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hellomynamiseglaf · 4 years ago

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🌰Chestnuts and Warm Milk🍂

My List of ~Favorites~ for Interactive Fiction and Visual Novels

(This is a work in progress so please bear with me)

Interactive Fiction:

The Wayhaven Chronicles (WIP Series in Development) - @seraphinitegames (Look,,, I’m just... obsessed.. I can’t stop thinking abt it,,, and I'm..... sometimes, I read and I think I feel like I know what love is.)

Mind Blind (WIP) - @mindblindbard (I just,, UGH it’s so good. I can't even say that much because my feelings about it are so potent that everytime I see an update I try to tell myself to leave it alone to play larger portions of updates as a treat and everytime my willpower FAILS and I replay the demo like twice in a row)

Demon: Recollect ; Forsaken (WIP) - both by @bathalafiction (whew...WHEW!!! Are you kidding me?? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? Look. I was attached to Demon: Recollect. I loved it. And then I played the Forsaken WIP and now I can't get over my absolutely BOMB character design for my player persona. Also it's kind of fun being considered a jerk in the game, because it opens up a lot of different options that I usually feel bad about taking)

Shadow Society - @carawenfiction (the concept is so interesting,, I dream of more. Also Quaiel...baby...)

The Soul Stone War - @intimidatingpuffinstudios (also whew!! I really enjoyed it and the characters all picture themselves really vividly in my mind for some reason.)

Greenwarden (WIP) - @fiddles-ifs (reading this is like thick fog.. but in a good way? I don't know how to describe it without pictures but this IF smells like fog over wet grass)

Divine Intervention (WIP) - @divineinterventiongame (the concept?? UGH SO GOOD. For some reason it's always the first game I click to check for updates)

Golden (WIP) - @milaswriting (😈😈😈😈)

Blood/line (WIP) - @bloodlineoffical (simply put,,, LARRY)

Supernatural in New York ; The Bastard of Camelot (both WIPs) - @llamagirl28 (UGH Both of these are so good in their own ways but equally as exciting to see updates for. I haven't consolidated my feelings much further than "my MC for SiNY is so cute" and "Mordred is a child" but they're all generally positive.)

Ace of Spades (WIP) - @steph-writing (I keep thinking about,,, con........)

Nevermoore (WIP) - @asteristories (AHHHHH.... let me say it again for those in the back: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH)

Son of Satan: The Mortal Coil (WIP) - @sosthemortalcoil (YES.)

Shepherds of Haven (WIP) - @shepherds-of-haven (yes. I just have to sigh because it's very good and I like saying those funny little words of power. But also outside of the game I can only picture this game as a great, grey border collie)

Attollo (WIP) - @attollo (Also a very interesting concept, whoo... I almost forgot how immersive it was untill I played the demo again and was reminded of how 'into it' I was straight off the bat. Also the seperate, short little piece on the blog with Sysba was also really good and I had a dream about it the other day)

Into the Shadows (WIP) - @wynnakang (whooo.... I'm sighing again, but louder. I press restart and play the demo again)

A Comedy of Manors (WIP) - @sviyaginthegreat (I kept replaying options that I hadn't chosen before because I wanted there to be more lmao)

Fallen Hero: Rebirth - @fallen-hero (I think there's a sequel coming up? I haven't stopped thinking about this storyline since I finished it omg... the.. the details are really good and I've become ridiculously attached to my tragic villain? Character... she IS the standard for my reusable IF persona, or at least one of my most prominent ones ;-D )

Samurai of Hyuga (WIP series) - (I'm pretty sure multiplechoicestudios.com is the development blog for this game, or at least what I've been checking for updates..... this is a series with four book currently out.... and I've been playing through book 4 at slower than a snail's pace in a desperate attempt to prolong my experience. I really didn't think I was going to like it as much as I did but I got a little too into it and now I'm horribly attached to all the characters)

The Porthecrawl Witness(WIP) - @porthecrawl-witness (I'm pretty sure this is a WIP?? But ugh. SCREEEEEE- it's so good. It's SO GOOD. I really want to punch Talbot in the face. And Asher, if for a different reason. And sort of Staci just to try. Quinn is just a cutie I could never hurt him like that. Ugh but they're all so good and I forgot that I was reading a WIP untill it suddenly was over..... I'mfeeling really aggressive rn as I'm writing this, so please just note that the punch comment is meant as a statement on how interesting the concept and immersiveness of the characters and story is)

Forgotten Names (WIP) - by Alexandra_Zorila on the CoG Forum (turn the volume up. AHHHHHHHHHH!!! Look, look. It's..... delicious. It's SO interesting and I obsessively have a tab open on my computer to check for updates)

OFNA: Birds of a Feather (WIP) - @ofna (the vibes are so grey and smoky but the fog is definitely from a party smoke machine and the room is only dark because the walls are taped with those huge sheets of black construction paper that teachers use to cover their bulletin boards with... the game definitely falls in the 'dark and mysterious' genre but something just strikes me as really funny when I play it. Anyway it's good and it's in a lot if recommended lists for a reason. Also I'm very attached to my American Goldfinch)

More Things in Heaven and Earth (WIP) - @morethingsgame (in the same way that it's fun to play Guenevere in the Guenevere game or Mordred in The Bastard of Camelot, playing Ophelia in the sort-of Hamlet story is really fun. If anyone has read the Missing collection- which I absolutely love- by Margaret Peterson Haddix, this gives me similar vibes for some reason. Anyway, I really want to give Hamlet a hug and make him a flower crown or something)

A Tale of Crowns (WIP) - @ataleofcrowns (It's kind of not even funny how much I love this game... It's hard to even describe why I like it, just that it's so well rounded in terms of the story, characters, dialogue, and relationships. It's such an interesting plotline and it's pretty immersive. Also the first time I read the demo, there was an update as I was reading and the high that sent me on has very rarely been matched. Also Dara running to save my Crown in the tunnel?? 🤚😩🤭💓 ugh. UGH!! That's good food for my fool heart)

Scout: An Apocalypse Story (WIP)- @anya-dev (I'm usually not that into apocalypse themes/plots but I really enjoyed this game, and the plot was very good and intruiging... it really pulled me in and I like my character in the story a lot. I don't know why but it tastes like chikuwa, atsuage, and this specific type of carmelized onions that my mom makes sometimes)

Nothing left to burn (WIP)- @clowdee-works (......ouch. I *knew* what was going to happen and I STILL became attached to Drew)

Smoke and Velvet - @roast-ifs (It's good. And I am VEDY much into my character design. Also the story is really interesting, and I enjoy the setting a lot somehow)

Speaker (WIP)- @speakergame (very fun to play, and each update gets me more interested in the aspects of the plot. I also really like the little descriptions of what the characters think of the player)

The Nameless (WIP)- @parkerlyn (interesting plot, I like the characters a lot, and The aesthetics of this world are so interesting. Definitely had a good time visualizing what everything looked like)

Fields of Asphodel (WIP) - @asphodelgame (I think it's really cute so far!!! I like mythology in general, and the persephone/hades dynamic is *mwah!*... I like the way the story progresses in the beginning, and I think it works well in drawing the reader into the world. I also very much enjoy petting large dogs.)

...there are so much more.. and I have followed so many blogs.........

I'm not sure why I can't find it rn but there's this one WIP game that I really like where the MC buys a manor for like dollar and moves to go live there with her best friend and shenanigans ensue as they try to settle in and fix up the estate

Harbringer (WIP) - @harbringercog (....are you KIDDING me?? I was fully planning on just enjoying the demo and keeping a mental note to update the list sometime later,,, but this game... THIS GAME really made me fold. It's very immersive and regardless of how nervous the author claims to be after releasing the demo, it's of my humble opinion that those nerves can be calmed. It's very good. I was planning on procrastinating and reading a little bit and then going back to this essay I need to write, but somehow I got pulled in and ended up reading through the whole demo and it's apparent that I honestly had no chance of getting through this without becoming invested in the plot.... just... so good.. I'm very excited to see how this will progress)

Visual Novels:

Andromeda 6 (WIP) - @andromeda-six (I repeat: Obsessed, I come back every few months to see an update and I fall deeper into the hole every time...)

To the Edge of the Sky (WIP,, probably) - by Ajané (??) on Steam (I think, it’s been a while)

Next on my list to check out: Perfumare by pdrrook

Does.... does The Arcana game by Nix Hydra count as VN?? If so, then yes.

Similarly, the FictIF games are all entertaining, although Last Legacy and Heir to Love and Lies are my favorites rn (and.....unfinished....)

I also don't know if this counts, because I kind of consider Otome games to be their own genre, but on the Love 365: find your story by Voltage Inc. There are a bunch of fun stories, my favorite of which are: the Shinichi Kagari route on After School Affairs and the Saejima and Keiichiro routes on Bad Boys do it Better

..To be continued...

#IF_VN #fis fic recs #interactive fiction #visual novels #game #recommendations

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nanowrimo · 4 years ago

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Tips on Finishing Your Novel from the NaNoWriMo Writers Board

Do the characters in your unfinished novel haunt your dreams? Does your incomplete story call your name from its dusty place in your “drafts in progress” folder? Introducing #NaNoFinMo (National Novel Finishing Month)! Our newest track for April’s upcoming Camp NaNoWriMo session is jam-packed with fin-tastic resources to help you finish your novel.

We asked our talented Writers Board to share some tips for finishing first drafts. Read on to discover what these authors have to say!

Sarra Cannon

Sometimes what holds us back is that all we can see is this huge gap between the sucky draft we think we've written and the masterpiece we want our novel to be. Stop looking at the gap and thinking about how impossible it feels. Instead, take it one word, one scene at a time. Finish it piece by small piece. Each step of the way, a little bit more of that masterpiece you're writing will reveal itself. I promise. There are things about your novel you can't see from where you're sitting, but a few steps forward and suddenly, there's a bit more clarity. Stop expecting yourself to make an impossible leap, and instead, show up every day and take a single step forward. You can do this.

Aya de Leon

One step at a time. I start by going through my draft and finding all the places where I wrote things like "DESCRIBE THE CAFE" in all caps. Once I've filled in the gaping holes, I read it through the whole book and edit the things that seem off. If there are bigger issues that seem to need work, I keep a separate running list of those. Then I go back and address those bigger issues. Then it's time to get someone to read it, to see what it needs next!

Susan Dennard

Don’t worry if your ending—or your middle or your whole book!—is a mess. Revision is the next step of the creative process, no matter what, but you can’t revise what you don’t have! So just get words down and worry about making them good later.

Grant Faulkner

The irony of the moment when you think about giving up on your novel is that it can also be a moment that’s ripe with opportunity if you just keep going. After a lapse, it’s important to forgive yourself, readjust your goals, and give yourself a fresh start so that a bad week of writing doesn’t lead to a bad month of writing, which then turns into a bad year of writing. I pick a “milestone day”—the first day of a new month or a new week—and start again. It’s all about designing your life around the things you rationally want to achieve instead of sinking into the powerful claws of more impulsive needs (such as quitting).

Life goes by too quickly to wait for next year or our next novel. I don’t want to die with a list of all of the novels I wish I would have finished. The main thing about any achievement isn’t necessarily starting it, but restarting it over and over again.

Mignon Fogarty

Find someone who will hound you mercilessly until you finish.

Kami Garcia

Even if you only write one page a day, at the end of the year you’ll have a book. Books aren’t written in first drafts. They’re written in revisions. But you can’t revise unless you finish.

Hugh Howey

If you are having a difficult time finishing your novel, try writing the final chapter! Too often, we get lost in the middle of our books, unsure of where we are heading. Create that final destination, then go back and write scenes that get you a step closer. Don't worry, you'll clean it all up in the revision process. The important thing is to have a rough draft with a complete story.

Mary Robinette Kowal

I always bog down at about the 3/4 mark, when I'm switching modes from opening questions to closing them. Now I treat that as a feature, not a bug, and take time to reread what I've written. I make notes of major dangling plot threads and then start giving my main character some wins as a way to start tying up threads.

Mur Lafferty

The first badge of a writer is writing an awful lot. NaNoWriMo winners have done that. But the next badge is finishing something. Storytellers of old didn't just get up from their campfires in the middle of their stories and wander into the woods.

Or, pithier:

You're not a storyteller if you don't finish your stories. Don't be a Storyte

Devi S. Laskar

Alas, it involves math! Make a list of all the items you have left to write (scenes, bits of dialogue and/or description) to complete a draft and then divide by thirty. Then you will know how many you have to tackle each day for the month. The keys are to keep the goals small (doable) and to set aside a bit of time to do these tasks every day!

Marissa Meyer

Remember that it's okay to skip scenes, chapters, even whole sections! If trying to write the middle of the book has put me in a slump, and I'd rather jump straight into the big, exciting finale, I'll do it. Once I've hit "the end," it helps motivate me to go back and fill in those empty spaces.

Emily X. R. Pan

Truth or dare! I'll go first.

Truth? Okay: Even as a professional author, every novel I write is a terrifying new challenge—I never know if I'll reach the end. But I do know that the books I don't finish are never going to be published.

As you might have discovered in November, it’s about figuring out how to keep going.

Here’s how I fight the overwhelm: Stop worrying about the whole book. Break it down into bite-sized pieces. Can you just write the next paragraph? Can you just write for fifteen minutes?

Do it today. Do it again tomorrow. Do it the day after. I dare you.

#nanowrimo #writing #camp nanowrimo #writing advice #nanofinmo #by nano writers board #emily x r pan #marissa meyer #devi s laskar #mur lafferty #mary robinette kowal #hugh howey #Kami Garcia #mignon fogarty #grant faulkner #susan dennard #aya de leon #sarra cannon

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powdermelonkeg · 3 years ago

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Okay so like since you said that you dislike botw ( I personally loved it as a new Zelda fan, but I know that several old Zelda fans didn’t like it) and I respect your opinion, can I ask what other games you think are overhyped or you personally don’t like? I love reading your rants and how you explain your opinions!

Okay, so a little clarification: Whether or not I like a game doesn't mean I didn't enjoy my first playthrough. When I decide if I ACTUALLY like a game, or if it's just there to occupy my adhd brain, I go through a few things:

Did the story make me feel good?

Did the ending feel like a victory?

Is playing still challenging by endgame?

Are there secrets to find around the world?

Does it replay well, or is the early game just irritating because I don't have the stuff I did before?

Breath of the Wild doesn't hit those criteria. The most emotional scenes were Zelda's despair, which we didn't get a proper resolution to. Dark Beast Ganon feels too easy. The world only scales up by making fights LONGER, not more interesting. Secrets all are the same ending (yahaha!). And most of all, early game BotW is frustrating, especially coming from a completed file.

Those in mind, though, there's a couple of other problems I have with some more loved Zelda games, though they DO tend to avoid the replayability issue by the way dungeons and stuff are structured.

Ocarina of Time feels like an easy target, but it's praised as the best Zelda game. And I know that it's because I've had later (and longer) Zelda games, but as a writer, the amount of plot holes bothers me. On all other fronts, though, it succeeds; there's a variety of enemies, different kinds of secrets (grottos, bomb walls, fountains, magic beans, etc), challenging bosses, etc.

Majora's Mask had better writing, 100%. However, it hits the "this is annoying to restart" thing, except it makes you restart every few hours. And it MAKES YOU BEAT THE BOSSES AGAIN. That doesn't help me when I spent the whole three days dying to the water boss!

Ahem.

Final offender, and this one's going to strike a nerve with some people, Skyward Sword. The game is beautiful, the story is heartwrenching, I'll give them that. But as someone who speedruns Skyloft, the tutorial phase is obnoxiously long (knowing EXACTLY where to go, running everywhere, avoiding all enemies and secrets, button mashing through dialogue, and it STILL takes me 14 minutes), especially on the Wii version where you can't skip through text. On top of that, the amount of backtracking you have to do, plus the removal of grottos, bomb walls, and fairy fountains, make the secret-finding aspect of it just a more palatable version of what BotW's got. You get different treasures, but the goddess cubes might as well still be saying "yahaha, you found me!" because they're ALL that's really secret, barring some out-of-reach small treasures and heart pieces.

I like CAVES. I like EXPLORATION. I like SECRETS. The little secret chime in Zelda games is my favorite noise to hear. I want to light torches and that makes a chest appear! Or fall into a hole that leads me to a hidden puzzle! Things like that!

The best part of Zelda, in my opinion?

It's a secret to everybody.

#loz #zelda #ask bee #botw #oot #mm #skyward sword #top games that DO hit the criteria: twilight princess. wind waker. spirit tracks. a link between worlds. cadence of hyrule.#controversial opinion time

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kbsd · 4 years ago

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not sure if you’ve answered this before, but what’s your process look like when you make an amv? i’m just curious and in constant awe of ppl who can make videos like you do :)

hello all!!! i have answered this before and i have a vid help tag with other asks i’ve gotten about stuff like this! but i’ve gotten several more messages along these lines so i’m just going to answer a bunch of them together (under a cut since i love to ramble about editing lol). i do just wanna say i’m definitely not the authority on video editing and obv everyone has their own techniques!

edit: i just finished typing all this up and it’s SO long so sorry in advance LMAO god bless anyone who reads this entire thing

so i work in news tv and we have a very specific workflow for writing scripts, sourcing video, producing, and editing. i’ve just applied that to making amvs! for every video i make, i copy the song lyrics into a google doc and adjust them to match the song i’ve cut (i often will trim songs for time and/or content purposes). then i start planning! i’ll mark down what clip i want to use for each lyric next to that line, and any sound bites i want to use (with episode numbers!). i’ll color code between video and sound bites and lyrics, so my scripts end up looking something like this (for my honeybee amv):

doing the planning ahead of time makes everything much easier when it’s a video that spans the whole show or involves a lot of sourcing, like honeybee or sports analogies. that way when i get to the actual editing process, i already know what i’m going to do and have a game plan. for videos like happy ending or believe it or not, where i’m mainly just pulling from a few episodes, i can just plan it in my head as opposed to writing it all down, and produce as i edit. obviously i do make in-the-moment decisions while editing—sometimes a shot doesn’t work the way i thought it would, or i go where the video takes me—but planning ahead definitely helps. i know some people use spreadsheets as well, with columns for lyrics, video clips, and sound bites if applicable. once you find a system that works, it actually goes pretty quickly.

as for sourcing clips themselves/finding clips within episodes, i talked about that here and kind of here. the short version is that transcripts are a must, and the supernatural wiki is hugely helpful by cataloguing all the hugs, prayers, phone calls, etc. in the show. gifmakers that tag episode numbers on their posts are your friends. it gets easier the more video you make—that’s another huge reason i make the google docs for each video (even the ones i plan in my head, i end up going back and making a loose script with episode notes just for reference). if i can’t remember where something is but i know i used it in another video, i can easily reference past scripts!

i also cut all my videos in the same project in premiere pro, so i can flip between them easily. instead of checking a past script, i can just go to the video sequence itself and copy the clip i’m looking for! this was especially helpful when i match cut together the 5x18 and 4x22 wall slam shots for my bestie video, and then stole it from myself for honeybee hahaha. at any given time i have at least 8 sequences open:

because of the sheer volume of videos i make, it’s worth it for me to download the entire show—i have all 327 episodes in HD, plus deleted scenes. if you think you’re only going to make a few videos, i’d start with scene packs. you can usually just google “destiel [or whatever ship/character you’re looking for] scene packs” and there will be any number of ones you can download. if you need other specific scenes, you can always download/torrent individual episodes or screen record netflix (that’s what i did before i got HD download links). i’m happy to share my links if you DM, but be warned it’s a lot of disk space (about 500GB on my hard drive). someone also compiled every destiel scene, downloadable here.

having every episode already loaded in premiere for all my projects also makes it a lot easier to source clips. once i use a clip in a video, i’ll put a marker on the episode file, so that after a while i have most of the important scenes/lines marked to easily find them. to give you an idea, this is my episode file in premiere for 12x10 lily sunder has some regrets (markers at destiel scenes, the car fight, hot girl cas, etc.). markers are the green tabs along the bottom:

premiere also lets you color code and name markers, so ONE DAY i will go back and color code them all. the ones above are all the same color, but in a perfect world, i’d have a myraid—for destiel shots like hugs, touches, looks; for important pieces of dialogue; for action shots; etc. but for now this works ok for me, so that’s a project for another time!

between detailed scripts, one giant premiere project, markers, the wiki, and my own memory, i have so many points of reference that i can usually find any clip i need in about 2 minutes max. sound bites are often harder to start out, or tiny specific shots i haven’t used before, and that’s when i turn to tumblr gifsets or beloved mutuals to crowdsource. but if you’re as obsessive about marking/keeping neat scripts as i am, it gets easier and easier with every video you make. that’s part of why i’m able to cut videos together so quickly. (also i want to stress i do this for a living and have to produce/edit a new piece for my show every day so i’m used to it. and compared to constantly updating content/sources and news that changes every day, 327 highly documented episodes that never change are much easier to handle hahaha)

this is all great for me since i make so many videos and plan to continue doing so, but if you’re only making a few, this level of work isn’t worth it imo. really it’s all about developing a system that works for you. whatever you do with episodes/sourcing, though, i cannot recommend planning things out in a script ahead of time enough.

everything i just mentioned is producing, though. for the editing process, i usually do it in this order:

music first. any parts i want to cut, i make sure it all sounds smooth

then soundbites. i usually try to weave them into the lyrics—i have characters talk in breaks between lines or instrumental sections as much as possible. i’ll sometimes go so far as looped/extending an intsrumental part to make room for the soundbite i want there lol. if i do have dialogue over a line, i do the sound mixing/levels at this point as well to make sure everything is audible/one doesn’t overpower the other. (also i always include the video that goes with these bites when i drop them in, and decide later if i want to show the character speaking or have other clips cover the dialogue)

once i have all the audio locked in, then i bring in all my other video clips. sometimes i edit completely chronologically, sometimes jumping from section to section—it depends on the song or how i’m feeling

double check sound mixing. i usually listen to my videos through a few times, with headphones and without to make sure it’ll sound good no matter how people watch it

once i have picture and audio lock, i go through and color correct my clips. i’m basic and just use lumetri color in premiere, and usually just play with brightness, saturation, temperature, and tint until i like it

render and export! :)

i always have several audio tracks, but i try to keep my video tracks condensed. i’ll drop clips on a V2 level, and edit a section there, and drop the whole chunk down to V1 so i know it’s finished. that way when i leave and come back i can know where i left off/what’s done/etc. to give you an idea, this is the timeline for my what the hell video:

i always render as H.264 with high bitrate, and make sure to check “render at maximum depth” and “use maximum render quality” for the best quality. i’m sorry, but i don’t know what the equivalent options are in final cut, imovie, kdenlive, etc. i post on youtube mostly so i don’t have to sacrifice quality, but usually just using a lower bitrate will get you under the tumblr file size limit and it’ll still look good.

as for the anon who asked about “polishing”: first of all, thank you!! second of all, it’s in the details. all of this is a matter of taste and my own insanity, but here are some little things i always try to do:

after i color correct, i blur out any credits from the starts of episodes. i use gaussian blur for this, but really any blur tool works

as much as possible, i avoid clips where we see a character’s mouth move but don’t hear the words. in tv/film we call it “lip flap” and i just think it looks messy. also i’m trained to avoid it at all costs at work hahaha. it’s more for serious videos that this matters a lot to me (e.g. i think i did a really good job eliminating lip flap in my happy ending amv)—for comedy videos i don’t sweat it as much

i put audio fades on the start and end of every single audio clip i use, even if i don’t think i need it, to make sure everything sounds smooth

i use markers for timing, especially in action-y videos like what the hell. i’ll put a marker on the clip i’m using at the exact moment a punch lands, and in the song on the beat. if i have the magnet/snap in timeline tool on i can just easily snap them together instead of having to spend time finagling it

this is such a small thing but i dip/cut to black for a tiny bit at the start and end of every video. this way if i post with tumblr video player, there’s black between the loops, and it gives you a beat before the video restarts. i do this even on videos i post on youtube, just because i think it looks nicer/more professional

this is 1,500 words so i’m going to stop myself before i pull something. if you have follow-up questions feel free to ask and i’ll continue to add them to the vid help tag, but any more questions about sourcing clips or my process in general i’ll just link this post going forward. anyone who made it this far, i am sending to a telepathic kiss. thank you for reading and happy editing!

#i typed this all up at 4am so i'm just scheduling it to post sometime today #ask #vid help

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roodllle · 4 years ago

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Year in Review - Animal Crossing New Horizons

I started writing this review/criticism in May of 2020 but decided to update it as the year went along and post it on the anniversary of NH’s release. I would like to preface that this is mostly going to be full of questions of criticisms, I love this game. I have not been able to put it down since I got it on March 20th. My first AC game was NL and then I played HHD. I was ecstatic when they announced NH at E3 2019 and kept trying to find other games to fit in my AC shaped hole in my heart but I wasn’t able to fill it till this game came out. I feel like the pace of the game is great with how you build up to unlocking terraforming and 5 stars, and I feel like the updates are well timed especially with how crazy 2020 was for everybody. That being said there were some things that irked me.

Some of the points I will bring up came from other people/commenters I have seen on here, Discord, Reddit, and Twitter that I also agree with. Some other points are from Youtubers such as ShayMay and ChuyPlays. And others are from me.

With that out of the way, let’s get on with the review. Warning, I guess, don’t expect this to be an essay, this is just a patchwork quilt made up of thoughts.

Terraforming

I wish cliffs/tiers had a smaller level? Like how we’re able to make stepping stones for our rivers if we don’t want to put a bridge down/use our vaulting pole. I just wish there was a cliff alternative.

Another cliff alternative would be if we could put bridges between cliffs. I think we’ve all been there where we see this picture

thought ‘we can do that!!” then realized it was photoshopped

When we go into terraforming, I wish a grid showed up on our island. It would make it much easier to avoid hitting the wrong square when I’m trying to change a river.

Having us be able to “close” a waterfall from a lower level but not create a new on at the same spot.

Also the fact we can add a 4th tier but can’t put anything on it is just strange to me. I know we have to have a limit to how high we can go, but at least let me put nature stuff, such as trees/flowers/bushes, on top of it instead of just a flat piece of land.

Houses

Why no ceiling items? Find it odd they added a bunch of stuff in HHD and didn’t add that to the new mainline game

There’s no reason I can think of to why we can’t access our storage when we’re crafting inside our house.

Buildings

Dodo Airlines

The Dodo Islands right now are very boring and barely use them. I have enough money and materials to not go farming and save up all my NMTs for when I go villager hunting, which has also become a rarity. I think it would be a good idea to make some islands seasoned themed. Have them be all rare, but have an island where it’s fall and has maple leaves falling, a cherry blossom one, one with snowflakes. I wouldn’t recommend they make Holiday themed ones, but having seasonal ones would be nice.

When I mess up a dodo code or accidentally hit ‘make a bridge’ instead of incline, etc. why do I have to restart the ENTIRE conversation instead of the characters just being “oh? did you mean “x” or “would you like to retype it?” like is it that hard??

Resident Services

As much as I love Isabelle this game has made me very indifferent towards her. I think they gave her a role that didn’t need to exist. They could have either let us roam around without any warnings to who was roaming around our island, in the campsite, or any weather updates. Just have us rely on our villagers, the TV, and our eyeballs. OR they could have given us a social media like app and/or a weather app. Instead, they gave us Isabelle that only announces something once a month.

Nook’s Cranny

This might just be me but can they add a little DIY area in the store? Maybe just make to where you can only customize things?? This is more out of convenience than an actual problem

Speaking of customization, since you can make medicine but also buy can we do the same for the custom kits and bait. Like make it where we can buy bait and also make our own custom kits? I just think it’s weird that they give us either/or for medicine but not for the other 2 that I honestly use way more than medicine.

Why do the Able Sisters get to have all of the colors of an item in their shop but Nook’s Cranny can’t? And why can’t we just be able to customize all items that have multiple looks/colors? Example, why can’t I just be able to change the wood type for the antique set instead of having to buy each one? I get that the furniture catalog is already small, but that’s not my fault. They’ve decided to not add past furniture sets into NH.

Able Sisters

Let us multi select clothes instead of it just being how much we can wear. idc if it’ll just put those clothes in our personal storage and then we’ll have to run home and put it in that storage, I just hate having to walk back in and out every time I want a dress in multi colors. ALSO tell us if we already bought it, like a little storage icon or something

Why can’t we hang any article of clothing on the back wall, why do we have to either make it or have the OG qr designer come to our island?

Why can’t we have the transparent option when designing clothes? I think it would make many designer’s lives easier instead of having to make 8 versions of the same outfit.

NPCs

I have played this game almost every day since it came out, minus 2 days. I have also been able to make friends on discord that help with trading/cataloging/etc. I have all of Saharah’s, Kicks’, Label’s, and Redd’s items. I have all of the fish/bug models I want and have no desire to “catch them all”. I haven’t talked to Wisp in months because I have most of the items and his idea of “expensive” is 10k bells. The only NPC I actively look forward to is Celeste because even though I now have all of her DIYs, she still gives out star fragments, regular large or horoscope, when I talk to her.

What I’m wondering is if they’re planning on doing anything else with these characters. Before I speak further I’m going to weed out characters that I am actually fine with. CJ and Flick will always be there if I want a bug/fish model, I understand that Saharah/Kicks/Redd have a ton of stuff to get and w/o the help of my discord friends, I probably wouldn’t have gotten everything till late 2021.

So that leaves Label and Wisp. I understand Wisp is there for beginners, but now that I’m at a point where I am a bell millionaire and have most of the Nook’s items cataloged, there is no reason for me to talk to him. I wish Nintendo had put in a system where depending on the person who Wisp is talking to, it determines how much money you have in your bank account/looks at your catalog, Wisp’s item’s worth goes up.

As for Label...I never saw her as viable. I also thought the tickets were dumb and you don’t even have to talk to her to have her items show up in the shop the next day. I think it would be great if when you bought all of her items, she decided to join the Able’s sisters in their shop like in NL and then have Gracie show up in her place for the weekly NPC.

Where is Blanca? Or Brewster? Or Shrunk, Katrina, Gracie, or Kapp’n and his family? I understand we will probably never see characters like Harriet or Pete because they have been replaced by a new system, but what is the excuse for these other characters? I’m hoping they show up in year 2 of NH but...we’ll see.

Villagers

I think having your first villagers living in basic homes is a good idea but one that quickly gets annoying. I found Sherb while villager hunting for the 1st time and have had him ever since, but his house is stuck at basic lazy setup. Instead of me going back and forth on whether or not i should trust somebody enough to hold Sherb, get somebody else out, then get him to move back to my island, You can have it to where you let them leave, then just wait till he comes to the campsite to visit and reinvite him. You get his actual house and he still remembers you. This could also go for you accidentally letting somebody go or letting somebody go then regretting it. Also it’d be fun to see some old villagers again.

I was curious and looked back on past games to see how many new villagers were released each game and NH has been the least amount. NL released 112 new villagers in total while NH has released 8. I’m hoping they might release more down the line but, hella disappointing imo. Along with the Sanrio update and adding those characters to the game, I am more hopeful that they’ll be adding new characters!

Having an “event” of sorts where you visit a villager’s house and they’re looking inside their closet. They look at you in surprise when you walk in and sheepishly explain that they were going through their clothes/items. They then decide to ask you for help since they can’t decide what to get rid of/what to keep and think you have a good eye for that sort of thing. Basically, a way to get rid of any clothes/items your villager somehow received bc I guess Isabelle scolding them isn’t enough.

A big problem I feel like everybody has is the villager dialogue. Yes they added sub personality types for each personality but they are not perfectly cut in half, ex. are the Sisterly types where there are 4 B types and 20 A types, like?? How I have “fixed” this problem is by having one of each personality type on my island so I always have different conversations with my villagers, but I understand not a lot of people do that. Some people just want normal/peppy types on their island bc they’re cute as hell, I get it. I know it would be...difficult to come up with unique dialogue for all 399 villagers, including Sanrio, but....you could at least for the “gimmicky” villagers. Some examples of these villagers are Ribbot and Sprocket, Lucky and Ankha, the super hero squad, and Kabuki.

Quality Life stuff

Why cant we sit AND wish on stars? And I don’t mean the sit emote; why can’t I sit on a bench and wish on stars?

It sucks when I’m about to hit my rocks or just do a lot of dig work and then my shovel breaks in the middle of it. To show the tool is about to break, cracks should start to form on the handle and get deeper/longer as you keep using it, starting when you have 5 uses left. You can also add an auditory element by making the tool sound like its struggling when you are using it. Net/Shovel/Axe/Fishing Pole can have cracks show up on the handle, Slingshot can have crack show up at the bottom of the 2 spokes while having 1 at the top of the handle. And the watering can have cracks at the base of the can.

If our inventory is full when I dig up a flower, why can’t I replace it with another flower to bury? And if I can dig up an item at an diagonal item, I should be able to bury it again at the same angle.

Other

Having more...liveliness?? on the island, idk how else to say it. Example is whenever you travel by plane there's a chemtrail in the sky afterwards, maybe just seeing other planes go by throughout the day. Maybe you can get a hint Redd or Gulliver will be visiting you tomorrow if you see their boats beyond the horizon, Redd’s just crusin’ and the Gulls’ boats looking messed up. On a week where you don't have a new camper, maybe have an old villager visit. That leads me too

I wish villager’s doors could count as “exterior decorating” and we can just put any ornamental on there instead having to hope that your villager will put the wreath on their own door.

Conclusion

If you read this whole thing holy shit, thanks!! Go treat yourself on my part lol If you disagreed with me or whatever feel free to chat with me about it!

#roodle speaks #animal crossing new horizons #acnh #animal crossing #ac #acnl #animal crossing new leaf #qtiepie

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palettes-and-prompts · 5 years ago

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Dialogue Prompts Based on Parts of the Body

I was saving these for when I had to leave for a week but it looks like we’ll all be quarantined for a while so I figured now would be a good time to post these. Especially since my sleep schedule is all messed up (Not your fault, corn anon! This one’s on me.) so I don’t know when I’ll be awake or asleep. I just wanna have something out.

Head 1) "I keep seeing things and it's getting harder for me to tell what's real anymore." 2) "Shit, your head's bleeding. No, hey, keep your eyes open for me. Don't go to sleep." 3) "I think they're seeing someone behind my back, but maybe it's all in my head." 4) "I can't remember who I am or how I got here. Do I know you?" 5) "My head feels like it's splitting right down the middle." 6) "I can't think, my head hurts so bad, everything is so loud. Can you just make it stop, make all the noise stop!" 7) "You can see them, can't you? No one else can see them and I thought I was going crazy but you can see them, can't you? You can!" 8) "What do you mean the crash might cause them to be different? Are you saying they wont be able to walk or something?" "I'm saying they might not remember some things." 9) "I think I remembered something that happened to me a long time ago." 10) "I can't remember how I got here but I'm covered in blood. I'm covered in blood and I don't know whose it is or what I did. And I think if something doesn't happen soon it's going to happen again."

Neck 1) "It would be so easy to snap your neck like this." 2) "I can feel your heart beating against my hand and all I want to is rip your throat out." 3) "Oh my god, is that a hickey? Ew, what's their name? Tell me everything!" 4) "The fuck is that on your neck, is that a hickey? How can you have a hickey if I've been gone for weeks?" 5) "I think I have a crick in my neck, I don't know how much couch hopping I can do." "You can always go back to Person A." "I'd rather have the pain in my neck." 6) "You have bruises on your neck, you keep telling everyone they're hickeys but I can see it, the pattern, they're finger prints. Who's doing this to you?" 7) "What are you do with your hand around my neck? You going to kill me, just like you did them? Huh? Cause if you're going to kill me get it over with already." 8) "Fuck, you sound so good when I kiss your neck like that." 9) "Jesus Christ, what's with the huge bandage on your neck, you get bit or something?" 10) "Choke me." "What?!" "Just choke me a little, I'll tell you when to stop. Come on, you choke me and I'll do that thing you like later."

Shoulders 1) "I hate him, he's always putting his hands on my shoulders." 2) "Come here, baby, let me rub your shoulders and help you relax." 3) "Fuck, hold onto my shoulders and spread your legs a little more for me." 4) "You keep digging your nails into my shoulder." 5) "They're always sitting beside you, putting their head on your shoulder, you must think about them too, don't you?" 6) "You got shot." "In the shoulder, barely even feel it." 7) "Your bed's killing my shoulder, you need a new mattress." "Well, you're the one with money, why don't you buy me a new one? Or maybe next time we meet it can be at a hotel." "My husband/wife would kill me." 8) "I didn't want you to leave me here! I didn't want that at all. I wanted you to put your arm around my shoulder and tell me it was going to get better even if it wasn't! I wanted you to be there for me!" 9) "Head held high, shoulders back. Wonderful, you all look lovely, make me proud out there." 10) "My shoulder hurts from carrying these bags." "I know, mine do too. But we're almost there. Just a little further and we'll be home."

Heart 1) "Lay them back, we need to restart the heart." 2) "My heart hurts when I look at them together." 3) "Your heart is beating so fast, are you scared of me?" 4) "I don't hear a heartbeat. I don't hear anything." 5) "This is your heartbeat, and this is your baby's hear--oh. My apologies, the sound of both of your babies heartbeats." "Twins?!" 6) "Don't trust them, they know just how to wrap their manicured nails around your heart and rip it from your chest." 7) "Something's wrong." "Your clutching your heart, are you okay?" "It's not me, I'm linked with Person B, it's them. I can feel them. Something's wrong." 8) "I heard your heart stop when they entered the room, do you know them?" "No." "Liar." 9) "Say a single word and I'll put a bullet in your partner's heart. And you know they aren't wearing a vest right now." 10) "Help! Help!" "What's wrong?" "I think they're having a heart attack!"

Ribs 1) "Oh my god, you're ticklish! Wow, who knew someone so tough could be taken down by just a little bit of tickling." 2) "The car hit them hard, they could have some broken ribs, possible internal bleeding, we need to get them to the hospital now!" 3) "I can't be here, I need to find Person A." "Easy, tiger, one of your ribs punctured your lung, you're not going anywhere for a while. We'll find them." 4) "Make a sound and I'll put my hand through their rib cage and eat their heart in front of you." 5) "Break open the ribs." "What? Break them open?" "Yeah, how else are you going to harvest the organs?" 6) "I heard tattoos on the ribs hurt the most." "Yeah, they can be painful, are you sure you want it there?" "I'm sure." 7) "Do you think human ribs taste as good as regular ribs?" "Stop being so fucking morbid, Person B." 8) "Stabbing someone can be hard, what you wanna do is aim under the ribs for the heart, then they'll bleed out pretty quick." "Thanks, mom/dad!" 9) "Am I dead?" "No, you're alive. You got your ass handed to you by a group of twelve year olds. They managed to break eight of your ribs just by kicking you." 10) "If you're going to be annoying I can always have my monster crush your rib cage. But if you're good I'll let you call your family."

Stomach 1) "Look at you, you're getting bigger and bigger every day. Soon we'll get to meet our baby." 2) "Hi, I'm Doctor [Insert name here.] We finished your surgery. We're going to try everything to keep you from scarring, but you'll most likely still have a scar on your stomach." 3) "Your stomach keeps rumbling, you need to eat before you pass out again." 4) "Doctor, can you please tell me why my stomach keeps hurting?" "You have a parasite, the only weird thing is it's definitely not from this earth." 5) "Your stomach is so soft." "Gee, thanks." "My soft marshmallow girl/boy. So comfy, so soft. I love you so much." 6) "I don't know if I can watch this. I don't think I can stomach it." "Watch or I'll hurt them even more." 7) "I don't think my stomach can take much more of this ride." 8) "You might not want to drink blood, but you need to. It's the only thing your stomach can handle." 9) "Here, drink this, it'll settle your stomach so you wont be sick again." 10) "Dude, your stomach just growled and sounded like 'Help me. I'm hungry, help me!'" "Shut up!"

Arms 1) "Oh wow, your arms are so big, do you work out?" 2) "Fuck, my arm is broken, my arm is fucking broken." "What'd you do?" "I jumped off the roof." "WHY WOULD YOU JUM-" "I wanted to see if I could make it into the pool!" 3) "I've got their arms behind their back, they're not going anywhere." 4) "Person B?" "Yeah?" "I can't feel my arms...I-I can't feel anything." 5) "My arms are killing me." "Hey, finish digging this hole, we've got a couple of guys coming to dump a body so we gotta be quick." "This is so boring though." "Do you want five hundred dollars or not?" "...yeah." 6) "My arm feels like I got hit like super hard. Like, by a superhero or something." "Oh my god you've been shot!" 7) "That cut on your arm is deep, if we don't clean it you could get an infection." "I'm glad you're okay." "I'll be even better when you're patched up." 8) "Hold my arms behind my back with one hand and pull my hair with the other." "You're into that?" "Just do it already!" 9) "Hold their arm out, I've been waiting too long to taste their blood I'm not waiting any longer." 10) "Relax, I'm just putting an IV in your arm." "Is Person B-" "They're fine. You saved them."

Hands 1) "Next time you put your hands on my boy/girl I'll break them." 2) "Your hands feel good in my hair like that." 3) "Do we have a deal? You stay in your territory I stay in mine and we inform one another when we need to cross into each other's territory?" "And if any strays walk in without permission?" "Both sides are allowed to kill any strays." "We have a deal? Shake hands on it?" 4) "Your hands are so cold, here, put them in mine and I'll warm them up." 5) "Your hands are all cut up." "They didn't like it when they found out I was trying to steal from them." 6) "You know, now that your handcuffed and I can finally see you up close you're pretty cute." "Bite me." 7) "Hands in the air!" "Shit, I-I was just looking at the car!" "Hands in the air! Now wave them like you just don't care!" "Huh? I--Person B? You piece of shit, I thought you were a cop!" "Nah, there's no one around now hurry up and break in. I've never stole a Mercedes before!" 8) "Hold out your hands, I've got something for you." 9) "Give me your hands, now close your eyes and repeat exactly what I say or the spell wont work." 10) "Put your hands on me again like that and I'll fucking kill you." "You used to like it when I put my hands on you." "Yeah, well, not anymore."

Hips 1) "I didn't give you those so who did? Who gave you those bite marks on your hips?" 2) "Jesus, look at you, move too hard and you'll break a hip." "I'm not fucking old!" 3) "Are you okay?" "I just hit my hip on the edge of that table so fucking hard, holy shit." 4) "Don't bump me with your hip, you bitch, I'll kill you!" 5) "Grab me by my hips and pull me closer." "Really? This is happening?" "Oh my god, I have to do everything." 6) "I think you should get a tattoo of my name on your hip." "So we can break up and things be weird and then I have to fork out money to get it removed? No way." 7) "You've got bruises everywhere, shoulder, wrist, hips-" "They just get a little rough when we're in bed, that's all. It's nothing." "They're in the shape of hand prints. That's not nothing." 8) "Come on, harder, put your hips into it!" 9) "Don't laugh but I fell really really hard and I actually think I broke my hip." "Oh my god, you're young, why do you have the hips of an ninety-seven year old woman?" "Just fucking help me!" 10) "God, they did it so hard one night I swear I thought they were gonna break my hips."

Thighs 1) "Your thighs are so fucking soft. It's cute." 2) "Talk shit and I'll use my thighs to crush you like a watermelon." 3) "Keep your thighs spread open. Yeah, just like that, baby." 4) "I think I pulled a muscle in my thigh." "Doing what? You don't even exercise? How did you pull anything?" 5) "You should see what they do when you're not around you girlfriend/boyfriend. They get super touchy. They're always putting their hands on Person A's thighs." 6) "Fuck, I can't go swimming this weekend, look at my thighs. You left so many bruises." "You weren't complaining at the time." "What the fuck am I supposed to do now?" 7) "Your thighs are fucking thick. In a good way, it's hot. I like it." "Just shut the fuck up and kiss me, dumbass." 8) "I know it feels good, baby but if you don't stop closing your thighs I'll have to hold them open." 9) "I love watching you sit on my lap. Especially when you put my hand between your thighs when you get needy." 10) "Fuck, you been working out? You've got really nice thighs." "Uhh...thanks?"

Legs 1) "If you're not between my legs in the next thirty seconds I swear I'm calling someone else to come here and do it for me." 2) "Been busy?" "No." "That's not what the bruises on your knees are saying." 3) "My leg, I think it's broken." "Help them up." "No, go on without me." "No." "I'll only slow you down. Go before they catch up to us!" 4) "I need a hand over here." "How about a leg?" "If you throw your prosthetic leg at me one more time I'm gonna come over there and beat you with it." "...fine, never mind, do it yourself." 5) "Break my chair and I'll break your legs!" 6) "You've got to stop wearing tight jeans like this, they're so hard to get off your legs." "Yeah, but you like how I look in them." 7) "I can't move, my leg's broken." "I'm coming back." "No! No, just stay there, I'm gonna talk you through how to do it, okay?" "Okay." "Find the control panel." 8) "We have to stop moving." "We can't, the second we stop is the second they catch us." "My legs are so tired, I don't think I can keep running." "Listen to me, you wanna see everyone right? Right. So keep moving or we wont ever see them again. We just have to make it to the border." 9) "Legs apart, hands on the vehicle." "If you wanted to feel me up, officer, you could have just said so." "Shut up and put your hands behind your back." 10) "Don't put your hand between my legs in public." "I didn't hear you complaining earlier." "Shut up."

Feet 1) "Jesus! Your feet are all bloody, what did you do? Walk on glass?" 2) "These heels are killing my feet." "I don't care, I'm not calling off the biggest job of our career because your feet are tired. The richest people in the world are here and I plan on taking every dime from them tonight. So you can suck it up and go flirt with that guy over there, you look like his type." "Fuck you." "Make me proud, baby." 3) "Ow! What the fuck, you shot me in the foot!" "I thought they were blanks!" "THEY CLEARLY WEREN'T!" 4) "Damn, look at this footprint. Whoever the murderer is they've got some big ass feet." "Those aren't the murderer's footprints, those are mine." "Oh shit!" 5) "I don't get this whole Cinderella thing, like, she clearly couldn't have been the only person in the whole kingdom with that size foot. Also, like, the people checking everyone's feet were there! They know what Cinderella looks like, how did they not just narrow their search to blonde hair and blue eyes? These royal people have foot fetishes and just wanted to look at everyone's feet. That's the only thing that makes sense unless everyone just has shitty vision." 6) "Toe socks are just gloves for your feet and I don't fuck with that." 7) "Why are you two covering your feet? You two get matching tattoos? Because if you handcuffed your feet together again I'm going to be very, very upset." 8) "What are you doing?" "I'm crushing grapes to make wine. You should try it. It kind of feels like I'm crushing little tiny people so I can squish the blood out of them and drink it." "Dark! But I'm glad you're having fun!" 9) "You know that song that goes 'And I would walk five hundred miles!' The people who wrote that have never walked five hundred miles in their fucking life because if they had they would not have wrote a song about doing that for someone because no one would do that! I wouldn't even walk fifty miles for someone. My feet are killing me!" 10) "If you don't tell me where the money is I'm going to hang you up by your feet and dunk you in a pit of sharks. And if you think I'm joking... PERSON B OPEN THE TANK!"

Sorry the asks are taking a bit, I wanted to get all the prompt asks out of the way first though before I started with the character palettes because they were sent first. But I hope you enjoy these while I wait and if you like these I might make a part 2.

#dialogue prompts #120 dialogue prompts #body prompts #prompts based on body parts #lightly nasty #ns/fw prompts #angst prompts #tw mention of abuse #slightly smutty #prompts #fic prompts #writer #write #dialogue #if you want me to tag anything let me know

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alexthepartyman · 4 years ago

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The Bleeding: Plain Sight

Hi guys! My name is Alex, and I like to write fics. This is the fic that used to be known as Fine Line, but for creative reasons, not anymore! This idea has really meant a lot to me, and the amount of times I restarted this fic I-

That means something, right? I’ve gotten to various points in this story before, but I could never tell it the way I truly wanted to tell it. THis time should be it, but don’t be surprised if I start over again.

This is The Bleeding! The chapter is under the cut, and it’s 3600 words, last I checked.

CONTENT WARNINGS: MURDER, MENTIONS OF RAPE, DEATH. READ AT OWN RISK.

“Make a wish,” Elle says. I look up to where smoke is ascending from Spencer’s desk.

“Come on, man. Blow, baby! Blow!” Derek yells with a chuckle.

“I thought you were full of hot air, Reid,” Elle teases.

“Come on, Reid!”

“They’re trick candles, Spence. Okay?” JJ cuts in. “They’re gonna come back on every time.”

“Oh, Mommy to the rescue,” Derek coos, shaking Spencer’s head.

“Mommy?” Spencer asks.

“Hey, James. Come join the celebration,” Elle says. I shake my head and look away from the Latina woman smiling at me. “Oh, you’re no fun. Ignore him, Spencer.”

“This is work time, not fun time,” I dryly comment. “The distinction between the two is very important to me. And no, I won’t have any cake.”

“Okay then, suit yourself.”

“Hey, Reid, does this make you legal yet?”

“Uh….”

“Hope you like chocolate,” Elle says, turning her attention back to Spencer. I can hear a phone ring.

“Agent Hotchner?” Grant asks across the bullpen.

“Aw, look, you blew wax on the cake, man.”

“That slice is for Derek,” I comment.

“What? No way, why do I get the slice with wax on it?” Derek asks me. I look up from my work to see Spencer walk over to Gideon and watch their lips move.

“Hey, Spence, first piece for the birthday boy,” JJ says, holding a piece of cake out to him. “Spence, get over here. James, are you sure you don’t want some cake?” She turns to me, and I snap out of the zone I just went to.

“Huh-uh, no. I’m sure.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Thank you.”

“Birthday boy.”

“JJ, why don’t you feed it to him?” Derek teases.

“Sorry, guys. Party’s over,” Hotch says from the phone. I close the notebook I was working in and slide it into my bag, slinging it over my shoulder and heading up to the round table. The rest of the team meets me up there, and we take our seats. “We’re going to San Diego,” he tells us.

“Not for the surfing, huh?” Derek asks.

“Nope,” I comment.

“They’re calling him the Tommy Killer,” JJ says, handing us each files.

“Six women raped and murdered in their homes in the last three weeks.”

“Six in three weeks?” Elle asks.

“Two a week,” I add. “Short fuse.”

“And getting shorter. The first two were eight days apart, then the next four in two weeks.”

“Rapid escalation,” Spencer comments. “Do you think he’s regressing to a psychopathic frenzy?”

“No, he’s too controlled for that,” Hotch answers. “See you on the plane.” I raise my eyebrows and look up from the file, watching our boss leave. Okay, weirdo.

“Why the Tommy killer?” Derek asks.

“You know the rock opera?”

“Uh...that was by The Who, right?” I ask.

“Yeah. This unsub glues his victims’ eyes wide open,” Hotch answers as he walks away.

“Tommy was blind as a result of psychosomatic disability, though…”

“He wants them to see him.”

“And feel him,” Gideon adds.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Brenda Samms was found yesterday by her children when they got home from school,” Hotch says. “She had been strangled with a thin ligature, possibly a wire.”

“No weapon left at the scene.”

“Residue on the wrist and mouth indicate that duct tape was used and removed.”

“Also not found at the scene.”

“Brought it with him, took it with him.”

“Why?” I ask, looking over the crime scene photos.

“He also started leaving messages at the fourth scene. This was on the mirrors,” Hotch says, holding up the picture of the mirror covered in lipstick. “Fire lady, lay your costly robes aside. No longer may you glory in your pride. Take leave of all your carnal vain delight-”

“I’ve come to summon you away this night,” Spencer finishes.

“That’s not in Tommy,” I comment, looking at him.

“No, it’s a ballad from the late 1600s. A Dialogue Betwixt Death And A Lady,” he answers.

“Lovely.”

“A seventeenth-century ballad?” Elle asks.

“Yeah, a woman essentially begging death to live.”

“What kind of person knows this ballad?”

“Are we looking for a literature professor?” JJ asks.

“Anyone with an internet connection, actually. You should see what comes in when you type the word Death into a search engine.”

“Reid, no wonder you can’t get a date,” Derek teases.

“Reid, Balian, you two stay on the messages. See if there’s a deeper meaning,” Gideon says.

“Well, it definitely looks like he ransacked the crime scene pretty well.”

“Lot of damage, but nothing taken.”

“The eyes are the thing, the signature.”

“The behaviour that isn’t necessary for the murder, but necessary for the emotional release...that’s what he’s there for...” I comment, pulling out my notebook and writing notes in it. “It’s one collar, two sleeves, right?” I ask.

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a trick to how to spell necessary. It’s like explaining a shirt. One collar, two sleeves.”

“Yes, it’s one collar, two sleeves.”

“Thank you, JJ.”

“There used to be a widely held belief that the eyes record a snapshot of the last thing a person sees before they die,” Spencer cuts in.

“Yeah, that’s right. People used to write poems about talking to death.”

“Ballads.”

“Whatever.”

“You think they’ll ever run out of new things to do to their victims?”

“Well, finding new ways to hurt each other is what we’re good at.”

“Right. Spencer, can you write down the poem for me? I’d ask you to recite it, but I couldn’t keep up,” I ask, sliding my notebook his way.

“Uh, sure.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“My name is Death. Have you not heard of me?” Spencer whispers, staring at one of the verses pinned to the evidence board. “You may as well be mute…”

“Creepy, huh?” JJ asks.

“Actually, conversations between death and his victims was a fairly popular literary and artistic theme throughout the Renaissance…” He peers over to JJ’s face. “Yeah. Creepy.”

“Thank you for making this James-friendly. So, uh, if this pattern sticks through, this is how it plays out?”

“Yeah.”

“Why not include the lady’s verses?”

“If the unsub is writing as Death, then it wouldn’t make sense for the lady to respond,” Spencer replies to me.

“Why start with the messages now? There were three other murders, why no messages until now?” I ask.

“Maybe he’s evolving.”

“Why would he evolve? He’s spending more time at the scenes now, what with writing the message, and the cool off period is getting shorter... Gideon? Where are you going?” I ask, trailing off at the sight of Gideon and Derek following someone out.

“We’re going to the crime scene. Come on.”

“Cool.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“This profiling really works?” The detective asks as we ride down a street.

“It’s a tool,” Derek replies.

“You can tell all about a guy from looking at the scene?”

“The scene’s only part of it. We also use victimology, precedent. We can usually get a fairly clear picture of the guy.”

“Our guys went over it pretty well.”

“I’m sure they did.”

“Local officers aren’t trained to look for the things we look before.”

“What’s that?”

“Hate, insecurity, fear, anger.”

“That’s all in the scene?”

“It’s all in the behaviour,” I comment.

“You know anything about our guy yet?”

“Yeah,” Gideon replies. “He isn’t gonna stop until he’s caught.” We pull up beside the house with perfectly trimmed green grass surrounding us, in every yard. As we get out and walk to the house, a cruiser drives by us. “You increased patrols in this neighbourhood when the pattern was identified?”

“After the fourth victim. Bosses cancelled days off, vacations.”

“Neighbourhoods full of cruisers, and he still struck two more times,” Derek comments.

“He blends. Gideon,” he answers his phone. “Attempt?”

“Damn,” I whisper to Derek.

“Well, we’re already at the last crime scene. Let us know if you identify a suspect,” Gideon replies, ending the call.

“Suspect?”

“There might have been another attack not far from your station.” I watch as the detective turns back to walk to the cruiser.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I cut in, stepping in front of him.

“Where are you going?” Derek asks.

“Over there.”

“Sir, units are already heading that way. There’s not much you would be able to do there, we can get more accomplished here -”

“You’re kidding me, right?” The detective stares down into my eyes.

“No.”

“If there’s an arrest, what we find here will help you prosecute,” Derek answers.

“This scene won’t be pristine forever,” Gideon adds.

“Guys, knock yourselves out,” the detective responds, putting the house keys in my hands.

“Thank you-”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Derek asks, stopping the man from running off. “The unsub went through the back, right?”

“The family room. It’s the one full of print dust,” he replies before turning to run away.

“Gideon, we’re going around the house.” I then toss the keys at Gideon and chase Derek around the side of the house, we climb over the gate and head to the family room window that was propped open, and we climb through it, carefully climbing the furniture until we get to the floor.

“Okay, it’s not that easy to manvuever.”

“Athletic,” I reply, helping pull him off of the armchair. We head to the kitchen, and Derek hands me crime scene photos.

“Alright, he messed with something in here.” I look around at the modern kitchen, feeling like I had walked into a friend’s house in Alexandria again.

“Microwave door’s open,” I comment, looking inside and closing it.

“Broken cappuccino machine. Took the appliances, which are upstairs. Why?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Why would I take the time?” We continue our tour around the house, leaving the kitchen and heading into the dining room. “Here's where I got the china...the silver.” I look to the open silverware box. “I didn’t take it, I broke it.”

“There’s a scene in Tommy where he throws all his mom’s riches into the water,” I add.

“Why wouldn’t she hear me?”

“Because she was blaring something upstairs.”

“Or I did it after.”

“Why stay afterwards for that long?” I follow Derek up the stairs, to the bedroom, where we meet Gideon staring at the TV.

“She had a workout video on,” he tells us. “Stepaerobics.” I told you so.

“Stepaerobics? With the platforms? Step up, down, step up, step down?”

“It can be fun,” I retort, looking around the bedroom floor. “Where’s the platform?” Gideon turns to the bed, getting on his knees and peering underneath it.

“He spent a lot of time here.”

“What, so he vacuumed? I mean, there’s no marks from the platforms.”

“A lot of time. We established this. The broken things, the message, the vacuuming-”

“The broken things. She must have been dead or incapacitated when he did that,” Derek cuts me off. “Cappuccino from the kitchen, dishes, vases, broken jewellery.”

“Symbols,” Gideon answers, sitting on the bed. “Your riches, gold, garments, jewels bright. Your house and land must on new owners light.”

“Is it just me, or do I just not understand that sentence?” I ask.

“Her riches,” Derek replies.

“Right.”

“You ever feel like there’s something obvious right in front of you, you just can’t see it?”

“A lot,” I nod.

“Yeah, usually right before a woman dumps me.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“The verses,” Spencer walks up to us as soon as we come back.

“You found something?” I ask.

“Uh, not an answer, a question. I found the full text. He’s pretty much following it to a T, a least the death side of the conversation.”

“Okay. What’s your question?”

“Why didn’t he leave them at the first three murders? I mean, this ballad is ten verses long, just on the death side, he’s got plenty to work with. But if it’s not part of his signature, if it isn’t something he has to do for an emotional reason, then, I mean, why start?”

“JJ,” Gideon asks, grabbing her attention. “Find out when the press ran the first story on this unsub.”

“When?”

“After which victim.”

“Yeah, you got it.” She picks up the phone.

“What are you thinking?”

“He wasn’t getting enough attention.”

“Narcissist? I mean, claiming you’re speaking as Death is a pretty big grandeur. It’s saying that you control life, you’re the thing to fear.”

“Police departments sometimes don’t even know they’re looking at a pattern.”

“Yeah, until somebody tells them. Balian, see me, feel me. Remember that. Tommy.”

“The first story ran the morning after the fourth victim was found,” JJ tells us.

“The increased patrols didn’t begin until after the fourth victim, either,” Derek adds.

“Yeah, the police didn’t realise what was happening, he writes his verse.”

“And everyone knows he was there.” I look behind me to see Hotch and Elle walking in.

“The offender in this new attempt is a black male.”

“Black male? Cross racial- that doesn’t happen.”

“What about Herbert Mullin, he killed fourteen people of completely varying ages, races, and creeds.”

“There was no sexual component to his crimes, he was a paranoid schizophrenic that was under the delusion that he could prevent earthquakes with murder,” I ramble.

“This attacker wore a ski mask,” Elle adds.

“Tell em we’re ready?”

“For a profile?” I ask Gideon.

“We’re gonna make Tommy contact us.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“The unsub brought his weapons with him. Tape, glue, wire. He did not leave them at the scene,” Gideon says. “He took them when he left. He has a kind of killing kit that he carries.”

“Organised killers usually have a skilled job, likely technology related, which may involve the use of the hands,” Hotch adds with his arms crossed. “The crime scenes are far enough apart that he needs a vehicle. This will be well kept, obsessively clean, as will be his home.” Gideon has found a spot, sitting next to me on a desk. “He’s diurnal, the attacks occurred during the day, so the vehicle may be related to his work, possibly a company car or truck.”

“We believe he watches the victims for a time, learns the rhythms of the home, knows his time frame,” Derek comments.

“You’re not gonna catch him accidentally,” Hotch continues.

“He destroys symbols of wealth in the victims’ homes,” Gideon gets up and paces to the boards at the front of the room. “He harbours envy and hatred toward people of a higher social class. He feels invisible around them.”

“Class is the theme of the poem which he left at the various crime scenes,” Spencer cuts in. “At one point in the poem, the woman attempts to bribe death, but he doesn’t accept it, he says this is the one moment when riches mean nothing. When death comes, the poor and the rich look exactly alike.”

“So, he’s poor?”

“Probably middle class,” Hotch answers. “A lower-class person would significantly stick out in a highly patrolled neighbourhood. This guy appears to belong there. He blends in.”

“Why does he glue the eyes open?”

“The unsub is an exploitative rapist,” Elle interjects. “Most rape victims close their eyes during the attack, turn their heads. For some rapists, this ruins the fantasy. For this type of rapist, the goal is more related to the victim watching him than the act itself.”

“The verses, the staging, the aggressive language, “I am death. This is a guy who, while being in control at the crime scene, almost certainly feels inadequate in the rest of his life.”

“That’s why he couldn’t wait for you to figure out what he’d done. Why he needed to make sure all his crimes were counted. His victims,” Gideon stands up again from a chair, “they represent whatever it is that’s controlling him, and he wants that control back. He is under the thumb of a powerful woman who frightens him. And a final point. He is white.”

“We have witnesses that identify him as a black male,” the chief argues.

“The attacker was black, but he’s not the Tommy Killer. Mrs Gordon’s husband came home at the same time he always does. The Tommy Killer would’ve known that-”

“And Mrs Gordon’s attacker wore a ski mask,” Elle cuts me off. “The unsub knows when he walks into a house, he’s going to kill the woman who lives there. If you’re not leaving any witnesses, why wear a ski mask?”

“And he wants the victim to see him anyway.”

“Your attempted rapist is a garden variety, disorganised young man.”

“As the victim’s age goes up, generally, the attacker’s age goes down. Mrs Gordon is about sixty, which puts her rapist at about twenty.”

“And it takes years to develop the level of calm and sophistication that Tommy displays at ta crime scene, and the rapist is far too young for that.”

“Mrs Gordon told me that there’s a young man who delivers groceries to their home. He fits a lot of what we’re describing here.”

“Great. So we’re back to zero on Tommy.”

“Not at all. May I see you in your office for a moment?” Hotch asks, walking off with the chief.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“You really watched the opera on the plane?” Gideon asks me.

“Yeah. I didn’t exactly remember it all, and I wanted to be able to determine if this unsub really fell like he was Tommy,” I answer. “And I figured I could do that by comparing details of the movie to the unsub, you know, since they call him the Tommy Killer… you know, that bugged me the most.” I turned to Gideon, facing him. “I couldn’t figure out how this was connected to Tommy at all, except for the riches in Brenda Samm’s house being destroyed and Tommy throwing his mom’s riches into the sea.”

“I could tell you found the opera fun to watch,” Gideon replies.

“Elton John caught me off guard, and I love rock music.”

“He confessed to Mrs Gordon’s attack before we even got to the car,” Elle struts in.

“Thanks, Elle.”

“Should just make the eleven o clock news,” JJ states.

“Did they get good footage?”

“Yeah. Couldn’t miss him.”

“Good. Now we wait.”

“Call Garcia.”

I pull out my phone and speed dial, reaching her in moments.

“Go for Ms Penelope Garcia,”

“I got her on,” I say, handing JJ my phone.

“You ready for the trap and trace?”

“Peaches, this is the office of unmitigated superiority. I am always ready. With the awesome power I have in this room, all I need is fifteen seconds on the phone to nail this skeevy perv.”

“Fifteen seconds.”

“If that.”

“That’s not bad,” I comment.

“Not bad? What do I have to do to impress you, Agent Balian?”

“Didn’t mean it like that, you are already impressive.”

“Uh-huh.” She then hangs up on me, and I pocket my phone. “I’m no Derek Morgan.”

“Yeah, clearly. You need game with the ladies.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don’t need game if I’m not gonna play,” I retort.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Still waiting, Garcia,” JJ says into a phone.

“God, I hate waiting like this,” Elle complains from the desk I’m at, flipping something over.

“Do you think it’s weird that I knew that ballad?”

“Spencer, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but everybody has that tidbit of knowledge that nobody else has,” I state. She scoffs.

“I don’t know how it is that you know half the things you know, but I’m glad you do.”

“Do you think it’s why I can’t get a date?”

“Don’t listen to Derek. What works out for some people doesn’t work out for others,” I don’t even look up from my book.

“Have you ever asked anyone out on a date?” Elle asks.

“No.”

“That’s why you can’t get a date.” A phone rings from another desk.

“Detective Martin.”

“That’s what that guy’s name was? Martin?” I ask quietly. “Did I even introduce myself?”

“Hey, hey,” I hear a whisper, and Derek throws his hand up.

“Line six, Penelope, line six,” JJ says. Gideon gets up from the chair he’s chilling in, and we take the call as Hotch and Gideon run over to us.

“You stupid, incompetent sons of bitches! I don’t make mistakes! I am death! You hear me?! I am death! You’ll see now. Tomorrow. Mark my words, you will see. And while I’m taking her, I’m gonna be thinking of you.” He then hangs up, and I pull my head back in disgust and confusion.

“Anything?” JJ asks. “She says she got nothing.”

“Nothing?” Derek exclaims.

“We missed him?” Hotch asks. Thinking about the FBI while you’re getting off? What kind of statement is that?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“We have an undercover car for each of your teams, and the entire damn department out there, too.”

“Remember, a truck. Maybe a work truck, in excellent condition.”

“Everyone knows.”

“Alright, he might make a mistake today.”

“He’s angry, and he probably hasn’t done the surveillance he’d like.”

“Yeah, well, neither have we. Let’s go, Reid,” Derek says, claiming the beanpole.

“I’ll bring the car around,” Elle sighs, then leaves. I look to Gideon, then to Hotch. He gently pat’s Gideon’s arm.

“We’ll find him,” he says before leaving.

“There’s no way we just gave Tommy another victim,” I sigh.

“Profilers make mistakes, too.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A cell phone rings, bringing Hotch and me out of our silence.

“What you got?”

“Put it on speaker,” I comment, and he does so.

“He’s a phone technician, Hotch. Police are looking for someone walking around the neighbourhood in broad daylight. Who notices a phone guy up on a pole?” I look from the phone to the phone poles, connected by miles of wire.

“He can watch for husbands leaving for work, watch for police patrols, know when the neighbourhood’s quiet.”

“He knows when he’ll have plenty of time. He can even tap into a phone line to make sure someone’s home. How about routing a call through twenty-five substations?”

“Twenty-five?” I ask.

“Yeah. Backyard? Hey, he’s just looking for a pole. Got tape? Of course he does. Wire? He’s a repairman.”

“Sounds right, Jason.”

“It is right. And we have his name.”

“We do? We have his name?” I ask Hotch as he looks at me and flips his phone shut.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Oh, I almost forgot. I have something for you,” Gideon says, pulling something out of his go-bag. “Forgot to give it to you at the party.”

“But you don’t give birthday presents,” Spencer remarks, taking the blue box with the red ribbon and opening it. “Wow...the Red...skins…”

“Reid, you got football tickets. And if I can count, there’s two of them,” I explain. “Why the Redskins, though?”

“It’s a VIP box,” Gideon explains.

“Whoa.”

“Thank you so much.”

“Ever been to a pro football game?” Gideon asks.

“No, I honestly didn’t even know this was football,” Reid laughs, examining the tickets.

“You’re gonna love it.”

“We are, you’re coming with me, right?” Spencer asks.

“No. Someone else on the plane is a huge Skins fan.”

“It’s not me,” I volunteer.

“Who?”

“Only person in the whole world who calls you Spence.” I look over the back of the seat at JJ, who reads a newspaper.

“No way, dude.”

“JJ?”

“She’s a huge Redskins fan.” Spencer looks back at her.

“Wh-what should I say?” Gideon just stares at him, and he tucks the tickets into his shirt pocket, getting up from the seat. He stops and stares at the board. “Checkmate,” he moves a piece.

“What? What?” I exclaim, looking back as he goes to sit with JJ. “Why did you just do that to him?”

#Criminal Minds Fanfiction #criminalminds #spencer reid #derek morgan

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shametheshadow · 4 years ago

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Hot take... Fallout New Vegas isnt the masterpiece of gaming people say it is. A lot of the things I've seen people say are its greatest assets are actually hindering it in other areas.

Rant below cut

Having three visible places of interest at all times is well and good but in between those places are a lot of empty, boring space and enemies designed to punish you for going off the path. Sure, damage curves are great in games, but I'm so god damn tired of walking on this road, chasing after a target that will move just enough that it's never in reach until it's finally like a ten minute jaunt from the starting area. But if you try to take short cuts even just to cut corners on the road you get owned by mobs made to keep you on the path. Or set pieces designed to physically funnel you through a specific area. That's railroady as hell.

Speaking of which, karma systems suck if you dont make being evil fun. I have only ever seen good karma systems in Fable, because being evil is turned into this hilariousy visual thing and it neber directly punishes you for choosing the evil paths, instead making a lot of things easier in some ways. In New Vegas (and Fallout 3 if I remember) what is the point of putting stat points into any thief abilities if you get a big frowny face every time you succesfully steal from a locked container? And Karma isnt even directly explained in any way that doesnt just feel like an ominous "The game will remember that" at least in 3 it was made clear really early on that certain people wanted nothing to do with you based on how good or evil you were.

And as far as unclear instruction goes Caravan isnt explained well at all. The dude you enter the game with gives you some but you have to exit dialogue and read the instruction, re enter and accept, hoping you remember the rules that arent even that clear to begin with. I didnt even realize I had to manually select the vertical position of my card or that I could play on opponents until my third online how-to guide and now I still just use the bug in the programming that apparently was supposed to prevent you from cycling through your cards on the first hand to pretty much cheat a win every time because it tool so long to figure it out I dont want to deal with actually playing legit.

I've seen people say it has a lot of morally grey choices but so far I'm not seeing any. A lot of the more ambiguous choices seem to be something you wouldnt find out until the game is over, like which sheriff you choose but you're provided next to no information to make even a slightly informed opinion. The rest seem to be more "Do bad thing for caps? Or good thing and get shot a bunch of times?"

Even the factions feel very eh. It isnt morally ambiguous, it's that every choice is a bad choice. War never changes... and neither does the Brotherhood of Steel. The NCR is well intentioned but also absolutely useless. They dont even care in Primm whether you do their job or not and just sit uselessly providing nothing but an obstacle to walk around to get into the town. Then in Nipton only one NCR person cares about the distant smoke but claims they're so underfunded and undermanned she cant check it out... but me, a courier with a nearly broken shotgun and nearly broken leather armor can easily just walk in and gun down the four legion dudes and still nobody really gives a shit besides my faction standing... and who knows how the Legion figured out I killed their dudes in a literal ghost town where the only survivor is a dude who they disfigured and cant walk outside to see who is shooting who. Speaking of which, I felt more compelled to help raiders in Fallout 3 at times than I did the Legion or the Powder Gangers. The first thing you ever see of the Legion is the aftermath of them torturing and murdering an entire town. "B-but the town was full of criminals and morally bad people!" Says the game as if that matters when I'm staring at a pile of burnt bodies and guys bleeding out that the only way to help is to waste weapon condition to kill them. The Powder Gangers could have provided a decent argument against the beliefs and authority of the NCR... if your first meeting wasnt them threatening the small town that helped you or if they didnt lob dynamite at you on sight.

Everyone is terrible is a running theme in Fallout games and New Vegas doesnt offer anything new there. Two bad choices just makes me want to not make a choice, which is probably why so many people laud the Independent ending, cause at least the bad choices are yours.

Like, New Vegas isnt horrible, but it isnt the best game ever or even the best fallout ever. If anything it is equally as bad and good as other Fallouts. And for as bad as 76 can be, at least it isnt boring as hell to look at. Skyrim may have been Bethesda showing off their world design, but I've restarted Skyrim like 50 times, I'm not sure I want to slog through the starting areas of New Vegas more than twice. I have stared at the road texture so much.

Also I wish I had a carry weight cheat just so I could finally get stuff back to a work bench to repair my stuff. Tired of constantly being encumbered in a game that makes scrap actually important.

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girl4music · 4 years ago

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My review of the XBOX Series X

So I’ve had nearly a full week with the XBOX Series X and here is my honest opinion on my experience with it and this is my initial review of it. I’m not gonna talk about the technology or go into anything about the console’s hardware too deeply. I will talk about the features and benefits it offers. Going into some things that work and don’t work as well as promised by Microsoft and XBOX. Finally, I will talk about all the bugs and issues that I experienced and found most annoying. Most of which have already been identified and reported.

First up, be aware that I am coming from an XBOX 360 as my last XBOX console experience so I may say stuff that applies to the XBOX One as well.

1. BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY AND AUTO HDR: Microsoft promised that the XBOX Series X and S would work right out of the box with 1000’s of gaming titles across 4 generations. This promise holds up… However, they do not run anywhere half as well as they also promised they would. They do run better than their native platform, that is true. But it’s not a groundbreaking difference. And AUTO HDR doesn’t really work with most games that never had it to begin with. It makes the colours and textures look really odd and you don’t get that nostalgic feeling of playing an old legacy title because of the “updates”. Which is something I was very much looking forward to. It’s pick your poison I guess. You can either have a legacy game running better and looking greater on a platform that can take the graphical fidelity and framerate boosts, or have a full reunion with your beloved legacy games from your childhood. You can turn AUTO HDR off via the main console settings, but this still doesn’t really give you the latter. Not in my personal opinion anyway. It’s not disappointing as it’s not something I really expected. I just would have liked to have it. Nostalgia >>> Shiny any day.

2. QUICK RESUME AND LOADING TIMES: The XBOX Series X (can’t speak for the S) has significantly improved on speed thanks to the custom lightning fast and functional SSD. So much so that you can now travel between multiple games fully loaded up on the SSD within the time of a few seconds. However, quick resume is not only useful to be able to play between 3 or 4 games (more according to YouTube influencers who have tried and tested this out far more than me) in one sitting. You can also effectively use it to save your game. Or rather… Replace save states IN a game. What quick resume allows you to do is keep your game saved at ANY point, and completely SHUT the console down and UNPLUG it for several days (or longer, again, never tested it that far) and then PLUG it in and switch it ON again, and come back to exactly where you left off in the game. And I do mean EXACTLY WHERE YOU LEFT OFF!

For example; you could be in an all-important boss fight in ‘Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla’ and be so frustrated with not being able to beat this boss after trying many times. You could indeed just pause the game, come out to the dashboard, turn the console off and walk away from it all…. And when you came back to have another go at it, you would not have to restart the boss fight and just carry on with where you left off in chopping down their health. I did this several times because I suck at boss fights… And every time, this worked and it was the strategy that got me through them all. So a little cool off time is more than affordable with the XBOX Series X. And if you hate boss fights, suddenly you won’t hate boss fights as much anymore if you do the same. It makes a world of a difference to your experience. Believe me, quick resume is a literal life-saver.

To add to that, you also benefit from much quicker load times both with booting up the games and in-game fast-travelling or level-entering. Instead of 5 minutes waiting for a game to boot up into the main campaign or wherever,… It will take at most up to 50 seconds for the most power-taxing of games. 'Grand Theft Auto 5' for instance, known for it’s notoriously long boot into story or online mode… Now only takes 10 seconds from the company title advertisements to get into the area of the game you want to play. It is so fast that you do not have the time to read the tips and tricks dialogue that takes up the screen during the initial loading. It’s honestly a quality of life you never even knew you needed or was missing until you had it.

3. BUGS AND ISSUES: Being that I bought the XBOX Series X at Launch (November 10th), I very much expected it to come with a plethora of bugs and issues to discover and be witness to as a consumer and user of newly developed and released hardware and software. And these bugs and issues have already been identified and reported to Microsoft and the respective console and game developers. Bugs where you cannot play games that offer 4K at 120 hertz (4K/120fps) without visual and audial distortions or even without turning the game off altogether. I particularly had trouble with this in trying to play ‘Rise Of The Tomb Raider' 20 Year Celebration edition. Once I downloaded it from the XBOX Store fully, (which took a LONG FUCKING TIME, we’ll get on to that in a bit), I immediately tried to play it and because my display settings were set at 4K/120 because I have a TV that supports that setting, it was having all sorts of problems in booting up. There was all this distortion happening on screen both visually and audially that I thought my ultra high speed HDMI cable that came with the console was broken or faulty. I also remember specifically that it kept turning my Game Mode on and off rapidly and I didn’t know how to stop it avoiding a full reset of the console. This game was the worst for it but it also happened in other games I tried to play too. Including those I had as physical disks.

Speaking of… I did not encounter the “black/blank screen of death” issue other next-gen XBOX consumers and users did where you would enter a game disk and be met with a black or blank screen. BUT I did have trouble with downloading the “updates” for the games I had bought physically. I expected the games I downloaded digitally to take a long time to download fully, but I figured that it would be much quicker for the “updates” for physical games. This was not the case, and for some games, it actually took LONGER. I don’t know why this happens or if it can even be fixed in a firmware update, but it has put me off buying games physically for it, which is certainly not a good thing for store game retailers. And I’m someone who actually cares about that and would want to help them out as much as possible since they are a dying breed. But if it takes longer to download physical games than to download digital games, I’m not sure I can hold up that promise. The time it takes to download is a major frustration for me. I’ll be leaving my console on for long periods of time doing nothing but downloading that I otherwise wouldn’t. And I’ve got to say right now that I am glad I do not have an OLED TV where this would be much more of a problem due to burn-in risks. I would highly suggest anyone who is buying a new TV for their XBOX Series X or S with all the bells and whistles to not buy an OLED for this reason. Leaving an OLED TV on with a display picture that never moves for hours at a time would severely decrease it’s life and usage capacity. I recommend a Samsung QLED TV instead. That’s what I’ve got. I bought their Q95T 55inch 4K TV for gaming alone and it has not disappointed in the slightest. But I won’t go into why it’s the better TV to buy for next-gen gaming since this is not a TV review. You can look that up for yourselves at your leisure.

Another issue the XBOX Series X has is with its sharing image snapshots and video clips feature. The new controller for the console has a dedicated share button and that works really well. I’ve had no problems with it capturing the content that I want to share. But sharing to social media and to XBOX Live itself is the issue. And this happens with video clips more so than image snapshots. For some reason, when I go to share a video clip to Twitter, the load bar moves forward partly but then it immediately stops and gives me a black/blank screen. And sure enough, when I go to check my Twitter on my phone, it has not posted the video clip. And trying to share it to XBOX Live first and then share it to Twitter from my phone via the XBOX app doesn’t work either. The same issue applies here too. Black/blank screen when trying to share it to XBOX Live. Snapshot images also has this issue but every once in awhile it will allow you to share to both XBOX Live and social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch ect…) whereas it will not allow you to share video clips at all. This is an issue Microsoft are aware of and are apparently fixing in a November firmware update at the end of the month. To what degree they fix it though is the real question because this feature is buggy as hell. So much for promoting and hyping up that dedicated share button on the controller, eh Phil Spencer and Co?

Well, that’s it. That’s been my experience with the XBOX Series X so far. Of course the pros of quick resume and loading times cut in half far outweigh the cons of faulty 4K resolution at 120 hertz gameplay and buggy sharing content features. I say do not let that put you off buying this fantastic piece of hardware because those bugs and issues can be fixed easily. The extremely long downloading for digital and physical games might not though and you might want to reconsider buying a next-gen XBOX console if you have an OLED TV. Or if you have the console already but not the TV to get the most advantages out of the console, consider buying a Samsung QLED instead. Thank you.

#xbox series x #microsoft #next-gen gaming #phil spencer #review #backwards compatibility #auto hdr #quick resume #loading times #bugs and issues #downloading #digital #physical #games

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terminatedapathy · 4 years ago

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Metamorphosis (Ovid Works) review

Finally, I’ve managed to finish a game in full, after several years of drowning myself in Transformers content.

....And this latest work won’t even be about robots, but insects. Whoops!

Either way, I have some Thoughts about this game. TL;DR I’m giving it a 2/5, reasons under the cut.

Game Synopsis: Metamorphosis, (very loosely) based on the book “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka, follows Gregor Samsa as he is turned into a bug (we’re not given a species but presumably he is some kind of beetle, like literally every other npc), and is forced to go on a wild bureaucratic goose chase for his new employer.

Gameplay: Hands down the worst part of the game. It’s a first-person puzzle platformer, which admittedly can be done well as a genre (*gestures towards the Portal series*), but completely falls apart in this instance. Your character seems to lack a body besides having a camera for a face (and the two legs that occasionally appear in front of you), so platforms that you can land on are limited only to wherever you can manage to fit the camera. This is bad not only for giving the player a general sense of their ability to land a jump, but for also avoiding getting trapped in tight spaces that the player was never meant to get into in the first place.

I’ve run into too many glitches, too, it’s a little ridiculous. While playing it on the Switch, the game would freeze randomly during or after initiating dialogue with various characters. This would force me to close the game and then restart it from the menu.

The puzzle aspect of the game, when it didn’t involve jumping puzzles, was actually rather satisfying. However, the environmental clutter and ability to climb on literally anything if you manage to find even the smallest ledge made solving some puzzles to be less fun if you had to search your environment for anything.

This section gets a 1.5/5. The game isn’t completely broken, but it gets close in some parts. Art: What little art there is happens to be genuinely appealing, I have to admit. The anthropomorphic bugs have a solid design, though their models could use a few more polygons. The two dimensional art (the bug insignia in the loading screen, the detailing on the menu screen) is gorgeous and I would love to have more of that kind of aesthetic throughout the game.

The sound design is also well done, as is the voice acting for the bugs. The voice acting for the humans, meanwhile, is extremely flat. The humans are also incredibly hideous, and it’d be wonderful if we saw less of them, frankly.

I do have a few....critiques, regardless of this. For example, beetles being the only species that have a character model despite mentions (and 2D pictures) of other arthropods. I’m not sure if this was due to a time or budget constraint, but it was highly disappointing and left NPC diversity extremely lacking.

There’s also the matter of the inconsistency in which the beetles are bipedal or not? As far as I can tell, it’s never explained why some walk on two legs while others walk on six, nor why we never see some switching between these two states.

Overall, a 3/5 for art. It’s hit or miss, and needs a little work regardless.

Story: Spoilers ahead! You have been warned!

...I say that, but what is there to spoil, really? This game barely has a plot despite its tone implying that there’s something much greater, much more mysterious going on. Gregor’s friend is arrested by some obviously fake police while Gregor is turned into a bug, and then has to talk to a bullshit lawyer and potentially be sentenced to death for a charge he doesn’t even know about. Gregor, meanwhile, travels through a series of mystical and physically impossible spaces as he encounters people in his same situation, seemingly being content to live in their bug society instead of dealing with the bureaucratic horseshit that the Tower forces people to go through in order to even get to the damn place. Somehow, this is all tied together, as the lawyer and fake police are obviously working for the Tower in come capacity.

Nothing gets explained, and we’re given no conclusion besides Gregor becoming human again by the end and then running into the same fake police. The Tower apparently deals in...illegal judicial practices? And forcing peoples’ friends to sign a paper to execute them? After turning them into beetles????

It’s sad, really. It seemed like it was going to go somewhere eventually, but it just stopped. If it were evident that this were only the first episode (as modern indie games are prone to doing), I’d be filled with anticipation, but as far as I’m aware Ovid Works seems to be done with this piece. A game like this leans heavily on its story, so it is with a heavy heart that I must acknowledge that the failure of this part has affected the quality of the experience considerably.

2/5. Interesting ideas brought up, but ultimately wasted potential.

Possible improvements:

-less humans. Preferably no human models next time, as these ones were honestly more intimidatingly uncanny than the bugs could ever hope to be.

-greater bug NPC diversity. Please, I’m begging you, you can’t just put a moustache on a generic npc and call that enough of a distinction, give us other species.

-a plot that focuses on the bugs with an additional analysis on what it means to be one as opposed to human. And it better appreciate them too, goddamnit.

-a third person camera accompanied by an actual character model. Either that, or completely doing away with jumping puzzles

-flight mechanics? If not, then an explanation for why the characters can’t fly despite being beetles.

Final Thoughts:

Absolutely not worth $20+. I’d price it more around $10. I genuinely hope Ovid Works will improve in their next piece.

#he speaks #metamorphosis #ovid works

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trskobold · 4 years ago

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Okay, so are you continuing the comic or what?

Hello there comrades,

So yeah, last few months I’ve been (once again) trying to get back into the groove. So far, I'm cautiously optimistic. I didn't want to just openly declare that I was restarting the comic since... well, some of you know how that went the last few times.

I've managed to add 8 completely new pages to the comic, as well as edit a few of the older ones and the new run of Vreakerz is currently 26 pages long. Furthermore, I've made some changes to my drawing process. As some of you might still know, I used to to draw both traditionally and digitally.

My old process looked like this (excluding the writing process):

1) sketch a few rough versions of the page based on the script on paper;

2) pencil and ink the page;

3) clean the page;

4) scan the page;

5) try to fix some of the errors;

6) colour the page;

7) add the dialogue and finishing touches.

Then, once I started using the new Cathedral 3D model, it changed a bit:

1) sketch a few rough versions of the page based on the script in Photoshop

2) add in 3D scenes from Blender;

3) Print the page with the 3D elements in blue colour (to filter out later);

4) sketch the rest on the printed paper;

5) pencil and ink the page;

6) scan the page;

7) try to fix some of the errors;

8) colour the page;

9) add dialogue and finishing touches.

While this did improve the architecture in each shot as I intended, it added some rather cumbersome extra steps. Furthermore, I often find myself disagreeing with an earlier layout choice once I put the dialogue in and I sometimes just suddenly think of a more interesting focal point for a panel, meaning I want to move the 3D scenes around as well. This of course is rather difficult when you’re working on actual paper with printed out scenes.

In short, this approach was on the right track, but it still included too many drawbacks of my old approach.

So, Since the latest page (http://vreakerz.angrykitten.nl/Stories/read/26), I've gone completely digital. It was quite a step for an Indian Ink lover like me, and I still have to figure a few things out, but overall I'm very happy with the result. I was especially concerned that I would not be able to capture the slightly jittery ink lines I get when inking traditionally, but I think I'm on the right track.

My process has become considerably quicker and having everything digital has the -huge- advantage that you can change things around while already past the sketching phase. Of course, I still enjoy drawing traditionally, so although I’ll be doing Vreakerz entirely digitally from now on, I’ll probably still draw some pen and paper pieces every now and then.

So, that’s pretty much it for the update. Follow me on Twitter if you want to keep up to date with what I’m doing. I’ll try to upload stuff to Deviantart and Tumblr as I go.

#vreakerz

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italynt · 5 years ago

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If you want a primer in regards to what’s going on in Italy, in terms of restarting the Serie A season, then here’s a good article to read.

Here’s an overview of everything that’s been going on from James Horncastle at The Athletic:

It’s now almost two months since Sassuolo striker Francesco Caputo celebrated his goal against Brescia by lifting up his jersey to reveal the message “Stay at Home” on a T-shirt underneath.

It feels like a long time ago, doesn’t it? So how close are we to football resuming in Serie A?

What is the situation in Italy now?

Last weekend, Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced the government is ready to begin the next phase of easing the country back to normality. Aspects of lockdown will be relaxed on May 4 allowing 4.5 million people to go back to work. Citizens will have freedom of movement within their own region. Restaurants and bars will be able to deliver takeaway. Exercise in parks and even a dip in the sea is permitted as long as social-distancing guidelines are respected. But the new decree has not escaped criticism. Opposition parties think the government is still being too cautious. Some regions like the Veneto are breaking ranks and lifting measures earlier than others. Bishops are protesting the ban on public masses and football feels it is being unfairly treated.

Why does football feel victimised?

Well, individual athletes like swimmers, cyclists and sprinters can return to training next Monday. Team sports will have to wait at least until May 18 and only if the protocol passes muster with the government’s scientific committee. This has sparked controversy because footballers cannot even train on their own or at a distance from each other within the controlled environment of a deep-cleaned training facility. What they can do is go for a jog or a workout in the local park — where members of the public may be inclined to approach them in breach of social distancing rules. “So we’ll have Ciro Immobile and Edin Dzeko in Villa Borghese and Lorenzo Insigne on the Caracciolo boardwalk,” scoffed Lazio owner Claudio Lotito.

It doesn’t make any sense. Many of the clubs are exasperated. The players’ union (AIC) said in a statement it was “perplexed and surprised” by a decision it considers “illogical” and “discriminatory”. Serie A stopped earlier than the other top five leagues. It has more fixtures to fulfil and stands to lose £620 million if the season isn’t brought to a close. La Repubblica quoted Napoli’s president Aurelio De Laurentiis saying: “COVID-19 will end up making the middle and smaller clubs who live beyond their means disappear.” It’s not hard to see why the league and the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) are pushing hard to at least prepare their teams for any return. “I do not want to be Italian football’s gravedigger,” said Gabriele Gravina, the president of the FIGC.

But as with everything in Italy it is deeply political and the pushback has been considerable. Italy’s highest-profile female athlete, the swimmer Federica Pellegrini, said: “All I hear about is football and I’m disappointed by that, other sports exist too”. Similarly, the president of the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) Giovanni Malago said: “Sport is not just and cannot only be Serie A football.”

The FIGC is an affiliate of CONI and football obtains more funding than any other sport. What Malago says matters. He believes football has muddled its response to the pandemic — “Gravina talks about July, August, September, October, even about splitting the league into two groups with play-offs and play-outs” — which further damages the game’s reputation. Ultimately, the decision lies with the government, but relations between the FIGC, Serie A and the minister of sport, Vincenzo Spadafora, have been tense.

Why are relations strained between Italy’s sporting bodies?

For a start, Spadafora hasn’t always toed the party line. In March, he sparked chaos at the Stadio Ennio Tardini, where Parma’s match at home to SPAL was due to go ahead in accordance with a government decree, which had been signed the night before. However, with players waiting in the tunnel, Spadafora announced the league needed to shut down with immediate effect. The game was delayed for an hour and 15 minutes while officials checked whether the order had been changed. It hadn’t and Parma-SPAL kicked off. “Instead of indulging in demagoguery, be consistent with the actions of your own government” came the reply from Serie A president Paolo Dal Pino.

It wasn’t pretty then and things aren’t any rosier now. Spadafora has called out club owners for using the media to influence opinion and force his hand. “We have to start safely,” he said on Tuesday. “Do you remember when the league didn’t want to stop? How many teams ended up in quarantine?” The answer is six. To avoid that happening again, the FIGC has drawn up a 47-page protocol document, seen by The Athletic, with the aim of protecting the players, coaches, referees and other members of staff from contagion.

How will they protect the players and everyone else?

The protocol document contains lots of advice from leaders in the medical field. In addition to the FIGC’s own 12-person scientific committee, the protocol has had substantial input from a task force comprising four experts in infectious diseases and virology. The protocol recommends squads should be selected three to four days before training resumes. The players and essential coaching staff in this group will then undergo an initial screening phase. This entails a visit to a clinic, a temperature check and an up-to-date medical history. Let’s pick a player at random. Say, Brescia’s Mario Balotelli: the FIGC wants to know if he’s travelled in the last two months and where to, whether or not he’s been in contact with anyone who has tested positive for the virus, and whether he’s showing any symptoms.

Depending on certain criteria, the group will be given two RT-PCR tests within 24 hours of each other and an antibody test. The expense and availability of testing — not to mention the morality of rolling them out for one category of society — remains a bone of contention. “The request on the players’ part is for football to resume only when every citizen can have a test,” Tommasi said. “There mustn’t be any fast-track for our industry.” As you might expect with a medical, there will be a resting ECG (to measure heart health), a spirometry (to measure breathing capacity), and blood and urine tests. The protocol is especially mindful of the latest medical advice on the damage left by COVID-19 and the therapies used to treat it on a person’s lungs and the heart. Even after screening is over, the group will have daily temperature checks and be constantly assessed for symptoms.

A permanent “ritiro” — a place for players and staff to live on-site — is also recommended. A number of clubs have dorms or even hotels adjoining their training grounds. When the Melia hotel closed in Milan as part of the lockdown measures, Christian Eriksen temporarily moved into Inter’s Appiano Gentile training ground. The problem is 11 of the 20 teams don’t have lodgings, so completely isolating the group isn’t possible across the board. However, the other nine clubs are meant to allocate players single, well-ventilated rooms where they will shower after their distancing-adapted training sessions.

Everyone in the group will be given behavioural guidelines to follow, ranging from washing hands to PPE for masseurs and physios. Treatment tables will be spaced out and time slots allocated to avoid congestion. If the enforcement of social distancing means there isn’t space in a team meeting, the preference is for a video conference instead. Food in the canteen will be self-service only.

As for training itself, the first week foresees individuals or small groups working out more than two metres apart before a gradual return to normality in week two and week three, with players running through patterns of play, set-pieces and playing small-sided games.

If someone does test positive, they are to be isolated immediately. Training will be suspended until the team and coaching staff receive the all-clear from two tests taken 24 hours apart and antibody tests will be repeated within five and seven days of each other. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the government’s scientific committee raised a red flag at this part of the protocol on the basis that, up until now, one positive test has been enough to send clubs into quarantine for a fortnight. This is a dilemma faced by all leagues hoping to finish the season.

Then there’s the not insignificant matter of away games and travel: it’s one thing limiting external contact within a training facility you own, it’s another thing doing it on the road. Fourteen of Serie A’s 20 clubs are located in areas that were defined “hotbeds” in Italy’s fight against the pandemic.

The outlook’s bleak then?

Gravina said: “In order to run zero risks, we’d have to wait for a vaccine. According to the scientists, that won’t be until spring 2021. We can’t just shut everything down waiting for that to happen.” Dialogue between the FIGC and the government’s scientific committee remains open, with Gravina vowing to modify the protocol in a renewed effort to at least obtain consent for teams to return to training on May 18.

Spadafora grows more pessimistic by the day, however. He talks about the road back to football getting tighter and tighter with only a “spiraglio” — the smallest of openings — left for it to happen. Gravina’s decision to align himself with UEFA and make August 3 the cut-off point for domestic competitions to finish puts Italian football on the clock. Serie A has proposed proroguing expiring contracts until after the season concludes. If the league returns to training in less than three weeks and games start from mid-June, that sounds like a good idea. But that’s a big if.

Spadafora has appealed to the leagues to come up with a Plan B. “I am starting to get the idea there will be a surprise over the next few days,” he told free-to-air TV channel La7. “Presidents could soon ask me to end the season now so they can prepare for the next one.” Brescia’s owner Massimo Cellino has repeatedly declared the season over. His counterparts at Torino and Sampdoria, Urbano Cairo and Massimo Ferrero, have both expressed scepticism plans to return — they fear finishing this season may compromise the next one.

What are the players doing in the meantime?

Well, Lazio’s Marco Parolo has been using his free time away from the training ground to protest that players should be allowed in the training ground. “All professional athletes should be treated the same,” he told the club’s official radio station. “I’m our athletes’ No 1 fan at the World Championships, and I’m all for them going back to training, but I think footballers should, too.”

For now though the players continue to work out at home.

“It’s difficult to expect a player to be able to maintain the necessary fitness to play in Serie A after a prolonged period of inactivity,” Sampdoria’s head of performance, Paolo Bertelli, tells The Athletic. “We’re trying to keep the fitness of our players to the highest standards as much as we possibly can.” Samp’s players have workout classes six days a week. “The sessions last between 65 and 80 minutes each depending on the player and the day of the week,” Bertelli says. “In addition to a warm-up, we do some free-weight exercises — some core, some jumps — hop on the exercise bike and work with the resistance bands. The players who have a running machine get a workout for that. It’s a bit different for the goalkeepers because we need to keep their explosiveness and strength.”

Roma’s goalkeeper Pau Lopez logs onto Roma’s bespoke platform to access all the material he needs for his day. “Every day the fitness coach sends us a customised workout plan that we have to follow to stay in shape,” the Spaniard tells The Athletic. “We weigh ourselves on a daily basis and send the info to the nutritionist. He keeps us posted, especially if there’s a problem. It’s all very well planned out.”

Manolo Zubiria, Roma’s chief global sporting officer, goes into more detail. “We set up a communication platform that allows the club’s directors and coaching staff to video conference with the players. It’s not just those in the first team either, but all levels, including our women’s team. Internal comms are fundamental. We want to give everyone as much support as possible in terms of info and assistance, whether it’s to do with fitness or nutrition. To that end, we are ensuring our players receive all the necessary material for home workouts. In terms of grocery shopping, we have also sorted a delivery service. We can’t predict what will happen in the coming weeks but our objective is for the lads to be in the best shape possible when training resumes.”

What’s the state of play in the table?

Juventus reclaimed top spot with their 2-0 win against Inter on March 8 and have a slender one-point lead over Lazio. Lotito is against the idea of play-offs to decide the top four — “Inter have eight points less than us (in third) and Atalanta have 14” — but he would be up for settling the title in a one-off game against the Old Lady, who, he points out, Lazio have already beaten on two occasions this season (in the league and the Super Cup). Atalanta occupy the last Champions League place and have a three-point advantage over Roma, plus a game in hand and a superior head-to-head record.

As for the Europa League, Milan are outside the top six but could still qualify through the Coppa Italia if they were to turn around a first-leg semi-final defeat to Juventus (without Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Theo Hernandez, who are suspended) and overcome either Inter or Napoli in the final. Down at the bottom, Brescia (10 points adrift of safety) and SPAL (seven) were already hanging by a thread, which is why, to some observers, it’d make sense for them to trade places with Crotone and Pippo Inzaghi’s Benevento, the two teams in the automatic promotion places in Serie B.

If that was the case, you’d have some sympathy for Inzaghi’s former Milan team-mate Alessandro Nesta. The former centre-back is now managing Frosinone, who were in second until the most recent round of fixtures, when Crotone took their spot.

But as one Serie A executive put it to The Athletic, if the season isn’t concluded on the pitch, there is “no right answer” to satisfy everyone’s definition of fairness.

#Long Post #Serie A #Serie A Femminile #Italy #Covid-19 #Scheduled

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aeritus · 6 years ago

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Homestuck Epilogues Theory

Alright alright, the Epilogues were A LOT of stuff, specially confusing! As 90% of Homestuck so it’s ok I guess.

Today I got stuck in traffic for about 1 hour and got some time to think about a few things and discussed later on with some buddies and we sorta crammed out this sorta of theory for what the epilogues are really about / how they’re playing out. (I’d like first to apologize, because I sucks at writing, I sucks at explaining and this is the first time I write down a fan-teory) So here we go, hope you’re ready for some babbling nonsense!!! (all under the cut because it’s LONG)

We know that both Meat and Candy happens at the same time and that thye both interact with the Canon session where LE is being faced, but since it’s also sorta of confirmed that Candy is like a “ghost” mirrored dimension that exist just because John had to make a choiche (therefore creating 2 paths) this is meant to be considered with the Meat closing.

Everything is just Skaia/Sburb trying to start a new session. (or restarting the first session this is up to debate)

I’ts known that the whole Homestuck happens because it’s the Universe creating a life cycle and reproducing, wich is a thing that our characters are trying to stop when they decide to live “out of canon”.

That’s why Dirk “has to be stopped” because by going off and starting up a new session would force everybody back into canon. But how’s he gonna start up a new session you may ask? Well since he reached his Ultimate Form he gained the ability to take direct action on the characters due to his Heart Aspect, as seen in most of Meat, and is explained on candy by U-Callie that he became a narrator. However he can just narrate “on the spot” as clever U-Dirk is and knows his friends up to predict possible reactions he sure can’t predict on a larger scale... So how to fix this? How is it possible to know in advance possible outcomes? Well but with a Seer obviously! That’s why he manipulater Rose to Ascend to her Ultimate form and convinced her that she needed to transport her coscence in a robot, so he could have her under control (because I’m pretty sure that if Rose were in good shape and not consumed by drugs she would have recongized his narration and definately opposed) so U-Dirk would be able to plan and predict every outcome and becoming an inside narrator.

However as narrator he can just of course describe the situations and manipulate the characters thowards his planned outcome and we saw in Meat that some characters reacted actively to his narration by eiher commenting or totally ignoring him. With this we can understand that characters actually have a free mind and will, so how could U-Dirk pass over this incovenient? Well with the help of another Seer, of course! And what other seer is avaiable and already achieve its Ultimate Status?

TEREZI

U-Dirk managed to have John bring her on Heart C and we knows from Jade in Meat that Terezi is with John on Dirk ship and in Candy’s PT we get a confirmation of this with the presence of the red slippers on board. So with U-Rose under his control and Terezi’s help U-Dirk can now be able to plan ahead everything and shape the story as he will as an omniscent narrator.

SO THEN

How can him be stopped? Well simple, by U-Callie. In Meat’s PT she is in Jade’s body and consumed LE, gaining his powers, then open up a wormhole and flies trought it, followed later by U-Dave. We think they’re going in the new session and try face U-Dirk by modifying the whole universe against him using both U-Callie narrator’s voice, Jade’s and Calliope’s Space power combined with Dave’s and Caliborn’s Time power. Causing also a total and definitive cut of Candy’s ghost bubble with the rest of the canon-scope.

BUT but but but... bear with me a bit longer please.

By talking about the epilogue we kept feeling that something was “off” and “not right” and rereading with the U-dirk’s final intentions in mind, we realized that in the last part of Meat, where Dirk is in full control of the storyline he pays a lot of attention to John, and especially he insist to Terezi to bring him aswell.

So we asked ourself “why” several times and well, we re-read some parts several time and we’re pretty sure that John is not dead at all.

John’s story starts being narrated by Dirk after he get wouned by LA, so after thate everything it’s said, it’s said by Dirk, and it’s likely that some fact were invented or altered up to move every chess piece in it’s place. What is it off and untrue then?

LE poison

The poision gets acknowledged only when Dirk’s narration steps in and not when John get’s stabbed by LE’s gold tooth... wich being a prostetic part couln’t possibly transmit any poison at all. By making a quick check we never find any other talk regarding any Cherub’s poison and especially regarding that it would override a key game mechanic! On Earth C U-Dirk makes John belive that his death will be permanent and then forcefully and quickly kills him in the middle of a dialogue by narration and have his corpse captchalogued by Terezi almost immediately blocking the respawn.

His captchalogues body then is kept by Terezi wich is then also convinced to bring it with her on U-Dirk’s ship.

Our main guess is that so he couln’t be de-captchalogged and respawned, because John still have his retcon power, making him actually one of the most powerful characters. Keeping him in check then would mean for U-Dirk a clear way for his plan.

Another guess for us is that his retcon power could be of U-Dirk’s use later on, peraphs on a fight with U-Callie.

So well... those are our main thoughts! Our train of tought started actually with John’s death because for us it reeeeeeally felt off and then worked everyting above from there Hope you’ll find them interesting, and we’re really courious to see what yuo guys think, so let us know!!! And really, i suck at explaining and writing so feel free to ask me if some stuff aren’t clear and I’ll try my best.

#homestuck #homestuck epilogue #homestuck epilogues #upd8 #homestuck theory #john egbert #dirk strider #rose lalonde #terezi pyrope #calliope #dave strider #jade harley

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