#also v cool to see like. its not necessarily Good Lines that carry all the communication yknow

[23b0075nke]

radiohead bodysnatchers dot mp3

feat. right hand

[dashielldeveron]

hi hello you may not remember but i sent a couple of asks about the shiggy route and was tentatively called mid-dec anon um. i have returned with thoughts ! again!

god the world building in this was absolutely gorgeous and so unique in its mechanics you should be so incredibly proud of yourself. there’s too much to say so i will pick a theme and my theme is the little throughlines you’ve done across the routes and how GORGEOUSLY you subverted them in the meta-route (i know you said it’s not necessarily a true route and also if it was my heart would break so. meta route). it absolutely tickled me pink how pink lemonade is NOT AVAILABLE. i adored how instead of experiencing the government assigned chapstick flavour in the Kiss Scene we are the ones wearing the chapstick. applying it to izuku kind of. technically. he is NOT wearing Moulded To Your Ass line but his ass is so fine he may as well be i’m so delighted!!!

I also absolutely adore how you bring your other interests into the fic like star trek and perhaps ouran high school host club? maybe? i ALSO liked how the “fine. lotus” REALLY reminded me of your hawks fic “spine, baby”.

the way that you pointed out hitoshis across all routes love in izukus route because i did not notice and now it is all i can see! heartbreak!!!! i think izuku is a very very difficult character to nail and by god did you nail it i’ve said it already and i’ll say it again you should be beyond proud of yourself.

i fear i may have to send more asks because you wrote 60k and a cumulative OVER 200k so there is much to consider. I donated to your ko fi and im only mentioning it in this ask because i think you should promo it

oh, hello!!! of course i remember you!!! you were very clever about it all!!! good to hear from you again!!!

may i be honest?? i am so STUPID i did not even realise i was destroying the throughlines. i was just thinking about how if a fundraiser has two pre-made cocktails, they prob don't have much to offer for non-alcoholic girlies. that since we haven't kissed him yet, we should get the chapstick so that we can focus on it more. GOD you've pointed out something really cool; i wish i had been consciously thinking about it so it could be cooler!!!!

and lololol i wanted to give izuku one of my specific badges of honour, which is Nerd So Into Star Trek That They Know Behind-the Scenes Stories. he deserves to be really into more than just hero work, and there's so much star trek stuff out there that i think his obsessive, cataloguing nature would carry over well. and i remember i put in "suoh's seaside cafe" thinking of tamaki ohshc--was there something else i ref with them, too? i wouldn't doubt it, since i am into ohshc, but the specific ref is escaping me rn

hitoshi!!! we love him!!! and Worse, he Loves Us Always!!!! and izuku--thaaaaaaaank you for saying i write him well, bc he is a difficult lil guy. thank you!!!!

and..........oh my god???? oh my GOD?????????? you donated to my ko-fi????? gracious. good lord. wow, okay, firstly, i canNOT thank you enough; i now feel like i'm a little victorian newspaper serial writer who got paid for their work--golly, wow, you are so VERY, VERY kind and generous; thank you so much!!!!!!!! (if i can figure out how to do a promo post, i will, but this hasn't happened before, so it may take some screwing around lololol.) but GOSH thank you so much. i'm v v excited to hear from you now, and i'll love any more thoughts you send in!!! i'm really glad that you like the silly stories i write!!!!!! xx.

[thedeadhandofseldon]

The Anti-Mercer Effect

On the Accessibility of D&D, Why Unprepared Casters is so Fun, and Why Haley Whipjack is possibly the greatest DM of our generation.

(Apologies to my mutuals who aren’t in this fandom for the length of this, but as you all know I have never in my life shut up about anything so… we’ll call it even for the number of posts about Destiel I see every day.

To fellow UC fans - I haven’t listened to arc 4 yet, I started drafting this in early August, and I promise I will write a nice post about how great Gus the Bard is once I get the chance to listen to more of his DMing).

Structure - Or, “This is not the finale, there will be more podding cast”

So, first of all, let’s just talk about how Unprepared Casters works. Because it’s kind of unusual! Most of the other big-name D&D podcasts favor this long, grand arcs; UC has about 10 hours of podcast per each arc. And that’s a major strength in a lot of ways: it makes it really accessible to new listeners, because you can just start with the current arc and understand what’s going on!

And by starting new arcs every six or seven episodes, they can explore lots of ways to play D&D! Classic dungeon delve arc! Heist arc! Epic heroes save the world arc! Sportsball arc! They can touch on all sorts of things!

And while I’m talking about that: Dragons in Dungeons, the first arc, makes it incredibly accessible as a show - because it lets the unfamiliar listener get a sense of what D&D actually is. (It’s about telling stories and making your friends feel heroic and laugh and cry, for the record). If I had to pick a way to introduce someone to the game without actually playing it with them, that arc would definitely be it.

And I’d be remise not to note one very important thing: Haley Whipjack and Gus the Bard are just very funny, very charismatic people. Look. Episode 0s tend to be about 50%(?) those two just talking to each other about their own podcast. It shouldn’t work. And yet it DOES, its one of my favorite parts, because Haley and Gus are just cool.

And a side note that doesn’t fit anywhere else: I throw my soul at him! I throw a scone at him - that’s it, that’s the vibe. The whole podcast alternates between laughing with your friends and brooding alone in a dark tavern corner - but the laughs never forced and the dark corner is never too dark for too long.

Whipjack the Great - Or, the DM is Also a Player!

I think Haley Whipjack is one of the greatest Dungeon Masters alive. The plots and characters! The mechanical shenanigans! The descriptions!

Actually, let’s start there: with the descriptions. (Both Haley and Gus do this really fucking well). As we know, Episode 0 of each arc sees the DM reading a description - of a small town, or the Up North, or the recent history of a great party. And Haley always strikes this tricky balance - one I think a lot of us who DM struggle with - between giving too much description and  worldbuilding, and not telling us anything at all. She describes people and events in just enough detail to imagine them, but never so much they seem static and unreal - just clear enough to envision, but with enough vagueness left to let your imagination begin to run wild.

While I’m thinking about arc 3’s party, let’s talk about a really bold move she made in that arc: letting the players have ongoing control of their history. Loser Lars! She didn’t try to spell out every detail of this high-level party’s history, or restrict their past to only what she decided to allow - she gave them the broad outlines, and let them embellish it. And that made for a much more alive story than any attempt to create it by herself would have - but I think it takes a lot of courage to let your players have that agency. Most Dungeon Masters (myself included) tend to struggle with being control freaks.

And the plots! Yeah, arc one is built of classic tropes - but she actually uses them, she doesn’t get caught up in subverting everything or laughing at the cliches. And it’s fun! In arc 3, there really isn’t a straight line for the players to follow, either - which makes the game much more interesting and much trickier to run. And her NPCs are fantastic and I will talk about them in the next section.

Above all, though, I think what is really impressive is how Haley balances mechanics, and rules as written, with the narrative and rule of cool - and puts both rules and story in the service of playing a fun game. And the secret to that? She’s the DM, but the DM is a player, and the DM is clearly having fun. Hope Lovejoy mechanically shouldn’t get that spellslot back, but she does, and it’s fun. The changeling merchant in Thymore doesn’t really make some Grand Artistic Narrative better, but wow is it fun. And she never tries to force it one way or the other - the story might be more dramatic if Annie didn’t manage to banish the demon from the vault, but it’s a lot cooler and a lot more fun for the players if Annie gets to be a badass instead - and the rules and the dice say that Annie managed it.

Settings feel like places, NPCs feel like people, and the narrative plot feels like a real villainous plot.

Anyway. I could go on about the various ways in which Whipjack is awesome for quite a while - she’s right, first place in D&D is when your friends laugh and super first place is when they cry - but I’m going to stop here and just. Make another post about it some other time. For now, for the record I hold her opinions about the game in higher esteem than I do several official sourcebooks; that is all.

Characters - Or, Bombyx Mori Is Not an Asshole, And That Matters

Okay, I said I would talk about characters! And I will!

Just a general place to start: the party! All of the first three parties are interesting to me, because they all care about each other. Not even necessarily in a Found Family Trope sort of way, though often that too. But they generally aren’t assholes to each other. The players create characters that actually work together, that are interesting; even when there’s internal divisions like SK-73 v. Sir Mr. Person, they aren’t just unpleasant and antagonistic all the time. Listening to the podcast, we’re “with” these people for a couple hours - and it isn’t unpleasant. That matters a lot. (To take a counter-example: I love Critical Role, but the episode when Vox Machina pranked Scanlan after he died and was resurrected wasn’t fun to listen to, it was just uncomfortable and angering and vaguely cruel).

All of the PCs are amazing, and the players in each arc did a great job. If you disagree with me about that, well, you have the right to be incorrect and I am sorry for your loss. Annie Wintersummer, for one example: tragic and sad and I want to give her a hug, but also Fuck Yeah Wintersummer, and also her familiar Charles the Owl is the cutest and funniest and I love him. And we understand what’s going on with Annie, she isn’t some infinite pool of hidden depths because this arc is 7 episodes and we don’t have time for that, but she also has enough complexity to be interesting. Same with Fey Moss: yeah, a lot of her is a silly pun about fame that carries into how she behaves, but a lot of how she behaves is also down to some good classic half-elven angst about parenthood and wanting to be known and seen and important. (Side note: if your half-elf character doesn’t have angst, well, that’s impressive and also I don’t think I believe you).

There are multiple lesbian cat-people in a 4-person party and they both have requited romantic interests who aren’t each other. This is the future liberals want and I am glad for it.

Sir Mister Person, the human fighter! Thavius, the edge lord! Even when a character is “simple,” they’re interesting, because of how they’re played as people and not action-figures. And that matters a lot.

In the same way: the NPCs. There really aren’t a lot of them! And some of them come from Patreon submissions, so uh good work gang, you’re part of the awesomeness and I’m proud of you! The point being, the NPCs work because enough of them are interesting to matter. It’s not just a servant who opens Count Michael’s door, it’s a character with a name (Oleandra!) and a personality and history. They’re interesting. Penny Lovejoy didn’t need to be interesting, the merchant outside the Laughing Mausoleum didn’t need to be interesting, but they ARE! And Haley and Gus EXCEL at making the NPCs matter, not just to the story but to us as viewers. I agree with Sir Mister Person, actually, I would die for the princesses of the kingdom. I actually care about Gem Lovejoy of all people - that wouldn’t happen in an ordinary campaign! That’s the thing that makes Unprepared Casters spectacular - and, frankly, it’s especially impressive because D&D does not tend to be good at making a lot of interesting compared to a lot of other sorts of stories.

And, just as an exemplar of all this: Bombyx Mori. Immortal, reincarnating(?), and described as the incarnation of the player’s ADHD. I expected to hate Bombyx, because as the mom friend both in and out of my friend-group’s campaigns, the chaos-causer is always exhausting to me. And yeah, Bombyx causes problems on purpose! But! She is not an asshole.

And that’s important. Bombyx goes and sits with the queen and comforts her. Bombyx gives Annie emotional support. Bombyx isn’t just a vehicle to jerk around the DM and other players; Bombyx really is a character we can care about. To compare with another case - in the first couple episodes of The Adventure Zone, the PCs are just dicks. Funny, but dicks. Bombyx holds out an arm “covered in larva” to shake with a count, and robs him of magical items, but she also cares about her friends and other people! She uses a powerful magical gem to save her fertilizer guy from death! Yeah, Bombyx is ridiculous, but she’s not just an asshole the party has to keep around for plot reasons; you can see why her party would keep her around. And one layer of meta up, she’s the perfect example of how to make a chaotic character like that while still being fun for everyone you’re playing with, which is often not the case. And I love her.

The Anti-Mercer Effect - Or, “I think we proved it can be fun, you can have a good time with your friends. And it doesn’t have to be scary, you can just work with what you know”

The Mercer Effect basically constitutes this: Matthew Mercer, Dungeon Master of Critical Role, is incredible (as are all of his players). They’re all professional story-tellers in a way, remember, and so Critical Role treats D&D like a narrative art-form, and it’s inspiring. Seeing that on Critical Role sets impossible standards - and people go into their own home games imagining that their campaigns will be like Critical Role, and the burden of that expectation tends to fall disproportionately on the DM. And the end result, I think, of the Mercer Effect is that we get discouraged or intimidated, because our game isn’t “as good as” theirs. (And I should note - Matt certainly doesn’t want that to be our reaction).

So the Anti-Mercer Effect is two things: it’s D&D treated like a game, and it’s inspiring but not intimidating. And Unprepared Casters manages both of those really freaking well. Because they play it like a game! A UC arc looks just like a good campaign in anyone’s home game. They have the vibes of 20-somethings and college students playing D&D for fun because that’s who they are (as a 20-something college student who plays a lot of D&D, watching it felt like watching my friends play an especially good campaign). They’re trying to tell a good story, sure, and they always do. But first and foremost, they’re trying to have fun, and it shows, and I love the UC cast for it.

And that’s the other half of it: it’s inspiring! It’s approachable; you can see that Haley and Gus put plenty of work into preparing the game but it also doesn’t make you feel like you need hundreds of pages of worldbuilding to run a game. Sometimes a cleric makes Haley cry and she gives them back a spell-slot from their deity! That’s fantastic! It’s just inspiring - listening to this over the summer, when my last campaign had fallen apart under the strain of graduation, is why I decided to plan and run my new one!

That quote from Haley Whipjack that I used as the title for this section? That’s the whole core of this idea, and really, I think, the core of the podcast.

The Mercer Effect is when you go “that’s really cool, I could never do that.” But Unprepared Casters makes you look at D&D and go “wow, that looks really fun. I bet I can do that!” And I love the show for it.

And I bet a lot of you do too.

[gaymer-hag-stan]

Ranking My Mains’ Debut Songs

Suggested by the legendary @everlasting-beg, I’m gonna try and rank my main girl groups’ debut songs from least favourite to favourite.

11. LA chA TA - f(x)

LA chA TA is one of those songs I always skip. I’m sorry I just can’t like this song no matter how many times I’ve tried. S.M. seems to have this thing with releasing subpar debut songs for its’ girl groups and only waking the fuck up and starting to give them good songs after the second or third comeback.

10. Into the new world - Girls’ Generation

I KNOW this is gonna be V controversial but hear me out. I love some of Girls’ Generation pre-Gee material like Girls’ Generation (the song), I adore it, I literally cry every time I listen to the chorus. But Into the new world is kinda just “there” for me. I know it has attained a legendary status among girl group songs but I wholeheartedly believe it’s more beause of GG’s own post-Gee stardom and success and less because of the song itself. I don’t necessarily dislike it like LA chA TA but it doesn’t do much for me either.

09. Lie - T-ara

From Lie onwards follow the songs that I actually like. The song itself has all the trademark T-ara must-haves: Soyeon’s melancholic-voice, retro-dance-y music, funny raps by Hyomin and Eunjung and of course Qri getting a single word as a line! Lie is catchy and I like it but it’s far from being an amazing song. The fucking b-side though? NEVER am I gonna skip Wanna Play? in my life.

08. Irony - Wonder Girls - The Wonder Begins

Irony is fun. I love the choreography, I love the music, I love the pretty decent and equal line distribution. I mean, it’s no Tell Me or So Hot but it’s cute. Also HyunA having no lines during the entire song and only doing the rap in the bridge compared to her usual 4Minute line distribution was quite surreal when listening to it for the first time. Also whoever chose that hairstyle for her should be persecuted as a war criminal. Again, we have a much better b-side in the form of Bad boy. I mean, this song is iconic. Sunye, the motherfucking Main vocalist is doing the rap part. Literally who does that other than icons?

07. Hot Issue - 4Minute

I love the energy during every single one of their performances of Hot Issue but I think it’s one of these cases where the song is not that good but because the artist is amazing they carry the song too and make it look good (kinda like every single song Teddy has produced in his entire career) I still prefer MUZIK over this one though. Also I think 4Minute represented the “QuiRkY” fashion thing in their earlier concepts much better than f(x) and maybe even 2NE1 did. f(x) and 2NE1 kind of made it their trademark and are known for wearing ridiuclous shit and still looking pretty but I remember getting a lot of “What the fuck did the do to you?” moments for MANY of f(x)’s and 2NE1′s looks but not as much with 4Minute. Except their awful 4Minutes Left period, that was not good.

06. Bad Girl Good Girl - miss A - Bad But Good

Now, JYP does the exact opposite than what S.M. does; JYP girl groups always debut FULL of potential but somewhere along the lines, rest assured he WILL find a way to screw them over! What’s worse with miss A is that literally all their comebacks that followed (all six of them...) NEVER dissapointed... Anyway... Bad Girl Good Girl is a bop. No more words needed. And of course Looking at Each Other and Love Again are bops too. Break It is pretty cool as well.

05. Come Closer - Brown Eyed Girls - Your Story

Honestly, when starting the ranking I wasn’t sure whether Come Closer would end up... Coming Closer to the bottom half or the top half but here we are! Maybe I didn’t use to care about it that much because I generally don’t like slow songs because I have the soul of a hoe that just wants to listen to loud dance music, but this is one of the few exceptions. I’ve said it a couple of times already but if you haven’t already, LISTEN. TO. YOUR. STORY. It’s THAT good, seriously. Also, I’m removing a few points for Miryo’s dreads... I’m glad this was not repeated ever again.

04. Break It - KARA - The First Bloooooming

“Ya wanna know what I think about you? You ain't nothing to me forget you I'm over all your lies Just look into my eyes to see the new light honey, now”

Bop. Honestly, I’m glad they found success with the concept change (because Korea and Japan ate that shit right up) but I can’t help but wonder how they would have progressed if they had stuck to this “R&B bad bitch” image... I guess Sunghee would have left anyway and I guess Hara and Jiyoung would have still been added which honesty makes me even more intrigued to see how OT5 would tackle a concept like Break It. I just realised I haven’t listened to this in a while and I need to fix this ASAP. Secret World is also pretty good. And I love Sunghee’s voice.

03. Push Push - SISTAR

Like I said before, I’m a hoe. I remember liking this song even in my “I HAtE siStAr” phase which just goes to show how powerful it is. I also think the line distribution was pretty decent and honestly wish Brave Sound had more working braincells and kept this lineup format for later songs but oh well. I don’t even hate the wigs for the jacket shoot!

02. Fire - 2NE1

I always liked Fire but I think I only started appreciating how good it is after their hiatus and eventual disbandment, and even more after one certain group FUCKEDT it up on that one performance. Iconic. The 2NE1 vesion not the "EThnIc HiPp” performance.

01. AH - After School - New Schoolgirl

I’ve come to realize how much I appreciate After School’s music in general over the last few months. They’re definitely in my top five girls, maybe even a solid third place behind 2NE1 and T-ara. AH is no exception. It was perfect for a debut song, their debut stage with the hot pants and Kahi’s abs was EXCEPTIONAL and if Korea had an ounce of taste they wouldn’t have turned their backs on every single comeback sans Because of You... Play Girlz and Bad Guy are SO good too but they’re too damn short, they’re basically an  intro and an outro. The line ditribution is horrendous though, I don’t think Juyeon and Soyoung get any lines in the b-sides at all and they don’t get to shine all that much in the lead track either. I adore Kahi and her stage presence but she’s too dominating to let anyone else shine. She’s an icon but she shines better alone than in a group.

[10boys]

MLQC : Oral (receving)

♡ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡

Gavin:

-Ugh ok so Gavin is 100% a giver

-He loves you more than life literally and theres nothing he wouldn’t do to show you.

-Naturally , hes a super bashful guy and gets a bit embarrassed when its time for he himself to be taken care of. He’s so used to being responsible for others that showing his vulnerability is something that took time, which you gladly gave him. You and Gavin have such a comfortable bond now he could do anything infront of you but ya know only things that make him look cool infront of you

-He came to your house superr late at night since after being on one of his week-long missons, still in uniform and smelling of “outside” to his airborn location

-after quick ilys and imys you offer him a shower to wined him down of his journeys

-The moment he stepped in and left you alone with your thoughts, they went wild

-His thick body fit into his uniform so well, his chest heaving from fatigue of his flight. His masculine smell filled your nose when you first embraced, the same one emanating from his steamy shower. Your thighs twiched as you imagined his body elongated and streached out to wash himself in the shower. His musclier arms reached above to rub the conditioner into his hair, the white bubbles dripping down his muscles coming together in the creases of his back. They’d dip into his V-line , as if showing your eyes where to go. Just as your were getting to the most delicious spot..

-“Babe..what are you looking at?”

-Actions speak louder than words......

-He layed beneath you on the bed as you kissed and sucked at his neck and ears. His fresh wet scent was tantalizing, his skin was soft and delicate beneath your fingertips. He held a tight grip on your waste, seemingly trying to keep you close as possible to him.

-Feeling your breast smothered onto his chest , nipples supply poking into his skin made the heat rush to his dick at an unbelievable speed

-Gavin has a very...active imagination. A small peak at your collar bones or the back of your lower thighs and he already has a saucy full-body image of you in his head. Saying something vaguely suggestive to him is the equivalent of your whimpers in his ear. You’ve ever wondered why those cheeks are always red?

-Plus the boys just super horny in general lol he always wants saucy times when hes with you. You don’t even have to ask and at the blink of an eye he’s shirtless ( he loves being shirtless for you ‘baby pls look at my hot bod pls love me the most’ )

-He poked you from beneath his navy boxers, hips slightly bucking into you as you continued to grope as suck at his neck and chest. His face flushed pink as his head started to cloud in his light waves of pleasure.

-As you began to kiss him lower, golden eyes poured into your own. He watched the way your lips connect and parted with his skin, leaving sheen pelts of spit his torso. Your tongue danced down his happy trail as you sucked light purple circles onto his lower abdomen.

-Gavin is a grunt and groner. He’s still shy, so he’ll be quiet at the beginning, but its hard to keep his cool when your figure is present to use at his leasure. Heavy breaths and pants will escape as he lets himself roam. His hands will never stay in the same spot when you’re around...They’ll start on your thighs, then to your waste, then your chest, then behind your head, then back to your chest, then to your ass, waist and chest, thighs and chest you get the idea

-Actually, most of the moans you hear from him are simply cause he failed at holding them in

-Btw Gavins v gentle with you but his ass grabs are superr hard. He probably just gets carried away at the sensation of it filling his palm but you usually still feel his grip long after he’s let go.

-He just wants to be everywhere, to take and claim all of you.

-You kiss and smell along his length, palming him over his briefs. The smell was so intoxicating you couldn’t help but clench your thighs, trying to create a heat of your own. You quickly disregard of his boxers revealing his beautiful fully erected cock. Pre-cum dribbes down as the cold hair hits his tip, or maybe cause the view of your face so close to his cock is just that hot.

“Mmm Babe stop looking” srry baby ur just so beautiful. Ofc you can’t look for long without him getting bashful.

-He has a large vein ranging from ball to tip and it feels amazing when you run your tongue across it. Like Victor, Gavin loves watching you play with it. Its almost too much for him to watch. Lick him all around with as much spit on your tongue as you can get, kiss his tip with his balls in your hand. And for the sake of our boy make alllll the dick-sucking noises too- They’re his favorite. He even trys to stay quiet to hear them better.

-You don’t tease Gavin as much as you do the others. Although he would take it for you, hes way too impatient. He’s got great stamina from his daily workouts and could fuck for years, but his first nut usually comes rather quickly. Like i said, it doesn’t take much to rile him up.

-A wet mouth and hollow cheeks get the job done for him. His grip in your hair is kinda massage like, he rakes along your scalp in un-rythmic patterns. In other words, he totally fucks up your hair everytime.

-In usual circumstances, your body is usually draped over him in the 69 position while you suck. Gavin absolutely, and i mean absolutely loves the smell of pussy. He is 100% a panty stealer. He loves to have your backside smothering his face as he thrusts up into your mouth. The smell is absolutely engulfing to him, he can’t help to suck at you from over your panties.

-But for sessions created just for catering to him, he likes to sit on the edge of the bed with your naked body quivering below him. He likes watching the liquids from your mouth dribbling off your chin to rest on your bouncing chest. But his favorite part is your legs spread wide for him exposing your opened heat. His tongue often peaks out in in-voluntarily licking motions before he can bite his lips. Your clit is his eye candy as he thrusts himself closer to his release.

-Typically lf hes layed across the bed he uses his forarm to hide his erotic faces from you he must not know how orgasmic you find them

-Gavins orgasims come on strong, erupting a deep growl from his throat as he shoots his loud into your mouth. His tense face softens , eyebrows rising showing his state of complete bliss. He stiffens, holding you down on him until his very last wave.

-Once he’s done, he releases his grip resulting in an erotic view of his white semen spilling out from your mouth, it drips down onto your breast piling up with the rest of your liquids. Your wattering eyes look up into his sending an intense blush across his cheeks

-If Gavin were in an anime he would be the boy with massive nose bleeds when he see’s you

-ooh no he’s horny again

-yes he will clean u up first

Kiro:

- Kiro is also a giver in theory

- Now dont get me wrong- this bright bubbly ball of sunshine loves to give his acts of service to you, but he is , very much so, a boy. He loves when you go down on him, he loves being the center of your attention and all your gestures.

-Kiros definitely a pint up boy- going from show to show and interview to interview, he barley has enough time to sleep let alone relive himself. When you two first got together, he was very modest and a bit shy to show his manly desires for you. He respects you for being such an important person in his life, having ungodly thoughts about you made him feel like a nasty boy. But as time passed and you escalated in your intamacy, he is absolutely shameless in letting you know what he wants or if he’s ‘in the mood~” “babee.. stop working..i wanna play~” “Those shorts look very good on you miss chips...so... short”

-Kiro doesnt talk much to let you know what he wants anyway, in fact, one glance into those ocean blue orbs and you know his intentions. He’ll act super cutesy at first, slowly inching his body closer to yours for ‘innocent cuddles’. Kiro is a very hands-on affectionate, so this part was normal. But soon his hands will start to wonder and grope while a devious smirk spreads across his face he knows you see him as a sweet little angel and he will play that role to his advantage

-He’ll nuzzle his head into your chest demanding you take notice to his actions like a freaking puppy, And once you lower your gaze to find his figure latched around yours, his seemly sensual orbs pour into you, sending you notice of his want for you. When kiro uses his cuteness to fight for dominance he will always win.Always. And you’re okay with that.

-Kiros not necessarily shy about his noises for you , especially after all the praises you’ve whispered to him about how good they sound. He’ll moan and whimper to you as your hands massage his length over his boxers, peppering kisses down his neck and across his chest. Your kisses feel like heaven to him, leaving small waves of heat at every peck and nibble left on him.

-With that said, when you start kissing and sucking at his lower abdomen , his mouth immediately hangs releasing a steady breathy moan for you. The view when you looked up at him was godly..

-Kiros pleasure face is absolutely erotic. His pleasure state in general is mouth watering. His eyes are dark and low, his face twists and contorts, he grabs at everything; His hair, the sheets, the pillows, you, anything that might fall into his grasp is being pulled and scratched at. As much as you would love to spend all your time planting kisses on his skin, you quickly relocate to different spots making sure not to leave any marks. Kiros shirt lifts a considerable amount of times from him jumping around on stage, so its better not to ruin any of his fans’ day by new-found knowledge of his intamacys. This service is for you but that is fan-service for them.

-Kiro loves being teased :)

-Blow your heat onto his head from over his boxers for a easy and quick way to wake up little kiro. Kiss him around the spots he wants you too, and make sure to keep eye contact. He gets super off from you watching him he just loves attention

-Please pay all attention to his balls. Lick them up and down for a while with his legs spread wide, nibble and suck at them. This will make his hips a thrusting mess as he trys to create more friction for himself.

-He’ll use his own hand to push his dick in your mouth, but first, he’ll watch as you lay there mouth wide and tongue hung for him. He’ll press his tip against your face, letting it roll over all your features. He lets out a soft giggle before letting the tip roll over your hot wet tongue. The wave immediately made his cock twich infront of you, a dribble of pre-cum leaking from his tip.

-Kiro is def a hand holder. Pls expect him to want your fingers interlocked to bring a loving gesture to your vile actions. He’s internally lovey-dovey during sex. Even if he’s not verbally spitting soft phrases at you, his mind is filled with fluffy thoughts of you “ahh.. so pretty” “she uses her mouth so good..” “she’s so lovely” “im so lucky” “..m-more there...ah...perfect” “i love her so much”

-Kiro nuts very well <3

- The boys orgasims...are mighty. His hip thrusts might get a little rough as his head fills with waves of pleasure, subconsciously bobbing your head down a little harder than intended. Short moans tumble over eatch other as his breath quickens considerably. He trys his hardest to keep his eyes open, the view of you teary-eyed engulfing his length is enough to finish him and it does .

- A few more deep sucks and his back arches, his body stiffens as waves of hypnotizing pleasure take him over. His moans were as pretty as his singing coming close, but as the shocks of heated kisses reminisce through his nerves , he sits silent, mouth hung open only to release small high-pitched gasps and a maybe dribble of drool.

-As he comes down from his high he’ll wipe your face and spit beautiful praises at you. He’s a fluff after sex so expect lots of mushy gushy cuddles and pillow talk <3

“Wow...that was the best one...”

“you said that the last time...and the time before...”

“Yeah !!! Until next time too~ !!”

-

Yayyy the continuation is done! Pls lmk what you think, and my ask is currently open ! Gavins is a bit short cause he’s my fav, so im a perfectionist in representing his image lol. Will add the links once im off work -Myk

[shoushatohaisha]

review: hajimari no kyojin (osaka 6/1)

so. hello. i usually write up my butai thoughts as, um, 100+ tweet threads in the immediate wake of whatever i just saw, but this time around i thought i'd work them out into a proper report, of a sort. if you, too, have seen this show already and want to talk about it... please. any time. always.

about reviewing: this is my very favorite 2.5D franchise, ever. but this is also a review, not a cheerleading exercise, so not every single thing i have to say is unrelentingly positive. having said that, i respect kinoshita, wada, suga-zachou, and the staff at large more than just about any creative team in this corner of japanese theater fandom so like. i'm not here to drag, lol.

about spoilers: i talk about the plot elements covered but try to avoid spoiling any of the fun production surprises. :) happy to do a more spoilery play-by-play later if folks are curious.

about length: i just checked and it's 2400 words im so sorry.

without further ado...

first of all, i admit that based on the preview clips i doubted, and i was swiftly taken to task for doubting. IM SORRY WORRY-SAN i trust u implicitly and i should have known better. after the major changes in shinka no natsu, i was concerned that bringing back the revolving stage and the original opening theme would feel stale/regressive. it did not. while they did bring back the revolving element they also extended the stage backward and added a second level behind a full stage height projection screen – the second level was used to do some neat staging for flashbacks/parallels and the screen was used to, how shall we say this, up their projection game in a major way, which i frankly did not think was possible. i will not spoil the details but it was pretty great, on a purely technical level.

i also realized that a lot of the repetition – opening with the bike scene, bringing back the original opening credits music, the staging, etc – is the "look back" over the last couple years that i'd expected to come this fall. they are very obviously already preparing for the end – you could think of this as part one of their last show, with the fall as part two. the show opens with a restaging of sixth grader hinata seeing the little giant on tv for the first time – then the current karasuno team take the place of the tv and hinata joins them for a team jog. "karasuno, fight!" "oh!" "fight!" "oh!" only then each character calls out their signature line from the show so far. "uchi no renchuu wa chanto tsuyoi" / "mou tobenai karasu nante yobasenai" / "murabito b mo tatakaemasu!"

and haha. let me tell you. BOY, DID I FEEL THINGS. a lot of things. i think yachi got me the worst but they were all real bad. (i have so many feelings about yachi's story and what a beautiful job saitou ami did with her character on stage. god. ;_;)

the theme of this play was the role of captain – what makes a good captain, what a captain does for the team, and how to step into those shoes when the captain is gone. the johzenji match is fun, but here, in a sense, it exists more or less to set up the wakutani match – (re)establishing daichi's importance so that his absence feels like the gut punch it is. and fully settling the weight of that responsibility on ennoshita's shoulders, as both daichi's substitute on the court and the captain-in-waiting.

with that in mind, the rival schools: imo it wasn't strictly necessary to cast full teams for each school – each match got its own dedicated act, and unlike, for example, nekoma/datekou in karasuno fukkatsu (which had a similar story structure), there aren't really any individual characters on these rival schools who have a role as such other than terushima and takeru. (you know, the captains. see above. XD) so in theory one could get this done with, like, one actor for each captain and then an ensemble cast playing the rest of the team across both matches. HOWEVER, having all those bodies allows them to do super cool stuff visually, and why force yourself to create the illusion of a full team if you don't have to? i.e., /i/ sure am not complaining, isn't it nice to have $$$ to achieve the max vision of your choreographer. XD

i also have no doubt that the kids playing these other characters are doing whatever they can to create a character within the ensemble, and i suspect there's plenty for repeat viewers to pick up on, esp during say the johzenji match (see below). however for the first time viewer following the main flow of the story it's more or less a very large ensemble cast.

the johzenji chaos was well expressed, haha, there was so damn much going on all the time that i hardly knew where to look. (i've also seen opinions on j-twitter that that diluted the impact and i can see that too – it worked for me as a "funny" match that didn't cross the line into comic relief, but ymmv.) i thought the final scene with misaki would pack more of a punch, but i fully expect them to cry at daisenshuuraku so that might fill in the last 10% that's missing rn.

wakutani are another Good Dance Team. one did get a sense, stylistically, of fukurodani- and nekoma-lite with johzenji and wakunan, respectively – i assume that was intentional. mirroring the cats vs owls match, as it were. yanagihara rin's takeru was like… scary?? i had to rewatch those episodes this weekend to see if i'd just forgotten something, but no, stage takeru is not so much reliable middle brother as scowly quiet tough guy. he looked like a kyoutani tbh, and looking at the kid actually cast for kyoutani, one wonders if someone in casting mixed up some paperwork or something. having said that, yanagihara was great at being the character he was, i enjoyed what he did on stage. i'm just not sure that character was takeru. XD (edit: ok having just rewatched, i have to revise this somewhat, i think a big part of my impression was due to being too far back to properly see his expressions the first time around -- up close he was much smilier, and bc i was thinking about it i noticed some nice details like him going over for a family hug afterward.) otoh big post-match scene – all of wakutani, actually – was really good. v effective, i heard sniffles around me.

during this match, johzenji reappeared dressed as takeru's family: FUCKING HILARIOUS omg, everyone involved has clearly learned how to do this right wrt blocking, the very fine line between comic relief and intrusion, etc, after the, er, shaky shousha to haisha experiment of kuroken doubling as oikawa's fangirls. seichou shita na, errone.

also, some great wire work for hinata and takeru – you could tell kenta is really comfortable up there these days. the first time the wires came into play one of the women behind me went "UWO!" which, when a japanese theatergoer makes a noise out loud, that's a true sign something's impressive. XD

nekoma vs fukurodani: Yeah, That Happened. it is a testament to how well done karasuno vs wakunan was that i didn't just spend the entire time screeching BRING BACK CATS VS OWLS because fjkdajfkdlsfjd KYAA. another good staging moment – they used mirrors to create the effect of two full teams playing at a crowded gymnasium, it was brill. i won't spoil some of the fun details but vvjakdlfjdf. and tbh i think the best performance of the four was probably shouri's?? not that this is news but istg idk how someone so soft offstage does THAT on stage. is it this "acting" thing you speak of.

new bokuaka: i mean it was clear some of this material was meant for yoshimoto kouki and i did kinda miss him – i appreciate higashi-san's pinch hitting and he did a solid job. but. ah well. HAVING SAID THAT. fucking "michi wo tsukurimasu yo" i mean we should all be grateful it wasn't kouki and yuuki or it would have just been a fucking fanfic on stage. it was still bad and i don't even go here. XD

and last but not least, arita ushiwaka kenji: not exactly the world's most natural line delivery but that's fine because, i mean, he's ushiwaka. and his physical presence was perfect. which was about all he was called on to do in this particular show, ahaha.

now, for karasuno. and specifically, for my son, kawahara kazuma. remember what i said approximately a thousand words ago, about captains and captains in waiting and stepping up to the plate? (or onto the court, as it were.) ennoshita's story was the heart of the wakutani match and kazuma carried the second act. he was. so. good. he had good material to work with, of course, but he made it even better. i was saying to a friend that in retrospect i think this is one of the very very few parts of the series that actually played better and more emotionally affecting on stage than in the source material (as opposed to differently good/differently affecting). in the manga/anime, you can only see what the paneling or the frame shows you, and those initial paneling/framing choices are focused on the drama of CAPTAIN DOWN. but on the stage, daichi goes down… and off to the side you see ennoshita freeze. and from that moment on, for kazuma, it's go time. he doesn't let up until the end of post-match scene in (here) the locker room – which, jesus, that scene. it packs ten times the punch it does in the anime. because of kazuma.

sorry if i sound like a crazy person here ahaha. but like. like, imagine you have been acting since childhood, you've studied dance with famous choreographers and innovators, you had a main role in The Franchise That Changed 2.5D as a teenager, you've done a solo album, you have a serious history in performing arts... and you get cast in what was initially the smallest role of the entire karasuno team. and you take it! and pull your weight! kazuma was a team player for three years and he deserved this chance to let his actual skills shine so much. ;_; because i don't necessarily think he would have been better in any of the other roles than his actual teammates – but i do think he is a much better actor than several of his actual teammates. and he finally got the opportunity to show that.

anyway, when it came time for curtain calls, the applause swelled noticeably for kazuma – a louder ovation than anyone except kagechan and kenta. and one of those people clapping her hands off, say in row 20, just a random row choice, was definitely tearing up at the same time.

IN OTHER KARASANEWS. kt-san. LIVE IN PERSON KT-SAN BACK IN THE ROLE HE WAS MEANT FOR cries into my hands i love him daichi-saaaaaaaaaan. very occasionally his delivery reminded me he's a model not an actor, if you know what i mean, but like, for the vast part it didn't matter because he is naturally such a perfect fit. have i mentioned i love him.

new suga: mmmmm. he looked and moved fine but his line delivery did not convince me. tbf it's not like suga has a huge role to play in these matches so 1) it's not a huge deal 2) he didn't get much chance to get into the character. either he'll get better or he won't, and if he doesn't it's not going to sink the next play or anything. he seems like a nice enough kid, i wish him well!

kageyama tatsuya: still can't yell and enunciate at the same time. loved that they brought back the archer analogy from shinka no natsu though!! it was one of my favorite things about his kageyama, and it's nice that it's something he "owns" instead of imitating/inheriting from tatsunari.

tsukishima & yamaguchi: miura kairi continues to get even better, i'm so pleased. <3 also, i love love love that they still use the musical motif from shousha to haisha for yamaguchi's jump float serve. it was the same in shinka no natsu, it's the same here. THE TSUKKIYAMA WAS REAL CUTE, great detail work before and after the serve as well as after tsukki's block(s). as for tsukishima, much as they brought back kageyama's archer imagery, they brought back tsukki's fancy katana kill block. (they didn't waste kondou shouri, either, i'll leave it at that.)

last but not least, MY ACTUAL SON AND FEELINGS TWIN, SUGA KENTA: ok like. to set the scene here. i have mad respect for this kid and also love him to death as a human. i think he puts more thought into this production than anyone else in the cast – he is practically worry-san's AD. and he clearly has a lot of real deep thoughts and feelings about the source material. so deep in fact that it took a while for me to come around to his hinata because while, for example, tatsunari's kageyama could have walked straight off my television screen, kenta went down to the manga and built hinata up from there. he didn't have a choice – he's nothing like murase ayumu's voice. all too often we, and i include myself here, think of the two dimensions in 2.5D as anime, rather than manga... but just as there's a big gap between the two dimensions of animation and the three dimensions of live theater, there's as big a gap again between static black-and-white drawing, and movement and color and sound. and when i looked at kenta's hinata as something created solely from furudate's art style, it all slotted into place for me. (naturally, ymmv.)

it also took kenta longer than some of the others, i think, to portray all of what he wanted to. shoen hinata was pretty yelly, and pretty single-register yelly. hinata is a yelly character, of course, but the balance between that hinata and Serious Match Hinata was out of whack at first. this got better and better with every show. and then—

his encounter with ushiwaka here. was IT. it was what i was looking for all this time. his delivery of hinata's big line there was like – i think maybe i clapped my hands over my mouth, unclear, bc it was like the final missing piece and i was so happy. kentaaaaa. ;____;

part of me wonders if this is what kenta's always had in his head but maybe couldn't get his face/voice to express the way he wanted it? OR, IT'S KENTA, SO MAYBE IT WAS ON PURPOSE and his previous Serious Hinata was meant to be like, just a feral hunger child whereas this is the kid who experienced the heartbreak of losing to seijou. i would love to ask him tbh. XD

anyway, my son, after five plays continues to grow in his portrayal of this character. kenta is the heart of gekidan haikyuu in so many ways, and i will be at their graduation show if it kills me.

(breathes out) i think that's. everything. a best setter award to anyone who read this far, and feel free to ask if there's anything specific you want to know about? i will be seeing it again this weekend for daisenshuuraku and will be sure to report back on who cried, etc. all hail volleyball stage the end. 🏐

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/how-wing-is-plowing-the-field-for-drone-delivery-tech-buzz/

How Wing Is Plowing the Field for Drone Delivery | Tech Buzz

One of the enormous changes coming to us that has accelerated significantly of late is drone delivery, which promises to provide more speedy fulfillment of online orders. First for small items like meals or medicines, both of which are critical during the pandemic, and eventually for larger items — and even people.

Still, drone delivery has a few challenges to overcome which include range, air traffic control, safety, and consumer trust. All of these must be developed to the point where the related services are trusted to do what they promise, without drama.

One of the leading companies developing a drone solution is a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, named Wing. It has the drones, the air traffic control system, and the most extensive test fleet in the air currently. Still, Wing will face competition from other firms and internal groups at shipping companies in this race for instant gratification.

Let’s talk about each of the elements and why Wing is so far ahead, and we’ll end, as always, with my product of the week: the first transparent TV at commercial scale from Xiaomi.

The Elements of Drone Delivery

Drone delivery isn’t easy primarily because we want the things to run on batteries, and battery energy efficiency is still inferior in terms of both energy density and weight when compared to fossil fuels. So part of a delivery solution is to have depots within the 6- to 9-mile effective delivery range of the more advanced delivery drones.

A drone design is needed that is reasonably safe and relatively energy-efficient; otherwise, the depot density and liability become unreasonable. Relying only on the heavy-lift capability of the drone won’t do it. The wings or lifting bodies need to be utilized to extend the range and the speed of the drone to minimize airtime, to conserve energy. Delivery drones need to be lightweight to reduce damage if they fail (lower terminal velocity), and to reduce the base energy the drone body needs to stay aloft.

Now with all of the drones in the air, some sort of traffic control system is needed. However, humans won’t cut it because the traffic will be significant when delivery service hits critical mass. So this traffic control system must be automated, work between drone service providers, and integrate with the traffic control systems in use by commercial, law enforcement, and military aviation. This platform should be integrated with the tracking systems that consumers have access to, so they can receive their drone-delivery package.

Finally, you need a process to assure the package and drone are both protected in transit and that the package ends up in the hands of the designated recipient. If significant numbers of drones or packages end up stolen or damaged, the proposition of widespread of drone delivery would be destined to fail.

Wing’s Answers

Wing has developed solutions for each of these elements, which is why currently, as far as independent drone solutions (Amazon has developed similar capabilities), it is ahead. Wing’s plan includes depots within the reliable range limits of their planned drone services. I think we’ll eventually find that shopping centers will make very viable drone depots in the future.

Wing’s drone design is inspired. Using industrial-grade Styrofoam for the drone body and a lifting-wing design, Wing has created a light drone that can use the wings to extend the drone’s range and lower its terminal velocity, and in turn the potential for damage in the event of a catastrophic failure.

Wing adopted OpenSky, an app-based offering in place for both commercial and consumer markets. OpenSky services are currently only available in Australia, but provide a vision of what’s to come in other regions. The app lets drone flyers place a pin on any location in Australia in order to gather information about flight rules.

Future planned enhancements are consistent with an automated air traffic control system, and those improvements are expected to arrive long before drone delivery reaches critical mass. They must; otherwise full deployments will likely be delayed until those enhancements are in place and thoroughly tested.

Finally, the Wing drone uses a built-in winch that keeps the drone elevated and safe, and the application the recipient will use assures they are on site to receive the package when it arrives. This helps protect the drone from damage, and better assures the package goes where intended. User tracking could be an option to assure the person at the delivery location is the same for whom the package is intended.

Wrapping Up

Wing currently has the leading solution, which is concerning to independent providers coming to market. Amazon, however, may be ahead particularly with heavy lifting and their investigation of alternative depot designs like dirigibles or blimps, which are mobile, although those have additional safety, weather, and air-traffic concerns.

In any race, being ahead doesn’t count for much now if you don’t get to the finish line first; and Wing’s parent company doesn’t have the best reputation for finishing big projects like this. Like many tech companies, Alphabet tends to fund based not on need, but on what some executive believes in their gut is good enough — and often, it isn’t.

Besides, Amazon is closing fast and appears to be more aggressively looking at things like heavy-lift drones. Wing’s drones don’t have the carrying capacity for medium-sized appliances or a grocery cart — and there are other companies already experimenting with people-carrying drones which, like Uber cars, could also be used for delivery.

Wing has started strong, but we still have years to go before this race is decided, and they’ll have to run hard to beat the increasing number of competitors entering this segment.

I don’t get excited about TVs that much anymore, but there was time I spent US$7,500 for one of the first wall-mounted flat-screen Plasma TVs in the market — and it was only a 42-inch. It replaced a large CRT that sat on the floor and looked a ton better. Since then, flat TVs have become common, and as we raised resolution, the content didn’t keep up well, and excitement dwindled.

Well, Xiaomi may have just changed this with its Mi TV LUX. This TV looks like a plate of clear glass when it’s off, and then it performs just like a flat-screen TV when turned on. The base houses the electronics, and it uses OLED technology, so it doesn’t need a light source. It should result in deeper blacks, but the bright display may offset that.

The Mi TV is as awe-inspiring to look at as was the first flat screen, with one big exception; it doesn’t obscure what’s behind it when it’s turned off. Now, if you are like me, when you look at what’s behind your TV, it isn’t that attractive — so you’d need to rethink TV placement. The Mi would do best as a TV in the middle of a room, or in place of a TV that obscures a window. Its transparent characteristic might stimulate some new ideas about where to situate a TV.

Mi TV LUX

I think this unit would work better as a monitor than it would a TV, because monitors are often placed on desks in open floor plan offices — at least before the pandemic. The ideal setting would be one where this TV/monitor is turned off, and clear. That would open the office up, or the user could blank the monitor and see who was on the other side of their desk, as needed. Think how cool this would look as a monitor on the desk of a receptionist, secretary or executive.

Ironically, given what I paid for my first flat-screen TV, this thing is $7K at 55-inches, so rather expensive for its size. But if you have a yacht with a view, want to impress your clients, or want something that will have your guests catch their breath, well the Xiaomi Mi TV Lux is my product of the week. (Don’t tell my wife, she’ll take away my credit card again.) Oh, and it could be perfect for watching virtual events in your office — though, if you turned this into a window, it could be even more interesting!

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.

Rob Enderle has been an ECT News Network columnist since 2003. His areas of interest include AI, autonomous driving, drones, personal technology, emerging technology, regulation, litigation, M&E, and technology in politics. He has an MBA in human resources, marketing and computer science. He is also a certified management accountant. Enderle currently is president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group, a consultancy that serves the technology industry. He formerly served as a senior research fellow at Giga Information Group and Forrester. Email Rob.

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[jackalopey]

i used to just completely disregard swtor, but now that ive actually started playing it i find that harder to do- its a good game & i dont want to pretend it doesnt exist! for the swtor issue i see a lot of people try to retcon certain parts of shadow of revan & otherwise keep things the same, and i like that idea :)

but as for kotor 3- thats something ive put a lot of thought into. ultimately we’re never going to get it, but it’s fun to think about what options there couldve been!

i really like the idea of having both revan and the exile is playable characters- maybe you pick which to play as and get two versions of the story, or maybe you start as the exile but switch to revan’s pov for certain parts of the game. personally, i like the idea of playing as the exile for most of the game, then having sections as revan, but... having the revan sections be a bit weird. like what youre playing through is based on revan (or someone else) recounting what happened, not necessarily what actually happened, to keep in line with how little we really know about revan

it’d be cool to keep some of the companions from kotor & kotor 2- specifically, id want visas & bastila to return as companions For Sure. t3 would be a given, too. other companions should at the very least have cameos, but i think to explain why theyre not in the game as companions, you could say theyre prepping the republic for whatever revan went off to fight

id want new companions as well, of course. people you find in wild space- having chiss and sith pureblood companions especially would be interesting i think!

for the exile, i’d like their character arc to continue from the end of kotor 2. showing them moving on from malachor v and building on the knowledge that kreia left them. id definitely want it to still be considered their story, even if you get to play as revan for chunks of the game

some aspects of the revan novel could be kept, i think. vitiate isnt the worst idea for a villain ever & encorporating scourge would be neat (maybe as a companion for the exile or revan). some aspects should definitely be scrapped though- the exile shouldnt be killed off. i think it really cheapens their story

i’d also like the option to say whether revan & the exile were light side / dark side, and with alterations to the story depending on which you pick! a different character arc for the exile based on their alignment & a different goal for revan based on alignment would be interesting! also keeping the gender choices would be a given- though id like it if you could select the romance from the first games with no gender-lock, too

as for themes, id want kotor 3 to carry on with the themes & character arcs from kotor/kotor 2, dependent on ls/ds ending. so a ls revan’s story would be about finding their own sense of identity and correcting the mistakes of their past- maybe their parts of the story would be about following the path they initially took with malak and undoing damage they caused. however, ds revan’s story would be about reclaiming their past power, maybe finding things that their past self left behind for them & exploiting people all over again. ultimately with revan, id also like the end of their story to either feature destroying their mask (light side) or reclaiming it (dark side). i think that would just be a really neat way to symbolise their growth/regression! also you should have the chance to be dark side even if kotor1 revan was ls, and the same vice versa- to show that growth is a continuous thing, not just based off of a single choice

of course, all of what i described is entirely self-indulgent and not very realistic, but we’re not getting kotor 3 anyway so that means we all get to make up our own version of it in our heads :)

I've been thinking. And I know SWTOR is technically KOTOR III but it doesn't feel like it. KOTOR 1&2 both had a storyline and while 2 was more the aftermath of Revan's story I really loved it.

Even if SWTOR is one of my favourite games, it doesn't have that feature. Obviously because it's an MMO but also because of different types of stories and arcs.

The thing is, I see a lot of people not acknowledging SWTOR as part of the KOTOR games and I understand that. Though what would even happen in KOTOR III, if it was one game?

[olivereliott]

Review: Riding the new Indian FTR 1200

For a brand that only relaunched five years ago, Indian Motorcycle is making some bold moves. The Scout FTR750 racebike has cleaned up in the flat track scene and Indian has now released a matching flat tracker for the street: the hotly anticipated FTR 1200.

When the FTR1200 Custom concept broke cover 18 months ago, everyone with a pulse and a love for two wheels went all giddy. And even though the production-ready FTR 1200 has been watered down by practical and regulatory considerations, it’s every bit as appealing.

It’s as if Indian have taken the classic ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ approach—but that’s only half the story. The motorcycle industry is morphing, and Indian are looking to attract younger, hipper riders; riders that want a slice of Americana, but have no interest in cruisers or baggers. (And yes, they’re obviously riding the wave of flat track racing‘s popularity, too.)

It’s also no secret that the American cruiser market is struggling. But Indian has seen significant growth in Europe—so the FTR 1200 is a bid to appeal to a wider audience, and pitched directly at European motorcycles.

Does it succeed? Does the FTR 1200 look half as good in real life as it does in photos? And does it go as good as it looks? I headed to LA for a day of Californian canyon carving to find out.

Even when parked up, there’s a lot to like about the FTR 1200. It’s closer to a full-on flat tracker than any other production bike out there. Indian very wisely parked it next to their FTR750 racer at the launch, and the shared DNA is unmistakable.

The FTR comes in three flavors: The $13,499 base model (above), the S version at $15,499, and the ‘S Race Replica’ at $16,999. The S is the benchmark and comes in two colors (below right): the base model sacrifices a number of features and comes in plain black, while the Race Replica adds Akrapovič cans, race replica paint and a red frame (below left).

All three share the same chassis, and the same liquid-cooled, 1,203 cc 60-degree V-twin motor. Numbers are respectable; 123 hp at 8,250 rpm, and 120 Nm of torque at 5,900 rpm. Power is handled by a slip assist clutch, a six-speed transmission and chain drive.

The S models also get a TFT touchscreen display, traction control and three switchable riding modes: rain, standard and sport. And they have additional rider aids like stability and wheelie control. The base model has an analog clock, no traction control, and no riding modes. Its fueling is equivalent to ‘standard’ mode on the S bikes.

All three models share the same Sachs suspension; 43 mm inverted forks and a mono-shock, with 150 mm of travel front and back. Both ends are fully adjustable for preload, rebound and compression on the S models, but on the base model, you only get preload and rebound adjustment at the back. Nothing up front.

The ten-spoke alloy wheels are a perfect compromise between flat track style and day-to-day practicality: a 19” up front, with an 18” out back. (The 18” rear offers a wider tire selection than a 19” would.) They’re wrapped in Dunlop DT3Rs—road-ready versions of Dunlop’s popular DT3 dirt track tires, developed in collaboration with Indian for the FTR.

Rounding out the impressive parts spec are Brembo brakes, with twin 320 mm discs up front. ABS is standard on all models, but on the S it utilizes a six-axis IMU, and is switchable.

Everything’s packaged in a steel trellis frame, with an aluminum subframe. And it’s one hella clean package too. From the cable routing on the handlebars to a distinct lack of visible plugs and gadgets on either side of the motor, Indian’s design team went to great lengths to keep things as tidy as possible.

It’s quite a compact design too. The airbox sits right on top of the throttle bodies to improve airflow, with the 13-liter fuel tank dipping down under the seat. So the faux tank you see up top is really just a set of plastic covers, with a shape that mimics the FTR750’s tank flawlessly.

The FTR 1200 has a premium feel, right down to the paint. The base model’s black is a straight-up gloss black, but all three S bikes have a deep flake that’s just stunning when the sun hits it. And the Race Replica is a dead ringer for the race bike, with multi-colored flake in the black paint that’s downright hypnotic.

The FTR 1200 does stray a little from the look of the FTR1200 Custom prototype. But according to the Indian product team at the launch, this was unavoidable. That concept had a one-gallon fuel tank, no airbox, an uncomfortable seat, and a high exhaust that ran hot—making it impossible to homologate and sell.

Still, there’s a lot to love on the FTR 1200. The LED lights at both ends look great, especially the taillight, which even has a subtle Indian script logo in it. I don’t even hate the chunky dual exhausts—though I will say that the Akrapovič option looks miles better, and the catalytic convertor lurking under the bike is an eyesore.

But it’s only when you swing a leg over the FTR 1200 that you realize just how much thought went into its development. Indian has absolutely nailed the ergonomics. It starts with the beefy ProTaper handlebars: they have a flat track feel to them, but the measurements are more suited to street riding.

The foot pegs are ever so slightly back from mid, and titled a touch forward. Combined with the seat height and bar position, it makes for a rider triangle that hits the sweet spot between comfort and control. Oh, and the seat is remarkably cushy too—even for a full day of riding.

The cockpit area is a letdown though. The TFT display on the S models is hit and miss—it packs a lot of information into an easy-to-read package, but the display itself is a lot smaller than the physical enclosure, and the graphics aren’t particularly great.

On the positive side, the touchscreen works great, and the unit has a lot of functionality—like the ability to interface with your phone and Bluetooth comms. But it’s also tricky to navigate.

There are three buttons on the switchgear, and three buttons on the display itself—some of which do the same thing. Switching modes means hitting one button to flick the display to the next screen, then either using the touchscreen or the joystick (which is on the other side of the bars) to pick your mode. (Oh, and you can’t switch traction control and ABS off independently.)

To be honest, I far prefer the analog clock on the basic FTR. Plus, the actual handlebar switches are incredibly dinky too, and the grips look and feel cheap. Which is a downer when compared the level of finish everywhere else on the FTR.

Can you look past these niggles when you’re out on the road? Absolutely. Indian took us on a route that lead out of Santa Monica along the Pacific Coast Highway, and into the twisty hills above Malibu for some spirited canyon riding.

I spent most of my time on the S model, and it was bags of fun in the canyons—as soon as I got used to a couple of things. I applaud Indian for being brave enough to put street-legal flat track tires on the FTR, but it took me half of the day’s riding to get along with them.

I’m not sure if they just suck when they’re cold, or if I’m just not used to the way they behave, but there’s little to no feedback from the Dunlops. By lunchtime I’d figured them out, and realized I could push them a lot harder than I thought—and from a style perspective, they’re perfect.

The 19F/18R wheel combo is not as sharp as a set of 17s would be, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just makes for a different ride characteristic. Its compactness also belies how heavy it is. At 222 kg dry the FTR 1200 is several kilos heavier than the BMW R nineT, which is 208 dry and 220 full fueled. It’s a lot heftier than it looks.

To put this into perspective with other roadsters with sporting pretensions, the Ducati Monster 1200 is a mere 185 kilos dry, and the Triumph Speed Twin is 196 kg.

Luckily the FTR 1200 carries its weight well, with the low fuel tank helping to centralize mass. But it does mean that you need to manhandle it—rather than simply flick it—through corners.

The spot-on ergonomics help muscle it from turn to turn, and once you’re pitched over, it holds its line like it’s on rails. With the right kind of riding style, and plenty of body English, the FTR’s capable of setting a fast pace.

Thanks to solid suspension and brakes, it doesn’t get bent out of shape too easily either. Those Brembos are sharp and predictable, and the suspension felt dialed out of the box, even on shoddier road surfaces. (With extra room for adjustment, expert riders should be able to fine-tune it to perfection too).

Twisting the throttle will remind you that you’re riding a chunky American V-twin. There’s a lot of torque, but the throttle’s snatchy—even more so when you switch it into ‘sport’ mode. The FTR 1200 gets enough power down to keep you entertained, but current emissions controls have it sounding a little bunged up (even with the optional Akrapovič units).

The slipper clutch is feather light, and shifts from the six-speed box are rock solid. I’ve been riding a lot of bikes with quick-shift systems lately, and immediately missed it on the FTR—but Indian’s people assured me it’s on their radar.

All in all, the FTR 1200 will give as much back as you’re willing to put in. Whack the throttle, trust the tires and throw your weight into it, and it’ll respond. Even the base model FTR is a hoot to ride, and might just be the ticket for riders that want a simpler bike, and don’t need to fuss with suspension settings.

The FTR’s biggest win though, is what it signals for Indian. It’s a far cry from a cruiser or a bagger, but doesn’t sacrifice one iota of the brand’s heritage. Think of it as American muscle, with a European twist.

As for customization, Indian have launched four accessory packs alongside the FTR 1200. But in my opinion, they add too much fluff to what is essentially a super-clean bike, as OEM offerings go. I reckon customers are more likely to pick and choose individual pieces (like the carbon fiber body panels in the ‘Sport’ kit).

I asked Indian’s VP of Industrial Design, Greg Brew, how much room for pukka custom work there is, and he reckons there’s a lot. He has a point too—at the end of the day, the FTR has good bones, and in the right hands we could see some exciting builds come out of the woodwork.

He also mentioned that they’d been playing with a few configurations in-house, but wouldn’t get into specifics. What’s clear though, is that the FTR hints at a whole new platform for Indian, rather than just a one-off.

It’s also carving out its own niche. Its closest competitors in capacity and price are the BMW R nineT, Triumph Speed Triple or Ducati Monster, but none of those are quite the same bike. And Harley-Davidson’s product line is woefully missing anything that could compete.

And that’s really the FTR 1200’s biggest selling point. There’s nothing else like it.

Indian Motorcycle | Facebook | Instagram

Pricing US 1200: $13,499 | 1200 S: $15,499 | 1200 S RR: $16,999 EU 1200: €14,690| 1200 S: €15,990 | 1200 S RR: €17,290 UK 1200: £11,898 | 1200 S: £12,999 | 1200 S RR: £17,290

Wes’ gear Rough Crafts Revolator helmet | 100% Aircraft goggles | REV’IT! Stealth hoody | ICON 1000 Nightbreed gloves | Saint Unbreakable Stretch denims| ICON 1000 Varial boots

[theattainer]

How the Modern Man Should Dress, According to 6 Professional “Wardrobe Fixers”

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How the Modern Man Should Dress, According to 6 Professional “Wardrobe Fixers”

A-list celebrities have stylists who dress them for everything from film premieres to their walks from the car to the airport terminal (yes, really). But who can civilian men of means turn to for their own personal clothing conundrums? A new breed of “wardrobe fixer” has arisen in recent years to hack the closets of financiers, tech moguls, entertainment executives and other elites.

Today, thanks to social media, C-suite execs who once went incognito are expected to be public-facing representatives of their companies, which means having plenty of judgmental eyeballs sizing up not only their business acumen but also their sartorial choices.

In other words, ill-fitting clothing and square-toed shoes are no longer acceptable. To make matters more confusing, the days of the suit as a trusty go-to are over—the nebulous term “business casual” rules the day, leaving many brilliant minds scratching their heads when it comes to dressing their bodies. So Robb Reportasked a few of the country’s leading style advisors to weigh in on how a man of accomplishment should dress in today’s world. Here’s what we discovered.

Victoria Hitchcock

Victoria Hitchcock Style, San Francisco and the Bay Area

Years in the Business: 25

Services: “Excavation,” or editing a closet; “Rejuvenation,” which is focused on building a wardrobe from the ground up; and “Lifestyle Optimization,” a full style upgrade.

Fee: $2,000 to $25,000

What makes you successful at your job?

“I don’t work with people’s posses,” says Hitchcock, who insists on dealing directly with clients. “I’m not a ‘yes’ person. I’m here to help you show your authentic self.”

What is the number-one mistake that men make?

“Getting bedazzled by brand name or price tag; these measures do not necessarily equate to quality. Also, men’s shirt lengths are always off. The cuff is too long, or on short-sleeve shirts it’s almost to the elbow. Some guys are still wearing a polo too wide, almost like a golf shirt.”

Loro Piana’s Stafford jacket. ($5,995)

What’s the most common advice you give your clients?

“I ask people, ‘Why are you looking to upgrade? Are you going through a midlife crisis? Is it because you’re single and you want to step it up? Is it because you work with people who all look a little cooler?’ Figure that out. And no matter what you buy, make sure it’s comfortable and functional.”

What does every guy need in his closet?

“A cashmere version of a car coat or a peacoat, something soft and elegant—think Giorgio Armani, Loro Piana. Also, a leather jacket—every guy wants one. Everybody should have a really crisp, white shirt with a great collar that’s fitted, trim, in good-quality cotton.” As for shoes, she suggests a Chelsea boot. “Saint Laurent’s have been iconic since the ’50s.”

Saint Laurent’s iconic Chelsea boot. ($945)

What are items that men in Silicon Valley, in particular, need in their closet?

“Hoka Bondi shoes: They are really cool but may be fashion-forward for some people. They’re insanely comfortable, like walking on a cloud of air. Plus, they add an inch or two in height!” Other stylish but subtler items Hitchcock recommends are sneakers from Maison Margiela, Lanvin or Golden Goose; Frame denim jeans; a Moncler puffer jacket and a Maurizio Baldassari vest.

Andrew Weitz

The Weitz Effect, Los Angeles

Years in the Business: Officially five; pro bono, more than a decade

Services: Everything from a one-off “getting started” program for those who’d like “a taste of the services” to an annual retainer program.

Fee: $500 and up

You were a Hollywood talent manager and an agent at William Morris Endeavor; how did you get started in fashion?

“I was always known as the best-dressed agent, and it was because I wanted a competitive edge.” Clients and colleagues took note, and a new career was born. “It’s about standing out in the right way, minding your details, and appearing smart and in control of yourself. You’re branding yourself.”

Giorgio Armani’s double-breasted blazer in checkered serge. ($3,095)

What is the number-one mistake that men make?

“Old shoes that are worn out, or square-toed shoes. I see a lot of ill-fitting blazers that don’t sit on the shoulders right or are a little too long. Men who wear jackets from their suits as blazers, which is a no-no. Tailoring is the most common problem. People think the bigger the clothes you wear, the more you’ll hide your flaws, and that’s not the case.” The right tailor, Weitz notes, can elevate an item from looking off-the-rack to made-to-measure.

Tom Ford slim-fit white jeans. ($650)

What’s your favorite example of how fashion helped change a client’s life?

“I had a guy whose wife thought he was having an affair because he looked so good, yet she was also more attracted to him than she ever had been. And a month after working with this one executive, who was a messy guy but good at what he did, his ROI [return on investment] was 20 percent higher.”

Bill Bolling

Sales Associate, Boyds, Philadelphia

Years in the Business: 40

Services: Personal shopping services at home; in-house tailoring.

Fee: Complimentary

Is there a piece of advice you give to every client that seems to work?

“Buy clothing that you’re not only physically comfortable in but mentally comfortable in as well. I don’t recommend wearing something that’s not a reflection of you or your personality just because someone else is wearing it.”

A classic dark Ermenegildo Zegna suit. (2,895)

What are the key pieces you think every man should have in his closet?

“My top five go-to items include a dark suit—I prefer charcoal; a solid-colored blazer or patterned sport coat; a pair of dark slacks; beige or white linen pants; and a nice jacket—three-quarter length, long enough to cover a suit. I like Zegna’s full line; it’s a brand that is classic in its appeal but with a modern touch. I also like Scuderi, a private label that we carry. It’s high-quality at a reasonable price point.”

A deconstructed Brunello Cucinelli jacket.  ($2,995)

What do a lot of men need in their wardrobes but don’t already have?

“Most men—especially younger guys— tend to not own outerwear. They think coats are worn strictly to avoid being cold. But in a professional environment, a coat is a ‘finishing garment.’ To me, this reflects someone’s thought process in business.”

Faran Sheikh

Style Advisor, Wilkes Bashford, Palo Alto

Years in the Business: 18

Services: Personal shopping, in-house tailoring.

Fee: Complimentary

How do you start to make over a man’s closet?

“I say, ‘Let’s fit one shirt, let’s fit one jacket, one suit, the pants. Let’s make sure everything fits perfectly.’ They always want it fast, but I work with Kiton, and I have to tell them, ‘We don’t rush. This is a handmade garment.’ You need to make sure everything’s right, first.”

Versatile five-pocket trousers from Kiton. (1,095)

What do you order?

“Navy suit, blue suit, gray suit. White shirts. Kiton has seasonal fabrics that I use to make them suits and jackets for going out and having fun. Then I build out the looks from there. If a man doesn’t need a suit for work, I’ll give him five-pocket pants and put them with a nice sweater—a nice V-neck or crewneck. And a beautiful, elegant loafer.”

Do guys in Silicon Valley wear sneakers?

“If my clients do, they have to be really dark and understated—navy, gray, black, like barely black. No color, though, not even white. For running, yes, but not every day.”

Brunello Cucinelli dark sneakers. ($795)

What’s your best piece of advice for men?

“I have to see the person, to see what size he is. If he’s a big guy, it’s one thing, and if he’s small, it’s different. I like to see the character of the man, what job he has. What is his social life like? I need to know what color his hair is, what color his eyes are, his skin tone. That’s how I pick the best colors for him. Everything is connected to the client’s personality.”

Bob Mitchell

Co-CEO, Mitchell Stores, Westport, Connecticut (and Eight Other Locations on Both Coasts)

Years in the Business: 28

Services: The store, family owned since 1958, offers house calls and will send over selections from your favorite brands or host VIPs before or after store hours.

Fee: Complimentary

Is there a big trend you’ve noticed lately?

“We are selling a lot of sneakers, but in the $300 to $3,000 range. Guys wear them with everything from jeans to suits. Something sleek from Lanvin or Cucinelli.”

Sneakers from To Boot New York. ($350)

Is there some piece of advice you find yourself giving over and over?

“Fit is the most important thing to looking current. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions out there, like bigger guys thinking they can’t wear skinny pants, but they actually look better. Or we get guys who buy skinny pants, but they still want to buy a coat that’s really long, and it looks ill-proportioned.”

What should every man have that he doesn’t already own?

“You know the five-pocket jean style? We’re selling a lot of wool dress pants in the five-pocket style. I’m wearing a Cucinelli one today; Zegna does one. Also, very soft sport coats that feel like you’re wearing nothing. It’s an element of being dressed up but in a casual way. Don’t be afraid to buy something timeless and high-quality. Another thing on my list every man needs is a piece of Loro Piana outerwear. Our number-one coat for five years is a three-quarter-length waterproof navy cashmere. When people first see [the price, $4,595] they’re like, ‘Man, this is crazy.’ It’s an investment piece! You’re going to wear it 100 times more than anything else in your closet.”

Loro Piana outerwear. ($5,145)

Is there a common mistake you come across?

“Length of pants. As the bottom of pants has gotten narrower, it should be shorter, or it just stacks on itself.”

Taff Bakali

Gentleman’s Personal Shopper, Stanley Korshak, Dallas

Years in the Business: 25

Services: House calls, doing closet assessments and sometimes bringing in a tailor to give items that extra little tweak.

Fee: Complimentary

What does every man need in his closet?

“A navy blue suit, and a charcoal one is a plus. A beautiful lightweight cashmere blazer you can wear all year round. A selection of white shirts—I have 20 or 30, because anytime I don’t have time to think about what I want to wear, that’s where I go. I love Kiton, but it’s an exclusive brand for a certain client.”

A Kiton formal jacket. ($9,995)

Any advice for guys when they’re shopping?

“Bring your wife along, if you have one. I love to have wives’ opinions: If she says it’s beautiful, boom, it’s a done deal.”

Is there a must-have for guys in Dallas to wear?

“Honestly, it’s a blue blazer—from the new kid who just graduated to the guy who’s running a hedge fund. What matters is the quality of the blazer, though. You can have it in vicuña, but that can be as much as $25,000. I’ve noticed that people have been buying jackets in the color Bordeaux. The problem is that once you wear it one or two times, it’s been seen. You have to put it away for a little while.”

Marol white shirt. ($850)

What’s the biggest change you’ve noticed in men’s tastes over your career?

“There was a time when no guy would touch a flat-front pant; now 90 percent of our store—all of our pants, really—are flat-front. And guys want tapered pants. When I started at Ralph Lauren, people wanted them bigger and fuller. And everyone wants to wear sneakers now. Cucinelli makes a cool one. Keep in mind they’re like $950, and customers will say, ‘Wow, that’s expensive,’ but they wear them almost every day.”

What do you think?

[manuelclapid]

Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor and Clogged Drain Line

The gaps in this laminate floor come and go. The installer failed to read and follow the installation instructions. (C) Copyright 2019 Tim Carter

Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor

QUESTION #1: Oh, Tim I need your help! A laminate floor in a friend’s house seems to be possessed. Overnight, gaps appear in the floor where one piece butts up against another. With some effort, you can slide them back tight again. When you walk across the floor in places it snaps and makes cracking sounds. What’s going on and can the floor be made to look and sound normal? What’s causing the issues in the first place? Roberta G., Eureka, UT

Does your laminate floor have a mind of its own like Roberta’s friend’s floor? Lately, I’m getting more and more emails from homeowners who suffer from the same problem. In all cases, the root cause of the problems is a failure to follow the written installation instructions provided by the laminate flooring manufacturer. Keep in mind that most laminate floors are floating floors that are meant to expand and contract to changes in humidity and temperature.

I clearly remember when laminate flooring was introduced to the marketplace. As with most products, the first generation products had a few bugs to squash. The laminate products have matured and my own office floor is covered with a stunning rustic oak v-grooved laminate floor that almost all visitors think is real wood.

My office floor looks as good as the day it was installed and it’s installed over an electric radiant floor heating mat. Radiant heating can cause gaps to appear as Roberta’s friend is experiencing. It’s imperative that you look at the instructions to see the maximum recommended temperature of the subfloor. One major manufacturer says to never exceed a temperature of 85 F. It’s not uncommon for the temperature of the water circulating through radiant floor tubing to be 120 F!

Heat causes laminate flooring to expand. This expansion is responsible for the gapping as the individual pieces of flooring start to expand at slightly different rates. When the radiant heat turns off because the room is warm enough, the flooring starts to contract as it cools. This back and forth movement can wreak havoc on a floating floor if it’s not installed correctly.

The snapping sounds are almost always traced to an uneven subfloor. Laminate flooring materials don’t tolerate humpy and bumpy subfloors. Subfloors need to be quite flat. Flat doesn’t necessarily mean level. You can have a nice flat subfloor that’s not level. The installation instructions call out how flat a subfloor must be. If a floor has too many humps or depressions, a filling compound needs to be used to get the floor flat.

Laminate flooring will snap and pop as you walk on it if it’s bridging across hollow spots under the flooring. Your weight stresses the interlocking tongues and grooves in the flooring causing the noise. It’s nearly impossible to stop this noise after a laminate floor is installed. You may have to start over to cure this defect.

Clogged Drain Line

QUESTION #2: Tim, I almost had a real mess on my hands yesterday. I couldn’t get a basement toilet to flush correctly and then heard bubbling and gurgling sounds in a shower stall next to the toilet. When I opened the shower door the basin was filled with disgusting colored water! A neighbor had a metal drain-cleaning flexible wire and was able to help me clear the line. I want to know what might have caused this wretched clog and how to prevent them in the future. Margaret T., Dublin, OH

I can feel Margaret’s pain and frustration! A year ago the exact same thing happened at my own home. A year before I had remodeled a basement bathroom and installed a very expensive brand-name toilet.

It turns out this toilet has two flushing settings depending on how long you hold down the flush handle. If there’s just liquid waste in the toilet you don’t need as much water for the flush. My son who was using this bathroom wasn’t holding down the handle long enough for the times when solid waste was in the toilet bowl.

I’ve been a master plumber since the age of 29. I have a personal beef with modern toilets as in many cases that small amount of water being released can’t always carry the waste and toilet paper all the way to the septic tank or city sewer connection.

Millions of people, including me, don’t have a water shortage. I have unlimited water from my private well and each time I use a gallon of water at my home a gallon of water is put right back into my aquifer as it flows out of my septic tank. The same happens in just about every major city as drinking water is extracted from rivers and the water homeowners use is dumped back into the same river downstream at the sewage treatment plant.

Cooking grease is also a common source of building drain clogs. It’s best to save lightly soiled paper towels and use those to sop up liquid grease in cooking pots and pans. Throw those grease-soaked towels in the garbage.

I now prevent unwanted clogs at my home by rapidly pouring two five-gallon buckets of water down a second-floor toilet once a week. I have a helper and we pour the water into the toilet at the same time making sure it doesn’t overflow the bowl. This massive amount of water creates a huge slug of energy and water in the building drain forcing solids out into my septic tank. You should do this same thing once a week to avoid clogs.

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[williamccreynolds]

Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor and Clogged Drain Line

The gaps in this laminate floor come and go. The installer failed to read and follow the installation instructions. (C) Copyright 2019 Tim Carter

Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor

QUESTION #1: Oh, Tim I need your help! A laminate floor in a friend’s house seems to be possessed. Overnight, gaps appear in the floor where one piece butts up against another. With some effort, you can slide them back tight again. When you walk across the floor in places it snaps and makes cracking sounds. What’s going on and can the floor be made to look and sound normal? What’s causing the issues in the first place? Roberta G., Eureka, UT

Does your laminate floor have a mind of its own like Roberta’s friend’s floor? Lately, I’m getting more and more emails from homeowners who suffer from the same problem. In all cases, the root cause of the problems is a failure to follow the written installation instructions provided by the laminate flooring manufacturer. Keep in mind that most laminate floors are floating floors that are meant to expand and contract to changes in humidity and temperature.

I clearly remember when laminate flooring was introduced to the marketplace. As with most products, the first generation products had a few bugs to squash. The laminate products have matured and my own office floor is covered with a stunning rustic oak v-grooved laminate floor that almost all visitors think is real wood.

My office floor looks as good as the day it was installed and it’s installed over an electric radiant floor heating mat. Radiant heating can cause gaps to appear as Roberta’s friend is experiencing. It’s imperative that you look at the instructions to see the maximum recommended temperature of the subfloor. One major manufacturer says to never exceed a temperature of 85 F. It’s not uncommon for the temperature of the water circulating through radiant floor tubing to be 120 F!

Heat causes laminate flooring to expand. This expansion is responsible for the gapping as the individual pieces of flooring start to expand at slightly different rates. When the radiant heat turns off because the room is warm enough, the flooring starts to contract as it cools. This back and forth movement can wreak havoc on a floating floor if it’s not installed correctly.

The snapping sounds are almost always traced to an uneven subfloor. Laminate flooring materials don’t tolerate humpy and bumpy subfloors. Subfloors need to be quite flat. Flat doesn’t necessarily mean level. You can have a nice flat subfloor that’s not level. The installation instructions call out how flat a subfloor must be. If a floor has too many humps or depressions, a filling compound needs to be used to get the floor flat.

Laminate flooring will snap and pop as you walk on it if it’s bridging across hollow spots under the flooring. Your weight stresses the interlocking tongues and grooves in the flooring causing the noise. It’s nearly impossible to stop this noise after a laminate floor is installed. You may have to start over to cure this defect.

Clogged Drain Line

QUESTION #2: Tim, I almost had a real mess on my hands yesterday. I couldn’t get a basement toilet to flush correctly and then heard bubbling and gurgling sounds in a shower stall next to the toilet. When I opened the shower door the basin was filled with disgusting colored water! A neighbor had a metal drain-cleaning flexible wire and was able to help me clear the line. I want to know what might have caused this wretched clog and how to prevent them in the future. Margaret T., Dublin, OH

I can feel Margaret’s pain and frustration! A year ago the exact same thing happened at my own home. A year before I had remodeled a basement bathroom and installed a very expensive brand-name toilet.

It turns out this toilet has two flushing settings depending on how long you hold down the flush handle. If there’s just liquid waste in the toilet you don’t need as much water for the flush. My son who was using this bathroom wasn’t holding down the handle long enough for the times when solid waste was in the toilet bowl.

I’ve been a master plumber since the age of 29. I have a personal beef with modern toilets as in many cases that small amount of water being released can’t always carry the waste and toilet paper all the way to the septic tank or city sewer connection.

Millions of people, including me, don’t have a water shortage. I have unlimited water from my private well and each time I use a gallon of water at my home a gallon of water is put right back into my aquifer as it flows out of my septic tank. The same happens in just about every major city as drinking water is extracted from rivers and the water homeowners use is dumped back into the same river downstream at the sewage treatment plant.

Cooking grease is also a common source of building drain clogs. It’s best to save lightly soiled paper towels and use those to sop up liquid grease in cooking pots and pans. Throw those grease-soaked towels in the garbage.

I now prevent unwanted clogs at my home by rapidly pouring two five-gallon buckets of water down a second-floor toilet once a week. I have a helper and we pour the water into the toilet at the same time making sure it doesn’t overflow the bowl. This massive amount of water creates a huge slug of energy and water in the building drain forcing solids out into my septic tank. You should do this same thing once a week to avoid clogs.

Column 1292

The post Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor and Clogged Drain Line appeared first on Ask the Builder.

from Real Estate https://www.askthebuilder.com/creeping-and-snapping-laminate-floor-and-clogged-drain-line/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[thegregorybruce]

Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor and Clogged Drain Line

The gaps in this laminate floor come and go. The installer failed to read and follow the installation instructions. (C) Copyright 2019 Tim Carter

Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor

QUESTION #1: Oh, Tim I need your help! A laminate floor in a friend’s house seems to be possessed. Overnight, gaps appear in the floor where one piece butts up against another. With some effort, you can slide them back tight again. When you walk across the floor in places it snaps and makes cracking sounds. What’s going on and can the floor be made to look and sound normal? What’s causing the issues in the first place? Roberta G., Eureka, UT

Does your laminate floor have a mind of its own like Roberta’s friend’s floor? Lately, I’m getting more and more emails from homeowners who suffer from the same problem. In all cases, the root cause of the problems is a failure to follow the written installation instructions provided by the laminate flooring manufacturer. Keep in mind that most laminate floors are floating floors that are meant to expand and contract to changes in humidity and temperature.

I clearly remember when laminate flooring was introduced to the marketplace. As with most products, the first generation products had a few bugs to squash. The laminate products have matured and my own office floor is covered with a stunning rustic oak v-grooved laminate floor that almost all visitors think is real wood.

My office floor looks as good as the day it was installed and it’s installed over an electric radiant floor heating mat. Radiant heating can cause gaps to appear as Roberta’s friend is experiencing. It’s imperative that you look at the instructions to see the maximum recommended temperature of the subfloor. One major manufacturer says to never exceed a temperature of 85 F. It’s not uncommon for the temperature of the water circulating through radiant floor tubing to be 120 F!

Heat causes laminate flooring to expand. This expansion is responsible for the gapping as the individual pieces of flooring start to expand at slightly different rates. When the radiant heat turns off because the room is warm enough, the flooring starts to contract as it cools. This back and forth movement can wreak havoc on a floating floor if it’s not installed correctly.

The snapping sounds are almost always traced to an uneven subfloor. Laminate flooring materials don’t tolerate humpy and bumpy subfloors. Subfloors need to be quite flat. Flat doesn’t necessarily mean level. You can have a nice flat subfloor that’s not level. The installation instructions call out how flat a subfloor must be. If a floor has too many humps or depressions, a filling compound needs to be used to get the floor flat.

Laminate flooring will snap and pop as you walk on it if it’s bridging across hollow spots under the flooring. Your weight stresses the interlocking tongues and grooves in the flooring causing the noise. It’s nearly impossible to stop this noise after a laminate floor is installed. You may have to start over to cure this defect.

Clogged Drain Line

QUESTION #2: Tim, I almost had a real mess on my hands yesterday. I couldn’t get a basement toilet to flush correctly and then heard bubbling and gurgling sounds in a shower stall next to the toilet. When I opened the shower door the basin was filled with disgusting colored water! A neighbor had a metal drain-cleaning flexible wire and was able to help me clear the line. I want to know what might have caused this wretched clog and how to prevent them in the future. Margaret T., Dublin, OH

I can feel Margaret’s pain and frustration! A year ago the exact same thing happened at my own home. A year before I had remodeled a basement bathroom and installed a very expensive brand-name toilet.

It turns out this toilet has two flushing settings depending on how long you hold down the flush handle. If there’s just liquid waste in the toilet you don’t need as much water for the flush. My son who was using this bathroom wasn’t holding down the handle long enough for the times when solid waste was in the toilet bowl.

I’ve been a master plumber since the age of 29. I have a personal beef with modern toilets as in many cases that small amount of water being released can’t always carry the waste and toilet paper all the way to the septic tank or city sewer connection.

Millions of people, including me, don’t have a water shortage. I have unlimited water from my private well and each time I use a gallon of water at my home a gallon of water is put right back into my aquifer as it flows out of my septic tank. The same happens in just about every major city as drinking water is extracted from rivers and the water homeowners use is dumped back into the same river downstream at the sewage treatment plant.

Cooking grease is also a common source of building drain clogs. It’s best to save lightly soiled paper towels and use those to sop up liquid grease in cooking pots and pans. Throw those grease-soaked towels in the garbage.

I now prevent unwanted clogs at my home by rapidly pouring two five-gallon buckets of water down a second-floor toilet once a week. I have a helper and we pour the water into the toilet at the same time making sure it doesn’t overflow the bowl. This massive amount of water creates a huge slug of energy and water in the building drain forcing solids out into my septic tank. You should do this same thing once a week to avoid clogs.

Column 1292

The post Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor and Clogged Drain Line appeared first on Ask the Builder.

from Home https://www.askthebuilder.com/creeping-and-snapping-laminate-floor-and-clogged-drain-line/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[andrewmawby]

Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor and Clogged Drain Line

The gaps in this laminate floor come and go. The installer failed to read and follow the installation instructions. (C) Copyright 2019 Tim Carter

Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor

QUESTION #1: Oh, Tim I need your help! A laminate floor in a friend’s house seems to be possessed. Overnight, gaps appear in the floor where one piece butts up against another. With some effort, you can slide them back tight again. When you walk across the floor in places it snaps and makes cracking sounds. What’s going on and can the floor be made to look and sound normal? What’s causing the issues in the first place? Roberta G., Eureka, UT

Does your laminate floor have a mind of its own like Roberta’s friend’s floor? Lately, I’m getting more and more emails from homeowners who suffer from the same problem. In all cases, the root cause of the problems is a failure to follow the written installation instructions provided by the laminate flooring manufacturer. Keep in mind that most laminate floors are floating floors that are meant to expand and contract to changes in humidity and temperature.

I clearly remember when laminate flooring was introduced to the marketplace. As with most products, the first generation products had a few bugs to squash. The laminate products have matured and my own office floor is covered with a stunning rustic oak v-grooved laminate floor that almost all visitors think is real wood.

My office floor looks as good as the day it was installed and it’s installed over an electric radiant floor heating mat. Radiant heating can cause gaps to appear as Roberta’s friend is experiencing. It’s imperative that you look at the instructions to see the maximum recommended temperature of the subfloor. One major manufacturer says to never exceed a temperature of 85 F. It’s not uncommon for the temperature of the water circulating through radiant floor tubing to be 120 F!

Heat causes laminate flooring to expand. This expansion is responsible for the gapping as the individual pieces of flooring start to expand at slightly different rates. When the radiant heat turns off because the room is warm enough, the flooring starts to contract as it cools. This back and forth movement can wreak havoc on a floating floor if it’s not installed correctly.

The snapping sounds are almost always traced to an uneven subfloor. Laminate flooring materials don’t tolerate humpy and bumpy subfloors. Subfloors need to be quite flat. Flat doesn’t necessarily mean level. You can have a nice flat subfloor that’s not level. The installation instructions call out how flat a subfloor must be. If a floor has too many humps or depressions, a filling compound needs to be used to get the floor flat.

Laminate flooring will snap and pop as you walk on it if it’s bridging across hollow spots under the flooring. Your weight stresses the interlocking tongues and grooves in the flooring causing the noise. It’s nearly impossible to stop this noise after a laminate floor is installed. You may have to start over to cure this defect.

Clogged Drain Line

QUESTION #2: Tim, I almost had a real mess on my hands yesterday. I couldn’t get a basement toilet to flush correctly and then heard bubbling and gurgling sounds in a shower stall next to the toilet. When I opened the shower door the basin was filled with disgusting colored water! A neighbor had a metal drain-cleaning flexible wire and was able to help me clear the line. I want to know what might have caused this wretched clog and how to prevent them in the future. Margaret T., Dublin, OH

I can feel Margaret’s pain and frustration! A year ago the exact same thing happened at my own home. A year before I had remodeled a basement bathroom and installed a very expensive brand-name toilet.

It turns out this toilet has two flushing settings depending on how long you hold down the flush handle. If there’s just liquid waste in the toilet you don’t need as much water for the flush. My son who was using this bathroom wasn’t holding down the handle long enough for the times when solid waste was in the toilet bowl.

I’ve been a master plumber since the age of 29. I have a personal beef with modern toilets as in many cases that small amount of water being released can’t always carry the waste and toilet paper all the way to the septic tank or city sewer connection.

Millions of people, including me, don’t have a water shortage. I have unlimited water from my private well and each time I use a gallon of water at my home a gallon of water is put right back into my aquifer as it flows out of my septic tank. The same happens in just about every major city as drinking water is extracted from rivers and the water homeowners use is dumped back into the same river downstream at the sewage treatment plant.

Cooking grease is also a common source of building drain clogs. It’s best to save lightly soiled paper towels and use those to sop up liquid grease in cooking pots and pans. Throw those grease-soaked towels in the garbage.

I now prevent unwanted clogs at my home by rapidly pouring two five-gallon buckets of water down a second-floor toilet once a week. I have a helper and we pour the water into the toilet at the same time making sure it doesn’t overflow the bowl. This massive amount of water creates a huge slug of energy and water in the building drain forcing solids out into my septic tank. You should do this same thing once a week to avoid clogs.

Column 1292

The post Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor and Clogged Drain Line appeared first on Ask the Builder.

from builders feed https://www.askthebuilder.com/creeping-and-snapping-laminate-floor-and-clogged-drain-line/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[allardjeremyballard]

Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor and Clogged Drain Line

The gaps in this laminate floor come and go. The installer failed to read and follow the installation instructions. (C) Copyright 2019 Tim Carter

Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor

QUESTION #1: Oh, Tim I need your help! A laminate floor in a friend’s house seems to be possessed. Overnight, gaps appear in the floor where one piece butts up against another. With some effort, you can slide them back tight again. When you walk across the floor in places it snaps and makes cracking sounds. What’s going on and can the floor be made to look and sound normal? What’s causing the issues in the first place? Roberta G., Eureka, UT

Does your laminate floor have a mind of its own like Roberta’s friend’s floor? Lately, I’m getting more and more emails from homeowners who suffer from the same problem. In all cases, the root cause of the problems is a failure to follow the written installation instructions provided by the laminate flooring manufacturer. Keep in mind that most laminate floors are floating floors that are meant to expand and contract to changes in humidity and temperature.

I clearly remember when laminate flooring was introduced to the marketplace. As with most products, the first generation products had a few bugs to squash. The laminate products have matured and my own office floor is covered with a stunning rustic oak v-grooved laminate floor that almost all visitors think is real wood.

My office floor looks as good as the day it was installed and it’s installed over an electric radiant floor heating mat. Radiant heating can cause gaps to appear as Roberta’s friend is experiencing. It’s imperative that you look at the instructions to see the maximum recommended temperature of the subfloor. One major manufacturer says to never exceed a temperature of 85 F. It’s not uncommon for the temperature of the water circulating through radiant floor tubing to be 120 F!

Heat causes laminate flooring to expand. This expansion is responsible for the gapping as the individual pieces of flooring start to expand at slightly different rates. When the radiant heat turns off because the room is warm enough, the flooring starts to contract as it cools. This back and forth movement can wreak havoc on a floating floor if it’s not installed correctly.

The snapping sounds are almost always traced to an uneven subfloor. Laminate flooring materials don’t tolerate humpy and bumpy subfloors. Subfloors need to be quite flat. Flat doesn’t necessarily mean level. You can have a nice flat subfloor that’s not level. The installation instructions call out how flat a subfloor must be. If a floor has too many humps or depressions, a filling compound needs to be used to get the floor flat.

Laminate flooring will snap and pop as you walk on it if it’s bridging across hollow spots under the flooring. Your weight stresses the interlocking tongues and grooves in the flooring causing the noise. It’s nearly impossible to stop this noise after a laminate floor is installed. You may have to start over to cure this defect.

Clogged Drain Line

QUESTION #2: Tim, I almost had a real mess on my hands yesterday. I couldn’t get a basement toilet to flush correctly and then heard bubbling and gurgling sounds in a shower stall next to the toilet. When I opened the shower door the basin was filled with disgusting colored water! A neighbor had a metal drain-cleaning flexible wire and was able to help me clear the line. I want to know what might have caused this wretched clog and how to prevent them in the future. Margaret T., Dublin, OH

I can feel Margaret’s pain and frustration! A year ago the exact same thing happened at my own home. A year before I had remodeled a basement bathroom and installed a very expensive brand-name toilet.

It turns out this toilet has two flushing settings depending on how long you hold down the flush handle. If there’s just liquid waste in the toilet you don’t need as much water for the flush. My son who was using this bathroom wasn’t holding down the handle long enough for the times when solid waste was in the toilet bowl.

I’ve been a master plumber since the age of 29. I have a personal beef with modern toilets as in many cases that small amount of water being released can’t always carry the waste and toilet paper all the way to the septic tank or city sewer connection.

Millions of people, including me, don’t have a water shortage. I have unlimited water from my private well and each time I use a gallon of water at my home a gallon of water is put right back into my aquifer as it flows out of my septic tank. The same happens in just about every major city as drinking water is extracted from rivers and the water homeowners use is dumped back into the same river downstream at the sewage treatment plant.

Cooking grease is also a common source of building drain clogs. It’s best to save lightly soiled paper towels and use those to sop up liquid grease in cooking pots and pans. Throw those grease-soaked towels in the garbage.

I now prevent unwanted clogs at my home by rapidly pouring two five-gallon buckets of water down a second-floor toilet once a week. I have a helper and we pour the water into the toilet at the same time making sure it doesn’t overflow the bowl. This massive amount of water creates a huge slug of energy and water in the building drain forcing solids out into my septic tank. You should do this same thing once a week to avoid clogs.

Column 1292

The post Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor and Clogged Drain Line appeared first on Ask the Builder.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247360 https://www.askthebuilder.com/creeping-and-snapping-laminate-floor-and-clogged-drain-line/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[emoryjrice71]

Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor and Clogged Drain Line

The gaps in this laminate floor come and go. The installer failed to read and follow the installation instructions. (C) Copyright 2019 Tim Carter

Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor

QUESTION #1: Oh, Tim I need your help! A laminate floor in a friend’s house seems to be possessed. Overnight, gaps appear in the floor where one piece butts up against another. With some effort, you can slide them back tight again. When you walk across the floor in places it snaps and makes cracking sounds. What’s going on and can the floor be made to look and sound normal? What’s causing the issues in the first place? Roberta G., Eureka, UT

Does your laminate floor have a mind of its own like Roberta’s friend’s floor? Lately, I’m getting more and more emails from homeowners who suffer from the same problem. In all cases, the root cause of the problems is a failure to follow the written installation instructions provided by the laminate flooring manufacturer. Keep in mind that most laminate floors are floating floors that are meant to expand and contract to changes in humidity and temperature.

I clearly remember when laminate flooring was introduced to the marketplace. As with most products, the first generation products had a few bugs to squash. The laminate products have matured and my own office floor is covered with a stunning rustic oak v-grooved laminate floor that almost all visitors think is real wood.

My office floor looks as good as the day it was installed and it’s installed over an electric radiant floor heating mat. Radiant heating can cause gaps to appear as Roberta’s friend is experiencing. It’s imperative that you look at the instructions to see the maximum recommended temperature of the subfloor. One major manufacturer says to never exceed a temperature of 85 F. It’s not uncommon for the temperature of the water circulating through radiant floor tubing to be 120 F!

Heat causes laminate flooring to expand. This expansion is responsible for the gapping as the individual pieces of flooring start to expand at slightly different rates. When the radiant heat turns off because the room is warm enough, the flooring starts to contract as it cools. This back and forth movement can wreak havoc on a floating floor if it’s not installed correctly.

The snapping sounds are almost always traced to an uneven subfloor. Laminate flooring materials don’t tolerate humpy and bumpy subfloors. Subfloors need to be quite flat. Flat doesn’t necessarily mean level. You can have a nice flat subfloor that’s not level. The installation instructions call out how flat a subfloor must be. If a floor has too many humps or depressions, a filling compound needs to be used to get the floor flat.

Laminate flooring will snap and pop as you walk on it if it’s bridging across hollow spots under the flooring. Your weight stresses the interlocking tongues and grooves in the flooring causing the noise. It’s nearly impossible to stop this noise after a laminate floor is installed. You may have to start over to cure this defect.

Clogged Drain Line

QUESTION #2: Tim, I almost had a real mess on my hands yesterday. I couldn’t get a basement toilet to flush correctly and then heard bubbling and gurgling sounds in a shower stall next to the toilet. When I opened the shower door the basin was filled with disgusting colored water! A neighbor had a metal drain-cleaning flexible wire and was able to help me clear the line. I want to know what might have caused this wretched clog and how to prevent them in the future. Margaret T., Dublin, OH

I can feel Margaret’s pain and frustration! A year ago the exact same thing happened at my own home. A year before I had remodeled a basement bathroom and installed a very expensive brand-name toilet.

It turns out this toilet has two flushing settings depending on how long you hold down the flush handle. If there’s just liquid waste in the toilet you don’t need as much water for the flush. My son who was using this bathroom wasn’t holding down the handle long enough for the times when solid waste was in the toilet bowl.

I’ve been a master plumber since the age of 29. I have a personal beef with modern toilets as in many cases that small amount of water being released can’t always carry the waste and toilet paper all the way to the septic tank or city sewer connection.

Millions of people, including me, don’t have a water shortage. I have unlimited water from my private well and each time I use a gallon of water at my home a gallon of water is put right back into my aquifer as it flows out of my septic tank. The same happens in just about every major city as drinking water is extracted from rivers and the water homeowners use is dumped back into the same river downstream at the sewage treatment plant.

Cooking grease is also a common source of building drain clogs. It’s best to save lightly soiled paper towels and use those to sop up liquid grease in cooking pots and pans. Throw those grease-soaked towels in the garbage.

I now prevent unwanted clogs at my home by rapidly pouring two five-gallon buckets of water down a second-floor toilet once a week. I have a helper and we pour the water into the toilet at the same time making sure it doesn’t overflow the bowl. This massive amount of water creates a huge slug of energy and water in the building drain forcing solids out into my septic tank. You should do this same thing once a week to avoid clogs.

Column 1292

The post Creeping and Snapping Laminate Floor and Clogged Drain Line appeared first on Ask the Builder.