#first real case barring the tutorial of course

[aceatoerbny]

it’s the FIRST CASE

[esamastation]

Gamer girl gets transmigrated into a farm boy Chapter 4 [<<Prologue | <Chapter 3 || Chapter 5>>] Ao3 link

-

So, gambling turned out to be a bit of a bust. It's not a complete loss, though, Van did multiply his starting bid of five silver to seventy four silver pieces in total. Compared to using exploits it's nothing - Katie could've made that in her sleep, if the NPCs still worked like they do in the game. But seeing that it's still in the very early tutorial section… it could be worse.

And then there's the level up. Van's very first this time around. Cue the confetti…

[Farmboy] [Van] [Lvl. 2 Commoner]

It feels pretty good. And what's waiting below in the stats screen is even better.

[You have 2 unused Stat Points.] [You have 1 unused Skill Point]

The first ones always feel a bit special.

In Age of Tales you get two status points and one skill point each time you level up and can then allocate those points as you wish on your character screen. It's not the only way to get points - there are quests, special items and a couple of accessories that affect how you accrue points - but until you're making real money in the game, you're stuck with what level ups dish out. Which is fine - early levels until about lvl. 20 are pretty cheap.

Of course, Van doesn't have a class yet, and so no skill tree to assign his shiny new skill point to - but he can assign his stat points, if he wants to. Which brings up the question. 

What is he going to specialise in this time? 

Van's got the base stats for an easy start as a Paladin, obviously - but Katie just did a Paladin run, and while it was fun, she wouldn't say it was so great that she's eager to repeat the experience. Especially if this really is a transmigration isekai situation - which she's still not thinking about, thank you very much, that's an existential crisis that can wait until nightfall.

At any rate, getting stuck forever as a Paladin would be… well, it would probably be fine. It was alright, playing the goody two shoes lawful good himbo with a heart of gold. It went great with the whole cliché secret chosen one and the lost heir to a great house thing at least… not that there were more than, like, three characters in the whole game who even acknowledged the player character's class. Van got pretty much the same reaction from everyone regardless of whether he was a Rogue or a Wizard or Paladin - it was just the big black and white moral choices that affected those sorts of things.

Age of Tales is Age of Tales-ing, what can you do?

Anyway, going at it as a Paladin again would be easy… but boring. Katie would have to think about it carefully before committing to anything. Though she hasn't quite ruled out the use of cheats yet and is still hoping that Van might be able to use exploits to his benefit later, the gambler showed her that things are different here. Never mind the fact that some features of Age of Tales are just missing, like the passive Wisdom buff. What if she chose a class with features that just don't work anymore?

Yeah, Van's next class would take some careful consideration, and she wouldn't be assigning his status points until she knew, either. Class selection wouldn't be until Urgol's Camp in Chapter 2, anyway, so there's no point fretting about it now.

For now Van has some silver to spend and shopping to do.

He considers visiting the fortune teller first, just in case the duplication glitch is still possible… but he doesn't have a gold bar, and the glitch never worked with anything else, and beyond that the fortune teller doesn't really do much. Also, he has The Incident to prepare for, too, and a limited amount of money.

So, with a full coin purse in hand, Van turns his attention to the market instead. First things first - weapon and armour.

The smithy stands on the other end of the market square, with smoke chugging out of its chimney at steady puffs. There are some shields on display in the front and a big wooden sword on top of the building, advertising "Blakeley's Blades - in business for more than three generations!"

"Hello," Van calls, entering the place.

Inside the air is hot and thick, with the smell of smoke and metal hanging heavy in the room. In the background there's the steady clink-clink-clink of a hammer on an anvil - an apprentice, hammering out some nails in the back. 

"Welcome," an older teenager, eighteen at most, comes forward. "How can we help you?"

[Blacksmith's Apprentice] [Jaro Amagris] [Lvl. 15 Commoner]

"I'd like to see what you have for sale, please," Van says.

"Well, what we have ready is over there," the older apprentice says, pointing towards a table loaded with a number of wooden boxes and buckets full of different metal crafts - nails, candle holders, hinges… "But if you want something specific, you will have to wait until the master gets back - he's out on business."

"Thanks, I'll just take a look," Van says and moves to the table. 

Much to his delight, an Age of Tales shop menu pops up.

[Blakeley's Blades Blacksmith]

[Small Iron Nail - 10 copper pieces] [Small Iron Hook - 13 copper pieces] [Small Iron Clasp - 15 copper pieces] …

And so on, in a surprisingly long list from cheapest to the most expensive. It's a lot of small iron stuff, different types of nails, cloak pins, buckles and buttons, eating utensils, heads of farming tools, and so on and so on, ending with the most expensive items.

… [Cast Iron Skillet - 35 silver pieces] [Cast Iron Cooking Pot - 40 silver pieces] [Short Sword - 50 silver pieces] 

It's a lot more items than Van had been expecting - and yet, fewer weapons. There are plenty of knives - Cooking Knife, Lvl. 1, goes for a nice round 20 silver pieces while Whittling knife, Lvl. 1 goes for 25 - but there's no daggers or throwing knives or anything like that. There isn't even metal ammunition for a sling. There's just one short sword on sale.

And no armour whatsoever. 

"Do you not sell any armour?" Van asks, confused. 

"Er, no?" Jaro Amagris says, giving him a strange look. "We don't make armour, really, though I suppose we can give it a try, if you want to order some. Or you could try at the Madam Arbury's, they might have something."

Van blinks, confused. "Madam Arbury's?"

"The tailor," Jaro clarifies.

There's a tailor? "Oh, okay. Uh. Where is it?"

"It's just across from the church - big windows with dresses, you can't miss it," the apprentice says with a shrug. "I think they have some padded coats and stuff."

Huh. That's interesting. You could get some gambesons and the like in the game too, but all armour and weaponry was bought from blacksmiths. This is… different.

"What d'you need armour for?" the younger apprentice, a boy of maybe ten or eleven, asks from between his hammering. His eyes shine eagerly on his sweaty, soot-stained face. Van glances at the air above him.

[Blacksmith's Apprentice] [Denny Rivercross] [Lvl. 3 Commoner]

The kid squints at Van.  "Are you going to join the army or something?" he asks.

Yeah, eventually, unfortunately, if things follow game plot. "No, no, I just got a bit of money, and I always wanted to try it," Van says quickly and motions at himself. "I mean… I think I'd make a good warrior. What do you think?" He flexes an arm, just because he can. And because Van's biceps are massive.

The younger blacksmith's apprentice bounces a little, clearly full of barely contained kid energy. "Oh yeah! You could be a knight!"

The older apprentice snorts. "Yeah, I don't think size alone is enough to become a knight, Denny," he says, looking Van up and down. "Though it probably helps…"

Denny bounces again. "Jaro, can we make armour for him?" the kid asks eagerly. "I'm so tired of making nails!"

"Well, like I said, we could give it a try," Jaro answers dubiously, still eyeing Van. "If he can pay for it."

Van shrugs. "I might, I might not. How long would it take to make it?"

"Depends on what you want," Jaro answers, taking a hammer lying on a table nearby and swinging it thoughtfully. "Some things take longer to make. And whether you're fine with us trying our hand at it, or if you want a master to make it matters too. He'll be faster - but it will cost you more."

"Hmm… say I wanted a chest plate, a cuirass, and you made it - how long would it take you?" Van asks, rubbing his chin on thought.

Jaro shrugs. "I've never made one and we're pretty busy, so… maybe a week or two?"

… by which time, Van would be at Ulgor's Camp and Valthor's minions would've already torched Westbrook to the ground.

Assuming, of course, that events followed game plot.

"Hmm," Van hums, wondering. In the game there's nothing you can do to prevent the destruction of Westbrook and the Gylcross farm - no matter what choices the player made, a scripted event was a scripted event. But maybe here and now… maybe there is something he can do.

He'd know once the Rift was opened.

In either case, a week is too long - he needs the armour for the battle in town, and that's in three days - and after that, even if the town survived, he might not see Westbrook again in months, if not years. There's no point in ordering anything made here.

"Well, it was a nice dream," Van sighs, a bit disappointed. "I guess I'll try my luck at the tailor's."

"Uh-huh," Jaro the senior apprentice agrees, clearly unimpressed, and drops the hammer on the table. "Alright. Anything else we can do for you?"

With no weapon-worthy knives and the only sword on sale being prohibitively expensive with Van's meagre budget… "Any chance you might have any spears or something lying around in here?"

Jaro snorts at him, arching his brows. "Spears?"

"I just want something to practice being a warrior with!" Van says defensively. "Spears are cheap, right?"

The elder blacksmith's apprentice shakes his head, looking amused, and then thinks about it. "Actually," Jaro says slowly. "I might have something. If you're alright with the shoddy quality, I think we have some practice pieces left?"

He goes to rummage in the back of the smithy and comes back with three very rough looking spearheads made of pretty low quality iron, going by the little holes and pockmarks in them.

[Dull Spearhead, Lvl. 1] [Attack: 3] [Defence: 0] [Crafting material. Attach to a Wooden Pole for a Dull Spear Lvl. 1.]

Van studies the spearheads with interest. Huh. There was crafting in Age of Tales, of course - but the only weapons you could craft were different types of arrows, and those only if you played a Ranger. He'd never seen spearheads. Maybe with some crafting material, his crafting menu will unlock?

In the meanwhile, the younger apprentice has abandoned his nail and is coming to join them. "Jaro, did you make these?" Denny asks, poking at the spearheads interestedly.

"Yes - master was hoping to get commission from the Baron, so he had me learn how to make them," Jaro shrugs. "We didn't get the job, though, it went to a blacksmith in Elysia. Someone's relative." He rolls his eyes.

Denny bounces eagerly, looking up at him. "I want to learn how to make spearheads!"

"Figure out how to make straight nails first," Jaro snorts, pushing the kid back towards the anvil he'd abandoned. Then the elder apprentice turns to look at Van. "Anyway, you can have these for five silver apiece."

Van hums. They are pretty rough, but… they'll probably still be better than the tools back at the farm. "Throw in a sharpening stone and you got yourself a deal."

-

Things go a little better at the tailor. Emphasis on the little.

"Oh, dear me," huffs the very fashionable lady tailor holding the gambeson against Van's chest and tutting fretfully. "No, it won't do, this won't fit at all! I'm afraid it will never fit you."

[Tailor] [Alma Arbury] [lvl. 7 Commoner]

She's somewhere between her thirties and forties and quite pretty, as most female NPCs in this game are. She's dressed up like the NPCs in the crown city, in a multilayered, vaguely Victorian looking dress with many shiny buttons running in a neat line from her neck down to the very hem. She looks very much like someone who's well fit to catering for the rich and affluent.

It's pretty fascinating, since she wasn't in the game at all.

"Well?" Alma asks, squinting a little through her golden framed glasses.

Van looks down. Though the gambeson looks pretty legit, with thick quilting and metal clasps and everything… it also kind of looks like she's holding something made for a child, when compared to his torso. "Could you maybe… expand it?" he asks hopefully. 

"Oh, well," Alma frowns, leaning back a little to consider the issue. "I suppose I could add panels to the side… and the arms… and the shoulder…" she trails away and then tsks, folding the gambeson over her arm. "No, no, it won't do, it won't do at all, it would be a complete mess. No, the proper thing to do is to make a new coat from scratch. Yes, it will fit you perfectly and will be far less work for me!"

Van hums, watching her take the gambeson away. "Well, you're the tailor, I guess. How long would that take, though?" he asks worriedly.

Alma hums and waves a dismissive hand. "Oh, a day or two - it's not a terribly complicated piece of clothing to make, and I have some nice quilt ready."

Van sighs with disappointment. Yet another unexpected turn for realism, but at least it's better than a week or two. "I see," he says and mentally pokes at the System, in hopes that it might offer him a handy-dandy instant goods store.

It shows him the tailor's shop instead. 

[Madam Arbury's Boutique.]

[Handkerchief - 80 copper pieces] [Foot Wrap - 90 copper pieces] [Underwear - 1 silver pieces] …

And so on and so forth, all the way down to…

… [Men's Fancy Winter Coat - 67 copper pieces] [Fancy Evening Dress - 80 silver pieces] [Elaborate Wedding Dress - 1 gold and 10 silver pieces] 

Van mentally flicks through the store page with a sigh and then stops. What's this? Near the middle of the list there is, oh, is that A Leather Vest, lvl. 4? For meagre 20 silver pieces? Well-well-well…

He looks slyly towards the tailor. "You wouldn't happen to have anything else - like, say, a vest?" he asks and adds, leadingly. "Something that might offer a little bit of protection?"

"Oh, well," Alma huffs, adjusting her glasses, her lips pursing up in thought. "I suppose we can have a look at what I have in store, but I really don't think… no, maybe…"

She heads off, muttering to herself and leaving Van examining the boutique and the System's store window. 

It's interesting, and yet another proof of how much more… real things are here. While the building for this shop was in the game - and it had something like five identical clones in other towns and cities - it hadn't been something the player could interact with. Just window dressing, making towns feel more lived in.

Maybe it was in the cut content, and there'd been plans for a clothing shop NPC that hadn't been implemented. It wouldn't be the first time it happened, and there certainly were enough clothing items that there should've been a tailor NPC.

"Ah, here we go!" Alma calls. She's holding a brown leather vest up triumphantly. "Now, this, this is a tough piece of clothing, if I do say so myself! Nice and supple cowhide. Come here, let's see how it fits."

It doesn't, no matter how Alma tries to stretch it, the vest doesn't get anywhere near to closing properly. Van's chest is simply too big.

"Well, that's what you get for growing so big!" the tailor says, a little defensive, her face flushed with effort. 

"I didn't say anything?" Van mutters and then shakes his head, giving in to the inevitable and taking the vest off. Everything was so much easier in the game - because everything always fit the character perfectly. "I guess it was a bit much expect clothing to be ready made. Let's talk about the gambeson - how much would it cost to make it?"

Pretty much all the silver he has left, it turns it, and he wouldn't get the gambeson until the next time he was in town, but that's fine. He wouldn't need it until after the Rift, anyway. With haggling done - and belated introductions made - Alma moves to take his measurements

It's a bit of a new experience for Katie, who's never had anything tailored in her life. It's also somewhat eye-opening, because Madam Arbury's Boutique has something he's not encountered yet. 

A mirror.

"I'll get to work right away," Alma promises, pushing her glasses up again while Van stares at his reflection. "It will be ready by tomorrow evening, mark my words. Please extend your arm straight to the side."

"I'm sure it will be," Van says, tilting his head this way and that while holding his arm to the side. Katie spent something like two hours designing this face, but seeing it like this, in the mirror, moving when he moves, emoting when he does…

"May I ask what you need a gambeson for, anyway?" Alma asks. "I assume you work on a farm?"

"Yeah, the Gylcross farm - but I'm not planning to stay there forever," Van admits, making faces at his reflection. His teeth are so straight. And so white. Kind of weird.

"Ah, I see," Alma hums, thoughtful, writing something down in a little notebook. "Are you looking to join any military group in particular? Should I add heraldries?"

"No," Van says, shaking his head. "I just want some armour, no insignia or heraldry or anything."

"Very well. You can put your hand down now."

Van lowers his arm and tilts his head the other way. Damn, his jaw is… impressive. He's got comic book superhero levels of jaw going for himself. Which kind of makes sense - a certain farmboy superhero might've been an inspiration there, maybe. His hair is so much messier than he realised, though. Guess that's an effect of it not being just a thing made of polygons anymore.

Also, is that… a bit of stubble? A hint of a five o'clock shadow? 

Does he have to shave?

Alma finishes taking his measurements with professional finesse. Van pays for his order, signs the receipt,  weighs his now empty coin purse and then sighs. "Thank you very much, Ma'am."

"And thank you for your business, Mr. Van," Alma says, sniffing, and with a last slightly flustered glance at him, awkwardly waves him off. "Have a very good day now."

Shaking his head, Van heads out of the store.

So, instead of the usual armament of Long Sword, Reinforced Wooden Buckler, Studded Leather Armour, dozens of Draughts of Memory and bunch of healing potions on top of it, his shopping haul is… three shoddy spear points, sharpening stone and a receipt for an order from Madam Arbury's Boutique.

Yeah, Katie's usual approach to Age of Tales is not working here, at all, and reality is throwing some spanners in the works. Katie isn't sure how she likes it. Which is probably kinda ironic, after all the times she went on and on about how dumb and unrealistic Age of Tales was. 

She'd get used to it. 

-

"Ah, there you are, my boy," Mr. Gylcross says, spotting Van loitering about the marketplace, waiting for him. "Have you been enjoying your time in town?"

"It's been… interesting," Van admits, which it has. "All done with business, sir?"

"Yes, quite. I found a couple of buyers for our spring crops," Mr. Gylcross says, seeming satisfied. He's got a flushed look of a man who's had at least a couple of drinks and his moustache has somehow gotten bushier. Looks like he's had a good day. "And the doctor will come take a look at Geruth tomorrow," the landowner continues. "Now, go and fetch the cart, if you please - I've made some purchases, and it will be far easier to load them directly into the cart."

[Homeward bound, Lvl. 2.]

[Mr. Gylcross' shopping trip is drawing to a close and it's time to head back to the farm. Fetch Bell and the cart, and load Mr. Gylcross' purchases for the trip home.] [Quest reward:  20 exp, 3 Meat buns, 1 Bottle of Mead.]

"Right away," Van agrees and gets to it.

Together with Mr. Gylcross Van loads up the various sacks and barrels and other things the man had bought onto the cart, tying them down for a secure trip home. Then Mr. Gylcross takes a seat in the back again, now leaning against some flour sacks.

"Have you eaten anything, Van?" the man asks, rifling through his purchases.

"Ah, no, sir, I got… distracted," Van admits - and the moment it's mentioned, he realises that he's actually pretty hungry and thirsty. He hadn't even been thinking of food as something he needs, because, well… Age of Tales didn't have a hunger bar.

"Here," Mr. Gylcross says and hands him a clay bottle and a paper bag that doesn't quite fit the setting. "Eat up, my boy, it's a long way home."

"Thanks, Mr. Gylcross," Van says and peers into the bag - sure enough, meat buns. The bottle must be mead then. "I appreciate it."

"Got to keep my men fed, don't I, else you might run off to work for the likes of Drakner, and I can't have that " Mr. Gylcross chortles and settles down for the journey back.

Van hums, taking a bite of the meat bun and answering the System's prompt for [Start journey?] with [yes].

-

[<<Prologue | <Chapter 3 || Chapter 5>>]

Proofread by @nimadge

-

Reality is against Van but at least there's meat buns and mead

[milfweirdal]

gif making tutorial for the inimitable @snowysobsessions

disclaimer: this is exactly how i do it, but im basically just winging it tbh. there may be other methods that are quicker and/or look way better. this is just the way to which i have become accustomed. i am not a fancy ass gif maker who does colouring and sharpening or uses photoshop whatever, those folks are the real pros. i just like to get the job done :) if you wanna make really fancy gifs other tutorials may be more appropriate. ok lets get into it under the cut!

step 1:

select your source. for the purposes of this tutorial im going to stay on-brand and use this video of weird al on 30 rock (aka the original Milf Weird Al).

step 2:

either download the video (i dont have a good recommendation for a website for that unfortunately, they all seem virus-ridden these days) or screen-record the part of the video you want to turn into a gif. for me, thats the part with al in it.

my computer runs windows something - 11 maybe? and it comes with screen recording software built in that saves into a folder called "captures" in the video folder, which can be activated with the keyboard shortcut Windows Key + Alt + R. most phones also have screen recording functions, you could record it on your phone and transfer it to your computer? (for the record the website i use works on mobile too, but its very slow and annoying so i much prefer to use my laptop.)

step 3:

use video editing software of your choice to cut the clip down to just the part you want giffed. i use microsoft clipchamp because thats whats on my computer. it can also be used to crop away any black bars around any video clip, which is useful, because a properly cropped gif will probably be better quality. export the clip in as high quality as possible.

tip: try to keep the gif 3 seconds or under. this keeps the filesize down. tumblr gif size limit is 10MB, but i keep all my gifs 5MB or below because otherwise the loading time/storage burden is painful, and like i said, im not making fancy ones here, i dont mind them being a bit lower quality.

here is my clip. i saved it muted because its filesize is smaller that way.

step 4:

go to https://ezgif.com/video-to-gif which looks like this.

note that ezgif has tools for cutting, cropping and resizing videos if you dont have access to any video editing tool. its quicker if you do it in advance, though, i find.

upload your video and you will see this type of screen appear.

if youre uploading it to tumblr, the 540xAUTO size option is the one i go for by default, but it also has the following size options.

smaller size = smaller filesize, and you want the filesize as small as possible within reason. i sometimes make a gif smaller in dimensions if i'm really struggling to get the filesize below 5MB.

next is the frame rate: i set it to 25 because thats closest to the oriignal frame rate of most recorded video, but in order to make savings on filesize, it can be selected to 20FPS or 12FPS. i wouldnt recommend lower than that unless you want it to look weird and choppy, in which case, go ahead, and i wouldn't recommend higher unless you literally need the animation to be smooth as silk - for making it slowmo, for example.

i don't mess with the "method" drop down bc idk what it means.

the "Optimise for static background" tickbox is useful for if someone is doing something on a totally still background, because it reduces filesize by not animating every single bit of background in every frame. it could be helpful here as our background is not moving at all, just our heroine Alfina. i'm going to tick it.

now you can click "Convert to GIF". you should see something like this - itll be animated of course, this is just a screenshot.

our gif looks crispy fresh (and has 69 frames - NICE), but its filesize is 5.51MB which is more than id like it to be, but first we're gonna look at Effects, so I'm not going to click the "Optimise" option yet.

step 5:

clicking effects will provide the following options

if the video was sort of dark and hard to see, for example if it was live footage, it can be helpful to increase the brightness. changing the brightness and contrast makes our gif look like this, and makes it pop a little more.

you can keep playing with the settings and clicking "Apply selected" until it looks about right to you, or not add any effects at all - it's up to you. I hit the back button in my browser to go back to the gif before i added the effects, then I went to Optimise.

step 6:

the Optimise screen is like this

i tend to stick with the Lossy GIf optimization method. I put the compression level down to 30, and press Optimise GIF and see what happens.

as you can see, the filesize has been reduced by 41.95% to 3.2MB without a super noticeable drop in quality.

if you set the compression level to 200, this is what it looks like

much more pixely, and not much further reduced in size, so i stick to the lower end of the compression scale.

this is our finished gif! isnt she beautiful. i just right-clicked and hit save on it on the webpage after generating - on mobile, i guess you'd long-press on it to download it.

hope that helps!!! lmk if you need help with any other aspect like changing speed or overlays or anything but honestly it's pretty intuitive once you know how to do these bits.

[bylrndgm]

Hey elz! Would you consider doing a tutorial of how you did the frame thing in this post: /post/724195624728379392/and-it-felt-so-nice-so-peaceful-and? It looks so cool!

hi anon! thank you for reaching out. i really appreciate it & you made my day! 💚 ily!!! for length reasons, you'll find the tutorial under the cut!

Resources used:

Photoshop

Vintage flowers pngs -> you can either google vintage/watercolor flower png or here are some DeviantArt packages [x] [x] [x]

Font: Avenir

Workflow

After you have made your gif as you would normally do, it's time for the frame.

First: place the flower

Once you got your flower pngs it's time to place them on your gif. Go on File > Place Embedded... and select the file. This is what will happen.

Now, click on that little tick (✓) on the top right corner, so that your image is actually placed.

Press the shortcut CTRL+T (on Mac: Command+T) to open the transform options - basically it is the same as the photo above. I tend to do it this way, because if I don't like the adjustments, I click on the ⊘ button. If you did that when you placed the image, it would delete the image.

So now, move the image, resize it using the handles on its corners while pressing shift on your keyboard to maintain the proportions.

Once you get a result that satisfies you, click on this button (highlighted in purple)

Now you can wrap the png, and make it "fuller", more natural looking, moving the intersection points of the grid that will pop up

When you're done, confirm.

Now that you placed your png, you can manipulate the colors. Click on the png layer and press CTRL+U (Command+U) and in this case you would adjust the Reds and Yellows.

And you're done!!!!

Second: the border

To make the border use the Rectangle Tool (shortcut: U). On the menu bar on top, set the fill as transparent and the stroke as white

Then drag your mouse and create the rectangle

Then of course, adjust it if needed - by clicking on the rectangle layer, the properties panel will open (if not, go on Window and check Properties).

Now duplicate the layer (CTRL/CMD+J) and make the original rectangle invisible by clicking on the eye next to it.

Right click on the copy and rasterize the layer -> this rasterized layer will be the one you'll work on (you keep the original one as a safe harbor in case you don't like the changes made on the copy).

Now, with the copy selected, pick the Eraser tool (E), reduce the opacity of the layer and zoom in, and erase the parts of the rectangle that goes over the flower. When you're done, set the opacity back to 100%.

Third: add the text

And that is literally it! Super simple and quick to make, and of course you can add as many pngs as you want to create somewhat of a bouquet. The real game changer is the Wrap thing you do to make it more natural, like a real bouquet!!!!

I hope this was helpful and if you have some further questions please please reach out! Love u!!!

E.

[breakfast-cereal]

Stupid For You (2) -Johnlock

← ← MAIN MASTERLIST

← PART ONE

PART THREE

!¡Trigger Warning¡! DO NOT IGNORE!: mentions to drugs and addiction, alcohol use, vomiting, hints to declining/poor mental health.

Rosie's hair was in a slightly dishevelled braid that reached just above her shoulder blades

"Youtube seems to be helpful for tutorials. Slightly inaccurate, though." Sherlock looked as if he was about to write down notes.

"It's YouTube, Sherlock." John looked at Rosie who had a massive grin on her face

Rosie rushed to Sherlock and wrapped her arms around him. "Thank you, daddy!"

Sherlock didn't seem to protest and accepted the role of a father figure to Rosie. John was confused by this. If Sherlock was a father figure to Rosie wouldn't that insinuate that he and John were together? Does that not bother Sherlock?

"No problem." Sherlock ushered Rosie back to her room and then sat back down to work on the case.

John sat on the couch, sneaking glances at Sherlock while watching some sports game on the telly. He reached for his phone on the table and scrolled through it while watching the telly and concentrating on Sherlock. John was hoping this would have some distraction from his headache. The light from his phone just seemed to make the headache worse. John had opened google and was staring down at it. His headache was horrible and those confusing feelings had returned to plague his thoughts. Without thinking, John entered "John Watson and Sherlock Holmes" into the search bar and entered it. He looked around anxiously as if someone was going to pop out of any corner and catch him looking at this. The worst would be Sherlock. Results popped up raging from "Johnlock" blogs to articles describing their relationship. John clicked on the first article and skimmed it until reaching a part that specifically piqued his interest.

Sherlock Holmes and his partner John Watson's relationship is obviously less than platonic. Relationship expert, Tiffany Laines has confirmed multiple theories with her video "Debunking 'Johnlock'." Laines stated in her video that "Holmes and Watson are very close for just roommates. It seems it's Holmes&Watson rather than just Holmes and Watson. Based on body language queues, like the leaning in from Watson, and the way Holmes' colleagues described him as brash whereas it seems John does not find him that way. Can this mean Holmes treats Watson differently? Of course, we can never be sure with their limited interaction, but my speculation is something is going on."

John read over that paragraph multiple times. He read it for what felt like hours. He stared and analyzed it wanting to know what they meant. What the secret meaning could be even though the truth stared back at him. He wanted to throw his phone. Launch it across the room. Find whoever wrote that article and beat them. Instead, John put his phone down and made his way up to make some tea.

"Tea?" He asked into the air, hoping Sherlock would maybe answer.

"Yes, that'd be nice."

John prepared two cups and watched while the water boiled in the kettle. He listened to it fizz and at some moments John wondered if it would boil over. John could be compared to a kettle. He would fizz and bubble until he reached a point where he would just stop or boil over completely. John believed he was a calm individual, though he wasn't. It's hard being calm when you're rather vigilant all the time.

"I've got it!" John spun to see Sherlock pacing around the house frantically. "It was so obvious how could I have not gotten it!",

"What?",

"It's objects! The numbers were words and the words were objects. I've got a lead, John.",

"How did you manage to get that out of a sheet of numbers?" John was impressed. Well, not impressed, because Sherlock could solve a murder with his eyes closed and hands tied, but his skills were always impressive.

"It became quite obvious with hints. The necklace the woman had is a precious object so at first, I thought it could be something expensive, but there's nothing expensive in our flat. Yes, I'm assuming it is in our flat, as the woman left these papers in our flat rather than taking them to Mrs. Hudson, or some other person. Of course, maybe it's just because she was one to visit us, but with the pieces of paper originally the coordinates seemed to also have directions that were rather similar to the way to get into our flat. To sum it down simply, there's clues in certain objects in our flat." Sherlock seemed so animated when he talked about these things. He always strived for perfection and clarity on his cases and when he got it, it's like it sent him into a high. "Don't drink the tea, by the way.",

"What's wrong with the tea?" John felt overwhelmed with this information. There were hidden messages all over the flat. What if he stepped on one? Or got it wet?

"You added milk to yours. It's expired. Strange you pour the milk before the water." John looked at the milk in his cup that had small chunks in it and dumped it down the sink, sugar swirling down with it.

The kettle finished as John was there and he poured it into Sherlock's cup. He waddled over to Sherlock's desk and placed the tea, noticing the messy state of affairs. Sherlock's desk had papers all over it. The papers in the centre focus were the ones from the most recent case. One paper had computer, Jane Eyre, heart, written on it, while all the others remained blank.

"Heart?" John felt a strange feeling when Sherlock looked panicked. Sherlock looked like that word wasn't supposed to be written.

"Likely mistake. I don't know why that word is there. Stupid mistake." Sherlock quickly flipped over the paper and overemphasized the grab of the cup. "Go watch telly or something. I'm busy." John hated the way Sherlock would brush him off so easily. Even with living with him all these years he still couldn't brush off the hurt it caused. He wanted to get his mind off this, but his mind immediately went to drinks. With what John remembered happened last night, drinking was the last thing he wanted to do. So instead, John left the flat.

He walked the opposite way from the pub. His mind thought of one thing and one thing only; Sherlock. He felt like one of those articles as he speculated what heart could be. Does Sherlock have a secret photo album of Irene Adler? John was sure that Sherlock didn't have any human organs (they had cleaned all those out after John screamed at Sherlock over the fact that if Rosie ever found them she'd be terrified.) Was heart meaning that Sherlock's heart had been taken? Was he in love with someone? John felt a spike of jealousy and resent for whoever this person was. How dare they have Sherlock's heart. Why can't it be John? John paused internally. Why was John so jealous? He didn't like Sherlock. He never liked Sherlock. Sherlock was a friend, but friends don't get jealous over their friend's relationship because they want it to be them. Maybe John wanted Sherlock as a little more than a friend, but he only liked women. His brain was just being weird again. It's because he hadn't been with any women in a while. He just missed Mary, and Sherlock was the only person around that he could be with, so his brain was just skipping to conclusions. John needed to meet someone. There was one person that came to mind, the woman he had met on the bus. He had always wanted more and now was the time for that. He could unblock her number and text her. It would be something that has no strings attached. It will help John get his mind off Sherlock. He'll be able to realize his feelings were stupid.

When John was back at the flat he felt strange guilt. Like sending a text to this woman would be cheating on Sherlock. Sherlock wasn't romantically interested in John at all. John stared at his phone and the text that was sitting and waiting to be sent

Would you maybe want to meet up sometime this week?

John shut off his phone, he needed time to consider. He wasn't sure what he wanted. He wanted something. He wanted someone, but this just didn't feel right to him. She didn't feel right for him. He felt like he would be using her. He would use her to distract himself from his own problems. He didn't need a distraction he needed advice. He really needed advice. Who was he supposed to get advice from?

John sat at a small table with a pink linen table cloth on it. The chairs were rickety and felt as if they were going to fall apart any moment, whereas the table cloth looked pricey and was clearly good quality. It had ballerinas dancing on it, and could definitely be used as a small blanket.

"What are you here for, John?" Mrs. Hudson asked,

"I need some advice." John expected Mrs. Hudson to be the last person he went to, but there he was, sitting in her flat.

"Aw, did something go down between you and Sherlock?",

"No, no, that's not it. Well, I mean. I don't know." John wanted to smack his head into the desk. "I need advice on feelings."

"Oh, John," Mrs. Hudson sounded genuinely caring. Or maybe John just wanted her to care.

"I'm not in love, before you think I am. I'm just confused and I want advice.",

"Is it Sherlock?" Mrs. Hudson knew before John. The articles knew before John. John realized with those words, that he was indeed stupid for Sherlock. He had to admit it to himself. He can't deny it all.

"I don't like men." Denial, denial, denial. All he did was deny. He had realized, but he wasn't going to acknowledge it. He may know, but if he ignores it, it's not real.

"I may be your landlady, but that doesn't make me oblivious." ,

"But I'm not-"

Mrs. Hudson interrupted him, "my advice is to stop denying it."

John pushed up from the table, shocked the chair didn't crumble. "I think that's enough advice for today." He hissed as he left the flat.

TAG LIST: @johnlocktrashsblog @ephemeraljimin @artefo @love-j0y

[fatoujallovv]

so here’s my disclaimer: I hardly know what I'm doing. This is my glued together homemade giffing method that I’ve created over months of just random experimentation and bits and pieces from all kinds of tutorials. there are probably better or more correct ways to do a lot of these things! this also isn’t a completely universal tutorial, some of the specifics are geared towards giffing skam, specifically skam france. 

I gif in photoshop cc 2020 on a macbook. Some things like keyboard shortcuts and little things about the photoshop interface will probably vary if you are on a pc/ other version of photoshop! 

this is very long and very unprofessional, but I hope there is something in here that someone will find helpful!

we’ll be going from this:

to this:

up to date as of October 25, 2020

downloading clips

selecting what part you’re going to gif

cropping

my action for resizing, converting to a smart object, and sharpening

coloring

exporting and setting the delay

tldr tips

1. downloading clips

4k video downloader (which you can get for mac or pc here) is great for things posted to youtube, especially from skam france because all the clips are on their youtube with no weird geoblocks or anything! it’s really easy, you just have to open the clip in youtube, copy the link, and go into the program and hit paste link. I like to put on smart mode first and set the destination folder so all my clips go into the place I want. 

There is a 30 video per day download limit, so if you’re thinking you really want to gif lots of stuff from the show, and want a big chunk or a full season it’s definitely worth hunting for a mega or google drive with full episodes to download because it’s just less hassle! I might come back to this post later and compile a list of all of those, but for now if you type “[remake] no subs google drive” or “[remake] no subs mega” into a google search, you’ll probably find something! the all of skam website has no subs for several remakes, but not all!

If you don’t have enough space on your computer to be keeping full seasons, I know there are methods to get screencaps without having to download (generally for giffing movies and regular tv I think this is a common method), but I’ve never done it so I’ll redirect you to this tutorial that explains it! you should probably just go there for the whole thing tbh it’s much more coherent than this, but I digress. 

2. selecting the piece of the video you want to gif

now that you’ve got your episode or clip you’ll want to just open it in photoshop! if you go the screen capping route the way to do that is a bit wonky, so you can keep following the tutorial I linked above and join back in here at coloring if you like!

if the timeline at the bottom doesn’t pop up automatically you can go to window > timeline and turn it on! now you can use the scrubber bar thing to find the moment you want to gif! 

The advantage of this over screen capping is you can scrub with more precision. the arrows circled in blue below let you jump only one frame, where in screen capping I'm pretty sure you can only go by ten second or one minute intervals. 

I usually drag the scrubber as close as I can to the start of the shot/moment I want to use, fiddle with the arrows circled in blue below to jump forward or back one frame at a time until I'm at the first frame I want. I move the left grey handle to the scrubber and then I hit the play button and let the whole shot/moment play. Pause and repeat the shuffling with the arrows until you’ve landed on the last frame you want to use and move the other grey handle. 

the moment you want to use should be between your handles (it’ll look like what I have circled in red), and if you hit play, you should see the thing you want to gif playing on loop above the timeline. the speed will probably be weird, but we’ll deal with that at the end. 

now I recommend doing command or control + s to save your gif as a psd (photoshop document). this is a working, editable file which means if photoshop crashes you can open your file right back up and keep working as long as you’re hitting command or control + s at regular intervals as you work. later we’ll go through exporting in gif format that can actually be uploaded to tumblr.

3. cropping

next I crop out any logos or black space at the top and bottom. Just click on the crop tool on the lefthand side of the screen, drag the edges and hit enter when you’re done. you can of course crop out more than just that, but regardless of what you crop out, now is the time to do it. 

you can set an aspect ratio for your crop at the top of the screen if you’d like to be positive that all the gifs in your set will be the same:

4. my trusty action: resizing, converting to a smart object, and sharpening with one click

Now is when I use an action I made that does all the resizing, converts to a smart object, and sharpens. I’ll take you through the steps so you can conceptually get what’s going on, but I highly recommend using the actions window to record your process as you follow along so you have this action as well. It easily shaves at least 5-10 minutes off of the whole process, and these steps will be the same every time. 

here’s how you make an action: go to window > action and open the action panel. click the plus symbol to start recording a new action:

in the window that pops up, give it a name and hit record:

now just continue with the steps below, and it will save them!

first you flatten frames to clips (I think it says flatten to layers on older versions of photoshop). this is in the menu at the top right corner of your timeline:

next you convert to frame animation by clicking on the symbol in the bottom left, circled in red:

if there is more than one thing in the frame animation, delete the extra one. you don’t need to keep the last one but it won’t let you remove it until there are other frames in there. also go into your layers and delete video group 1 and its contents. don’t ask me why these steps are necessary, I don’t really know, but I’ve noticed it sometimes gets wonky if you don’t do this:

now you want to make frames from layers and delete that first frame that was there before:

then we return to the timeline: 

use command + option + a (control + alt + a for pc I'm pretty sure) to select all layers and then right click within your layers window and select convert to smart object. It’s important to convert to smart object after you go back to the timeline, or the gif won’t move:

next I resize. gifs for tumblr should be 540 pixels wide. for recording your action you should just go into image > image size and only change the width to 540 in case you ever have gifs cropped to different aspect ratios. don’t touch the height, let constrain proportions figure it out!

now, here’s what our base gif looks like, no sharpening, no coloring:

now to sharpen. go to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen. this is up to personal preference, but my go to settings are:

this is what we have after sharpening:

now is when you can stop recording your action. 

just press the stop button in the action window:

this action is pretty much universal and after I select the moment the gif will be and crop however I want, I use it on every gif I make!  so although this initial setup is tedious, now you’ll never have to do these steps again, and the process is magically much quicker.

5. it’s time to jump into coloring!

I typically start with exposure and sometimes some brightness/contrast. with really dark gifs like this, you kind of have to make it worse before you make it better. I did this:

now the gif looks like this:

we have some static and some ugly bits, and this is where selective color comes in to fix it! boost blacks like this:

and now your gif looks like this:

the skin tone is looking a little sickly and weird, so I go into the yellows and reds in my selective color layer to fix it! I also messed with the greens here because I didn't want color in the background (that part is totally optional and just up to your preference):

now we have this:

to really take the color 100% out of the background, I did one more separate selective color layer for cyan (again, I just felt like it but this is optional!):

and now the finished gif:

there’s lots of fun extra things you can add like text and tints and overlays and all that I won’t get into, but feel free to reach out for help on those types of things! 

this gif was certainly not the most complicated to color. some ridonkulously dark clips (*cough cough* vendredi 20h27 *cough cough*) take tons and tons more effort than this and a lot of the time you’ll want to use color balance layers and vibrance layers and all of that to mess with your coloring. 

with all of this coloring business, I really just learned by doing. I don’t know all the technical purposes of each type of adjustment layer, and I tend to stay away from curves just because I find them confusing and annoying. The bottom line is that you should always experiment and find out whatever coloring works for you and run with it! I’m sure every gif maker you talk to does things at least a little differently! 

I highly recommend taking the time to go through all the types of adjustment layers and just move the sliders around to see what they do! That’s honestly one of the best ways to learn and decide what you like!

6. now to export and adjust the delay!

the keyboard shortcut for exporting on mac is command + option + shift + s, control + alt + shift + s for pc, otherwise you can go to file > export > save for web

my settings are here:

the settings only need to be configured once! otherwise just hit save and follow the pop ups to choose where to save and what name you want to give your gif. Since you saved as a psd way back, that will be the name it’s automatically given, but call it whatever you want!

then I adjust my delay by opening the gif I just exported (not the psd, the .gif file) and using one of my delay actions. I’ve made an action for each delay between 0.05 (real time) and 0.08 (really slow mo for certain super short shots, typically for more ~artsy~ sets). 

all my action does is select all frames:

adjust the delay (which will differ based on whether you want them slowed down and by how much): 

for reference, this is a 0.05 delay:

and this is a 0.08 delay

now you just export the same way you did before! 

remember if you’re recording this as an action, you don’t want to touch the file name, just say yes when it asks if you want to replace the file. if you always save your gifs to the same place, your action will now enable you to override any gif with the incorrect delay with the correct one with one click!

7. tldr: the main tips

for downloading 4k video downloader works well for non geoblocked youtube videos, the all of skam website is another place you can look to download with no subs, here’s the screen capping method if you don’t want to download

The main way I combat dark lighting is to bump exposure to the right, gamma correction to the left, and then enhance black in a selective color layer. The amount of these three adjustments will vary gif to gif. I know lots of people use curves, but I find them really confusing for some reason, so this is my method! As my graphics teacher likes to say: there are always at least 3 different ways to reach the same result!

there’s a little bit of additional coloring on this one, but here’s another before and after example so you can get an idea of how those steps get you a better lit result without making the lighter parts super over exposed:

besides those three steps, you have free rein to use the other selective color channels, as well as color balance, vibrance, hue/saturation, etc. to restore color that was lost or to change the colors altogether! mess around with it and have fun experimenting!

7a. bonus coloring tip: 

sometimes you can make use of selective color to completely alter an isolated color in your gif. You can get very adventurous with this, but here's a simple example of changing blue tones to teal (I got away with these gifs being longer because they were in rows of two in the set I posted them in. I'm too lazy to trim frames so I can put them here at 540 px without going over the 10mb limit so just ignore the quality ok):

7b. actions, actions, actions! 

if you find yourself doing a certain thing over and over, always record it as an action. the amount of time they will save you is honestly really impressive. 

You can duplicate actions, so, for example, if you have different sharpening preferences for different shows or scenes, you can duplicate your gif process action and go into the steps, double click smart sharpen, and alter it however you want! 

This could also be good to do for the different widths for tumblr if you ever do sets with rows of two or three! Duplicate actions is also how I made my actions that set delay at 0.05, 0.06, 0.07, and 0.08!

when in doubt, always make an action! it’s worth minimizing the tedious bits of the process as much as possible so you can focus on the fun part of seeing your awesome gifs come to life! any little task you find yourself doing often, make an action!

and for now that’s all I have. if any of this made no sense, if you want to suggest a correction or addition I could make, if you’re ever curious how I did something on any gifs I post, or if you have any other sort of questions, feel free to send me an ask or a dm! if I can’t answer your questions I’ll be happy to try to direct you to someone who can or a tutorial to help! again, I'm no expert, not even close, but I hope at least one person will find one thing in this mess that helps. 

[incorrectbatfam]

Got any tricks for finding good fanfics right away instead of having to read 1000000 bad ones first?

First, you gotta have in mind the specific type of fanfic you’re looking for. What characters, plot, length, etc. Since this is a Batfam blog, let’s use the example of Wayne family bonding fluff for this little tutorial.

Then you go on Ao3 (because it’s objectively the superior platform) and type the broadest term in the search bar. It’s easier than overly-specific ones that might yield no results because no such tags exist. In this example, I’d search “batfamily”.

Right away you see an unholy number of works spanning countless tropes and genres. This is where you start the basics of cutting it down with the filters menu. Take care of the language preference first, because there’s no point in reading something you can’t understand.

It’s an okay start, but as you can see we still have a lot:

In this example, I’m not a fan of crossovers, I prefer reading material with substance, and I’ve been hurt way too many times by cliffhangers from unfinished fanfics, so I configure next few settings.

Okay, that prunes it down a lot, but still it’s too much for one person to browse through:

The next settings are probably the last of the basic ones. These are the ratings and warnings. I don’t do explicit material (because 99% of them are NSFW and gross) but I’ll keep the mature content because I am an adult who can handle tough topics. I also have my respective triggers so I know what to avoid. 

You can do this two ways: you can check things off in the “include” or “exclude” menus (or both). I mainly use the exclude content menu because with the include one, sure you’ll find some stuff you want, but it’ll still tag you with stuff you don’t. I find it easier to take the metaphorical gardening shears to this.

So far so good…

There are shipping categories too. Since this is batfam, I don’t think any romance is warranted so we can nix all except the general one.

Now we’re down to only a third of the original 2,800 works.

Now you trim the fandoms. I actually have no problem with this generally but I’m just gonna check some stuff off as an example.

And here is our progress…

Since I’m searching for Batfam content, I can eliminate characters that don’t fit the profile.

Which leads us to…

Relationships are iffy in the cursed fandom we’re using so I’ll select another random one for show:

Under “additional tags” is where the real gold mining begins. In this case, we’re looking for fluff, so…

New ones will show up each time to click that menu, so go ahead and do it as many times as you like (I did this for the end results later). Or if there’s something that doesn’t show up that you wanna get rid of, type it into the search bar and add it to your personal blacklist.

Then filter however much you want, yada yada, and…viola!

Now it’s a reasonable amount for you to peruse and enjoy at your will. And of course, you can always go back to search new stuff or edit tags when your fanfic craving change. 

[script-a-world]

Got a question about building maps. There are always roads and streets that change, as well as buildings. How do I easily create maps of different times but easily seen on top of each other without it being confusing or all clogged up. The only way I think even,possible is handdrawing on trace paper so we can see underneath but it's still messy. How about when it's also important where sewer, telephone, electrical lines etc are located on a map? My maps are all muddled up.

Feral: So, for real, as I was reading your ask, I was like “oh, that’s easy: trace!” And then I got to the part where you said you tried trace, but it’s all muddled. And honestly? I’m still like “trace!” I work in the interior design industry, and I go for hand drafting and rendering as much as I possibly can.

I know some of my colleagues are going to have digital resources for you to try out (it’s all about layers!), but I’m going to walk you through how I would do this on trace (within the limits of what I would expect someone who doesn’t do this sort of thing professionally would have) in case that ends up being the best option for you.

Create a legend. Color coordination, thick lines, thin lines, dashed lines, dotted lines, squares, circles, triangles etc, etc. Have a sheet of paper to the side at all times while you’re working on your map to reference and add to as new symbols become needed. Think of the symbols you would normally see on a map - a train track is visually distinct from a street. Which exact symbols you’ll need to use will depend on where your map falls in the realistic to iconic representation spectrum.

Use graph paper for your base layer. Personally, I would use the base layer as the most modern version of the city you want to create, as this will probably be the largest map, and then the maps on trace will work backwards to the oldest version of the city, but do what makes sense in your mind. Orient your graph along the axes that make the most sense to you - most likely this will be cardinal directions with x as North-South and y as East-West. You will tape this down, and then tape the trace down over as needed. Once the graph paper is taped down, do not move it until you’ve finished all the maps! Unless you have a drafting table with a parallel bar or t-square (in which case you probably don’t need this lesson from me), moving the base layer could create differences in orientation of your lines on your tracing paper maps. If you don’t have drafting dots/strips/rolls available, masking tape will do; just give yourself a little more paper than you’ll need to fit the map on, so you can tear the tape off if necessary.

A bold border will be your friend. Outline a border on your graph paper, and every time you lay down a new sheet of trace, trace that border. This will ensure that you are lining up your maps every time. 

Use the right drawing implements. If you want to use pencil so that you can erase, (first of all, erasing on trace paper is not a fun time, but second of all) you have to find a pencil that is hard enough to not easily smear (H at the softest) but is soft enough to not tear through the trace and to create a line dark enough to read. 2H is my standard, but most “regular” pencils are HB (“B” means soft and “H” means hard, so an HB is the middle between a hard and a soft), so the yellow pencil or .07 mechanical pencil that you have is 2 steps softer than that and will not be a great option. Colored pencils, which usually require more than an accidental brush of the hand to smudge, also work great if you want to color-code. If you want to use pen, don’t use a gel, which stays wet too long, or anything that feathers and/or bleeds - a technical pen will be best; lower cost Staedler or Sakura Micron work fine. You also must, must, must have a straight edge! Even though you’ll be drawing over a grid, if you want neat lines, you gotta have at least one straight edge. Personally, if I could only have one, I would use my 30/60 triangle, but that might be an unnecessary expense for you, so… pretty much anything that is flat, hard, and straight can be used as a straight edge. A ruler without notch marks right on the edge will work, but personally, if I’m making light enough lines over graph paper, I’m usually fine using a plain piece of paper. I’ve been told even a credit card can be an option, but I would actually stay away from that because of the rounded corners - a sharp right corner will work better for you. 

Layers! So, clearly, each era would have it’s own map on trace, but I would also do things like the sewers, electrical lines, etc each on their own separate pieces of trace, possibly as overlays for each era depending on your needs. 

Labels! Label your layers! It’s that simple. What the time period is and whether it’s depicting the streets or the sewers or what have you. Use the same format every time (e.g. “1950s - Sewers” or “1560s - Streets”). Put your label outside the bold border you’re drawing on each sheet, and put it in the same place on each sheet - I would do it in the lower right-hand corner; to me, it’s the most obvious place to look while thumbing through pages for a native English speaker/reader.

Scale vs. Proportion. Most maps that you’ll get at AAA or wherever, will be “to scale.” If you want your maps to be to scale, that means you have to measure as you draw, and you have to know exactly the size of each street, building, etc that you will be including on your map. This will take a lot of research and a lot of time being very deliberate. Your other option is to focus on approximate proportion. The largest buildings are the largest on the map, and the narrowest streets are the thinnest on the map, without having to worry about exact size. Which you choose to do will be dependent on how realistic (scale) vs. iconic (proportion) the representation on your map will be.

Remember not to create more work for yourself than you need. Always keep in mind why you are creating these maps. What purpose will they serve? This is going to be directly reflected in how detailed you need to make your maps. Most worldbuilding applications I can think of do not need every street of a city for its entire existence mapped out in as realistic a representation as possible, and whenever we get asks that are about this level of detail on this large a scale, I get concerned that the worldbuilder is never going to be satisfied enough with their world-building to write their story or run their tabletop RPG or whatever it is you’re worldbuilding for - unless of course, this is worldbuilding for the sake of worldbuilding, which… go for it!

Wootzel: Feral has a fantastic breakdown on hand-drafting, but I would like to suggest some digital alternatives in case that ends up being more the route you’d like to go. If you haven’t used a digital art or design program before, they can feel overwhelming or impossible, and some of them have very high price tags. Never fear! There are options that are free and pretty simple, and it’s just a matter of finding one that works for you. 

If you’re just starting out, I’d recommend trying a program called Firealpaca. It’s free, has a nice set of tools but is still simple enough to pick up mostly by playing with it, and it has enough of a userbase for there to be easy-to-find tutorials around the internet. I actually don’t use it often as my favorite art program is a paid program, but I have had a lot of fun with it when I messed with it in the past. 

So, why is digital a good option for your project? The simple answer: Layers. Just like Feral’s breakdown on making different layers using tracing paper, digital layers will allow you to separate the different elements of your map and easily show/hide them as needed, edit one aspect at a time, and generally move/remove/manipulate them in relation to each other. You can put your electrical lines on a different layer from the sewer lines and turn them on and off at will, color them differently, and generally differentiate them from each other. You can use layer groups/folders to make your maps of different times stay separate from each other. And you can use little visual tricks to make them stand out--for example, using crisp lines on a modern map and using a brush with some jitter on your older map. 

Firealpaca also has some nice snap modes built in--basically like having a straightedge on the computer. Want to only draw on a grid for a while? Turn on the grid snapping, and suddenly the only directions you can draw are horizontal or vertical. There are similar, easily accessible modes for parallel lines, vanishing point, radial, etc. Almost all the digital art programs I have used also have a built in function to quickly make a straight line--hold shift while using a standard brush tool and click where you want the line to start and end. 

One final note--if you end up putting in a lot of time and effort into digital drawing programs, even if you aren’t freehanding much, having a basic tablet can make things so much easier and quicker. Drawing tablets have gotten very cheap in recent years, and for a purpose like this, you would do just fine with one of the tiny, basic ones.

[nyarmand]

i forgot to respond earlier but YES if you feel up to ranking the cases you should! :D

i absolutely feel up to it! okay, let’s go! below, my rankings for all of the ace attorney cases i’ve played so far... please note that these are all subjective opinions and you may highly disagree, but this is how i feel :) please also note that this will contain me crushing hard on a couple of characters but i promise not to get over the top about it.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

The First Turnabout -- 2/10 I literally do not care about this one like, at all. I do like having Mia around, hence why it has 2 points instead of 0. But also it’s a Larry case and I really do not like Larry. Plus... everything else. I just don’t like it. (And Phoenix having passed the bar exam but not knowing what a cross-examination is, even if it’s just for tutorial purposes, drives me up the wall.)

Turnabout Sisters -- 6/10 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA [sobs] This case hurts me. It hurts. Both because of the painful loss of sibling rights and because April May exists. Very different types of hurting, but all the same... She’s one of the reasons why this case gets points taken off of it. Another reason is that I’m just not huge on how it progresses; I’m never a fan of when Mia has to come in and be like ‘this is what you need to do!’ I like figuring it out myself, y’know? But also, heyyyyy, introduction to some characters that are very dear to my heart! Edgeworth time! Fantastic!

Turnabout Samurai -- 5/10 I like Will Powers a lot, and I would kill for Cody, and Penny makes me happy because she has the same name as me, and Dee Vasquez... Wow. Wow. She’s really something. But the plot is kind of boring and goes on for too long, Wendy Oldbag makes me want to defenestrate myself (especially when she talks to Edgeworth) and Sal Manella fills me with a murderous rage. So this case only gets a 5/10. It would probably get lower, except I really love Edgeworth realizing what’s going on and starting to help out, and the scene at the end... well. Well. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate.

Turnabout Goodbyes -- 10/10 Excellent case. Perfect case. Could not think more highly of it. Yes my lifespan is decreased whenever I see Manfred von Karma but it’s okay. I love defending Edgeworth and I love the backstory even though I also hate it, and I love the actual realistic depictions of trauma, and I love cross-examining the parrot, and I love love LOVE the ending, of course, because getting justice has never felt so goddamn satisfying before. Yeah, I think this case is just my absolute favorite (so far).

Rise from the Ashes -- 9/10 This case hurts me deeply for a thousand different reasons. The sibling rights... The REMOVAL of sibling rights... (I cried. I actually cried.) Edgeworth suffering... It’s all so painful but it’s so well-written that it’s okay. Point taken off because the whole rotating evidence thing kind of annoyed me. ‘But isn’t that also a mechanic in the Investigations series?’ Yeah, but it’s okay when Investigations does it. Don’t ask me to elaborate.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice for All

The Lost Turnabout -- 3/10 This case only gets points for Maggey, and also Wellington’s cool ringtone. Oh, and the line about bananas. You know the one. Otherwise, it’s just kind of boring, though I do appreciate that they actually came up with an excuse as to why Phoenix suddenly needs everything explained to him again. Even if that excuse is a bit silly.

Reunion, and Turnabout -- 7/10 It’s not a favorite by any means, but this one is pretty good. Pearl is just baby. The whole Miney sisters thing is deeply upsetting to me, but in a way that’s kind of good. The Hotti Clinic makes me really fucking angry and creeped out, so points taken off for that. Also, Franziska has arrived, and oh boy am I glad to see her!

Turnabout Big Top -- -10000000000000000/10 NO NO NO NO NO. FUCK THIS CASE. I HATE IT SO FUCKING MUCH. I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS ONE. The only good thing in it is how Franziska talks about Miles, because sibling rights are real. But the rest of it? The rest of it can burn.

Farewell, My Turnabout -- 9/10 This is a really good case! I LOVE the twist, I didn’t expect it at all, and it was so cool. I also really like Adrian. Shelly de Killer is pretty cool too. And of course, Edgeworth is back! Hallelujah! Franziska getting shot though... :( And having to go to that damn clinic... :((( Oh and also I love Shoe with every fiber of my being.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations

Turnabout Memories -- 7/10 Ah, another flashback case, and one that doesn’t absolutely destroy me emotionally! Mia is here! Phoenix Wright as a sick college student with no common sense is here! Dahlia Hawthorne is here! It’s quite a collection of interesting individuals, and on top of that, it’s just a cool case! Even if lovestruck Phoenix makes me feel like hitting someone... Sort of like what it does to Mia... 

The Stolen Turnabout -- 6/10 The case itself isn’t that good, to be honest. But I would kill for Ron and Desiree DeLite. They’re so sweet, and Ron is so funny... On the other hand, though, Luke Atmey can go Zvarri himself. I hated him from the very moment he first appeared. What an annoying, fraudulent ass. Also, Godot was there, and I didn’t like him, either, even though I hadn’t yet seen quite just how bad he can get. It was really nice to see Adrian living her best life, though!

Recipe for Turnabout -- 2/10 I really didn’t like this one... I don’t want to talk about it... I did like Lisa Basil though. Too bad she wasn’t much of a character. Oh, and Viola too. And seeing Maggey again was nice. But those were the only good points in an otherwise horrible case.

Turnabout Beginnings -- 7/10 The case is pretty high quality, but it tormented me. Seeing Edgeworth in that coat... with those sprites, just like von Karma’s... And that one line... I hated every minute of it. It hurt. The only way it could’ve been worse was if von Karma himself had been there, but that gets saved for Investigations. Mia being there again was fun, though. And Dahlia... Wow. Lots going on there. That ending was... a lot. Terry was a creep and I didn’t like him, but watching that... Yeah. Yeah. And Diego did not endear himself to me in the slightest.

Bridge to the Turnabout -- 8/10 Too much Godot. Otherwise, this was a really great case. Playing as Edgeworth was so much fun, and Franziska being there too was incredible, and the whole thing tying up all the loose ends was just... so cool. Admittedly, the case itself made me very sad, but... it was so good. So good. I wanted to kill Godot partway through, though. No one talks to Franziska that way. No one. Plus, his whole stupid attitude about Mia... Yeah, I hated his guts, that’s for sure. It also had the scene that I hate (Phoenix needs to fucking learn what PTSD is or I swear to god) but otherwise, very good case.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Turnabout Visitor -- 5/10 HELLOOOOOO I was so excited to finally play these games that the whole case is a bit of a blur, but I do remember not really finding it that interesting outside of the whole rush of ‘FUCK YEAH I’M PLAYING INVESTIGATIONS’. Jacques annoyed me. But it’s Investigations. Investigations is cool.

Turnabout Airlines -- 7/10 Okay, first of all, Edgeworth hiding Steel Samurai stuff in a law book is genuinely just the funniest thing ever. But this case was pretty fun! I love that Franziska’s working with Interpol now, good for her! The characters were pretty cool (I really liked Cammy) and I thought a lot of it was pretty funny, too.

The Kidnapped Turnabout -- 6/10 The only reason this gets 6 points is because it introduced Kay Faraday, who is my chaos child that I love dearly, and also Shi-Long Lang, who I have a very complicated relationship with. It switches from love to hate frequently. It also introduced their totally epic theme songs, one of which is now my morning alarm. Otherwise, I really don’t like it that much. The case goes on for too long, and a lot of the characters are pretty annoying. I really hate Lance. I feel bad for Lauren, though. Ernest... Ugh. Ugh. The man makes me want to break things. Every time he mentions von Karma, he inevitably says something that makes my blood boil. And it brings back Wendy Oldbag, which is always bad news, and she was so fucking creepy, and... yeah. I enjoyed seeing Ema again, though! She seemed to be living her best life :)

Turnabout Reminiscence -- 9/10 This case had too much von Karma in it, and the fact that he went and called Edgeworth worthless right to his face made me so angry and upset... But! It is still a very good case! I really like Detective Badd, and Calisto... Calisto is very pretty and fun, but... yeah. Also! Baby Kay! Baby Kay is everything! And the sibling rights, they were everywhere! The case was just full of them! I love Miles and Franziska bickering like regular siblings. I love the scene with the Swiss rolls. I love Franziska getting between him and her dad. Sibling rights are so real.

Turnabout Ablaze -- 6/10 This case was pretty eventful. Not a favorite by any means, but still good. I thought it was a little too long, though, and the ending just really felt like it was dragging out too much. It got to the point that I wasn’t even fired up anymore, I was just kind of trying to get it all over with. Also, whether he meant it or not, Lang accusing Franziska of murder made me mad. But some of the twists were cool, even if I figured out most of them ahead of time... Also, Edgeworth getting really mad about Larry playing the Steel Samurai was hilarious, in a mean way. I felt a little bit bad for laughing.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth: Prosecutor’s Path

Turnabout Target -- 4/10 This one was kinda boring, to be honest. I liked seeing Shelly de Killer again, though, with his matching ice cream cone. And I liked Nicole. (I bet I know who her first mentor was...)

The Imprisoned Turnabout -- 5/10 This one also kinda bored me, unfortunately. Raymond ticked me off from basically the moment he walked onscreen, because sure, let’s blame Edgeworth for [checks notes] ah yes, being manipulated by Manfred von Karma since he was nine. Let’s do that. Nothing wrong with that at all. /dripping sarcasm Sebastian also ticked me off at first, but I’m warming up to him. Also, I was in love at first sight with Justine Courtney. [heart eyes] I am not embarrassed in the slightest to admit to it. She is amazing. Simon is really funny and I think it would’ve been hilarious if he was actually evil, but he was innocent, so... My blood ran cold when I found out the Berry Big Circus was involved, but thank god, it was only Regina. No Franziska yet. I’m really hoping Franziska will show up.

The Inherited Turnabout -- 8/10 I haven’t finished this one yet, but so far, I’ve been enjoying it, even if it torments me with sadness and anger. Once again, von Karma shortens my lifespan, but Gregory Edgeworth lengthens it. (I think it’s really funny that they got ProZD to voice him.) Raymond... I still don’t like Raymond. Though his eating the paper is funny. Also! Also! Katherine Hall! This game introduced two women in a row that I have absolutely fallen for, and I have zero complaints about this. They are incredible. Sebastian is really funny in this one and like I said I am really warming up to him. Yeah. That’s all I really have to say so far. Still no sign of Franziska...

I’m definitely excited to see where the other cases in this game will take me, and after that it will be time for Apollo Justice! I am looking forward to finally meeting the famous Klavier Gavin... But I am not at all looking forward to meeting Kristoph... Oh, well. I’ll live. Probably.

Thank you for reading all of this, haha! I have a lot of thoughts... Many thoughts head full (of Ace Attorney).

[just-some-random-blogger]

December Dates

Seventeen Summary: In the spirit of Christmas, boyfriend!svt is here to take you on a date. Word Count: 3k+ Warnings: Fluff, crackkkkkk, v many typos,etc.

R E Q U E S T

my friend: seventeen + cute

A/N: HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS YOU HOS (jk) HAHAHAHAHAHHA. Also ashdiepl because im writing on a tab, i couldnt add any gifs so aksjemksksmsksksmskskdk alsO im so sorry i dont remember if the request is platonic or nah but kaksksksk this is what u get soz

-----

Alright

So no gifs

Imma just do a header real quick so u know wassap

S. Coups

Das better

hi header

I might delete u later if i get on a pc

But firsT seuNgcheEolL

*deep breath*

Ho u lucky enough to breath the same air he does

N now u are on aa date with him

WoWw

So bf!seungcheol is a cute lil snowflake

Which means he'll buy u an ugly ass Christmas sweater and matching gloves

THAT MATCHES THE ONES HE BOUGHT FOR HIMSELF OFC

then yall go out and play in the powdery snow outside

ImGine seungcheol grabbing yOuR hand 

cebAuse u a dumb loser that slips on nothing

Also warmth

pulling your scarf up a bit because he can tell you're getting cold

Then like a gentleman

will pUSH U INTO THE SNOW

AND START A FRICKIN SNOW WAR

HE'll hit ur dumb face he dont care

He'll maKe u wish u Stayed damn home

Rapid fire frikin snow granades man

Course iz all a bita fun

Then he'll let u win

Cause he does care Bout ur dumb Fce

Also he soft for u gross

Then once that's done he'll start laughing

Not because of post-snow ball fight adrenaline

But because he thinks himself so funny

When he busts a lung screaming "dO Ya wana biLd aSNOEMAN!!!!!"

AND THEN U decline and leave him in the snow

"YAAAAA WE HAVE TO BUILD A SNOWMAN THOUGH!" he'll laugh

U literally wana leave him and his annoying ass

U stomp away

He laughs and goes after u

His hot breath is visible 

and hits your ear when he comes up and wraps his arms around you from behind

U be like, "listen stupid, u corny af, lets break up"

Seungcheol would pout and kiss ur cheek, "nah, u still owe me hot choco. Break up with me after paying me back."

"Ew, why would i pay u back tho"

"Uh cause if you don't imma do thisss," then he proceeds to shove u into the snow again

"CHOI. SEUNG. CHEEOOOLLLLLLLLLLALAKAKAOKS!"

Ok well i have to cut this here first cos there are 12 boys left

Oh Hi hello u here back to ur regular programme

Jeonghan

Yiz

Unlike cheol

Dis ho not about to get cold 4 u uhm

Leave the cold for someone else

But get warm together

I mean

Wink wINKkkkk

Jk gtfo

This is a wholesome headcanon

Git warm he would gladly

So u know what dat means

CUddlEs

Imagine cuddling jeonghan

BoIii

It's da holidays

Which mean he bout to get dat $$$leep

Of course u dont mind that ur just sleeping in

Gurl if ya do

Let me stress out

If you mind sleeping in and cuddling with yoon jeong han

GUrL

Wathu doin????

AnYWAY

ITz u and him right

Ur in bed reading the novel he got u beforehand right

Look at u looking cute in knit sweater and glasses

EVEN IF U DONT NEED THEM THERE ARE GLZSSES

IM TRYING TO MAKE A SCENE HERE WORK WITH ME

it could be jeonghan's ur using it as a headband shhhh

So like ur sitting down

N beside u its jeonhan v slightly snoring

Right right right

Then ur like "man i want something to eat cause i've been sitting here reading all day"

But also ur always hungry

Cause who isnt tho lol

ANYWAY UR ABOUT TO STZND UP

but jeonghan like a needy ho is like noooooooooooodontgo

N ur like

aww wat a needy ho

"Jeonghan im just gonna get something to eat"

"Eat laterrr, i need u now"

He'll keep his eyes shut and shimmy over

Securing an arm on your  hip so u wont go

U roll ur eyes and put your book away on the cabinet next u

"Jeonghan ive literally been next to u since last night. I'm just gonna get something to eat, and 4 u 2!"

He'll flutter his eyes open only to close them and move even closer to place his head on ur lap

"I dont want toooooo"

U roll ur eyes again and shimmy out of his grip

But only to get into his arms and hide your face in his chest

"You're so needy," u note

"Says you who's tangling themselves on me"

"Touché"

Joshua

Okay

Get this

Joshua and gingerbread houses

He probably used to build one growing up

And he has just the person in mind he wants to rekindle the tradition with

Congrats u filthy animal

So he took the liberty of getting allll u and he would need

And so much more

Im talking chocolate bars

Shipped cream

Candy canes

Busicuits

Edible glitter

Gum drops

Shrek 1 2 3 4

Is there a four

Im too lazy to google it

And omg u so special to him he loves u so much

Screw u

He wants to share the love with the carats

So he vlives it all

And at first ur shy

Like what if the joshua stans come 4 u

Ok but in this story yall had already annouce ur relationship

AND EVERYONE HAS NO CHOICE BUT TO BE COOL WITH IT FFS LET UR FAVES DATE WHOEVER THEY WANT ISTG

so

Joshua is like "noo don be shy they'll all love u"

(':

N ur like ok cos i love u sm

But not like the company sm tho *barfing noises*

So yall build a gingerbread house and do a whole ass tutorial about it

Except u dont

Cause yal are morons and could stop messing up or earing the ingredients along the way

Sorry honey ur morons i dont make the rules

"Stop eating the marshmallows!"

"U literally finished the bowl of mnms tho Joshua!"

"Uh no that was the gingerbread man,"

ANd then u all bicker like children because u are omfl

And it excalates

fooD FIGHT

U smear cream on joshuas face

He sprinkles sprinkles on ur head

U press graham crackers against either of his cheeks and ask him what he is

"A sexy graham sandwich"

"Ew no wrong answer," u reply

Can i just point out that that chocolate syrup stain is never coming off

*cough cough cough moron cough cough*

Jun

Imma bout to yeet

Junhui is also feeling nostalic

super soft super baby

And since he's probably feeling bit homesick somewhere in there

he thinks he can remedy it with a bit of chinese home cooking!!!

And whiney needy cuddles also yay

Moving on so

Will it be good?

Damn straight

itll be fikin delish

Will you try to to help him

Of course u gotta help ur man

But like duh

u have eyes

And seeing him all focus and busy and hot

Is really distracting

So like ur as useful as a broken button to him

He doesnt mind tho

He thinks ur cute

Also lovng the attnstion

But the thing about not helping

Not really

And being distracted by a cutie pie

Is that it's basicaly a disaster ending to happen so like

he's efficiently stirring up so hot stuff right

And ur like "man jun's some hot stuff"

And then BaaaaM

U knock over the damn chopping board with the knife and everything on it

Thank goodness the thing didn't chop through your foot of anything

And jun is like "oHMYGOSH DA HELL R U OK"

"... i- im sorry i knocked over ur potatoes"

"My poTaToeS! Listen rn im glad u didnt chop ur foot off"

Jun sighs and looks at the cubes of taters scattered on the floor

You frown, feeling useless

Both of u pick up ur mess

Jun puts down the kitchen utensils in hand

u picked up the last of the potatoes

"Hey we could always wash those, it's not like the floor is mud or anything, even then , potates came from mud"

"Yeah but im sorry, i wanst really helping in the first place"

Jun smirks, "nonsense! U were feeding my ego! That's enough for me!"

You snort and jun comforts u with a tight embrace

Hoshi

AlrighT fam

I thought of something pretty cute but pretty dumb for hoshi

He's like "imma do something super romantic for Christmas"

So he's like "wear something cute we gon do smth fun" @ u

So u do

U get a cute little red dress just for the occasion

And soonyoung his like "BRO MY GIRL SO SUPER CUTE"

And ur like a blushing mess cause he looks super excited with his big smile and cresent eyss

ahhh Hhh myHOSishiii fealzssmsmmsms

Anyway u think ur gonna go to some cute restaurant right

But hoshi brings u to the mall

To instead join the couples dancing contest

Soonyoung gets super nervouse at ur surprised reaction

He's like, "omg is this a super bad idea i thought it would be cute but like i guess not we dont have to go we could always just drop out"

You laugh and shake ur head, "no it's all good, but i mean like, we don't have a choregraphy, and im not like you who can just break it down."

Soonyoung lets out a breath and chuckles, "nah don't worry. It's not really a compation-competion, and regardless, they're going to show ius a choreo and the couple that best interprets wins a a romantic date for two, fit for a dancing king and queen"

And then u break into a big uwu

"Omg u are super romantic soonyoung"

He struts a pose and chuckles, "i mean, i try"

So you both participate in the contenst

Kinda zumba it out by folling the instructors

Soonyoung is helping you out with your form and explaining to you the steps

He gets a little competative so he doesn't really want to mess us

Up hearing you giggle when you do a s pin breaks his competative spirit

And all he really cares about is having a good time with you

Aleight

But admitedly

He was pretty annoyed when they annouced the winner

Were not the two off you

i mean you lot were the cutest it can gt

Who else could trump that

But then you both saw that the winners were 80 something yesr olds holding hand and looking at each other like the other was their world

and then soonyoung was like "okay valid"

You pout, "aww i hope we end up like that"

Soonyound and you turn to each other

He grins for ear to ear, "then lets go on a romantic date as well"

"I thought you'd never ask"

Wonwoo

LiNda

I hope you're ready for wonwoo 

Because i sure as hell am not 

So in case youre wondering 

Youre crazy I mean youre reading this arent you 

Prolly at midnight hi fam 

Again i dont make the rules 

Well just a btw Almost every 

Christmas tradition is pagan 

Like the tree 

The wreath 

And SANTA IS SO CREEPY YALL NEED TO GET UR CHILDREN AWAY FROM HIM 

SO MAYbe ur not all that crazy 

For not wanting to continue them on 

i mean sure u can give new meaning to things 

But you wanted none of that

 Which was whyyyy you decided to DIY the decorations to your entire house 

Nnd who else are you going to do that with other than your loving bb boyfriend wonwoo 

Wonwoo doesn't mind 

He thinks its cute 

Because it is a cute date idea 

Youtube tutorials 

Pinterest ideas and paper snowflakes and all 

Yeah 

so wonwoo is there cutting up some of the paper you folded 

You're glueing some popsicle sticks 

He's water coloring some designs in 

Youre pulling on the tape dispenser 

It's all going great 

"Jagiya... i don't want to sound mean but-"

 "They're all ugly as hell. I know Wonwoo." 

Wonwoo gives an apologetic look. 

For a moment u two dont speak 

And then you both brust into laughter 

"Aww whatever, lez stick em on!" 

And do you get your badly painted slowflakes 

Your wolf drawing 

"That's a wolf?" 

"Duh what else would it be wonwoo?" 

The letters that spelled merry chrsitmas 

And the doodle cutouts of the seventeen members 

in personalized ugly sweaters 

And placed them all over the place 

You look around basking in the glory of ur craft 

Its all very colorful 

And crafty 

And looking like a child made it 

Then like an imbecile 

U break into laughter 

"It looks like a kindergartener's classroom" 

U end up roasting yourself 

Making fun of your sloppy handwork 

And wonwoo watches u 

with adoring eyes

 "I almost forgot," wonwoo speaks up and pulls out a piece of paper 

You recive it from him and break into a smile 

"Is this us?" 

Wonwoo snorts, "no its jeonghan hyung in a dress holding my hand sweetheart"

For a moment u believe him

But then he breaks out into laughter

Woozi

Boi imma fite u

Christmas carols

Okay idek why i ended up so serious with wonwoo

But listennup

Im not about to maypke it crackier

so back to christmas carols

Dis boi is about to serande you with a christmas themed love song

So its around 8pm at night

Jihoon has is guitar

and ur just chilling right

and ur on ur phone letting him do his thing

but then from the floor he was sat on

he turns to you on the couch

And pats ur leg

"Yo i just finished my song u wann hesr"

You squeak and jump of the couch next to him

"Duh dummy!"

And he starts singing

He's talking about stars and warmth

He's spittin fire about the smell of hot choco

The  he's talking sbout how lame joshua's gingerbread house was

Next thing you know ur  crying

because omg that ginger bread houseWAS UGLY

also jihoooooooooooooon just serenaded you

Dont u just

Then jihoon catches you and panicks

"You okay? Why are you cryin?!"

"HowDARS YOU ASK ME THAT LISTEN UP U JUST SAID SOME SWEET WORDS TAKE RESPONSIBILITY!!!!!!!"

JIHOON CALms down

But u crybaby cant stop crying

and of course jihoon panicks again

So he starts singing some other Christmas song

And then u start crying about poor rudolf

And remember regina george

But then eventually you calm down

And decide to nuzzle up against jihoon who replaced his guitar with you in his arms

Then us fall asleep with him sweetly singing about the spirit of Christmas

DK

 Liz gittit

Of course this ray of light just wants to give off energy to the world 

And since he 

And u u forgetful ass 

Forgot to go shopping for presents 

You decided to go on a dec 24th shopping trip! 

Hurrah! 

But it was too eady for u two 

Like wtf 

Gift giving Is suuch and easy task 

And shoping a day before Christmas 

pshhhhhhh 

Its a heartbeat

 "Whoever gets the best gifts gets for the best price gets to boss the other around until new year," seokmin grins 

You knit your brows deeply at his words 

And wonder what the hell he has in plan for him to think of doing something so ensnaring 

So being the smarter one in the relationship 

"Uh no??" 

Seokmin was like "ok then the other has to do whatever the other says for the entirety of Christmas" 

"???? Whyyyyy?" 

"Because its not challengeing or fun if there isn't any condition" "Ugh fine" 

So the two of you zip around looking for the best gifts you could get 

You try to stay away from the people doing their last minute shopping 

Seokmin doesnt dare go in between an old lady mouthing of another customer 

Tbh its super stressful 

wtf 

what kind of date is this 

Only morons would do this wtf 

Both of you got shoved constantly 

There wasnt really much space to move around 

And there wasnt really anything to choose from 

But hey guess what 

Seokmin found some really cool gifts 

"Daheck did u get that shirt?" 

"Isle five. There were a bunch of people grabbing some stuff and this fell to the ground and so i picked it up and thought it was pretty cool"

You on the other hand got like ok gifts 

I mean theyre not bad

 But da hell did dk get a frikin eeyore onesie idek 

It was no contest.  

Seokmin defo won 

"Yisss so i win therefor u have to make me some Christmas cookies tomorrow" 

"U ho did u really just make me suffer through that so you could ask me to make cookies 4 u???" 

"Yes but we really didn have gifts tho." 

U roll ur eyes 

Seokmin's face falls, "r... r u like mad @ me?" 

"Uhhhhhhhhhh" 

You knit your brows at him but release a smile when u see his nervous look 

"No babo. Im jusy tired, lezgo back home" 

He sighs and nods, kissing your cheeks 

"Dont worry baby, ill carry all of this back home" 

Which he does 

And when u get back 

He says he forgot something in the car

then comes bzck 

And then forcefully turns u around 

Ur about to protest

But the you realize he's putting on a silver necklace on u 

"Yahhhh seokminie, u shouldnt have. Where you even get this"

"I bought it a while back, duh" he chuckles then kisses you on the cheek 

"Merry christmas jagi" 

Mingyu  

You are a genius for getting boyfriend like mingyu 

uh and super lucky like fu-- 

BUT TODAY 

Ur extra glad that mingyu is 10ft tall 

Because ur going to be decorating your very own tree 

Wow 

You bought he prettiest glass ornamnets

 and the sparkliest streamers 

"I have a vision," u explain 

Mingyu nods in understanding 

U and him lift the tree into the living room 

And then u start decorating the tree from the bottom up 

Its all rly chill

 You lot are chatting about whatever 

He's tellling you about ur tour n stuff 

U put on some Christmas tunes for flare 

And then u stand up from the floor and boogey with each other 

Yall shake ur butts 

and go around the tree wrapping it in tinself 

Mingyu steals one of the ornaments from u

 and u try to take it back from him like the genius u are 

Except hes holding it over his head 

N u cant for the life of u reach his hand up there 

So u step on his foot 

And punch his stomach 

And he bends down in reaction 

In pain

Soz

He was asking for it

U steal the decor back 

Then he proceeds to chase u around because aparently ur the bully 

*instert pikachu meme here* 

N then u get back towork 

Or i mean take a break 

And u eat a bunch of holiday special junk 

And then u get back to work 

"ok nows for the star" 

U hand him the star because its the entire point of his existance

getting that star up ther 

with his longass arms 

He turns to u "u dont wanna put it" 

BOI 

u suck in a breath 

"I cant frIKICN REACH IT U LIL" 

He give a face, "there are ways" 

"My go-- just put the AHHHHHHH"

AND THEN THE NEXT THING U KNOW

 Hes crouching down pulling ur legs on his shoulders 

"MINGYU PUT ME DOWN" you say, about to rip of his face 

Mostly because u have nothi to hold onto

but he stands 

with u on his shoulders

and walks to the tree 

"Put the damn thing on before u fall!!" 

Wow its ur fault again

And screaming u put the star on 

And mingyu putz u down 

"Okay that was stressful" 

U punch him in the gut again 

The8  

Minghao is super tired 

But super looking forward to spending time with u 

So u defintely go on a date 

But its of the lazy movie watch variety

Im talking all the chesey romance movies 

Set in december 

that has like mistletoe kisses 

And snow scenes 

And also those holiday specials

 For catroons 

And non cartoons 

Even the one with arnold swartzimacallit 

You pull out the laptop 

And get on netflix 

There's popcorn on 

And hot tea 

Or whatever the hell 

Its all just very warm 

and u and minghao are wrapped together in a warm blanket 

Ur nestled in between is legs and ur super warm and cozy and im so soft bleh 

"Oh oh, u should see this part, its my fav--" 

But u stop uourself when u turn and see minghao fell asleep

 U coo and let him obvi 

taking unflattering pictures duh 

But also cute ones because 

#couplegoals 

He doesn't sleep through all the movies though 

You end up watching non christmas themed films too 

Like toy story4 

OKAY I CRIED AT THE ENDING 

PIXAR IS REALLY COMING FOR MY WIG 

"You look really cute cuddled up against me" he'll randomly blurt 

U feel ur cheeks brun at that 

but no he cant have that 

"I thought i was always cute" 

He chuckles and groans as he hugs u tightly 

U laugh at his reaction 

"Of course you're always cute" 

"Ok but the teddy bear u got me is actually cuter" 

"Nononono, the teddy is cute but uuu are cuter" 

"Were u always this gross?" 

Seungkwan 

Okay 

before u tell me these are getting worse and worse every passing member 

i would first like to say i know 

and  that seungkwan bought u a cute dress for Christmas 

and took u to a fancy restaurant 

Ok ur welcome 

But like even if it werent fancy 

U'd still like it 

cause holy guacamole 

imagine holding seungkwans hand as u walk around

Jsut being so head over heels

and super in love with the cutie

Groooossss 

LinDA 

The feeling is mutual for him when he's around u 

so he stops mid conversations 

just to take ur pic 

Its kinda annoyig 

but kinda cute 

"Hey unknow hansol told me about-- what are u doing"

 "No go on, im just talking ur picture"

 Literally the bst hype man alive 

Will make take dozen upon dozen photos of u 

And will make u pose for aethetics 

He will go on making sure everyone knows u da hottest ho in the place 

n ur like "seungkwan stfu u embarrassssing meee" 

And then oml  

Some moron tries to hit on u 

and seungkwan sqwares up ready to hit a fool 

would he actually do it i mean 

Like 

prolly Not 

but then again he looked really mad 

So u calm him down 

and u go bzck home 

And the cuddles 

"Baby girl im sorry if i embarrassed u"

 "Nah itz chill i mean i know u have good intentions"

U smile and he takes another candid phto of u

"Broooooo!!"

 "Im donnnr. Now hows about we get rid of that dress" 

Vernon  

okay im willing to guess hansol loves drinking hot chocolate in the winter

So he's like 

"Lets do a hot choco review" 

And buys 897 types of hot choco 

Or like ten 

wtf eight hundres pluss is too much 

So ur like okay i like hot choco 

and then he pulls out his phone and does a vlive 

"No i am not jealous of joshua hyungs vlive with his gf" 

Yall make like ten cups of hot choco 

and is chaotic 

Idek how u could get injured 

But hey 

It wasnt even the hot water invovled 

but the wrapping of the choco powder 

"Technical difficulties hansol is a big moron" 

U get him a bandaid

"Ya! I am not" 

Yall start reviewing anyway 

*insert try guys eugenes voice* 

Im rihght

 Ur wong 

Shut up 

After trying the first onw 

Ur like wow dis is good 

the second was even better 

The third one u hold

then u realized there were eight more cups 

And that u made so

much 

so u were like "omf there is too much "

then u debated whether or not calling seventeen to drink the rest 

But then hansol was like "ther isnt enough for themm"

Then ur like 

"okay whatabout making a super hotchoco" 

n vernon was like 

???? 

"THATS THE BEST IDEA UVE EVVER HAD" 

SO YALL GET A BIGASS POT 

MIX THE REST IN 

REALIZE U HAVENT RATED THE other cups

 Shrug it off 

and get a cup of the hot choco mix 

"Tastes like corn" 

"Bish dafaq" 

Dino 

Yikes 

so 

Chan is a dumb ho 

and got himself sick at Christmas so 

nononoono thats a no to any cute date ideas 

and its just you and him staying at home 

U personally dont mind 

but hes like "awww but i had so many ideas"

 but obvi U cant risk him getting any sicker than he already is 

So you stay home and take care of him 

and all he can do is complain about everything 

about the cold 

his runny nose 

The lack of taste of the food

 His head ache 

The fact his bed is hot 

And that fact that u have to take care of him 

And treat him like a baby 

"I am not a baby" 

"Listen up, u are always gonna be my baby" 

"Not u toooooo najsjsjjs" 

You make him some hot cocoa 

And hes like "im not drinking that if u call me baby again" 

"Babybabybabybabybaby" 

Ugghgg "If you keep doing that im not going to give u the gift i gotchu" 

"Well das on u" 

And then u end up going ona glaring contest 

Chan ends up giving it to u anyway 

"i hope u choke on it" he grumbles with insencerity 

U coo when u see that its a handwritten letter 

And then u end up crying because hes super soft

N ur super soft

And gahhh u love him so much

 Chan pats ur back because he doesnt want to get u sick if he hugs u  

U sniffle and wipe ur eyes 

"Who's the baby now, cry baby" 

You snarl and pinch his side 

And now i say

This was probably hecking bzd but i hope u enjoyed 

merry CHRISTMAS 

ITS MY FABORITE HOLiDAY 

TAKE CARE Of urselves mwaah

Support me on ko-fi

[catsafarithewriter]

"So many questions, so little answers. This is why I don't come to your house anymore." Work your magic ;)

A/N: Ayyy prompts! I love prompts! Right, so I went down the route of returning to my Modern Vampire AU - which is a silly little AU where Baron is a vampire who slept for 400 years and woke up in the modern era and is now Haru’s housemate (to her reluctance). It’s very light-hearted (save for casual swearing) and requires no further explanation. 

x

Baron was becoming accustomed to the strange modern day habits of his host but, even so, he had no immediate explanation for when Haru answered her front door, swore, and slammed it shut. 

“Fuck,” she said again for good measure.

Baron looked up from where he was following an origami video tutorial (one of the few improvements of the 21st Century), but otherwise didn’t move from the sole kitchen chair. A month ago, he might have considered whatever lay beyond the door a threat, but time had passed and he had rapidly realised that Haru was (although he’d never admit as such) more capable than him with dealing with contemporary dangers. 

“What is it?”

“Hiromi’s here.”

“Who’s Hiromi?”

“Hiromi is my best friend who I have managed to keep you a secret from out of pure dumb luck and the hope you’d be gone by now.” She gave him a pointed look. Baron wasn’t quite sure what point she was making.

“And?”

“And I don’t want to have to explain you.”

There was another bout of knocking, this time far more insistent. “Haru, I can stay out here all day until you let me in! You know I will!”

“Do you want me to hide in the cleaning cupboard again?” Baron offered. 

Haru looked like she was considering it for a panicked second before hastily shaking her head. “No. If she finds you, she’ll jump to all the wrong conclusions.”

“Which conclusions would those be?”

Haru looked at him. 

Baron’s brain figured it out a moment later. “Oh.”

“Look, just… just sit there and leave me to do the talking, alright? Don’t…” She fumbled for words. “Don’t be weird, okay?”

“I resent that.”

“The last time you met somebody, you challenged him to a duel,” Haru reminded him flatly. 

“I shan’t challenge your friend to a duel.”

“Just… minimal talking, you get it? Zip. Nada. Take all your natural instincts to be the weird vampire you are and box it up and throw it out. Here’s an idea - ask yourself: what would a rock do? If the answer is anything but ‘sit quietly and don’t embarrass Haru’ then you fail.”

Baron tilted his head. “You are taking this very seriously.”

“She’s my best friend!” Haru hissed. “I can’t just not ever see her again like I did with Machida! So, do you know what you’re going to do?”

“I’m going to sit here, making no noise and pretending I don’t exist.”

“Exactly.” 

Haru didn’t look entirely convinced, but she returned to the hammering door and swung it open. “Hiromi,” she crooned, and Baron was surprised how pleased she sounded to see her friend despite the previous conversation. “How… unexpected. You didn’t tell me you were in town.”

“Flying visit. You know how it is. How have you been? It’s been simply ages since we last chatted. You were working down at the castle last I heard. Something about a missing body or-” Hiromi trailed off as she swept into the flat and spotted Baron. “You have a man,” she said.

Haru snorted and closed the door. “Not exactly.”

“What is a man doing in your flat? And why is this the first I hear about it?”

“He’s a temporary flatmate,” Haru said. 

“Like, a flatmate with benefits or…”

“God, no.”

Baron filed away the phrase to ask after later, but couldn’t have asked now even if he’d wanted to, for Haru’s friend rapidly approached him. Baron couldn’t help it - he leant back. People didn’t approach him, certainly without fear. The 21st Century had lost all survival instinct, it would seem. 

“And why didn’t you tell me you had a cute flatmate? Where did you get him from anyway?”

Baron bristled at being called cute, but he spotted Haru motioning for him to keep his mouth shut and reconsidered correcting Hiromi’s grievous oversight. 

“Uh… friend of a friend,” she answered.

“Which friend?”

“Um, work friend. You don’t know them.” 

Hiromi squinted at Baron. “Wow. Do you know you look just like the portrait of the old dude in the castle?” 

“Yes,” he said. 

“That’s such a weird coincidence,” Hiromi continued, missing the alarmed expression on Haru’s face. “Do you think it might be a family resemblance or something?”

Baron tore his attention away from where Haru was visibly going through the five stages of grief and decided that, for the sanity of his host and his continued stay in her abode, honestly might not be his best course of action. He found himself smiling uneasily. “Something like that.” 

“Okay,” Haru said, recovering from her friend’s unexpectedly observant question, and wheeling Hiromi away. “Do you want tea? Coffee? I still have a little hot chocolate in the cupboard here…”

Hiromi allowed herself to be guided to the kitchen counter, sparing one last look back to Baron before leaning in to whisper to Haru. “Dude, he has filed teeth.” 

“What?” Haru whispered back, although she must have known Baron could hear every word.

“His teeth. He’s had his, you know, the canine teeth filed into, like, fangs.”

Haru made a sound in her throat that sounded like repressed laughter. “And?” she managed. “I thought you didn’t judge.”

“I don’t. But isn’t that a little weird? I didn’t even realise you could do that.”

“Tea, coffee, or hot chocolate?” 

“Hot chocolate. Seriously, Haru, you don’t have questions? I mean, he’s staying with you. You don’t know what he could be into.”

“Relax, Hiromi. I have this all under control.”

“I’m sure you do, but, you know, just be careful. I know he’s cute and all-”

Haru snorted then, her breath hitching as she furiously tried to repress the hysterical laughter. She took a long, steadying breath and grinned at Hiromi. “Trust me, nothing like that is going on. At all.” 

“So he’s available?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Spoilsport.”

“I know. Grab some biscuits out of the cupboard there for me, would you?” 

“So,” Hiromi continued, “does he have a name?”

“Baron.”

“Cool, just like the dead guy he looks like,” Hiromi said, and Barcon could see Haru mentally cursing her friend’s observational skills. “So, is he an actual Baron or–”

“It’s just a nickname.”

“For what?”

Baron wasn’t perfect at reading body language, but he was fairly certain that Haru had just realised she couldn’t reveal his full name without raising more questions. Looking like a dead guy was a coincidence; actually sharing the same name would probably fall under her category of ‘weird’. 

“For what?” Haru echoed. “Yes, Baron, which is a nickname for… uh, Bar… Barold.”

“That’s not a real name.”

“And people like you are why he goes by Baron.”

“People like me? I don’t know what you’re– why is this cupboard full of tinned prunes?”

Haru slammed the cupboard door shut. “Wrong one. Biscuits are to the left.”

“Are you…? Are you on some kind of healthy eating purge?”

“Yes.”

“Your pee will come out purple, I hope you know that.”

“I thought that was beetroot.”

“My point is that’s a lot of tinned prunes. What are you stocking up for? The apocalypse?”

“No. Just in case people get hungry.”

“If you’re craving prunes, then I don’t know what to tell you.” Hiromi gave Haru a searching look. “Is this cravings? Because, as your best friend, you are legally obligated to tell me if you’re–”

“I’m not pregnant, Hiromi.”

“You sure? Because I gotta tell you, that’s a really weird diet–”

“I’m very, very sure, Hiromi.” Her phone went off and Haru groaned as she checked its screen. “It’s work. I have to answer this, so if you don’t mind…” She hesitated, visibly caught between answering the call and not leaving her vampire housemate alone with her best friend.

Hiromi removed the choice. “Go,” she said. “We’ll be fine. You know me - I don’t bit. Much.”

“Two minutes,” Haru promised. “Behave until I get back.”

Baron wasn’t entirely sure who it was directed at more.

In the seconds that followed Haru’s absence, neither initially moved. Then Hiromi huffed and made a beeline for the curtains overlooking the lounge. “I swear,” she muttered, “she hasn’t changed a bit. Still living in a cave.”

Baron flinched away from the harsh sunlight, dragging his seat into shadow and earning a strange look from Hiromi.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I burn easily.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Any paler and you’d look like a corpse.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s not a compliment. I’ll be honest, it’s not your best look.” 

Baron squinted at Hiromi through the stark sunlight. “I can see why you’re friends with Haru,” he said.

“Is it because we’re both gorgeous, confident young women?” She didn’t give him time to answer, which was probably a good thing since that hadn’t been the commonality that he’d had in mind, and hauled the desk chair over to the table, seating herself opposite him. 

Baron watched her out of the corner of his vision, studiously avoiding any actual eye contact. 

“Are those your real teeth?”

Haru had told him not to speak to Hiromi. But then Haru wasn’t here right now. He smiled and this time made no attempt to hide the fangs. “Yes.”

He watched her gaze flicker from his eyes to his fangs and back again. Somewhere, buried deep beneath her rationality and modern-day sensibilities, was an inkling of some latent survival instinct that knew he was other, that he was dangerous, that he was not one to be trifled with–

“Cool.” She scooted closer, eyes glimmering with curiosity. “Okay, so Haru told me not to judge - and I’m not, honest - but I have so many questions.”

His smile snapped shut. “What?”

“Okay, so where did you get them done. Are they filed down into fangs or were they added? Did it cost a lot? Do, like, a lot of people ask for that? Who even does that to teeth, like a teeth surgeon?”

His patience snapped. He smiled again, and this time let the predator inside show. “Side effects of an infectious disease,” he said.

There was a beat. Baron began to believe what he was had finally sunk in when she gave a whoop of laughter and sunk back into her chair. 

“God, you’re funny. You sounded totally serious then. I’m impressed. Deadpan and everything. No wonder you’re sharing a flat with Haru.” She patted his hand as if he weren’t a monster of the night and rose to he feet. “My phone is almost completely dead. Where does Haru keep her charger?”

Mutely, Baron pointed to Haru’s bedroom and watched as Hiromi disappeared through the door. He looked down and realised he’d crushed the paper crane he’d been trying to make. He flattened it back out - with limited success - and restarted the tutorial video just as Haru let herself back inside.

She froze in the doorway. “Where’s Hiromi?”

He pointed once again to her bedroom door and went back to carefully folding the paper.

“Everything go okay?” she asked suspiciously. 

“Of course.”

“So you didn’t do anything stupid then?”

He glanced up, one eyebrow raised. “There’s still time for me to turn into a swarm of bats, if you like.”

“You’ve definitely been spending too much time around me.” She collapsed into the desk chair with a sigh. “When did my life get so complicated?”

“About two months ago when you found my remains.”

“It was a rhetorical question.”

“Haru?” Hiromi’s voice rose waveringly from the next room over. “I have questions.”

“Oh, what now?” Haru grumbled, but she went to investigate. Baron followed after, curious despite himself. Over Haru’s shoulder, he was able to see Hiromi standing by the bed, a wooden beam in hand, the end shaved to a spike. 

“What is this?” Hiromi asked. 

“A banister support,” Haru answered. To her credit, she made it sound like a perfectly reasonable response. 

“It has a point.”

“Yes.”

“Why does it have a point?”

“To ward off intruders.”

“Geez, Haru, you need to move into a safer neighbourhood.”

Haru swept in and reclaimed the makeshift stake. “I’ve got it all under control.”

“You’ve got a homemade spear by your bed.”

“Same thing.”

Hiromi stared. “So many questions, so little answers. This is why I don’t come to your house anymore.”

Haru smiled. “And yet, here you are.” 

“What can I say? I take my role as best friend very seriously.” 

“Yeah, I can tell.” Haru shot Baron a ‘go back to your origami’ look and steered Hiromi out towards the door. “Look, we should go out for coffee or something, you know, anything out and about, that doesn’t include judging me on the frankly bizarre turn my life has taken, okay?”

Hiromi glanced to Baron and back. “Is your flatmate coming with us or...?”

“No. If you’re still in town, how about tomorrow? Midday, at the crossroads? That sound good? Yes? Great.” Haru prompted Hiromi to the door. “Love you lots, have a great evening, and I will see you tomorrow.” She groaned and leant against the closed door. “Effing hell.” 

“Well,” Baron said, “I think that went rather well.”

[artificialqueens]

Four Times You Read My Mind (branjie) - writworm42

A/N: For the lovely pinkgrapefruit, who asked me to write a soft fic where Brooke & Vanessa knew each other’s thoughts. Thank you 3000 to Meggie for reading this over for me <3

TW for alcohol and smoking mentions.

Brooke woke up to the smell of blueberry pancakes, and instantly knew it was that day.

Shit. It was that day.

The day she and Vanjie would have to get in drag, go to work, and watch themselves lip sync against each other.

“Hey, babe.” Vanessa smiled weakly, looking up from the grill she had been intently dropping perfect, round lakes of batter onto, when Brooke wandered out into the kitchen. She was wearing one of Brooke’s t-shirts, a fan-made gift with We stan tea sis on the front and Step on my neck written in bold lettering on the back. Brooke chuckled a little; she couldn’t tell whether Vanessa was wearing it because she liked the feeling of the fabric hitting her knees, Brooke’s size enveloping her even when she wasn’t actually there, or because she knew her cologne would rub off on it, giving Brooke something to burrow into later that night when they would finally collapse into bed together, wanting desperately to sleep the night off but staring up at the ceiling, unable to.

“The pancakes are almost ready,” Vanessa added, and Brooke nodded. She had expected this; Vanessa loved to cook when she was anxious, and right now the kitchen was choked in a fragile, hyperactive energy that betrayed how fast Vanessa’s nerves were building. Brooke stifled the urge to go and help the younger queen, instead opting to go and sit at the table; right now, Vanessa needed the win, needed the sense of accomplishment. Needed to feel like she could do things on her own.

She slid Brooke her plate in silence before sitting down in the chair opposite, stony-faced and lost in thought.

The first time Vanessa had ever made Brooke blueberry pancakes was the morning after a particularly bad performance for Brooke, one where she’d landed wrong coming out of a shoulder stand and sprained something in her neck, the pain bad enough that she’d been afraid she would be out of the game for weeks. And she wasn’t in Toronto any more; there would be bills to pay without insurance, and if she didn’t work, she didn’t have a safety net to fall back on. So she’d sat in bed with a heat pack slung onto herself, scouring YouTube for the least sketchy DIY-massage tutorials she could find, when Vanessa slid into bed beside her, a tray of pancakes with a side-bowl of maple syrup in her hands.

“This is real Canadian syrup?” Brooke remembered how wide her eyes had gotten when she poured the syrup over her food, the slow, sticky pace of its crawl down from the bowl betraying its origins.

“Just like mama used to make.” Vanessa had smiled softly while her warm hands replaced the heat-pack and gently worked the muscles underneath.

To this day, Brooke had no idea where Vanessa had gotten the maple syrup, or how she’d known that blueberry pancakes had always been her favourite comfort food.

What she did know, coming back to reality, though, was that Vanessa wouldn’t talk first, not in her current state; so Brooke filled the silence for her.

“So you’ll never guess what happened on Real Housewives last night.”

–

They had to be at work for seven o’clock that night, which meant their day had to start at two, gathering their outfits and rehearsing their numbers, trying to get themselves into the headspace for the viewing party, thinking up back-up one-liners to say in case they got caught off guard by the crowd, by what they knew they were going to see. Brooke had written out her cue cards last night, and had slidden the back-ups for Vanessa into her garment bag, cards that only read you’re one funny bitch and we all love you no matter what and when all else fails, hold my hand.

You couldn’t plan out Vanjie; Brooke had made Vanessa try, back in the early days of their relationship, when the manifestations of their anxieties had clashed and Brooke had become desperate for control. But the results had been disastrous, and she had long since accepted that Vanessa was best when she was free, affirmed rather than controlled. So affirm she did, with a couple of extra makeup-remover wipes thrown in just in case Vanessa cried during commercial breaks.

–

“It’s not your fault, Brock.”

Brooke didn’t ask what Vanessa meant. They had been driving along in silence, the early-summer sun only just beginning to wane, each of them dreading their destination more intensely with every passing block.

“I’m serious. You wasn’t the one who put me in the bottom. And it was your job to send me home. I’m glad you did.”

“You’re glad I stopped you from being able to have your dream?” Brooke didn’t mean to snap, and regretted it instantly, taking her eyes off the road only for a second to see Vanessa’s stricken face.

But the small queen recovered quickly, her voice even as she continued, “I lip synced twice before we did. I wanted to fight to stay. I was ready to fight to stay. You fought me. I wasn’t gonna accept any other losin’ than that.”

“But you didn’t have to fight–”

“You wasn’t the one who made that choice. We both knew it was gonna happen. Mama Ru ain’t stupid. Tonight’s gonna make the ratings go wild.” Vanessa sighed. “I’m serious, baby. I didn’t wanna go home, but I know you didn’t wanna send me neither. I’m not mad that you did. If it wasn’t me it was gonna be you, then I’d be feelin’ the same way.”

“God, I don’t want to do this.” the car rumbled to a slow stop, this last red light and a left turn the only thing that separated them from the point of no return. Not for the first time since getting into the car, Brooke wondered how many free tequilas she could sneak from the bar tonight before Vanessa would cut her off; Vanessa was taking her turn designated-driving home tonight anyway, so it wasn’t like Brooke had any reason not to get smashed.

Of course, she knew that Vanessa would think differently.

“We gotta.” Vanessa’s voice was hollow, but Brooke knew she was right. The light turned green, and Brooke rolled into the intersection cautiously but automatically, anxious to get it over with.

They pulled up towards the bar.

Brooke kept driving.

Vanessa was already jamming numbers into her phone.

“Hey, Silk? I need a favour.”

–

They were incredibly lucky that Silky was in town that night, and even luckier that she was able to wrangle a local queen into subbing for Brooke and Vanessa with her, too. The fans would be disappointed, and there would be plenty of them who would clock their cover-story about Brooke having the stomach flu, but they had both logged out of social media for the night, setting their phones to ‘do not disturb’ to ward off any concerned texts from the other queens.

It was funny; the last time Vanessa had been sent home from the show, Brooke had been the one to message her and make sure she was okay. This time around, she was sitting on their couch with the Vanessa’s head on her lap, running gentle fingers through her hair and humming one of the Puerto Rican queen’s favourite songs under her breath. Vanessa had always been surprised that Brooke knew the lyrics to Sea of Love, let alone that it was a song that always calmed her down. For some reason, Brooke had never wanted to tell Vanessa that she knew because she had walked in on Vanessa after a loud fight with her mom, looping the song off of the Juno soundtrack from underneath a pile of blankets, her phone tossed to the other side of the couch and a box of tissues beside her, every fibre of her being exuding the need to be alone for a little while. Maybe it was because she didn’t want Vanessa to be embarrassed; maybe she just liked the feeling of having her own secret knowledge, too.

“Your hands are shakin’,” Vanessa pushed herself up off of Brooke’s lap, her face level with the taller queen’s, the smell her cologne spicy and heavy, “You need a cigarette?”

Vanessa hated that Brooke smoked. Always told her she tasted gross after coming back inside with the tobacco lingering on her tongue, always half-joked that she was already dating an old man and that she didn’t need one who was also on oxygen by the time he hit forty.

Brooke supposed that on nights like this one, Vanessa knew when to back off. Brooke nodded, and Vanessa followed her out onto the balcony.

“You’re not a failure, you know.” Brooke yanked the carton out of Vanessa’s grabbing reach, noticing the look that Vanessa was giving her as she slipped a cigarette into her mouth, one of a man looking for easy comfort. Far better to give it to her with the words she actually needed to hear, even if she didn’t think she deserved to.

“I failed twice. Mama Ru gave me two chances, and I ain’t even win no challenges before I blew ‘em.” Vanessa snorted, frowning. Brooke lit her cigarette and, in a flash of stupidity or genius, she wasn’t sure which, passed it down to Vanessa. Just like she thought, Vanessa screwed up her nose instinctively and refused to take it. Brooke smiled.

“See, you haven’t given up on yourself yet. You know it, too.”

“Know what?” Vanessa rolled her eyes.

“That you’re not a failure.” Brooke shrugged. “I wouldn’t have messaged you that first time if I thought that was true. Hell, I wouldn’t have even given you the time of day if I did, let alone be standing here with you.”

Despite herself, Vanessa began to laugh, low and breathy. “You really do always know what to say, don’t you?”

“Only when it comes to you.” Brooke smiled, bringing the cigarette away from herself long enough to pull Vanessa close and kiss her, laughing a little against the sour pucker Vanessa’s lips formed at the taste.

“Now,” she turned to put the cig out, still holding Vanessa lightly around the waist, “Should we Ubereats in some Popeye’s, get into bed, and watch The Notebook?”

“Shit.” Vanessa laughed, already dragging Brooke inside. “It’s like you know how to read my mind.”

[bittysvalentines]

Virtual Reality, Emphasis on Reality.

From: @omgnotanothercpblog

To: @aflailureandamasterpiece

“Please, Bitty?” Chowder was giving Bitty his best puppy dog eyes. Bitty never could resist that look, and Chowder knew it, damn it.

“I don’t know…” Bitty told him, and Chowder’s face lit up, sensing his victory. “I never play video games,” he added desperately.

“That’s exactly what we need. We already have people who know what they’re doing.”

Bitty folded his arms and gave Chowder an unimpressed look, but Chowder just grinned at him.

“We want to make sure a total noob can jump right in and start playing too.”

“With that kind of talk, I hope you aren’t on the sales team. ‘Total noob’,” Bitty muttered.

“I brought everything you need to play,” Chowder said, ignoring him. He held up a VR headset - a fancy one with attached headphones - and a thin pair of gloves. “It’s all set to connect, you just have to turn it on. After you put it on, of course.”

“You want me to do this right now?” Bitty eyed the equipment as if it was a poisonous snake. He didn’t have anything against it, it just wasn’t his cup of tea. No matter what Chowder said, it didn’t make sense that he and Dex wanted Bitty to test their new game.

“I want to get you started, that’s all. You don’t have to actually play it right now.” It was obvious from Chowder’s tone that he really wished Bitty would.

“And how is this different from regular VR?” Bitty asked as he pulled on the gloves.

“It’s like, the next level. Total virtual immersion. Or as close as we can get for now. Like the Matrix or OASIS in Ready Player One.” Chowder held out the headset for Bitty to take.

“I’m not one for science fiction, but even I know the Matrix is not a good thing.” Despite his words, Bitty put the headset on, leaving one ear uncovered so he could listen to Chowder’s instructions.

“Okay, there are two modes,” Chowder said as the visuals began to load. “There’s augmented reality where the game world overlays the real world. So your couch becomes the trunk of a fallen tree or something. You need some space for that because the game world is so extensive. I mean, there’s this quest where-”

“Chowder, honey, can we get back to my tutorial?”

Chowder cleared his throat. “Yeah, it’s just- It’s swawesome that it’s finally real, you know? Anyway, we also have what we’re calling autopilot mode, so you can explore the game world without needed too much actual movement. To switch it, you just have to...”

Chowder went on, but Bitty barely heard him, because he was standing at the edge of a dark and forbidding forest. The trees were literal works of art, realistic-looking, but not so realistic that his brain kept insisting something was off, the way CGI people made him feel. Bitty would swear he could hear birds chirping and insects buzzing. He adjusted the headset, muffling Chowder’s words. Yep, birdsong, bees, and a breeze ruffling the leaves on the trees.

“This is amazing,” he breathed.

~

Bitty found himself spending a lot of time trying out Quester’s Fate, Chowder and Dex’s game. Not so much for the gameplay - it was interesting, but that had never been his cup of tea - but for the wonderful world where it took place and the people he met there. He was sure there were players who liked to use the augmented reality version and roam around outside to complete their quests, but Bitty preferred the shared virtual world. It was easier after a long day spent on his feet.

Even though he wasn’t actually playing the game, he had explored the other things it had to offer - namely, he’d built his own shop. He’d gotten Chowder and Dex to help him to speed things along; he wasn’t a fool. Now he sold or traded items to fellows players to help them along on their quests - things that would refill their game energy or boost their game stats - or would let them customize their character. It was pretty entertaining when they thought he was an NPC (non-player character, he was slowly learning their language) at first because his skin wasn’t available in the game store. Perks of being friends with the game developers. Dex had even created an NPC to keep the shop running when he wasn’t playing. If Bitty had been charging real money, he’d be rolling in it.

Not long after he’d opened up his shop - only stocked with virtual fruit at that time - his first customer had come along. That was how he’d met Jack.

Bitty’s General Store was was in the middle of the forest, situated at the crossroads of several quest pathways. A player wearing the default skin had come walking along one of them, looking a little lost. He kept looking this way and that and consulting his quest map. Finally he spotted the store - and Bitty - and practically ran up to him.

“Hel-” Bitty began.

“Are you a real person? Can you help me?” the player said in a rush.

“I’m as real as anyone can be in here,” Bitty said. “What do you need, sugar?”

“Dieu merci! I don’t understand how this map works. How do I get it to show where I am? Where I’m supposed to go?” He thrust his map at Bitty and it disappeared as soon as he opened his hand.

“Well, first of all, my name is Bitty.” Bitty waited expectantly.

“Oh. Sorry. Jack.”

“Nice to meet you, Jack. Second, that map is yours . So you can’t hand it to me. Go ahead and open it up again.”

Jack swept his hand up, then poked the air in a specific spot. It never got old, watching other players waving their hands around while they interacted with menus that only they could see. The map reappeared.

“Now don’t let go,” Bitty said. He moved behind Jack and peered around his bicep (even in-game he was shorter than most of the other players, which somehow seemed unfair. Dex didn’t have to make his character that true to life). “It looks like you’re still in world view mode. Tap your quest icon, up in the right corner. That’ll show you things that are specific to your quest, including where you are and where you should be going.”

“Quest icon? What does it look like?”

“That depends on the quest you chose. This was all covered in the tutorial.”

“There’s a tutorial?”

“Now how on earth did you get this far without the tutorial?”

Jack dropped his hands and the map disappeared again. “It’s my friend Shitty’s account. He kind of…” He made a pushing motion with both hands. “He said I need to relax, or at least not focus so much on hoc- my job.”

“I supposed wandering around trying to figure out how this all works could be relaxing,” Bitty said doubtfully.

“He had to leave for a work emergency before he could show me very much.”

“Wait. Did you say your friend Shitty, or did you mean your shitty friend? Because only one of those makes sense to me, and it’s not the first one.”

“Shitty’s his nickname. He likes it better than his real name.” Jack brought up his map yet again. “Quest icon, right?”

Bitty could take a hint and let the subject drop. “Did you even choose a quest? Considering you managed to skip all the basics.”

“Yes. Uh, I think so? Yes.”

“Well, that’s something, anyway. Let’s get you started from the beginning, all right, sugar?”

“Okay?” Jack didn’t seem too sure about continuing to play the game, but he was already there, and Bitty felt he owed it to Chowder and Dex to make sure he had a positive experience after such a rough start. Bitty showed him how to start the tutorial and left him to it, though he did stay close, rearranging a nearby display of apples, just in case Jack had any questions.

“Okay, I think I got it,” Jack said eventually. “I have to go…” He looked at his map and then at the numerous paths. “That way.” He pointed at one of the trails.

“Oh, the Glass Mountain quest. That’s a good one for someone just starting out. Here, take these apples.” Bitty held out a sack. “They refill your character’s health bar. You’ll need them.”

Jack stared at the sack. “How do I accept them? It wasn’t very clear in the tutorial.”

“Just reach out your hand. Once you’re close enough, the game’ll ask if you want to accept or reject the item.”

Jack reached out and the sack disappeared. Then he stood there, looking uncertain. “I suppose I should… go?”

“The princess is waiting,” Bitty said with an encouraging smile.

“Are you sure she’s not in another castle?” Jack asked expectantly.

“No? That’s not how that quest goes.”

Jack’s shoulders slumped. “That’s not...” He shook his head. “Oh, um, payment? For the apples?”

“Don’t you worry about that, sugar. They’re a gift for being my first customer.”

“Oh, okay. Um, bye then.”

“Bye, Jack. I hope to see you again. You can tell me how you did on your quest.”

Jack nodded and off he went. Bitty hoped he would come back. He didn’t think he’d ever met someone who knew even less than he did about playing video games; Jack’s cluelessness was a little adorable. He wondered briefly what Jack looked like in real life, but he buried that thought quickly. Sure, Jack seemed nice. Friendly. Willing to learn from someone shorter than him (which was surprisingly a problem for some players, Bitty didn’t understand it). None of that meant anything. Bitty wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. He probably wouldn’t ever see Jack again anyway.

~

Jack came back.

Not right away, but he did, and he kept coming back, showing up when Bitty was in-game at least once a week. Jack had gotten his own account, though he’d kept the default skin. At first, he would talk to Bitty for a few minutes before going off on one of the quests, but eventually he was sticking around longer and longer until Bitty suspected he’d given up on actually playing the game. Not that Bitty was one to judge, since he’d given up on doing that almost immediately. He used the virtual world as a distraction, something to do when he was too tired to do anything else and it was too early to go to bed, or when he needed the company of others and his friends were otherwise occupied.

Bitty enjoyed talking to Jack, and Jack didn’t seem to mind that Bitty was doing most of the talking. They would discuss work and their friends and family and Bitty’s dream job (because it sounded like Jack had his, lucky devil) and so many random topics that it amazed him that Jack kept coming around. Bitty found himself looking forward to their weekly chats more and more.

Shoot. He’d gone and done it - he’d fallen for Jack.

~

“Please, Bitty?” Dex wasn’t as good as Chowder at the puppy dog eyes, but he was giving him a run for his money.

“Dex, you don’t have to talk me into coming to your big celebration, silly goose.”

Dex grinned. “Chowder told me to do that. But also, we’re having it catered.” He winced, waiting for Bitty’s reaction.

“I would assume so. You’re bringing that up because…”

“They specialize in pies for dessert. Sorry, Bitty. We had to pick a couple for them to serve.”

“I see.”

“They won’t be as good as yours,” Dex insisted.

“Well of course they won’t,” Bitty replied automatically. “I don’t know, William. I don’t think I could come to your party now that I know you’re cheating on me with other pies.” He pressed his lips together to hold back a smile.

Dex’s eyes widened. “You don’t-”

Bitty burst out laughing. “My word, your face! Like I wouldn’t show up because of a little thing like that. Bless your heart, you should know I was going to bake pies for you and Chowder as a gift anyway.”

Dex rubbed the back of his neck and laughed. “Thanks, Bitty. I just didn’t want you to think, I don’t know, that we didn’t prefer your baking or something.”

“It’s not like I’m in a position to make pies for such a big do. Don’t worry your head about it.”

“So we’ll see you there?”

“Do you really need to ask? You couldn’t keep me away, mister.”

~

Dex and Chowder were having a party for two reasons - it was the one-year anniversary of their company, Two Frogs, and Quester’s Fate had become the #1 best-selling VR game in the country. It was an amazing achievement, and Bitty was proud to be a small part of that. He didn’t even mind very much that he had to miss his and Jack’s weekly chat. Bitty had sent him a PM through the game’s messaging system to let him know he wouldn’t be there.

Chowder introduced him to Caitlin Farmer, a young lady he’d met while testing out the game in its early stages. Apparently, he’d mowed her down when he hadn’t seen her due to a glitch and the apology coffee he’d bought for her had led to several coffee dates and then a relationship. They were adorable together.

Dex hadn’t brought anyone, but he was mighty interested in Derek Nurse, a local celebrity who was in attendance for some reason. He kept sneaking glances at him, only to look away quickly whenever Derek looked in his direction and Derek was doing the same. Wasn’t that interesting?

It was Dex who introduced him to Larissa Duan, the artist who had designed the backgrounds used in the game.

“Ms. Duan, let me tell you how beautiful your work is. It’s just breathtaking,” Bitty told her as they shook hands.

“Thank you. Please, call me Larissa. They turned out all right, I think. I’m an abstract artist normally, but I wanted to challenge myself, work outside my comfort zone.”

“Well, I’m glad you did, and I’m sure De- Will and Chris are, too.”

A man with an impressive mustache and long hair pulled back in a ponytail came up to them. “Lardo! Love of my life! I’ve found you,” he cried and handed her a drink.

“Cool it, Shitty, he’s not hitting on me,” Larissa said.

“I didn’t think he was,” Shitty replied. “I missed you, that’s all.”

Larissa’s face went a little pink and she gave him a tiny smile. “You were gone for two minutes.”

Wait-

“Shitty? Jack’s Shitty?” Bitty asked without thinking.

“You know Jack? Oh!” Shitty turned and waved at someone across the room. “Jack! I think I found your friend!”

Bitty’s face burned. Jack? Jack was here? He was going to meet Jack? Was he ready for this? They’d never even talked about meeting in real life. What should he do?

A familiar-looking man with dark hair was walking toward them. Bitty considered running away, but that would be too rude. It looked like he was going to meet Jack, ready or not.

He thought back to their long discussions, to the kind of person Jack seemed to be. Bitty decided he was ready.

Jack got closer and Bitty had to catch his breath. Jack was handsome. No, that word was too bland. Jack was gorgeous . Lord, those eyes . He could only hope Jack wasn’t disappointed in the real him.

Then Jack was standing in front of him and Bitty forgot to breathe.

“Bits,” Jack said, and yes, that was his voice. Bitty was going to swoon like a debutante in a corset in the middle of July.

“Jack,” Bitty said faintly. “How-”

“Your message said you were coming to the party, and I was already planning to come so I thought it might be okay? To meet, I mean.”

“Yes, but-”

“Bitty, I see you’ve met Jack Zimmermann,” Dex said, appearing out of nowhere. “He’s one of our major backers.”

Jack smiled. “Lardo made me do it,” he said with a fond look at her.

“Jack Zimmermann? The hockey player?” Bitty was getting light-headed from all the revelations. No wonder Jack had seemed familiar. He shouldn’t have - he looked nothing like the default skin he used in Quester’s Fate. “Any other surprises? Is Beyonce here too?”

Dex laughed. “I’d definitely warn you first.”

“Is this okay?” Jack asked. He reached out and took Bitty’s hand. “I really wanted to meet you, but if you-”

“This is more than okay, Jack. This is wonderful.”

[herzenswarme]

Fighting game difficulty and accessibility

Summary

In the recent years, the fighting game scene has been seeing a shift in design philosophies. From the casual to the increasingly competitive, we are seeing a tendency towards going back to the casual.

To do that, developers are attempting to make the game easier so new players do not get intimidated or frustrated when learning the game, which so far has not worked at all. Now, reducing the difficulty is not necessarily bad. However, as I’ll will explain, there are more than one way to do so, and not all of them are good.

In this entry I’ll go over some things regarding what makes up the difficulty of a game and what I consider the *do*s and *don’t*s of bringing in new players.

Difficulty: of complexity, information, and execution

Currently, I divide the complexity of a fighting game in 3 different factors:

Complexity

Information

Execution

Complexity

The first factor, complexity, is the one I use to denominate games as complex or simple. Which is a term that is often used in quite an ambiguous way. Here, complexity stems from computational complexity and it is defined as the function of the amount of operations required to do a task based on the size of the data.

Thus, having a lot of moves is not necessarily complex. That is only data. Complexity comes from how many operations you have to perform, intellectually and not mechanically, when using the moves. It would be represented by f(n) where n is the number of moves.

If every move were to be the same, then f(n)=1. Because it doesn’t matter which move you use, there is no real operation needed other that choosing one at random, regardless of how many there are.

A single move, however, could have way more complexity than multiple moves by having properties that require more operations. A puppet, such as that of Carl Clover, involves both a second point of reference for distance that requires you to measure 2 extra distances and evaluate your actions in relation to them, and an extra resource to be managed as these puppets are linked to their own health bar.

This is the most rich factor in difficulty, as it makes the game keep your mind more active and thus makes it more engaging. When making a game simple, you are taking the risk to make it boring straight away, or in the long term. Furthermore, complexity inherently will increase the Information factor, as you not only need to understand the nuances of your character’s mechanics but also all others.

When reducing complexity, the game will be easier to understand and learn; but you will definitely reduce the enjoyment for those who know how to play and those who eventually learn. For that, I consider that you should never reduce complexity.

Information

Here we have the raw data you have to memorise as part of learning a game. This is what makes up the data that will then be part of the complexity function. However, not all the information will have the same weight over the complexity of the game.

Let’s take as an example a mechanic in which if a happens, you do x; if b happens, you do y; and if c happens, you do z. Here, you have a table with 3 rows relating the event with the reaction. Here, the complexity is low (approximately f(n) would be O(n), though the human brain might work in such a way that it is even lower), and removing that information so for both a,b, and c can be deal with using action z could be a safe accessibility change.

As a real example, throws in Tekken can be broken in 3 ways: 1, 2, or 1+2; depending on the throw. The function of a throw is already covered by the need to tech it, so the use of 3 different inputs is not really necessary. Another example would be Guilty Gear’s character dependant wake up times. Again, this is just a table that would effectively be O(1), as you simply delay you action the necessary time or use a whole different setup if preferred. Such things can difficult learning but won’t really offer much to the player in terms of engagement.

Of course, there’s information that stems directly from complexity, such as the pull force of Kokonoe’s Gravitons, the speed and trajectory of Bridget’s yoyo, etc. To remove this it would mean removing high complexity elements thus noticeably reducing complexity, which is terribly undesirable.

Alongside this, there’s information that is necessary for the design even if not quite significant in complexity. For example, the previous {a→x,b→y, c→z} table is also present in the most standard attack types (low, overhead, throw), which are necessary in order not to make defence too easy thus balancing the effort needed for both defence and offence.

Information is a great choice for reducing the difficulty of the game, but has to be done with care as per not to reduce complexity significantly.

Execution

This one refers to the mechanical requirements in terms of speed and precision when performing inputs. Currently, reactions would be factored here as well.

Execution can really increase difficulty but cannot increase complexity, as it is purely mechanical. Some kinds of execution can be crucial to the game design, however. The requirements on reaction time are key for pressure to be effective and for mix-ups to exist. In the same way, special move inputs have some inherent properties that balance them in an organic way by making them slower without reducing responsiveness with additional startup; or make them direction dependant. Thus, some subsets of the execution factor should not be removed recklessly. If you want to have 1 button specials, you must be careful with which direction you assign to which move.

The execution requirements for combos, however, neither affect the complexity nor the design of the game. These can be removed from the game baseline safely. However, there are players who do enjoy these requirements. 

Because of that, my recommendation is to remove it from the baseline but keeping it for some characters. Having 2 or 3 characters with high execution requirements won’t affect the experience of new players and will be there to please the players that enjoy it.

Further accommodating new and casual players

During these attempts to get a wider audience, developers have tried time and time again to make games easier. Guilty Gear Xrd and Street Fighter V reduced execution; Xrd and Skullgirls added more elaborate tutorials; Blazblue and Xrd added alternative modes with 1 button specials; King of Fighters XIV and Dragon Ball FighterZ added auto-combos... All to no avail. Now, Guilty Gear 2020 seems to actively reduce complexity in yet another attempt to bring in new players, likely with no result.

What, as I see it, is being done wrong here is thinking that the intricacy of the game-play is the element that pushes people away. However, this is for the most part not the case. People with no special interest in fighting games played hard and complicated games like Marvel vs Capcom 2 without problems. SF2 was one of the most popular games of its time, too. So what happened?

To me, the differentiating factor between the older times and the current age is the heavy focus in competition. The content of the game is strictly focused on the competitive setting. The elaborate tutorials, in the end, aim to get you to partake in the competitive mindset.

Don’t get me wrong, the competitive element in fighting games is the one I consider the most important; however, if you really want the casual audience, you must offer them an engaging single player package. Because what they seek is a more laid back environment that is not so competitive. They want to play single player modes or matches against their friends. 

And thus they need good single player functionality with hopefully good replayability. With this part of the audience, the competitive route should be considered an optional part, a byproduct of the engagement with the single player component.

[monicahervey268-blog]

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[thomasroach]

Outward Review – A Rough Adventure

The post Outward Review – A Rough Adventure appeared first on Fextralife.

The following post is this author’s opinion and does not reflect the thoughts and feelings of Fextralife as a whole nor the individual content creators associated with the site. Any link that goes outside of Fextralife are owned by their respective authors.

Can you defy the bitter cold, brutal heat, and ravenous monsters that all desire your death? Outward is an RPG that doesn’t hold your hand in the slightest, as you make your way through an open-world filled with adventure and death. Only with careful preparation will you survive the dangers of this world.

Outward Review – A Rough Adventure

Genre: Survival RPG Developed by: Nine Dots Studio Published by: Deep Silver Release date: 26 Mar 2019 Platforms: PC (Reviewed), XBOX One, PS4 Website: https://www.ninedotsstudio.com/outward Price at time of review: $39.99

Outward Features

Play solo or coop in local or online modes

Dynamic defeat scenarios that react to your context

Constant auto-saving means there’s no turning back

Ritualistic, step-by-step approach to spellcasting

Constant auto-saving means you must live with your decisions

Encounter dynamic defeat scenarios

A unique experience with every playthrough

An immersive exploration experience

Creatures will be harder to beat in co-op mode

Single-player, online co-op and local co-op with split screen

Story and Setting

Outward starts you off indebted to your tribe, a debt in which you must try to repay.  In an effort to clear the amount you owe, you embark on an ill-fated voyage to try and earn enough to pay it off. Of course the ship runs aground, leaving you with almost no money and a crowd of angry villagers demanding payment. From here on out, the game opens up into three distinct main quest lines, with a small variety of sidequests you can participate in. Sounds like a good setup, but it is not executed well in my opinion.

This is a good friend, or so I’m told

You are tossed into this town and told someone in your family did something bad, you’re again told this one person is a close friend, you’re told that you are a part of this tribe. Due to the way the story is told, none of this is given adequate time to develop. I’ve poked at one of the main quest lines out of a feeling of professional obligation and I still have no real drive to pursue it. This is fine though as Outward does not advertise itself as a game with an in-depth story, rather the focus is on the story that you make for yourself.

Even with that though, things fall a little flat as I can tell the devs put a fair amount of work into this world, but very little of it comes across to the player. Very few NPCs will talk with you, and many of them are just shopkeepers that have just add a little bit of flavored text.  If there’s books or other written lore entries in this game, I haven’t found them yet. There are ruins scattered throughout the game, but so far I’ve not found much inside any of them so far. To be fair, this is a very slow paced game and I’ve not gotten too deep into the more dangerous ruins, so there might be more if you venture further in. That being said, it’s not very excusable that I’m still so clueless on the world given the amount of time I have spent playing.

And thus starts the legend of the Bird Lady

Gameplay

In my original draft, this section was turning into a small novel as there are a lot of mechanics in this game but two things made me stream-line this section. Firstly, if the mechanics of this game aren’t going to interest you, the Cliff Notes version is all you really need to read.

Secondly, if the mechanics of this are your cup of tea, then all you’ll want to read is the Cliff Notes version. See, a lot of this game is about exploration, discovery, and the story that you create. Going through the game and making decisions based on imperfect knowledge is a major part of what makes this game unique. There is a tutorial, and it is a must for this game, but you’ll really be short-changing yourself if you go in with a complete understanding of the mechanics. This is the same for most things in this title, for some this will sound like heaven and for some it will sound like a complete waste of time.

Avatar customization is limited, but it has a purple hair option so it’s all good.

At its core, this is an action-RPG, while there are plenty of side mechanics, the main thrust is exploring dungeons and beating down the bad guys and monsters. After administering the beat downs you will loot all of their stuff, maybe find an upgrade or two, sell the rest, and move onto the next group of walking loot.

Combat

This brings me to my major criticism of the game, and one that I think will be the proverbial straw for many gamers. The combat is not fun as it is clunky, unresponsive, and it is difficult to use the flashier more complex spells if you’re playing solo. After the most difficult fights have ended, I don’t feel like I achieved a victory, rather I just feel like I cheesed the AI. I honestly can’t tell if this is the result of inexperience or if it was a deliberate design choice. Either way, combat really needs to be better given how much of it you’ll be doing.

As for the rest of the mechanics I’ll just skim over them. Survival is a big aspect of this game, with hot and cold weather, hunger, thirst, and the need for sleep. It might sound like a bother, but the game does a good job of encouraging you naturally to keep track of all your bars. As long as you are mindful, you won’t get in trouble.

That being said, the UI to convey some of the information is lacking. For example as you take damage, you recive ‘burnt health’ which reduces your max HP until you either eat specific foods, drink a potion, or sleep. However, the UI really isn’t very clear on this and I died several times before I figured out what that slightly different color red meant on my health circle.

I mean it’s obvious in hindsight, but it did take a few deaths to figure it out

Death

Speaking of death, you don’t really ‘die’ in this game. If you lose all your health, you’ll pass-out instead. This will cost you one day (which can be a major problem for some quests) and you’ll wake up in a context sensitive situation. This can either be fun, an annoyance, or a really bad situation since the time might have caused some food to rot, which means you can’t eat to get rid of that hunger status, as well as your max HP and stamina is also now reduced. It is certainly an interesting way to handle death, I’ll give the developers that. Something to be aware of is that because you can’t ever die, the game does not allow you to save. There is only one auto-save for your character, and the game is saving almost constantly. Don’t count on ALT-F4 to bail you out of a bad choice either.

Character Progression

Character progression is mostly done by getting new gear, you don’t level up in this game, though you can gain new skills. Some skills are free, some cost silver, and a few require you to spend one of your three skill points to unlock. While skills help, your gear is everything here. Getting a new piece of armor or a better weapon drastically effects how well you do in combat. This also means in certain situations you can lose all your advancement because all your gear gets taken, needless to say that really stings. Though it is always possible to get your stuff back, however it might be pose a big challenge, but as far as I can tell nothing gets destroyed unless you sell it to a merchant and their inventory resets.

Multiplayer/Co-op

Multiplayer is potentially a big bonus here as not only does it have online drop-in drop-out gameplay, but it has split screen co-op as well. I didn’t get to test this feature a lot but from what little I did test out multiplayer worked well. It does seem to make the combat an order of magnitude easier though, which could be a concern. To me this is a non-feature since I don’t have anyone in my house I can play with and I’m not all that interested in playing with random people, but I can see how others would love the ability to play an RPG like this with a friend.

Crafting

Finally, there is quite the crafting system to explore here. There are no skill points here, you either have the materials to make something or you don’t. There are recipes but you don’t get to read them before crafting, If you look it up on a wiki (or in some cases just take an educated guess) you can craft the item and the recipe will be added to your journal. While you can craft weapons and armor, you’ll mostly be crafting adventuring supplies such as fire rags and potions. Cooking is a major crafting area as well and is very well integrated into the other systems. Different dishes have different bonuses, with more complex dishes providing additional bonuses.

Audio and Visual

There is honestly not much to say here, the visuals are to put it simply, functional. Occasionally you’ll come across some interesting monster designs and much of the gear you can equip is unique in design, but most of the terrain and architecture is very plain looking. There’s also tons of small, tiny errors in the terrain with the occasional prop that just looks out of place such as the giant rib cages that look like they’re made of plastic.

This does not look like weather-aged bone

Another thing about the visuals that ties in with gameplay is lighting. When it’s supposed to be dark, it is dark. Running out of light in a dungeon is not good situation to be in. While this sounds like an interesting mechanic, it really doesn’t work well when you are outside. If you’ve lived your life in the city, you really don’t realize how dark the great outdoors gets. As someone who does a significant amount of camping in his life trust me, this games gets moonless nights perfectly, which ultimately means you can’t see a darn thing. This makes outdoor navigation a massive pain, even if you have a lantern.

I did not doctor this screen shot at all

Audio is a bit of a mixed bag as the actual songs aren’t bad, and SFX are serviceable, but whatever system they are using for dynamic music is a bit wonky. I’ll be on my 17th trip back to town to sell off the two swords I looted and suddenly the music will swell into this epic score, usually spooking me a bit in the process. The voice acting is a bit off as well. It really does feel like they just went around the office and said “Hey, you’re not doing anything. Go get into the sound booth!” I really don’t think you’ll miss much by muting the sound and listening to your own stuff, but it won’t hurt the ears to leave their stuff on either.

Replayability

OK this might be a bit of a controversial view point, but I feel this game has very limited replayability. As I mentioned in the gameplay section, the vast majority of your adventuring effectiveness is in your gear. True, there is the choice of using magic or not, and which of the skill trees you wish to max out, but honestly you’ll probably have a favorite combat style that you’ll want to stick with. The only real reason to replay the game will be to experience all three faction story lines, since once you join a faction, you’re locked out of the others.

As I’ve already stated though, I don’t feel the main quest lines aren’t all that compelling. Certainly not enough for me to want to redo the game from the start. I really feel that whether or not you want to replay this game is going to hang on both how compelling you find the three factions vs how much the gameplay annoys you.

Pricepoint

So despite that fact that I just roasted Outward for a perceived lack of replayability, I still feel this game is a good buy. Assuming again, the mechanics sound like your cup of tea. Due to the pacing and the size of the world, this is going to take you a solid 30-40 hours to finish one of the main quest lines.  It might take you a little less time for additional playthroughs, but not much so for a $40 game, that’s not bad at all.  The devs give an estimate of 40-80 hours to fully experience the game, and I can see someone easily spending 60+ hours in this game if the mechanics happen to click with them. Toss in the fun you can have with a friend or random people on the internet, and Outward will really give you your money’s worth.

Final Thoughts

If I could give this game two scores I would. This game has a target audience and for them this is easily a 7.5, maybe even an eight. For the average gamer looking for a neat RPG experience to tide them over until Elder Scrolls 6 or Cyperpunk 2077 it would not even come close to that. Very slow pacing, unexplained mechanics, removal of modern systems, clunky combat, all of this adds up to an experience that the average gamer is probably not going to enjoy.

But if you are in that target group, those looking for an RPG that absolutely does not hold your hand and allows you to get hopelessly lost if you don’t pay attention, and will rip you a new one if you mess up, then this game is for you hands down. In the end though, I do need to choose a single score, and I’m going to go with the one I think will reflect the experience most people will have with this game.

If you enjoyed this review be sure to read more with our latest thoughts on action shinobi Sekiro Review: Shinobis Die Many Times. Or you can check out what we thought about CD Projekt Red’s upcoming sci-fi action RPG in Cyberpunk 2077 Preview: When Fallout Meets Blade Runner.

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