#I think Phil's turning that effect down manually now

[haphazardcorvid]

Honestly, good on Phil for keeping going through that nausea effect. They genuinely had to nerf that shit for him during purgatory when it happened in a disaster so he didn't throw up on camera. Motion sickness is no joke, king was playing in his peripherals the whole fight.

#tbh out of rp kinda wish they didn't use that one #But oh well #Pretty sure they didn't know #I think Phil's turning that effect down manually now #Honestly a stronger person than me #I would have caved and asked for a timeout out of character lmao #qsmp #qsmp philza #qsmp luffy

[aslitheryprinx]

What if in nom therapy au, as a prank, Tommy took a shrinking potion (and set up the ender pearl stasis) and snuck onto Wilburs plate? Would Wilbur even notice Tommy, or just swallow him before he realized there was something wrong?

We can say Tommy made sure Wilbur was eating something soft that didnt need much chewing if we dont want to bother considering Wilbur accidentally chewing on Tommy without being gentle.

Ooooh I love this idea! Honestly, I could see both Tommy and Wilbur trying to pull this on someone when they're tiny. I'll focus on Tommy, though.

It would definitely be a bit complicated to pull something like this off. It wouldn't work at Nom Therapy, of course, since you always expect a tiny in your food. At some point when they're hanging out, however, that might work.

Of course, Tommy will probably need some outside help to really get this prank to work.

______

Surprise!

______

Tommy felt giddy as he crept through Phil's backyard. He and Tubbo had been planning this prank for weeks. Phil was in on it too, of course, since it was his house they'd be sneaking around in.

The cover story was that he was at home being force to work on an assignment he'd put off. It was believable enough... he just didn't tell Phil that he actually was postponing working on homework for this.

According to Phil's mission report- also known as a text- Wilbur had laughed at his plight, not suspicious at all. Bitch. That was just one more reason to pull this prank perfectly. That, and he still needed revenge for the sauce incident.

First, he had to get inside.

Just like they planned, Tubbo was waiting by a window near the back of Phil's house, under the guise of using the restroom. He slid it open, and Tommy climbed through as quietly as he could. Tubbo had a maniacal grin on his face that Tommy matched, barely holding back his laugh.

He could hear the muffled sounds of Wilbur and Phil chatting a few rooms away. He dug the tiny pearl stasis chamber out of his pocket and handed it to Tubbo. His friend had brought the shrinking potion- apparently Eret made really good quality ones. Tommy took the small vial, and dumped it in his mouth.

The citrus flavor was a little more bitter than the kind they had at Nom Therapy, and Tommy grimaced a little. When the pins and needles started, however, it was much less intense. Huh. Guess whoever made NT's sacrificed a little bit of the smoothness for taste.

He hadn't even shrunk all the way down yet when Tubbo crouched down and scooped him up with a gentle motion. Even when rushed, he never moved quickly enough to disorient Tommy. Tubbo always handled shrunken people so expertly; it was easy to tell how used to it he was.

Once the potion had stopped and Tommy recovered from the effects, Tubbo held out the stasis chamber. He chucked the pearl inside, and Tubbo slid into a spare room, setting it on a dresser. Then he carefully slid Tommy into his pocket and walked back to the kitchen.

Tommy couldn't see where everyone was, so he had to use his other senses to guess. He could hear Wilbur a little clearer than Phil, who's voice was drowned out a little by the sounds in the kitchen. He assumed Phil was making dinner now. He mourned the loss of a chance to eat Phil's cooking, but he'd eaten before he came. Ah least he hadn't missed out on a Niki meal.

It felt like Tubbo was climbing up to sit, so he'd probably taken a seat at the bar. Wilbur's voice had gotten a lot louder; he was likely on the seat next to Tubbo.

Tommy played with the remote in his pocket while he waited. The stasis chamber he'd bought didn't have the automatic timer like the ones at Nom Therapy. A feature that fancy was a little out of his price range. It could still be activated by remote, or even just manually. It was probably better this way anyways, now Tommy could stay in Wilbur's stomach as long as he wanted.

This plan had been made very carefully. It wasn't like he could sneak around Wilbur's house while he was tic tac sized, so Tubbo was a necessary part in his plan. And Tubbo and Wilbur didn't hang out by themselves very often, so Phil got roped into the prank as well.

That turned out to be a good thing; with Phil's help, they could plan what food Tommy would actually be sneaking into. There was a reason noms were usually done in controlled environments. There was always the chance that since Wilbur might not notice him in the bite of food, he would just crunch down on the food... and Tommy.

Of course, Tommy would respawn, but that wasn't a fun process. An accident like that would probably traumatize both of them for a while.

But Tommy had been eaten by Wilbur dozens of times. It was a strange knowledge, but he knew how the man ate. He knew exactly the food that was unlikely to get him chomped. Wilbur had a strange habit of barely chewing spaghetti. Very often, he would simply slurp the noodles down whole. Tommy, who was often on those noodles or wrapped up in them, teased him about it. It was one of the few dishes where Wilbur didn't nibble on him for a while before swallowing. It was the perfect meal to hide in.

He wondered what was taking so long. It was hard to follow a conversation from inside a pocket, and he was getting bored. There wasn't much to do besides play with the remote. He'd started tossing it up, catching it with one hand.

Suddenly, his world shifted as Tubbo stood up. He fell against the lip of the pocket, fumbling the remote. It slipped out of his hands, and fell what seemed like hundreds of feet down to the floor.

Well fuck. Tommy sat back, embarrassed. Tubbo kept walking, so he probably hadn't noticed the remote. That meant he'd have to wait for one of his friends to manually activate the stasis chamber. He just knew he was going to be teased relentlessly for this.

He hadn't really been paying attention to what was going on; he'd heard something about Tubbo helping with the plates maybe? So it came as a surprise when Tubbo's hand suddenly came in the pocket. His fingers wrapped around Tommy, gently plucking him out.

He was deposited on the edge of a plate that was piled high with steaming spaghetti. He grinned at his friend before wiggling into the mass of noodles. He felt slight movement as his plate was carried over to Wilbur.

Now came the fun part. His goal was to go unnoticed as long as possible, preferably until he was actually in Wilbur's mouth.

It was hard to move around with the spaghetti curled all around him, but he managed to keep ducking back into cover whenever Wilbur scooped up a bite. During one twirl of his fork, Tommy took the opportunity. He grabbed onto the noodles, getting a couple more wrapped around him. He was on the bottom of the fork, so Wilbur didn't see him as he was raised to his friend's mouth.

Wilbur's mouth closed around him, and he pulled the noodles off the fork, Tommy with them. Like he expected, Wilbur didn't even chew, simply slurping the noodles down in one go.

Wilbur made a choked sound as he swallowed, and Tommy burst into laughter as he slipped into Wilbur's stomach. Their prank had gone perfectly, and he could hear Wilbur's confusion from outside.

_____

Wilbur liked spaghetti. Wilbur also liked surprises.

He wasn't expecting a surprise to be in his spaghetti. Of course, surprises were never expected but they were usually in the realm of possibility.

As Wilbur swallowed another bite of Phil's spaghetti, he felt something warm and squirming go down his throat. He nearly choked on the bite, shocked at the unexpected tiny. He managed to get the bite down, and he saw Tubbo and Phil looking at him with barely concealed amusement.

"I think I just swallowed someone," he said bemused.

Tubbo burst into laughter. He just stared at the teen for a moment, before he heard a faint laughter from his stomach. A very familiar laugh.

"Tommy?" He asked incredulously. This time even Phil laughed.

"You were all in on this?" He accused. Then his attention turned to the teen that was settling comfortably in his stomach.

"Aren't you supposed to be studying?"

"Get pranked bitch!" Tommy shouted, Wilbur listening carefully to hear the muffled sound. "This is payback for that time with the sauce!"

Wilbur heaved an exasperated sigh. He a glare to Tubbo and Phil who were still giggling.

"Your face was so fucking funny!" Tubbo laughed.

"Wilbur! Ask if he got a picture!" Tommy yelled.

Wilbur repeated the question with a roll of his eyes. Tubbo grinned wickedly and held up his phone.

"Better, I got a video."

They continued to tease him through the rest of dinner. Tommy was a little quieter than normal, but Wilbur assumed it was because it would be hard to hear him with multiple people talking.

Once things calmed down, Tommy spoke up. He sounded a little nervous, and Wilbur frowned in concern.

"Um, hey big man. I uh... sort of dropped the remote for the stasis chamber before you ate me."

"You dropped the remote?" Wilbur repeated, worry in his voice. "Wh- do- do you need me to get you out?"

"Nonono!" Tommy protested. "I'm fine right now. I just... need one of you to get me out eventually."

Wilbur realized his friend was more embarrassed than anything. He laughed, poking gently at his stomach. He felt Tommy give a small kick back.

"Aww, and what if I want to keep you here for a while Tommy?" He teased. "It sounds to me like you're stuck with me for a while."

"Willll," his trapped friend whined. Wilbur imagined his face was bright red by now. He continued teasing Tommy, making sure the teen never sounded like he actually didn't want to be there anymore. Tommy remained comfortably nestled against his stomach, and Wilbur could hear the humor in his voice. A while later, once the teasing had died down, Tommy spoke up again, voice almost too quiet to hear.

"Hey, Wil, you won't actually make me stay here the whole time, right?" He sounded just a little vulnerable, and Wilbur put a hand on the outside of his stomach. He gently rubbed and felt the miniscule weight of Tommy leaning into the contact.

"Of course not, Toms," he reassured his friend. "If you really want to be let out, I'll let you out. Promise."

He couldn't hear a response from Tommy, but the small weight in his stomach curled even further into him. Wilbur smiled.

It was supposed to be a prank, but he'd enjoyed his surprise.

Nom Therapy Part 1

#mcyt g/t #mcyt giant/tiny #nom therapy au #vore tw #tw vore #aslitheryanswers #dsmp g/t #giant/tiny #tiny!tommy #giant!wilbur

[huphilpuffs]

flares

chapter: 31/? summary: Dan’s body has been broken for as long as he can remember, and he’s long since learned to deal with it. Sort of. But when his symptoms force him to leave uni and move into a new flat with a stranger named Phil, he finds that ignoring the pain isn’t the way to make himself happy. word count: 4k (103k total) rating: mature warnings: chronic illness, chronic pain, medicine a/n: As always, immense thanks to @obsessivelymoody for beta’ing!

Ao3 link || read from beginning

They settle into bed that night with no intention of going to sleep.

Dan’s laptop is open, resting on his thighs. Phil propped up two pillows against the wall for him to lean against, his back and neck still tender from the pressure point test Dr. Kissel performed. The duvet is draped across his lap, his toes sticking out from the end of it. 

Phil stares at the screen over his shoulder. Dan can feel the warm puffs of air from his breathing against his skin.

He types fibro mialgia into Google. 

Its response is Did you mean: Fibromyalgia, just enough to have a quiet breath rumbling between Dan’s ribs. 

He clicks on the first link, a webpage from the Mayo Clinic. He’s pretty sure that’s in America somewhere. It probably doesn’t much matter. The top of the page tells him it’s believed to amplify painful sensations by changing the way the brain processes pain. He thinks that’s what Dr. Kissel said. 

Dan’s not entirely sure what fucked up pain processing is supposed to feel like, but he thinks this is probably it.

The next paragraph is about trauma, about how it sometimes triggers fibromyalgia. Dan tries not to let the fact that he doesn’t relate make his insides twist too much. 

Phil must be able to tell, because he leans in close and whispers, “It says ‘sometimes’.”

The one after that includes a list of other conditions that may be related. Dan reads it once, twice, three times before his gaze lingers on the last two. His stomach goes tight. He doesn’t realize his fingertip’s tapping his computer until Phil reaches over to grab it, snagging one of Dan’s hands and drawing it into his lap.

He doesn’t ask what Dan’s staring at. It’s probably obvious. 

Dan’s spent years trying to convince himself he definitely wasn’t depressed, that definitely wasn’t his problem, and now it’s splashed across the page again in the clearest of sans serif fonts. Dr. Kissel didn’t mention that one. He wonders how much of his chart she’s read, if she knew it would make him feel like this.

He almost shuts the laptop and gives up on research. Maybe he doesn’t want to know after all.

But then Phil reaches over and scrolls down for him, leaving the list of symptoms lighting up Dan’s screen.

Everything after that is overwhelming in a different way. There’s a lot of symptoms. A lot of possible treatments. Dan’s never considered most of them. Massage therapy sounds incredibly unpleasant. Acupuncture, too. Getting enough sleep sounds so implausible that Dan actually laughs, too loud, too sharp. 

The next page on Google is a lot of the same. So is the third, and the fourth. 

Exercise is mentioned a lot. Dan’s joints ache at just the thought of trying to go out for a run, at the memory of how painful it was just to walk to class back at uni, of how sick he used to feel after gym class back in school.

There’s a lot they don’t know about fibromyalgia, he learns. There’s no cure, no definitive answer on why things hurt. There’s a bunch of studies that show little abnormalities that might cause it but none of them agree and none are conclusive and Dan doesn’t much care.

He knows, finally. And there’s some stuff they do know.

It’s not fatal. It’s never fatal. Dan reads that bit out loud, because Phil’s sitting next to him, gaze tripping across the page just a bit slower than Dan’s. Dr. Kissel already told them that more than once. The extra layer of reassurance makes Phil lean in close, his body pressed against Dan’s side.

He dusts a kiss to Dan’s bare shoulder, soft, loving. 

There was a time when Dan might have been terrified by the prospect of a lifelong condition with no cure and no potential to be let out of his misery. It’s still scary now, not knowing what to expect for any of his future. But giving this up isn’t really an option anymore.

Phil lets go of his hand to wrap his arm around Dan’s shoulders instead, leaning in close so his head rests right above Dan’s collarbone. 

“I’m glad you have an answer,” he says. His voice has gone low and gravelly. 

He sounds tired. And he has to work in the morning. And Dan suddenly feels bad for keeping him up for so long with a cycle of redundant articles that say the same little bit of information in slightly different ways. He closes his laptop, scrolled only halfway down the page. 

“You’re not gonna keep reading?”

“I can read tomorrow,” he says. “Apparently I need to focus on getting enough sleep.”

Phil chuckles. He pulls away just enough slip down the mattress until he’s lying down. Dan tosses the extra pillow onto the floor and rests his laptop precariously on the corner of his bedside table before doing the same. He reaches out, draping his arm across Phil’s stomach, cuddling up against his side.

He can’t handle the pressure against his back tonight. Phil doesn’t seem to mind.

His palm settles flat against Dan’s ribcage, head dipping down. Dan looks up to meet his mouth in a quick kiss goodnight.

When he pulls away, he’s smiling.

---

Dan dreams of being old that night. 

He’s sitting in a mostly empty room with white walls and a sofa. There’s a blanket draped over him and an ice pack sitting uselessly atop his head. It’s just like his life now, except when he looks down, his hands are wrinkled and spotted with age. 

He wakes up. The room is still dark, hardly a touch of light filtering through Phil’s curtains. Phil’s still sound asleep, snoring softly.

Dan’s brain is echoing his nan’s complaints about how achy her knees were, the ones he could relate to when he was only fourteen. 

He swallows, presses himself tighter against Phil’s side, and stares at the window until he falls back asleep.

---

His chest is tight when he wakes up in the morning.

Phil’s not in bed anymore. There’s a note on Dan’s bedside table telling him Phil’s already gone to work. It has a silly little smiley face drawn in the corner. Dan’s laptop has been moved to sit on the chest of drawers instead, more stable there than where he placed it last night.

He sinks back against his pillow once he’s spotted it. His breath comes out as a sigh, his hand coming up to rub hard at the line of his sternum, as though that will ease the pressure there.

His knees crack when his climbs out of bed. There’s still a tingling, radiating sort of pain where Dr. Kissel pressed against his body, all down his legs and up along his spine. Some of them feel swollen, but when he rubs at the back of his neck, there’s nothing there.

Dan grabs his laptop and changes his pants before moving to the lounge.

He turns to look back before he leaves, hand gripping the door frame to steady him. The duvet is ruppled on both sides, a giant ball of fluff where Dan’s feet were. There’s a pillow on the floor and two pressed close together at the head of the mattress. Dan’s phone charger rests on his bedside table, plugged into nothing. 

Something spasms in Dan’s chest.

It takes him a moment to realize it’s anxiety.

---

The kettle is half full of water on the kitchen counter. There’s a smoothie in the fridge with a straw already sticking out of it. Phil left the cereal box out, plastic bag half poking out the top of it, and the cupboard door open overhead. Dan closes it as he sips at his breakfast.

He doesn’t turn the TV on this morning.

He drags his computer onto his lap and opens the article he’d left half read last night. He doesn’t finish it. There’s other things on his mind this morning than symptom lists he’s already read and collections of advice that only seems half effective.

Working with fibromyalgia, is what he types into Google today.

The first link is to a WebMD article. Dan clicks it without thinking much.

People can work with this, is the first thing Dan learns. It makes his chest feel funny, something half relief and half not blooming there. Keep working, is what the article says, and Dan tries not to think about the day he handed his resignation to Sue, body aching so much just getting there had been a hassle.

He fails. 

He thinks about it for so long that his vision goes out of focus, the article sliding into double. It snaps back into place when he blinks and scrolls down to the next part, too many lists of too many questions to address way too many problems. 

The advice is … a lot. It’s flexible work hours and working from home, extra equipment at work and less tasks. It’s finding a job that’s not too stressful and lets you sleep in, and one where you don’t need to do manual labour but can also survive when your brain isn’t working right.

Right in the middle of it, there’s an ad for some pill that starts with, Does your penis curve when erect?

Dan laughs. It’s only then that he realizes his throat’s gone tight and his eyes are stinging. His fingers are shaking over the keyboard when he jams the down arrow to read the rest of the page. It takes him too many tries to stay steady enough to click the arrow bringing him to the next one. 

Can I get disability with fibromyalgia? is its header. 

Dan almost forgets how to breathe. He doesn’t read it. He doesn’t go back to Google. He closes Chrome entirely and slams his laptop shut and tells himself it’s because the advice was about American law and not because his stomach suddenly really doesn’t like the smoothie Phil made more him.

A tear rolls down his cheek.

He stares at the blank TV screen until it falls off the bottom of his chin.

---

The lounge is full of both their stuff.

There’s a PlayStation and a Wii on the TV cabinet, above neat shelves lined with a shared collection of games. There’s two DS chargers plugged into the wall. There’s a stack of DVDs by the door to the balcony, Dan’s piled on top of Phil’s from when he first moved in.

The blanket Phil got him is draped over the sofa. Decorations he had before Dan moved in are all laid out on the furniture and hanging on the walls. There’s a throw pillow that used to live on the sofa that now sits in the corner of the room.

Dan thinks too much about how none of his A-levels or GCSCs will ever be enough to get him a job that would give him any of the things on WebMD’s list. 

And then even more about all the horror stories he’s heard about people living on benefits.

And then, once his chest hurts and pressure is welling at his temples, about how he doesn’t really have a choice but to need one of them if his body’s not going to be fixed.

It’s not. Dan expected that. He tries not to care. Part of him doesn’t.  

But the other part of him reminds him that Phil’s parents are still paying his part of the rent, echoes his mum’s warnings about leeching off Phil until tears are welling in his eyes once again. It pictures the people back in Wokingham who told him he’d never go anywhere if Dan didn’t learn to deal with a little bit of pain.

His brain flashes a quick image of being back there.

He reaches for his phone, just to distract himself. He ends up texting Taylor instead.

Dan: can you come over? i have news

Taylor: already on my way out the door

---

“You look less shit today,” is what she says when she opens the door. There’s a smile on her face, wavering just enough to let Dan know it’s her attempt to act normal. 

He doesn’t feel less shit. The post-appointment high has settled into something just as heavy and insecure feeling as before, just tainted with different memories, weighted with different fears.

“Yeah,” he says, “Well, stuff happened.”

He leads her to the lounge without explaining first. His body is achy and she knows he needs to be sitting down. When she settles down next to him, it’s with her whole body turned towards him, legs tucked under her and arm draped across the back of the cushions, like she’s waiting for something.

She doesn’t ask for it.

Dan takes a moment to steady his breath before saying, “I’m not dying.”

She chuckles, breathy and uncertain. “That’s good,” she says. “You better think it’s good.”

There was a day, back in at uni, when she’d tossed her textbook aside and said killing me would be less painful. And Dan, safe in the knowledge that she wouldn’t try to send him to a therapist, lest the advice be turned back on her, had admitted sometimes I wish I was dying just so I’d know the pain would end.

“It’s good,” says Dan. He turns towards her, offering a smile that actually feels genuine. “I have a diagnosis.”

“Oh!” She bounces on her knees. “And?”

“It’s fibromyalgia.”

She nods, just once, brows going a little furrowed. “Is it bad that I don’t know what that means?” 

Dan laughs. “Neither did I,” he says. “I reckon most scientists don't either, if Google is a reliable source.”

“Sounds accurate, if my quarter of a bio degree is anything to go off,” says Taylor. A smile quirks at the corners of her mouth. 

Dan’s not sure he’s ever seen her smiling when talking about those classes. It’s nice.

“Yeah, most of my old doctors confirm the theory,” he says, smiling too. “Dr. Kissel’s actually good, though.”

“Yeah?” says Taylor. “And this fibromyalgia thing, is it good?”

He shrugs. The anxiety from before burns in his chest again. His head tilts back against the sofa, and he watches Taylor’s brows furrow in concern. 

“Probably shouldn’t be. The symptoms are royal shit and there’s no cure and I don’t really know where to go from here,” he admits. “But having an answer? That’s good.”

A smile spreads slowly across her face, close-lipped and content. Dan watches her eyes flick between both of his, her head falling to rest against her open palm as she stares.

“I’m not gonna pretend to understand,” she says. “My diagnosis– I knew what was wrong, I just didn’t want to admit it, you know?”

Dan nods. He wonders if that’s one of the things she learned about herself in therapy, wonders how he never really saw it that way. Maybe because he couldn’t relate. He never felt like he knew what was wrong with him. Until now.

His heart clenches at that, eyes falling closed against the rush of anxiety-tainted relief that floods the already too-full space between his ribs. 

Taylor reaches over, resting a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her voice is quiet as a whisper when she says, “I’m so happy for you.”

He laughs. It comes out as a puff of air that sounds half like a sob, but it’s the best he can muster without actually breaking into tears. 

She must be able to tell, because she pulls away and settles back against the sofa. Dan counts his breath for a moment afterwards, until the steady rise and fall of his chest feels less fragile. When he opens his eyes again, Taylor’s staring up at the ceiling with him, lips still quirked up.

“You get to join me in the arduous process that is recovery now, you know,” she says. “Welcome to the dark side.”

Dan smiles. “Shouldn’t it be the brighter side?” 

“Hush,” she turns to him. Her smile’s reaching her eyes, like it rarely used to before. “I’ve been rehearsing that in my head for the last, like, two minutes, let me have this.”

When Dan laughs that time, it actually feels genuine.

---

Taylor stays for dinner. Phil invited her.

They eat around the coffee table. Taylor lets Phil have his usual spot next to Dan with a joke about how she’s pretty sure it’s morphed to their spines by now, and drags over a chair from the dining table instead. She tells Phil all about her new courses as they eat, a grin wide on both their faces.

Afterwards, they play a round of Mario Kart, because they can. Dan wins. Taylor comes in second this time, and Phil complains about how she’s never allowed to play with them again because, even if he can’t beat Dan, he can beat the computers. Usually.

Dan teases him with that last bit. He points out how often Phil ends up stuck in the item clusterfuck and, when he pouts in response, presses a quick kiss to his cheek. Because he can.

It feels normal. As normal as it can when, a few months ago, he and Taylor were playing this game on their DS’, miserable in Dan’s uni bedroom. 

So, not normal at all. 

Taylor’s laughs so much happy tears leak from the corners of her eyes. Dan has an answer for why his chest aches when he laughs too much. Phil reaches around him, and flattens a hand against Dan’s ribs when his breath catches around an exhale. 

He whispers a quiet one, two, three, against the round of Dan’s shoulder.

Dan leans his head back against the cushions again, and enjoys the company of the two people who will give him a second to steady the broken parts of his body without making him feel bad.

When he looks back up, he smirks at them both, and starts a round of Rainbow Road without warning.

---

The anxiety starts to come back when darkness falls. 

Phil leads him to the bedroom without a word. Taylor’s just left, the sky’s just starting to go dark. It’s been a long time since they last sat up and watched a movie late into the night, Dan realizes, but he doesn’t much mind. It means he gets to wrap himself in cozy blankets and rest his head on a fluffed up pillow and feel Phil’s arms around him.

He gets to reach up and chase away the tedium of the day with soft kisses pressed to Phil’s lips. 

Tonight, though, he doesn’t. His mind is too preoccupied by the time he slips under the covers. He stares up at the ceiling and tries not to think of all the long nights he spent with just his pain and his questions to keep him company. Days when the brush of his duvet was too much against his skin, when his pillow pressed too much against the back of his neck.

It’s because there’s tender points there. Dan knows that now. 

It doesn’t feel like he should.

He reaches out into the space between them and catches Phil’s hand over the mattress, squeezing once. 

“Can I ask you something?” he says.

“‘Course,” says Phil. He rolls over, so he’s curled up on his side facing Dan, head resting against the crook of his elbow.

Dan doesn’t look back at him. He feels weird when he asks, “You know that thing you made me do the other day? To get my thoughts out of my head? With my webcam?”

“Yeah,” says Phil. “Why?”

Dan swallows. Phil must be able to hear it, because he squeezes Dan’s hand, just for a second.

“Would you find it weird if I wanted to do it again?”

“Why would I find that weird?” asks Phil. He lets go of Dan’s hand, only to reach out and clumsily search for his fringe in the darkness. He swipes some curls away from his eyes. “I told you I used to do it, didn’t I?”

Dan shrugs. It’s awkward, with his pillow tucked right above his shoulders. “Yeah. Just feels weird.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to, if it helps,” says Phil. “Do you want me to set it up for you?”

Dan considers it. There’s comfort in the idea, a weird kind that soothes his mind into thinking Phil actually can’t find it weird if he’s willing to help Dan do it. But it’s getting late, late enough that Dan’s pretty sure if he peeked outside he could see the the flashing trails of airplanes over the city, and Phil worked all day.

“I think I can manage,” he says. “Pretty sure I haven’t forgotten how to use my laptop just yet.”

Phil laughs. His hand trails across Dan’s chest as he slips out of bed. When Dan turns to look back from the doorframe, the hallway light lets him see just enough to tell that Phil’s still curled up on his side, smiling.

---

He sets his laptop up on his pillows, with the grainy window of his webcam app filling the screen. 

The room stays silent for long seconds after he hits record. Dan adjusts his hair, all curly in the way he hates but can never spare the energy to fix. He fidgets around on his bed until his too-bony knees are out of shot and you can see the waistline of his pants so he doesn’t look naked.

Part of him wants to laugh at himself. It doesn’t matter. No one will ever see this. Dan doesn’t even think he’ll ever look back at it. 

He takes a deep breath, brings his fingers to his head, and says, “Hello internet,” just like last time.

And then he rants into the camera until he’s lost track of what he’s already said and isn’t sure any of it is making sense and the anxiety in his brain fades into some sort of mental fatigue. He’s lying down on his side because he lost the energy to sit up and his laptop clock is telling him it’s been over half an hour.

His hands are shaking when he reaches over to shut the recording off. Dan’s not sure when that started.

He’s not sure about a lot of things, he realizes.

Dan rolls onto his back, and stares up a ceiling that’s just like Phil’s but feels way less familiar until he musters the energy to hold his body upright again.

---

Phil’s still awake when Dan goes back to their room.

He looks up from his phone as Dan closes the door behind him and walks over to crawl into bed. He pulls the duvet over his body, right up to his chin, and curls up on his side. There’s a headache welling in his temples, and a heaviness lingering in his chest.

“Were you listening?” he whispers.

“No,” says Phil. He reaches behind him to set his phone down, sending the room dark, and then reaches out to tuck a strand of Dan’s hair behind his ear. “I don’t want to intrude.”

Dan hums. His eyes drift closed as Phil’s thumb traces small circles on his cheek. 

Part of him wishes Phil had overheard, so he could soothe Dan’s anxieties without him needing to ask any scary questions. Most of him just wants to hold Phil close and pretend he isn’t suddenly questioning the stability of his entire fucking life, of all the wonderful things in it.

So he does. He grabs Phil’s hand, and dusts a soft kiss to his palm, and then presses closer until Phil’s arms are wrapped all the way around him, holding him tucked against his shoulder in an awkward horizontal hug.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

Phil doesn’t respond with words. He just brushes a kiss to the top of Dan’s head and then, when Dan looks up, a second to his lips. 

And a third and a fourth and a fifth until they actually settle in to sleep.

#phan #phanfic #phanfiction #flares #dan and phil #callie writes words

[independentartistbuzz]

Indie 5-0: 5 Questions with John Dylan

Multi-instrumentalist and producer extraordinaire, John Dylan, has had music running through his veins before he was even born, his parents playing the likes of Elvis Costello, Bob Marley and Stevie Ray Vaughn whilst he was still in the womb. After previously having exhibited his work through the genre-defying band Terrene, (Produced by Phil Ek: The Shins, Fleet Foxes, Built to Spill). John has now gone solo, to focus on his talents as a songwriter. His upcoming album Peripheral Drift Illusion is set for a fall release.

1. Tell us about "Get Beyond." What was the inspiration behind your sound and the video’s imagery?

Well I was at a very low point in my life during the writing of this song. I had been laid off, my house was broken into and I was robbed, my car was stolen, my girlfriend’s car was broken into, I was filing for bankruptcy and the house was ultimately foreclosed on. I had recently gotten a diagnosis of chronic anxiety. The layoff was precipitated by the big financial crash, and it was 2009 and there was this feeling of darkness in my head about my life and the world… But 2009 was also a year the Beatles got a little press. The remastered discography came out that year and also their video game, which was really fun.

I was already a huge fan and have been since I was in grade school. Ever since I heard the jaunty bassline in “All My Loving.” And even though I am most into their experimental stuff, their political stuff, and their more mature work generally, there is just something about Paul’s bass playing that I just loved as a kid and still love now; it’s like he is expressing pure happiness and acceptance through just very intentional bass playing. It just connects.

And that was sort of the beginning of the idea. I was so low, I was just reaching for anything that made me feel better, something that had that real, “from when I was a kid,” true comfort and joy in it. And it just started with that... “bounce.”

I didn’t take anything else from it, just that feeling like, what if there was a bassline that just made people feel better?

The video tries to go from where the song starts (“in haven bed I stay”) to where it finishes (“you must prepare to let your real self show; get beyond!”) visually. It starts with 2-tone xeroxed-looking black and white. Then progresses to vector-traced slow-motion. Then it progresses to psychedelic vector-traced slow-motion. Then you have “gotten beyond” and are floating in space and are free of your pain. I have always wanted to get into vector tracing ever since A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life came out. It turns out it requires more manual work than you might realize for it to look like that. Little variations in the color averaging from frame to frame creates flicker and I couldn’t figure out a way to solve that, programmatically. Still, if you watch it in fullscreen in very high quality you get a sense of the effect pretty well. Not so much if it’s zoomed out or low-bitrate or non-HD; then it basically just looks posterized.

2. How did the collaboration with legendary Beatles artist Klaus Voormann come about?

I was trying to do some collage work for the album art. I have this super cheap laser printer/scanner that basically functions like a xerox machine and I was trying to do black and white surreal collages, maybe a bit inspired by punk flyers. I have a compendium of Cometbus’s work, the book about 924 Gilman by Brian Edge, and even a book called Punk: An Aesthetic that compiles all kinds of brilliant work.

But, I found my efforts to be a bit clumsy, and realized that, speaking of the Beatles, what I really was imagining was something more surrealist, like the cover for The Beatles’ Revolver, that I have always loved. I have it as a magnet. I also have a t-shirt that has the Revolver artwork except it’s a Simpsons shirt and The Beatles are replaced by The B-Sharps and the collage is full of Simpsons references.

So I emailed Klaus and I told him about me, and what I was doing, and work of his that I really like. I told him about the themes of the album, and what I was thinking about, and of course shared the music with him. And he said “yes.” He has been very kind.

As for the punk collage work, my favorite artist in that area was, and is, Jesse Michaels, the lead singer for Operation Ivy, among other bands. So I also wrote him about doing a piece for an upcoming single, and he said yes, too.

I like working with musicians who make art because I feel like they get it in this really cool way and there’s this homemade, earnest feeling to what they make. They’re multi-talented, working from their home. Coincidentally, since I recorded and performed this album at home by myself, that suits the project very well.

3. You’ve played in some notable bands and we were curious how it feels do everything solo on your forthcoming album.

With no offense meant to the members of Terrene I feel like individual musicians who specialize in an instrument can often see a song in a very “this is my part” kind of way. We would go into the studio, and people are just like “alright, my guitar part: done.” “Bass: finished.” But I was always the stickler trying to get all the pieces to add up. So I would stay behind and be like “WE’RE NOT DONE.” And do overdubs. Too many overdubs.

Then, I went too far the other way; the final product of Terrene’s album, through no fault of Phil Ek, who is a wonderful producer, was very sonically crowded with ideas. Way too many layers of stuff on songs that are far too simple to be carrying them. When you read the criticism of “overproduced,” that’s a tough one.

So, I gave myself a rule: Don’t do any recordings that a 5-piece band couldn’t pull off. And, though you would need a very talented band to do it, I stuck to it on this record!

Mars Accelerator was more circumspect, we would sit for hours talking about arrangements and trying to make it work. At the best of times, that’s how it’s supposed to work, at least for the kind of music I’m interested in making; everybody thinking like a songwriter and arranger. Something that gets better if you listen to it a second time and try to find the little things. You can feel the difference in something where all the pieces were thought through. Unfortunately, Mars suffered from the other problem with working with bands: it was hard to get everyone together and commit time. People moved away and… That’s where we’re at. Maybe we’ll resume soon. I would love to. I think playing with them made my music a lot more complex and hard-edged. I am not averse to distortion and more angular, difficult ideas, the way I was during Terrene.

Doing it yourself is empowering. But you have to strike this balance where you discipline yourself and not fall in love with every idea you have, yet you also love yourself enough to call something “done” when it’s done.

4. What artists are you listening to currently?

I actually keep an excellent bunch of playlists up on my YouTube page that I strongly suggest people check out.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAgntbIlnXuy4FfX1u6FRBA

I always love to use my megaphone to highlight good music, and I share thousands of songs on there of stuff I’m listening to right now. Yearly best-ofs going back to 2008. Plus my “writer’s block cure” playlist of stuff that you can put in the background and write to, without it infecting your internal wordstream. My day job is as a writer, you see.

Every once in awhile I get an idea for a themed playlist. A recent one was my favorite female-fronted music. I need to add a lot more to that, actually.  

5. What's your favorite instrument to play in the studio and favorite to play live (if different) and why?

In the studio I really like playing drums. Drums were my first instrument, I started playing when I was about 4 or so. I was sitting in my car seat and my parents realized I was hitting the safety bar in time with the music and getting into it. The viscerality of the drum performance sets the tone for the entire track. I am often humming very loudly when I play, which gets picked up on microphones sometimes, because I have the music in my head playing so loud and I want to make a noise over the sound of the drums -- with the drums, mixed into the drums. It’s just a pure state of creation.

Live, I really enjoy playing bass. I feel like the audience starts to “get” the song once the bass player drives the song home. It’s not too hard for me to play, so I can just groove out. Live drums would be too much pressure to be as fun. It’s very different keeping time so other musicians can play to you vs. laying down an idea on tape.

So of course live, I play guitar. Hah!

Find John Dylan Online:

Homepage

Facebook

Instagram

BandCamp / Fan Club

SoundCloud

Twitter

Tumblr

#john dylan

[entergamingxp]

FIFA 21 plays a better game of football that will keep fans on-side for now • Eurogamer.net

FIFA 21 has a lot of welcome changes when it comes to the actual gameplay, but after playing the game for a weekend, it’s hard to call this year’s entry a game changer.

Perhaps this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. FIFA 21 launches as the next generation of consoles arrives, and traditionally our industry’s great transition has always been low-key for FIFA. As the developers at EA Sports manage launching their great cash cow on new platforms for the first time, big-ticket new features are hard to come by. Instead we have hardcore-pleasing tweaks and a handful of cool new on-the-pitch features. You tend to get the truly eyebrow raising stuff once FIFA is bedded in to new consoles, not as it takes its first steps onto their virtual pitches.

So, what we have with FIFA 21 is a game that certainly plays better than its predecessor, but there’s no real wow factor. FIFA 21 plays like a game with all the right changes in all the right places, but it will do nothing to convince those who accuse the series of selling little more than roster updates dressed in full-price clothes each year.

My first impression was that FIFA 21 felt a tad faster than FIFA 20. It felt more responsive, which will have contributed to the feeling of faster gameplay. Players certainly feel more reactive to your input. This is welcome, given responsiveness is one of the biggest issues with FIFA. But I should note I was playing offline on a PlayStation 4. There was no way to play by preview build online, where responsiveness is at its most troublesome.

After a few matches I started to notice some nice little flourishes. The through ball is much better in FIFA 21. The ball arcs into space in a nice-looking way, often into the path of the target. It feels like the game targets the right space more often, whereas I often feel FIFA 20 sends my through balls in the wrong direction.

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Players jump over other players now. This sounds like a rather inconsequential change, but it’s actually a pretty big deal for FIFA. FIFA 20 and its predecessors would often descend into a nightmarish mess of wayward physics as competing under-the-hood systems sent players crashing into each other in increasingly disturbing ways. FIFA 21 does the simple thing of making an attacker hurdle an on-rushing goalkeeper, which not only makes for a nice, realistic-looking sequence, but prevents FIFA from going full on Cthulhu.

FIFA 21 has a new dribbling mechanic designed to recreate how the best players wiggle out of pressure from defenders. It’s called Agile Dribbling, a proper noun because EA Sports likes to give its new systems, however trivial, titles. To do it you need to press the right bumper and move the left stick in the direction you want your player to go to. All players in the game can do this, but attributes are taken into account. Good dribblers, such as France wonderkid Kylian Mbappe and Barcelona legend Lionel Messi have faster feet than the likes of Manchester United lump Phil Jones. But then who doesn’t?

It’s actually quite useful, in a match. It’s not some get out of jail free move, but it is an effective counter for the jockey mechanic. Interestingly, it sometimes happens automatically. This contextual version of agile dribbling is optional, but enabled by default. It makes your players automatically perform Agile Dribbling in certain situations, for example in a one v one.

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But the best new gameplay mechanic by far is the Creative Runs (no, this isn’t a nod to Gary Lineker’s unfortunate World Cup moment). There are three available: Directed Pass and Go (flick the right stick right after you pass in any direction and the passing player will start running there); Directed Runs (trigger a run with the left bumper or call for support with the right bumper, then flick the right stick right away in the direction you want the player to go); and the Player Lock (keep control of the player who makes the pass and let the CPU take control of the ball).

That’s a lot to take in, but the upshot is you’ve got much more control in FIFA 21 over player runs than any previous FIFA game, really. Control is, like responsiveness, a long-standing FIFA issue. There’s this feeling that you’re never truly in control of what’s going on. Rather, you’re doing your best to encourage your players to do your bidding. With these new Creative Runs, you have full 360 degree control over the player you’re directing.

It’s pretty accessible, too. The Directed Pass and Go works with any type of pass. You simply pass then flick the right stick in the direction you want the player to run in. I found myself using this one most often, as the timing on the other two options is a bit more fiddly. The Player Lock in particular is an advanced mechanic, and I imagine it’ll go down well with hardcore players who want total control over player runs. You can have up to five players performing a Directed Run or Directed Pass and Go simultaneously, which is way too many for my simple footballing brain to contend with, but those who fuss with FUT Champions and the like will no-doubt have fun with it.

I also noticed attackers were caught offside less often, and defenders made interceptions more often. This is down to new attributes: positioning and defensive awareness. The positioning attribute impacts onside and offside runs, among other things, whereas the defensive awareness attribute affects a defensive midfielder’s ability to cut out passing lanes – aka the N’Golo Kanté special. You really do feel this is actually working during a match, particularly with players with high numbers in these categories, which is pretty cool.

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Some other positive changes I felt: headers are back, after EA Sports pretty much eradicated their effectiveness for FIFA 20. I scored more headed goals during my weekend with FIFA 21 than I have done all year with FIFA 20. It turns out EA Sports has made manual heading mandatory in all FUT modes, including FUT Champions, FUT Rivals and FUT Squad Battles, as well as all Pro Clubs modes, FIFA Seasons, FIFA Co-Op Seasons and FIFA Online Friendlies. Basically, you’ve got manual heading to contend with in any meaningful competitive multiplayer. This is to improve the viability of scoring with headers while keeping a skill gap in the game, EA Sports said. Whatever the tuning, old reliable Olivier Giroud was a menace with his head at FIFA 21 near-post corners for me. In FIFA 20 they’d never go in.

Also of note: I liked the new nutmeg skill move, which worked more than I thought it would. EA has ditched a couple of toxic celebrations and alongside that picked up the speed of the game when it comes to skipping cinematics and getting the ball back into play. More on that here. The new Cancel Foul Advantage mechanic is pretty cool, too. Here, you can press both triggers to ask for the foul instead of keeping the advantage of the play (good for free kick fans). You can call players into the box on goal kicks (right bumper), which lets you build up play as teams like to do in real life these days. And the super cancel is much better. You can even super cancel some skill moves. Bit fighting game, that.

And finally, a word on the new team press timer. When FIFA 20 launched, the drop back quick tactic was deemed overpowered, so EA added the team press quick tactic to counter it. But the team press then became overpowered. So, for FIFA 21, team press is no longer a constant pressure defensive tactic. It now triggers a temporary auto press on demand, but with a cooldown timer that prevents it from being overused. Smart.

Despite all these quality of life improvements, you’d be forgiven for thinking FIFA 21 was FIFA 20 just by looking at it. I didn’t notice any significant graphical upgrades. Some of the player faces look super realistic, but superstar players have looked fantastic in FIFA for some time now. The stadiums I played in looked a bit flat. And, crucially, I think FIFA 21’s ball feels just about the same as it has done in recent years. PES has FIFA’s number here. Konami’s game has the better virtual football – it just feels better to kick around, to pass over the top, to shoot on the half volley. FIFA 21 still has that FIFA thing of feeling like the ball is made up of ones and zeroes – it doesn’t have any heart, no magic.

Gameplay is just one part of FIFA 21, of course. The most important part, perhaps, but only one. There’s Volta, the FIFA Street-style mode introduced last year and set to return this year in slightly improved form. There’s Career Mode, which already looks and sounds better than FIFA 20’s catastrophic effort. And of course the brilliant, problematic, fascinating and deeply troubling Ultimate Team. All of these parts of FIFA 21 will be discussed in detail by EA Sports at a later date. But there’s no signature new main mode to play; no rewrite of the FIFA rulebook. FIFA 21 offers sensible, welcome improvements that will keep the core on-side for another year, but not much else.

Roll on next-gen.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/08/fifa-21-plays-a-better-game-of-football-that-will-keep-fans-on-side-for-now-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fifa-21-plays-a-better-game-of-football-that-will-keep-fans-on-side-for-now-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[lovelyfantasticfart]

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All the New ES2019 Tips and Tricks

The ECMAScript standard has been updated yet again with the addition of new features in ES2019. Now officially available in node, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari you can also use Babel to compile these features to a different version of JavaScript if you need to support an older browser.

Let’s look at what’s new!

Object.fromEntries

In ES2017, we were introduced to Object.entries. This was a function that translated an object into its array representation. Something like this:

let students = { amelia: 20, beatrice: 22, cece: 20, deirdre: 19, eloise: 21 } Object.entries(students) // [ // [ 'amelia', 20 ], // [ 'beatrice', 22 ], // [ 'cece', 20 ], // [ 'deirdre', 19 ], // [ 'eloise', 21 ] // ]

This was a wonderful addition because it allowed objects to make use of the numerous functions built into the Array prototype. Things like map, filter, reduce, etc. Unfortunately, it required a somewhat manual process to turn that result back into an object.

let students = { amelia: 20, beatrice: 22, cece: 20, deirdre: 19, eloise: 21 } // convert to array in order to make use of .filter() function let overTwentyOne = Object.entries(students).filter(([name, age]) => { return age >= 21 }) // [ [ 'beatrice', 22 ], [ 'eloise', 21 ] ] // turn multidimensional array back into an object let DrinkingAgeStudents = {} for (let [name, age] of DrinkingAgeStudents) { DrinkingAgeStudents[name] = age; } // { beatrice: 22, eloise: 21 }

Object.fromEntries is designed to remove that loop! It gives you much more concise code that invites you to make use of array prototype methods on objects.

let students = { amelia: 20, beatrice: 22, cece: 20, deirdre: 19, eloise: 21 } // convert to array in order to make use of .filter() function let overTwentyOne = Object.entries(students).filter(([name, age]) => { return age >= 21 }) // [ [ 'beatrice', 22 ], [ 'eloise', 21 ] ] // turn multidimensional array back into an object let DrinkingAgeStudents = Object.fromEntries(overTwentyOne); // { beatrice: 22, eloise: 21 }

It is important to note that arrays and objects are different data structures for a reason. There are certain cases in which switching between the two will cause data loss. The example below of array elements that become duplicate object keys is one of them.

let students = [ [ 'amelia', 22 ], [ 'beatrice', 22 ], [ 'eloise', 21], [ 'beatrice', 20 ] ] let studentObj = Object.fromEntries(students); // { amelia: 22, beatrice: 20, eloise: 21 } // dropped first beatrice!

When using these functions make sure to be aware of the potential side effects.

Support for Object.fromEntries

Chrome Firefox Safari Edge 75 67 12.1 No

🔍 We can use your help. Do you have access to testing these and other features in mobile browsers? Leave a comment with your results — we'll check them out and include them in the article.

Array.prototype.flat

Multi-dimensional arrays are a pretty common data structure to come across, especially when retrieving data. The ability to flatten it is necessary. It was always possible, but not exactly pretty.

Let’s take the following example where our map leaves us with a multi-dimensional array that we want to flatten.

let courses = [ { subject: "math", numberOfStudents: 3, waitlistStudents: 2, students: ['Janet', 'Martha', 'Bob', ['Phil', 'Candace']] }, { subject: "english", numberOfStudents: 2, students: ['Wilson', 'Taylor'] }, { subject: "history", numberOfStudents: 4, students: ['Edith', 'Jacob', 'Peter', 'Betty'] } ] let courseStudents = courses.map(course => course.students) // [ // [ 'Janet', 'Martha', 'Bob', [ 'Phil', 'Candace' ] ], // [ 'Wilson', 'Taylor' ], // [ 'Edith', 'Jacob', 'Peter', 'Betty' ] // ] [].concat.apply([], courseStudents) // we're stuck doing something like this

In comes Array.prototype.flat. It takes an optional argument of depth.

let courseStudents = [ [ 'Janet', 'Martha', 'Bob', [ 'Phil', 'Candace' ] ], [ 'Wilson', 'Taylor' ], [ 'Edith', 'Jacob', 'Peter', 'Betty' ] ] let flattenOneLevel = courseStudents.flat(1) console.log(flattenOneLevel) // [ // 'Janet', // 'Martha', // 'Bob', // [ 'Phil', 'Candace' ], // 'Wilson', // 'Taylor', // 'Edith', // 'Jacob', // 'Peter', // 'Betty' // ] let flattenTwoLevels = courseStudents.flat(2) console.log(flattenTwoLevels) // [ // 'Janet', 'Martha', // 'Bob', 'Phil', // 'Candace', 'Wilson', // 'Taylor', 'Edith', // 'Jacob', 'Peter', // 'Betty' // ]

Note that if no argument is given, the default depth is one. This is incredibly important because in our example that would not fully flatten the array.

let courseStudents = [ [ 'Janet', 'Martha', 'Bob', [ 'Phil', 'Candace' ] ], [ 'Wilson', 'Taylor' ], [ 'Edith', 'Jacob', 'Peter', 'Betty' ] ] let defaultFlattened = courseStudents.flat() console.log(defaultFlattened) // [ // 'Janet', // 'Martha', // 'Bob', // [ 'Phil', 'Candace' ], // 'Wilson', // 'Taylor', // 'Edith', // 'Jacob', // 'Peter', // 'Betty' // ]

The justification for this decision is that the function is not greedy by default and requires explicit instructions to operate as such. For an unknown depth with the intention of fully flattening the array the argument of Infinity can be used.

let courseStudents = [ [ 'Janet', 'Martha', 'Bob', [ 'Phil', 'Candace' ] ], [ 'Wilson', 'Taylor' ], [ 'Edith', 'Jacob', 'Peter', 'Betty' ] ] let alwaysFlattened = courseStudents.flat(Infinity) console.log(alwaysFlattened) // [ // 'Janet', 'Martha', // 'Bob', 'Phil', // 'Candace', 'Wilson', // 'Taylor', 'Edith', // 'Jacob', 'Peter', // 'Betty' // ]

As always, greedy operations should be used judiciously and are likely not a good choice if the depth of the array is truly unknown.

Support for Array.prototype.flat

Chrome Firefox Safari Edge 75 67 12 No

Chrome Android Firefox Android iOS Safari IE Mobile Samsung Internet Android Webview 75 67 12.1 No No 67

Array.prototype.flatMap

With the addition of flat we also got the combined function of Array.prototype.flatMap. We've actually already seen an example of where this would be useful above, but let's look at another one.

What about a situation where we want to insert elements into an array. Prior to the additions of ES2019, what would that look like?

let grades = [78, 62, 80, 64] let curved = grades.map(grade => [grade, grade + 7]) // [ [ 78, 85 ], [ 62, 69 ], [ 80, 87 ], [ 64, 71 ] ] let flatMapped = [].concat.apply([], curved) // now flatten, could use flat but that didn't exist before either // [ // 78, 85, 62, 69, // 80, 87, 64, 71 // ]

Now that we have Array.prototype.flat we can improve this example slightly.

let grades = [78, 62, 80, 64] let flatMapped = grades.map(grade => [grade, grade + 7]).flat() // [ // 78, 85, 62, 69, // 80, 87, 64, 71 // ]

But still, this is a relatively popular pattern, especially in functional programming. So having it built into the array prototype is great. With flatMap we can do this:

let grades = [78, 62, 80, 64] let flatMapped = grades.flatMap(grade => [grade, grade + 7]); // [ // 78, 85, 62, 69, // 80, 87, 64, 71 // ]

Now, remember that the default argument for Array.prototype.flat is one. And flatMap is the equivalent of combing map and flat with no argument. So flatMap will only flatten one level.

let grades = [78, 62, 80, 64] let flatMapped = grades.flatMap(grade => [grade, [grade + 7]]); // [ // 78, [ 85 ], // 62, [ 69 ], // 80, [ 87 ], // 64, [ 71 ] // ]

Support for Array.prototype.flatMap

Chrome Firefox Safari Edge 75 67 12 No

Chrome Android Firefox Android iOS Safari IE Mobile Samsung Internet Android Webview 75 67 12.1 No No 67

String.trimStart and String.trimEnd

Another nice addition in ES2019 is an alias that makes some string function names more explicit. Previously, String.trimRight and String.trimLeft were available.

let message = " Welcome to CS 101 " message.trimRight() // ' Welcome to CS 101' message.trimLeft() // 'Welcome to CS 101 ' message.trimRight().trimLeft() // 'Welcome to CS 101'

These are great functions, but it was also beneficial to give them names that more aligned with their purpose. Removing starting space and ending space.

let message = " Welcome to CS 101 " message.trimEnd() // ' Welcome to CS 101' message.trimStart() // 'Welcome to CS 101 ' message.trimEnd().trimStart() // 'Welcome to CS 101'

Support for String.trimStart and String.trimEnd

Chrome Firefox Safari Edge 75 67 12 No

Optional catch binding

Another nice feature in ES2019 is making an argument in try-catch blocks optional. Previously, all catch blocks passed in the exception as a parameter. That meant that it was there even when the code inside the catch block ignored it.

try { let parsed = JSON.parse(obj) } catch(e) { // ignore e, or use console.log(obj) }

This is no longer the case. If the exception is not used in the catch block, then nothing needs to be passed in at all.

try { let parsed = JSON.parse(obj) } catch { console.log(obj) }

This is a great option if you already know what the error is and are looking for what data triggered it.

Support for Optional Catch Binding

Chrome Firefox Safari Edge 75 67 12 No

Function.toString() changes

ES2019 also brought changes to the way Function.toString() operates. Previously, it stripped white space entirely.

function greeting() { const name = 'CSS Tricks' console.log(`hello from ${name}`) } greeting.toString() //'function greeting() {\nconst name = \'CSS Tricks\'\nconsole.log(`hello from ${name} //`)\n}'

Now it reflects the true representation of the function in source code.

function greeting() { const name = 'CSS Tricks' console.log(`hello from ${name}`) } greeting.toString() // 'function greeting() {\n' + // " const name = 'CSS Tricks'\n" + // ' console.log(`hello from ${name}`)\n' + // '}'

This is mostly an internal change, but I can’t help but think this might also make the life easier of a blogger or two down the line.

Support for Function.toString

Chrome Firefox Safari Edge 75 60 12 - Partial 17 - Partial

And there you have it! The main feature additions to ES2019.

There are also a handful of other additions that you may want to explore. Those include:

Symbol description

Sort stability

ECMAScript as JSON superset

JSON.stringify

Happy JavaScript coding!

The post All the New ES2019 Tips and Tricks appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

All the New ES2019 Tips and Tricks published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[ryvaeus]

Gamers are the worst (and best) people

I was very hesitant about posting this article. An anti-gamer rant on a website that praises games? Blasphemy. Still, I ended up hitting the "Publish" button because being able to love something completely means to look at its ugliness along with the good side; and to accept the reality of its imperfection, while at the same time helping it achieve that impossible state in whatever way one can.

It's true. The vocal majority of people on the Internet don't think very highly of those who self-identify as "gamers." Five seconds at Google will paint a general picture:

Yikes.

Well, at least we're smarterer? Kidding and pseudo-proofs aside, it's easy to understand the overwhelming disdain for gamers as a group (mob, really). Go to any popular videogame blog/site and check out the comments, but make sure the kids aren't peeking over your shoulder. Some of the things gamers post in these public places are the meanest, most bile-filled things you'll ever read online. There's way too many people taking things way too seriously to leave any more room for fun.

Shit gamers have done

I won't even go into the kind of shit gamers say because enough has been written, recorded, and parodied about that - and also because that's just the icing on the cake. When you get into some examples of things gamers have done, it gets really depressing:

Indie game developer Phil Fish (creator of Fez) was told that people will pirate his game because they don't like him

Jennifer Hepler, writer at BioWare, became the target of an online harassment operation organized by disgruntled fans of the Mass Effect series who were unhappy with the ending of the final game

Minecraft's multiplayer servers were once rendered inaccessible thanks to hackers who were dissatisfied with the way its creater, Markus "Notch" Persson, was handling the game

Some suspect the same group of hackers to be responsible for preventing people from buying the recently-released indie game Cube World (developed by Wolfram and Sarah von Funck) by taking down its servers

Microsoft was ready to take a step into the next generation of game distribution with their Xbox One, but gamers weren't comfortable with the idea and so they backed down (though Microsoft's fumbling of their marketing delivery certainly didn't help)

Not just vidjagames

This isn't isolated to console, PC, or videogamers, either. Friends who play in card gaming circles and tabletop role-playing groups have told stories that make me want to facepalm myself into a coma: people who stall an entire tournament just because of one slight calculation in the point system; friendships and relationships torn apart over a basketball game; grown men fighting over printed pieces of cardboard, or numbers on a sheet of paper.

I had a bit of a harder time finding specific examples of dickish gamer activity in tabletop and card gaming circles (maybe because the Print Screen for real life isn't as intuitive as on PCs), but here's a few:

Geek elitism. There are, surprisingly enough, a few subcultures within what's generally considered "geek culture," and that these subcultures are often fairly competitive with large amounts of snobbery and elitism within them. Ironic?

Yet another case of blatant sexism, this one at a Magic: the Gathering tournament. Will we ever escape this?

A bit of reverse sexism, not as much an example of shameful gamer behavior as it is a case of gamer discrimination (which was negatively responded to by its sister site, heh)

Don't panic

It's come to the point where some feel ashamed about admitting that they love games. This is extreme; nothing should ever get in the way of being proud to do what you love, and the truth is you probably won't even let the existence of gamer assholes stop you from enjoying the next game you play. That's great, and I hope you do keep playing! It wasn't the intent of this article to make you ragequit and boycott games.

And even if being shown this ugly side of gamer horde mentality gets you down, keep in mind that for every story of malicious gamer behavior, there are just as many cases of gamers doing great things for each other and for charity:

Funds like Child's Play and Extra Life exist thanks to the donations of people who love games and believe that games, simply put, make life better. The money and goods raised by these two charities goes to children's hospitals and therapy centers around the world, where they provide patients with vital distraction from an otherwise generally unpleasant experience

Everybody's heard of running marathons for causes, but not as many are familiar with groups that marathon videogames for a cause. Zeldathon and TheSpeedGamers are two communities that get together and stream live gameplay video to an audience to raise funds for different charities every month

More specific cases of good-guy-gamers include one where a bunch of do-gooders compiled a step-by-step manual that would help a blind man finish Ocarina of Time, and the story of a man who spent 30 years of his life helping disabled gamers play games

Some gamers know how to co-op in real life, too.

It's all about perspective

The truth is, every field has its share of fanatics, assholes, and just plain immature brats. That's what happens when enough people get together and rave about something they all love. A fanbase is formed, and we all know how annoying fanbases can get.

When people lose perspective, they tend to do and say weird things. And when someone's love for something - a hobby, a band, a person, a game or anything else - turns him or her into an unapproachable, unlikable ass who can't spend the extra effort to put some real thought into what they're about to say and how it will make others around them feel, then perspective has just flown out the window. They're no longer contributing to the development of whatever discussion they just took the train to crazy town from. People who don't share the same (perhaps irrational) level of enthusiasm just won't be able to keep up, and instead will lose interest at best and call the cops at worst.

Now, there's nothing wrong with being excited about gaming, and I'm the worst example for this; just thinking about when I can finally play Star Citizen is enough to reduce all productivity to zero (after typing this, I quickly checked their website to see if there was any news). But my excitement is not exclusive; raving about Star Citizen doesn't cut me out from the rest of society, and the game is not something I feel is mine by rights ("it's about fucking time someone made a decent space sim, god!").

At the heart of it I do believe that most cases of overly-aggressive gamer misconduct is an unbridled passion for their beloved hobby. They're too close to it. The moment they see something "not right," the moment they sense a disturbance in the Force, their vision clouds, heart palpitates, and teeth grind - because they know Things Aren't As They Should Be™. Unfortunately, their actions - done in the name of all that is good for gaming - end up becoming part of the problem, not the solution.

So how do you teach someone how to regain perspective? I don't know. I don't think many of us would even be interested to even attempt to talk rationally to a gamer douche, opting instead to simply brush off their behavior as mindless droning, a lost cause. What I do know however is that a better use of our time would be to actually spend it enjoying a game together, rather than bicker about what in the end amounts to nothing but hot air. Because we're cool like that.

#rant #2 cents #gamers #longform #long reads #tldr

[entergamingxp]

my life with Jason Brookes • Eurogamer.net

In the autumn of 1995, I interviewed for a writing position on Edge magazine. I had no experience in publishing; I’d spent a year since leaving university writing manuals and design documents for the developer Big Red Software, but I was desperate to be a journalist. Although I hadn’t read Edge that much, everyone I worked with treated it like a holy text. It felt like a long shot. Then Jason Brookes turned up late for my interview, was friendly but distracted throughout, and at the end set me a writing task before disappearing completely. I assumed I had failed. Over a month later however, he called me and offered me a job. This was my first inkling that Jason had his own way of working.

Three days ago I got a call from Simon Cox who joined Edge just after me and later became deputy editor. Jason had been ill for three years – he died in the early hours of Monday morning. Between long difficult pauses, Simon and I swapped a few stories about our time on the magazine. I put the phone down and cried, and thought about Jason. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

Jason Brookes began his journalism career at the cult Super Nintendo magazine SuperPlay, under the tutorage of launch editor, Matt Bielby. He’d originally applied for a job on the Sega magazine, Mega, but editor Neil West soon realised Brookes was a complete Nintendo fanboy and pushed him Bielby’s way. “From the start, we were influenced by Japanese magazines – not just games mags, but women’s mags, car mags and anything else we could get our hands on – as well as Japanese comics and anime,” says Bielby. “What struck me about Jason was just how much he knew about and loved Japanese culture – and gaming in particular, and Nintendo especially amongst that. He knew more about all of it than the rest of us put together.

Photo credit: Hilary Nichols.

“Getting reliable info on Japanese games was a painful, time-consuming business in the pre-internet days, involving late-night phone calls to the other side of the world, local language students doing vaguely comprehensible translations for us from Japanese magazine articles, and all sorts of palaver. Jason was intrinsic to this.”

As there were so few SNES games officially released in the UK each month, the SuperPlay team was forced to scour the obscure grey import market – and this was Jason’s forte. “Even if the average SuperPlay reader was never going to buy Super Wagan Island or Zan II, the fact that it existed and we could tell people about it added to the unique feel of the magazine,” says Beilby. “Jason would find all sorts of obscure stuff that I, for one, couldn’t get my head around at all. It became his territory in a way, and his enthusiasm made us all consider the most oddball releases in a new light.”

In 1993, Future Publishing’s magazine launch specialist Steve Jarrett was looking for writing staff to help with an ambitious project. It was a new type of games magazine, eschewing the pally, hobbyist tone of most publications of the era in favour of a serious, refined, journalistic style, inspired by visual effects mag, Cinefex. That project was Edge. “He made a huge impact on the magazine,” says Jarrett. “He filled in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge – he brought with him his love of Japanese culture, games and game art – and at the time, that was where all the innovation was coming from. He opened Edge up. He was fortunate, too, because I wasn’t so keen on travel at the time so he did all the trips to the US and Japan!”

His first issue as editor was Edge 11, which featured a series of exclusive articles on the forthcoming PlayStation console, which at the time was still known by its codename, PS-X. Jason and Matt had been invited by Sony’s third-party development manager Phil Harrison to view the legendary T-Rex graphics demo being touted to developers, and Jason later secured interviews with staff within Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, as well as at Namco, Konami and Capcom for the big reveal feature. Over the course of ten packed pages, the magazine communicated the importance and potential impact of this vital newcomer to the games industry. As a knowledgeable fan of dance music, Jason also perfectly understood Sony’s determination to align PlayStation with the ascendant 1990s club culture, running several articles on the machine’s groundbreaking marketing and its relationship with hip brands such as Ministry of Sound and Designers Republic. He saw that both the audience and industry were maturing, and that popular culture would have to cede ground to video games. He just got it.

The Edge office in the mid-1990s was a cross between a university halls of residence, a night club and a game development studio – an atmosphere utterly presided over by Jason. He was an unapologetic perfectionist, determined that every page of the magazine exemplified the Edge vision of style and substance. He would spend hours choosing exactly the right photograph or screenshot for even the most minor preview, and my abiding memory of him is hunched over a lightbox, examining 35mm slides from some Japanese arcade trade show or obscure Shibuya-based development studio.

Everything would always come together at the last possible minute. The magazine flatplan – the page layout guide that showed writing and art staff what each issue would contain – was almost always virtually empty until the week before deadline. Then suddenly, Jason would announce that he’d secured an interview with Howard Lincoln or Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux or Bill Gates, or an exclusive look at some amazing new AM2 arcade game, then we’d be off. He’d trust us too. I remember the day Susie Hamilton from Derby-based developer Core Design (then best known for aging Mega Drive title Thunderhawk) brought their latest project into the office for us to see – something called Tomb Raider. Jason wasn’t interested so me and production editor Nick Harper had a play during our lunch hour. I think within five seconds we were over at Jason’s desk, saying “Um, we think you’d better come and have a look at this.” Straightaway he gave it two pages. Deadlines would often involve two or three all-night sessions, the whole team writing and laying out pages as Orbital blasted from the stereo. It was hard work, but it was fun. We’d smuggle beer in, and Edge’s art editor Terry Stokes, an inveterate prankster, would set up elaborate traps for us around the office.

What did I learn during this fraught, tense, hilarious nights? I learned everything about writing quickly, about getting the best from poorly translated interviews, about how every sentence needs to carry a fact or idea that takes the story forward. Jason hated waffle, he hated mediocre, colourless writing. He wanted us to communicate the joy of a Treasure shooter, the technological magic inherent in a lit, textured polygon, the underlying philosophy of an executive soundbite. He thought deeply about games and how they functioned. His favourite was R-Type and to hear him break it down was to hear a Nobel prize-winning scientist explaining DNA strands. As Jason’s brother Matthew recalls, “He loved the passionate attention to detail, the creativity, the huge sprites, the multi-layered parallax, the colours, and even the superlative collision detection. I’m not sure how long he must have spent playing and eventually completing that game.”

Jason didn’t teach us how to make a magazine, he just expected us to know. When I turned up to the Edge office on my first day of work, he told me to take screenshots of Sega Rally. I didn’t know what the hell that meant, I had no idea of the process. I just had to go over to the Sega Saturn, plug the leads in, figure out how to use the Apple Mac connected to our CRT gaming monitor and get on with it. Sometimes, he’d disappear to Japan or LA for a week and you wouldn’t know when he was coming back, you’d have to piece together his intentions from vague emails and editorial meeting notes. That’s just the way it worked, we all knew it. You figured stuff out. And then he’d return and flip through the latest issue of the mag and say “you did a really good job on this article” and my god, you’d glow with pride all day.

His perfectionism at Edge lasted until his very last act at the magazine – his final Editor’s Intro. “I just remember how long it took him to craft it,” says production editor at the time, Jane Bentley. “That sign off was the most agonising 300 words I’ve ever seen someone write and rewrite. I think I came out in hives having to stay up all night for final sub checks before the mag could get biked off to the printers. But Edge was a magic world back then. A real gang of super fans.”

After this, he moved to San Francisco writing for US magazines Xbox Nation and GMR as well Japanese publications LOGiN and Famitsu. More recently, he got back into pure design, helping indie studio 17-Bit Studios create its website.

A few months before he died, we all attended Simon Cox’s wedding in the Cotswolds. I sat next to Jason for most of the reception, and we reminisced about the olden days. At some point quite late on, after a few glasses of champagne, I said to him, “when you gave me the job on Edge, you changed my life. Everything I have done in writing after that is really down to you.” He just smiled at me in that charming and slightly airy way of his. I hope I have lived up to whatever it was you saw in me on that warm autumn afternoon long ago.

This is what I have learned from Jason Brookes: be good at what you do. Take care. Make every sentence you write, every image you capture, every idea you foster mean something. And if you are given the chance to thank someone for helping you, take that chance. In fact, do it now. Email them, text them, put down your phone or close your laptop and go find them. Tell them what they did. Because life can be cruel, and important people are sometimes taken away too soon. Jason, you were brilliant, difficult, talented, chaotic, spiritual and loving. You always ended your editor’s intros with a single phrase – the future is almost here. That’s how you lived – with one foot in next week, or next year, or the next decade even, waiting with a smile on your face for the rest of us to catch up.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2019/12/my-life-with-jason-brookes-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-life-with-jason-brookes-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net