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hazelenergy · 4 years ago

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How I Digitally Paint like a Scenic Artist/Designer

Aka: how I did this and put my degree to good use.

LONG POST WARNING

Step 1: Research.

First off, get to your image search. If you are going to be using Google, you may want to type “-pinterest” in the search to eliminate the countless boards.

I had to figure out clothing that is vaguely late 1800s. I found a multitude of reference images that were fancier clothes- but I wanted to find images of clothing for kindred across all social classes. Photographs from the era and paintings are your friend. They will more accurately showcase what was worn.

After Fashion research comes location research. The 1890s in America is known for the rapid industrialization. Factories were getting bigger and work days were getting longer. But, I wanted the moonlight to be cascading into the place, illuminating the scene. This means I needed to find a structure that had skylights or let sunlight in. And the best images I found? Slaughterhouses. Fitting, huh?

The same rule for fashion still stands- if you can find photographs or paintings from the era- they’re better. There are tons of places still standing today from the 1800s. But today, they look WAY different. Ya know, Abandoned! So just be sure to take this into consideration if you search “abandoned slaughterhouses” or go trespassing like I did.

Lastly, pose research. Finding the poses for a fight scene can be tedious. So, I enlisted some help from a few fight choreographers and stunt men. You can record their fights and play them back at quarter or half speed. You can also get a mirror and flop on the floor a bunch. I did both. This lets you see the action/motion lines you are going to replicate in the drawing. Heres how we initially did fina’s pose:

And sometimes you have to go back and get a clean shot. I ended up using this pose for the axe.

Step 2: Set up and Background!

When you open a new file, set it to the dimensions and resolution you want. I was working at 600. Usually, I’m working at 300-350. You can always reduce resolution. Its hard to prevent fuzzy lines if you increase it later.

I cannot stress the following enough:

You work background to foreground. Big Shapes and areas to little shapes. Work your way forward. What this means is you need to fill in as much space as possible first. Then build your details. I prefer working as follows: Big Solid tones, Soft shadows, Dark Shadows, Highlights, then final blend. Once you finish this, put an overlay on top. This knocks everything back and helps create the illusion of depth. See this at work with the video below or here

Step 3: Figure Drawings + Composition

Utilize that research and images you collected to pose your characters. I create subfolders for each set of figures. Organization is important here. This will help keep you on the right layer and prevent the eternal digital artist struggle of “Fuck that was on the wrong layer!”

Even after you move on to lineart and shading, Keep the sketch layer as a reference. You may need to see what youre original notes/ figures looked like as you do the lineart and shade. Don’t be afraid to move them around and alter the composition rn. You want to be able to make changes. Make notes! Detail light sources!

I’m about to through out some art jargon:

You want to think about asymmetric balance. The easiest way to achieve this in an eye-pleasing manner is to use the Fibonacci spiral. Yeah. This boi:

Place your figures and actions in a similar sequence to the spiral and the viewer’s eye tends to naturally follow it. This is sometimes called the Golden Ratio in the art world.

Doesn’t need to be perfectly on the spiral. You can break it- but its an excellent tool to plan how things move in the piece.

Step 4: Lineart

Once you got things sketched- its time to do the lineart. I’m using clip studio paint’s standard brushes. Nothing fancy. I often switch between the G-pen and the For Effect Liner. Mapping and Turnip are for thicker lines.

Usually I set these pens to a specific thickness depending on where I’m drawing.

My background figures are lined at 0.05 thickness, the midground is .1 to .2, Fina is .3 and the foreground is .4. I set my stabilization high to help keep my lines smooth. Stabilization 100 means there’s a significant delay between where the pen is and the cursor. I like the stabilization to be at 20 for freehanding and at 50 ish for outlining. Dont become completely reliant on the stabilization though. Good and smooth lineart is drawn from the arm not the wrist. Your range of motion is severely limited if you only move your wrist. Practice moving from your elbow and you’ll be surprised how much smoother your lines get.

Once I finish lining the figures, I usually go around it with an outline. This does three things:

1. Solidifies the figure and cleans lineart for paint bucket tool. More on that in the next step.

2. Its a stylistic choice. Helps give it that comic book feel with a heavy outline.

3. Pushes figures forward or back in the composition. Thicker outline helps denote that a figure is farther forward than another. My background figures have no outline to push them away

Step 5: Digitally coloring

For each figure you are going to select outside the lineart.

Create a new layer under the lineart

Invert the selection. Paint bucket. You should now have a solid shape of the figure under the lineart. Do not deselect.

Create a new layer above the one color. Title it solid colors. Paint in thick, solid tones. I like to use the mapping pen and turnip pen to color in my solid tones: skin, clothing, hair, etc.

After that, deselect. Create a multiply layer if you can. If your program does not have a multiplier function, Pick a tone you want to use for shadows and lower the opacity (usually 30-40% I like to use lavenders or blue tones). It will not be as vibrant, but you can edit it in post. Select off of the solid colors layer. I like to start with skin tones. Use the airbrush tool to create soft shadows. You don’t want to create harsh lines on this layer.

Then repeat this process with harsh lines.

Then knock it all back with an overlay. If you dont have the ability to create an overlay, you can again drop a solid color and lower the opacity, but you’ll have to mess with the color balance/ brightness/contrast to let all the hard work come through.

You’re going to repeat this for every single figure. Here’s a few color theory tips though.

Your overlay colors should be darker (not more vibrant) in the foreground and lighter (avoid using pure white) in the background. This helps with the depth of the piece. Things closer tend to be darker (not always true, depends on lighting)

You can choose to use color theory to aid your shadows. Instead of choosing black or grey for shadows, choose a complimentary color. I used a lot of green for this piece, I used red for really dark shadows. Its not that black drains color- its just loses some depth if not used carefully.

Keep your colors consistent. Helps unify the piece. You can strategically break the consistency to draw focus. For example, Fina is the only figure with a true blue overlay. This helps her stand out from the other figures who have reds and greens.

Step 6: Touch Ups and Final Renderings

Now comes the most tedious part. If you’re like me, your computer fans have been whirring for the last few hours trying to render this monster of a file. If you havent already, SAVE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD

These are the last four layers I have for the entire piece. Here, I am trying to create effective and believable lighting. This kind of work I have only been able to achieve in clip studio or photoshop. You can do it with normal layers, but choose your colors CAREFULLY. Stay away from pure white. Carefully utilize your knowledge of light and shadow to create soft highlights. Harsh lines tend to be a stylistic choice for me. The final layer, subtract, dulls out harsh red tones. I used this as a final overlay to help put everyone and everything in the scene. Without it, things are a little too green and skin tones are a little too blushed for vampires.

The challenge here is I want to tone down the red, but not lose the vibrancy of the blood. So, shift it to a blue. This also helped reinforce the “nighttime” effect. Its only a slight change.

Final thoughts:

Whenever you finish something, its important to reflect.

1. I am so FUCKING PROUD OF MYSELF. This is easily one of the most complicated pieces I’ve done in a while- and I’ve made 16′ tall faux stained glass. Brag. Let yourself feel awesome cuz you just made something awesome.

2. I timed myself on the piece. I could have easily spent another 7 hours on it. But its important to know when to stop messing with it. Partially for budget reasons but also when you get down to the details you can make yourself go insane. Theres also a ton of detail work I lost cuz of overlays or its just too small to notice. Fina’s face? hard to see cuz its not close enough.

3. I needed to take frequent breaks for this piece. That was good. Resting and stretching was very important. That is one of the reasons why I was able to work so fast.

4. I started doing more digital art in April 2020. I have to say, practice makes perfect. I practice drawing and digital painting for at least 3 hours a day.

That discipline has allowed me to improve so rapidly. So- I don’t wanna hear shit about I can’t possibly get this good! Or I couldn’t even draw a stick figure! BULLSHIT. You can. Get yourself some free software like Krita or Autodesk sketchbook and start playing!

And thats what I got! Thanks for coming with me on this long post!

#digital art #my art #okay to reblog #how to #long post

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wildewebdesign-blog · 5 years ago

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My weight loss journey

This was me at the beginning of my journey

December 2018 I decided to stand on the scales to see just how heavy I was, and my god I was horrified by the digits I saw! Thats when my love/hate relationship with the weighing scales took a turn for the better. I then decided that my new years resolution would be to lose some weight and get in to shape! So, on the 1st of January 2019 I did just that!

I started to eat healthier and make healthier choices at first but my mindset on food remained the same, which as we all know (for those that have a food addiction) is a real pain in the backside as we just hate wasting food or leaving leftovers. I mean being a few pounds away from twenty nine stone wasnt good for me, my health or my amazing wife who has supported me throughout my entire journey so far! The first step was to cut my portion size down bit by bit so it wasnt a drastic change, stop having takeaways and give myself one day of the week where I could eat something naughty to help curve the cravings for the rest of the week (didn’t go so well, ate like a pig on crap food!) So, I limited myself eventually but that bit comes later in my story! The first week I had lost almost half a stone and was feeling on top of the world! I never thought I could lose weight, as I always gave up after a month or so, this time however I was determined to stick it out. I had an appointment with the doctors, can’t remember what for but the results from a blood test showed I was ALMOST pre-diabetic, so even more important to shift the weight! By going along with most of the official Slimming World guidelines and rules (didn’t go to meetings, not my thing!) I found it easier at first, but figured out very quickly that it had its limitations as some things may work for others but not for me so, I made some tweaks to it, first off, its not a diet. Its a way of life! That bit is very important as if its a diet, you can quit at anytime, whereas if it is a part of daily life, you can’t!

After four months of eating healthier, being a little more active I had a follow up appointment with my GP who actually referred me to the gym, which to be fair I was a little anxious about, I mean the stigma around gyms is they are full of muscular, skinny people but, I found they weren't! Others like me doing their best to shed a few pounds. I will admit, I got addicted to the endorphins and the rush you get afterwards! Oh did I mention that before I started in the gym I had lost three and a half stone already?

Those of you that are on Slimming World and are buying SW chips, or par boiling homemade chips… DON’T DO IT! There is a better way! Handy trick for you, you can either peel them or keep the skin on, but slice your potatoes into chips, spray an oven tray with enough frylight to coat the tray, place the chips on, salt/pepper them and spray more frylight on top to make them crispy and place in the oven at 200 degrees Celsius for half an hour (depending on how you like them) and they are gorgeous! Healthy chips without all the faff!

Ok so, I left off last time after mentioning about my first visit to the gym. This was a whole new area of the world I hadn’t previously explored and was completely clueless! I knew how to use the bike and the treadmill but that was it. The fitness instructor I was assigned to was very inviting and kind, and always paid me compliments which helped boost my confidence whilst in the gym. I started on the TRX, bike, treadmill and squats to start with so, basically all cardio. Which I found relaxing to be fair. It got me into a routine, which I highly recommend for weight loss! Routine is one of the main things that has helped me get this far! Food routine and daily routine. After all, your body stores fat when you have irregular eating patterns as it doesn't know when it will be fed next. Sorry I digressed a little there.

I found that once I am in the gym, headphones in and my favourite music playing I was in the zone, where I could push myself each week to work harder, do more and improve the statistics on my account to show myself I am capable of doing it. At this point I was only attending the gym twice per week. I did this for six months and had lost a total of six and a half stone at this point. I even lost weight over Christmas!

Things changed in May 2020 thanks to the Corona Virus pandemic, where all the gyms, swimming pools etc all closed, so this is where I had to get creative to continue the weight loss and not just sit at home eating crap because I was stuck inside. So I headed over to Youtube and found one or two easy workout videos which I did every day, I was seeing great results! Losing more than I did whilst in the gym and feeling more energetic. I moved on to the video I still use every day today, Emi Wong 30 minute minute HIIT workout with no jumping. Not quite beginner but still a great workout, it has helped me get to the point where at this moment in time (04/06/2020) I am a pound away from a nine and a half stone loss! This is the part of my story where I can share some of the tricks I have used in order to get this far. Most of which are easy enough to do, but some will require self control and a great mental attitude!

This is me now, weighing 19.2 stone!

1) Routine, as mentioned above this helps you to stay the course and also allows you more freedom if that makes any sense?

2) Drink plenty of water, this in turn helps the skin retain its elasticity which helps your skin bounce back instead of having saggy, loose skin afterwards.

3) Eating meals which are healthy, but can be made exciting using herbs and spices to spruce them up a little, you can still have whatever you want but portion control is a must. I still eat sausages but they are Linda McCartney vegetarian sausages.

4) Keep active, says it all really. No explanation needed.

5) Change the way you think about food. Before I started this journey I LOVED pizza and now everytime I think about eating a slice I feel physically sick!

6) Three square meals a day at regular times, for example everyday I have two weetabix, blueberries, grapes, raspberries and strawberries for breakfast. Then I have lettuce, cucumber, cheese and ham sandwiches for dinner and for the main meal I tend to go for gammon (fat removed), broccoli and the chips I mentioned above. I don’t get hungry during the day doing this, so im not liable to eat more than I should.

7) Don’t be afraid to ask for help! People that want to see you in the best shape of your life are more than willing to help! NEVER be ashamed or afraid if you get tempted or have cheated by eating something you shouldn't have, we all do it! At the end of the day its your body, your choices and your life!

So that is my story so far. Any questions? Want somewhere to start yourself? Feel free to comment below and I will answer when I can as my wife and I run two small businesses. One is a website design business called www.wildewebdesign.co.uk and the other is a craft business called www.wildeaboutcrafts.co.uk feel free to take a look :)

#lose weight #weightloss #loseweight #diet #gym

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genderhawk · 5 years ago

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I got mad on FB and posted a rant as a caption on a shared image. The rant is SUUUUUUPER long and incohea-rant but it felt good to write...

I added the cut at about the same place fb puts the readmore

The image:

The rant:

I only have to be brave in order to reveal a SLIVER of my true self (if you think I'm not hiding autistic traits by forcing myself to act painfully against my natural relational, communicative, and self-expressive instincts literally any time anyone could potentially see? you are wrong) because people who AREN'T trans and/or disabled and/or otherwise marginalized in our culture have made it LITERALLY UNSAFE not to. CW: bigoted violence against people of all ages, eugenics, and other bigotry both in the abstract and as it applies to me. Also, I'll be deleting comments that aren't constructive and respectful because this is MY facebook and, while I don't mind discourse, I don't want to host any content that doesn't serve me. Argue wherever else you want. Freedom of speech protects you from the government, not the Alexx. (that right ALSO doesn't cover incitments to violence, like arguments in support of eugenics............... bc killing someone for immutable traits of their very being? violent. Even if it's just in reproductive limitations or the legal need to literally sterilize yourself in order to transition legally... 👀) as well as disordered eating and related weight loss

Anyways... I've been thinking about living in a world that is hostile to almost every part of me, for one or more reasons. If I go into spaces for queer and trans people who share my interests? It's full of white people who can't be rascist bc they "have a black friend" but I'm the black person they've "befriended" and we are NOT friends and they ARE racist. Black spaces? Most of them transphobic, if not homophobic as well... Again, usiually not at the surface but even at the best events the bulk are still rife with STRUCTURAL anti-queer microagressions... And so few spaces for queer people, POC, nerds, activsits even..... MAYBE 1/10 puts accessibility info on the event listing... I know that not every event can meet every need, but shouldn't they at least be meeting the need of letting me know BEFORE I spend 3 hours getting to a class on interserctional direct action only for me to be unable to attend without SOMEHOW asking the event hosts to help me up the half-flight of steps to get into the building... But theres no contact info and in order to get help I'd have to GO UP THE STAIRS AND ASK!! Disabled people can make PENNIES to the dollar, not even ten cents to every dollar an abled person can make, and it's LEGAL! A dollar an hour is LEGAL and sub-minimum wage is standard for disabled employees even in feilds where their disability doesn't impact performance on average. Acording to the CA Public Policy Institute, 32,500 is the minimum yearly income needed for a family of four in California over the average cost of living for the WHOLE state. I divided by 4 and got $677 and change. I make EXACTLY that in SSI, give or take fifty cents. So lets do some math! My favorite subject... My PRESCRIPTION meds cost about 30 bucks a month, if I ONLY get the few meds that Medi-Cal and my private insurance through my mom don't cover AND if I can convince all my doctors to give me the max quantity of those so I'm refilling those every 90 days instead of every 30. My transit? Now that I have access, is 68.75 for 25 rides which is about how many I need a month. Compared to the long beach transit 25 ride pass (31.25) so that is already an increase in CoL of $37.50 (not including meds in this updating tally bc most people have some medical copay, and 30 a month on average is comprable to an able bodied person's appt and med copays if they had my private insurance even without medi-cal)... I do have OTC meds which, a low esitmate for monthly, is about 50 (I'm not counting CBD and THC as med expenses here bc then the numbers would be skewed by racist drug laws too....) for Tylenol, allergy meds, meds for nausea and diarrhea and constipation, dry eyes, dry mouth, other med side effects and symptom management. $87.50 spending increase with REALLY low and highly excluisive estimates... Moving on! Food. I can't cook or clean up after myself on a bad pain day (5 to six days a week) so I've lost 20% of my body weight since August due to disability. A few different grocery budget calculations for my needs if I could cook for 64 of 84 meals a month (20 meals eaten away from home, ordered in, or otherwise convenient) is $145 or so. This also doesn't account for cost increase for allergy safe food items. Thats also how much calfresh I get, although that number is slightly higher than my food money. That means that I only spend, according to Jan's bank statment, 100 bucks of my own money on food. $187 above and beyond average basic expenses per CA policy. And thats just three needs. LEGALLY housing can't cost more for me bc of a disability, so I'll leave that out of this rant thats getting too long... Just with the four basic needs listed I've only got $274.75 left to buy clothes, further an education or learn a trade so that I'm not on SSI my whole life, pay for anything urgent, pay for anything extra, have fun, pay for THERAPY to deal with the stress of having so little money................... It doesn';t cover phone, internet, or any medical equipment I might need to fix/replace/or add to my collection of resources... It sure as hell doesn't cover any kind of community work or social connection. Sometimes it feels like everything is against me and I feel paranoid... And then I remember that in most states its legal to abuse and torture children like me to make them Normal and Acceptable (ABA, conversion therapy, skin bleaching...)

#if you rb this it had better be to add commentary

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tumblunni · 6 years ago

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Baron omatsuri and the secret island traumatizes me yet again, hooray!

Ok wow that was a nostalgia blast! Finally goddamn have a physical copy of this thing to own. Its never been dubbed and the only way to get it was this weird manga UK licensed reprint of a bunch of (i think) hong kong english subtitles. The style of the subtitles looks like that, at least. Its all weird and grainy and very very old fashioned early days of subtitling style, which contrasts completely with the modern dvd menus and box and stuff. And its also a weird combination disc of four different movies, it seems they just bought out a licensing package deal or something? And just baked it onto the disc without checking or editing anything. Its not really a funny sort of bad subtitles though, its just awkward phrasings of thibgs that are hard to understand or random typos or whatever, no legendarily hilarious stuff. I kinda dislike it more when subtitles are like this, when theyre like...actually written by a guy who speaks fluent english but he just never watched the actual movie so theres a bunch of rookie mistakes. Also has a strange case of what you usually only see on fansubs- the obsession with leaving everything in japanese to Sound Cool. Nah we cant call them the Tea Party Pirates we have to say the japanese word for that. Nah we cant have this man say mustache when he's doing the mustache pose and talking about his crew of entirely mustache men who all do this mustache pose NO it has to be Chobehige because its somehow deep and edgy to not understand the word for mustache. Like i feel if i was watching this sub first i would have no idea what was happening! At least its not as bad as that older sub i saw where they insisted on translating friends as "crew", even when it was llike..a singular. This one man is my crew and here are all my other crews! Like i feel like that subber probably originally did that dumb old fandom thing of INSISTING that you had to say Nakama in japanese and Capitalized and it was a Very Important japanese word for specifically pirate friends that was Impossible To Translate. And then they just did a ctrl + F replace on the whole thing and made an incomprehensible mess. Also for some reason sanji just yells DOCTOR out of nowhere (chopper wasnt even in the scene) and baron omatsuri's one syllable "oh" is translated as some long string of what seems to be baseball jargon..?

But ANYWAY the movie is still fuckin awesome and i actually noticed EVEN MORE dark shit and subtle storytelling that i missed when i was a kid! The whole 'small child zombie stares blankly at the place where a sword stabbed through his chest and cant understand why he got back up' scene is EVEN MORE emotionally destructuve than i thought! Cos the subtlety of the voiceacting seems to make the poor kid sound so tired and resigned to it? He's desperately asking and his father figure feeds him the same old lies he's done a million times about how he's totally still alive and everything is fine. Like wow i missed that inplication that this has happened before! And then he kinda sounds like he's actually aware that Baron is lying and he's just pretending to believe him to make him feel better. And then he starts turning back into a corpse and he doesnt panic like muchigoro or not realize whats happening like the grandpas do. He just looks straight at his hand falling apart and tries to lie to Baron to make him feel better. *long shot of him from behind before you see whats happened* "I'm just feeling dizzy again. I've got used to it." *him staring blankly at his body falling apart, not even capable of feeling sad about it anymore* "Don't worry...i've got used to it." *thud*

Like FUCKING HELL this film is the best damn existential horror thing ever and why the FUCK did they market it as a fun happy kids film? it probably would have been way more successful if the twist wasnt kept all twisty, honestly.

And also WOW YEAH theres a lot of stuff thats the subtlest goddamn storytelling in the universe and youd never notice unless you watched this film a million times like i did! Like during the intro when everythibg still seems all fun and cute and normal, the advert for the Totally Innocent Not A Trap Super Secret Island Resort is being read over some random shots of waves and stuff. But then right near the end you see those same shots again and it becomes clear that it was literally the view from Baron's eyes as he was falling from the ship and drowning, desperately trying to keep his head above water and strain his eyes to see if anyone else had survived. All the moments that just looked like camera cuts were actually when his head fell beneath the waves. Thats fuckin amaizng you straight up showed the ending in the beginning and we didnt notice????

Oh and also right before THE FUCKIN TERRIFYING MUCHIGORO DEATH SCENE you see him casually mention being 'sleepy' a few scenes earlier. It just passes by without notice and you think that he's just drunk until he suddenly starts going from comedic slurring to fucking asphixiating and the SKIN ON HIS FINGERS PEELING OFF. Oh hey! Another thing i didnt notice before! FUCKING THAT. A fun game for you on your rewatch! Looking out to find the secret finger horror! Ha ha ha...ha...

Also MAN OH WOW all the subtle signs of Baron getting more desparate throughout the movie and how it seems the time limit for the zombies was almost up and he had to kill these specific pirates right now because he couldnt spare even a few more hours. In retrospect it makes sense how he was slipping up and leaving evidence for the heroes to figure him out. And its just so subtly offputting and strange how he goes from making a big fun performance about the festival early on and then starts subtky rushing through the formalities faster. Like you dont eveb conciously notice the tone is changing until suddenly BAM the full change happens and you realise you missed all those signs! And aaaa its so fuckin sad how you see him come running when muchigoro drops dead and he's like fuckin GET OUT OF THE WAY DAMMIT and kneels down next to the body and theb he just..turns emotionless again and goes ITS TIME FOR THE NEXT CHALLENGE. It is time. Its now. Shut the fuck up and do it, i dont have time to deal with this shit, just die so i can bring my friend back. (Tho of course you dont know thats why at the time) And then whats most jarring about the whole scene to me is how he's like "okay fuck it theres no more fun theres no more attractions, if youre not gonna play along then the final game is just i shoot your damn head off" WHILE YKNOW STILL STANDING OVER THE CORPSE OF HIS FRIEND AND STARING DAGGERS INTO THEM LIKE ITS THEIR FAULT FOR DARING TO CLING ONTO LIFE and then a fuckin half finished hapoy fun carnival game sign pops up in the backgroubd and everyone walks past it. Why was that somehow both hilarious and terrifying????? Just fuckin 'whoops we had this thing ready to go but alright its murder time i guess' and everyone IS SUDDENLY PACKING HEAT AND RIDDLING OUR HEROES WITH BULLETS???

And also even more subtly Baron just?? Stays with muchigoro?? Like notice how the entirety of the endgame takes place around where the dude dropped dead. And how when mustache pirate guy saves luffy you see Baron just walking in circles around the same area angrily shooting arrows at nothing in complete desperation even though the dude is gone and itd make more sense to run after him. No he stays standing right there and actually looks really damn relieved when luffy comes back, he's like 'holy shit you really were stupid enough to walk right into my trap jesus christ im so glad but also youre a dumbass'. And he fights entirely using arrows at this point so you might not even notice that he barely walks more than just circling a two meter radius of fuckin DEAD BEST FRIEND CORPSE. Which btw blends intonthe shadows for this entire scene and they only draw attention it again after Baron wibs and muchigoro comes back to life. And UGH MY HEART you see him smile genuinely for the firstvtime and he's like 'im so glad youre okay' and muchigoro is like 'haha im more than okay i can do somersaults!' and generally being a FUCKING TREASURE and this poor fuckin horrible evil man is hugging his buddy and gently leading him away from the battlefield so he doesnt norice he was just fuckin murdering some dudes to ressurect him. God the scariest damn thing about this film is how the zombies dont know theyre zombies and honestky they probably wouldnt even agree with their boss's plan to kill people to keep them alive. They justvthink they live a perfectly normal happy life on hapoy festival island, and he wants them to stay that way and never feel pain again :(

Aaaaand then yeah the infamous scene of revealing this horrifying intestines flower is growing out of the flesh on his back and all the corpses its digesting are pushed against the undulating flesh of its throat like a snake devouring its prey. And its cutesy fake flower face grows infinate eyes as it just keeps laughing and laughing. And then it gets graphically blown apart and the poor goddamn parasite host tries to shove the bloody instestines back into its body, knowing that without this horrifying monster chewing on his goddamn veins all his friends will go back to being dead.

THE END

THE FUCKING END

God it ends so abruptly seriously

I still cry my eyes out every time at the ending monologue of Baron dying and meeting all the souls of his dead friends and theyre crying telling him he shouldnt be here, they wish he'd been able to find another reason to live without him...

And then THE END

JAUNTY MUSIC OVER THE CREDITS

THE FUCKIN END I GUESS

What a great but very oddly executed movie. Seriously i feel it could have worked better if it was given space to breathe and more deeply explore the dark themes rather than the weirdness of trying to fool the audience into thinking it was cheerful and innocent. Like all of this shit happens in the last 30 minutes of the movie! They spend 60 minutes on the fun carnival games! What a strange sense of priorities!!

I WOULD DEVOUR A MILLION HOURS MORE OF DEEP SAD ZOMBIE CONTENT

I am like the Lily of fanfics

Oh yeah btw the horrifying deadly elder god spine parasite thing is named Lily and it looks pretty much exactly like flowey from undertale. This film kinda spoiled me for that game LOL ive never trusted a single talking flower ever since!

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azanycollectormilkshakeworl-blog · 7 years ago

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RELATED QUESTIONS:

Help with Car Insurance/License!?!?

Okay, so I'm a 17 year old girl in michigan. I am planning to take my road test soon and then get my license. I have divorced parents and my grandfather on my moms side is going to buy me a car and keep it in his name. He is going to put me as the primary driver on this car and pay for the insurance. However; I live with my dad and therefore my address on my license will be at my dad's house, since you have to have proof of residency when you go to secretary of state. My dad has been extremely annoying about this situation, saying that his car insurance will go up since I live here, so I need to know if it will or not. The people I have talked to so far say that it won't since I am not a driver on his car or his wife's. I've been wanting to get my license so I can get a job and whatnot for over a year now, so please help me with your experience. Thank You :)""

My daughter was in a multi vehicle car accident and i cant seem to find an estimate for car insurance?

It was a 2001 hyundai elantra. My insurance was 9 star. My daughter just turned 21 and wasen't given permission to drive the car.

Car insurance question - backed into someone?

This afternoon, I was backing out of a parking spot in a crowded lot. I was going under 5 mph and backed into someone. There was a very small dent in their bumper in front of the passenger tire. No damage to my car. They pulled over. I gave him my name and phone number and told him to call me. He said they would probably pull the dent out themselves or that it couldn't cost more than $100 to fix . I didn't get any of his info and only gave him my name and phone number. After I left, I started to regret not getting his info. I'm trying to decide if I should report it to my insurance company now or wait to see if he calls me. Any advice?""

Did you know that you save money if you have higher prior limits on insurance?

Okay, this seems to be a secret in the auto insurance world, but my insurance agent told me that if you say you have higher limits when switching to a new company your rates will be $200-$300 dollars lower! I didn't realize this would make a difference. For instance, I said in the beginning I had $25,000/$50,000 (liability) my rate was $1400 per year, then I took my old policy into the office and I really had prior limits of $100,000/300,000, and my rate when down to $1282 just for having higher limits at the other company.""

*Help* First Motorcycle?

I am about a month away from purchasing my motorcycle and already have a total including the bike, gloves, jacket, and helmet i just wanted to know the average total cost to get it road legal for example the Insurance, Tax, registration, and MOT (I am 18 the bike is 125cc I have my provisional and CBT) I have fashioned rough estimated total for Insurance, Tax, registration, and MOT but would like to know if 677?? a realistic estimate. If i have left anything out please tell me i need to know what i am getting into. Thank you. _""

Health insurance for the unborn?

Im under my dads health insurance until im 26. my insurance said they would cover me and my delivery, but wouldnt cover the baby. how can i get my baby medical insurance before she's born? (im aiming to get her on medicaid) but what steps do i take?""

TEENS: Car insurance question!?

Kinda random but here we go. 1 How much do you pay a month for insurance? 2 How old are you? Male or Female? 3 Do you pay for it or do your rents help? thanks!

Ballpark figure on motorcycle insurance?

First please don't tell me to call my insurance agency, that's why I'm on here. I just want an estimate I'm 17, male, it's a 1999 cbr600f4, I don't want full coverage, just liability, I am on excelsior high honor roll at school, I took the msf course, I have had my moorcycle license for a year now, I live in upstate new york. And would be riding leisurely. Any guesses? How much do u pay, how old are you etc. Thanks!""

How much does it cost for postal insurance?

How much will it cost me to get $5000 usps insurance for my package? Im in the usa tx.

Im pregnant and dont have health insurance.?

Recently my boyfriend lost his job and we lost our health insurance. What can i do to get insurance for myself and our two other kids, him? I live in california""

Driving without insurance?

Hi guys police gave me citation for not having insurance paper with me its registered under my cousin name we live the same address the car is insured but i don't have insurance if i go court and show car insurance they will give me ticket or what thank you.

Are there any sites where I can compare average insurance rates by model?

I want to get an idea of how much it would cost to insure different cars, but I don't want a quote because they will never leave me alone.""

Help with insurance terms?

Hi, i am having trouble working out what my insurance guy is telling me... what is a premium, and how often is it payed, and what is excess, and how often is it payed? what should i be asking and checking for? Thanks""

Insurance for my mom & me?

so say if my mom goes to get her permit could she get a insurance policy then list me as the main driver on it ? i have my licenses but i am only 17 and i can take out my own policy so could this happen ? i live in ny and since i am not 18 could this work for my mom to get her permit & get car insurance policy since she is old ?

Best way to find affordable therapy for a teenager with depression?

I'm seventeen years old and I think I have depression. All teenagers are emotional, I get that, but I know this is more. When I'm occupied and around people for a few hours at a time or less, I'm fine and usually even happy. Then when I actually have time to stop and think and let my mind wander, I usually feel kind of hopeless and just very sad. I also have other emotional issues, like the littlest things seem to enrage me. Also, I read somewhere that depression can cause physical issues such as digestive issues (which I have been having a lot of the past four or five months). I cancel plans a lot now, either because my stomach is acting up or I feel too sad to go anywhere and I just dont want to be bothered with people. Ive been sleeping a lot more than normal lately because thats the only time things dont bother me. When I was about thirteen I had an issue with cutting, I would talk to my guidance counselor (which is not an option now because I did home schooling and now am done with school until college next fall) and when she realized that I may have some more serious issues, she called my mom. My mom always brushed it off. She talked to me a total of one time, only when I went to my older cousin and my cousin forced my mother to talk to me. Basically, my mom got mad because I said I didnt feel comfortable talking to her and she refused to send me to a counselor, then she said she would send me to a counselor (at that time I had insurance) but she never actually ended up doing anything. So I went back to doing what I always do, pretending to be fine, and for the most part I controlled it. I stopped cutting until about seven months ago, which was also when all my other issues started popping up. I havent cut myself in a few months now, but I still have the urge to which is not okay. Depression and other mental health issues run in my family, and I keep thinking of one particular relative who got so bad that she took her own life. I know that at some point she must have been like me, where it was difficult but still somewhat manageable, and it just scares me that I could get to the point she was at. I have no insurance, and we have very little money. I know Yahoo Answers isnt the ideal place to seek advice, but I dont know where to go. I only have one true friend that I trusted enough to tell, and obviously she is my age so shes just as clueless as me. Then I have tried talking to my older cousin (not the same one I mentioned before, she and I dont talk anymore) but in her world even if the money is not readily available, when its needed they find a way, so she doesnt get the concept when I tell her I really do NOT have the money for a psychologist or insurance. Is there any websites or anything that provide information on free or more affordable counseling for teens? Im ready to admit that I need help I just need to find somebody actually willing and able to give it to me.""

What is the best but affordable health insurance w/h low deductibles anyone knows about?

Insurance quote changes?

hi recently i have been looking for insurance for my car that i have purchased. i have recived a quote of 2500 on a 22/01/10 last week, 4 days later the quote has changed to 3000? i have been using go compare.com, y the sudden change? i havent changed nothing since my first quote so i do not understand this change ps i am 17yr old who has purchased a mk golf 1.4s hence high insurance price thanks in advance""

How much will my insurance go up from a provisional licence to a UK full licence?

I have recently started to learn to drive in my car with my dad. However my insurance is on a provisional licence how much will it go up by when I pass my test? My insurance company is Admiral and i'm 17 years old.

""Turning 17 in a few years time - group 20 car insurance, how much would that cost??""

as above, please answer, i know im being a tad bit ambitious lol (1995 aston martin db7 fh 2dr coupe) WOOP WOOP!""

Car Insurance rates for a new driver.?

Hello so my question is what kind of apr would a driver around 19 or 20 get for a new car, i am looking at a Toyota Corolla, with no preexisting credit. I understand that I would need a cosigner and that is not an issue. I would just like to see what type of apr I should be expecting so I may save and plan accordingly. Thank You.""

Who has the Cheapest libility Car Insurance in Chicago?

I want some libility Insurance under $50.dollars, not over $49dollars.""

California statute of limitations re: medical bills ?

My sister a Canadian visiting California became ill during her stay. She was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer spending several months in a Sacramento hospital due to complications. She had medical insurance however there was a dispute related to a pre-existing condition. The dispute remains unresolved and contact with the insurance company ceased more then two years ago shortly after her death.The bills in question total more than $600,000. What are the implications related to the California statute of limitations and the estate of my deceased sister? There is no communication with the hospitals, doctors or any medical service providers who hold the debt nor with the insurance company who provided the travel insurance.""

How much do you pay for Tiburon insurance?

I have a 2002 Honda Civic coupe but am trying to convince my parents to look at a 2003 Tiburon. I am 18 years old, have done the safe student driver program, I have a discount from my gpa, and have not had any accidents. Also, my dad thinks that Tiburons are bad cars; I've heard a lot of mixed opinions. Are they reliable cars in comparison with a Honda?""

My car was considered a loss. how do insurance co. determine how much to pay for the car? 2001 toyota carolla

A four door CE model. No major problems some small scratches and dents.

Anyone in PA know about the car insurance discount?

Supposedly you can get about 7% to 8% off car insurance if you have an Emergency vehicle Certificate. Does anyone know anything about this?

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How Do I Get Medical Insurance...???

In my situation: I'm 16 and covered under my mother's insurance through the state because she has a disability- I'm moving in with my self-employed father who's covered by his wife's insurance (which is through her job). When custody get's switched over, I'm no longer covered by my mother, and my dad doesn't have his own plan. Since no one can afford 700 dollar bills every time I get a sore throat or tooth ache, what the hell should I do? Advice PLEASE.""

Cheap auto insurance in gresham/portland oregon?

I just moved to Gresham, OR from the Dallas, TX area. I am a 19 year old female who has been driving for over 2 years and has never gotten in a wreck. In Texas I had auto insurance for $88 a month from a local independently owned company. All the quotes I am getting from popular companies here are unbelievably high. Does anyone know of any cheap independently owned companies in the Gresham/Portland Oregon area. I'm trying to shoot for my insurance to be under $100 a month. Please let me know, thanks.""

Were can i get Insurance for the Aprilia rs125 at age 17?

Im 17 looking for insurance for the Aprilia rs125 but ever were i look no company's will insure me i don't know what i doing wrong but they must not like me :P can i getadvicee please thanks :)

Whats a good life insurance plan?

I'm want to apply for life insurance for me and my husband but, what is a good life insurance plan? and where do I apply? I know gerber is good for kids do they have gerber life insurance for adults?""

Do I need to change car insurance?

Right now Im going to school in tampa while my home town is about 2.5/3 hours away. Im currently residing in the dorms on campus but next semester (january) I was going to move into an apartment. I know Ill have to change my drivers license but will I have to change my car insurance policy too? I know one of my classmates did and it went up considerably because of the move to tampa.

Where can i get the best & affordable health insurance?

company does not provide it anymore. where can i get the best and affordable health insurance that i pay for myself. thanks

""My daugter is 19, and drives without insurance and driver licence(she has a permit though) in California?""

I tried to reason her not to do it, till I get insurance and she gets the licence, but nothing works. She bought the car on her own, but I was planning to help her with insurance. I wanted to find some impressive articles on internet..kind of like If you drive without insurance, you go to jail or pay $1000, and your car is taken away :-) , but couldn't find anything oficial. Please help!""

What cars are there that are decent but cheap on insurance for first time drivers? (male)?

i don't care on what the car is as long as its reliable. even if it looks like a shed. i have a motorbike for looks and pleasure with 2 years no claims if that makes a difference i don't know. cheers.

Can anyone recommend a cheep and reliable car insurance in New Jersey?

Does premium payment depend on the area you live in. Would my car insurance be cheaper in Hudson or Bergen county? Any pointers ly and advice would be greatly appreciated.

How to get my car insurance in my name?

i am going to break up with my boyfriend, but my car insurance is in his name.i want to be independent , so how to get it over in my name. he refuse to help me out. did i mention how much i dislike him.""

My car insurance wants to void policy?

I have a ford fester 3 doors that is insured with more than. My dad has a stroke and was getting worse as my mum or dad cannot drive I got a Peugeot 206 with 5 doors so that it would be easier for my mum and dad to get in and out of the car when taking them shopping, I also use the car when my partner is using my ford fester. My son (NAME DRIVER) uses my Peugeot 206 to go to and from college this is 3 days a week. Out of 7 days a week my son uses my Peugeot 3 days to do to college they are the only days he uses it. I use it the rest of the week. My son had a crash on the 30/09/2010 on the way home from college. The crash was not his thought as the car had just pulled out on him when the other car should have stopped. The car that crashed into his span the car around and smashed into the side of him, where the car has impacted him side (DRIVERS SIDE) the seat belt locked so my son had to climb out on the seat belt and get out the passenger side as the drivers door was smashed him. We have a witness and CCTV of what happened. When we called the insurance company (MORE THAN) they asked what happened and my son told them. They then said they will be in touch. That night we had to go to hospital as he is really has back, neck and wrist pains. It has not been 27 days since the crash and since then we have found out that we have been investigated for fraud has they are saying we lied about the amount of car in our house hold. My partner has 1 work van, 1 car that is on a classic insurance, and then I have 2 cars. When taking out the new insurance policy for my Peugeot I only said I have 1 car and that was the ford fester which I did, however is I was doing a new policy for me in my name I didt know I had tell them about other cars that my partner has. Now they are saying the under writer have sent u a letter saying if you pat 550 we will add the other card onto the policy and also change the name over to your sons name and u can say he is the main user. HE ANY THE MAIN USER 3 DAYS A WEEK HE USES IT THEN I USE IT THE REST. So they are kinds of bribing me? I own the car and brought it with my money and on the car registration document it says my name So if I say ok I will pay u the 550 the car does not belong to my son Cox it dont say his name of it.""

Insurance totalling my car looks suspicious?

At this point I regret making a claim and wish i could turn back the clock. I am being forced into a box and it looks shady. Three weeks ago my 2005 Cadillac STS was involved in a parking lot flood where the water rose and filled the floors of my car by about 4 inches. All us neighbors had cleaning parties using a wet vac and baking and toweling are cars in the sun over the next few days letting our vehicles dry out. On my car everything works like a dream as it did before with the exception of a 'check stability control' notice that comes on when I start the car. I have been driving the car fine since the flood and decided maybe I should make a claim to fix this error that pops up on the dash when i start the car. From the time I dropped it off at the dealer it has been all negative. Right away the dealer was negative and telling me it's the end of the world with my car, everything is ruined and it will probably be a total loss. He got the adjuster for my insurance company out there and it looks like it will be put in to the total loss category. No i am just asking the insurance company to forget everything and drop the claim because the damage is not that extreme and i dont want to lose my car. I am told at this point it is too late. Is that true? My neighbors are floored by this, i have been driving it around for a few weeks just fine and the car still looks new With only 62000 miles on it. I can't help from thinking that something suspicious is going on here. Do they stand to make a nice profit by totalling my vehicle and then replacing one module for a 1000 or so and having a perfect car with all systems working? Also the lady from the claims office said the car had to be 80% damaged for it to be a total loss. I asked her if this was based on speculative problems that they think may occur in the future because of the water, or based on actual damage now? She said it had to be actual damage now but couldn't give me any details from the adjuster yet. Can I demand that the adjuster list everything that he thinks has been damaged to my car (which I am convinced he will have to be creative to do so)? The car as i said drives wonderful, I checked the fluids on my own (fine), and the car looks new. Do I have any recourse here? I just want the car fixed for the one problem, i dont want to lose the car, and at this point I don't even care about having insurance fix the one problem, but again I am told it is too late to go backwards and drop this entire issue. I almost have an inclination to report this because it looks so shady. No reasonable person would look at, and drive this car and consider it a total loss. What is the agenda of the insurance company and cadillac dealer here? Something smells foul with this situation.""

How much do you think insurance for an Acura RSX would be?

I'm 16 years old and I want to buy an Acura RSX. Does anybody have any idea about how much insurance might be? I live in California.

How muh would cost me a car insurance? i havent bought the car yet. i am a new driver.?

""Cheap teen car insurance, best car to get?""

16, licensed, in high school with a b average. I know some insurance places give a discount for a b average. I know older cars with a good safety rating tend to have cheaper insurance quotes, if you can, please list some cars that you know would be cheaper to insure. Also, if you know the insurance companies that do discounts for a b average I would like to know. I am a safe driver so I'm not too worries about good coverage, I'm only driving to school and back daily. I need to pay for this myself so doing high school, running start, and having a part time job I wont be able to pay for anything too expensive. So, best cars to get? and best insurance?""

What's a good health insurance option for a 22 yr. old male?

My boyfriend just lost his coverage under his parents policy and needs insurance that's pretty affordable but still covers things such as: -emergencies (of course!) -vaccinations -yearly doctor visits/sport physicals Any recommendations are welcome! Thanks!

""Health Insurance, Texas?""

OK I'm 20 and have a part-time job, I don't have health insurance and don't know much about it. Anyway I mainly doing it to see a docter, to see if I have any problems like adhd, bipolar or whatever, which I THINK I may have. Anyway whats a good/affordable plan if thats all I want to do? Maybe something that will cover prescription drugs, if needed.""

Car insurance for teens?

I am 17 turning 18 in like four months. I would really like to get a car but I need to see if I can afford it. If you could please list your car and how much you pay for insurance a month that would be really helpful.

Few questions on cars and insurance UK ONLY?

i live in the uk and im 16 but 17 soon after my tests and things i want to buy a renualt clio 1.2 and the insurance group is 3E. now is this a high insurance group for a 17 year old as a first car? also if you buy a car and put a body kit on it your insurance goes up. so if i bought a car put a body kit on it and then insured it would it be as much or will it still go up?

How much is MOTORCYCLE INSURANCE?????

I am 18. I want to get a sports motorcycle. How much will my insurance be?

Does homeowners insurance cover scooters?

stolen moped does house insurance cover repairs

Looking for an insurance company to insure me using VIN/chassis number?

I have bought a beeline Veloce GT50 49cc scooter (still in shop till insured) i cant get plates on it until i give them my insurance documents but im finding it hard to get an insurer to insure me online using the VIN Number / Chassis Number. so im stuck in a loop. no bike untill insurance is had and no insurance untill licence plate number is inserted onto online forms. This is for uk provisional so no answers from outside of uk please. thanks

Did you agree over a decade ago when California made police asking for auto insurance illegal?

For a few years, police were not allowed to ask for auto insurance from motorists. Much of the argument in favor of that law was that it discriminated against poor Mexicans. It was overturned eventually as auto insurance violations/irresponsibility became epidemic. How does this relate to the current law in Arizona? How does it relate to the mandatory health insurance law?""

If I'm only listed as a driver on a family insurance plan. Will the rates go up if I move into Detroit?

As answered in my previous question, legally I am supposed to change my license to the address where I reside. Living in Detroit constitutes a higher insurance rate than that of the suburbs. Will my rates increase if the policy is not in my name since I am only listed as a driver?""

I need a form for allstate car insurance good student discount?

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Best home insurance in ma?

best and lowest home insurance in MA

Insurance for the baby?

Before you judge, I have a license, car, job, and apartment and am stable with income. I'm 17, and will be 18 by the time the baby is born, and I am covered under my fathers insurance which was established 17 years ago through my fathers work. Its Cigna PPO. Since then my father has been layed off because the plant closed down. He still has the insurance from his work and does not pay the huge bill because it was covered by his work. Now I'm Pregnant and, I'm trying to understand how insurance works. The baby cannot be added to this insurance because It has already been established. I know this for sure because my brother, 22 and unmarried, had a child in November and his child could not be added to our insurance plan. So will you please help me find insurances, Private insurances not state? Also can the baby be by itself or must it be with it's father or mother, me, on a plan?""

Is there any website I can use to get cheap car insurance?

I've been using Auto Trader insurance comparison and the cheapest I can find is 4,400 ? Yes I'm 18 and I realise it's going to be expensive, but come on ! The cars only 750 ! No way am I paying that much, I will honestly drive without insurance as it's a pure joke to be expected to pay 4,400. I don't believe I should have to pay that much. I only want a car to drive to the Gym and that is honestly all. It's like having to pay 4,400 for the Gym a day !""

Would abortion be commonplace and covered by insurance if men got pregnant?

I think it would be.

Tickets & Insurance Question?

I drive a 2000 Camry the insurance is in my aunts name........ So my question is if i got a ticket will the rates go up? If the insurance on the vehicle i drive is in her name will the rates go up if i get a ticket? Her name is also on the title of the car

Planning ahead for car insurance ADVICE.?

OK, So I have recently passed my driving test and am now currently trying to sort out a car for myself. As a young driver I know insurance is high. All I want to do is find out how much the insurance is on each small car, so I can find the cheapest. E.G KA ETC. I have looked online such as confused.com and they ask you for the number plate and ask questions about the specific car. Obviously I can't fill it in because I haven't got one. Is there a website that will show all insurance companies and their prices????? Many thanks.""

Car insurance question?

What is the normal price range for monthly payments on car insurance? I'm 23, female, with no prior accidents.""

Auto insurance company that you Do or Don't recommend?

I'm going to be shopping around for better rates soon. I'd like to know names of auto insurance companies that you do or don't like. If you've ever filed a claim with them. How'd they handle it? I live in IL.

What is the cheapest insurance around for a 20 year old with 2001 bonneville?

What is the average car insurance cost for a 20 year old in Maryland?

I tried doing quotes but it asks for too much information. I dont wanna keep receiving calls from car insurance places annoying me to get it with them. I have a 1998 Chrysler ...show more

Can I get free health and car insurance or any kind of insurance if my parent doesn't want to help pay?

My mom died and since im 18, i decided to continue to live with my grandma like i originally was with my mom and when im suppose to live with my dad he isnt responsible for me anymore. emancipated me. but im not living alone im with my grandma. so im wondering if there was a way to get health and car insurance. can i get it for free? is there a plan?""

How much does car insurance cost in California?

I know it varies but I just need a range.

What is the average auto mileage per year?

Farmers Insurance says that it is 22,000 and I don't believe them for a second""

Home Owners Insurance?

My husband and I are looking for the best home owners insurance in California one that includes earthquake coverage and other stuff like fire and theft can you give me places to check out? We will be living in Culver City, California in the USA""

What is the cheapest insurance for a 19yr old?

About car insurance what will happen?

okay so a few days ago i was driving my breaks dident stop in time it was very slow and i wasent going that fast at all my breaks dident stop in time and i left a very very lil scrab on a guys car and he said if i cant get 220 dollars by tomorow he will call my moms car insurance will that make the price higher?

Tax and Insurance question for a Young Person?

Okay , Im 14 years old , and I cannot wait to start my real career (After some years of college) as a Video game producer (or) programmer. My mom says that what ever pay check I get from a job or career , the tax will take money from it. I've calculated my monthly payment from being a Video Game Producer , Which is $5208 a month. How much will money would I Really get after taxes are taken care of and if I have car and health insurance? Is there any other thing I need to know as well?""

Where can I find cheap car insurance for someone who has a dui?

I live in AZ and I am trying to find car insurance for someone who has had a dui. The only company so far is Bristol west but they are too expensive. Where else can I go?

""I have a 11 month daughter, and i want to buy affordable health insurance for her.?""

I have a 11 month daughter, and i want to buy affordable health insurance for her.?""

""Could $5,000 provide healthcare for a family?""

If this credit becomes reality, doesn't it seem logical that a major healthcare provider would put together an affordable health insurance package for the credit amount and market the ...show more""

How do I get my insurance website to bring up quotes?

I want to start an online insurance company but would like to know how I go about getting the website to bring up quotes like with other insurance companies. How do I go about doing this I'm very serious about it so would like serious answers please thank you.

2000's Subaru WRX insurance info for a 20 year old in ct?

Hello I'm looking into purchasing either a 2002 or 2004 Subaru WRX. I live in Connecticut i am 20, have had my license for 2 years with no accidents or tickets. I would like to ...show more""

""In Oregon, is a pedestrian hit by a car, treated as uninsured driver without car insurance?""

Eleven years ago, I was hit by a car walking down a road in Oregon. When it came time for the medical bills to be paid, (spine fractured in 3 places, knee completely blown out, 8 days in hospital) and the settlement I was told because I did not carry car insurance, I am considered an uninsured driver. I was stuck with a $25,000 hospital bill, and a $12,000 settlement. People do not believe me when I tell them this was the law at the time. Anyone know if this is still the law in Oregon?""

Car insurance is abnormally expensive for me (18yrs old)? What am I doing wrong?

I go on gocompare, confuse.com, comparethemarket, etc. to check prices of different cars but I keep getting insurance at the price of 7,000+?! And the crazy thing is, it was for a Peugeot 2002 106 which is like 1.1 litre. which came to the lowest I found. Which was 7,000+. I fill in the details truthfully, such as locked home garage, very low miles per year, etc, but I can't seem to get cheap insurance? Everyone online says they get insured for around 2,000 on a Corsa, Peugeot 106, Citroen C1 and on like 1.4L+ cars etc. HOW TO HELL? Should I just buy my 1st car then insure it on my parents name then ask me to be put on as a named driver? My friends do that and pay around 1,000-1,200 on 1.6L cars.. Also, can you recommend me a good 1st car? (England) Thanks!""

Dental Insurance question?

On my dental insurance card, I have a primary care dentist listed on it. Does this mean that I must go to this dentist in order to have the insurance pay for my appointments or can I go to any dentist that accepts my insurance without having to switch my primary care dentist and still receive the insurance benefits? Will the insurance cover less if I don't go to the primary care dentist? Thanks!""

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""I have a company car, who should pay for the car insurance?

I have a year contract with this company and they are giving me a car for the duration of my employment. they told me i can use it for personal as well as work use. they told me i have to pay for my insurance though. is that fair?

How do I go about getting car insurance in another state?

I live in new york, i want to get car insurance in another state like maryland or delaware, i have friends in each state. What do i need to get car insurance there? Please help me...lots of details please...thank you""

Cost of newborn delivery/childbirth(California...

I'm wondering what the cost is for delivery/childbirth is in California, without taking health insurance coverage into account? Just looking for a general number, but if you want more specifics: -My area is the San Francisco Bay Area (east/south bay) -When I say childbirth, I mean: admittance into hospital/actual delivery procedure (not cesarian)/3 day hospital stay I'm shopping for health insurance, so any number that you come up with to help me budget/calculate would help me out greatly!""

Tickets & Insurance Question?

What height/weight ratio will get me best life insurance rates?

I want to replace some ART life insurance with level term. But I'm worried my weight relative to height might keep me from the best rate. Is there some way to find out what numbers trigger higher risk? If so I might wait another year and try to lose 10-20 lbs.

Why is car insurance so expensive for 18 year olds?

I passed my test yesterday, but insurers are being sharks again and charging thousands of pounds for something we might not need, and charging thousands (2600-23,000) for a small car which isn't even worth 1500. I have been riding a motorbike for 2 years beforehand, but no insurer seems to care. What is the best way for someone like me who needs to get on the road because of his job, to get a cheaper quote online? I've done basically everything.""

""My brother wrecked my car and the Insurance wont cover it, what can I do?

While I was out of the country my brother wrecked my car and the insurance company wont cover it. I have full coverage and my brother had my permission to be driving my car so how can they refuse to pay?

Who has the cheapist insurance. for min.coverage?

I am 16/m and looking for a cheap car insurances?

Im currently living in nyc, I am 16/m and looking for a cheap car insurances. Does anyone know of any?""

Can i park at my aunts to get... a good price on the car insurance?

The insurance is double the amount for cars in my area compared to my aunt who lives at the other side of the town, can i park at hers to get good price on the insurance..?""

Help with car insurance claim process?

A few days ago I scraped a co-worker's vehicle in our work parking lot. She wasn't in a proper parking space, but whatever, it was clearly my fault. I am paying for repairs to her car. I have pictures of my vehicle after the accident, but not of hers, because she left for the day while I was trying to find out who I had hit and find her in the building. I haven't brought this up with my insurance company yet. I initially thought I was going to be paying for scuffs to be buffed out of her back bumper, which wouldn't be cheap to fix but I figured it'd be inexpensive enough that I wouldn't involve my insurance. Today she handed me an estimate for $600+ for bumper replacement and paint work, etc. Fine. It was my fault. I'll eat it. But if I now want to involve my insurance, what do I do? Do I need her insurance info to file a claim? If I call up my insurance, does her insurance have to also become involved? I'm not even fixing my car - the fender's messed up but it's an old car and cosmetic damage doesn't bother me. I don't know what my insurance deductible is...if it's $500+ then I guess I won't bother and will just pay up in cash.""

Best car for cheap car insurance England?

i'm looking for an affordable car for my first one i'm a 19 year old female, i''ve checked a 2001 ford ka 1.3 and it was the second cheapest one for insurance which was 1500 the only thing putting me off is my friend had one and she said it guzzled petrol :P which i think she means it wasted petrol, the cheapest was a fiat 500 the insurance was 1300 but i really can't afford one so just want a cheap run around until i've saved up enough to buy a new one, does anyone know any affordable cars max price 1500 with cheap insurance thanks!! oh and if anyone has had a ford ka do you recommend one?""

Car insurance for 16 yr old boy?

I want to get a white 5 speed subaru impreza WRX (wagon sport) with turbo (standard). How much do you think this would cost considering that i'm 16 yrs old and the car is white and i get good grades? thanks

Where is the best place to find medical insurance?

I am taking a job where I will basically be self employed so I will need to find my own medical insurance. Where do you suggest I go to look into this?

Car Insurance? Do you really need it?

Say for example the owner of a vehicle allowed you to drive it, and you accidently damaged a car or vice versa, would you have to pay for the damage or would the owners insurance cover the car or an injuries that occur to the driver? thanks""

What could make my car insurance cheaper?

I am currently 19 years old and I want to buy myself a new car. It would be about 200 dollars a month for the current car i'm driving for car insurance but it is in my fathers name so I only pay 80. Now pretty much any new car I am choosing the quotes are over 400 a month. Would have car insurance in my name for my current car at 200 a month for 6 months until the policy is over make the quotes for the new car cheaper? Or is the quotes based off of how long I've had my license?

What is the best kind of life insurance to get? Which is most affordable?

(term, whole, universal, variable) I also would like your recommendations on good companies.""

16 year old car insurance with a classic truck?

So my neighbor has this awesome chevrolet apache 10 pickup from the late 50's, early 60's for sale. I am 16 so i am looking to buy a vehicle. I was wondering is insurance more or less with a classic car/truck?""

Good Car Insurance Agency in Kentucky?

I'm going to be heading to Eastern Kentucky, near Hazard. I currently have Nationwide insurance, but may change my insurance around if it is cheaper. What are some good and cheaper car insurance companies?""

Car Insurance For a 19 almost 20 year old?

Im gonna buy a used car, a 2003 sedan (not sure what car yet). This is going to be my first car and I need to know how much car insurance would cost. Thank you:)""

Car insurance rate question?

If I use my dads insurance on my car and get into an accident what will happen? Who would get in trouble me or me father?

What is the most reasonable home owner and Auto insurance?

I need to get a cheaper insurance for car and Auto.Would like to hear from you that have checked prices before you bought insurance.

How much does health insurance cost?

I just got a new job and I am about to enroll in medical coverage. I'm a healthy 29 year old male and I'm going to include my wife as a dependent. I know there are a few different plans, depending on deductible, etc, but I just want to get a ballpark figure on how much will be deducted from my checks. My wife suggests it will be about $150 a month, or about $75 per check.. Does this sound right??""

California insurance--driving a friends car???

I'm not an insured driver, but is it illigal if I drive a friend's car (that is insured) in California? What happens if i get in a wreck? I dont normally drive, but in case my friend's been drinking sometimes she'll ask me to drive her home. thanks.""

Car insurance renewal?

my car insurance renewal is due on the 22 of this month. but i'm 200 dollars short. can i call them and give them a post dated check for a week later

prize indemnity insurance quote

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/you-experience-opinion-pet-insurance-william-golden/"

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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How technology gets us hooked

The Long Read: From a young age, humans love to press buttons that light up and make a noise. The thrill of positive feedback lies at the heart of addiction to gambling, games, and social media

Not long ago, I stepped into a lift on the 18th floor of a tall building in New York City. A young woman inside the lift was looking down at the top of her toddlers head with embarrassment as he looked at me and grinned. When I turned to push the ground-floor button, I saw that every button had already been pushed. Kids love pushing buttons, but they only push every button when the buttons light up. From a young age, humans are driven to learn, and learning involves getting as much feedback as possible from the immediate environment. The toddler who shared my elevator was grinning because feedback in the form of lights or sounds or any change in the state of the world is pleasurable.

But this quest for feedback doesnt end with childhood. In 2012, an ad agency in Belgium produced an outdoor campaign for a TV channel that quickly went viral. The campaigns producers placed a big red button on a pedestal in a quaint square in a sleepy town in Flanders. A big arrow hung above the button with a simple instruction: Push to add drama. You can see the glint in each persons eye as he or she approaches the button the same glint that came just before the toddler in my elevator raked his tiny hand across the panel of buttons.

Psychologists have long tried to understand how animals respond to different forms of feedback. In 1971, a psychologist named Michael Zeiler sat in his lab across from three hungry white carneaux pigeons. At this stage, the research programme focused on rats and pigeons, but it had lofty aims. Could the behaviour of lower-order animals teach governments how to encourage charity and discourage crime? Could entrepreneurs inspire overworked shift workers to find new meaning in their jobs? Could parents learn how to shape perfect children?

Before Zeiler could change the world, he had to work out the best way to deliver rewards. One option was to reward every desirable behaviour. Another was to reward those same desirable behaviours on an unpredictable schedule, creating some of the mystery that encourages people to buy lottery tickets. The pigeons had been raised in the lab, so they knew the drill. Each one waddled up to a small button and pecked persistently, hoping that the button would release a tray of Purina pigeon pellets. During some trials, Zeiler would programme the button so it delivered food every time the pigeons pecked; during others, he programmed the button so it delivered food only some of the time. Sometimes the pigeons would peck in vain, the button would turn red, and they would receive nothing.

When I first learned about Zeilers work, I expected the consistent schedule to work best. But thats not what happened at all. The results werent even close: the pigeons pecked almost twice as often when the reward wasnt guaranteed. Their brains, it turned out, were releasing far more dopamine when the reward was unexpected than when it was predictable. Zeiler had documented an important fact about positive feedback: that less is often more. His pigeons were drawn to the mystery of mixed feedback just as humans are attracted to the uncertainty of gambling.

Decades after Zeiler published his results, in 2012, a team of Facebook web developers prepared to unleash a similar feedback experiment on hundreds of millions of humans. The site already had 200 million users at the time a number that would triple over the next three years. The experiment took the form of a deceptively simple new feature called a like button.

Its hard to exaggerate how much the like button changed the psychology of Facebook use. What had begun as a passive way to track your friends lives was now deeply interactive, and with exactly the sort of unpredictable feedback that motivated Zeilers pigeons. Users were gambling every time they shared a photo, web link or status update. A post with zero likes wasnt just privately painful, but also a kind of public condemnation: either you didnt have enough online friends, or, worse still, your online friends werent impressed. Like pigeons, were more driven to seek feedback when it isnt guaranteed. Facebook was the first major social networking force to introduce the like button, but others now have similar functions. You can like and repost tweets on Twitter, pictures on Instagram, posts on Google+, columns on LinkedIn, and videos on YouTube.

The act of liking became the subject of etiquette debates. What did it mean to refrain from liking a friends post? If you liked every third post, was that an implicit condemnation of the other posts? Liking became a form of basic social support the online equivalent of laughing at a friends joke in public.

Web developer Rameet Chawla developed an app as a marketing exercise, but also a social experiment, to uncover the effect of the like button. When he launched it, Chawla posted this introduction on its homepage: People are addicted. We experience withdrawals. We are so driven by this drug, getting just one hit elicits truly peculiar reactions. Im talking about likes. Theyve inconspicuously emerged as the first digital drug to dominate our culture.

Chawlas app, called Lovematically, was designed to automatically like every picture that rolled through its users newsfeeds. It wasnt even necessary to impress them any more; any old post was good enough to inspire a like. Apart from enjoying the warm glow that comes from spreading good cheer, Chawla for the first three months, the apps only user also found that people reciprocated. They liked more of his photos, and he attracted an average of 30 new followers a day, a total of almost 3,000 followers during the trial period. On Valentines Day 2014, Chawla allowed 5,000 Instagram users to download a beta version of the app. After only two hours, Instagram shut down Lovematically for violating the social networks terms of use.

I knew way before launching it that it would get shut down by Instagram, Chawla said. Using drug terminology, you know, Instagram is the dealer and Im the new guy in the market giving away the drug for free.

Chawla was surprised, though, that it happened so quickly. Hed hoped for at least a week of use, but Instagram pounced immediately.

When I moved to the United States for postgraduate studies in 2004, online entertainment was limited. These were the days before Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube and Facebook was limited to students at Harvard. One evening, I stumbled on a game called Sign of the Zodiac (Zodiac for short) that demanded very little mental energy.

Zodiac was a simple online slot machine, much like the actual slot machines in casinos: you decided how much to wager, lazily clicked a button over and over again, and watched as the machine spat out wins and losses. At first, I played to relieve the stress of long days filled with too much thinking, but the brief ding that followed each small win, and the longer melody that followed each major win, hooked me fast. Eventually screenshots of the game would intrude on my day. Id picture five pink scorpions lining up for the games highest jackpot, followed by the jackpot melody that I can still conjure today. I had a minor behavioural addiction, and these were the sensory hangovers of the random, unpredictable feedback that followed each win.

My Zodiac addiction wasnt unusual. For 13 years, Natasha Dow Schll, a cultural anthropologist, studied gamblers and the machines that hook them. She collected descriptions of slot machines from gambling experts and current and former addicts, which included the following: Slots are the crack cocaine of gambling electronic morphine … the most virulent strain of gambling in the history of man Slots are the premier addiction delivery device.

These are sensationalised descriptions, but they capture how easily people become hooked on slot-machine gambling. I can relate, because I became addicted to a slots game that wasnt even doling out real money. The reinforcing sound of a win after the silence of several losses was enough for me.

In the US, banks are not allowed to handle online gambling winnings, which makes online gambling practically illegal. Very few companies are willing to fight the system, and the ones that do are quickly defeated. That sounds like a good thing, but free and legal games such as Sign of the Zodiac can also be dangerous. At casinos, the deck is stacked heavily against the player; on average the house has to win. But the house doesnt have to win in a game without money.

As David Goldhill, the chief executive officer of the Game Show Network, which also produces many online games, told me: Because were not restricted by having to pay real winnings, we can pay out $120 for every $100 played. No land-based casino could do that for more than a week without going out of business. As a result, the game can continue forever because the player never runs out of chips. I played Sign of the Zodiac for four years and rarely had to start a new game. I won roughly 95% of the time. The game only ended when I had to eat or sleep or attend class in the morning. And sometimes it didnt even end then.

Casinos win most of the time, but they have a clever way of convincing gamblers that the outcomes are reversed. Early slot machines were incredibly simple devices: the player pulled the machines arm to spin its three mechanical reels. If the centre of the reels displayed two or more of the same symbol when they stopped spinning, the player won a certain number of coins or credits. Today, slot machines allow gamblers to play multiple lines. Every time you play, youre more likely to win on at least one line, and the machine will celebrate with you by flashing bright lights and playing catchy tunes. If you play 15 lines, and you win on two of the lines, you make a net loss, and yet you enjoy the positive feedback that follows a win a type of win that Schll and other gambling experts call a loss disguised as a win.

Losses disguised as wins only matter because players dont classify them as losses they classify them as wins. This is what makes modern slot machines and modern casinos so dangerous. Like the little boy who hit every button in my lift, adults never really grow out of the thrill of attractive lights and sounds. If our brains convince us that were winning even when were actually losing, it becomes almost impossible to muster the self-control to stop playing.

Every time you play a slot machine it will celebrate with you by flashing bright lights and playing catchy tunes Photograph: imageBROKER/Rex/Shutterstock

The success of slot machines is measured by time on device. Since most players lose more money the longer they play, time on device is a useful proxy for profitability. Video-game designers use a similar measure, which captures how engaging and enjoyable their games are. The difference between casinos and video games is that many game designers are more concerned with making their games fun than with making buckets of money. Bennett Foddy, who teaches game design at New York Universitys Game Center, has created a number of successful free-to-play games, but each was a labour of love rather than a money-making vehicle.

Video games are governed by microscopic rules, Foddy says. When your mouse cursor moves over a particular box, text will pop up, or a sound will play. Designers use this sort of micro-feedback to keep players more engaged and more hooked in.

A game must obey these microscopic rules, because gamers are likely to stop playing a game that doesnt deliver a steady dose of small rewards that make sense given the games rules. Those rewards can be as subtle as a ding sound or a white flash whenever a character moves over a particular square. Those bits of micro-feedback need to follow the act almost immediately, because if theres a tight pairing in time between when I act and when something happens, then Ill think I was causing it.

The game Candy Crush Saga is a prime example. At its peak in 2013, the game generated more than $600,000 in revenue per day. To date, its developer, King, has earned around $2.5 billion from the game. Somewhere between half a billion and a billion people have downloaded Candy Crush Saga on their smartphones or through Facebook. Most of those players are women, which is unusual for a blockbuster.

Its hard to understand the games colossal success when you see how straightforward it is. Players aim to create lines of three or more of the same candy by swiping candies left, right, up, and down. Candies are crushed they disappear when you form these matching lines, and the candies above them drop down to take their place. The game ends when the screen fills with candies that cannot be matched. Foddy told me that it wasnt the rules that made the game a success it was juice. Juice refers to the games surface feedback. It isnt essential to the game, but its essential to the games success. Without juice, the game loses its charm.

Novice game designers often forget to add juice, Foddy said. If a character in your game runs through the grass, the grass should bend as he runs through it. It tells you that the grass is real and that the character and grass are in the same world. When you form a line in Candy Crush Saga, a reinforcing sound plays, the score associated with that line flashes brightly, and sometimes you hear words of praise intoned by a hidden, deep-voiced narrator.

Juice amplifies feedback, but its also designed to unite the real world and the gaming world. The most powerful vehicle for juice must surely be virtual reality (VR) technology, which is still in its infancy. VR places the user in an immersive environment, which the user navigates as she might the real world. Advanced VR also introduces multisensory feedback, including touch, hearing and smell.

In a podcast last year, the author and sports columnist Bill Simmons spoke to billionaire investor Chris Sacca, an early Google employee and Twitter investor, about his experience with VR. Im afraid for my kids, a little bit, Simmons said. I do wonder if this VR world you dive into is almost superior to the actual world youre in. Instead of having human interactions, I can just go into this VR world and do VR things and thats gonna be my life.

Sacca shared Simmons concerns. One of the things thats interesting about technology is that the improvement in resolution and sound modelling and responsiveness is outpacing our own physiological development, Sacca said. You can watch some early videos where you are on top of a skyscraper, and your body will not let you step forward. Your body is convinced that that is the side of the skyscraper. Thats not even a super immersive VR platform. So we have some crazy days ahead of us.

Until recently, most people thought of VR as a tool for gaming, but that changed when Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $2bn in 2014. Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg had big ideas for the Oculus Rift gaming headset that went far beyond games. This is just the start, Zuckerberg said. After games, were going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court-side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face just by putting goggles in your home. VR no longer dwelled on the fringes. One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people, said Zuckerberg.

In October 2015, the New York Times shipped a small cardboard VR viewer with its Sunday paper. Paired with a smartphone, the Google Cardboard viewer streamed VR content, including documentaries on North Korea, Syrian refugees, and a vigil following the Paris terror attacks. Instead of sitting through 45 seconds on the news of someone walking around and explaining how terrible it is, you are actively becoming a participant in the story that you are viewing, said Christian Stephen, a producer of one of the VR documentaries.

Despite the promise of VR, it also poses great risks. Jeremy Bailenson, a professor of communication at Stanfords Virtual Reality Interaction Lab, worries that the Oculus Rift will damage how people interact with the world. Am I terrified of the world where anyone can create really horrible experiences? Yes, it does worry me. I worry what happens when a violent video game feels like murder. And when pornography feels like sex. How does that change the way humans interact, function as a society?

When it matures, VR will allow us to spend time with anyone in any location doing whatever we like for as long as we like. That sort of boundless pleasure sounds wonderful, but it has the capacity to devalue face-to-face interactions. Why live in the real world with real, flawed people when you can live in a perfect world that feels just as real? Wielded by game designers, it might prove to be a vehicle for the latest in a series of escalating behavioural addictions.

Some experiences are designed to be addictive for the sake of ensnaring hapless consumers, but others happen to be addictive though they are primarily designed to be fun or engaging. The line that separates these is very thin; to a large extent the difference rests on the intention of the designer.

When Nintendos superstar game designer Shigeru Miyamoto created Super Mario Bros, his primary aim was to make a game that he himself enjoyed playing. Thats the point, he said, not to make something sell, something very popular, but to love something, and make something that we creators can love. Its the very core feeling we should have in making games.

When you compare Super Mario Bros regularly voted by game designers as one of the greatest games ever to others on the market, it is easy to recognise the difference in intention.

Adam Saltsman, who produced an acclaimed indie game called Canabalt in 2009, has written extensively about the ethics of game design. Many of the predatory games of the past five years use whats known as an energy system, Saltsman said. Youre allowed to play the game for five minutes, and then you artificially run out of stuff to do. The game will send you an email in, say, four hours when you can start playing again. I told Saltsman that the system sounded pretty good to me it forces gamers to take breaks and encourages kids to do their homework between gaming sessions. But thats where the predatory part comes in.

Super Mario Run was primarily designed by its creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, to be a game he enjoyed playing Photograph: PR

According to Saltsman: Game designers began to realise that players would pay $1 to shorten the wait time, or to increase the amount of energy their avatar would have once the four-hour rest period had passed. I came across this predatory device when playing a game called Trivia Crack. If you give the wrong answer several times, you run out of lives, and a dialogue screen gives you a choice: wait for an hour for more lives, or pay 99 cents to continue immediately. Many games hide these down-the-line charges. Theyre free, at first, but later you are forced to pay in-game fees to continue.

If you are minutes or even hours deep into the game, the last thing you want to do is admit defeat. You have so much to lose, and your aversion to that sense of loss compels you to feed the machine just one more time, over and over again. You start playing because you want to have fun, but you continue playing because you want to avoid feeling unhappy.

A game in which you always win is boring. It sounds appealing but it gets old fast. To some extent we all need losses and difficulties and challenges, because without them the thrill of success weakens gradually with each new victory. The hardship of the challenge is far more compelling than knowing you are going to succeed. This sense of hardship is an ingredient in many addictive experiences, including one of the most addictive games of all time: Tetris.

In 1984, Alexey Pajitnov was working at a computer lab at the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow. Many of the labs scientists worked on side projects, and Pajitnov began working on a video game. Pajitnov worked on Tetris for much longer than he planned because he couldnt stop playing the game. Eventually Pajitnov allowed his friends at the Academy of Science to play the game. Everyone who touched the game couldnt stop playing either.

His best friend, Vladimir Pokhilko, a former psychologist, remembered taking the game to his lab at the Moscow Medical Institute. Everybody stopped working. So I deleted it from every computer. Everyone went back to work, until a new version appeared in the lab.

Alexey Pajitnov, the inventor of Tetris Photograph: Sipa Press / Rex Features

Tetris spread from the Academy of Science to the rest of Moscow, and then on to the rest of Russia and eastern Europe. Two years later, in 1986, the game reached the west, but its big break came in 1991, when Nintendo signed a deal with Pajitnov. Every Game Boy would come with a free game cartridge that contained a redesigned version of Tetris.

That year I saved up and ultimately bought a Game Boy, which is how I came to play Tetris for the first time. It wasnt as glitzy as some of my other favourites, but I played for hours at a time. Nintendo was smart to include the game with their new portable console, because it was easy to learn and very difficult to abandon. I assumed that I would grow tired of Tetris, but sometimes I still play the game today, more than 25 years later. It has longevity because it grows with you. Its easy at first, but as your skills improve, the game gets more difficult. The pieces fall from the top of the screen more quickly, and you have less time to react than you did when you were a novice.

This escalation of difficulty is a critical hook that keeps the game engaging long after you have mastered its basic moves. Twenty-five years ago, a psychiatrist named Richard Haier showed that this progression is pleasurable because your brain becomes more efficient as you improve. Haier decided to watch as people mastered a video game, though he knew little about the cutting-edge world of gaming. In 1991 no one had heard of Tetris, he said in an interview a few years later. I went to the computer store to see what they had and the guy said, Here try this. Its just come in. Tetris was the perfect game, it was simple to learn, you had to practise to get good, and there was a good learning curve.

Haier bought some copies of Tetris for his lab and watched as his experimental subjects played the game. He did find neurological changes with experience parts of the brain thickened and brain activity declined, suggesting experts brains worked more efficiently but more relevant here, he found that his subjects relished playing the game. They signed up to play for 45 minutes a day, five days a week, for up to eight weeks. They came for the experiment (and the cash payment that came with participating), but stayed for the game.

One satisfying feature of the game is the sense that you are building something your efforts produce a pleasing tower of coloured bricks. You have the chaos coming as random pieces, and your job is to put them in order. The game allows you the brief thrill of seeing your completed lines flash before they disappear, leaving only your mistakes. So you begin again, and try to complete another line as the game speeds up and your fingers are forced to dance across the controls more quickly.

Mikhail Kulagin, Pajitnovs friend and a fellow programmer, remembers feeling a drive to fix his mistakes. Tetris is a game with a very strong negative motivation. You never see what you have done very well, and your mistakes are seen on the screen. You always want to correct them.

The sense of creating something that requires labour and effort and expertise is a major force behind addictive acts that might otherwise lose their sheen over time. It also highlights an insidious difference between substance addiction and behavioural addiction: where substance addictions are nakedly destructive, many behavioural addictions are quietly destructive acts wrapped in cloaks of creation. The illusion of progress will sustain you as you achieve high scores or acquire more followers or improve your skills, and so, if you want to stop, youll struggle ever harder against the drive to grow.

Some designers are very much against infinite format games, like Tetris, said Foddy, because theyre an abuse of a weakness in peoples motivational structures they wont be able to stop.

Humans find the sweet spot sandwiched between too easy and too difficult irresistible. Its the land of just-challenging-enough computer games, financial targets, work ambitions, social media objectives and fitness goals. It is in this sweet spot where the need to stop crumbles before obsessive goal-setting that addictive experiences live.

This is an adapted extract of Irresistible by Adam Alter, published on 2 March by The Bodley Head in the UK and Penguin Press in the US on 7 March

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.