#it's not really an idle game in the traditional sense it's supposed to be a creature survival game

[the-aviary-system]

Mood. We've had to stop playing games like this because we'd get unhealthily addicted to "number go up"

Like we'd get a withdrawal like effect, we'd get anxious about missing out on potential number going up if we didn't have whatever idle game we were obsessing over running in the background of our computer 24/7. Doing schoolwork? Keep it in the background and tab in like every 5 minutes to check in on it and buy upgrades. Planning D&D? Same thing.

Other games that use the "number go up" formula often got greedy with their players and kept trying to exploit their addiction to make them spend money, they made it more and more grindy until it was impossible for free-to-play people like us to keep up. (We didn't have a job, so no consistent money, so that's a reason why we were FTP. I dunno if we would've fallen into the trap of spending tons of money on games like these if we had a consistent income)

After getting disillusioned with our latest "number go up" simulator, I decided to try cookie clicker because I heard it wasn't pay to win. Yeah, I used an autoclicker too. And CC was pretty neat and all, it wasn't exploitative, which I appreciate- it was a grindy game in its purest state, grinding for the sake of grinding, gaining numbers for the hell of it, instead of trying to make money off of players- but since it wasn't actively trying to exploit us with FOMO it let us stop and think, and we realized we don't even enjoy these kinds of games that have taken up hours and hours of our lives.

So we made a rule for ourselves. No more of these games. From now on, we only play games if we're actually enjoying them, not just playing it out of obligation to make the number go higher. And it was really hard to stop playing since we got that same kind of withdrawal effect, the little itch in the back of the head that "I could be more productive right now, if I just had one of those games open in the background while I write I would be more productive" but we had to just fight that.

Anyway, that's not to say nobody should play these games. I'm not writing this to shame anyone for playing them, I'm not trying to sound preachy and hope that it doesn't come off that way- this comic just reminded me of our experience with these types of games and I felt like talking about it since we were addicted to these kinds of games for a good while. Some people will definitely be able to handle the addicting nature of these games better than we can. Some people genuinely enjoy the grind because it lets them just turn off their brain for a little while or not have to focus too much on something. Just be mindful to not let it become an addiction, is all.

So yeah that's the story of how we had an addiction to really grindy idle games

-Emyr (he/it)

[st-writes]

Reach and Flexibility Pt. 2

ME2: Shepard gets a peek at the big guns

(Read Part 1 Here)

Shepard sat at the edge of the first medbay cot. Her palms were dry. Everything was dry. She felt like the traditional definition of a husk, her exterior hardened and leathery while inside her soul shriveled up, pulling away from the edges. It left a moat between her and the rest of the world, making everything seem distant.

Two days earlier they’d raided the collector ship. They’d gotten the data they needed and escaped without casualties. It was a success, but only in the sense that the directives had been fulfilled. In every other sense, Shepard didn’t think she’d ever felt like a bigger failure.

Two days earlier they’d raided the collector ship, and she’d been mentally spaced by her own psyche, set adrift in her nightmares while her body was left panicked and vulnerable in the belly of the beast.

“I wouldn’t have sent you in if I didn’t think you could succeed,” he’d said.

Shepard winced as Chakwas’s gloved hands manipulated her cheek, pinching the skin around the growing, glowing fissures. The pain was dull, but still there. Chakwas tutted and stepped away, tugging her gloves off by the fingers.

“Other than a rejection flare-up, you appear to be fine, physically. But I’m a medical doctor, Commander. When it comes to matters of the mind, I can only be a friend,” she said, setting the gloves on her desk.

“I’m not talking to Chambers.” Shepard yanked her sleeves down. “You know those reports are just going straight to the Illusive Man’s desk.” By his account, he’d led her into the lion’s den because he believed she could get herself out. What would he do if he knew his game piece was broken, his weapon impotent, his investment squandered?

“I wish you would talk to someone.” Chakwas slumped into her chair with a sigh. “Your experience is not unique, even if your circumstances are. You don’t have to deal with this alone.”

Shepard snorted. “Well, I wish we hadn’t finished all your brandy in one go.”

The corners of Chakwas’s mouth curled upward, but the smile fell short of reaching her eyes. “Are you sleeping alright? I can give you something that will help.”

Shepard ran a hand through her hair before tucking it behind her ears. “I’m sleeping plenty.” Not entirely true. The first night had been a breeze-- she’d barely made it to her cabin. EDI had let her sleep well into what was supposed to be the waking part of her cycle, and she fought a residual grogginess until it was nearly time for her to sleep again. As a result, she waited up the second night until her eyes were raw from pouring over reports and she was forced to lay on her couch and focus on nothing in particular until sleep found her.

“Alright.” Chakwas, with an air of reluctance, spun her chair back slowly toward her desk. “Do let me know if any other issues arise, or… if you want to talk…”

“I know where to find you.” Shepard nodded, moving to the door. “Thanks, Karin.” After a few steps she peered back through the window to make sure the doctor wasn’t watching her, and changed course from the elevator to the mess. She’d need coffee if she was going to make much sense of EDI’s findings beyond the overview.

The pot was empty and Gardner was off doing the other half of his duties that no one really cared to think about, so Shepard set to work brewing a new one. She found herself hypnotized by the sporadic drip, so much so that she didn’t notice one of her team had come up beside her.

“Shepard.” Garrus materialized from the haze of her surroundings to greet her. “It’s good to see you up. How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” she responded automatically, before realizing who had asked: a good friend with a front-row seat to her meltdown. She glanced at him with sheepish alarm.

His avian eyes, somehow always as enigmatic as they were expressive, watched her for a moment. The good mandible on his left made one idle twitch as he seemed to reach some sort of conclusion. He gave her a small nod. “Glad to hear it,” he said. “Do you have a minute?”

There was something about him not calling her out on her bullshit that made her feel incredibly called out on her bullshit. She tried her best not to look admonished as she turned to face him. “What do you need?”

“I wanted to show you something.” A note close to mischief crept into his voice. “I think you’ll like it.”

Too worn out to have her interest truly piqued, Shepard frowned skeptically as she gestured loosely toward the coffee maker. “More than coffee?”

Garrus’s browplates dipped briefly downward as his eyes followed her hand. “Hm. Can’t say, haven’t tried the stuff.” He looked back at her, mandible tilted in what she’d come to read as a smirk. “But yeah, I think so.”

Shepard raised her eyebrows; he didn’t know what a high bar he’d just set for himself. “Alright, Vakarian. I’ll bite. Show me.”

“Great.” Garrus straightened and started toward the corridor to his usual haunt and makeshift quarters, beckoning her along. “Follow me to the battery.”

She fell in line behind him, with some small, distant amusement taking note of an energy in his stride--a “spring in his step”--she hadn’t seen in a long time. It was the gait of a younger iteration, a Garrus Vakarian eager and excited, impatient for whatever comes next. What could possibly merit that?

Once inside the battery, he pressed a tablet into her hands before stepping over to his console. She looked down at it, trying unsuccessfully to find enough focus to read the scrolling data. “What am I looking at?” She asked.

“You asked, before, if a turian patrol could’ve disabled the collector ship. We know now that’s not what happened… but it got me thinking. So I did a little poking around.” Shepard looked back up, then looked again. The interior of the battery was overlaid with a hologram- new holographic parts integrated into the current, physical setup.

“These are Thanix Cannons,” Garrus said, spinning back toward her from where he’d been queueing up the hologram at his console. “They fire a liquid alloy core suspended in an electromagnetic field that’ll tear through just about anything. Our military reverse engineered them from Sovereign’s main gun. Reaper-grade weapons, Shepard. Those Collector bastards try anything again, they won’t know what hit them.”

Garrus’s energy was contagious. Shepard felt her mouth pulling into a smile as she looked over the data with refreshed eyes. The back of her neck prickled as understanding began to sink in. “And we can make this happen?”

“Definitely. Easy upgrade.” Garrus stepped to her, tapping the tablet and clearing his throat. “Once we get the parts, of course. But I can’t imagine Cerberus won’t write this check.”

Shepard’s grin had grown so much it was hurting her scarred cheeks. The corners of her eyes began to burn, threatening tears. For the first time since she’d been brought back, the phantom Collector ship in her mind was paired with imagery of its own destruction, not hers. “Vakarian, I could kiss you.”

“Easy there, Shepard. I don’t want you to have to sit through that vid again on my account,” Garrus chuckled, taking the tablet out of her hands. He regarded her for a moment before tapping it gently against her arm. “You’ve had a long, hard couple of days. I thought you could use a win.”

Wearing a tempered smile she brushed him away, for a moment the touch of his forearm against hers almost eclipsing her other senses. They joked, but she could actually kiss him. She could do more than kiss him. Her eyes swept over him, gaging the feasibility of a whim her fatigued brain would not let pass. “Speaking of, um, Turian ingenuity...”

“Hm?” Garrus, who had just begun to move back to the console, stopped himself.

She re-crossed her arms. “I’ve been thinking about what you said-- about relieving tension.”

Garrus mirrored her gesture. “I uh, didn’t think you’d feel like sparring, Commander.” He leaned toward her conspiratorially. “You look a little tired.”

And she was: too tired to mince words. Shepard tried to smile, but it ended up feeling more like a grimace. She watched his eyes. “Yeah, not what I meant.”

Realization dawned slowly over his face. His mandibles went slack for a moment before flicking back up with a thoughtful tic. The plates on his nose flexed, his browplates tilted upward. “Oh! I didn’t… Huh.” Garrus shifted his weight onto his back foot and tugged at his collar. He turned his head toward the console, then back toward her, mandibles twitching restlessly. “You said I was ugly,” he reminded her, more confusion in his voice than reproach.

Shepard shrugged helplessly. “Looks aren’t everything,” she said. Had he taken that playful ribbing to heart? She hadn’t meant it. Though she hadn’t thought him particularly attractive then either, now she found her interest… piqued. “Maybe I changed my mind.”

Garrus was visibly floundering, his fidgeting more pronounced. “Is it the scars?” he joked, taking refuge in humor. “Never knew you had a weakness.”

“Sure as hell wasn’t your lines.” Shepard smirked. She glanced over at the hologram, still shimmering over the battery’s machinery. “Might’ve been the gun talk.”

“That cannon is a sexy machine,” Garrus agreed. When Shepard looked back, she found him watching, studying her. “Sorry. I’ve just never considered--- seriously, anyway,” he corrected himself after catching her look.

“Right, sounds like a no.” Her smirk tensed into something more like a grimace, and she rubbed at the spot between her eyebrows with a knuckle, as if she could smudge the whole idea out. “Sorry. I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s not-! I—“ He huffed helplessly. “You don't ever have to worry about making me uncomfortable. Nervous, yes... but never uncomfortable. I just… I know you can find something a little closer to home.”

She squinted up at him through her hand. “Like who? Jack? Miranda?”

“Jacob?” Garrus suggested meekly. “...Joker? Zaeed? I mean, even Thane has…”

“Garrus,” she cut him off, waving away his suggestions like gnats. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re my best friend, one of the few people I can trust. I never feel closer to home out here than when I’m with you.”

If she’d had more sleep, if she wasn’t raw and burnt out she might’ve been surprised at her nearly embarrassing earnestness. But if she wasn’t raw and burnt out she probably wouldn’t have been embarrassingly earnest.

Garrus straightened a little, regarding again with a look that was…softer. “I get that.” He nodded, his mandible twitching. “You’re about the only friend I’ve got left in this screwed up galaxy. I’m not going to pretend I’ve got a fetish for humans, but… If this is about us?”

His head tilted and he took a step back. “You know what? Yeah. Why the hell not.”

Shepard let slip an incredulous laugh. “‘Why the hell not’?”

“What?”

“Garrus! ‘Why the hell not’?” She stared, waiting for the penny just wouldn’t drop. “I mean, I think that’s everyone’s favorite response to putting themselves out there.”

“Definitely,” he corrected himself, sounding almost resolute before he kept on talking. “If we can figure out a way to make it work, then… Definitely.”

“It’s not uncharted territory, Big Guy.” Shepard shrugged sympathetically. She wasn’t familiar with any turian-human couplings herself, but there were definitely asari who took turian partners, so it couldn’t be too far a leap. All it took was knowing your own body, communication, and a can-do attitude, as far as she was concerned.

“Right… So… I’ll do some research,” he proffered, obviously coming from a very different, more cautious philosophy. “Find some music…?”

It was a little adorable. Shepard patted his arm supportively, feeling the fatigue creep back in. Excitement and nerves had invigorated her, but the wave of relief that came over her as their conversation settled seemed to wash her energy away with it. She never did get her coffee. “Do what you need to do, Vakarian, and nothing you don’t want to.”

His mandibles and mouthplates twitched as a series of responses died silently on his tongue. She’d broken him, she thought with distant amusement, but he’d bounce back.

“And please, PLEASE, forward those specs for the cannons to Lawson as soon as possible.” Her intention had been bringing their conversation to a merciful close, not to reignite the hot bloom of gratitude within her, but there it was. She found herself staring at that spot on his forehead.

“Can I…?” She gestured hesitantly.

“Hm?”

“Kiss you. Actually.” A light laugh bubbled through her voice. There was a giddiness now, amusement at his bafflement and her own persistent ridiculousness floating like flotsam on whatever emotional mess churned in the depths of her psyche.

Garrus sighed, a quiet exhale with a stutter at the end that could have been a laugh. “Alright.” He opened his arms and lowered his head for her.

Placing her hands on either side of his head, she guided her face to his and pressed her lips gently to that spot where the three sections of his forehead plating met. “Thank you,” she murmured against the cool, hard surface, and felt him shudder beneath her. His hands found her wrists and encased them in a soft but firm hold.

Did she stumble over a line again? She pulled back, watching him carefully as he watched her. There was something intense about the look in his eye, not alarm or reproach but… something.

“Well.” Shepard gave him a half apologetic smirk and an ineffectual pat on the hard plating that seemed to essentially form an exo-cheekbone. “I have some reports to look over, and gallons of coffee to drink, so… I’ll leave you to it?”

He let go of her with a wry chuckle, running his hands up over his own fringe. His blue eyes shot her a good-natured glare. “Riiight. 'Cause I'm in a great place to optimize firing algorithms right now. “

She shrugged, sympathetic but impotent, as she triggered the door control. Sounds from the mess filtered in on the heels of the door’s mechanical hiss. Garrus straightened, his blue eyes sliding warily over the scene behind her before meeting her gaze again. He shook his head and waved her away with the casual gesture of a good friend.

Shepard nodded in acknowledgement and turned, remnants of a smile lingering at the corners of her mouth. Two days ago, they raided the Collector ship, and the same specter that killed her two years prior had unmade her again. The Lazarus’s time, money, and scientific genius all brought to ruin with the sharp sting of betrayal and the unsteady lurch of a platform. Two days ago she was, in some ways, as two years ago- meat and tubes, raw and exposed, a lost cause. Today, healing began again. Not on a gurney, not under a knife, not with stitches and cybernetics, but in the arms of a friend, under their protection, with kindness and caring—and some very big guns.

Everything was going to be okay. And even better with coffee.

[csykora]

what’s education like for hockey players? i’ve heard some wacky shit in football but i don’t really know much about hockey, especially outside the US/canada

General academic education for hockey players? I’d have to say “alright, and getting worse.”

I’m assuming this was inspired by the quote I shared from Ken Dryden, so I’m just talking broadly about how North American schools and hockey have been changing. Please do let me know if you have other areas you're specifically interested in!

Cut for discussions of institutional racism/anti-Indigeneity including mentions of the residential/boarding school system, and of sexual abuse.

Schools in the English-speaking world have been the main site where sports grow since they appeared in Britain in the 14th century. Games have always also been played by rural and poor people in Britain, but the development of the school created this really new situation where large groups of boys and young men would be together by themselves and would be physically idle for long periods of time. Descriptions of popular games played in communities before this are generally more freewheeling, impromptu physical activities bringing lots of different people together, and competition might be between different towns of communities, rather than within them. In the new context of the school, in these homogenous groups of young men, a sense that it was important for things to be controlled so there would be competition but both the winners and losers could feel pretty good about the outcome developed, and so did more elaborate rules.

So when schools expanded from the first exclusive universities to institutions for more and more of the public in Britain and then in the colonized regions of North America, sports were seen as a vital part of what schools were all about. They could be used to teach “values”.

Again, both colonists who weren’t in school and Indigenous communities had other games and traditions of physical activity, and those often combined. When those games began to be played in schools, they became organized and propagated and came to be seen as the dominant form for the game.

Mission and reservation schools, and boarding (in the US) or residential schools (in Canada) had a massive impact on modern North American sports. American/gridiron football would be unrecognizable without the inventions of young Native men and boys in the school system—since they were often better runners, and were more knowledgable about athletic training for running than white opponents at the time, they changed the structure of the game from an earlier form closer to rugby, and invented the overhand spiral throw to reach each other. (Their strategies are either still in use today or were immediately perma-banned for not being in the Anglo spirit of “fair play” that school sports were allegedly supposed to teach.)

In the northern US and in Canada, children at those schools played, and were pushed to play, hockey instead of football, bringing together various Native and non-Native skating traditions, the stick designed by the Mi’kmaq, and other developments.

School administrators saw sports, with all those rules of fair play, as a civilizing influence—another tool of control. At the same time, some young players saw physical activity as an escape and a creative space, and some very much felt it as another tool of control (and many felt both, at different moments in their lives).

But you end up with this situation where organized hockey is being played at the really exclusive north eastern colleges, at prep schools, and at reservation schools and boarding schools (which often were or later transitioned to be technical/industrial/agricultural schools). Strong, long-established college hockey programs are recruiting youth players. Colleges can offer an education and they can offer high levels of competition, whether it’s against other strong historic schools or the Olympics, where hockey will be played by amateurs until 1995.

-

Then youth hockey changed. The roots were in the ‘60s, and the situation bloomed in the ‘80s.

The first competitive youth teams had come together back in the 1890s. Early hockey players were sorted into seniors and juniors, with juniors defined as player who were 20 or under at the start of the year. Youth teams were added to various local leagues governed by the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA), a predecessor to Hockey Canada, in the ‘30s and ‘40s. NHL teams started sponsoring them.

The sponsor NHL team didn’t have all the players on their sponsored team under contract, but they had dibs to sign the good ones to an NHL contract before any other team, and a level of influence over their development.

In 1963 the first NHL Draft was held, with teams claiming rights to any amateur players who weren’t already sponsored by an NHL team. The junior teams did not like that.

By 1967, the CAHA and the NHL struck a new deal. The NHL would stop sponsoring whole junior teams, the Draft would change to a “universal” draft, with any player anywhere eligible (unless they were French, in which case the Habs would have first dibs for several more years), and NHL teams would simply pay a transfer fee for each player they had rights to when they called him up, which they wouldn’t be able to do until he was over 20.

“In simple words,” George Cross predicted in the Sun, “now, the pro clubs have to buy a cow in order to get a glass of milk. Through the new agreement, they’ll be able to buy the glass—even though it may be at inflated prices.”

The problem was that the teams in the junior leagues under CAHA didn’t really have the money to survive long without sponsorship.

In 1969, the best teams who had been playing in two junior leagues in Québec left their old leagues, got together, and called what they were doing hockey junior majeur. Similar disputes were going on between the OHL and their governing association in the late ‘60s, resulting in them splitting their top teams into a new higher level as well.

The progenitors of the WHL made me feel like I was actively hallucinating, but to summarize, youth teams in the west felt they were behind Québec and Ontario because they were all spread out in provincial leagues. The owner of the Edmonton Oil Kings (a team put together in 1950 and immediately kicked out of the local junior league because the season schedule had already been written without them, so the Alberta Hockey Association threatened to ban every other team unless they were added), Bill Hunter, dreamed of a unified national junior league competing for the Memorial Cup. CAHA promptly told him if he wanted the Mem Cup he needed to stop playing his “junior” team against senior-level teams and he was like “what if I don’t” and they were like “we’ll ban you,” so he started a new “outlaw league”, which they banned. In 1967 that league sued to be let back into CAHA and then announced that it would not let NHL teams sign players at 20 like the CAHA’s new deal said, it would be keeping them until 21 so they could make more money off them, actually, thank you very much, so they got booted again and joined a rival to CAHA before trying to sneak back in in disguise.

In 1970, CAHA officially divided the top level of junior competition, which was previously called Junior A with the lower teams being Junior B, to make a top-top tier they called major juniors above Junior A. They sanctioned the Q, Ontario hockey, and the western situation as the three leagues who were playing at the major junior level.

Any moment of peace was broken in 1971 by two American promoters and—he’s back—Bill Hunter, who made the World Hockey Association (WHA). Hunter founded, owned, Gm’ed, and coached the Alberta-soon-to-be-Edmonton Oilers, before fucking off to invest in shipping the St. Louis Blues to Saskatoon and running curling tournaments. The WHA wasn’t part of that no-touching-till-they’re-20 deal and took advantage, as well as taking the initiative to bring over the first European players to compete.

The three major junior leagues looked at each other and then at all the fresh young players the pros were snatching up and back at each other. In 1975 they formed a super-league they called the Canadian Major Junior League (now just the CHL). As a block they could demand that the NHL pay standardized (and steep) fees for their players, stop getting into bidding wars with the WHA, and everyone stop signing underage players.

The NHL complained that the CHL was a blatant monopoly, which it is, then went back to snuffing out the WHA. But they still had to pay the CHL’s fees.

By the ‘80s, the CHL had big money. No longer bogged down by the teams they’d left behind in the Junior A level, they could promise a consistent high level of competition, and pro-level coaching and training. To avoid infighting between their own member leagues and teams, they instituted their own player draft. More young players wanted in, and they didn’t necessarily get to pick where they went. Billetting, where teenage players are housed in the community where they play, ballooned. Billeting can involve staying with a host family, but groups of teenage players were also put up alone in motels. Stipends for player’s living expenses would lead to the NCAA declaring that players who had done major juniors weren’t eligible to play in college, making youth players choose between the promise of development now or later.

A system that requires kids to do that to is going to end up selecting for kids who are already stressed.

Basically, if you’re someone who’s already probably going to go to college, and hockey was more of the side thing, you still will. There are lots of colleges, more all the time, where young men can play at some level, and in most of them they do tend to have more time to study than college football or basketball players do, because their practice routine isn’t as fucked and their games aren’t worth nearly as much money. Things like paper classes aren’t as common as they are for those athletes.

But if you (or your parents) were wavering on college, things look different.

The CHL teams were not motivated to care if their players did well in school—what responsibility do they have for them once they age out? After that either worth money for the NHL to take them away, or they’re not. I’m sure some people in some of those organization sincerely did and do care about balancing sports and school or whatever, but the system doesn’t care, and the system makes it harder for individuals to care.

Away from home, the support systems that teenagers need to do anything, much less homework, tended to get weaker. Unfamiliar teachers, being out of step with class material, constant travel, often having no adults they knew to ask for help, loneliness, and the stresses of competition, injuries, travel, and abuse didn’t help. Many of those players didn’t finish school, and those that technically did didn’t get a whole lot out of it.

People who grew up in the height of billeting think complaining about it is a new thing. But people were worried about how youth hockey was changing from the beginning, including players like Ken Dryden, and the impacts on players have been clear for a long time.

The pressure to train harder and get good younger and younger reached a whole new level in 1987. Before then no one cared about international junior competition. 1,200 lonely people had showed up to watch young Wayne Gretzky face down Slava Fetisov in Montréal a decade before. Then the tenth World Junior Championships were held in Piešťany, Czechoslovakia. When the Canadian juniors played the Soviets, two players collided and the Canadian boy punched the Soviet boy, starting a fight that became a bench-clearing brawl.

Don Cherry’s reaction to the fight would make World Juniors important. After that more and more boys (and parents) would want to “represent their country” on the national junior teams, meaning, again, you had to get good younger and younger.

Which I think is just about the wrongest we could have gotten it.

[via the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame. I admit I couldn't think of a lot of ways to break this all up and included this photo for cuteness]

The player who kicked off the Punch-up is named Everett Sanipass.

He was an eighteen year-old Mi’kmaw man from Elsipogtog/Big Cove First Nation in New Brunswick, and had played two and a half seasons of major juniors, scoring 94 points one season. Just six months earlier he’d been picked 14th overall in the NHL Draft, making him the first Mi’kmaw player in the league.

The Mi’maq have been playing some kind of hockey since the 1700s and invented the stick, but players before Everett hadn’t been allowed to leave the reservation to play. Everett had scored 43 goals (and 26 assists) in 37 games with the Big Cove Flyers, so he’d caught the attention of the managers in Montréal. It had always been a bone of contention in the CHL that the Montreal Junior Canadiens moved from the Q to the O in the ‘60s, so they were determined to put together an aggressive team, and they took Everett.

His first season was the team’s first season. They won the Q playoffs, despite their coach quitting five games from end because he felt it was "it was too difficult…to motivate amateur-level players”.

(Claude Lemieux—Brendan’s dad—was also on that team. Claude Lemieux is a real cock but he would also later be responsible for pranking Slava Fetisov in a way I find, regrettably, very very funny. I’ve been saving that story for a year so I will be very happy to tell it if anyone wants, to make up for all the other stuff in this post.)

The first coach had been replaced by Jean Bégin. The year after the Punch-up, Bégin would actually coach the national junior team, too. His players called him “Johnny B. Good”, because he always played the ‘good cop’ compared to other coaches, talking to them and spending extra time with them. The year after that, several players would report he sexually assaulted them. We don’t know if he sexually abused anyone in Verdun, but between those two coaches, they were a bunch of kids left alone at best, and guided by people with harmful intentions at worst. Violence, racism and xenophobia saturated the locker room.

On the ice in Piešťany, eighteen year-old Theoren Fleury had scored the first goal, and for his celly he slid on his knees past the Soviet bench, holding his stick like a machine gun as he mimed shooting the Soviet players dead. Before the start of the second period, a moment of silence had been held for several WHL players who had been killed when their bus crashed five days before. About a third of the Canadian team, including Fleury, played in the WHL and knew those players. Then Sergei Shesterikov and Sanipass collided. Everett started fighting.

Another Soviet player flew at Fleury. Brendan Shanahan, just nineteen days out from turning eighteen, watched with interest as nineteen year-old Vladimir Konstantinov laid a headbutt on Greg Hawgood that broke Greg’s nose, which Brendan worshipfully named "the greatest head-butt I've ever seen”.

It was quickly clear that the Canadian boys were in actual danger, because the Russians didn’t do hockey fights, and were responding like they were in a fight for their lives. “There were lots of guys who jumped over the boards who had zero intention of fighting,” Shanahan commented, but “it’s not the Russian players’ fault for not knowing that.”

Pierre Turgeon was the last skater sitting on the bench until Coach Bert Templeton ordered him to get out on the ice and going the fight.

“I just remember thinking that this should be over by now and it wasn’t,” Shanahan says now. “Then when the lights went out, I was thinking that they want us to end this thing. I remember feeling like they were turning out the lights to say, ‘Whatever you got to do, do it, but this has to end.’ The adults left the ice and you had a bunch of scared kids on the ice who had a lot of different things going through their heads.”

(The Canadians didn’t even have a captain, because he was serving a suspension for the team brawling with the Americans earlier that week.) They were a bunch of kids left alone again.

Everett was furious. Shesterikov had elbowed a Canadian earlier in the game and not gotten called: Everett was escalating to send a message and protect his teammates. He and Fleury, who is Métis and Cree, were getting pounded, and some of their white teammates, especially the white Quebecois Turgeon, didn’t seem to care much. I have no idea if that was what motivated Turgeon or if he—reasonably—didn’t want to join a brawl, or both, but Everett’s time in the Q had shown him the particulars of racism in French culture, and he didn’t trust his teammate.

Fleury, too, was stressed the fuck out. He was dealing with the racist climate and his own history of surviving violence. After a childhood of insecure food and housing, at thirteen he’d come close to bleeding out on the ice after a violent collision severed an artery in his arm. He’d been terrified he might miss his chance to leave some kind of impression on the hockey world, but his raised money to send him away to a hockey school for rehab, where he’d first been scouted by Graham James.

At the time, James was the head scout for the Warriors in the WHL. The next year he became their head coach, and then moved away to another team. Coach Jones emotionally and sexually abused Fleury, Fleury’s cousin Todd Holt, future Red Wing Sheldon Kennedy, and at least two other children. According to the players, it was well-known on and around both teams that Coach James had “his favorites”, who he offered rewards and praise. James went on to be the coach and general manager of the Flames’ AHL team until Kennedy and an anonymous survivor brought charges against him in 1996. Fleury and Holt would give their testimonies in 2010 and 2012. (Those WHL players I mentioned earlier, who died in a crash just before the WJC—Jones was their coach at the time. So not to dig down to a whole new strata of grimness, but it is possible that some survivors died before giving their testimony.)

This one national junior team had a 1-in-10 rate of players I can easily confirm were coached by someone who would be convicted for sexual abuse. (Every player on this team played in major juniors.) Statistically, the rate of boys who experience some form of sexual abuse is higher than that, but this is not the most common scenario.

To me, the ’86 national junior team points to how badly this system had been built—and then we piled a bunch more kids in before trying to patch it.

Ultimately, the assaults Coach Bégin was convicted for weren’t the ones against his players. One of his players had shared what was happening with his agent, Gilles Lupien, but when Gilles reported it to a league official, that person never made any further action. So while Bégin was banned from participating in youth sports by the courts, major juniors would not make any changes until Coach James was convicted in 1997, at which point they introduced criminal record checks for coaches and billet families.(Which is when a bunch of families realized they had not been doing that.) Sexual abuse by players against other players remains difficult to address.

The practice of putting teenage players up in motels wasn’t ever approved by the league and has been banned repeatedly because people keep doing it, most notably in 2008 when coach David Frost was found to be living with several of his players in one.

In ’98 the OHL introduced anti-hazing policies to address the racist abuse and other forms of bullying in major juniors. Those policies have developed since then, in response to various events.

Accidents related to travel remain a very real danger for major junior players, as well as injuries in the game itself, which I’ll give the OHL credit for trying to bring down, but which still contribute to epidemic opioid abuse as current and former players attempt to manage pain and trauma.

Not all of that is unique to major juniors, at all. Some are bigger problems in hockey, or in sports. But competitive hockey players have had less reason, and less ability, to focus on their education in recent decades.

Gilles Lupien, the agent whose player told him about some of the abuse, has spent decades on all these problems. "The league, the newspapers, they never talked about this. When it comes to men and hockey, there's this notion that we have to hide anything bad."

The problem, as he sees it, is fundamental to the power structure of junior hockey, which doesn’t center young people’s safety or future needs. "We are the followers and the leaders are the coach. And if the coach happens to be a real bastard, he'll manipulate them. We have to take better care of our kids."

[sanstropfremir]

hi ik this is sorta different from what you usually post about here but im wondering what you think of k/da's 'villain' mv!!

hi!! at first i was like "....wait when did i ever give any indication that i know anything about league....????" but then i remembered that k/da is technically kpop because it has (g)idle members in it and then everything made sense. you're actually very lucky because i literally phoned a friend for help with answering this, since one of my best friends of 15 years is an animator that works in the (semi) big leagues doing mostly 3d animation! i could have probably answered this without him but i wanted an excuse to talk to him (we did literally have a phone call) since i hadn't heard his voice in a while and i really like talking about art with him. we both have slightly differing opinions on the villain mv and on k/da in general, which isn't that surprising if you know us, but i also think it speaks to the success of the ideas behind k/da, i suppose.

first, an intro for anyone who doesn't know what k/da is (because there will definitely be some of you). k/da is a fictitious animated girl group made from four characters from league of legends, that are voiced by two kpop idols (miyeon and soyeon from (g)idle) and two american singers (madison beer and jaira burns). the project was conceived by riot games after having success with a similar project pentakill (basically the same thing but using metal instead of pop/kpop). k/da has handful of songs and three music videos: pop/stars, more, and villain, all of which are completely divorced from any of the lore of the game. honestly you don't even need to know anything about the characters either if you can get past the fact that they yanno, look like video game characters. pop/stars and more are the whole group (there's another champion feature in more) and villain is a concept video/solo song for one member, evelynn.

personally i don't have a lot of opinions on k/da as a whole; i remember when pop/stars dropped and all my friends when bananas (i don't play league and i don't play multiplayer games at all), but i don't really get the appeal of them because i don't think they're doing anything with k/da visually that's intrinsic to being animated (other than the concept itself, but i'm going to come back to this). my friend however, likes the concept a lot and thinks that the animation has more appeal on a broad approach than a traditional kpop mv. i will fault him for this logic because that last girl group he followed was snsd when we were 13, but he does kind of have a point. the animated nature does temper some of the more surrealistic elements of kpop mvs and makes it more 'palatable' to a non-kpop viewing audience, but personally i don't agree with this reasoning and people are just boring. we do both agree that pop/stars is the best of the three mvs, though. it's the most fun and has a few really interesting moments that do utilize the animated medium (mostly akali's parts with the blacklight), and the stylization of the animation itself is fun. more and villain lean more into realism and i don't find that as interesting even if it is more of a technical achievement. the thing about both more and pop/stars though is that despite the concept needing to be animated (because the characters aren't real), a lot of the shots and content within the frame is pretty similar to shots you would see in real life kpop mvs. there is absolutely an extra heightened nature to it because of the medium but honestly? they could be doing a lot crazier shit instead of trying to emulate something that already exists with some extra flair.

i like villain i think the most conceptually because it does make a fuller use of the medium (regardless of the fact that it's not a lot of actual animation and is mostly just really really good texture sims. this is a pendantic point that my friend decided he had to correct me on). a good chunk of the shots hinge on the fact that it is animated, and this kind of atmospheric mv is less common for kpop; they pointedly don't show evelynn's full face at all, which they can do because she has a very recognizable and totally designed silhouette, which is something that you can't achieve in quite the same way with an actual human being. villain's ability to capture the mood of the song is successful because of its lack of emphasis on the main character; something that i find kpop mvs sometimes struggle more with because of the industry emphasis on face (and subsequently the fact that a lot of idols can't act). riot does also get it mostly right with giants, which is from another fictional champion group, which is mostly 2d animated.

[circuscarnage]

Heehee, Hoi Anna 🌿 between Anna and maybe one (or both teehee) Hooska twins please :)))

Anna had been acting... Strange. Ever since the seasonal decorations had been put up, she had been ducking and dodging doorways, archways, and anywhere where the ceiling dipped. Staying away from any hanging decorations that looked suspicious. She was on the lookout for the dreaded plant that haunted her nightmares. The mistletoe. The most deadly plant of them all.

This plant wasn’t deadly in the sense that it could kill you outright. It was more manipulative than that. It would curse those that passed by to conform to its sadistic ritual. Well, she wasn’t going to be caught in it, no sir! So, that was why she was climbing through a window to get from the classroom to the courtyard, instead of using the doorway.

Of course, her strange behaviour did not go unnoticed by idle eyes. There were two students in particular that caught on to what she was doing, and they were very entertained by the whole spectacle. She was halfway through the window before being approached by two shady figures. She stopped in her tracks when Imoo folded his arms and leant against the wall.

“Why, Lil soul, how nice to see you here! Do us a favour and tell us why you are climbing through the window? Very interesting, wouldn’t you say, Sauda?”

“Interesting indeed.” Sauda chirped in, leaning against the opposite side, placing a hand on her chin. “Why would someone who always uses the door, suddenly feel the need to climb through a window?”

“I just had to avoid the doorway.” Anna said as she managed to scramble her way out and onto the floor. Feet now firmly planted onto the ground, she could finally make her way towards her next class. Or at least that’s what she thought, until the two siblings blocked her path.

Imoo quirked his brow, putting on a confused face. “Why, you allergic or something?” He was purposefully manipulating his voice, making it seem like an innocent question, when in reality he was trying to uncover information.

“I might as well be!” She blurted out. Oh no. Now that she had said that, they were expecting an explanation, the eager look on their curious faces was enough of an indication. “Well no, I’m not. I just hate those things. I don’t like the tradition. it’s all just one big trick, and not the good kind. I’ve never been caught under that parasite, and I don’t intend to.”

A sinister smile spread onto Imoos features. A wicked smirk that couldn’t lead to anything short trouble. The gears in that dark mind of his beginning to turn. He had an idea. Sauda seemed to be on the same wavelength, giving her twin brother a knowing nod. “Wanna bet?”

“No, absolutely not.” The sentence came out more forceful then intended. But the statement still stood. Knowing them, it would probably involve some sort of voodoo even Sam would be afraid to use. No. She learned her lesson from last time not to get involved with these two. Her soul could testify to that.

“That’s a real shame, Anna.” Sauda said, slipping her arm around the girls shoulders and guiding her away from the window. Imoo followed close by her side, linking her arm in his. “Because it seems before the game even began, you already lost.”

Anna stopped walking. She didn’t even need to look up to know what was looming above her head, taunting her like some sick joke. She blinked. Not wanting to accept what was about to happen. Her voice was just above a whisper. “Pardon?”

Imoo clicked his fingers in front of her face, demanding she pay attention. “Pay up, Lil soul.” What was she supposed to do? She could run. That was always an option. But that would just cause even more trouble later on. She could feel her face starting to heat up. She needed to think of something, and fast. That’s when it hit her.

“Hand kisses!” She suddenly exclaimed. “Technically, they count! I can do those, right?” Sauda and Imoo exchanged a look. Technically, she wasn’t wrong. They had never discussed the rules beforehand, so this wasn’t breaking any of them. Sauda agreed to her conditions, while Imoo looked disappointed, he was really looking forward to getting a big flushed reaction out of her. Oh well. This would have to suffice for now.

Anna gave both of the twins a light kiss on the back of their hands before running off in the opposite direction. The twins, pacified with their thirst for chaos, watched the poor flustered girl fled down the hall and out of their sights. Imoo spoke up. “She knows her next class is the other way, right?” Sauda laughed. “She’ll know. And when she does, we’ll be here waiting.”

[junhaoshua]

The Great Collie Crossover, 8/10

A/N: I own none of the characters, being neither JK Rowling nor @colubrina. This is just a chance for me to play in the sandbox they have created.This is a birthday/get well soon present for the lovely @colubrina, whose work has been such a joy and inspiration to me.

*** 7: Lady of the Lake

“What happened here?” Hermione asks dryly. “Sorted into Slytherin? Married Tom Riddle? Death Eaters won?”

The other witch’s smile grows wider and wider with every question. “No, no, and no. Sorted into Gryffindor, Harry killed Voldemort, and the Order won.” Her smile fades at that. “The Order won, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

“You mean-”

“I think you need to see it for yourself,” other-Hermione says with a sort of stiff finality. “I think you need to see everything.”

The world fades, darkens, warps, and they find themselves in a bar, past-Hermione sitting in the shadows and watching Harry and Ron surrounded by admirers, basking in their post-war glory. Then Malfoy slides into the seat opposite her.

“Don’t blame Draco,” other-Hermione says as they watch the conversation, the slow and careful words with the strong current of I want power running underneath, the mutual agreement that making people give you power was far more effective than seizing it. “I’d been thinking how I could run things better for a long time.”

Hermione watches her past counterpart point Draco’s own wand at him, then return it and give it to him, and leave together. No, Draco Malfoy likely couldn’t be blamed for this Hermione’s darkness.

Veritaserum and questions, and Draco already sitting at her feet, willingly placing himself under her thumb. Their plans to make her Lady and Queen. Draco comes to pick her up from the ratty old flat she was in at the start, armed with a snake bracelet to court her. Huh. Dinner and a quiet walk where people look at them with cool speculation. Kissing and flirting in front of the bookstore where Harry and Ron are signing. Waving the bracelet plaintively, all the while confirming her relationship with Draco and goading Ron into pushing her. A wary conversation - what the hell did Ron do in this world? - and then a kiss, a real kiss, not a public show.

Inducting Theo into the inner circle and inserting a kill switch into his head with legilimancy. Lunch with Harry and his refusal to reconcile with Draco. The most inelegantly expressed proposal in history.

Lady-Hermione laughs, and Hermione realises she said that aloud. “It doesn’t really matter, since marrying Draco is part of the game. I suppose he’s lucky that I’d have married him no matter how he proposed.”

The inner circle expanding to include Blaise and Pansy and Greg. Meeting in her old flat and discussing traditional morality. Planning how to gain power through articles about the Order living lives of hedonistic decadence with money from the war. Making herself look like a figure of purity, living in simplicity. Meeting Narcissa and learning about the old custom of fostering. Volunteering at a pathetic little orphanage. An orphanage, that according to official records, is very well funded, and in reality, even better funded than the records suggest. A conversation about changelings and blood magic.

A cold, numb shock slowly creeps up her spine. Yes, blood magic was - blood magic - but was it really Dark to take down a regime like this? A regime that deprived children and laundered money? How could the Order act like this and still be Light?

Inducting Astoria and Luna, Luna who speaks in metaphors upon metaphors that make everyone think she’s Loony because they’re unable to understand her, that make Theo drop to his knees and beg Hermione not to trust her. Meeting Greg and Astoria and - “I don’t understand.”

“You will,” Lady-Hermione says in a low, flat voice.

Tiring of their constant prejudice, the assumption that she must be a pureblood because Draco would never touch her if she was a filthy mudblood, even though that’s the assumption she’s using to gain power. Arguing with Draco and ripping through his brain with desperate ferocity. She needs to know if he despises her. Has to know. And a proper proposal.

“That would have been more romantic if you hadn’t tortured him first.”

Lady-Hermione shrugs. “I wouldn’t have accepted his proposal if I didn’t know.”

Quiet conversations with Draco. Being snubbed by Ginny. Discussing Luna and muggleborns with Blaise. Reassuring him that she has a way to solve the risk of discovery they pose. Finding out Ron hit Draco - and once more Hermione wonders who this Ron is, what he did to her, because he’s not the Ron she knows. Theo giving them proof of the Order’s creative accounting. Him accidentally letting slip that he knows she isn’t a pureblood, and having a wand shoved into his neck for it.

“It is far safer to be feared than loved,” she quotes.

Her counterpart laughs. “But every prince must desire to be considered merciful and not cruel. And to avoid being despised and hated. That was the Order’s mistake, and I don’t repeat mistakes.”

Coming to an agreement that involves him walking her down the aisle in loco fratris. The importance of the Nimue symbolism. More conversations with Narcissa about fosterage. Meeting Harry and Ron.

“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” this Harry says, and past-Hermione throws it back in his face even as he excuses whatever Ron did as “not a big deal”, as “you’re obviously fine and it’s not you were like this innocent victim”. Ron grabbing her wrist so hard that they can almost hear the bones grind together. She glances at other-Hermione and sees the witch’s frozen expression. These aren’t her boys. Whoever they are in this world, they’re not her boys. Ron would never lay hands on her. And Harry would never, never allow it. He would never excuse it with pretty words and cut her off. She wants to applaud when past-Hermione tells them to bugger off.

Getting Blaise to contact the bargirl who gave her ice for the wrist, who’s part of some underground anti-Order movement. Draco finding out that Ron hurt her wrist and promising to kill him. Her allowing it. She doesn’t blame her; if Ron treats her like that in public when they’ve broken off, what did he do to her when they were together? Could her Ron ever do that?

Visiting Astoria and Greg, Astoria who’s now pregnant but the child isn’t Greg’s. Her Slytherin boys dragging back some Order informant to her flat so they can pick through her brain. She goes to the kitchen to prepare snacks, and when she returns, the boys have done their work. Is it more evil to do your dirty work yourself, to feel the weight of it on your conscience and blood on your hands? Or is it more evil to have someone willingly stain themselves with evil at your command while you remain technically pure?

Marrying Draco in a humble wedding at the park, her hair braided in a subtle circlet, the simplicity of her robes a beautiful contrast against the Order’s lavishness when they’re side by side in the papers. Their wedding night, Draco gentle and sweet until he finds out -

“Ron did what?” she gasps.

“I was weak,” Lady-Hermione says, her words hard and cold in a way she recognises. It’s the way she speaks when she’s afraid of her own emotions. “Weak and silly. I’m not anymore.”

Working out the money system with Theo. Embezzlement and illegal seizure of assets and debased coinage and nepotism. This Order disgusts her. They need to fall. Meeting with the photographer who took shots of the orphanage, because every regime needs someone in the media. Telling Pansy to start a column painting Harry as the right candidate for Minister because of his unblemished morality.

Meeting with the inner circle in her bright new flat - a circle including Daphne Greengrass as writer of mocking limericks. The girl has a talent for it. Planning for the orphanage to be exposed and Astoria to out Harry. Listing potential adoptive families for the orphans and the changeling project. Changelings. Astoria and Harry. This should make sense, she should be able to put the pieces together, but she can’t grasp it. Theo wanting one of them for his heir and having the life hugged out of him. Yes, this Hermione knows how to use love and fear both.

Spellwork and planning with Blaise and Draco. Why do they want to make someone get drunk, and what’s this about transfiguring wood into babies? She wants to think, but then the scene shifts to her ascertaining Luna’s loyalty - which is strong, contrary to what the boys think of her dotty reputation - and she can’t be lost in idle musings.

Reconciliation with her Slytherin swains after they’re nearly broken by her displeasure. Blaise accepting her real blood status and nearly crying when he finds out she’s got a plan to ensure all children are raised in the magical world.

“At least you managed to restore their memories,” she says bitterly as she watches past-Hermione tell Blaise about her parents.

“Is it better to have them know me and hate me, or not know me at all?”

Astoria delivering the baby. Daphne delivering a spell to make Ginny a cheap drunk. The pieces come together.

“Astoria has Harry’s kid,” she says slowly. “That’s why you did all that. Make people want him for Minister for his morality, then destroy it with the affair, and of course Ginny will get drunk when her marriage publicly falls apart. That’s how you’re getting him off the chessboard.”

Lady-Hermione claps as the world swirls and they find themselves at Harry’s press campaign and how it all falls apart when Astoria comes with the baby. “You realised it just in time. A little slow on the uptake, aren’t you?”

“And the changeling project,” she says as they watch past-Hermione with Theo at the orphanage with the press. coincidentally managing to goad Ron into boasting the Weasleys are responsible for these “character building conditions” and going on the record with it. “Bring in the muggle-borns, leave some dead baby behind transfigured from wood or whatever it is, and have them fostered. No more muggle-borns.”

The other witch looks at her with faint surprise. “Perhaps you aren’t so slow after all.”

Shopping with Theo. Telling Draco she’s pregnant. The orphanage expose hitting the papers. Networking with the purebloods at a party for the kid Theo adopted, Æthel. Becoming godparents for Alicia, Astoria’s daughter, and a public proposal from Greg.

She looks at the other witch in surprise. “I take care of my people,” Lady-Hermione says simply.

Bringing Marcus Flint in. Resigning from the Ministry in protest over the orphanage, then running for Minister herself. Sending Luna and Æthel to feed misinformation to Harry. Meeting Neville and Hannah at the orphanage and being warned about Ron.

There’s a thud as her counterpart punches the wall. “I should have listened then,” the other witch says with a sort of miserable fierceness.

Bringing Percy in by promising to bury his involvement in the embezzlements, and him endorsing her in exchange. He’s always been the pragmatic one, the ambitious one. Harry fighting for custody of the baby. At least he’s got enough of a conscience to want to take responsibility, but past-Hermione doesn’t seem to agree. Working with Pansy and Daphne on restoring pureblood power, their lands and Wizengamot seats. Painting Arthur Weasley as a fool and Shacklebolt as a villain who crippled the economy and stole from the old families. Astoria’s wedding. Ginny finally drinking herself to death.

Charming the populace. Making the common people root for the wealthy to have their estates and vaults returned to them. Inciting protest marchers in the streets. Publicising Ron’s sexual exploits in the papers. Narcissa tacitly admitting she knows the truth about Hermione’s blood and doesn’t care. A spat with Molly. “I should have listened,” Lady-Hermione says again, and Hermione feels a slow, dawning dread.

George joining the service organisation she set up, perhaps the only Weasley who’s actually innocent in this whole mess. Giving a speech that has people chanting her name. Winning the election, as expected.

Then Ron coming out of the crowd with accusations. Cursing her, a curse that would have dealt more than a glancing blow if Æthel hadn’t sent off a quick stunner. Blood soaking her robes as she lost the baby, as Ron lies dead on the floor from Draco’s curse.

“No,” she gasps, horrified, as the world dissolves. “What - how could he -”

“I lost the baby,” she says simply. “Nearly lost my mind. The boys took revenge, but it didn’t help me. By the time they crowned me I was about ready to break down. Power changes you, but not always in the way you expect.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, wondering if this Hermione means herself or the Order.

“It seems blood sacrifice, and a million people wanting to believe in a myth, have a way of inviting the unexpected in. And that’s all I’ll say on the subject,” she adds with a hard expression when Hermione opens her mouth.

So she changes her question. “Do you regret any of it?”

“I’m probably the only one who wishes things could change, you know. Among the dark witch versions of us. Riddle-us, whatever she says, is probably the only one of us who knows she’s evil and likes it. The rest of us…” she shrugs. “Darkness is useful, until one day you wake up and you don’t know who you are anymore.”

“But you - who made you like this? Why are all of you like this here?”

Lady-Hermione shrugs again. “The Order corrupted the world. I tried to fix it, ruined lives in the process. Ron killed my son, died for his trouble, invited her in. Who knows where the blame goes? Does it even matter?” She turns, starts walking away as the fog rolls in. “Watch yourself, Hermione. Do what you want but try to remember some things can’t be undone.”

***

When she lands in the grounds of Hogwarts, she knows somehow, instinctively, this is the last world.

A Hermione who looks ordinary enough stands there with a smile, wearing two simple rings, a peacock drawn in brown adorning her hand, and yet another diamond tennis bracelet. “A gift from Theo,” other-Hermione says. “An adopted sibling thing. I’m not actually a Nott. And it’s not a portkey or anything.”

***

Thank you to @sulisaints for helping me with some parts of this very tricky chapter, and of course to @colubrina for creating this world. And above all, thanks to all of you for reading, kudos-ing and commenting on this fic. You are what motivates me. Crossposted on AO3.

[gear-project]

Okay, I would love to if you could, can you explain what exactly Characters are saying during battle post SIGN? I know it's a bit vague, but at least thanks to the dub, there were gusts of character that I learned that I couldn't before (like Faust and Ino being masochistic, Elphelt focusing more on keeping her dress perfect or Leo's insistent downplaying of the damage he receives). So, could you give a rundown of what they are saying (Johnny - Answer) to someone not familiar with Japanese?

That depends on what you want to know… I already discussed basic mechanics of how the voices work before.

And it’s not like older characters from Xrd Sign changed their voice-work too much in Revelator.

At the same time, much of what they say can be considered recycled from older GG games, so you can always check out my Guilty Gear Quote Project text document for those tiny little bits that were re-used (for example: Sol will sometimes habitually say “Te no uchi wa oshimai ka” [“That’s it for you.”], though the dub took some liberties with a few bits of dialogue.

Though I suppose I can give a run-down of what the new cast characters are saying.

Jack-O’: She tries to summon her servants Lancer (K), Knight (P), and Magician (S), as well as use her special moves like Elysium Driver.  Her goal is to “test the limits” of her body, so she often compares things in “this era” to what she considers to be trendy from the past. She also makes fun of her opponent during taunts (she calls them a “weird chocolate” sometimes), though against Sol she’ll talk about the Backyard a bit.  When she gets knocked out, sometimes she’ll say she’s entered “Sleep Mode” and uses PC computer jargon to describe her situation.

Johnny: He’s a gambler, so when he tosses his coins he places a bet.  He’ll frequently say stuff like “watch your feet” when doing low attacks or low mist finers, and “above you” when doing high mist finers as a means of zoning out opponents.  Using Bacchus Sigh, he’ll say “I’ll show you a mystery”, as a sign that he’s confusing his opponent.  His dialogue is pretty loose and easy-going, so it’s not like he’s trying to fight seriously.

Baiken: Her voicework hasn’t changed much from Accent Core, so you can look up the guide on that to get a rough idea.  She has a taunt for everyone, but more often she’s only concerned about catching opponents in her traps and cutting them, so she’s very direct and short tempered.  She also appears to get frustrated with herself easily if she’s losing (nasake- ne… I’m pathetic).

Answer: He’s almost always on the phone with someone, mostly trying to get paperwork done or settle over-the-phone disputes (his idle crouching animation).  When he does his command throw izuna drop he’ll say “Wait a moment… CONTRACT DROP… sorry, I’m back, what were you saying?”  This is typical of him, as he’ll stop the conversation mid-way when he’s about to do a strong attack… or when he’s staggered and almost dropping his phone.  If he loses he’ll say things like “We couldn’t get the project delivered on time.” and such, like a truly apologetic office worker.  His wins are traditional of office greetings in Japanese work ethic… and is something of a play on how ASW work hard to produce their own games, so when he bows along with his clones and thanks his opponent… really that’s ASW thanking US for playing this game!

Dizzy: Her moveset has gotten a bit more courage-filled since AC, so even when she blocks attacks, she’s more focused on winning now than she used to be (shizukani, “silence”).  Necro will still catch her off guard, but it’s nothing new (Necro will sometimes say “I guess our attempts to reason have failed” or “It ended up this way in the end”).  She doesn’t like fighting so her Taunts are just about telling people to stop fighting, while her Respects are just acknowledging her opponent’s strength and resolves.

Kum Haehyun: Kum is all about fighting to the utmost, so she has a personality not unlike Ryu in Street Fighter if you can imagine it.  She has an “old man” sense of humor though, so she can be a bit of an antiquated bumpkin when responding to situations as is reflected in her way of speaking (I wouldn’t say she’s got a Kansai-ben accent, but it’s similar).  She’ll say “it’s a matter of course” when winning (jonryoku de aru mai… jonryoku being a “pun” on her robo suit’s name).  Any time she says Jonryoku, it’s a pun on the word “Power” or “absolute effort”, so keep that in mind.  When she gets flustered she says “cut it out!” (during psyche burst) as if the opponent is just fooling around with her.

Raven: Raven will often say things like “You’ll never understand me”, or “Past, Present, Future, I will EXIST”.  "You aren’t desperate enough, THIS is how you kill someone!“ *stabs self with needles*  "So close… SO CLOSE TO DEATH” (His time-up animation).  THE PAIN!  THE PAIN IS HERE~!  *happy face* Yes, he’s a straight up masochist.  One of his lesser known catchphrases is “My body is a temple? We’ll see about that!” as if he intends to challenge God himself to break his immortality.  His movelist is fundamentally german, but you can pick up some of what he says in this post.

I think that should do as a summary, but eventually we’ll figure something out about working on translation (I’m gonna wait until the next major GG arrives before I decide what to do about that.)

[goshiyachi]

Of a heart, I couldn't steal

Fandom: Haikyuu!! Pairing: Atsumu Miya/Oikawa Tooru Summary: Oikawa was all too familiar with the routine: 1. Pick a victim carefully (while making it seem like a random tragedy) 2. Never play with your food 3. And certainly, don’t ever fall in love with fragile notions of masquerading as a human. Haikyuu Halloweek Prompts Used: Vampires, Halloween Night, Blood, Crime Fictober 18 Prompts Used: “Take what you need.”; “How can I trust you?”; “You shouldn’t have come here.”; “I felt it. You know what I mean.”; “I’ve waited so long for this.”; “I hope you have a speech prepared.”; “This is gonna be so much fun!” A/N: Referenced murder, and death A/N 2: @fictober18 ; @haikyuuhalloweek

Or Read on Ao3

Part of the problem has always been that he was, Oikawa.

He had lived, and lived that he became too bored and almost too careless every other decade that passed him. Humanity had proved to be dull and annoying with their petty wars and glutton for power. They were hardly worth his glance; but, when he got too bored he wasted some years like minutes and learned their habits when he chose to roam in their midst. It was a risky business; having a chance of watching their feeble attempts of conquering the world and stepping closer to whispered lost thoughts.

He didn’t know why he did that, it wasn’t like he had ever been truly invested in their trifles and despairs. There had never been any leverages for him to gain their thrones. He had all the power and knowledge to live beyond their lifespans anyways. It must have been due to when he lost his humanity a long time ago. A fog of memories had been buried, and the likelihood of ever finding a fragile piece of his old sanity felt thin. Oikawa would never admit it out loud, but he was in some sense, just a lonely being.

Someone who had been pitied once an upon ago, who was now doomed to live in a world where his apathy was consuming his whisks of life. It shouldn’t have made a difference now, with all those past diminution coursing into his present. Relearning how to speak, and become a shadow from society was all that awaited him. Maybe that was why Oikawa was known to be an inexcusable idiot, because he was getting too thoughtless. He had witnessed one too many dull decades and his boredom was recalling his need for adventure and risky submissions.

What he wanted to grasp was a fulfillment to cease his thoughts and make him feel almost alive. A challenge perhaps, but that had been the issue. There were obligations to honor; rules that suppressed any gambles of getting something he lost when he was transformed. The pressure to obtain the standard illusion was crushing his style. Oikawa couldn’t or rather, didn’t want to continue having to live in a specific direction.

Their rules on how to survive were absolute, and for necessity for the lost but, Oikawa had come to know rules as second nature guidelines and mere strategic suggestions for the bored. There was no need for him to be cemented on remaining as a lone creature with too strict ropes to cross over from. Yet, that was all that was waiting for him, a constant sense of becoming too constricted and more willingly to break the code he was forced to learn from his second beginning. It had always been an issue of him living too long to start taking more risks as he lingered in cities and neighborhoods for periods that made him almost stand out as weird or impossible with his clinging youth. He found himself coming into odds with others as he played his former role too perfectly flawed.

He missed his past.

A little too much that it surprised him when he first re-discovered his love with the sports that were roaming his territories. He didn’t go out too much but when he did Oikawa saw what his missed. The chance to be somebody who could have lived a life of full passion. With no regrets, and discovering all the untouched corners of the world and maybe beyond the skies he kept looking up each day. It had been an old selfish wish, but nonetheless, Oikawa still dreamed about it when he walked the night streets while looking for a quick bite.

They would always end the same. With him finding a snack and pondering how long he would have until something would crack.

Oikawa needed a warm body.

The bed that he had been using for a month now, was too lonely. He couldn’t say anything else, the fact had made him sigh in disappointment. It had been years since he had cupped another face that had not been a snack. Longer that Oikawa had been taunted by others when he went to some gatherings. He had been one of those vampires that lived long enough that he had been seen as a teenager in the eyes of the elders.

Enough decades that he should have had a semi partner or have joined a more permanent coven. But he hadn’t. Oikawa just couldn’t find it in himself to stay with others, even when he had clearly had signs that he needed a companion. No matter what he did, or who he had tried to stay with, there had always been a disconnection. A sort of wall he couldn’t overcome when he spoke to them.

They had always felt faceless, with pretenses that never felt genuine. It figured that Oikawa would only be accompanied by other covens with few things in common with him. But then, Oikawa had always been different.

When a new century had come and passed he came back to the question. People changed rhythmically, and metaphorically; but never in spirit. They grew bolder in some aspects too with the supernatural gaining more popularity. The technology had never surprised him. It had fascinated him, had made him laugh at the elders’ reactions. But it had always forged a sort of visual representation of a new chapter that been forced on to himself.

They could learn of him, could find a way to make him human again, or just plain kill him.

And while that would produce some form of entertainment, Oikawa couldn’t still wonder back to his old thoughts. A long life hadn’t taught him the true values, it had just furthered the answers from his grasps. They had always escaped when he delved further away from the traditions the elders taught him before he started to question more when his thirst became just a fact and not a constant issue over his head.

He had come to expect their stance when he woke up and lived closer than recommended, or when he had woven himself in and out of their affairs because he was getting desperate. When the idea popped up Oikawa had known it wouldn’t end well; he was idleness, but never a true fool. Until then, when he felt himself consider it.

It had actually started in a Halloween.

He had been dangling off a building roof when a heartbeat woke his trance. A figure came forward, his hair was a mess, but it had been his eyes that had loomed over Oikawa that made him look back. His pale skin had glown but, it almost looked sickly.

He wouldn’t make for a good meal, Oikawa could already smell the alcohol and smoke from him as he walked closer to Oikawa. His costume had been fairly simple but with some notches of creativity like the face paint on half his face. The smudges that had been cleared showed his tense jaw. The stranger didn’t open his mouth right away, but had faced the skyscrapers for a couple of seconds.

“You good?” The stranger’s voice had been raspy as if he had finally stopped yelling and now, he was recovering.

Oikawa eyes didn’t show any interest with the way he shrugged his shoulders. He had a fairly recent meal so, he hadn’t been particularly hungry. Or had much patience to wrestle a game yet.

“As much one could be.”

They didn’t say much after that. The other guy had taken out his phone, making the light spark up and highlight the make-up he wore.

“What are you supposed be?” Oikawa hadn’t really cared before, but when the night grew so did some of his attention to the world.

“Don’t know some half skeleton dude. Wasn’t listening to what my friends were sayin’ when they dressed me up.” He texted someone before looking at Oikawa. “What about you? Not into Halloween?”

Oikawa’s legs had started to get cold, “Eh, just didn’t feel like it this year.”

The only things he had don had been some cat ears he received as a mock present from one of his neighbors. A bell choker had been added too and painted whiskers when he had handed out candy for the tikes and kids that roamed earlier from his apartment complex. In the past, he had found the holiday to be somewhat amusing. After most of his second life, it had been liberating to say he was a vampire and nobody took another glance. The loopholes were fantastic trips for him.

The rest of the night Oikawa kept to himself, while the stranger who gave his name, Miya Atsumu, had minded his business. The rooftop stayed like that, a ghost zone for two people that wondered why existing had been so hard. One with too much time, and the other with too little.

“I hope you have a speech prepared.”

Oikawa had been in the middle of dumping his dinner and had been preparing to leave the site when he noticed another presence. The other person had hitched his breath, took a step back until they hit the back of a brick wall. Oikawa’s hood still covered most of his head and the lack of lighting made it easier to make his face seem faceless. But with the other person, they had smelled familiar.

(In the back of his head Oikawa had wished it weren’t one of his neighbors because he always hated it when they got too nosey. It made killing them more of a chore and having the police too annoying.)

When he turned back the other person had the same dyed blond hair, and pale skin. But this time, they lacked the other smells he had associated from their last meeting; they knew each other, but not by much. Recognition hit him when he saw their face mirror him too.

“Dude. You’re a murder?” He had sounded a tad more curious than scared.

Oikawa, like usual made an annoyed noise as he scrunched his nose when he dropped his hoodie. The reveal hadn’t been that dramatic. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

Miya’s shivering body didn’t move an inch closer, but he had observed the body then to Oikawa who had no visible blood on his clothes. Without bothering to be sensitive Oikawa lit up a match and threw it to the body, the smell hadn’t made the scene any better; it had felt like it bottled Oikawa when he walked away and hearing Miya call to him. He hadn’t known it, but that had triggered Miya to keep tabs on him. Had made it for Oikawa to see that he had unknowingly opened another door into his life of playing human with an actual human.

Eventually he had to ask him it :“How can I trust you?”

Miya at the time, had witnessed Oikawa burying, burning and chopping a couple of bodies for a couple of months. He never told anyone else of Oikawa’s activities, and Oikawa had never allowed him to know the real truth of why he did the things he did. He only furthered the illusion that Oikawa was just a killer. And that Miya was as guilty of not reporting.

“I haven’t said anything yet have I?”

No. He hadn’t. He only observed first. Then he wrote the people’s names, death and area where they got rid of them or picked up. (He had claimed that Oikawa needed to be organized about it. In case of people catching up to him.)

The questions almost never did come out in the beginning; but the suggestions did. Oikawa had asked once about that. Miya just followed Oikawa’s usual answer by shrugging and saying it all nonchalant.

“I watched a lot of crime documentaries and TV shows. Figured I’d give a few variations to keep it from getting too repetitive.”

The next time Oikawa had been feeding, and away from Miya he had wondered why he tried to pretend to be human. It had never benefited the way he wanted; it had done the opposite. The deep-rooted sadness that could never be carved out from him had made it impossible for him to seek peace. They had only been temporary. He had been given hell on earth, had been wondering and seeking for something to occupy his mind away from the clock that would never be stopped.

Besides the odd affair of having Miya accompany him in some of his adventures (he never allowed Miya to watch him kill them or catch him feeding from them), he had felt Miya give him small courses of behaving like a normal person. They went to the movies, amusement parks and some clubs. He had been taken to a tour of Miya’s university, and had met his twin brother (that had reacted with a little more sense and didn’t approve of him in the end). Oikawa had almost thought and believed he was human again. But then his thirst would come back harder, more resilient when Miya pushed the boundaries Oikawa had laid. It had made it harder to ignore him.

The warmth of the bed when they laid on it and talked about Miya’s day and Oikawa’s next day off to find a new victim had almost tasted like a victory for him. As if he had found a life almost similar from before. Oikawa had almost believed it could have comforted him.

They had been sleeping for of the day when Miya broke the silence.

“I felt it.” His neck was exposed, his eyes looking directly at Oikawa as he cupped his face. “You know what I mean.” His skin was flushed and Oikawa loved how the blood underneath Miya’s skin was so warm.

Oikawa hummed as he kissed his neck in slow appreciation. Had teased the other of what he wanted to do.

(He wanted it. Wanted to just bit his neck. And then―)

“Tooru. I want to go with you tomorrow.”

He immediately pulled away. Separated his limbs from him as he watched the other sitting up. The conversation that he always dreaded came back with vengeance.

“No.”

The whirl of the statement made him look at how Miya was upset of not being able to be a part of the whole process again.

Miya pushed himself closer, “But I have been there making adjustments with you with the planning and always helping you with the cleanup. Why can’t I go and help with the actual climax?”

Oikawa had been playful, had been dramatic with few people, but with Miya, he had been distant in some clear ways. Ones, he knew he could never really crack and allow him to see. The elders had always been strict with adding any more numbers, and Oikawa would never break and make Miya see what his life really was. He was killer to exist. Not because Miya had certain assumptions of him that made him almost admire Oikawa.

“Miya.”

“Tooru.”

The bed had been comfortable, but as he loomed over Miya Oikawa found his resolve. He sighed. And with one last glance at his room and Miya waiting for his response, he got off the bed and with a clipped tone he ordered: “Take what you need.”

The only grace he had that he had taken two other people previously. Therefore, that night Oikawa had to only humor Miya when they picked their targets. He watched and found Miya to be a quick learner when he approached and taunted his person. Miya had memorized the lessons that Oikawa had taught him and applied it well when he neared the finishing blow of his person. Oikawa in the background had been somewhat paranoid when he leaned in close to his chosen person when he thought about wasted blood that seeped into his cloth that protected his shirt.

It hadn’t been as dull when he mocked his prey; but Oikawa had remembered of the rules that his old master had taught him. Playing with his food was below him. (Even if it had brought some fun into it.)

When he heard Miya swing and swipe and the other heartbeat stopped Oikawa had to control himself from activating his fangs. He had been a little messy, but Oikawa had figured that he had done well considering where Miya had started first when he caught Oikawa burning a man before. He would have to wipe clean his face and fingers and the clothes would need to be destroyed but Oikawa had in the end congratulated Miya for a good first kill.

They ended up cleaning up a bit later than usual.

Oikawa blamed the blood in air when he kissed and nipped Miya in the neck.

(But never too deep. His master had shown him before how to effectively nip others without accidentally creating another vampire. After all, he didn’t need another reason to have the elders come back and question him when he wasn’t done questioning himself.)

Miya’s thirst became a game for Oikawa. To find the right places for him to have, and when Oikawa had to babysit. It became a cycle. One that entertained him for a while. They had fun. Miya caught him up in almost all the pop culture and Oikawa had taught him how to be efficient. It had come closer thought, having Oikawa to leave the city again.

He hadn’t said anything, but he had been sure that Miya had come to understand what he couldn’t directly show him. He pulled away from his job, and Miya took that as a sign to follow him too when he didn’t apply for another semester.

“When are you coming back?”

Oikawa had a small backpack on when he didn’t make a motion to grab his apartment key. The room had been lowly lit; the last exams that Miya had been close as he had some big textbooks near him. A lamp was on and a cold coffee cup was left alone. His heart was calm when Oikawa kissed him softly. It almost hurt like the first time he did it―but, this time had been different and the same.

Because, this time Miya had almost shown him the answers he had been looking.

But then he didn’t. Couldn’t really because he had a heart that worked, and had few different beliefs than him. He kissed his neck. (He was there―ready―willingly if he told him everything.) Oikawa cradled his head, had gently hummed and said his name once.

He couldn’t help but say out loud his thoughts that crosses him when he first met him. The rooftop had been the perfect place. And Miya had been unsuspectedly the perfect partner.

“I’ve waited so long for this.”

He snaked one hand to the back of Miya’s neck, and the other tilted Miya’s head for the perfect angle.  Miya’s heartbeat picked up, the warmth that only Miya could radiate had been addicting but, Oikawa had finally cracked. Many lifetimes he supposedly lived flashed within his head as his fangs appeared.

Miya’s facial expression had been interesting too when Oikawa allowed him to see his eyes shade into red and, to see his fangs appear.

He laughed out loud when Miya’s lit up and especially when he said, “This is gonna be so much fun!”

[deductionjournal]

29/09/2017 - Friday --> 18/10/2017 - Wednesday

 Appreciation goes to nicotiiine for presenting me with these pictures to deduce. Apologies for taking so long, but University has just started and as fun as this blog is, that really must take priority for now. This is a fairly long post so I hope you've all got your thinking caps on. If anything said here doesn't make sense just send me a message and I'll try to clear it up, but I've tried to make sure I explain it all as I've gone along. As said, this is a very long post, especially for photo deduction posts, so I've put it all under the Keep Reading tab (consider yourself warned).

Heads up tho, I'm still looking for pics to deduce so send 'em in and I'll  make time to post them up

The Space is big enough for two people but it's difficult to pick out different tastes, which suggests you have moved in with a long term partner, as people tend to mimic each other the more time people spend together (Chartrand, 1999).

Owning a PS2, PS3, and a PS4 doesn't just point to both of your love of games, but also to how old you are, as the PS2 is a fairly old gaming console, coming out in 2000 (IGN, 2000), suggesting that it was kept not just because you like the games played on it, but also as a reminder of childhood. Having out in the open also provides a conversation starter with any guests that come round, acting as a reminder to fond childhood memories to whoever visits (Petrelli. et al, 2008) .

As for the Harry Potter films, the first book of Harry Potter came out in 1997 and gained popularity with the films first release in 2001 (Rowling. 1997; Heyman. et al, 2001), and therefore will not gain much of an audience from people who were above the target audience range  around this time. Given the original target audience would have been young children who are still attending the British primary school, the age range would have been from around five (5) up to nine (9). Given this, the eldest fans en mass would be around 29 (1997-9=1988 2017-1988=29).

Presuming you are in a long term relationship and are living together in this newly decorated place, it is fair to assume for now that you do not belong to the group of younger fans, and taking into consideration that you would still have been in the age bracket (as children/teenagers) for the PS2 when it was released, you most likely fit into the age group of mid to late twenties (~25-29, and as said before, tastes and interests are similar,  so the partner is likely to fit into that age group as well for the same reasons.

The three guitars on display (1 acoustic, 1 electric, and 1 bass) go to show musical talent to which the owner is proud of. (As a point of curiosity, I've often found that people who play one instrument have a tendency to play or have played another in the past, if this is the same here may inquire what that is? -TB)

Comparing the Black and white electric guitar on the left of the TV  with mine, I'd measure it at ~40 Inches (As my guitar is a measured 37 inches with a head that has string tuners on both sides, as opposed to just one, which means the one in the picture must occupy more space), On my computer screen, the guitar measures 2.5 Inches.

~40 Inches / 2.5 Inches = a multiplying factor of ~16.

Given that people tend to write on walls just below eye level (Ruder. et al 2011), it would make theoretical sense for people who are unaware of the concept of "gallery height" to hang pictures in order for the middle of the frame to be just below eye level. There's a margin of error due to the variance of heights these pictures are hung, so the measurement on screen (in inches again) from the floor up are 4.25 and 4.5 

4.25* 16= 68 while 4.5*16= 72

Convert into feet then at least one of you is between around 5'6'' feet and 6' feet tall   

Talking about the pictures, those on the walls and upon the tables each have a different location written upon them, and each a fairly well known landmark in America. This could lead to a few conclusions; either the owner could either wish to travel to these destinations, have already travelled to them all, or just appreciate their artistic style. I'd say it's most likely a mixture of the first and third, in idle thought they would like to visit these places at least once, if not visited some already, and decided on these posters due to their artistic value. The lack of visible hiking gear or any other sports equipment make an argument that the people living here aren't particularly sporty or traveling people, but it may be that this equipment just happens to be out of frame.

From pictures and onto the furniture. Given the design and bright blue colour of the table, fitting in with traditional themes, it would fit into the target audience of creative females (Porta. 2010) who are quite clean by nature (glass gets so many smears and from experience tends to need delicate cleaning -TB), along with the pale colour of the patterned colours of the coasters, suggesting that each of these were picked by the female within the relationship (or that this is just her place and the male partner has recently moved in).

The table contains ribbon that I can only think to be used when decorating cakes. On the table there is also a pamphlet for "Créme de la [....]" with a cake picture, on top of an Employee Manual, so it's safe to assume that as everything is neat and tidy, these two things belong together, meaning one of you most likely works here. it's fair to assume you're living within at least driving distance of this shop. The table also contains black ribbon with a skull pattern on it, leading me to believe that the cake decorations are being prepared for Halloween 

One thing that I was unsure about was the bowl with bits of paper inside. I've seen them used for a variety of things; jobs that need doing; compliments for when people are feeling down etc. So it was hard for me to come to any definite conclusion without being able to read them.

In Summary:

This place belongs to someone who is in a long term relationship and is in their mid-twenties between five and a half to six feet tall. They are sentimental towards their childhood, having their old consoles and pictures on display. Musical talent with guitar is on open display and is something they are proud of. They have an aspiration to travel but are not overly sporty/travelling people. The Female occupier of the housing is a decorator of cakes who works in a relatively nearby cake shop and has been getting cakes ready for Halloween at the time this picture was taken.

-TB 

I would very much appreciate feedback, so feel free to point out everything I got wrong or right, as this will help me improve next time.

====================================================

(This post was supposed to come out last weekend but Uni life had to take priority for this one, so I haven't covered nearly everything in these photos but I've tried to take the important things and expand on them a little. In an ideal world I'd also point to the Mickey mouse that has sentimental value, and I didn't get to touch what was on the fireplace, or point out the record player and Vinyls. Hopefully I'll be better at time management for the next one)

[In hind sight, being able to deduce that at least one person is average height might not be as impressive as I hoped it would be, but hopefully the mathematics can work as a basis for others with their deductions of people]

=========================================================

References:

Chartrand, T. L.; Bargh, J. A. (1999); The Chameleon Effect: the Perception-Behavior link and Social Interaction; journal of personality and social psychology, 76, 893–910.

Heyman D. (Producer), Columbus C. (Director). (2001) Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone [Motion Picture]. United Kingdom. Warner Bros.

 IGN (2000), 'Sony Pulls in Over $250 Million at Launch' [online] Available from: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2000/11/07/sony-pulls-in-over-250-million-at-launch (Accessed 09/10/2017)

Petrelli D., Brockmeier J., Whittaker S., (2008); AutoTopography: What Can Physical Mementos Tell us about Digital Memories?; CHI 2008. CHI 2008, 5-10 April 2008, Florence (Italy).

Porta M., (2010) How to Define your Target Market [Online] Available from: https://www.inc.com/guides/2010/06/defining-your-target-market.html (Accessed 18/10/2017)

Rowling J.K., (1997) Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, London, Bloomsbury Publishing

 Ruder T.D., Thali Y., Bucher M., Cottier A., Thali M.J., Hatch G.M., (2011) The Writing's on the wall for Sherlock, BMJ 2011;343:d7406

[63824peace]

Wednesday, 28th of september 2005

It’s been meetings, meetings, meetings since I arrived this morning. At times like this it is unforgivable to waste time in idleness.

I don't have time for lunch, so I bought a take-out meal on the fifth floor. I eat while checking email. I am now following up the work I received during the meetings. It doesn't look like I will make it to the bookstore today.

In the afternoon I have an interview with Frank Miller, although I can't disclose where. It’s a secret. I can that it is somewhere in Tokyo, however. Miller is visiting Japan in honor of the release of his new movie Sin City.

Frank Miller is the man who created a revolution in the world of American comics. In Japan, the graphic novel (comic books with mature stories) appeared in the 1970's and became quite revolutionary. Miller served as an important figure in bringing comics to a greater level of respect in the United States. The changes brought about by his work are akin to those that occurred within Japanese comic culture.

Miller’s works differ greatly from any comic publishing in America. He does everything by himself: story, dialogue, art, even the covers. When he began working, American comics were created by several staff members who each worked on different aspects of the comic. Miller's method of working was unconventional. Furthermore, his comics are presented in black-and-white, a colorless aesthetic which is considered indispensable by American comic standards.

Miller's appearance on the American comic scene turned the industry's sensibility on its head. His style encompasses more than the traditions of American comics. His work bears similarities with the French bandes design, so his comics were introduced and advertised as entertainment for mature audiences.

Miller is more than just an artist. He is an innovator and pioneer. I like people who break new ground, I have respect for them.

I was able to hear from Mr. Miller about the struggles he experienced in the American comics industry. I was also able to hear about the strong attachments he feels toward his own works, almost as though they were his children.

The interview was short, only one and a half hours, but I really enjoyed myself.

I told him I am a big fan of Jessica Alba, who plays Nancy. With a joking smile he responded: "All men are big fans of Jessica Alba.” He is a marvelous gentleman with great, intelligent sensibilities.

The interview with Miller will appear in Famitsu magazine on October 21st.

Before we parted I asked if he would autograph my copy of Hard Boiled, one of his comics that was first published in Japan ten years ago. As a side note, I almost met Geoff Darrow (who illustrated Hard Boiled) five years ago when he came to Japan for the publicity campaign of The Matrix.

I don't know why, but both Miller and Darrow addressed me as "sensei" when we first met. I wonder why. Perhaps this, too, is an influence from graphic novels.

Robert Rodriguez directed the movie Sin City. He fell in love with Miller's work. I first saw the film in a theater in Santa Monica. The other day I saw it for my second time at a pre-release viewing room of GAGA Communications, Inc.

The film industry hasn't seen anything like Sin City before, it is a completely new type of movie. I almost want to say that it’s not a movie at all- it’s Sin City and nothing else! This movie will change how filmmakers translate comics into movies, just like how Miller transformed the comics industry. When we use the magic of digital technology we give a dynamic sense of movement; a liveliness; to a comic. We can create a world that hitherto was impossible.

Showing the possibilities of digital technologies requires great ambition.

It’s Wednesday. At Kojima Productions it is the day of the week when we all go out to see a movie, something we called “The Longest Day.” As long as we don't have any urgent work, we leave work at 5:00 PM. On the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month, we try to enlighten ourselves by attending a movie, a concert, an art gallery, or visit the gym. We follow the example of Kounosuke Matsushita who established a five-day workweek for his company, Matsushita Electronics, in order to improve productivity.

All the movie theaters set aside Wednesdays as “Ladies Day” that gives discounted ticket prices for women. It is a double-deal for the female staff members. “The Longest Day” has been in motion for about three months now at Kojima Productions. The staff seems to have accepted it as firmly established. They take their work very seriously, so they really seem to appreciate the chance to watch movies.

However, today no one relaxes. Everyone is busy working in the office today playing Subsistence, checking MGO, and testing MGA2.

I would like to see the film Bewitched but at Roppongi Hills the movie is scheduled to run only during the daytime. I still haven't been able to see it. The film will run in the theaters until September 30th. I won't have time to see it before then I suppose. But I want to see Nicole!

I'm so busy with MGS3, so no movie tonight. Goodbye, Nicole.

Once more I am checking the MSX version of Metal Gear that will be included in Subsistence. Every time I want to open a door I have to select the exact keycard that will open that door. For instance, when the player must run through all of the keycards in the gas room, he must enter the equipment submenu and change the equipped item from the gas mask to one of the keycards. While I'm testing the keycard on the door, Snake's life diminishes because of the poison gas. I got crushed by a tank while trying all the different cards for the door.

Yup, just got crushed again.

When the MSX version was ported to cell phones in Japan I was asked, "Should we update this part of the gameplay to the current standard wherein the player just holds the card and the door opens if it's at any level of access below the player's maximum level of security clearance?" The original idea was to experience the thrill of choosing the exact right card to escape while enemies close in on Snake. I insisted we keep the original idea.

While working through the MSX Metal Gear for Subsistence, however, I thought, "Maybe this is too difficult?" After a long time away from the game, it is difficult to adjust to the difficulties of retro gameplay.

I have to consider whether or not I really want to transfer the exact same character to this new incarnation. I think that it is OK to update old things to current standards, but I cannot alter the game's essence. Games should evolve with the times.

Around midnight I check the sound on third chapter of the third Subsistence disc. It is a quick chapter with a lot of action and features boss fights with Ocelot and The Pain. The chapter doesn't have much character to it. It sounds cool to say that it's a chapter with non-stop action that doesn't let the audience catch their breath, but in fact, it's just a chapter in which two abnormal opponents appear and show off.

That's just part of the character of the MGS universe.

When I watch it, not as a game, but as a linear stream of events, I notice that it seems similar to an American comic. Listening to the game with Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound I feel as though I were amid a swarm of bees.

"PAIN!"

[spicynbachili2]

The Epic Journey of Floor Kids, Available Now on Xbox One

It’s been fairly the journey, and now it’s time for Flooring Children to launch on Xbox One. And to mark this event I wished to jot down a private observe about this wonderful expertise and everybody I started working with and study from.

I’m JonJon, the animator and creator of the eight authentic characters within the recreation. To me, these characters signify me and my buddies from a time when this world was my complete life. However they’ll additionally simply signify your self and your folks on this present period, or from an period way back. These characters shout out to the legends of the break scene that created all these actions as a part of a wealthy and storied tradition. The Flooring Children characters can come off as common children, but additionally possess the energy and stamina of tremendous hero dance warriors of a cool animated world.

So, I need to share what I loved most about this mission and the individuals I’ve been collaborating with:

Ryhna Thompson

Our lead producer. The glue. She stood up for Flooring Children as a model, from the inception, and at each flip, and guarded our potential to go far. We had been capable of keep assured in ourselves, and affected person, and saved Flooring Children as an artist-driven mission for a lot of, a few years. She’s been the glue and stabilizing power on the staff. For one thing like a brilliant long-term mission like ours, even courting again to the primary animated promo clip from over 10 years in the past, retaining regular isn’t any straightforward job.

Mike Wozniewski

Chief of Hololabs. My favourite half was watching him join the sprites of my b-boy drawings manually, body by body, and getting concerned within the determination making of what inputs can be wanted at each department within the animation system. As a result of in our philosophy, we opted to not have a generic transition system that makes use of an idle state or idle animation, as a result of in breaking, that’s unhealthy. True to the character of this dance, I wished to animate every transition uniquely between every transfer, between every step. As a result of that’s how it’s in actual life.

It was enjoyable to see him actually attempt to wrap his thoughts round break dance logic, which is huge and complicated, and perceive the physique physics happening in every drawing, and determining programmable fashions and playback methods to explain attributes like momentum, move, acceleration and sluggish movement strobing. Collectively we broke issues down into classes that made sense to each the break logic and the coder logic. Packages and methods love to do issues the identical method each time. B-boys and B-girls need to do issues otherwise each time.

Inherent on this, is a superb problem. program a recreation that represents an artform that’s steeped in creativity, and originality. Seeing him ask questions like, “Can this body cease?” Or, “Does this motion go constantly?” “Is that this reversible or not reversible?” It was a factor of magic to see it progressively take type. There have been so many enjoyable checks and prototypes that we did, to see what controls would work and be enjoyable. I’m pleased with what we completed collectively.

Phil Rostaing

Our recreation designer for issues like unlocking, development, and determining a factors system. He tackled the massive problem of scoring. The problem was that video games must current a transparent objective. However in our case, there are a number of objectives, and also you get to decide on which of them to deal with at any time. There’s freedom and talent required. He designed a implausible and in-depth scoring system based mostly off the actual worldwide five-point judging commonplace for break competitions.

The true-life system has 5 methods to concentrate to and we flipped it for our recreation to make it Funk, Taste, Circulation, Hearth, and Flyness. Every factors system is straightforward sufficient to select up by itself however factoring all of them collectively requires mastery. I additionally traveled rather a lot with Phil to the sport conventions. He was all the time down for highway journeys in a rental automobile, throwing the gear within the again seat. Spreading the sport at each growth stage to every new individual one after the other.

JoDee Allen

Our recreation designer for controls and rhythm. She tackled the controls initially slated for contact after which tailored for buttons and joysticks. Her controls had been all the time tied to rhythm but additionally incorporating directionality. Discovering the metaphors between the finger actions and the animation on display screen. She was additionally a b-girl beneath the identify of Feisty, with years of educating beneath her belt. It was so enjoyable working along with her on this as a result of the subject material is so private to us, and it was a strategy to revisit these reminiscences.

Six Ascher

An early developer at Hololabs, taught me to open my thoughts to the idea of variable body charges. As an animator from movie my thoughts saved considering in 24fps, however for this mission we needed to suppose in BPM (beats per minute). So, they taught me to let go of a inflexible body price strategy and to open myself as much as a system that will tie my animation to the beat, no matter pace that will find yourself being. And it was actually liberating to my animating course of to have the ability to suppose this manner.

Amesh Narsing

Our lead engineer. Respect to the architect! He got here up with a brilliant highly effective thought. Slightly than connecting the frames by hand, he laid the muse for an animation fetch and play system that will find the quickest path right into a transfer. This was an thrilling growth which allowed me to resolve many intricate issues by the animation, on how strikes would transition into each other, what number of frames every transfer wanted to be, the place the maintain poses had been, the place the out and in factors can be.

The programmers and designers may concentrate on different necessary issues, trusting me to ship an animation transfer tree for every character that would go away room for participant creativity, and wouldn’t crash the system. And so I opted to make as many distinctive transitions as attainable, and to have sufficient of them out and in of every transfer to permit for participant response time to really feel proper… bringing the drawing depend as much as the tens of 1000’s. Which almost broke the system many instances. By the tip of the mission, Amesh was studying to get down within the studio and six-step.

Roger Braunstein

Our junior engineer and programming spark plug. When he writes code, he talks out loud. So, we may all hear him play-by-play commentate on himself catching and zapping bugs within the system. I additionally witnessed Roger good the rhythm part on the Peace Summit, the toughest degree within the recreation, on a primary attempt – after we thought that will be unattainable.

Eric San

Final however not least, DJ Child Koala. Via his music and reveals world wide, he’s saved the dream of Flooring Children alive all these years till the correct alternatives hit. His brilliance is not only within the music and sound, however his imaginative and prescient, his jokes, and his wit. One among my favourite issues within the recreation is the story — it’s a poem. Eric wrote one thing to be humorous, and it got here in on the final minute, in a flash of inspiration. It was written with cadence and wit. It speaks in a legendary but playful tone however can be dropping hints about how the scoring system works. Every chapter of the story incorporates the theme of the placement and describes a lesson for one in every of Funk, Taste, Circulation, Hearth, and Flyness. Humorous factor is that these classes may additionally apply to our actual lives.

He learn it out loud and everybody was laughing, however what I heard, was one thing deeply significant, as I noticed his story touched on the sentiment of every little thing I had drawn and tried to create.

So, he sends me all of the story music tracks, and so they had been so goofy and foolish, I laughed so laborious as a result of they sounded hilarious, and I knew what he was considering… however I used to be like “A’ight. I’m going to do this different concept that I’ve.”

So, I got here again with story panels for an enormous journey traveler journey drama, a severe quest by town. Eric laughed at how epic the story panels had grow to be. And he modified the entire music of the story sequence to make it tremendous huge and intense. Ultimately, we laughed our heads off on the mixture.

And in order that’s a glimpse into our story as a staff. Flooring Children is now on Xbox One. Now go construct your crew and we hope you have got enjoyable!

isCookieClear(function () ); isCookieClear(function () );

The post The Epic Journey of Floor Kids, Available Now on Xbox One appeared first on SpicyNBAChili.com.

from SpicyNBAChili.com https://www.spicynbachili.com/the-epic-journey-of-floor-kids-available-now-on-xbox-one/

[fanfic-collection]

Demon!Loki x Reader: NSFW

Ugh, it’s so bad and I meant to post it earlier but got held up and now I just don’t want to post it at all because the ending sucks and the smut is bad and I kinda want a beta reader but I also want to surprise everyone, but if I have someone tell me it’s not bad that might help my confidence and sorry for rambling, this should be in the tags but oh well.

Loki as a demon, horn, wings and claws, possibly dubcon but I don’t even know

The wind whispered ominously through the trees as you slowly wound your way along the solitary path in your town's local forest. Trees arched and snaked over the path, reaching out at you like massive clawed beasts, groaning as they swayed in the breeze. Strangely, here at their bases, the air was still, chilly and thick like a haze settling over the ground. Your pace quickened as you heard more noises from behind you.

Yes, the traditional spooky local small town haunted forest. It was innocent enough during the day, even harboring the occasional deer, some birds making nests on its edges. During the day, young lovers would stand just a few paces inside, doing what young love encouraged or carving their undying love into tree bark and adding to the countless other declarations that had gathered through the years.

All that changed at night.

Only a few of the more country folk dared venture deep into the woods during the light of day, some sort of presence seemed to encourage deer to take residence in the forest, just as quickly gutting them and bleeding them dry each night. No one talked about what it might be, just a damn shame that the innocent creatures kept dying. The nature of their deaths was especially peculiar but local park service rangers always looked the other way, merely shrugging and denying anything. All the rangers were quick to be home from the forest before the sun dipped past the horizon. No one ever said why, just a laugh with a knowing look. It was never questioned.

As you looked up at the cloudy moonless sky, you swallowed hard, barely able to see it through the thick treeline. It was very much night, if the moon had been visible, it would've been directly overhead.

You had grown up in this town, accustomed to hearing the stories, always diligently giving the forest its wide berth, being home by dark, the usual. But tonight, on a whim, returning to meet up with old friends at one of the bars, the subject of the old childhood game of truth or dare came up.

You had long been the good student, the well behaved adult, the person who followed directions to the letter, content with their books and stories and never stepping out of line. Your childhood friends teased you to no end, and tonight was no different. Finally, fed up, and just a little spurred on by liquid courage, you declared yourself ready to take on any dare they threw at you.

Hushed whispers followed, what extent would you really go for this supposed declaration? The conversation circled around the room, slowly making its way back to you. You watched them smugly, trying to maintain your false confidence, ready for anything they might throw at you.

"What about the forest?" The offer came casually. All eyes fell upon the speaker, for the sun had just set. You hesitated, remembering the stories all too well. Doubt sprang up, everyone waiting for you to switch to truth, claiming you'd just been bluffing.

"I'll do it." You had stood up, downing the last of your drink.

"Just walk through it, there's a path from one side to the other. "

Everyone knew the path, where it started and ended on each side. The rangers maintained it well enough, no child daring to use it.

"Fine." You replied calmly, not betraying your growing apprehension. Now would be the best chance to throw aside your goody reputation and have people take you seriously.

Fifteen minutes later, you were dropped off with only the light from your phone to guide you through the forest. Your friends promised to be waiting for you at the other side, the path shouldn't take more than an hour to walk. In daylight it was a half hour trek but with poor lighting, you knew you'd move slower.

As soon as you stepped foot in the forest, clouds had drifted over the moon, blocking it from view. You swallowed hard, one last wave to your friends as you steeled your resolve and began your trip. Immediately the outside world was muffled, as though you'd stepped into a different realm. So many roots poked out of the ground, threatening to trip you up, but with the meager light of your phone, you managed to keep a steady pace.

Around fifteen minutes in, time tracked with the help of your phone, you realized one of the many reasons the forest was so eerie: no life broke the silence, only the creaking of the trees. No bugs scurried under foot, crickets chirping in the wood, no flies buzzing around your head on this late summer day. The last you were thankful for, but it still unnerved you. You imagined that even in the day, no birdsong would pierce the gloom, but hoped they were merely sleeping.

As you walked, your senses grew more heightened, an ominous dread growing at the pit of your stomach. What could cause the eerie silence? You were so deep in the forest, even the wind struggled to move through the undergrowth. Yet still the trees swayed on, alive by their own right. You glanced at your phone, based on the time, you should be near the heart of the forest. It didn't even surprise you to see your phone flashing a no signal warning. As you placed the phone back in your pocket, you looked up, eyes scanning the gloom, certain you had heard movement. What's more, was the distinct feeling of being watched. You were a trespasser here, it would be unwise to call out to whoever watched you. Whatever might live in the forest would surely be unfriendly. Your mind helpfully flashed back to the memory of the deer, reminding you just how gruesome their deaths had been. Surely they were kids' tales, idle warnings about once dangerous times? Yet the look of the local bar patrons upon your announcement that you were going into the forest convinced you otherwise. You had continued walking, after a few steps, you were certain there was an echo that hadn't been there before.

Remembering a tactic from a book you'd read, you feigned tripping, listening for the echo. Much to your horror, the echo was slow to copy it, taking a few more steps before the tripping sound hit you. You froze, hands clenching into fists as your heart thudded in your chest. Spinning around, you saw nothing there. Your eyes had adjusted to the dark and you feared using your phone would put you at a disadvantage, or worse drain the battery. You looked back at the path and saw a short distance ahead was a small clearing. If an ambush were to happen, that would be the place.

Bravery from some unknown source rose within you. If you were going to die over some stupid dare, you planned to face it with dignity. Maybe you were really just overreacting, maybe one of your friends had followed you to scare you? The hopeful words quickly melted away as you heard a guttural laugh echo from all around you. Your throat went dry and you struggled to swallow. For a moment, you closed your eyes as you walked. When you reopened them, you stood in the clearing, mercifully alone. A few meters away, you could see where the path continued, the second half of your journey within reach, at least you figured.

A surge of hope rushed through you and you took a step forward. A strong gust of wind cut through the clearing, the clouds quickly moving overhead and revealing the moon. It lit the clearing in its pale silvery hue, the deep green grass fully visible. From behind you, a loud Crack echoed around the clearing. Instinctively, you spun around, yet saw nothing. You swallowed hard, once more turning forward before you got yourself lost from spinning around.

To your horror, someone, or rather something, stood blocking your path. You let out a strangled scream, throat dry from fear.

"Little lamb," the creature spoke in a deep velvety voice, and though it stood several meters from you, it seemed to be whispering in your ear, "what, pray tell, are you doing in my forest?" The creature moved forward lithely. It seemed to be a man, at least you hoped, yet from his back protruded two massive black leathery wings. His torso was bare, covered in strange tattoo like runes and he wore black trousers tucked into tall black leather boots. Your eyes scanned back up his lean torso to his face and you found yourself stunned by appearance. The creature, though it appeared to be quite human in much of its appearance, had long black hair, falling loosely at his shoulders, two horns jutting out of its temples and curling back over the crown of its head.

Yet the face is what drew most of your attention. He had high arching cheek bones, a thin straight nose and eyes pure black, they flashed back to a gorgeous green shade as you examined the creature. It shocked you how attractive this monster straight out of horror stories could look, even down to the lethally sharp looking claw like nails at the ends of his hands. They hung loosely at his sides before slowly moving up and crossing over his chest as he cocked his head to look at you.

"Answer my question." The creature demanded softly. It surprised you such a feat was possible.

"I'm, I'm just passing through." You managed to stammer.

The creature smiled coldly, revealing long sharp teeth. "No one just passes through, lamb." The creature moved forward. "This is the forest of the devil, of Loki, you are aware?"

You looked at him warily, involuntarily stepping back. "I just needed to cross through."

Loki's hand shot out, latching around your throat and lifted you off the ground. "No one passes through, the price is your life." You gasped, sputtering and choking as you struggled for air. You gripped his hands futilely with yours, trying to relieve the pressure. "And yet," Loki paused, looking you up and down. Spots danced across your vision as your legs struggled uselessly. "It has been many years since a meal such as yourself has crossed my path, perhaps, if you satisfy me, I will let you live." His hand released and you fell to the forest floor, landing on your knees. You struggled for breath, coughing and massaging your throat as you gasped for sweet oxygen. His words slowly sank into your oxygen starved brain as you looked back up at him.

"Satisfy?" You croaked.

Loki scowled staring down at you, "my meaning is unfamiliar?" He tilted his head to the side, eyes slowly widening and a smile spreading across his face. He grabbed you by the hair, forcing you unsteadily to your feet. Loki held you in place for a moment, allowing you to find your footing before leaning forward. Hand still gripping your hair, Loki's tongue darted out and ghosted along your throat. You moaned at the touch, horrified by how easily he could play you. Loki's eyes fluttered shut, a soft groan sounding from deep in his throat. "Virgin flesh." He growled, eyes opening. Once more, he flashed you a sharp tooth smile, "you truly are a rare treat."

You flushed at his words, quickly crossing your arms, why were you embarrassed? School, work and life had been so hectic and here was this demonic creature practically preening over the thought of you.

Loki looked you up and down, his forked tongue darting out along his lips as he nodded slowly. "Yes, you will do nicely lamb. But I am no monster," he shrugged stretching out the leathery wings from behind him, "rather, I will have you begging for me before I find my own release, understand? If you satisfy me, I will let you leave with your life. If not..." Loki glanced up at the sky, "I suppose there are other uses I can find for you."

You stared up at him, for he was quite a bit taller than you, knees trembling. Perhaps if you made a run for it, while he was seemingly distracted, perhaps you could make it to the other edge of the clearing? As soon as the thought came to you, you pushed it away, knowing that was hopeless. You studied the creature, Loki, again and thought of his offer. Did you truly want to risk running, he had said he would make you enjoy it, and there was no denying how attractive he was, demonic wings and horns and everything. You bit your lip.

Loki looked back towards you and smiled, “Lamb, your thoughts are written all over your face, you couldn’t escape me if you tried.” He stalked forward and you found yourself slowly backing away until your back hit a tree branch. “And do you even want to escape?” He whispered softly, leaning down into your ear. “I can smell your desire, your want,” he chuckled softly, “make this easier on yourself.” His hand reached out, sliding down your chest, wrapping around your waist, “give in to your darkest desires, pet.”

You felt your face flush, your gut coiling in anticipation and your head nod. It didn’t even feel like you were in control of your body, your instincts had kicked in, wanting this more badly than anything you had ever wanted in your life.

Loki leaned forward, his lips meeting yours in a hungry kiss. You allowed your own lips to part, his forked tongue snaking in and winding all around your mouth. It amazed you how long and versatile it was, searching and exploring every crevice. You moaned loudly into the kiss, hands reaching up to wrap around his bare shoulders.

Loki chuckled again, finally pulling away. You weren’t even aware that your eyes had drifted shut until you found yourself reopening them, mouth still hanging open where Loki’s lips had left yours. He took his clawed thumb and carefully slid it along your still agape lips, tenderly feeling the flesh.

“What those lips would feel like on my cock…” He murmured, smiling as your mouth snapped shut. “Perhaps another time.”

Once more, he gripped your hair, hands tangling in it wildly and pulling you up for a deep kiss. You started to struggle for breath, desperate to pull away but Loki held you in place longer. Just when you feared you might faint, he pulled away, turning you and shoving you to the forest floor.

You landed on your elbows, wincing as the bare skin grazed the dirt from your short sleeved shirt. Your chest heaved as you looked up at him, your desire already pooling in your panties.

Loki walked forward, “Strip. Now.” He ordered. “Everything.”

You hurried to obey, noticing that his already tight trousers were fitting more snugly as his own desire pushed against its confines. You had a button up short sleeve blouse on and considered undoing the buttons, but as soon as your fingers started fumbling with them, you heard an angry growl from Loki. Eyes flickering up to him as he crossed his arms impatiently, you changed tactics and struggled to pull it over your head.

“Too slow.” Loki hissed. He walked forward, kneeling over you, legs on either side of your waist. His hands grasped the front of your shirt, claws tearing it open and throwing the tattered remains to the side. You wanted to cry out in protest but the look in his eyes kept you quiet.

You lay underneath him, bra the only thing covering your chest and legs still covered in long jean trousers.

Loki smiled, staring down at your mostly exposed upper half, his hands reaching down to glide along the bare skin of your stomach, thumbs teasing the waistband of your trousers. “These will not do.” He murmured looking at the material. Moments later, he had helped you shimmy out of the jeans and tossed them to the side, landing atop your tattered shirt.

Loki knelt back down, only your bra and panties covering you. You sat up once more on your elbows, watching him warily. Loki reached behind your back, his claw slipping under the clasp of your bra and slicing through it easily before pulling it off and tearing it to the side.

“Do you have any idea how much that cost me?” You growled, finally finding your voice.

Loki chuckled, smirking down at you, “More than your life? You are, after all, still in my debt. Remember little lamb, I could still choose to kill you, I am being merciful.”

That quickly shut you up as Loki reached down to your now exposed breasts and began to kneed at them. Instinctively you tried to cover yourself but Loki’s wings batted your hands away, allowing him to continue unimpeded. He chuckled softly, “Don’t be shy, don’t cover up such a beautiful sight.” Leaning down, Loki pressed soft kisses to each breast in turn. His forked tongue darted out, sliding along your chest over the swell of each breast, one by one, wrapping around the first nipple then the second and working them into a pert bud. You keened softly at his ministrations, back arching as you grew wetter by the second.

“It has been some time since a lamb such as yourself has wandered into my forest, I had almost forgotten how lovely you could feel. But you…” Loki paused, marveling as he looked up at your face, “I intend to savor this treat.”

You blushed at the compliment.

“Now then.” Loki slipped his thumbs over the waistband of your panties, his sharp claws easily tearing through them. He returned to kissing your breasts, his tongue slowly sliding along your stomach, hands sliding along your sides before moving down to your womanhood. His hands gripped your thighs, pushing them apart as Loki inhaled deeply. “Mine.” He cooed softly, his tongue lapping along your folds, circling around your clit with both sides of its forked tip. You gasped softly, back arching and toes curling as he pushed his tongue deep into your core. It curled around sliding along your walls and stroking within you, a shiver ran down your spine as he found your sweet spot, stars dotting at your vision.

You gasped a soft oh, there, as Loki chuckled, the vibrations driving you crazy as you involuntarily thrust your hips up. Loki slowly pulled his tongue out, leaving you empty and wanting.

“Please.” You whispered weakly.

“Please what?” He teased.

“Do, do that again.”

“Do what? This?” He thrust two of his fingers in, curling them around and finding that spot once more.

You cried out softly, “Yes! That!”

Loki knelt over your, watching your face and listening to your cries of ecstasy. He continued pumping and thrusting his fingers, occasionally adding a come hither motion until you were a mess of cries and pleas, juices running freely down your legs. Loki’s fingers slid in and out, curling within and stretching you so achingly sweet until suddenly he pulled away.

Your eyes shot open, a scream of frustration leaving you as you once more sat up on your elbows. Your lower half trembled, weak with being so near only to be denied. “Loki!”

The demon chuckled, “I did say I would make you beg for me.” He waved his hand and green magic shimmered over him, his trousers vanishing.

Your eyes widened and you swallowed hard at the sight of his now exposed cock. It was long and large and very much ready, dripping precum as he stared down at you.

“Tell me, lamb, tell me exactly what you want.”

“I… I want you to fuck me.” You whispered meekly, staring at his manhood warily. It truly was massive and you were starting to realize just how new to this you were.

Loki chuckled at your apprehension, “What’s the matter, pet, be honest.”

“You’re huge.” You gulped, staring at him.

Loki glanced down and grinned widely, “Oh yes.” He winked at you.

“Will it fit?” You managed to stammer.

“Only one way to find out.” Loki laughed again, “But I’m sure you can do better than that.”

You thought of the aching in your legs, how close to release you were, the desire to be filled by his fingers but unable to doubt just how sweet his cock would feel buried in you. “I want you, all of you, I want your cock buried deep in me, giving me all the pleasure I can take.” You felt dirty saying it and you blushed at the lewd words.

“I’ll give you all the pleasure you can take, and more.” Loki growled, lining himself up at your entrance. He slid his cock over your clit, and you groaned, falling back off your elbows once more at your still sensitive button once more being stimulated. Laughing, Loki angled himself towards your lower lips, “Though I can’t promise that this won’t hurt a bit pet, you are unused to this.” He slowly began to press his member in, softly coaxing you to calm down, reminding you to breathe as you struggled to relax, taking his full girth into you.

Your hands reached up to grab his horns as Loki pressed kisses to your breasts, hands gently kneading at your thighs. He continued to press deep into you, stars dancing across your vision as you gasped at the fullness.

When he finally reached his desired depth, buried to the hilt, Loki stopped moving. His voice was strained as he held himself in position. “How are you pet?” He growled.

You nodded slowly, the full ache slowly fading to a desperate need for him to move. Loki scanned your face, smiling as he watched you struggle to find words. Very slowly, he leaned up and kissed you, the movement of his body causing his cock to shift within you. You gasped into the kiss and struggled with your grip on his horns to push him away. “Move.” You growled weakly.

Loki kissed you again before pulling away and sliding his hips out. He removed his cock almost completely before thrusting back into you, circling his hips and slamming into you again and again. You cried out with each thrust, his cock finding your sweet spot as his hand rubbed vigorously at your clit, the other gripping your shoulder and using it to steady himself. You tried to match his pace, hips rising and falling in time with his movements, but mostly you held onto his horns, struggling to keep any amount of your senses as you cried out his name repeatedly. His name left your lips like a prayer, driving his excitement to new heights. The coil in your stomach from earlier had returned, tightening once more and bringing you so close to release.

Suddenly you came, screaming loud enough to echo throughout the forest and for a moment you remembered the city and your friends not too far off, but you were too far gone to care. Loki continued thrusting into you, his movements sporadic and his body trembling before spilling his seed within you. His cock spasmed hard as he continued to thrust. Slowly his movements died down, his cock spent and twitching gently as your sexes pulsed around each other in an offbeat rhythm. You gasped out desperately for air, vision going completely dark.

You had no idea how much time had passed but your vision slowly returned and Loki knelt over you, wings cocooning you and shielding you from the sky as one hand stroked gently through your hair, the other resting on your stomach.

“Are you alright, little lamb?” He whispered, searching your face.

You nodded weakly, still trembling, “I, I think so.”

Loki smiled, laughing weakly, “I knew I would give you pleasure, but I hoped I hadn’t killed you.”

Your eyes widened, “Can people die from that?”

“I’m hardly human, love, it’s been some time since a mortal has wandered into here.” He smiled at you and you were surprised at the warmth it held.

You sat up shakily, Loki’s hand never leaving you as he helped you into a sitting position. “Well, uh, thanks for the concern.” It unnerved you more to see this demonic creature actually concerned about your wellbeing.

“I take it, you’ll be on your way then?” Loki asked.

“I was planning on it.” You trailed off, remembering your pile of tattered clothes and wondering how you’d explain this to your friends. Maybe you’d just say the creature had attacked you, which was mostly true, but you managed to get away. Or perhaps that you had tripped repeatedly and the trees had damaged your clothes. You looked back up at Loki curiously, it sounded like he had more to say. “Why, did you have something else in mind?”

Loki raised his hand and a shimmer of green fell over you, slowly revealing a see through green shift dress. Pulling you in for a soft kiss, you instinctively wrapped your fingers through his silky black hair. Loki slowly pulled away, “Remember me, won’t you?”

“How could I forget my first?” You smiled at him, “maybe I’ll see you again?”

Loki chuckled, “I do hope so.”

[avislux]

Zelda: Breath of the Wild write up

The Wii U activity log says I’ve logged 118.5 hours in Breath of the Wild. I’m sure some of those were just leaving the game on and idle. Anyway now that I’ve beaten the game I feel like I can do a large write up of the experience.

Spoilers

It’s been a long while since I’ve had a game really draw me in like BotW has. I played it every day since March 4th and I think I can finally stop. I’ve done every main quest and found every shrine. I’m not going for 900 Korok seeds, that’s absurd. It really captures the sense of exploration I haven’t felt since I played Link to the Past on the SNES as a kid. Well, A Link Between Worlds did too, actually. I 100%’d that in three days when I had nothing much else to do.

I’ve slacked off on a bunch of other things I wanted to do because of this game. Usually I stop to do things after playing a game for a while but BotW hadn’t fatigued me enough to stop. Of course I do get up and take breaks but when that’s done I went back.

I was very impressed with the amount of freedom the game gives you. You can pretty much go anywhere after finishing the tutorial provided you’re prepared for where you’re going. The game doesn’t restrict you and gives you lots of things to interact with.

The first twenty hours or so I died I lot more than I normally would in a Zelda game. Although after a certain point things stop one shotting you and you get used to all the mechanics. Eventually I just stopped dying. Hearts don’t drop anymore and comes in the form of various food items and cooking. And since eating takes no time at all, you can just stock up on food items and have a good stockpile of hearts to fall back on. Rupees don’t come from cutting grass anymore but are still really easy to come by in the form of ores. The enemies get harder and some regions and get stronger as you kill more of them but it never got to the point for me where it got brutally difficult. Even the strongest enemies, the Lynels, aren’t too much of a challenge once you’re prepared.

So now you pick up weapons, shields, and bows from enemies and they all have durability. Some people had problems when weapons breaking all the time but it never really bothered me. I just figured I use all weak weapons to exhaustion so that I can make room for more. I like that there are different weapon types that have different ways of attacking. Weapons breaking means you are encouraged to use all of them and not horde. Although, I never found that they break faster than I can replace them, so I always had a few weapons kept on me all the time. Also parrying is a cool mechanic. Parrying guardian lasers is probably the most satisfying thing in the game.

You are encouraged to experiment with cooking. Although once I got the patterns and basic recipes down I didn’t need much else. Mix a pepper for cold resist. Mix a cold item for heat resist, etc. Adding a bunch of basic stuff together basically combines all their heart values. You can also make cakes and rice and stuff but you have to find the ingredients and the recipe and most of the time it’s not really necessary as meat, mushroom and herbs are plentiful enough. Once the respective gear is acquired most of the food becomes obsolete. Stealth and lightning resist were the least used.

The music in this iteration goes for a more ambient feel to it, and it feels very appropriate for this game. The music changes with the time of day. The classic Zelda theme is seldom heard but it is in the horse riding music if you listen for long enough. The score has a recurring motif unique to the game, which I always like. I look forward to playing these pieces. I love the sound of the erhu.

I like that Nintendo put a lot of effort into the NPCs. One of the first things I noticed is that most NPCs are named and have some kind of story. Many of the Zora also have some kind of relationship with Link. They will often also react to what you’re doing. Talking to them while standing on their tables is fun.

The physics-based shrine puzzles are a good addition the series. Many of the puzzles have a fairly straight forward solution but some allow you cheat a little. It allows the player the freedom to solve it however they want without restricting you to a certain method. This notably comes into play with the fire puzzles, and some of the gyroscope mazes. I don’t like how many combat trials there are. Once you become really strong and figure them out they become a real annoyance.

The story is rather weak. Probably one of the weakest in the series. Since it’s established that Link has lost his memories we learn the story with him. You have the option of visiting various memory locations for the backstory. It all amounts to about 30 minutes of cutscenes which is just enough to introduce all the major characters but not enough to get invested in them. Zelda gets the most characterization of all and she comes off as this scholar trying to find her power. The four champions and their descendants get some character but the story progresses the exact same way for the four tribes. Go through some challenge in order to meet the leader. Then do some tasks for the leader and then go with them to calm the respective Divine Beast down. Hell even the champions have basically the same dialogue when they talk to you in the dungeons.

Link is established as a brave knight in the back story and I liked that. You also get some interactions with him and the NPCs. Some of his dialogue has some sass to it, which is good. However he never shows any emotion in any of the present-day cutscenes. Even towards the end after I killed the big bad guy. Absolutely no reaction when you see Zelda again.

The dungeon design vastly differs from the traditional design of dungeons. They’re smaller, and all lean towards puzzle solving rather than exploring and fighting. I suppose it’s okay but I really would like to see the traditionally designed dungeons again.

Ganon isn’t a character this time around. Literally just an evil force that sits in a sac in the castle waiting to be killed. After you’ve done everything he’s remarkably easy. Even if you haven’t the final stage is a complete joke. I wish the fight was different. Maybe they could have added some Shadow of the Colossus type thing like the Stone Taluses.

The voice acting isn’t remarkable, but not awful. Most of the deliveries lack any emotion as if the voice director had no idea what he was doing. Despite that I thought the voices matched all the characters well except for Zelda. Zelda’s VO feels like someone tried to act too much like royalty. Maybe with 50% less British it would be okay. For a game that excels in almost everything you would at least think they would get it right.

Would have liked 1080p and 60 FPS but I guess that’s too much to ask for now. Game is capped at 30 but drops down to 20 or less frequently, although they just released a patch to address it a bit.

Overall, a very good game but not without some flaws. None of the flaws are a deal breaker though. I had fun playing through this game.

[nile-a-earls-symphony-llc]

Origins for Super Mario Characters Name

The cause on the Mario set! Will you come together or...or against each and every other...?!

Mario Bros. is a measures game released by Nintendo found 1983.

It is the first game which pre-owned "Mario" within the name. Control Mario or Luigi in order to value the foes originating out of water lines by underneath to convert them then and over beat them. Within the two-player setting, each players are able to choose to come together or even perform alongside each other and take pleasure in the game in many ways.

The "Arcade Archives" sequence has faithfully reproduced many traditional Arcade masterpieces.

Players can change many game options like game problems, and likewise recreate the atmosphere of arcade display settings at that time. Players also can participate against each other from around the world due to their superior scores.

Please take pleasure in the masterpiece which built a version for clip games.

Can you produce a film from a video recording game? That's the question that's answered by this specific movie. Mario Mario in addition to the Luigi Mario, 2 hard working plumbers discover themselves in another universe where developed dinosaurs are now living in moderate hi tech squalor. They find themselves the sole optimism to preserve planet earth from invasion.

This is the story of 2 hard working Italian plumber brothers known as Mario Mario and Luigi Mario, whom befriends a new paleontologist known as Daisy. She uncovers a tremendous get of mystical new dinosaur bones. While checking out the tunnels in which dinosaur fossils lay, saboteurs selected through the Mario Bros. competitor businessman, Anthony Scapelli, to break some underground piping. Meanwhile, within a secret world called Dinohattan, King Koopa's farm land is being drained of its water and also going through issues thus he sends Spike as well as Iggy to kidnap Daisy! The Super Mario Bros. find themselves the sole hope to preserve the earth from invasion and then challenge a diabolical lizard king and they need to battle giant reptilian goombas, outwit misfit criminals, and also challenge sinister scheme by snapping with the world!

Mario and Luigi, 2 wacky plumbers, undertake a daring pursuit in order to save a princess in Dinohattan -- a concealed earth in which the occupants evolved from dinosaurs! Luigi and Mario face dangerous obstacles from a diabolical lizard king and also should battle huge reptilian goombas, outwit misfit criminals, and weaken a sinister scheme to dominate the world!

Two Brooklyn plumbers, Mario and Luigi, need to travel to an additional dimension to rescue a princess with the evil dictator King Koopa and eliminate him via capturing over the world.

When I found that out I did 2 things. For starters, I whipped out my copy (yes, I keep it which real/nerdy that I still have an older NES hooked up in the room) of mine and made confident I will be able to match the game at will. (I can. Childhood not wasted.)

Secondly, I started down a rabbit hole of reading Mario internet sites as well as Articles and Wikis. In the procedure, I stumbled upon the etymologies of the names of many of the major players in the Mario universe. Consequently, in honor of the video game that changed the globe, here they are, presented in useful 11-item show form.

Mario.

When Mario debuted to the arcade game "Donkey Kong", he was simply called Jumpman. (Which also happens to be the generic name associated with that Michael Jordan dispersed leg Nike logo. 2 of the most renowned icons actually each have generic versions of themselves called Jumpman. But just one has now arrived at the effort of simply being extremely effective that he shaved himself a Hitler mustache before filming a professional and nobody had the balls to correct him.)

In 1980, as the Nintendo of America staff imported Jumpman to raise him right into a franchise-leading star (Hayden Christensen style), somebody discovered that he looked like their Seattle office building's landlord... a fellow named Mario Segale.

Mario Segale didn't obtain a cent for turning out to be the namesake of pretty much the most prominent video game character perhaps, though he probably isn't excessively concerned; in 1998 he sold his asphalt company for over sixty dolars million. (Or 600,000 additional lives.)

Luigi.

Luigi actually has one of the weakest name origins of most of the list of mario characters in the Mario universe (once again displaying why, for life that is real, he would have a bigger inferiority complicated than Frank Stallone, Abel or even that third Manning brother).

"Luigi" is simply the product of a group of Japanese males working to think of an Italian brand to complement "Mario." Why was the Italian brand they went with? When they all moved from Japan to Seattle, the pizza area nearest to the Nintendo headquarters called Mario & Luigi's. (It has since gone from business.)

Koopa.

Koopa is a transliterated model of the Japanese rap for the adversary turtles, "Kuppa." Stick with me right here -- kuppa is the Japanese phrase for a Korean recipe known as gukbap. Basically it is a cup of soup with elmer rice. From what I explain to it's completely not related to turtles, especially malicious ones.

In an interview, Mario's creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, said he was deciding between three labels which are distinct due to the high-speed of evil turtles, each one of which were named after Korean foods. (The alternative 2 were yukhoe and bibimbap.) Which means one of two things: (one) Miyamoto likes Korean foods and needed to provide it with a tribute or even (2) Miyamoto believes Koreans are evil and must be jumped on.

Wario.

I kind of overlooked the debut of Wario -- he debuted in 1992, right around when I was hitting the generation where I was too fantastic for cartoon-y Nintendo games. (Me and the middle school buddies of mine have been into Genesis just. I was again on Nintendo within 4 years.)

Turns out the title of his functions equally in english and Japanese; I kinda assumed the English manner but did not know about the Japanese element. In English, he is an evil, bizarro community mirror image of Mario. The "M" flips to become a "W" and Wario is created. The name also operates in Japanese, where it's the variety of Mario and "warui," that means "bad."

That is a really great situation, since, as I covered extensively in the summary 11 Worst Japanese-To-English Translations In Nintendo History, only a few language significant difference finesses back as well as forth quite smoothly.

Waluigi.

When I initially heard "Waluigi" I thought it was hilarious. While Wario became an all natural counterbalance to Mario, Waluigi sensed really comically shoehorned (just tacking the "wa" prefix before Luigi) -- like a giant inside joke that somehow cleared every bureaucratic phase and then cracked the mainstream.

Well... in accordance with the Nintendo individuals, Waluigi is not just a gloriously lazy decision or an inside joke gone substantial. They *say* it is based upon the Japanese word ijiwaru, which means that "bad guy."

I do not know. I feel as if we would have to cater for them much more than halfway to invest in that.

Toad.

Toad is made to look like a mushroom (or toadstool) because of his giant mushroom hat. It is a great thing these gaming systems debuted before the entire model realized how you can generate penis jokes.

Anyway, in Japan, he's called Kinopio, which happens to be a combination of the term for mushroom ("kinoko") as well as the Japanese variant of Pinocchio ("pinokio"). Those combine to be something around the collections of "A Real Mushroom Boy."

Goomba.

In Japanese, these men are called kuribo, that typically translates to "chestnut people." That seems sensible because, ya know, if somebody asked you "what do chestnut individuals seem to be like?" you'd probably arrive at food nearly like the figures.

When they were brought in for the American model, the staff caught with the Italian initiative of theirs and referred to as them Goombas... based off the Italian "goombah," that colloquially signifies something as "my fellow Italian friend." It also kind of evokes the photo of low level mafia criminals without very many expertise -- like people's younger brothers and also cousins who they'd to hire or maybe mom would yell at them. That also goes for the Mario Bros. goombas.

Birdo.

Birdo has nothing to do with this original Japanese title. There, he's named Kyasarin, that results in "Catherine."

In the training manual for Super Mario Bros. two, in which Birdo debuted, his character explanation reads: "Birdo thinks he's a girl and additionally likes for being named Birdetta."

What I think all of this means? Nintendo shockingly made the decision to produce a character that battles with the gender identity of his and then called him Catherine. When it was some time to go to America, they have cold feet so they determined at the very last minute to phone him Birdo, even though he's a dinosaur. (And don't give me the "birds are descended from dinosaurs" pop-paleontology line. Not buying that connection.) That way, we would just understand about his gender misunderstandings if we have a look at manual, and the Japanese have been pretty sure Americans were sometimes way too idle or even illiterate to accomplish that en masse.

Princess Toadstool/Peach.

When we all got introduced to the Princess, she was known as Princess Toadstool. I suppose this made sense -- Mario was put in the Mushroom Kingdom, so why would not its monarch be known as Princess Toadstool. Them inbreeding blue bloods will always be naming their young children immediately after the country.

No one seems to be certain precisely why they went that guidance, though. In Japan, she was recognized as Princess Peach from day one. That term didn't debut here before 1993, when Yoshi's Safari came out for Super Nintendo. (By the way -- have you ever had Yoshi's Safari? In a bizarre twist it is a first-person shooter, the only person in the entire Mario history. It is like the equivalent of a country music superstar creating a weird rock album.)

Bowser.

In Japan, there's certainly no Bowser. He is simply referred to as the King Koopa (or comparable variations, including Great Demon King Koopa). So where did Bowser come from?

During the import procedure, there was a concern that the American crowd wouldn't understand how the seemingly insignificant turtles and big bad fellow could certainly be named Koopa. So a marketing staff developed many selections for a title, they loved Bowser the best, and also slapped it on him.

In Japan, he is still rarely known as Bowser. Over here, the label of his is now extremely ubiquitous that he is actually supplanted Sha Na Na's Bowzer as America's many well known Bowser.

Donkey Kong.

This is a far more literal interpretation than you think. "Kong" is based off of King Kong. "Donkey" is a family-friendly way of calling him an ass. That's right: The name of his is a valuable variation of "Ass Ape."

Fantastic Mario Bros. is a video recording game released for the household Computer and Nintendo Entertainment System contained 1985. It shifted the gameplay far from the single screen arcade predecessor of its, Mario Bros., along with rather featured side scrolling platformer levels. Although not the first game on the Mario franchise, Super Mario Bros. is probably the most iconic, in addition to introduced many set staples, from power ups, to classic adversaries like Goombas, to the basic idea of rescuing Princess Toadstool from King Koopa. As well as kicking above a complete number of Super Mario platformer games, the crazy good results of Super Mario Bros. made popular the genre as an entire, helped to revive the gaming sector as soon as the 1983 clip game crash, and was mainly the cause of the first results around the NES, with that it's included a launch name. Until it was ultimately exceeded by Wii Sports, Super Mario Bros. was the very best selling video game of all of time for almost three years, with over forty million copies marketed internationally.

[baburaja97-blog]

New Post has been published on Vin Zite

New Post has been published on https://vinzite.com/secrets-to-an-amazing-role-playing-game/

Secrets to an Amazing Role-Playing Game

Role-playing games are a very specialist type of game that really need a far greater attention to detail than other less immersive genres. As the computerized version of the genre took off there were a lot of money hungry companies who decided to storm into the genre without really trying to understand what the vital elements of a role-playing game are. In some cases, these companies have actually had the audacity to buy out smaller companies who did know the genre and they destroyed long-held legacies of great traditional games.

Considering that this may have an impact on the future of computerized role-playing games I have felt it be of importance to educate these gaming giants in an effort to help them understand the only thing that matters to them. In order to sell role-playing games you need an audience willing to buy the product and if a company consistently puts out dodgy shooters in the guise of apparent role-playing games they’ll only destroy their reputation and go bankrupt. I know that the word bankrupt is a word that these money hungry companies recognizes and so I emphasize one point, try to sell dodgy shooters to role-playing fans and you will go bankrupt!

Personally, I have been a role-playing gamer for about thirty years and I fell in love with only two systems that I probably can’t name because of article writing guidelines. What I can say is that very few game producing companies have come even close to the pen and paper versions of the best role-playing games on the market, you know, the ones that people actually enjoy playing. I will say that I rejoiced when role-playing games became computerized as it meant I could do my role-playing without the need to hunt for people with similar tastes and even though some games have risen to become great role-playing games, they are sadly few and far between. On that note, of the styles of role-playing games that include pen and paper, computerized games and online games, there is only one type that can meet the fully immersive needs of a role-player and I’ll reveal why later.

Amazing Role-Playing Game

Okay, what are the elements of a great role-playing game then? I’ll give you one at a time but the very most important piece of advice to keep in mind during this whole discussion is immersion. To be a truly great role-playing game, it has to grab the players attention and not deliver diversions that allow the player to slip back into the reality of the real world. The player must be kept in the fictional world if they are to feel that they have experienced a great role-playing game.

One of the most vital elements of immersion is a storyline; a really believable and yet gripping storyline. A role player doesn’t want to load up the newest game and find to their dismay that storyline consists of the flimsy idea that they have to kill heaps of things to get enough experience to kill the apparent bad guy. Who wants to play a game where the bad guy is designated the bad guy without good reason? Have you played a game where you are part of one group of people and you’ve been chosen to defeat the other group of people but there’s no actual evidence that shows why the other group is bad? The worst of these are the recent thug games where one criminal organization wants to defeat another criminal organization and you’re the hitman. Who is really that stupid to fall for such a terrible storyline? It’s certainly not for intelligent role-players.

A good storyline can’t be a shallow excuse for a war and it has to be something you’d want to be a part of. The storyline also has to be included in the gameplay itself and delivered in a way that doesn’t interrupt the reality of the gameplay either. There’s nothing worse than a big cut-scene that drops into the middle of the game and makes you sit idle for more than a minute or two. For role-play games, the immersion of the game comes from being the character, not from watching the cut-scenes as if you were watching television. What’re next… advertisements?

Another part of a great gameplay experience is being aware that you have been a part of the fictional world since you were born. This is conveyed by knowing where things are in the world and knowing who the current leaders are, along with knowing current events. This can be done cleverly by feeding snippets of information in a natural manner during conversations with non-player characters. Some extremely vital information can be revealed in otherwise meaningless banter, just like in the world you’re immersed in right now.

One thing that will jolt a role player out of a game is a sudden unwanted conversation with a hastily introduced character who explains where the next local town is and that you have to be careful because there’s a war on or some such thing. This is only done in games where the maps are updated as you discover places of interest. Making a major city that lies not ten miles from your current position something that you have to discover is ridiculous at best and only suits scenarios where you’ve been teleported into a new reality or you’ve lost your memory although the latter should be used sparingly as there are already too many games out there that rely on the character having amnesia. Discovery can be implemented in far more subtle ways by having secret areas within already well-known places and it is this that gives a role-player a sense of discovery.

Another immersion problem is the introduction of a love interest in a game without any participation on your part. You’re playing away, minding your own business and then all of a sudden, one of the infatuated characters that you never knew existed, has an impact on gameplay because of a supposed vital role they play in the group you’re a part of. They should, at the least, allow a bit of flirting in the conversation paths before a love interest is thrust into the mix. For me, someone suddenly having that kind of interest is an immersion breaker because there was nothing at all that prompted a relationship. If there is a love interest possibility in the game, then it needs to be introduced in a believable way and shouldn’t be out of the characters control.

There was one game in which this happened and the involvement of two love interests was the excuse for one of the non-player characters to do worse at being a support while the other became a great support. Sure, the idea was novel but it was also very childish because it assumed that these two love interests were so enamored with the player that neither could do without him. It was worse than watching Baywatch or Desperate Housewives.

I’m only going to add one more element to the mix because I just wouldn’t reach a conclusion if I allowed myself to point out every requirement of the best role-playing games. As I stated before, the important factor is immersion. A real deal breaker for me is the inability to develop the type of character I want. I’ve encountered this more often than not in games where you have no choice over the skills that your character can develop. Of course, this is the worst scenario and there are many games that allow limited development but there are only a handful of games that allow a real sense of development.

A truly great role-playing game has to allow players to develop in any direction and compensate for this flexibility by incorporating multiple paths through the game. There’s no point in creating a computerized role-playing game if the character does the same thing in every single playthrough of the game. The most annoying of these issues is a game where you can have a spell wielding character but they develop the exact same spells at exactly the same point in every run of the game. It’s a little more forgivable for warrior types but even in this case, there are many games which allow for dozens of different fighting styles.

Now, if I were to continue this discussion I’d add other topics like the renaming of attributes with no good cause, allowing for more than one quest to be given at a time, real world purchase requirements during the game and other ridiculous practices.

I did promise to show which game type was the best for role-playing games though so, here it is. Non-online computerized games are the only games that allow for full immersion and I’ll explain why.

Unlike table-top games, you aren’t interrupted by the requirement to physically reach out and move pieces which take you out of the role of the piece itself. Compared to pen and paper games, you aren’t required to look up tables or enter long boring discussions on how rules should be interpreted. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games don’t meet the requirements either and I know some of you will be surprised but when was the last time you were playing a computerized role-playing game and one of the other players had to leave because they had to go to work and they informed you it was a different time in their part of the world.

Computerized role-playing games are the only role-playing game type where the characters stay in the game, you don’t have to suddenly work out if something is allowable by the rules and the user interface stays consistent so that the immersion is most efficient.

In conclusion, the best role-playing games are stand-alone home computer based and don’t involve interaction with other real world people who will throw a spanner in the immersion works. The storyline must be solid and delivered in a natural manner, a deliverable assumption that your character already knows the fictional world, no instant love interests out of nowhere and the ability to develop your character in any direction seamlessly along with plot paths that allow for these developments.

I only hope that the gaming companies pay attention to this and realize that they are making role-playing games for role-players and if they’re not in the market for role-players, then they should call their games by a different genre.

[hopefulphantomwonderland-blog]

New Post has been published on Pagedesignweb

New Post has been published on https://pagedesignweb.com/secrets-to-an-amazing-role-playing-game/

Secrets to an Amazing Role-Playing Game

Role-playing games are a very specialist type of game that really need a far greater attention to detail than other less immersive genres. As the computerized version of the genre took off there were a lot of money hungry companies who decided to storm into the genre without really trying to understand what the vital elements of a role-playing game are. In some cases, these companies have actually had the audacity to buy out smaller companies who did know the genre and they destroyed long-held legacies of great traditional games.

Considering that this may have an impact on the future of computerized role-playing games I have felt it to be of importance to educate these gaming giants in an effort to help them understand the only thing that matters to them. In order to sell role-playing games you need an audience willing to buy the product and if a company consistently puts out dodgy shooters in the guise of apparent role-playing games they’ll only destroy their reputation and go bankrupt. I know that the word bankrupt is a word that these money hungry companies recognises and so I emphasise one point, try to sell dodgy shooters to role-playing fans and you will go bankrupt!

Personally, I have been a role-playing gamer for about thirty years and I fell in love with only two systems that I probably can’t name because of article writing guidelines. What I can say is that very few game producing companies have come even close to the pen and paper versions of the best role-playing games on the market, you know, the ones that people actually enjoy playing. I will say that I rejoiced when role-playing games became computerized as it meant I could do my role-playing without the need to hunt for people with similar tastes and even though some games have risen to become great role-playing games, they are sadly few and far between. On that note, of the styles of role-playing games that include pen and paper, computerized games and online games, there is only one type that can meet the fully immersive needs of a role-player and I’ll reveal why later.

Okay, what are the elements of a great role-playing game then? I’ll give you one at a time but the very most important piece of advice to keep in mind during this whole discussion is immersion. To be a truly great role-playing game, it has to grab the players attention and not deliver diversions that allow the player to slip back into the reality of the real world. The player must be kept in the fictional world if they are to feel that they have experienced a great role-playing game.

One of the most vital elements of immersion is a storyline; a really believable and yet gripping storyline. A role player doesn’t want to load up the newest game and find to their dismay that storyline consists of the flimsy idea that they have to kill heaps of things to get enough experience to kill the apparent bad guy. Who wants to play a game where the bad guy is designated the bad guy without good reason? Have you played a game where you are part of one group of people and you’ve been chosen to defeat the other group of people but there’s no actual evidence that shows why the other group is bad? The worst of these are the recent thug games where one criminal organisation wants to defeat another criminal organisation and you’re the hitman. Who is really that stupid to fall for such a terrible storyline? It’s certainly not for intelligent role-players.

A good storyline can’t be a shallow excuse for a war and it has to be something you’d want to be a part of. The storyline also has to be included in the gameplay itself and delivered in a way that doesn’t interrupt the reality of the gameplay either. There’s nothing worse than a big cut-scene that drops into the middle of the game and makes you sit idle for more than a minute or two. For role-play gamers, the immersion of the game comes from being the character, not from watching the cut-scenes as if you were watching television. What’s next… advertisements?

Another part of a great game play experience is being aware that you have been a part of the fictional world since you were born. This is conveyed by knowing where things are in the world and knowing who the current leaders are, along with knowing current events. This can be done cleverly by feeding snippets of information in a natural manner during conversations with non-player characters. Some extremely vital information can be revealed in otherwise meaningless banter, just like in the world you’re immersed in right now.

One thing that will jolt a role player out of a game is a sudden unwanted conversation with a hastily introduced character who explains where the next local town is and that you have to be careful because there’s a war on or some such thing. This is only done in games where the maps are updated as you discover places of interest. Making a major city that lies not ten miles from your current position something that you have to discover is ridiculous at best and only suits scenarios where you’ve been teleported into a new reality or you’ve lost your memory although the latter should be used sparingly as there are already too many games out there that rely on the character having amnesia. Discovery can be implemented in far more subtle ways by having secret areas within already well-known places and it is this that gives a role-player a sense of discovery.

Another immersion problem is the introduction of a love interest in a game without any participation on your part. You’re playing away, minding your own business and then all of a sudden, one of the infatuated characters that you never knew existed, has an impact on gameplay because of a supposed vital role they play in the group you’re a part of. They should, at the least, allow a bit of flirting in the conversation paths before a love interest is thrust into the mix. For me, someone suddenly having that kind of interest is an immersion breaker because there was nothing at all that prompted a relationship. If there is a love interest possibility in the game, then it needs to be introduced in a believable way and shouldn’t be out of the characters control.

There was one game in which this happened and the involvement of two love interests was the excuse for one of the non-player characters to do worse at being a support while the other became a great support. Sure, the idea was novel but it was also very childish because it assumed that these two love interests were so enamoured with the player that neither could do without him. It was worse than watching Baywatch or Desperate Housewives.

I’m only going to add one more element to the mix because I just wouldn’t reach a conclusion if I allowed myself to point out every requirement of the best role-playing games. As I stated before, the important factor is immersion. A real deal breaker for me is the inability to develop the type of character I want. I’ve encountered this more often than not in games where you have no choice over the skills that you character can develop. Of course, this is the worst scenario and there are many games that allow limited development but there are only a handful of games that allow a real sense of development.

A truly great role-playing game has to allow players to develop in any direction and compensate for this flexibility by incorporating multiple paths through the game. There’s no point in creating a computerized role-playing game if the character does the same thing in every single play through of the game. The most annoying of these issues is a game where you can have a spell wielding character but they develop the exact same spells at exactly the same point in every run of the game. It’s a little more forgivable for warrior types but even in this case there are many games which allow for dozens of different fighting styles.

Now, if I were to continue with this discussion I’d add other topics like the renaming of attributes with no good cause, allowing for more than one quest to be given at a time, real world purchase requirements during the game and other ridiculous practices.

I did promise to show which game type was the best for role-playing games though so, here it is. Non-online computerized games are the only games that allow for full immersion and I’ll explain why.

Unlike table-top games, you aren’t interrupted by the requirement to physically reach out and move pieces which takes you out of the role of the piece itself. Compared to pen and paper games, you aren’t required to look up tables or enter long boring discussions on how rules should be interpreted. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games don’t meet the requirements either and I know some of you will be surprised but when was the last time you were playing a computerized role-playing game and one of the other players had to leave because they had to go to work and they informed you it was a different time in their part of the world.

Computerized role-playing games are the only role-playing game type where the characters stay in the game, you don’t have to suddenly work out if something is allowable by the rules and the user interface stays consistent so that the immersion is most efficient.

In conclusion, the best role-playing games are stand-alone home computer based and don’t involve interaction with other real world people who will throw a spanner in the immersion works. The storyline must be solid and delivered in a natural manner, a deliverable assumption that your character already knows the fictional world, no instant love interests out of nowhere and the ability to develop your character in any direction seamlessly along with plot paths that allow for these developments.

I only hope that the gaming companies pay attention to this and realise that they are making role-playing games for role-players and if they’re not in the market for role-players, then they should call their games by a different genre.