#my lack of returned fp is driving me MAD

[lucebee]

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[jeronicaismyotp]

33 and 43 for jeronica please :)

33. I know you love me. But I think you love her too. 

43. You weren’t suppose to find out this way. 

 Veronica has been noticing a difference in her boyfriends actions. He has been so distant lately and it is starting to bother her. She knows that their relationship is new and that they both had just got out of bad relationships, or so she thought. Well she knows that her and Archie’s relationship was a disaster from the start but she went through it to make her parents angry. She regrets being that girl who uses a boy to piss off her parents but she is also now realizes she could have been with Jughead this whole time. Even if he didn’t like her when they first met in the beginning of freshman year, he has came along way. Duh, he is dating her or maybe he is just pretending to like her is what Veronica thinks.

 They have talked about their exes and how they were all friends before they got together. Jughead and Betty dated for a year and she was okay with that, it’s not like they ended on bad terms but it was Betty who broke up with him. So of course, Veronica thinks he might still have feelings for his ex-girlfriend. She tries not to think of that possibility too much though because she wants to believe her and Jughead’s relationship is better and stronger than that or anything.

Jughead and her have been dating for 11 now and it truly has been the best months of her life. He has became so important to her in such a short amount of time. He knows how to make her smile when she is in a mood, he knows when she needs a hug after arguing with her parents, and his kisses just make the world stop, leaving just the two of them in that moment his lips reaches hers.

It’s a Friday night and she just got a text from him cancelling plans so he can help Betty at the Blue and Gold. She doesn’t mind that they are spending time but lately Jughead has been ditching her for Betty. That is when the doubt of him actually having feelings for her comes to her.

“Okay, whatever Forsythe.” she texts back.

J: Are you mad?

V: no, why would i be mad forsythe?

J: Stop using my real name and tell me what’s wrong?!

V: have fun with betty, forsythe :)

She knows that it isn’t fair to him that she won’t be honest about how she feels but clearly he isn’t being honest either.

J: YOU’RE SO COMPLICATED SOMETIMES!

J: Just talk to me Ronnie.

J: You’re going to ignore me now?

J: Well I’m going over after I help out Betty.

A couple hours later…….

Veronica is in her kitchen pouring tea into a cup when there is a knock on the front door.

“Hold on!” she shouts as she puts the tea down and makes her way towards the foyer.

She completely forgot that Jughead said he was going to come over later and so when she opens the door to see her boyfriend there, she is momentarily surprised to see him.

“What are you doing here, Jughead?” she asks.

“Oh, Jughead is it? I thought you forgot about that considering you were calling me by my god awful first name earlier.” Jughead replies.

“Well Forsythe is your name,”

“I know that Veronica but you know that I don’t like being called that,” he crosses his arms. “That’s not even why I am here. I want to know why you were upset with me earlier?” he questions.

“Who said I was upset?”

“ I can tell when my girlfriend is upset so just tell me why,’ he pleads.

“Can you come inside first. I don’t need my neighbors hearing my relationship problems.” Veronica says as she steps to the side to let him in.

They walk up to her room in silence. Once Veronica shuts her bedroom doo rand takes a seat next to her boyfriend on her bed. Jughead takes the opportunity to speak first, “So are you going to tell me what I have done to upset you?”

Veronica takes a deep breath before speaking. “Jughead we been together for seven months now and it has been so great dating you. I love you and you know that but relationships don’t work without honesty in them. So that’s why I think you should just tell me the truth about how you really feel. I know you love me. But I think you love her too.”

Jughead is shocked at her words, he didn’t expect to being having this conversation after being together for so long with Veronica. Why does she even think any of this?

“Veronica, who are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Betty! I know you must still love her if you are cancelling plans with me for her. It sucks but if she is what makes you happy then go for it. Get her back but stop stringing me along,” she shouts. Is he really trying to act like he doesn’t know what he is doing.

“Ronnie, I am not in love with Betty. I only love you Veronica Lodge,” he says. “Come on, let me prove it to you. I have something to show you.” Jughead puts his hand out for her to grab. Veronica has no idea what he is going to do but she loves him and trusts him so she follows him.

They drive to the Sunny-side Trailer Parks where Jughead lives with his family. She doesn’t know how a trip to his house is going to ease her worry of him loving his ex-girl but she doesn’t comment on it. She’ll just wait and see what he has planned.

He stops his motorcycle in front of his house and helps her get off the bike in her skirt.

“Let’s go inside.”

She notices that no one is home from the lack of FP’s truck not parked in the front and the lights were off when the entered the trailer home.

“Jughead as much as I love coming over to your house, mostly to spend time with Jellybean. But what are we doing here?” Veronica asks after trying to wait but the wait is getting too long.

“Just way here Babe. I will be out in a second.” Jughead replies as he makes his way down the hall and into the room him and Jellybean share.

Veronica takes a seat on the couch in the living room and waits for him to return from his bedroom. She can hear him opening some drawers and closing them.

After a couple minutes he comes out of the room and sits next to her. He has a nervous smile on his face.

“You, Veronica Lodge mean the world to me. I don’t want anybody else. I love being with you. You make me so happy and you’re so amazing. You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen and ever since we started dating I can’t imagine a day without you in it. I am so sorry I made you doubt my love for you or even question our relationship. I could never not love you. You are everything to me Ronnie. I hope you know that. There is a reason I have been spending time with Betty but not the ones you thought. I was asking her for help and she was the only girl I talk to so I didn’t think it would be a problem-”

“Betty is you ex-girlfriend, of course it would have been a problem Jug.” she interrupts him.

“Yeah I know that now. I am sorry for that. I just want you to know that you are the only girl I want to be with. That is why I asked Betty to help me find a perfect gift for you for our year anniversary.” Jughead says then reaches into his pocket to get a small black box.

Veronica gasps when she sees the little box, “Jughead we can’t get married yet!” she exclaimed.

He starts laughing, “I know that Ronnie and that is why I got you this.” He opens the box to present a necklace with a crown and a little J engraved on it with a ring on the chain too.

“It’s not an engagement ring but a promise one. That I, Forsythe Pendleton Jones the Third promise to care and love you until we achieve our dreams and be old enough to be married.”

Veronica has tears streaming down her face. She can’t believe herself, that she let her mind think that this wonderful boy doesn’t love her. “Jughead you didn’t have to get me anything. I would have been fine with flowers or just a night with you. I am the one sorry for ever doubting our love. I don’t deserve this Jughead.”

“Well you weren’t supposed to find out out this way. I had our whole day planned out but it’s okay. We can still do it all.” Jughead smiles.

“Jughead Jones, I love you so much.”

-------

I hope you liked it. Sorry it took me long to write it but this was the easiest piece I ever wrote!! 

[swipestream]

The Mad Max/Id’s Rage Ripoff Conundrum!

This week I discovered something so absolutely amazing, so utterly startling, that I was compelled by my sheer amazement to share it here, with you my loyal readers:

The much ballyhooed 2015 Mad Max video game, a sorta-but-not-really movie tie in for Mad Max: Fury Road, by (not so) famed developer Avalanche Studios, makers of Just Cause 2, is utterly and totally ripped off from Id Software’s disappointing 2011 game Rage.

WAIT!

Before you get all persnickety about that whole “ripped off” thing, let me explain that I do not consider this to, of necessity, be an insult. To quote one of our foremost modern intellectuals, myself:

“‘Good artists borrow; great artists steal.’ In other words, the only defense against accusations of ripping something off is to make something so good, the point is moot. Quality justifies its own existence.” — Daddy Warpig

Quality justifies its own existence. Absolutely true. So, two questions become pertinent:

1. Did Mad Max really rip off Rage?

2. If it did, is it such a great video game that the entire point is moot?

I pre-ordered Rage, back in the day, and never finished the game. I always wanted to, but never quite got back to it—there was always something better to play. Then, just last week, Bethesda released two trailers for the sequel, imaginatively titled Rage 2, and I thought, “Eh. Might as well finish the first before the second comes out.” So I did, and what I discovered was astounding:

Rage is a hybrid shooting/driving open world game, set entirely in a desert badlands: rocky canyons, blasted and dusty open ground, and nary a green, growing thing anywhere. The wastes are dotted with the remnants of pre-cataclysm industrial complexes: catwalks, giant containers, blasted buildings. Oh, and there’s also a landlocked cargo ship in one area, cut in two by some catastrophe, its cargo containers spilling out.

Bad guys in combat-modded cars drive around the wasteland, shooting the crap out of anything passing through their territory, including (and primarily) you. Fortunately, you can return the favor. Run them off the road, shoot them with guns, shoot them with rockets: it’s a Car Wars world out there, and you’re in the gunner’s seat. (At least after the first driving mission, when you actually get some bullets.) There’s even combat towers you can ram to bring down, cutting the bandits’ fire support.

There’s also mutants, massive mutants, massive and resistant-to-bullets mutants, super-massive mutants, and a bunch of human enemies. You can enjoy scenic mission hubs (cheerfully decorated in stereotypical post-apocalypse chic) at which you can pick up missions from quest givers, said missions usually requiring you to drive to some location, disembark, and journey through a mostly-linear series of corridors, dispatching enemies with extreme prejudice.

Rage has a crafting system, naturally, various combat mods for the several cars you can acquire, multiple games of chance, and meteor storms which drop loot. You can take on several gangs in their home bases, killing ever tougher opponents until you face the gang boss and straight beat him down. There’s non-combat races, combat races, and a gladiatorial TV show which lets you shoot mutants for dollars. There’s even a mission which requires you to blow up a great big door before you can progress to the next area.

If you’ve played Mad Max, most of those elements will sound hauntingly familiar. Almost exactly. Here’s the difference, however: Everything Mad Max did right, Rage did mostly wrong.

Rage is a disjointed experience. The driving isn’t quite good enough, the overworld too cramped (being a series of narrow corridors, instead of Mad Max’s expansive vistas), and the shift from hub world traversal, to wastelands driving, to corridor-centric FPS-ing is jarring and inelegant. The game feels like a bunch of almost-completed parts, hastily thrown into a box with only a token effort to make them fit together, then sold as-is. Mad Max, on the other hand, felt like it had been hand-crafted for maximum enjoyability. (Up until that one race in the final boss area that most people don’t get past. Screw that race, and the people who designed it.)

More, Rage was, for the most part, a fairly generic post-apocalyptic game with stereotypical dun and drab visuals, lacking the visual or setting flair of Borderlands and Fallout 3 (wingsticks, the one iconic weapon in the game, being excepted). Mad Max, OTOH, had style to spare. (To be fair to Bethesda, they look to be correcting this for the sequel, at least if the trailers are any guide.)

Mad Max also benefitted from being designed for a new generation of consoles, with more memory, faster CPU’s and GPU’s, and more storage space. (Rage shipped on three DVD’s, which is shocking considering how short and shallow the game really is.) Just on visuals alone, the designers of Mad Max used the improved hardware to good effect. Plus, the beefier hardware allowed Mad Max to add several other gameplay elements (like dudes on foot in the wastelands, guys who could jump onto your car from the next, fantastic and impressive lightning-filled sand storms, and so forth) and have bigger and more visually impressive areas than Rage.

Mad Max is truly an excellent game, well-polished and well-designed. The missions are mostly great, the characters memorable (which Rage’s are not), and the guy who hangs out to repair your car is a hoot. In a straight-up comparison, Mad Max wins hands down.

So was Mad Max ripped off? To a certain extent, almost certainly. It was John Carmack’s last game at Id, and scored only lukewarm sales. Most gamers considered it a disappointment. Anybody working in games development would know Carmack—he straight-up invented the First Person Shooter genre—and would have been familiar with Rage. Frankly, I’ve heard of worse ideas than “This game could have been great, but wasn’t, so let’s make something very similar but do it right.” And the developers of Mad Max did it right.

Which is why, despite having duplicated so many elements from Rage, Mad Max is remembered as a great game and not a lifeless copy. It is a quality game, and quality justifies its own existence.

Jasyn Jones, better known as Daddy Warpig, is a host on the Geek Gab podcast, a regular on the Superversive SF livestreams, and blogs at Daddy Warpig’s House of Geekery. Check him out on Twitter.

The Mad Max/Id’s Rage Ripoff Conundrum! published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames