#a way that fulfills the vision you have and actually makes the design appealing even if its abstract and super stylized

[cicadabite]

i don’t think a lot of ppl know what good font pairings look like. or what good font design looks like. but also who cares

[stevensavage]

The Cybertruck Tells Us What We Want

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve's Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Yes, I’m going to blog on Elon Musk’s Cybertruck and how it teaches us what people want. Buckle up, but avoid a crash because the doors will probably stick.

Now if you expect me to praise Elon Musk or the Cybertruck, then you’re new here. The Cybertruck is an ugly mess, a renegade PS1 asset turned into an overdesigned and overhyped dysfunctional chunk of metal. Even if Elon Musk hadn’t worked hard the last few years to ruin his reputation, the Cybertruck would be a joke (and indeed it didn’t help his image). There’s a reason it’s so hated - and ironically the reason the Cybertruck is so hated is a lesson in what people actually want.

See, the Cybertruck, for all its flaws, is the realization of a vision.

It is a bad vision. It’s got an ugly retro-futuristic design with no appeal. Its control system sounds horribly inconvenient. The design makes visibility questionable, to the point I’m nervous to drive near one.. Even the unintentional flaws like the rusting or the dangerous hood, are things that seemed to be ignored in pursuit of the vision. That vision, apparently, is being a prop from a 1980s direct-to-video film.

But it is clearly a vision made by a person, there is an idea here.

Even if people had not, soured on Musk, the Cybertruck would still be the fulfillment of a vision. This truck is designed by someone with a plan, it is an expression of a human voice and human intent. Therefore because we know there is a person behind it, the dislike becomes personal, passionate. We get why it is the way it is and we don’t like it.

To hate something truly, is to have a personal connection to that hate. There’s someone and some decision to understand and dislike.

The hatred for the Cybertruck also tells us why we like things. A vision that speaks to us, that tells us about the intent and the creator and what it means, is one we can love. Through a book, a movie, or a vehicle, we can feel the intent, the human agency behind it. The love of something is also personal, because we know there is a person there and we get it.

Why we hate the Cybertruck is why we can love things - the human factor.

This is also why we really hate everything soulless, personality-less, from AI to corporate bureaucracy. There’s no one there, no one home, no moral actor. Even in hating something, knowing there’s someone there to hate is enlivening, dare I say, human. The Cybertruck may be awful, but it’s awful in a human way.

So before you entirely write off the Cybertruck, take it as a lesson. Not in hubris or questionable design decisions (since we’ve already had that lesson), but in why we hate and love things. It is a personal statement, and humans gravitate to those.

Even if just to complain.

Steven Savage

www.StevenSavage.com

www.InformoTron.com

[dylanais]

Why You Should Hire a Unity 3D Developer

The previous decade has transformed the gaming industry in various ways, and immersive experience has become the element of success. Whether you're building a small indie game or a high-octane AAA project, getting the right tool and talent is definitely the way to fulfill your vision. Unity 3D is one of the excellent game development platforms that has rendered beautiful, interactive games with breath-taking effects and scenarios. But to fully take advantage of what Unity 3D offers, it needs to have a competent and skilled Unity developer.

This blog is about subject matter related to why hire Unity 3D developer matters in your game development process and what can be achieved while using the skills of such an expert.

Mastery of Complexity with hire Unity 3D developer

On the other hand, Unity 3D is absolutely feature-rich—it's got much for developers to work with as it supports both 2D and 3D game development. Flexibility helps develop a wide array of games and target different platforms, from desktop computers and consoles to mobile and even virtual reality systems. Still, though the interface is friendly to beginners, it takes reading well into what it can do to make a really good professional-style game.

a) Managing Sophisticated Functionality

Using a Unity 3D developer will ensure that your project is treated with professional expertise in using the most advanced features of Unity, such as real-time rendering, physics-based simulations, AI pathfinding, and shader programming. Those features are important when one needs to create those very immersive experiences but require professional knowledge to be implemented appropriately.

A Unity developer can design complex gameplay mechanics, integrate realistic lighting and shadows, optimize animations, and do much more. Using the full potential of Unity, a professional developer can transform your game from a basic concept to an interactive, visually appealing experience that captures the players' imagination.

b) Cross-Platform Optimization

One of the major advantages of Unity is that it provides the facility to make a game that would run on several platforms without rewriting large portions of codes. Optimizing a game for high-performance delivery on various platforms, such as mobile, PC, and console, involves complex procedures. He knows each type of platform inside out and learns exactly how to optimize the game so that it can be run with whatever machine it is being deployed with, without any issues whatsoever.

For example, a game that works incredibly well on a high-end gaming PC would flop miserably on a mobile device if it were optimized the wrong way. Unity developers have the expertise that would enable them to balance between performance and visuals so that all players playing on different machines can have their experience treated seamlessly.

Developing Interactive Game Worlds 

The art of a truly interesting and successful game is one that allows creating an overall exciting and immersive environment—a world players get caught up in. Unity 3D brings along a vast opportunity for creating dynamic, realistic, and interactive environments in the game, but it takes more than just picking assets and applying textures to create that world. Hiring a Unity 3D developer lets you create amazingly immersive environments that really speak to the player on a deeper level.

a) Level Design and World Building

To design an interesting gaming environment, one does not place objects on a map. Professional Unity developers understand the level-design principles such that the environments are not only beautiful but also support the gameplay mechanics. Thus, they can actually achieve real environments and balance the navigation of players to apply the story elements in an exciting way.

Developers can further exploit the lighting and rendering systems of Unity to produce dynamic atmospheres that change their flavor according to time of day, whether it has rained or not in the region, and in-game events as well. This fully submerges the player in the world

b) Realistic Physics and AI

Unity 3D includes in-built physics that provide for movement, collision, and interaction amongst the physical systems of your objects in the most realistic way. All these physics shall have been so set up when you hire a Unity developer, from making characters move realistically to blowing up destructible terrain, so that the developer gets the detail necessary for that fully immersed experience.

AI also holds an important position in building a lifelike game world. A Unity 3D developer can help in designing intelligent behaviors for non-player characters or NPCs, so that these in turn react dynamically towards the player's action, find complex ways to navigate the environment, and have characteristics such as lifelike, which in turn ensures a believable game world that is full of interaction.

For the Game's Performance and Scalability

But one of the biggest challenges in game development is, in fact, optimization for performance, especially for large-scale games involving detailed environments and complex mechanics. Poor performance can absolutely break immersion and ultimately lead to a negative user experience, which would make players abandon a game. That's why it is really important to hire a Unity 3D developer, especially for large-scale or resource-intensive projects.

a) Optimization for Performance

The developers in Unity make sure games will run smoothly even on lower-end devices, and they do so by using techniques such as compression on the textures and efficient usage of assets and even code optimizations that cut down workloads on both the CPU and GPU; your game, therefore, runs just perfectly without taking up the visual.

By concentrating on performance right from the start, developers can avoid widespread problems such as frame rate drops, lengthy load times, and input lag, all of which can derail a game.

b) Scalability for Future Updates

Games never stay static. Whether you are adding in new levels, issuing updates, or expanding into a new platform, your game needs to be scalable. By hiring a Unity 3D developer, you will know that your game is designed for scalability. Modular systems can be designed, which would be compatible with extending the future expansion without forcing the application to change the architecture of the game completely.

This flexibility allows your game to be dynamic and change with the player base, using supports for content and updates and expansions without really interrupting gameplay.

Conclusion

AIS Technolabs is just the perfect firm to hire from when you need a Unity 3D game developer. Their team of skilled workers promises to provide skillful expertise in creating high-quality immersive games according to your vision. From the creators, every game developed here at AIS Technolabs comes with deep knowledge about Unity's advanced features, such as real-time rendering, physics, and AI pathfinding, which ensure that the overall experience for players across platforms is richly excellent and engaging. Working from PC to mobile to VR, AIS Technolabs delivers optimized solutions that improve performance while increasing the scalability of the game. This makes them one of the best companies in terms of customized and scalable game development solutions that can accommodate small-scale projects and huge, complex game worlds Contact us for more.

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[easyquickweb]

Unlocking the Power of EasyQuickWeb: Your Gateway to Fast, Stunning Websites in Hyderabad

Get Yourself On The Map With EasyQuickWeb.com

A unique and memorable digital presence becomes the ultimate asset in the hyper-competitive rows of Hyderabad’s marketplace online. What makes us stand apart at EasyQuickWeb is our innovative process of creating websites that capture and enthral your audience to a degree that will increase its traffic significantly. The team of our highly qualified Stunning Websites in Hyderabad comprises of creative and technical thinkers; hence, they come out with the desired results much better than your expectations.

The fabric of website creation in Hyderabad

In Hyderabad, it’s not only that the website design is about appearances. This process is creating a website that reflects on the user’s expectations and experience. At EasyQuickWeb we are able to focus on design intricacies and we utilize both –tomorrow’s magic and the most of advanced instruments and techniques in order to get the job done. From compact looks to quick response we used user experience’s to achieve the intended outcome.

Lycantropes in the City will not only beautify our metropolis, but also reveal the skills backing these designers.

In a city which is overly packed with the web design companies, EasyQuickWeb stands for its determination to yield high quality outcomes and innovation. As for our team, it consists of top performers who can undoubtedly demonstrate their superior skills at the same level. It does not even matter whether you are a small business or a large enterprise; we are still the experts who can bring your brand to a new level of recognition and achieve measurable results.

Becoming Partners with Web Developments Companies in Hyderabad, A Business Goes Beyond Its Own Boundaries.

Often this is the crux of any successful website, and at EasyQuickWeb we not only fantastic at that, but we are very good at making ideas a reality. Being our web development unit our team uses the latest technologies and the best practices devising strong and reliable websites that evolve with time. We provide solutions ranging from custom CMS websites to e-commerce platforms, all with their unique capabilities and experience to actualize your vision.

Expert Web Development Professionals in Hyderabad Together with you.

We are so confident about the power of collaboration which is why we decided to name our company EasyQuickWeb. These professionals that we employ for web designing in Hyderabad work in close association with clients to discover their specific needs and focus. Are you looking for a job to redesign a website or a construction of a new one? We have a variety of options for you, which are crafted to meet your needs. Besides your site being well designed and your business needs fulfilled, we are here to provide our continued support and expertise, which will ensure the success of your online presence.

Gain a Firm Vantage Point on Your Website Creation.

Building a website can be as challenging as it is appealing, but thanks to EasyQuickWeb you can enjoy the process to the full. We have simplified the process to make your website fizzing with vibrant animation and full functioning user-friendliness. Whether it’s about your local customers in Hyderabad or the kinds of global audience you are targeting, your website would be the way that you can make an impact.

Steal A Moment And Begin Tomorrow

If the complexities of web design scare you, turn them into your advantage and ease the process. Having EasyQuickWeb at your disposal, you can speed up your website creation and reduce the amount of work needed to do it. Feel the power of entirely hassle free design, counseling of the superior level, and the ULTIMATE speediness. Reach out to us now to take-off into the digital way using the ‘power of exclusivity and acceleration

[utopia-game]

Interview with Mehul!

In case many ever wondered, the OG Mehul is still alive and kicking! Just so happens, one of our dedicated players, Frosty, managed an interview with him! Check out the interview below! And thanks Frosty!!

1.  Do you ever play, or feel inclined to play, Utopia?  Just out of curiosity?

Honestly, outside of the first few years running it, I really didn't play it much even when managing it. I would participate in the sense that I'd have an account and kind of watch the dynamics of how players interacted and if there were any imbalances in gameplay, but I wasn't an active gameplayer. Since selling it, I haven't ever played it. I've checked out the website occasionally just to see how things are going, but actually hadn't done that in a few years now either. This interview led me to do a deeper dive into the game today and it's pretty neat to see how it's evolved with Discord chats, an android app, etc but also how much of the original core game has survived!  But I haven't tried playing it as of yet.

2.  Are you still in touch with Blake?  I think Blake deleted my provinces more than once.

Absolutely - he was one of my close friends when he joined Swirve and still remains so. I'm in contact with him regularly and see him a few times a year. If you'd ever like to interview him, I can reach out and see if he has any interest! 

3.  Are you interested in ever making a new online game? 

I've had lots of ideas and think I still understand game design and mechanics really well. But I don't really play computer games these days, so I don't have a good sense of the industry, and my programming skills are still late 1990s, early 2000's level, so there'd be no way to develop a game in today's world the way I'd want to. One of the things I enjoyed in creating Utopia is that I could create it entirely in my head and then turn into code, do the (very limited) graphic design, and every other part of the website and business myself (before we grew and added Blake). Earth:2025 went from "I should try to make a webgame" to release in something like 6 weeks. Utopia was a bit longer, but conceptually similar. That kind of pace and environment is what I thrive in. Today's games seem to require entire teams of developers and designers and so many things to coordinate and the timeline to develop seems to be measured in years. None of that is really appealing to me, unfortunately.

4.  You manage escape rooms in Austin.  How do you develop those, how has Covid affected the industry, and how has your online game development affected your perspective in developing escape room scenarios?

Some friends and I launched an escape room around 2016 and it's one of the most fun projects I've been involved in. I love creating unique and interesting forms of entertainment. Swirve existed in a time when the internet wasn't really social - it was used for information and there were occasional message boards and such, but there was no social media, no real interaction between people of different backgrounds or cultures or things like that. So that's what I really focused on - Earth was interactive, but in a limited way. Utopia was kind of the fulfillment of that vision of bringing people together in a totally new way. 

Escape Rooms exist in kind of the opposite world. Now everyone interacts on screens and phones, and every corner of the world is accessible to everyone.  But in the process, we lost some of the human-to-human interactions. So the escape room was an opportunity to bring my strength in game design to a different world - taking out the screens and the tech and getting people laughing and struggling together face-to-face. Every aspect of it was fun - watching people play and seeing the joy they got, designing the games to create unique and quirky themes and puzzles, etc. For me, it was an opportunity to take my understanding of "what's fun" from the online gaming world and try to turn that into a real-life scenario. A lot of the outputs are very different, but the core ideas of what makes something interesting and addictive and gets people excited are very similar underneath. We had an amazing team of owners and employees that made the whole thing a blast and really successful.

Unfortunately, Covid hit in the middle of it all, and putting people in a room with strangers and having them touch things that other random people had touched all day long was basically the single least Covid-friendly activity you could come up with. We were built to be a high volume business that was fully booked all the time, and unfortunately, it couldn't survive the pandemic. So we shut it down in 2020 and ended up selling it to a company looking to expand their global presence. But, even post-pandemic, I don't think escape room popularity has returned to where it was prior (for a whole host of reasons relating to how covid changed people's entertainment preferences and spending).

5.  Do you see any future in text-based games?  Utopia's numbers keep dwindling despite being one of the best games ever made.  How can text-based compete with "modern" games?

Its hard to imagine, honestly. If you asked me in 2000 whether the game would be around 25 years later, I'd have laughed. I knew it was something special, but technology ultimately moves forward. Utopia survives because it has such a loyal following and works well enough on a smaller scale with a few thousand people. But if it had never existed and we tried to launch the same game today, no one would give it a chance. So it's incredibly fortituous that it had the right timing and grew enough in its heyday to maintain itself through today. And great ownership by whoever runs it these days to understand what makes it work and keep improving things while not losing that essence. It would be very tempting to try to turn it into something it's not to target a broader audience, and I think that would destroy it pretty quickly, so I'm glad they haven't pursed that.

That said, one area where I think text-based games could play an interesting role is with the massive growth in AI. Having the game be able to interact with players in a human way opens a whole new interesting set of doors of how to design games. For example, you could design a game done entirely through conversations on SMS between players and a virtual game host. I think of things like Dungeons & Dragons campaigns that could be modernized with technology but still be conversation or text focused. I haven't thought through it well enough to have a cohesive game idea, but that's an area where text can still dominate and create some unique value.

6.  Utopia has changed so much but has also remained the same over the 25 years I've been playing.  Real-life connections have been forged...marriages and friendships.  Did you forsee this?  (I know you have already been asked this...but it still boggles my mind.)   (Combining with 8.  What are our or more of your favorite Utopia (or Swirve in general) moments)

Not even for a second. Utopia is now older than I was when I wrote it, which is kind of insane to think about. As I mentioned earlier, doing this interview led me to do a bit of research just to see what the game looks like now and such. Seeing so many things added and new ways to interact with the game is really neat. At the same time, the logo is the original logo from our early years - that, to me, is crazy and really cool to see what's survived.

When I was started it, I was also pretty young and focused more on the game and business development. While I loved how much fun it was for everyone and had a pretty good sense that I was creating something fairly unique, I don't think I had the life experience to really understand the full impact the games would ultimately have. The friendships - I had hoped for that and that was part of the core design. But marriages? My favorite was hearing about a pair from literally opposite sides of the globe - Sweden and the Philippines - ultimately meeting and getting married.  The long-term post-game connections people have maintained are amazing. I was just looking at some reddit forums and to see people still talking about how they played the games 20 years ago and that they still have an emotional attachment to those experiences is kind of incredible.

Some of the things I didn't appreciate as much at the time but now still remember decades later are things like teachers sharing how they used Utopia and Earth to connect with students and teach them everything from math to social skills. And parents using the game to bond with their adopted kids and things like that. Creating fun is great, but actually having an impact on lives on a broader scale is a feeling that's hard to match - and not something I went into Utopia thinking would ever be the case. But that idea of helping impact people's lives in some unique way is something that's become an important part of any project I've worked on since and will do in the future.

7.  Game changes must be exhausting to conceptualize.  There are issues of balance (to fix flaws in the mechanics) and also a kind of intentional chaos (change for the sake of change).  How did you navigate this?

This was actually a really fun part of game design for me. With the Ages system and the game restarting every few months, this whole thing was like an laboratory for me. I could just kind of do whatever I wanted and even if it ended up unbalanced, it would take people a month to figure it out and then in another month or two, we'd just start fresh. People took each age and each change way more seriously than I did and would routinely get upset with things before seeing how they played out. But while I got plenty of things wrong, I think I had a reasonably good intuitive sense if something was going to work OK or being way too destablizing or whatnot that nothing went too, too haywire.

9.  Everyone asked this, but I feel I know the answer: Would you ever consider purchasing the game if you had the option to do so?

I think from a nostalgia perspective, it would be cool. I've often looked to see if I could buy back the swirve.com domain, but it's now in use by another business. But it would be disservice to the player base today because I'm not remotely qualified at this point to keep developing the game! I think if ownership needed to change again, some combination of active players with game-design and/or programming background would be the ideal. One of my big concerns when I sold the games originally was if the people taking it over really understood exactly what it was that made the games and community so unique and how to cultivate that. I think if I were to try to take over today, I'd be in that same position since I've been away so long.

10.  You have supported various causes, such as Restoration Collective (If I am correct.) In any case, what organizations or causes would you like to mention?

I work with a variety of causes, but my connections to them tend to be personal. I know their leadership or am involved with the organizations in various ways. To me, it's a far more meaningful and interesting version of charity because you get to see a more direct impact of your resources than you would contributing to a larger organization (though maybe less efficent due to lack of scale). Rather than picking organizations or causes and simply donating money, I would recommend people find things important to them and try to get involved in some way, even if it's only a small one, in some of the smaller and more local organizations doing work in those areas.  I think it's more rewarding and builds a stronger connection between the cause and the contributors.

[mslaughalottt]

Overhaul Your Area: Releasing the Possible of Residence Enhancement

""

Are you tired of the very same old appearance and also feeling of your home? It's time to get started on a journey of change as well as discover the world of house improvement. Whether you're wanting to boost the aesthetic appeal, increase performance, or simply create an extra comfy living environment, house renovation is the vital to unlocking the complete capacity of your room. From little DIY jobs to large-scale remodellings, there are plenty of possibilities to renew your house and make it really your own.In today's fast-paced globe, our homes have actually become a lot more than just a location to sleep and also consume. They have become our shelters, our havens from the outdoors. Home renovation enables us to tailor our living rooms to reflect our one-of-a-kind individualities and also way of lives. By upgrading outdated fixtures, including contemporary innovation, or reimagining the design, you can create a space that not just satisfies your demands yet likewise brings you joy and convenience each day. Whether you're a seasoned do it yourself fanatic or like to employ the aid of professionals, the opportunities for residence improvement are countless. So why wait? It's time to revive your house and also start a trip of improvement.

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Residence renovation not only improves the aesthetics and also performance of your room but additionally adds value to your home. Whether you're intending to offer in the close to future or simply wish to increase the market value of your residence, buying residence enhancement tasks is a sensible choice. Prospective purchasers are commonly drawn to buildings that have been well-kept and updated. By making tactical renovations, such as updating the kitchen or restroom, including energy-efficient functions, or creating additional space, you can substantially boost the resale worth of your home. Furthermore, a well-executed residence improvement project can also attract even more potential purchasers, causing a quicker sale and possibly a greater selling price.In enhancement to

the monetary advantages, residence improvement provides an opportunity for personal development and also creativity. It permits you to discover new abilities, discover various layout patterns, and express your imaginative style. Whether you're a seasoned do it yourself fanatic or simply starting, the process of changing your house can be both fulfilling and meeting. So, why not start and embark on a journey of residence enhancement? With cautious preparation, a clear vision, and a little of initiative, you can create a room that not only reflects your distinct personality however also enhances your

Read more here lino cost

[mahabirconstruction]

Best Home Designer Company in Gorakhpur

Enter the amazing world of outstanding house design in the appealing city of Gorakhpur. Mahabir Constructions is the place to look if you're looking for a symphony of outstanding craftsmanship, ground-breaking innovation, an obsession with even the smallest details, and a persistent pursuit of client happiness. Mahabir Constructions is known as the leading home designer company in Gorakhpur and has cemented our reputation as the peak of trust in this delightful world. We turn goals into reality by expertly combining creativity and accuracy in our perfect creations, leaving a permanent mark on the fabric of greatness. We will solve the mystery that distinguishes MahabirConstructions in this exciting blog, opening the way to their infinite domain. 

What makes us the foremost home design company in Gorakhpur

•Innovative Designs Tailored to Your Needs:

Mahabir Constructions' aptitude to provide personalized designs that exactly match the tastes and needs of its customers sets them apart from its competitors. We go above and above to make it possible for each homeowner to realize their vision for their ideal house. The creative staff at Mahabir Constructions house designing company in Gorakhpur will work with you to realize your ideas, whether you want a modern, minimalist style or a more elaborate, traditional one.

•Unparalleled Expertise and Experience:

Mahabir Constructions is home to a group of very talented experts that have a thorough understanding of architectural concepts, design principles, and building methods. We can offer great design solutions that are both realistic and aesthetically satisfying because of our years of business expertise. 

•Attention to Detail:

At Mahabir Constructions, a hotel designer company in Gorakhpur no detail is too small to be overlooked. Their team creates a symphony of accuracy from the conception of an idea to its magnificent realization. They understand the underlying reality that a home's design goes beyond purely aesthetic appeal; it creates an array of use and tranquility. They make their way through a network of options with constant drive and flawless skill. 

•Quality Craftsmanship:

Mahabir Constructions is committed to delivering uncompromising quality in every project we undertake. We passionately promise to create for you a flawless piece of art where compromise has no place. The use of superior materials, created in the flames of trust and obtained from the best suppliers, is the basis of their ideology. Each of their brilliant artistic representations strengthens the structure while going beyond the limits of time. 

•Customer Satisfaction:

Customer satisfaction is at the core of MahabirConstructions' philosophy. Our core concept is to establish long relationships with our elite customers, built around the pillars of flawless service and unmatched results. Our committed team weaves a web of open communication, openness, and solid honesty from the start of the consultation to the conclusion of the transfer.  

Mahabir – your perfect home design partner

When it comes to converting your imagined residence into a clear actuality, Mahabir Constructions’ Best Designer Company in Gorakhpur shines as the supreme home designer firm in Gorakhpur. With our unmatched skill, inventive plans, meticulous focus on particulars, loyalty to excellent workmanship, and dedicated commitment to customer contentment, we have collected a wonderful standing in the field. Whether you seek to construct a new home or restore your current habitat, placing your project in the hands of MahabirConstructions home designer company Gorakhpur ensures a smooth and fulfilling journey.

[honeypirate]

In Madness lies Sanity

Ushijima Wakatoshi x Reader - College AU

Based off the bit by Allan Watts. I read the transcript and I thought— Ushijima in love with his best friend listening to this talk about love in one of his classes and realizing that he needs to tell them the truth. Allan watts bit is in blue, the fic is in white.

Ushijima wasn’t one to dwell too long on trivial matters. He works through them and then forgets them. He focuses on what is important and what will bring him closer to his desired future. He isn’t one who is sucked into madness and drama, he has a strong level head and it’s something he takes pride in. So he’s trying to apply his ideas to how he handles his feelings for you, is it trivial? Is it important to tell you? He was struggling before he walked into class Monday morning and had his eyes opened by the video played during lecture.

- I’m going to talk to you about a particularly virulent and dangerous form of divine madness which is called falling in love. Which is, from a practical point of view, one of the most insane things you can do, or that can happen to you. Because in the eyes of a given woman or a given man, an opposite who go to the eyes of everybody else a perfectly plain and ordinary person can appear to be God or Goddess incarnate .... And this is an extraordinary disruptive experience a subversive experience in the conduct of human affairs

You were never a plain and ordinary person to him and he believes that’s where it got confused. He always has and always will see you as an extraordinary individual, regardless of things that may be seen as flaws or imperfections, regardless of your mistakes. You didn’t transform from one thing to the next, you were the same angel he knew, so when his heart flipped from friendship to love, he wasn’t paying attention.

- Because you never know when it will strike off for what reason. It’s something like contracting a very chronic disease once you get into it

If anyone asked Ushijima who his best friend is his first thought is you. His first thought thought is always you. His constant. His true best friend who is there for him through anything. He’ll open his mouth and say “y/n is my best friend” and when people would point out just how close they are he just shrugged, weren’t friends supposed to be close?

When he thinks back now, now that his feelings are obvious, he realizes that it was just a matter of time until he fell in love with you. He can pinpoint every moment along his life where love was obvious, every joke and hug that at the time he thought was just nice, when he loaned you his sweatshirt and then didn’t wash it because it smelled like you. When he would spend all his valuable and limited free time with you just because he liked the way you would smile as he walked you home. He thinks back to all of his dates in high school and college, of the dating app conversations he’s had or blind dates his friends had set up, and they all failed because of one simple reason- none of them were you.

- I would like to make some reflections on this particular form of madness, and to raise again a very disturbing question. And this disturbing question is as follows: Is it only when you are in love with another person that you see them as they really are? And in the ordinary way, when you are not in love with people you see only a fragmented version of that being.

He’s spent hours turned to days to weeks as he keeps thinking about whether or not he loves you or if he just thinks he could because of how close you already are. He’s lost track of time connecting different dots and making different lists and theories, replaying you’re entire friendship back in his head. He’s thought about the times he saw you drunk in college and puking on his shoes as he helps you home, when you decided you wanted to try and longboard and turfed it so bad your arm was gashed from wrist to elbow and he had carried you to the urgent care. all your reckless and crazy ideas you dragged him along with, you were almost as bad as tendou but he just wanted to take care of you as best as he could. He can feel the desire in his bones to make sure you were always taken care of, a feeling he knows he’ll have until he dies.

He thinks about when you had dated Oikawa and for the entire three months he had an ulcer but didn’t know why. He thought it was because of his pain relievers and quit them the week you broke up with him, not realizing the connection. When he’d get acid in his throat when you talked about dating someone else, he thought he just needed some milk. How blind he had been.

-Because when you are in love with someone you do indeed see them as a divine being. And suppose that’s what they are truly. And your eyes have by your beloved been opened in which case your beloved is serving to you as a kind of guru. An initiator. And that is why there is a form of sexual yoga, based on the idea that man and woman are to each other as mutual guru and student. And through a tremendous outpouring of psychic energy in total devotion and worship to this other person who is respectively the goddess of the god.

Being someone’s best and closest friend consisted of seeing their entirety and choosing to stay and love them anyway. To care for them. He can’t say for certain where he crossed over into love, into wanting to hug you and kiss you, wanting to be the only one you think about, but there’s not much he can do about it now and he doesn’t want to.

Ushijima sees you. He sees your good and your bad and everything in between, he sees you for you. Your ordinary mundane ways of life that he can’t help but want to share with you. Grocery shopping, library trips, post office runs, he wants them all to be done with you. He truly cannot imagine anyone else taking that spot in his heart.

Wanting to show you what he sees. What he knows to be true about you. he wants to scream from the rooftops how amazing you are and he’s not a very loud person. He sees the way you care for your friends selflessly and give and give all you have just so that others can be happy and you never complain. You do what you can when you can and still have time to take care of yourself he never knew how you did it so effortlessly, even when you’d vent to him you never regretted helping others.

He sees the way you lift up those around you. How you leave everyone a little more positive than before you talked to them. He doesn’t know how you do it. He’s convinced you’re an angel and he’s dying to show you just how amazing he knows you are. But he doesn’t want to ruin your friendship. He sees your entirety, your full book instead of just the cover, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He wanted to give you this energy and receive it in turn and he’s never been so absolutely terrified.

-You realize by total fusion and contact with the other organism. You go down to the divine center in them and it bounces back and you discover your own or you could put it in this way which is another aspect of it that by falling in love and regarding falling in love not just as a sort of sexual infatuation, because it’s always more than that, isn’t it. I mean you can have a great sexual enjoyment with a pleasant friend, you know. But you may do so simply because he or she appeals to your aesthetic senses. But when you fall in love, it’s a much more serious involvement, you just cannot forget this person. You feel miserable when not in their presence, you’re always yearning, that’s get to see more of each other let’s get together that’s we’re completely entangled and then you see you’ve actually kind of out what I would call spiritual element has been introduced. And the Hindus were sensible enough to realize that this was a means of awakening, enlightenment, and therefore it was. Surrounded. With a sort of rigid religious ritual meditative art, with a form of sexual yoga that is designed to allow the feeling of mutual love to the extent of grand passion to have an extremely fitting fulfillment and expression.

Ushijima has always thought you were beautiful. Any human with eyes would think that. But your beauty and attraction went far deeper than that. Sure he’s had fleeting thoughts about how good you looked in a dress but he never let them linger. It felt wrong to think of you like that. But now that he’s an adult, a grown man and not a teenager anymore, he wants to kiss you, to hold your hand, maybe more but it wasn’t about that. It was about the intimacy, the closeness, the vulnerability.

Awakening. Enlightenment. Two words that before he didn’t really think about. But now he feels changed. Now that he’s realized how much he loves you has lifted his spirits, made him dream of the passion and happiness you could have together. He feels himself slipping into the joy of being in love with his best friend and imagining all the ways that love could grow. He feels only half of himself when he’s without you, always needing to see you or be around you, but you never made him feel clingy or bad. You met him in kind, telling him how much you wanted to be around him too.

At first he thought that this love was a trivial thing, something he could push from his mind, but after his weeks of thought he knows this is a lot more serious than he’s experienced before.

-Falling in love is a thing that strikes like lightning and is therefore extremely analogous to the mystical vision. We don’t know. No how really people attain the mystical vision. There is not as yet a very clear rationale as to how it happens because we do know that it is opened to many people who never did anything to look for it. And many people especially in adolescence have had the mystical vision all of a sudden without the slightest warning and with no previous interest in that kind of thing

He remembers what he was doing when it dawned on him that he was in love, when he felt the air leave his lungs and his eyes widen softly when he realized how nice it would be to kiss your temple and he couldn’t even finish the thought as the feeling ran from his head to his toes.

He was standing in your kitchen as you finished making your lunch for the following day and you made a joke that made yourself laugh, he didn’t think it was a very funny joke but you didn’t care. You giggled to yourself and he couldn’t help but wish he could witness that forever. It hit him like a brick that he would, in almost an instant, give his entirety to you. It terrified him when he imagines you and him ending like his parents. But behind the terror, the fear of divorce, was a softer and quieter emotion that he tried to focus on harder than the insanity of his anxiety. A softer, lovelier, hopeful feeling that he usually gets every time you smile at him. That was the feeling he was searching for, everything else was irrelevant for a few glorious moments.

-But as yet we are not clear as to why it comes about and if there is any method of attaining it the best one is probably to give up the whole idea of getting it…. you see it is completely unpredictable and so it is in that way like falling in love, capricious and therefore crazy. But if you should be so fortunate as to encounter either of these experiences. It seems to me to be a total denial of life to refuse it. And what we therefore have to. Admit in our society is so that we can contain this kind of madness.

He called Tendou that evening, telling him that he thinks he loves you, and Tendou about had a conniption. He was in Paris as his best friend fell in love for the first time. He talked him through it, told him how good it can be. That yes it was going to be work but the reward would be worth it. To not sell himself short out of his own fears. He deserves much more than that. Tendou’s last phrase is what sunk in deep “I know it was unpredictable, that it feels so fickle, but that’s what love is like buddy! You can’t deny it Ushi, you can’t run from it or hide from it, it will only hurt you in the long run”

- You see, in this way we can think about and structure the necessary stable social institution of family sometime without it being constantly threatened of foundering on the rocks of love. Now you see this then means that when when people marry they take any vows at all to each other instead of saying that they will always be true to each other in the sense of meaning I Will Always Love YoU, It means I will be true to you in the sense of I will always be truthful to. I will not pretend that my feelings towards you ARE other than what they are. Because I marry you, because I think that you are a reasonable person to live with and therefore I want you to be you I want you to be someone else I want to be a rubber stamp of me–how boring that would be?! an arrangement in which people set each other free and make an alliance to cooperate with each other in certain ways. Now if it should so occur that they are of immense sexual attraction to each other, so much the better? That this should not be a primary factor in entering into marriage. Admittedly, you must be to a certain extent attractive to each other otherwise there will be no progeny. But this is this is seems to me to be a sensible and reasonable view and just because it is sensible and reasonable it can accommodate what is not sensible and reasonable which is falling in love.

Ushijima is terrified. He’s terrified because the instant immediate joy he felt when he realized he loved you was almost overtaken by worries and stress. He loves you! Now what? He loves structure in his life and he values stability but he knows how rocky relationships can be and how they can ultimately end. He knows he won’t deny it, he won’t back away because of his fear but he needs a plan. A plan to take to you and talk about it, he knows you’ll have the right thing to say but he doesn’t even know what he’ll even say to you yet. He loves that you are so carefree and goofy, a breath of fresh air to his stoicism. You’ve even gently worked your way so deep into his soul that you feel like his other half, his complete other in every way, someone who wasn’t like him at all and how wonderful that is.

Once in his life he thought that arranged marriages were smarter, you did it out of logic and bloodline and family, nothing messy to deal with. But that structure, that boring empty rocky foundation that an arrangement might bring made his mouth taste bad, although at the time he convinced himself it was because it would be more like another job that takes up his time (away from you)

Sensible and reasonable was right up his alley, he thought how nice it would be to have a mini him but he couldn’t think about having that with anyone. He couldn’t think of another half of dna that baby would share that would make it worth it. Not until he saw a picture of you holding your nephew, now whenever he thinks of his babies they share your genes. He thinks of a chunky baby with your eyes and his hair color, a mix of your personality and he’d share volleyball with them. He’s never wanted kids as much as he does when he thinks about sharing them with you. And that’s the part that feels senseless, the love part, the part where you give your entirety to someone and trust that they will care and keep you, no matter what happens, save its not infidelity or other deal breakers of yours he already knows.

Ushijima’s theorizing and thoughts about you over the course of time went from being about understanding why he feels like this to imagining fake scenarios where he wants to take you abroad to travel together, to be together every day and share the hard times and good times, babies or not, marriage or not. He just wants to make you happy for the rest of his life no matter what and he can’t go on much longer without knowing he has a chance to do so

- Well now really when we go back then to falling in love. And say it’s crazy falling. You see we don’t say rising into love. There is in it the idea of the fall. And it is goes back as a matter of fact two extremely fundamental things that there is always a curious tie at some point between the fall and the creation. Taking this ghastly risk, is the condition of there being life. You see, for all life is an act of faith and an act of gamble

And so here he was. Sitting on a bench outside of your dorm, feet bouncing as he stared at the small patch of grass growing in between the sidewalk crack. It’s been a while since that class and he’s been thinking about this constantly.

He knows the risk, feels it in his heart every time he meets up separately with his parents since their divorce. He sees it every time he remembers his childhood and the messy separation. That mess he never wants to repeat. The fall that comes with this love is like that class video had told him, ghastly. He doesn’t know if this could ruin it all, if he takes the leap of faith and it all comes crumbling down years later he’ll be just another divorce. He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to end up like his parents and have a child who feels the same. But when he imagines his life he doesn’t think he could be haply without you by his side.

- the moment you take a step, you do so on an act of faith, because you don’t really know that the floors not going to give in to your feet. The moment you take a journey what an act of faith. The moment you enter into any kind of human undertaking in relationship what an act of faith you see you’ve given yourself up. But this is the most powerful thing that can be done surrender see and love is an act of surrender to another person. Total abandonment. I give myself to you. Take me, do anything you like with me. So, that’s quite mad because you see it’s letting things get out of control all sensible people keep things in control.

You know something is up the moment you open the doors and see his back on the bench. You were going to his place since he wasn’t answering his phone, you freeze at the doors at watch him for a moment as your anxiety spikes in your stomach. His shoulders are tense as he leans forward, elbows on his thighs and hands clasped together as he looks down between his bouncing feet. Before you really think about it, you follow the urge to comfort him, to talk to him and make sure it’s all okay. Your feet carry you quickly to his side and you sit down, pulling him into a side hug and wrapping your arms around him.

He gasps when you sit and as you’re wrapping your arms around him he furrows his brows and hugs you back. His heart racing As his fears take the back burner. He didn’t expect you to find him but he also didn’t know how long he’s been sitting here. He buries his face into your neck as he you hold each other in the cool spring evening.

“What’s wrong?” You ask as you hold him and feels his walls break down, his arms tighten around you

“I’m scared” he says quietly and his voice cracks

“Of what Toshi? You can always talk to me” Your fingers run through his hair softly and it soothes his nerves.

He pulls back and cups your cheeks, his eyebrows were still furrowed and his stoic expression was broken by his eyes that were swimming with worry and insecurity.

You saw everything in his eyes and you met him with your determination and steady unwavering love he finds in your eyes. God he feels so mad. So incredibly and undeniably mad and insane and like he isn’t in control. He needs to tell you. Needs the words to come out of his throat so he can calm his heart and soothe his ulcer. The anxiety felt like it was immeasurable and his breathing was starting to get faster until you placed your hands on his cheeks, smothering the bad feelings completely “it’s okay Wakatoshi, I’m right here”

Ushijima feels the exact moment his heart relaxes into the faith, the surrender into love trusting that the floor isn’t going to collapse under his feet, the moment he gives his whole self, body and soul, to the fall, and that moment was when your lips touched his for the first time. Then he let go, the madness left his body and was replaced with a calm assurance that yes, yes this was it, what he’s been waiting for, what he’s been yearning for.

- for all the cost and wisdom what is really sensible is to let go that is to commit oneself to give oneself up and that’s quite mad,

-so we come to the strange conclusion that in madness lies sanity.

[avelera]

One thought I had about the friction between “Supernatural” the show, as it exists, and its fandom that perceives “Supernatural” the show as it could be is how SPN really straddles that historic line between episodic and long-form prestige television by virtue of lasting for 15 (!!) seasons. 

When Supernatural first aired, it was clearly in the genre of X-Files style “Monster of the Week”. Its freshness lay only in the appeal of its main duo of Ackles and Padelecki and there was a certain earnest charm in the cool-factor and wish fulfillment around two brothers traveling the US and killing monsters out of their muscle car. The charisma of the actors and the mythologies they dipped into added a feeling of complexity to a story that otherwise really wasn’t that deep, which wasn’t a bug so much as a feature, because SPN’s creators were just more focused on pure entertainment. 

But like many CW shows and episodic television in general, events would coalesce around the season premiere, mid-season, and season finales to tell a slightly longer form story and attempt to tie together certain high points of the season. This further leant the perception of depth where it didn’t necessarily exist beyond on the production side beyond the sincere desire of any given writer to do a good job on the one episode they were being contracted and paid to write. However, simultaneously with the unexpectedly long run of SPN, which was slated to end at Season 5 when Eric Kripke the creator moved on (and who is now working on Amazon’s “The Boys”), corresponded with the rise of long-form, prestige television.

Keep in mind, streaming services that became ubiquitous during the 00s allowed the rise of long form, prestige television outside of HBO. The common wisdom before that was you couldn’t have a series that required the viewer to keep details in their head about what happened before today’s episode. Episodic stories were designed so by the end of the opening credit song, you pretty much knew who all the players were and the characters didn’t change on purpose, 1) so audiences could tune in and out of the story without being confused 2) so writers could be contracted easily to write a one-off story without getting bogged down in the canon’s continuity and 3) because of the way syndication worked there was zero guarantee of what order television episodes would be aired in. 

Supernatural straddled that transition in television over the last couple decades, where mostly it was written for syndication. All you needed to know was that two macho brothers had a cool car and drove around fighting monsters. That’s it. You know that by the end of the credits. Sometimes, maybe 4-5 episodes out of the 22 episode season (the premiere, the mid-season finale, and the 1-2 episodes of the finale), you’d get more of an arc. These were television events, heavily promoted in the lead-up with commercials giving a bunch of recaps of the season for casual viewers so they could appreciate the slightly deeper story being set up in contrast to the usual one-off episodes. 

Unfortunately, due to the rise of streaming and again that long-form, prestige television where people are now expecting to know all these deep details about the lore and follow this character progression, I believe fans began to expect this level of consistency and depth from Supernatural. Fanfiction and the wider community did a truly superb job of building on all the tantalizing morsels one-off writers would drop during the show. And truly, SPN was a show that cried out for in-depth drama and for its many plotlines to be given a satisfying conclusion. Sadly, that was never in the actual DNA of the show as it was planned or run. It was never going to stop having a hybrid episodic with-occasional-finales format. And that’s really tragic.

People commented that the last episode of Supernatural could be watched immediately after seeing the first episode. And that is exactly the mark of the episodic format, no broader knowledge required, no need to be a long-form, prestige TV-trained viewer noting and remembering every little twist and detail of canon. The show wasn’t built for that. Like episodic shounen anime, it’s designed for the casuals, even if that objectively makes it a worse story and betrays its potential. SPN was always going to be as easy for viewers who only saw one other episode, the first episode, to follow the finale as long-term, dedicated fans and I feel, really, really bad for those long-term fans to be honest because if one show could have handled the transition to a prestige format, I truly think Supernatural could have handled it, if only the creators and producers had the vision to make that leap.

[jackdawyt]

One of the most alarming statements made by anonymous BioWare employees currently working on the next Dragon Age has been the remark that the next game is “planned with a live service component, built for long-term gameplay and revenue.”

Like me, I suspect you have questions regarding what exactly a live-service Dragon Age 4 may entail. While we don’t have all the answers currently, thanks to Jason Schreier’s article on “The Past and Present of Dragon Age”, we certainly have an idea on what the next Dragon Age may look like.  

Regardless, I feel like it’s even more necessary to have this conversation on BioWare’s live service future having watched the debacle of Anthem’s post-launch content, and what BioWare hopefully learned from Anthem’s experience going forward with Dragon Age 4.  

You see, Anthem’s live service model was originally going to follow story-based content after the base game launched. The content would forward the main narrative in many different directions with new areas, bosses, dungeons, characters, stories, and of course, cosmetics.  

In pre-production, Anthem's story had been produced with live service in mind, so the developers could easily write, change and create many different plot points and narratives in future content to come.  

“They had a really strong belief in the live service,” said one developer. “Issues that were coming up, they’d say, ‘We’re a live service. We’ll be supporting this for years to come. We’ll fix that later on.’” (How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong, Kotaku).

The game was originally planned to follow a deep content road map, that would have players still engaged with Anthem ten years after launch.  

"Anthem is a social game where you and your friends go on quests and journeys. It’s a game that we’ve been working on for almost four years now, and once we launch it next year I think it’ll be the start of a ten-year journey for us." (Patrick Soderlund)

However, Anthem’s original ‘idealistic’ live-service model didn’t come to fruition due to only 18 months of development time. The content road map we did eventually get for Anthem, didn’t prove to be successful.  

[Anthem] was in development for nearly seven years but didn’t enter production until the final 18 months, thanks to big narrative reboots, major design overhauls, and a leadership team said to be unable to provide a consistent vision and unwilling to listen to feedback. (How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong, Kotaku).

The post-launch content was staged in acts. The first act was called “Echoes of Reality” and would last around three months, providing constant new missions, strongholds and world dynamics. The act would end on a huge update called “The Cataclysm”.  

Unfortunately, this road map was too idealistic, and was cancelled after heavy delays of “The Cataclysm” event.  

With BioWare’s first live service model not going according to plan, hopefully, the unsuccessful launch of Anthem’s live service-model speaks volume for future BioWare’s titles, and the developers have learned from that experience.

It's worth stating that Anthem isn’t dead and BioWare haven’t abandoned ship. They’ve remained adamant on working out how the game can stay afloat, as a small production team at BioWare Austin work on the preliminary design of Anthem 2.0.  

BioWare and parent company EA have been planning an overhaul of the online shooter, according to three people familiar with those plans. Some call it “Anthem 2.0” or “Anthem Next.” (Sources: BioWare Plans A Complete Overhaul For Anthem, Kotaku).

In spite of that, I know for a fact, every Dragon Age fan can look at Anthem’s style of a live-service model and say that this model wouldn't cross-over into a Dragon Age game.  

Anthem is a multiplayer game with a heavy emphasis on gameplay as opposed to story. While the game does have a main narrative with all the BioWare trimmings of lore and a codex, the general reason you play Anthem is to kill, loot and customise your javelin suit.  

This gameplay loop can be easily continued with a live service model adding new content like levels, enemies, worlds, cosmetics, etc.  

Whereas for Dragon Age, the player’s experience is deeper than the gameplay - there are many reasons we play Dragon Age - for instance my experiences have been driven by the story as I, solely, make impacting choices and consequences throughout the world.  

Anthem’s live service model reflects a very different perspective, so, what could a Dragon Age live service-model entail?  

Well, according to Jason Schreier: “we not sure about the details, and in fact they’re likely still being decided, as the game is still very early in development and could evolve based on the negative reception to Anthem. If it does turn out to be an online game, which seems likely, it would be shocking if you couldn’t play the bulk of it by yourself."

"One person close to the game told [Jason] that Morrison’s critical path, or main story, would be designed for single-player and that goal of the multiplayer elements would be to keep people engaged so that they would actually stick with post-launch content."

"Some ideas [Jason] heard floated for Morrison’s multiplayer include companions that can be controlled by multiple players via drop-in/drop-out co-op, similar to old-school BioWare RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, and quests that could change based not just on one player’s decisions, but on the choices of players across the globe."

“They have a lot of unanswered questions. Plus, I know it’s going to change like five times in the next two years.”

The trouble with Dragon Age 4 being live service is that the game is predominantly single-player, and while there is a multiplayer mode in Inquisition, no one plays Dragon Age for multiplayer. As I said before, there are many personal reasons each of us play the series from escapism to fantasy fulfilment and everything in-between.  

Diversification of a live service model or multiplayer in the fourth entry of a single-player RPG just sounds like a recipe for disaster in my opinion.  

While in theory, the idea of a drop-in/drop-out coop system in Dragon Age 4 sounds somewhat okay, everything else that multiplayer implicates is not okay.  

If this sort of coop system is embedded into the game, then Dragon Age 4 could be an always online game running on servers. If Anthem serves as an example, that means no offline play, long loading screens, and an almost unplayable launch day.

How can Dragon Age 4 follow a live service model, and at the same time appeal to the majority of the single-player fans? That’s not a rhetorical question because I have three approach's BioWare could likely follow:  

The Andromeda Approach

In Mass Effect: Andromeda, Ryder has a small unit called Strike Teams, they act like Inquisition’s war table mechanic where you can send out groups into the world for rewards. However, in Andromeda as a secondary option, the player can actually take over these missions themselves in the multiplayer mode to assume full security over the mission’s succession.  

Dragon Age 4 could have a new war table that enacts live service content. Perhaps you’re given an incentivise to take on side-missions in multiplayer with other people, however, like Andromeda’s method, if you’d rather not, you can just send NPC’s to do the task with a longer time limit.  

The multiplayer mode while connected to the single-player would be a dispatched component. This sounds like the most okay approach for the majority of fans.  

The Anthem Approach

Anthem’s approach follows a single-player hub-based world where many key choices and story scenes can play out. Then once you enter the world, or choose a quest, the player is automatically put into a lobby. While you can play the missions and explore the world solo, you can’t play offline, it’s always online play on servers.  

Hypothetically, if Dragon Age 4 followed this exact approach, the player would have a single-player based hub, like a castle, fort or camp where we could engage with our allies and further the plot. However, when continuing the main missions, or exploring the world, we’d then have to go through a lobby to continue the adventure solo or with friends on always online servers, with no offline play.  

This wouldn’t be a good experience in my opinion.  

The “Ideal” Approach  

My ideal approach to live service is, of course, way too optimistic, but I’m throwing it out there anyways because Ubisoft did it, so that means anyone can do it. I’d love Dragon Age 4’s live service model to follow many post-launch story-based DLC’s adding to the narrative post-launch.  

Perhaps smaller content added monthly like new enemies, quests, areas, etc.  

And larger, story-based content perhaps 3-4 months after launch, and onwards.  

This is exactly what live service should be, the game is kept alive with more quests and story DLC’s giving the game breathe. If done successfully, this could be a live service RPG done right, with more content coming for months.  

Final Thoughts  

I may sound cavalier about the whole live service Dragon Age 4 ordeal, but I trust in the developers and their knowledge of their games and more importantly, their fans.  

This is something I haven’t stopped talking about, but it’s worth reiterating that the BioWare developers are looking with an eye to what the fans love about Dragon Age. The main team working on Dragon Age 4 created the Trespasser DLC, that’s John Epler’s narrative direction, with Patrick Weekes as the Lead Writer.  

Yes, I do get worried when I hear the terms “live service Dragon Age 4”, and “Anthem with Dragons”, but ultimately that’s just unplaced fear. In reality, the BioWare developers know their fanbase more than anyone, and will most certainly cater to our needs for the next Dragon Age game.  

I know this topic is rather baren at the moment, we don’t have a clearer picture of what Dragon Age 4 will look like. We’ve just got to trust the epic developers who’ve been at the studio since Dragon Age: Origins and are working on the next instalment to the best of their ability.

I’m sure we’ll touch on this topic in the future, but for now, let’s just focus on supporting the people creating the next Dragon Age, rather than fear what may or may not transpire in the next game. When we know more about live service, I’ll be sure to have another chat about it with you all then.  

Let me know your thoughts on how BioWare can handle Dragon Age 4’s live service model.  

[paizleyrayz]

SCORPIO WOMAN: OVERVIEW & PERSONALITY TRAITS

Scorpio is the eighth sign of the zodiac, and the Eighth House is all about sex, death, and the cycle of regeneration. With their penchant for all things spooky and magical, female Scorpios are natural Queens of the Underworld, and thus usually not ones to shy away from the more intense or heavy characteristics of life.

This sign gets a bad rap from most astrologers for being “too much,” overly dark, or even downright evil. This stems more from modern western culture’s inherent discomfort with discomfort with discussing the Pluto-ruled subjects of sex and death (typically not your general everyday dinner-table conversation). Reviled as a Scorpion woman can be, not many can deny her magnetic personality and the aura of mystery, magic, and sensuality that she wears around her like a cloak. This is not a woman who tolerates surface-level interactions easily. She prefers to give her attention to those willing to go deep with her. With a Scorpio’s electric gaze powerfully focused on you, it’s easy to feel like a bug pinned under glass, examined by a curious scientist determined to learn everything there is to know. 

One of the most sensitive signs in the zodiac, Scorpio women feel their emotions intensely, though they may not always express them overtly. A water-ruled sign, Scorpio is symbolized by the submerged depths, like the pure waters flowing through an underground cave. But you may not see the currents or waves rippling through her facial expressions – much of what a Scorpio woman feels, she won’t always express overtly. 

Scorpios rule over the occult sciences, and the true meaning of the word “occult” is “hidden” – hence, the Scorpionic tendency toward secrecy and inscrutability. Only the most determined (and respectful) will be granted permission to explore the secret caverns within the heart of a Scorpio woman.

Scorpio women are universally known as the sex goddesses of the zodiac, renowned for their passion, their strong libidos, and their exceptional prowess as lovers. Sex is extremely important to these women, and sharing a sexual connection with their deeply-bonded lover is a necessity for them to feel completely fulfilled in life. That being said, Scorpios don’t really love to sleep around, nor do they take sex casually. So until they find their soul match, a Scorpio can feel a little adrift without a partner to frolic and share intimacy with. Dating and lackadaisical flirting for fun’s sake or just as something to pass the time rarely appeals to focused, intense Scorpion women. They tend to have consuming romances that take up a lot of their time and emotional energy. Sexless unions or relationships of convenience will never work for this libidinous sign, nor will an excess of flash-in-the-pan one-night stands. In general, a Scorpio woman will hold out until she finds just what she’s looking for in a partner. Once she commits, she tends to mate for life.

With Scorpio’s widely known reputation for powerful jealous streaks, her possessive personality may also be a bit misunderstood. This kind of jealousy doesn’t stem from insecurity – in fact, most Scorpio women are extremely confident (particularly about the strength of their charms). But once this woman stakes her claim on you, she has a hard time letting go. She won’t take easily to relinquishing her mate into another’s arms without a battle.

Ever walk past those basement apartments in the city and wonder about who might dwell down there? It very well might be the lair of the Queen of the Underworld, lounging on a chaise and grinning up at the hustling and bustling feet of passersby with amusement. The word “lair” is a truly fitting way to describe this sign’s home. She makes her living space an insular, private domain where only her closest friends and lovers are invited. Decor-wise, Scorpio babes tend to adore textiles, draperies, and elaborate hanging lamps. Her living room might resemble an exotic bazaar, stuffed with the all the spoils of the souks that she’s visited on her travels. But everything here is arranged tastefully, and nothing is overdone or feels sloppy. Scorpios tend to be fairly tidy and can even tend toward the minimal, which makes their love for gloriously embellished details really pop rather than get lost in the visual shuffle. 

A Scorpio mom is a protective creature, strong and quiet, who usually has a powerful psychic link with her beloved children. She’s the envy of other mothers, as her kids can usually be disciplined with nothing more than an intense look from their Scorpio mama.

Scorpio women work hard and are exceedingly goal-focused. They set their sights on long-term objectives, and work steadily and quietly toward making their dreams realities. They often get pegged as loners in the workplace, and tend to intimidate their co-workers, often without meaning to. Scorpios don’t tend to enjoy being subordinate – they would much rather just be the boss, free to make their own decisions, especially around aesthetics and design.

Scorpio women usually have a very clear idea of how they think things should go, and will only share power or control with other signs whose vision they innately respect. They work well with other signs who are similarly quietly powerful, but generally have no time for bombast or showboating – especially if the person with lots of opinions makes no real effort to back any of their talk up with actual results. Scorpios have a serious reputation for getting inside people’s heads, and due to their love of psychology, can easily manipulate others to get what they want. This isn’t always used for sinister purposes – in fact, Scorpio women can often excel in sales positions, because they will use their intuitive traits to determine what their customers really want and how to make them feel most at ease. But should you ever stand in the way of something a Scorpio truly wants, prepare to get steadily worn down over time – because these women are completely relentless when it comes to achieving their personal missions.

Once they set an intention, they will do whatever it takes to reach that goal, regardless of the desires of others around them. These women do what they say they’re going to do and have a way of making it all look easy – always carrying themselves through even the most difficult and trying workdays with panache and grace.

When shopping for a Scorpio woman, remember always that though her tastes might be a bit unusual or spooky, she won’t appreciate anything tatty or cheap. You might choose for her something truly bizarre, like a beautiful skull or vintage taxidermy – though make sure it’s something she would actually display in her home. Framed butterflies or moths make a perfect gift for this sign that rules over the cycles of death and rebirth, transformation, and the metamorphosis of the soul, which butterflies symbolize. All the better if you can find a framed set that includes a scorpion, her symbol. Snakes and serpents are another Scorpio symbol, and also bring to mind death and rebirth with their shedding of skin.

While snakeskin printed items may not appeal, jewelry depicting snakes usually will – especially if extremely realistic, or ethnic/geometric. Exotic items from other countries, particularly textiles or costume elements, will usually delight your Scorpio woman. Think unusual hats, headdresses, caftans, or flowing robes. Perfumes and body oils in spicy, heavy scents, and resinous fragrances will often appeal, as well as hard-to-find herbs and spices for her cooking. Anything related to the occult, human psychology, diverse cultures, and sexuality will definitely interest her – especially vintage books on these subjects. Exquisite underthings and fancy lingerie will please your Scorpio woman, who may be dressed in relatively simple head-to-toe black (always a safe bet when purchasing outerwear for her), but choose bras, undies, and lacy bodysuits in shades like heliotrope, cerise, electric chartreuse, and vermilion.

―SCORPIO WOMAN: PERSONALITY TRAITS, LOVE & MORE

[joyfulburger]

Top Web Design Company in Brisbane

The most effective method to Choose A Brisbane Web Design Company 

Things being what they are, you are frantically needing the best Brisbane website architecture organization however just not certain precisely what to search for or request to guarantee that you are settling on all around educated choice? All things considered, you are not the only one. 

A large number of individuals each and every day are needing a convincing website architecture either for their new site or for existing one. 

At the point when you attempt to scan for organizations on the web, Google will return with a great many organizations that appear to all offer similar administrations and offer WebDesignOttawa site among the most mainstream query items. 

This unquestionably makes the way toward picking the best one an overwhelming errand. 

Right now, wish to assist you with settling on very much educated decisions. It takes something beyond a shining promotion on Google to settle on the choice to contract a Brisbane website composition organization. 

Keep in mind, you are not simply contracting individuals to finish a straightforward venture, as it were; you're really placing your business in their grasp. 

In the event that they're not a compelling or talented website specialist, you will risk bombing in reinforcing your image, in pulling in more customers, and in improving your transformation rate. 

Things being what they are, what precisely do you have to search for when you're needing the best Brisbane website architecture organization? 

Amazing Search Engine Rankings 

Normally, individuals don't consider the organization's web crawler positioning as a factor while enlisting a Brisbane website composition organization. In any case, in all honesty, this is as significant as their portfolio and reputation. In the realm of Internet Marketing, the web crawler positioning can be extremely telling. 

It doesn't generally make a difference how appealing your website composition is, if your site is for all intents and purposes strong to web indexes, you will bomb on the web. 

It's that basic. In this way, if the site of the organization that you wish to contract shows up on the best 10 hunt page results, you have an affirmation that they do comprehend SEO or website improvement. This gives you an assurance that your site will be planned so that it will have the best odds of getting appealing rankings. 

Here at Ignition Media, we don't simply ensure appealing and responsive website architecture, we additionally remember SEO when creating sites. 

We are a Brisbane website architecture organization that comprehends customers fundamental objective is to connect with whatever number individuals as could reasonably be expected. This can possibly occur in case you're site is made so that it is web search tool amicable. 

Shocking Samples Of Previous Work 

Basically don't take an organization's statement when they state they have the stuff to convey appealing website architecture – request evidence! Before you work with any Brisbane website architecture organization, request the rundown of their customers and request their online portfolio. Through this, you can measure their degree of skill, their inventiveness, and their adequacy right now. 

Start Media has made various sites in the course of the most recent 9 years and our portfolio shows why we are the main website architecture organization overhauling Brisbane and the Gold Coast. 

Beside being innovative and for being able to adequately and effectively put customer's thoughts into structures, what separates us is our responsibility to giving 100% fulfillment. 

The undertaking isn't finish until you say as much. This implies we offer to make updates all through the task to truly catch your vision and to adequately send your message across to your intended interest group. 

The Company Must Be Legitimate 

Accounts of individuals getting ripped-off online are not surprising. From time to time, we hear potential customers disclose to us that they've paid another Brisbane website architecture organization for a site just to discover that they were managing cheats. 

Not at all like in the disconnected world, it is simpler to offer administrations and not convey on the web. Along these lines, it is an absolute necessity to guarantee that the organization you're managing are not deceitful and will convey precisely what was guaranteed. 

One approach to do that is to know the area of their office and their contact data. Call them or even better, visit them to realize that they truly exist. 

Start Media is situated in Miami, on the Gold Coast. You can get in touch with myself, Nicole Brooke, the executive of the organization whenever in business hours on 07 5568 7515. 

Client care 

The manner in which a specific organization treats both their customers and potential clients give you a reasonable thought on how they maintain their business and build up their items. 

In this way, on the off chance that you have a rundown of potential suppliers call them individually and discover an organization that will accept your call and sets aside the effort to answer every one of your requests. Additionally, observe how quick they hit you up on the off chance that you demand for cites. 

Here at Ignition Media, we put client support on our need list. At the point when you call, you can be guaranteed that I will actually answer your summon right. 

On the off chance that you call outside available time, we will get back to you as quickly as time permits. Call us now and see why more customers want to work with us. 

Abilities And Qualifications 

Obviously, the most significant thing to check when searching for a Brisbane website architecture organization is the abilities and capabilities. 

Do they have the stuff to change over your thoughts into alluring plan? Do they have top to bottom information on all programming dialects and web conventions? Do they approach all the required instruments? 

As the lead creator at Ignition Media, I have been creating and planning sites for a long time. 

Throughout the years as the innovation to make sites advance, I guarantee we're completely refreshed with each change so we keep on moving with the occasions and make cutting edge responsive sites. Along these lines, you have nothing to stress over. 

Start Media isn't only a main Brisbane website architecture organization, we additionally offer extra administrations that are pivotal for you to succeed web based including site design improvement, web-based social networking advertising, and so forth. 

Ring us and let us reveal to you how we can help you Brisbane organization develop. Email me at Nicole@ignitionmedia.com.au and make a point to like our page on Facebook. We'd love to get notification from you.

[iconiceyesbirminghamwestmid-blog]

Dwelling Of Graphics Design

Make Compelling Design. I'm the proprietor and lead inventive driver and designer at AXIS visible. To depart your photos in RGB mode when despatched to the printer will delay your job. The design of the system—the relationships among all of these parts—is where the designer brings biggest worth. With its content-rich atmosphere and skilled graphic design, photograph-enhancing and website design software, you might have all the things you have to specific your model and creativity with infinite possibilities. So I looked at a hundred+ job posts to determine what expertise they want a graphic designer to have. As a result of graphics is the part, which appeals the viewer probably the most, many corporations, spend an enormous amount on graphic design, packaging design as well as brochure design. This contains business cards, Fb promotion graphics, Facebook page graphics, Youtube Page graphics, web site banner adverts and nearly most other print graphics too (flyers or print banners). Be sure that your designer gives you an ai or psd file so that should it's essential to replace or reverse our your colors you could have a supply file. The reasons are infinite, some people prefer to outsource their work with a view to spend more free time, others will not be certified to do the work and subsequently outsource the work to professionals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham at the moment are keen to flourish their career as a graphic designer. Exporting your mission is the simplest factor in Jeta emblem designer crack. It is best to rent a graphic designer to do this job additionally. You should use this very half in your graphic design to entice the viewers or impress your purchasers. The increasing attractiveness of graphic and web designing has made it one of the quickest growing and lucrative professions on this planet right now. Most designers use a hybrid course of that combines traditional and computer-based mostly applied sciences. You may edit your logo recordsdata in Illustrator or any other Emblem designing software. In thoughtful with the requirement of this trade, quite a lot of skilled school of graphic design have been established in different components of the world. There are totally different strategies of doing graphic designing that varies from web web page layouts to display screen printing. Graphic Designing is among the most profitable and fulfilling jobs today. I have noticed designs that belie the economical makes an attempt of shoppers wishing to save cash however create extraordinarily amateurish renditions; to essentially the most subtle and thought upsetting displays. On your personal blog graphics, observe the identical technique: Decide one dominant coloration (ideally, the same as your website shade) and use it in every single place. Premium clipart pictures, fonts, effects, overlays and frames make your creations stand out from the crowd. A business designer will use this analysis to develop detailed product descriptions involving colour, value, and form, as well as size, supplies used, and safety. 1. Use good stock photographs, add text and a colour tint. A very good designer will work with your ideas and meld them into one thing sleek and skilled. I'm actually keen on learning from the best of those on-line, and hope that myself and or my mate as well - can work with you to be taught and grow a talent within the designing area. With this program you could have the choice of ether utilizing your personal photographs or choosing clip art from the huge library of pictures bundled in with the package. So long as the criteria set down by the shopper is met, there's nothing to cease a graphic designer from having free reign with a web site to make sure it seems to be the perfect it probably can. As well as a designer can assist you focus the vision you have for your small business. Job vacancies for knowledgeable graphic designers have been rising. This perspective could be conveyed by the graphics, copy, and multimedia presentation of the knowledge, products and services you provide. The writer is a highly skilled and an skilled Content author who publishes for Business Growth. Graphic designers have to be familiar with desktop publishing tools such as Frame Maker, Acrobat Alternate, Photoshop or PageMaker. A game designer is concerned in each step of the design process, a graphic designer is much more specialized and concerned in only these areas relevant to the graphic designer. Daily is a treat when you are a graphic designer working for a graphic design company. They educate you the basics of graphic designing, shade and in-depth typography which are very much essential and essential for a newbie to know. Silhouettes are an effective way to create impression within your designs. Get durable window tinting options from Designers Graphics that won't solely protect your privateness however will even maintain your car comparatively cooler and keep harmful UV rays out. Like different fantastic arts fields, within the graphic design world it's hard for people to find and keep a gradual job. They work carefully with UX (user experience) designers (who decide how the app works) and UI developers (who write code to make it work). Encompassing all of these standards will improve your brand as the appropriate designer can be employed. Designers who work with an company are surrounded by fellow designers who're prepared to assist and information them. Graphic designers create visual ideas, utilizing computer software program or by hand, to communicate ideas that encourage, inform, and captivate consumers. In addition they put together promotional shows, packaging, and advertising brochures for services and products, and design particular person logos for products and businesses. Half of the freelancers would maintain steady jobs in both a computer graphics firm or employed in some laptop related group.These small companies can not afford to pay the fees demanded by large design firms. While It is vital to have (or at least be working on) a consistent colour palette to your weblog, you possibly can work sure colours into your pictures that can seemingly improve the number of shares your posts generate. If you're a gifted graphics designer, you'll be able to even earn cash with IMVU. Oftentimes businesses will be part of professional networks and or business itemizing guides which offer them a "internet portal" on their community. The pc software applications used by laptop graphics designers assist them create interactive web platforms, computer animation, product packaging, books, magazines, and a wide range of different products. There might be many alternative purchasers with many alternative requirements that means that a graphic designer will hardly ever get bored as they're engaged on something new and interesting at frequent intervals. If you're a graphic designer, we also encourage you to debate your helpful concepts and tips for business novices from the remarks under. An entry-level Graphic Designer with less than 5 years of experience can expect to earn a median whole compensation of C$38,000 based mostly on 1,341 salaries offered by anonymous users. Graphic Design: A History (third edition) contains over 500 new photos, a new chapter on present developments in digital design and an expanded introduction. Research reveals people spend extra time on a nicely designed web web page than on a low quality net page. So, it is easy to alter the size of image whereas sustaining similar decision and high quality of emblem whether they have to be printed on business cards or on banners of firm. best logo design services iconiceyes Birmingham, West Midlands in America have a terrific duty on their shoulders. Solution: If the graphics have been created in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, open them within the software program and edit the text. These are the rewarding benefits of hiring a graphic designer for your corporation which you shouldn't in all probability skip because your on-line presence is at stake right here. The graphics tablet however is much more correct when drawing photographs on screen and you can even trace over pictures on paper to make the picture on display screen look extra lifelike and artistic. It's for the professional graphics designer and it price fairly a bit. Poster and theatre designer, lithographer, painter and creator of typefaces, Cassandre, one of many biggest commercial artists of this century. There is no telling what shapes, vectors, and brushes you'll need in your graphics projects. Graphic design services could sum up your total company and you wish to make sure that you are represented properly. Placing graphics in your promotional convention bag that match the events venue will make sure that you keep away from making your organization look cheesy or ill-prepared for the market phase. 2. Offering related data that the person is looking for- Just a beautiful website with informative house page is a trick a few of the net designers use to attract guests.

[thesweetblossoms]

Conversations at Night

🎹Last week, a newly immigrated Jordanian Uber driver, Omar, drove me to work, he mentioned that he studied Arabic literature and was curious about by name. When I told him, it was indeed an Arabic word, chosen by my father, he readily shared his research and knowledge, to tell me more about its meaning. He relayed to me that the name derives from one of the oldest tribes in the Arabian desert, that the root word means hardworking as well intelligent. Although I had known that my name meant, intelligence, since I was a little girl, after learning the actual root word, “Sammar”, I researched further, discovering it also means “conversations at night”. This is such a haunting meaning, since I often think and write at night, and it pleasing to think that my name might indeed be a self fulfilling prophecy.

If I were to list seven elements that contribute to a women’s appeal, that carry the impression of compelling, interesting and unforgettable femininity, that strengthen a ladies ability to exert a magnetic pull, sex appeal, as well as attraction, my list would include grace, intelligence, wit, confidence, imagination, style and vision. For each dispenses the charms, extracts the best elements and leaves faint traces of the women’s soul into the atmosphere she inhabits and colors all her encounters.

A graceful women is one that may be counted on to examine the hand she has been given and find the only way to play would be to create, envision and design, a charming, memorable and beautiful life. She would notice that a hand painted thank you note and homemade lemon zested madeleines would be a happy gift to send to an elementary school teacher, or a message to an author, after reading a book may increase the power of both written and unwritten works, or that dealing with multiple obligations yet remaining unfazed is the key to carrying out each endeavor well. A graceful women is often a reliable friend, somebody who has kindness and strength to spare,

who is generous and open hearted in providing ideas, advice, new ways of thinking, perspectives and insights that open channels, clarifying problems, dilemmas or troubles. By confronting issues with a high level of ability, sharpness, composure and calm, she inspires faith in outcomes as well as a sense of security in others, for she reminds us, that the universe readily furnishes us with necessary tools and the awakened among us may cannily use these to create gardens, or start companies, write books, raise children or steadfastly and relentlessly chase any dream.

Intelligence is an irreplaceable tool in a women’s arsenal. While appearances satisfy many evolutionary prerogatives, people are often attracted to the components of a persons personality, character and energy. Thus ones ability to think, to make connections, to gain and use knowledge, to envision new and different worlds, to find patterns, to look minutely at details, to be able to grasp the universal horizons, to simplify the blinking space between birth and death, to detect humor or to ideate a world without pain and suffering, may be intoxicating to others, just as newly opened ivory roses, are to an orchid pink desert hummingbird.

The wittiness factor adds a sparkle to drifting breezes, ticking minutes and to the light filled hours of experience, for any encounter is more pleasurable when the conversation is amusing, interesting and articulate. The epitome for wit may be Jane Austen’s, Elizabeth Bennet, a heroine that is able to duel with the most bedeviling of men, who is able to enchant all around her with her kindness, intelligence and passion. For eons, I thought that being witty meant the ability to think fast and return a volley with ferocity and brilliance, yet it may actually embody a larger context, as being witty may be a certain kind of sensitivity, of knowing the correct words to appease a tense situation, perhaps with a gentle surrender, or a thoughtful offer, or it may be the priceless skill, at a dinner party or even, an attorneys break room setting, perchance, to extract the most vivacity from another person. A witty disposition unleashes the exuberant and sardonic ability to ascertain the humor inherent, even within the bitterest of dilemmas and unsavory intervals, it persuades the sleepiest of senses to savor the intrinsic qualities of reality, of the funny, cute and precious elements of quickly changing and developing children, or of noting the romantic opportunities of lounging in candlelight, when the power goes out, or in taking rain showered tree and blossom perfumed walks in less crowded sidewalks, or of knowing that what is truly relevant is how much you laughed, or lingered in beauty or dwelled in love.

Confidence is a narcotic quality, it opens ones experience to manifest the most fruitful results. It relies on an innate sense of place, an ability to see through many of the artificial blocks that prevent us from enjoying the present. I am awed at the way certain individuals carry themselves, the plus size models, or the plainly dressed and unassuming tech founders, or little children who have not been conditioned to compare themselves to media and cultural archetypes. Confidence arises from a comprehension of the value that one may add to the situation, knowing that the simplest gestures may tint the quietest hours, or even the most hectic ones, it is the calling card of the person, who introduces themselves and gains a new friend, or the individual that sweeps aside other peoples narrow viewpoint by example, or who seldom worries about how the audience regards them, as long as they adhere to high principals, values and modes of conduct.

Creating imaginary worlds, or parallel dimensions is a satisfying and alluring anecdote to navigating life in our present form. Therefore, a wild, creative, whimsical, exuberant, fantastical, energetic, ephemeral or any other type of imagination allows us to wonder into other realms that may exist in the vastness of eternity, like invisible moons, beguiling us unawares. An imagination could spark an ambrosial love affair, by sensing possibility in a potential partner, despite the blindingly obvious shortcomings, leading one on a romantic journey that could be thrilling despite the gaping variance from previous amorous notions. Or it could lead one to design and create an incandescent and disarmingly magnificent garden, laden with peach hydrangea, royal purple forget me nots, green tea dogwood blossoms, pink sapphire peonies and a hanging rope swing, knotted to a stately fairy light strung oak tree, to softly glide upon, while caressed by honeysuckle perfumed drifts, lashings of tenderness from ripening pink moons and lulling gold silk threaded clouds. It could create worlds that linger in our shared literary world, enthralling readers over generations with indelible characters and themes, such as J.M Barries, Peter Pan, or A Midsummers Nights Dream by William Shakespeare. An unfettered imagination could birth an enthusiastic and charming story about a mischievous giraffe in Paris, or a lonely starfish who longs to escape the coral reefs, or a striking, haunting and unforgettable love story set in the English countryside.

Words are more permanent than thoughts, as thoughts dissipate unerringly into the atmosphere, so just as writing encodes symbolic meaning, accelerates and defines the future as well as leaves greater tangible traces than musings alone, personal style is also an imprint of ones personality into reality. Sometimes the simplest ideas beguile me, the idea that a dress as ephhermal as a chiffon piece protects, shelters and conceals us from the part of reality that is separate from our selves, yet also exists as a work of art, or that how we dress impacts our energy, attitudes and moods, wearing floral patterns reminds us of the healing potential of nature, a black studded dress advertises that we must not be trifled with, or a nude halter silk dress evinces a desire for frivolity, sensuality and celebration. My thoughts often dwell upon an inking, an ominous sensation or a persistent thought cloud, that there is scare time as well as opportunity, to express myself to the farthest limits of possibility, to sit quietly to read and think about manifold subjects that render illumination, or even to savor the wondrous scenes occurring across time and space, as it entails a sacrifice of other pressing matters to notice, contemplate and mull the mysterious unfurling of the hours. I feel this way especially poignantly regarding style, that there isn’t enough time to wear the clothes that have come across my path, that I may not have adequate chances to choose different earrings to compliment my outfits or wear lovely shoes that would enhance a carefully chosen scarf. Just as the way an exquisite platinum ring sets of a twinkling emerald gem, this dearth of time influences me to both savor as well as thoughtfully consider the ritual of dressing in the morning for work, or selecting a caramel and gold beaded party dress to wear for a date night, or collecting another white cotton dress to linger in the garden.

Ones vision far exceeds the artifices and false boxes of sex, status or upbringing as vision is an element of our soul, it is a masterful and ecstatic gift, one that many lucky people possess, yet only to squander it in half sleepy lives, leaving a handful to scale the heights of awareness, or risk the temptations of insanity, topple precariously over the edges of reason as great visual artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet or Georgia O Keefe. For vision is a subtle ecstasy, enabling us to be charmed by overwhelmingly gorgeous vistas such as lilac clouded rainforests in Costa Rica, or Balinese, glimmering beach temples, a misty pine tree cove in Vancouver, a small town waterfall in Connecticut with groves of blossoming plum trees, a hilly glade ripe with nigella, cosmos, asters and lace flowers in Colorado, a moonshot Taj Mahal with night blooming jasmine and tuberose, a concealed hydrangea, rose and clematis ivy and moss draped reading bench in a garden in Cotswalds, or a white chiffon gown and black tie soirée at the Hall of Mirrors at the Versailles. Yet, the boundless gift of vision includes the ability to create imaginary worlds, perhaps, the talent to create a Parisian rooftop soirée with pink champagne, piano music, shadows of darkness and light, a setting for an overture, for the mischievous heiress in a backless black silk dress with emerald earrings, and the tall, captivating, yet, impecunious gentlemen in a patched up tweed jacket, both, serenaded by the musical notes and lilac dusk breezes floating over pooled pillar candles, strung Japanese lanterns, multiple riveting conversations and hinting at a momentous rendezvous, by star struck water fountains in the rose gardens below. But, vision unwavering burnishes the magic of the ordinary, common place or even mundane, like a spell or incantation, it charms us when we are at leisure, maybe, when we see the tiny spiders performing gymnastics over the blossoming tomatillo plants, or the shadowy outline of cosmos on the pavement, or a black thrasher bird feather, of the slowly whirling pink grasses in the inundating light.

During a spell of neglecting to refill my hummingbird feeders with handmade nectar, I diverted my spare time to planting seeds, fertilizing and watering my garden consistently. On Saturday afternoon, while lazying in the balcony garden with cups of Irish coffee, I noticed a hummingbird fly into the covered garden with pots of jasmine, tuberose, black eyed Susan’s, flowering basil, cosmos, roses, sweet alyssum and Mexican sunflowers, and sip greedily from the roses and cosmos before flying away. I was bewitched by the sight, realizing how much I miss seeing the fast beating whizzing petite birds visit my garden, yet enthralled that by growing flowers they may still frequent my space and imbibe in the nectar they find therein.

By looking again, more carefully, calmly, methodically at the possessions we already have concealed away in delicate pouches or miniscule ceramic bowls, or barely holding up in creased envelopes in oyster pink Prada purses, we might be delighted, intrigued and captivated by what we discover. I recently took out my Elsa Peretti teardrop necklace out and considered the fragile silver chain and the evocative shape of a single drop of water, borne of insidious joy or recalcitrant sorrow. I hadn’t worn it for many years as there were two tiny knots in the chain that I couldn’t untangle and was too busy to take to Tiffany's to repair. Yet, once I took it out again, with a degree of maturity or skill that is the gift of growing older, I was able to focus on the minuscule tangles and unknot them slowly with concentration and patience. With the years, we gain talents, perspectives and abilities that are not immediately apparent. So it is with pleasure that I wear my long ago acquired and conscientious stored necklace, hoping it charms the seductive flow and cadence of the present time, to symbolize our physical ability to transform energy when we cry and to take the tears and alchemize it to realms of imagination, wonder and beauty.

Often during breaks between work, I succumbs to islands of fancy and I scribble shards of fancy and nonsense; I seek alchemy in every leaf and discover magic in every blossom, I leave secrets in the open meadows and plant revelations under the shadows of cedar trees, I traipse into comedies in the coffee beaned darkness and escape tragedies in the mirrored light, I linger in the borders between moments, in the beats between the notes and the spaces between the lines.

One is able to measure the healing quotient of a house by the vibrancy and the lushness of its plant inhabitants. I am aware of this co-relation, whenever I enter a space with emerald, jade, arsenic green, oyster or polka dotted pink, or hues of deep Provençal lavender, that appear content, peaceful, well tended, happily imbibing light showers, fending off the dusty cadence of windows, rising tenuously, joyously or even arrogantly from black pearled soil, that itself, is verdant, sufficiently hydrated, evidently fertile, and with lilting stems that have been either left to its own devices, or that been thoughtfully sculpted with the gardeners hands with a pair of much used, oiled and sharpened bonsai scissors. There is a tangible loving energy that emanates from these spaces, where the subtlest creatures are cared for and honored. For our lives are akin to sheafs of fragilely stroked watercolor botanical paintings, tied loosely with a nude pink silk ribbon, each offering a daily experiment in alchemy, practiced, by cutting off a branch to allow another, greater access to light and air, or by gently pulling off dried leaves, so that another might sprout from the green stem below, or to take a flourishing limb from one plant to embed into another pot so that it may root and create an independent plant. These houseplants allow us to deepen our connection to nature, to entwine with it unwavering flow, recklessly, by attempting to manipulate and control living entities, by inviting other species and personalities into our midst, by examining the visible patterns, arcs, shapes, forms and manifestations of botanicals, to attempt to understand its quiet language and to bind ourselves to them, within our own scant hours, upon this pale dot, that is planted itself, by some unknown gardener, into eternal space.

Spend the day looking at the shadows and the night looking at the stars. For there is magic and mystery in the hidden spaces that the illumination conceals, while there are truths, beyond the blatant solar flares that the softly lit moon shyly gives away. I linger in the early November breezes while the crescent moons silver filters indolently through a congress of palm tree leaves, into my Paris cup of chamomile tea. I lull in the lantana, basil, chrysanthemum, rose, tuberose, orange leaf and jasmine perfume. I am soothed by the abstract and bewitching melodies of the wind chimes, the song of the flowing water in the fountain, of old memories lingering within the fabric, weavings and leaves; of the faded firoza, mustard and cream kantha blanket, ivory paint chipped rattan chair and the new marigold plants. These ameliorate the current time, by reminding me of my grandparents garden, as a little girl, even though, the textures, fragrances and lyrics are carefully, and irreversibly separated, by a handful of decades from my contemplations, here, bathed in the heady new moon and the gently biting desert winter winds. But perhaps, there is more to consider, for garden perfumes, night nectar chasing moths, fluttery eucalyptus branches and the tricks of the heavenly bodies, might allow frames to shift and flirt unbeknownst with each other.

Can you hear the wondering butterfly and the prancing bee, whispering gently through the lavender breezes, follow me, follow me? 🌊

[nintendotreehouse]

Dragon Quest-ions Answered: Fujimoto-san Talks Dragon Quest Builders

Hi hi, everyone! Theresa from Treehouse here. Hope you’re still having fun saving the world of Alefgard, and keeping it out of the Dragonlord’s clutches.

With all of these sconces and braziers, you could say I have a thing for fire…

The Dragon Quest series is a powerful force in the world of Japanese RPGs, and Square Enix has quite literally rebuilt the experience from the ground up, creating something exciting for fans and newcomers alike. As for me, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity of working with them leading into the launch of Dragon Quest Builders on Nintendo Switch, and as a fan of the game myself, I took a moment to ask the game’s producer some burning questions…

Theresa:

This game takes place in the world of Alefgard—the setting of the very first game in the Dragon Quest series. Why did your team decide to return to this important location in the Dragon Quest franchise?

Fujimoto-san:

We felt the objectives and setting of the game would be intuitive if the world from the first Dragon Quest had fallen into ruin, and you were tasked with recreating it as you saw fit.

The final boss of the first Dragon Quest, Dragonlord, has a famous line, “I give thee now a chance to share this world and to rule half of it if thou will now stand beside me.”

If you answered “Yes,” the world would fall into darkness. Game over. But Dragon Quest Builders takes that world clad in darkness and allows you to rebuild it as you see fit. This game challenged us to create an alternative, hypothetical world, one that progressed differently in important ways.

Also, we used graph paper when we were creating the 2D pixel tiles of Alefgard’s geography in the original Dragon Quest game. So, in a way, Dragon Quest Builders revives the original game world with both 2D and 3D blocks, and we hope everyone will play this reborn vision of Dragon Quest.

It’s difficult to pull off that look and look regal in an evil throne room.

Theresa:

The cities you rebuild, like Cantlin, are from the first Dragon Quest game as well. How did the development team go about choosing which specific cities players would get to rebuild?

Fujimoto-san:

We had an idea to reverse the order in which players visited cities throughout the original Dragon Quest story. The flow we ultimately chose starts the player out near the Dragonlord’s castle, sending them off to rebuild surrounding cities and finally revive Tantegel Castle, the starting area of Dragon Quest, only to return to the Dragonlord’s castle across the sea.

Theresa:

On the subject of building, this is a pretty significant step away from Dragon Quest’s traditional gameplay style. Why did you decide to reimagine an established RPG franchise as a building game?

Fujimoto-san:

The Dragon Quest numbered series continues to be created in the tradition of classic RPGs in which the hero saves the kingdom. While we use those traditional RPG elements as the focal point for non-numbered Dragon Quest games as well, we also use those titles to experiment with other ways to play in the Dragon Quest world.

With Dragon Quest Builders, we sought to create a play experience that had never been accomplished before—a marriage of Dragon Quest RPG elements and sandbox elements that lets you freely create things.

Sandbox-style games are not something that most Japanese players are deeply familiar with, and we developed Dragon Quest Builders with this in mind.

My immediate reaction to anything that was once dead and comes back to life. *insert repeated attack button presses*

Theresa:

Looking at this game, some people might think that it’s simply a building experience, but there’s actually a really engaging story here too. Can you please tell us more about how this story was developed, and how the building elements were integrated into it?

Fujimoto-san:

From the very beginning, we decided that the overall story would be about getting caught up in the Dragonlord’s trap at the end of the first Dragon Quest game, having the world fall to ruin, and then reconstructing the world. But we knew that charting out the plot and the building gameplay elements simultaneously would result in a half-baked, non-cohesive game. So, instead, we focused on designing the gameplay first, basing the mechanics on what we wanted the user to create at various points and what tools they would use to accomplish these builds. That way, even just the simple act of playing is fun and highly motivating. Finally, we then thought up details of the plot that would work well with these mechanics as we fine-tuned the gameplay.

The goddess has spoke-eth—I shall rebuild this land and claim it my own! …Err, fine, I’ll claim it for the people, I guess.

Theresa:

Since the game’s original release, how have you seen new players, as well as Dragon Quest fans, react to this “classic RPG-meets-builder" style of gameplay?

Fujimoto-san:

It feels like we’ve allowed Dragon Quest fans who haven’t played a sandbox style of game to easily discover the fun of this play style through this carefully crafted mix of RPG and sandbox elements.

This is the same type of reaction we received when the first Dragon Quest game expanded the appeal of the RPG genre in Japan 30 years ago.

Theresa:

Since Dragon Quest is such a long-running series, there was a lot of deep lore for the development team to draw upon while working on this game. What is your favorite surprise or Easter egg hidden away for fans to find?

Fujimoto-san:

There’s a lamp that you’ll need certain building material to craft. If you make this lamp and place it in a room, some sort of change will happen to the villagers. In Dragon Quest, this is a household element and one minor, fun item.

The Slime with the little beanie hat is my personal favorite throwback in this room. Super cute!  

Theresa:

While knowing Dragon Quest lore certainly adds to the experience, players don’t need to have played previous Dragon Quest games in order to follow what’s going on and enjoy it. How did the development team ensure that this game would be so accessible for new players?

Fujimoto-san:

For Dragon Quest itself, the game designer, Mr. Horii, always chooses mechanics that the player can instinctively understand, and puts his heart into creating something that anyone can relax and play without having to look at the manual. When Mr. Horii playtests a game still under development, he always plays it as if he was a brand-new player. Then we revise all the stumbling points.

Dragon Quest Builders was developed with similar tests in mind, ensuring that even those with no knowledge of the Dragon Quest series can freely enjoy the game.

Theresa:

It’s an interesting design choice to have the player start each chapter from what is essentially square one, as they teleport to the next town with the most basic equipment and no access to their previous materials and constructions. What made the development team decide to structure the game in this way?

Fujimoto-san:

Actually, the initial plan was not to split the game into standalone chapters, but rather to have everything connect in one overarching flow. But during the development process, the director, Mr. Niinou, suggested that we make a big shift in this plan. He proposed that we split the story into more distinct chapters to address a problem that occurred when all of the pieces of the narrative were more interconnected.

To illustrate this problem, imagine that you’ve just rebuilt the town of Cantlin and moved on to the next area. If you’re still able to access the location you’ve completed, then collecting the resources you need for the work ahead will be a very simple task. And there goes the challenge of the game! We realized that it would be too easy of an exploit to harvest new materials by continuing to build up Cantlin throughout the game. For this reason, we changed direction and split the story experience into chapters, so that the player would be able to create each area with a refreshed outlook.

In making this change, there was a concern that you wouldn’t be able to revisit your experiences from chapters you already played*. So, we designed it so that, as the chapters unfold, some sort of progression occurs. It’s a spoiler, so I won’t say any more than that… (laughs).

*Spoiler-Free Note from Theresa: Discovering fun details in Story Mode is really fulfilling! Normally, sleeping in a game is a simple act to restore health, but in this game, there’s something more to uncover. Also, after completing a chapter in Story Mode, you’re able to unlock similar areas within Terra Incognita, so you can gather and build things that you’ve encountered previously.

There’s a satisfying feeling in creating so many things, and that over time, you’re able to build better and more complex creations. And in doing so, you feel this nice progression for your skills in the game, which sets you up for the ultimate challenge near the end.  

I hear the next town’s gonna be a real fixer upper…

Theresa:

Fair enough! (laughs) Let’s change topics, then… This game features music from a wide selection of Dragon Quest games. How did the team decide which tracks to include?

Fujimoto-san:

Well, to start, since the game is set in the world of Alefgard from the original Dragon Quest, we created arrangements of all of that title’s music. From there, since the game was developed with creation at its core, we pulled in songs from the numbered series that are relaxing. And for the emotional story scenes, we used stirring music from across the series.

Theresa:

What was the thought process behind adding the Great Sabrecub and Dragon Quest Game Pak as exclusives for the Nintendo Switch version?

Fujimoto-san:

Terra Incognita (free-build mode) is a vast land, so we thought it would be fun to enhance the player’s ability to move about quickly, take down monsters, and gather materials. That’s where the Great Sabrecub mount came in.

In Dragon Quest, the Great Sabrecat often appears as a mount, but in Dragon Quest Builders, its head didn’t look quite right, so we decided to use the cute Great Sabrecub for the first time.

We also have completely recreated the look of the original Dragon Quest game’s cartridge on the Famicom. We had an idea of placing it in the land of Dragon Quest Builders, and from there, thought about the possibility of creating retro Dragon Quest themed blocks and objects.

Pouncy! Pouncy! Pouncy!

Theresa:

As a follow-up question, can you tell us more about why the development team decided to make this exclusive content only accessible in Terra Incognita?

Fujimoto-san:

If you use them in the story mode, it breaks the balance of the game. Since strange blocks and objects exist in the landscape of Terra Incognita, we made sure the exclusive content was only usable there.

Theresa:

Thank you so much for your time today! As we wrap up here, do you have anything else you’d like to say to the fans?

Fujimoto-san:

We’d love it if you used the in-game feature to upload the cities and landscapes you’ve created in Terra Incognita. We are very interested in seeing what sort of world you have created in Dragon Quest Builders. I’m sure there are those who have beautifully revived the cities, or others who’ve completely destroyed their world’s mountains and cities and everything... (laughs)

We are working hard to develop Dragon Quest Builders 2, so we hope you are looking forward to it.

Also, for those of you who haven’t played Dragon Quest Builders yet, please go try the demo.

Ever feel like your day is just taking you around in circles?

Theresa:

Thank you so much to Fujimoto-san and the rest of the team at Square Enix for providing us some of the gritty details behind the development of Dragon Quest Builders. For me, this game has been a great intro piece to the Dragon Quest franchise and a comfortable gateway into building-style games. I hope you all get to experience it and share your stories—as well as your building masterpieces!

That’s it from me for now. Tune in next time, fellow gamers! ^^

—Theresa A.

[custompackagingboxes]

Custom Boxes with Logo

Custom Boxes with Logo - Making Your Packaging Items Pop for Your Customers

Why Customers Choose You?

You just made a sale. A consumer bought your item. But have you ever wondered why the customer bought your product in the first place? Clearly, the customer had no clue how your product looked like so was it really because of your item? We think not. We all know that there is something wrapped up around the product known as packaging. Long before the customer can actually set its eyes on your product, it comes in contact with the packaging itself. And only when the customer buys your product will it be able to see what’s inside. They have no right to rip the Custom Boxes with Logo open even before they have purchased the item. So they are sort of bound. In short, it’s the packaging that has the appeal factor for the customers and not the product itself in the first go.

The customers make their purchasing decision mainly based on the appearance of the box. This is how this whole purchasing thing works. First, the customer is going to see the packaging and then what’s inside.

Your packaging needs to reflect who you are as a brand or business. In fact, we believe it would be wise of you if you use all the sides of the packaging for the purpose. Use wise to reflect your brand’s image, your product, and all factors related to it and vision to the audience carefully utilizing all the sides of the packaging. Because clearly you have no idea how the boxes are going to be placed up on the shelves in those piles of other products. Therefore, it’s imperative that you use all the sides effective so that you can ensure this factor that even if the front is not visible, the customers can still spot it’s you from the side. You need to have your name printed along with logo so that you are ensuring the factor you will be easily noticed by your audience. Who know they come to the store looking for a product from your brand and since they fail to find yours up there in the stuffed aisle, they have to settle with the next best thing. But sadly, what they didn’t know is that you were already up there but not noticeable. Whose fault would you say it is? Not the customer’s.

This is perhaps the best way you can reinforce your brand’s identity. All you need to do is print your brand’s logo, name, the website link, location and all other necessary information like your social media URLs on the box’s side.

You know that your boxes have dust flaps. If you have no idea what these are, let us explain. The tiny panels of cardboard that you can see on the either side of the lid, that’s what the dust flaps are. You can amp up your brand’s identity or your box’s design. Or another thing you can do is infuse some sort of style on those flaps will definitely work in your favor big times. Fill up the empty space with perhaps some patterns. Or maybe you could use your brand’s color there to reflect that. Adding colors that are in your brand’s image will make the packaging even more interesting and exciting. Also, the unboxing experience that you are trying to offer to your customers will be enhanced a great deal.

But in saying that, you need to realize that there is a balance that needs to be maintained. This is a highly delicate and important thing to bear in mind. You are trying everything in your means to make your packaging interior interesting. However, the thing that you don’t realize is you are bombarding your customers with a little too much than needed in terms of colors or related information. We all know that going a little overboard that kill things. It’s a little too much to handle. But in saying that, you can’t leave any blank space too on the box. Because that would be like wasting an opportunity of showcasing your customers who you actually are.

We recommend that you try to make your logo pop out. This is another element of due importance. Know that your logo is not only a part of your identity but one of those key and crucial features that will help you set apart from your competition in the industry. If you look back in time, you will remember that when this company was started, you took all the time in the world to create the perfect looking logo. But now that it’s the logos time to actually shine, why are you trying to miss that opportunity? You need to therefore work on placing your logo strategically that will help in making it pop out and shine as it should.

You have given all the time in the world to the outside of your packaging. But what about the inside? Have you taken that into consideration? Know that the outside as well as the inside, both will matter to the customers.

Do you wish for the customer experience to continue? If the answer is yes then you need to take it to the next level. You need to design the Packaging inside too. All those elements that you have used outside, these can be used inside too. You can continue the same textures, patterns, designs and style inside the packaging too to make it look like something high-end.

But keep in mind the fact that you don’t need to spend as much on the inside of your packaging. Because, be it whatever, it’s still the inside. The outside is what the customers are going to see first. The inside they will only get to see when they purchase your item.

Doing simple things like placing a note saying thank you for your purchase inside the packaging will make the customers adore you. Or maybe a ribbon outside the packaging. Anything that will appeal to the customers and enhance their unboxing experience.

The last thing you need to keep in mind is the practical side of your Pre-Roll Boxes. Up till now, the talk has mainly been about the packaging’s design. But make no mistake, this too has equal importance. The practicality factor is there to meet those certain needs and fulfillment issues of the customers. These need to be catered to. Ideally, you need to simplify this factor by not making the packaging far too complicated. For this to be realized accurately, notice the amount of time your crew is taking when they pack these boxes. If they are taking it a bit too long than you hoped for, you need to rethink your design. In fact, thinking of all these concerns prior to the creation of the boxes will help you spare the time and effort in the first place. You won’t all that rethinking and redesigning if you did this before. Remember my friend, time is money!