#she can develop any position but she really excels with post players

[dianasprnce]

dawn staley really knows how to develop a center

[anonthefold]

So the grind to get progression level 50 on Ana has been going smoothly (Outside of having just the most difficult diamond-gm lobbies). I got to 45 which is great! The home stretch! I'll just have to nade the enemy 25000 times, heal 1,000,000 hp, and play for 12 more hours.

Someone once told me you develop bad habits just mindlessly playing the game and to a degree they are right. I review myself, and sometimes ask others to review me in exchange for reviewing them. My bad habit is from overall improvement which is going to sound extremely egotistical at first but here me out:

I have gotten very mechanically comfortable with Ana. she is starting to really feel like a comfort pick. Naturally as I started winning more consecutive games with her the game evolved from gold to plat to diamond. Anyone who has also do that climb will know gold players and diamond players are VASTLY different experiences. In gold you can get away with heal botting, nading the team occasionally, seeping an ult, etc etc. Plat is like gold but with more mechanical ability. Diamond is just a beast of difference. If you are heal botting and not pressuring on Ana you are literally throwing. That's like support 101, right? keep people out of critical and damage. Well yeah but the caveat to that statement is timing. In higher ELO it is more about the psychological affect of what you're doing and exploiting the human condition under duress. Predicting the future plays like where people are going to look, how long, what they are going to do and how to capitalize on it. ability tracking is critical.

Case in point: I noticed one of my recent games that the enemy kiriko loves to cleanse nade. It is a good time to do it. We had Deadeye coming up so I naded to bait out the suzu. Deadeye went off and the cass got a 3k. By the time the next team fight happens nade will be back up, or close to it, and then I can look for an opportunity post suzu to nade. Thinking like that helps a lot when approaching team fights as Ana. I'm simplifying it because there is a lot more decision making that goes into the entire process than that but that is the foundation.

Anyway back on the rails: Growth. I need to improve my ability to rotate on KotH maps as Ana. It is really challenging for me still because you have to think of using cover to move, maintaining some LoS and then think about where you are going to go next meanwhile most people play brawl or dive on those maps so you might feel a lot of backline pressure. Ana can be played mid range. She excels at having distance advantage but sometimes you have to make an assessment on wether it is even reasonable to play that far back because of map structure. Think Oasis University for example. Juggling all those game actions can be overwhelming while trying to hit your shots, tracking ability usage, and tracking player positions. But I have noticed I am getting better at that on the whole. I need to work on quick scoping as well. Those are my immediate goals. If i set too many then i feel like I will never complete any of them.

I would also like to add that I occasionally review some of my Ana games from 6+ months ago and boy oh boy. Absolutely marked improvement. I like to also think about when I first started taking Ana seriously how intimidated I was with "what if i don't hit my shots and someone dies because I can't heal them?" to where I am at now which is " that genji has blade lets sleep him the second he pops it" and I am so much more confident in that. Yeah, i miss some but the ones I hit are just absolutely stimulating.

That is where I am at with the Ana progression... and it wouldn't be a review if I didn't share a little gameplay and maybe a highlight from today's games. (It is a reference point to the closest time as of posting this and not cherry picked)

This was a KotH map match that i played this evening. I feel like my positioning was good 80%^ of the time. I could have done a lot more damage but right now I am working on survivability on these modes then when im comfortable I will start peppering in more damage.

This was the highlight from my most recent game in QP which was defending shambali monastery. This game... was more aggressive of a playstyle. I died 4 times which happened because I missed 2 critical sleeps on genji. The others were intentional deaths to reset. Our tank was incredibly aggro and went on many a spirit quest to where I would not follow. Their aggression was purely based on the enemy dps feeding charge into her and I can tell she had the murderlust with 100 charge. I've been there myself and sometimes you forget things like cover, the cart, your teammates just to get a team kill with a death ray canon disintegrating everything that glances it. But I digress, it worked... sort of. They gave up a comical amount of space that was countered by the fact that the entire enemy team would be so worn down that the rest of our team could just pick them off.

The stats are below and you can see I had the least amount of healing... but we also had a sombra who didnt need as much babysitting. It allowed me to, once again, follow up on elims with the team more efficiently.

[jjpmoans]

t’aimer sans cesse

↦ song: Hesitate from Eyes On You 

↦ lyrics: 'Yes, you, why are you making me this confused?/ I don't get you any more' 

↦ word count : 9k+

↦ genre : roommates to lovers

↦ warnings : fluffs, angst if you squint really hard

↦ summary : Park Jinyoung. You. Jeong Jaehyun. As complicated as it seems, you’d be honest when you said, you didn’t expect to be involved in this whole love triangle. Have you been missing signals or have he been sending you absolutely invisible signals? Is your radar broken? How have you not know? How have you been so dense? How long have you been foolishly hurting him?

↦ a/n : Hey everyone! I’m back with a new fic! I’m soo sorry it’s been a drought here on my blog. But i’m back and looks like Mr Jeong is joining us this time~ Anyways, this fic is written for the GOT7 Alive Fest on twitter and if anyone is interested, go check it out on @/GOT7_Alive_2020. They have both artists and writers joining the fest! Most of them post on ao3 and I am probably the only one who post on tumblr. Nevermind that, I hope you love the fic! Thank you for reading!

Morning classes are by far, the most hated part of your schedule. You don’t like waking up early, which explains why you’re not a morning person. You don’t remember when was the last time you met the morning birds and the sunrise since you usually wake up after ten in the morning and the sun is already up. You missed the chirping and the first ray of the morning but you’d trade anything for sleep at the moment. 

“Jinyoung.” you groan when you feel a finger poking your cheek and pinching it. You know it’s him, who else is patient to wake you up? Bambam and Yugyeom have long given up trying to wake you since you refused all their advances, even coaxing you with food. “I don’t want to wake up.”

You heard a few rustling and you exhaled in relief. Perhaps Jinyoung will let you off the hook and let you sleep this once. You don’t have that many morning classes, to be honest. You only have one, and that’s on every Tuesday. Usually you wake up and sign the attendance then go back to sleep since you had online learning for this semester, but since the situation has toned down and the university has reopened, today marks the first day of on-site class. 

“Hey, sleepyhead.” you hear his voice and a few seconds later, you feel your face getting wet and his palm softly applying cold water all over your face. Another dip into the basin and he returns his palm to your face with another round of wiping the cold water all over your face which he carefully presses it on your eyelids. “Wake up. You have class at nine.”

You grumble, turning away from him to continue sleeping but at this moment, you’re almost wide awake after he technically washes your face for you. You can hear Jinyoung chuckling and you’re positive now that he has successfully woken you up. “Urgh. I hate how you wake me up easily.”

“Not my fault that I’m an expert.” he laughs upon seeing you getting out of his bed and into the bathroom. “Hurry up. I’m taking you to breakfast.”

“For what?” you appear again with your toothbrush inside your mouth. 

“To eat, you dummy. Your class ends at eleven and you’d be starving by then.” he picks a book out of your shared bookshelf, flipping it to the page he left before. “Hurry up! I’m giving you ten minutes!”

You stare in disbelief at him and when he sees you’re unmoved, he throws you one of your small pillows to get you moving. “Tik tok, y/n! Move fast!”

“I can’t believe you shove me into the bathroom.” you frown when Jinyoung just laugh at your complaint. He indeed shoved you into the shower after you’ve been standing for too long while brushing your teeth. “We aren’t even late!”

“You’ll thank me later.” Jinyoung grins, walking into the busy cafe. People are getting their first coffee supply of the day and so do you. Jinyoung and you are both coffee people, it just made sense to start the day with a cup of iced Americano.

As usual, Jinyoung will queue up so you can find a seat for both of you while waiting. It’s easy to catch a spot in the cafe during the morning since most people pack to-go breakfast. So you carefully choose a table for two, a bit far from the counter and hidden from the excessive sun exposure but still be able to see people entering the cafe. 

It’s just an unconscious habit of yours, to watch whoever that passes through the door. It’s just amusing to you how most people fall into the same time schedule, about fifty people probably have the same class to attend and twenty seven of them need coffee before class. 

“Here.” a tray of drinks and food appears before you, you make space for Jinyoung to place the drinks out of the tray and put the tray away. It’s so obvious which one of the food is yours and which one is Jinyoung’s. He prefers to have croissants for breakfast while you prefer egg sandwiches since you’ll be fuller and can last until lunch time. “Saw anyone you know?”

You shake your head before taking a big bite of your sandwich, munching them happily. The man before you just laugh at your behaviour, fifteen minutes ago you were wrestling with him to get into the shower and now you’re just behaving like a child, eating her breakfast with joy.

He sees the corner of your lips smudged with the mayo and his heart skips a beat, wondering how can you be so adorable being so messy. He can’t stand someone munching loudly but here he is, watching the corner of your lips moving and the sauce is still there. So he extends his hand, wiping your lips and retracts to lick his thumb back, before going back to eat his own croissant.

You didn’t mind, it’s not actually out of the ordinary. Jinyoung smiles, knowing how comfortable you are with him. Sometimes he wishes you don’t, because right now he just wanted to let you know how badly he’s in love with you. 

But of course he can’t. As best friends, he can’t. His feelings aren’t worth the awkward encounters or the cold treatment you’ll be giving him once you learn that he’s in love with you. 

“Alright so for the assignment partners,” your professor announces, indicating the class is ending in ten minutes. During the quarantine, he has decided that all assignments will be graded individually since the quarantine was expected to run longer. However with the on-site classes coming to life again, he wanted to make the last assignment graded in partners, so that he can actually provide better materials for the lecturers audit session. 

You heard your name being called and you swear your breath hitches when another name follows yours, loud and clear. “Jeong Jaehyun.”

“Oh my god.” your friend next to you gasps, utterly speechless at revelation of your partner. You as well, are shocked and completely blank out. “Oh my god. You got the golden boy.”

“Oh my god.” repeating the phrase over and over again, your friend taps you multiple times and you feel your throat dried. One of the reasons why she’s so excited is because you’ve developed a crush towards the golden boy from the start of the semester and she knows. She, who goes by the name Mina, is your only friend from the same course.  However it was short lived since you only got three classes with him and the quarantine started. Either way, you’ve completely forgotten about your crush until he was brought up again, 

You took Mathematics as an elective just because you thought it was fun and you wanted to try it. Jinyoung couldn’t make it, Psychology students are always packed and you, as the Language student, have too much time to spare.

“Mina. this is insane.” you are having a minor breakdown and Mina isn’t helping, squealing when she sees Jaehyun walking over towards your seat, nudging you not so subtly. “My lord, don’t nudge me like that-”

He stops in front of you and for a second you forget how to breathe, extremely mesmerized by his presence. Here’s why he’s the golden boy.

You knew from a classmate that he comes from the Engineering faculty, taking Mathematics as one of his complementary subjects in order to fulfill his credit hours requirement for this semester. It’s a given that he excels in mathematics as he’s an engineering student but his other achievements make him even more dreamy and absolutely golden. 

Jaehyun is also very popular in sports, he’s one of the baseball club players, the one and only sport club that is making names for your university. It doesn’t need you to attend their matches to know how well he’s been playing. His fame makes up for it. They have been winning almost every match and well, he contributes about two third of the scores. Above all of that, he’s apparently a member of NCT frat, where every single member is magnificently handsome, carved and painted by god himself.

In short, he’s the standard boyfriend you’ll never get.

“Uhm.” okay he has a bit of a flaw — no, not a flaw. Despite how famous he is, he’s apparently an introvert. He gets shy quite easily, more reasons to like him. The tip of his ears will be red if he feels nervous or shy and you don’t know what is cuter than that. “Hey.”

You forgot how to talk just by looking at him. Never would you have thought you’d be able to talk to him, well given the situation and his social status, you have no doubt you’re out of his circle. It’s only when Mina secretly pinches your thigh that you manage to find your voice, clearing your throat to reply to him. “Hi. Sorry, I’ve been so rude. I’m y/n.”

He offers you a smile. Jeong Jaehyun offers you a smile. You can finally die in peace. “I know. I’ve heard a lot of things about you.”

Oh. What is this? How does he know about you? Scratch that, why would he know anything about you?

“Wha- what? Excuse me?”

He chuckles and Mina’s gasp is completely audible to your ears now, you have no idea if Jaehyun catches that. But you know he does, after all his ears won’t lie to him. “I know you. You’re Jinyoung’s girlfriend.”

Even nothing comes out from Mina, you know she’s laughing. Of course, your reputation is affiliated with Jinyoung. There isn’t any person on the campus who doesn’t know about you and Jinyoung. To say you’re Jinyoung’s best friend is absolutely underrated, so they upgraded your status to Jinyoung’s girlfriend. You’re so close to Jinyoung that it made a lot of his fangirls mad. Why? Because just like Jaehyun, Jinyoung is a member of a frat. 

GOT frat specifically.

Things got complicated and you got his fangirls harassing you to the extent of harming you in your own house during your first semester. After much consideration, Jinyoung figured that it is safer for you to stay with him instead. No one will be able to harm you in a frat house, mainly because he is there but also, his members are very protective of you too. 

Hence he got Jaebeom to go to the administration and arranged your residency exchange. You have no idea how Jaebeom managed to convince them since no girls are allowed to reside in an all boys frat. However he powered through and the news spread as fast as they could, making you officially Jinyoung’s girlfriend and off market.

“Lord, not this again.” you mutter quietly but goodness gracious of course he heard it. Jaehyun’s laughter resonates again and this time you decided to just fuck it. “Firstly no, I’m not Jinyoung’s girlfriend. I’m his best friend and I have no idea why people keep saying I’m his girlfriend.”

“Maybe because you act like a couple?” Jaehyun offers his thoughts. Probably it’s true, Jinyoung has a soft spot for you. Maybe because he feels sorry for what you’ve been through, however you don’t mind. You love when Jinyoung is being protective of you. It reminds you of how much he cared for you.

“Yeah. Nevermind that. Do you want to talk about the assignment?” you hate to ruin the moment but you figured he needed to go somewhere and you’re already holding him back. If you want to chit chat, you can do it when you meet for the assignment.

“Oh yes.” he quickly whips out his phone and scans the task given, quickly sliding his phone to your direction. “Okay so I’ve done question no 1 and just need you to look over them in case I did them wrong-”

He- what? He already did the assignment? Screw it, you’re in love with him already.

“So we just need to work on the second question.” he finishes his sentence and looks up to you, flashing his dimples away. Ah right, his deep dimples are exactly the reason why you’ve taken a liking in him. Whenever you have online classes, a strand of his luscious brown hair will naturally parted away from the others, his dimples showing up occasionally when he’s solving questions. Out of every single window on the screen, you’ve been intently watching his window, mesmerized by his good looking face. “I guess we can set the time and place for us to work on this?”

You unconsciously nod, before quickly snapping out of your thoughts. “Yeah, I’m actually fine anywhere. I’ll check my schedules and we can try to set any time for it?”

Jaehyun hums, hesitated before asking, “Will you be comfortable if we do it at my place?”

Another quiet squeal makes you roll your eyes, at this point Mina isn’t trying to be subtle anymore. Jaehyun has been laughing whenever she lets out any kind of noises, which embarrass you even more. “Wait- you mean NCT frat!?”

You can’t believe she just asked that. 

“Wow, y/n. Spare me some of your luck, please.” she tugs on your arms to which you shrug her off easily.

“Shut up.” you tell her before catching Jaehyun’s attention again. “I’m okay with NCT frat. I’ll text you before I come over?”

“Yeah,” he replies distractedly when his phone shows an incoming voice call, seeming important since he freaks out, whipping his head to the door. “Sorry, the boys are having some meeting and I need to go now.”

He hands you his phone, his dial pad showing up. “Put your number in. I’ll text you.”

If someone ever tells you that Jeong Jaehyun will offer his phone to get your number, even for an assignment, you’d definitely assume that they’re insane and tell them to stop giving you false hope. But now you’re filling your phone number in Jeong Jaehyun’s phone and it feels more like a dream than a reality.

Only when he’s out of the lecture hall that you’re able to breathe, accompanied by Mina’s never ending teasing. Lord, why are you being extra kind today?

Unknown Hey it’s Jaehyun :)

You almost drop your phone before making unrealistic noises, your heart jumping in joy. You don’t wish to disturb Jinyoung who’s studying at his table but this calls for celebration. 

“Oh my god!” you decided to let it loose and quickly dance in the middle of your room out of giddiness. Jeong Jaehyun has officially texted you and he’s waiting for you to reply. “Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh!!”

Jinyoung stares at your dancing figure with an eyebrow raised, his pen in between his teeth. To say that your sudden dance abnormal is an understatement, he’s been watching you do even crazier and dumber things in the middle of the night during examination weeks but that’s out of stress. So he lets you cool down – not really since you’re still grinning while holding your phone. Definitely, something is wrong.

“Wait how do I reply-” you fumble with your keyboard, thinking of a proper sentence. It’s been three minutes since his text and it’s the perfect time to reply back. You have to act like you didn’t wait for him to reply.

Y/n Hi! Yeap, y/n here.

What do you say more? Did the meeting go well?

You contemplate writing another sentence when his reply comes in, startling you in the process.

Unknown Have you checked your schedule? What day are you free?

Y/n I did and I am free on monday and wednesday afternoon, then friday evening. Hbu?

Unknown Oh crap. I’m only free on wednesday evening 

Golden boy curses too? Oohh, hot.

Y/n Uh… I don’t mind doing it on the weekend? If you don’t have practise or anything.

Unknown Unfortunately [Sticker] I have baseball practice in the morning. But

Y/n But what

Unknown Can we make it at night? We can do the assignment in the next two weeks.  I have an upcoming submission and I’m fully booked this weekend. I’m sorry I promise you I’ll provide you snacks.

Y/n What am I? Five years old? [Sticker] I don’t mind. The due date is still far away.

Unknown Oh so you don’t want snacks?

Y/n Shut up. Give me McDonalds.

Unknown Deal. A princess will get what princess wants.

Your heart skips a beat. He calls you princess? From the first text? This sounds like a frat boy attitude. For a moment you laugh at yourself, of course he is. He’s technically a frat boy.

“Okay you’re creeping me out.” Jinyoung finally stands up from his study table and proceeds to sit on his bed. Your study table is next to his bed while his study table is at the foot of his bed. “You’ve been smiling creepily while texting. Who’re you texting with?”

You quickly reply to Jaehyun with a sticker and lock your phone, facing Jinyoung who’s still confused about what’s going on. You can’t handle this alone and you need to tell Jinyoung. If anything, Jinyoung is the first person that shall know.

“You know Jeong Jaehyun?”

He gives you an incredulous look, of course, who doesn’t know Jeong Jaehyun? One must be blind and deaf if they don’t know the golden boy. “Really? You’re asking me this now?”

You dismiss him immediately, moving to sit next to him on his bed. “He texted me.”

“He texted you?”

“Yes!” you almost screamed at him but hold back and throw yourself on his pillow, kicking the air. “We got partnered for an assignment and he texted me!”

Jinyoung is absolutely clueless because he stares at you again, confused. “So? Why are you so happy about it?”

“Oh god Jinyoung! You don’t understand!”

“Then tell me! And for god sake stop kicking already!”

You sit back up and watch Jinyoung carefully, before explaining, “Jinyoung. A handsome boy, from NCT frat texted me. And he’s not just any NCT member, he’s the golden boy. The standard boyfriend-you’ll-never-have. The Jeong Jaehyun.”

“And he texted me. And he calls me princess!” You watch Jinyoung’s face contorted with disgust and you push him away roughly. He would never understand. He’s not having a crush on Jaehyun.

“So what? I can call you princess too. What’s so special?” Jinyoung has now moved higher on the bed and his hands are crossed. This is why you need a girl best friend. When you have a boy best friend they are so dumb and they can’t understand this joy.

“Oh god. Because he’s so dreamy and I got a crush on him!” you lunge towards Jinyoung and shake him, forcing the information to sink inside his brain. “My crush just called me princess, can you believe it!!???”

“You have a crush on Jaehyun?”

“Urgh. You’re so slow.” you get up and reach for the door, yanking it open. “I’m going to Jackson. He’ll be more enthusiastic to listen to my story than you.”

You close the door and leave Jinyoung alone, stoned and unmoved on his bed.

You didn’t realise it but the previous sentence left Jinyoung speechless, sending him into a shock.

You like Jeong Jaehyun? Oh shit. Jinyoung is in a deep deep shit.

“Hi.” the door opens, revealing Johnny who looks like he’s been expecting you for a while. 

“Oh! Y/n!” he screams, well not screaming but definitely a higher octave than usual conversation tone. “Come in! Jaehyun told us that you’re coming over.”

Like you have agreed, Jaehyun invites you to come over two weeks after You enter the house, a fresh smell greeting you softly. The layout of the frat is just like yours, except that it is bigger, well to accommodate 21 people in one house. There’s only a few minor differences from your house, like how the kitchen and the living room looks extremely bigger.

You spot someone at the kitchen and you nod timidly, showing your respect in someone’s house. Lord, you feel overwhelmed.

“Who’s at the door- oh!” a high pitched tone yell from the fridge and you see Lucas hugging a jar of milk, probably taking it out. “Jaehyun hyung! Your pretty partner is here!”

You blush at the nickname, quickly trail behind Johnny who offers to send you to Jaehyun’s room. You agree, you can’t possibly manage to find his room by yourself. Actually, you take your words back. This house has a different layout than GOT’s frat, definitely you won’t trust yourself around here. One mistake and you’d probably end up in a room with at least three naked men.

“I have no idea why you’d yell, Lucas.” Johnny comments, ascending the stairs. “Jaehyun can’t even hear you.”

“I know. I just want to call her pretty.”

“Oh god.” your face reddens when Lucas continues to tease you that by the time you reach Jaehyun’s room, you’re as bright as a tomato.

“Heyyy you’re here- wow what happened? Why are you so red?” as soon as he opens his door, Jaehyun bends over to see your reddening face, scanning for any suspicious injury. Johnny however, starts laughing and he’s lucky you just met him today or else you’d already jab him with your fist. “Come one, Johnny. Who did this to her?”

“Lucas that kid. He’s teasing her all the way up the stairs.”

“Oh.” Jaehyun laughs as well, beckoning you to enter his room. “Shut that one up for me.”

“Aite, golden boy.”

You manage to tone down your redness after fanning it while watching Jaehyun’s minimally decorated room, all in black and white, three beds lining up next to each other, the study table at one corner and their closet at the other end. It’s a big room and with three people living in it, it still has spaces to work on the floor.

“Sorry if you find it messy.” Jaehyun rubs the back of his head sheepishly when you seated yourself on the floor, in front of the folding table that he has prepared. “I forced Jungwoo and Jeno to clean the room since you’re coming over.”

“So if you find anything suspicious, just ignore them okay?” you chuckle at his choice of words, as if you’d probably find something. The whole room looks clean, or so how it looks. You doubt you can find anything.

“I’m serious. I always find questionable things and you don’t want to know what they are.”

“Oh.” now that is something you didn’t think of. You know how they always hold parties and a lot of people come over, but you definitely didn’t think of that. “Okay now I’m afraid to move.”

Jaehyun lets out a hearty laugh, seating himself next to you comfortably. “Don’t worry. Nothing can harm you here.”

“Knock knock!” instead of knocking, Haechan chooses to enunciate the sound and in a split second he opens the door, posing at the door frame. “The delivery man is here and I’m not rich to pay for it.”

Jaehyun sighs as he pulls out his wallet, throwing it to Haechan. “Swipe it.”

You turn to Jaehyun, halting in your calculation. “Did you really order McDonalds?”

“I promised you.” he says softly, looking back at his own paper. “What my princess wants is what my princess gets.”

You swear the air suddenly gets hotter and Jaehyun turns super flirty since his first text. You kept texting back and forth, the awkward texts have long forgotten, now it’s always him asking you about your day and sending memes he found on the internet. 

“Are we flirting now?”

“Depends on how you define flirt.” he smiles and that damn dimples show up again, impossible making you even more giddy. “I’d say, I’m being me.”

“This is how you are?” you look at him up and down, giving him a disapproving look. “Do you flirt with every girl you meet?”

Jaehyun comes closer to you, looking at you straight in the eye. “I’ll have you know one thing.”

“I never bring any girl into the frat. Not even hookups.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t do hookups.”

“But I’m just an assignment partner.”

“Definitely not for me.”

You later learnt that Jaehyun has ordered every single meal on the menu because he doesn’t know what you like. You almost got tricked when you came downstairs and saw the food untouched when all the boys were practically circling the dining table but no one touched anything. It’s only after you picked your burger, fries and drink together with Jaehyun’s food that Haechan sprinted towards the table and started the food war with others.

“You just have to ask me, you know.” you tell him while he walks you home, smiling sheepishly while getting scolded. “You wasted a lot on the meals.”

“It’s not wasting.” he defends himself. “I let everyone eat the remaining. It’s not wasting.”

“Yeah, that’s one thing.”

The walk home is silent, a comforting silent. His house and yours is just a few houses apart but he still insists on sending you home. It feels so short because just in five minutes, you fall in step in front of your house. Tonight, you experience something new. You experience another set of happiness, surrounded by Jaehyun and his friends.

It’s different from being with Jinyoung and the boys, it just feels like it. With GOT frat, you feel like home while with NCT frat, you feel exhilarated.

“Hey.” you hear Jaehyun calls, making you turn to him. “I want to let you know that I enjoy talking to you.”

Your features soften, of course, you like talking to him too. “Same here, Jaehyun.”

He grins, walking backwards. “Talk to you later!”

“Good night pretty girl!” you shush him when he shouts a bit too loud. He laughs, running to his house while screaming the same sentence, absolutely madness. You love talking to him, perhaps a bit more than he does.

“Jinyoung.” he calls, trying to shake the said male into reality. However he gives no response, staring into space making Jaebeom sigh in frustration. “Stop making that face. It’s obvious enough that you’re jealous.”

“What face?” Jinyoung glares, putting his Americano cup down and exhales shakily. He knows what kind of face Jaebeom was referring to. His annoyed face. “I am not jealous.”

“Oh really? Geez, I would never know,” Jaebeom rolls his eyes sarcastically. If looks can slice, Jaehyun must have been slaughtered by the Jinyoung’s total concentration water breathing form and poof! He’d be a verified demon slayer. 

“Shut up.” It’s been an hour and you are still there, sitting at the table by the window, talking to Jaehyun. He has been eyeing you since you entered the cafe and was about to call for you but realised that a certain male has followed you after, seating both of you further from people. He’s not mad, no. He’s a tad bit sad. He doesn’t like this unsettling feeling and it hurts even more when he sees Jaehyun’s concentrated eyes gazing on you.

He knows that gaze. That’s just how he looks at you.

Ever since you first told him that Jaehyun texted you, something has changed. You start spending less and less time with him and more time with Jaehyun. You start waking early and rush downstairs, just to go on a morning walk with Jaehyun. At night when it’s supposed to be your time with Jinyoung, you’d spend it talking to Jaehyun, if not texting all night.

You haven’t realised it but Jinyoung is extremely jealous. 

He never had you that enthusiastic with him. You’re always you, nothing special you’d change just for Jinyoung. And the thought of it makes him sad, sad that he’s actually just a friend. 

“I think you should tell her, you know.” Jaebeom starts. Ever since you revealed that you had a crush on Jaehyun, Jinyoung has been constantly broken. It’s like you pressed a switch inside his brain and he malfunctioned himself. It’s rare to see Jinyoung acting out of character but this is what love does to people. It made you go insane. “What’s the point of torturing yourself watching the woman you love talking to another handsome man with heart shooting out of her eyes?”

“So you agree he’s handsome?”

“Jinyoung.” Jaebeom shakes his head exaggeratedly. “It’s Jeong Jaehyun we’re talking about. We all know that NCT house has some magic shit going around because every single member from that frat is drop dead hot and handsome. Now don’t avoid this. Tell her before it’s too late.”

Jinyoung has officially gone blank. He wanted to tell her, he really does. Jinyoung can’t count those nights where he has drawn a perfect plan in his mind, watching you sleep while mouthing unsaid words to you. He really wanted to tell you that he loves you. He had been in love with you for so long, he has forgotten when exactly he harboured his feelings for you. All he knows, one day he woke up and he felt his heart threatened to burst at the sight of you. 

However every single plan has its flaws and Jinyoung’s plan involves throwing your friendship into the mix. If only he’s not afraid to risk your friendship, he would have tried his damn luck. He would have confessed and he wouldn’t give any damn whether you’d be awkward or not. Things will be easier if he has no attachment. Yet, this attachment is the thinnest line he wouldn’t dare to cross.

“I can’t, Beom-ah.” he sounds helpless, the most helpless Jaebeom ever heard and they are childhood friends. He knew Jinyoung since they were eleven and nothing, nothing  ever broke Jinyoung this bad. Jinyoung is never a quitter but this time, Jaebeom sees him quitting. “I can’t risk our friendship, Jaebeom. I can’t. I can handle her fawning over someone else but I can’t afford being apart from her.”

Jinyoung is never helpless but somehow, he’s helpless when it comes to you.

“So you’re going to let her date Jaehyun?” Jaebeom, though his heart wrenches seeing Jinyoung so broken, he’s not going to let Jinyoung give up. “Because I’m telling you, Jinyoung. Jaehyun isn’t playing. We know how someone looks when they’re in love. I’ve seen it on you and believe me or not, I saw it on Jaehyun.”

Jinyoung has never been unconfident. He’s always that one student who is constantly positive that it will turn out well in the end. He believes that even if it’s bad now, it will be better soon. Beat him but now, he sees nothing like that. He can’t bring himself to think that if he confesses to you it will turn out good. That even if something happens, even if you distance yourself from him, you will be okay in the end.

Because it won’t.

“Tell her before it’s too late please.” half pleading, Jaebeom just can’t see his friend being this lost. “Tell her even if it risks your relationship.”

“What if I lose her?” he can’t answer that, of course Jaebeom can’t. It’s not his place to make an escape plan, it certainly is not his place to come up with your answer. But there’s one thing he is sure of.

“Then she certainly doesn’t deserve you.” 

“I need to talk to you.” Jinyoung starts, watching you focusing on your screen. Like always, you are grinning, probably laughing at some TikTok videos that Jaehyun sent you. 

“One second, Jinyoung.” you quickly type a reply and lock the phone, setting it face down. Another thing that has changed ever since you started talking to Jaehyun. Before, you had nothing to hide but now? Jinyoung doesn’t know you anymore.

You’re now totally focused on him, your eyes staring straight into his eyes but it’s different. It doesn’t feel the same. It feels like you’re someone else. You’re not his girl anymore. 

“Jinyoung?”

“Hm?” it’s bothering him how foreign his name comes out from you. It’s been a month and if he counts, you probably utter his name only twice a day. “Oh yes. The talk.”

You are sitting cross legged on your chair, waiting patiently for Jinyoung to start. You realised it too, that you’ve been spending less time with Jinyoung. You do feel sorry for him and you have an inkling that he wanted to talk to you about it. Jinyoung rarely needs to have a talk with you unless he feels bothered, and now you can see how bothered he is.

Taking a look at him, you suddenly feel your heart wrenches. How long have you stopped giving attention to Jinyoung? He has this frown on his face now, sometime you never see before. His hair is a bit longer and his hair colour is a lighter shade of brown. 

Who dyed his hair for him? After all, it must have not been you, since you’re busy hanging out with Jaehyun. But usually, you dyed his hair for him, saying you’re the only one who knows how to dye hair properly. Now that you look back, this concern is probably bigger than you expected.

You’ve abandoned your best friend and you knew about it but you did nothing.

“Uhm.” Jinyoung clears his throat, snapping you out of your trance. “I don’t think it’s like- like a big concern.”

“And you know I don’t like complaining either.” he stops, gulping nervously as he continues, “I just feel like we’re too far away.”

“I came home and we’re roommates but I can’t feel you here.”

“You’re so near yet so far.”

You know it will hurt. You know Jinyoung’s choice of words are already the softest he would have chosen, yet it stings. It reminds you of how ungrateful you are, leaving him for someone you have a crush on. He is telling you how he is sad, sad that he gets nothing like before. Your attention is now unavailable for him. It hurts him and now he’s projecting them in words.

Now it hurts you.

“I’m sorry if you feel like I’m demanding. But I just don’t know you anymore. I don’t know how you are, or what you ate for lunch. We’re drifting apart and it hurts me.” he continues as you stay silent, feeling the guilt eating you alive. “I know you have someone new…..yet is it so easy to leave me behind?”

Jinyoung is officially breaking apart. He feels like he’s childish, pouring his heart out but this is about him. This is him demanding you to be fair. He can’t stop you from liking Jaehyun, he can’t force you to love him back. He just wanted to remind you that he’s there. He’s there and please do something. 

“Jinyoung.” your voice cracks, slowly the tears fall on your cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m so sorry I made you feel this way. I was too blinded by the newfound happiness and I forgot you. I forgot you who have constantly made me happy.”

“I’m so sorry.” you cried harder, reaching Jinyoung and hugging him. “I’m so sorry I made you feel this way.”

You feel his body shakes and you know he’s holding back from crying. You hated yourself for making Jinyoung cry. 

Jinyoung isn’t weak, no he isn’t. He’s been too strong that it breaks his limit. He wanted to let go. He wanted to let go for once and he’ll be fine. If nothing goes right after tonight, he’s done tolerating. 

A few quiet sobs and some awful jokes later, both of you are lying on Jinyoung’s bed, holding each other close. 

“Jinyoung.”

“Hm?”

“Can I sleep with you here tonight?” you ask Jinyoung, rubbing his arm. It’s been too long since you sleep in his bed and now you feel nostalgic. You’re overreacting but really, it feels too long. 

“I thought you’re going to talk to Jaehyun?” he teases, earning himself a slap on his chest. “Ow! What was that for?”

You laugh, settling yourself comfortably in his embrace. “Say Jinyoung.”

“Hm, what?”

“Do you approve Jaehyun?”

He looks down to you, questioning eyes boring into yours. You know it’s too soon, you know perhaps it’s not the best time to bring it up. But you just want to know his answer.

“For what?”

“To be my boyfriend.”

Jinyoung wakes up feeling empty, his eyes stare blankly at the ceiling. You’re still sleeping in his arm yet he has this unsettling feeling inside him. Recalling your last question before you sleep, he inhales a deep breath.

Will you be happy? Will his approval make you happy?

Jaehyun is a nice guy, Jinyoung knows that. Looks aside, he has full potential to be the best boyfriend for you. Jaehyun is caring and also when he loves, he’ll love you to the fullest. It’s not a problem to approve Jaehyun, he won’t hesitate if that’s the only case.

However it’s not.

Will Jinyoung be happy with his decision? It feels like the burden has increased tremendously, from jealousy to pain in just one night. It seems like the one month is just a trial for Jinyoung, now he needs to be prepared to lose you for good.

With his fingers raking your locks, he watches you sleep soundly. This is probably the last time he watches you sleeping in his embrace. This is probably the last time he’ll see you wake up in his arms.

Lord, can you help me stop the time?

“Nope.” 

“Jaebeom-”

“Nope. I won’t let you be as stupid as you are.”

Jinyoung lifts his eyebrows, offended by Jaebeom’s statement. He’s just offering a suggestion yet Jaebeom calls him dumb? “Hey! What do you mean as stupid as I am?”

“Jinyoung.” Jaebeom sighs exaggeratedly, holding Jinyoung’s shoulder in place. “When I told you tell her, I mean tell her your feelings your dumb ass. Not just telling her how you feel when she forgot about you!”

“I’m not a dumb ass.”

“Well you look like that to me now.” It’s another evening where you went over to Jaehyun place to finish the assignment and Jaebeom has no other way than to confront Jinyoung about how weird both of you have been.

Yes, both of you have been weird. Specifically, Jinyoung.

The morning you woke up in his embrace, you didn’t notice something was off. Probably because you forgot how it felt waking up with Jinyoung but definitely, Jinyoung was different. As if he had a switch in him, he started avoiding you, keeping your conversation minimal.

You thought it’s just you but one day Jackson asked you why you were both eating separately, one person at the other end of the table, then you realised that Jinyoung had avoided you. Yes, he made it subtle and you never noticed it until someone pointed it out.

Jinyoung still let you sleep with him and still woke you up like any other morning. He just doesn’t talk as much as he did before. And you brush it off, thinking it as another awkward change that you brought upon your friendship.

“You’re not a dumb ass?” Jaebeom asks. “Y/n has been at Jaehyun’s for hours and you’re still here, like a wife waiting for her cheater husband? Oh you’re just unable to think rationally.”

“Shut up. She’s not a cheater.”

Jaebeom had enough of these awkward encounters. It seems like none of you figured this thing out and he needs his lively frat back again. “Then I suggest you do something about y/n. It’s almost eleven and she’s not home yet.”

“Like what?” Jinyoung is now irritated. He doesn’t have any control over what you’re doing and even if he wants to, he can’t. “I’m not her boyfriend.”

“And Jaehyun is not her boyfriend either. So go get her.”

“What?”

“You heard me. As the house leader, I’m ordering you to get her ass from that NCT frat and bring her home.”

“She can come home by herself. Jaehyun will walk her home.”

“Park Jinyoung.” Jaebeom grits his teeth, pulling the said man towards the door and without hesitation, throws him out of the house. “Don’t let me put up ‘No Jaehyun is allowed’ in front of the door. Go fetch her home by 12. I mean it, Park.”

Then Jaebeom slams the door shut, locking it from inside. Though Jinyoung clearly has the key, he knows Jaebeom probably locked the door using the other lock instead. So he stood outside, leaning against the wall.

What is he going to do? Knock on NCT frat and ask for you? No shit he’s not going to look like a desperate man. 

But indeed, Jaebeom is right. Jaehyun is not your boyfriend either and he has a valid reason to be worried and to go get you at his house which is only five minutes away. Yeap, valid.

“I must have gone crazy.” Jinyoung mutters as he exits the compound and starts walking on the sidewalk in a painfully slow pace. “I must’ve looked crazy too.”

Five minutes turns fifteen, courtesy of Jinyoung walking around the neighbourhood and standing like a stool against the lamp post, contemplating whether he’s going to knock on the door or not.

“Well.” he sighs, walking up the NCT house and stands nervously in front of their door. “Aite, fuck this.” he knocks, slow at first but gradually the third knock is loud, followed by fourth and fifth. He did it on purpose, he knows how boys can be. Yugyeom and Bambam can be so focused while watching Netflix that they can’t even hear any other noises.

Jinyoung fiddles with his hoodie sleeves, his heart beating nervously as he waits for someone to get the door.

“Who is- oh, Jinyoung!” Thank god, Taeyong shows up, not Lucas or Jaemin or else Jinyoung would have a hard time being less suspicious. “Why are you here?”

Now that’s another hard question? Does he simply say ‘well my roommate is here and it’s already 11.20 and why the fuck is she still here’? Or does he say ‘i’m jealous so i’m picking up my girl’? Nope. Nope.

“Uh. Is y/n here?” He hopes he doesn’t sound like a desperate man asking for his crush’s whereabouts because he feels like he’s one. “It’s- it’s 11.20 and uh Jaebeom is kinda mad? She’s not yet back.”

Taeyong takes like- 30 seconds to let the information sink in, before frantically shouting for Jaehyun. “Jaehyun! Tell y/n that Jinyoung is here to bring her home!”

An awkward silence follows him, well of course it’s awkward. All pairs of eyes are watching him from all directions, curious of why he’s here to bring her home? You have been patronising this house for like, two months now and suddenly he’s here to remind her of her curfew?

He hears you come down the stairs, shock paints your face as you see him at the door. Firstly, well since Jinyoung avoided you, you don’t know why he suddenly came to take you home. Secondly, since when do you need someone to take you home?

“Jinyoung.” you reach the door, Jaehyun trailing behind you equally as confused. “Why are you here?”

The amount of ‘why are you here’ irks him that by the time you ask him the same question, he feels like his blood is boiling. Why is it so hard to believe that he’s here to take you home? Don’t you realise what time is it already? Why are you still at Jaehyun’s? These voices inside his head are shouting at the same time and he just- can’t stop himself anymore.

“Why? I can’t come here now?” his question, as soft as he wanted to sound, didn’t come out well. It sounds plainly rude, like he’s picking a fight with you. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Not that. I’m just confused.”

“Jaebeom told me to come and get you.”

“But I can go home by myself.” you point at Jaehyun behind you, who stays silent between your conversation. “Jaehyun can walk me home.”

At this point, Jinyoung feels anger bubbling up inside him and if everyone squints really really hard, one can see that his jugular vein almost pops. All this ‘Jaehyun this and Jaehyun that’ is starting to get to him and honestly? He’s tired of listening to it.

“Can we just go home?” as much as he wants to scream at everyone, he doesn’t want to make a mess at someone’s frat. He knows how Jaebeom works hard to maintain a good relationship with other frats and how hard it is to clean after messes. “I don’t think we should be having this conversation here.”

You silently agree, bidding the boys goodbye and step out of the house. Jaehyun’s eyes follow you worriedly, as if he knows that you’d probably end up fighting with Jinyoung.

In your eyes, Jinyoung is irritated by the fact that you asked too many questions but in Jaehyun’s eyes, he recognises those emotions as anger and jealousy. He’s been asking you about your true relationship with Jinyoung, knowing that it’s impossible for one to be that close without any feeling involved. Tonight, he found out why. 

Jinyoung is in love with you.

“Taeyong.” he whispers while watching both of you getting further away from his house. “Fuck, Taeyong.”

“What?”

“I messed up.”

“What??” how come Jaehyun didn’t realise it from the start? Of course, when he first got close to you, he thought that you and Jinyoung are just best friends and given he never really gets to talk to Jinyoung, well he just didn’t think of that.

“Taeyong.” his frantic eyes find Taeyong, who is as clueless as ever. “Jinyoung loves y/n.”

The leader’s vision switches to the couple on the street, looking at them with wide eyes. “Oh fuck.”

“I don’t understand him!” you throw your hands, ruffling your hair. It’s been four days and Jinyoung avoided you like a plague, refusing to talk to you even if you cornered him every time you got him. “He’s like, really confusing.”

Jaehyun bites the apple, listening to your story intently. You have told him through texts but here you are again, ranting about how Jinyoung is the most useless communicator and it’s impossible to take the words out of him if he decided to give you cold treatment.

“So you said he’s been weird after you asked him if he approves me to be your boyfriend?” he asks again, making sure he had his point right. Just like four days ago, Jaehyun has concluded that Jinyoung indeed, has been in love with you for so long but you’re just dense to realise it. It’s been proven true, you have the audacity to ask Jinyoung about it and not feel guilty at all.

“Yeah.” you sit on the foot of Jaehyun’s bed, settling yourself comfortably. You hang out more at Jaehyun since Jinyoung looks like he’s about to become mute whenever he sees you in the house. You figured you could give him some space. “I’m so confused right now.”

Jaehyun nudges you with his foot, making you look right up to him. Jaehyun has been too comfortable with you, becoming close just after two months. He’s at that stage where he just calls you with his feet now. 

“You wanna know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think that Jinyoung is in love with you.”

“What the-” Shock is not enough to portray your feelings right now. It’s a mixture of shock, disbelief and suspicions. You don’t know if Jaehyun is playing around because right at this moment, his face shows no hint of joking. “Jaehyun! It’s not funny!”

Jaehyun rolls his eyes, annoyed with your ignorance. You’re the most clueless person he ever knows, and he knows Mark Lee! “Girl, listen to me.”

“What did Jinyoung say when you said I texted you?”

“He said, ‘so?’”

“And what did he say when you said you like me?”

“Is this another session to feed your ego?” you don’t trust Jaehyun, he has a lot up in his sleeves and you just knew him for two months. “I fed your ego too much, don’t you think so?”

“Shut up and answer me. What did he say?”

You roll your eyes. “He said nothing. Why are we doing this?”

“What did he reply when you ask about me being your boyfriend?”

“He didn’t reply. God, I don’t know where you are going with this conversation.”

Jaehyun takes another bite of his apple, munching while talking at the same time. “You see, he didn’t reply when you told him you like me. That’s fine, maybe he didn’t care. But when you ask him about me being your boyfriend, why didn’t he answer right away?”

“Well-”

“Because he doesn’t want to! Come on, Jinyoung can’t possibly tell you no right? You’d be too nosy and asked why.”

“Hey!”

“So what I think is, he likes you.” Jaehyun concludes, snapping his fingers in triumph. “Now the real question is, do you like him back?”

You shut up, eyes running away from Jaehyun’s. You don’t know, well you have no idea. You never thought about liking Jinyoung because you don’t want to risk your friendship. It might have crossed your mind a few times but you ignored the curiosity, you figured it’s the best to stay being friends.

Not that you don’t want to invest your feelings in Jinyoung, you’re just too afraid that it will backfire you. You don’t like rejection and you certainly don’t want to become awkward afterward.

“I don’t know.” you answer truthfully because really, you don’t know.

“Then find it out.”

You close the door to your room, putting down your bag on the floor and sit down on your bed. Jinyoung is at his study table, unmoved.

“How long are you going to give me cold shoulders, Jinyoung?” you ask, your feet kicking the air. You know he’s listening, even if he has his earphones in. That’s just Jinyoung style, to wear earphones so that no one bothers him, especially Jackson. Whenever Jackson comes over, he’d retreat when he sees Jinyoung stuffing them in his ears. “I know you can hear me, Jinyoung.”

“Let’s not fight anymore.” you look down, suddenly you feel sad. You feel like you’re losing Jinyoung. Is this what Jinyoung feels before? So near yet so far?

“It’s been hard without you, Jinyoung.” 

“The mornings are extremely cold without your laugh and the lunch is plain without you cracking up lame jokes. Dinner is boring because you avoided me and night…the nights are even colder without your hugs.”

“I know you’d say, ‘so what? You have Jaehyun so go and ask him to eat with you, crack up lame jokes and give you hugs.’ but I don’t want Jaehyun. I want you.”

Jinyoung has stopped writing, listening to you intently. You noticed this, which is why you continue, “Jaehyun told me that he thinks you like me.”

You didn’t realise it but Jinyoung stiffens at the mention of his crush on you, catching him off guard. He knows that someone will eventually tell you about this but he definitely didn’t think of Jaehyun of all people.

“I don’t know if it’s true. Jaehyun isn’t exactly the best fortune teller so I definitely can’t gamble with his words.”

“I just want you to know that you’re extremely important in my life. I never thought of putting you second just because I found someone new. In fact, I decided that I’ll stay as friends with Jaehyun, I don’t find him that attractive anymore.”

You stand up and walk over to his side, sitting on his bed just beside him, forcing him to face you. “So if that’s the case, can you please stop being jealous now? I don’t have anything to do with Jaehyun. We are not dating and can I please have my Jinyoung back?”

Jinyoung is frowning, his eyes scan you from the top to the bottom. “You don’t find him attractive anymore? Really?”

“Well-” you grin, crinkling your nose up playfully. “He’s still handsome. I can’t deny that.”

You feel more at ease, now that you’ve told Jinyoung what you’ve been wanting to tell him. It feels lighter, your brain and your heart. You hated the days where Jinyoung ignored you and you’re left imagining what you would do without him in your life. The thought alone scares you, the fact that you’ve been so comfortable with Jinyoung beside you and you never thought he’ll leave you for someone else someday.

“So you still like him.” Jinyoung confirms and turns around to his note again, picking up his pen. 

You scream, pulling him away from his work and tugs him nearer, trying to have all his attention on you. Jinyoung struggles to escape from your grips but fails miserably, laughing along the way. You join him, laughing together as you bring him nearer.

“Let me go, oh god. Since when you’re so strong?” he wrestles his way out of your grip again, hoisting you up and throws you on the bed easily. “Did you practise lifting Jaehyun’s dumbbells?”

“Yeah, I went there to exercise.” you reply deadpanned and laugh when Jinyoung tickles you as a revenge.

“Hey.” you call out, trying to get his attention again. Jinyoung’s arms have you caged, he’s on top of you while you lie comfortably on his bed. “Is it true?”

“What is?” Jinyoung’s eyes rake you face up and down, like how his thoughts are running wild inside his brain. He doesn’t know what to do, does he confess now? Does he confirm that it’s true? Does it mean you’ll be his? Can he do that? Can he kiss you?

“Is it true that you like me?” just as Jinyoung, you’re nervous. You’re conflicted. What if he doesn’t actually like you? What is Jaehyun really bad at guessing? You’re not surprised, nothing surprises you about Jaehyun anymore.

“What if it’s true?” 

“I’d be so happy.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been thinking for a while and I don’t think i can ever end up with someone else other than you.”

“Oh yeah?” Jinyoung’s heart stops at your confession, then beats harder as he feels his adrenaline pumping his blood faster. “Can I kiss you now?”

You shake your head, watching Jinyoung’s eyes grow and a cute frown appears on his face. You wanted to laugh but you held back, looking straight into his eyes.

“Why not?”

“You haven’t said you like me.”

“Oh my god.” he curses, turning away from you when he feels his face grows hotter. “Fuck- fine. I like you. Are you satisfied?”

You laugh, nodding furiously. Jinyoung doesn’t waste any more seconds, diving right then to press his plump lips to yours, taking the perfect shape of your lips in his. 

Finally. His mind says, Fucking finally.

“God. finally.” he mutters to himself, somewhat trying to convince himself that indeed, he’s kissing you. “Oh god.”

“Do you know how long I have been dying to kiss you?” he reaches down to press another kiss on your temple, another on your cheeks, nose and your chin, then pressing the last one on your lips once again.

You chuckle under him, pressing your palms on his chest to hold him. “How long?”

“Too long, I’ve forgotten already.” his reply earns another laugh from you. 

Jinyoung moves to lie beside you, watching you play with the string of his hoodie. It’s funny how time works. About fifteen minutes ago you’re sitting on your bed, trying to fix things up and now you’re lying beside him after he kissed you breathless.

“I thought you’re dating Jaehyun.” he did. He really thought that after what happened, you’d hate him. “I hated myself for screaming at you.”

A strand of his hair falls on his forehead and you reach to swipe it away, pushing his locks behind. “Yeah, you’re quite rude.”

“Very rude.”

“I thought our friendship is ending.” you confess, eyes on his chest instead of his face. “I thought it’s the end of us. That you got fed up with me.”

“Then it turns out that you’re just a jealous boy.”

Jinyoung pushes your chin up, making you face him. “Just a jealous boy? You didn’t know how jealous I am when everything is about Jaehyun! Have you ever heard I talk about other girls? No right? See who’s rude now?”

Another laugh escapes you and you caress his face, calming him down. “I didn’t know, okay. I thought you were fine with it.”

“Yeah right.”

“But we’re here now, right? You don’t have to be jealous anymore.”

“Really?” Jinyoung’s finger finds your lock, playing with the strand. “Do you like me too?”

You really want to make him suffer a bit. Just a bit since he’s being a pain in the ass for ignoring you for one week straight. 

“Hmm, I need to think about that again.” you grin, sending Jinyoung into a series of screams.

“What the- out!” he pushes you off his bed with you hanging onto him while your laugh fills the room. “Get out of my bed!”

“Oh my god. I can’t believe you! Did you just play me?”

“Is my feeling that easy?”

“Get out of my bed!”

“Jinyoung!”

“Out!”

You don’t know about your feelings, just yet. But there’s one thing for sure. You love Jinyoung’s kisses. You can deal with that. But his petty ass? That calls for a serious mental discussion.

Copyright © 2020 jjpmoans. All rights reserved

[ Writings ]

[fischerfrey]

HPHM character profile

Identity

Name: Gael Romero

Gender: cis male

Age: Depends on the timeline

Birth Date: March 14, 1972 (Pisces)

Species: Human wizard

Blood Status: Pure-blood

Sexuality: Bi

Alignment: Lawful Evil

Nationality: British and Portuguese

Residence: London

Myer Briggs Personality Type: The Debater (ENTP)

The Mage

Wand: Elm, 11 inches, unicorn hair, slightly yielding

Misc Magical Abilities: legilimens

Boggart Form: His father.

Riddikulus Form: His father in ridiculous clothing slipping on something and not being able to get up.

Amortentia: (What do they smell like?) N/A

Amortentia: (What do they smell?) N/A

Patronus: A raven

Patronus Memory: Gael has trouble producing the patronus charm for a long time. Only after making genuine friends and learning to love and be loved, is he able to produce it.

Mirror of Erised: -

Specialized/Favourite Spells: The cruciatus curse, Gael is also adept at various fire/explosion spells.

Appearance

In-game Appearence:

Height: 5′9 (175cm)

Physique: Lean, muscular

Eye Colour: Brown

Hair Colour: Black

Skin Tone: Tan

Body Modifications: The dark mark for a while during the Second Wizarding War

Scarring: A scar where his dark mark used to be.

Inventory: Wand, books, a quill and ink at all times, reading glasses

Fashion:

Allegiances 

Hogwarts House: Slytherin

Affiliations/Organizations: Slytherin house, Death Eaters (temporarily), The Order of Phoenix

Professions: Curator of Magical Artifacts

Hogwarts Information

Class Proficiencies:

Astronomy: E

Charms: O

DADA: O

Herbology: A

History of Magic: O

Potions: E

Transfiguration: O

Electives:

Arithmancy: E

The Study of Ancient Runes: E

Alchemy: O

Extra-Curricular: -

Favourite Professors: Septima Vector

Least Favourite Professors: -

Relationships

Father: Alistair Rookwood

Brother of Augustus Rookwood, Alistair was a prominent Death Eater, working in secret for Lord Voldemort in the Magical Law Enforcement department while his brother worked in the Department of Mysteries. He was killed during the First Wizarding War when his son was just a small child and thus never had a big role in Gael’s life.

Not much is known about Alistair’s life, except that he was a Slytherin with great ambition and little time for sentimentality or familial bonds.

Mother: Rebeca García Romero

Rebeca is a resourceful, ambitious witch who married into a prominent family very young. She is self-serving and wants power but loves her son fiercely. She never agreed with Voldemort or her husband in joining the Death Eaters. Eventually when she realized her son was in danger thanks to Alistair, she assassinated him, took control of his family’s finances, and moved away from the Rookwood ancestral home into London, disappearing with Gael. She also changed the family’s last name into Romero to keep low profile after Voldemort’s defeat.

Love Interests:

Colette Belrose by @gcldensnitch​

Best Friend:

years 1-3: Barnaby

years 4-6: Kind of a loner

year 7-> Colette Belrose by @gcldensnitch​

Rivals: Verna Malinda and her little posse

Enemy: R, The Order of Phoenix (temporarily), eventually Death Eaters

Dormmates: Barnaby Lee

Pets: An owl called Coco

Closest Canon Friends: Merula, Ismelda, Barnaby, Tulip

Closest MC Friends:

Colette Belrose @gcldensnitch​

if you would like to be friends with Gael, hmu!

Background/History

Pre Hogwarts: 

Gael and his parents lived at the Rookwood ancestral home in the English countryside for a few years after his birth. When the war got to be too much for his mother and she assassinated her husband, the remaining two family members fled to London to live in a lavish penthouse hidden from muggles and wizards alike.

Gael’s mother is very strict and expects him to excel at school, as well as other areas of life. They’re not by any means close and neither is their relationship very warm, but Rebeca would do anything to protect her son.

Hogwarts Years:

Gael is popular in school. He’s handsome, smart, and always up for finding loopholes in the school rules. He rarely gets in trouble because he has a knack for exploiting said loopholes and almost never getting caught. He has almost flawless academic record, but he’s not extremely interested in any after-school activities. In years 6 and 7 he garners quite the reputation as a player and kind of an asshole to be honest.

Order of the Phoenix / 2nd Wizarding War:

Gael works as a Curator of Magical artifacts for a while, trying to keep a low profile while times grow darker. He also grows closer to Colette Belrose and the two develop feelings for each other. However, the war breaks out in full force before it can really go anywhere.

Gael is recruited into the ranks of the Death Eaters at the outbreak of the Second Wizarding War. He only complies because Voldemort is threatening to hurt his mother. Like her, Gael is not interested in the blood purity agenda Voldemort advocates for, nor does he think that Voldemort would make a very good evil overlord. In fact, if Gael were interested in world dominion, he’s sure he’d be better at it than the self-proclaimed Dark Lord. This is not to say his power doesn’t terrify Gael, because it does.

Eventually he breaks ranks and reluctantly helps the Order of Phoenix.

Post-War: Gael feels immense guilt for his actions during the war and struggles greatly during the years after the war. However, he and Colette reconnect even after everything that happened, and slowly begin to mend their relationship.

Personality

Positive attributes: resourceful, ambitious, intelligent, observant, charming, witty, confident. Negative attributes: conceited, judgmental, cynical, liar, emotionally unstable, mean, even cruel to an extent.

[border-spam]

Bit of a subjective question, but I'm at a crossroads with my au. I posted a while ago that I think Ava should have been Lilith's apprentice - and while I do still think that, I think it for the story we had. A lot of its problems came from Ava's connection to Maya when she had more of one with Lilith - but I'm changing the story, and I do like Ava's relationship with Maya. So, in a different world, would Ava work best as Maya or Lilith's apprentice?

This is such a great question that I’m gonna essay it because I’ve not commented on Ava as much as I wanted to in general. Any choice you make here in regards to using her is going to work, because she’s a blank slate character you can develop to fit your overarching planning. I like Ava. There is nothing wrong with her character build, she’s an exciting and interesting idea to work with. The problem is:

Ava in BL3 was a plot mechanic for a plot that never actually happened. She was seeded into the game story in a way that destroyed the “Sirens can choose who they give their powers to” rule in the same game it was added to canon in.

Throughout Bl3, Maya repeatedly drops hints that she knows Ava is going to be a Siren. She does this more than once, it’s literally the driving cause of her death when Ava mouths it to the twins (apart from blatant fucking stupidity from all sides which I’ll cover later), and that as well as how much Maya cares about Ava, is meant to be a major plotpoint in the game. 

It isn’t, it gets completely ignored after the entire plot shits itself when Troy goes full e-thot and dies. 

Essay under the cut. /dab

Ava exists as a character to further a very simple and clear plot that’s fed to us from the point we meet her:

She is going to be a Siren.

Maya knows she is going to be a Siren.

Maya has taken her on as an apprentice because she wants to train her how to be a Siren before she becomes one (wat). 

She is very important to Maya and may as well be a sister figure.

We know this, and we sit and wait to be shown it instead of told it, but the problem is that BL3 completely falls at showing not telling (which I covered before), and instead we are left wondering WHY the hell Maya, a character we know very well and understand is very intelligent, is doing any of this at all.

We have no context for why Maya cares about her, we have no build up of relationship or backstory. It’s hamfisted and shoved into the game plot and like most things in BL3, the writing thinks the players are stupid enough to just accept it and move on - which is why the story has been slammed in general as time goes on. If Maya had for some reason met Ava and decided this kid was going to inherit her powers, it means also she had vast amounts of knowledge she was refusing to share with any other Sirens and chose newcomer Ava over any of the women she’d known very well who could be excellent choices over the years.

None of this is very Maya at all, so we move onto option two for why she chose Ava:

Because we have no actual explanation for WHY Maya is so close to this kid or HOW she knows she is going to be a Siren, we have to rely on mystical fuckery instead. That Sirens can somehow... sense.. other future Sirens? And this is where things start spiraling downhill very quickly. 

If Sirens can sense other future Sirens, then they aren’t choosing who their powers go to, are they. 

They can’t decide who gets them, it’s preordained. And if they can sense this, why did NO ONE cop Tannis was going to be one or WAS one the entire time she was? It makes literally no sense, it’s contradicting its own plot as the story continues, so now we are left with something really terrible. 

Now we are left with Maya and Ava having a clearly written side plot of:

She is going to be a Siren.

Maya knows she is going to be a Siren.

Maya has taken her on as an apprentice because she wants to train her how to be a Siren before she becomes one (wat). 

She is very important to Maya and may as well be a sister figure.

.... except as the game progresses you realise this fits nowhere in the story. It literally does not fit into BL3′s plot, it contradicts it blatantly.

The story needs to get Maya’s power into Ava for some reason, it’s stressed she knows Ava will get her powers and is highly defensive of her and given us no actual explanation of why, and suddenly we are in a cutscene that’s going to haunt a huge group of players for a long ass time, watching Maya, this intelligent woman we care about and know:

Grab one of the fucking Leech Sirens who kill with direct contact with her hands. 

Have him fumble at her arm as she has him in a choke hold and begin to husk her despite not having a clue he could do that. 

Stare in surprise and give a “Wat lol” response (I don’t blame u Troy that was mine too)

Threaten our dearly beloved Ava

We are meant to care about all of this, but none of this intended plot has been put in the game correctly so instead we just stare in complete confusion and try and work out what the hell just happened. It’s garbage tier storytelling. It’s absolute wankery.

The only way to redeem this arc would have been for Maya’s death to somehow have some grand saving grace across the rest of the game, like for Troy to turn on Tyreen and join the raiders - become the true Leech and return Maya’s power to Ava with a somber acknowledgement of her loss, or to have Ava become a force for good, mature and step up to the mantle Maya had known she would bear and use Maya’s gifted powers to defeat the God Twins, but instead we got nothing. 

Ava was completely forgotten about till the end of the game where suddenly she’s given control of the Raiders, and Maya just.... lol. Goddddd. No one cared.

Because this fizzled so badly, and the actual arc was:

Maya dies -> Troy gets power ->Troy pisses on moon -> Troy dies -> Ava gets power -> Fart noises -> Ava big girl commander now 

Ava is hated for being a shitty character and people want Maya back. 

Ava isn’t a shitty character, her and Maya (and Troy’s!) plots were not part of BL3 and so came across as clownshoes honk honk leading to people hating that entire arc. 

If you’re using Ava in an AU, go ham with her! Don’t even consider the canon, it’s -shite-. If Sirens don’t predetermine who an upcoming Siren is going to be, then don’t even have her in your AU if you want, because there is no reason for her to have been in the position she was at all. 

She’s not in Leech Lord as a main char for the above reason, there is literally no logic for Maya to have taken her on as an apprentice because Siren’s can’t.. magically.. tell.. who will be one in the future. She’s just a kid who got a chance at a home and a live with Maya’s sect instead of some star crossed Mary Sue the game used her as. 

I think personally, Ava’s way of interacting with other’s and explosive emotions does suit Lilith a little closer to Maya, but we got so damn little of her canonically that you cannot go wrong. Just have fun with her, give her the use she missed out on BL3.

She’s a great char, she just needs a chance. 

[sugar-petals]

Hav u done predictive readings for who the boys will end up with & how their career will go etc?

a 2020 career prediction i’ll publish at the end of december! their future partner we’re doing now. i added some angel oracle cards today ♡ those describe the theme of their relationship.

Jungkook: QUEEN OF CUPS

Hallelujah! Oh yeah. That’s an ideal card, picture perfect. The Queen of Cups is quite possibly one of the best partner allegories to have because a) Cups rule smoothness of relationships and emotions and b) she’s a royal card which indicates a highly developed state of mind where things finally come to fruition unlike with the aces and pages. Jungkook will mean so, so much to his partner. That’s a twin flame or soulmate connection we’re talking here. A really beautiful and dignified person, a little touchy feely, but experienced with love. They can really depend on another. Maybe they’re from Busan like him or the shore generally, the sea plays an important role for the Queen of Cups. There are tiny little cherubs on the card, I’m thinking he’ll be treated like an angel. It’s a very healthy relationship that leaves nothing left to be desired. As for looks: It might be a blonde, taller person whose favorite color is blue. There are cliffs on the card that remind me of Cornwall’s coast. The English theme is pretty consistent in his readings lmao we’re dealing with an excellent speaker. And, because it’s a court card with quite abundant imagery, it’ll be a S/O of quite some status. I am sure the person will be known to us already, or at least a big deal within his or her family. It’s queen energy, so the mom friend is right on their way into JK’s heart. Another aspect is that his partner might be rather spiritually inclined — mind you, every person is spiritual, how aware you are makes the difference — or even psychic. Water signs ahead; Pisces, Scorpio, Cancer.

— angel card: “Playfulness — To bring about romantic feelings, allow your youthfulness to shine with delight.”

Taehyung: THE EMPRESS

Yet another powerful female archetype, this reading does not mince words.  And also a very wholesome outlook, it’s very similar to the Queen of Cups vibe, or Queen of Pentacles if we’re looking at other tarot suits. I was really happy when I saw this card come out. The Empress almost always signifies kids, the theme is fertility. Taehyung will live a very lavish life with this partner. The card has so much opulence and positivity on it. Nature, food, pillows, ample garments, jewelry, good weather, and harvest time. And, of course, the Empress is fairly curvy, so expect either Taehyung gaining weight in the future or his partner being chubby. It’ll be the good life, in a good place, with the right person. There’s a settled and satiated feeling there. Stagnation could be possible after a while because this card gets too cozy. However, loyalty and a ripe sexual life are like glue to the union so I don’t see Taehyung stress anytime soon there. The card gives me plenty of clues how his home will look like as well, it’s highly decorated and comfortable. Interestingly enough, we see a huge wheat field surrounding the Empress — hence the card symbolizes fertility — so I wonder whether Taehyung’s dream of getting involved in farming will play out. I mean… coincidence? The countryside will take on an important role in any case, maybe with photography as well. Tae marrying a farmer’s girl, who knows! Beautiful card, definitely. It’s a good prospect for him. The Empress is major arcana so, this state of happiness will last him for a giant while and it’s destined. The boy will shed a tear no more. 

— angel card: “Attraction — you receive love by enjoying the moment.”

Yoongi: KNIGHT OF SWORDS

It’s the fastest card of the tarot! The power of swords paired with a knight on his speedy horse is quite a combination. Yoongi’s future partner is not going to waste time to charge right into sweet honey boy’s life. We’re dealing with a hothead, athlete, extrovert. I don’t think Yoongi has to do as much as crook a single finger to get things going. In fact, he’s the one waiting it out. He’ll just lean back and poof there is his significant other bursting into his life. Though I gotta say, the Knight of Swords has a detriment and that is: He leaves as fast as he arrives, and you have to be sure of your boudaries. Major burnout dangers there. The relationship might be short compared to say Namjoon’s or Tae’s reading. It’s Yoongi’s part to make this last if that’s what he’s going for. It’s a sword card, there have to be efforts and mental clarity involved to solve the problem. Though, someone rushing towards their love interest with so much passion has a good reason why he or she does that. Yoongi could get snatched away by someone else, with so many people interested in him you really have to be determined. With the archetype being a knight I also know it’s going to be someone younger than him, there’s a certain rebellion to the card. It has military energy. Yoongi’s partner will be one outrageous and direct person. They are 100% unafraid to face off with Yoongi, they have better comebacks than the master of sharp remarks himself. When it comes to sex, Yoongi will probably forget his own damn name after that ride. This person is wild as hell. It’s not a fellow sleepyhead as we saw in the ideal type reading, but a S/O bringing him out of his dreamy world. There’s a strong encouragement for Yoongi to achieve a lot more when he enters that relationship, it’s a power up to be expected here.

— angel card: “Worth the Wait — Divine timing predicates your relationship.”

Namjoon: TEN OF PENTACLES

Nice! Wow. The tarot says Namjoon is blessed. This is the card of wealthy, happy old age. He’s headed right for it already. In all tarot suits, the 10 indicates fulfillment. E.g. the Ten of Cups shows relationship completion because cups stand for love, the Ten of Swords shows total defeat because swords symbolize conflict, the Ten of Wands signifies complete effort/exhaustion since wands represent impetus. So the Ten of Pentacles equals coming full circle in terms of material things as pentacles are responsible for all tangible value in life. He’ll be living blissfully with his S/O. Everything is cared for. We’re talking long-term relationship here. The card shows an old man settled in his favorite coat and spot. Namjoon has a kind of master plan to gently arrive in his 80s, 90s. It’s not a surprise, we know he looks ahead, the tarot is aware of it, too. And yes: He will finally be able to answer his question “Who the hell am I?”. Ten of Pentacles means: Identity found. I had to wipe away a tear for that one man. I think it has to do with the location. The setting of the card is like a polished type of town with castles. A bit Italian, Mediterranean. Not as modern as say Seoul, bigger cities. It could be him moving to a warm country where things are slow, antique, and indulgent. I once said Namjoon has a type of European mindset going on, if he moves there it with his loved one or his partner is European it wouldn’t be shocking. There are two dogs on the card so, Joon will have pets involved in the partnership. The 10 of Coins also shows a couple immersed in a chat. His S/O is primarily someone he can talk to about the world, it’s a very conversation-heavy union. Now, the old man on the card could also show that he finds another old soul— we’ve had that topic come up in the other readings as well, the tarot is sure he’ll meet someone on par. Earth sign energy here.

— angel card: “Love Without Fear — Open your heart to give and receive the highest of energies.”

Hobi: THREE OF PENTACLES

Even more pentacles. Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn is possible. His partner is a darn good team player, their friendship bond is strong. First thing that came to my mind, they’ll build a house together or get busy working around their home in some kind of way, that’s interestingly enough the central theme I get from the card. Distribution of chores and general tasks is a big thing, and they’ll be planning a gazillion industrious things from what I got through the imagery. There’s an abbot, architect/craftsman, and monk seen on that card working on a church wall embellishment. One gives directions, the other has drawn a sketch that illustrates what kind of decor the abbot wants to have on the church wall, and the third guy does the crafting, hammer and chisel in hand. It’s not a love-related card per see so it’s important to point that out. It could hint at some pretty huge artistic collaborations coming our way instead. If you combine that, it could happen in a way like… Hoseok gets with someone he collaborated/collaborates with sometime soon, or a little later. Yup. Chicken noodle soup with Becky G on the side! Their chemistry is amazing and she is so cute, it’s very much possible. Or, in a wider sense, it’s someone from an upcoming project. That’s interesting. It seems quite sure that Hoseok won’t retire after BTS even if he’s pretty damn rich already, he’ll stay in the industry and foster (=embellish) his career with a strategy behind it much like the abbot on the card. We’ll get to know his partnership(s) along the way, but the tarot says it’s not top priority. Pentacles are earth sign energy so Mercury, Saturn and Venus are what will dictate that union, it’s the overall pragmatic energy that’s taking center spot. Also, since the church is so prominent on the card, Hoseok is working towards marriage nine times out of ten. 

— angel card: “Fresh Love — A new person has stirred your romantic feelings.”

Jimin: FIVE OF SWORDS

That one is… sigh. The odd one out in this post. How do I put it. It’s a series that just doesn’t break. Jimin constantly gets the messy cards and not so love-friendly swords when I do relationship readings on him. There is something going on and I kind of hate it already. But the tarot is being adamant so we have to decipher what’s going on and see the resolution, there’s more to it than just the cards doing him dirty. The Five of Swords pictures a battle aftermath with a mischievous winner and two defeated parties walking away sore. The winner picks up the weapons left behind to hoard then. So when it comes to his future S/O, we’re talking someone wants to play win-lose with Jimin’s insecurities and will get away with it because they’re strong, sly, and full of themselves. They don’t have his best interests in mind, especially when quarrels go down. Lack of harmony overshadows the relationship. There’s some major bullshit and that’s scary. The partner is like a leech, leaving only Jimin pissed, it’s not a lose-lose situation, things are wholly unequal. Picking on Jimin leaves their ego inflated and intensifies resentment. Working against each other over working with another is going on. Jimin has to walk away from that situation and mend his wounds, and never return. It’ll be a period of growth in his life ahead where he becomes aware just how giving too much and being defeated by that does him no good, as well as learning how to spot douchebags who don’t care about him. The Five of Swords is among the quintessential breakup card, it’ll be what defines his future relationship unless or until he has the grit to stop the fight and search for equity and affection instead of put-downs.

— angel card: “You Deserve Being Loved — You’re worthy of love.”

Jin: SIX OF PENTACLES

Pentacles, pentacles everywhere. I see that the hyungs have some financial themes going on, Jin’s card is emblematic of that. First let’s have a look what’s going on with the imagery. A wealthy man holds a scale on this card. He distributes coins to poor men kneeling before him. It’s an interesting symbol for a relationship, if not for another more important area of Jin’s life which could very well be philanthropy. He is the wealthy man on the card, sharing in just ways as the scale indicates. That could be providing for his partner a lot or simply doing charity together with them. I do have to say, and that is similar to Hoseok’s card, I don’t see too much of a romantic theme here which is surprising, but the tarot knows its ways. Some members might be doing partnerships much later in life or eschew them. With Jin here, I get a sense that business relations and deals will be an overarching theme in the near future. It could be the situation with his dad’s business in Germany the card is hinting at, and if marriage is involved, there’s a major exchange of valuable ideals and things involved between parties. A recurring theme is class difference though, the same popped up in the last reading. Jin’s status will be much, much higher but he can tip things into balance with a fairness mindset, Libra energy. A huge gap will be bridged. Last but not least, mea culpa: I think I’ve been missing the obvious interpretation there. The signs are everywhere in the cards for his readings, and oh my god: Jin is the member who’ll get together with a fan. 

— angel card: “Children — Kids will have an influence on your love life.”

[shielddrake]

Psychonauts: Setup and Payoff Done Well (If Not Perfectly)

So about a year ago I posted a long lecture about how Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts 3 had major problems in the story department when it came to setup and payoff. I basically said that Final Fantasy XV had lots of scenes with payoff that were not set up very well and Kingdom Hearts 3 had some excellent moments that set up story elements but never followed through on them. And while I think some of those issues have been addressed with some of the DLC released for both games (I reserve my right to be a little salty Episodes Aranea, Luna, and Noctis were canceled) I still stand by my statement that these games have big problems with this.

 During the past year, I have received a couple of comments regarding my position on this, ranging from “Can you give a good example of setup and payoff?” to “Well, if you’re so smart, why don’t you come up with a better example?” And I thought, well, what kind of game would be a good example of excellent use of setup and payoff? What game or series would I say does the job so much better than any writer has or does, video game or otherwise?

 And then, the middle of a repeat playthrough I always do before a game’s sequel comes out, it came to me:

 Now Psychonauts has been out since 2005, so a spoiler warning might seem a little silly here, but I think a lot of gamers have been playing it for the first time since the sequel was announced, so just in case: Major spoilers for the original Psychonauts game under the cut.

 Whenever someone tries to argue whether or not video games can be considered art, one of the first games that comes to my mind is Psychonauts, and not just because of its amazing aesthetics. It has some of the best storytelling, script writing, level design, music, voice acting, and art direction I have ever seen. This game is possibly one of the best video games I have every played, despite the flaws that it does have (I’m looking at you, Meat Circus), and it is easily on my list of top ten favorite video games.  Is it really any surprise that Psychonauts 2 reached its crowd-funding goal of over $3,000,000 in about a month? And yes, I admit that I am one of those backers, just to put out there any bias I know I have.

 But this isn’t meant to be a review of Psychonauts.

 I replayed Psychonauts a few months ago with the idea of the first game being fresh in my mind when the sequel comes out, which is supposed to be sometime this year of 2020. I was absolutely inundated with examples of effective setup and payoff as I played, so it seemed like the obvious choice to go over how this story-telling technique can be used not only well, but also to the point where it’s almost like there are far too many examples.

 Honestly, I could go on and on and on about setup and payoff in Psychonauts’ story, but for our purposes here most of the focus is going to be on just three big things that are really important to the main storyline: Linda the Lungfish, bunnies and meat, and Raz’s dad.

 One thing about setup and payoff is that the setup has to actually happen in a way that the audience, in this case the player, can’t miss it.  There are several moments in the game that Linda is mentioned, the first time being in the opening cutscene, where Bobby teases Dogen about the monster at the bottom of the lake.  You can’t miss the setup when it is thrown in your face that way.

  But that’s not the only time we get references to some sort of lake monster. Before going into Basic Braining, the first official level of the game, if Raz talks to Mikhail, the adorable Russian psychic mentions a “giant, hairless bear” in the woods, asking if Raz has seen it and wanting to wrestle with it. Now, it’s not said for certain if Mikhail is talking about Linda or if he’s just referring to the telekinetic bears you meet later on, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it’s supposed to be the former.

  The first time the player heads for the lake, Elton will run up to Raz and mention the “brain-eating fish” that supposedly lives there. Well, now we’ve got both a mention of the lake monster and the fact that it goes after brains.  Hmm, sound familiar in retrospect?

  Optionally, Raz can also talk to Elton about the fish being spooked by something in the lake.

  Although only the first lake interaction with Elton is mandatory (whether it’s when you go to see Milla or before then), both of these moments act as reminders of the setup of the lake monster established in the opening cutscene.  

 And then there’s the scene in the woods between Raz and Lili on the way to Sasha Nein’s Secret Lab. Raz says that something was watching him, a shadowy being that smelled like pond scum.

  I absolutely love Lili’s face in this scene, by the way.

 We kind of get distracted by their interactions and Lili basically trolling Raz, but that’s part of what makes good writing. The scene is foreshadowing something without making it overly overt…not that the game is subtle every time, but the point still stands. This game does a great mix of the obvious and the subtle.

 The game also has optional dialogue with Coach Oleander and Raz reporting on a UPE (Unidentified Paranormal Entity), which he suspects is aquatic in nature. And Oleander seems oddly insistent that the lake monster does not exist, that it’s just a camp fable.

 Finally we get to the Brain Tumbler Experiment. Needless to say, it’s in this level that a lot of the elements come together. We come across a demon in the form of a big, shadowy figure that spits out a diving helmet. Again, does that sound familiar at all?

  There is a minor mention of the lake monster in the mental vault below the spooky thorn tower (more on that near the end of this post), but other than that there’s a break in the game where the lake monster isn’t mentioned for a while. We don’t get another explicit scene about it until Raz and Lili meet Linda properly at the edge of Lake Oblongata…where Lili gets kidnapped, we go through the boss sequence under the lake, and enter Linda’s brain of Lungfishopolis.  And the final payoff occurs with the Hideous Hulking Lungfish transporting us to Thorney Towers and giving Raz her real name, Linda.

  Now would any of that be nearly as rewarding if we had never heard of the Hideous Hulking Lungfish of Lake Oblongata prior to her official appearance? Every single player would just have visible question marks hanging over their heads if Linda just showed up out of nowhere. Deus Ex Lungfish, anyone? But that’s not what the developers did.  They spent plenty of time building up to Linda, making her reveal not only make sense but also weaving her into the story so that her reveal is more than satisfying.

 There is just one thing I’ve always been curious about, a sort of chicken-and-egg scenario. Did the legend of the lake monster start because genetically-altered Linda showed up and starting attacking campers?  Or did the legend already exist and Oleander used it as an excuse to write off any “sightings” of the monster? Any ideas?

 Moving on from Linda, we come to the imagery of meat and bunnies.

 Without knowing the full ending of the game, most players would think that it’s a bit strange I would stick meat and bunnies together in the same category. Sadly, the connection between these things is a bit on the morose side, and they are actually first introduced at the same time as well.

 When I first played Psychonauts, the first time I actively thought about bunnies and meat being related somehow was during the Brain Tumbler Experiment, but that’s actually not the first time the game introduces these. Anyone else notice that Basic Braining has figments of meat cleavers, butcher knives, a pig, a duck, and a fox? I could logic that a meat cleaver and butcher knife fit with the whole army theme, but a pig, duck and fox?

  Kind of odd animals would be included in all this, especially animals that are either butchered or hunted. At least that’s what I thought at first.

 It is in Oleander’s mind that we first see the “meaty plant” that Lili saves from being squashed by Raz. It’s also here that we see bunnies hopping around the snowfield with the Gatling gun. This early in the game, is this important or just set dressing?  I’m ashamed to admit, but I thought it was just weird set dressing when I first played, but it makes more sense as the story goes on.

  Turns out it’s important all right, since the next time we see both meat and bunnies is in the Brain Tumbler Experiment. ��Mr. Bun” seems like a rather random animal to have in Raz’s brain, but then again bunnies showed up in Basic Braining as well.  Is there a connection somehow? Sasha tells Raz that an animal may represent a primal fear or memory.

 He’s right on the latter, although a player going through the game for the first time might not know why (and I admit, on my first playthrough, I didn’t). And there’s more meat and meaty plants here. Raz doesn’t directly mention these (at least he didn’t during my most recent playthrough, to my recollection) but they are pretty obvious, to say the least.

 So that’s two things connecting the Brain Tumbler Experiment and Basic Braining.  Is this a normal occurrence? Maybe these things just show up in brains? Lili does mention she had been dreaming of meat plants, after all, both in Basic Braining and in the cutscene before Raz enters Milla’s mind. Maybe it’s a primal need for meat? Don’t tell the vegans I said that. The Vegan Police would be very unhappy with the final level of this game.

 After the Brain Tumbler Experiment is finished, we know that the brain interference was coming from Oleander, but it’s not explained why there are meat and bunny references up until that point.  There’s actually no mention of either at all in the subsequent levels until the last.  Lungfishopolis, The Milkman Conspiracy, Gloria’s Theater, Waterloo World, and Black Velvetopia are devoid of all meat or bunnies, which possibly leads the player to forget about the whole thing for a while (and when I say “the player,” I really mean me).

 In fact, we don’t see any sign of either until the final level of the game, Meat Circus. And, oh boy, Meat Circus.

  Yeah, it should come as no surprise that I hate this level. I hated it so much that on my first playthrough of this game in 2005, I rage quit and didn’t look at Psychonauts for several days. I eventually went back to it and beat it, but let’s say I was more than a little relieved that they lowered the difficulty for it in subsequent releases.

 But I digress.

 We reach Meat Circus, the combined consciousness of Raz and Little Oly, and the payoff of all the meat and bunny stuff we’ve seen thus far. We have Frankenstein-esque meat bunnies, platforms made of steaks, rail grinding on bones, trapeze and trampolines of bones and skin, and of course the dark versions of both Raz’s and Oleander’s fathers, who not only are evil but also become a giant two-headed monster.  When Sasha said that problems seem larger in your head than in real life, I should have known it would be taken more literally in this game.

  I mean, is it really any shock that Oleander is carrying some trauma after seeing his bunny friend be decapitated by his own father? It’s never said how old Little Oly is, but considering his behavior he is clearly younger than Raz, so this happened when he was in the single digits of age. That’s really not something a little kid should see. That’s just asking for PTSD.

 Anyway, back to setup and payoff, which is pretty obvious at this point. We have plenty of mentions of both bunnies and meat throughout the game, leading to the final boss that is both creepy and downright terrifying. Not only does this boss conclude Oleander’s trauma with his father being a butcher and killing his favorite bunny, but it also allows Raz to defeat his inaccurate mental image of his own father.  Both of them are able to move forward from that point on. Defeating this monstrosity acts as the ultimate payoff and conclusion for both Raz and Oleander.

  Speaking of Raz’s dad…

 Raz’s relationship with his father at the start of the game is strained, to say the least. When Raz goes to learn Levitation from Milla, the very mention of his father showing up to take him home from the camp makes him nervous. Not the best sign here, and his other comments regarding his dad don’t make it much better.

 Once Raz reaches cadet ranks ten and twenty, we get cutscenes of Raz talking with Cruller in tutorials for Pyrokinesis and Telekinesis. During Pyrokinesis, Raz first mentions that his father, Augustus, hates psychics and trained Raz in acrobatics to the point where Raz worried his dad was trying to kill him. During Telekinesis, Raz reveals his suspicions that his father is psychic as well. The memory vault we see of Raz running away from home only reinforces Raz’s perspective.

  We’re led to believe that Raz’s statements are the truth, which is a logical conclusion since he’s the game’s protagonist, but the end of the game shows otherwise. At first I thought this meant Raz was simply an unreliable narrator, but that turns out to not be the whole story. While Raz is an unreliable narrator in that there are a lot of things he just doesn’t know, it’s not malicious in any way. Raz simply doesn’t know that he father really does care about him. That’s the magic of using the third-person limited point of view.

 Up to this point, we’re led to believe that Augustus is a neglectful father at best, but it turns out that Augustus does love his son. He’s just apparently really bad at showing it. The very fact that he is the only one able to break into Raz’s “hard to penetrate skull” shows that there is a deeper relationship between them.  And Augustus is clearly distraught that his own son sees him as a monster in his mind. Poor Augustus.

  I think that a lot of the interactions between father and son in this game was cut out due to both budget and time constraints, because I feel like there is more to be said with these two than what we get in the final product. (I’m thinking we’re going to get more of that in the sequel, but that is up in the air at this time.) This doesn’t bother me too much though, since we do get effective enough setup and payoff that it doesn’t seem like it comes out of nowhere.  They do finally talk to each other and express their concerns, mending their relationship…in the middle of a battle with a two-headed father monster.

  Clearly these two have communication issues. The morale of this story is that it’s important to talk to one each other.

 And this is certainly paid off in the end cutscene of the game.  When Sasha says they want Raz to come along to rescue Truman Zanotto, Raz doesn’t just run off with them again.  He turns around and gives his father puppy-dog eyes, clearly asking for permission to go this time. And Augustus not only gives it, he gives Raz his blessing and encourages him to “show them all.” Contrast this to the backstory of the game, where Augustus flat out forbids Raz from having anything to do with the Psychonauts and Raz running away in secret.

  And if that’s not satisfying use of setup and payoff, I don’t know what is.

 That’s not to say that all of the setup and payoff in Psychonauts is perfect. To be fair, there are times when the setup can be missed, and therefore the payoff that comes later can be confusing. The most obvious example of this is the nightmare that attacks you in The Milkman Conspiracy. When I first played the game all those years ago, my first thought was, “What in the world? What is this thing and where did it come from?”

  Of course, on subsequent playthroughs, I did find the demon room in Milla’s mind, showing the same nightmares she had caged away. This is the difference between a sane mind and an insane one.  Milla has all her demons under control (although notice that they have not gone away) while Boyd’s run amok because he has no way of mentally dealing with them, since his brain is a little bit busy with this, well, milkman conspiracy.  The nightmares that attack in Boyd’s brain make more sense after I saw the ones in Milla’s brain. In this case, the payoff wasn’t bad since the nightmare miniboss wasn’t a bad fight, but context in the form of the setup made the payoff better.

  Other times the setup can be missed?  The other big one is the resolution of all the campers’ storylines. Unless the player spends time going around camp throughout the game and seeing the interactions the other campers have with each other, the little scene you have with each one once they are re-brained won’t make a lot of sense. The love triangle between J.T., Elka and Nils? J.T. and Chops having conflict about J.T. abandoning his best friend for his new girlfriend? Crystal and Clem attempting suicide to become more powerful? Chloe thinking she’s an alien? Maloof basically becoming a mob leader with Mikhail as his right-hand man? Elton and Milka’s blossoming love? …Just to name a few? Yeah, the context of all that is missed if the player doesn’t bother to talk to the other campers throughout the game, but I attribute that more to the player than the game.  The developers accounted for this in the story, so it’s more the player didn’t look for the setup rather than Double Fine just not bothering to include it.

  That’s just some examples of setup and payoff that I feel are probably the most important to the main storyline of Psychonauts.  They are far from the only examples. Really far from it. Oh boy, could I go on about the scenarios of setup and payoff that happen in this game.

 Dogen talking to the squirrels, who tell him that the short man is going to kill everyone, only for them to really be talking about Oleander?

 Elton saying that Oleander’s recruiting office in Basic Braining resembles a dentist office, only to find out that one of the main antagonists, Dr. Loboto, is in fact a dentist?

  Oleander having a mental vault trapped behind some mental cobwebs? Well, he has something to hide, despite him saying he doesn’t when you first play through Basic Braining. Of course, getting angry at Raz for snooping around a room with a curtain doesn’t give off the idea that Oleander has something to hide. Nope. Not suspicious at all.

 Agent Crueller having all the different personalities around the camp, hinting as his unstable mental state?

 The Hand of Galochio appearing in the lake as a reference to Raz’s family having a curse to die in water, and said curse just so happens to show up not only as a gameplay element but as a story element during Meat Circus?

 Raz being able to read Lili’s thoughts when she doesn’t mean for him to, then for him to do it two more times near the end of the game?

 How Lili’s cold stops her from sneezing out her own brain?

 Sasha’s hatred of tacky lamps having to do with his past working in a tacky lamp factory? Or the shoeboxes indicating his father was a cobbler? Or the bed as the location of where his mother was horribly ill and died?

 Raz needing to climb the “creepy thorn tower” in the Brain Tumbler Experiment, only to later need to climb Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed?

 The mention of the town of Shaky Claim on the giant tree stump at the camp entrance referring to the sunken town that is (somewhat) explored during the boss sequence under the lake?

 Raz talking about being back in high school in Black Velvetopia despite being ten years old? Not to mention the stories the dogs tell about Lana/Lampita and Dean/Dingo?

 Lastly, do I really need to mention the incredibly weird and seemingly out of place mental vault below the creepy thorn tower? A brain chicken hatches out of an egg, meets a fish in water, goes to a circus, gets placed in a teacup, and blasts people to death? Kind of a summation of Raz coming out of the egg in the Brain Tumbler Experiment, meeting Linda at Lake Oblongata, entering the Meat Circus, and getting placed in a brain tank and defeating two people? Was the mental vault a foreshadowing of the main plot of Psychonauts? I don’t know.  What do you think?

  *Takes a deep breath.* See what I mean when I say I could really go on and on about setup and payoff in Psychonauts? There are so many examples that it’s kind of ridiculous. It could be said that there’s too much of this kind of storytelling in the game, but I fail to see how that is a problem.  There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, but when it comes to setup and payoff, Psychonauts is not it.

    Credits 

Screenshots courtesy of the following:

Comic Foil, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN-Y6XDe0oWyhgjcGunJqGw

 Global Gaming, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pjsxNSwSSA

 StoryGamer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXZ1vDFp_dw&t=139s

 ThatNotSoAznKid, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ford0MGvWIc

[outerloop]

Porting Falcon Age to the Oculus Quest

There have already been several blog posts and articles on how to port an existing VR game to the Quest. So we figured what better way to celebrate Falcon Age coming to the Oculus Quest than to write another one!

So what we did was reduced the draw calls, reduced the poly counts, and removed some visual effects to lower the CPU and GPU usage allowing us to keep a constant 72 hz. Just like everyone else!

Thank you for coming to our Tech talk. See you next year!

...

Okay, you probably want more than that.

Falcon Age

So let's talk a bit about the original PlayStation VR and PC versions of the game and a couple of the things we thought were important about that experience we wanted to keep beyond the basics of the game play.

Loading Screens Once you’re past the main menu and into the game, Falcon Age has no loading screens. We felt this was important to make the world feel like a real place the player could explore. But this comes at some cost in needing to be mindful of the number of objects active at one time. And in some ways even more importantly the number of objects that are enabled or disabled at one time. In Unity there can be a not insignificant cost to enabling an object. So much so that this was a consideration we had to be mindful of on the PlayStation 4 as loading a new area could cause a massive spike in frame time causing the frame rate to drop. Going to the Quest this would be only more of an issue.

Lighting & Environmental Changes While the game doesn’t have a dynamic time of day, different areas have different environmental setups. We dynamically fade between different types of lighting, skies, fog, and post processing to give areas a unique feel. There are also events and actions the player does in the game that can cause these to happen. This meant all of our lighting and shadows were real time, along with having custom systems for handling transitioning between skies and our custom gradient fog.

Our skies are all hand painted clouds and horizons cube maps on top of Procedural Sky from the asset store that handles the sky color and sun circle with some minor tweaks to allow fading between different cube maps. Having the sun in the sky box be dynamic allowed the direction to change without requiring totally new sky boxes to be painted.

Our gradient fog works by having a color gradient ramp stored in a 1 by 64 pixel texture that is sampled using spherical distance exp2 fog opacity as the UVs. We can fade between different fog types just by blending between different textures and sampling the blended result. This is functionally similar to the fog technique popularized by Campo Santo’s Firewatch, though it is not applied as a post process as it was for that game. Instead all shaders used in the game were hand modified to use this custom fog instead of Unity’s built in fog.

Post processing was mostly handled by Unity’s own Post Processing Stack V2, which includes the ability to fade between volumes which the custom systems extended. While we knew not all of this would be able to translate to the Quest, we needed to retain as much of this as possible.

The Bird At its core, Falcon Age is about your interactions with your bird. Petting, feeding, playing, hunting, exploring, and cooperating with her. One of the subtle but important aspects of how she “felt” to the player was her feathers, and the ability for the player to pet her and have her and her feathers react. She also has special animations for perching on the player’s hand or even individual fingers, and head stabilization. If at all possible we wanted to retain as much of this aspect of the game, even if it came at the cost of other parts.

You can read more about the work we did on the bird interactions and AI in a previous dev blog posts here: https://outerloop.tumblr.com/post/177984549261/anatomy-of-a-falcon

Taking on the Quest

Now, there had to be some compromises, but how bad was it really? The first thing we did was we took the PC version of the game (which natively supports the Oculus Rift) and got that running on the Quest. We left things mostly unchanged, just with the graphics settings set to very low, similar to the base PlayStation 4 PSVR version of the game.

It ran at less than 5 fps. Then it crashed.

Ooph.

But there’s some obvious things we could do to fix a lot of that. Post processing had to go, just about any post processing is just too expensive on the Quest, so it was disabled entirely. We forced all the textures in the game to be at 1/8th resolution, that mostly stopped the game from crashing as we were running out of memory. Next up were real time shadows, they got disabled entirely. Then we turned off grass, and pulled in some of the LOD distances. These weren’t necessarily changes we would keep, just ones to see what it would take to get the performance better. And after that we were doing much better.

A real, solid … 50 fps.

Yeah, nope.

That is still a big divide between where we were and the 72 fps we needed to be at. It became clear that the game would not run on the Quest without more significant changes and removal of assets. Not to mention the game did not look especially nice at this point. So we made the choice of instead of trying to take the game as it was on the PlayStation VR and PC and try to make it look like a version of that with the quality sliders set to potato, we would need to go for a slightly different look. Something that would feel a little more deliberate while retaining the overall feel.

Something like this.

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize (and when that fails delete)

Vertex & Batch Count

One of the first and really obvious things we needed to do was to bring down the mesh complexity. On the PlayStation 4 we were pushing somewhere between 250,000 ~ 500,000 vertices each frame. The long time rule of thumb for mobile VR has been to be somewhere closer to 100,000 vertices, maybe 200,000 max for the Quest.

This was in some ways actually easier than it sounds for us. We turned off shadows. That cut the vertex count down significantly in many areas, as many of the total scene’s vertex count comes from rendering the shadow maps. But the worse case areas were still a problem.

We also needed to reduce the total number of objects and number of materials being used at one time to help with batching. If you’ve read any other “porting to Quest” posts by other developers this is all going to be familiar.

This means combining textures from multiple object into atlases and modifying the UVs of the meshes to match the new position in the atlas. In our case it meant completely re-texturing all of the rocks with a generic atlas rather than having every rock use a custom texture set.

Now you might think we would want also reduce the mesh complexity by a ton. And that’s true to an extent. Counter intuitively some of the environment meshes on the Quest are more complex than the original version. Why? Because as I said we were looking to change the look. To that end some meshes ended up being optimized to far low vertex counts, and others ended up needing a little more mesh detail to make up for the loss in shading detail and unique texturing. But we went from almost every mesh in the game having a unique texture to the majority of environment objects sharing a small handful of atlases. This improved batching significantly, which was a much bigger win than reducing the vertex count for most areas of the game.

That’s not to say vertex count wasn’t an issue still. A few select areas were completely pulled out and rebuilt as new custom merged meshes in cases where other optimizations weren’t enough. Most of the game’s areas are built using kit bashing, reusing sets of common parts to build out areas. Parts like those rocks above, or many bits of technical & mechanical detritus used to build out the refineries in the game. Making bespoke meshes let us remove more hidden geometry, further reduce object counts, and lower vertex counts in those problem areas.

We also saw a significant portion of the vertex count coming from the terrain. We are using Unity’s built in terrain system. And thankfully we didn’t have to start from total scratch here as simply increasing the terrain component's Pixel Error automatically reduces the complexity of the rendered terrain. That dropped the vertex count even more getting us closer to the target budget without significantly changing the appearance of the geometry.

After that many smaller details were removed entirely. I mentioned before we turned off grass entirely. We also removed several smaller meshes from the environment in various places where we didn’t think their absence would be noticed. As well as removed or more aggressively disabled out of view NPCs in some problem areas.

Shader Complexity

Another big cost was most of the game was using either a lightly modified version of Unity’s Standard shader, or the excellent Toony Colors Pro 2 PBR shader. The terrain also used the excellent and highly optimized MicroSplat. But these were just too expensive to use as they were. So I wrote custom simplified shaders for nearly everything.

The environment objects use a simplified diffuse shading only shader. It had support for an albedo, normal, and (rarely used) occlusion texture. Compared to how we were using the built in Standard shader this cut down the number of textures a single material could use by more than half in some cases. This still had support for the customized gradient fog we used throughout the game, as well as a few other unique options. Support for height fog was built into the shader to cover a few spots in the game where we’d previously used post processing style methods to achieve. I also added support for layering with the terrain’s texture to hide a few places where there were transitions from terrain to mesh.

Toony Colors Pro 2 is a great tool, and is deservedly popular. But the PBR shader we were using for characters is more expensive than even the Standard shader! This is because the way it’s implemented is it’s mostly the original Standard Shader with some code on top to modify the output. Toony Colors Pro 2 has a large number of options for modifying and optimizing what settings to use. But in the end I wrote a new shader from scratch that mimicked some of the aspects we liked about it. Like the environment shader it was limited to diffuse shading, but added a Fresnel shine.

The PSVR and PC terrain used MicroSplat with 12 different terrain layers. MicroSplat makes these very fast and much cheaper to render than the built in terrain rendering. But after some testing we found we couldn’t support more than 4 terrain layers at a time without really significant drops in performance. So we had to go through and completely repaint the entire terrain, limiting ourselves to only 4 texture layers.

Also, like the other shaders mentioned above, the terrain was limited to diffuse only shading. MicroSplat’s built in shader options made this easy, and apart from the same custom fog support added for the original version, it didn’t require any modifications.

Post Processing, Lighting, and Fog

The PSVR and PC versions of Falcon Age makes use of color grading, ambient occlusion, bloom, and depth of field. The Quest is extremely fill rate limited, meaning full screen passes of anything are extremely expensive, regardless of how simple the shader is. So instead of trying to get this working we opted to disable all post processing. However this resulted in the game being significantly less saturated. And in extreme cases completely different. To make up for this the color of the lighting and the gradient fog was tweaked to make up for this. This is probably the single biggest factor in the overall appearance of the original versions of the game and the Quest version not looking quite the same.

Also as mentioned before we disabled real time shadows. We discussed doing what many other games have done which is move to baked lighting, or at least pre-baked shadows. We decided against this for a number of reasons. Not the least of which was our game is mostly outdoors so shadows weren’t as important as it might have been for many other games. We’ve also found that simple real time lighting can often be faster than baked lighting, and that certainly proved to be true for this game.

However the lack of shadows and screen space ambient occlusion meant that there was a bit of a disconnect between characters in the world and the ground. So we added simple old school blob shadows. These are simple sprites that float just above the terrain or collision geometry, using a raycast from a character’s center of mass, and sometimes from individual feet. There’s a small selection of basic blob shapes and a few unique shapes for certain feet shapes to add a little extra bit of ground connection. These are faded out quickly in the distance to reduce the number of raycasts needed.

Falcon

Apart from the aforementioned changes to the shading, which was also applied to the falcon’s custom shaders, we did almost nothing to the bird. All the original animations, reaction systems, and feather interactions remained. The only thing we did to the bird was simplify a few of the bird equipment and toy models. The bird models themselves remained intact.

I did say we thought this was important at the start. And we early on basically put a line in the sand and said we were going to keep everything enabled on the bird unless absolutely forced to disable it.

There was one single sacrifice to the optimization gods we couldn’t avoid though. That’s the trails on the bird’s wings. We were making use of Ara Trails, which produce very high quality and configurable trails with a lot more control than Unity’s built in systems. These weren’t really a problem for rendering on the GPU, but CPU usage was enough that it made sense to pull them.

Selection Highlights

This is perhaps an odd thing to call out, but the original game used a multi pass post process based effect to draw the highlight outlines on objects for both interaction feedback and damage indication. These proved to be far too expensive to use on the Quest. So I had to come up with a different approach. Something like your basic inverted shell outline, like so many toon stylized games use, would seem like the perfect approach. However we never built the meshes to work with that kind of technique, and even though we were rebuilding large numbers of the meshes in the game anyway, some objects we wanted to highlight proved difficult for this style of outline. 

With some more work it would have been possible to make this an option. But instead I found an easier to implement approach that, on the face, should have been super slow. But it turns out the Quest is very efficient at handling stencil masking. This is a technique that lets you mark certain pixels of the screen so that subsequent meshes being rendered can ask to not be rendered in. So I render the highlighted object 6 times! With 4 of those times slightly offset in screen space in the 4 diagonal directions. The result is a fairly decent looking outline that works on arbitrary objects, and was cheap enough to be left enabled on everything that it had been on before, including objects that might cover the entire screen when being highlighted.

Particles and General VFX

For the PSVR version of the game, we already had two levels of VFX in the game to support the base Playstation 4 and Playstation 4 Pro with different kinds of particle systems. The Quest version started out with these lower end particle systems to begin with, but it wasn’t enough. Across the board the number and size of particles had to be reduced. With some effects removed or replaced entirely. This was both for CPU performance as the sheer number of particles was a problem and GPU performance as the screen area the particles covered became a problem for the Quest’s reduced fill rate limitations.

For example the baton had an effect that included a few very simple circular glows on top of electrical arcs and trailing embers. The glows covered enough of the screen to cause a noticeable drop in framerate even just holding it by your side. Holding it up in front of your face proved too expensive to keep framerate in even the simplest of scenes. 

Similar the number of embers had to be reduced to improve the CPU impact. The above comparison image only shows the removal of the glow and already has the reduced particle count applied.

Another more substantive change was the large smoke plumes. You may have already noticed the difference in some of the previous comparisons above. In the original game these used regular sprites. But even reducing the particle count in half the rendering cost was too much. So these were replaced with mesh cylinders using a shader that makes them ripple and fade out. Before changing how they were done the areas where the smoke plumes are were unable to keep the frame rate above 72 fps any time they were in view. Sometimes dipping as low as 48 hz. Afterwards they ceased to be a performance concern.

Those smoke plumes originally made use of a stylized smoke / explosion effect. That same style of effect is reused frequently in the game for any kind of smoke puff or explosion. So while they were removed for the smoke stacks, they still appeared frequently. Every time you take out a sentry or drone your entire screen was filled with these smoke effects, and the frame rate would dip below the target. With some experimentation we found that counter to a lot of information out there, using alpha tested (or more specifically alpha to coverage) particles proved to be far more efficient to render than the original alpha blended particles with a very similar overall appearance. So that plus some other optimizations to those shaders and the particle counts of those effects mean multiple full screen explosions did not cause a loss in frame rate.

The two effects are virtually identical in appearance, ignoring the difference in lighting and post processing. The main difference here is the Quest explosion smoke is using dithered alpha to coverage transparency. You can see if you look close enough, even with the gif color dithering.

Success!

So after all that we finally got to the goal of a 72hz frame rate! Coming soon to an Oculus Quest near you!

https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2327302830679091/

[leakgaming457]

How much ram do i need for gaming

Of Wolf's Gaming Weblog

It really is time to recognize the greatest gaming blogs of the year. EDIT:I used to watch the Feedback video more than at G4 every week, but it really is gone down hill the final few times I watched it and https://www.eviloid.online/ now that Adam Sessler is not on it and they have that girl from IGN that absolutely everyone hates in just about every episode I just cannot be bothered to watch it any more. Still worth going back and watching some of the older ones though. Klepic employed to be on that show and back then in the early days was when it was the very best. Back when they in fact talked about gaming news with some semblance of intellect alternatively of just gushing about whatever game they are told is cool this week.

You are quietly accepting and at peace with your selection to grow to be a board gamer for life. Your family members knows you appreciate board games and almost certainly play them with you. Your good friends know love board games, and you have good gaming groups. You have committed to assigning portion of your property to be a board gaming area. For the initially time, you have began to remove games from your collection. Maybe you've sold the games, or you just don't have space to maintain practically all of them. Mentally you accept that you do not need to play every game, and you have likely narrowed down a handful of games that you want to play regularly.

I got into action games late but when I did it absolutely changed how I viewed gaming forever. The game which brought me round was Viewtiful Joe. Here was a game with a deep and open-ended combat program which seemed to be built as a suggests for the player to express creativity. This technique is then pitted against opponents and obstacles which were created from the ground up to interact meaningfully with the core technique. The course was fixed, but the approach for dealing with that course was fully down to the ingenuity, talent and inspiration of the player. You play like you have a big audience watching and the game constantly entices you to boost the concentrate is not merely on having the player from A to B, the focus is on receiving the player to play Viewtifully”.

Nowadays is the day! I will be progressively releasing the names of the leading ten gaming blogs of 2014. Looking more than this list, I am positively blown away. So quite a few awesome posts this year! If you have been disappointed by the Ennies… if you feel that the real deep thinkers in gaming commentary don't get the interest they deserve… effectively, people, we are going to fix that.

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It is worthwhile getting a niche which will bring persons back time and again. This is how you turn out to be an authority in the gaming community. Your branding and domain need to all point to what it is you do, generating you easy to come across. Be inventive. Place your own character into your writing, and your editing. Play to your strengths. If you're a whizz on the Xbox, run with that.

Paul: Green Man Gaming, like quite a few information driven technologies marketplaces, was born in a spreadsheet and continues to this day to be heavily data dependant. The business uses historical analysis of correlated data to produce forecasts of buyer behaviour, as properly as real-time information streams to augment these forecasts in true time.

Augmented reality games are becoming a front-runners of gaming market. Nowadays, this is not just the fantastical notion. AR games enable you to fight aliens, capture fantastical creatures, defend kingdoms in the real world. And all of this is doable without the need of super high-priced headsets - just an AR-enabled smartphone or console is necessary. Wolf's Gaming Weblog is on a run to give you the most precise and sincere evaluations on the prime games in Xbox One particular, Personal Personal computer games and Board games. With this web-site in your bookmarks tab, the weather is generally superior to get your hands on some on-line games.

The Game Fanatics brings to you precise reviews, podcasts, gadget articles, gaming articles, and weekly YouTube videos about great on the internet games. The web-site is dedicated to displaying the planet some of the greatest games launched and the developers of the same. As a user reaches a gaming internet site, they expect to discover loads of visual content and media files. So, give them what they want. In order to deliver a properly-structured presentation of your content, use galleries on your site's pages and posts.

An additional of our best gaming influencers for 2018 is The Rad Brad We had to involve this channel due to the fact The Rad Brad is a especially properly known YouTube gamer. He produces an extraordinary amount of extremely-excellent, enjoyable content. It's no wonder he's known for creating the ideal video game walkthroughs on social media. The Rad Brad has helped to make a quantity of influencer advertising and marketing campaigns a true good results.

Gaming content material on YouTube is some of the stickiest. Much more than 20 of the major 100 YouTube channels with the most subscribers worldwide are gaming connected. Who's the most subscribed? That would be Let's Play creator PewDiePie , with more than 32M subscribers. His loyal following now outnumbers the population of Canada. To give you some point of view, Google Trends shows that searches for PewDiePie on YouTube are on par with stars such as Eminem and Katy Perry. He's even created a cameo on South Park.

Alia Lia” Shelesh, far better recognized as Sssniperwolf is the initially female gaming influencer on our list. She began her YouTube career by playing initially-individual shooter games like Contact of Duty, Halo, and Far Cry. Her account these days consists of vlogs and various video games that she plays and has extra than 7 million subscriptions.

The HyperX Cloud Stinger is the finest sub-$50 Pc gaming headset you can present. It has a lot of options, but maybe most critical is the excellent audio and a mic that has a definitely very good audio pickup. It also has a steel slider, an quick-to-adjust volume controls located on the bottom of the suitable ear cup, a swivel-to-mute noise-cancellation microphone, and flexible 90-degree rotating ear cups.

In the ‘90s, televisions got bigger, and gaming consoles got more powerful. Nintendo and Sega fought for the prime spot with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Sega Genesis, respectively. You will uncover all the retro games for SNES and Genesis you loved back in the day in one practical spot. From Golden Axe to Mega Man X, all your favorite 16-bit titles are obtainable at the Retro games shop.

[gamingst417]

Why does gaming show under data usage warning

What Are The Most Well known And Ifluential Gaming Blogs Of Uk?

It's time to recognize the most effective gaming blogs of the year. SHIELD portbale is built on Tegra 4, offering unmatched Android gaming performance and graphics high-quality. We place with each other an great list of the most effective WordPress Gaming themes that are developed and created for gaming magazines, blogs and critique sites. A website for a casual mobile game about a restaurant could possibly have a fully distinct target audience so consider about this although generating your choices about your initial gaming blog. You may perhaps need to concentrate on your mobile web page style or monetize with distinct advertisements or affiliate solutions.

Under you will locate over 20 awesome gaming WordPress themes for various purposes to come to be aspect of the speedy moving gaming market. NVIDIA GAMESTREAM technologies works precisely like desktop GAMESTREAM, and is compatible with GeForce GTX 800M, GTX 700M, and choose GTX 600M GPUs installed in some of today's finest gaming notebooks.

Avantura has one of the very best building blocks we've observed for constructing a gaming website, it supports special color categories ( a will have to for any severe gaming magazine), can be combined with popular widgets, can be color customized per page, has many alternatives for the header and footer and it has an incredible good seeking blog post design. Also, it has a really good about the author module and some nice next and previous article hooks. On best of it all, it supports a good mega menu with photographs.

Rules Not To Follow About GAMING

Comics Gaming Magazine is an on the net gaming community magazine that publishes articles and editorials on on line gaming. The internet site also reviews the newest games and sells gaming merchandise. Subscribe to their magazines to get the most recent facts on top games. Azreal Llywen or Azzy for short is a particular person of contradictions becoming brainy and a total idiot at the similar time. She is a geek by heart always amazed at science but despairs at the sight of math. That is why her areas of knowledge in gaming are puzzle solving, fighting and flat type games.

We're big on game theory at SIG. Our traders and quants hyperlink their interests in gaming with the strategic pondering involved in trading. We like competitors, strategy, and managing threat - just like all excellent gamers. Six of the very best games critics from Britain in one particular spot. They create about every thing connected to Computer gaming. The very best thing about their web page is that they encourage young developers to send them their suggestions and in exchange they offer you their most sincerest suggestions.

So you want to start off a gaming blog? Excellent for you! Gaming is a terrific topic to create a weblog about, with a lot of men and women out there interested in this niche. Irrespective of whether you want to begin a weblog as a hobby or you're seeking to make a bit of money from blogging, the following suggestions can enable you get started.

Ask a Game Dev is a Tumblr weblog committed to hosting a wealth of answers to any inquiries that arise about the world of making video games. The blog has been running for various years and has amassed a huge archive in that time, but the creator nonetheless answers new queries on an ongoing basis. Gaining the type of insight that only an industry insider can offer is a great tool for those aspiring to break into game development, and the concerns answered can be particularly topical in the course of huge gaming events such as E3.

You have played thousands of various board games, yes that is correct not hundreds, but thousands. You are a member of many gaming groups, and you've come to realise that various groups have different personalities and unique dynamics. You fully grasp what style of games you delight in and precise mechanics that you do and never like in a game. You do not actively preach or tell persons about board games, but when asked you are an ambassador for the genre and with your vast knowledge you can usually add thoughtful discussion and predictions relating to games you are yet to play. Your collection is the perfect variety of games that you like. It is not straightforward for a new game to make it into your collection, and you have a defined a rigorous trial of fire that any game need to meet to make it successfully into your collection.

How do enterprises fight back even though maintaining their customers content? We chatted with Danièle Thillmann, Senior VP of Fraud and Payments at Green Man Gaming. Danièle reveals how companies can confront the exceptional challenges of a digital vertical. Armed with years of knowledge in the gaming globe, Danièle shares how gaming providers make a tricky and critical selection: which fraud prevention remedy to use.

If the first tier is gaming's prime-time news programs, the next bunch is the hobby journalists, the working-class heroes, the passionate gamers who are specialists in their own appropriate, specializing in a single or two elements of the market. Sea Nanners has a fantastic reputation amongst gamers on social media, generating him another of our top rated gaming influencers to watch out for in 2018.

And this is exactly where cloud gaming has fallen down historically. In the past, bandwidth just wasn't high adequate to deliver responsive gameplay - but now, we're beginning to see world-wide-web speeds that make cloud gaming a viable selection. 5G broadband is noticed as a essential enabler, with a reasonably high number of customers now in a position to take complete advantage of remotely hosted gaming services. That mentioned, it's vital to note that high-speed online is far from widespread even in developed markets like the US, exactly where poor connectivity and bandwidth caps are still issues for several users.

Why we like it: This is a ideal gaming podcast if you want to discover how the game business seriously functions. The episodes cover subjects like What is incorrect with user reviews?”, What does it price to make a video game?”, Why distribution is cool”, How to get your game published”, and other folks. This is almost certainly the most powerful way to make cash online inside any market and definitely with your gaming blog as effectively.

Brought to you by the business responsible for the World Electronic Sports Games, Planet Gaming is a fantastic spot to get all your esports news. The World Electronic Sports Games is one of the most prestigious esports events in the world, and World Gaming brings that very same level of production value to their blog. Globe Gaming has coverage of a wide variety of esports outdoors the most well known games, as nicely as general esports news. The forum is also a fantastic location to engage and talk about esports with other gamers and fans.

Though PUBG has discovered a all-natural household in Japan, it is also a international good results story. It has achieved higher percentages of players in many smaller sized territories, grabbing the interest of 22.5% of Computer gaming enthusiasts in Norway, 21.9% in Australia, and 17.1% in New Zealand. In April 2017, Green Man Gaming appointed former Take-Two CEO, 35 Paul Eibeler, to its Board as an Advisor and hired Sam Bennett, ex-Sony Entertainment, EA and Activision Neighborhood Manager and Buyer Engagement Head, as EVP to lead its newly formed Customer Experience and Communications team.

From Indie games to PlayStation, Video Chums have got dimma.online How to make a gaming blog all the reviews of your favored weekend picks. Read through their gaming articles, gaming console critiques and participate in contests to win giveaways. Related Posts: Allow the related posts and they will appear at the bottom of each weblog post suggesting 3 (or far more) connected articles to read subsequent. Make certain the pretty layout is enabled in your websites settings due to the fact this is a lot a lot more enticing for gaming blogs.

[jvncnt]

𝐡𝐞𝐲  𝐡𝐢  𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨  ,  beautiful  people  !  my  name  is  lenny  (  22  ,  she/her  ,  mst  )  &  i’m  absolutely  hyped  to  be  joining  this  amazing  group  !  it’s  honestly  been  a  hot  minute  since  i  last  rped  in  a  group  ,  but  i  truly  cannot  resist  anything  that  my  bbys  stephy  &  leia  come  up  with  so  here  i  am  !  i’m  bringing  you  my  boy  jayden  ,  a  completely  new  muse  ,  but  i’m  really  excited  to  develop  him  here  .  pls  bare  with  me  if  whatever  is  below  the  cut  is  a  mess  ,  that’s  just  representative  of  my  permanent  state  rn  sjkdlhfs  but  i  wanna  plot  with  each  &  every  one  of  you  ,  so  pls  hmu  !  give  this  post  a  like  or  slide  into  my  dms  ,  or  u  can  reach  me  via  d*sc*rd  @  lenny the pooh#3088  !  ily  all  already  ,  can’t  wait  to  be  a  part  of  this  group  ✨

*  𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐠𝐨𝐬  here  and  do  i  have  the  tea  for  you  .  jayden  is  back  in  bridgehampton  for  the  summer  ,  living  off  the  vincent’s  family  $670 million  net  worth  .  must  be  nice  to  come  back  home  to  the  hamptons  ,  i  wonder  what  his  fellow  class  of  2017  grads  think  of  his  return  .  you  know  ,  he  was  known  around  town  as  the  vainglorious  and  for  bhs  senior  superlatives  he  was  crowned  as  most  likely  to  punch  you  in  the  face .  i  wonder  if  that  still  holds  true  today  ,  a  lot  can  change  when  you  go  off  to  pace  university and  study  commercial  dance  .  either  way  ,  i  bet  he  is  still  very  steadfast  ,  assured  ,  truculent  and  heedless  .  hopefully  this  time  next  year  the  plans  to  dance  professionally  come  true  .  in  the  meantime  ,  i  look  forward  to  seeing  him  blast  cross  me  -  ed  sheeran  ,  chance  the  rapper  ,  &  pnb  rock  at  every  hamptons  function  .  it’s  going  to  be  a  wild  summer  home  ,  welcome  back  .

alright so i’ll just drop some bullet points here that’ll tell u all about jay !

( tw : mention of suicide , drugs )

his father is one of the most well-known boxers around , but not for anything great : he was a major heavyweight champ in his early days but shortly after jayden was born his mother committed suicide after a really difficult struggle with postpartum depression , which was not aided by her concern for her husband’s dangerous and demanding career — after that , everything sorta went downhill for jay’s father .

he was caught in one of the biggest drug busts in new york history and went to prison , leaving 10 year old jay in the hands of his paternal grandparents in the hamptons , who already were more like parents to him than his father would ever be .

his grandfather was a big time boxer in his day ( then worked as a mentor to some other big names until his retirement ) , and his son’s troubles disappointed him because he wanted the vincent legacy to live on , so he started mentoring jayden to reclaim the family name in the boxing world .

for a while things went well and jay was into the whole boxing thing , but his grandfather began to put more and more pressure on him as he grew older , along with everyone else around him — he was the star of bhs’ wrestling team and everyone envisioned him up on the big stage , giving creed a run for his money — but jayden couldn’t see it . he really wasn’t that into boxing . sure it gave him an excuse to punch shit and get his anger out , but that only goes so far until you begin to question the true meaning behind what you’re doing .

for jay , the only meaning he could see in pursuing a boxing career was to reclaim the vincent name that his father had tarnished all those years ago , as his grandfather wanted him to , but that moment of glory wasn’t enough to outweigh the lack of passion jay felt underneath every punch — not to mention how much he feared following in his father’s footsteps . he also wasn’t sure he wanted to give his father the satisfaction of reclaiming their throne .

so what was he going to do ? well , where his passion lacked in boxing , it absolutely thrived in dance . his grandmother founded a major dance studio in the hamptons and jay spent many evenings there while growing up . at first he just did homework in his grandmother’s office , but then he started snooping on classes out of boredom before he befriended one of the male teachers who convinced him to try out a class . and from there it kinda snowballed . his teacher turned into more of a mentor than his grandfather would ever be , and jay felt more excitement leading up to his dance classes than his boxing lessons .

his grandfather at first saw dance as a good way for jay to keep up his stamina and exercise in different ways , but then he started to notice the imbalance between his grandson’s passion for dance and for boxing and he grew frustrated . “ dancing’s not for vincent men , " he once told jay . “ grow some balls and throw some punches . ”

out of pure fear of his grandfather and disappointing him , jay continued to pursue his grandfather’s dreams for him and trained almost every day , but then he’d sneak away to late night dance sessions because he just couldn’t avoid how magnetized he was to a life of dance . the creativity , excitement , and pure fun held more meaning than boxing ever would for him , but it took him until high school graduation to properly admit that to himself .

his grandmother , the wonderful spitfire of a woman she is , sneakily led jay through the application process of every major dance academy across the states , even though her husband found no use in sending their future heavyweight champion grandson off to college . she’s always supported jay for every decision he’s made and wanted nothing but the best for him , whether it was boxing or dance or something completely different . she’s the source of all of his confidence , ambition , and determination .

it wasn’t until the acceptance letter came in the mail from pace university that jayden came clean to his grandfather . it was a messy , loud , stressful , emotional night , but his grandfather eventually realized there was no use in arguing or fighting — he raised jay to be strong , independent , and everything he wished his son had been , and he knew that when jay set his sights on something , he was going to do it no matter what .

WHEW ok now we come to the present : jay has been excelling in pace’s commercial dance program , his passion for dance blazing brighter than ever before , and he’s returned home to the hamptons every summer to visit his beloved grandparents . with his senior year coming up , he has already lined up several auditions for world tours and music videos and more to set his dance career in motion . he’s honestly looking forward to seeing his old bhs alumni over the summer and rubbing their noses in the success of his own future that he is writing .

as for a lil about his personality :

he’s well known as the vainglorious , aka excessively proud of oneself or one's achievements ; overly vain .

not to say he’s a bit of a dick but ... he’s a dick . 

as much as he hates to admit it , he definitely inherited his father’s hotheadedness and his utter selfishness .

he has always been the kid who doesn’t just think he’s the shit , but is the shit . he’s cocky in an annoyingly charming way and flirted his way up every social ladder during high school .

being the star of the wrestling team also didn’t help to deflate his ego sdljkhf like he didn’t love boxing or wrestling , but he knew he was damn good at it and just likes being the best .

as for some positives about my boy !! he is a charmer and he’s always loved to have fun . he spent so much of his childhood and teen years training and working hard that when he gets free time , whew he revels in it .

working hard is in his blood and he just oozes determination and will be your biggest hype man because he’s a dick but he still wants to see everyone succeed ! he knows what it feels like to be passionate about something and wanting to chase your dreams , and he will help you chase those dreams !!!

a big ol’ flirt , but he’s not really a player . he’s never been one to sleep around or act like breaking hearts is a sport . he grew up really admiring his grandparents’ marriage , all while remembering the poor relationship he knows his parents had , and definitely is a bit of a romantic . but that’s not to say he isn’t down to have some fun either lol

UUHHHH I REALLY DK WHAT ELSE TO SAY !!!

like i said , he’s a work in progress so i’m sorry this isn’t more detailed or fancy , i’m truly just so excited to be here that i wanted to get this up asap !

if you'd like to take a look at the shitty pinterest board i made for him , you can find it right here ! you can ignore the extra sections on it , it's a recycled board from an old muse but i'm leaving the connection sections there in case any of the pins work with the plots i get going with u !

as for connections , i’m truly down for anything and everything !! which i know is sooo basic to say but i’m forreal . if you have some angst or drama you wanna throw my way , i am here for it ! i also pride myself on my ability to brainstorm fun plots , so don’t be afraid to reach out !

xo ily

[aminocasino257]

How to optimize yor windows 10 i5 pc for gaming

50 Finest Gaming Websites To Stop by In 2017

It really is time to recognize the very best gaming blogs of the year. EDIT:I used to watch the Feedback video over at G4 every single week, but it is gone down hill the last couple of occasions I watched it and now that Adam Sessler isn't on it and they have that girl from IGN that every person hates in just about every episode I just can't be bothered to watch it any much more. Nevertheless worth going back and watching some of the older ones though. Klepic employed to be on that show and back then in the early days was when it was the greatest. Back when they truly talked about gaming news with some semblance of intellect as an alternative of just gushing about whatever game they are told is cool this week.

Green Man Gaming , a global e-commerce technologies enterprise in the video games market, nowadays announced that gaming business veteran, Paul Eibeler, has joined the business as Board Advisor. Paul brings a wealth of know-how to Green Man Gaming by way of his practical experience of working at major game publishers, distributors and platforms in the interactive games sector.

The gaming industry saw a number of exciting developments in 2016 touching on distinct elements of the sector. Gaming technology is establishing in quite thrilling methods. The long promised revolution of virtual and augmented reality moved closer to realization. The mania around Pokémon GO with its mass industry appeal and utilization of mobile phones introduced untold millions to the potential of augmented reality. With its launch in India and South Asia it has turn out to be the poster child for the potential of mobile games offered its advanced technologies and the enormous eeee2.site Mobile gaming blog international smartphone penetration.

Right now is the day! I will be progressively releasing the names of the leading ten gaming blogs of 2014. Searching more than this list, I am positively blown away. So a lot of awesome posts this year! If you were disappointed by the Ennies… if you assume that the genuine deep thinkers in gaming commentary never get the focus they deserve… effectively, folks, we are going to repair that.

Green Man Gaming is a global pure play e-commerce and technologies business enterprise in the video games business fuelled by an unhealthy obsession with bringing the magic of games to everyone. The company's geeky expertise, data and IP sit at the core of the organization and is what drives it to develop into a technology leader in the video games ecosystem.

Why Some People Almost Always Make/Save Money With MATCHING

You can have your personal special Gaming Internet site and impress your online players with this totally functional WordPress Theme for On the net Games. Take a appear to our cool characteristics list beneath and you will see that the Gameleon theme will be a excellent choice to your projects and will convince you to acquire it in a minute! Also, if you are not hunting to establish gaming internet site, that is fine as well. Considering that most up-to-date update this theme functions none-gamer edition with similar functionality but noticeably various style.

The stereotypical image of the geeky gamer, sitting alone in his room, playing video games all night extended, is long gone. Gamers have come to be the real stars of social media. No other niche has grown so immensely with the age of social media than the field of gaming. Supported by social media like YouTube and the reside-streaming platform Twitch, the numbers of gaming channels boomed. No wonder that brands recognized the prospective that these gaming influencers bring with them. We have put with each other a list of some of the biggest gaming influencers you have to have to know.

Paul: Green Man Gaming, like numerous information driven technologies marketplaces, was born in a spreadsheet and continues to this day to be heavily data dependant. The business utilizes historical evaluation of correlated data to generate forecasts of buyer behaviour, as nicely as real-time information streams to augment those forecasts in genuine time.

Travel into a virtual world with a VR headset , where all of your senses will be treated to a barrage of stimulus from numerous sources. With the Oculus Rift + Touch Virtual Reality System , you'd have to prepare yourself for much more intense gameplays, more immersive action, and a entirely new and exhilarating gaming gift expertise as the package already comes with 6 VR games that will maintain your heart pumping through your chest. The Oculus Touch controllers are ingeniously made for optimum and unparalleled interaction with the many elements in the virtual world. You will need to have to meet certain method specifications on your pc, although. This also tends to make a great gift for nerds in your life.

The Game Fanatics brings to you accurate evaluations, podcasts, gadget articles, gaming articles, and weekly YouTube videos about good on the internet games. The internet site is devoted to displaying the planet some of the greatest games launched and the developers of the same. As a user reaches a gaming web-site, they expect to locate loads of visual content material and media files. So, give them what they want. In order to provide a well-structured presentation of your content material, use galleries on your site's pages and posts.

It is February! In 2017 that indicates that we get six extra weeks of winter AND your yearly dose of video game statistics and trends. We're taking a look at big events and shifts in the gaming sector and thinking about the current state of gaming. Take a peak, or keep for a week! All statistics are completely researched. See sources at the bottom of the page for additional information.

Gaming content on YouTube is some of the stickiest. Additional than 20 of the top rated one hundred YouTube channels with the most subscribers worldwide are gaming associated. Who's the most subscribed? That would be Let's Play creator PewDiePie , with over 32M subscribers. His loyal following now outnumbers the population of Canada. To give you some perspective, Google Trends shows that searches for PewDiePie on YouTube are on par with stars such as Eminem and Katy Perry. He's even made a cameo on South Park.

Alia Lia” Shelesh, much better known as Sssniperwolf is the initially female gaming influencer on our list. She began her YouTube profession by playing very first-person shooter games like Contact of Duty, Halo, and Far Cry. Her account currently consists of vlogs and different video games that she plays and has additional than 7 million subscriptions.

The HyperX Cloud Stinger is the very best sub-$50 Pc gaming headset you can present. It has a lot of attributes, but possibly most vital is the good quality audio and a mic that has a seriously good audio pickup. It also has a steel slider, an straightforward-to-adjust volume controls located on the bottom of the right ear cup, a swivel-to-mute noise-cancellation microphone, and flexible 90-degree rotating ear cups.

The essential piece of the cloud gaming puzzle is latency. A data centre can have the most highly effective, cutting-edge hardware running the most current titles at ultra-higher settings and framerates - but the user's knowledge will always depend on the speed of their connection. Games rely on true-time interactions, so any lag between a button press and the action playing out is detrimental. Tolerable latency varies across genres, but for quickly-paced shooters and action games, it needs to be kept to an absolute minimum to make certain a playable expertise.

[ambarto]

Headcanons for Maglor’s and Curufinwe’s wives

Don’t you guys just love how so many of “canon” female characters in the Silm end up being basically your own OCs? Anyways, pretty much what it says on the tin, my Feanorian wives OCs. A little bit of these headcanons are in my fic Much, more, less, nothing already, but I’m gonna expand on pretty much whatever my thoughts are. Very long post under the cut (and I sure hope the cut is working because if it isn’t this is gonna be long to scroll through).

Maglor’s wife - Vílerë

- The name for this girl is my own probably kinda sloppy work. I found in some Quenya dictionaries the word “vílë” which means “gentle breeze”, and it fit perfectly within my vision of her. The ending -rë is feminine and can denote an agental meaning, making the name mean “[girl] who makes a gentle breeze”, or something along those lines. I want to point out I have never studied Quenya at all and so this goes off entirely on various dictionaries I’ve been through.

- Vílerë is the girl’s mother-name, and it refers to two things. The first, is that she was born with very weak vocal chords, meaning her voice always sounds barely louder than a whisper. The second, is that she is also a very skilled flute player.

- Her parents are Noldor, but her grandmother is Teleri. Vílerë’s eyes are dark brown, which comes from her Teleri grandmother. Her hair is black, and she wears it long and plainly braided. Her skin is a light brown color. She’s not considered exceptionally beautiful, but not ugly, either. By Noldor standards, she’s cute, but in a little plain way, and a little on the shorter side.

- She’s a quiet girl, she doesn’t speak much. Partially it’s because of her voice, but it’s mostly just her personality. She doesn’t like drawing attention to herself, and she prefers being alone or with a few good friends rather than in the middle of a crowd. Because of this, she also doesn’t play her flute a lot in public, although she is known for being one of the best players and her music is loved by anyone who hears it. With those who know her, she’s kind and sweet, full of smiles and with a sharp wit you would not guess at first.

- While quiet and introverted, she’s got a strong will, and she will let people clearly if there is something that displeases her. She picks her words carefully, and if angry she’s good at getting her point across in the most cutting ways.

- She and Maglor met through music, and spent a great deal of time playing and composing together. She understood his more introspective moments better than most others, and she was drawn to his more caring side. She was good at getting him out of any bad mood and at humoring him when he got involved in some kind of musical competition with others; and he in turn helped her get out of her shell a little, but never tried to force her to come out on the spotlights with him. She took a liking to him from the start, although she sometimes rolled her eyes when his Feanorian pride showed through a bit too much.

- While still deeply in love, she did not follow him in exile. She did not agree with the Kinslaying, especially being part Teleri herself, and thought that it was absurd to do all of this just because of some rocks, no matter how beautiful they were. She didn’t want to leave her husband, and was also quite curious to see what was on the other side of the sea, but in the end she stayed in Valinor with her family.

- Other than music, she also enjoyed poetry and theatre. She had an appreciation for painting, but she never really learnt how to do it, and was more content with just looking at art rather than creating it. She also knew a bit about woodworking, because it was her parents’ profession, but she never really liked it. She enjoyed traveling too, and seeing new landscapes, and after marrying Maglor took her around to see all the cool places he had been to with his father and brothers.

- Some people had to say about her and Maglor marrying, because Vílerë lived in a village outside of Tirion and her family was one of the common folk. Some particularly vicious ones also complained that she didn’t look beautiful enough, but they had all learnt very well to not badmouth the beauty of the wife of someone of Feanor’s line. She was honestly more annoyed by receiving all that attention than by the negative comments in themselves, because she hated the positive attention too.

- She has one younger sister, who married before her and had two children. Vílerë herself married late in life compared to the average, although she was still a couple centuries younger than her husband. Out of her in-laws, the people she got along with better were Maedhros and Nerdanel, and she also was on friendly terms with Fingon and Finrod. While she did not have any quarrels with Feanor or with Maglor’s more outgoing brothers, she did find them exhausting in the long run, and better dealt with in small doses.

- While she grew to resent the Valar, although not as strongly as her husband’s family, when she was younger she liked to spend time in Lorien, and the quiet presence of Irmo and Este.

Curufin’s wife - Vanien

- Her name I took from RealElvish.net because I got lazy, although for some reason it’s not listed there anymore? For some reason? The closest it lists are Vanie and Vaniel, idk why they got rid of the specific one I used. Just my luck. Anyways, Vanien comes from “vane”, which means “fair or beautiful”.

- Her name says all about how she looks. She is the picture of Noldor standards of beauty. She has black hair and strikingly blue eyes, her skin is pale, and her facial features look like they could be put on a statue. She’s the kind of woman who could compete in Tirion Next Top Model, if they had it.

- Her family is entirely Noldor, going back all the way to Cuivienen, and fairly respected. They’re not nobles, but her parents are very good healers, which in Valinor mostly meant they were spectacular surgeons who could fix any idiot who had gotten attacked by a wild boar or something of the sorts. She was herself a healer, and very skilled.

- She and Curufin met though work as well. She had been developing a theory that perhaps one could enchant jewelry to give it properties that would make healing and recovery faster, and she had decided to go look for a good smith who could help her with it. It turned out making that kind of magical jewelry was extremely difficult, but she did get a husband out of the deal.

- She’s a city girl and at ease in the middle of the hustle of Tirion. She’s got a charming smile and she’s an excellent conversationalist. She’s a good girl, but she’s also got a rather competitive and petty streak, and if someone pisses her off she will get herself a nice revenge. Nothing truly bad, of course, but she’s not above turning her husband’s hair green if he acts too annoying. She’s more mischievous than harmful, however.

- Her main flaw is probably that she is a bit vain. She’s very aware of her beauty, and will do her best to flaunt it. She has excellent taste in fashion and hairstyles, and a husband who can craft her some of the most amazing jewelry one could think of. If she goes to a party, one can bet she’ll make sure to be the most breath stoppingly beautiful person in the room.

- She’s more outgoing than her husband, but she doesn’t mind that he sometimes ends up working on a project for days on end, although it does annoy her, as a wife and a healer, how he sometimes ends up forgetting to eat and rest. He often looks for her input when coming up with a design for something. Bitching about people who annoyed them is a bonding activity for them, but of course not their only topic of conversation. They like to go out on rides together, either along or with Curufin’s family. They are both ridiculously proud spouses, Vanien is extremely proud of her handsome, clever, and talented husband, and Curufin is extremely proud of his beautiful, smart, and talented wife. They’re also a good match when it comes to being stubborn.

- Celebrimbor is the only son they had, because Vanien struggled to get pregnant and carry the child to term. Sadly ironical, for a healer, and she was very protective of her son once he was born. She was a caring mother, and the kind who likes to cheer her brooding son by tickling him until he’s out of whatever tantrum he was throwing.

- Officially, it’s said Curufin’s wife stayed in Valinor, but I like to think that she came to Beleriand with him and Celebrimbor. She was a headstrong woman, who had her husband’s resentment towards the Valar and almost enough pride to match him. She did not directly participate in the Kinslaying, but cured the Noldor who had been wounded in it, and got on the ships with her family. Unfortunately, she ended up being killed in the Dagor-nuin-Giliath, and because of her rebellion she was held in Mandos until after the end of the First Age.

- She gets along well with most of Curufin’s family, especially Celegorm and the Ambarussa, and bonded with Feanor by answering all his questions about the body as well as she could. She became good friends with Aredhel, too.

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