#I would spend hours analyzing the differences in writing choices between the universes

[sporkandpringles]

I want alternate universes to be real, but only for the incredibly stupid and self-indulgent reason of having even more hours of star trek to watch

[blackwoolncrown]

The defining feature of conversation is the expectation of a response. It would just be a monologue without one. In person, or on the phone, those responses come astoundingly quickly: After one person has spoken, the other replies in an average of just 200 milliseconds.

In recent decades, written communication has caught up—or at least come as close as it’s likely to get to mimicking the speed of regular conversation (until they implant thought-to-text microchips in our brains). It takes more than 200 milliseconds to compose a text, but it’s not called “instant” messaging for nothing: There is an understanding that any message you send can be replied to more or less immediately.

But there is also an understanding that you don’t have to reply to any message you receive immediately. As much as these communication tools are designed to be instant, they are also easily ignored. And ignore them we do. Texts go unanswered for hours or days, emails sit in inboxes for so long that “Sorry for the delayed response” has gone from earnest apology to punchline.

People don’t need fancy technology to ignore each other, of course: It takes just as little effort to avoid responding to a letter, or a voicemail, or not to answer the door when the Girl Scouts come knocking. As Naomi Baron, a linguist at American University who studies language and technology, puts it, “We’ve dissed people in lots of formats before.” But what’s different now, she says, is that “media that are in principle asynchronous increasingly function as if they are synchronous.”

The result is the sense that everyone could get back to you immediately, if they wanted to—and the anxiety that follows when they don’t. But the paradox of this age of communication is that this anxiety is the price of convenience. People are happy to make the trade to gain the ability to respond whenever they feel like it.

While you may know, rationally, that there are plenty of good reasons for someone not to respond to a text or an email—they’re busy, they haven’t seen the message yet, they’re thinking about what they want to say—it doesn’t always feel that way in a society where everyone seems to be on their smartphone all the time. A Pew survey found that 90 percent of cellphone owners “frequently” carry their phone with them, and 76 percent say they turn their phone off “rarely” or “never.” In one small 2015 study, young adults checked their phones an average of 85 times a day. Combine that with the increasing social acceptability of using your smartphone when you’re with other people, and it’s reasonable to expect that it probably doesn’t take that long for a recipient to see any given message.

“You create for people an environment where they feel as though they could be responded to instantaneously, and then people don’t do that. And that just has anxiety all over it,” says Sherry Turkle, the director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It’s anxiety-inducing because written communication is now designed to mimic conversation—but only when it comes to timing. It allows for a fast back-and-forth dialogue, but without any of the additional context of body language, facial expression, and intonation. It’s harder, for example, to tell that someone found your word choice off-putting, and thus to correct it in real-time, or try to explain yourself better. When someone’s in front of you, “you do get to see the shadow of your words across someone else’s face,” Turkle says.

In last month’s viral New Yorker short story “Cat Person,” a young woman embarks on a failed romantic relationship with a man she meets at the movie theater where she works. They only go on one date in the story; they get to know each other primarily over text. When the affair ends messily, it reveals not only how the bubble of romantic expectations can be popped by reality’s needle, but also how weak digital communication is as a scaffolding on which to build an understanding of another person.

In an interview, the story’s author, Kristen Roupenian, said the piece was inspired by “the strange and flimsy evidence we use to judge the contextless people we meet outside our existing social networks, whether online or off.” Indeed, even for the people we already know, we increasingly rely on contextless forms of communication. This puts an unusually large burden on the words themselves (and maybe some emojis) to convey what is meant. And each message, and each pause in between messages, takes on outsize importance.

“Text messages become marks on rocks to be analyzed and sweated over,” Turkle says.

It’s not always easy to figure out what someone meant to convey by using a certain emoji, or by waiting three days to text you back. Different people have different ideas about how long it’s appropriate to wait to respond. As Deborah Tannen, a linguist at Georgetown University, wrote in The Atlantic, the signals that are sent by how people communicate online—the “metamessages” that accompany the literal messages—can easily be misinterpreted:

Human beings are always in the business of making meaning and interpreting meaning. Because there are options to choose from when sending a message, like which platform to use and how to use it, we see meaning in the choice that was made. But because the technologies, and the conventions for using them, are so new and are changing so fast, even close friends and relatives have differing ideas about how they should be used. And because metamessages are implied rather than stated, they can be misinterpreted or missed entirely.

This metamessage opacity spawns thousands of other text messages a year, as people enlist their friends to help interpret exactly what their romantic interest meant by a certain turn of phrase, or whether a week-long radio silence means they’re being ghosted. (The New Yorker parodied this collaborative textual analysis in a video in which a group of women gather, war-room style, to answer the question “Was It a Date?”)

Features intended to add clarity—like read receipts or the little bubble with the ellipses in iMessage that tells you when someone is typing (which is apparently called the “typing awareness indicator”)—often just cause more anxiety, by offering definitive evidence for when someone is ignoring you or started to reply only to put it off longer.

* * *

But just because people know how stressful it can be to wait for a reply to what they thought would be an instant message doesn’t mean they won’t ignore others’ messages in turn.

Sometimes people don’t respond as a way of deliberately signaling they’re annoyed, or that they don’t want to continue a relationship. Turkle says sometimes taking a long time to write back is a way of establishing dominance in a relationship, by making yourself look simply too busy and important to reply.

But oftentimes, people are just trying to manage the quantity of messages and notifications they receive. In 2015, the average American was receiving 88 business emails per day, according to the market research firm Radicati, but only sending 34 business emails per day. Because—who has the time to respond to 88 emails a day? Maybe someone isn’t responding because they’ve realized the interruption of a notification negatively affects their productivity, so they’re ignoring their phone to get some work done.

I find myself ignoring or procrastinating even important messages, and ones I want and intend to respond to. I had to create a bright red “Needs Response” email label to battle my own “delayed response” problem. I regularly read texts, think “I’ll respond to that later,” and then completely forget about it.  Working memory—the brain’s mental to-do list—can only hold so much at once, and when notifications get crammed in with shopping lists and work tasks, sometimes it springs a leak.

“A lot of the time what’s happening is people have five conversations going on, and they just can’t really be intimate and present with five different people,” Turkle says. “So they kind of do a triage, they prioritize, they forget. Your brain is not a perfect instrument for processing texts. But it will be interpreted as though it really was a conversation, and so you can hurt people.”

* * *

Still, even though instant written communication can be overwhelming and anxiety-inducing, people prefer it. Americans spend more time texting than talking on the phone, and texting is the most frequent form of communication for Americans under 50.

While texting is popular worldwide, Baron, of American University, thinks that a strong preference for communication that can be easily ignored is a particularly American attitude. “Americans have far fewer manners in general in their communication than a lot of other societies,” she says. “The second issue is a real feeling of empowerment. I think we have become a version of power freaks, not just control freaks.”

In a survey Baron conducted in 2007 and 2008 of students in several countries including the United States, the things that people said they liked most about their phones were often related to control. One American woman said her favorite thing was “Constant communication when I want it (can also shut it off when I don’t).”

“What I have seen in this country, and I don’t know if it’s a national trait, is people wait until they think they have the perfect thing to say, as though relationships can be managed by writing the perfect thing,” Turkle says. “And I think that is something we pay a very high cost for.”

In Baron’s survey, people also mentioned feeling controlled by their phones—bemoaning how dependent they were on the devices, and how the constant connectivity made them feel obligated to respond.

But texts and emails don’t create as big of an obligation as phone calls, or a face-to-face conversation. When young adults are interviewed about why they don’t like making phone calls, they cite a distaste for how “invasive” they are, and a reluctance to place that burden on someone else. Written instant messages create a smokescreen of plausible deniability if someone doesn’t feel like responding, which can be relieving for the hider, and frustrating for the seeker.

More than anything, what the age of instant communication has enabled is the ability to deal with conversation on our own terms. We can respond right away, we can put it off for two days, or never get around to it at all. We can manage several different conversations at once. “Sorry, I was out with friends,” we might say, as an excuse for not texting someone back. Or, “Sorry, I just need to text this person back real quick,” we might say while out with friends.

As these things become normal, it creates an environment where we are only comfortable asking for slivers of people’s distracted time, lest they ever obligate us to give them our full and undivided attention.

[limitededitionsanderssidesblog]

Will Deceit  Disguise Himself Again???

So a thought randomly came to me regarding Deceit, who and will Deceit disguise himself as next? Thus far in the series, after DWIT, Deceit has only disguised himself as two sides, Patton and Logan. There are still other sides he can transform into.

But will he? As we’ve seen so far, disguising himself hasn’t lead to any significant success and he was always found out eventually, so will he even bother to try again? Well, they say third time’s the charm. But for what purpose would he need to go in disguise?

Well, let’s take a look at the other times Deceit has impersonated one of the other sides.

Deceit as Patton, in CLBG:

In order to analyze his reason behind this disguise, let’s revisit the plot behind this episode.

Thomas, who had made a previous promise to his best friend Joan to attend his staged reading, gets sidetracked with a handsome fella and forgets to uphold his promise to Joan. The next morning he gets a, seemingly angry, text from Joan asking where he was the previous night. The sides then argue over what course of action to take over the matter, be honest and face Joan’s wrath, or lie to not hurt their feelings.

In this episode, Deceit decides to impersonate Patton in order to convince Thomas that fabricating the truth would spare both Joan’s feelings and protect Thomas from any negative side effect that would come with damaging their friendship.

Later in this episode, after deceit is revealed and leaves, Patton calls him a form of “self-preservation” who wants to act in Thomas’s best interest.

Deceit knew that Patton, who is one of the most influential sides, would be adamant against lying because of his morality towards altruism. Therefore, he went in his stead before he could be summoned, which is why he was the first to appear. His entire goal in this episode is simply to protect Thomas from getting hurt and to try and convince him that lying isn’t something so morally evil.

But he isn’t just protecting him from external harm, but also from internal. Take this line into consideration.

I usually ignored this line and disregarded it as Deceit simply being snarky, until you take in Deceit’s cannon ability and responsibility to hide away all unpleasantries that Thomas doesn’t want to admit or know about himself.

He’s reflecting his purpose to protect Thomas, and he’s purposefully being sarcastic and chastizing. After all, Deceit was forced to keep himself hidden for years because Thomas didn’t want to admit that he was capable of dishonesty. He’s just as much as a side as the others, yet he wasn’t allowed to give his opinion or contribute to any of the debates because of Thomas’s fearful thinking and denial.

Years and years of being rejected finally grew to much, so when his plan to protect Thomas was rejected, he gave up on trying to conceal himself and dropped the act, although he still wasn’t able to reveal himself until Thomas gave his consent to know about him.

Look at his expression when he has to silence Logan from saying his name:

He’s just so done with it all, he looks annoyed and tired like, “Great Thomas knows something is up yet I still can’t reveal myself.” 

He doesn’t take any pleasure it keeping his existence a secret, but he’s forced to, it’s how Thomas unknowingly programmed him to be. Until at the end of the episode when Thomas finally sees him for who he is and he’s no longer required to stay in the dark. 

And he doesn’t even wait that long to stay gone. The next episode he’s the first of the sides to make a cameo in WDWGUITM

But then he’s immediately told to leave. After waiting years to finally be accepted into the group, he’s still ignored and despised. But more on that later.

Deceit as Logan, in SvS:

Okay, a quick summary of this vid- GO!

Thomas had just found out a few hours ahead of that he got a callback to be in an upcoming movie directed by Alfred Hitchcoppolucas, an esteemed director in this universe. However, the callback shares the same date as the wedding of two of Thomas’s friends, Lee and Mary Lee. The sides then argue which one they should go to, while Deceit initially disguises himself as Logan to try and reason why the callback is a better choice, but it quickly discovered.

I won’t go into too much depth over why Deceit wants Thomas to go to the callback (you can see my other theory, What is Deceit Really After? for further detail) but basically what Deceit is after in this episode is security for Thomas both socially and financially, a result as the part of him charged with self preservation.

But not only that, Deceit wants Thomas to stop denying the parts of him that are hidden away. Take a close look at these lines from SvS:

“That’s not really necessary. I think now you see that all this is-”

“But you’re still missing the point!”

“Okay, let me put it this way. Life... is like a pinata. Sure, and you want that makes you happy, right?! Well, in order to get that stuff you must attack the pinata. But you’re wearing a blindfold right now. You can keep it on if you like the game better that way, but if you take it off, it’s easier to get that stuff you want.”

The main point and purpose behind Deceit spending his time trying to get Thomas to admit that he wanted to go to the call back was not simply to get him to go, although that is a good portion of it. His true purpose was to get Thomas to take off his blindfold and stop denying the other sides of him still hidden away.

So, back to the main point, why did Deceit disguise himself? Well in Patton’s case it was because he still wasn’t allowed out as himself, and to protect Thomas from a potential fallout in friendship. With Logan, it was to convince Thomas to let the other sides out too and face the facts of his true self, and to get him to go to the callback for security. With these grounds covered, is there any real reason for Deceit to disguise himself again? And even if he did have a reason, who would he disguise himself as?

To figure that out, let's look over what disguising himself as the other two main sides would gain him.

Deceit as Roman:

From the first time we saw Deceit, we’ve seen him manipulate and trick Roman. In every episode he plays a major role in, he uses Roman almost like a puppet. Even roman admitted to feeling “used” at the end of CLBG.

For this reason, Roman appears to be very important to Deceit’s plans, not only because he is easily swayed with pretty words and affection, but because he shares a lot of his viewpoints. In the times that lying was brought up as a possible course of action, Roman was always initially in favor of it. And, since a large part of Roman is egoism, he can often come off as selfish, which Deceit has also been caused.

Disguising himself as Roman would be the perfect way for Deceit to get his point across without being ignored or met with negativity.

On the other hand, if Roman were to find out about Deceit disguising himself as him it could lead to a falling out between them, and cause Deceit to lose the only ally he has with the main four. This, as well as Roman chivalrous side, would never agree with letting the dark sides free, after all, he was the one who coined the name and has announced his dislike for each of the dark sides at some point or another, including pre-aa Virgil.

So the likelihood of being copied? 6.5/10, very possible, but I wouldn’t count on it

Deceit as Virgil:

This one is much harder because of their conflicting interests and their complicated history that has been hinted to but not (yet) shown.

In CLBG, Virgil was against Deceit!Patton’s idea to lie to Joan and thought it would be better to tell them the truth. This could be due to the his fear of being caught in a lie outweighing his fear of making Joan upset; or, it could be his fear that lying would summon Deceit, who he clearly doesn’t like.

In SVS, Virgil isn’t clear on his stance on the callback vs wedding debate and instead is only focusing on the fact that he doesn’t want Deceit there.

So, overall, there isn’t much for Deceit to gain by transforming into him, as the others are all well aware of his hate for him and everything he stands. 

But what if Deceit were to go about it a different way?

As I once described in my other theory I linked above, it is very likely that Deceit wants Virgil back on his side because of the influence and power he has. So what if instead of disguising himself to participate in a discussion, it was to make it appear as if Virgil reverted back to his old ways and get Thomas and the others to despise him again so that he’d have no choice but to go back to the dark sides.

Even if Virgil were to appear and reveal him, this would give Deceit the perfect opportunity to let a few secrets from Virgil’s past slip. Even if Virgil denied them, that seed of doubt would be plated in Thomas’s head. And that could grow into a weed strong enough to push Virgil away, right into Deceit’s hands.

Likelihood though: 4/10, not completely impossible, but most likely won’t happen.

At this point, Deceit is so over being hidden away and having to keep the others hidden away, one possible reason he released Remus, that he may not even want to disguise himself again. It is possible we won’t see him impersonate another side on screen for a very long time, or if at all.

[Short message undercut]

Sorry, I couldn’t get this idea out of my head and I had to write it down to try and sort it all out, but honestly just came out like a mess, I’m not sure if this makes any sense. Anywho, this is my take on the whole situation. Feel free to ignore this.

[aerikimi]

Just Breathe | 1

➵ min yoongi was a bad guy with expensive taste. eight months from your return to daegu, things start to get strange and dangerous again. nobody falls for the same fuckboy twice, specially if he’s your friend.

➵ pairing: yoongi x reader;

➵ genre: friendswithbenefits!au, fuckboy!au, smut, angst, a bit of fluff;

[1] [2] [3] [4] -

1 • The Issue

“Frankly, Y/N.”

Yoongi pushed his tongue on his cheek, scanning you as if you were some nasty piece of bubblegum he has just found sticking on the back of his shoe.

His mood dropped from a 3 to -3 very quickly only in the thirty minutes of waiting for the train to Seoul city. Of course the Min Scale goes up to 10, but Min Yoongi never went beyond 6 and he’s almost always between 4 and 1, -1 when he needs to socialize pretty much like tonight. And finally, -3 when you wore tiny skirts at the peck of winter.

“What? You said you wanted to go” You blinked slowly, pretending not to understand the reason for such annoyance as you calmly analyzed Yoongi’s angry face enlightened by the subway’s parlor light.

Although your voice was muffled by the thick scarf wrapping your neck and mouth, Yoongi could cap every word of yours with absolute despise on his face.

“‘I’d rather die than leave home Y/N’ is not exactly the definition of wanting something. Are you deaf?” He grunts, throwing his head back and squeezing the top of his blonde hair, his eyes tightly closed in a clear sign of frustration.

Min Yoongi could only think about how hard he’d fuck you after all this bullshit ends. He was the kind of guy who would always bring his frustrations to bed, and believe, it was far from being a bad thing. ‘I’d rather stay at home, Y/N, I’m not going at all. I don’t like crowded places and you know it. Stop looking at me like that, it’s making me uncomfortable. Are you dumb?’ were the exact words, but you decide not to contribute to Min Yoongi’s bad mood and remain silent as he kept his grumpy-pouty face on.

You knew underneath all that annoyance was a far greater reason than Taehyung’s birthday party, and you, as always, were painfully one step ahead of it all.

You knew Yoongi had planned to spend the rest of the night off watching the worst of South Korean TV, asking for delivery every two hours after an incredible round of the best kind of fuck. It could be brutal, depending on the volume of sexual tension hovering the air in the past few days or how much you’ve been naughty to him — walking around his studio in spectacularly tiny lingeries while he tried to work, or not using one at all, as you sat on his lap like he always liked when he was too stressed to move from his studio chair; everything could turn into a hot, punishing foreplay with Yoongi —, or it could be slow, slow and lazy and yummy, the one that makes your stomach chill through the whole thing; Yoongi wasn’t much of a fan of this one, and that was probably one of the reasons why it was so good and special when he wanted to do it with you.

Although he usually doesn’t appreciate food a lot — and runs the risk of starving to death if no one checks on him in Genius Lab every now and then — this was the kind of night both of you were craving so much the past weeks. Yoongi doesn’t like things he isn’t able to understand, and at the moment he didn’t understand why should he exchange a night of overwhelming sex with you for anyone’s birthday party, specially Taehyung’s. To be honest, Yoongi would trade pretty much nothing for any activity involving you and multiple naps on his couch.

The issue always started with dinner; If you two didn’t come up with an agreement between noodles or Japanese food, Yoongi would rather starve to death than go out for dinner, anywhere. “It’s too intimate, Y/N. And what if I suddenly feel like fucking you?” Yoongi had an argument there, even though you usually would fuck long before ordering anything to eat. You understood with that grotesque comment Min Yoongi was trying to say, 'I can’t kiss you in front of everybody, sorry’. Min Yoongi wasn’t the kind to be affectionate.

Friends with benefits seemed to be a very unfortunate term to define what you meant to each other; it’s not just sex. The sex could end or not even exist, and yet you still would be Y/N and Yoongi, without strange silences, awkwardness nor embarrassment. It just became inevitable and the tension was nothing less than excruciating. Painful, in his words, — “Congratulations, you’re the first woman to give Min Yoongi blue balls”. There is no reason not to have sex if its existence does not make things any more complicated — in fact, for you and Yoongi, sex only made you two more human.

Now, inside the train, Yoongi was leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he played with a piece of paper between his fingers. Seeing him sitting on the red seat of the train, wearing black pants with holes in his knees and an earring in the first of his three spaces, so calm and serene in one of the rare moments his hermetic mind isn’t working on wire, you were sure Yoongi definitely didn’t belong there; he wasn’t even human. Min Yoongi belonged to distant afternoons of spring when you both took the train in Daegu on the way to school, or the ride back, when your mom would expect him with rice cakes for luch just as she knew he liked so much. Min Yoongi was now dark. And since you’ve came back from Seoul University eight months ago after three years far away from Daegu, — and from Yoongi —, things have quite changed. Not just the fact that you both started to fuck (it was quite predictable it would happen once you’ve left for so long), or that you came back and found a relatively well known producer, whom it’s mental health has always been in the middle of his way, unbelievably stable, but Min Yoongi was a completely different whole now. You still hadn’t figured out what was it yet, though. Min Yoongi was just... different. Less kind. Less open.

Still, he was the most magnificent and mind-blowing handsome human being you’d even laid your eyes on.

You’d give the world to know if he still writes.

•••

“Well, the truth is, once you start having sex it’s not friendship anymore, and if you’re not smart enough to run away when the right time comes in, one of you will eventually go nuts. If you aren’t the one developing feelings, good, as long as you keep it that way. On the other hand…”

Yoongi was now sure, Taehyung sucks at giving advice. His knuckles, already white with the tightness he’d put around his beer grew even whiter and more painful as he spotted you, a few tables away, and the idea that he had really refrained from fucking you to be at someone’s party whom in addition to all the inconvenience entailed couldn’t articulate a single useful word to Min Yoongi’s ears would certainly perpetuate the list of choices which he deeply regretted, Volume 5.

How many times had he seen you dancing like that? Ten? Twenty? You always did it the same way, and every single damn time Yoongi felt his chest pinch. No, not romantically speaking, really pinching, as if someone really poked him inside with a needle. He swears to God next time he fuck you he’ll make you dance like this on his lap.

“It shouldn’t be allowed to have you two in the same campus, though. Thank God Yoongi hyung stayed in Daegu. How many places they would’ve baptized? I’d be scared just to sit in the waiting room there” Jimin smirked as he intruded the conversation, making Yoongi munch his cheek in annoyance.

“Don’t be fucking stupid, Y/N will never be anything but a friend, either me fucking her or not. Are you deaf or just stupid?”

You definitely noticed Yoongi’s deadly gaze watching you from afar. Now, in the bathroom, listening to Aeri blabbering through every sniff of whatever she was doing behind the door did not seem so bad after all.

“The truth is, Y/N” Aeri interrupted herself after a long final blow, finally opening the door shortly afterwards “Is that there is no next step for girls like us. This is all a big fucking lie.”

You rolled your eyes, propped up beside the sink while your friend adjusted her blue fringe in the mirror. Aeri had spent no less than thirty minutes talking about how her relationship with Taehyung would never improve, because Taehyung would never see her beyond an easy girl and a casual fuck (a divine one, she said, but casual), and how girls are always the most impaired part of the relationship, despite what kind of relationship they are in.

You didn’t even bother trying to explain that with Yoongi things did not happen that way when the friend let out a spiteful “You’d better do something, before it’s too late for you too”, cracking her tongue between her teeth before leaving the bathroom.

•••

“Taehyung told me something really funny tonight. You wanna hear?”

Seoul has some great avenues, but hundreds of smaller boulevards. Everything the avenues had in extravagances — lights, signs, advertisements, buildings, big screens, movement — the little streets had in mediocrity. Poorly lightened, sometimes tortuous. But don’t fool yourself — it’s where the best of the city is hidden.

The walk back home was always incompatible. Even though you two were strangely connected in a freakish mental bond during your time together, sometimes being around other people seemed to pull you two apart, just like you were any other girl casually coming out with a boy, and honestly, it was frustrating.

At that point of the night, you weren’t even able to decipher a single expression on Yoongi’s face, and it felt as if he had left forever.

Not in a literal sense, of course, Yoongi’s presence has always been strong — he was not the type of guy to go unnoticed. It was unanimous that Yoongi’s singular dark and tuff appearance ripped off any woman’s panties whenever that rare and precious gummy smile decided to appear. Not being able to feel the usual bond between you and Yoongi made you feel like one of the other women — and it sucks.

Despite your frivolous silence, Yoongi continued, not even bothered. “Taehyung said the world has a bad sense of humour.”

“What’s fucking new?” you mumbled to yourself. Yoongi stared at the floor, hands in his pockets and a sneering smile lifted the corner of his red lips. It’s not like he’s going to remember anything the next morning.

“I know, right? He’s fucking pathetic, Y/N” Yoongi laughed behind his scarf, turning slightly red from the neck to the tips of his ears, part from the cold, partly from the amount of alcohol in his veins. You couldn’t help but find it extremely appealing, something you would never say out loud, fearing running the risk of not seeing him like this ever again. Knowing Yoongi, he would never smile again if he knew you admire him so much when he does. It’s not like he’s an asshole about it, it’s just his shy perspective of things. “Apparently, the world has a bad sense of humor because people like us are together.”

“What?” A cloud of steam escaped your lips to collide with the cold air. “What are you talking about, we aren’t even—”

“In his thesis, and apparently another twenty-one people in his shitty art class agreed with this bullshit” Yoongi stated, bittersweet “Besides the ridiculous amount of people who fall for someone who doesn’t give a fuck, the world places those who don’t want to be loved face to face, and then split up the lovers.”

Yoongi glanced at you just to see you wasn’t picking up anything. “Look, as far as he told me, it works like that, it’s simple unfair. He even used us as an example. You see—”

Hearing him referring to you two as us sent chills down your spine. Of course you two were a thing, everybody knew it. Maybe not everybody, at least not in your social lives; but your friends did. Hearing him affirming the fact and being so soft about it for some reason was just beyond pleasing to you.

“—there’s Jimin, right? Who broke up with that Eun-Ji girl after three months because she was getting on his nerves and vice versa. They do still love each other. Well, at least he loves her or whatever, the fuck I care anyway. But then there are us, who don’t belong to anyone but ourselves, we have an understanding and we still get to fuck. Got it now?”

You couldn’t help but smirk under your breath, you two now close to the subway. Knowing Taehyung well, he probably did a whole explanation on his point to Yoongi.

And besides, you could really understand what he was saying. It was a point, though.

“So am I glued to your crotch my whole life?” Your question made Yoongi frown his forehead. “What about the moment I find someone, like, romantically speaking, everything starts crashing down? Because, you know, it’ll eventually happen.”

Yoongi takes a few seconds to think, his usually annoyed resting face really pale as a ghost under the subway parlor light. “The fuck would I know?” He looks drunkenly pissed off as he takes off the tickets from his pocket. “Call him. And also use the opportunity to ask him why being glued to my crotch didn’t seemed to be a problem yesterday.”

Smart, you didn’t stick around to hear the rest, Yoongi was done with all the explanatory stuff and would probably start randomly cussing at anytime. But now, as you patiently waited for your coffees a few meters away, the view of a sleepy sluggish Yoongi melted yourself inside, badly. He was lazily propped on the wall, his tiny, cold eyes looking forward the rails. Yoongi was stunning, and no one could say otherwise. His frivolous angst from early that night hadn’t eased not even a little, though.

“Aeri told me something funny too” you cautiously mumbled as you approached the wall handing one cup to Yoongi, his venous pale fingers full of rings immediately wrapping tight around the plastic.

“Taehyung knows she’s madly in love with him, he’s not fucking blind” he sips his pure black coffee without hesitance as you set yourself beside him, shrinking.

“And don’t you have any empathy for her?”

“Of course I have, it’s fucking stupid and sad.”

“And where does his thesis come in? You know, with his and Aeri’s relationship. Because, you know, despite anything they are in one.”

Yoongi suddenly tilts his head a bit, only to look at you. For maybe a second you think he’ll kiss you, but he just remain silent, watching your face. His earnestness became goneness, the buzz of the train echoing and its blinding lights coming off of the tunnel straight to his face. It was heartbreaking seeing him drunk, tired and distant.

“I don’t know, Y/N”

A/N: Things start to happen next chapter! Thank you for reading! & feel free to leave some feedback here :D

[scared-aquarius]

me being (very) brutally honest with the signs

Aries- You’re such a goddamn hothead all the goddamn time. Not everyone likes to be constantly doing something every second of every day. You get angry with people for the smallest and most trivial reasons but god forbid someone take a dig at you. You’re such a hypocrite and it’s annoying as fuck. You act like an edgy teenager that’s constantly throwing a tantrum. You also boss people around and expect everyone to just follow your lead and if they don’t, you get pissed at them for having a mind of their own. You seriously need to take a look at your life and stop seeing everything as a fucking challenge that’s rigged against you. My god, I get tired just being in your presence. 

Taurus- You’re a lazy fuck and way too materialistic and possessive. You literally have no desire to do anything because you love to sit on your ass. You take “treat yourself” to a whole new level and not in a healthy way whatsoever. It seems like every chance you get you cause arguments and then you contradict whatever the other person is saying just because you can’t look at anything from a different point of view. Even if you get to the point where you realize you’re in the wrong and the other person is right, you’ll just continue to argue for the sake of arguing and god forbid your ego take even the slightest blow. It’s irritating as shit like you really think you know best when in reality you’re just a stubborn bitch. What a bore.

Gemini- Look, I know you guys get a lot of flak. But take this into consideration...... it’s because most if not all of it is FUCKING TRUE. You have so many different personalities I don’t know which one is even real. You gossip 24/7 and flip-flop between who you talk to and who you talk about. You’re completely unreliable and unpredictable and also clingy as fuck. Seriously, I feel like I can’t get away from you. I just want to go to the bathroom, I don’t need to hear the story right now about how Sarah said that Dylan said that Kimberly found a sock in the dryer that wasn’t hers. Literally no one cares. Another thing that you do is once you get tired of someone, you just throw them away like garbage. (Also Trump is a gemini, and I know you guys can’t control that but like come on. Of course he’s a gemini.)

Cancer- You really need to stop being so whiny or I’m actually going to lose it. Everyone has problems so stop acting like such a victim all the goddamn time. You’re so moody all the time and you act like a small child that needs to have their diaper changed. You also cling onto people as soon as you meet them and cry if someone doesn’t answer your text within 5 fucking minutes. Don’t you have your own life to live? Oh wait, I forgot you spend every second in a dark room and refuse to come outside unless it’s to answer the door because you ordered shitty takeout. You consider changing your clothes adventurous and honestly it’s so boring. Introverted doesn’t even describe you, you’re more like a complete hermit (CRAB. HA!)

Leo- Hey leo, wow, are you actually reading this? I’m kind of shocked because I never thought you’d ever stop looking at yourself in the mirror. Seriously, you’re probably the most vain sign out of all of us. So much so that if someone criticizes you in even the smallest way, you get so offended and act like you’ve been shot in the chest. You think so highly of yourself, and while it’s great to have confidence, you take it to the next level, which is extreme arrogance. You love to have the conversation focused around you. You’re the type of friend that if someone is telling you about their problem or just their day in general, you’ll interrupt them and start talking about yourself and it’s DAMN ANNOYING. How do you still have friends?

Virgo- I’m gonna tell you right now, you’re not as perfect as you think you are. You’re so quick to critique other people that you write them off as not good enough before even getting to know them. You’re the type of person that would tell their friend that they were breathing too loudly. For fucks sake, you’re such an over analyzing pedant it makes me want to slap you in the face with my fucking asymmetrical hand. Your pessimism is damn near blinding, I probably wouldn’t want to hang around you for more than 10 minutes or you’d make me feel self conscious about how I fucking walk or some shit. You can’t take or make a joke. You’re skeptical about everything and you’re completely inflexible. You like to think of yourself as an intellectual but really you’re stuck up, narrow minded and someone I constantly find myself rolling my eyes at.

Libra- You are manipulative as shit. You’ll tell someone they look good without even looking up from your phone. You lie all the time and don’t really give a fuck if you hurt other people’s feelings because you really only look out for yourself. You’re also a huge fucking coward. When your friends need you to have their back and actually be there for them, you run and hide and say, “Oh sorry I just didn’t want to get involved!”. What a lame fucking excuse for ditching your friend in their time of need. You’re also extremely indecisive to the point where it’ll take you 3 hours just to choose where you want to go eat. It’s tiring as fuck. Just MAKE A CHOICE FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE. Have your own fucking opinion. You’re like a goddamn sheep.

Scorpio- Why the FUCK are you so aggressive for no fucking reason? You manipulate people just for the fun of it. You get jealous so easily and usually you don’t even have a reason to be jealous. You just are. It’s pathetic. You like to think that you’re so cool and mysterious but in reality people just see you as a moody and brooding asshole that no one really wants to bother getting to know. I mean, why would they? What’s the point? Every time someone even tries to get close to you, you completely brush them off and act like you don’t care about them because keeping your “mystifying” aura is soo important to you. And if you do let someone in, you treat them like they’re your possession and it’s creepy as hell. You obsess over them and you want to control them. God forbid they hang out with someone that isn’t you and then you resent them for no goddamn reason other than having a life of their own. Do me a favor scorpio and don’t talk to me.

Sagittarius- Honestly if a sag is reading this, you’re just straight up getting a taste of your own medicine. You’re tactless as shit and it makes me not want to be around you, ever. You’re inconsiderate of others and impatient with everyone. If someone isn’t moving up to your standards you will become agitated and aggressive and then you take it out on the person. You constantly need to be doing something else because your attention span lasts about 2 fucking seconds. You act like an 8 year old. You’re also really superficial. You don’t bother getting to know the deeper layers of a person because, like I said, you’re impatient and also just plain lazy. You take people for granted and are careless when handling the feelings of people closest to you. You’re also a really self-obsessed know-it-all. Go climb a fucking tree, sag.

Capricorn- Four words. Lighten. The fuck. Up. You are by far the most power-hungry of all the signs. You take everything so completely seriously that I don’t even know if you understand what “fun” even is. You always have to have two feet on the ground at all times and you can never ever be spontaneous and it’s so fucking dull. You’re conservative and disdainful nature can be so overbearing at times that even your friends need to get away from you. That is, if you have friends. You’re a complete pessimist so who knows if anyone can actually tolerate that. You constantly have to be the most successful person in a room, and you make sure you reach this level of success through abusive and controlling behavior towards the people around you. Your selfishness grosses me out.

Aquarius- I asked you what time it was. I didn’t ask you if I was afraid of time passing or the fact that it’s a manmade construct. For fucks sake, just shut the fuck up about this deep shit for once. I don’t want to contemplate how large the universe really is at fuckin 8:30 am on a Monday. You’re rebellious even when it doesn’t matter and honestly all it does is piss people off. You’re constantly trying to deviate from the norm that you make the same fucking mistakes that other people already made, but you don’t fucking learn from other people’s mistakes because you always have to go your own way. Maybe listen to other people for once? You’re the most detached sign out of all of them and you hurt people by acting aloof all the fucking time but you don’t care because you chalk it up to “this is who I am!!! I need my freedom!!!!”. You need to actually think about how your actions affect people you care about because if you don’t, you’re REALLY gonna end up alone and you won’t be able to do a damn thing about it. 

Pisces- You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself all the time and get it through your head that you’re not always the damn victim. You don’t take responsibility for your actions and you always find a way to blame it on someone else because you’re NEVER in the wrong, are you? Poor little pisces. You’re not as innocent as you want everyone to believe. You’re constantly daydreaming and it becomes really annoying when I’m trying to talk to you and you just completely zone out because you love living in your little imaginary world. You’re the WORST at solving your own problems and conflicts because instead of dealing with them you just avoid it all together and end up leaving the mess for someone else to clean up. You’re really nosy- you love to get in other people’s business. But you don’t go to the person directly, you have to be sneaky about it and gather rumors from other people. You’re also very over-sensitive. Out of all the signs, you’re by far the most likely to respond to this post saying how this isn’t true and that I’m just a “big fat meany!!!” and then add a bunch of angry/crying emojis.

(disclaimer: Don’t worry, I don’t really hate your sign (unless you’re a  * * * * * * ... lmao). This was just for fun and I know it’s harsh. Don’t take it too personally. You’re an individual and ultimately you determine who you really are. Except for you, * * * * * * . Fuck you.) 

[teddyylou]

Kuroken Week: Day 1 - Varsity Blues

College AU to kick off the week!!!!!

Ao3 xx

Kuroo is finding it hard to settle into his new university after the first semester and is finding it hard to make new friends and balance school, training and sleep. 

Kenma worries about his boyfriend and visits to make make sure he is staying alive. ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ 

____________________

Kuroo could barely lift his feet of the worn floorboards of his dorm room as he trudged through the threshold, essentially letting everything from his hands drop unceremoniously to the ground. He shut his eyes, no longer able to avoid them drooping closed as he kicked off his shoes, adding them to the pile of things by the door. He swayed blindly as he dragged his way over to his bed, momentarily cracking one eyelid open enough to check that it was his bedspread that he was falling onto and not his roommates before eventually dropping onto it akin to how his book bag and volleyball bag had been discarded.

The tall athlete buried his face impossibly further into the depths of his soft covers, relishing in how much more comfortable they were then the ones he had originally been given by the school. They were insufferable which is why he had taken his current ones from his bed at home on his last visit. He could barely breathe as he prayed for his warm haven to swallow him whole and spit him out back in his old bedroom at his parents house; never to be seen again by anyone at the university.

It wasn’t that he regretted his choice of schools, or even going to university in the first place. He knew he was working towards his life ambitions and he was slowly achieving them; to Kuroo, it had always been perfect in theory. However the unfortunate reality was not all it cracked out to be in his mind. Balancing school, volleyball and a social life was harder than he thought. He never ran out of time or didn’t finish a task, and he certainly wasn’t failing. He had just severely underestimated how much of his energy it used, which has never once been an apprehension of his when going to the school as he had always had enough for himself and then some to spare for Kenma.

He was now constantly running low and living off coffees and energy drinks, which had previously been self forbidden in high school. Kuroo worked hard during the day, trained harder in the afternoon and evening and studied really hard after waking up early to do so. In actual fact, that had never been his gameplan and sleep was always a priority to Kuroo, but coming home this exhausted every night meant crashing as soon as he hit the pillow and studying in the morning over breakfast was the way to go.

Begrudgingly, Kuroo rolled out of his bed to pull off his shirt and pants before finding some presumably clean sweats of his on the floor that he pulled on before climbing back under his red duvet. He sighed as he shut his eyes again, retracing everything that had happened throughout the semester to figure out what had gone so wrong. He knew university would be a change from high school but he was barely passing these days and he needed to do well to stay there; Lord knows he could only get there on a scholarship and 60% won’t cut it. Everything was just so different and harder to adjust to than the boy had imagined. New classmates and professors, new timetable, new teammates and more importantly a new setter to sync with.

Kuroo quickly decided that not having Kenma around 24/7 was the thing that threw him off the most. The couple would hang out from dawn to dusk, not even having to talk sometimes. Kuroo had the best friend group last year, ones he still talked to over text often but the people here were different. He was less used to them and they were most definitely less used to him. On top of that they all seemed to know one other person there.

Kuroo’s train of thought was cut short by a blinding light shining into the dark room as the door opened, revealing his roommate who had just come home from a dinner he had briefly mentioned to him that morning. They made awkward eye contact as the other male waddled tipsily to their shared bathroom, mumbling a good night and closing the door. Kuroo rolled over to face the brick wall his bed was against. Photos of his friends hung up from the roof right down to the bricks inches from his face. He really did have a lot of friends; why had it been so hard to make new ones then? He pondered the subject before analyzing a conversation he had had with his lab partner a few days earlier.

She had asked if he was going to a dinner that night for a classmates birthday, to which he replied saying that he had no idea it was even on and he wasn’t that close with them or anyone going anyway. Actually, that must have been where his roommate had been, thought Kuroo. She had brought to his attention something that his roommate had also brushed on after a week of meeting.

Kuroo had been really excited to go to university, so he was really outgoing when introducing himself. He made a lot of good first impressions and was invited to all the right parties. It wasn’t until the semester had actually started and everyone settled that the parties dwindled and one night a few people that were in the same hall as him were round and everyone was chilling and drinking when his roommate returned and Kuroo welcomed him with a hug; something he had always done with his teammates at home.

His partner had been there that night too and she brought up that he was very open and casual with hugs and stuff like that which put a few people off. This didn’t offend Kuroo at all, only shock him. He was so used to greeting friends like that he must have not even noticed. Kuroo could only sigh again as he silently wished for things to become easier, and as he watched the shadow of his chest rising up and down on the wall from the moonlight, his prayers were seemingly answered when a notification on his phone pulled him from his trance.

He squinted from the light projecting from his phone but subconsciously smiled upon seeing it was a text message from the one person he needed to be with the most in that moment.

_____________

Kenma <3: hey, sorry it’s late but are you up.

            all good if your are studying.

_____________

Kuroo knew it was important as his smaller boyfriend was actually writing full words instead of replacing them with letters, emojis or including horrendous intentional spelling errors.

_____________

Kuroo: of course kitten. What’s up?

Kenma <3: can’t sleep, miss you

Kuroo: Kitten…

           I miss u too

Kenma <3: Do you any free time coming up where I can visit?

_____________

Kuroo struggled to form a reply. He wanted to see his boyfriend more then anything but between class, study and volleyball, he didn’t even had time to look after himself let alone accommodate for kenma and spend any quality time with him. He had been to a few of the school advisors about this, all of which would say the same thing.

‘School is a priority, Tetsurou-kun, you may need to cut out extra activities like volleyball club.’ They’d all recite as if reading off a script. Although he was still adjusting to the other teammates he still enjoyed playing alongside them and still loved volleyball. He never wanted to give it up, even if it wasn’t at Nekoma.

He realised that he hadn’t responded in five minutes to Kenma and began to get worked up. He could feel tears burning at the corners of his eyes, mind fuzzy with stress. He heard the shower in the bathroom turn off so he got up from his bed, clutching his phone so tight he was losing colour around his knuckles. He needed to see Kenma’s face, talk to him properly without being heard by anyone else. He grabbed his nekoma tracksuit jacket and almost ran down the hall into the cold night air. He was breathing heavily, pulling his mind away from the dangerously high pile of work on his desk that stood out teasingly as he had left.

_____________

Kuroo: I’m gonna ft u okay.

_____________

He sent the text quickly not even waiting for a response. Everything was building up inside him and he was itching to take off his jacket again as he felt too hot and annoyed in his own skin. He knew better than to catch a chill this close to mid terms but as soon as the phone against his chest stopped ringing and he brought it up to eye level to see Kenma’s face illuminated by whatever game his was playing on his Xbox it was if the world washed away and all the weight that was crushing him into the ground was lifted. He sat on a park bench and sighed, beaming at Kenma’s worried little expression.

“Are you okay?” He whispered into the phone.

Kuroo shook his head as the first tears spilt down his cheeks and over his still upturned lips. Kuroo let everything that had happened spill, from the gathering to volleyball, to classes to his lab partner. He spoke about the energy drinks that would probably give him a heart attack or a disease and how he sometimes wished they would.

The small teen sat and listened, pay attention to every word and detail, letting his boyfriend vent, trying to fathom a reasonable reply or justify for him how this could even happen. I mean, he liked Kuroo and everyone else liked Kuroo, he understood why these people were so different just as much as the other boy did. Sure he was used to Kuroo’s affectionate tendencies; even though he liked space and Kuroo resected that, Kenma was also used to everyone else being used to it even if they were on a different volleyball team. Maybe it was an athlete thing. Kenma listened to Kuroo for at least half an hour hopelessly trying to give advice. In the end Kenma just wanted to give him all of the hugs and touches that he had been deprived of recently and make sure he was eating and sleeping and acing tests, even if he spent less time on his own work, he was fine anyway, he just wanted to be able to fix everything, even if that was impossible.

“Kuroo, you need to take a break, you are going to burn out.” He regretted his words sounding so harsh but the statement was truthful and necessary. Kuroo just bowed his head.

“I can’t” he spoke defeated into the phone.

“I have lectures and classes to go to and on weekends there is left over work to get through. After midterms I’ll come home though, for a while too.”

Kenma had to refrain from getting frustrated at his response, he had to be the strong one at the moment. After composing himself and his thoughts he spoke calmer but still firm into the phone.

“No, you will hurt yourself by doing this, Okay. I finish early on Friday and I will take the train right up to you.” He promised.

“You have practice.”

“You are more important to me then a practice. I can skip it once and will still live… So should you or you might actually not.” He didn’t even left Kuroo finish.

“You not exactly changing my mind.” He retorted deadpanned.

“Kuroo, I’m worried about you. I’ll stay with you, you can take the weekend off from, sport and work too, I know you can catch up. It is important to relax and be healthy too, okay. I’ll leave Sunday night and we can just hang out for two days.”

Kenma was giddy at the thought. He hadn’t been to Kuroo’s uni yet. He was delighted to see a small smile return to his face for the first time since he broke down. He didn’t look like him when he wasn’t smiling. He was the most motivated he had ever been in his life to help Kuroo and was actually extremely excited about going. It was the first time he had felt extremely about anything.  

Kuroo pulled a reluctant expression, leaning his head back and groaning before leaning it on his shoulder and sighing. He mumbled a fine and Kenma almost leapt in his spot on his floor; almost.

So as promised , Friday afternoon just as Kuroo had finished his last class of the day, Kenma was there waiting for him shyly outside the front of the dorm quadrangle. He avoided eye contact with everyone who passed him, eying their feet as they entered their block. He looked so tiny compared to all of them even though he was only one year younger then most of them and it made the older boy’s heart swell. Contrary to what the third year had hoped, a growth spurt never really came in abundance for him and he only barely reached over 172cm. Kuroo found his height compared to the others hopelessly adorable and almost broke into a run as he rushed to meet his boyfriend.

“Kenma!” Kuroo chirped as he engulfed him into a bone crushing hug, lifting Kenma’s small frame completely off the ground; evidently already in a better mood at the mere presence of the highschooler.

“Kuroo, put me down!” Kenma whined into his shoulder, still taking in the scent that he had missed so much. They stood there beside the doorway to Kuroo’s dorm block for what seemed like an age, trapped in their embrace, unable to leave the instant feeling of safety and comfort they had felt through every fibre of their bodies the moment they touched.

Kuroo kissed Kenma on the top of his head to finally break the reunion. They took in each others features that had only been pixels on a screen for two months, not even speaking for a further protracted amount of time before Kenma broke the silence.

“How are you feeling? Was school good today?” He asked sweetly, genuine concern dripping in his tone.

“For some reason that I can’t quite pinpoint, today just got 1000 times better.” He smirked, laughing at Kenma hitting his chest lightly in retaliation.

“It was alright. No homework to take home so all I’ve got is the stuff on my desk.” He smiled down at his boyfriend.

“Good, so you can do that on Monday.” Kenma replied stubbornly, Kuroo just rolled his eyes before leaning their foreheads together.

Most people had cleared the area by now, only the occasional people left to make quick and curious glances towards the couple. Kuroo hadn’t exactly mentioned that he was in a relationship to anyone here and he didn’t expect that others would make that assumption either; but he brushed their stares off and took Kenma’s dainty hand, leading him out of the cold and wrapping his oversized hoodie-clad arms around his waist right up until they were at his door. He let them into the empty room and let go of his boyfriend so that he could get an impression of the room. He went over to his desk pushing away a fast food wrapper from his neat pile of paper as Kenma scanned the photo wall.

“Messy ass hell, so nothing really has changed.” He said bluntly.

“Hey!” Kuroo laughed throwing the wrapper at him, which he dodged effortlessly.

“Ok first we clean so you aren’t trying to learn in a dumpster-”

“Says you and your video game hoard.” Kuro cut him off.

“Archive.” Kenma corrected quietly, smoothing out some wrinkles in Kuroo’s duvet.

“Whatever.” Kuroo joked, feeling at ease in a conversation for the first time in forever.

“Then, we can cook the pasta I brought because you need to learn how,” Kenam continued, vaguely gesturing to a green reusable grocery bag he had dropped of by the door, “and then…”

“We sleep?” Kurro finished.

“We sleep.” Kenma smiled at his shoes, excited for the domestic evening they had planned.

They speedily cleaned Kuroo’s half of the room, changing sheets, dusting, throwing out civilisations of take away containers and making a pile of dirty clothes to put in Kuroo’s hamper only to find that it was full to the brim. Kenma had just rolled his eyes and shoved the pile into Kuroo’s hands while he picked up the hamper and nonchalantly walking out into the hall.

The pair spent the next hour and a half sitting on the floor of the blocks laundry room opposite each other playing a half hearted game of foot wrestles while catching up properly, talking about everything and nothing while they waited for the machine to finish.

“I don’t see how you guys aren’t better friends, you are both equally disgusting.” Kenma commented on his roommate judging him by the state of his side of the room.

“He is pretty chill and I wouldn’t mind hanging out, he just doesn’t think that…” Kuroo trailed off.

“I’m sure that’s not it. Yeah you hug, so what? That’s all! You are still a nice person.” Keman ranted.

“Thankyou.”

“If it helps, I think you are very funny.”

“It does.”

“Good.”

The two boys broke into a dumb laughter after that, enjoying their limited time together.

Later that night, Kuroo’s roommate came home with a few mates to find Kenma and Kuroo opening windows and fanning the smoke alarm with a tea towel.

“ I said to put water in it Kuroo, how do you not know that!” Kenma shouted over the alarm before realising that it had stopped right before he has spoken and that they were in fact not alone anymore. He fell silent instantly.

“Hey guys.” Kuroo said happily to the trio that had just entered. It turned out that they were there to figure out a plan for dinner. Kuroo was the one to point out that even with the burnt pasta out of the equation there would still be enough for everyone, and everyone appreciated the lesson.

The night turned into the five of the teens, even though Kenma didn’t say all too much, talking about professors and campus legends and actually bonding for the first time. There was another boy and girl alongside Akira, Kuroo’s roommate who were both in their first year Kenma eventually felt comfortable enough with the situation, him leaning into Kuroo on his bed while Akira sat on the floor and the others on his bed, to comment on how none of them knew how to cook something as simple as pasta.

He was surprised when they others actually found it funny and said that he should ‘so come to this uni next year and they can hang out heaps’.

The rest of the week was spent doing the exact one thing that Kuroo and Kenma had left on their list, sleep.

They woke up late Saturday morning to an empty room, tangled in each others limbs. They rolled around for the most part of the day before going to a cinema that night to see a new horror movie, an abandoned tradition since Kuroo had gone to university. They hung out with the others for a while on Sunday, escaping shortly after as they had less than a day left together and they did some more cuddling in Kuroo’s bed, making up for lost time.

Soft kisses to skin and lips still felt so familiar and good and it was as if this weekend was the energy drink that Kuroo had really needed. He needed his boyfriend as a sense of familiarity to settle properly and even as they kissed goodbye at the train station and as Kuroo walked back to his dorm alone, he didn’t even feel remotely tired. He didn’t know how long this would last so he rolled with it, going against kenma’s wishes and got a stack of work done Sunday night. Akira was long asleep before Kuroo hit lights out and he felt good about the rest of the semester to come.

Kenma continued to visit every so often and they put their lives on hold for a night to just refresh themselves. Life had finally fallen into a healthy rhythm for Kuroo and he was forever grateful to have Kenma by his side to swoop in and save the day.

[coconut2877-blog]

10/27/2019 the week of revelations

It’s been a week full of interesting conversations and exciting opportunities. I attended DCASE 2019 as a volunteer and got wonderful feedback from people in the world of musical information retrieval/sound events detection, most importantly found myself a mentor in MIR. I also refined my visualization design goal, which I would explain in detail in the following paragraphs.

Progress in designing visualization:

Before I was formulating the question as - recover parameters that i can visualize, and then make a GUI that let users tweak those visual parameters to get different sounds. However, i found this process a bit straightforward, and does not quite qualify as a thought experiment. I spent long hours trying to get the re-parametrization sound right (and realized that my original model assumed a lot of physical properties while synthesizing the sound, which makes sense since the stress is on timbral rather than physical qualities). Especially after a great conversation with my peer Jessica, I realized that some of the steps I include in this researching/prototyping process is “for the sake of completion”, or for the sake of being rigorous while not conveying much interesting aspects. For a sound generating tool, visual aspects are often times secondary. Asking users to spend time changing shapes in hope of getting a sound they want is not as rewarding as making the sound available first, and then prompt them into thinking about what it might look like.

So then I reformulated my visualization design goal - the sound parameters would remain the same, but while tweaking the sound parameters, users may see the changes in visualization. I reexamined the parametrization, hoping to find a relationship between sound qualities and shapes. Not to my surprise, this relationship is not a one-on-one mapping. In other words, one sound may correspond to millions of possible shapes/materials. The visualization is an under-determined inverse problem!

After some messy calculations shown above, I found that:

In order to fully determine the visualization of a given sound, length of the string and two of three parameters - density of material, cross sectional area, and tension in the string, needs to be defined. And I leave these choices to the users.

To summarize my design decisions, users may first pick a sound (from tweaking sound parameters), then choose a shape (length), and finally choose to fix two of three physical parameters(density+cross-sectional area, density + tension in string, or cross-sectional area + tension). The remaining one visualizable parameter would be changed (visually) accordingly.

By design, this GUI is meant to not only enable flexible/natural sound synthesis, but also inform users on how to interpret them in relations to their shapes.  Some takeaways may include :

-  Knowing the fact that to fabricate one desired sound, there would be infinite physical possibilities. 

- In order to fully determine the solution/“sounding object” of this underdetermined inverse problem, how many variables we would have to know in advance.

etc.

My baby String model is now completed on the sound part, I would implement the GUI according to one of the hand-written notes attached above.

Inverse Problem:

This is related to the second part of my thesis - Recover physical parameters of the sounding object from the sounds it makes. My initial thought was to use a machine learning approach. I talked to post doc in MARL lab Vincent Lostanlen about this, and he agreed to start an independent study with me on this topic!

Here are some of my afterthoughts after meeting him and a few other people at the conference (peer in music tech Sri, MARL Phd student Tom, Professor Mark Plumbley from Queens Mary University):

- There would be two parts of investigating this inverse problem: one is data-driven and the other is timbral-driven. 

- Data driven: given a sound, train a supervised machine learning model to recover parameters in my physical modeling formulation. Dataset (sound and its parameters) needs to be constructed using my sound synthesis tool. Vincent also suggested the addition of noise and reverberation on my sound samples in this approach. (This would also be my final project for MIR class.)

- Timbral driven:  analyze and visualize the “topology” of sounds made with my physical model. By topology, I roughly interpreted as orderly placing (order determined by keeping all other variables fixed and changing only one)all the sounds I’m able to generate using this tool, visualize the “distance” between adjacent sounds, and find its relationships between the “distance” in the physical space. Writing this down I have to say it’s sort of making sense but not quite. As mentioned in the last post I did want to evaluate the ability/complexity of this physical model as a sound synthesis tool. I did not expect to enter the realm of abstract mathematical spaces. However whatever legitimate approach is out there I am willing to explore under mentorship of great people in this field, just a few floors above me.

- The above timbral driven approach often times involves using something I’ve never done before - unsupervised machine learning (finding implicit patterns/invariance in data without labels). or Manifold learning, as Vincent mentioned.

- Vincent introduced me to Mark and a similar study he conducted in 2013 - “Hearing the shape of a room”, where Mark is solving the inverse problem of room impulse response, rather than in my case, impulse response of an object. Mark gave us a very abstract lecture on defining the “space” we’re searching for when recovering the sound->shapes mapping. He told us “you want to search on a bigger subspace as the smaller ones have discontinuity at the boundaries!” Then he picked up a DCASE flyer, folded it to a quarter of its size and showed us that sounds triggered at any point on the surface may be mapped to within this one quarter surface, through rotating and flipping this space. He also animated the different ways of “transforming” this flyer space so that “discontinuity may be avoided”. I felt very lost but inspired. I don’t know what to say so I attach here the notes Vincent drew, under the light of two men’s intelligence. 

[atrocitycl]

V - “Stigma” Review

(Audio)

V (from BTS) – Stigma

Reviewed on January 24, 2017

And so, although “Stigma” faces the stigma of being a slower, dramatic song and thus is disliked by many fans because of such, I argue the song is actually an excellent one. If we are critical and listen beyond the song’s style and begin attempting to understand why certain compositions are in place, we will find that “Stigma”—despite being “boring” or “too slow”—has many creative, efficient, and stunning points.  

Personal Message: As perhaps readers can guess, I am back at university and somehow already quite busy. Although this semester appears to be quite challenging, I am expecting it to be “easier” than the last as I have multiple two hour breaks in between classes and thus, my tendency to procrastinate is greatly minimized. Personally a huge issue with last semester—and this relating to the lack of reviews during that period—was squeezing all of my classes back-to-back and as a result, despite many hours of free time afterwards, I ended up wasting them away with distracting tasks. Perhaps this could be a scheduling tip to readers who, like me, are not as disciplined.

On topic with this review, I would like to thank a reader for sending in this request. I greatly apologize for not getting to it sooner, but I hope this review is still enjoyable and thought-provoking. I personally have been anticipating writing a review for this song as there is so much to discuss in terms of music. As the requester addressed, many fans struggle to listen to “Stigma”—a song that is not a title/comeback song and instead is a song included in one of BTS’ albums. Furthermore, the artist singing is just BTS’ V and thus, this creates more difficulties as it is not the usual of every member participating. But of course, the true problem is not the technicalities with members and “Stigma” not being a title song; the issue is that musically the song is hard to “enjoy.” It is not upbeat and within the pop genre as is, say, the group’s “Blood Sweat & Tears,” nor does it involve powerful dancing and a flashy music video. “Stigma” is the opposite: it is a soulful, R&B song (if correct on the genre) that—while possessing a short music video—is predominantly meant to be consumed sonically. However, given the incredibly slower pacing of the song, a lack of visual aid, seemingly overly dramatic vocals and instrumental, and a composition that appears to be quite stagnant, it truly is understandable on why fans find “Stigma” a difficult song.

Because of this interesting background, this review will be more than just reviewing the song: I hope this review becomes an example of how a listener can learn to reap enjoyment from analyzing what she is listening to—especially with a song that she may not personally prefer. Even if a listener dislikes “Stigma” ‘s style (as in my case), I hope he will still realize that at least appreciation is possible if not genuine enjoyment. And so, although “Stigma” faces the stigma of being a slower, dramatic song and thus is disliked by many fans because of such, I argue the song is actually an excellent one. If we are critical and listen beyond the song’s style and begin attempting to understand why certain compositions are in place, we will find that “Stigma”—despite being “boring” or “too slow”—has many creative, efficient, and stunning points.  

_______________________________________________________

Song Score: 7/10 (6.75/10 raw score) - “Above average”

- Vocals: 7/10

- Sections: 6/10 (6.00/10 raw score)

Introduction, Verse, Pre-Chorus, Chorus, Pre-Chorus, Chorus, Bridge, Conclusion (Chorus)

1.     Introduction: 6/10

2.     Verse: 6/10

3.     Pre-Chorus: 6/10

4.     Chorus: 6/10

5.     Bridge: 6/10

6.     Conclusion (Chorus): 6/10

- Instrumental: 7/10

- Lyrics: 7/10

I’ve been hiding it I tell you something just to leave it buried Now I can’t endure it anymore Why couldn’t I say it then? I have been hurting anyway Really I won’t be able to endure it

Now cry It’s only that I’m very sorry towards you Again, cry Because I couldn’t protect you

Deeper, deeper, the wound just gets deeper, like pieces of broken glass that I can’t reverse Deeper, it’s just the heart that hurts every day You who was punished in my stead You who were only delicate and fragile

Stop crying, tell me something Try talking to me who had no courage Why did you do that to me then? Sorry Forget it What right do I have, to tell you to do this or that?

Deeper, deeper, the wound just gets deeper, like pieces of broken glass that I can’t reverse Deeper, it’s just the heart that hurts every day You who was punished in my stead You who were only delicate and fragile

I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry, my brother Even if I try to hide i or conceal it, it can’t be erased Are you calling me a sinner? What more do I have to say? I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry, my sister Even if I try to hide it or conceal it, it can’t be erased So cry Please dry my eyes

That light, that light, please illuminate my sins Where I can’t turn back, the red blood is flowing down Deeper, I feel like dying every day Please let me be punished Please forgive me for my sins I beg

_______________________________________________________

Analysis: For a side note, while the given ratings appear to be straightforward, I do wish for readers to know that the process to reach these ratings was far from such. I devoted much time to understanding this song (and admittedly to push aside much of my own personal biases). Also to note, this review will most likely be shorter than intended due to how busy I currently am (and on top of that, I am down with a cold).

Onto the review, as the ratings unveil, “Stigma” is an incredibly well-rounded song statistically. There are no immediate, impairing points and at worst the sections—this category having the lowest ratings—is still decent. But, of course, ratings are meaningless without explanations and more so with considering how many find the song difficult to listen to, so let us proceed with actual analysis.

With the lyrics, this category should be the most straightforward to understand. However that said, it is worth clarifying why the lyrics have scored well. As the requester of this review mentions, the background to this song is complex: it may be a part of BTS’ ongoing, fictional story or it might very much be something personal from V or perhaps even both. While all these points are interesting, these are not criterion I use for grading lyrics; instead, the lyrics have earned their higher score by being distinctive in its details—word choice, variety, imagery—and by differing with its plot. Overall, I will not spend too much time in this song’s aspect as the more intriguing discussion is towards the musical aspect.

With that covered, let us focus on the vocals and instrumental. I bring up these two aspects and not individually because both ultimately utilize similar strategies and forms, but furthermore, both are quite misunderstood by many fans. After all, the difficult aspect in the song may not be so much on how it is structured with the sections but rather how it sounds within the sections—these sounds being the vocals and instrumental.

One of the most impressive aspects to the two is how well they complement each other so that their perceived downsides are covered. Before explaining that, though, let us return once more to current perceptions on the vocals and instrumental. On a more superficial hearing, the vocals are not impressive: the vocals carry a sluggish, dragged pacing; many of the beltings are overly emphasized and dramatized and thus, the extreme pitch shifts render unappealingly—even if the singing itself is skillful; and lastly, the singing simply comes off as monotonous considering there are few changes throughout. Similarly, the instrumental can also be critiqued with those reasons: the instrumental is too plain, dull, and provides nothing more than just background.

While these are all viable points, I challenge fans to realize that these supposed weaknesses are actually, realized or not, addressed in the vocals and instrumental themselves. For example, the vocals’ slower pacing is paired with a bass line that strengthens at moments where V provides beltings. The result, then, is not vocals that are sluggish or an instrumental that remains dull; the result is that both combined lead to a rhythmic, balanced flow that sounds excellent. Another example is when considering the instrumental’s beats in relation to V’s vocals at the first verse. Both in of themselves appear to be incredibly vexing: the vocals are minimal in tune and the instrumental itself provides nothing more than just the mere foundation of the song. However, when considering how both sound when taken into account as a single unit, we realize the vocals act as a pseudo-beat and equally the beats are akin to background vocals. Lastly to note on a more technical side, another interesting composing decision about the instrumental and vocals is that both physically complement each other’s sounds. In clearer terms, I am referring to the actual pitch range covered. During moments where the vocals are adopting a middle pitch, we realize the instrumental “balances” out such by providing sounds slightly above that pitch or slightly below it. Expectedly for moments when V is singing in a higher pitch, the instrumental still “balances” out the overall sound by then providing much lower pitches—this being the most explicit example as we can hear the much deeper bass line coming in during these moments. Again, this is a minor aspect but one I find quite creative and ultimately appealing especially as “Stigma” ‘s style beckons careful, methodical listening.

Finally discussing the sections, since we have already indirectly discussed some of this through the discussion above regarding the vocals and instrumental working together, let us instead turn to addressing why—despite the solid chemistry of the vocals and instrumental—that the sections still all earn a six. Ultimately, though the sections sound fantastic and that even the progression to the entirety of “Stigma” is fluent and coherent, the main flaw remaining is that the sections lack incredibly distinctive points. And of course, I do not necessarily mean distinctive as in each section has to sound different from one another—as numerously said, “Stigma” does follow a linear format—but in terms of what each section provides for the song, there is nothing distinctive in this sense. For example, both the introduction and conclusion suffice in their roles, but in doing so neither is that stunning. Even in, for example, the choruses where the vocals are—especially in the song’s context—diverse and the instrumental is impressive with complementing such along with meshing the bass with the beats, the choruses are not composed to the point that their very composition consists of striking ideas and techniques. Now this is not to say the sections are bad at all; all the sections hold a decent score, but overall, the structure to the song individually and in whole merely provide the foundation to the song versus being the aspects that carry forth the song.

All in all, “Stigma” is definitely an above average song if we are able to pay attention to how the vocals and instrumental work. Stylistically, I do agree with many that the song is difficult to listen to and to even enjoy, but given the nature of it, I do urge fans to find enjoyment from it through analyzing it versus just listening to it. Unlike the typical pop song that is fun and easy to listen to due to being able to predict its flow or simply how upbeat and tuneful it is, “Stigma” is a song that requires one to actually pay attention to what is occurring with its sections, vocals, instrumental, and so forth. Once a listener pays close attention, most likely she will find it to be quite impressive in terms of the song’s inner workings—and if not that, at least in his attempt I hope that the song becomes worthwhile.

_______________________________________________________

To the requester, huge apologies for the delay and for poorly writing the review. I feel that I have failed to truly bring insight as to why “Stigma” is a fascinating and solid song, but I hope in the end that the review is interesting and gives some ideas as to what one could look for when listening to a difficult yet charming song. In terms of the next review, look forward to another requested review. And though this sounds silly, I will have to end this review here as I do have class quite soon—perhaps “writing-on-the-go” is not the most optimal idea, after all. Look forward to Uhm Junghwa’s “Dreamer” and until then, “I’m very sorry towards you” for not being as diligent, but I will do my best to catch up on reviews. 

[vieuxnoyesrp]

Jos. It’s always nice to see one of our former members returning to the group! We can claim that we were surprised by the strength of your application for our latest addition to the cast, Finn Mikaelson, but that simply wouldn’t be true. We had a feeling your skill in writing and intuition for capturing a character’s inner voice would pull through - and we were not at all disappointed. You captured Finn’s darkness; his cutthroat - almost fanatical ambition and dogged belief in his sense of purpose. But you didn’t forget about the sleek, deceptively cool mask he wears externally - which is arguably the most terrifying part about him - because of how seamlessly it hides what lurks beneath the surface. We cannot wait for the havoc that Finn is sure to unleash in our Quarter, and we bid all of New Orleans’ residents tread carefully; with the most monomaniacal Mikaelson on the scene, even the hounds of hell would be more merciful...

Jos, thank you very much for applying. As for Finn…

                  ⚜ ~ WELCOME TO VIEUX NOYÉS!!! ~ ⚜

Wondering what to do next? Click here and let the good times roll!

⚜ Roleplayer

⤜ Name/alias: Jos | Joslyn ⤜ Pronouns: She/Her/Queen ⤜ Age: 26 ⤜ Timezone: Central/Chicago ⤜ Activity: I’m off school and work so I’m all set till at least the end of January and then i’ll be around for most evenings because spring semester is chill beans~ ⤜ Best form of contact: Character account :) ⤜ Any Triggers? None ⤜ How did you find Vieux Noyés? Previous Member that played Kol Mikaelson and I miss my babes and I’m a terrible abandoner that cries for leavin y’all ⤜ What drew you to the RP? EVERYTHING. I remember how much fun it was and how much inspiration I got from the plot and the players alike, I want that back if I can have it *grabby hands* ⤜ What is one subplot/element from the Plot page that you are particularly looking forward to seeing in this roleplay? Well since I’m applying for a different character…. the Mikaelson feels, the power plays (as always) and the unmistakable sound of masochism and mayhem in the Quarter. I can’t pick ONE PLOT HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!

⚜ Desired Character: Finn Mikaelson Vincent Griffith

⤜ Why do you want this character? While Kol hails himself the ‘black sheep’ of the family, I very much think that title is self-proclaimed and deserved to Finn. He is the black sheep born of self hatred and has placed himself in the position on choices alone. Where other siblings slide in when given reprieve to take up the vow of ‘always & forever,’ Finn has CHOSEN to remain on the outside, forever watching and evaluating their treacherous and tyrannous acts. He is intricately woven in an obstinate hatred for the supernatural - vampires in particular - as he finds their behavior and need to suck the life out of every vein mercilessly abhorrent. I almost envision him (shout out to my Harry Potter nerds) to almost carry an OBSCURUS around his heart - a never ending darkness that engulfs his worst deeds in vampirism that leaves him confused and lost on weighing the outcome of survival and family versus ‘the right thing to do.’ I think playing that out and discovering that though he hates them, he can feel a tiny pinprick of love for them, is going to be interesting to see develop and quite fun to cultivate.

⤜ What are your future plans for this character? As above I’d like to develop and pick apart his loves and hates. I mean Freya, she’a a MAJOR weak point for him. Though she lies with his siblings in wrongdoing and is bloodying her hands, he’ll still have a weak part of his inner darkness that calls to her, that allows HER to wash away an ounce of hatred. I feel that he will have that with others as well, as they mold their way into his life on actions and choices. I mean Camille is going to be the exact opposite (to start). Little Miss Sunshine ain’t nothing but a power play and a poignant piece of the puzzle between the two city leaders - the self proclaimed kings of disaster. Exploiting her naivete will allow him the chance to see what’s going on in the Quarter while actively remaining on the outskirts.

⤜ Put yourself in your character’s shoes. Give us a few lines to describe a day in the life of your character… Where do they live? Where and how do they spend their time?

(I’m doing something a bit different with this and using the locations!)

ROSSEAU’S - though their chats usually happen outside in the sunlight where Camille rants about freezing her ass off, Finn is amenable to playing bar-back and helping her to perpetuate the alcoholism of the natives by pouring beers. Surely the act itself would be frowned upon by the owner, but Finn isn’t exactly caring of their plight when he is begging for more answers. “Alright Camille, you know that you can serve up as many shiny shots of tequila as you’d like, hoping that the next blustered and brash boy toy that comes to the bar will get me off your back, but you’re wrong. You’re going to have to talk eventually about that little tidbit you divulged on your… how did you put it… theatrically untamed and easily angered artist?” He knew she was speaking on Niklaus, knowing full well he tossed his dramatic flair into brushstrokes for a calming effect.

LAFAYETTE CEMETERY - hands intricately laced in a spell, doused in blood as per the usual enchantment, Finn is accustomed to people entering the hallowed lanes of the cemetery. Even being interrupted in the middle of one of his rituals, however, he is not accustomed or amenable to being watched and analyzed, caring to do that onto others. “You know, most people tend to offer a greetin’ instead of an unwavering, burn through your clothes, gaze. I don’t know, maybe you could try a ‘hello’ instead of a snarl, maybe un-pluck a few of those feathers you’ve got wound so tight.” His visitor was not of the unkind variety, just the uptight as if a perpetual stick was shoved up their ass steering the direction of their emotional bitch switch. He tossed a lopsided smirk their way, slopping the blood off his hands and reaching for a towel to turn rouge. “You know I ain’t no threat, and I know you ain’t either, let’s be honest. Tell me what you want, or get on your way.”

TULANE UNIVERSITY - Speaking on issues that he cared less about, Finn digressed to fully, while also systematically chosing his words as carefully as possible, divulging the benefits of magic in history and the Salem witches. What was thought to be a history class hailed from the books that sat before the very attuned yet half asleep faces of the pupils, became a true story that most wouldn’t believe. Simply because a guest speaker arrived didn’t mean they listened to a word spillin’ out of his mouth. A favor to a professor he happened to find linked to data he needed to breach, he had told himself, agreeing to being placed dead center had become an hour of watching their faces turn from intrigue to boredom and phones coming out of pockets. “I know y’all have this insane hunger for technology, and I get it, gotta swipe left on the hottie of the second and swipe right on anything that would actually create neurons, but you’re gonna need to put your phones away.” One careless student rolled his eyes, and in the next second Finn was snapping his fingers, words thought in spell, and the phone was dead. No matter how many times the boy hit restart the screen stayed black. “Rotten luck man, bet ya wish you’d been paying attention to have something to attribute to that faulty form of technological magic.”

⤜ Give us three headcanons regarding your character of choice.

#1: DREAM CATCHERS - Finn is woven like a dream catcher. His hopes hang on the finely woven strings hoping to create a better future by allowing the passage of nightmares to turn into vividly kinder dreams. He wishes to funnel everything to a brighter and better light, to eliminate the darkness from the lives that deserve better. But through such changes, he also holds tight to the nightmares, callously turning them against the perpetrator and using them to his advantage. He weaves a web and he knows every string.

#2 THE FALLEN  - there is a part of Finn, no matter how minuscule, that lies with the fallen. The ones used for devious deeds of others. Perhaps it’s in those deeds, with choices chosen for him that he would otherwise not choose, that has him so hellbent on making sure his choices are finely decided before actions hail to emotions.

#3 HUMANITY - he craves humanity like a drowning man craves dry land. He wants to be human, to stop the inevitable chance of no undoing. If he goes back into his vampire form, he’ll hunger, and his hatred will grow. Being in a witch form allows him the time to ensure he stays in this vessel or moves to a human one, but no matter which vessel he takes he WILL NOT be struck back into an immortal body. Otherwise any dagger he finds he’ll plunge into his own undead heart.

⤜ What are some plots you’d like to explore with your character? Is everything too obvious? (lol). I want to explore all the things I talked about above ^^ his relationships, the creation of his coven, the use of magic because it’s been forever since I played a witch with an active power (not Kemiya), his distrust, his hatred, his kinder weaknesses, everything. I don’t think Vincent/Finn is readily offered in most RP’s so I’m going to explore as much as I can. Bare with me while I fully get into his role though!

⤜ Para sample:

(Retained for privacy)

⤜ Would you like to be considered for another character if not accepted as your primary choice? No thank you I got my bae if you accept me <3 ⤜ Have you read the rules?: Yes darlings <3 ⤜ Anything else? Negative except LOVE ME PLS! xo

[lindyhunt]

How to Create an Email Newsletter [Checklist]

When starting an email newsletter, you're juggling a lot of balls in the air at once.

You have to worry about proofreading the copy, creating compelling calls-to-action, designing the email to work for multiple inboxes and devices, avoiding any spam triggers, and brainstorming clickable subject lines -- all while staying within the confines of email law (yes, there is such a thing).

Oh, and if you mess any of your email up, there's no undoing it once you send it to your subscribers.

If you want to make sure you won't miss any steps when making a newsletter, keep reading. Inspired by a blog post from former leader of HubSpot Academy, Mark Kilens, we pulled together a completely updated and comprehensive checklist for anyone looking to send an email newsletter.

If you're sending newsletters, bookmark the following steps in your browser, or print it out and hang it up next to you. You don't want to miss out on these crucial steps.

How to Create an Email Newsletter

Here are 12 steps to create the best email newsletter for your business or personal goals.

Step 1: Figure out your newsletter's goal.

Before you start drafting a single word, make sure you're fully aware of the newsletter's goal and how it fits into your larger content strategy. (Have one in place? Go ahead, skip to the next section.)

Is your newsletter supposed to help you generate leads? Get more email contacts? Send traffic to your website? Figure out your goal and let the rest of your decisions flow from it.

Keep in mind your goal should be something beyond "how many people opened it." Instead, it should be more closely tied to your overall business goals. Your email's open rate can give you an indication of the newsletter's performance, but it shouldn't be the only number you care about each month. Here are some email marketing metrics to consider.

Step 2: Gather your content.

Once you have a goal for your newsletter, you'll find content for it. Depending on how early you set your newsletter's goal and how often you plan on sending this newsletter, you could be able to actively or passively find content in the time between two email sends. Active means you're going on the hunt for content that'll solve a specific goal. Passive means that you'll randomly stumble on it when browsing for other content, but realize it could fit in nicely.

When I put together newsletters, I tended to do a lot of active searching ... but I could've saved myself a lot of time if I were passive. Since I knew a newsletter needed to be sent each month, bookmarking links throughout the month would've been a great timesaver. Instead, I usually spent several hours clicking the "Back" button on my blog, hunting for content.

However you like to gather content is up to you, but great places to look for content are your company's blog, social media accounts, lead-generation content, internal newsletters, and training documents.

Step 3: Design your template.

Make sure you've got an idea of how your newsletter will look before writing copy. That way, you'll know exactly how much space you have to promote a piece of content -- there's few things more frustrating than trying to squeeze copy into too tight a space.

Your template doesn't have to be flashy or anything -- even newsletters with minimal text and color formatting will look great. The design just needs to make it easy for your recipients to read, scan, and click elements of the email. This means it should be mobile-friendly, too. According to data from Litmus, most people (46%) opened their email on a mobile device in 2018 -- nearly 30% higher than email opens on desktop.

If you want to get some inspiration for great email newsletter design, check out this post. I'd also recommend looking into pre-made templates if you're not familiar with designing emails -- it can save you a lot of heartache down the road. If you're a HubSpot customer, you'll have a bunch of pre-made templates in the email tool.

Step 4: Set your email newsletter size.

Unfortunately, email newsletters don't size themselves when you send them to subscribers. But because everyone opens their email on their device and email service of choice, how are you supposed to know what size or resolution they should be?

Most providers will default your email newsletter size to 600px wide, with email body padding another 30px wide on all sides. And when this happens, the content inside your newsletter might not survive the adjustment. Therefore, it's important to ensure your newsletter design fits inside that universal 600px width.

What about height? Ultimately, your email can be as high (or, rather, as long) as you want it to be without the email client distorting its design. However, people are much less likely to click through to your website if the email goes on forever -- and email clients with sensitive spam filters might take notice as well. As a general rule, try not to make your email recipients scroll for more than a second before reaching the end of it.

Step 5: Add in your body content.

Next up: filling in the template with words and pictures. This will be the meat of your email newsletter, so spend time perfecting it. Most people keep the copy short and sweet to encourage clickthroughs, though some notable newsletter take the opposite approach. This post can help you with email newsletter copy if you need it. Be sure to add in some images if they can help support your copy.

Don't forget to edit your email thoroughly -- maybe even send it on to one of your teammates for a once-over. Remember, once you send the thing, you can't fix those embarrassing typos like you can with web content.

Step 6: Add in personalization tokens and smart content.

The best email newsletters I get feel like they've been written personally for me -- like a friend actually took the time to put together a newsletter with things only I would like. I open them, I click on them, I share them ... pretty much every time.

If you want your newsletters to feel that personal, you should do three things:

Segment your emails and choose content that group of people will love.

Add in personalization tokens. If your marketing software supports personalization, this is a really easy thing to implement that could have big results for your conversion rates. That being said, only add in a few personalization tokens -- you don't want to creep out your email recipients. ;)

Also add in smart content. This is content that shows one thing to one part of your audience and one thing to another. An example would be a Smart CTA -- your leads would see a CTA for talking to your sales reps and your customers would see one about getting tickets to a customer-only event. Neither audience would want to see the other audience's CTA, so smart content will show only the right CTA to the right person.

Step 7: Choose your subject line and sender name.

Your audience may like different things, but we've found that having a sender name from a real person increased opens and clickthroughs. Try running an A/B test to see if it works for you, too. Whatever you choose, make sure it's something recognizable so recipients aren't confused as to why they're receiving your email.

Subject lines are a little trickier. Lots of things can help you put together a click-worthy subject line, including brevity and an immediately actionable value proposition. That being said, some really great marketing emails have been sent with the subject "Hey." Use the subject line best practices as a jumping-off point, then run your own A/B tests to see what your audience loves.

Step 8: Support your newsletter content with alt text and plain text.

At this point, you'll have the email pretty much ready to go. While going through the steps above, I'm guessing you forgot two absolutely crucial things (I know I forget them almost every time I make an email): the alt text and plain text.

Alt text is the text that appears when a picture isn't loaded. Since not all email providers load images properly, you have to make sure the alt text is there so your recipients know what they're looking at. If you're including a CTA that's an image, your conversion rates will definitely suffer without alt text.

Some email clients also won't display HTML properly, which is why you need to make sure your emails look great in plain text. Make sure the links are easy to click and that it's clear what the email is about without the photos.

Step 9: Make sure you're legally compliant.

Before you hit "Send," be sure that your emails are all good from a legal perspective. The two biggest laws you need to worry about? CAN-SPAM and GDPR.

CAN-SPAM requires that you have a footer in your email with your address and an easy way to unsubscribe from your emails if they don't want to receive them anymore.

GDPR is a similar but more comprehensive privacy law that passed in Europe in 2018, requiring (among other things) that email marketers only send newsletters to those people who have manually opted in to receive them. In other words, wherever on your website you collect email subscribers, you cannot automatically check the "opt-in" box for them if these recipients live in Europe. They must deliberately check this box themselves.

Step 10: Test different browsers and email providers.

Email providers don't all read email code the same way -- what looks fine on Gmail in Chrome will look terrible in Outlook, for example. So you need to test out emails in the most popular browsers and email providers.

If you have HubSpot, you can test emails for different providers in the tool. If you don't, check out Litmus, or create a bunch of fake email accounts and test everything manually.

Step 11: Send your email.

The moment of truth! Having made sure all your email recipients have subscribed to receive this email, and your email has all the branding and legal compliance it's worthy of, it's time to click send. Then, wait for the data to roll in.

Step 12: Analyze and iterate.

Fast-forward a few days: The data's in. How did your newsletter do? What do you do next?

Check to see how your email newsletter performed on the goals you set back in step one. See which parts of your email got the most clicks, and which parts of the newsletter contributed most to your goal. If you have closed-loop analytics, measuring this all will be pretty easy.

Once you have that data, you have a direction to go in for your next email newsletter send. Whether your next send is in a day, a week, a month, or a quarter, you'll have insights to make the next newsletter even better.

What other tips do you have for creating successful email newsletters? For more inspiration, check out these awesome newsletter examples.

[zipgrowth]

How Social Media Can Help Teach Good Writing

For all the hype Millennials get, nearly every K-12 student today is part of its successor generation—Gen Z—a group more plugged in and social than ever before. The internet is awash in surveys touting the inseparable connection between kids and technology.

I think students are reading and writing more than ever. Is it quality writing? Not all the time

Jeremy

According to one Common Sense Media report, on any given day, around 60 percent of teens use social media, spending an average of two hours on platforms like Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, all of which are having a big impact in the way they engage with the written word.

“I think students are reading and writing more than ever,” says Jeremy Hyler, an eighth-grade English teacher at Fulton Middle School in Michigan. “Is it quality writing? Not all the time.”

Hyler has co-authored two books including “From Texting to Teaching: Grammar Instruction in a Digital Age,” and has made it his mission to immerse himself in the platforms, rules of conduct and digital argot that comprise the communication habits of a generation where efficiency, humor and graphic media are given priority over formal grammar.

Naturally, social media plays a big part in Hyler’s writing instruction. He acknowledges that a lot of the writing that students do these days is informal and social, and thus today’s writing instruction must focus on teaching students how to artfully master both registers.

“I tell them, ‘I respect the fact that you write in these informal spaces, but I want you to understand that there are these formal spaces you need to learn how to write in as well,” he says. “So let’s mix them together and talk about them both.”

Even in middle school, Hyler still sees students struggle with concepts such as proper capitalization and tone, as they navigate between texting with friends and crafting essays or emails to adults.

“It’s a process. It does not happen overnight,” Hyler says. “But it’s like learning how to write an argument for the SAT. The more they practice it, the better they get. They see the different spaces and learn how to differentiate between them.”

Making it explicit may help. Five years ago, Hyler created a grammar template in Google Slides to teach concepts like complex sentences. Using a mentor text from the curriculum, students analyze a sentence and recreate it for various media and audiences.

An example of Jeremy Hyler's social media grammar template

Recently, Hyler’s class read middle-school staple, “The Outsiders” and adapted a sentence for Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, email and Google Docs. Afterward, they talked about what a complex sentence might look like on each platform. “Students like it better than having a worksheet that’s boring or repetitive, and because I’m not saying you have to get rid of writing informally,” Hyler says.

The exercise also gives students a chance to explore their creativity as both a writer and a user of social media. To illustrate the complexity of the sentence, “one student used a pic of a Rubic’s Cube, because a Rubic’s Cube is complex,” Hyler says. “I never would have thought of that. I’m thinking of something like a wiring system for an internet network—that’s complex to me.”

The Power of Brevity

When you think of writing on social media, it’s natural to think of the informal tweets and status updates we shoot off every day. But that’s a limited view ignoring all the more formal writing we do for wider audiences on sites like Amazon, Yelp and Airbnb. Literacy consultant Maggie Roberts refers to this type of writing as our “review culture,” and says schools can teach students to approach their writing in these spaces not just as reviewers and consumers—but as writers.

“There’s a real opportunity there to teach the power of brevity—how to say big things with only a few characters,” says Roberts, a former staff developer for the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University. “How do we want to approach word choice or talk about syntax and clarity of voice? It’s a powerful and productive place to teach those concepts of writing.”

Like Hyler, Roberts believes that teachers can take a page from the narrative signatures on each social platform to strengthen student’s writing skills and personal voice. On Twitter, students can use viral tweets as mentor sentences, breaking them apart to discover what made them so popular. Instagram and Twitter, which let users pair images and short videos alongside minimal text to convey ideas, offer a new take on creative writing.

In particular, she points to the work of Chicago teacher Gregory Michie, whose work with students mixes written text with hand-drawn artwork, video and music. “All of that is storytelling,” Roberts says. “It’s the whole blend of images and words—it’s quick little videos or snapshots. That is a story that a writer is telling.”

Of course, there’s still a place for longform essays and formal writing, and strong writing instruction will effectively incorporate both, she says. “Instead of ditch that and teach micro writing, it’s more of an and you can teach micro writing,” Roberts says. “It’s an extension.”

Learning Like Students

In her role as a literacy consultant, Roberts often leads groups of writing teachers in professional development workshops where she encourages teachers to try the writing assignments they assign to students for themselves. But first she has them examine the role formal and informal language plays in their own writing.

“I have the teachers break out their phones and examine the last few texts they sent,” Roberts says. “The goal is to have them figure out: ‘Who was your audience? Where was your conventional language? Your more conventional shorthand?’ Getting teachers really curious about how they engage in those platforms is a really nice first step.”

After that, teachers can consider how they might teach digital writing in their classrooms. “The best advice I can give is to respect the students space, but bring it into their classroom,” Hyler says. Tech adverse teachers may struggle at first, he admits, although even that can turn into an opportunity for learning.

“If you’re unsure of how that lesson would go, learn alongside your students,” Hyler suggests. “Have them show you how they’re writing and ask them questions: ‘Why are you writing that way?’ There’s a lot of power in that.”

How Social Media Can Help Teach Good Writing published first on http://ift.tt/2x05DG9

[onaudiopost]

Becoming a Full-Time Podcast Producer

Myths and Legends is a podcast that retells folklore and fables from a modern-day perspective. Still as faithful to the original stories as possible, they’re narrated with dry wit and an often deservingly incredulous tone.

“The original Beauty and the Beast story has, of course, monkey butlers with parrots strapped to their heads...so they can talk to you. I'm not joking at all. It's amazing,” reads one episode’s description.

Its first episode released in April 2015, Myths and Legends is downloaded over 2.5 million times every month, and all together, Bardic podcasts (Myths’ parent media company) have been downloaded over 35 million times worldwide. Behind the success of the podcast is Bardic co-founder Carissa Weiser, as well as her husband and co-founder Jason Weiser. Since starting Myths, they’ve expanded to produce two other regularly occurring podcasts: Who We Are and Fictional.

Not bad for a two-person operation.

Carissa, a former audiology professor at the University of Cincinnati, was kind enough to share her path from professor to full-time podcast producer, what her typical day looks like creating and promoting the show, and some of the biggest challenges she faces along the way.

“Clinical audiology felt like work, but producing podcasts feels like I get to be the Bob Ross of audio every day.” —Carissa Weiser

Tell me about your journey from audiologist and professor to full-time podcast producer.

At first glance, audiology and podcast production look like separate worlds. Call it pivoting, a career do-over, or a complete break. But to me, going from audiologist and professor to full-time podcast producer is all forward motion. I am in my current role today because of my overall background—all of it.

Our first podcast, Myths and Legends, began in 2015 as my husband’s hobby while I was working as a clinical audiologist. It was a concept we honed after realizing it didn’t currently exist. A full year passed between idea and actually publishing the intro, and we didn’t start with the intention of going full-time. Jason asked where the best sound space in our house was to record Episode 1, and I suggested the car. After all, it’s like a sound booth covered mostly with carpet that’s designed to block out noise.

I’ve always loved to write, and eventually I found myself editing episode scripts and helping storyboard future topics. One day, I asked Jason if he was open to me taking a look at his sound settings and maybe tweaking a few things. My involvement with the podcast grew and grew, and somehow I was working 50+ hours a week as a professor by day and staying up til 2:00am every night to produce the weekly show.

Finally, we realized that was just not sustainable. By then, we had founded Bardic, our little media company, and we had so many ideas for additional podcasts and content. So something had to give, and we had a decision to make: stay in audiology and not be able to expand...or take a risk and plunge full-time into the world of podcasting where the sky is the limit but the risk is just as great.

I remember telling family, friends, colleagues, and students that I was leaving audiology for a podcast producer gig. Reactions were varied, but I felt then what I still feel to this day: going full-time in podcasting was the right decision and a job seemingly made for me.

What did you do as an audiologist?

Broadly speaking, I diagnosed and treated patients with hearing loss of all kinds, tinnitus (such as ringing or buzzing in your ears when there’s no external sound), and dizziness related to the ear and human auditory system. The bulk of my clinical experience is from the Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center and at the university level, though I’ve rotated through nearly every clinical environment imaginable throughout my eight year road to a doctorate.

The job itself was one part anatomy and physiology, one part science of sound, and one part ever-changing technology (digital hearing aids, cochlear implants, electrophysiology), all packaged in 100 percent human interaction and empathy.

In other words, for a very long time, my world was psychoacoustics, sound waves, polar plots, speech perception, filters, speech in noise ratios, etc. I’ve brought all of that to the audio narratives I design.

I spent years customizing digital sound for individuals, and so I understand how shaping audio can either bring a world to life or close a person out of an experience completely. To me, I’m still using my core audiology training—I’m just applying it with different tools now.

Describe your day-to-day as a podcast producer.

My day is never boring. We usually start with a status update on all the episodes to make sure we’re meeting deadlines. At any given time, we’re monitoring this week’s episode, mixing the next, editing scripts for the following, and storyboarding a couple weeks after that. I spend just as much time on the steps leading up to sound mixing as I do putting the final narrative together. I can’t stress enough how important having the right content matters in combination with high audio quality for building an engaging audio narrative.

With an indie podcast like ours, we’re also doing social media, writing back to listeners, shipping merch, and writing episode posts.

Essentially, my day is editing and revising scripts, directing re-records, going through raw audio files, mixing multiple audio tracks into the perfect story, and business logistics.

What are some of the biggest challenges of your job?

One challenge is that there are no breaks in what I do, no “sick” days. While I have no set hours, we work around some very real deadlines.

Another big challenge is crafting a compelling audio narrative week after week. It’s a balancing act between understanding the tone of the script, the mood we want to set, and the audio tricks we can use (including the use of silence) to build the right ambiance.

But that also presents my biggest audio challenge in podcasting: maintaining audibility across uncontrolled listening situations. Everyone listens on different sound systems, in different environments, and with different degrees of hearing sensitivity. This means that background music may be too loud for one person but inaudible for another, or the same speech sample too tinny, just right, and unclear for three separate listeners. This is different than simply loudness-matching tracks because it also depends on the listener’s environment and ability to hear—things beyond my control. So what can I do?

There’s no way to control if someone listens over headphones, earphones, or soundfield speakers, in their car on the highway, in a living room at home, or a small office. Are they focused on the show or listening while doing something else? Hearing sensitivity (and type/ degree of hearing loss), level of sound attenuation in the room, type of speaker/sound system, and properties of existing background noise all play a huge part in sound perception, especially when there are no visual cues involved. So in addition to song choices, scripts, prosody, setting the mood, and the overall sound of each episode, I try to make choices that enhance overall audibility, too.

With storytelling via podcast, the challenge is both artistic and technical, and that’s why I enjoy it. In the end, the highest compliment I receive is when listeners write in to tell me they had goosebumps, they shed a tear, or they laughed out loud during an episode. That emotional response tells me that what they heard was powerful and immersive enough to move them, and that’s everything.

The most enjoyable moments?

In all seriousness, my work doesn’t feel like work. I did the 10-hour shifts, 2-hour commutes, triple-booked patient schedule for hours on end in the past. Clinical audiology felt like work, but producing podcasts feels like I get to be the Bob Ross of audio every day.

It’s fun to be a part of such a growing medium in general. In some ways, there are no limitations to what you can create, and that’s exciting.

The best moments, though, are hearing from listeners about how our projects have made a specific difference in their lives. When I read those emails, I know that we’re creating something more than just entertainment.

For part-time podcasters who aspire to produce them full-time, what advice would you give?

Remember that in the ways that count, you already are doing a piece of what you aspire to do. If we look at “going full-time” as a different island altogether—a distant place we’d like to be someday—rather than an enhancement of where we are now, it denies the power of what you can produce at this very moment. Now is the time to start pushing yourself to make the best audio experience you can every time.

When we first started, we didn’t have the best equipment, the ideal space, the flexibility of time, or the experience that we do now. We did, however, make each and every episode better than the last by treating each one like a million dollar gig. Sure, I cringe at some of those early episodes now, but I think that’s normal.

What tools—hardware or software—are essential to you as a podcast producer?

At a minimum, I need a microphone and a computer. The key, though, is having a good workflow for post-processing. Software that can analyze my audio files and smooth out sibilants, plosives, mouth clicks, and breaths is an absolute necessity, especially when time is so precious.

What have you learned about podcasting from other podcast producers? Who influences you and why?

To be honest, I’m influenced most by audiology and conversations with cartoonists, illustrators, and graphic novelists I’ve met through our third podcast, Who We Are. These are artists with unique perspectives on storytelling and creativity on demand. Tom Manning is a Yale-trained graphic novelist who shared a lot about using illustration and text in unique ways to create a complete narrative. The drawings alone or the words alone don’t give you what the complete frame communicates, and I try to do the same thing with scripts and audio design.

Do you think podcasting can be for everyone, or is it a niche industry?

There are some impressive stats out there that indicate huge growth, but it's a very specific medium. With the right concept, the sky is the limit in podcasting. The idea of low barrier to entry is partly because it’s not hard to find a mic, hit record, and start a podcast these days. However, as the novelty of anyone being able to create and publish an episode starts to wear off and major companies continue to enter the scene with branded and paywalled content, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for new, independent podcasts to be discovered among the crowd.

That said, in the great banquet hall of podcasting, there are countless seats still available at the table. The technical side is something nearly anyone can learn. From my experience, it’s really the content, the idea, and the passion to produce something consistently that makes the bigger difference. If you have something unique to say and the dedication to put in the required work, there’s an audience waiting for you.

Jad Abumrad said of podcasts, "My only prediction is that some way, the quality will always rise to the top.” What makes a quality podcast?

A quality podcast has a way of making us forget that we’re listening to a podcast at all. For me, this comes down to both content and audio quality. Content depends on podcast genre; a scripted storytelling show with a single narrator has to be tightly written with enough twists to maintain interest, a conversational show has to truly feel intimate, and so on.

The unifying factor for quality podcasts, though, is great sounding audio that isn’t overly tasking to process. If it’s too much work to focus on the speech signal, whether due to the speech-in-noise ratio, a poor audio recording, or a host of other reasons, the end audio quality can become distracting. So, it might mean greater effort on our part to manage background noise, control multitrack loudness, and account for auditory fatigue. It’s also attention to processing (but not over-processing) sibilants, plosives, and overall speech to improve audibility and create an acoustic scene that matches your content.

When all of these elements hang tightly together on a consistent basis, you end up with a quality podcast that maintains faithful listeners and consistently attracts new subscribers—not because of self-promotion or the best social media rollout plan—but because it’s a quality product. Period.

[patriotsnet]

Is Economy Better Under Democrats Or Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/is-economy-better-under-democrats-or-republicans/

Is Economy Better Under Democrats Or Republicans

Democratic Presidents Are Better For The Stock Market And Economy Than Republicans One Study Shows

Contrary to popular belief, the stock market and economy have performed better under Democratic presidents than it has under Republican presidents, according to data going back to 1946.

Liberum, a UK-based investment bank, pointed to historical stock market returns and annual GDP growth to make the case that a Republican president’s drive to cut taxes and reduce government spending often leads to lower economic expansion and stock market returns than when a Democratic president is in office.

Since 1947, the S&P 500 has posted a total annual return of 10.8% under Democratic presidents, versus 5.6% under Republican presidents.

And if you exclude the Great Recession and COVID-19 pandemic, both of which happened under a Republican president, the data still points to stronger returns for Democratic presidents versus Republican presidents.

Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

It’s a widely held view that Republican presidents are better for the economy and stock market than Democratic presidents, because of their drive to cut taxes and reduce government spending. But the data says otherwise.

According to an August 21 note from Liberum, a UK-based investment bank, historical stock market returns and gross domestic product data points to a stronger economic expansion under Democratic presidents than under Republican presidents.

Read more: RBC says buy these 48 stocks spanning every industry that are poised to crush the market if Donald Trump wins reelection

Bush Was The Last President To Inherit A Budget Surplus And Started Running A Deficit Obama Cut It Though Trump Ran Bigger Ones As A Result Of His Tax Cuts And The Federal Response To The Pandemic

The federal deficit is the gap between tax revenue and federal spending. During periods of growth, the deficit tends to shrink because government spending on safety net benefits lessens.

Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion for fiscal year 2001. It was the last time the US had money left over. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a series of tax cuts, erased it and increased the deficit.

Obama ran large deficits to end the Great Recession, passing an $830 billion stimulus package in 2009. He later cut the deficit over half by the time he left office.

Similar to Obama and Bush, Trump has also relied on deficit spending. It widened by $1.5 trillion with the passage of the 2017 GOP tax cuts, contrary to the administration’s claims that the law would pay for itself.

The pandemic, however, prompted $3 trillion in federal spending many economists say was needed to address the public health and economic crises.

Does The Economy Do Better Under Democrats Or Republicans

In the rough and tumble of presidential campaigns — rougher this year than ever before — facts are sometimes lost in the debate. But one fact that voters should keep in mind — one that is incontrovertible — is that the U.S. economy performs better under Democratic presidents than Republican ones.

Conservatives have long claimed that they are better stewards of the economy. Most recently, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump promised to be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” They have repeated these claims so relentlessly and with such confidence that millions of Americans believe them to be true. The record shows otherwise.

Research from Princeton University economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson finds that, since World War II, the economy has performed substantially better by virtually every measure when Democrats have been in the White House. GDP growth, job creation and industrial production have all been stronger during Democratic administrations than during Republican ones.

As the Ranking Member of the Joint Economic Committee, I asked my staff to review the Blinder and Watson findings. They were able to update and build on the economists’ analysis and found that on average since World War II, real GDP has grown about 1.6 times faster and private-sector jobs have grown nearly 2.5 times faster under Democrats than Republicans.

Let’s let the real debate over the economy begin.

Which Presidents Have Delivered The Best Stock Returns So Far Democrats Are Dominating

According to Siegel, author of the 1994 investment classic Stocks For The Long Run, Wall Streets obsession with politics is mostly misplaced: Bull markets and bear markets come and go, and its more to do with business cycles than presidents. In some ways the current environment has characteristics of the existential threat faced by George W. Bush post-2001 , the civil unrest that plagued the Johnson and Nixon administrations and Ronald Reagans trade war with Japan in the 1980s. 

In an effort to more closely examine the relationship between the actions of a president and the direction of stocks, Forbes has analyzed their stock market performances, including dividends, dating back to Harry Truman. Using data from the National Bureau of Economic Research , weve also noted for each president the number of expansions and recessions that began during their tenures. In some cases like the presidency of Bill Clinton, who was in office during one of the most impressive periods of economic prosperity in history, you won’t see an expansion listed. Thats because credit is awarded to the president who was in office during its inception, which in this case was George H.W. Bush. We also included the ratio of gross federal debt to GDP for the final year of each presidency.

Presidential portraits courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration

Donating = Changing Economics And Changing The World

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Whos Better For The Economy: Democrats Or Republicans

Who does a better job at managing the American economy: Democrats or Republicans?

Whose policies help the country and whose policies hurt it? Who should get credit when things are going well and who should take the blame when the economy slips?

But before we use the EPI to answer the question, we have to figure out how to measure the problem. It is impossible to break down every piece of legislation to see how it affected the performance of the overall economy. We can examine a few key policies, but that doesnt really answer whether one political party does a better job altogether; it only sheds light on that particular piece of legislationone small piece of a very big puzzle.

So how do we measure the effectiveness of one partys politics?

Do Dems Run The Economy Better Nope

Its a Democratic campaign consultants dream: a study from two respected academic economists concluding that, since the late 1940s, the economy has consistently performed better under Democratic presidents than under Republican ones. The gap is huge. From 1949 to 2013 a period when the White House was roughly split between parties the economy grew at an average annual rate of 3.33 percent, but growth under Democratic presidents averaged 4.35 percent and under Republicans, 2.54 percent. Jobs, stocks and living standards all advanced faster under Democrats.

Not surprisingly, one of the reports authors is a well-known Democratic economist, Alan Blinder, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve now at Princeton University; the other author, Mark Watson, also at Princeton, is a highly regarded scholar of economic statistics who describes himself as nonpartisan. More interesting, Blinder and Watson dont credit the Democratic advantage to superior policies.

Democrats would no doubt like to attribute the large growth gap to macroeconomic policy choices, but the data do not support such a claim, they write. Most economists, they note, doubt presidents can control the economy.

So if presidents didnt do it, who or what did? Blinder and Watson march through economic studies. Their conclusion: About half of the Democrats advantage reflected good luck favorable outside events or trends. Three dominate.

Conservatives Love To Tout Their Economic Bona Fides But The Data Reveal A Far Different Story

As the 2016 election cycle heats up, the key question at stake for most Americans is economic growth and jobs. The debate, then, will center around what to do with the fragile recovery that overwhelmingly benefits the rich; the stagnation of middle class incomes; and unemployment — which, particularly for young people of color, remains dispiritingly high.

The right likes to argue that these conditions mark a clear failure of progressive policies, and in particular of the Obama administration. In the process, they reject policies that have, however imperfect, unequivocally strengthened the economy over the past seven years, such as the stimulus packages that came in response to the economic crisis.

Meanwhile, while conservatives often claim that their policies are good for the middle class, systematic studies by economists, political scientists and sociologists suggest these claims are overblown.

Economic Growth

At the heart of the question is economic growth: Which party is better at delivering it?

While economic growth alone is not sufficient for middle class and working class income growth, it is certainly necessary. The most systematic investigation of how parties affect economic growth was performed by economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson. Their results are unequivocal:

Inequality

The chart below suggests this effect is driven by both market conditioning and redistribution .

Unemployment

Taxes

Race

So Democrats Are Worse

We look at the differences in economic scores between Democrats and Republicans and judge it to be a draw. The Democrats score may reflect that they had to manage the economy under difficult circumstances, including the Great Depression and the Great Recession. Then again, Republicans enjoyed a booming economy during the Roaring Twenties and the late 90s. If we could control for those shocks, we might find the two parties positions switched. Moreover, our approach cannot establish causality . All we can view is the correlation .However, we could use a regression analysis to look for time connections between one party coming to power and the subsequent performance of the economy. This approach would actually allow us to look for empirical causality. We wanted to isolate economic policies from exogenous shocks, so that we were truly comparing apples to apples. Democrats would not be docked for the Great Depression and WWII, while the Republicans would not get a boost from globalization, etc.

To do this, we subtracted the smoothed trend from the EPI scores. Then, we conducted a regression of the EPI deviation from its trend against the IPP.

This way, there could be no disputing whether the economy was up or down because of factors beyond the respective partys control.

Our regression analysis found no statistically significant causality. Which is fine and happens often.

Diversify Into Real Estate

Stock market performance has been strong over time. The same can be said for real estate. Given interest rates have come way down, the value of rental income and cash flow have gone way up. Therefore, Im personally buying multifamily properties and rental properties for capital appreciation and income. Stocks also tend to be more volatile than real estate.

One of the best ways to invest in real estate is through real estate crowdfunding. My favorite two real estate crowdfunding platforms are:

Fundrise: A way for accredited and non-accredited investors to diversify into real estate through private eREITs. Fundrise has been around since 2012 and has consistently generated steady returns, no matter what the stock market is doing.

CrowdStreet: A way for accredited investors to invest in individual real estate opportunities mostly in 18-hour cities. 18-hour cities are secondary cities with lower valuations, higher rental yields. They also have potentially higher growth due to job growth and demographic trends.

Ive personally invested $810,000 in real estate crowdfunding since 2016 to diversify my investments. Its nice to earn income 100% passively as I spend more time taking care of my children. 

Filed Under: Investments

I spent 13 years working at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse. In 1999, I earned my BA from William & Mary and in 2006, I received my MBA from UC Berkeley.

Current recommendations:

The Index Of Political Power

It stands to reason that the more policy-making positions one party holds, the more policies that party will implement. If one party controls a majority of Congress, for example, then more of that partys policies will likely get passed than the other partys. Therefore, we could measure how many positions each party held, and then use that as a proxy to assume that more of that partys ideas were being enacted.

Obviously, such a measure should include the legislative bodies of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Since the president signs or vetoes legislation into law, that position should be included, too. Even though the Supreme Court can overturn a law, we should not include the judicial body. Many of its decisions are related to social policies rather than economic ones; its impact on the economy, as far as this Index is concerned, is negligible.

However, there is another area outside of legislative control that we should include in this proxy measure: the monetary policy. As we explained earlier, the countrys monetary stance is a critical component of the economys performance. But Congress does not control monetary policythe Federal Reserve does. By tradition, the Fed follows the decisions of its chairman. In effect, the nations monetary policy is determined by one individual. Logically, then, we should include the political party of this position, too.

our Index of Political Power

Recessions And The White House

The statement by Occupy Democrats runs from the Ronald Reagan presidency, which began in January 1981, to the present.

But by using the phrase “has overseen” in connection with a recession, the statement is less than precise as to whether it refers to a recession that began during a president’s term or whether he has had to deal with a recession in his time in office.

Likewise, applying the phrase “has overseen” to a strong recovery by the Democrats leaves it unclear as to whether the statement means a president started the recovery or inherited an ongoing recovery, as President Donald Trump did from President Barack Obama. 

The interpretation of the phrase “has overseen” complicates the process of fact-checking it. Obama inherited a recession from Bush II that began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, according to NBER, the longest economic downturn since World War II.

Under that Reagan-to-Trump timeline, the Republican presidencies had four recessions start in their terms: one each under Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and two under George W. Bush. By contrast, Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had zero.

With the economic downturn created by the coronavirus pandemic, a recession is likely to be declared after the latest GDP data is released, sometime in July. We may be in one now, but it has not been deemed official.

Wages Grew Steadily Under Bush And Slowed Under Obama They Started Picking Up Again Under Trump But The Pandemic’s Impact Skewed This Year’s Data

Wage growth is usually a good indicator of how much the economy is benefiting average workers. But the chart above illustrates the shortfalls of relying too much on a single metric given the devastation that the pandemic has caused.

Wage gains were steady for most of the Bush administration, ranging between 2% and 4% each year. Then it took a hit during the Great Recession, and wage growth was anemic for much of the Obama presidency.

The initial years of the Trump presidency coincided with a rise in wages as the economy expanded and employers competed to hire workers. They grew above 3% starting in 2018. 

Millions of low-wage workers were sidelined in the early months of the pandemic, while many higher-wage white collar workers were able to continue working remotely.

It artificially dragged up the average wage for those still able to work, according to an analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. It’s expected to drop as more hourly workers regain their jobs.

  Want A Better Economy Elect A Democratic President

I enjoyed David Leonhardts opinion piece in the New YorkTimes today including graphic evidence that the econmomy performed better under Democratic presidents for the last century.

A president has only limited control over the economy. And yet there has been a stark pattern in the United States for nearly a century. The economy has grown significantly faster under Democratic presidents than Republican ones.

Its true about almost any major indicator: gross domestic product, employment, incomes, productivity, even stock prices. Its true if you examine only the precise period when a president is in office, or instead assume that a presidents policies affect the economy only after a lag and dont start his economic clock until months after he takes office. The gap holds almost regardless of how you define success, two economics professors at Princeton, Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, write. They describe it as startlingly large.

Accompanying graphics tell the story, with a couple shown here.

My dad, a yellow-dog Democrat stockbroker in southern Louisiana, preached this to me until his dying day. His evidence was only anecdotal, of course, but very tangible.

The Historical Precedent For Job Gains Is Mixed

The economy didn’t substantially add jobs early on in Bush’s presidency. But it started picking up until the 2008 financial crisis.

The Obama administration moved to stem those job losses early on in his term, and the economy stabilized in 2010. With the recovery underway, employers added jobs, coming out to an average of 224,000 gains per month in Obama’s last three years.

Job growth during the Trump presidency had mostly matched its pace under Obama before 2020. In the first three years up to February, the economy added 182,000 jobs monthly on average.

But pandemic-related job losses left a crater in the economy. Many experts say it will take several years for the labor market to recover from the blow.

Everyone Does Better When The Presidents A Democrat

The numbers dont lie. The question is why every Democrat isnt talking about this all the time.

Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast/Getty

Our two political parties have certain identities that are seared into our collective public brain. Democrats: the party of workers, of civil rights, of compassion and fairness, and of higher taxes and more regulation. Republicans: party of the rich, big business , the free market, and lower taxes and less regulation.

And because the GOP is the party of big business, it is universally assumed that Republicans are better at handling the economy. Polls typically find that people trust Democrats more on all the things that government does, which stands to reason, but trust Republicans more on handling the economy. Just last week I saw a poll in which respondents rated Biden as better equipped than Trump to handle race relations, the virus response, and two or three other things; but on the economy, Trump bested Biden 51-46.

Its hard wired, and its wrong. Dead wrong.

Simon Rosenberg heads , a liberal think tank and advocacy organization. He has spent years advising Democrats, presidents included, on how to talk about economic matters. Not long ago, he put together a little PowerPoint deck. It is fascinating. You need to know about it. The entire country needs to know about it. 

The deck consists of about 15 slides, but Ill walk you through just six so you get the idea. Lets start with job creation under each president:

Financial Planning Under President Joe Biden

With Joe Biden as president, financial planning comes full circle. I retired under President Obama and I plan to retire again under Joe Biden.

Because the Democrats have control of both houses and the presidency, more taxes will be passed. There will also be more spending to help all citizens. As a result, I plan to take things down a notch once I get vaccinated or once taxes go up, whichever comes first.

Im tired of the hustle during the pandemic. Instead, I want to spend my money and live it up more. I think everybody is.

Luckily for investors, stocks and real estate have performed well during the pandemic. Therefore, we have an even larger cushion to live our lives as freely as possible.

Biden Versus Trump Some Speculate That The Future Of The Republic Hinges On The Outcome Of The Next Election But For Smart Investors It Doesn’t Really Matter Who Wins

Conventional wisdom says that those liberal Dems are generally bad for the economy and the stock market because of their big government tendencies, while fiscally conservative Republicans are good. This widely accepted belief is actually fake news if you look at data going back to the end of World War II.

Stock markets do perform better under Democrats than under Republicans. Thats a well-known fact, but it does not imply cause and effect, says Jeremy Siegel, the Russell E. Palmer Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. From 1952 through June 2020, annualized real stock market returns under Democrats have been 10.6% compared with 4.8% for Republicans. 

With the 2020 election less than four months away, some investors are fretting about the pros and cons of a Trump vs. Biden presidency. A Democratic sweep would almost certainly mean a rollback of Trumps massive corporate tax cut , but additional economic stimulus and stability on the China trade front would be a big positive. 

Clinton: Economy Better Under Democrats

Hillary Clinton says the U.S. economy does better with a Democrat in the White House, citing research by two Princeton economists. But the authors of that report do not credit Democratic fiscal policies for the economic growth.

In fact, the authors say our empirical analysis does not attribute any of the partisan growth gap to fiscal or monetary policy.

Clinton has made the claim numeroustimes in recent weeks usually in the context of her economic plan, as she did during the first Democratic debate.

Clinton, Oct. 13: I have a five-point economic plan, because this inequality challenge we face, we have faced it at other points. Its absolutely right. It hasnt been this bad since the 1920s. But if you look at the Republicans versus the Democrats when it comes to economic policy, there is no comparison. The economy does better when you have a Democrat in the White House and thats why we need to have a Democrat in the White House in January 2017.

Clinton expounded on that talking point the following day during a speech in Las Vegas.

When we asked for backup, the Clinton campaign  pointed us to academic research by two Princeton economists titled, Presidents and the U.S. Economy: An Econometric Exploration. The authors, Alan S. Blinder and Mark W. Watson, concluded after researching an array of economic statistics that the economy has performed much better when a Democrat is president than when a Republican is.

Why Does The Us Economy Perform Better Under Democrats Than Republicans

Since Carter, no Democratic President has had a recession begin on their watch. At the same time, no Republican President including the single term Presidents has gotten through their time in the White House without a recession.

Despite the widely held belief that Republicans are better at managing the economy than Democrats, the history of the United States economy tells a different story. In nearly every metric one might use to measure performance, Democratic presidents have presided over greater economic growth.

Strikingly, this is not even by a slight margin. According to a paper published in 2013 by Princeton economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, the performance gap is startlingly large so much so that it strains credulity, given how little influence over the economy most economists assign to the President of the United States.

The pair suggests that this is not due to time sensitive matters or partisan fiscal or monetary policy. Instead, they attribute this gap in large part to benign oil shocks, superior TFP performance, and more optimistic consumer expectations.

In short, they chalk it up to one part luck, another part self-fulfilling prophecy whereby consumers anticipate the economy will flourish under a Democratic leader and then drive the economy upward and a third part thats, well, a mystery.

Still, they say that it is highly unlikely that the D-R growth gap was just luck.

[nazih-fares]

Five years after the final controversial Mass Effect 3 episode, Bioware’s Sci-Fi RPG is aiming for a comeback and its first launch on the latest console generation. A brand new galaxy to visit, with revamped mechanics and new narrative system, the franchise gets a new look with Mass Effect Andromeda and tries to do what most “reboots” do in the industry: to not disappoint its fan base while attracting newcomers to the series. The question here is simple: is it a success?

Before we start, it is necessary to give you a bit of narrative context of Mass Effect Andromeda especially for those that didn’t play the original trilogy. The singularity of the adventure experienced by each player during the first three Mass Effect forces Bioware here to find a way out of the trilogy, without having to decide among a string of choices and possible options like it did in Dragon Age Inquisition. Instead, Bioware created the concept of the Initiative, an organization with a single goal to provide a new home for humanity and its allied Milky Way Alien species (Asari, Krogan, Turian, Salarian), by colonizing potential “golden” planets in Andromeda galaxy. Thus began a 600-year journey thanks to Cryogenic sleep, where each major Milky Way race was put in stasis throughout the long journey, before reaching Andromeda. This is how your adventure begins, in the skin of a newly awoken human colonist (Ryder will be your family name, whether you choose the default male/female names, or edit your own), which you can, like all other Mass Effect, design from scratch at the start of the game.

Mass Effect Andromeda is probably the franchise entry with less oomph than the iconic adventures of Commander Shepard, which you can feel directly within the early hours of playing the game. Slow-paced and unattractive, they put us in command of a group of characters that have the heavy burden of arriving after the brilliant team that was in the original Mass Effect trilogy. Thankfully after a few hours, the first story trigger reminds us to recall memorable moments of the Mass Effect saga, and soon discover that Mass Effect Andromeda is also a more joyful Mass Effect game, pitting us against new enemies, with uncharted territories and unknown Alien races to discover, that ends on well-paced and convincing final chapters, but leaves us with many questions unanswered. Is that a sign that Mass Effect Andromeda is laying the stones of a new trilogy or multiple-episodic adventure? Probably, and I highly doubt it won’t. In any case, without spoiling the story for any of you, Mass Effect Andromeda is a game that starts slow, but ends up having a proper pace within couple of hours, reminding us why we love the series, and will take you anything between 20 to up to 60 hours if you take the time to carry out all the side missions and tasks (estimated based on my current playthrough).

Mass Effect Andromeda’s success is all thanks to its universe and lore which is still as captivating and interesting as it was in the original trilogy. The iconic elements that made the series are reused again so as not to disturb the fans, and so the Nexus acts as a new Citadel, the Tempest replaces the Normandy ship and even the Mako Land Rover from the first Mass Effect returns in a new design and name as the Nomad. The overall structure of Mass Effect Andromeda meets the typical specification of the saga, which will make you chain long dialogues with multiple choice, exploration of planets, lots of return to the Nexus but also events and relationship building on the Tempest. Like Mass Effect 2, and in contrast to the third episode that is more stingy on this point, Mass Effect Andromeda decided to make us live more events that deepens the relationship between the characters on the ship, whether it is through sidequests (which are sometimes fun and refreshing) or simple exchange of dialogues between Ryder and the other crew members. The result is very convincing and even compensate in part the lack of charisma of most new characters, especially for those that got used to Garrus, Liara and others from the original trilogy.

Mass Effect Andromeda like every previous title offers a great load of missions and quests to do. If Bioware has not skimmed on quantity, it must be recognized that the quality of the latter varies greatly. You should know that a lot of effort was put into the writing and the overall narration of these missions, which avoids at any time to see you inherit a task without knowing the reason behind it. Similarly, a handful of lighter and shorter quests help you “chill” a bit between major chapters of the story, bring a bit of freshness to the whole ensemble, while others, more copious, can have an impact – although often minimal – on your main story mission. But like previous Mass Effect game, there’s still so many fetch and deliver sidequests, and an abuse of the scanner ability in missions, even if it has further usefulness which I’ll talk about more later on.

The more interesting missions are generally those at the core of the narrative axes of colonizable planets, which percentage of viability makes it possible to evaluate your influence on them. To boost this viability number, you will have to venture on the surface of these semi-open worlds with the Nomad. The latter can be improved throughout the game to facilitate your navigation and has two configurations, depending on whether you are looking to climb steep trails or to speed through clear terrain. On that note, the planets are less generic than the large empty areas of the first Mass Effect, and Andromeda playgrounds are more carefully designed, playing effectively between large deserted areas and dense populated areas for missions and enemies, as well even the game’s version of dungeons which are called Vaults. In the end, there’s so much to do on each of the five planets that can be colonized in the Andromeda galaxy, done by clearing important missions, field analysis, exploration of vaults, clean-up areas from hazardous environments, optimize local outposts, and more to reach a 100% viability level.

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While the roleplaying part of the Mass Effect series was gradually toned down in favor of a more pronounced action-based gameplay, you’ll be happy to know that Mass Effect Andromeda actually puts its RPG core first, while dusting off the rest to make it a more dynamic gameplay. The difference is as noticeable in combat as it is during your travels, as our main character now has a jetpack sort of booster, which helps him take longer jumps but also can be used in fights as a way to strafe away from danger. These new gameplay elements singularly changes the fights which are more exciting and dynamic, yet still requires you to smartly use cover like the previous games. The new automatic cover system struggled to convince me initially, but was finally much more enjoyable over time as I got used to it.

When it comes to combat tools, all major weapons and powers of the series are back in the game, but the latter have been revamped to offer more variety of playing style. Level progression is once again done thanks to a skill tree, where you spend points in each talent branch, as extensive as the original Mass Effect. On top of that, Bioware decided to add even more depth, with something called profiles, which are activated and upgraded depending on how you distribute your skill points on the talent tree, and activate some extra bonuses, rather than forcing you to pick one distinct class at the start of the game and end up stuck with it until the end. These profiles are very similar to the classes for the original trilogy, and range from Soldier, Engineer, Adept, Sentinel, Vanguard to Infiltrator, plus a new jack of all trades profile called Explorer. Each profile (which can be switched instantly even during combat) has its weaknesses and positive traits, which can be either extra weapon damage percentage if you’re using the Soldier profile, or even turn temporary invisible when dodging properly as an Infiltrator profile. On top of weapons, armor and improvements that can be equipped, the scanner now makes it possible to analyze different elements of the environment, whether it is fauna, flora, enemies, machinery, or anything else and accumulate research points to initiate technology research. Finally, it will be necessary to use minerals recovered via probes or mining systems, direct extraction on planets or from merchants against a few credits to create these newly designed or researched weapons, armors, and mods before equipping them on your character.

Sadly, the interface has some questionable ergonomics on that front, but the research and development system is easily tamed after a few hours and proves invaluable to improve your equipment, especially if you intend to complete the title on higher difficulties. Despite its problems of ergonomics, the entire interface is not as unpleasant as you would expect from a Bioware RPG, and can be handled at ease on the long run. Other options add to the title’s RPG elements, such as the management of strike teams that you can send on missions to gain additional resources, which reminds me a bit of the Assassin’s Creed III’s contract missions. These missions can be directly played via the multiplayer mode, which makes its return by using the basis of Mass Effect 3, or can be dealt with by the AI on its own with a real-life timer. On top of all that, the final RPG elements is in terms of the Nexus itself, which gains levels by colonizing planets, and allows you to unlock different military, commercial or scientific bonuses.

By abandoning its guided system ranging from the pragmatic character to the model of virtue that is the Paragon, Mass Effect Andromeda gets rid of a Manichaean system in favor of a new model of personality building according to your preferences. This system certainly suits the style of our character in this opus, but it is a bit disappointing when it comes to the consequences of our choices, which are more difficult to perceive, often masked by tricks and illusions of change. For example, one of our first core mission objectives allows us to choose between two different “path” for your colony outpost, which is either focus on a military or scientific objectives. This will then activate secondary quests, but there’s not really any major differences depending on your choice, except very basic dialogue lines. Sure, while the previous Mass Effect played an illusory part in this type of decision, the trilogy still offered a better balance between your choices and its real consequences on the game, your character and his crew. Wish it was the case, but in Mass Effect Andromeda, even choices that have a real influence on your team are rare, and I have a feeling that these consequences will only be visible in the longer term, in an upcoming and probable sequel.

Now that we’ve talked about most elements of the game, it’s time to discuss the biggest let-down of Mass Effect Andromeda which is on the technical front. Even within weeks of its launch, and after a bunch of updates, there’s so many collision, frame drop and even game crashing issues, without pointing out at facial animations that are very low standards in comparison to the previous Mass Effect games. Understandable in semi open-world planets where a lot of elements are loaded, but there’s even a lack of fluidity in enclosed areas (like the Nexus or your ship), which overall is unworthy of an AAA production. Strangely, none of these defects alone makes the game unplayable, but their number and regularity can annoy and break the immersion, and it’s the console users that suffer the most, especially on Xbox One. During the time I played, I sadly experienced a lot of these issues on my Xbox One (learned it’s the same as well on other consoles), and while even the progressive resolution system aims to reach an optimal frame rate cap of 30FPS, the game engine (which is Frostbite now instead of Unreal Engine) has difficulties to render in some instances, which are countered by an adaptive v-sync, which results in screen tears.

On PC, the performance is obviously dependent of your resources, and our testing machine is high-powered 8GB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1070 fitted on a 4th Generation Intel i7 4790 3.6Ghz CPU and topped with 16GB of RAM. For those of you that like to tinker with the settings and get the dials just right, Mass Effect Andromeda has you covered. The game handles ultrawide resolutions just fine, although the loading screens looked kind of strange. There’s also an FOV slider (a veritable must-have for PC gamers), although I was fine with the default setting.

In terms of graphics settings, the game offers four standard settings: low, medium, high, and ultra. Of course, if you want to change any of the specific settings within a preset, you’ll end up in ‘Custom’. ‘Ultra’ doesn’t actually max out the settings completely, as HBAO isn’t set as high as it’ll go. It goes without saying that you’ll need beefier hardware to hit those higher benchmarks. Once you scale your settings down, the game will automatically switch down your resolution, so be sure to disable resolution scaling if you want to keep higher resolution but switch out some settings.

The game’s higher resolution settings will need reasonably demanding hardware, as our GTX 1070 just barely managed 1440p, with some noticeable drops here and there. At 1080 FHD it managed remarkably, and I only recall a few fps drops throughout the game. In terms of visuals, FaceGate notwithstanding, the game manages to look incredible even on medium settings. The shadows, the AA, the textures – this is truly a masterpiece for the eyes. Just don’t focus on the actual eyes.

Even with all these technical issues, I cannot deny the fact that Mass Effect Andromeda is gorgeous in terms of artistic direction. Each planet, open zones, vaults and even the Nexus are gorgeously painted, and if you are lucky enough to have an HDR-compatible TV, do not hesitate to activate the option on your Xbox One S or PlayStation 4 Pro consoles to get that little pushed contrast that really pops the colors. In terms of sound effect and soundtracks, Bioware worked with John Paesano, better known for his recent work on Marvel’s Daredevil Netflix Original series. His compositions are in line with what was proposed in the original trilogy, perfectly accompanying the action, despite a less important presence of significant themes, and heavily influenced with the original Mass Effect with a nice blend of “space synth” and traditional orchestral work.

Mass Effect Andromeda was reviewed using an Xbox One digital code of the game purchased by the reviewer as well as a PC version of the game provided by EA Middle East. The main review was done on Xbox One by Nazih Fares while the PC version was tested by Mazen Abdallah on a PC running Windows 10, with an 8GB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1070 fitted on a 4th Generation Intel i7 4790 3.6Ghz CPU and topped with 16GB of RAM. The game is also available on PlayStation 4 in both digital and retail stores. We don’t discuss review scores with publishers or developers prior to the review being published.

Mass Effect Andromeda is neither a bad entry to the series, nor a title capable of reaching to the heights of the original trilogy. Five years after the final controversial Mass Effect 3 episode, Bioware's Sci-Fi RPG is aiming for a comeback and its first launch on the latest console generation.