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yangyeet · 5 years ago

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Labeling A Relationship is Hard

Pairing: Donghyuck x Mark x Reader

Genre: Fluff, Smut

Warnings: uhh threesome-ish, SWS (okay i didn’t know this was an acronym but it’s smut with substance), also humor

Word Count: 6.0k

Requested: Yes! (Hope it’s good angel 💚)

If you’d gone back five years to tell yourself about the situation you were caught in, there was a good chance you would’ve shrugged your shoulders and called the cops. But now that you were in it, you were sure you would be very happy and hollering in joy.

It all started off when you met Mark Lee, the picture-perfect Canadian transfer student, who’d joined your middle school halfway through the year. He had stumbled into the room with an awkward half-step and a small chuckle. The nervous boy had introduced himself so enthusiastically, he ended up banging his head on the teacher’s desk when bowing. This caused the teacher to sigh and instruct you, as the star student, to take care of him for the day.

You could still remember the way he hid the tears in his eyes, refusing to cry and smiling instead as you led him to the nurses office.

“I’m Mark,” he said to you, rubbing his hands together and staring at you with his teary doe eyes.

Of course you remembered his name from his unforgettable introduction earlier. “I know,” you had quirked, watching as he laughed shyly. “I’m (y/n), by the way. You have a nice voice.” The blunt compliment had slipped out of your mouth, leaving you blushing. He did have a really nice voice at the time, kind of high-pitched, but still sweet.

“Ah, haha, really?” Cue a voice crack and another giggle. “I don’t know about that, but I think yours is nicer. It’s nice to meet you, though.” He finally had the courage to stretch his hands out for a handshake. You had thought otherwise and laced your hands with his, keeping up with his pace as the two of you walked down the hall.

That day had been fairly eventful from other things you had recalled. After your quick visit to the nurses’ office, you’d detoured to the cafeteria and got several free cookies from the lunch ladies before making your way to the various classes.

As the day had progressed, Mark had gotten more comfortable with you and asked to exchange house numbers, telling you to call him so you could set up playdates. Who were you to refuse him?

The first time you had gone over to his house, you met his older brother and his parents, who were more than happy that he’d gotten another friend in his first week at the new district. They were quick to bring you in the house and tell you a bit about Mark’s embarrassing childhood stories, but Mark had other plans. He had pulled on your arm as a signal for you to stop talking with them.

So as you finished greeting them quickly, you both ran to the neighborhood park to play cops and robbers. He was always the cop, chasing you around with his water gun, but he was a bit slower than you. In fact, it was humorous how you’d always outrun him. To make sure he wouldn’t feel bad, you kept a slow pace and purposely let him catch you, but it was all worth it to see the smile on his face as he caught you.

Observing the curfew his parents had placed, the two of you returned home by seven that day and said your goodbyes, promising that the next time you’d meet, you’d bike on a cul-de-sac near his house.

A few playdates later, you both were over at your place. He stood on your porch looking as angry as a fourteen year old could look, with eyebrows turned inwards and lips in a pout. When you inquired who made him this mad, he said it was his other friend. Upon further questioning as to who this other friend was, he’d just vaguely shrug and say it was someone really annoying. And that was the end of it.

Of course, young-teenager you quickly became jealous of this other friend. Who was that person and why were they taking your friend away? It took you several tries to get his name: Lee Donghyuck, also referred to as the ‘devil’ by Mark. His real name left a melodic ring on your tongue and you had a newfound desire to meet this person.

One day, not too long after you’d learned the mysterious boy’s name, you were sitting on the swings, lazily kicking your legs back and forth watching the small fumes of anger unfold in front of you. Mark had his favorite red cap on and was swinging quite furiously.

“What’s got your panties in a twist?” You asked unabashedly. His face was pointed towards the ground, even as he moved fervently.

“Ugh, it’s just...Donghyuck. I swear the kid’s gonna make me regret coming here.”

You sighed. There it was, that name again.

“Why don’t you let me meet him? I’ll square up to him,” you threatened, showing your fists at him.

He shook his head. “Too much trouble. Like, you really don’t want to meet him. Really. He’s such a handful.” To emphasize his point, he stopped kicking his legs and spread his hands apart to show you how much of a handful he really was.

You laughed. “Alright, whatever you say.” The way he puffed his cheeks in frustration nearly had you falling for him. He was really cute when he was frustrated, but you never thought more of it. Instead, you were more annoyed that you couldn’t be there to help your friend when he was irked. This just made you wonder how much of a handful could the boy really be?

In your next year, the final year before you’d go to high school, you finally got to meet Donghyuck, leather jackets and all. He had such a fiery personality that you were surprised you’d never met him before.

You were in the cafeteria drinking your milk and watching as Jaemin, another friend Mark had introduced to you in the past year, snorted pixie sticks jokingly. He sneezed so hard that the remaining dust scattered and flew on Mark, who was clearly disgusted.

“That’s disgusting, man. You’re paying for dry-cleaning,” he complained, dusting his outfit from the sweet powder.

Jaemin shrugged and drank some water. “Only if you pay me.”

You were outright laughing at this sitcom-like scenario and turned to see Jaemin sending a flying kiss (and wink) at you. Obviously, you reciprocated it and slapped your hand on Mark’s thigh repeatedly as you tried to ground yourself from laughing too hard.

You were clearly taken aback, however, when you saw a figure approaching behind the flirty boy, walking with swag that you could only describe as cringey - one hand on his hips as he carried his TMNT lunchbox in the other.

“Mark Lee,” he shouted from across the room.

No one paid any attention to him other than your small group.

“Yah, Haechan,” Jaemin greeted him first, fist-bumping and giving him a bro hug.

Mark beside you took in a deep breath and covered his face to huff in frustration before looking at you. “It’s about time you met him. It was inevitable. Donghyuck, this is (y/n). (Y/n), Donghyuck.”

Said boy gave you a warm smile, a stark contrast to his appearance, and stretched out his hand. “You’re pretty.”

To say the least, you were shocked at his extroverted personality. He exuded confidence, but didn’t seem quite as bad as Mark often described him. At least he called you pretty. Finding the new boy interesting, you met his hand with two fingers forming into scissors, a trick you’d learned from your neighbor, Jisung.

“I know.”

He scoffed. “You’re supposed to say ‘thank you,’ you know.”

“But you called me pretty. That’s a fact,” you responded.

He rolled his eyes but smiled. “Fine. I’ll give you that one.”

Mark just let out a groan as he watched the two of you interact. This wouldn’t end well. And he was right. You and Donghyuck were the perfect combination of chaos and comebacks, but it’d made the friendship dynamic so much more interesting with the three of you together.

The two of you would often tag-team in teasing Mark, the subject of most of your pranks. In fact, you pranked him so much that Mark quickly adapted to accept his fate and would just watch as you two had fun.

In the beginning of your budding friendship, he’d make sure that you two weren’t doing something crazy to get in trouble with the law (“What does spray painting a wall in the abandoned house have to do with the cops?” Donghyuck would quip. “A lot,” Mark would respond, pulling you behind him. It’d taken a while for Mark to convince him that his idea was not brilliant, but dumb.)

Slowly, he let up, but still kept a watchful eye on the two of you even after several years had passed.

He wasn’t always that much of a prude. Sometimes, he’d join in when he thought that the tricks were appropriate, such as putting pink dye in the laundry to turn all the whites into various vibrant shades. The punishment he’d gotten after with the two of you was well worth it after he saw you picking up a pair of pink underwear and placing it on your head for fun.

Unfortunately, you got in trouble for fooling around a second time when Donghyuck yelled loudly at you for not being productive. Mark had been banned from playing video games for a week and Donghyuck spent the week whining about not having his gaming buddy.

Overall, you’d say that you had an enjoyable childhood after the two boys entered your life.

You saw quite a large change as you guys grew up. Mark had learned not to hate his friend as much and began to enjoy his presence much more. He would occasionally get jealous, but he could always be consoled with a hug and a midnight donut run.

On the other hand, Donghyuck had been the missing sunshine in your life. He’d learned about you much quicker than you would have guessed.

Sometimes, it was scary how well he knew you despite having entered the picture a year after Mark. Whenever you were upset, he’d pull up with Mark on his bike and take you on a mini excursion around the neighborhood as he pointed out all the horrible architecture. When you needed a picker upper from a horrible exam grade, he’d always be there with some face masks and chocolates for a self-care day. Obviously he’d end up eating most of the chocolates, but you’d always feel better after being in his presence.

It was safe to say that you loved the two so much that you all went as far as choosing to move in with each other, post-graduation. It was a rather decent living situation with a small two bedroom apartment that could fit a total of four beds (twin-sized, but rather comfortable), a functioning kitchen, a corner office space, and a mini-living area. The three of you had considered finding a fourth roommate to ease the monthly bills, but you knew that the shift in dynamics from a trio would be strange at this point.

Mark and Donghyuck had taken one room and you’d taken the other, happy to have your own space. Having your own room was beneficial since you’d gotten decorative freedom, so you chose to spend the first month decorating your room. Photos taken from high school parties and middle school galas adorned the walls and you could easily see a timeline of how the three of you had grown.

Mark was much taller and leaner now, but you could see the short moustache phase he had in his sophomore year before he decided to shave it off since ‘it looked too weird’. You could also see that his fashion sense had grown immensely, the designer clothes he chose to wear now clinging to his figure nicely. His voice had also gotten deeper, especially when he’d wake up in the morning before drinking his ritual coffee. The sweet, awkward boy you’d known earlier had grown up well and that made you happy.

Donghyuck was still the same childish boy as before, just more mature. He had learned to understand when his pranks would go too far and even learned to apologize whenever he’d cross the line. He had also decreased the rate of his petty arguments with Mark and you were more than grateful to get past that phase.

He always had a fantastic fashion sense, so you couldn’t knock that out. However, he’d gotten much more...sexier? If that was a way you could word it. His eyeliner had gone from post-breakup, MCR vibes to something more accentuated, giving his eyes a half-lidded appearance. Sometimes, he’d catch you staring and lick his lips teasingly, but it never escalated more than that. You just ticked that as one of his personality quirks.

You were fine with that. Totally fine.

As you glanced at yourself in the photos, you found yourself cringing at your middle school phase. Silly bands and beyblades were scattered in the background as you back hugged Mark and threw a peace sign. You had definitely glowed up, 100%. There was no doubt about that. You were a little taller (“Not by that much,” Hyuck often teased you) and so much more happier than before. Your smile was wider and you had become more confident in yourself as the years had rolled by. That was something you could pin on meeting the two best people in your lives.

A sharp rap knocked you out of your thoughts. “Uh, hey, (y/n)?” It was Mark.

“Yeah?”

“I’m going shopping. We ran out of eggs and milk. You want anything?”

“I just want some milk,” you quoted.

“Right...vines. Haha. Anyway, I’ll be back in an hour,” he responded.

“What are you gonna do for an hour? Take a solid dump?”

He looked offended. “No-I-(y/n), absolutely not. I have to be careful about what we’re buying, you know? Anyway, I’ll be back soon. Make sure Donghyuck doesn’t do anything wild.”

You laughed. He was still so cute when he pouted at you. “Yeah, of course. I’ll call you if anything happens. I’m sure you’d love to have some of the action.”

“Eugh-” you heard him fake vomit and walk out, shutting the door behind him. You could hear him give a similar warning to the other boy before leaving.

You sighed and gathered your thoughts as you walked out of the room. You were definitely teasing him when you joked about something happening between you and Hyuck but suddenly, you weren’t too sure about that.

Donghyuck was reclining on the sofa, legs stretched out onto the coffee table in front of him. One of his arms was extending across the back of the sofa and the other was holding his cell phone, lazily searching through his SNS for any updates.

Your gaze accidentally dropped to see that his light grey sweatpants were loose on his waists, revealing a slight v-line that almost had you wanting more. You snapped out of it when he clicked his tongue.

His eyes didn’t even lift from his phone when he began speaking to you. “Like what you see?”

You huffed. “As if.” There was no way you were going to get caught doing anything with your best friend. You couldn’t imagine how Mark would react if he found out you had been ogling at him right after you promised that nothing would happen.

Deciding to be casual in your approach in contrast to your wandering mind, you plopped down on the opposite side of him and lifted your legs up to his lap. He didn’t even flinch.

“Hyuck?” You asked, waiting for his reply.

His sharp eyes flitted up to meet yours. “Yeah?”

“Nothing I’m bored.”

“Not my problem,” he replied, struggling as you kicked your legs slightly. Feeling slightly annoyed, he finally set his phone down on the table and stretched his arms above his head, letting out a groan. The baggy tank top that he was sporting lifted slightly, just barely revealing his (cute) tummy. God, he was acting so innocent and that was driving you crazy.

“I’m bored~,” you argued, crossing your arms. Mark was going to be out for an hour and you were in a teasing mood, so you decided to play with him. “Entertain me.”

He let out a chuckle. “Oh baby, you want me to entertain you? I bet you won’t see this coming.”

You found yourself lying underneath him in an instant, letting out a squeak as he pulled your legs and crawled on top of you. His soft brown eyes were searching your face to the answer of his unspoken question. Feeling a bit awkward, you snorted and moved your hands to rest against his neck.

“This is a nice angle.” That was true. You could see every detail on his face, from the small constellations of his moles to his pouty, pink lips. If you looked below, you would see that his shirt was hanging low enough to reveal that he was breathing rapidly.

“I could say the same,” he replied.

Honestly, you had no idea what you looked like from his point of view, but you hoped that your hair wasn’t too ruffled from his rash movements or reveal the red blush that you could feel was spreading across your face. You found it really sweet that he’d left a small gap so you could back out any time.

One look in his eyes told you what he was feeling: hesitant, but confident. All it would take was one move. That’s it. That was all that was needed to cross the line and he was waiting for you to do it.

A sudden surge of confidence crashed over you, and you found yourself closing your eyes, hoping for the best, and pulling his neck down gently to mold your lips to his. It was almost as if all the tension you’d felt from the past suddenly rush into you and you found yourself wanting more.

He didn’t stray too far from your lips either, pecking and pulling your lower lip with his teeth. You moaned at the feeling and he raised his head in surprise as if he just realized what the two of you were doing. He backed away, returning back to his spot on the couch and let out a cough.

“I...we got carried away.” You could see the way that his ears tinged red and his lips were a little swollen from your mini-makeout session.

Truthfully, you felt a little disappointed at him backing away but you knew what he was doing. He didn’t want to ruin all the years of friendship the two of you had built, not to mention Mark’s trust. The two of you wouldn’t risk going behind his back to hook up.

Clearly, Donghyuck closed the matter and picked up his phone to continue where he left off. You grabbed your own and went on TikTok to distract yourself, but all you found were story times from dates and that frustrated you even more.

Mark came back an hour later just as he’d promised. He’d noticed the tension in the air, but chose not to say anything, instead placing items in the fridge.

Donghyuck leaned against the counter as he did so, watching him struggle to carry the two milk jugs. “Do you even lift, bro?”

Mark just glared at him and tried to scare him by fake-throwing the mini watermelon at him. “I'm the only one shopping around here. At the very least, you could put these things in the storage!” The offender only chuckled and winked as he walked away. The two continued bickering throughout the rest of the night, periodically involving you in the argument. You shut them both up by calling Hyuck the victor leading to Mark giving up and calling it a night.

As you were tossing and turning in bed, you tried to forget about the kiss. You really did. But as you thought about the way that his lips caressed yours so gently, you wanted to feel the sparks again.

A few weeks had passed by and nothing else had occurred between you and Donghyuck. Even Mark pretended that everything was normal and you thought that’d be it. But it wasn’t.

Jaemin’s birthday party changed things up. He hosted a banger with all of his acquaintances (which were admittedly a lot of people - not a strange sight due to his popularity). Not unusual to you, a game of spin the bottle had ensued and he had persuaded your trio to join his group.

The first to go, a guy named Jeno, landed on a pretty girl who he smiled at politely before dragging her to a guest room upstairs. The second was Mark. Pure boy Mark. When he spun the bottle, he shook his head. “I have a bad feeling,” he muttered.

As the bottle finally settled, you found yourself holding your breath. It had landed on none other than your other best friend. Donghyuck looked beyond pleased at this turn of events, smiling and puckering his lips to prep for the kiss. Mark was absolutely horrified beside you. “Can I re-spin the bottle? Choose a substitute?”

Jaemin shook his head. “It’s a game. Better luck next time.” He fanned his face in fake sympathy and then clapped his hands.

Hyuck crawled closer to Mark and signaled you to grab him. You went along and grasped Mark’s flailing arms. His voice comedically began to crack as he panicked. “No, ah, Donghyuck probably isn’t even a good kisser-”

His words did the opposite effect as the boy smashed his lips against Mark’s. He eventually relaxed in your hold and kissed back.

Soon, the two were engrossed in the kiss and you let go of his limp arms, which he immediately raised to hold Donghyuck’s hair. You could see the way he practically melted into the youngers mouth and found yourself getting jealous at the scene.

Feeling a little awkward, you turned to see Jaemin looking excited and hollering at the two. It felt like eternity before they pulled apart and settled back into their spots and the audience settled down slowly. Mark rubbed his neck and rolled his eyes in mock annoyance, but it didn’t take a genius to see how affected he was.

You were stirred by a tap from Jaemin who handed the bottle to you. Accepting it even though your mind was still occupied with the steamy kiss you’d witnessed, you took your chance. It ended up landing on Jisung, your self-proclaimed ‘son,’ so you kissed him on the forehead and moved on with the game.

The rest of the night was a blur and the three of you went back to your apartment, each lost in the events of the party. It only served to strengthen the tension in the room whenever the three of you would be there. Mark would let out a couple of ‘haha’s’ whenever he saw Donghyuck and lick his lips. You would be lying if you said you didn’t do the same.

_________________

A few months rolled by and the three of you had grown busier with your respective studies/work, finding yourselves occupied by day and only having time to meet in the evening for meals before sleeping and repeating the cycles.

It wasn’t until the following summer when classes had ended for the session that you were comfortably able to resume your conversations with the other boys, or at least one of them.

Mark had gone out for another grocery run and you found yourself in the same position as a year ago, sitting across from Donghyuck. This time, your leg was crossed in front of you. He was on his phone again, clearly not paying any attention to it since the two of you had been busy catching up on the latest incidents.

You recalled a personal favorite of yours when a cult of students had set the econ building on fire, resulting in free ‘A’s for the entire class. Thankfully, no one was in the building at that time, but you were never a hater for free grades.

Hyuck was cracking up as he recounted his own story of how the football team at his university had celebrated at the restaurant he waitered at and they liked him so much they gave him tickets for the rest of the season and five additional guest passes.

His eyes were practically sparkling with joy, but you couldn’t find yourself joining him. Seeing him smile reminded you of all the memories that you’d missed out on and threw you in a sudden downhearted mood.

He noticed the change and moved to sit next to you, lifting your chin so you could see him. His breath hit your face in soft huffs, smelling like the peppermint gum he always kept in his back pocket.

“What’s wrong, babe?” He was very gentle in his approach, treating you delicately and fondly. His other hand moved in to hold yours.

You shook your head. “Nothing. It just hit me how much we missed since we’ve been so busy recently. I missed this...no I missed you two.” Your eyes were watering up a little and you blinked rapidly, willing the tears to disappear.

Donghyuck, not missing a beat, moved in and kissed the corner of your eyes where your tears were gathering. “I know you did. So did I. And I’m sure Mark did too.” His hand was rubbing soothingly against your own and you were thrown back into the memory of him kissing you just like this, in the same spot.

You hadn’t even realized when you moved up to meet his lips in a chaste kiss, but when you did, you were quick to pull away. Your eyes widened in shock. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

He interrupted you by leaning in again and pressing against you with more passion than before. The hand that was on your jaw moved in a rhythm only the two of you could feel. His lips felt so silky as he moved against you, noses bumping occasionally. He let out a soft whine when you swiped your tongue against his lower lip and opened his mouth.

You had heard about many people talking about tongues fighting for dominance and all that, but for you two, it seemed so much more natural when you took the lead. There was no resistance and he let you control the pace from here, matching your maneuvers with his own. You couldn’t help but let out a soft chuckle in his mouth when his other hand moved to your waist and rubbed ticklish circles against your skin.

The two of you were clearly beyond the point of caring and Donghyuck seemed to feel your arousal, so he decided to take it a step farther. Carefully, he changed your position so that you were now underneath him, almost like deja vu from the first time.

You sighed happily and glanced at his warm gaze.

One of his hands cupped your jaw and the other slipped under your shirt. “Whatcha lookin at, beautiful?”

You couldn’t help but snort at his cheesy words. “Clearly you. You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this.” His hand inched on top of your breast and took a tentative squeeze, waiting for your reaction. You let out an exaggerated moan and batted your eyelashes at him. “Could you, like, do something more?”

He rolled his eyes and moved his head to press against your neck. “So impatient. We have all the time in the world right now.” You huffed and tilted your head to the side so that he could have easier access. He reciprocated by humming pleasantly at your eagerness. Hyuck continued to fondle your breasts as he mouthed against your neck, moving around while biting and licking in an attempt to find your sweet spot. It didn’t take too long and you moaned at the feeling, almost visualizing the way he smirked cockily as he marked you up.

It was starting to feel real good and you were about to raise his head up for another kiss until he suddenly took his hand out of your shirt. You involuntarily whined at the loss of contact until you saw what he did next. Hyuck took two fingers and raised them to your mouth. “Suck.”

You opened up your mouth and swiped your tongue around his fingers sloppily, watching as his eyes blew out in pure lust. His puffed lips slightly opened as he let out a deep groan. “That’s my good girl.” You keened at the praise, finally loving the attention he was giving you.

Hyuck took his fingers out with a ‘pop’ when he was satisfied. “You sure you wanna do this?”

You took his hand and dragged it down to where you wanted him to touch you the most. “If you don’t finger me right now, I’ll kick you out of the room and do it myself.”

He chuckled at your frustration and licked his lips. “Should I?” He mused, rubbing his palm against the cotton of your shorts. You raised your hips at the friction and glared at the teasing. You tried pushing him off, impatient and horny, but he beat you to it and finally slipped his fingers under your shorts.

“Wow, you’re dripping. Can you hear that?”

You strained your ears for a second and you heard the slight squelches as he rubbed into your heat. Slightly embarrassed, you tried to turn your head to the side but he wouldn’t allow that. He moved your chin so that you were facing him and cooed. “Aw, you have such a pretty face. I want to see your reactions.”

Letting out a sigh, you gave in to his request. Instead of covering your face this time, you opted to watch the way his hand was working sinfully inside your shorts. You could feel his hard-on beside you and tried to give him some relief but he swatted your hand away, saying that you were his priority.

His fingers were pumping at a leisure pace, thumb rubbing circles into your clit at the same pace. You were getting impatient, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry. Instead, he let out a little chuckle and turned to the door. “You can come out now.”

You heard a sharp gasp from behind the door and lifted your head to see a blushing Mark standing there, covering his boner as discreetly with his hands as possible. Surprisingly, you noticed that he didn’t look as scandalized as you thought he would’ve been. Rather, he was pretty turned on as evident by the way his eyes couldn’t leave the sight of Hyuck’s hands touching you.

“How long have you been standing there?” You hadn’t noticed his arriving in the apartment at all, but you weren’t mad at that.

He shuffled nervously, eyes still trained on his friend’s hand. “Uh-maybe five minutes?”

Hyuck lifted his other hand and gestured for him to join the two of you on the bed. “You’re our missing puzzle piece. Come over here so we can do this properly.”

The older wasn’t fazed as he walked over and sat down on the sofa beside the other. “This is, like, really hot.”

You hummed in agreement. “It is.”

Oh, and it was definitely about to get hotter, especially when Hyuck used his free hand to grab the back of Mark’s head and lean in for an open-mouth kiss. Mark groaned into the kiss and sucked on the youngers’ tongue. “Fuck, you have no clue how much I wanted to do this.”

You propped yourself up on your elbow, adjusting yourself to see the view better. Hyuck stopped thrusting his fingers and pulled them out, shoving them against Mark’s lips. “You know what to do.” The elder obediently stuck his tongue out and licked them clean from your juices.

You nearly came at the sight, watching as the two were having their fun. You decided to have your own and moved so that you were straddling Hyuck’s hips and facing Mark’s hard-on. As you palmed Mark’s tip, you heard him let out a cry. He hadn’t noticed you changing positions and was pleasantly surprised.

“Pants off,” you commanded.

He didn’t hesitate to pull his pants down as he watched you immediately move closer and fondle his balls. At the same time, you swiveled your hips up against the boy behind you.

At this point, the two had stopped whatever they were doing and got washed up in the pleasure, whining as you continued your ministrations.

Hyuck was the first to speak up. “F-feels good.” He rolled his hips back against yours and leaned forward to press kisses against your back, nimbly unbuttoning your shirt and taking it off. You shimmied your arms and then resumed to suck on the hard cock in front of you. Mark leaned his head back at the feeling of your wet mouth on him before he gathered your hair into a make-shift ponytail. He watched you trail against his length and bob your head up and down in a simple rhythm that had his legs shaking.

You could tell that he was holding back from thrusting his hips into your mouth and you purred against him, causing sweet vibrations to shoot through his spine and cause him to let out a deep groan.

The boy behind you cried out impatiently. “Me too~”

Mark laughed. “Can we shift to a more comfortable position? (Y/n), you’re fine with all this, right?” You almost swooned at how caring he was, even in the middle of such an explicit situation.

Nodding, you got off of him, and shyly glanced at the trail of saliva that connected your mouth with his length. Mark let out a soft moan and helped you get up.

“I’m fine with that. But...can we not do any...like dick-inside-me action today? Since-”

Donghyuck let out the loudest laugh at your euphemism. “We’re all virgins here. Yeah, let’s take it slow today.”

Mark sighed in relief and arranged you guys so that you were sitting comfortably against the arm of the sofa and the two boys were arranged in front of you.

“Donghyuck, since you love using that mouth of yours so much, how about you make her feel good?”

The younger smirked, sending a flying kiss to Mark. “I’d love to.”

He laid down between your legs and sucked at your thighs as he took your shorts off. “Commando?” His eyebrows were raised in amazement.

“You didn’t notice earlier?”

“No, I was too busy processing that this is real.”

He didn’t waste any more time in speaking and dove right into your pussy, lapping up all your leaking juices and practically making out with your lower lips. His eyes didn’t dare leave yours, watching as you writhed beneath him.

Mark took the boy’s pants off and grabbed his hard-on, giving a quick twist of his wrists and beginning to jerk him off at a steady tempo while doing the same to himself.

The three of you were quickly lost in your own ecstasy, feeling the long-awaited tension begin to crash down rather quickly.

Donghyuck was the first to cum, lifting his chin to rest against your lower stomach as he moaned and painted the sofas with ropes of his cum as Mark helped him to finish. He lazily slipped two fingers in you to finish you off and you came soon after, seeing white spots dancing in your vision. Mark was the last to follow, crying out both of your names and collapsing on top of you.

“That was really good.”

You weren’t sure who spoke up first, but you agreed with it wholeheartedly. That was the most mind blowing experience you ever had and you were pretty sure that you would be alright with it becoming a reoccurring experience.

Hyuck seemed to agree as he brushed your hair gently, moving upward to kiss both you and Mark on the lips. “So...uhm, what are we now? We went this far.”

Mark chuckled nervously. “Oh, hehe. That’s a deep question.”

“Not as deep as his fingers,” you jumped in. The ‘innocent’ boy looked mortified at your reference and the other high-fived you mischievously. “But seriously, I’d be happy if we could take this further than just friends. It’s about time.”

“Yeah. You’re right. But would we be a polyamorous couple then?” Mark posed the question, but he looked too tired to think about the proper semantics.

You heard a mumble from beside you. “We can figure that out later. But I like both of you guys and I’m pretty sure all of this is reciprocated. So what are we waiting for?”

“I guess you’re right. This could be the start of our new chapter then?”

Mark nodded. “I love you two so much. But Donghyuck if you ever hurt her…”

The threat lingered in the air as he laughed it off and cuddled you tightly to prove his genuine affection. “Never~”

______________________

You weren’t sure when you had knocked out, but you were relieved to know that you had been cleaned up and placed in your bed. Mark and Donghyuck were laying on either side of you, snoring comfortably looking as if they were in bliss. And you quickly realized that you would be content seeing this tranquil sight every day of your life if it meant you’d be with the boys that you loved.

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forestwound6 · 4 years ago

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Exactly How Will Creating Solutions Can Aid You With Your Estate.

Exactly How To Locate The Most Effective Will Composing Service.

Content

Wills, Count On & Probate.

Should You Utilize A Will Creating Service?

We Are Companions Or Married What Are Mirror Wills?

Use Our Wills Organizer Device

In addition to solicitors, voluntary organisations such as Age NI can also aid with your will. Although it is possible to compose a will by yourself, it is suggested to use a solicitor as there are various lawful procedures you require to comply with to make sure that your will is valid. A lawyer can likewise encourage you concerning exactly how Inheritance Tax impacts you. An executor can likewise be a professional person, such as your solicitor.

If you die without a valid will, it could be difficult for your family to sort out your events. Your estate will be shared out according to the guidelines of intestacy. Under these rules, only married companions, civil partners and certain close relatives can inherit your estate. We have actually just automated an age old process followed by lawyers preparing Wills around England & Wales. This allows us to provide you with a totally legal paper at a substantially lower cost in a short amount of time.

Wills, Depend On & Probate.

Many people fret about the validity of making a will without making use of a lawyer. However, supplied the Will is appropriately worded, authorized as well as seen it is a completely legal file no matter that composed it. Therefore our will service allows you to make a flawlessly legal will without going to a solicitor. Join mailing list Join newsletter to receive info and updates from us concerning our products and services. You can unsubscribe from our e-mails at any moment utilizing the unsubscribe link supplied in the e-mails that are sent to you. If you are considering transferring your property right into someone else's name, please call us for suggestions.

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We supply custom legal solutions to areas from our offices in Nottingham, Peterborough, Spalding, AlconburyandBirmingham. If you've been called the Administrator of a Will, after that your duty to recognize the properties of the estate, pay funeral service costs, pay Inheritance Tax, settle any type of debts, and disperse inheritance to the Recipients. This means that if you do not make a brand-new will, if you die after that the rules of intestacy will dictate just how your money and properties are separated. For estates valued under ₤ 250,000, your new spouse or civil partner will obtain everything. For estates over ₤ 250,000, your spouse will get ₤ 250,000 and also your personal belongings; the remainder will after that be split similarly in between your spouse and children. A solicitor may have the ability to visit you in your own residence, care home or medical facility. The price of writing up a will can range solicitors and also will rely on exactly how challenging your affairs may be and the experience of the lawyer.

Should You Make Use Of A Will Creating Service?

Our will-writing solution entails us listening to you and after that creating a will which shows your individual circumstances and also wishes. When you have actually spoken in depth to one of our group, we will make sure that your assets are passed to your picked recipients on your fatality.

Reduce tax-- You can make sure any estate tax allocations that might apply to you are fully made use of to keep the tax obligation payable on your estate to a minimum or avoid it entirely, decreasing the lots for those who inherit. As well as discussing any type of new steps we have put in place for those self-isolating to assist mitigate the danger of increased infection and to allow us to still supply a service customarily solution. Whilst a lawyer isn't needed to compose a Will, they are of course specialists in ensuring the legality of such documents. Utilizing the know-how of a solicitor, specifically if the estate is intricate, can assist ensure that it is simpler to translate and also carry out when the time comes. Online Will-writing services make the process of composing a Will easier and also faster than ever. In many cases all you need to do is enter your details online, address some vital concerns on-line or over-the-phone, and their group will then help you to craft a Will from the convenience of your own residence. The people that will be in charge of carrying out the deceased's wishes as laid out in the Will, paying any type of taxes and guaranteeing that the estate is provided based on the regulation.

If you do not really feel comfortable making a Will by yourself, you have different options. You can make use of a lawyer, or for example, an on-line Will-writing service. If you do not leave a legitimate Will, after that that acquires will be determined by the government's guidelines of intestacy. This lays out specifically who will inherit based on the value of your estate, whether you are wed or in a civil collaboration, whether you have children and what other relatives you have. Our Will lawyers will more than happy to review the likely expenses involved in making your Will over the phone or by e-mail.

Supply you with tailored recommendations consisting of estate tax planning if needed. Fairly merely, if you do not make a Will the legislation claims who acquires your estate. Your estate may pass to the person or persons you would certainly not want to acquire.

We Are Companions Or Married What Are Mirror Wills?

https://earley.directwillstrusts.co.uk/ will offer a potential inheritance tax limit of ₤ 1 million for couples by 2020/21, however the nil-rate band progressively lowers for estates with a value of over ₤ 2 million. Land and structures, specifically, are most likely to be reliant regional estate tax in the nation where they are located. International inheritance tax can be punitively high, particularly if your recipients are not member of the family. What you must stay clear of doing, under any kind of scenarios, is creating on the original will. That can produce issues and may revoke the will totally.

Conversely, the people you have actually selected as executors may choose to ask a solicitor to assist with the administration of the estate. Your companion may be able to assert some of your assets if they are in requirement or were monetarily depending on you. Yet to guarantee that your companion inherits, a will is necessary. Also if you have no family members, your estate will pass to the Crown instead of to your partner. If you have assets of much less than ₤ 250,000, and also die intestate, after that your spouse or civil partner will be entitled to the entire of your estate. Get vital lawful updates, information and opinion sent to you directly from our lawyers. reportedly used might additionally ask us how estate tax jobs as well as about intending to cover your future care needs as well as exactly how to safeguard your family in case of separation, bankruptcy or handicap.

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If you were to draft your very own Will and also after your fatality this were discovered to be void, it could have devastating consequences for individuals you leave. It will likewise make issues much easier for your family and friends, when needing to handle your estate. You can determine that you would like to be in charge of providing your estate once you have died, this person will be your Administrator. This need to be someone you can trust implicitly for instance a relative, buddy or solicitor. Normally, if you are one of 2 joint proprietors, you are dealt with as having half, if one of three, a 3rd, etc

. Since will writers newbury , your personal home will benefit from a transferable nil-rate band when it is passed to a 'direct descendant' (consisting of step-children). The allocation is being phased in and will deserve ₤ 175,000 by 2020/21.

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It may cause monetary difficulty for your enjoyed ones or an expensive court action. or fill in our on-line get in touch with type as well as we will come back in touch for a confidential discussion. Our team of lawyers can also supply advice on a large range of Trust, Wills and also Probate problems such as Lasting Power of Attorney, need to the most awful occur. A relied on coworker recommended we call Mogers Drewett to ensure that any type of decision we made would be legally appropriate. We were consulted with compassion for the scenario that we were in as well as likewise used wonderful suggest with what was a rapidly changing situation for individuals and organizations alike, as well as without genuine priority to adhere to. We had excellent suggestions from Sean and also Lucy and also all managed really successfully by Annie. Communication was excellent throughout and inevitably led us to be able to make the right choice for our requirements as well as also supported with all the lawful lingo we simply could not have actually perhaps understood.

Our People.

If you utilize a solicitor for this solution, you'll need to pay a charge. Making a will without utilizing a lawyer can cause blunders or something not being clear, especially if you have a number of beneficiaries or your finances are made complex. Your executor will need to iron out any kind of errors and also might have to pay legal prices.

Do credit card debts die with you?

When someone dies, it's not true that any credit card debts are automatically written off. Instead, any individual debts must be paid using the money the deceased has left behind. Only if there isn't enough money in the Estate may the debt be written off.

I would certainly not hesitate to advise Mogers to any person I come into contact with in the future and also will certainly associate with them once more. Thank you significantly for you and also your team's exceptional work and also professionalism and reliability, in handling as well as progressing the sale, which has all gone extremely efficiently. This is clearly why my moms and dads used your solutions when they were able to manage their own events.

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You can likewise have a look at our rates for more general details regarding our lawful charges. Sometimes, we can provide a taken care of cost Will creating service for straightforward estates, giving you assurance over the prices included. Theoretically, you can make a Will yourself, sometimes described as a 'DIY Will' and also there are numerous Will templates on-line that individuals in some cases utilize when doing this. However, you are taking a considerable threat by not having the guidance of a lawful expert when making your Will.

Before the preparing occurs, our Wills lawyers make the effort to obtain a comprehensive understanding of your individual situation, from your family history to your individual requirements. That way, you can guarantee that your Will enshrines your accurate wishes which these will be performed word for word after you have died. With a lot at risk, it makes sense to pick an established solicitor you can depend prioritise your interests. At Pickering & Butters, our group of Wills lawyers are dedicated to aiding our customers via the procedure of Will creating, functioning diligently but successfully to guarantee no stone is left unturned. Whether this is because of a misconception of the regulation, evasion of the subject matter, or simply easy laziness, stopping working to make a Will can trigger a lot of problems. Not only can an absence of correct estate preparation wind up costing relative and various other prospective beneficiaries their inheritance, it can additionally cause unneeded conflict in between your enjoyed ones after you are gone.

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louisishj334 · 4 years ago

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How to lose $1 million and risk it all again

When Abbas Dayekh was 18 several years aged, he walked confidently to the reception of Sussex Location, London Enterprise University’s primary campus, and asked: “Where can I enrol?” Safety advised him he would have to wait a several years. Dayekh was in the wrong spot. He was in search of Regent’s University London, exactly where his parents experienced sent him to check a BA (Hons) in Worldwide Enterprise with French. Dayekh, ethnically Lebanese, is from Nigeria, the grandson of the textiles’ industrialist. He was sent to the united kingdom to achieve knowledge, then return and insert benefit inside the loved ones business.

Dayekh, CEO and founder of OyaNow, an application-primarily based shipping and delivery service in Nigeria, chuckles within the memory. It’s not the first time he has taken a detour in his life, and it possibly was one of many additional pleasant – and less expensive - events. With no doubt, one of the most tricky was having to notify his mom he experienced shed all her price savings – about $600,000 – that she invested in him to put in place a Beirut branch of distinctive Parisian couture model CLVII in 2012. “It absolutely was a buddy’s store. The purchasers are certainly top quality; elite footballers and these kinds of. It’s obtained a particular image.

“I ran CLVII notion capital for about a year, and afterwards the Syrian civil war escalated. Bombs started heading off in Beirut. The Saudis and Emirati holidaymakers – my buyers – they went household and didn’t return. I used to be trapped with a great deal of expensive couture and no funds”

I ran CLVII for around a year, and afterwards the Syrian civil war escalated. Bombs started off going off in Beirut. The Saudis and Emirati travellers – my prospects – they went residence and didn’t come back. I was stuck which has a large amount of pricey couture and no dollars. Involving my mom’s price savings, a buddy’s financial commitment of about $two hundred,000 and the money I’d expended in that two-year period, I’d managed to lose $one million.

‘Not a tech dude’

While Dayekh, from Kano in Nigeria’s northern province, felt upset that he’d Enable down his mom, his initial – and biggest – entrepreneurial flop did nothing at all to dampen his enthusiasm for the entrepreneurial route and his zeal to triumph. In actual fact, he reflects that it spurred him on to at some point found OyaNow, an application-primarily based logistics enterprise aiding enterprises to achieve Nigeria’s progressively related populace of just about 200 million by trustworthy and rapidly previous-mile shipping and delivery.

This Regardless of the simple fact Dayekh promises to generally be “by no means a tech man”. He laughs: “I'm able to’t code.” Dayekh has gained the Persons’s Decision Award while in the George Bernard Shaw Unreasonable Individual category at this calendar year’s Serious Innovation Awards (RIA) in recognition of his dogged perseverance to succeed Even with there becoming no fantastic rationale that he should really.

When he had The theory for OyaNow, he was pretty much broke, acquiring returned from Shanghai the place for 9 months he had been performing being an outsourcing broker for just a number of Nigerian clientele he’d managed to secure. “They had been tiny contracts and Therefore the Fee was little,” he claims. “I had return to Abuja for being with my mom and determine what I had been gonna do with my life. I barely experienced any revenue, but I nonetheless realized I used to be about to do my own factor.”

It transpired to him that buyer self esteem in Nigeria was zero. “There was no rely on in the market in Nigeria and not Considerably purchaser treatment possibly. I thought of the accomplishment of foods shipping expert services in Europe and The us like Deliveroo and Uber Eats. Nigeria is probably one of many final nations around the world on this planet with such a big inhabitants that remains so underdeveloped. I observed that hole as a huge possibility.”

But who was about to buy the coders? And to the bikes? In fact – this was Africa, not Europe. Banks don’t give financial loans to people with no property. Dayekh was fortuitous to have a network of Intercontinental experts and traders he cultivated from having long gone to one of the better boarding schools in the world in Switzerland. A friend came by with a few seed income Which paid out for creating the app and the main motorbikes.

Ideal time, right solution, proper place

“I realized This may be a really diverse proposition from Deliveroo and Uber Eats. For 1, we would want to supply total pastoral care to our riders – whom we contact Entrepreneurs – mainly because they could be coming from all around the country. We would have to give them a destination to Are living. They would be the brand. I needed to be sure that I did all the things I could to empower them for being entirely engaged in OyaNow and assist the manufacturer to accomplish its key performance indicators of reliability, usefulness and high quality of assistance usually.

“My uncles felt I were born which has a silver spoon in my mouth Which I'd volume to nothing exterior the relatives small business. I'd a burning desire to establish them Improper and clearly show the entire world I could allow it to be by myself”

OyaNow is definitely an abbreviation of the phrase indicating “we've been coming” in Nigerian slang English. It really is widely recognized throughout ethnic teams and tribes and was a great match with the operating product and to the cultural context. It soft released in Abuja, in advance of launching in Kano after which Lagos.

Starting up off to be a foods shipping service about 3 many years ago, OyaNow obtained an sudden fillip within the Covid-19 pandemic which noticed desire for its very last-mile supply provider go with the roof. Now, it delivers Pretty much anything at all that may be shipped and OyaNow has business associations with lots of factories across the country.

The organization now has about eighty five bikes and vans as well as other vehicles, microinvestors which is eyeing the subsequent stage of enlargement in other nations in Africa, but Dayekh can’t say too a great deal more at this time. The serial innovator also has enterprise passions in medical marijuana and hemp in Malawi by way of a Swiss-based startup called House Africa. Previously this yr, Malawi legalised the expanding, promoting and exporting of cannabis for professional medical use.

“Winning this award – the George Bernard Shaw Unreasonable Individual Award – I love it! It pleases me in excess of if I had been to generally be manufactured President of America! It appears that evidently I do new points on a regular basis. But, the truth is, there is a pattern. Africa is often a tough area to know if You aren't from listed here. Western organizations see likely during the economies here but are nervous to generate a transfer due to perception of danger and a lack of certainty.

I've realised that I may be that bridge that inbound links Africa With all the West. It is a fairly distinctive situation to be in and I am just getting started.”

six tips about entrepreneurship from OyaNow founder Abbas Dayekh

Being an entrepreneur seriously isn’t straightforward. You require conviction and dedication. It’s probably a cliche but You can not succeed devoid of it. It’s a lonely highway. You may get dangers. You will upset the established order, and people don’t like that. Men and women like it any time you fall short. Personally, when I turn into devoted to a thing, no one can cease me.

The most important enterprise lesson I've discovered was the four Ps: value, products, promotion and spot. They're the key elements for achievement. OyaNow delivers all 4 together beautifully.

Failure is Studying and almost nothing to become ashamed of. Be honest with your self about what went Mistaken and go forward, striving not to generate precisely the same mistakes once more.

Entrepreneurship can be difficult on your own mental health and fitness. You can find every day considerations about cashflow, and regardless of whether you'll have enough funds to pay your charges; to pay your employees. Even now, I put up with panic assaults. It might be very difficult to repeatedly need to project a façade of strength for your personnel, buyers and the market when deep down you don’t know wherever your following tranche of cash will originate from to maintain heading. Be sincere with oneself about whether or not you can handle this strain.

Any time you expand, empower your personnel. They can be your small business. They will be the distinction between accomplishment and failure ultimately. Be humble as a pacesetter and hear your staff. Apologise for the mistakes. They must invest in into your eyesight. Empower them to co-create that eyesight mainly because it evolves.

Use a disproportionate number of Gals in the management staff. Females tend to be a lot less self-centred and aggressive. Coming from the patriarchal household business enterprise dominated by warring factions, I wish to be surrounded by Girls, who often carry balance and direct for your greater great rather then individual acquire.

The Real Innovation Awards is undoubtedly an once-a-year ceremony celebrating business innovation all over the world, hosted via the London Business Faculty’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE). To determine this year’s celebration occurring on ten December 2020 and hear insights on ‘Innovating in Adversity’ sign up below.

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#Passion Capital #Venture Capital #VC london

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rafespeaks · 5 years ago

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Pokémon Sword and Shield, From the Eyes of a Veteran (Critique)

I want to preface this by saying I have been playing Pokemon since before I can remember. It has been a staple of my childhood since day one and is an incredibly important franchise to me. I have nothing but love for it, and I wish the franchise success and a long life far into the future. That being said... I have some big issues with this latest generation. Big enough that I’m writing out my thoughts for everyone to see for the first time.

As a note, I am not a competitive player, nor do I think I ever will be. I don’t have the patience or technical mind to focus on all the finite mechanics and breed the statistical ‘very-best’ Pokemon out there. As such, I will not be focusing on those aspects (or at least not nearly as heavily as others might).

Now, let’s begin.

As a starting point, let’s start where Nintendo always does when introducing a new region and generation

The Pokémon

Every new generation of Pokemon comes with brand-new creatures for everyone to love. However, some generations just have... more than others. The original games had 151 Pokemon total to catch, collect, and love. And from there, more were added. Here’s the count:

Johto: 100 Hoenn: 135 Sinnoh: 107 Unova: 156 Kalos: 72 Alola: 88 Galar: 81

This is not accounting for the new Pokemon introduced in Galar’s DLC, as that has yet to come out, or old Pokemon that were given a Mega Evolution or regional variant. Kalos added 30 Mega Evolutions, plus an additional 20 from ORAS. Alola added 18 regional variants, and Galar added 13 of their own (not counting the DLC Slowpoke) plus 24 Gigantimax forms (25 if you count Flapple & Appletun as separate, and 26 with Melmetal).

Numbers-wise, Galar did... okay. Not great. But okay. It still passed up Kalos, at the very least, which was a huge point of contention among fans when gen 6 came out. However, if I had to sum up my feelings towards the new Pokemon I could do it easily with one phrase: they’re very ‘hit-or-miss’. And while new Pokemon that I don’t care for tend to grow on me over time, there’s just one problem with that. They can’t grow on me if I don’t ever see them.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with old Pokemon being in the new games. In fact that’s something I love! But when you want the players to connect with the new being introduced, you have to give them a chance to do so.

This was the first region in what felt like ages where I went in without a plan of what I wanted on my team. Typically, I go with a simple, easy-to-follow formula. Grass, Fire, and Water take up three slots. Add in a Flying-type, as Water and Flying were highly important for transportation in earlier games. And for coverage, the last two spots go to Electric and Ground or Rock. Anything else, I try to cover for with getting as many dual-types as possible. Simple. Effective. Tried and true.

However, after choosing Scorbunny as my starter, I encountered a problem. There are only two Grass-types to choose from, and neither are particularly good for my strategy. Eldegoss, which I ended up going with, is a pure Grass-type and can ONLY learn Grass-type damaging attacks, unless you want to track down the single Bug-type TR it can learn, or use one of the few compatible Normal-type TMs/TRs.

The second Grass-type is Applin. And while both evolutions have better type coverage, there are still problems. One, Applin on its own is pretty bad. The only moves it knows when caught fresh from the wild are Withdraw and Astonish. While that isn’t too horrible in and of itself, the fact that its evolutionary item can only be obtained near the end of the game makes it a horrible choice. Since I was about to take on Nessa and had no access to this item, I was forced to either choose Eldegoss or something from a previous generation. And since I was trying to use all-new Pokemon, Eldegoss it was. (Though on the upside, I realized it had plenty of potential to be a competitive wall.) Now, if you are intent on getting a Flapple or Appletun, you can persevere and evolve one. Now you have your grass dragon! Great! Except... its level-up moveset is pretty bad to begin with... You will have to dedicate a lot of time to training or hunting down TMs and TRs to make up for this seemingly MASSIVE oversight.

This is just one example, of course. And while coverage isn’t particularly BAD considering all the old Pokemon included, it could be much better.

Continuing on from this topic is another that has had a lot of fans, including me, up in arms.

The Pokédex

Dexit.

Nearly 900 Pokemon, cut SEVERELY down to 400. It’s unprecedented. It’s unfair to the fans of cut Pokemon, completionists, and old players waiting on transferring all their partners from previous games. Frankly, it sucks. And I think every Pokemon fan can agree, no matter the reason.

While some similar things to this have happened before, it has never been this bad. Unova did it right - the only Pokemon available to the player through the main story of Black and White were the newly introduced ones. After defeating the Elite Four, finishing the game, and the credits are done rolling however, all previous Pokemon were welcome in the region once more. Alola didn’t exclude any older Pokemon, but for the first time in any Pokemon game, we did not get a National ‘Dex. Even so, the Pokemon unavailable natively in Alola were still transferable and usable in the new generation. And while it was a bit disappointing not to get any new entries for some old favorites, it was understandable. Coming up with new world lore is hard work!

Nintendo said that all these Pokemon were cut due to time constraints and limitations with the memory. Unfortunately, these are issues that could be fixed easily, which just... weren’t. Sword and Shield could have gone the same route that Zelda: Breath of the Wild did and simply extended production time. As Shigeru Miyamoto once said, “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” And it shows in Sword and Shield in so many ways.

The memory limitations is, honestly, just a bad lie in my personal opinion. This opinion is only proven to me by the DLC reintroducing over 200 Pokemon from prior games. It’s not that Nintendo couldn’t - it’s that they didn’t give themselves the time. I had hoped for free updates in the future to remedy this, and that’s what’s happening. But not in a good way. (They also cut a plethora of Pokemon moves, which was also heavily disappointing, but the loss there couldn’t be felt nearly as much as over half of the total Pokemon being straight-up unavailable. Every one of those is someone’s favorite!)

Even if the memory WAS an issue, there are so many things that were, ultimately, unnecessary to me that they could have done without. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Dexit aside, there’s another issue that needs to be addressed with the Pokedex that I’ve touched on already - distribution of Pokemon. There’s just... way too many, way too fast, and not enough of the new Galar Pokemon to go around. I am a Player who takes the famous tagline ‘gotta catch ‘em all’ fairly seriously. As I progress through the game, I am always compelled to search for every Pokemon on a route and catch, at the very least, the basic form of that Pokemon. While I haven’t managed to complete the Pokedex on my own or build a Living ‘Dex yet, those are both major goals I have.

However, shortly after first stepping into the Wild Area, I was overwhelmed. Too many Pokemon were coming my way, with too many variations in weather meaning it would take ages to catch all the Pokemon available to me in a route before moving forward in the story. While the Wild Area is a marvel, fun to explore, and an amazing way to experience Pokemon, it’s all just too much to throw at you in one huge chunk. Plus, there’s one very annoying, very artificial limitation that just feels completely out of place in a game that traditionally has had nothing quite like this. The Pokemon-catching level cap.

Now, level caps have been talked about among fans of the series, especially those that would like a sort of ‘hard mode’. This is not what they were talking about. Level caps have been used in previous games to prevent a player from transferring or trading overpowered Pokemon to the game and breezing through it as fast as possible. If you don’t have enough badges, the Pokemon will not listen to you, and you’ll be out of luck until you progress. Fans have suggested extending this level cap to all Pokemon, so that potentially even your starter will refuse to listen once it’s too strong. Personally, I wouldn’t enjoy such a change. But that’s why it’s only really suggested for a hard mode.

The way this level cap was implemented, however, was just... bad... I understand why it was done, but it can be put into practice SO much easier with one simple fix - utilizing Routes like previous generations did and closing off the higher-level areas to the player until they have progressed appropriately.

And that brings me to my next talking point.

Routes VS the Wild Area

Pokemon routes have always been included in every game, from the very beginning. They are the segue between towns, holding new Pokemon for you to battle and catch, the majority of free items to be found across the world, and a good few trainers to pit your team against once you’ve gotten past the first little chunk of story. To put it simply, routes are necessary. Without them, all the different towns would be one huge city, and specifically in Sword and Shield, there would be nowhere but the Wild Area to catch Pokemon.

That being said, the routes throughout Galar are... pretty tiny. I’d even say pitiful. What’s more, it seems that most of them have a short, straight path forward that discourages exploration and bettering yourself through battles with wild Pokemon and trainers. Sure, there’s the occasional arbitrary blockade that will force you to take the long way around, but once that’s done with, there’s nothing else to keep your interest. Glimwood Tangle in particular made me realize how far back they cut the routes. There was so much potential to make a sprawling forest out of it, and they just... didn’t. It was tiny. I wanted more, but they left it lacking in so much.

There’s an easy solution to this - making the Routes into mini Wild Areas. And, to accommodate all these huge routes, CUT BACK THE WILD AREA. Trust me - it needs to be smaller. This fixes the Pokemon distribution, the level cap issues, and the tiny routes all in one fell swoop. Instead of having one massive area with a bunch of sub-areas, have each route be bigger, with two to three sub-areas. The balance will make it much more impressive in the long run.

Speaking of balance, let’s talk about how this affected the pacing of the game. Even when I was taking my time, it felt like I was always rushing, rushing, rushing on to the next town. Not to mention, there are far too many options in the story to let you skip over backtracking through a route you’ve already been through. I’ve just finished taking on Milo. I blink. I’m standing in the Pokemon center the next town over, prepping for Nessa’s gym. I just defeated Bea. I blink. Now I’m about to take on Opal. The only time I got a little time to breathe was when I had to travel through the Wild Area to get to the next town. And then it was all just so expansive that I... didn’t want to go back to the story. There were items everywhere. There were Pokemon to catch. I wasn’t done here - I had to explore. I had to find everything. Do all I could. Because that’s what you do in a route, right? You explore and find all the goodies to help you on your journey. So what comes after...?

The Towns

While the towns are gorgeous and each have their own charm, they all feel... almost empty.

Compare to previous games, and it’s obvious to see. Many buildings don’t allow you to go inside and explore. There is a distinct lack of NPCs. And the ‘big’ cities are decidedly small as a result.

Just take a look at Castelia City and Lumiose City. Both are huge, compared to the rest of the locations in the games. They have many buildings, many NPCs to fill them... People needed a map to avoid getting lost in Lumiose! Even in cities that are smaller scale-wise, such as in Alola, they never feel empty. There are plenty of places to go, people to talk to, and things to explore or interact with. You find new things all the time.

Meanwhile in Galar, the only things that seem to give the towns any purpose are the Pokemon gyms. And that is a massive shame. Especially when in prior games, there have been places I will make my way to, just to sit there and take in every little detail of the location, or where I’ll talk to every NPC and soak up all the lore. I go back to murals and statues and unique buildings. I go back to puzzles and the homes of legendary Pokemon. I go back to enjoy the things I’ve seen in a new light and reminisce about my journey. But in Galar... there seems to be very little to reminisce about.

The Story

This is the biggest disappointment for me. If all the rest of the game were awful, as long as the story is good, I can overlook it. As long as the story is good, I can enjoy any game.

This story was not good.

As far as Pokemon stories go, they aren’t all complex, nuanced narratives. In the first games, you fight Team Rocket, who are just in it for the money. In Johto, it’s the same thing, with the addition of a rival that has a touching change of heart in the end. Things get a bit bigger in Hoenn, where the world-ending plots officially start in the form of weather crises caused by Team Aqua and Team Magma. In Sinnoh, the entire universe is threatened when Team Galactic aims to remake the world in their image. In Unova, the morals of you and the rest of the Pokemon world are called into question by PETA-- I mean Team Plasma. In Kalos... rich people want to kill the unworthy poor...? Yeah, I didn’t really get that story much either. And in Alola, you deal with alternate dimension aliens running amok. Safe to say things got quite a bit bigger as time went on.

Now we’re in Galar. Something’s going to happen. Something always happens. But when? How?

We get hints about the Darkest Day. Dynamaxing is still very new and not much is known about it. Sonia is looking into the legendary hero(s) that stopped the Darkest Day. But where’s the evil team? What’s their motivation? Where’s the action? The buildup?? Bede mentions he’s collecting Wishing Stars. Why??? We get to Hammerlocke and learn that the Wishing Stars are for the Chairman. But again, why? He mentions a problem has been bothering Rose concerning all Galar, but it’s such a brief moment that it’s easily dismissed. Where’s the action, or the stakes? Nothing has happened yet except we’re being pushed through the gym challenge as fast as possible.

Fourth gym. No sign of any real trouble yet. Except that jerk Bede just vandalized an ancient mural, just because... he wanted to? Yeah, he’s trying to find Wishing Stars, but literally NO ONE told him to make a spectacle of himself and ruin a piece of history in the process. We’re getting more hints about the past and Galar’s history, but nothing solid on what we’re supposed to be doing. Besides the gyms. EVERYTHING is about the gyms... Oh, and apparently Oleana is the one who asked Bede to collect Wishing Stars. Whatever. What does that have to do with anything?

Five gyms in now, and... Ka-BOOM!

FINALLY!!! Some ACTION!!! Something’s happening at the Power Plant, and Sonia’s detecting a Power Spot! Alright, let’s go! I’m finally going to be able to DO something! I’ll finally be able to see what’s going on and--

“You should leave the investigation on the quaking to the adults. Head to Circhester and get that Gym Badge!”

... What... No! No, I refuse! There must be something to see, even if it’s just Sonia, Leon, and the Chairman standing around after things have already been sorted out. I can talk to them and get a little dialogue on what’s going on! Except they aren’t anywhere to be found. No one around the gym, no one by the Power Plant door, nothing.

Sixth gym. More lore. Seventh gym. Heading out towards Raihan and BOOM! Trouble on Route 9! Leon’s here! NPC says I should go help! Heck yes, I will! It’s about time I got some action out here, it’s almost the end of the game!

Run outside, there’s Leon! And... he dismisses you. Again. Says ‘nope, I’ve got this, gym gym gym, see you!’

No way am I taking that laying down. I’m right on his heels - I should at least be able to see him battling or something, right? But no. In the seconds it takes to run after him, Leon has beaten the threat, he’s gone, and now Hop is waving a news article about the debacle in your face, complete with picture! How the hell did all that happen so fast?! It takes time to write something like that up, never mind the time it must have taken to battle the Dynamaxed Pokemon that Leon faced!

The game is almost over, and what little action you could have seen has been blocked from you because you are a child. And I understand, from a moral perspective, that this is what any sane adult would say to a child. But from a story perspective it is a horribly bad writing choice. It gives you a little taste of the story, a tiny hint at what’s going on, and yanks any real explanation away from you until the very end, where you’re floored by everything happening all at once. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Finally, Professor Magnolia mentions that the issue the Chairman is worried about is the future of Galar’s energy. But... why? We have seen no hints of a problem with that throughout the entire game. No mention of shortages. Nothing about global warming or sustainability. It seems there’s exactly zero reason for anyone to worry, much less turn this into a huge issue that needs to be addressed. It’s one thing if a crisis is there and people are ignoring it. It’s another matter entirely if there is no crisis whatsoever to be seen, even if you look for it. And even if there was any sort of issue, Leon once again tells you to do nothing. Nothing at all.

Eighth gym. On to the Championships. Blah blah, tiny snow route, nothing even remotely close to a Victory Road... In Wyndon now. Still bubcus about an evil team or anything that you can actually DO something about. The Semifinals happen. Leon goes missing.

Suddenly, you’re thrown into a situation you know nothing about to save this miserable dope. And when you get to him... he doesn’t even need any saving! He’s just having a pleasant chat with this jerk! Drag his butt out of there, then the Finals happen. Now you’re gearing up to face Leon himself. Only to be stopped by Rose SUMMONING ARMAGEDDON TO SOLVE A NONEXISTENT ENERGY CRISIS HE SEEMINGLY MADE UP.........

It makes no sense whatsoever. And unlike in Unova, where the interruption to your Elite Four challenge made sense, these TWO interruptions did not. Leon even promised to help Rose after he finished his Championship match against you! Why couldn’t Rose wait a single day? Or even a few hours? ... I digress.

Anyway, Rose awakens Eternatus, who is the source of Dynamax energy. (Necrozma & Totem Pokemon vibes much?) Leon goes up to capture it, just as Rose planned, and gets his butt kicked, not as planned. Meanwhile, the player and Hop made themselves useful for once, went to find the Sword and Shield from legend, and used them to call Zacian and Zamazenta. Together, all four of you defeat Eternatus! Yaaay for yooouuu!!!

...

Oh. And you finally have that Championship battle. Get that win squared away. Finally, but also way too soon, the credits role.

Perhaps I may have been a bit harsh about the story. But with very little to make up for it, I feel justified in everything I’ve said here. But I’m still not done. After all, a story can’t have no one helping the protagonist along. Or hindering them. Severely.

The Characters

Unfortunately, many of the characters were just as bad as the story. However, for the most part, it doesn’t entirely seem like their fault. There just wasn’t enough time spent on them, or the writers handled them poorly.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Hop

He’s a friendly rival. Okay, I can get behind that. But he’s also very self-absorbed throughout the entire story. Why are you even friends with him? He doesn’t once talk to you about anything other than how he’s going to be the next Champion. He cheers you on occasionally, but it’s always overshadowed by him harping on the same things over and over again - his brother is The Best and he will defeat him to become The New Best.

Many people say Hop is very much like Hau. I say that’s an insult to Hau. Hau is a laid-back free spirit who’s only goal starting out is to have fun with his Pokemon. He supports you and gives you items along the way because that’s just his nature. He’s a true friend. And when things get a bit tougher, he realizes he needs to step up and take things seriously if he wants to protect the ones he cares about. So he does.

In my opinion, Hop is more like Green in his approach to you, except a bit more friendly. In fact... I’d say he’s MOST like the Diamond/Pearl/Platinum rival, Barry. They’re both braggarts, self-absorbed, and constantly, casually putting you down even though you’re clearly better than them. Long story short, Hop is infinitely annoying like Barry is annoying. I was shocked at myself for how eager I was to beat Hop evey time, and how uncaring I was when Bede crushed his spirit. Hop’s mopiness and woe-is-me attitude felt very forced, especially since he was always smiling and still constantly talked about how he was going to beat you and Leon both.

Not to mention how his story ultimately ended... But I’ll get to that a little later.

Leon

For as annoying as Hop is, Leon is ten times worse. I can see where Hop got all those self-absorbed tendencies. He strikes a dumb pose every five seconds, goes on about how great and undefeated he is, constantly basks in the attention of his fans... Not an ounce of humility or humbleness in this man. Not to mention, he pretty much abandoned Sonia during their journey together. I couldn’t wait to ruin his whole career. But if there’s one positive thing I can say about him, it’s that his team is legitimately tough. Mostly that demon Charizard.

Sonia

She’s nice enough, and it’s pretty neat to see her on her journey to becoming a full-fledged Professor. But her progression to that ultimate payoff seems pretty rushed, probably because the rest of the story is rushed. Also, she consults with you about many of the legends she digs up, and the dialogue choices ultimately mean YOU are drawing the conclusions while SHE just agrees with them. By all rights, I should be the Professor in this game!

Marnie

Honestly, I don’t have a strong reaction about Marnie either way. She just seems a bit subdued, we don’t see her very much, and there’s no real character arc that we get to see her go through. She’s the same as when we first saw her, only now she knows she’s not going to be the Champion, because you are.

Bede

He’s a little jerk. And honestly? I love little jerks. But only if they’re done right.

Green was a jerk rival that was done right. He didn’t see the error of his ways throughout the entire game. However, come the Johto arc, he is now a gym leader, realizes he was treating his Pokemon poorly, and it’s implied he regrets his harshness towards Red.

Silver was another done right. He was a jerk from the very start, and a thief to boot. He hated you, and Team Rocket, and... all the world really. But as the game progressed, he came to realize that he needed to be kind. And by the end of the game, he has a Crobat. While his abrasive personality is still there, he respects you, and realizes you were right.

Bede, on the other hand, was pushed through the plot. First, he was working his hardest for the sake of the Chairman. Then when he was forsaken, hurt, and lost for a purpose... he wasn’t allowed to find his way himself. Instead, Opal snatched him away and demanded that he become the next Fairy-type gym leader. She even went so far as to force him to change his type preference! What happened to Gothorita and Duosion?! (Don’t get me wrong, I love Opal as a character. She’s probably my favorite out of everyone. But still...)

Bede should have come into his own by his own choice. And since he didn’t, the change seems like it... wasn’t a change at all. He’s still harsh towards you and others, and the respect he says he has for you seems insincere.

Piers

Unlike the rest of the gym leaders, Piers takes a slightly more active role in the plot once the ball FINALLY gets rolling. So I figured I’d talk about him, too. Piers seems... a lot like Nanu. Like A LOT. And that doesn’t really seem to fit with his rocker look or job. He just seems depressed and like he doesn’t want to be here. At least he’s a fairly responsible brother, always making sure Marnie is safe. I never did get past that hair though... Never liked it. But I seem to be in the minority there.

Oleana

She’s just... She seems like a Rose-obsessed Lusamine, instead of Ultra Beast-obsessed. Except her manipulation of children is more subtle. Honestly, I can see her being a formidable villain, and actually a much bigger threat than Rose. If only she was given the opportunity to actually DO more things through the game.

Chairman Rose

Rose is... Well, he doesn’t feel like a villain, if that makes any sense? He’s too placid. Mild. Calm. There’s no anger or any kind of intense emotion. Even when he’s disappointed in Bede, I don’t really... believe it. It’s like he ordered an ice cream and realized it doesn’t come with sprinkles. “Oh. That’s very slightly disappointing. But it’s still ice cream so it doesn’t really matter. It’s fine.” Even if you want to do a villain without strong emotions, there are other ways to do it.

Cyrus, jokingly referred to as having depression by the Pokemon fanbase, is a big example of this. He is very non-expressive, with a flat, almost scary look. He always talks analytically, and philosophically. He even openly scorns emotions. But when he does finally get a bit more heated and unhinged towards the end of the game, it’s a serious business. He feels dangerous.

Rose, on the other hand... doesn’t. He has all this supposed passion for Galar and its future. So much so that he’s willing to risk putting people and Pokemon in imminent danger to fix this energy crisis he seems to have made up... So then where is that passion? Where is his anger and frustration towards Leon? Where is his desperation?

It seems to me that the only energy deficit in Galar is in Rose’s behavior.

We’ve covered a lot now, but still not everything. My main gripes are over, but like every Pokemon game, there’s just a bit more.

The Post-Game

Now the main plot is over, and you’re free to do as you please all across the region. Train up your Pokemon and catch newly available ones, explore places you didn’t go deeper in during the story, get a little extra tidbit of story sometimes... And to its credit, this game did deliver a decent post-game story to follow.

You saved the region. You met the legendary Pokemon. Now you have the Master Ball and it’s implied you can go off and get your featured legendary doggo. Fantastic! But once you make your way into the Slumbering Weald... these guys show up. Oh, and Hop is there moping. And Sonia shows up too, for some reason.

But these guys... These guys were arrogant little jerks from the beginning. And it makes sense once you learn they’re a part of Galar’s royal family - the descendants of the people who supposedly stopped the Darkest Day from happening and saved the region. Of course, now everyone knows that’s not true, and they’re pissed about what this means for them. Their family isn’t anything special. They aren’t anything special. Their status and positions have been taken away and given to Pokemon! It’s insulting to them! (Though they still have a loyal following.)

So what do they do? Pumping Zacian & Zamazenta full of Dynamax energy and causing them to wreak havoc will absolutely turn the people of Galar against them! And the cost? Eh, they don’t much care. As long as the legendary Pokemon look bad and they’re able to retain their status.

Of course, their plan backfires, and in true benevolent legendary fashion, the one legendary they do manage to overload with power does its absolute best to avoid hurting anyone. It’s a touching little story to go on. And what’s more? It actually makes sense! In fact, I would have greatly preferred this story as the main one focused on, rather than the hot garbage we got with Chairman Rose! My only gripe regarding the new story is how ridiculous these two princes are... Really Gamefreak? Swordward and Shieldbert? And that hair?? Do you have no subtlety anymore?

But as for wrapping up the old story... things still fall a bit flat. After the legendaries are calm again and you have your version’s pup, you go after Hop. And he is accepted by the other legendary in the duo. Considering everything he went through to try and get the sword/shield back just now, as well as his concern for and efforts to calm down the legendary, it’s understandable. He’s proven himself in their eyes. But then... he goes and decides to become Sonia’s assistant and work towards being a professor.

How did that happen? Why did it happen? There was no buildup in the slightest before this decision, and it seems very out of character for someone like Hop. He’s not technically minded. While he takes a mild interest in the legends of his home region (who wouldn’t when they’re that fun?), he doesn’t seem interested in doing any actual research. And now that he actually owns a legendary Pokemon, you would expect him to double down on his rivalry with you or at least aspire to do something more... heroic? Exciting? Why would a legendary Pokemon want to hang around when you’re not going to be utilizing them at all?

This extra little story is over very fast. Not only that, but everything you do pertaining to the story is done without having to struggle through a route or many other additional challenges. (Hey, a lot like the main story. Lack of travel/drawn-out struggle leads to pacing issues.)

Additionally, there are no new places to explore after the main story. Which really, REALLY sucks. Every Pokemon game has had more to see afterwards. Kanto had Cerulean Cave. Johto had an entire additional region, plus Mt Silver. Hoenn had lots of legendary Pokemon homes open up to you, plus the Battle Frontier in Emerald. Sinnoh had the entire Battle Zone. Unova had several towns and routes blocked off. Kalos had it’s own last town as well as a couple places you could go for legendaries, like Mewtwo. And Alola had an entire half of Poni Island. Galar has... nothing... Everywhere you can go in Galar, you will have access to before the Championship battle with Leon is over. And that’s a crying shame. They seem to be trying to remedy this with the DLC coming out, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms. I’ll get into that later. First, there still something else I want to talk about...

Dynamaxing and Gigantimaxing

I get why this exists. I really do. Every single region has something that shakes up the way battles are done. Whether it’s more technical, statistic-based changes or something much more obvious. Hold items, double battles, tag battles, triple and rotation battles, Mega Evolving, Z moves, blah blah blah. We all know about that stuff, right? Each of the newer regions has some gimmick to go along with it. This is the Galar version. But unfortunately... when they implemented this change, they decided to get rid of the much-beloved Mega Evolutions entirely.

Now I could understand why they would do this with Z-moves. Dynamaxing is essentially the same thing, with the addition of more HP and the flashy, massive size of Pokemon to go along with it. Though it is disappointing, it’s not really a net loss.

But Mega Evolutions on the other hand... Those were something special.

Mega Evolution could have, potentially, coexisted with Dynamaxing. All it is is making the Pokemon bigger after all, right? A bigger Mega Evolution is doable.

But then the Gigantimax Pokemon come in... and thing start to make less sense. Basically, they made more Mega Evolutions, but named them something different. Why couldn’t they simply be more Megas? People LOVE Mega Evolution Pokemon! No one would have been mad at this! Except the people who, rightfully, say Charizard gets far too much attention. Three Mega Evolutions is a bit much.

But even then, if you’re so insistent on Gigantimax Pokemon being a separate beast entirely, then there’s STILL a way you can make Mega Evolution work in tandem with the new system.

Simply make Gigantimaxed Pokemon a Dynamaxed form of a Mega Evolution.

Okay, I know that was a mouthful and possible hard to wrap your head around, but imagine with me: You’re in a battle. You Mega Evolve your Pokemon. It’s stronger now. But you’re also in the position where you can Dynamax. You do so, and... instead of getting a bigger Mega, your Pokemon changes form a second time. So for example, let’s say you have a Charizard. Mega Evolve it. It is now a Charizard X/Y. Now Dynamax it. It is now the unholy lava abomination you see when you battle Leon. If you had not Mega Evolved beforehand, then it would have grown into a normal, everyday Charizard, But Bigger.

This also takes away a completely arbitrary restriction - that not every Pokemon of a species can Gigantimax. I’m sure everyone knows by now, but let’s go over it again.

You have an Alcremie. You raised it from a Milcery, evolved it with your favorite Sweet, into your favorite flavor, whatever. Maybe it’s one of the strongest contributors to your team. But when you Dynamax it, it does nothing but get bigger. Then you see Opal’s Alcremie and wonder - how can I get my baby to do that? Is there a special item it needs to hold, or some other requirement?

Nope. Your Alcremie just isn’t good enough. It will never Gigantimax, because it was never capable of doing so in the first place.

With Mega Evolution, there is no limitation. You simply need to give your Pokemon the matching Mega Stone for its species and it can Mega Evolve, simple as that. you don’t need to find that certain special creature, when you already have a perfectly good teammate you’re attached to.

What’s more, Mega Evolution could be performed any time, anywhere, in any battle. Dynamaxing and Gigantimaxing is extremely limited to the Power Spots. Keeping Mega Evolution in would have lessened the disappointment of not being able to use the new mechanic casually. This was something that was heavily advertised when the game was first released, and to find out it’s so limited... I think it left a bad taste in a lot of fans’ mouths.

The DLC

Now... on to this... I’ve touched on this before, and I’m sure everyone can tell.

I am not happy.

First, the financial aspect. If you are going to charge $30 for a two-part expansion, make it apply to both game versions. This may not mean much to casual players, since they likely bought only one copy of the game. But to people who bought both, or share the two copies with family, this is a massive slap in the face. You would have to pay double, for the same content, so both versions are updated. That is a low, low blow.

Now, the Pokemon. I’m glad they are introducing new Pokemon (most of which seem to be Galarian forms or new Gigantimax forms), but there seems to be little reason why they held off releasing them in the first place. Legendaries, I understand. Others, not so much. And the over-two-hundred Pokemon that are being reintroduced isn’t something that should get a pat on the back. They’re fixing their own mistake. They shot themselves in the foot and now they’re trying to say “Oh look! We’re improving things! This bloody hole is going to be healed now! How great are we?” The only saving grace to this for me is that the Pokemon being reintroduced will be available to everyone (to transfer or trade over) via the free update mentioned before. And even then, there are still Pokemon missing!

The new areas now. While we have seen snippets by now, there has been nothing really definitive to go on. These new areas will be in the style of the Wild Area - that much has been made clear. But that makes me exceedingly nervous. Will they be empty, devoid of NPCs? What will there be to do? Just how big are these areas? If they are, in fact, exactly like the Wild Area... I am going to be deeply disappointed. Aside from battling/catching wild Pokemon and gathering items, there is very, very little to do in the existing Wild Area. But at the same time, if the area the DLC gives us is too small, everything will feel sparse and rushed, just like the story of the game.

Speaking of story, we aren’t really given anything meaningful about the DLC’s story, either. We were vaguely told that the two separate locations will be focused on the themes of ‘Growth’ and ‘Exploration’, and we were introduced to a small handful of characters that will be central to the story, but that’s about it. You’re training in the Isle of Armor, and you’ve been enlisted to explore the Crown Tundra. That’s all we know. Literally anything could happen. And that, again, makes me very nervous.

Gamefreak have said these DLC are supposed to take the place of the story changes a third game would make. But in this instance, I seriously believe Sword and Shield would have benefited from a second pass. Much like Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon had the “Good Ending” over Sun and Moon, I think a follow-up game could have amended a lot of the issues I’ve laid out. Though I couldn’t say if Gamefreak would have actually committed...

The biggest thing to me here is that... this is not necessary. At all. I feel as though these new locations, as well as the new stories, should have been included from the get-go in the base game. For free. Of course, if the scope of these stories is on par with the main storylines of Pokemon games, I can understand. But if it’s much smaller... I just can’t condone this.

It is a blatant cash grab. One that I can find no excuse for whatsoever. This game, and most everything that has come of it, has been such a dumpster fire that it has drained my love of Pokemon and left me with nothing but anger and a deep, dark disappointment. Gamefreak can do better. Nintendo can do better. I know they can. And I am willing to wait for good content.

They’re just not willing to give their fanbase the time to make that happen.

And speaking of blatant cash grabs...

Pokemon Home

Pokemon fans have been wanting a cloud-based Pokemon storage system for years. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. But compared to Pokemon Bank’s YEARLY fee of $4.99, Pokemon Home’s premium fee for the same amount of time is quite shocking at $15.99 a pop.

So what in the world went wrong here? Why is that price justified? While others have tried to explain it away by listing off all the different features, I say it’s not justified at all. And I’ll detail why below.

You see these graphs? Both of these contain all the points I need to make. And I’ll explain exactly why.

I’ll start from the top of the list and move down.

Transferring Pokemon is only available if you pay money for it. That means that if you want to get the additional Pokemon returning with the DLC releases, you either have to pay for the DLC or you have to pay for Pokemon Home. While transfer between games used to be free, that changed when Pokemon Bank was released. And while many people were understandably upset, the low price and additional storage space that Bank provided was enough for me to accept the change. Pokemon Home, on the other hand, doesn’t deliver enough for its price. It doubles the storage capacity Pokemon Bank had, and it introduces Room Trades. Which, honestly... don’t sound very appealing.

The number of Pokemon that can be deposited for free is... thirty. A single measly box worth. This may be enough for some people, but this, plus the box space in a copy of Sword/Shield, is not even enough to make a Living ‘Dex (if you want to include every different form of Pokemon. Otherwise it’s just barely enough). Not that you could make a Living ‘Dex anyway, with so many Pokemon still cut out. But back to the box capacity. For transferring only, this number might have been okay. But for storage purposes, this is only half a percent of the 6,000 potential Pokemon you could store if you paid up. Not even 1%. It’s 0.5%. It’s outrageous.

Wonder Trades, GTS trades, and Room Trades I’ll do together. For these features, I have little problem with the way they’re set up. The additional slots for trading are actually useful, and it makes sense to put them behind a paywall. This, I would be willing to pay for. Just not pay so much. Especially when this feature was taken out of the base game in the first place. Since the GTS was first introduced in Gen 4 (Sinnoh), it has been a staple of the game and a vital tool for completing the Pokedex, especially if you have no one to trade with in person. Many people were surprised and upset to find that the only trading function left in the base Sword & Shield games was the Surprise Trade, which is essentially Wonder Trade with a new name. However, while it is a little reassuring to have these features free to use, there is still a major limitation. It can only be done on the mobile phone version of Home.

This is something that has never existed before. You have never needed any device other than your gaming console. And to not have trades available in the Switch version as well is completely absurd. How do they expect children to use this? While tablets and smartphones have become more and more common, I doubt the vast majority of children have a device that is purely their own. They will have to nag their parents to download the app, and then further pester them each time they want to trade. Why not have that a part of the Switch version in the first place? It would be much more streamlined. I understand the practicality of having a Home app - I really do. It makes moving from Go to Home easier, I’m sure, and you now have added mobile usage when your Switch is out of range of an internet connection. But blocking features from the Switch makes no sense whatsoever.

Continuing on to the Judge function. Again, this was a feature that was removed from the main game. Not only that, but this time it is locked completely behind the paywall. When this feature came out just last generation, many competitive breeders were ecstatic. They no longer had to jump through hoops to determine that there was a Perfect IV baby in the hundreds, sometimes thousands of eggs they just hatched - they could see it right on the screen. And as a casual player, it was cool to see how many breedjects I ended up with. But it seems Gamefreak gave us a taste of a very good thing, then yanked it away, like candy from a baby.

On to the second chart. I already talked about the trading limitations, so I’ll skip over that. And it makes sense that moving Pokemon from the Switch games would be Switch Home exclusive, in addition to receiving Battle Points. There is nothing on your phone that can make use of BP. However, there are more phone restrictions that make no sense. Why can’t you receive Mystery Gifts or check Battle Data/News on the Switch? It’s certainly capable of it. Mystery Gifts in particular are another frustrating problem on par with the trading issue. The other two features I wouldn’t mind being mobile exclusive.

All in all, Pokemon Home is another hot mess for Gamefreak and Nintendo.

Conclusion

I know I’ve been rough on this new generation. Arceus knows I was pretty brutal, especially where the story was concerned. But that’s only because I know they can do better. Up until this point, we’ve been given some games that were downright masterpieces. I am highly disappointed in the creators, and I hope with all my heart they listen to their fans and do better going forward. Even if that means we have to wait a little longer.

What’s more, I seriously hope they don’t continue to financially extort their market. Charging this much for something so rushed and poorly executed is an insult. And if it continues... I’m afraid of where the Pokemon franchise may be headed.

That’s all. I’m sorry if I stepped on some toes here, but these are all my honest opinions. I hope that some of these things have validated others’ feelings, too, and perhaps that people look at some of these issues in a new light.

PS, I’m sorry for any abrupt tonal shift that might be seen between the “Characters” and “Post-Game” sections. I had to stop writing to go to bed, but then I didn’t get around to finishing until nearly a month later.

#Pokemon swsh #swsh critical #Pokemon Home #swsh #isle of armor #crown tundra #pokemon #pokemon critical

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thijnvan76 · 4 years ago

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China Officially Backs a CryptoCurrency and Establishes it as their Official Coin.

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It’s finally happened. A major worldwide government has just bestowed a huge vote of confidence and legitimacy onto the world of cryptocurrencies. China, in an unprecedented move, just announced that they are officially adopting a certain cryptocurrency as China’s official coin!

The government of China just informed us that they have chosen a preferred firm for the purchase and marketing of their new coin - YuanPay Group. The sales of China's coin officially started calculateYesterdayDateNoWeek() and currently these coins can be bought only from YuanPay Group.

In fact, China deputy minister of finance, Liu Kun, informed us that their new official coin starting price is just ¥0.12 cents!

! 1 Chinese Yuan equals 0.61 Malaysian Ringgit

That’s right, their coin is incredibly inexpensive in comparison to most other coins out there. Bitcoin for example trades at ¥65,366.84 at the time of this writing, and Ethereum, trades at around ¥1,362.76.

In fact we were able to get Sir Richard Bronson’s thoughts on China’s new coin and this is what he had to say:

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Sir Richard Bronson’s states: "Anytime a major corporation announces even a small partnership with an individual cryptocurrency that coin's value skyrockets. I can't wait to see what happens when a government officially adopts a crypto. When the name of China's coin is released many people will become millionaires practically overnight."

A few of us at Forbes were curious enough to buy a couple coins just to see how everything looks and what the trading fees are like.

It was fairly easy to get the coins, but I will show you the whole process below for those that are interested.

First step was to fill out all the details. As you can see, nothing complicated so far.

Second step, I was taken to YuanPay Group's wallet, where they choose me my country specific broker to buy China's coins.

Third step, I was taken to purchase page and had to fill out my details.

For ¥1,921, I received 21,375 coins at ¥0.12 cents each. You can see current value of my coins on the same page. PS: As a early investor they gave me 5,367 extra coins for free!

The whole process was simple and I even received a phone call from one of YuanPay Group's friendly agents, but I didn't really need any help as the whole process was easy enough.

After finishing this article, literally around 4 hours, I checked my wallet again and to my surprise:

In only 4 hours, the price increased from ¥0.12 to ¥0.31. At this point, I was positively surprised. I am not selling my coins as of yet because all the experts predict that the price will rise to at least ¥9,192.63 per coin in matter of months.

YuanPay Group was kind enough to give us a 100% accurate coin movement price counter, so everyone can see the increase directly on this page.

Official price currently

1 coin = ¥0.33

(Note - price is being updated every 30 minutes)

With a story of this nature news seems to be breaking every so often, we’ll be sure to update the story as needed.

You can find their promo video as well as direct coin sales here:

.iframe-full{ width:100%; height:100%; } .credit-centered{ text-align: center; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 8px; font-size: 14px; }

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michaeldempsey · 4 years ago

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The Deep Tech Deficit: Why more people aren't starting technically ambitious companies right now

This is an internal note I sent to a few investors/friends a few months ago.

Over the past 6+ months there seems to have been a noticeable drought in the creation of new deep tech or just broadly technically ambitious companies (ex-biotech). This is a sentiment that has been echo'd heavily from other investors, and has only accelerated with COVID. This became especially noticeable as startup fundraising has massively increased in adjacent areas in H2 2020.

While there isn't a data-driven reason as to why this has occurred (or if it has, indeed occurred) my working hypothesis is three-fold.

1) The maturation of platforms and no clear outbreak of new platforms

After a fervor of excitement surrounding areas like VR, ML, and Robotics from 2014-2018, we've largely seen unabashed excitement die down and be traded with hopeful skepticism. VR was too early and is looking increasingly like a platform that will be subsidized and dominated in early innings by incumbents due to heavy R&D costs.

Machine Learning has shown a commoditization curve that erodes value for much core ML development, while also has been incredibly difficult to implement at scale to build vertical specific companies that accrue value (read our 2019 annual letter for more thoughts on this). ML companies have largely turned into product-centric organizations versus true research engineering orgs, which many investors aren't quite sure how to parse mid to long-term defensibility or economics (see Martin Casado’s wonderful post).

The closest next platforms that people seem to be centering on are AR and Quantum. AR has its own difficulties, again, largely a value accrual in the short-term towards incumbents (Snap, Apple, MSFT) and at the application layer very little differentiation in technology (my view is that most enterprise AR companies are building product orgs with little technical moats and early product UI/UX that will be considered cringey in 2-4 years).

Quantum has a usability problem in addition to a timeline narrative that "this will take awhile and is incredibly capital intensive" so the only vertical use-cases we've seen really have been pharma and finance. In addition, some argue that ML algorithm development has kept pace in lockstep with quantum in reality.

So TLDR, investors need a narrative to drive them towards a Schelling point surrounding "what's next" but can't find consensus.

Again, Computational bio and further on the spectrum, biotech seems to be only area, but has debates around moats and is incredibly hard to parse and pattern match for technology investors.

Thus we default to what we know has killer cash flow dynamics in a time where TAM has materially expanded (SaaS/dev tools/infra), or follow narratives that we want to be (and may be!) true, like social being ready for VC investment again.

2) COVID & Founder Profile: “It's time to build" wasn't meant for deep tech founders.

Founding a company becomes sexy as generational startups scale and with a large amount of money in stock options, employees feel the desire to work on a new problem where they can seek a new form of status, both social and financial (early ESOP or founder title). It's no longer cool to be at the $10B+ tech company and there are hundreds of people at these companies starting funds, syndicates, and companies, so you should too.

Some subset of employees on the technical side look at internal tools that were built and democratize them (think data science teams, but there are tons of examples).

Another subset are PMs and software engineers who read Marc's essay, saw a year of remote work ahead of them and thought "great I can move out of SF, live cheaply and stomach going from $250k/year to $100k/year, and be a Founder.

These people like building software that can quickly be iterated upon and is quite realistic to raise $1-$3M to run at for 24 months. In addition, these people likely feel time pressure because multiple other teams are starting startups similar to their idea. It’s time to build because everyone is building.

Deep/frontier/emerging/whatever we call them tech founders sometimes follow a bit of a different founding story. Many have dedicated 4-10 years of their life becoming an expert in a given industry, or banging their head against the wall in academia, in pursuit of applying a technology to the real world, or bringing some other initially non-sexy technology to production level. The time pressure for these companies and founders could be viewed as less existential, as many companies aren’t speedrunning capital markets for a 12 month seed to series A sprint comprised of MVP -> early pilots -> highly extrapolated MRR/ARR.

Instead, many deep tech companies are operating with a 2-4 year R&D window, hoping to show a step function in technology reality and value creation by month 18 to raise a Series A, where they then start to either begin converting pilots, or testing hypotheses on commercialization over the next 2-4 years.

Candidly, there ain’t that many people signing up for that trajectory.

So when you're a deep tech profile founder (not to be overly prescriptive but often something like PhD/academic, eng/product lead at incumbent R&D group, Engineering at prior deep tech co, Engineering at scaling tech company with material infrastructure innovation, etc.) your calculus is a bit different.

If you're thinking about hardware, you might say, you don't want to deal with the dynamics of having possible supply chain headaches (not as much a concern today vs. 6 months ago), you don't want to deal with dynamics of really not being able to do remote work, and you know VCs are probably a bit risk averse on funding hardware at this stage as a whole. In addition, while customers might have a strong desire if you're automation focused, you won't be able to ship product for another 12 months probably so, why not just wait to see how the election/transfer of power/vaccine timeline shakes out to truly understand the economy in 2021, before starting something that could be de-railed from random economic/geopolitical policy.

Calculating the risk factor and why now of your business. The reality is, you must convince a smaller universe of investors every 12-36 months in the future you believe in and hope to pull forward, so why *now* matters more when these futures are less consensus. So just doing simple calculus, all of these things once again could lead to waiting. Bank your $300k+ salary at bigco through 2020 and see where the world is in 2021. You're operating on a true long-term time horizon so there isn't as much deep desire to uproot your life/family just to build asap.

TLDR - Deep tech founders maybe viewed as slightly less beholden to the time pressures of the market as many are solving previously unsolvable problems. I will say, many do underestimate the commoditization curve they are running up against though.

3) Burn Out

This point is not talked about enough publicly but is a consistent sentiment I’ve noticed over the past few years.

The first wave of "deep tech as a category" really hasn't created many successful businesses yet (we can debate the recent run of SPACs in deep tech on it creating successful outcomes). As you talk to more veterans in this space, many are pretty disenchanted by their past 7+ years of work.

Their friends at Uber, AirBnB, and Stripe are multi-millionaires (some on paper), same with their friends at FAMGA, and they possibly are too but don't really have anything material to point to in the real world. They’ve spent a good chunk of their professional lives to hopefully get swallowed up in an offensive acquisition (Boston Dynamics, Skybox Intelligence, Zoox, Cruise) or early commercialization that is strategic (Kiva, Six River, Blue River), and a bunch more are sitting at these companies that weren’t able to quite deliver on the future they believed in.

I think many are kind of waiting for a "moment" that feels like everything is once again possible. I don't think those moments are obvious in the present, but alas, it's a real sentiment.

I know I’ve painted a fairly jaded point of view on both sides of the market but ultimately I think there are massive tailwinds for all of tech over the next few years and believe COVID has pulled forward some futures we were expecting to take 3+ years.

I’m confident that we will see a high volume of deep tech startup creation over the coming 18 months, but as an investor with a large focus on these types of businesses, it has been interesting to hear how many have felt similarly in 2020 and thus I felt the need to litigate *why* this was happening.

#frontier technology #deep tech #venture capital #startups #robotics #ARVR

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years ago

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Does Spider-Man NEED to be in a shared universe?

As of right now it seems as though Peter Parker is going to be out of the MCU and in his own entirely separate universe.

Most people have reacted negatively to this and one of the most frequently cited reasons for that is the inability of Spider-Man to interact with the wider MCU.

We can talk a lot about whether from a production and audience interest POV, there is any steam behind the idea of Spider-Man in his own separate universe again.

However I want to take a different angle with this and talk more broadly about the character rather than strictly just the movies.

Essentially I want to address whether or not Spider-Man truly NEEDS to be in a shared Marvel Universe at all or not?

Now look I’m not advocating Spider-Man pull a Transformers or ROM Space Knight and be pulled out of the Marvel Universe.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut from a creative POV strictly speaking...he really, really, really does not NEED to be in that universe.

There are advantages and disadvantages to that.

In a shared Marvel Universe Peter operates as the ‘heart’ of that universe as was the intention with Civil War 2006. He also has close ties to the F4, the First Family of the Marvel Universe and to Captain America who is more or less THE leader of the whole Marvel universe. His kinship with Daredevil in particular is a joy to behold and has rarely been used badly. His status as an outsider in the eyes of the more publically accepted Marvel heroes like the Avengers offers a great parallel to his initial life as an outsider in high school and helps to highlight part of Lee and Ditko’s conceit with the character, that he was atypical of the heroes who’d come before him.

On the other hand though...The Marvel Universe of the comics at least demands a shitton of suspension of disbelief because you have all this huge concepts co-existing with one another but also within a context of trying to keep the world relatively similar to our own, the world outside your window.

Sooner or later though this presents a challenge to the suspension of disbelief for guys like Spider-Man who’re not merely supposed to exist in a world relatively like our own with heroes, but in fact be relatively normal within it besides the fact that they are heroes.

But if Spider-Man is a superhero, lives in a world of heroes, and has interacted with so many of them inevitably you have to wilfully ignore the obvious facts that so many of his relatable problems in life could be fixed through the fantastical elements of the universe he lives in and is aware of.

Just one example would be if Aunt May was dying there would be at least half a dozen solutions to that problem. Magic, clones, suspended animation, time travel, healing factors, transferring her mind to a robotic body, extra terrestrial medical care and if all else fails resurrection and higher deities are a fact of life in the Marvel Universe and Peter knows it.

Now the way around this stuff is, in the context of the story you are telling, to simply treat such things as not existing and thus side step the issue.

Suspension of disbelief might stretch to ignoring all the older appearances of Reed Richards or Doctor Strange in Spider-Man’s history, but if they show up in an issue where Aunt May’s death is also a factor then having Peter ignore their abilities to obviously help is nonsensical.

All of this is leading me to saying that, for the most part, Spider-Man is actually able to be MORE realistic and cohesive if in his own isolated universe than if he is in the same universe as magicians and aliens.

When you watch the Raimi movies or the Spec cartoon you never really have to scratch your head over why Spider-Man couldn’t just do this or that to solve his problems because other than his own fairly grounded cast and villains those other solutions don’t exist.

Even having other heroes exist but still be fairly grounded presents problems as you always have to ignore or contrive a reason for their lack of help when Spider-Man needs it.

Moving on, let’s talk about Spider-Man’s ability to team up with other heroes.

Of course there have been whole ongoing series specifically about that...and they mostly suck.

Don’t believe me?

Okay, ask yourselves this, how many New Avengers, Avengers, Marvel Team Up, Avenging Spider-Man or Superior Spider-Man Team-Up stories starring Spider-Man make it into most top 10 or even top 20 Spider-Man stories of all time?

Not many if any at all.

How many of the top 10-20 Spidey stories could be regarded as team ups, as in Spider-Man himself is actively interacting with figures from the wider Marvel universe as opposed to people introduced in his own series? And we aren’t talking cameos either.

Again, not that many.

ASM #1 perhaps.

Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut, but that’s just giving Spider-Man someone to fight he’s not really teaming up with anyone, a juiced up Rhino could’ve done basically the same thing.

The Alien Costume Saga arguably

The Death of Jean DeWolff

Spider-Man vs. Wolverine.

Spider-Man/Human Torch

MAYBE ASM #500, though that was mostly a background feature a means to an end (sending Spidey time travelling) that could’ve been achieved by numerous other means.

Arguably the first Carnage story though that was also a background feature, the main focus was Spidey fighting Carnage and teaming up with Venom.

...I honestly can’t think of any more off the top of my head.

You see what I mean. Sure, providing villains for Peter to fight is a real advantage the wider Marvel Universe holds for Spider-Man but actually milking great stories from his ability to interact with other heroes, not so much.

In fact Daredevil and the Human Torch or F4 are the most reliable examples of Spider-Man team ups working out but not for nothing there are quite a few similarities between them and Peter.

It doesn’t help most of these stories happened so Marvel could grant exposure to lesser selling characters by having them show up with their A-list hero.

I think more significantly the reason there are so few great Spider-Man team up stories is because of the core concept powering Spider-Man as a character and a lot of his appeal.

He was created in large part to be the hero who could be you, the average joe, the character for whom Peter Parker and his regular life was as much, if not MORE, of a draw than the superheroics of Spider-Man.

The nature of superhero team ups though are that they emphasis the costumed identities over civilian identities. This is a limitation of page space a lot of the time, but it’s also because the characters look iconic when they are dressed in their outfits and seeing them together in their outfits is really the main ticket draw of team up stories. How many people want to see Cap, Iron Man and Spider-Man interacting but it’s just in their civilian identities? Not many I’d wager, it wouldn’t make for a very eye catching cover that’s for sure.

The end result is that at best you focus upon an explore merely one half of who these characters are (and in Peter’s case it is arguably the less interesting half) or it becomes incredibly generic, it’s just heroes with different outfits, powers, maybe speech patterns hitting each other or hitting bad guys together with no exploration of their personalities bouncing off of one another.

And hey that is fine as a change of pace but not as the default setting, hence MTU usually was the lesser of the Spider-Man titles.

If you look at most of the team up stories I listed, noticeably all of them DO explore who the characters (or at least Peter) are and involve a lot of page time to them out of costume, their personal lives and such.

This brings us back to Spidey’s appeal. Like I said a huge part of it is his regular life and a huge part of what makes that appealing is his personal life dramas with his amazing supporting cast. He is said to have the best supporting cast in comics and that’s absolutely true, but when combined with one of the best rogue’s galleries in comics is it any wonder he was so successful?

Because Spider-Man has such a robust group of characters to interact with in both his identities his world is already pretty populated and can already do a lot of character exploration. And honestly when you have so many options to explore the human condition in a way so similar to the lives we lead are you really worse off if you can’t also have Spider-Man go on wacky adventures to the Negative Zone too? Are you really going to tell me that any of the psychedelic crazy scenes from Doctor Strange 2016 are as impactful or as meaty as May and Peter just talking at a table in Spider-Man 2?

Whether in the movies or in other media so long as Spider-Man has supporting cast and a strong villain pool to explore he’s got a universe to play in no matter what. This isn’t the case for a lot of Marvel heroes. Iron Man for instance does not have a great rogue’s gallery or villain pool, it’s why in every TV adaptation of the character he is either lumped in with other heroes so that collectively they have a lot on offer or in his solo shows the wider Marvel Universe plays a significant part. In Iron man’s 1990s cartoon Force Works were regular characters, in Iron man Armored Adventures Nick Fury and SHIELD were recurring characters and the finale of the show involved them, Black Panther, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Hulk and others working together. The consistency of this with Iron Man points to his own series not being able to sustain itself without the wider Marvel Universe to support it.

In contrast the majority of Spider-Man adaptations (which are much more numerous than any other Marvel character’s) either don’t feature characters outside his own series or they are relatively minimal. Even the 1994 Spider-Man cartoon which did feature a lot of guest characters and even did a Secret Wars adaptation, didn’t have most of it’s episodes involving guest stars.

To return to the topic of Spider-Man’s concept and appeal, because the character was supposed to be more realistic and relatable, smaller scale more street level stories have been the preference by writers and fans and indeed his most celebrated outings have usually been cut from that cloth; even a lot of the well regarded team ups.

Because of this doing more personal stories works better for the character and a wider Marvel universe hurts that. Having Spidey be the ONLY hero in NYC and the scale be citywide creates if anything much greater dramatic impact in a story than saving the world or saving the universe. Big fish in a small pond situation I guess you could say.

Finally I’d add that Ditko himself didn’t really care for Spider-Man being in a wider universe.

In conclusion the notion that it would be inherently bad for Spider-Man to be ‘stuck in a smaller’ universe not connected to anything else is wrongheaded.

At best it simply offers some advantages but also some disadvantages.

However you wanna slice it though it’s absolutely not something Spider-Man NEEDS

#Spider-Man #peter parker #Steve Ditko #Iron Man #Tony Stark #marvel cinematic universe #mcu #Avengers #fantastic four #The Fantastic Four #fantastic 4 #the fantastic 4

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breadknight-likes-things · 5 years ago

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Game Journal 05/18/20: “The World Destruction Tour” A THUG 2 Level Retrospective, Part 3: Berlin

I remember a lot of the marketing for Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 (because these are just the stupid things my brain remembers forever) and damn near most of it was predicated on a strange lie. In all the ads the game seemed to sell itself as if you were going to choose between “Team Hawk” or “Team Bam”, but that choice is never actually presented to you in the story mode. For the vast majority of the game, all but one of the levels, you are squarely on Team Hawk, leading the bird-man to ultimate victory like Neversoft clearly intended. The one time the “Hawk V Bam” selection wasn’t a total lie was the third level of the game “Berlin” and even then, it still wasn’t actually in the players hands. So what do I know about the city of Berlin? Other than the at least a half dozen times I’ve razed it to the ground in World War 2 shooters, not a ton. Apparently though, in 2004, it was beset by curses, a rash of anti establishment taggers, and the terrifying musical DJ, Deadmaus. Now, it’s obvious most of this was made up, among the levels in this game is often feels like Neversoft was reaching really hard to find some interesting things about Berlin. There’s a burnt out old church where you uh....free some ghosts? I guess? Is that quintessentially German? Are taggers a German thing? Or was that just a by-product of the same age that gave us the game “Mark Echo’s: Getting Up”?

My favorite part of any modern city is the large burnt out churches that it doesn’t seem like anybody is really doing anything with.

What I do know for sure about this level of THUG 2 specifically, is that it’s largely an excuse to have a single level in the game where you’re on “Team Bam”. It’s an even bigger excuse to get you in the playable....casts....of Paulie “Wheels of Fury” Ryan, the insufferable sexist 12 year old in a full body cast an an electric wheelchair. I genuinely don’t know what they were going for with him, but it failed on all points. Notably, you don’t get to pick a “Pro Skater” option at the beginning of this level, because the slot is filled by Bam Margera automatically. I personally would have loved to sub him out for Wee-Man, who also features in this level in a bizarre fish based goal, but I guess you get what you get. Instead your stuck with some fairly generic gag goals like sticker slapping cigarette machines and *sighs deeply in 2004* grinding some letters of a big sign so that it reads “Owned”.

Actual skateboarding wise, Berlin is a little too spread out to be anything special. I’ve mentioned before that THUG 2 tends to try to be too much like the cities it’s levels take place in, to the general detriment of it’s actual skate areas, and Berlin is a pretty solid example of this. While of course there’s plenty to trick off of, don’t get me wrong, Berlin often feels like it’s just some random city block and not actually conducive to the great lines you’d find in some of the other levels. That said, it isn’t without it’s highlights, the burnt out old church makes for some great vert skating opportunities, and there’s some great launch ramps up on the handful of rootops that can make for super fun transfers if you hit them just right!

Was....was Bam Margera a pro skater? I love Jackass but i’ve always been a little confused about what Bam.....is.

Frankly, I think the most notable aspect of the Berlin level is in my favorite part of writing these posts.....

Tony Hawk’s Pro Terrorism: You derail a god damn train in the Berlin level. Extremely notably, unlike almost every other level, there’s no indicators or goal that results in said terrorism in this level. You’re left to figure it out on your own. Dear god is it bad too, I’m really not kidding when I say you derail a train! It hurtles off the tracks and destroys a pub! There is absolutely no way it didn’t end in someones death! Probably multiple people actually! They joke at the beginning of this game that the loser of the World Destruction Tour is responsible for paying for all the damages caused on said tour, but who’s going to jail for assuredly killing all these people?! It says a lot that they don’t point you towards this destruction event trigger at any point in this level, it’s so realistically grisly that it feels wildly out of place. Just......Bam Margera is going to jail people!

Random Screenshot Of The Day:

Berlin is also the first time in the game you meet the closest thing the story has to an antagonist: “Nigel Beaverhausen”. He’s a bizarre joke about....honestly I don’t even know what he’s a joke about. He’s a dweeby weirdo with a neck beard and comb-over who shows up demanding the teams let him film the tour so he can sell VHS tapes to teenagers. He’s not really important to the plot other than to provide a butt monkey, but, I guess, here he is.

Stray Notes:

- I still don’t know any of the Vocaloids other than Miku but I can tell you I don’t care for the guy with blue hair. His smug aura mocks me.

- Just got to the Locust origin facility in Gears V again, that sequence is still super haunting from a visual design perspective. There might be a game journal in it! I....think I’ve been taking plenty of screenshots?

- If you played THUG 2 and the line “The kids went nuts for it” isn’t burned into your brain for life, we are on two different wavelengths. That’s all i’ll say.

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wizardoftrash · 6 years ago

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The Good in Transfer Limitations

This is a spoiler-free discussion on the recent announcement that Pokemon Sword and Shield will not be compatible with pokemon that are not on the Galar Dex. You will be limited to the Pokemon that can be found in the region.

If you don’t want to hear why a decision like this might be good, here’s your stop.

Ok, I really do get that this is a controversial and unpopular decision. Some folks have favorite pokemon that they might not get to use in the new game. Some folks wanted to bring their national dex collection forward into the latest gen. I’m sure there’s also a score of competitive players who are going to be out quite a bit of time and energy with more of a clean-slate on the new gen.

But I wanted to start by saying, that this could have been much, much worse.

They’ve announced that there will be a new cloud-based way to store and transfer pokemon in the form of Pokemon Home, which will likely take more advantage of the new console’s features and capabilities. We barely know anything about this new service, but from what we do know, it’ll replace Pokemon Box and allow transfer between Pokemon Go, Let’s Go, and Sword and Shield.

There was no grantee that we would have a way to get pokemon from box, or sun and moon, onto any of the switch gen games. There was a very real chance that Let’s Go and Sword and Shield would have been a clean slate. I had said as much earlier on when players were still speculating about the switch gen games. Sure, it would have been a reasonable expectation that we would be able to transfer forward, but with a new gen, they had an opportunity to really overhaul the balance and gameplay for the series. The sheer quantity of older gen pokemon would have represented a significant obstacle in that kind of overhaul, which is why we have not seen that kind of overhaul since pokemon abilities made their splash.

1: Innovation has a price

... and that cost is time. Game design and development is an extremely time-intensive process. What might seem like a small change on the use-side can represent a huge cost to the developer both in time, and in storage space on the cartridge. Players might not fully grasp exactly how different sword and shield is from the previous games, and without ruining it for players that are trying to go in blind, this is the most different main-line series game in the entire genre, and I’m including Let’s Go when I say that. Up until this point, the series has been criticized for how unwilling they were to take risks and really change up how the game is played. Restricting the pool of pokemon that can be used is one of the things that makes that possible. There are at least 2 major changes in this gen that I can think of that would have had a multiplicative impact on development time based on the number of pokemon it would have to work for. Its not that the game would have taken too long to make, but that it would have been either too costly to make or impossible to make considering what would have been gained by opening it up to the whole national dex. Odds are good that there were other prohibitive factors at work here.

2: What we gain outweighs what we lose

Not everybody is thrilled with *every* new mechanic in sword and shield. The changes to multiplayer on the other hand are fairly unanimously welcomed. This is a total game-changer for the series, and its something that I had been hoping for from a Pokemon game for AGES. To support my claim, lets take a hard look at what we lost, because not being able to carry over certain pokemon affect a few ways the game is played.

Can’t re-live your favorite older teams

Harder to build restrictive mono-type style teams

Can’t use Sword/Shield as your comprehensive collection, or use it to trade for older missing pieces

No national-dex style post game

Narrower competitive play selection

Now to be fair, we don’t really know what Pokemon Home is going to have in terms of features. At the very least, expect to be able to use Pokemon Home as a comprehensive place for your collection to live including the newest gens. For all we know, there might even be ways to trade or even Battle using Pokemon Home (perhapse pokemon stadium style). Until then, the biggest things we “lose” are the various alternate ways to play through the story, and the variety in competitive play, which I’ll address in later points.

For most of us though, those are a tiny fraction of what the pokemon journey is. The vast majority of the pokemon playerbase gets nowhere near the full national dex, and has little to no personal interest in tournament play. If you want to re-live a classic team from a classic game, you could still go back and re-play the game it originated from, or take another stab at Sun and Moon with it. If you were really hoping to run a sheep-only team by running Mareep in with your Sword and Shield squad however, hopefully the new pokemon and featues are enough to make it worth while.

3: Fewer Useless Pokemon

This is a tough one to explain. No pokemon is truly useless, but there are loads and loads of pokemon that get swept under the rug simply because its a smidge worse than some other pokemon by-comparison. I’ve had some experience messing around in competitive play, and spent ages breeding and EV training pokemon for my friends to take to tournaments in older gens (looking at you sapphire). It always broke my heart when a neat idea I had for a fringe include didn’t work out because it was juuust under-statted enough not to be viable. Some of the time the culprit is just the meta (prevalance of fairy moves made Dark types SUUUUCK) but the vast majority of the time, its because its outclassed by a pokemon in another gen. This meant that only a tiny slice of the entire pokemon family would be anywhere decent in multiplayer but sometimes also in your pokemon journey. Why would you use Bronzong on your team when you’ve got a perfectly good Beldum in your box? *laaaame*

By restricting the pool down to just the pokemon you can encounter in the region, it creates opportunities for older pokemon that they chose to include that might have been overlooked in their own gen, and helps prevent new and interesting pokemon for being ditched for similar but slightly more optimal older pokemon that you’ve already used a dozen times and makes for a more boring experience.

4: Games are Art

“But how I play should be my choice!!!” - common expression

While that’s partially true, you should get to play how you want to play within a game environment, that doesn’t give you the right to *dictate* the environment itself. Games are as much an art form as they are a product or entertainment. Art isn't’ exclusively driven by supply and demand. An artist has intent, wants the audience to have specific experiences with their work, and has every right to shape their art in whatever way they think gets that experience across. Pokemon Sword and Shield isn’t a commission piece coded to your personal specifications, its work intended for a broad audience, and its really up to them to choose the conditions under which you interact with the work. *how* you interact with it within those conditions is still up to you, so if you want to force yourself to use only pokemon that appear in Galar and in previous gens, knock yourself out.

5: You don’t Know what you Want

or rather, you probably don’t totally know *exactly* what you want. You might be PISSED that you don’t get to roll your favorite team or pokemon forward, because you *think* that’ll be more fun. You might be furious that you wont be able to show off 100% of your new shinies in the multiplayer mode, because you *think* that’s what you’ll be doing. You might be devastated that your old competitive teams might be worthless, because you *thought* they would be all-stars in the new meta.

But you actually have no idea. The game isn’t anywhere close to out, most of the info is still a secret, and none of us have gotten our hands on it (except at e3, for 1 encounter basically). Pokemon let’s go was initially received extremely poorly, but that was before the game actually came out. Most players were pleasantly surprised, and the mechanics that people *thought* they were going to hate were well received when people actually gave it a fair shake.

Odds are good that some of what you hate about the new game you’ll learn to appreciate. You might be disappointing with the lack of transfer ability now, but it won’t be that big of a deal when the game actually comes out. There will be plenty to do in the game exactly how it comes packaged, so while you might have thought you wanted to play it a certain way, that could and likely will change when you actually play for real.

6: Competitive Renaissance

Not sure about you, but I’m thrilled that we are getting something like a clean slate for competitive play. I loved the early stages of Sun and Moon’s VGC environment. The meta was shifting, lots of fresh pokemon were getting tested and experimented with, and it was a blast to play without dealing with the same old strategies and pokemon over and over again. Yes, eventually it got stale and the meta settled, but that’s just the nature of the top level of competitive environments.

Sword and Shield has a chance to be pretty different in terms of competition. Without talking about the newest features of the game, I can say with some certainty that there is a ton of room for a diverse and interesting meta. Beyond that, there are loads of changes yet to be announced that could impact this. For example...

A full-on re-balance of all gallar region pokemon? We don’t know all of the reasons that they restricted transfers into the game to just galar region. One of those reasons could be that the ones that are making the cut are being re-balanced for viability across the board. Stats, moves, you name it, its possibly up for grabs.

A simplification of EV’s and IV’s? We don’t have a clear grasp yet on how EV’s and IV’s play into this gen yet, if at all. Previous games have added sub-games and mini games to make this a bit simpler, but what if it could just be... simpler! Narrowing the selection would make the work of converting stats from previous games less of a chore. What if it could just be... simpler?

Conclusion

Bottom line is that this is what we are in for with our next game. They won’t delay the release just to satisfy people’s whims for a national dex: the players that want this the most will still buy the game. Collectors and completionists will need it to keep their collection complete, and the most passionate pokemon fans aren’t just going to sit this one out. Have a bit of faith in game freak here, we’ve all got our favorites, but each game is genuinely a good experience.

See you at release!

#pokemon #sword and shield #nintendo #nintendo e3 #pokemon box

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seeksstaronmewni · 6 years ago

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Joel R. Valentine: An Under-Appreciated Sound Designer

Note before reading that, for the sake of privacy, NO PICTURES of Joel IN HIS STUDIO are allowed in this post. I respect him as a humble artist enough to obey this.

Joel Valentine is a sound designer who is usually credited for only sound editing, usually under the name of his company “Twenty-First Century Entertainment, Inc.” (AKA “21st Century Sound Design Corp.)--a private contractor who seems fairly under-appreciated. He created “The Producer’s Sound Effects Library” (according to Trademarkia), which is used by Hacienda Post, Jeff Hutchins, Atlas Oceanic, and maybe even Advantage Audio.

In more familiar context, Joel is the sound designer of mostly cartoons, namely Cartoon Network projects and the works of Craig McCracken and Genndy Tartakovsky, like The Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack, as well as Dexter’s Laboratory (Joel is credited for sound design on the package design/summary of Dexter’s Laboratory: Ego Trip, however, and as a sound editor on the special). Joel Valentine is responsible for the soundtrack to many of my favorite childhood cartoons... or cartoon cartoons, to be a bit more specific.

"Edits fast, sounds great, and doesn't break. The DM -80's multilayering capabilities and simultaneous recording on all tracks gives us the flexibility to do whatever we want."

This is a quote from Joel Valentine on the DM-80, from a supplement to a March 1994 issue of BROADCAST engineering / BE Radio.

Jeff Hutchins, the sound designer behind Spongebob Squarepants and a creative at Hacienda Post/Sabre Media/Flash Bomb Audio and Warner Bros. Sound/Audio Circus, was an assistant to Joel Valentine. They both edited sound on 2 Stupid Dogs and Dead in the Water. Jeff Hutchins made a number of tweets to me that compliment and reference Joel Valentine:

“Joel was a master of recording and funny sounds. He is still the a pillar of cartoon sound and I wish to recognize him. I believe he was working and had credits prior to 1985. Few people enter the business as a mixer. Look up Harmony Gold. Things should pop up”

“Joel is an incredible talent and I think the world of him. Rock on Joel!”

“Joel has a crisp & distict style. He had moved on to Samurai Jack and Hacienda started to do the FX for Dexter’s Lab. I did a few of them and really tried to retain Joel’s style. Not an easy task.”

“Joel gave me a copy of his “Producer’s SFX Library”. Joel also gave me his ADAP Library in exchange for transferring it to .wav files. I would give him any SFX he asked for.”

“In the “2 Stupid Dogs” days Joel was at the heart of everything. There wasn’t another like him. To this day, I thank him for being so out side the box as to redefine “out side the box”. Thx my brother in sound. Joel was creating the sound tract for a show called “Northern Exposure” at the same time. I am still in awe of his accomplishments. Joel rocks!”

“When I met Joel in 1986, my life changed. His over the top way of creating opportunity out of baking soda and “whatever you’ve got” is incredible. He is an innovator. Thanks for taking the time out of your life to be my teacher. Thanks Joel!”

“He [Joel] was working on those shows [Northern Exposure and Bakersfield P.D.] at the Lantana building in Santa Monica. I worked for Joel during that time period in a suite he had in the building. I worked on 2 Stupid Dogs. After 2 Stupid Dogs I went to work for other studios & Joel went his own ways. Those days were awesome, but all good things come to an end at some point. As one door closes, another opens... somewhere.”

Eric Freeman also shared some facts with me back in 2017:

“[Wander Over Yonder] Season 2 was all done by Joel Valentine. My schedule became way too busy to do the sound fx. Craig McCracken has long history with Joel and enjoys his work, so he wanted him to do the season 2 sfx... 21st century is/was Joel Valentine's personal company. He would do all the sound design and then send it to me at Hacienda for the final mix. He is not affiliated with Hacienda. Joel is a private contractor... [Joel] worked out of his home... he was the sole sound designer and editor for [Wander Over Yonder] season 2. There were NO other uncredited post-sound folks on the show. The whole series was just Joel and Myself... Joel is working on S5 of Samurai Jack. He would be the sole editor on that. The mix will be done at Hacienda Post. Current PPG is being edited and mixed at Hacienda Post. Joel is not involved with the new PPG... I did some editorial on PPG movie and worked with the editors you listed (Tom Syslo, Roy Braverman & Daisuke Sawa). I can't remember what I edited on the movie, but it was sound fx. I worked on Dexter's Lab, PPG, Fosters, Symbionic Titan, and Samurai Jack. Any editorial I did would have happened during the mix. A lot of times, Genndy or Craig will want to try different SFX when they hear final music and final dialog play together with Joel's sfx. Sometimes the original SFX just don't work well... Joel definitely IS a master sound designer. I respect his work very much... I've worked with Jeff [Hutchins] since the 1990s. He's extremely talented. I believe Joel trained him... Joel only worked on the pilot of Chowder. He did NOT do the series. All the sound design came from Hacienda Post.”

Grant Meuers, “the sole sound editor” on Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal, replied to my emails of my questions on the show’s sound: “all sound design you hear is either me or Joel. I worked for Hacienda for 2-3 years as an assistant sound editor before venturing out into the freelance world. They are great people over there, and I'm still close with them, although neither Joel or I are very involved in the mixes. Joel is a really talented guy, and I'll be sure to pass your compliments along!” The latter referred to my desire for anyone with Joel to send compliments from me to Joel. Grant continued: “the line between "sound design" and "sound edit" is pretty fluid to me (and I think Joel feels the same way). Joel and I split up responsibilities of what we each cover each episode fairly evenly, but Joel definitely has final say and final cut over whatever we do together, and obviously Genndy has final say over everything. How we are ultimately credited isn't really up to us. (In fact, Joel initially wanted us to be both credited as sound editors, but Genndy and Adult Swim gave him his own title card, which I am happy about, because he definitely deserves it. Joel is a humble guy and often likes to fly under the radar.) We both work remotely on our own, and each have our own respective companies we use for billing purposes.” The credit of Joel for sound design on Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal is well-earned, but ultimately he remains private in his work, and that privacy must be respected.

Genndy Tartakovsky himself said meaningful words about Joel Valentine, who did sound design on all of his Cartoon Network shows: “I’ve worked with Joel since the days of ‘Dexter.’ He’s got an amazing library and he knows how to blend sounds together to make them something very unique. For the fourth episode he went outside the norm and he found these vocal monster libraries that were done in the ’60s or something in Germany... for the mastodon episode, he found this library where some guy started a Kickstarter and then went to India to record elephant sounds for a year... all the mastodon sounds are so much more than what’s out there that a lot of people are using. I think we’re taking the extra effort for everything to make it sound unique and specific.”

Shane Houghton, co-creator of Big City Greens, compliments sound editor/designer Joel Valentine as part of “a killer sound team! They don't get enough love! Eric and Joel are amazing!”

Someone on Twitter asked @crackmccraigen “how was the noise used when the powerpuff girls would suddenly fly off made? The fwOosh/pew!! noise, yanno?” Craig replied: “It was comprised of a few different sound fx that were put together by the PPG sound designer Joel Valentine.” When I noted that Joel was usually uncredited, Craig told me that “The name Twenty-First Century Entertainment, Inc. listed under Sound Editing is Joel. That’s his company, [and] he wanted to be credited that way.” Another person appreciated the sound design of Kid Cosmic, and Craig highlighted that he’s been working with him for 27 years.

As of May 30th, 2021, Owen Fishback’s Kippie short, “Guard Duty Doggy”, was released. I saw it the next day, and it acknowledges Joel Valentine for sound effects (some of his sound effects are used in it, probably sourced from the Sound Effects Wiki pages for his sound effects, to which I contributed info but not the audio samples used in the video).

The sound effects that Joel created are very meaningful to me as I grew up heavily on the works of Joel Valentine for Cartoon Network, namely Dexter’s Laboratory. When I heard his sound design on Samurai Jack Season 5 back in 2017 (namely EPISODE XCIV), I was so impressed with his array of realistic soundscapes of atmospheres and animals that I began to consider Joel the next best creative in sound post-production sound services, next to those of Skywalker Sound and Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services.

I’m not sure what will become of The Producer’s Sound Effects Library, though I got a copy from ebay on 1/23/2020 A.D. as an upcoming birthday gift and immediately preserved it by ripping the files off ( the link for proof read Producers-Sound-Effects-Library-13-cds-Great-Value-Free-shipping/283736597492?hash=item421004e3f4:g:rLkAAOSwAGxeE8ql ). Thanks to @wiley207 and SqueakyCartWheel for notifying me on the Sound Effects Wiki!

Here’s a close-up of the main CD’s cover, used for the 101 SOUND EFFECTS CD...

...and here’s the label of the CD. They all look like this due to distributor S.O.S.

I made a page for The Producers Sound Effects Library on the Sound Effects Wiki, of course, to celebrate this amazing, obscure library. I recognize a number of sound effects on that library, like “IN Cricket Single” (as often heard in Spongebob) and “ROBOT MOVES #1[-3]” One of my absolute favorite sound effects on that library is “SPACE BEAM DOWN.” It’s a deep drone with a mysterious, enticing musical tone; it’s on PSEL CD SY-01 - “Science Fiction”.

Regarding preservation of the PSEL: due to the copyright warning requiring “written legal documentation from the owner of the Producers Sound Effects Library” (that’s probably Joel)--though I think that the company of the same name as the SFX library, PSEL, is defunct--I believe that I can not upload the audio files online “unauthorized” “by any information or sampler storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented”.

Aside from the PSEL, I hope and pray that Joel’s library will be in good hands when he retires. Sound Ideas or Pro Sound Effects deserve to preserve this amazing library of sound!

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kusunogatari · 5 years ago

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[ Portal Peril || Chapter Five ] [ @abyssaldespair ] [ Uchiha Obito, Suigin Ryū, Namikaze Minato, Hatake Kakashi, Nohara Rin, Uzumaki Kushina ] [ Verse: White Hands of Healing ] [ Previous || Next ]

Four days. Four days of waiting, agonizing, worrying. Though Rin, and even Kushina have been doing their best to keep the interdimensional traveler distracted from thinking about her circumstances, it’s rather hard to avoid. Any moment she’s left to idle in her thoughts, they always circle back. In all honesty, her biggest worry is Obito. Her Obito. Is he all right? Is he handling her absence without panicking? She can only imagine how he felt, going into Kamui and finding her missing...especially given how impossible that is. Is he trying to get her back?

She knows he’s intelligent enough to eventually puzzle out what happened, and if she knows anything about him...it’s that he hasn’t stopped trying since he figured it out. Just like this Obito and Kakashi have been working to reopen the window between their dimensions. They’ve both been running themselves ragged. In a way she feels guilty, but Minato remains convinced it’s a high priority: having someone from another timeline in their own risks opening up paradoxes and exposing them to events they should never realize transpired. She’s been extra careful to avoid broaching topics that might influence - in any small way - this timeline she was never meant to see.

“So...there was a fourth war…?” Kushina murmurs as they sit around and carefully exchange stories.

“Mhm...and it was by far the bloodiest of them all. Every major country was involved against a...common enemy.”

“Can you imagine?” Rin wonders aloud, leaning back in her chair with folded arms. “What kind of event could unite us after so much division?”

Ryū, of course, doesn’t explain. Even if it was excusable to do so...painting Obito in such a light when their own is so different could be cruel. “It was a fierce battle...but in the end, they overcame it. It’s been less than two years since then, so change is still slow...but so far, it’s been steady.”

“Did you participate?”

“...er...no. I was...recovering from grave injuries at the time. Believe me...I was disappointed. I wanted nothing more than to help, but I’d have been useless. I couldn’t even properly mold chakra.”

“Wow...must have been some wounds!”

“...yeah.” Subconsciously, Ryū rubs at a spot on her arm - now marless - that once bore one of the largest scars from her stint in Root’s torture chamber.

“But you obviously recovered…?”

“...you could say that. I had to use a rather...dangerous technique. But it paid off, in the end.”

“I still can’t believe you have sage training,” Rin offers in the subsequent silence, looking almost disappointed. “I’d love to do something like that…”

“Well...maybe before I leave, I can point you in the right direction,” Ryū replies with a small smile. “I just don’t want to risk you running into other me if you go. And...well, I’m not sure how shishō would react.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.” Rin seems to mull that over for a while. “There’s so much more I wish I could know...but even with what little I do, it sounds like your timeline’s a lot more…”

“Depressing,” Kushina offers dryly.

“Yeah. Makes me think I don’t really want to know.”

Ryū hesitates a moment. It’s hard to remember that, where she comes from, both of them are long dead. “...I think some things are better left unsaid.”

...she’s going to miss them when she goes home.

...if she goes home.

There’s still a lingering fear, the more time goes on, that she won’t ever make it home. Four days have already passed...and who knows how many more will be needed before she can return. As much as she tries not to think about it, Ryū can’t help but be haunted by it.

“Ryū-san.”

Looking up from her plate (Rin insisting they spend each evening with her teacher and his family), Ryū hums in question.

Minato thinks for a moment. “...your sage training involves gathering chakra, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I was wondering if you are able to then transmit that chakra to others.”

She blinks. “Well, I’ve...done so in small doses in the past. Why?”

“Our biggest limiting factor, for the moment, has been chakra. Both Kakashi and Obito can only use Kamui for so long before exhausting themselves, especially given how draining a technique of that level is. I was wondering if I could convince you to go with them tomorrow and act as a sort of...battery. To help extend how long they’ll be able to keep working on the portals.”

That gets Ryū to brighten. Why hadn’t she thought of that? “I...of course! That’s a great idea.”

“Perfect. Then if you’d accompany Obito tomorrow in the morning, I believe his shift is first. Of course you’ll both still need breaks to rest, but I’m hoping it will greatly improve productivity.”

“It should, yes. I’ll do that.”

Ryū then helps tidy up afterward, chatting nonchalantly with Kushina as Minato and his team discuss the happenings back at the table.

“Are you sure you’re up for this, dear?”

She glances to the Uzumaki questioningly. “Huh?”

“Well, I don’t mean to pry, but it’s rather obvious you haven’t been sleeping too well,” Kushina offers. “Which of course I understand...you’re stressed, after all. But I’d hate for you to push yourself too hard and make things worse.”

That makes the healer go quiet, thoughtfully toweling off a clean dish. “...I am tired, yes...but I’m also desperate to get home. If wearing myself out will up our odds, then...I’ll gladly do so.”

That gets Kushina to sigh, dunking a dish a bit forcefully. “You medics’re all the same...Rin’s always working until she conks out like a cut light bulb whenever she gets really into something. It’s like y’get so caught up in helping everybody else, you forget to help yourself! You’ll get home, I’m sure of it. And I get wanting to help. I can’t stop you. But don’t forget there’s people who’ll worry if you hurt yourself trying, hm?”

“...I know. Um...thanks.”

The warning makes her realize...Obito doesn’t have that guiding hand right now. Nor does he have a Kakashi to split his time with. How badly is he faring…? If he can keep that up...then she can at least do this…!

They return to Rin’s apartment once everything’s done, Ryū lying awake and staring at the ceiling. If anything, she feels like tomorrow will do her some good. Being so idle has been driving her mad, no matter how busy Rin tries to keep her. Minato decided it wasn’t wise for her to get caught up working in the hospital, so being without her typical job or...really anything else to do has left her about to go stir crazy.

Her eagerness, however, is tempered by a body that finally outweighs her mind, falling into a decent sleep for the first time since she arrived here. She wakes groggily, a bit disoriented after resting so hard.

“Hey, sleepyhead! Ready to head out and meet Obito?”

Though she should be used to it by now, the name brings a small pang to her chest. “...yeah.”

They grab breakfast on the way, leaving Konoha behind and heading out toward the proper road. Rin chatters away mostly aimlessly, Ryū a bit lost in thought. She hasn’t been out here since she arrived. Please, just...let today be the day. I don’t know how much longer I can be patient…

When they arrive, they find themselves alone. Rin plants hands on her hips. “Eh, should have known...he’s always late.”

“Really?”

“Mhm. He’s always getting caught up in some errand or another, seems like.”

“...what about Kakashi?”

“He’s fairly prompt. Why?”

“...just curious.” Yet another thing that seems so...backwards.

Fifteen minutes later, they hear a voice up the road, Obito landing beside them with a sheepish grin. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine, I explained your habitual tardiness,” Rin assures him, arms crossing and giving him a knowing, exasperated smile. “So, want me to stick around?”

“Well...whatever you think. I guess there won’t be much for you to do, and I can keep an eye on Ryū-san.”

“Hm…” Rin mulls it over. “...maybe I’ll head back and see if sensei needs help with anything. Haven’t had a chance to do that in a while.”

Ryū can’t help but shrink a bit, looking guilty. “Sorry…”

“Nah, it’s fine. Job’s a job! Just might as well do something else if there’s not much to be done here, hm? Good luck, guys!” With that, the Nohara starts making her way back toward the village.

That leaves Ryū and Obito.

“...well, ready to give this a shot?” he asks, turning to her a bit awkwardly.

She nods. “Sure. Give me a few minutes to build up some energy. Um...I guess in the meantime, go ahead and get started?”

“Sounds good.” Facing the proper direction, Obito concentrates, his one dark eye shifting red. Tomoe then spin until the design of his Mangekyō forms. There’s a surge of chakra, and Ryū watches as a familiar glance into Kamui opens just before them.

...but no sign of the other dimension beyond.

Realizing she’s wasting time, Ryū then gives a small shake of her head. Evening her breath, her energies begin to balance...and then open to the energy around her. Nature chakra begins to pool with her own, swelling her reserves to their maximum capacity. Pupils then narrow to slits as the chakra influences her biology.

Letting his first attempt release, Obito glances to her and startles slightly. “...whoa! I guess that means, uh...you’re good to go?”

“Mhm. It’s easiest to transfer energy over a direct connection, so…” After a small pause, she rests a hand along his upper arm, letting some chakra travel between them. “Did you feel that?”

“Yeah! It’s...warm,” he notes, giving her hand a glance.

“Don’t worry, it won’t get any warmer than that,” she assures him.

“Okay...got it.” Regathering his focus, Obito shifts his target slightly, and gives Kamui another try.

Over...and over...and over again.

After two straight hours, Ryū advises he take a break. Chakra between the two of them is holding up well, but his eye is starting to feel fatigued.

“Any blurriness in your vision?” she asks, looking at the eye carefully.

“Uh...maybe a little. But it always goes away. Just need to give it a breather, that’s all. Otherwise I feel great! Hardly tired at all. Which, uh...is quite the change, honestly.”

Ryū hums, thinking. “...I guess it might be the effects of my line’s chakra. It’s most suited for healing, so even beyond keeping you energized, it might help a bit with any other feelings beyond weariness.”

“Guess that makes sense.” Obito takes out a canteen, taking a few swallows before offering it over.

“No thank you, I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Mhm.”

He studies her for a moment. “...you sure you’re okay?”

There’s a pause, and then Ryū heaves a sigh. “Just...worried. About getting home. Everyone seems so convinced that it’s going to happen, and soon...and yet the days just keep passing. And it’s not that I don’t have faith in you all. But like Minato-sama said...it’s going to be so hard to get to align properly...to get it just right...and without being able to coordinate both sides, those odds are just…” She fades into silence, elbows on her bent knees as she sits. Her brow buries into her palms.

Obito hesitates, clearly not sure how to handle this. “...I mean...yeah, mathematically, it’s...a bit daunting. But you said it yourself: the other Obito’s going to be working his ass off trying to get to you! And we’ve been going from sunup to sundown. That alone has to count for something, right…?”

She doesn’t answer.

“...and, I mean...has it really been so bad, being here?” he dares to hint, tone a bit hesitant. “I mean...you’ve been getting along really well with everyone! Sensei, his wife, our team...I know it’s only been a few days, but...you fit right in. I know Rin’s loved having you around. You two click like nobody’s business. Even Kakashi tolerates you, and that’s saying something.”

In spite of herself, Ryū looses a small snort, but doesn’t move.

“...we’re really gonna miss you when you go,” Obito then admits softly. “And I mean...I know you keep talking about the other Obito. And I get it. But...you haven’t really mentioned anything else. Maybe Kakashi once or twice, but...is there...anything else you want to get back to?”

Ryū’s eyes flicker over the patch of ground between her knees, not having an answer.

“I don’t mean to pry. But I mean...just seems a little odd that you’re really only gunning for this for one person, you know? Don’t you have any friends, or...family?”

“...no family,” she manages to reply quietly. “My mother died when I was small. And I...never knew my father. No siblings. No aunts, uncles, cousins. And I’ve...I’ve never really been good at making friends.”

“What, really? You? Look how well you’ve settled in here! Just in a few days you’ve won us all over!” Obito tries to catch her eyes, attempting a smile. “I mean...is it really so bad here?”

“...I…”

“And like you said...your village might still be here. Maybe you do have family left. There’s no way to know until you look, right?”

“But...but if I am there, then...then it would…”

“I know, I’m just...throwing out ideas.” Obito braces his forearms on his knees, hands clasped as he sighs. “...we’re just...really gonna miss you. And I mean…” He hesitates, looking torn as a tooth nibbles the scar on his lip. “You said it yourself: this timeline’s lost a lot less than yours. I dunno what exactly that means. And I get why you can’t tell us. But isn’t that, y’know...encouraging?”

Ryū stiffens a hair.

“...and, uh...there’s...y’know…” A hand spares to itch at his neck, clearly trying to sort out his words before he says them. “...there is an...an Obito here. So, I mean...maybe -”

Teeth gritting, Ryū heaves herself to her feet, walking swiftly several paces from their resting spot.

...well, crap.

Jolting a bit in surprise at her immediate reaction, Obito leans back a bit, blinking a wide eye. Well that...wasn’t what he expected, in all honesty. “H...hey! Wait, I...I didn’t mean that…! I mean, it’s not that I -?” After a pause, he wilts with an exhale. “...I…”

Coming to a stop a ways down the road, Ryū lets her arms tighten around her middle, jaw clenched and fighting back all sorts of unsavory emotions. Instead, she stares at the spring nearby the road...the one she and Obito had stopped at on their way back. When they were ambushed. Maybe if they’d just kept on their way...so many ifs, so many buts. And for now, nothing to show for them, either way.

All the while, Obito just sits, chewing his lip and debating how to fix this. It wasn’t that he meant he was some sort of...replacement. That just feels...odd. And yet...well…

He sighs, dragging a hand down his face. How to explain it. After all, it’s only been four days. And he hasn’t even seen her that much. Maybe it’s just some stupid idea in the back of his mind, given that - apparently - they’ve meshed so well in another timeline. Just his imagination getting carried away with him. But...he really does enjoy her company. They only really get to speak when he’s off and Kakashi’s taking a turn at things, resting and getting ready for a new attempt to open the portal back up. But she really is a kind person. Soft-spoken, gentle, chiding...and yet obviously friendly. True, she’s been rather distracted for the entirety of her unintended visit, but even then, he’s been watching how she interacts with everyone else. And there’s just something about it...something about her.

And now he’s gone and completely ruined things.

“Is...everything okay?”

Glancing over, Obito flattens in expression as he spies Kakashi. “A little early, aren’t you?”

“Sensei wanted to check and see how the chakra exchange was working. But it doesn’t really look like you’re doing much of that at the moment,” Kakashi retorts, brows lifting a bit.

“No kidding.”

“What’d you do?”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“Then what did you say that you shouldn’t have said?”

“I -! It just -! I didn’t -!”

The Hatake then waves a hand. “...I have a pretty good guess. Getting carried away as always, are you?”

Obito doesn’t reply, just crossing his arms with a sigh.

“...she can’t stay, Obito. She doesn’t even want to. I don’t think a handful of days is going to convince anyone to leave their lives behind. And you’ve seen how distraught she is over this. Did you really think you could just convince her to give that all up?”

“...that’s not what I meant...I just…” Obito throws up his hands in a gesture of frustration. “...I didn’t mean to choose to give it up, and just...pretend her other life never happened. I meant more in a, hey, if we can’t get you home, then...y’know…”

Kakashi sighs, clapping a hand atop his teammate’s shoulder. “...well, I know you meant well, but...I’m not sure she’s quite ready to hear that, yet. She’s still hanging on to a hope that she can make it back.”

“...do you really think we’ll get it?”

“...we have to keep trying. Four days is hardly a proper effort, all things considered. But, uh...maybe we should swap for a bit. Let her cool down. Just...go say you’re sorry, and that you’re an idiot, and that I’ll take over from here for a bit, hm?”

Obito’s expression sours a bit, but...he relents. “...you really suck at giving advice.”

“Never said I didn’t.”

Sighing, Obito glances to where Ryū is still standing off the road. “...all right. I’ll...come back later.”

“Sure.”

Heaving to his feet, Obito hesitates a moment before making his way over, a bit unsure how to repeat what he told Kakashi in a way that will hopefully make her less upset. Once he’s near enough, he offers, “Look, I...uh…”

“...I know what you meant.”

He pauses. “...you do?”

“...I know how hopeless this all seems.” Her tone warbles, and Obito’s brow wilts in sympathy as she clearly struggles to keep it together. “I just...I can’t give up...not until we’ve tried everything…” For a moment longer she stares at the water, and then turns to give him a glance with watery greys. “...I can’t tell you everything he’s been through. Everything we’ve been through. But the thought of giving up on that...it...I can’t. I just can’t…”

“...I didn’t mean to make light of that,” Obito murmurs, avoiding her eyes as both guilt at his insensitivity and embarrassment at seeing her cry makes him nervous. “I guess I just wanted you to know that...that you’re welcome here. You have a place here, if...if you need it. But it’s not what you want, and...I get that. I’m sorry.”

Watching him quietly, Ryū softens. “...and I don’t mean to make light of you,” she offers, tone somber. “You’re...you’re a very nice man. And I can already tell that you’re funny, and optimistic, and determined to do what’s right. It’s not that I...that I don’t…” She hesitates. “...I’ve already made a choice. And after everything...there’s no taking it back. I’m sorry.”

“No! No, don’t...don’t be sorry,” Obito insists, waving hands. “I...I’m just an idiot. And...I’ll just...give Kakashi a crack at things, okay? So you can, uh...y’know. I’ll just...give you a break.”

“Obito, you don’t need to -?”

“I just…” He hesitates, and then wilts. “...I guess now I understand why he’d come to love you so much.”

Taken aback, Ryū’s eyes widen slightly. But before she can offer a reply, there’s a holler from up the road.

“Uh...guys? I...think I found something.” Staring into his Kamui portal, Kakashi goes stock still as a rather...interesting sight looks back.

I like to call this: the awkward chapter, bahaha~ Where we have the actual crossing of wires between other!Obito and Ryū. Poor guy...words are hard. He wasn't trying to offend you Ryū! He's just a lil tongue-tied...and maybe a little crushy, huehue~ But otherwise...we've got a CLIFFY! Which...won't be one for long, given I'm posting this all now, lol - buuut either way, thanks for reading!

#abyssaldespair #uchiha obito #suigin ryū #namikaze minato #hatake kakashi #nohara rin #uzumaki kushina #white hands of healing [ canon verse ]

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sbboh · 6 years ago

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Yellow Fever

After predicting a mediocre 9th place for Norwich last season, I didn’t actually make it to Carrow Road until Boxing Day. By this point the Canaries were flirting with automatic promotion and hadn’t lost a league game in over two months.

Not long after the hour mark, City found themselves 3-0 down to a relatively unimpressive Nottingham Forest side. But even at that moment, Christmas wasn’t ruined. Norwich were creating chances like there was no tomorrow. Incredibly Norwich made it back to 3-3, with two injury time goals from Onel Hernandez, the player I suggested it was worth keeping an eye on last season. If you haven't seen Jeff Stelling’s reaction to the third Norwich goal, it is well worth looking up.

Norwich lost their next game three days later to Frank Lampard’s Derby County but hardly looked back from that point onwards. A defeat to Preston in February was the only blemish in an incredible end to the 2018/2019 which saw the Norfolk side finish as champions on 94 points.

As they head to Anfield on Friday, it’ll be almost six months since Norwich last lost a competitive game, so in a sense there no reason for Daniel Farke’s team to approach the match with anything other than confidence. Not necessarily a confidence that they can win the game, but that they can utilise their brand of football, lovingly referred to as ‘Farkeball’ to take on Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool.

The first thing anyone looks for as we enter into August is the summer signings. With Harry Maguire heading to Manchester United for an amount in excess of £80 million, it is worth noting the only fee Norwich have out laid is not even 1% of that. Sam Byram, a £750,000 signing from West Ham, is likely to be a back up right back for the immensely promising Max Aarons.

The other business has involved free transfers and loans. Swiss striker Josip Drmic, signed on a free from Monchengladbach will likely play second fiddle to last season’s top scorer Teemu Pukki. At the age of 30, Drmic will be looking for redemption after a few seasons of unfortunate injuries. His pre-season has been interesting, scoring a perfect hat-trick against Luton on a Saturday before releasing his own music video on the Sunday. Even if he struggles to find the net this season, he can look back fondly on the two days that were even more productive than Craig David’s seven.

Signed on loan from Schalke, German stopper Ralf Fahrmann provides much needed competition for Tim Krul in goal. Despite being a free transfer, a leader and a Championship winning goalkeeper, the Dutchman came in for a lot of stick last season. He is no doubt a good keeper and an asset to the dressing room, but Fahrmann will fancy his chances of grabbing the number 1 shirt. I think Krul will get the nod at Anfield, but Fahrmann will be number 1 by Christmas.

The first signing Norwich made this season, Patrick Roberts, has arguably the highest ceiling of all the new arrivals. He’s a left footer, happy to play on the right wing, who hasn’t yet had his chance in the top flight, despite signing for Manchester City four years ago. After limited success at Celtic and Girona, Norwich seems a sensible choice. He should get given a chance by a manager who has pedigree for bringing through young players, notably Roberts’ ex team-mate Angus Gunn. Whether this proves to be his breakthrough season, only time will tell.

If Norwich get off to a poor start then inevitably sports journalists across the land will point to the lack of spending as the obvious shortcoming. But Norwich have been clear from the start that they don’t have the financial muscle to splash the cash. And more pertinently, the feeling around the club is a lot of the players can make the step up to the Premier League without too much fuss. Many of last season’s key players have signed new contracts over the summer. Farke and the indispensable sporting director Stuart Webber have even gone as far buying flowers for the players’ partners to thank them for their support last season. It’s moves like this that could help keep the team together and avoid players being poached by bigger clubs for a little longer.

Aston Villa have spent in excess of £100 million this summer which has gained them the most media attention of the three new promoted sides. The comparisons with Fulham, who spent that much are also lazy. Besides Jack Grealish and John McGinn, Villa had a fairly average Championship squad supplemented by useful loan signings such as Tammy Abraham. Sure Villa might go down, but they’d have been likely to be relegated not long after Christmas without a major overhaul of the existing crop of the players. The same goes for the other promoted side Sheffield United, who appear to have made some shrewd acquisitions such as Callum Robinson and Oli McBurnie to help them make the step up.

Going back to ‘Farkeball’, it does have the potential for success against better opposition. Daniel Farke’s first season at Norwich led to unimpressive 14th place finish in the Championship, which would have almost certainly been lower without James Maddison. But during that season there were very competitive cup games against good Arsenal and Chelsea sides, as well as a decent battle with Bournemouth during the most recent campaign.

Any Norwich fan with a modicum of common sense would be ecstatic with a 17th place finish. But I’d suggest a higher finish is by no means out of the question. The aforementioned will hope Teemu Pukki, the greatest free transfer in Championship history, will hope to turn his 29 league goals last season into double figures of Premier League goals. Bosnian midfielder Mario Vrancic became a greater influence in the second half of last season, and has a world class free-kick in him. But the jewel in the crown is undoubtedly 22 year-old Emi Buendia.

The skilful Argentinian lit up Carrow Road with some sensational performances after joining from Getafe last season. His influence was such that Norwich didn’t win any of the league games he played no part in. It’s not just his ability on the ball, he is superb at winning the ball back from opponents, which makes him deadly in the final third. Norwich fans thought Maddison was going to be as good as it ever got, but Buendia reached levels that have made most forget the Leicester man’ absence. I’d be surprised if any Norwich fan would swap Buendia to have Maddison back right now. Of all the City players, he is the one who could take the league by storm.

For all of my unusual optimism, things could go still go very wrong for Norwich. I’d be no more surprised if Liverpool put 5 past them on Friday as if Daniel Farke’s men snatched a point. The defence, likely to be made up of youngsters Max Aarons, Jamal Lewis and Ben Godfrey has brilliant potential but this is an environment they’ve not faced before. Also longer term, key injuries to the full backs (Lewis and Aarons) as well as Buendia or Pukki could compromise the free flowing style of football Norwich play.

City have got this far by doing it their own way. As they enter the Premier League, the one thing you can guarantee is that they'll continue along that path and see how far it can take them. Unlike previous promotions it feels like Norwich aren't just happy to be there, they really want to show what they can do. I’d expect as the seasons roars into action, the Canaries are much more likely to be making the noise than listening to it.

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sportsgeekonomics · 5 years ago

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The Crystal Ball: Predictions of what the NCAA will say when they finally (claim to) allow a limited exercise of athletes’ NIL rights

Today the NCAA issued an open letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom, threatening to cut California schools out of NCAA championships, threatening litigation, and also casually mentioning that when they get around to allowing some form of NIL rights, it is not going to be, um, well, real in the sense of allowing athletes to operate in the market. To this last point, they write:

“The NCAA continues to focus on the best interests of all student-athletes nationwide. NCAA member schools already are working on changing rules for all student-athletes to appropriately use their name, image and likeness in accordance with our values ...”

Since the NCAA’s values do not include that athletes are entitled to the full market value of their NILs, I think we can read this as a pre-announcement of an intent to restrict athletes rights. (side note, if it’s a right, it’s not supposed to be restrictable)

But the NCAA is so predictable in this desire to arrogate athletes’ rights for their own benefit, that with a fairly high degree of confidence, I believe I can predict several other “features” of the new NCAA NIL policy. To wit:

1) It will involve an artificial cap on what an athlete’s “true” NIL value is, determined by a committee of college administrator types, and designed to ensure that athletes are not “overpaid” for their NIL rights.

Recognize that in most situation where we are concerned about young or naïve people contracting with savvy businesses in the market, we have legal protections to ensure the less knowledgeable people are not taken advantage of by being paid too little. But the problem the NCAA will be worries about will be a needless concern that young men and women will be paid “too much.”

This shows you the NCAA’s concern is not to ensure the rights of the athletes to open-market compensation, but rather to ensure they do not get their full value, for fear of what this will say about how valuable college athletes actually are.

2) The committee’s concerns will be

a. Fear that payment for NIL value will be inflated by payment for athletic value

This has two major problems. The first is a purely economic one. There is virtually no athlete for whom his/her endorsement value is separable from his/her athletic value, esp. prior to retirement. When Klay Thompson does an ad for Kaiser Permanente, a large portion of why he is chosen as the endorse, and why he can command payment above a union scale commercial actor is because he is an awesome basketball player, and his value to Kaiser Permanente hinges critically on the fact that he is beloved in Oakland, where Kaiser Permanente has a presence.

For a car dealer in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the value of Tua Tagovailoa depends critically on him playing well, and doing so for the Alabama Crimson Tide. If he were to transfer to Clemson, his value to the Tuscaloosa dealer declines to zero, or perhaps even negative. So thinking that these values are somehow severable is foolish.

The second is a civil/economic rights one, which is the idea that a school or sports body should somehow have the right to decide whether two adults transacting in the market for perfectly legal conduct should have their collective judgment of a fair price questioned. In particular, for this third party to step in and override the athletes’ right to engage in commerce to make sure he/she gets less than the market’s own assessment is essentially granting to the NCAA/School ownership over a stream of payments that ought to belong solely to the adult full-citizen.

b. Fear that only the rich schools will be able to offer NIL deals/com balance

There are two fundamental misunderstandings baked into this concern. The first is a belief that caps on individual earnings improve competitive balance in sports. They do not. There are dozens of sports economics papers in professional and college sports that show that caps on what individual can earn doesn’t improve the fortunes of “poor” schools, but instead just changes how the “rich” schools use their money to get talent. (I’ve summarized a lot of them, and discussed the empirical data in the past). If amateurism rules improved competitive balance, we would not have the concept of a Power 5 conference, because all conferences would tend to have an equal chance at being powerful in any given year. We would not have UConn and a handful of other school dominating women’s basketball year-in and year-out. Alabama and Clemson would not be favorites, again, to be in the college football championship after having met up in the CFP the last four years in a row.

Economics has known for 60+ years that talent flows to where it is most valuable, regardless of whether the talent itself receives a share of the profits of not. Prior to free agency, the New York Yankees were more likely to be in the World Series than they are today. This is know as the “Invariance Principle” and you can check out this paper I co-authored for a good discussion of this principle if you’d like. Essentially it says that Alabama will out-recruit Fresno State for QB talent as long as Tuscaloosa has more demand for football talent than Fresno, and allowing that demand to lead to athletes receiving a share of the Tuscaloosa revenue will not change the relative success of Alabama. Ask yourself how many times, currently, Fresno state is able to beat out Alabama if they want the same athlete even when “pay” is capped equally at a scholarship. (spoiler: never)

The second misunderstanding is to think about spending on athletes like a pure consumer luxury good and to imagine a school/community acting like a family with a (short-term) fixed income deciding whether or not to take a vacation. That analogy is horrible for thinking about how major universities decide how much money to allocate to their various means of generating revenue and reputation as educational nonprofits. In that budgetary environment, the value of a star athlete is assessed, not against whether the family can afford a luxury, but rather whether the benefit of adding that athlete is worth the cost. Because it is a business decision, if a school like Fresno State felt it would generate more economic/reputational benefit from a star quarterback than Alabama would, they would offer more. But Fresno’s market is not as lucrative as Alabama’s and so it’s not that Fresno “can’t afford” to outbid Alabama, rather it’s that Fresno’s break-even point is lower than Alabama. So it’s rational for Fresno to stop bidding even when Alabama is willing to continue to up the stakes, and Alabama thus gains the asset.

This is not a argument for fixing prices at the point where Fresno would break even, since all Alabama then has to do is invest in other assets, better facilities, better coaches, etc., (can you say indoor waterfalls?) and since Fresno is already at break-even, for Fresno to invest even a dollar more is wasteful. In other words, it’s not that it’s unfair that Fresno can’t afford to outbid Alabama, it’s actually economically rational for Fresno to let Alabama pay more for talent, because it would cost Fresno more than Fresno would benefit, while the reverse is true for Alabama. It’s win-win for Fresno not to overpay and for Alabama to get the ability to commercialize the athletes’ value. Allowing the money to flow to the athletes instead of the Waterfall Construction Industry just ensures the value reaches those who generate it.

c. Purported Fear that NIL rights will involve too much time away from school

This is somewhat perplexing, for several reasons. The first reason is that shooting a commercial or lending some pre-existing video to a sponsor is not a very time-consuming activity, certainly not compared to the time it takes for a college sport team to travel to a road game (or several) over the course of a week. College Basketball athletes miss something like 40 days of class a year. Suddenly now we’re worried about an afternoon photo shoot?

The second reason is that, of course, activity of this sort can be focused on the summer.

But the third is that the prior goal of making sure athletes aren’t “overpaid” for their NIL goes firmly against the goal of ensuring athletes do not focus on NIL activity too much. If an athlete needs, say, $100,000 to help pay of his mother’s mortgage, wouldn’t it be easier on his time to let him film one lucrative endorsement for $100,000, than to declare that level “too much” and thus force him into doing twenty $5,000 deals? Not everyone has a dollar goal like this, but the best way to ensure anyone who needs money will not do too many side-jobs is to make the first side-job pay enough to cover the financial need.

d. Unsavory advertisers.

This is not as ridiculously as the other concerns. Every sports employer imposes these sorts of terms on their athletes, whether it is a requirement not to endorse a competitor of the team’s official sponsor, or not to advertise for illegal products, or gambling (given that it may be perceived as lowering the integrity of the sports contests themselves, etc.) But the difference here is that these terms are all negotiated as part of an employment contract. If a team wants to tell an athlete s/he can’t advertise for a beer brand, that is baked into the salary they settle on for his/her services, and generally, the salary will rise as the endorsements are more restricted.

In contrast, the NCAA wants to impose these sorts of restrictions, but not compensate the athlete for them. They want to treat the athlete like an employee in terms of imposing rules of employment, but it does not want to grant the athlete all of the benefits of employment, whether it be workers comp, the right to unionize, or even social security matching. To the extent the NCAA needs to control what products an athlete can endorse (which I question), they should be forced to bargain for those concessions, not allowed to simply assert an artificial right to declare them forbidden by fiat.

3) It will involve some mandatory “tether” to education, such as requiring an endorser to offer a summer internship as part of the contract.

By itself, working to get athletes more exposure to the business side of sports is a fine goal. But (a) it contradicts the goal of limiting the impact of the NIL work on school time, and (b) it may force an athlete into internships ill-suited to his/her career aspirations. Take the example of Bryce Love, a recent star at Stanford who also plans to become a medical doctor. He was the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy in his penultimate season at Stanford and he could have easily gotten lucrative endorsement deals from any number of advertisers. But would forcing him to do a summer internship at adidas have helped him get ready for medical school?

So yes, let’s encourage endorsers to offer these sorts of internships, but let’s not allow the NCAA to impose a one-size-fits-all mandate on athletes. There is also ( c) the question of how to handle the star with multiple offers. If the total amount is going to be capped, and if then an internship is also required, an athlete will find his/her ability to do more than one or two sponsorships curtailed as well, which effectively would impose a cap on total earnings on top of individual deal earnings.

4) This will all be done in an effort to maintain a “line of demarcation” between college and pro sports.

Of course, there is, and always will be, a strong demarcation between pro sports and college sports, which is that to play college sports, the athlete must be a student at the college. As long as that “tether” is maintained, no one will confuse the two. It's simple guys: College Athletics = The Athletes Attends College.

Beyond that, further demarcation is unnecessary from the point of view of avoiding consumer confusion. If a real college student is wearing Nike shoes because his school is being paid for him to do so, and suddenly that changes so that he is wearing Nike shoes because his school AND he himself are both being paid, it’s hard to see this as blurring the line. The only way the line between pro and college would be blurred, is if consumer questioned whether the college athlete’s education was genuine. As long as it is, the availability of endorsements, and true access to an open market for those endorsements, will not change that fundamental distinction where College Athletics = The Athletes Attends College.

If the NCAA is worried that endorsements blur this line, it is really a signal they are not confident that college athletes really DO attend college in the same sense as a normal college student. This should be a sign to California to push back and tell the NCAA to focus on fixing that problem, rather than limiting athletes’ economic opportunities to cover up for the NCAA’s failure to ensure all athletes are receiving a true college education.

Conclusion

This ends my prognostication of what we’re going to see from the NCAA. Almost surely, the NCAA plan will seek to override the market assessment of athlete NIL value with the express goal of lowering their income and controlling their efforts to commercialize their image. Whatever the NCAA plan is, it will almost certainly reject the best method of determining fair market value, which is to let transactions in a fair market set value. It will arrogate to the NCAA the athlete's right to determine who he/she endorses, how much he/she can bargain for, and how much time he/she wants to devote to this, in a way that schools do not do for any other student. At core, it will not accept that this is about the athletes’ rights as adults in society, and instead will consider that doling out a slightly higher level of compensation, but denying the fundamental right of market access, should suffice. It is a “how much cash will you need us to dole out to stop insisting on athletes’ getting all their rights” kind of deal.

This is the key. The purpose of ensuring athletes recover their NIL rights is because, well, rights are fundamental. Athletes’ are not second-class citizens – and we should not be fooled by “well, this is less exploitative than before” when the real standard should be “this is no longer exploitative at all.”

This is why my work with the HBL is so vital to my efforts to try to restore college athletes’ full sets of rights. Even when a state passes a law restoring a limited subset of college athletes’ full rights, the NCAA is ready to go to court to use the full weight of our legal system to make sure this doesn’t happen. The NCAA is never going to be on board with the simple concept that College Athletes have equal rights to College Coaches. And so, no matter what the legal question, the fact is we will not see the NCAA pay athletes their full market worth unless and until someone else enters the market and forces them to do so. That someone is going to be the HBL.

The HBL will be the first professional college basketball league. We’re not worried that consumers will be confused; rather we’re confident that when we put teams on the court with the bulk of the elite collegiate talent, fans will be excited to watch, sponsors will be excited to be associated with our league, etc. The league is run by Ricky Volante and NBA legend David West, and you can learn more about us at HBLeague.com.

Remember #AmateurismIsACon

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henrynicholl7-blog · 5 years ago

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Ok, I Think I Understand Internet Geekies, Now Tell Me About Internet Geekies!

As a consequence, online drug dealers are somewhat more likely to want decent customer service abilities and a persuasive way with words than muscles and a difficult reputation. Internet freedom is getting a foreign policy issue. Any changes needs to be accomplished by the author.

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