day, my dear.”

She knew he was trying to make her feel better, but the knowledge he was wrong caused her to feel light-headed as she turned into his embrace. She would never have to say goodbye to Killian again, but she knew she would relive it over and over until the day she died.

—

He approached her on the shoreline as she watched the blue waters of the Atlantic crash against the rocky beach forming one side of Arthur’s estate. Heat lightning flashed in the distance; the far-off storm robbed of its noise and violence when viewed from the calm of land. Emma knew it was only a matter of time until he sought her out. He was a smart man, a gambler and a rogue, so why not press his advantage?

“You disappeared on me after the baron left.” Lance never referred to him as her husband, always ‘the baron.’ She wasn’t sure if it was his way of skirting the immorality of his pursuit or simply to rob the other man of any claim on her, but it was starting to piss her off. Which was silly considering he wasn’t really her husband. Or a baron.

“He told me he was filing for divorce on his way out. That he hoped you found happiness but had come to realize it wasn’t going to be with him.”

She had yet to look at Lance, but she felt her heart break a little at the scene he painted. It was just like the Captain to try to help her all the way to the bitter end. She supposed he simply couldn’t stop himself. Breathing in the warm salty air, she wanted to let it fill her lungs and sweep out the misery that had taken hold in the core of her.

She was an idiot. She had let someone who had never loved her, never really even cared about her, twist her into someone who would do the same thing to a man who was perfect in every way. If she hadn’t already sworn to get even with Neal Cassidy, this would have driven her to it.

She was damaged now, unfit for human company, clinging to a sham because it was easier than facing the fact she made the biggest mistake of her life. Only this time, there was no boogeyman in the form of a cheating, lying ex to blame. She did this to herself.

But she didn’t have to double down on it.

With a deep sigh, Lance dropped on the sand next to her. He was more casual than she had ever seen him, and somehow it made him more approachable. Barefoot and with his pants legs were rolled up to mid-calf in a nod to the tide, he observed, “He was wrong, wasn’t he? You still love him.”

“Yes,” she admitted, staring at the horizon.

“And you aren’t a baroness…”

“No,” she confirmed, this time chancing a sidelong glance at him. “Everything he said was true. I’ve been here under false pretenses.”

“To come between Guin and me. It has the smell of an Arthur scheme all over it,” he explained with a wry grin. “Well, I can’t say I didn’t deserve it. I never intended for it to go this far, but once it started, we kept getting deeper and deeper until I couldn’t see a way out. And then I didn’t want to. I love her, I probably always will, but she’s not mine. You helped me realize that. A gorgeous wake-up call designed to turn my head and steal my heart. Losing you is my penance. One I can’t regret because I have a feeling you saved several lives by playing along.”

“You’ll be back in the saddle again soon, I’m sure, and the women of the world will be better for it. Do yourself a favor next time, though. Choose an available woman, and once you find her, don’t let her go. Don’t make the same mistake I did.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Pick up where I left off, I suppose. I have some debts that still need to be paid and a fugitive to bring to justice. Maybe if I keep busy enough, keep moving, this will all fade and seem like some fever-induced dream.”

“I meant, what are you going to do about Jones?”

“I think I’ve done enough already. The best thing I can do for Killian now is to stay away.”

“For someone so smart about other people, you have a rather glaring blind spot when it comes to your own life. A mistake is only a mistake if you keep making it. You know where to find him, you know he wants you to, the only thing stopping you is fear.”

“Fear is enough, Lance.”

“You know what fear has gotten me: Absolutely nothing. I was afraid to put myself out there, so I only got involved with women who I knew would leave me before the whole thing even started. It’s hard to mourn the loss of a relationship that never stood a chance to begin with. It cost me my best friend and two women I care about. You’re better than that, Emma, and doesn’t he deserve the best version of you? But more importantly, don’t you?”

@teamhook @kmomof4 @jrob64 @stahlop @motherkatereloyshipper @xarandomdreamx @xsajx @klynn-stormz

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salixj · 4 years ago

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(December 21, 2020 / JNS) It’s one of the few rap videos around that features a lead singer in frockcoat, tallis and shtreimel—paired with a cascade of gold chains (one bearing a Magen David) and leopard-skin scarf—dancing with guys from the ‘hood facing off against others in Chassidic garb.

As such, “Mothaland Bounce,” where our hero proudly calls himself “Hitler’s worst nightmare,” reveals much about the man behind it and what it means to be a passionate and deeply committed Jew of color.

Because for Nissim Black—successful rapper, father of six and Orthodox Jew—the video makes a strong statement about how Jews of color merge their very disparate identities into a (nearly) seamless whole.

(Fans may want to check out Black’s newest rap video “Hava”—a thoroughly Nissim spin on the traditional “Hava Nagila”—its release timed for the first night of Hanukkah).

Black is perhaps the most famous of today’s Jews of color. (Readers of a certain age will recall when singer Sammy Davis Jr. could claim that honor).

Though the term itself has gained traction in the last decade, there have always been Jews of different races. Scan the globe today, and you’ll find Ethiopian Jews and the African Lemba tribe whose men test positive for the Kohen gene, a marker of the Jewish priests.

What’s more, many Sephardic, Cuban, Mexican and Yemenite Jews consider themselves Jews of color. Not to mention the murky waters surrounding pockets of the Black Hebrews found in Israel (largely in Dimona and Arad in the Negev Desert) and around the Diaspora, many of whom claim descent from the ancient Israelites.

The numbers are equally murky. Estimates range from 6 percent to 12 percent—or even as much as 15 percent—of today’s Jewish population being Jews of color. But there is little in the way of standardized definition of who is a Jew; some studies count all the members of a household as Jewish household when only one member actually is. But when researchers Arnold Dashefsky and Ira M. Sheskin held the disparate estimates of Jews of color up to the light of demographic standards earlier this year, they concluded that the percentage of Jews of color “is almost certainly closer to 6 percent nationally [from the 2013 Pew study] than 12 to 15 percent. And this percentage has not increased significantly since 1990, although it is likely to do so in the future.”

It stands to reason that this year of painful racial tensions across North America could trigger an internal debate in African-American Jews, especially those who came to the faith not through birth or adoption, but who, like Black, embraced Judaism as adults.

And embrace it many of them do—with passion, perseverance and a deep appreciation—often overcoming raised eyebrows, insensitivity and even downright racism in the process. With a surprising number of them finding their spiritual home in Orthodox Judaism.

Nissim Black

Damian Jamohl Black, whom the world knows now as rapper Nissim Black, was born into a family of Seattle drug dealers in 1986. His childhood was pockmarked by FBI raids on his home, his dad was taken away in handcuffs, and he was accustomed to assorted incidents of street violence and crime. By 9, he was smoking marijuana, and plants were growing in his room. By 12, he’d joined the family business.

The only faith Black was exposed to back then was his grandfather’s Islam. His first religious service? A mosque, which he attended until his grandfather went to prison.

But at 13, Black was pulled into Christianity by missionaries. He now says it was the best thing that could have happened to him. “This was the first time I was around people who had normal healthy relationships. No one sold drugs, they had a heart for kids from the inner city, and their summer camp was the most fun I’d had in my life,” he recalls. “Becoming religious saved me from the world of street gangs.”

By high school, he was “the poster child of the missionary center.” That’s when he met the woman who would become his wife. As a Seventh-Day Adventist, Jamie (now Adina) went to church on Saturdays. They wed in 2008 but remarried in an Orthodox ceremony after their conversion five years later.

By 19, Black was making rap music professionally, and his mother died of an overdose. But by 20, Christianity was beginning to feel foreign to him, and he began wondering what the Jews walking in his neighborhood on Saturday mornings were up to. “I went to Rabbi Google and found Chabad.org. And it all began to make sense,” he says. “I told my wife [they were newlyweds] that I didn’t want to celebrate Christmas and Easter anymore. Pretty soon, she was doing her own digging into Judaism.”

The couple’s conversion followed in 2013 and aliyah to Israel three years later. The Blacks now make their home in Ramat Beit Shemesh with their six children, ages 1 to 12. “I wanted my kids to grow up here,” he says, “where they’d see Jews of different shades all praying the same prayers.”

“I’ve checked every box, right?” he says with a laugh. “One rabbi at my yeshivah told me, ‘You have a lot of strikes against you: You’re black, you’re a convert and you’re a Breslov Chassid. And in all these things is your greatness.”

Maayan Zik

Maayan Zik was 13 when her soul woke her up. Growing up in Washington, D.C., with her mom and sister—her parents divorced when she was in first grade, and she didn’t see her dad for another 10 years—she attended Catholic schools and was close with her maternal grandparents, Jamaican immigrants who took her to museums and taught her the value of hard work and education.

Accompanying her Jamaican-born grandmother to church every Sunday, by 13, Zik had “begun to wonder if what my family believes is right for me.” She explored a number of world religions, but when she saw a photo of her light-skinned Jamaican great-grandmother Lilla Abrams, whom family lore says was Jewish, “I realized I had to go way back to find out who I am.”

When she moved to an apartment in 2005 in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., she noticed the previous tenant had a left up a poster of a white-bearded man. “I said to myself, ‘I’m going to find out who you are.’ The man turned out to be the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Two years later, after courses and a summer seminary program, she converted. Thirteen years later, now 36, Zik remains there—with her Israeli-born husband and four children. “This somewhat awkward coexistence that lives inside me” fades into the background when she begins to pray, she says. “Having a personal conversation with God as part of the Jewish people, it’s who I’ve always been; I just didn’t know it.”

Mordechai Ben Avraham

Black and Mordechai Ben Avraham are both African-Americans from the West Coast (Seattle and Los Angeles, respectively), and both found Judaism in their 20s. But their early environment could hardly have been more different.

Growing up in an affluent neighborhood with a successful businessman father and a professor mother, “my focus was on how someday I could make more money than my dad.”

Ben Avraham’s spiritual journey took him from Sufism to the Kabbalah until at 22 he experienced Shabbat in a Carlebach-style minyan. “It was like I was floating in outer space. This is what Jews do? This is amazing! The Torah, the prayers, this beautiful spiritual system God gave to the Jews for people to transform themselves—they literally grabbed my heart.” His conversion was complete in 2013 with his move to Israel three years later.

Now 39, the former TV producer is living in the heart of Jerusalem’s religious Mea Shearim neighborhood, working towards his rabbinical degree and publishing a book on the joys of Torah as a black Jew.

But why would anyone who’s already making a huge leap religiously and culturally choose to embrace Orthodoxy with its full menu of mitzvot, accepting the Torah as Divine and committing to living within halachah (Jewish law)?

“If someone is going to make this big of a change completely based on their need to go beyond, there’s a very real tendency to go what many would consider ‘all the way,’ ” says Henry Abramson, dean of Brooklyn’s Touro College and author of The Kabbalah of Forgiveness: The Thirteen Levels of Mercy in Rabbi Moshe Cordovero’s Date Palm of Devorah (2014), among other titles.

A shared history

Much of this tendency to search spiritually can be traced to African-Americans’ religious experience in America, adds Abramson. “Since the 1960s, we’ve seen the phenomenon of questioning the Christianity foisted on their slave ancestors.”

And though Islam has attracted many of these disenfranchised souls—in part, he says, because the black Muslim culture permeated prisons beginning in the 1960s—Judaism offers another option.

Ben Avraham maintains that, in a spiritual sense, Judaism may feel familiar to those raised in the black church. “Like Judaism, gospel Christianity is an intense personal relationship with God without any intermediaries,” he says.

This is a connection Ben Avraham experiences every day of his life. “Living in Mea Shearim, in a fundamental way, I’m around people who are just like me. I just connect with my Chassidic neighbors.”

A growing fissure

But after the 1960s and ’70s, when Jews fought alongside blacks for civil rights in the United States and in South Africa, “there’s been a growing fissure between blacks and Jews,” says Rabbi Maury Kelman who, as director of Route 613, a New York City conversion program, has welcomed many students of different races into his classes.

And, with last summer’s rise in violence between the African-American community and the religious Jewish community, primarily in New York,” says Black, “lately, it’s gotten uglier.”

‘I cried all the way home’

Not everyone in the Jewish community rolls out the proverbial red carpet for someone of color.

After working up the courage to walk into synagogue on Shabbat, Zik couldn’t miss the two women glaring at her, eventually yelling at her to get out and threatening to call the police before giving chase.

“I cried all the way home, but my friends would not let me give up,” she says. “I also knew from everything I’d read about the Rebbe, with his emphasis on love and kindness, that eventually this would be the right place for me.”

“Unfortunately, like in all communities, you’ll find the occasional ignorant Jew or racist,” allows Kelman, who offers programs on the importance of accepting the convert.

A time of racial tensions

With this year’s heated racial debates and demonstrations following the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, where does that put Jews of color, with feet in both the African-American and Jewish worlds?

Zik, for one, helped lead a rally in Crown Heights this summer where black neighbors shared their experiences with racism. “It was a reminder,” she says, “that the Torah teaches us to protect the rights of all God’s children.”

And the learning goes both ways, she adds. “When black friends ask me if now that I’m Jewish, do I have money? I tell them about the Jews I know who struggle to pay for rent, food and their kids’ yeshivah tuitions. I tell them that, when I’ve had my babies, neighbors bring us meals and help furnish the nursery. People here always want to do another mitzvah.”

Ben Avraham also says he better appreciates African-American history because he is a Jew. “We can see our own story reflected in the Torah,” he says. “Our two peoples had so many struggles just to survive.”

Adds Black: “Just knowing there are black religious Jews can help the two communities see they aren’t completely separate after all—not to judge each other so quickly.”

Kelman agrees. “Black Jews can be a terrific bridge chiefly because they have credibility on both sides. It’s increasingly important to teach our fellow Jews that we’re a family that comes in different colors, that Judaism is colorblind,” he says. “Once they convert, they’re just as Jewish as any of us—and our diversity only strengthens us.”

‘Something bigger than myself’

By the end of “Mothaland Bounce,” the guys from the ’hood and the Chassids are dancing together with Black as ringmaster.

But it may be “A Million Years” that’s Black’s love letter to Judaism.

In this 2016 music video (with singer Yisroel Laub), Black takes a journey proudly carrying a Torah throughout Israel—archeological digs, mountain caves, a busy shuk (marketplace) and Jerusalem’s Old City—turning heads as he goes. (Don’t miss the moment when Black stops to let some haredi kids lovingly kiss the Torah), finally nestling it inside a synagogue’s ark.

“Since I was a kid, I was looking to be part of something bigger than myself,” says Black. “I prayed and prayed, and finally, I knew who I needed to be, a Jew, and where I needed to be, the Holy Land. It took time but now God’s answered my prayers. And one thing I know is that to God there is no such thing as color. He sees us for who we are inside.”

As he raps:

“I came from a distance Where everything was different … I called out to You And You showed me that You listened … I gave my all to You And You showed me who I am.”

#Israel #Jews of Color

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i-am-a-closet-fanfic-fiend · 5 years ago

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Sexiled (Part 23/23) ~ Steve Rogers x Reader ~ College!AU

A/N: Hello my lovelies! Happy Friday! I hope you all had a good week and are staying safe and healthy. This is it. The last part of this story. It’s been a joy writing and sharing with you. I hope you enjoy this final part. A big shout out to @captainscanadian for listening to all of my rambles as I tried to finish this fic. Love you!

Summary: You and Steve finally go on your first date!

Characters/Pairings: Steve Rogers x Reader, Brief - Bucky, Wanda, Sam, Tony

Rating: T

Warnings: Language, some mild suggestiveness maybe,

Word Count: 2492

Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist

After keeping you thoroughly focused on him and making up for the lack of quality time over the past few weeks, Steve finally dragged himself out of your bed around six, which left you with just an hour to get ready for your date.

Relief over being done with the semester and the excitement of going public with Steve had you giddy. You turned on your favorite feel good playlist and danced around as you got dressed and did your hair and makeup.

You grinned at your reflection as you made sure your lipstick was perfect. Doing a quick turn in the long mirror, you adjusted the bright blue lace sleeves of your dress so they were even just below your elbows. And you made sure that your skirt was fluffed properly, falling just above your knees. You’d even opted for your favorite black heeled booties that had bows on the back. While they weren’t your trusty converse, they were the most comfortable fancy shoes you owned, and you were more than willing to put up with any minor discomfort to complete the look.

At seven o’clock on the dot, Steve knocked on your door, and you raced to open it.

Steve’s eyes went wide as he took you in.

“Wow,” he breathed. “You are stunning, sweetness.”

“Not so bad yourself.”

In truth Steve looked amazing. Black suit and a dark blue button up. He’d forgone a tie and you momentarily lamented the fact you couldn’t yank him down by it, but his lapels would have to do.

“Whatcha hiding there?” you asked peering around him when you noticed that he had his hands behind his back.

“Oh,” he produced a bouquet of red roses from behind his back. “These are for you.”

“They’re beautiful. Thank you,” you pecked him on the cheek

He went to kiss you properly, but you’d already ducked out of his arms to find something to put the flowers in.

“Tall and narrow,” you muttered to yourself, eyeing the container you kept your sharpies in.

“What? No kiss?” he pouted.

“Steven Grant Rogers, expecting a kiss before you even take me out to dinner. I am appalled. What would your mother say?

You dumped out the markers and filled it halfway from your water bottle and dropped the flowers in before turning to him with a faux shocked look.

Steve quirked an eyebrow, but you held his challenge. You were about to give up the game when he spoke.

“You’re right, sweetness. Ma would kill me. It’s probably for the best anyway. Wouldn’t want to mess up that pretty lipstick before we get to dinner.”

You shivered slightly at the implication, making him smirk and you couldn’t hold his gaze.

The charged moment quickly passed, and he cupped your chin to lift it. You saw that his smirk softened into a genuine smile.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered brushing his fingers along your cheek.

““You’re not so bad yourself, handsome.”

“Are you ready to go? I haven’t stopped thinking about this since you said yes.”

“Me neither. I’ve been looking forward to it all week.”

Steve helped you on with your coat, and once you had double checked your purse, offered you his arm. If you hadn’t been wearing heels you probably would have skipped along next to him.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”

You both froze when Tony’s voice drifted lazily out of the common room.

“Should we make a run for it?” Steve whispered.

You glanced down at your heels in answer.

“I’ll carry you,” he laughed.

“You know we can hear you right?”

Tony and Bucky were now grinning at you from the doorway and you decided it was best to humor him. You reluctantly backtracked a few steps. Bucky opened his arms for a hug, which you happily gave him.

“Hey, doll. Sorry about sexiling ya last night.”

“It’s okay, Buck. I’ll just bill you for the chiropractor.”

He rolled his eyes and went to ruffle your hair but your glare warned him off.

Wanda snickered before cooing at you from her seat on Sam’s lap.

“Aww you both look nice.”

“Thanks, Wan.”

“Where are you two off to?” Sam asked as Bucky plopped down on one of the chairs, swinging his legs over the side.

“Just going out to celebrate the end of the semester,” Steve shrugged.

“And you didn’t invite us,” Tony shook his head.

“Well, we’d love to stay and chat…”

“But we’ve got a reservation. So we’ll see you later,” You finished for Steve.

“Wait are you coming to brunch tomorrow?” Sam yelled.

“Yes!” you agreed poking your head back in the room.

Steve led you towards the elevator laughing silently at the not quiet comments your friends were making.

“Is it just me or did they actually get their heads out of their asses?” Sam asked.

“Nah, Nat said they’re still being dumb,” Tony argued.

“Tonight sounds pretty romantic,” Wanda countered.

“It does,” Bucky agreed.

“Are you two still standing by your bets? There’s still time to change them,” Tony comment.

“Absolutely,” Wanda said with confidence.

“I’m good as I am,” Bucky announced.

“It’s your cash.”

“We get a cut when Bucky wins right?” you giggled as the elevator shut.

“Oh definitely,” Steve nodded.

The T was crowded with everyone out celebrating the holidays, so Steve held onto the pole while you held onto him. He would kiss you on the forehead randomly and you’d kiss him on the cheek. And he held you tighter when you wobbled in your heels.

It was only a five minute walk from the T to the restaurant in the North End Steve had picked out, and you happily walked hand in hand, ignoring the cold. But you were early for your reservation and had to wait outside. Steve quickly pulled you close, letting you steal his body heat.

“Sorry, sweetness.”

“Don’t be. I really don’t mind snuggling with my boyfriend for warmth.”

He grinned down at you, somehow tugging you even closer.

It was only a few minutes until the hostess called Steve’s name and led you to a table in the corner. You could feel the heat from the wood stove, and it helped take the chill off.

“This place is so cute,” you gushed once the waitress had taken your drink orders.

“I thought you’d like it.”

“How’d you find it?”

“Well I had made a list. But Bucky recommended this one when he found me staring at an excel sheet,” he admitted with a chuckle.

“You made an excel sheet of restaurants in the North End?”

Steve went pink to the tips of his ears.

“Well… I technically made one for all of the restaurants in Boston that I thought you’d like.”

“Was it color coded?” you grinned.

He pointedly read his menu.

“Oh my god it is, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he sighed, looking at you. “Among other organizational systems.”

“If I wasn’t already in love with you, I would be now.”

He chuckled and shook his head, but his smile was bright, blue eyes sparkling.

“That’s because you’re a nerd.”

“And proud of it,” you assured him, raising your nose into the air. “I have it on good authority that nerds are cool now.”

“Well whoever told you that definitely has a crush on you.”

You tilted your head curiously.

“You think Tony has a crush on me?”

This time Steve laughed outright.

“You are ridiculous. And I love you.”

“I love you too.” You squeezed his hand, holding on to it as you perused the menu. “I do hope you kept the excel though. It’ll make picking date night spots for the next three years a lot easier.”

“Three years,” he repeated softly, goofy grin crossing his face.

“For starters,” you added.

His grin only got wider.

Dinner was delicious - filled with stolen bites and giggles. After a quick stop into Mike’s Pastry to get treats for brunch the next morning, you walked to Faneuil Hall arm threaded through Steve’s and your hand resting on his bicep. You popped into a few stores, finishing up some Christmas shopping.

“So are you still full from dinner or are you ready for something sweet?” Steve asked as you were leaving the candle store.

“I’m always ready for something sweet. What did you have in mind?”

“Ghirardelli is open. We could get some hot chocolate before we keep walking around?”

“Perfect.”

Warm from the hot chocolate, Steve led you towards the far end of the marketplace, checking his watch.

“Are we heading home now?” You couldn’t hide your disappointment.

“Not yet. Come on let’s sit for a few minutes.”

You eyed the cold wood warily, but Steve sat on the bench, patting his leg for you to sit in his lap.

“Are you ready?” he whispered once you were settled.

“For what?”

He tilted his head towards the rest of the marketplace.

“Watch.”

Moments later the lights that lined the tress began flashing in time with the music now playing over the speakers. You watched in wonder at the beautiful display, Steve’s arms wrapped around your waist. It was magical.

“Tonight was perfect,” you murmured as you walked back to your room.

“I’m glad, sweetness.”

Steve stopped you outside your door. You tilted your head, confused.

When he kissed you on the cheek, whispering, “I had a really good time tonight. I hope we can do it again soon.” You realized what he was getting at, and stifled a laugh.

“Me too. In fact, I don’t know that I’m ready for the night to end,” you flirted. “Why don’t you come in for a little while?”

“I don’t think it would be proper, Y/n. It’s only our first date.”

You pouted and shrugged, “That’s too bad. Have a good night, Steve. Thanks for a great date.”

You pecked him on the cheek before sauntering into your room, closing the door behind you.

You giggled and waited ten seconds before opening the door to a grinning Steve who was leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets.

“Date officially over?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Good. Get in here.”

He crossed the little hallway with a step and half and you in his arms in an instant.

“That was fun,” he chuckled as he twirled you into the room, kicking the door shut.

“Yes, it was.” You kissed him once. Twice. Three times, as you gazed up at him. “Thank you for making tonight so special.”

“You’re welcome, sweetness. You deserve to feel special. I’m so glad we get to do these things now.”

“Me too. Speaking of which, I think it’s time for that post.”

“Do you know which pictures you want to use?”

“Mhmm,” you used his shoulder to balance as you slid off your heels, groaning in relief.

You sat on the bed and after shrugging out of his suit jacket and rolling up his sleeves (which wasn’t distracting at all) Steve pulled your feet into his lap and started massaging while you made the post.

First you added a selfie the two of you took that afternoon while you’d stuffed your faces. Frankly, you looked like gremlins in it but you loved it. The second photo was Steve kissing your temple as you smiled serenely in front of the Christmas tree. And the third was you and Steve kissing in Times Square, taken by Becca during Thanksgiving.

You quickly added the caption.

Three versions of celebrations.

1. The end of finals

2. Our First Date/2 Months (Yes both can be true)

3. 1 month of dating (PC: @BeccaBarnes) (Did I mention I loved NYC?)

Which is your favorite? @SteveRogers Happy two months, handsome! I love you.

When you were happy with the pictures and the caption you showed it to Steve who grinned and kissed you.

“Perfect.”

You hit post and squeaked in excitement. “It’s done.”

“How long do you think it will take for them to see it?”

“Four minutes?” you guessed, though that was probably an overestimation.

“Probably. Well, I have something for you in the meantime.”

You couldn’t help but perk up.

“Really? I actually have something for you too.”

You reached into your top desk drawer and produced the neatly wrapped package while Steve retrieved his jacket and pulled something out of the breast pocket.

“Happy two months, sweetness.”

“Happy two months, Steve. You go first,” you encouraged bouncing on your knees.

Steve happily tore off the paper, before looking to you wide-eyed. You hoped that was a good sign.

“This is too much. You shouldn’t have.”

He ran his fingers over the gold lettering of his name embossed on the dark blue moleskin journal.

“I wanted you to have something a little bit special, and I know you mostly have bigger sketchpads, so I thought it would be nice for you to have something to carry around.”

“It’s perfect. And it’s a lot special. Thank you,” He kissed you tenderly. “Now open yours.”

“Okay.”

You carefully undid the paper and lifted the lid of the lavender box. Inside lay a silver ID bracelet that was engraved on both sides.

“I love you,” you read aloud as you examined it before you turned it over.

“More than yesterday and less than tomorrow,” Steve recited with you.

You couldn’t hold back the tears.

“Oh, Steve.” You shot forward, throwing your arms around him. “It’s so beautiful. And perfect.”

“Just a little something for the days when I’m not beside you to remind you.”

“I’m never going to take it off. I love you so much,” you sniffled.

“I love you too, sweetness.”

Leaning back on your heels, you held out the bracelet to him so he could clasp it. He pressed a kiss to your pulse point before began to trace his way up your arm.

However, violent vibrations drew your attention from each other.

“I think they saw the post,” he chuckled.

“I think so. Should we face the music?” you asked as you retrieved your phone.

He plucked the device out of your hand and silenced it. After doing the same with his own, he placed them both on the desk.

“They can wait. I have much more important things to attend to.”

Steve reached out to cradle your cheeks, keeping you still as he leaned up to kiss you. He hesitated for just a hair’s breadth away from your lips. For a moment you thought he was going to ask if he could kiss you, like he did that night in October. But before you could say anything his lips met yours, and you melted into the kiss. The wash of contentment that rushed over you was similar but somehow even deeper than the first kiss you’d shared. You were certain it was because you loved each other more than you did then. And the thought of how much love you would feel in your future kisses had you smiling against Steve’s lips.

A/N: So that’s it for this story! I have loved writing for them and I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this story. Thank you so much for all of your support and patience. It means the world to me. On to the next project!

Tag Lists are Open (Please Send an Ask)

Sexiled Tag List

@yourspecialcrush @part-time-patronus @impala-with-wings @the-stories-in-my-head-95 @zlixlle @peter-parker-steve-bucky @encounterthepast

@holygaygal @hista-girl @steves-on-a-plane @juliagolia87 @pastelsweaters-and-bubble-t @musicfreak180 @captainscanadian @mikariell95 @viarogers

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@isaxhorror @peachykeen3502 @patzammit @wordlesscaptain @coffeebooksandfandom @hereisanapplepie @mywinterwolf @straightforwardly

Marvel Tag List

@hdthdthdt @sophiatomlinson23 @misty-panther @supermusicallee @scarlettsoldier @acupofhotlatte @slender--spirit @petitesmate @libbymouse

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#Sexiled #Steve Rogers x Reader #College!AU #college!steve rogers #Final Part

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baekhypnotized · 5 years ago

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☆— [one]

summary: Baekhyun is just a man who doesn’t believe in romance as much as Byul, who is trying to give herself to him. But day by day, he will soon realize that her fleeting actions are breaking down his cold-hearted brick wall, no matter if it takes her a million years.

warning(s): -

word count: 2.7k+

author’s note: first chapter is finally up!! feedback is much appreciated so please leave your thoughts regarding this fic!! to anyone who would like to be tagged in the next chapter, please let me know too :)

tag list: @baestelcolor

[next]>>

Today marks three months since I moved to an affordable studio apartment in Seoul. With an agreement, my mom agrees to let me further my studies in Seoul on one condition, she can only give a limited amount of monthly allowance for me. It doesn’t really matter to me because I have been planning to find a part-time job in a cafe or a flower shop to pay for rent and my college fees. Trying to find a job in a city where only experienced people will be prioritized is quite a struggle considering my lack of experience but I am grateful to be able to land a job in a small cafe near my university. I will be working in shifts to fit my class schedule and the weekends.

Since it's the weekend and some of the workers are taking their leaves, I take this opportunity to take over their shifts for extra wages. This is the only effort that I can do for my own living. Next week will be super hectic with orientation week as a post-graduate student. I’m feeling a little nervous about it that I can feel the shiver down my spine. I wake up early in the morning, prepare a simple toast for breakfast and get into my work outfit. Styling my hair with a messy bun, I apply lip tint on my lips to make me look alive for today.

The walk to the nearest train station is about 10 minutes from my apartment and since it’s still early, the amount of people on the train is less than I imagine. Maybe, most of them are still tucked in bed and enjoying their weekend with beloved ones. But here I am, working on a Sunday when tomorrow is my first day as a Master student. The view of the Sunrise, lighting up the panorama of Seoul with her gleaming rays, reflecting beautifully on the blue water of the Han River is endearing to me. The beauty of Seoul will always catch people’s attention, including me and that’s the reason why I decided to continue my studies in my own hometown. It feels good to be back in Korea after living in New Orleans for years with a new family for so long.

When I arrived there, the cafe is already open as I guess, Senior Hana arrived earlier. I greet her politely and she instructs me what to for today. An hour left before the cafe’s starts to open, cleaning the place up would be a good idea somehow. Dahyun will be here any minute now because she’s responsible to display the cakes and appetizers at the display counter. I rearrange the tables and chairs accordingly, sweep the floor and finish it up by mopping the floor.

The first bell chimes make me turns around, noticing that Dahyun has finally arrived.

"Morning, Byul!” She greets with a loud yawn.

I pause for a moment from cleaning the cashier counter to look at Dahyun, with a smile stretched. “Morning, Dahyun.”

She leaves me alone to set up the desserts by the display counter as I go back to the staff room and grabbing my black apron as I wear it, completing it with my nametag pinned on the apron. There are approximately 15 minutes left before we open for today’s business and I just hope my first day at the cafe goes well considering we’ll be getting a lot more customers on a Sunday.

"I’m done arranging them! Finally!” Dahyun huffs a loud sigh before she plops down on a small chair. I give her a thumbs up, rewarding her for her hard work. Dahyun stands back on her feet, walking towards the staff room to prepare herself. “I think we can start for today, Byul.”

"Are you ready?” I confirm it back to her, waiting for her reply.

"Yes, I’m ready. I’ll be back and you can unlock the main door already.”

I comply with her commands, go straight to the main door and unlocks it, and then turning the ‘closed’ sign to ‘open’. Waiting for customers to enter the cafe behind the cash register counter, I hum to random songs while figuring out what outfit should I be wearing on the first day of university tomorrow. I’m feeling quite edgy and anxious but I pray that everything will be fine.

A tinkling sound comes from the wind chime that my boss hung at the door, alerting the staff of new customers. My first customer for today is a he. The heels of his expensive shoes makes a clear, nice sound against the wooden floorboards. He enters the café. His hair is combed perfectly and parted in the middle, looking so sleek in his black suit. As he comes closer towards me, I can clearly see a few cute little moles on his face.

This man in front of me greets me with a smile that manages to make my heart beats loudly, my cheeks redden into a rosy pink color. I let out a small cough to control myself as I plaster a polite smile to him.

"Good morning, sir! Do you have anything in mind?”

The guy scans through the menu board, taking his time to order.

"I’ll have one cup of latte and a waffle with honey on top.” He asks with a firm voice, unknowingly making me feel nervous.

I key in his order into the system one by one without leaving anything. “That will be $15.65, sir.”

He digs into his pocket and hands in a 50-dollar bill. “Keep the change.”

"But sir… It’s my responsibility to return your change back. It’s a business policy…” I stutter while explaining to him, hoping for him to understand my current situation since I don’t want to risk breaking a rule or worse, get fired from this only part-time job that I have.

The guy is busy staring at me in amusement when I’m trying to be a good and innocent staff that wouldn't have done any wrongs. He gives me a contemplating ‘hmm’ before he complies. “Listen here,” He reads my name tag, “-Hanbyul. Let’s just say I treat your next upcoming customers. How does that sound?” He smirks slyly before taking a seat by the window, playing with his smartphone to kill time while waiting for his orders. I baffle when he just left without giving me an answer. I sigh and keep the dollar bill into the cashier and start brewing his hot latte and baking the waffle.

Dahyun comes back to the front and she is surprised with the early customer that we got. “Woah, what the heck is he doing so early in the morning? It’s only 8 in the morning!”

She nudges me with her elbow but I refuse to answer her because I am busy with my work. But, she’s right though. How on Earth does a guy wake up so early in the morning looking so handsome like this guy?! And it is the weekend for God’s sake!

Once I finish up preparing his orders, I bring the tray to him instead of calling him because he’s the only customer in the café.

"Sir,” I greet him while serving the hot latte and the waffle on the table, “your orders are here. Hope you enjoy it!” I beam brightly and bow 90 degrees as respect. The guy was busy scrolling his phone as I leave him behind.

"Hanbyul.” My name was called by his husky voice, making me stop in my tracks, turning around to face him.

"May I help you with anything, sir?” I question him as he starts to take a sip on the latte. He starts to make weird faces and I assume there’s something wrong with the latte.

"Is there anything wrong with the latte, sir?” I ask worriedly.

He shakes his head before the frown on his lips stretched into a grin. I am taken aback but I sigh in relief, knowing that I didn’t do any mistake that might risk me my position.

"It surely tastes sweeter today,” he says with a hum, taking another sip. “Yeah, definitely sweeter than yesterday. Probably because it was prepared by a sweet girl.” His eyes sparkle with a glint of something unfamiliar as he gazes at me. The intensity of his gaze is making me feel so, so warm that I’m sure he notices my whole face reddening in front of him.

What an odd day.

On the first day of class, I wake up earlier so I don’t have to rush. It’s going to be a challenging day because I’m going to meet new people for me to get along with throughout these two years except for Soomin. Thank God we’re decided to continue our study and graduate together like we used to. Living in the same house with her and now enrolling in the same class. Again. But, I will never get bored with her or maybe I would, one day.

"Wake up, Soomin. We’re going to be late for our first class.” I shake her shoulders violently because she is a heavy sleeper and waking her up softly will be fruitless. However, Soomin with her eyes still shut tightly doesn’t budge even as I raise my voice an octave higher, simply humming before going back to sleep.

I rake my head for ways to wake her up. After a few long seconds of thinking, an idea came into my mind and I can only hope for it to work. I lift her thick duvet from her body and push her off from the bed, letting her body fall to the floor with a thud.

Ouch!” Soomin sits up with her hand rubbing her back as she tries to glare at me with her half-lidded eyes.

"Breakfast is ready so please, go and take your bath quickly,” I order her as I’m busy folding the duvet before placing it nicely on her bed. She fumes in anger, holding her tongue from cursing to me early in the morning. Stomping her feet on her way to the bathroom, she expresses her irritation towards me with a powerful slam at the door.

I only let out a giggle because her tantrums are not foreign to me, I’ve known her for years, a childish yet a good friend that I would rather stick to even if it takes years to unglue her from me. The only person who understands her annoyingness is her family, me and Sehun. The three of us are best friends since high school and I’m grateful that Sehun loves her a lot by making her the only girl he would have after his mother and older sister. I couldn’t imagine an unfamiliar guy coming into her life and claim her love without deeply knowing her.

And that’s not what love is about.

Heading back to the kitchen to prepare peach tea for us, I remember the encounter I had with the guy at the cafe yesterday. The way his deep voice calling my name made me feel butterflies in my stomach and I somehow wish for him to drop by the cafe again, just so I can admire his good looks again.

"What took you so long to stir the tea?” Soomin says as she passes by me. “And ew! Is that drool?! Byul, I don’t want drool infested tea so early in the morning.”

Soomin’s voice knocks me off to reality as she was standing by the fridge for a few minutes.

"Gosh, can you please don’t hurt my poor heart like that?” I say with a soft tone and she smirks, pulling a chair to sit by the island table. She takes one french toast and take a single bite, staring at me curiously. “What are you thinking of?”

"Nothing,” I say while grabbing clean cups from the cupboard. I place them on the table and pour the peach tea before handing one to Soomin. She thanked me before taking the cup from me, blowing on the surface a little to cool it down before taking a sip. Soomin scoffs. “You never hide secrets from me.”

"How did you know that I really told you everything?” I say, successfully turning her into a furious woman as she grabs the toast, ready to throw it to me. “Okay geez. I’m kidding.”

She brings the toast for a bite but continues to give me a death glare. I chuckle silently and sip my tea, glancing at the clock hanging by the wall. It’s already 8:25 in the morning but both of us are still busy having our breakfast.

"We’re going to be late!” I hurriedly gulp down the tea and put the empty cup in the sink. Rushing to pack my stuff and making sure that I don’t leave anything important at home, I prepare myself for the last time in front of the standing mirror. Light makeup added nicely with a shade of pink blusher and the nude colour of lip matte; I’m good to go.

"Come on, Kim Soomin!”

She groans loudly to take her car keys as we leave the apartment. Crossing my fingers and calming my nerves, I stare at the outside scenery by the car window. How the fluffy clouds hang beautifully by the blue azure sky, following the Sun shining brightly. Everything will be fine, Byul.

We arrive 10 minutes early before the class starts. As Soomin and I settle down in the big lecture hall, I observe the seats around me. It’s already occupied with people who are taking the same course; Master in Business Administration. All of them are unfamiliar faces to me.

"Good morning, Byul.” Sehun greets me. I smile at him back before he takes a seat beside Soomin, leaving a peck on her temple.

"Good morning, baby.” He greets her this time with adoration but Soomin only hum as a reply. Sehun looks at me curiously when I could only shake my head and shrug my shoulders to his wordless question. “Tell me who ruined your morning, Soomin.”

Soomin quickly points her index finger to me that makes me lift both of my hands in the air, defending myself. “I only pushed her off the bed. It wasn’t that bad.” I grin as I confess. She dilates her eyes and starts pinching on my arms, causing me to groan at the slightest pain. “Okay! Okay, enough! It stings!”

Sehun can only chortles while watching this normal catfight between us. I am only able to stop her off by pushing her away. I brush my already wrinkled blouse, thanks to her. I roll my eyes and divert my attention to the front. One by one people enter the hall up until an aged woman comes in with a rattan tote bag and I guess she’s our lecture for the financial management class.

"Hello and good morning everyone! My name is Lee Kyungmi but please call me Mdm. Lee,” she greets the whole class with a firm voice.

The whole class replies in unison with a loud ‘yes’ to her greeting. She then decides to begin our first class with ice-breaking session even though in my opinion, it is very lame for university students. But, I’m glad she didn’t jump directly into the syllabus in our first class.

We are separated into a few groups where I finally get to detach myself from my best friends and sit in a circle that is full of unfamiliar faces strangers. We begin to exchange our names within the group. Being around people whom I’ve never met is making me feel a little more confident. When it is my turn, I start to introduce myself, “The name given is Kim Hanbyul, but I prefer being called Byul.” I plaster a smile to them. After about 10 minutes, we head back to our seats and Mdm. Lee decides to start the class with the first topic.

I take out my notebook and pencil case from my bag, ready to jot down notes that will be displayed on the white screen from the projector. But before Mdm. Lee gets to continue her words, a single clear knock is heard from the door. She then calls the intruder to come in. I don’t pay attention to the intruder as I am focused on my notebook.

"Late for your first class, Mr. Byun?” She takes off her glasses to look at him as the person goes straight to an empty seat. I lift my head up to focus back on the screen, gasping softly when my eyes accidentally landed on him.

It’s him. The 50-dollar bill guy with the same dashing look from the cafe.

#exo #exo smut #baekhyun #baekhyun smut #recent #baekhyun imagine #exo imagine #baekhyun scenarios #exo scenarios #baekhyun angst #baekhyun fluff #exo fanfiction #baekhyun fanfiction #fanfiction #baekhyun x reader #byun baekhyun #kpop imagine

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crosshunter321 · 3 years ago

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After Effects Cc 2014 Mac Download

(UPDATE: Be sure to install the After Effects CC 2014.1.1 (13.1.1) bug-fix update.)

After Effects Cc 2014 Mac Download Crack

After Effects Cc 2014 Mac Download Free

After Effects CC 2014.1 (13.1) is available.

If you have a Creative Cloud membership, you always have access to the latest version of After Effects. You can install this update by choosing Help > Updates within any Adobe application or by opening the Creative Cloud desktop application. Go to the Creative Cloud site to download applications or to sign up for Creative Cloud.

Download Adobe After Effects CC for Mac Free. It is full Latest Version setup of Adobe After Effects CC Premium Pro DMG for Apple Macbook OS X. Brief Overview of Adobe After Effects CC for Mac OS X Adobe After Effects CC for Mac is an impressive and powerful application which will let you create professional looking photos and render 3D. Download the After Effects CC 2014 Plug-in SDK Macintosh or Windows The After Effects CC 2014 Plug-in Software Development Kit contains headers defining the After Effects Plug-in APIs, sample projects demonstrating integration features, and the SDK Guide documentation.

For more information about Creative Cloud, see this overview video and the Creative Cloud FAQ list.

For information about updates for all of our professional video and audio applications, see this page.

For details of what was new in After Effects CC 2014 (13.0), see this page.

Please, if you want to ask questions about these new and changed features, come on over to the After Effects user-to-user forum. That’s the best place for questions (and, if you follow that link, you’ll find more information about how to communicate with us). Questions left in comments on a blog post are much harder to work with; the blog comment system just isn’t set up for conversations. If you’d like to submit feature requests (or bug reports), you can do so here.

top new features for After Effects CC 2014.1 (13.1)

high-DPI content and UI (Mac OS, Windows)

refreshed user interface design

Copy With Relative Property Links command

color management for Dynamic Link

Adobe Anywhere for Video improvements

Maxon Cinema 4D Lite R16 and Cineware 2.0

Collect Files for Cinema 4D assets

native GoPro CineForm codecs

scripting improvements for text layers

improved Adobe Media Encoder watch folders

mocha AE CC 2014, based on mocha 4.0

many bug fixes

details of all new and changed features in After Effects CC 2014.1 (13.1)

Here is a virtually comprehensive list of changes, with detail beyond the summaries of the top items listed above. We’ll be posting a lot more detail over the coming weeks, and the outline below will be populated with links to in-depth articles and tutorials, so bookmark this page and check back.

high-resolution (high DPI) content viewers and user interface elements on Mac OS and Windows

After Effects CC 2014.1 (13.1) displays content and user interface items at the appropriate resolution on high-resolution displays (sometimes called “high-DPI” or “HiDPI”) on both Windows and Mac OS. This makes After Effects easier to use on high-pixel-density monitors, like Apple Retina displays and Microsoft Surface Pro devices.

In content viewers, After Effects will take advantage of the pixel density of the display to show each pixel of content in a viewer as a single pixel on the display. This affects the contents of the Footage panel, Layer panel, and Composition panel, including both your video content and some UI overlays and widgets within the content area.

Note that for a given piece of content to appear the same on a high-DPI display as on a non-high-DPI display, the zoom value for the former needs to be twice that of the latter, since the points are half the size. If you drag a panel from a high-DPI display to a non-high-DPI display, you’ll see the zoom value change, while the content occupies the same space on the screen.

User interface elements such as icons, text labels, pointers, buttons, etc. will now scale according the operating system display DPI setting. Mac OS computers with a Retina display will scale to 200%. Windows computers with a high-DPI display will scale to 150% or 200%.

refreshed user interface design

The user interface (UI) of After Effects, as well as Premiere Pro and other Adobe professional video and audio applications, has been updated with a new design. Pointers, icons, text, controllers, and button styles have all been refreshed.

The layout of the interface has not changed significantly, but some simplification has been made to panel functionality.

The icon for the panel menu has been moved from the upper-right corner of the panel to the panel tab, making the panel menu easier to discover.

The panel grabber and frame grabber icons have been removed; you can still drag panels using the panel tab.

The close button (x) has been removed from all panels except the Timeline, Composition, Layer, Footage, Effect Controls, and Flowchart panels. In these panels the close button has moved to the left side of the panel tab. To close a panel without the close button, open the panel menu or right-click on the panel tab and choose Close Panel, or use the keyboard shortcut, Command+W (Mac OS) or Ctrl+W (Windows).

The range of the Brightness slider in the Appearance preference category is more limited than in previous versions; there is no longer a “light” mode for the interface. The default brightness setting is darker than in previous versions.

Because some scripts that create ScriptUI panels have not been updated to accommodate the new user interface design, some of these scripts may appear wrong with the new UI skin. If this occurs with a script that you use, you can make an individual ScriptUI panel appear using the old UI skin by enabling the Use Legacy UI option in the panel menu for the ScriptUI panel.

Copy With Relative Property Links command

A new command in the Edit menu, Copy With Relative Property Links, works like the existing Copy With Property Links command, except that it creates expressions that do not reference the source composition by name. This maintains a relative link between the layer with the expression and the composition containing that layer. This can be useful when, for example, you want to move expression-rigged layers from one composition to another but let the layers reference a control layer only in the same composition. The expressions created using the Copy With Relative Property Links command are identical to those created using the expression pickwhip.

For copying a layer’s Position property, the result would be this: thisComp.layer('control_layer').transform.position

The existing Copy With Property Links command will specifically reference the layer’s source composition in the expression: comp('source_comp').layer('control_layer').transform.position

color management for Dynamic Link

When color management is enabled for an After Effects project, compositions viewed or rendered over Dynamic Link will be transformed using the HDTV (Rec. 709) color profile. This prevents color or gamma shifts in the appearance of these compositions in Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder.

Dynamic Link always assumes that all incoming frames are in the HDTV (Rec. 709) color space. Prior to After Effects CC 2014.1 (13.1), compositions in a color-managed project were sent to Dynamic Link in the project’s working color space; they were not adjusted for Dynamic Link’s assumption of HDTV (Rec. 709). This mismatch resulted in a noticeable color or gamma shift when the project’s working color space was significantly different from HDTV (Rec. 709) or when Linearize Working Space was enabled.

In After Effects CC 2014.1 (13.1), a color transformation is applied to the composition as a last step before the images are passed to Dynamic Link for use in Premiere Pro or Adobe Media Encoder. This corrects the composition image to the color space used by Dynamic Link, similar to how the View > Enable Display Color Management option in After Effects corrects the image for your monitor.

Maxon Cineware 2.0 plug-in and CINEMA 4D Lite R16

After Effects Cc 2014 Mac Download Crack

After Effects CC 2014.1 (13.1) includes a version 2.0 of the Cineware plug-in, which serves as the primary interface for integration with Cinema 4D.

After Effects CC 2014.1 (13.1) also includes version R16 of Cinema 4D Lite, which provides several new features, such as the new Reflectance channel. (For details about each edition of Cinema 4D, see the Maxon website.)

John Dickinson summarizes the changes in Cineware 2.0 in a video on the Motionworks website.

Automatic Cineware effect settings synchronization: When adding multiple instances of a CINEMA 4D scene layer in a composition, including adding Multi-Pass layers, you will see an on/off checkbox at the top of the Effect Controls panel labeled Synchronize Layer. It is on by default, meaning that the Cineware effect settings on all instances of the layer will automatically synchronize. If this checkbox is disabled for a specific CINEMA 4D scene layer, then that layer’s settings will not synchronize with the rest of the layers in that composition. The Apply To All button from previous versions of Cineware has been removed.

Default Layer: The CINEMA 4D layers dialog box now shows a Default Layer option if the renderer supports it. Objects that have not been assigned to an explicit layer in the .c4d project file will be visible with Default Layer enabled.

Content Browser: When using a full retail version of CINEMA 4D R16 as the renderer, textures applied via installed content libs (.lib4d files) will render in After Effects using Cineware.

region of interest: If you use the region of interest feature in After Effects to constrain the preview to a subset of the frame, the Cineware effect will respect this setting and limit rendering to the area within the region of interest. This only applies when the Renderer control is set to Standard (Final).

Purge Memory: This option only works when the CINEMA 4D render path in Options is set to the default render server Cineware R16, or a full retail version of CINEMA 4D R16 or later. For complex scenes, the render server may use memory for internal caches. To free up that memory click “Purge Memory” in order to extend the length of previews in After Effects.

Collect Files for Cinema 4D assets

The Collect Files command in After Effects now collects assets associated with .c4d footage items, such as textures.

automatic encoding of compositions in After Effects project files in Adobe Media Encoder watch folders

If you place an After Effects project (.aep) file in a watch folder that is being monitored by Adobe Media Encoder, the compositions at the top level in the project (i.e., those not in folders in the Project panel) will automatically be added to the Adobe Media Encoder encoding queue.

For more information about what’s new and changed in Adobe Media Encoder CC 2014.1 (8.1), see this page.

native encoding and decoding of movies using GoPro CineForm codecs

After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Adobe Media Encoder can natively decode and encode QuickTime (.mov) files using the GoPro Cineform codecs on Mac OS and Windows, meaning that you do not need to install additional codecs to use and create such files.

At the higher quality settings, this codec is an excellent choice for intermediate files—i.e., files that you create from one application in a post-production pipeline to pass to the next application in the pipeline. Movie files encoded with the GoPro Cineform codec at the higher quality settings include an alpha channel.

To use the GoPro CineForm codec for output, choose QuickTime as the format in the Output Module Settings dialog box, click the Format Options button, and choose GoPro CineForm as the video codec.

For details about quality and pixel format settings for the GoPro CineForm codec, see this page.

scripting improvements for text layers

You can now read additional information through scripting about the font and style used in a text layer, including the location of the font file on disk.

The new read-only attributes for the textDocument object are these:

fontLocation: returns string with path of font file, providing its location on disk (not guaranteed to be returned for all font types; return value may be empty string for some kinds of fonts)

fontStyle: returns string with style information — e.g., “bold”, “italic”

fontFamily: returns a string with the name of the font family

The value returned is for the first character in the text layer at the current time.

mocha AE CC 2014, based on mocha 4.0

mocha AE has been updated to mocha AE CC 2014 (version 4.0.1). This is a major version update that includes compatibility with mocha Pro 4 project files. For details, see this page

miscellaneous new and changed features

The Anchor Point icon on selected layers has been enhanced for better contrast and visibility, and it is now easier to select and use.

The application title bar now shows the full path to the project file.

The Welcome Screen dialog box will automatically close when you open a project by double-clicking it in Finder or Explorer.

While tracking an effect mask, the mask mode no longer temporarily changes to None. This preserves the appearance of the masked effect during tracking.

The motion tracker (point tracker) no longer offers a pre-processing Blur control. This option never worked as designed.

There is now a Render And Replace command in Premiere Pro for replacing a Dynamic Link After Effects composition with a rendered movie.

Use the new Browse Add-ons command in the File menu to go to the new Adobe Exchange, from which you can download and install animation presets, scripts, template projects, et cetera.

The new Adobe Color Themes panel replaces the panel previously named “Adobe Kuler”. Choose Window > Extensions > Adobe Color Themes to open this panel.

a few choice bug fixes

We fixed a lot of bugs in this update. Here are a few that I think are especially worth calling out:

memory leak when scrubbing to preview audio

slow rendering of After Effects compositions used in Premiere Pro through Dynamic Link when the main After Effects application is open

errors when using the Create Stereo 3D Rig

errors when using and creating custom (pseudo) effects

mismatch in interpretation of layer bounds for imported .psd files in projects from previous versions of After Effects

incorrect rendering of vector objects from Photoshop

pixelation and and other problems with RED (.r3d) files

incorrect VRAM amount reported for some AMD GPUs on Mac OS

crash when copying and pasting layer styles from one layer to another

problems with effect eyedropper control

incorrect date when using Current Date option in Numbers effect

many other causes of crashes and errors

Summary of what’s fixed in the After Effects CC 2014.1.1 (13.1.1) update

If you applied an effect without properties or opened a project containing an effect without properties, then After Effects would give a long series of error messages: “After Effects error: internal verification failure, sorry! (unexpected match name searched for in group) ( 29 :: 0 )”. This bug is now fixed. Examples of effects that triggered this problem inlcude Knoll UnMult and BAO Mask Avenger.

Tooltips now appear correctly in the Timeline, Project, and Effect Controls panels.

The middle mouse button again works as expected for such purposes as activating the Hand tool in viewer panels, using the Unified Camera tool, or repositioning shape layers or masks.

Panels no longer flash red when resizing or rearranging panels.

The Graph Editor works correctly on Windows high-DPI systems. In the previous version (After Effects 13.1.0), clicks within the Graph Editor were registered in the wrong place on Windows high-DPI systems.

RED (.r3d) files no longer cause a 15-second delay when the resolution of the image being requested from the importer is less than 1/8. This could occur when the thumbnail was generated on import, when Adaptive Resolution was engaged, et cetera.

BridgeTalk is now set up correctly, so that scripting calls from ExtendScript Toolkit, Bridge, and Premiere Pro correctly target After Effects.

The installer cleans up stale components better, including updated Cinema 4D components.

Top new features for After Effects CC 2014.1 (13.1)

high-DPI content and UI (Mac OS, Windows)

refreshed user interface design

Copy With Relative Property Links command

color management for Dynamic Link

Adobe Anywhere for Video improvements

Maxon Cinema 4D Lite R16 and Cineware 2.0

Collect Files for Cinema 4D assets

native GoPro CineForm codecs

scripting improvements for text layers

improved Adobe Media Encoder watch folders

mocha AE CC 2014, based on mocha 4.0

many bug fixes

After Effects Cc 2014 Mac Download Free

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phoenotopia · 5 years ago

Text

2020 May Update

I hope you're all staying safe and healthy during this time of Coronavirus!

We continue towards the finish line, slowly, but surely. Coronavirus did throw a few wrenches in our plans. Our talks with a publisher about a possible sponsored appearance at an upcoming event stalled.

But that was always just a possibility. We have a backup plan. If we didn't win a sponsor, we were just going to pay our own way to a convention. That's what most indies do! Anyway, that's canceled too. It doesn't seem like there'll be any conventions to showcase in the near future...

Nevertheless, we did move forward in other areas. We've got the press materials ready as well as the game's official launch site up. You can view it in its prelaunch state at this link. NOTE, It is in a "prelaunch" state, so some media links are being withheld until reveal time. But there are a bunch of new pictures and artwork you can look at.

You might notice the link reads "phoenotopia.wordpress.com". The plan is to direct "phoenotopia.com" to it in the near future. That means if you wanted to reach this tumblr specifically, you'll have to visit it at its tumblr link, "phoenotopia.tumblr.com" (which, I just noticed doesn't work... huh). Anyway, since this is a dev blog, I'll talk a little bit about the journey of creating the website.

SQUARESPACE vs WIX vs WORDPRESS

I actually tried 3 different services (in the above order), before I settled on wordpress. I did a bunch of researching, and most reviews seemed to point at WIX >= SQUARESPACE >>> WORDPRESS.

I went with Squarespace first, since it was recommended a bunch on some youtube videos I saw (guess marketing works). Even though it didn't win outright in the reviews, my impression of it was "less quantity, but more quality." I tried it and found it serviceable. It was kinda sluggish, with some not so intuitive areas. I had to ask for help a few times for some things that would seem simple ("how do I change the BG and font color and of the music player?", etc).

That was last year, when I *thought* I was near launch and would need a press site soon. One year later (present day), it was time to create a press site again, and since my website with Squarespace expired (I had only signed up for a trial period), it was a good opportunity to try Wix, especially since Pirate had lots of praise for Wix.

My impression of Wix was that it was... too distracting. After I chose a theme, in the editor view I felt bombarded by menus. Everywhere you move the mouse, things kept lighting and popping up. And it was slow. So I guess it was sorta like Squarespace, but maybe even a little worse?

(Easy ways to preview the website from phones and tablets was one of wordpress’s neat features)

What prompted me to try Wordpress was one of their slogans "35% of the web uses WordPress". If it's good enough for 35% of websites, it's good enough for me! I ended up liking it most of all. It's definitely less featured, which suited me, since I'm not trying to create something too fancy either. Unlike the other website builders which emphasize free-form, wordpress was more rigid. I couldn't drag and drop an element just anywhere - I found that comforting in a "I can't screw this up" sorta way. The most important thing was that it was fast. Loading the editor view to Wix took 11 seconds vs 4 seconds with Wordpress. And the speed advantage of wordpress extends across every action. Similarly, when Chrome launched 10+ years ago, it was also less featured vs Firefox, but it became my choice browser. I guess speed is something I value highly.

Anyway, my experience is from a drag/drop perspective with minimal coding. This is also NOT a paid advertisement. However, if wordpress would like to send some money my way, I would not be opposed... (call me!)

Achievements, Bugfixes, and Cleanup

Lots of small tasks and polish was done over the past 2 months. I finally fixed the time tracking bug - important because the Speed Run achievement depended on it. I also finally finished implementing all the technical stuff for the achievements. There was a bug where some enemies would stack up too many light sources, causing them to appear too bright and drain system resources. That's now also fixed. Lots of other small ones that don't bear mentioning.

A neat trivia about the game is that there's a final super hard achievement for those seeking to prove their mastery over the game. The player has to beat the game having never picked up a heart or energy upgrade. When playing under this constraint, some enemies can even kill the player in one hit! In the game's most current iteration, even I failed to achieve it, so I'm definitely going to have to go in and tweak things a little more.

Age Ratings

I went and got the game's age rating. I did a little research on this - it's quite fascinating. ESRB would be the age ratings board for the United States (where I'm based). But if you were in Europe, you'd get a PEGI rating. Then there's ACB for Australia and so forth. So if you wanted to launch a game globally, you'd have to deal with this process over and over, and each country rates things a little differently... that's a lot of work!

Enter IARC (International Age Rating Coalition), which aimed to simplify the process by being the one standard that you apply to, and from which you could then get the equivalent rating for all participating countries. IARC is an entirely automated process - probably necessary due to the boom of digital titles across all platforms, particularly mobile.

IARC is great for me, because they relaxed the standards for getting a rating. From my understanding, the process used to be more difficult. And you'd have to pay ESRB a hefty chunk to get a rating, but with IARC, it's totally free! So long as it's for digital and it's used only on licensed sites and store fronts. If I wanted to launch the game physically, I'd have to deal with ESRB on an individual basis again.

Without further ado, here's Phoenotopia's IARC ratings:

Fascinating... Phoenotopia is rated "Mature" in Australia... but for "Horror". Which seems suspect. The horror elements are rare (remember Dreadlands?). But when I was answering their questionnaire, they provided a video example of what they considered "horror", and it was pretty mild. About as mild as my game, so I checked that box. It is what it is...

We also got a "Teen" rating for ESRB for reasons of Fantasy Violence and "Mild Blood". This one is kinda iffy. In the game, if you hit a giant bug, it spits out a few drops of green blood. Does that really count as blood? Ocarina of time skirted by with an E rating 2 decades ago, and it let a dude spit out green blood. However, since IIARC is an automated process, I didn't see any place to dispute. But also, I wouldn't have disputed it anyway. A "T" rating is cooler than an "E" rating!

I'd like to mention this is not a paid advertisement for IARC. However, if IARC would like to send some money my way, I would not be opposed... (call me!)

Submission

I expect to polish the game for about 2 (maybe 3) more weeks. After which, I'll be submitting the game to the console "authority". From my understanding, I'll then have to wait a month while they "inspect" the title. After which, I'm then cleared to have an official launch date - which I'll probably set to be 1 month after getting approval.

So the plan is to have a very short marketing campaign. The reveal trailer will basically drop 1 month before release. And we're going to sprint to the finish line. Some marketing campaigns are 6 months to a couple years. Ours will be one month... Let's hope it works.

Wrench

That's what the plan looks like right now, but there is a possible upcoming wrench in this whole thing. I recently learned that my version of Unity is too old. Games running on old Unity versions are not automatically accepted - so I'll have to apply for an exemption. If the exemption gets rejected, we can't launch without upgrading, which will require *significant* work...

This came as a surprise to me. When I started dabbling in games development a decade ago, the most common advice I found online was "Make Games, not Game Engines." I interpreted this to mean lock in your technologies. There's always going to be a new and shinier bell or whistle, but if you keep chasing it, you're not going to work on the actual content of the game. That's probably what kept me to releasing the original game on Flash. That was a game I was making as a hobby while working a full-time job. By the time I quit my job to go full-time indie dev, Flash had long been a dead technology. But I remembered "do you want to build game engines or games?" And so I pressed forward.

So that mindset could potentially backfire here. If PC was the lead SKU, we wouldn't have these issues since PC is more relaxed as a platform. Consoles, as I'm now learning, have an ever forward shifting window of technologies. If we get rejected for the exemption, there's a couple ways we can play it. One, we go through the pain of upgrading which will take months... Two, we pivot and make PC the lead SKU again, but have to handle porting that plus its specific features, which will also take months...

So why is updating such a big issue? Unity has changed drastically over the years. When I started, it was a lot less 2D friendly. They didn't have an official 2D tilemap solution, so you had to build your own or buy a 3rd party library from their asset store. I used 2DTK for tilemaps - 2DTK is now entirely deprecated. Similarly, I had to search for and purchase a good asset to display crisp text - since you couldn't even do that in Unity back then (heh). That's the story for a lot of old Unity stuff. Think of it as a first mover's "disadvantage".

Hopefully it won't come to that, since I'm pretty spent as a developer. I've been ready for this to be over, and I know many of you feel the same. Hopefully soon! As usual, I'll update in 2 months at the latest (end of June). An update might come earlier if we have some good news to share sooner. Until then!

Fanart and Cosplay

This first picture comes from roccy_chair and shows Gail basked in light. I like how her pose and equipment together form an "X". That's a neat hidden symmetry. The way she floats also kinda reminds me of Crono's "Shining" spell. Perhaps Gail should have the ability to cast spells? Hmmm...

Cody G returns with a new art depicting the 2 Moonstone enthusiasts. I like Fran's starry-eyed expression here. That's true love on display. I also like how the Moonstones are depicted as flat and coin-shaped. Very unique! Also note Gail makes an appearance in the back :D

Thanks to M1shaaa for this cosplay of Gail! There's a lot to like here! The vibrant pink hair. The costume with 3 stitches across the vest. The pose with slingshot, accurate to Gail's depiction in the box art. Amazingly, this might also be the very *first* cosplay of Gail! Will and Pirate both alerted me about it excitedly since they were pretty stoked. We joked that we crossed the final milestone in terms of fandom.

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outerloop · 4 years ago

Text

Porting Falcon Age to the Oculus Quest

There have already been several blog posts and articles on how to port an existing VR game to the Quest. So we figured what better way to celebrate Falcon Age coming to the Oculus Quest than to write another one!

So what we did was reduced the draw calls, reduced the poly counts, and removed some visual effects to lower the CPU and GPU usage allowing us to keep a constant 72 hz. Just like everyone else!

Thank you for coming to our Tech talk. See you next year!

...

Okay, you probably want more than that.

Falcon Age

So let's talk a bit about the original PlayStation VR and PC versions of the game and a couple of the things we thought were important about that experience we wanted to keep beyond the basics of the game play.

Loading Screens Once you’re past the main menu and into the game, Falcon Age has no loading screens. We felt this was important to make the world feel like a real place the player could explore. But this comes at some cost in needing to be mindful of the number of objects active at one time. And in some ways even more importantly the number of objects that are enabled or disabled at one time. In Unity there can be a not insignificant cost to enabling an object. So much so that this was a consideration we had to be mindful of on the PlayStation 4 as loading a new area could cause a massive spike in frame time causing the frame rate to drop. Going to the Quest this would be only more of an issue.

Lighting & Environmental Changes While the game doesn’t have a dynamic time of day, different areas have different environmental setups. We dynamically fade between different types of lighting, skies, fog, and post processing to give areas a unique feel. There are also events and actions the player does in the game that can cause these to happen. This meant all of our lighting and shadows were real time, along with having custom systems for handling transitioning between skies and our custom gradient fog.

Our skies are all hand painted clouds and horizons cube maps on top of Procedural Sky from the asset store that handles the sky color and sun circle with some minor tweaks to allow fading between different cube maps. Having the sun in the sky box be dynamic allowed the direction to change without requiring totally new sky boxes to be painted.

Our gradient fog works by having a color gradient ramp stored in a 1 by 64 pixel texture that is sampled using spherical distance exp2 fog opacity as the UVs. We can fade between different fog types just by blending between different textures and sampling the blended result. This is functionally similar to the fog technique popularized by Campo Santo’s Firewatch, though it is not applied as a post process as it was for that game. Instead all shaders used in the game were hand modified to use this custom fog instead of Unity’s built in fog.

Post processing was mostly handled by Unity’s own Post Processing Stack V2, which includes the ability to fade between volumes which the custom systems extended. While we knew not all of this would be able to translate to the Quest, we needed to retain as much of this as possible.

The Bird At its core, Falcon Age is about your interactions with your bird. Petting, feeding, playing, hunting, exploring, and cooperating with her. One of the subtle but important aspects of how she “felt” to the player was her feathers, and the ability for the player to pet her and have her and her feathers react. She also has special animations for perching on the player’s hand or even individual fingers, and head stabilization. If at all possible we wanted to retain as much of this aspect of the game, even if it came at the cost of other parts.

You can read more about the work we did on the bird interactions and AI in a previous dev blog posts here: https://outerloop.tumblr.com/post/177984549261/anatomy-of-a-falcon

Taking on the Quest

Now, there had to be some compromises, but how bad was it really? The first thing we did was we took the PC version of the game (which natively supports the Oculus Rift) and got that running on the Quest. We left things mostly unchanged, just with the graphics settings set to very low, similar to the base PlayStation 4 PSVR version of the game.

It ran at less than 5 fps. Then it crashed.

Ooph.

But there’s some obvious things we could do to fix a lot of that. Post processing had to go, just about any post processing is just too expensive on the Quest, so it was disabled entirely. We forced all the textures in the game to be at 1/8th resolution, that mostly stopped the game from crashing as we were running out of memory. Next up were real time shadows, they got disabled entirely. Then we turned off grass, and pulled in some of the LOD distances. These weren’t necessarily changes we would keep, just ones to see what it would take to get the performance better. And after that we were doing much better.

A real, solid … 50 fps.

Yeah, nope.

That is still a big divide between where we were and the 72 fps we needed to be at. It became clear that the game would not run on the Quest without more significant changes and removal of assets. Not to mention the game did not look especially nice at this point. So we made the choice of instead of trying to take the game as it was on the PlayStation VR and PC and try to make it look like a version of that with the quality sliders set to potato, we would need to go for a slightly different look. Something that would feel a little more deliberate while retaining the overall feel.

Something like this.

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize (and when that fails delete)

Vertex & Batch Count

One of the first and really obvious things we needed to do was to bring down the mesh complexity. On the PlayStation 4 we were pushing somewhere between 250,000 ~ 500,000 vertices each frame. The long time rule of thumb for mobile VR has been to be somewhere closer to 100,000 vertices, maybe 200,000 max for the Quest.

This was in some ways actually easier than it sounds for us. We turned off shadows. That cut the vertex count down significantly in many areas, as many of the total scene’s vertex count comes from rendering the shadow maps. But the worse case areas were still a problem.

We also needed to reduce the total number of objects and number of materials being used at one time to help with batching. If you’ve read any other “porting to Quest” posts by other developers this is all going to be familiar.

This means combining textures from multiple object into atlases and modifying the UVs of the meshes to match the new position in the atlas. In our case it meant completely re-texturing all of the rocks with a generic atlas rather than having every rock use a custom texture set.

Now you might think we would want also reduce the mesh complexity by a ton. And that’s true to an extent. Counter intuitively some of the environment meshes on the Quest are more complex than the original version. Why? Because as I said we were looking to change the look. To that end some meshes ended up being optimized to far low vertex counts, and others ended up needing a little more mesh detail to make up for the loss in shading detail and unique texturing. But we went from almost every mesh in the game having a unique texture to the majority of environment objects sharing a small handful of atlases. This improved batching significantly, which was a much bigger win than reducing the vertex count for most areas of the game.

That’s not to say vertex count wasn’t an issue still. A few select areas were completely pulled out and rebuilt as new custom merged meshes in cases where other optimizations weren’t enough. Most of the game’s areas are built using kit bashing, reusing sets of common parts to build out areas. Parts like those rocks above, or many bits of technical & mechanical detritus used to build out the refineries in the game. Making bespoke meshes let us remove more hidden geometry, further reduce object counts, and lower vertex counts in those problem areas.

We also saw a significant portion of the vertex count coming from the terrain. We are using Unity’s built in terrain system. And thankfully we didn’t have to start from total scratch here as simply increasing the terrain component's Pixel Error automatically reduces the complexity of the rendered terrain. That dropped the vertex count even more getting us closer to the target budget without significantly changing the appearance of the geometry.

After that many smaller details were removed entirely. I mentioned before we turned off grass entirely. We also removed several smaller meshes from the environment in various places where we didn’t think their absence would be noticed. As well as removed or more aggressively disabled out of view NPCs in some problem areas.

Shader Complexity

Another big cost was most of the game was using either a lightly modified version of Unity’s Standard shader, or the excellent Toony Colors Pro 2 PBR shader. The terrain also used the excellent and highly optimized MicroSplat. But these were just too expensive to use as they were. So I wrote custom simplified shaders for nearly everything.

The environment objects use a simplified diffuse shading only shader. It had support for an albedo, normal, and (rarely used) occlusion texture. Compared to how we were using the built in Standard shader this cut down the number of textures a single material could use by more than half in some cases. This still had support for the customized gradient fog we used throughout the game, as well as a few other unique options. Support for height fog was built into the shader to cover a few spots in the game where we’d previously used post processing style methods to achieve. I also added support for layering with the terrain’s texture to hide a few places where there were transitions from terrain to mesh.

Toony Colors Pro 2 is a great tool, and is deservedly popular. But the PBR shader we were using for characters is more expensive than even the Standard shader! This is because the way it’s implemented is it’s mostly the original Standard Shader with some code on top to modify the output. Toony Colors Pro 2 has a large number of options for modifying and optimizing what settings to use. But in the end I wrote a new shader from scratch that mimicked some of the aspects we liked about it. Like the environment shader it was limited to diffuse shading, but added a Fresnel shine.

The PSVR and PC terrain used MicroSplat with 12 different terrain layers. MicroSplat makes these very fast and much cheaper to render than the built in terrain rendering. But after some testing we found we couldn’t support more than 4 terrain layers at a time without really significant drops in performance. So we had to go through and completely repaint the entire terrain, limiting ourselves to only 4 texture layers.

Also, like the other shaders mentioned above, the terrain was limited to diffuse only shading. MicroSplat’s built in shader options made this easy, and apart from the same custom fog support added for the original version, it didn’t require any modifications.

Post Processing, Lighting, and Fog

The PSVR and PC versions of Falcon Age makes use of color grading, ambient occlusion, bloom, and depth of field. The Quest is extremely fill rate limited, meaning full screen passes of anything are extremely expensive, regardless of how simple the shader is. So instead of trying to get this working we opted to disable all post processing. However this resulted in the game being significantly less saturated. And in extreme cases completely different. To make up for this the color of the lighting and the gradient fog was tweaked to make up for this. This is probably the single biggest factor in the overall appearance of the original versions of the game and the Quest version not looking quite the same.

Also as mentioned before we disabled real time shadows. We discussed doing what many other games have done which is move to baked lighting, or at least pre-baked shadows. We decided against this for a number of reasons. Not the least of which was our game is mostly outdoors so shadows weren’t as important as it might have been for many other games. We’ve also found that simple real time lighting can often be faster than baked lighting, and that certainly proved to be true for this game.

However the lack of shadows and screen space ambient occlusion meant that there was a bit of a disconnect between characters in the world and the ground. So we added simple old school blob shadows. These are simple sprites that float just above the terrain or collision geometry, using a raycast from a character’s center of mass, and sometimes from individual feet. There’s a small selection of basic blob shapes and a few unique shapes for certain feet shapes to add a little extra bit of ground connection. These are faded out quickly in the distance to reduce the number of raycasts needed.

Falcon

Apart from the aforementioned changes to the shading, which was also applied to the falcon’s custom shaders, we did almost nothing to the bird. All the original animations, reaction systems, and feather interactions remained. The only thing we did to the bird was simplify a few of the bird equipment and toy models. The bird models themselves remained intact.

I did say we thought this was important at the start. And we early on basically put a line in the sand and said we were going to keep everything enabled on the bird unless absolutely forced to disable it.

There was one single sacrifice to the optimization gods we couldn’t avoid though. That’s the trails on the bird’s wings. We were making use of Ara Trails, which produce very high quality and configurable trails with a lot more control than Unity’s built in systems. These weren’t really a problem for rendering on the GPU, but CPU usage was enough that it made sense to pull them.

Selection Highlights

This is perhaps an odd thing to call out, but the original game used a multi pass post process based effect to draw the highlight outlines on objects for both interaction feedback and damage indication. These proved to be far too expensive to use on the Quest. So I had to come up with a different approach. Something like your basic inverted shell outline, like so many toon stylized games use, would seem like the perfect approach. However we never built the meshes to work with that kind of technique, and even though we were rebuilding large numbers of the meshes in the game anyway, some objects we wanted to highlight proved difficult for this style of outline.

With some more work it would have been possible to make this an option. But instead I found an easier to implement approach that, on the face, should have been super slow. But it turns out the Quest is very efficient at handling stencil masking. This is a technique that lets you mark certain pixels of the screen so that subsequent meshes being rendered can ask to not be rendered in. So I render the highlighted object 6 times! With 4 of those times slightly offset in screen space in the 4 diagonal directions. The result is a fairly decent looking outline that works on arbitrary objects, and was cheap enough to be left enabled on everything that it had been on before, including objects that might cover the entire screen when being highlighted.

Particles and General VFX

For the PSVR version of the game, we already had two levels of VFX in the game to support the base Playstation 4 and Playstation 4 Pro with different kinds of particle systems. The Quest version started out with these lower end particle systems to begin with, but it wasn’t enough. Across the board the number and size of particles had to be reduced. With some effects removed or replaced entirely. This was both for CPU performance as the sheer number of particles was a problem and GPU performance as the screen area the particles covered became a problem for the Quest’s reduced fill rate limitations.

For example the baton had an effect that included a few very simple circular glows on top of electrical arcs and trailing embers. The glows covered enough of the screen to cause a noticeable drop in framerate even just holding it by your side. Holding it up in front of your face proved too expensive to keep framerate in even the simplest of scenes.

Similar the number of embers had to be reduced to improve the CPU impact. The above comparison image only shows the removal of the glow and already has the reduced particle count applied.

Another more substantive change was the large smoke plumes. You may have already noticed the difference in some of the previous comparisons above. In the original game these used regular sprites. But even reducing the particle count in half the rendering cost was too much. So these were replaced with mesh cylinders using a shader that makes them ripple and fade out. Before changing how they were done the areas where the smoke plumes are were unable to keep the frame rate above 72 fps any time they were in view. Sometimes dipping as low as 48 hz. Afterwards they ceased to be a performance concern.

Those smoke plumes originally made use of a stylized smoke / explosion effect. That same style of effect is reused frequently in the game for any kind of smoke puff or explosion. So while they were removed for the smoke stacks, they still appeared frequently. Every time you take out a sentry or drone your entire screen was filled with these smoke effects, and the frame rate would dip below the target. With some experimentation we found that counter to a lot of information out there, using alpha tested (or more specifically alpha to coverage) particles proved to be far more efficient to render than the original alpha blended particles with a very similar overall appearance. So that plus some other optimizations to those shaders and the particle counts of those effects mean multiple full screen explosions did not cause a loss in frame rate.

The two effects are virtually identical in appearance, ignoring the difference in lighting and post processing. The main difference here is the Quest explosion smoke is using dithered alpha to coverage transparency. You can see if you look close enough, even with the gif color dithering.

Success!

So after all that we finally got to the goal of a 72hz frame rate! Coming soon to an Oculus Quest near you!

https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2327302830679091/

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rayless-reblogs · 4 years ago

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the effect of The Caligula Effect

I just beat The Caligula Effect, a game I heard about years ago, but always understood to be a semi-bad Persona clone full of angsty-looking high school kids with superpowers. But I was eventually convinced to play The Caligula Effect: Overdose, an expanded rerelease that allows the gamer not only the opportunity to play alongside the Go-Home Club – a group of students who are searching for a way to escape the virtual utopia that entraps them – but also the chance to simultaneously join the Ostinato Musicians, another group of students who are determined to preserve the utopia and their idealized lives within it at all costs.

I'm a big fan of Persona, and this isn't the first clone I've played. Last year I tried out Falcom's Tokyo Xanadu. As far as I'm concerned, neither game approaches the quality of the latter three Personas, but in terms of visuals, gameplay, and story, Xanadu has Caligula pretty well beat.

I like Xanadu. But between the two, Caligula is the one I like more and care much more about.

Justifications below the cut. Also some extremely vague spoilers.

The Bad: The Caligula Effect has major shortcomings in many, many areas. For me, the battle system is clunky and bland (though if I raised the difficulty, I might find it more interesting). The character models are awkward. The environments are repetitive and the levels are too long. And as far as battles go, you are literally just fighting other students – no interesting monster designs anywhere. Those are a few points, but there are definitely more flaws that could be gone into.

But if you've followed me for a while, you know that the games that end up grabbing my attention aren't necessarily the most deserving. So here's what I like:

The 2D art is lovely. The characters have changeable portraits based on their emotions, as per Persona, but the menu features two full-length portraits for each character, Go-Home and Musicians alike. The elegant, silvery art style is gorgeous, and it's a shame it wasn't used more prominently and creatively, rather than the awkward 3D models. The main visual motif is flowers, and to that end each Go-Home member has unique (and highly symbolic) flowers associated with them. When they access their superpowers, each of them is shown with a stake driven through their heart, surrounded by their flowers – a striking and unusual effect. The desaturated colors in the characters' designs make their flowers stand out all the brighter.

And definitely check out each character's status screen because their portraits hint towards their true personalities.

Speaking of which –

Caligula mimics Persona's Social Link system (it doesn't use the term Social Link, but that's what I'll use here), allowing you to grow closer to your teammates on both sides of the ideological conflict. Not all of the Social Links are written equally well – some are more interesting than others – but a number of them are intertwined (even across both teams in the Overdose release) and become very engrossing as you try to figure out how events fit together. And who these people you're working alongside really are.

Like Persona, several of your teammates are motivated by personal trauma. As great as Persona 3 is, it can start to feel ludicrous how many of its characters have dead parents. (In fairness, their traumas aren't just that they have dead parents – but most of them have at least one dead parent and it gets old.) In Caligula, the traumas feel varied and more unexpected, touching on subjects I haven't often seen in JRPGs. For example, I guessed Mifue's trauma fairly early on, but was surprised at how seriously it was eventually depicted. I thought I figured out Ayana's quite quickly, only to have my theory pulled out from under me. Izuru's Social Link ended up shocking me at one point, then made me more thoughtful as I listened to him analyze himself. I've heard Kotono's arc wasn't universally liked in Japan, but I was really happy to see her specific backstory handled, even if it made her more complicated than a typical pretty girl in a high school game. And when it came to Shogo's, I immediately started to downplay the seriousness of his past – only to be proven quite wrong.

And it's not just the heavy stuff. Going through characters' Social Links (and talking to them on the game's texting feature) often changed how I felt about them. When I first met Suzuna, I was instantly fed up with her timid personality and thought I was going to hate her. She ended up being one of my favorites, the change not so much due to big story events but because of small details about her personality. I disliked Ayana and Naruko early on, but softened as I got to know them. This is especially noticeable with the Musicians. If you only encounter them as the Go-Home Club, they'll be rather flat, easily dismissed antagonists. Getting to know them on their own turf reveals characters who are often as fleshed out and interesting as the main cast. And again I was surprised at who I ended up really liking, like Sweet-P and Shonen-Doll.

Another, more subtle, thing I enjoyed – in different Persona games, a number of your teammates are very cool people. Eriko's mysterious and interested in the occult, Mitsuru's this unattainable school celebrity, Akihiko's a star boxer, Ann's a professional model, Yusuke's an artistic prodigy, Rise's a literal teen idol. There are certainly talented people among your teammates in The Caligula Effect, but for the most part, you're all nerds and losers. And that goes for the villains as well. Most of the characters aren't that socially impressive, either because of their personalities or they have very powerful reasons for turning away from the mainstream. And while many of them grow and change, they're not really wish-fulfillment characters.

One last thing I want to touch on – this virtual utopia our characters are struggling in is rather deceptive. Everyone within it takes on the role of a high schooler, but this doesn't always reflect who they are in reality, adding another layer of interest for me. Without going into specifics (because one of the most fun things for me was trying to figure out who people really were), a (vague) number of these characters are adults, not teenagers. And many of them are motivated by very adult concerns, such as dissatisfaction with their professions and questioning their positions in their adult lives. One of the main tensions of the game is whether it's better to direct yourself as an adult in the often-disappointing real world or whether it's better to remain a child free from responsibility in the virtual world. Despite all the game's high school trappings and tropes, I found myself wondering who the intended audience really was.

Caligula's main story is pretty flat and basic, much less sophisticated than the plots of the Personas or Tokyo Xanadu. But because of the characters and the multitude of B-Plots you go through with them, the game still has a compelling, and even adult, quality.

It's not a great game. I can't stress that enough. The first handful of hours are terrible. I think one reason I'm so into it is that I entered the game with very low expectations. But its characters have a lot to offer, and for me that ended up being the heart of the game. So I liked it.

#the caligula effect #lucid #suzuna kagura #(being the pictured characters)#meta #rayless reviews #i'm not going to do game reviews as a regular thing #but i had a lot of thoughts after beating this game #and may post a few more thoughts in the future #persona #tokyo xanadu #mine

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hollywoodx4 · 5 years ago

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Thanksgiving-Modern AU

Hi I’m finally here! I’m Danielle, and I’m the coparent to this modern college AU-So this one of the moments @dilforpheus and I have talked about over and over again and it is one of my most favorites, so I had to write it. I’ve been sitting on this for a long time but I’m excited for this AU to find air other than us screaming at each other all hours of the day even though I love screaming about it. I am so happy that ten years later we’re still on our bullshit. It is SO special to me. - The only thing you need to know is that Orpheus and Eurydice go to college together-she studies in a coffee shop on campus and he notices her there. They both end up going there just to see each other but not saying anything, until Persephone invites her favorite student with nowhere to go for the holiday over to her family Thanksgiving. This is the result. -

The doorbell rings and Orpheus looks up from the mashed potatoes with curiosity, scanning the room. It seems as though they’re all here; Hades stirring one pot and monitoring another, Hermes sitting on the island stool transferring roasted carrots to a different plate. Orpheus has been mashing the potatoes for a while now, the back-and-forth motion making him feel useful in a kitchen commanded heavily by his culinarily anal uncle. He can hear the soft click of Persephone’s footsteps moving across the floor of the entryway, then the slight squeaking of the front door and a bright greeting. The voice that responds is familiar, but in a distant sort of way; Orpheus stops his mashing in hopes of hearing the conversation better-there’s slight laughter, distant but sure, like a music that pulls him.

Persephone enters the kitchen first, reaching an arm out and pulling a girl in beside her. The girl, small in stature, smiles slightly and waves at Hades, who gives the first greeting. Orpheus is frozen; the cropped haircut, bangs just above her eyebrows-the sound of her laughter and the soft, lilted timbre of her voice…this is the girl from the coffee shop. She orders dark coffee with extra espresso, always has her nose in a book or her feet hurrying her somewhere. This is the reason he’d started playing more in that coffee shop, lugging his guitar halfway across campus to somewhere with poorer acoustics and more chatter. This is the girl he’d been thinking about since the beginning of the semester, always a song on the tip of his tongue. When she turns her gaze to him and flashes him that friendly smile, Orpheus lurches at the feeling of his heart skipping in his chest.

“I’m Eurydice,” She steps toward him, leans slightly on the counter in front of him. Eurydice-he can feel the way her name would roll from his lips, four syllables in absolute melodic harmony, a sigh of thanks straight from his soul. He realizes that it’s been too long after everyone else has introduced themselves and his hand shoots away from the bowl of mashed potatoes and reaches to hers. In a flurry he realizes the residue on his hands and quickly wipes them down the old kitchen apron he’d put on. A quick heat rises to his cheeks as he attempts again, and she takes his hand and shakes it.

“I’m Orpheus.” It’s about all he can manage to get out through the near magical feeling of her hand touching hers, even in something as cordial and demure as a handshake. Her dark eyes meet his and he almost forgets to let go-that this is just a handshake and nothing more. It’s a tiny voice that interrupts them, Junie’s light figure bumping against his leg and breaking their eye contact. He takes in a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

Junie’s gaze is fixated on Eurydice, who bends down to her level and introduces herself again. The toddler, in all her amazement, lunges forward to hug her. Eurydice laughs-the sound of music and light-and hugs her back before asking her name.

“I’m Junie, are you a princess?” Eurydice can’t help but feel herself warm to the question; she’s dressed simply, a thrifted shirt slightly too big for her small frame with ornate detailing tucked into a pair of dark skinny jeans. She’d taken her boots off at the door, and was left with a pair of mismatched socks thrown on when she realized she’d be late if she didn’t leave her apartment soon enough. The back of the hand she’d shaken with everybody still had remnants of a list written with ballpoint pan; things to do, a new work schedule. She felt like Eurydice, with the arms of the toddler of the mysterious, beautiful musician from the coffee shop wrapped around her.

“No, I’m not a princess,” She brushes the girl’s hair back instinctively, gently. “I bet you are, though.”

The little girl claps, clearly satisfied with that notion, and begins to skip around the kitchen. She holds the hem of her big dress with two hands, lets her soft ringlet curls bounce up and down as she parades. Persephone calls her name, warns her about running in the kitchen as she weaves between Hades carving the turkey and Hermes with a stack of dishes in his hands. Junie then calls for Orpheus, pulling on his hand, and he follows dutifully behind. Persephone shakes her head, sipping from a glass of deep red wine.

“Our daughter-man she’s a firecracker. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. We waited eighteen years for her and it was worth every heartbreak.”

There’s something tiny, indescribable that shifts through the air at this notion; Persephone’s daughter, not his. They race across the edge of the kitchen singing some kind of princess song, Junie’s tiny, powerful voice and his softer one, laughing and playing. Eurydice bites at the corner of her lip, shifting on her feet as she watches them skip by, finally looking away to flash a smile at Persephone.

“She’s beautiful,” They’ve gone into the adjoining room and so Eurydice turns back to the three adults standing around the kitchen island, accepting the offer of a wine bottle and a glass wordlessly held up by Persephone.

When dinner is served Eurydice ends up on one side of Orpheus, who pulls out the chair next to her with the slight turn of his lip and a nod. She nods back, turning her focus to Junie climbing her way into the empty spot on his other side, fitted with a booster seat in the big chair. Her big dress settles around her like a cupcake, all tulle and frill, but she settles her cloth napkin in her lap as if its second nature.

Persephone begins the dinner with a speech-something about being together “just like Sunday dinners,” thanking a quiet, grinning Hades for orchestrating the entire dinner.

“You might’ve made too much, but you’ve been up for a month planning and researching this menu so I can’t say that.” The family laughs, and Eurydice does too-this man with his white-grey hair and large presence is feigning offense, gesturing to the table full of elaborately plated dishes with pride. Once Persephone gives the go-ahead the meal is served, plates passed back and forth around the table. More than once she bumps hands with Orpheus, who hands her dishes of food after serving both Junie and himself. More than once she feels color rise to her cheeks, dismisses it with the warmth of the room and the wine just beginning to hit her system. But the electric feeling lingers between them all night, bumping elbows and making jokes, and she barely remembers the meal she’s eaten when everyone gets up from the table.

She moves to the kitchen but Persephone stops her, shaking her head vehemently.

“You’re our guest, you’re not washing dishes.” She shoos her away and Eurydice finds herself in the living room, where Junie has settled herself with a large bin of dolls. She sets her wine on the coffee table and sits cross-legged on the floor next to her. Junie immediately pushes a group of dolls her way and gives her instruction, babbling on in her tiny voice as she scoots herself closer to Eurydice.

In the kitchen there is a hum of activity, instantaneous and simple from years of practice. Persephone washes and Hades wraps up the leftovers. Hermes dries and Orpheus puts the dishes away, stacking them neatly back in the wide expanse of cabinets the gourmet kitchen is filled with. The dried dishes begin to stack next to the counter, however, and when Hades is done wrapping his eyes catch the pile. Orpheus is leaning against the kitchen island, one finger tracing mindless patterns on the granite countertop. He calls for his nephew but receives no response. Hermes and Persephone turn around-the water is shut off, the dishes done, and the adults watch the boy they raised stand idly, uninterrupted.

“Are you even listening?” Hades raises his voice a bit, prodding his nephew with one giant hand on his shoulder. Orpheus’s lean frame lightly sways in response, but he does not turn to face his uncle. Persephone chuckles from beside him, bringing her glass of wine to her lips.

“It’s the girl,” she points to the pile of toys on the floor, a trail of them leading up to the ornate Victorian-style dollhouse in the corner of the living room. Eurydice is lit by the glow of the fire, her voice changed to match the doll in hand, putting herself in the elaborate story they’ve created. Junie leans up against her, her body nestled in the crook of Eurydice’s elbow. Their backs are turned to the kitchen but he catches glimpses of her turning her head, leaning down to speak to Junie. There is something more to the way she cradles Junie’s sitting frame close to her, the way her voice changes to match the characters she’s set out to play from the endless expanse of dolls. Her full attention is focused on the girl, who’d just met her only hours before. He finds himself transfixed by the scene, by the girl he’d only admired from afar until she’d walked through the door. He wonders briefly what kind of strange magic had brought her to this Thanksgiving, and then remembers Persephone’s brief wording days before.

“She doesn’t have family-she doesn’t have anybody. She’s my favorite student-brilliant, quick as a whip. I invited her over for dinner. She’ll have us.”

“Go talk to her.” Hermes finally pulls him from his daydream, her voice startling him and causing him to jump slightly. Persephone laughs, moving to stand alongside him and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Go.”

“She’s the girl I’ve been telling you about-the one from the coffee shop.” It’s almost breathless, the disbelief in his voice as he looks into the living room at her small frame and warm smile. Of all of the people on their college campus-of all of the students Persephone teaches-he can’t believe that she is sitting in his aunt’s house, playing with his niece. He can’t believe the luck-the coincidence that feels more like fate to his poetic translation. But as much as he feels the pull toward her he cannot seem to move his body, rooted to this place in the kitchen by an unrecognizable force.

“Here,” Persephone pours him a hefty glass of wine, much to Hermes’s warning glance-their boy is a lightweight, but the woman with beautiful rolling curls and a coy smile does not take his overly-cautious caveats; this is typical of Hermes, who’d always been the more serious in raising their boy. “Take a little sip of liquid courage and just go over there. Speak your truth.”

“No,” Hermes interrupts with his slow, careful wording in the most delicate and intelligent of voices. He narrows his eyes at Persephone, turning to Orpheus with a caution in the back of his eyes. “Go on and talk to her, but don’t come on too strong.”

He looks then to Hades, who’s polishing off the pieces of the gas stove, reading glasses perched neatly on the tip of his nose. He chuckles, shaking his head.

“Just talk to her, boy. It’s as simple as that.”

Orpheus, taking a long sip of red wine, finds the confidence to saunter into the living room. At least, it feels like a saunter. His long limbs perform the action with less grace and poise, certainly. Junie turns to him first, hearing him coming, and reaches his arms out to him. He sits on her other side, nodding again at Eurydice, who grins back. She’s completely illuminated by the warm glow of the fire and his heart nearly stops there, the words he’d practiced on the short walk completely forgotten. All he can muster is another hi, spoken through a gentle tenor knocked over by her presence. The words he wants to say get mixed up, and he’s not sure where to begin; I feel like I’ve known you forever-I’ve seen you at the coffee shop before-I’m the one who bought you coffee and sent it your way last Monday-I haven’t been able to find the words to say to you-I

Persephone calls Junie’s name, appearing in the doorway. The toddler pouts, crossing her arms-she knows what’s coming before Persephone can tell her.

“No bed.” She shakes her head, looking between Orpheus and Eurydice. She doesn’t want to miss the fun; she’s sure her uncle has come to join their play. But Persephone gives her a pointed look and she groans, little yet sure, then tugs at Orpheus’s arm.

“Ophie put me to bed.”

“No, sweetheart, let me do it.”

“No, Ophie.” All Junie has to do is look up at him with big, adoring eyes and a refusal is out of the question; he shrugs at Eurydie, an apology more to himself, and picks his niece up, cradling her in his arms.

“Queen Buggy has spoken,” He coos, kissing her forehead and hugging her close. “I’ll be back. Say goodnight.”

Junie lays her head on Orpheus’s chest and waves, then he turns and moves to bring her upstairs while speaking to her in a silent, slightly singing voice. Eurydice watches them go, still clutching both barbies in her hands, until Persephone begins to pick up the mess around her.

“She’s a good girl,” Eurydice offers, tossing her dolls into the large toy chest against the wall. Persephone merely grins, with a hidden sort of prodding within the mask of outward happiness that causes Eurydice to blush in immediate understanding. Persephone gestures to the couch and she sits, hanging Eurydice her glass before taking a drink from her own. The older woman sits on the coffee table, one leg crossed over the other.

“I’m glad you could come,” Persephone softens upon looking at the girl-really looking at her. With her soft, rounded features and fringed bangs over tired eyes, she is a thing of beauty. Exhausted, intelligent, hard-working beauty; she is effortless in her posture, humble in the way she thanks Persephone for giving her somewhere to go. She has to work later-the Black Friday rush-and Persephone wonders briefly if this is the first Thanksgiving she’s spent with the company of a family and warm food. It seems so; her frame is tiny, and she’s debated heavily on the topics of humanity and the reality of family ties in class before. Her papers have been moving, completely compelling. She wonders now, with the girl sitting with her body toward the front of the couch, if her arguments had been born from experience.

Orpheus returns then, standing awkwardly in the doorway, and Persephone jumps from her place on the coffee table and pats the couch.

“Here, Orpheus,” She prods, with a pointed look so natural to the blatant nature of her personality. “I don’t think you’ve had a chance to talk much yet-keep her company while I settle some things with Hades?” She’s nodding, not giving Orpheus a chance to give in to the bustling anxieties living underneath the pull in his heart. She bustles quickly from the room then, moves to stand behind the kitchen island, just barely out of sight. She watches as her nephew sits, Eurydice laughing at whatever introduction they’d given themselves. She pulls Hades and Hermes to stand next to her, watching the younger adults talk.

“I have a good feeling about this-look at him, he’s gone.”

Orpheus leans back on the couch, taking practiced breaths as he attempts light chatter. She volleys answers back to him-she’s a communications major, spends most of her time in Persephone’s classes. He’s a music major, a year older. The more she talks the more he’s hinged on her words, the tonality of her voice and the warmth of the room-the crackling of the fire, the soft music coming from the speakers in the dining room-wrap Orpheus in a consuming serenity. She’s just finished telling him about a final paper when he loses it, that restraint he’d been so surprised with having for so long.

“I’ve notice you before-in the coffee shop.” He stammers over the words that spill themselves involuntarily from his lips, and he immediately feels the overwhelming heat that reaches his cheeks. Eurydice lets a soft smile reach her lips, her head tilting slightly.

“I’ve noticed you too-you always have your guitar. Working on something important?”

“A few things-I haven’t finished anything yet, though. The coffee shop is always busy-the acoustics aren’t the best. I used to work more in one of the practice rooms, but you have to stay where your inspiration is.”

“Oh,” It’s all she can muster-she isn’t sure what to make of Orpheus’s words, the meaning she thinks she deciphers behind them. He looks at her with a gentle nature unfamiliar to her, speaks in a voice so light she feels as though it could carry her away at any moment. She thinks of him with his guitar, settled in the corner of the coffee shop with a notebook balanced on the arm of an old chair. She thinks of her abandoned notes, the time spent watching his careful concentration as he plugged away at combinations of chords that felt like otherworldly symphonies. Her intention of drinking dark coffee with extra espresso had been laced with the promise of the possibility of seeing him again, hearing more of his musings, and now he sat next to her on the couch talking of inspirations and bad acoustics. There’s a flood of pictures in her head-him and his guitar, him chasing his niece around the kitchen earlier in the night, him chasing other children with her dark hair and his light eyes. She blinks the vision away, frightened at the strange intensity that draws her to him. Instead of drawing back, however, she feels herself pull closer toward him. Setting her glass on the table beside them, she shifts her weight on the couch, turning her body to face his. Her request is wordless-she’s not sure she can speak at this point, so enraptured by his soft eyes and the visions in her head. When she puts a hand on his jawline he meets her lips, eager yet slow. She moves against him instantly, pushing herself against him as the immediate spark flies to the forefront of her mind. He holds her then, hands gentle and soft, encompassing her in warmth as she moves her hands to the hair on the back of his neck. There is nothing else-just Orpheus, the name she breathes as she lowers his body to the couch. Her musician has a name and it is beautiful just as he is, with his hands holding her hips and his lips brushing her neck.

He isn’t sure what’s come over himself but once her lips meet his, Orpheus feels impulse kick in. He wants to hold her; hear her voice sighing his name, feel the hitch in her breath as he kisses her neck. He wants to lose himself in the song of her action, her body, her soul. It’s as if he’s known her for years, but is kissing her for the first time, familiar yet so new, and something he wants to do until his lips turn blue and his lungs give out.

“Come home with me,” He whispers the words as she presses his forehead against his, feels the strength and rapidity of her heart beating in her chest. She nods, wordless, and takes pause to catch her breath. They’re interrupted by the clearing of a throat from the kitchen, voices speaking louder than need be, and as they sit up Persephone appears in the doorway.

“We were just going to take out some cards-want to play?”

“No-uh-no thank you, Seph. We-we’re going to get going now.” Eurydice nods, biting her lower lip and clearing her throat and trailing Orpheus to the coat rack by the front door. He holds out her coat to her first, helping her slip it on before finding his own.

“Thank you so much for inviting me-it was a beautiful dinner, and it was so nice to meet everyone.” She’s still near breathlessness, a slight giddiness in her voice as she and Orpheus move to hug everyone goodbye. He wraps a hand around her waist then, and she falters as they make their way for the door, waving one last time before the cold air of the night hits them as brisk as their impatience.

#hadestown #modern au #orpheus #eurydice #the entire family

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su-nlt · 5 years ago

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Things Confirmed In Steven Universe: The Movie

New Gems: Spinel, unnamed uncorrupted gems

New Fusions: Steg, Alexandrite (new form) Opal (new form)

New Objects: Giant Injector Drill, Bio Poison, Rejuvinators

New Locations: Pinks Garden

New Songs: https://su-nlt.tumblr.com/post/187175460886/su-movie-soundtrack-list-revealed

Also this turned out to be like 4 pages long, so I inserted a read more link for everyone's convenience. Click to read more!

The opening of the movie mimics that of a classic Disney movie

It has been two years since the events of Change Your Mind, and, in accordance with his mental state, Steven has aged to look like a 16 year-old, as well as received a new outfit

Aside from the opening flashback, Jasper does not appear in the movie. Most sightings have just been of other Jaspers

This is the first movie in the series

The movie contains a total of 38 songs

WD wrote a book about Stevens adventure

PDs legs are back on Homeworld

Other Heaven and Earth Beetle gems can be seen on the beach planet

The Zircons are alive and free (they can be seen in a crowd shot on a green planet)

Spinel can been seen in one of the locations during Stevens broadcast

The Diamonds have allotted airtime

The Diamonds have disbanded their armies, liberated their colonies, refrained from shattering, and have practices better manners. Blue has also stopped using her crying power

The Diamonds have gotten better at showing affection

While recognizing Steven as his own person, the Diamonds still fawn over him like Pink

A warp from Earth to Homeworld has been established

Stevens new house has several new features, including

-a warp pad within a greenhouse and Gem computer

-Flags representing Earth and Homeworld

-An actual second floor (Stevens room used to just be a loft)

-a balcony attached to stevens bedroom

- A Lonely Blade poster, The Painting of Garnet and Steven, the MoonGoddess statue, the Space Train to the Cosmos CD, the KEEP box from Greg’s storage, a photo of the main CGs, the picture of Greg and Rose, a new game system, a glass of Pine Needle tea, a crystal gem logo, another picture of Connie, the Stephen mug, Steven’s old red shirt, and a few photos of the Temple have all been added to Stevens room

-The picture of Rose was moved from on top of the door to the side of the stairs

-A dining room table

-Centipeedle’s drawing hangs on Stevens fridge

- Roses broken sword is on display

-More planets and pictures

Steven uses his bubble to go down stairs

Connie and Steven are now in a relationship

Connie is interested in a space-related career

Cat Steven is now fully grown

Pearl is learning how to play the bass guitar

The chest in Lion’s mane is open

Lars now cooks for others

Lars hair has grown a bit

The Off-Colors are now on Earth

There's a bubble with a slice of cake in the temple

Bubbles can preserve food

In place of the barn, a community known as “Little Homeworld” has been made, as a place for the uncorrupted gems to live

Little Homeworld is 83% complete

Warp pads can be moved around

Amethyst and Steven have made up a handshake

Steven is no longer the shortest in the main squad

This is our first time seeing ‘original’ Amethyst

Amethyst didn't have a Diamond insignia when she first emerged

Amethysts size was not the only thing different about her when she first emerged. He limbs where segmented, her hair short, her outfit simplistic, and her intellect stunted

Amethyst considers the Uncorrupted gems and New Crystal Gems part of her family

Steven now runs in front of the group

A small house has been added to the lighthouse

Spinel (Pronounce SPIN-el) are made to be entertainers (ie. Best Friends)

Spinel’s design and animation appear to be inspired by a style over animation known as Rubberhose (popular in the 1920s-1940s) She also appears to inspired particularly by the characters of Mickey Mouse (original Spinel) and Oswald the Rabbit (Evil Spinel) judging by her buns/pigtails (How they are both always showing no matter the angle)

Spinel and Pearl know each other

Garnet's Gauntlets have her wedding rings on them

Spinels theme is electro-swing

Spinels can store objects in their gems

Spinels power is enhanced shape-shifting (which include the power to turn into a spinning top and turning her hands into giant fists)

The black lines on Spinels face resemble running mascara

Giant injectors exist, have Heart-Shaped gems at the top of them, and can fly

There hasn't been much combat since the events of CYM

Spinels gem cut is perfect

Spinels come in other colors

Spinel can move her eyes in different directions

Spinels squeak when they move

Items in gems gems stay with them after rejuvenation

In terms of ‘threat to Steven’ Lapis is still considered on the fence

Peridot doesn't know what rejuvenators are, implying that they don't exist/ aren't used in Era 2+

Blue Garnet’s outfit in the “Isn't it Love?” song sequence implies Sapphire is barefoot under her dress

Potent Biochemicals exist, which destroy organic life and organic materials, but does not affect gems

Rejuvenators , which are shaped like synths, can poof and ‘reset’ a gems memory, and were used to ‘correct’ gems how stepped out of line. However, the process can be somewhat easily reversed by unlocking a gems memory.

Judging by the title of her song (system/BOOT.pearl_final(3).Info ) this is the third time Pearl has been rebooted

Pearls are given a customization option whenever they first form, any are loyal to whoever activates the menu

The memories of Fusions are also reset when their components are reset

While Steven organic half is unaffected by the Rejuvenator, his gem was reset, causing his powers to be reset

The ability to access Lion's mane is a power exclusive to Steven, and is considered to be his easiest power

Spinel has abandonment issues

The Heaven and Earth Beetles engage in afternoon constitutionals

Until she learns ‘the truth’, every one of original Garnet’s lines in the movie is a question

The Uncorrupted gems wander around Beach City

Spinel does eat

Vidalia has made more Amethyst painting

Ronaldo's phone PIN is 989675979

The moment where Amethyst and Steven cheat as speed ball is a reference to the episode ‘Arcade Mania’

The moment where Steven pulls Amethyst out her hole in the Alpha Kindergarten is a reference the episode ‘On The Run’, where Pearl pulls Amethyst out of the Hole

Giant injectors are considered unstable, and are controlled through sound

The Warehouse is both a concert venue and safe house

Greg stores Sadie Killer shirts in his Storage Unit

Sadie Killer and the Suspect have gotten popular

Mike Krol (who guest starred in the episode ‘Last One Out of Beach City’) provided the bass, guitar, and drums for the song ‘Disobedient’

The majority of Uncorrupted gems are Quartzes

Amethyst considered Rose the love of Pearls life

Greg being uncomfortable about Amethyst shapeshifting into Rose is a reference to the episode ‘Maximum Capacity’

The moment where Garnet see ‘Rose’ at the concert is a reference to the episode ‘The Answer’

Pearl was metaphorically and literally freed when Rose left (Cant follow orders when the person who gives you them are gone)

Steven and Greg can fuse to form Steg

Stegs weapons include Stevens Shield, a dual Guitar, and his powers include levitation and the power to create shock waves

Pink had a garden on an asteroid, where she would play with Spinel

Pink used to be lonely on Homeworld

Earth was given to Pink by Yellow and Blue, but not White

Spinel used to entertain Pink as her ‘best friend’, but, without Spinel noticing, Pink grew bored with Spinel, and Pink eventually abandoned her in her Garden for 6,000 years

Spinel was left next to a patch of ‘Forget-Me-Nots’, a type of blue, white, and yellow flower

Other gem types can turn their gems

Steven is no longer surprised by Pinks actions

Gems can make their new forms somewhat taller or shorter

The shot of Connie sliding into Stevens house on Lion is a reference to the motorcycle slide from the movie ‘Akira’

Greg doesn't always wash his hands after using the bathroom

The Pizza Car has been dissolved

Alexandrite, Opal, a Bismuth all have new forms

This is the first time dripping blood has been shown in the show

The Rejuvenator has been busted

Gems can make physical objects part of their gem forms (ie. Garnets wedding rings)

The citizens of Beach City and the uncorrupted gems get along well

Connie's Sword can cut through metal

Steven believes he has changed in the last few years

Steven can summon multiple shields, change the shape of his bubble, use his bubble to create shock waves,form tiny bubbles around his fists, and fully levitate

Steve can make blood disappear with his healing powers

The gem at the top of injectors are their power source

Steven realizes that no matter what, his work will never be finished

Steven can regrow plants with his healing powers

Garnet says staying hydrated is important while smooching

Spinel is trying again at friendship, but believes she's already messed up too badly with Steven and the gang

The Diamonds were willing to move to Earth to spend more time with Steven

The Diamonds consider Homeworld boring without Steven

Yellow finds Spinel funny

The reprise of ‘Come Live With Us’ is a combination of the songs ‘Come Live With Us’ and ‘Found’

The Diamonds consider Earth disgusting

The shot of the Diamonds extending their hands to Spinel is a callback to the episode ‘Your Mother and Mine’ (when the Diamonds launched their final attack on Earth)

Spinel now lives with the Diamonds in place of Pink/Steven

The song ‘Finale’ is a reprise of the songs ‘Happily Ever After’ and ‘Change’

Beach City has been rebuilt since the events of the movie, but the cliff has a few new dents in it, and their are now large ravines under the city

Steven no longer has his pink jacket (or at least, he’ll have to get a new one)

Steven, Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, Greg,and Connie put on a …...Broadway Musical? (Still not entirely sure if that canonical)

#steven universe #su movie #su movie spoilers #things confirmed in #sunlt

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genshin-impact-updates · 4 years ago

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"All That Glitters" Version 1.3 Update Details (Part 1)

Dear Travelers,

Below are the details of the Version 1.3 "All That Glitters" update and the update compensation.

〓Compensation〓

1. Maintenance Compensation: Primogems ×300

(60 Primogems for every hour the servers are down)

2. Issue Fix Compensation: Primogems ×300

(Please refer to the relevant compensation mail for more details)

〓Eligibility〓

Maintenance Compensation: All Travelers who have reached Adventure Rank 5 or above by 2021/02/03 06:00:00(UTC+8)

Compensation must be claimed before the end of Version 1.3.

Bug Fix Compensation: All Travelers who have reached Adventure Rank 5 or above by 2021/02/03 06:00:00(UTC+8)

Please claim from in-game mail before 2021/02/06 11:00:00(UTC+8)

Our developers will distribute compensation to Travelers via in-game mail within 5 hours after the update maintenance is finished. The mail will expire after 30 days, so don't forget to claim the attached compensation in time.

〓Update Schedule〓

Update maintenance begins 2021/02/03 06:00:00(UTC+8) and is estimated to take 5 hours.

(Note: Precise timings are subject to change. Players may also experience disruption outside of this period.)

〓How to Update Game Client〓

PC: Close the game, open the Genshin Impact Launcher, and click Update.

iOS: Open the App Store and tap Update.

Android: Open the game and follow the directions on-screen. (Alternatively, you may open Google Play and tap Update.)

PS4: Highlight Genshin Impact from the PS4 Home Screen and press the OPTIONS button > Check for Update.

Please do not hesitate to contact Customer Service if you encounter any issues installing the new version. We will do our very best to resolve the issue swiftly.

〓Update Details〓

(All times below based on server time)

I. New Character

5-Star Character "Vigilant Yaksha" Xiao (Anemo)

◇ Vision: Anemo

◇ Weapon: Polearm

◇ A yaksha adeptus who defends Liyue. Also heralded as the "Conqueror of Demons" and "Vigilant Yaksha."

Elemental Skill "Lemniscatic Wing Cycling": Xiao instantly lunges forward, dealing DMG to enemies in his path. This maneuver can also be executed in mid-air.

Elemental Burst "Bane of All Evil": Xiao dons the Yaksha's Mask, giving him enhanced abilities at the cost of draining his health: He deals increased DMG, attacks are converted to Anemo DMG, and his jumping ability is greatly increased.

During the event wish "Invitation to Mundane Life," from after the Version 1.3 update to 2021/02/17 15:59:59, the event-exclusive 5-star character "Vigilant Yaksha" Xiao (Anemo) and the 4-star characters "Kätzlein Cocktail" Diona (Cryo), "Uncrowned Lord of the Ocean" Beidou (Electro), and "Blazing Riff" Xinyan (Pyro) will have their Wish drop rates greatly increased!

II. Rate-Boosted Characters

5-Star Character "Driving Thunder" Keqing (Electro)

◇ Vision: Electro

◇ Weapon: Sword

◇ The Yuheng of the Liyue Qixing. Keqing has much to say about Rex Lapis' unilateral approach to policymaking in Liyue — but in truth, gods admire skeptics such as her quite a lot.

During the event wish "Dance of Lanterns," from 2021/02/17 18:00:00 – 2021/03/02 15:59:59, the 5-star character "Driving Thunder" Keqing (Electro) and the 4-star characters "Eclipsing Star" Ningguang (Geo), "Trial by Fire" Bennett (Pyro), and "Shining Idol" Barbara (Hydro) will have their Wish drop rates greatly increased!

More character event wishes to follow during Version 1.3.

III. New Equipment

◇ Primordial Jade Cutter (5-Star Sword)

◇ A ceremonial sword masterfully carved from pure jade. There almost seems to be an audible sigh in the wind as it is swung.

*During the event wish "Epitome Invocation," from after the Version 1.3 update to 2021/02/23 15:59:59, the event-exclusive 5-star sword Primordial Jade Cutter and the 5-star polearm Primordial Jade Winged-Spear will have their Wish drop rates greatly increased!

◇ Staff of Homa (5-Star Polearm)

◇ A "firewood staff" that was once used in ancient and long-lost rituals.

◇ Lithic Spear (4-Star Polearm)

◇ A spear forged from the rocks of the Guyun Stone Forest. Its hardness knows no equal.

◇ Lithic Blade (4-Star Claymore)

◇ A greatsword carved and chiseled from the very bedrock of Liyue.

*Staff of Homa (Polearm), Lithic Spear (Polearm), and Lithic Blade (Claymore) will appear in future event wishes.

IV. New Events

Take part in Version 1.3's flagship event, Lantern Rite, for the chance to obtain a free 4-star Liyue character of your choice!

◆ Gameplay Duration: 2021/02/10 10:00:00 – 2021/02/28 03:59:59

◆ Event Rules: No Original Resin needed to take part. During the event period, Travelers can claim a 4-star Liyue character of their choice in "Stand by Me." Complete challenges in "Theater Mechanicus" to obtain Peace Talismans, which can be spent in the Xiao Market on rewards including Crown of Insight and a new namecard style "Celebration: Lantern-Light."

〓Lantern Rite Questline〓

Duration:

The Origin of the Lanterns: 2021/02/10 10:00:00 – 2021/02/28 03:59:59

Currents Deep Beneath the Lanterns: 2021/02/14 04:00:00 – 2021/02/28 03:59:59

Light Upon the Sea: 2021/02/18 04:00:00 – 2021/02/28 03:59:59

〓Lantern Rite Tales〓

Unlock Criteria:

Lantern Rite Tales I: Complete "The Origin of the Lanterns" to unlock.

Lantern Rite Tales II: Reach the Festive Fever stage "Guests Flock From Afar," complete the questline "Currents Deep Beneath the Lanterns," and complete all requests in "Lantern Rite Tales I" to unlock.

Lantern Rite Tales III: Reach the Festive Fever stage "Glow of a Thousand Lanterns," complete the questline "Light Upon the Sea," and complete all requests in "Lantern Rite Tales II" to unlock.

● Complete requests in "Lantern Rite Tales" to win Primogems and increase Festive Fever. Increase Festive Fever to progress through the Lantern Rite.

※ After the event gameplay ends on 2021/02/28 03:59:59, requests will no longer be available to complete.

〓Theater Mechanicus〓

Unlock Criteria:

Complete the quests "The Origin of the Lanterns" and "Liyue: Theater Mechanicus" to unlock

● Each attempt at Theater Mechanicus costs 1 Xiao Lantern (regardless of whether or not the challenge is successful). Xiao Lanterns can be crafted at a Crafting Bench, and the required crafting materials can be obtained by gathering plants and ore, or by defeating specified enemies.

● Progressing through the stages of Festive Fever unlocks new maps, new mechanici, higher upgrade levels, and increased difficulty levels.

● Progressing through the stages of Festive Fever unlocks new Theater Mechanicus challenges. Complete them to win Peace Talismans.

● Theater Mechanicus challenges can only be completed in Single-Player Mode or a two-player Co-Op session.

〓Xiao Market〓

Duration:

Stage I: 2021/02/10 10:00:00 – 2021/03/07 03:59:59

Stage II: 2021/02/14 04:00:00 – 2021/03/07 03:59:59

Stage III: 2021/02/18 04:00:00 – 2021/03/07 03:59:59

● Spend Peace Talismans at the Xiao Market to purchase items including Hero's Wit, Mystic Enhancement Ore, Character Level-Up Materials, Talent Level-Up Materials, the Crown of Insight, and the namecard style "Celebration: Lantern-Light."

〓Stand by Me〓

Duration: 2021/02/10 10:00:00 – 2021/03/07 03:59:59

● Reach the Festive Fever stage "Glow of a Thousand Lanterns" and spend 1,000 Peace Talismans in "Stand by Me" to receive one of the following 4-star characters: "Exquisite Delicacy" Xiangling (Pyro), "Blazing Riff" Xinyan (Pyro), "Uncrowned Lord of the Ocean" Beidou (Electro), "Eclipsing Star" Ningguang (Geo), "Juvenile Galant" Xingqiu (Hydro), or "Frozen Ardor" Chongyun (Cryo). You may claim only one character in this way.

Five Flushes of Fortune

◆ Event Duration: After the Version 1.3 update to 2021/02/10 03:59:59

(Please notice that this event will start from 2020/02/03 04:00:00 on Euro and America Server.)

◆ During the event, Travelers can claim a Kurious Kamera from Ji Tong. Equip the Kamera and take pictures of specific targets to obtain photos of different colors. Collect photos of five different colors and exchange them for a Fortune Trove to obtain Primogems, Hero's Wit, Mystic Enhancement Ore, and other rewards!

More events to follow during Version 1.3.

V. New Questlines

1. New story quests

After the Version 1.3 update, Xiao's story quest "Alatus Chapter" will be available.

◆ More story quests are on the way, so please stay tuned!

2. New world quests

◆ A total of 26 festive World Quests will become available over the course of the Lantern Rite event, accessible from "Lantern Rite Tales" on the Events menu.

◆ A further world quest "Bough Keeper: Dainsleif" will also be added.

VI. Other New Content

• Gameplay

1. New monsters: Geovishap, Primo Geovishap

2. New gadgets:

Parametric Transformer

Complete the world quest "Tianqiu Treasure Trail" from Lan in Liyue Harbor to obtain the Parametric Transformer. Enhancement Materials can be converted into Character EXP Materials, Character Level-Up Materials, and Weapon Ascension Materials by placing them in the Parametric Transformer to undergo transmutation.

3. New consumable: Dust of Azoth can convert the Elemental Type of Character Ascension Materials.

4. New achievement "Transmutation Nuclide"

5. New recipes:

Xinyue Kiosk's "Fullmoon Egg"

Wangshu Inn's "Vegetarian Abalone"

Liuli Pavilion's "Stone Harbor Delicacies"

• System

1. Archive addition: Living Beings

Records information on enemies defeated and living things caught or discovered. Travelers can consult the Living Beings section of the Archive to view how many times they have defeated different enemies and also review tutorials for certain enemies.

2. New conversion function on Crafting Bench:

Combining some Character Ascension Materials with Dust of Azoth at a Crafting Bench lets you convert their Elemental Type.

3. Travelers' profile pages now include Achievement progress and a Character Showcase.

4. Controller support added for devices running iOS 14 or above. Currently, the following controllers are supported: Xbox Wireless Controller (Bluetooth Version), Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2, PlayStation DualShock 4 Wireless Controller, some other Bluetooth Wireless Controllers designed for iOS.

5. On the Weapon Enhancement screen, holding the selected material will add it rapidly.

6. A quick delete function has been added to the mailbox. Does not delete unread mail or mail with unclaimed attachments.

7. New photography method added for the PS4 version. Take a photo and save it to the PS4's local storage in one single action.

VII. Adjustments & Optimizations

• Characters

1. Adjustments to Zhongli:

1) Adjusts the effect of holding Zhongli's Elemental Skill "Dominus Lapidis":

◇ Original effect:

Causes nearby Geo energy to explode, causing the following effects:

·Creates a shield of jade. The shield's DMG Absorption scales based on Zhongli's Max HP, and absorbs Geo DMG 250% more effectively.

·Deals AoE Geo DMG.

·If there are nearby targets with the Geo element, it will drain a large amount of Geo element from a maximum of 2 such targets. This effect does not cause DMG.

◆ Post-adjustment effect:

Causes nearby Geo energy to explode, causing the following effects:

·If their maximum number hasn't been reached, creates a Stone Stele.

·Creates a shield of jade. The shield's DMG Absorption scales based on Zhongli's Max HP. Possesses 150% DMG Absorption against all Elemental and Physical DMG.

·Characters protected by the Jade Shield will decrease the Elemental RES and Physical RES of opponents in a small AoE by 20%. This effect cannot be stacked.

·Deals AoE Geo DMG.

·If there are nearby targets with the Geo element, it will drain a large amount of Geo element from a maximum of 2 such targets. This effect does not cause DMG.

2) Adjusts the effect of Zhongli's second Ascension Talent "Dominance of Earth":

◇ Original effect:

Planet Befall deals additional DMG equal to 33% of Zhongli's Max HP.

◆ Post-adjustment effect:

Zhongli deals bonus DMG based on his Max HP:

·Normal Attack, Charged Attack, and Plunging Attack DMG is increased by 1.39% of Max HP.

·Dominus Lapidis' Stone Stele, resonance, and hold DMG is increased by 1.9% of Max HP.

·Planet Befall's DMG is increased by 33% of Max HP.

2. Optimizes Mona's Talent "Illusory Torrent": When Mona is hit, she can use Illusory Torrent more quickly, as is the case with sprinting for other characters.

3. Adds a new idle animation for Kaeya.

4. Optimizes Zhongli's animation under "Weapons" on the Character Screen.

5. Resolves issues with Aiming Mode for Bow-wielding characters when obstacles are present nearby, such as character shaking and off-center shots.

6. Optimizes precision when firing shots at moving targets.

7. Resolves issues of shaky clothing/movements when some characters perform actions such as walking, attacking, skill casting, and sitting.

• Monsters

1. Adjusts combat logic for Dendro Slimes: When a Dendro Slime is hiding relatively far from your location, you will not enter combat mode.

• System

1. Spiral Abyss

Updates the monster lineup on Floor 12 of the Spiral Abyss.

The Ley Line Disorders on Floor 12 are adjusted to:

• For this floor only, the ley line flow will be normal

• No Ley Line Disorder

Starting from the first time that the Lunar Phase refreshes after updating to Version 1.3, the three Lunar Phases will be as follows:

Phase I: When active character's HP is less than 70%, ATK is increased by 20% and ATK SPD is increased by 15%.

When active character's HP is less than 35% and they are under the protection of a shield, CRIT Rate is increased by 20% and CRIT DMG is increased by 40%.

Phase II: A Charge will accumulate every 10s, with a maximum of three existing at any one time. If the active character's HP is less than 50%, they will consume a Charge when they hit an opponent to create an unstable energy orb at the opponent's position. This orb will explode after 1s, and only one of them can be created every 2s.

Phase III:

When the active character's HP is less than 50%, they gain a 2% DMG Bonus for 10s after hitting an opponent. This effect can stack up to 10 times, and each character in the party will have their own independent stacks and durations. Each time the stack count or duration of this effect resets, there is a 50% chance to release an Energy Blast. An Energy Blast can be triggered once every 10s.

2. Deleted chats will not appear in the chat list.

3. Optimizes display order of chat column: After entering team setup in Co-Op Mode, the chat column will automatically switch to the team column.

4. Optimizes the display hierarchy when there are multiple overlapping icons on the Map.

5. Optimizes UI transparency on mobile devices upon entering Aiming Mode in the Spiral Abyss.

6. Optimizes the Kamera gadget for the PS4 version: When equipped, using the Kamera directly stores a screenshot with the UI hidden to the local storage.

7. From Version 1.3 onward, extra Fragile Resin rewards will be included in the BP system:

Starting from BP Level 5, Sojourner's Battle Pass and Gnostic Hymn provide Fragile Resin ×1 every 10 BP Levels. The original rewards of Mystic Enhancement Ore provided at these BP Levels will be added to the rewards at other BP Levels instead, and the total quantity of Mystic Enhancement Ore that can be obtained from the BP system will not change.

8. Removes the Delete button from the Portable Waypoint interface of the open world map.

9. Optimizes the size of the Wind Glider on the Dressing Room screen for certain characters.

10. When using a controller, improves the refresh rate when switching between tabs in the Paimon's Bargains section of the Shop.

11. Optimizes the experience of moving the crosshair in Aiming Mode when the frame rate is low.

• Audio

1. Voice-Over Optimization:

a. Adds a reverb effect to internal monologue voice-over in quests.

b. Character combat voice-over can interrupt idle voice-over.

2. The Chinese voice artist for Amber will be changed, and this adjustment will take effect in Version 1.4.

3. Adds Chinese voice-over for some characters.

4. Adds Japanese voice-over for some characters.

5. Adjusts the audio effects for some voice-over on mobile and PC versions.

• Other

1. Adjustment to the Geo Elemental Resonance "Enduring Rock":

◇ Original effect:

Increases resistance to interruption. When protected by a shield, increases Attack DMG by 15%.

◆ Post-adjustment effect:

Increases shield strength by 15%. Additionally, characters protected by a shield will have the following special characteristics: DMG dealt increased by 15%, dealing DMG to enemies will decrease their Geo RES by 20% for 15s.

2. Geo Shield balance adjustments:

Geo Shields are adjusted from having "250% Geo DMG Absorption" to having "150% Physical DMG and Elemental DMG Absorption."

This adjustment affects the following:

• The Geo Shield produced by Zhongli's Elemental Skill

• The Geo Shield produced by Noelle's Elemental Skill

• The Geo Shield produced upon picking up a Geo Crystal dropped by a Geovishap Hatchling

3. Amends the tab for the standard wish "Wanderlust Invocation." *Only the tab has been changed. The Wish contents and rules remain unchanged.

4. Optimizes item source descriptions for Mist Grass Pollen, Mist Grass, and Mist Grass Wick.

5. Adjusts descriptions for the materials Fragile Bone Shard, Sturdy Bone Shard, and Fossilized Bone Shard and adds their sources.

6. Adds a description for the rules of Elemental Orb drops in the "Test Run" event (the actual mechanics in-game are not affected by this change).

*Note: In order to allow Travelers for a quicker use of Elemental Bursts and more efficient testing experience, the opponents on trial stages drop additional Elemental Orbs. However, due to our negligence, this effect was not individually listed in the event details, leading some Travelers to misevaluate characters based on their trial stage performance. We sincerely apologize for any confusion this might have caused. After this update, the event details will be supplemented with the relevant rules. We will continue to optimize the trial stage experience in the upcoming versions.

7. Adjusts the Stellar Reunion event as follows:

a. Adjusts the order of rewards in Passage of Time (total obtainable rewards remains unchanged).

b. Reduces the number of points required in Homeward Path to be eligible to claim the sword "Prototype Rancour." Points requirement reduced from 700 to 500.

Scope of Impact: Travelers who activate the Stellar Reunion event after updating to Version 1.3.

#genshin impact #genshin impact updates #genshin impact 1.3 #official #whew #that was rough to do on mobile #part 2 coming when i get home #so i can use my laptop

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pandoriasbox · 5 years ago

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Jade’s SSO Rambles - 2 Quality of Life (UI Elements)

(Please keep in mind that these are my thoughts and opinions at the time of writing these rambles. I may change my mind in the future.)

By quality of life I’m basically going into small aspects about the game that while certainly not necessary to acknowledge or fix are those little things that really help the overall feel of a game in the background. It’s the difference between having to click between 5 different menus vs 1 or 2 clicks to get to what you want. Yes it’s not necessary to tweak but players/users will often unconsciously greatly appreciate it. Also this may come up again later as I usually have a lot of thoughts regarding UI and HUD. (UI means User Interface and HUD means Heads Up Display. I use them semi interchangeably but HUD is more like your map, exp bar, status ect whereas UI would be more like the chat window or your inventory where you “interact” with it.)

Also if the SSO devs read this and care about me, please please please remove area and global chat notifications. I would love you forever if you did.

Okay now on with the insanely long rambles!

What SSO Has Done Well:

I think the updated store UI was a very long overdue update and I can’t wait for the rest of the stores in the game to get this refresh. I’m glad that the camera has been freed to move around the horse and that we have an option to turn on and off magical mode for our Jorvik Wilds. Using the 3D models instead of icons has been a blessing and makes shopping so much better as I’m not guessing what the object looks like or forgetting where it’s at in the store. I also am glad that we have filter options to select items based on what they are (tops, saddles, accessories ect) or based on colors and so on. The only thing I’d like to see updated is the color/style of the background to match the global store but I’m sure it’ll come in time.

The global store is another feature I greatly applaud and I think was a must for this game. While not everything is available in it I think it really helps even just with planning and testing outfits or tack sets let alone saving time and effort on shopping. I also love being able to look up the price of an item in game and figuring out where it’s located without having to go into my browser or hunt around in game. Overall I think the way the global store is setup is great, I adore all the filters, the ability to manage both my horse and my character’s outfit and see the stats even. I also like that a tutorial is available just in case but isn’t in your face either.

Adding 3D inventory models was again one of the best things the team has done for UI. I can’t stress enough how much better it is for finding what you need or looking for the right color items. It makes organization and finding objects so much better and probably the only thing I would like more is if they were slightly bigger. I also appreciate when items are zoomed into (especially earrings) as it helps make them easier to see and know which one you’re looking at. Personally I also like the updates to backgrounds of items and I can’t wait to see everything else updated from the black jarring background to a more color coordinated one. (My only worry is for people with color blindness though.)

Updating the race UI/HUD, namely in adding buttons that allow you to restart and exit the race. (I began playing the game before this update and was ecstatic to see it implemented.)

Removing the bar on the magical horse changes but leaving sparkles to still give the player a heads up of the change.

Having a bar on the swimming (so the player knows how long they can be in the water and when they are in deep enough water to be teleported out.)

I personally love the newer UI/HUD graphics in general and I feel it looks far more professional and sleek without taking away from the game’s feel and branding. Especially speaking of the updates to the race UI, boards and such. I hope to see the darker blues carried over into the rest of the game’s UI and HUD. I also really love the way the wooden boards look now (especially the western games one) and I hope to see that implemented in things such as stable chores boards.

The quest log update was badly needed and I like the new organization on it. Overall it is a small thing but I think for people still running main quests it’ll help a lot.

Suggestions for Improvement:

Please make everything able to be exited out of by hitting the “Esc” key. Prime examples of where this is missing is namely with the race boards to initiate a high score race, the druid lessons/missions board and the new western games board. (Can’t check the board at the rescue ranch but that might be one too.) While not necessarily UI I also want to mention that things such as dancing (like the disco) or sitting down (like at the cafe) would also be nice to exit via “Esc.”

I think area notifications should either be removed entirely (since we have the compass to update us) or turned off by default (especially since there are several bugs with them turning on despite the muting feature being active.) If they are left on by default then the game should be updated to remember the player’s settings. I personally don’t like to have to turn on the mute setting every time I log in and would love it if the game simply kept my settings saved client side so the only time it refreshes it is on a full reinstall. If none of these are a viable option then at the very least the area notifications should be moved to the top of the screen. They update far too frequently and become rather frustrating especially when either taking screenshots or recording. (Just moving around the circus in Nilmers is a prime example of the area notifications being way too easily triggered.)

Entering and exiting global chat notification should be removed entirely. Personally I don’t understand why it’s only active in certain areas (unless this is something on the back end that makes the game run better then yes that makes a lot of sense.) However if it must stay within only towns/stables then I think the notification is unnecessary. The player should get some kind of mini tutorial at the start of the game explaining how the chat system works. After that then most people old enough to chat will be able to figure it out on their own or use the “say” chat to ask for help. People who already know how to use global will be aware it only functions in towns.

Lower the loading bars and announcements or other notifications not placed in the upper right corner to the bottom of the screen. (Alternatively they could be moved up to the top of the screen.) For example the “Swimming” bar can be moved so it’s across the bottom of the screen instead of the middle and place the warning that it’s too deep in the same spot. Other examples are with the “Ferry Leaving the Quay” and when characters talk in quests outside of dialogue boxes such as cooking instructions. I would also move the druid commands during training like the change lanes as well. In general I would keep any brief info out of the center of the screen as that blocks the player’s view of their character/horse and what they are interacting with.

Add in a way to view your best time on appropriate races. (This is likely a lot of extra work since it only applies to ones you can run multiple times but I would love to know what my previous best time was while running said race.)

Remove the popup for all archaeology digging that causes you to pause and close out of it. Preferably replace it with the standard floating UI you get from races and items flying into your inventory. (I’ll go into this more on the archaeology ramble.)

Combine beating your personal best pop-up with the update on current time and current best time. When you beat your best time it should show 3 times instead of 2, your time on the race you just ran, your new personal best and your previous personal best. I would suggest making the “Congrats” text more noticeable to help avoid causing players interested in seeing these stats to skip it. There is plenty of room in the massive popup we currently have to be able to fit all these aspects and I feel trimming excess popups helps with general quality of life.

Remove the loading bar on most actions and either make them immediately completed or just let animations play. Most things I don’t think really need to have the animations play for so long as well. Prime example would be horse care and stable chores, you don’t need a “grooming loading bar” for example, just play the animation of the player grooming the horse or mucking the stable. The bar I feel just makes it feel less immersive (for as immersive as you can get with mucking) and also makes it feel more like a chore and something you have to wait out. Some things also just feel better being instantaneous like when you refill water or hay with daily chores. (Would love if refilling my buckets was instant too.)

Western games board improvements (I will also bring this up in my discussion about Starshine Ranch and go into some extra detail there.) Please make it so when the board is activated that the horse the player is riding will stop. I’ve found when I come out of the arena after running a race that my horse continues galloping past the board, often into the tables across the way as I’m used to the boards pausing my horse’s movement. As mentioned earlier I also think it should be able to be exited via the “Esc” key.

I don’t think I really need to mention all of the stores that need to be fixed but I do have a few specific details I’d like to list. I really hope the mall gets an update to function more like the newer stores or the global store where I can tilt the camera around my horse and rider. Speaking of the global store I would personally like to see the player/horse preview area increased in size and possibly adjust the lighting so it’s a little better on the opposite side of the horse from the player model. I would also like a way for indoor pet stores to have a means of viewing the pet with your horse. Otherwise I would simply just make it so they aren’t indoors at all. Lastly Farah seems to have a weird bug with the placement of the camera and I dearly hope that her new store is updated as it’s very hard to actually look at my horse and apparel. (Might submit a report on that.)

When you complete caring for your horse it should only pop up in the notification area in the corner. I think the extra popup across the top is pointless.

Small idea for the quest log, I would love to see daily quests (and possibly races and chores) separated per general area. So for example maybe something like Silverglade (Moorland/Fort Pinta/Silverglade/Manor/Valedale/Firgrove,) South Hoof, Harvest Countries (Jarlahiem and such,) Epona, Mistfall, Goldenhills, Dino Valley and so on as new areas are eventually added. Possibly even break central Silverglade down further. Basically this would be nicer for end game users to be able to see what areas have the most quests available that day and is certainly not something I would prioritize.

Other Notes:

With removing the “Okay” button that pauses you before starting a race I was initially on the fence about it. On one hand I think removing it helps when you’re doing a quick run of races because it means less time to get into the race. On the other hand, however I am also one of those people who uses it to pause the game. I think if I were on the team I would end up removing it as it feels pointless, there’s no reason to make the player pause as they already confirmed they want to do the race by selecting it.

I will be going into more depth regarding Starshine Ranch in another post but I did want to add a few of my immediate notes on the UI for the western games/races. Overall I love the board (besides my suggestions earlier) and I really like how you can line up several races via checking the boxes. (And I hope this means we get other barrel/pole/ect setups too later as well as group/friend races.) My main concerns are with how the UI before and after the races is handled. I think the line showing you the path is a great idea but I also feel it grows very tiring to have it before every race. I would think maybe having it as an option in the board menu would be better. Something that works as a “preview” of the race you’re interested in rather than every time you’re about to run it. I think maybe having Josh do a mini intro quest into western games would be a better means of showing players the layout of the course for the first time than having the line show up each time you run the race and can avoid having to code a way for it to only show up the first time a player interacts with the board. I think the number of popups could also be reduced much like the new best time on races. The same info is displayed on both screens (who wins is denoted by a medal instead of text) and therefore the first screen is sorta pointless. I also feel that the reward screen should only show up when you actually are rewarded money/exp and when repeating the races without a reward it shouldn’t show up.

Also, honestly if the team ever wanted someone to go through and find all of the places for suggested adjustments on small things such as removing loading bars on animation I would be happy to do so in my spare time. I care quite a bit about this horse game to probably a ridiculous point but I want to see it succeed even when it comes down to the little things like quality of life updates.

Anyone is free to add their thoughts via reblogs or replies, I’d love to hear what others have in mind regarding my rambles or what they think the game does well or can improve at. I’m also open to asks about my thoughts as well.

I’d like to also mention that I certainly don’t think I know better than the team, these are simply my personal observations on how I think the game could improve. I hope that they can help stir up discussions within both the SSO community and maybe even with the team on how to make the game even better. I want to help promote healthy and constructive critiquing and free shared thoughts in the fandom/community. Please try to keep any additions free of ranting/putting down the game or the team that works on it.

Thank you for reading my extremely long rambling thoughts!

#sso #jaderambles #sso talk #2 #quality of life #ui #ui elements #hud #the rambling begins!

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