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solange-lol · 4 years

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who is he (and what is he to you?) - ch. 1/3

words: 1,720

solangeloweek day 1: fathers day

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Will Solace has never been nervous to travel.

He used to go on vacations with his mom when they could afford it, although most of those were road trips. Then, when he got older and started working for the magazine company he currently works for, he was sent on all sorts of business trips. Will got used to traveling; used to flying and being in different places every couple of nights.

It’s less the plane ride that he’s nervous for and more the actual reason why he’s going. Yes, it is technically a business trip, but its a business trip to Texas and Will thinks he’s found his father. The one that walked out of their house when he was barely a year old and never looked back. The one that never sent birthday cards or went to Will’s graduation, who didn’t even attempt to contact Will once he was older.

It was an accident, really, that he found his father.

Of all things it was an ad on his Instagram feed that popped up, promoting a touring band called Apollo with lead singer Lester Papadopoulos. Seeing his father’s name not spoken from his mother for the first time was a bit of a shock.

The universe had a cruel sense of humor though, or so it seemed, as their gig in Austin, Texas lined up right as Will was headed there for a business trip slash unplanned reunion with his mom.

The opportunity was at Will’s feet, practically begging him to finally find out what kind of man his father really is. Or more likely, have Will give him a piece of his mind.

“You good?” A voice from behind him came. His coworker and best friend Nico was also assigned this trip with him (like usual, and thank god for that).

Nico bumps their shoulders together as the two of them board. “Usually I’m the one with plane anxiety.”

Will pushes back his thoughts and replaces them with a smile. “It’s not that. Can’t say I’m completely looking forward to three days of conferencing, though.”

“Tell me about it!” Nico groans, practically throwing back his head as the two of them settled in their seats, preparing for the four-hour flight from New York to Austin. “Last time we were stuck in one of those, I pretended to be taking so many notes but I was just doodling!”

Will laughs. “I remember that one. We played hangman at one point,” he reminds Nico, which just causes him to go onto retelling many stories about conference days. It was one of Nico’s ways of calming down before the plane took off, but also gave Will time to zone off again about his father.

He has the date, location, and time of the bar that Lester and his band were playing at just in case. The thought was burning in the back of his mind just like it had been ever since Will first saw the ad, and he imagines it wasn’t going to leave until Will just sucked it up and faced his deadbeat of a dad.

“Is your mom still upset that we aren’t staying with her?” Nico asks, pulling Will from his thoughts once again. (Though not completely. Like he said, burning in the back of his mind.)

“I think right now she is, but once we take over her house during the day, demanding food and laundry, she’ll be glad to have the space to herself at night.”

“We are not demanding anything from your mother,” Nico replies indignantly.

“You might change your mind about that once you taste her cookies.”

They’re cut off as the engine begins to roar, and Nico squeezes his eyes shut, grabbing Will’s hand. Even after a few years of working together, he’s still scared of planes. He has the same reaction to every flight.

Will had offered his hand on their second flight ever together, and every flight since then, to the point in which he just takes it when he feels they’re about to take off. It’s one of their weird business trip traditions.

Will notices an older man eyeing their hands from across the aisle, making him nearly roll his eyes at the guy. For one, they’re not even dating. And if they were, what was the big whoop? Were people still sensitive to two guys holding hands in this day and age?

It didn’t matter, he supposes, because there was no way Nico was letting go until they reached a level relationship to the ground.

⁠—

Naomi Solace was waiting for them as soon as they got their bags. She had insisted that even while they weren’t staying with her for the trip, the least she could do was provide them some transportation so they wouldn’t have to rent a car.

Nico was visibly uncomfortable, Will could tell. He’s tried explaining multiple times that his mother is the last person to be afraid of as long as you don’t hurt Will or mention his father, neither of which Nico had done. It didn’t help to calm him down though.

That worry seemed to melt the moment Naomi catches their eyes, immediately waving them over with the brightest smile on her face.

She hugs Will first, of course, who could feel relief spreading through his body when she wraps his arms around him. Even with all the crazy going on around them, it was comforting to know that his mom was there for him. (Not that she knew Will’s other reason for the trip, nor would she. It would crush her, and he can’t handle that right now.)

After she finally lets go of Will, she immediately goes to Nico. Will winces, cursing at himself internally that he hadn’t told his mom that Nico didn’t like to be touched without warning until he realized that he can’t even help but to relax into one of Naomi’s hugs.

The tension had completely dissolved by the time they got to the car, leaving Will to excitedly tell Nico all about the area that he had grown up in.

“Schlitterbahn!” he cries excitedly, causing Nico to give him a confused look.

“Bless you?” he says, more like a question than a statement, causing both Will and Naomi to laugh.

“Not a sneeze,” Will says giddily. “Just the best waterpark ever!”

Nico still looks confused (has he never been to a waterpark?) but he seems content with letting will rediscover his past. Will’s grateful for it, especially considering it takes his mind off his father.

It also makes Will realize something. Something huge, unknown to Nico, and only a select part of the southern experience. He turns to Nico with a near-crazed grin. “Have you ever had Whataburger?”

“Had a what-a-what?”

“We have to take him there for dinner, mom!” Will’s voice is pitched higher than normal, dripping with pure childlike excitement. Next to him, Naomi’s smile was much more calm, only laughing at her son’s antics

Meanwhile, Nico looks like he’s almost expecting Naomi to say know. Lord knows how many times Will has refused to go to McDonald’s with Nico for dinner on business trips. That changes as soon as Naomi takes a quick turn into a parking lot.

Will nearly pulls Nico out of the car as she parks, dragging him towards the bright orange and white doors of the restaurant.

“I know you’re a devoted McDonald’s fan, but at least give this a try,” he says, walking Nico up to the counter. “I think we might be able to change your mind.”

Once the three order their food, they sit down together at a booth. Will ends up sliding next to his mom rather than Nico, which is a force of habit after many restaurant trips spent sitting across from each other.

Both Naomi and Will eagerly watched as Nico took the first bite of his burger. He chewed comically slow, making vague facial expressions before swallowing. He pauses, then decides “It’s alright.”

“Alright?” Will nearly yells, trying not to laugh through his words.

Nico’s face breaks out in a grin. “Okay, maybe it’s better than alright. I still think McDonald’s is my number one, though.”

Will rolls his eyes. “We need to get you some new taste buds.”

⁠—

Later, Will flops back happily on the hotel bed. He sighs contentedly as several joints in his back pop, savoring the feeling of resting for the first since they got off the plane.

After dinner, they gave Nico a quick car tour of the city of Austin before Naomi dropped them off at the hotel they’re staying at. They’ll have plenty of time to explore the city tomorrow after some much needed rest.

Will hears a soft laugh coming from next to him. He rolls to his side to face Nico, who’s sitting cross-legged on the bed across from him as he bemusedly watches Will stretches.

“Comfortable?” Nico asks, grinning. Will’s taken aback for a moment by how soft his best friend looks at that moment in black sweatpants and a soft gray-green t-shirt. He’s actually very pretty, and for a moment Will wonders what it would be like to cuddle with him.

He shakes that thought away with a smile, dramatically stretching his arms above his head. “Very.”

Nico laughs again, uncrossing his legs and scooching up to the headboard of the bed. “Not quite like my bed at home-”

“But better than some of the others we’ve had,” Will finished, nodding. He mirrors Nico’s actions, sliding under the covers of his own bed and reaching to plug his phone in. He's not really that tired, but he doesn’t want to think about the day ahead of him tomorrow anymore.

“Hope you’re ready for some epic rounds of hangman tomorrow,” Nico says as Will reaches to turn off the lamp next to him.

He grins in response. “It’s the highlight of these conferences.”

Nico rolls his eyes. “We need to stop agreeing to these trips.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he laughs. “Goodnight, Nico.”

“Goodnight, Will.”

He rolls over, facing away from Nico as he tries to force himself to fall asleep. His mind is still racing, though, overlapping thoughts about his mother and his father, and even Nico himself.

All he could do was close his eyes until he fitfully fell asleep.

⁠—

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#solangelo #will solace #nico di angelo #pjo #heros of olympus #sw #solangeloweek2020 #liz writes.com

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flipomatic · 3 years

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Internship Chapter 8: Day 3 - Amity

Author Note: Surprise, another Amity chapter! It made more sense to have two in a row than to split them up. This chapter was a lot of fun to write.

First Chapter Previous Chapter

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As expected, after leaving the library yesterday Amity was able to buy two tickets to the abomination wrestling match. The match was the very next day, which mean they wouldn’t have to wait. Since it was the final match of the season it was almost sold out, with only some of the farthest seats left, but that was fine. Amity had bought two seats together and brought them to school in the morning.

When she arrived at school, she looked around to find Luz. She didn’t want to wait until the afternoon to tell her about the tickets, since Luz could make other plans. She also couldn’t wait to see how Luz reacted to the news.

Luckily, she saw Luz in the central area of the school, still walking to her first class. Amity called out to her, probably louder than she needed to, but it was alright since Luz stopped to look her way.

“Hey.” Luz greeted her, looking like she was trying to shift her books and free a hand to wave. The books were too heavy for her to hold in one hand, so she gave up.

“I got the tickets.” Amity blurted out as she reached her, cursing herself for not explaining first when Luz looked confused. “For abomination wrestling.” She hastily clarified.

“That’s amazing!” Luz grinned, shaking her books with excitement. Seeing her happy like this always warmed Amity’s heart.

“It’s right after school, want to meet out front?” Besides seeing how excited Luz would be, Amity also wanted to coordinate plans with her.

“I’ll see you there!” Luz almost dropped her books, trying again to free one of her hands and again, failing to do so.

Amity said goodbye as she turned to head to class. “See you later.” The two then parted ways, with plans set to meet up after school for the abomination wrestling match.

The rest of the school day passed by as it usually did. Amity took notes, raised her hand to answer questions, and learned a few things in her classes. Before she knew it, the final bell was ringing and it was time to meet Luz.

Amity stowed her books and walked to the designated meeting place outside. She was excited both to spend more time with Luz and to see the abomination wrestling. It was certain to be a spectacle.

When Amity reached the front of the school, Luz was already standing there waiting. She had a bit of a bounce to her knees, like she couldn’t contain her energy. She was watching the school door and her eyes lit up when she saw Amity.

Luz waved with her whole arm as Amity approached, with Amity returning the gesture in a much smaller motion.

“Let’s go!” Luz exclaimed as the pair started walking. Amity took the lead, since she knew where they were going. It was pretty close to the market and would only take about ten minutes to walk there.

They talked on the way, about their classes and the hijinks Eda had been up to lately. It turned out when Luz got back to the Owl House the day before, part of one of the walls had been singed and almost destroyed. Eda had passed it off as an unfortunate casualty of her experimental potion, but Luz wondered if Lilith had anything to do with it. Hooty was refusing to talk to either of them, which was highly unusual.

Amity listened to her talk, adding in comments occasionally. Luz told stories in such an interesting way; Amity couldn’t help but want to listen.

Before Amity knew it, they had reached their destination. The abomination wrestling matches were held in a tall, large tent, which towered over the two young witches. It had large grey and purple vertical stripes around it, representing the color of abominations.

Witches of all ages were lined up to get inside, waiting to hand their tickets to the attendant. Amity and Luz entered the line behind them to wait their turn. While they waited, Amity took the tickets out of her bag. She had bought two, exactly the number they needed.

The line moved quickly, so they soon reached the front. Amity handed the tickets to the attendant, who accepted them, but not without stopping to stare in surprise as they passed him. Amity knew all of these coven members and staff worked for her mother. She just hoped they wouldn’t be too weird about it around her and Luz.

Those thoughts left her mind when she entered the tent. The inside was lit up with a variety of candles and magic lights, some projecting images of abominations on the walls. Streamers lined the overhead light structure, giving it all a festive feel. Luz was looking up with her mouth slightly open, gaping at the sight.

Ahead of the entrance, there was a gap between the tall bleachers. Amity tapped Luz on the shoulder to get her attention, then gestured to where they needed to go. When they passed through that gap, they could see the wrestling ring. It was big, about 20 feet across if Amity had to guess. The outside of it had a thick rope to mark the boundary. There was additional line in the sand behind that, much thinner, that would form a magic boundary.

Amity tore her eyes away from the ring to look for their seats. The whole ring was surrounded by bleachers, with the only gap being at the entrance. Each section was labeled with a number, with each row then labeled with a letter and seat numbers.

Amity and Luz had seats in section six, in the second to last row. Amity located it after looking around. “Our seats are up there.” She tapped Luz on the shoulder, and then pointed up at their seats.

The two went to the stairs to climb up, past the many other fight attendees who were already in their seats. Once they reached their row, Amity went first in squeezing past the other witches to get to the right spot. Behind her, she could hear Luz apologizing to each witch she passed.

When she finally reached her seat, Amity sat immediately down on it. Well, it was less of a seat and more of a spot on a bench with her assigned number, but she wasn’t complaining. Even from way back here, she could still see the ring clearly.

“These are great seats!” Luz said as she sat down next to her. She had her hands lifted as fake binoculars, aimed down at the ring. “I’m so excited!” She brought her hands down, turning to Amity. “Abominations are so cool”

“They are.” Amity agreed with a much calmer tone and volume. Luz’s enthusiasm was infectious.

“I can’t wait.” Luz clapped her hands together in excitement.

Even though Luz said she couldn’t wait, they still had to for a few more minutes. There was a buzz of conversation in the crowd and a hint of tension in the air. A faint hint of of abomination magic lingered in the air as well, likely since so much of it was cast there.

The match finally started when a witch appeared from the bleacher gap, dressed in a brightly colored costume. “Ladies and Gentlemen!” He called into a magic microphone, which spread his voice throughout the tent. “Are you ready?”

After the question he held the mic towards the audience, who called back “Yeah!” all together. The noise startled Amity slightly.

“Let me introduce our wrestlers for today! In the north, we have Abomamama!” He gestured towards the north side of the ring, with a magic spotlight appearing at the same moment. It highlighted a witch in a purple and yellow outfit. She struck a pose for the crowd, showing off her stature and muscles. The crowd cheered, including Luz who shook one fist in the air.

“In the south, we have returning champion Snowbomination!” He moved his hand south, the spotlight going with him to highlight a different witch. She was wearing a similar outfit, but with white and purple instead of yellow. She dropped to the ground to do pushups, earning her much applause.

Amity clapped for them both as she glanced over at Luz, who had practically jumped out of her seat to cheer. She was surprisingly into it considering she had never heard of the sport before yesterday.

When she looked back down at the ring, the announcer was explaining the rules. “This will be a match between two abominations. The first to disintegrate or fall out of the ring will be defeated. Winner takes the championship! Let’s have a clean match today.” He lifted his hand, holding up three fingers. The two witches cast their circles, summoning their abominations on their side of the ring.

These abominations were huge, way bigger than any Amity could summon. They had darker colors as well, probably made of materials specifically to help fight other abominations. Amity would have to do some research to say for sure.

“Count down with me.” The announcer called to the audience. “3! 2! 1! Begin!” He threw his hand down at begin, and the abominations surged into action.

The witches on both sides called out orders as they moved, telling the abominations what to do. The two abominations lurched towards the center of the ring, faster than Amity’s abomination could move but still slowly.

When the two met in the middle they both roared, lifting arms to grapple with the other. It was harder to tell which one was which when they were this close. They toppled to the ground, still wrestling for control.

One of the witches whistled, and her abomination freed itself to back away. When the other one rose it wasn’t as tall as it had started, showing that it had lost the first encounter and taken some damage. It roared defiantly before they clashed again.

The crowd cheered with every blow, calling the names of the witches. Luz was right there with them, cheering for Abomamama at the top of her lungs. Amity was drawn into the spirit of the event as well, but kept her cheers quieter.

It looked cool and like it took a lot of abomination skill to do well. The two abominations were extremely well trained and responded quickly to their witch. In terms of a career though, Amity couldn’t see herself doing this. It was a lot of fun to watch, but it wasn’t the career for her.

Unfortunately, her track could lead her there anyway. If she didn’t make the Emperor’s Coven, this could be where she ended up. She looked at the two witches, now shouting in each other’s faces as their abominations continued to grapple.

Despite the noise and fervor around her, that sent a chill down her spine. It was a sobering thought.

The match continued below, with Abomamama extending her lead. Her abomination was slowly moving the other towards the edge as they wrestled, getting ready to push it out. The crowd clamored for a win as they neared the edge.

On the sideline, Snowbomination was calling orders to her abomination with little response. It was barely hanging in there, barely still standing.

Abomamama whistled loudly and lifted one finger to the sky in some kind of hand signal. Her abomination lurched to action, leaning down to lift the other onto its gooey shoulder. It then surged forward, stopping ahead of the line to launch the other abomination. The losing one flew surprisingly far, crossing the line and smashing into an invisible barrier before it could reach the stands.

A large ding rang out, signaling the end of the match. The crowd, including Luz, went wild. Amity joined in too, unable to resist the mood despite her distracting thoughts.

Snowbomination ran over to kneel by it, while Abomamama joined hers in the ring to celebrate. She raised both arms in the air in victory, with her abomination doing the same. The crowd whooped and stomped their feet to cheer, with the announcer re-appearing.

“Our new champion, Abomamama!” He shouted into the mic, bringing the spotlight onto the witch with a sweep of his hand. The crowd continued for a few minutes, before the cheering died down. “Thank you all for a great season!” The announcer continued. “As you leave, please proceed carefully out of the arena.” He waved around at the crowd as they started to move. He called out a final farewell, before vanishing from the ring.

Amity and Luz had to wait another few minutes for their turn, since they were sitting all the way in the back. Once it was time, they walked down the steps and followed the rest of the crowd out of the tent.

“That was amazing!” Luz was still talking way louder than usual, since her ears were used to the noise of the crowd. “She was like, pow, and then the other one was like, bam!” With each sound she faked lunging, moving similar to how the abominations did.

Amity walked alongside her, heading in the general vicinity of their homes. “I liked it too.” She said, trying not to talk too loudly like Luz was. “Their abominations are very strong.”

“I have to try it.” Luz had pulled out her little square notebook, where she drew the glyphs for her spells. “If only I could summon an abomination, it just looks so fun.” It made sense that Luz would want to do it, after all she was studying every track. She still couldn’t summon abominations though.

“I’m not sure that I would want to.” Amity admitted, voicing what she had been thinking about during the match. “I mean, I can’t imagine doing that as a job. I don’t know what I want to do.”

“What about other covens?” Luz asked, either forgetting or not caring that Amity was studying abomination magic. Knowing her, it was probably the latter.

“I don’t know what they’re like.” Amity said with a shake of her head.

A grin grew on Luz’s face. “We’ll find out then. Just like today, we can visit them and see what they do!”

As Amity looked at Luz, she was again struck with how incredible this girl was.

“Alright, let’s do it.”

Next Chapter

#the owl house #the owl house fanfiction #lumity #amity blight #luz noceda #this is like #the last of the exposition #wooh #which is great because it's already been 8 chapters #please forgive me for the exposition #flip writes

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silvershoelaces · 4 years

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HPWU: A One Year Retrospective

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite turned one year old last month, and over the past year, it has improved a lot.

This review is looking at HPWU as a standalone game, devoid of the context of the book series, any views of its author, the movies and spinoffs, or any other media associated with the Harry Potter franchise. I have plenty of opinions thereof, but they are not directly relevant to my opinions of the game and how it functions.

The game at its core is not particularly inventive, and at the beginning of its first year, it mostly felt like a reskin of Pokemon Go. Spawns appear on the screen based on a map that a player traverses in real space, and players must tap on the spawns and then attempt to collect them in order to complete their collections. But instead of catching Pokemon to fill the Pokedex, players are rescuing “foundables” from “confoundables” to fill their stamp collections. Unlike Pokemon Go, multiple copies of each foundable must be collected in order to acquire the stamp, and once the entire page of stamps is collected, it can be prestiged in order to start the whole process over again.

Traversing the world, though, can prove to be complicated in anywhere but the most urban of areas. I live in an urban area, close to my local downtown, and at the game’s inception, I had to walk pretty far in order to complete my daily F2P chores each day. See, all of the POIs (points of interest) on the map are auto-generated from the data in Niantic’s original game, Ingress, and each POI is randomly assigned to one of three types. Inns, where players can acquire spell energy, are the most common. Next are greenhouses, where players can acquire potionmaking ingredients and occasionally, more spell energy. And the least common of these POIs is fortresses, which allow players to enter timed dungeons either by themselves or with other players to fight baddies and get prizes for their efforts.

The randomness of assigning each of these three types of POI is a real drag for many players. When the game was first released, I had two greenhouses and one fortress reasonably close to my home. This was enough to play the game, as greenhouses also occasionally awarded spell energy just like inns, except that the dailies explicitly required me to interact with two inns each day in order to get any premium currency. And as I mentioned, the assortment of POIs was completely random! Some players found themselves with nothing but fortresses around, while others had only inns and no fortresses for multiple kilometers. I considered myself relatively fortunate that I only had to walk 1 km to get to a nearby inn!

But unlike Pokemon Go, while the game encourages exploring, the core mechanics are not well suited to walking. In Go, a rare spawn can be easily subdued in 1-2 attempts, and curveballs are quick and easy to throw. In HPWU, the rarer the spawn, the more difficult it is to capture, and the more likely it is to run away. Foundables are captured by tracing patterns on the screen, and they all have a rather low acquisition rate, which means the rare ones are more likely to flee than to stay put unless the player pours consumable items into their capture. And even so, a player having to trace the same pattern multiple times just to capture a single spawn means that there is much more time standing in one place and less time walking. This is not an exercise game.

And this is one of the core flaws that has plagued Wizards Unite since its inception. It’s a clone of Pokemon Go, but every single mechanic that differs from Pokemon Go brings it further away from Go’s vision of an exercise game. Wizards Unite is an augmented reality exploration game, but it’s more about exploring a story and a setting than about racking up burned calories. This is especially apparent in limited-time events that encourage players to spend multiple hours standing still by the same POI, challenging hordes of enemies.

Monthly Community Day events aside, the regular cycle of in-game events was fun and engaging at first, but it quickly grew dull as players finished the main story quest and found the primary content of the game to be the fortnightly events. This is always a struggle for F2P games, especially games that rely on collections rather than PVP mechanics. The events weren’t even new content, merely recolored versions of content that already existed in the games, spawning much more frequently than other foundables and with featured spawn rates. What was fun in the game’s first few months had quickly become tedious, especially when the featured foundables had low catch rates.

Despite this stagnation, the game has changed over time, and many improvements have been made. The tonic for trace detection, a craftable potion that allows players to summon foundables to wherever they are, was long overdue when it was introduced into the game, allowing players who were less mobile to encounter more foundables when they had time to play. Inns and greenhouses were rebalanced so that inns in less urban areas dropped more spell energy, and greenhouses’ spell energy became guaranteed, rather than a 50% drop rate, which was an important improvement for areas with a low POI density and an active playerbase. Adventure Sync was added, which allows the game to track steps. (Unfortunately, this feature does not function well, as the steps counted toward daily tasks only begin after the player’s daily login bonus, and AdSync requires the game to have access to the player’s GPS while the game is closed, which drains phone battery in the background. Players who already have AdSync enabled for Pokemon Go will not notice much difference.)

The most significant overhaul, of course, came with the onset of coronavirus. In order to allow players to continue playing from their homes, the daily requirement to interact with inns was removed, and the Knight Bus, which allows players to remotely access fortress challenges and even engage with other players remotely, was implemented. I have found that the implementation of the Knight Bus almost single-handedly revived my interest in the game when I had grown completely bored of it, as it was a lot more fun to play fortress challenges with friends, which I had barely been able to do before, than to play the game solo.

But these improvements also serve to highlight the flaws in this game that have not been improved since its release. Trace completion always takes a particular shape, and its right-handed bias is clear the moment one attempts to complete a trace off-handed. The swirl of Ebublio, in particular, which takes an “e” shape, feels much more natural in the counter-clockwise direction in the right hand than in the left. Mirroring traces in a left-handed or “mirror” mode would be an easy fix!

SOS assignments have not been updated since day one of the game, and they have said “new assignments coming soon” since I completed them. In my first few months of playing, that was the real draw of the game for me, finishing the story quest and continuing on to the next page to see what would happen next. Each event feels like filler, while what would have made the most sense would have been to add four or five new pages of story quests every few months or so. And they (and all other events) aren’t replayable, so when WB/Niantic/whoever is responsible finally gets around to adding them, we’ll all have forgotten what happened. I already don’t remember.

Finally, the entire story as a whole, which is told as a haphazard, shoddy, zigzagging extra flavor to the repetitive, bland events, could have been told with just a week or even a day of gameplay in a regular game. “What is causing this calamity?” the characters ask. “I don’t know, but let’s patch the problem and investigate the cause later. Maybe the identity of the next problem that arises will give us a clue.” The game relies on half a dozen characters who show up just to give the player instructions, and it is somewhat over-reliant on the draw of the property to encourage players to invest themselves in the game. This is not good for a game that is mostly divorced from the primary story of its franchise. Assuming I knew nothing about Harry Potter or his universe before playing this game, and even if I do, there are way too many characters, and no documented point of reference for a player to look at for a reminder. The main characters seem to be Constance Pickering and Hermione Granger, with a splash of Harry Potter and a pinch of Ron Weasley thrown in. Their commentary doesn’t add much to my engagement because it’s the same mildly curious “I wonder what’s causing this” speculation we’ve had since the beginning.

Good stuff appears to be coming soon. The strongest aspect of the game is the ability to customize one’s character with an ability tree, which lends more variety to the way players can interact with the fortress challenges. An upcoming update is set to add this customization to the map screen, which may give this game the new life it so sorely needs.

All in all, judging Wizards Unite by its gameplay and content alone, and divorcing it from the source material, I’d rate it a C+. The game isn’t sure what it wants to be. It advertises itself as an exploration game, but punishes walking and rewards standing still. Adventure Sync once again rewards walking, this time when the game is closed, but the player is again punished, this time by severe battery drain. The game leans heavily on its story, but the story falls short due to poor updates and over-reliance on events to tease rather than deliver new story elements.

And of course, if we are to judge the game based primarily on its being an entry into the Harry Potter franchise, then we must begin to judge it on the merits and flaws of the franchise as a whole, which is a discussion for another day. If we don’t measure it against the franchise, there is much in the game that will be confusing to a player unfamiliar with the series. Who are these people, and why are we rescuing them? Why are we rescuing this one man some of the time, and attacking him other times? Four of the six pages of stamps feature characters from the franchise heavily. Players who aren’t invested in the franchise won’t care too much about them.

To someone who isn’t interested in the Harry Potter franchise, or to someone who was previously interested but has become disillusioned with the author of the series, I recommend you pass on this game. However, longtime fans who can still derive pleasure from the series, who separate the creator from the creation, or who view this and other derivative works as their own entries, created by teams rather than by the one who started it all, may enjoy this game.

#harry potter wizards unite #hpwu #mobile games #reviews #long post

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jcherrybct · 4 years

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3/3/20

In the days since my last post, a few things have happened involving COMP570, CTEC501 & CTEC502!

I have been slowly working my way through the programming worksheet we were given in our last programming session, this has been very helpful in getting to grips with the fundamental knowledge. I do have to admit however there were a few times I felt like punching a hole in my computer screen, before realising the problem was with the person in the screens reflection. Not the screen itself. I am getting more used to minor things such as the dreaded semi colon; which has stopped processing from reading the code I have written, and am sure it will soon become second nature. However, there were other errors that took me far too long to realise, such as using a single quotation mark as opposed to speech marks, which led to processing to let me know repeatedly there was a, ‘badly formed character constant.’ I shouldn’t be making that mistake again in a while! I have also gone through a few, ‘Hello processing!’ lessons in an attempt to both reinforce what we have learnt and keep myself writing the correct code! I am currently really enjoying processing and am looking forward to my next lecture/lesson!

Zoog! - The ‘man’ on the screen followed your mouse around the box.

In regards to Studio, the team and I now believe we have our ‘hacked’ board game ready for the presentation tomorrow. We all came in yesterday and managed (with several trials) to work out how to connect an LED to the Makey Makey and to only light up when a certain key is called upon. This came with help from a member of another team giving me potentially my biggest learn of studio so far. Copper wire has an insulating paint on, and is therefore is not conductive. I had been trialling different ways of connecting the LED to the output section of the Makey Makey using copper wires and discounted that we would be able to do so until finding this piece of information out. As good as self learning is, collaborating sooner would have helped save a lot of ‘wasted’ time. (I do not believe that the time was wasted as it got me thinking about several different solutions which could have been better than the trialed method). This also helped with the grounding pen we had created, I had isolated that the copper wire wasn’t conducting however believed it was due to too much copper tape, and that potentially one side of the copper tape wasn’t conducting through to the copper wire. However after trialing and inspecting the pen it became apparent that attaching the crocodile clip to the copper tape was the obvious solution and then worked perfectly. It later became obvious the copper wire was the problem having been told this. After this Marc showed us the code he had written in processing to bring up the correct functions when buttons are pressed using the Makey Makey. Chris got to drawing up some icons and John to making a platform for the Makey Makey. I started wiring up the makey makey and adding a switch into the ‘click’ function allowing the winning move to light up the LED and show fireworks (with explosion sound effects) come up on the laptop.

Trialing different options for buttons.

Today after our lecture, we aimed to polish up our board game and have it ready to play for tomorrow. This included a lot of wiring, firstly outside the mount to make sure everything would work whilst it was still accessible. Then secondly I had the challenge of wiring everything up again inside the mount. As with everything on the project so far this required a recalculation. This time with the mount being too low. John added a further section for the Makey Makey to sit in on its own so the mount would rest flat. We had quite a few problems with this due to clips being too close to each other and therefore allowing the wrong function to be pressed, the LED not working as the wire to the output was not in tight enough. This was hard to isolate due to all the wiring being correct otherwise. We also added play dough to colour the foil buttons we had created so it is more obvious which button to press depending on what you land on. Once all this was completed, I suggested we have a playthrough as if we hadn’t seen the game. This highlighted several problems. Firstly that we had condensed the categories from 5 to 3, and it wasn’t obvious that if you landed on red or orange you had to press red. I suggested adding a small piece of play dough into the corner of each space on the board with the corresponding colour of the button we should press. We also realised that we will have to include a small rulebook to explain few of the game features (such as multiplay) that are confusing before the game had even been hacked. Finally we also have to add icons to the timer and reset functions. All in all we have made great progress in this project and I feel I have come a long way in wiring circuits and finding solutions for problems. I am happy with the game we have created however we could potentially have aimed a little higher (more LED’s etc.). The only problem there however would’ve been the time constraint. My biggest take away from this project so far I believe is failing is the first step towards a proper understanding and succeeding.

A soft circuit, checking for faults whilst keeping the wiring accessible.

The final board with all the wiring concealed.

Before we continued with the boardgames today, we had our second ‘Introduction to Creative Technologies’ class. We did a recap of last week, including our brainstorming technique, a chat about our Vlog assignment (I am yet to come up with any large ideas. So far I believe I will just be explaining what creative technologies meant to me when I applied & what it means now, having had a brief insight, and also a brief introduction to me ). We also talked over the reading that we did from Rich Golds - “The Plenitude” In which he talks of the ‘four creative hats’ he has worn. Drawing from personal experiences he likens Science, art, design and engineering together whilst saying they are also all massively different from one another. He references how science is actually incredibly creative, pointing towards the machines used in high tech labs. Interestingly my takeaway from this chapter was that despite making several valid points I agree with, Mr. Gold had a bee in his bonnet about art, (fine art in particular) being on a more true and virtuous level than Design. Several of his points about design being controlled and judged by the client rather than peers making it different from art are contradicted by saying that Pop art is encapsulating what the wider audience is feeling and therefore they are actually very similar. I did find this reading very interesting however and it really got me thinking! I do completely agree with the sentiment that, to really harness potential, collaboration across disciplines is crucial.

We then talked about what makes you ‘creative’, using the following:

Firstly Paradox. One of the two internal ways of being creative. I understood this as being completely open to ideas and not ever closing the possibility for change. Even if something seems certain, you have to aim to keep your mind open to the possibilities that there are ways to improve, change or manipulate what is black and white into something different. The other sections of this visual are quite self explanatory and my biggest learn from here is that I should keep open to try and do new things, resist monotonous routine and bring this attitude to life into work. Why take the bus every day just because it worked the first time. By going a different way, who knows what you may stumble across!

Having thought about the phrase Creative Technologists work with:

Their hands,

their heads and

their hearts

to make the world a better place.

I believe this means a few things, and it is better understood when you look at the three parts collectively rather than separately. Creative Technologists have the power to take something they are passionate about, be it making a change or something they rave about (their hearts). Apply their (and their peers) knowledge to it (their heads), and paired with their hands, there is the power to take ideas out of the ideas phase and actually do something with them. The ability to act on a passion like this as well, rather than any random job provides a great drive. The phrase I haven’t mentioned is, ‘to make the world a better place.’ This is because this phrase can mean so many different things. From the obvious of reducing carbon footprint, waste & helping with diseases to bringing joy through games & toys. Wherever the CTs passion falls within this spectrum is the area that they will try to make the world a better place.

We also looked today at a clip today (https://youtu.be/803LU4C_7IY?t=92) showing how many different opinions can be given on different projects. Where some will say, “useless!” whilst taking a step back there is likely a lot of value. Whilst this task may actually by definition have no use whatsoever when it was performed, and therefore useless, the learning and enjoyment brought actually does provide value. This is paired with what we looked at next in that Creative technologists have the ability to actually take an idea from its early stages & grow it into something physical. Even if you don’t know how at the beginning through failing and learning.

I have tried to cut down my entries today to slightly larger learning points, to save on extra long posts! There are many more points to add, and I have lots of work to do, such as trialing a new technique we learnt today (Affinity diagrams), Identifying some myths & barriers & reading the A-Z of CT to name a few bits!

Bring on studio tomorrow!

#CTEC501 #CTEC502 #COMP570

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lateviews · 5 years

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Lateview: Absolver

If you've heard the expression, “Biting off more than you can chew”, then you'll understand how I feel about Absolver. Fans of third-person fighter games like “Dark Souls”, “Devil May Cry” and “God of War” know that these types of games require high levels of love and polish to do well. Despite the starved market, there’s a lot of room for mediocrity. Surprisingly, Absolver doesn't pull any punches and goes toe to toe with the best... until it runs out of steam.

Absolver is a third-person fighter game trying to set itself apart from the crowd using two unique mechanics: stances and the combo builder. The “build your own combo” system has been done before, most notably in “Remember Me” and “God Hand” but the way they combine it with the stances really sets it apart. Each move has a speed and damage rating as well as some of the moves having unique properties like breaking guard and interrupting attacks. There are 4 combat stances, visually corresponding to the direction your torso is facing. Changing stances will result in you turning your torso to face to the left or the right of your opponent while others will leave you with your back facing towards the enemy! Each stance can be assigned an escalating number of light attacks and a heavier “alternate attack”. Most attacks transition you from one stance to another; then, since you’re in another stance, you can immediately use that stances attacks. If you build your combos correctly, you can create loops where one attack will lead into one stance before an attack in that stance returns you to the same stance you started in. The end-result is a custom-built train of attacks that you've personally engineered to confuse opponents as you flow from stance to stance. Since you’re changes stances so often, your alternate attack changes over time. Predicting what move your opponent is currently planning on doing is daunting since there is so much they can do. Oh, and did I tell you that you can pull out a sword or gloves and doing so swaps you over to a brand new page of attacks that you need to customise and memorize?

The game has RPG elements to it as well. Gear will drop from mobs as you down them and you'll also find stashes of gear hidden within piles of rocks. Most interestingly though is how you acquire new attacks. You start the game with a reasonable number of attacks but soon you’ll run into people using 'new' attacks against you and if you block that attack, you'll start learning the move. Use your right thumb-stick ability against it and you'll learn it even faster. Story wise, this is a cool concept. Get punched in a particular way a certain number of times and you should be able to know how your opponent punches like that. Unfortunately, in practice, this just results in you actively not killing your opponents. You end up standing around as they are wailing on you while try to block/dodge/parry all their moves; grinding out all the moves before you move along. There is a risk/reward system at play here wherein all the learning you've done during a fight won't be saved until you kill the opponent and exit combat, but there is a lot of moves to learn from random grunts in the world and these don’t really pose a threat once you’ve got a handle on the game. This system gets even worse when you're trying to discover sword specific moves because swords are rare, and by the time you find someone wielding one, they are normally a very strong opponent and you can't afford to grind out these moves because you won’t survive unless you actively damage them.

That's pretty much the entire game. Fight, learn moves, earn gear, equip said moves and gear, repeat. Thankfully that's not as bad as it sounds because hey, it's a fighting game. You came here to fight. So why am I so disappointed in it? Well before I get to the big one, let me just rattle off a few smaller impressions the game left on me: ● Falling off ledges is far too easy. Admittedly this is a designed mechanic; forcing someone up to a ledge and just pushing them off with attacks is a legitimate way to win a fight but it still felt like it was far too easy to just slip off. Even with nobody attacking you as you’re navigating the environment, one foot off the path might mean falling and most of the time falling is death, because when it's not instant, the insane fall damage will ensure you lose the fight that you just dropped into.

● The environment is not easy to find your way around. The “map” you're given is essentially 3 circles, and you don't know where you are unless you sit at a bonfire an energy shard thingy or kill a boss as these are the only 2 markers on the map. Many times, vital paths that you NEED to go down are not highlighted or made evident in any way and are sometimes, out-rightly obscured. As a result of this, I completely missed an entire area of the game for a long period of time simply because I couldn’t find the path AND I thought I had already entered that area of the map… There's a time and a place to do-away with the hand holding evident in modern game design but this is too far the other way.

● Maybe why the environment is so convoluted is to try to hammer in this sense of mystery that the game is so stubbornly trying to instil. The game makes a point of telling you NOTHING about where you are, who you are, what you're doing or why. Thankfully it does tell you what to do (fight people and open a door). It just comes across as entitled. There IS an interesting world here but by the end of the game, nothing is explained at all. Who am I? Why did I teleport when I put on this mask? Why do I need to kill these people? Did I travel through time? Who is this chick with a sword? Who were the people who were here before? The game makes a point in referring to the tesseract-looking particle effect that happens as you kill others, get killed yourself or even unsheathing your sword as “folding” which seems really cool! To sum up my feelings on the aesthetics and lore of the game, I have two words. Obnoxiously Mysterious

Finally, the big one. The game ends. It just ends. No big finish, no special reveal, no closure. Nothing. If you remember before, I mentioned the map being 3 circles? That's it. That's the whole game. I have FOUR HOURS in Absolver, and it's finished. The entire story-mode. That's a third of the I spent in DMC and less than a 10th of the time I spent in Sekiro. Now sure, those are AAA titles with massive budgets behind them, but I cannot help but feel starved of content, especially since the story does not wrap itself up. The game starts with you and a bunch of other initiates standing in an arctic wind before you are chosen, you don a mask and teleport to another world. You then traverse through 12 named areas (3 of which contain nothing) fighting 11 different bosses. There are probably below 50 enemies to fight in the entire game. And then you're done. After fighting the somehow important Risryn, you're teleported back to the place you started with, you graduate from being a “prospect” to become an “Absolver”, you get a neat cape and you get told, “Idk, wait around and grind a bit I guess?” before it teleports you back to the “hub”. To put this in perspective, if the game had 3 times as much content as it currently does, I would still probably call the game short. I have no idea why (besides development problems) the game ended when it felt like Act 2 should have begun.

The game tries to justify this by placing a big emphasis on PVP. There is a system to look up other players and have a tussle and the game is always online so you might find people in the world and decide to start smacking one another but if the game is dead (like it was when I got to it) then all the PVP is non-existent. That's not even mentioning the players who don't WANT to fight other people. As far as I can tell the “latest” addition to the game included the “downfall” mode. This mode (only available after you have graduated to be an absolver) is randomly generated rooms of goons to fight endlessly. The lore explanation for this area only adds questions to the already tall pile of unanswered ones. The game allows you to fight bosses again at a harder difficulty, but this is locked behind PVP progress…meaning that if you weren’t able to find a game like myself, then you just can’t

I hate having to be so negative. Other indie games cater themselves to a casual market and can have all the depth of a puddle and still receive high ratings but because the devs took on such a loved genre, all the depth they have added only makes people want more. I mean really, if my biggest complaint about the game is that I wanted more, there's got to be something good about it. In shooting for the stars, the devs came up short, but the time, skill and effort they put into trying to get there far exceeds a lot of other developers. I can say that the game was bug free and (until it ended) felt close to a AAA title and the sad thing is that it starts to get judged by those harsh standards. For a AAA title, this would be an insult; But for a fighting game? This is a worthwhile experiment; for an indie game? This is one heck of an accomplishment and for your time? This is worth it.

Overall, I'd look to pay $15 to $25 for Absolver, despite its $42 default price tag. It depends on how much you love the third person fighter genre; how much you enjoy PVP (and if you're lucky enough to be in a locale with players online) and how much you want to support the studio. If you can make a trio of yourselves, maybe you can get some mileage out of the co-op enabled Downfall mode, but I wouldn't want to pay much more for that.

#Absolver #lateview #lateviews #fighting games #spectaclefighter

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Bigg Boss 13 day 85 written update episode 85 December 30: Sidharth fights with Rashami, Shehnaaz, Arti and Asim - tv

TV actor Sidharth Shukla, who has clearly had the maximum fights inside Bigg Boss 13, locked horns with not just his favourite rivals - Asim Riaz and Rashami Desai, he even fought with Shehnaaz Gill, who shares a rather sweet relationship with him, and old friend Arti Singh.Here are all the top highlights from tonight’s episode: The episode opened with Devoleena Bhattacharjee coming on the sets to bid goodbye to everyone. She said her view changed after she stepped out of the house. She also said she earlier felt Sidharth Shukla is impolite but now has realised he may have temper issues but he is not heartless. All he needs is a good friend, she added. She also said Rashami is unable to vent out her feelings at the right place and it is hampering her behaviour. She also said Rashami is losing her track. Devoleena received a warm welcome inside the house. Also read: Kangana Ranaut impressed Deepika Padukone with her act in Panga trailer: ‘Seems that this film will also be very good’Devoleena then hosted her talk show, OMG with Devoleena. She called upon Rashami as the first guest and asked her if she had faked not knowing about Arhaan’s child. Rashami replied that Arhaan convinced her that he will prove his side once out of the house. Devoleena told her she should have waited for completing the show before proposing him. Devoleena also called up Shehnaaz and Paras-Mahira in two separate chats. Sidharth was also called upon. Salman Khan then celebrated his birthday with Sunil Grover who came to the Bigg Boss stage as Salman’s wife. Then Salman met housemates and assigned a task to them to make resolutions for others. Shehnaaz was asked and she said she will not “make a boyfriend” and will concentrate on her work. Salman said he was on a drive with Govinda and someone abused them. Govinda then asked Salman to follow them and then stopped them to say, “Teri ma, meri maa. (Your mom is my mom).” Asim said Sidharth should control his anger, take care of his health and remember “inki maa meri maa aur inki behen meri maa. (Your mom is my mom and your sister is my sister). ” Rashami said Mahira should use her words wisely. Arhaan said Sidharth should speak more politely with women. Vishal wanted Rashami to talk clearly, with as much clarity as her thoughts and Salman made fun of the fact that he called Rashami’s thoughts clear. Madhurima said Arti should refrain from using friends and rather carry out her friendships well. Shehnaaz said Rashami should speak up about her relationship. Shefali Bagga wanted Rashami to be strong inside the house. Arti said Madhurima should concentrate on her relationship, instead of eyeing others’ behaviour. Shefali Jariwala said Madhurima should start waking up early. Paras said Asim should motivate fans to keep their houses clean and Salman chided him saying that the resolution applied to him as well. When Paras tried to reason that he completes his duties, Salman quipped, “Mai hota to apne bed, bartan sab karta (If I were inside the house, I would have made up my bed, cleaned my own plates and glasses and even cleaned up for others, if he had some free time.Mahira said Asim should also take care that he does not respond to Sidharth’s anger in equal measure and controls his anger. Sidharth said Shehnaaz should “switch on” her mind. Salman then assigned yet another task that he claimed he ideated as a six-year-old kid. Each contestant would have to paint a co-housemate’s face whom they want to target to win the Bigg Boss trophy.Mahira picked Paras while Paras painted Sidharth’s face. Shefali Jariwala painted Asim’s face. Arti picked Rashami and Shefali Bagga painted Paras’s face. Shehnaaz picked Paras and said it would be equal if Sidharth wins the trophy or she wins it. Madhurima painted Shehnaaz’s face and Vishal also picked Shehnaaz. Arhaan painted Asim’s face while Rashami also painted Asim’s face and Asim picked Rashami. Sidharth picked himself and claimed, “Mai trophy jitu ya nahi ye meri wajah se hi hoga (Whether I win or lose the show, it will be because of me alone).” Salman said that was the joke and Sidharth must give him the real answer. Then he picked Paras.

Sunny Leone also entered Bigg Boss 13 sets with a beautiful cake to celebrate Salman’s cake. She said the cake was for new years’, Salman’s newborn niece, his birthday and the success of Dabangg 3. She also tried Salman’s dialogue from Dabangg 3 and had everyone laughing. “Apne baccho se seekh rahi ho, (Are you learning all these antics from your children?)” Salman asked and she replied in the affirmative. Salman then offered her macaroons and asked her to mouth words with a macaroon in her mouth. She has tough Hindi words like Ullanghan (disobeying) and Romanchak (adventurous) that bowled her over and made her lose the game. Sunny also enacted the famous dialogues of Sunny Deol – Dhai kilo ka haath and Tareekh pe Tareekh. Sunny also made Salman groove to her hit number, Baby Doll.The caller of the week asked Sidharth why was he fighting with Rashami if he had already apologized to her. Sidharth said it was her confusion, adding that he simply ended the confusion and never apologised. He also said “humare beech me koi jhagda ya gaali galoj nahi hua hai. (We never had a fight or even a heated debate). He also claimed that Rashami was the one who instigated him and he never initiated fights inside the house. Rashami again chipped in saying Sidharth often made creative changes to the script of the show they worked upon together, to which Sidharth said “Apko batau kab kab bani hai aur kya bana hai, bhool gai hain? (Should I tell you what all happened and when it happened? Have you forgotten it all?).”

Salman then announced Madhurima Tuli, Shefali Bagga and Arhaan had the lowest votes. Salman could not control his laughter and rolled on the floor as he announced that the eviction would happen at midnight and Bigg Boss would announce the name. Soon as Salman left, Sidharth fought with Shehnaaz and asked her not to hold his hand. He then called Arti and asked “kaun se cans khulenge? (What cans did you say would open?)” He also shouted at Rashami that she keeps talking about stuff from their life outside the house. Arti insisted Rashami should keep quiet. Arhaan walked upto Sidharth and the two ended up fighting yet again. Sidharth yelled at Arti who was trying to pacify him. Asim also intervened and asked Sidharth to keep quiet. Arti also went upto Rashami and then asked her to stop talking about the fight, old things and each other. Arti also asked her not to talk about her house or Sidharth. Sidharth then said, “Thakeli, peeche aati hai khud, Goa tak aphunch gait hi. Bakwaas karti hai (She follows me, came all the way to Goa!).” Arti requested him to stop talking about it all while Rashami began crying. “Do line set me yaad nahi rehti thi, aur set ki baat batau? (She could not remember her lines on the sets of our show and she wants to talk about what happened on the sets? Should I spill all the beans?,” Sidharth yelled infront of Arti, addressing Rashami. Arti tried to stop Asim who also asked Sidharth and Rashami to stop fighting but she lost her calm. “Ladkiyo ki izzat ki baat karte hain, aisi ladkiyo ki izzat? (They talk about respecting women, respect for such women?)” Shehnaaz also yelled at Sidharth, asking him to calm down and not be instigated by Rashami. Sidharth also abused Rashami with words like “gandh se bhari hu aurat”. Asim then went upto Rashami and Arhaan and asked them to calm down. Shehnaaz went upto to Asim to ask him to stay away from the fight, just like she was doing.. Vishal also went upto Arhaan and told him that he should either just hit Sidharth and get out of the house or ignore till the time that he can. Vishal tried his best to calm down both Rashami and Arhaan, asking him to stay with Rashami as she needed him.Shehnaaz also said Sidharth should not use bad language but he yelled at her as well. “Wo poke karti hai tu ho jata hai,” Then, Bigg Boss asked everyone to come out in the garden area and then they welcomed Sunny Leone and Sunil Grover. Bhangra Paa Le stars Sunny Kaushal and Rukhshar came to promote their film that will hit theatres on January 3. Salman announced he had the rights to the title Bhangra Paa Le and he gave it to Ramesh Taurani when he asked because he loves the producer. He wished everyone a happy new year as he bid goodbye. Follow @htshowbiz for more Read the full article

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such-a-common-girl · 7 years

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Professor Winchester (Dean Winchester x Reader AU) Chap. 3

Professor Winchester Masterlist

Word Count: 2,659

Professor!Dean Winchester x Reader AU

Summary: Your first day on the job as a Dean’s assistant isn’t as easy as you thought it would- but it’s not the work that’s making it difficult.

Warnings: Language, mentions of sex, sexual tension

*gif not mine*

“You what?” Nina’s hand freezes as she goes to lift the fork up into her mouth, her jaw dropping in shock.

“I accepted the job.” You shrug, taking a bite out of your apple. “I need the experience and the letter of recommendation. He needs help getting organized and caught up. It’s a win-win.”

You weren’t sure whether or not you wanted to tell Nina at first about your newfound job opportunity. You didn’t know how she’d react since she was there the night of the drunken incident. She didn’t know everything – certainly not about the kiss – but she knew enough, and you didn’t want her to think you were taking Dean’s offer just because of that. You didn’t want her to think that you were becoming one of those students.

But, the more you thought about it, you realized you had to tell her. If she didn’t find out from you, and mysteriously from some other source, it’d look way more suspicious than if you just told her the truth.

“You lucky bitch!” Nina beams, her eyes crinkling up at the corners as she slaps her thigh. “You totally have Professor Winchester wrapped around your little finger!”

“I do not have Dean wrapped around my finger.” You roll your eyes, and Nina’s lips form into a smirk upon hearing you call Professor Winchester by his first name. “We both had a mature, adult talk about things and have agreed to put the events of last Sunday behind us.”

“Yeah yeah, whatever you say.” Nina shakes her head, finally taking a bite of her pasta. “What kind of work are you doing for him, anyways?”

“I’m not really sure,” You say. “Typical assistant stuff, I don’t know.”

“This is like the beginning to every porn video I’ve ever seen.” Nina laughs, making you spit out your apple.

“Nina!” You scold, but you can’t help but let a laugh escape. “It’s not like that.”

“Whatever you say.” She walks away from the kitchen table, putting her plate in the sink. “You start tomorrow? Are you nervous?

“Yes, I start tomorrow, right after my computational calculus class. And to answer your other question, yes I’m nervous. Beyond nervous. This internship, or job, or whatever the hell you want to call it is basically going to determine my future. I mean, Dean is a good guy and I think even if I colossally fuck up and he ‘fires’ me, he’ll still write me a good letter of recommendation, but… I’m still anxious.” You admit, setting your half-eaten apple on the table and beginning to fiddle with your fingernails – a bad habit you only do when you’re nervous.

“Stop stop stop,” Nina rushes over to you, taking your hands in hers and giving you a concerned look. “You’re my best friend and because of that, I’m required to stop you from falling back into old habits. Stop with the fingernails. Are you really that nervous?”

“I wasn’t lying when I said beyond.” You bite your lip. “I just feel like I’m bound to screw this up. What if something happens, Nina? Forget all the excuses I told you earlier. You know what happened on Sunday. Dean and I agreed to put that behind us and move on, pretend like it didn’t happen, but it’s going to be really fucking hard when I have to spend most of my time around him now. You know how attracted I am to the guy, and he’s made it pretty clear that the feeling is mutual, despite our agreement. I’m just afraid something is going to happen and screw up my future.”

“You’ve got to relax a little, Y/N.” Nina sighs. “As much as I want to tell you to just fuck him already, I understand what you’re saying. But think about it this way- the job is only for the rest of the semester, and then it’s done. You’ll never have to be around him again, not unless you want to be. So if you can keep your lust under control until then, which I know you can, you’ll be fine.”

“Jesus, Nina, I’m turning into one of those people we always make fun of. Throwing themselves at Professor Winchester. I can’t believe myself. One, small drunken kiss and I’m suddenly-“

“What?!” Nina screeches. “You didn’t tell me that you guys kissed!”

“Oh.” Your cheeks go red, realizing that you accidentally let it slip. “You absolutely cannot tell anyone, you understand?”

“Oh, I understand,” Nina says smugly. “My best friend’s kissing her teacher. The teacher, the one everyone is head over heels for. I’m sorry, this is not what you want to hear right now, but I’m so fucking proud of you.”

“Ugh.” You groan. “I’m trying to forget about it.”

“Alright, alright. I won’t bring it up again unless you do.” She smiles at you. “But, if it makes you feel any better, you’re nothing like those other students. Not even close.”

“How?” You laugh sarcastically.

“Because you’re technically not even pursuing him, and you’re still getting more out of it than they do.”

You take a deep breath as you stand in front of Dean’s office, your hand formed into a fist as you hold up your arm to knock on the door. You’ve never been to his office before, not his actual office, only his classroom.

After yesterday’s somewhat uplifting talk with Nina, you’re feeling much better about working as Dean’s assistant. The nerves are still there, naturally, but way less so than before. You feel confident that you can make it through the job without any complications of any kind.

You knock lightly on the door, not even able to knock a third time before the door is opened abruptly. Dean stands there, his eyes glanced down at you since you’re quite a bit shorter than him. He’s wearing normal clothes – a flannel and jeans, something completely different than the suits or sweaters that he typically wears for his lectures. A small smile appears on his face as he sees you standing there, but it’s obvious that he’s stressed.

“You alright, Dean?” You frown.

“Yeah yeah, just got a shit ton of papers to grade still. Come on in, you’ll be a huge friggin’ help.” Dean opens the door wider, allowing you to walk inside. It’s a nice, medium sized office. Not quite as large as you imagine the dean of KU has, but roomy enough to fit a couch, a few bookshelves, and a desk.

“What exactly do you need me to do? I haven’t exactly ever done this before.” You set down your purse on the couch, looking around awkwardly.

“Here’s your list for today- it’s easy as hell, don’t worry. Just takes up a lot of time that I don’t have since I need these essays graded by this weekend. You can use my extra laptop to do some of them.” Dean explains. He hands you a handwritten list of your tasks.

To Do List – FOR Y/N

-send an email to Dr. Garth asking about the results of his experiment and asking permission to speak about it in class. he’s going to say yes, and since I already know that, please ask him if I need to highlight any specific areas that he thinks are important. clarify that it’s you sending email or he’ll be suspicious since I don’t type very ‘professionally’ or whatever. It’s a problem of mine. I should probably work on that, being a college teacher and all.

-respond to student emails regarding questions you know the answer to/dates of assignments/their grades. Calendar and student grades are on my laptop with the dates. I trust you won’t snoop for personal reasons. I know you won’t but you know, just saying.

-organize my bookshelves. I don’t care the order. They’re just insanely unorganized and not even stacked correctly right now and it’s driving me insane. Thanks.

-bring the harry potter series to Castiel (Professor Novak). This one isn’t work related, but he’s never read the series and I’m forcing him to. It’s like the guy is stuck in ancient bible times, I swear. He struggles with technology and basically anything 21st century. Jesus, this to-do list is turning more into a conversation than anything. Sorry. His classroom is one floor down and room 34.

“That’s it?” You ask, looking up at Dean as you giggle slightly at the little notes he added on to the end of each task. “I was expecting a lot more.”

“Nah,” Dean dismisses. “Told you it's easy shit. Nothing too grueling. And I’ll be in here if you need any help, so feel free to ask me questions if you’re confused about anything. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be at my desk so you can chill on the couch.”

Your mouth goes a little dry upon the realization that he’s going to be in the room with you the entire time. You know it shouldn’t affect you so much- he’s doing a nice thing, he’s a nice guy. He probably doesn’t even think about that night anymore, so why can’t you get it out of your head? Why can’t you stop thinking about him bending you over that desk and-

“Y/N?” Dean snaps you out of your thoughts. You blush like mad knowing what you were just thinking about. “Here’s my extra laptop. I’m already signed in on email.”

“Thanks.” You weakly smile at him, taking a seat on the leather couch while you grab the laptop from his hands.

You’re not sure if only you’re feeling it, but the tension in the room is overbearing. His hand lingers a little too long on yours while he passes you the laptop, his smile lasting a little too long to be friendly. Maybe it is just you, but the elephant in the room is prominent and seemingly not fading away.

You clear your throat as you tear your stare away from him, his actions mirroring yours. He walks over to his desk as if nothing just happened, immediately opening up his other laptop to begin to grade the number of essays he has.

Once you open up his email, your mind immediately goes into work mode. You’re able to send Dr. Garth and reply to all of the student emails within an hour, leaving you with only two tasks to finish.

“Where do you want your laptop at?” You ask, closing the top. “I finished.”

“Huh? Oh, just leave it on the couch.” Dean doesn’t even look up from his computer. You notice how concentrated he looks; his bright green eyes glued to the screen as he bites on the tip of his pencil, his lips pink and plump, essentially looking way more sexy than he should. It’s a sight you never knew you needed to see until now.

“Jesus…” You mumble under your breath. Dean looks up at you, catching you staring at him. His lips, only for a slight second, curl up into a smile. Only for a second, and if you hadn’t been already analyzing his face, you would’ve probably missed it.

“Something wrong, Y/N?”

“Nope.” You say all too quickly. “I’m just gonna go work on the bookshelves now.”

You don’t give him time to reply before you look away from him, setting the laptop down beside you and walking over to the bookshelves. Dean wasn’t lying when he said that they’re really unorganized- it’s a mess. Half of them are lying down, stack up upon each other, and the other half are just randomly thrown about.

“Aren’t professors supposed to be really organized?” You say, beginning to take all of the books off. You’re going to have to start fresh.

“I’m a bit of a rule breaker.” Dean laughs, and your heart flutters at the sound.

What the fuck is wrong with you? Getting all giddy from hearing his laugh? You feel like you’re in high school all over again, crushing on that one hot upperclassman who probably had only talked to you once.

“I can see that.” You tease.

“You want to take a break? Get some dinner or something? We could go get pizza, or even order some in if you want. I know you had classes before this, and we’ve already been here for a while. Don’t want to starve my assistant on the first day.” Dean says, taking you by surprise.

“Are you sure? I know you have a lot to grade, and I don’t want to be the reason you don’t get it done.” You shrug, trying to act nonchalant. Despite your ever growing attraction to the man, you do not want to get dinner with him. It’s bound to only skyrocket your feelings, which is something you absolutely don’t want to happen. Besides, isn’t getting dinner together a little too much for a professor and his student? Nevertheless, you can’t outright tell Dean no, that you don’t want to get dinner with him. It’d sound rude.

You’re over-thinking this way too much.

“Trust me, I could use the break too.” Dean pushes his chair away from his desk. “So what’s the plan? Order in? Go out?”

“I guess we could just order in.” You suggest. “I don’t want people getting the wrong idea…”

“I get it.” Dean nods, and you could swear you saw a look of hurt flash across his face. “No need to explain. What kind of pizza do you like? I’m ordering you your own. I eat an entire one myself.”

“Pepperoni is fine. Tell me how much I owe you after you order it.” You pull your phone out of your purse, checking the time. Almost six. By the time you finish eating, complete your tasks, and drive home it’ll probably be close to nine, and you still have a shit ton of homework to get done. Thank god you don’t have classes tomorrow, or you’d be exhausted.

“It’s on me.” Dean shakes his head. “You need help with homework or anything while we’re waiting for our pizza?”

“Unless you know anything about computational calc, nope.” You snort. “It sucks. The only reason I’m even taking that class is because of general education requirements. Same reason I’m taking yours. No offense. If it makes you feel better, though, I like Greek Mythology a whole lot more than calculus.”

“Yeah, there’s a reason I’m not a math professor.” He laughs, getting up and sitting next to you on the couch. “Math was never my strong sort. I barely passed algebra. Greek mythology, on the other hand, is the most interesting thing in the world to me. All the monsters, the gods, the truly terrifying shit from your nightmares… Maybe I’m just a nerd, I don’t know. Maybe in another life, I was a monster hunter or something.”

“Yeah, maybe.” You smile. “I think it’s pretty cool how passionate you are about it, though. It definitely shows whenever you teach.”

“You know, that means a lot. Thank you.” His hand goes to touch your thigh, gripping onto it lightly. He retracts his hand once he realizes what he’s done, clearing his throat. “So, pizza. I should probably order it.”

“Yeah, good idea.” You stutter out. He gets up off the couch swiftly, pulling his phone out to dial the number of whichever pizza place he’s ordering from.

You watch him as he paces around the room while talking on the phone, barely believing that that just happened. You’re absolutely certain now that he can feel the tension between the two of you as well- it’s not just you. And now, the tension has only grown higher.

What are you getting yourself into?

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hoeseok · 7 years

Text

Guardian Angel

Pairing: Hoseok x Reader x Namjoon

Genre: Angst and slight fluff

Warnings: Mentions of cancer, death, and suicide attempt

Word Count: 6.4k

Summary: A tragedy unexpectedly strikes your family, and when you start to believe that you’ll never be happy again, you meet the person who will change your world.

A/n: Honestly, this took longer than expected to write this, but it’s finally completed. I also would like to give a shout out to @aichan11 for being my beta for this because she’s amazing and put up with all my questions I asked.

During the third week of August on a Saturday, you were moving into your dorm, and your loving parents came to help out as you had a ton of boxes to unpack because you over packed, like always. Once you unlocked the door, you were surprised when you saw half of the room already moved in, but then you remembered that you were assigned a roommate over the summer. You didn’t really mind (as long as both of you got along) because it would be nice to have at least one friend here.

After all the boxes had been unloaded and brought up to your room, your parents lingered around before hugging you goodbye because they dreaded this moment, knowing that they would have to leave you on your own after 18 years of you living under their roof. The walk to their car was hard enough as you tried to stay strong with a smile on your face, but when you watched them drive away, you almost made it without shedding a single tear until you saw tears falling from your mom’s eyes. Your blurry vision made it hard for you to look at people in the eye, so you slowly headed back to your room with your eyes glued to the ground. Hopefully this way they wouldn’t be able to see that you were already homesick. As you were decorating your room to make it feel more like home, others on the hallway were still moving in, so it felt quite lonely not being able to introduce yourself yet. Later that evening when you were lying on your neatly made bed, you heard a key rattling in the door, and your head nervously shot to the door being opened. Your wide eyes made eye contact with the person standing in the doorway, and you froze for five seconds before a soft smile formed at the corners of the other person’s mouth.

“Hi, I’m Kara. I’m your roommate,” she said shyly. Kara’s features were delicate yet beautiful. Her brown eyes were as rich as Hershey’s milk chocolate, and they sparkled in the fluorescent light above. Her long dark brown hair smoothed over her back, with the caramel highlights peeking through slightly. From where you were sitting, she didn’t seem that much taller than you, give or take an inch or two.

“Hey, I’m y/n. Nice to meet you,” you said still sitting on your bed without bothering to stand up.

“Nice to meet you too, y/n. Would you like to join me for ice cream? Ever since I got here this morning, I’ve been craving some strawberry cheesecake ice cream, and this town has some of the best.” She took a few steps to stand next to the foot of her bed as she patiently waited for your reply.

You contemplated your answer for a few seconds before replying because honestly, you just wanted to stay in since all this moving wore you out. However, you agreed to it anyways, and when you told her yes, her eyes lit up like lights on a Christmas tree.

The ice cream shop was located next to a tiny run down shopping center 25 minutes off campus. It looked out of place with its brightly lit lights shining through the pristine windows in an area with potholes of all different sizes in the parking lot and closed stores all around. The shuttle bus that dropped your roommate and you off outside of the shop headed back to campus and disappeared into the darkness of the night. Even though the rest of the shops were closed for the night, this ice cream shop was full of lively people laughing and chatting with their friends. School was about to begin for the semester, and people were catching up with others on the details of how they spent their summer, whether it was an internship, work, or traveling. The chatty voices coming from every corner of the room made you want to go back to your dorm for peace and quiet as social situations like these drained your energy, but you couldn’t turn back now because your roommate was so excited for ice cream, and you didn’t want to leave her alone.

Scanning the endless possibilities of ice cream flavors when you got to the front, you saw a little bit of everything – cotton candy, mint chocolate chip, chocolate, birthday cake, rocky road, strawberry cheesecake, chocolate chip cookie dough, and much more. The countless options of different flavors to choose from made it extremely hard to narrow your answer to just one.

“Ma’am, ma’am. What would you like to get?” the worker asked impatiently as a line started to form behind you. You didn’t realize that you were blankly staring at the ice cream in front of you, and you snapped out of your daydream real quick. Embarrassed, you looked around at the people standing behind you and at your roommate already licking her ice cream cone in front of you.

“Oh, I’m so sorry! Uh, I’ll have the strawberry cheesecake ice cream in a waffle cone.” You felt your cheeks blushing instantly from embarrassment. You hadn’t even been out 30 minutes yet, and you were already spacing out.

He handed you your cone with the freshly scooped ice cream, and after paying, you joined your roommate at a table in the back corner.

“So,” you paused for a second to lick the melting ice cream dripping down the side of the cone. The awkward silence was uncomfortable and increased by the minute, so you quickly tried to think of something to chat about. “Are you a freshman, and what’s your major?”

“I’m actually a sophomore, and I am majoring in film production. My brother is an actor, and one day I would like to produce a movie with him as the main actor.”

“Oh, that’s really cool! It seems like fun to study that.” You nodded your head in agreement before adding something else to keep the conversation flowing. “I’m not sure what I want to major in. I was thinking about studying music education because I’m passionate about sharing my love of music to other people.”

“Really? I’ve heard great things about that major since this university has an excellent music program. When I first got here as a freshman, I thought about majoring in audio engineering, but I decided that film was more of my interest.” She sat back in her chair with her arms crossed to try to keep the warmth from leaving her body. “I should have brought a jacket with me even though it’s August. I always get chills after eating ice cream.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty cold in here. I guess they have to keep it like this, so the ice cream won’t melt.”

As you kept the conversation flowing, Kara looked around the room since she noticed that most everyone had already left. Both of your voices seemed to travel across the room more since there weren’t many people in there to drown them out with their commotion.

“Do you think we should leave now? I’m not sure what time they close exactly, but it looks like they will be closing soon,” Kara questioned, interrupting you mid sentence.

“Uh, how will we get back to our dorm? We took the bus here, and I don’t think they run this late. It took the shuttle 25 minutes, so if we did walk back, it’ll take us at least a good hour or more.” You pressed the home button on your phone to view the time, and it read 9:15 p.m. “We should go outside at least, so they can start cleaning up.”

Kara stood up and pushed her chair in, and you followed behind her doing the same. Right before Kara opened the door to leave, you glanced over at the worker behind the counter, and he gave you a shy smile and a small nod goodnight. The font on his nametag was too small to read as you walked by, so you couldn’t catch his name unfortunately. Too bad you couldn’t read it because he was really cute with his purple hair that fell over his eyes. However, his dimples were what attracted you to him the most because you had a weakness for guys with dimples. It made them 100 times cuter, and you strongly believed that it usually brought out the softer side in guys.

It was quite windy for a night in August, but the temperature outside caused you to warm up slowly. The perfectly round moon gleamed brightly against the pitch-black night sky while the stars faintly sparkled in the darkness above. The luster of the street lights provided some light and only a few cars remained in the parking lot.

“What should we do now? I don’t have anyone to call to pick us up, and I don’t have the number to call a cab either,” you stated. You looked down at the time on your phone, and it was getting later as the seconds ticked by. It was a good thing that school wasn’t going to start tomorrow because it looked like you weren’t going to get much sleep tonight.

“Most of my friends aren’t coming back until tomorrow, so we can either walk back or maybe someone will be nice enough to give us a ride,” she replied, as she fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. “I’m so sorry, y/n. I completely forgot that the buses don’t run after 8:30.”

“It’s okay,” you told her, while taking a seat on the sidewalk.

About fifteen minutes later, the worker with purple hair walked out of the shop and locked the door. He looked at you with a confused look on his face before walking away to his car. He wasn’t even halfway to his car yet when he spun around to face you and asked, “If you don’t mind me asking, why are you both still out here?”

“We took the bus here, but I forgot that they don’t run late,” Kara uttered before you even had a chance to say a word. The puzzled look on the guy’s face disappeared, and he appeared to be thinking.

“I know this may seem sketchy because you don’t know me, but would both of you like a ride back to campus? I live on campus, and it seems like the most logical thing to ask. You don’t have to agree; I completely understand if you don’t trust me since we just met,” he said, looking at your roommate and back to you as he patiently waited for an answer.

Your parents told you to never take rides from strangers, but in your opinion, he came across as a true gentleman and someone you could trust. However, you were gullible enough to believe anything people say, so you looked to your roommate to see what she had to say about his offer, and she gave you a short nod.

“Um, we’ll take the ride back with you to campus.” Your voice was unsteady, but there was nothing you could do to halt the nervousness from spreading throughout your whole body.

He nodded in agreement and motioned for you all to follow him to his car. “By the way, I’m Namjoon. Nice to meet you both.”

“Nice to meet you too. I’m y/n, and this is Kara,” you responded, while opening the door to his car.

* * * * *

On the first day of classes, you got lost trying to find the building your Fundamentals of Music Theory class was in. “I should have walked around more beforehand to familiarize myself with the campus,” you thought to yourself as you power walked across campus through the green, freshly mowed grass. Your calf muscles screamed in protest at the sudden strain, but there was no way that you could slow down and be late to class. Eventually making it with one minute to spare, you took the last open seat. The guy sitting in front of you looked very familiar with purple hair that you’ve seen before. Your eyes grew wide when you realized it was Namjoon. Thoughts ranging from “I wonder if he knows I’m sitting behind him” to “do I look good today?” raced in your mind, and you hoped he didn’t turn around at this very moment. If he did, he would see your cheeks blushing, and you probably would die a little inside.

When class ended, Namjoon turned around to get his book bag, and he acknowledged you with a smile. “Hey y/n. It’s nice to see you again.”

“Yeah, it’s nice to see you again too Namjoon, and I’m glad we have a class together. Kara and I are going to get lunch when she gets out of class. Would you like to join us?” you inquired shyly.

“Why not? I would love to, and I have a nice break between my classes.”

“Really? We can sit outside while we wait for her to finish,” you replied almost a little too eagerly. You found a metal bench for both of you to sit on in the cool shade away from the sun. “So, tell me about yourself because I would like to get to know you better.”

He thought diligently prior to speaking, as he carefully pondered about the words he was going to use. “Where should I begin? Let’s see, I am a sophomore majoring in music production, and after I graduate, I want to run my own studio production company. I fell in love with songwriting during my teenage years, and I try to allot time to write in my journal every single day. Now I have an urge to expand and learn how to produce and record. This is the stuff I’m passionate about, and I know that I’ll never want to stop making music. I live and breathe music, and it’s my life.” You saw the enthusiasm shine bright in Namjoon’s eyes as he spoke, and you never wanted him to quit talking about what he loved to do. “Now why don’t you tell me a little about yourself since I’ve talked quite a lot,” he asked. You wanted him to keep rambling on about his life because you could listen to him all day, but he insisted on asking about your life.

“I’m a freshman, and right now my major is undecided, but I think I want to study music education.” Your eyes drifted off of Namjoon to Kara as she walked out of the building she was in. She then saw you both sitting on a bench, so she strolled over with a smile on her face.

“Y/n, my stomach has been growling all throughout class today, so let’s get something for lunch,” she suggested before turning her body towards Namjoon. “Hey, Namjoon. It’s nice to see you again. How are you?” Kara spoke, her voice peppy and full of energy. You loved how delighted she always was because her personality boosted your mood up whenever she was around. It also became apparent that Namjoon had more interest in her than you, as it seemed like he was somewhat intimidated by you considering that he kept his distance even when you were next to him on the bench. Although he acted that way with you, he couldn’t keep his eyes off of Kara, and Kara surely couldn’t keep her eyes off of him.

* * * * *

Arising from the deep slumber from the night before, you felt well rested and energized, ready to begin your day. Rubbing your hands against your half-opened eyes to wake them up, the sun peeked through the thin curtains hanging from the window in your dorm, and the birds chirped happily; however, something felt off. Your gut told you there was something wrong, but you couldn’t put a finger on it. Shrugging it off without letting the thought ponder in your head a second time, you rolled out of bed and got ready for class. Quietly tiptoeing around the room trying to find clean clothes without waking your roommate was a challenge, but somehow you managed to find a pair of shorts and a matching shirt in the dim light. Neglecting to turn off your alarm since you woke up earlier than usual, the loud ringing began echoing off the paper-thin walls and revoked you from the dazed state you were in.

“Shit. Kara’s gonna kill me if I wake her up.” You quickly ran to your night table to turn off the alarm, almost stumbling over a pair of shoes. Fumbling with the buttons on the top, you succeeded in silencing the repetitive noise. Looking over at her still sleeping soundly, you were thankful that she didn’t hear your alarm. “Good, she’s still asleep.”

Grabbing a granola bar on the way out, you headed to your first class of the day. When it was time for lecture to begin, you diligently took notes since the professor could put any material on the exams. Halfway through class, the phone in your lap buzzed faintly against your legs. You looked down at the dimly lit screen and saw your dad’s contact picture light up. Usually when you received a call from your parents, it was from your worried mom instead of your dad, so this shot immediate red flags in your mind. “What could be happening that my dad is calling me? He never texts me, let alone calls me,” you pondered to yourself.

The professor dragged out the lecture for as long as possible, but the only thing you could do was watch the call go to voicemail since you couldn’t be disrespectful and pick up the call right then and there. Hopefully, the call was just a check-in to see how you were adjusting to college life, so you shrugged it off. Once class ended, you hurriedly packed your bookbag and headed for the door. Your thumb shook nervously as you pressed the home button to unlock your phone, and your head flooded with unwanted thoughts. Light rain hit your bare face as you stepped outside, so you quickened your pace back to your dorm. On the walk back, you hit play on the voicemail and put the phone up to your ear to hear what your dad had to say. Before the voicemail could even end, tears immediately formed and gushed down your face. You couldn’t believe it, so you replayed the voicemail to make sure you heard correctly.

“Your mom and I went to the doctor, and we found out that she has stage IV pancreatic cancer. She never showed symptoms, and that’s why the cancer was caught so late. She only has six months to live.”

Six months. 180 days. That is all the time you had left with your mom, and you could not believe what you heard from your dad. It seemed unreal; one day she seemed healthy, the next she had stage IV cancer. You kept pinching yourself over and over because you yearned to wake up from this tragic nightmare. Nothing worked, and you were stuck living in this bad dream. You burst through your door and ran straight to your bed to bury your teary face into your soft pillow. You were too distressed to even shut your door, but you didn’t care who saw you cry. Rummaging through your bag, you blindly felt around for a package of tissues. Pulling a tissue out, you patted your eyes and wiped your nose. Unzipping your jacket pocket, you took out your phone to call your dad back for answers. You heard the phone ring twice before a familiar voice was heard.

“Hey babe,” your dad answered the phone.

“Hey Dad. How’s Mom doing?” you frantically asked, hoping for answers.

“She’s a little shook up by the news today, and I took off work for the rest of the day, so I can be by her side to comfort her.”

“How can she have cancer? She seemed fine when I moved into my dorm, and now this is happening. I don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand it much either, but the doctor explained that pancreatic cancer is usually diagnosed at a late stage because symptoms don’t really show up beforehand in the earlier stages.”

“Are there any treatments she can try? There has to be something we can do.”

“The doctor gave us some options to check out - chemotherapy, palliative pain treatments, and palliative surgery. We’re leaning towards chemo, but we aren’t positive with our decision yet. I know you’re worried about Mom, but please don’t stress over this. Focus on your studies, and enjoy your first semester in college. Everything will be okay; don’t worry. I love you, sweetheart.” Your dad tried his best to reassure you, but there wasn’t much he could say to make you feel better.

“I love you too. Bye, and tell Mom that I love her.” Too tired to hold back tears, you ended the call and closed your eyes to escape the pain.

“Y/n, wake up. You’ve been asleep for almost the whole day now.” Kara said worriedly as she shook your shoulder. You blinked hard twice to wake up your drowsy eyes. Your eyes and cheeks were still puffy from all the crying earlier, and your head felt cloudy, as if you couldn’t think straight. She looked at you with soft eyes for a second until she sat next to you on the bed. You sat up to say something but nothing left your opened mouth, so you stared at the foot of your bed instead.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about whatever is bothering you. I’m here for you always. If you just want someone to hug, I’m also here for that.” You hesitated for a moment before holding out your arms, and Kara leaned in to envelop you in a hug. It was too hard to stay strong through all of this by yourself, and before you knew it, a single tear slid down your face slowly until multiple tears chased after one another. Removing your head off of her shoulder, you looked at the sleeve of her shirt now stained with your tears.

Breaking apart from her welcoming embrace and wiping your eyes with the collar of your shirt, you asked shyly, “Can I tell you the news? I need to get it off my chest because it’s been weighing me down.” Kara nodded her head yes and sat in silence as a signal for you to continue. “Today after class I got a voicemail from my dad, and he said that my mom has stage IV cancer. She doesn’t have much longer to live. I, I…” Before you could even finish your sentence, you were already sobbing as words were muffled into your hands. Kara quickly ran to grab a tissue and then came back to your side to comfort your shaky body. As both of you sat in calming silence on your bed, you appreciated the support from your roommate because there was no way that you could suffer through this nightmare alone.

Lost deep in thought in the beautiful world you created for yourself to escape the heartache of reality, you were immersed in picking at the chipped red polish on your left thumb until Kara interrupted you to bring you back down to earth. “Let’s go pick up dinner and hang out with some friends to get your mind off this. I can text Namjoon to see what he’s up to because it’s been a while since the three of us hung out together.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” you said reluctantly, while hanging your feet off the bed until they reached the ground, and you leaned over to put your shoes back on.

* * * * *

Each day after classes, you called your mom to hear her voice no matter what time it was because you never knew when she would breathe her last breath. This was the toughest part for you, even more challenging than all your schoolwork, because every time you heard her weak “I love you” near the end of your call, it tugged at your heartstrings until you were on the verge of balling your eyes out. Since you were the type of person that craved for being in control over your life, you hated knowing your mother’s death was in the near future, yet no matter what you did, nothing would change the course of her life.

Pulling into the driveway of your parents’ small, cozy home, your dad eagerly waved to you while leaning on the handle of the stationary lawn mower. The unkempt grass of the front yard buried him ankle deep as weeds decorated the yard. The weeks away from home when you were at college, made you appreciate being home more even if your stay was just for the weekend. You missed having homemade meals, sleeping in your soft bed in your own room, having your pets around, and spending quality time with your family. As soon as you parked your car in the garage, you hopped out and ran to give your dad a bear hug, not caring about the sweat dripping from his face. His tight squeeze of welcoming you back home took the breath out of your chest, but you didn’t mind because you missed him dearly.

Quietly opening the door in the garage, you didn’t want to awaken your mom if she was resting on the couch in the living room. Peeking around the corner of the wall, you saw her chest rise and fall with every breath she took as she rested with her eyes closed. With her breathing barely audible, the hum of the television filled the silent room.

“Y/n? Is that you?” your mom questioned with her eyes still shut.

Startled by her question, your body jumped slightly, and your eyes grew wide, but the darkness camouflaged your reaction. You didn’t think she was awake, but she heard the opening and closing of the door. “Yes, Mom. It’s me. Do you need anything?”

“No, I just want you to sit, and talk to me.”

Walking over to the couch where she was lying, you took a seat on the floor next to her and rested your head on her shoulder. “How are you feeling? I hope you feel okay, and I’m sorry that I can’t be here more often.”

“Honey, don’t feel sorry. I love that you come home every weekend to be with me. That means so much to me, and I love you.” Taking a couple of deep breaths, she continued on with your question, “I’m feeling all right. I’m mainly tired by lunchtime, but your dad takes very good care of me. I do feel weaker now than when I did when I first found out, but that is nothing to be worried about, sweetie. You already have a lot to be stressed over with classes, so please do not be concerned about me.”

Choking back tears, you turned your head away from her view, hoping she missed your watery eyes. “It hurts me to see you in pain. I know you don’t voice it, but I can still see it in your eyes.” Your voice cracked as the words left your mouth, and that was when the sobs took over. “Why is this happening? I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. You’re my- ”

“Y/n, y/n. I know you’re upset, but try to stay strong for me. Can you do that for me? Stay strong now, and stay strong later. I told your dad that exact same thing because I caught him crying before bed a few times.”

Thinking of the future, you know you’ll ache for times like these when you enjoyed your mom’s company. You’d miss the connection you felt with her without having to speak a single word for her to understand. You loved your dad to pieces and appreciated everything he did for you and your family, but it was not the same. He wasn’t your best friend.

The months of your semester flew by faster than ever. In the blink of an eye, it was already finals week, and you clearly remembered the first day of classes like it was yesterday. Since you were a freshman, you mainly took general classes this first semester, so finals weren’t anything you were too terrified about. Christmas break was right around the corner, and the excitement of being home for a month grew in your stomach. The only thing that stood in your way of being free for a whole month was four finals and a paper.

* * * * *

“Do you need help unloading the tree?” you asked your dad.

“No, I think I have it if you’ll open the door,” he stated. With the Christmas tree blocking his view, he diligently stared at the ground until he made his way to the living room. After stabilizing the tree carefully into the stand, your dad slowly backed away with his arms spread out to the side, taking preliminary measures in case the tree tipped over. “Y/n, did you get the water?”

“Yes, I have it right here,” you replied, crouching down to pour the water into the metal basin. “Before we decorate, we need to place a tree skirt around the stand to hide it.” Searching through the boxes of Christmas decorations, your dad found the skirt hiding at the bottom of the box.

“The tree looks nice! I think this one is perfect one for us,” your mom paused to take a deep breath in, and then she continued, “And there’s nothing better than the smell of a real Christmas tree.” With her hands on her hips, she took a step back to admire the tree fitting nicely in the corner of the room.

“Y/n picked it out herself. She found a hidden gem towards the back of the farm, while I only found small ones that weren’t that pretty.”

“Yeah, I was about to give up on my search, but then I stumbled across this one at the last minute. It’s funny how once I stopped looking, I found a good tree,” you chuckled. “I’ll be back in a second. I need to get my speaker to play some music.” While walking to your room, you shuffled through your playlists on your phone to find some Christmas music. Once you got back to the living room, you turned on “Joy to the World” for background music and made your way over to the stack of boxes that your parents were already digging through. With help from your dad, you strung the lights around the tree carefully, as to not tangle them up, while your mom sat in a chair next to the boxes and tapped her foot to the beat of the music. When that was finished, you took the ornaments one by one from your mom, carefully hanging them up where they looked best.

“Y/n, remember this ornament? This is your handprint from kindergarten. I still can’t believe you’re all grown and in college now,” your mom said, reminiscing about memories of you at the age of five.

“My hand was so small compared to it now. It’s so weird how much I’ve grown,” you exclaimed when you compared your hand to the handprint.

“Ah, those were the days. I’m proud of the beautiful, young lady you’ve become,” your mom gushed.

“Me too,” your dad chimed in, agreeing with your mom while flashing you a grin.

* * * * *

Sitting cross-legged on the foot of the hard bed in the hospital room with your dad standing next to you, the deafening silence rang loudly into your ears. Blank walls stared back at you, and the cold air from the window crack brushed lightly on your right shoulder. Nothing but sadness permeated the stillness of the air. Your dad nodded his head toward your mom with a solemn look plastered on his face, and when he turned to face you, you saw the identical distressed and suffering signs that you were feeling. He squeezed her hand tightly one last time. This pain intensified by the second, but you promised to stay strong through all of this. Your dad and you both promised. “Thank you for everything. I couldn’t have asked for a better life. I love both of you,” your mom whispered unhurriedly as she closed her eyes one last time. You couldn’t recall the exact time she breathed in her final breath, but you did notice how peaceful her face and body appeared to be. She wasn’t suffering anymore, and she was lastly in a place where she could be pain free. While getting up to leave the hospital room, you caught a glimpse of a small, white butterfly squeezing its way in from the tiny crack in the window and landing on the foot of the bed.

* * * * *

It was tough for you to admit that life was harder without your mom, yet you felt empty and believed that there was no purpose anymore. You dreaded waking up every morning because this meant another day of desolation, and you hated that feeling. You wanted more time to talk to her, to hug her, and to be around her.

Only a month after the funeral, you found yourself staring into the vast dark ocean as you stood on the edge of a cliff. The harsh waves crashed down below onto the black rocks that embellished the shore. The gray clouds blocked the sun from radiating onto the water, and there was a chilly breeze that nipped at your bare skin through the small holes in your sweater. You closed your eyes and took a deep breath in to reflect about everything that had recently happened in your family and knew your decision was final. Nervously, you took a few steps back as your mind began to race, and your body began to shake. Shutting your eyes tight once more, you thought to yourself, “Just jump, and the pain will be gone.” On the count of three, you hesitantly ran, only to stop yourself right before you leaped off the cliff because in the corner of your eye, you noticed a white butterfly flutter by. That butterfly appeared to be the same kind as the one in the hospital room before your mom’s death. Your body trembled in shock as you stared at it and finally realized that everything would be all right in the end. This was a sign from your mom, and you remembered that she wanted you to stay strong for her, so you did just that. Still fatigued from the near death experience, you ambled away from the edge of the cliff to sit down and regain your strength. Wrapping your arms around your knees, you placed your head on your arms and unlocked your phone to check the missed messages and calls.

Kara: Where are you? You weren’t here when I woke up. [8:42 am]

Kara: Are you skipping class? [8:50 am]

Kara: You never skip class. I’m worried. [8:57 am]

Kara: And you always answer your phone fast. This isn’t like you. [8:59 am]

[ (15) missed calls from Kara ]

Namjoon: Are you okay?? You wanna talk? [9:13 am]

[ (2) missed calls from Namjoon ]

Dad: I hope you have a good day. I love you babe. [9:47 am]

With the last bit of energy you had left, you took the time to reply to their messages and let them know where you were at the moment. Then you pressed the off button to lock your phone.

The sun peeked out from behind the scattered clouds, and the warm beams hit your face, which made you squint to see out into the distance. Oblivious to the sounds of the footsteps getting louder behind you, you flinched at the repeated tap on your shoulder. Turning around with a shocked look on your face, you saw an angelic man standing two feet away from you, lips curled into a beautiful smile. He wasn’t like anyone you had met before in your life. This time was different, and your gut told you this man was special. His golden skin radiated from his slim body similar to the way the sun beamed down onto the Earth, and his beauty blinded you. His ethereal beauty and allure made you doubt his existence because he couldn’t be real. He was too perfect to be real. To you, he couldn’t be less of an angel. Unconsciously your mouth dropped open slightly, and your eyes grew wide before he brought you back down to earth.

Flashing a big grin back at you, he replied, “Don’t worry about that. You’re good.” Ruffling his hand through his jet-black hair, his bangs fell across his forehead and covered his eyebrows. “I’m Hoseok. What’s your name?”

“Hoseok, Hoseok, Hoseok,” you repeated his name over and over in your head trying to imprint his voice into your brain because the way his words rolled smoothly off his tongue made butterflies flutter in your stomach. Too shy to bring your gaze up to his, you stared at the ground while smiling to yourself. Eventually finding the courage to meet his eyes, you noticed that they were a rich chocolate brown with flecks of gold that glistened even in the dim light. “I’m y/n. It’s nice to meet you.”

He seemed to be thinking carefully before he responded. “Y/n. That’s a lovely name.”

You couldn’t help the grin from spreading across your face as you heard your name glide off his tongue like velvet, and gladly, there wasn’t anything to be timid about because he beamed right back at you in response.

There was no explanation to why Hoseok was here at the same time you were because the spot you chose was usually isolated from the general population as only a handful of people knew about this location. None of the pieces added up, so you were genuinely confused.

“Y/n! Look at all these butterflies flying around us. I’ve never seen so many of these in one place before!” Hoseok twirled around with his arms in the air before bouncing around in attempt to cup one in his hands. You giggled with laughter at how amusing he was acting and how he was already comfortable with you from the start. Prior to joining him in catching butterflies, you lifted your head up to the sky and mouthed a silent “thank you.”

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christinasphotographygbc-blog · 5 years

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Photo Manipulation Assignment

Both of the manipulations below are my own personal photographs of friends that have allowed me to photograph them. Outlined below are summaries of the changes (in Adobe Photoshop) I made to both of the images.

Manipulation # 1:

Editing Summary:

- Adjust Brightness (+67), Adjust Contrast (+22)

- Adjusted Levels

- Cropped slightly at bottom edge

- Multiple Lens Flares

- Hue (-7), Saturation (+25), Lightness (+3)

- Added Noise (18.92%)

- Marque Selected neon sign and Sharpened

- Adjusted Highlights (46%)

- Colour Balanced/Adjusted Shadows

- Channel mixer

- Flipped Canvas Horizontal

Manipulation #2

Editing Summary:

- Brightness (+45), Contrast (+6), Saturation (+11)

- Lighting Effects (from bottom right corner)

- Lens Flare (from bottom right corner)

- Sharpen

- Desaturated Blue tones

- Marque selected to B/W

- Marque selected to cut out eye box

- HDR toning

- Created Rectangles (White lines)

Questions/Explanation:

Explain what you did and why you made the changes. Do you think your edited images could confuse or misguide the audience if they can't see the originals? Please explain.

In my Manipulation #1, I was going for an “increase/boost” effect for the overall edit. I was quite content with the original photo but I wanted to make some small changes to enhance it on a small scale. the I made slight changes like adding lens flares, playing with the brightness and contrast and adjusting the colours. However, I did not want to remove and add anything to this photo. I simply wanted to lightly enhance and make it a little more intriguing and interesting. I also flipped the image to give a new perspective and then added noise and speckle to make it seem Polaroid -like.

In my Manipulation #2, I wanted to create a artwork-like image. One that was abstract painting-like. Which is why I cut and altered different areas of the photo to make it look like a whole new photo in itself. I made parts of it black and white and even desaturated the blue tones in the picture. I also added lighting effects and lens flares to give more interest and make the picture more dramatic than it originally was. Overall I was editing towards an abstract version of the original photo. Which is why I used cut out methods, combined with altering the colours of different parts of the photo.

In regards to the first manipulation I do not believe that my edited image could lead to confuse or misguide the audience if they didn’t see the original photograph. I believe this because the manipulation is not far off from the original, it is clear that both images are very similar, the edited one just being slightly enhance and with minor details added (i.e lens flare, contrast and saturation adjusting). If you saw one, then the other right afterwards you would definitely still know that they are the same image. You would just recognize slight edits such as the brightness or contrast.

For my #2 manipulation, I believe this edit may be one to confuse or misguide the audience if they hadn’t seen the original. I believe this because there is so clearly alterations that are quite different from the original image. Such as cutting the square around the eye and moving it downwards and make a whole selected square black and white using the marque section tool. I also added rectangles to this photo, which meant I made new additions that were not present in the original photo. In conclusion these reasons are why I think the manipulated version of this image could confuse and misguide an individual if they did not see the original image.

Is it ethical news media to publish your edited or unedited images and to present them as press photographs? Please elaborate why your photos should or should not be used by news media?

For my #1 manipulation, I do believe a news or media publication could publish this edited photo and present it as a press photograph. I believe this because, the edit, like I explained in the previous question, has only been slightly edited to enhance the overall mood of the image. There are no parts that were taken away and no parts that were additional. And for this reason I feel it would be acceptable for a news or media publication to publish as a press photograph.

As for my #2 manipulation, I do not think this would be acceptable to be published by a news or media publication. For the reason, that this photo has been altered quite a bit and there has been additional parts added and moved around. And also for the reason as I stated in the previous question where I explained that due to my edits, the edited photo would confuse and misguide an individual if they did not see the original photo. And for these reasons I do not believe it would be appropriate for a new or media publication to post this manipulation as a press photograph.

What are the main differences between art and press photography? Are your edited and unedited images press or art photographs?

Art photography is more artistic. These are usually a vision created by a photographer. It’s more creative and can be altered as the photographer sees fit. Whereas, press photography is essentially photojournalism. Where photographs are used as a way to tell a story and send a message. They are evidence to record news. Which can be slightly manipulated to enhance the overall quality of the image however they cannot be manipulated in a way that changes, adds or removes elements of the original photograph.

My #1 manipulation photo, can be considered a press image and an art photograph. It can be a press photograph because it has only been edited to the point of enhancement, nothing has been removed and added.

However on the other hand my #2 manipulation can only be considered an art photograph, because it has been altered in a way that changes the overall image. I have move and changed elements from the original photo that make it very different. For this reason this image would not be acceptable as a press image.

References Cited:

Iccevska, G. (n.d.). The World of Photographers and Photojournalists. [ebook] Gordana Iccevska. Available at: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxzaG9vdGluZ3RoZXRydXRofGd4OjRmNDAzZGZlNjZmMDhkYmE [Accessed 11 Mar. 2019].

Photo Staff (2016). A Brief History of Photojournalism | Photography Schools. [online] Photography-schools.com. Available at: http://www.photography-schools.com/photojournalismhistory.htm [Accessed 11 Mar. 2019].

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simplemlmsponsoring · 5 years

Photo

New Post has been published on http://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/copywriting/your-2020-mission-a-unified-strategy-for-content-in-your-marketing/

Your 2020 Mission: A Unified Strategy for Content in Your Marketing

In case you haven’t noticed – over the years here at CMI we’ve spent quite a few brain cells and digital ink defining and defending the approach of content marketing as a separate and distinct methodology to influence customer behavior.

More than a decade ago, my good friend and CMI founder Joe Pulizzi wrote his seminal post and put a stake in the ground for our beloved practice. He said it very plainly. Marketers have the opportunity to provide “truly relevant and useful content to prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.”

That post still reflects on CMI’s definitions page – which still serves to this day as the No. 1 Google result to the question “what is content marketing.” But, of course, our practice evolved. As we looked a few years later, I wrote an article that attempted to stratify the approaches of content strategy and content marketing. And then, more recently, as approaches such as branded content, brand journalism, native advertising, and brand experience (yeah it’s a thing) grew in popularity, we wrote an article and created an accompanying video that tried to separate signal from noise on the different approaches of content in the business.

In short – we’ve ranted (both rightly and probably at times too stridently) about what content marketing is and isn’t. Mostly (I hope) our aim has not been to take shots at other approaches, but rather to defend content marketing when people came along to invalidate or co-opt the practice. One thing I know for sure is that over the last 10 years we’ve always tried to have clear eyes and a full heart about why we think the separations are important.

Well – we’re in 2019 and we’re about to run up on more than a decade’s worth of experience. Let’s take a breath and see where we really are. Because, as usual, we have watched you – the practitioners in the businesses – accomplish the true innovation. We’ve been watching as you content leaders, strategists, managers, writers, SEO specialists, and technologists have found the optimal ways to make content in marketing and communications a scalable, measured, and exciting approach.

Quite honestly, we’re humbled at the level of innovation we’ve witnessed. And it’s time for us to evolve too.

Unifying content as an approach to marketing and communications

It’s high time to unify and examine #AllTheThings. Yes, to be clear, the differences in the approaches still matter – probably more than ever (and we will continue to highlight them). But it’s time to acknowledge that it’s the same people that make all manner of content a success.

It’s time to acknowledge it’s the same people that make all manner of #content a success, says @Robert_Rose. Click To Tweet

Yes, we still believe that companies should operate like media companies. But today, content teams are not only deploying owned media platforms that build audiences – they simultaneously are tasked with being the experts at native content, branded content, and technological, process-driven content strategies that enable these strategies to be governed, managed, and optimized effectively.

Set the stage – what we’ve learned

If I can brag for a moment, I would say that we have a good, 50-yard-line view of where content sits in business these days. As I noted in my last post, in 2018 my team – the consulting and education group – worked directly with more than 30 of the Fortune 500. CMI’s amazing research team conducted our annual Content Marketing research, which generated responses from 1,947 marketers across the world. Content Marketing World 2018 saw more than 3,700 marketers from more than 50 countries gather to talk about the strategic approach of content.

When we pull together the insights from all those inputs, we can see some conclusive trends.

1. Focused, centralized content teams are being assembled.

Successful businesses are taking the function of enterprise content seriously. They are moving beyond the one or two ad hoc practitioners supporting the whole business – to specialized teams focused on strategic content in marketing and communications.

Successful businesses have teams focused on strategic #content in marketing & communications, says @Robert_Rose. Click To Tweet

Sixty-seven percent of B2B organizations are fully committed to the practice of content marketing, and half these organizations expect budgets to increase over the next year. In B2C, it’s a similar story. Fifty-seven percent are looking at increased budgets, and 64% say their organization is fully committed.

Fifty-seven percent of #B2C orgs are looking at increased budgets via @cmicontent. #contentmarketing Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Increase in Your Content Marketing Budget? 61+ Fresh Ideas From Experts 2. Scalable, operational models for these teams remain elusive.

This is where the differences between the approaches of branded, native, content marketing, and content strategy really rear their head. Put simply, today’s content teams are simultaneously tasked to support marketing and sales objectives, as well as create content that supports audience building and more integrated business objectives. But what’s the model for that?

Too often, nascent content teams are assembled with no separation of approach. Content teams are measured simply by how many content assets they can create and serve as digital targets for promoted marketing campaigns. An amazing, audience-centric piece of content might suffer from a horrible marketing campaign. Or, conversely, a mediocre piece of content might shine based on a well-executed marketing campaign.

In our experience of helping hundreds of businesses with operational models, this approach is simply a misalignment of priorities vs. goals. As we wrote recently, as teams are assembled, they must look to create a “business model of content” that truly understands what this media model looks like – and how it can be measured appropriately.

That brings us to …

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: An Easy-to-Apply Framework to Build Your (New or Mature) Content Marketing Team 3. Goals and measurability remain a challenge.

If there is one through line to the struggle of content to gain traction in the business – as well as the confusion over the usage of branded content, native advertising, or content marketing – it is how to support goals and measure progress toward them.

These days it is extraordinarily common for the team handling the creation of content for owned media and audience-building purposes to also create content for a native advertising campaign or to be part of a branded content effort.

Now, assigning appropriate and measurable goals for the different types of efforts is extremely important – and we have started to see some true frameworks emerge.

However, the operational model may be even more important – because companies that have clarified and created a foundational documented content creation strategy are succeeding in greater numbers. The content creation process for businesses must be one where the content you are creating must work harder, must be reusable, and must be scalable across multiple approaches. The idea for a thought leadership piece must work on your owned media platform, as a syndicated white paper, a webinar, a native piece on an industry journal, and as a series of social media-fueled infographics. Thus, you not only need a centralized method of creating all the appropriate assets to measure correctly. You must have a common – and clear – way of measuring those efforts to see what is really working where.

Companies w/ a foundational documented #content creation strategy succeed in great numbers, says @Robert_Rose. Click To Tweet

Goals and measurability have much more to do with having an appropriate and scalable operational, governance, workflow, and technology practice than whether you have engaged the right agency or creative freelancer.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Road Map to Success: Monitoring and Measuring Your Content’s Performance What does this mean for content teams

There may be no more perfect example of this evolution than what we’re seeing evolve at Red Hat, the $3 billion software company. Over the last few years Laura Hamlyn, its global director of content, has evolved the content team from a handful of people creating content assets for sales, the C-Suite, and SEO-focused articles for the website into an integrated center of excellence, leading content as a differentiating brand, marketing, and sales effort.

The Red Hat team has used four team-focused goal inputs to balance where and how to grow the group and measure effectiveness:

Increased awareness of the company Increased subscribers to their content platforms Increased demand to fill the sales pipeline Increased content quality/scalability requirements (relevance plus findability)

To that end, Red Hat has created/hired an integrated team of copywriters, journalists, content strategists, librarians/curators, localization experts, academics, and editors. Within the next six months, the company should have approximately 45 team members. Put simply: Red Hat takes content seriously, and it is a strategic function for the company in the area of content for marketing, communications, and sales. As Laura said to me when I reached out for this article, “We’ve been given a lot of responsibility at Red Hat. Brands have to deliver a consistent value in a consistent voice. The way we do that is with a consistent team.”

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Falling Behind Your Competitors? Build a Content Brand A Step-by-Step Process for Scoring Your Content What does this mean for CMI?

Our goal remains the same as it has since Joe wrote his seminal blog post: to advance the practice of content marketing. But if this mission is our North Star, then we must acknowledge and expand our horizons to meet the changes of an evolving space race.

The content marketing practitioner of 2020:

Is a leader in the organization’s communication strategy. The team does not serve as an internal, on-demand content vending machine – but as part of the fabric of marketing and communications for the business. Understands the differences and intricacies of all operational approaches of content in the business, from content marketing and content strategy, to branded content, to native advertising, or anything else that inherently drives media creation as a business strategy. Aligns the measurement and goals appropriately to the strategy being executed. The content team members of tomorrow will build audiences through owned media experiences that can be monetized in multiple ways. They drive promotional execution of content for short-term advertising campaigns. They drive shares and organic search traffic from smart earned media and word-of-mouth strategies. Supports every part of the customer’s journey. The content teams of tomorrow are not just top-of-the-funnel, sales enablement teams. They are not just SEO-focused teams driving brand awareness. They are not just customer-support organizations, managing how-to videos, or customer events. Tomorrow’s content teams are the experts in delivering audience value at every stage of the customer’s journey.

Tomorrow’s #content teams are experts in delivering audience value at every stage of customer’s journey. @Robert_Rose Click To Tweet

And thus, we expand our mission, our editorial coverage, our teaching, and our learning as well. At Content Marketing Institute, you will see more coverage on topics such as native advertising, branded content, and content strategy as well as our continued focus on the approach of content marketing. It’s a unified family of specific, yet related approaches to the strategic use of media in our business.

CMI is here to support you – the content marketing team leaders, the practitioners, and every single subject-matter expert.

It’s your story. Tell it well.

Technology often is one component in unifying content in marketing strategy. Make plans today to attend ContentTECH in San Diego this April. Register using code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Your 2020 Mission: A Unified Strategy for Content in Your Marketing appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Read more: contentmarketinginstitute.com

#content #more #must #ndash #strategy #team #teams #your #COPYWRITING

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thekoreanlass · 5 years

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To zombie apocalypse fans alike, I think that Rampant‘s plot is going to be a lot interesting considering that South Korea did use a juxtaposing mix of genre’s in this one, possibly surpassing the uniqueness that ‘Train to Busan‘ had.

Surely, there’s nothing more intriguing than mixing zombie thriller, historical fiction and political war in one single movie. That should be the absolute and almost impossible made possible recipe that will surely bring in patrons that once loved the first-ever Korean zombie film two years ago that took over the world.

But the real question is: ‘is ‘Rampant’ able to surpass or at least come on par with ‘Train to Busan’?

Brought by the same studio as ‘Train to Busan’ and directed by Kim Sung Hoon that brought to us well-acclaimed 2017 action film ‘Confidential Assignment‘, surely ‘Rampant’ will not disappoint.

The Story:

Prince Ganglim (Hyun Bin) goes back to Joseon after a long political imprisonment abroad in the Qing Dynasty. His sudden return was due to the last will that he received from his befallen brother, the crown prince (Kim Tae Woo), who he thought died from suicide. It had stated that as a last favor for Ganglim to retrieve the crown princess and their unborn child and bring them back with him to Qing.

Ganglim’s long absence made everything in Joseon so estranged to him that he had shown great disinterest about the darkness that’s looming over his birth country. He did not wish to come back for anything else other than saving the crown princess in honor of his late brother. So, after encountering ‘night demons’ that had been plaguing Jemulpo and being saved by Park Eulryoung’s (Jo Woo Jin) group from being mugged by them, Ganglim still refused to cooperate willingly though the peasants that had been waiting for him were begging for them to be saved by the prince.

Upon seeing though the chaos and terror these ‘night demons’ caused to his people, though reluctantly, Ganglim agrees to speak to the King to send an army to help those still trapped in Jemulpo.

However, upon his return to the palace, Ganglim is denied his request by the vicious Minister of War Kim Ja Joon (Jang Dong Gun). More so, he ordered for Eulryoung and his gang to be imprisoned for high treachery. A similar incident with the ‘night demons’ happens though as one of consorts who got infected by the plague turns into a night demon and bites the King. Eventually, chaos in the palace starts after this and more people are bitten and unfortunately turned to grotesque looking monsters who feed on human flesh and blood. While Kim Ja Joon sees this as an opportunity to usurp the throne from the King’s bloodline, Ganglim, together with his men, becomes determined to end the long standing plague caused by the ‘night demons’ within the palace walls before it’s too late.

Review:

Premise

I’m giving this film extra points for the plot’s originality. I think that while ‘Train to Busan’ can be a common westerner’s vision of a modern zombie apocalypse, no one would have thought that zombies and historical period can fit in the same picture. Like how can zombies arise in the old period? There’s no way zombies could exist during those times since it will take an uncontrollable virus outbreak situation to create an army of them. So, I think it is also wise of them to call these creatures as ‘night demons’, because the real cause of the infection can be left alone as ‘unknown’, especially that this movie surely left out that very important detail: as to how the first ‘night demon’ caught the condition. It would have been more interesting if we were given a little backstory, but we’re left in the dark, so we should just take what we can.

Night Demons

In terms of the ‘night demons’ or zombies or whatever you want to call them, I think that this film has maintained the same image about zombies that we saw from ‘Train to Busan’: (1) they are sensitive to sound, (2) they go rampant upon hearing sound or upon smelling blood (3) they look grotesque, (4) they are fast, strong and vicious. The only thing I see different is that these zombies hate the sun, because the sun actually hurts them or at least I think so; while the zombies from ‘Train to Busan’ were tamer in the darkness. It is good that the same concept is used to make sure we are not lost in the story, but this actually killed some of the excitement since I was actually looking for something new. I was hoping they’ll depict zombies a little differently. Nonetheless, I have enjoyed the action packed zombie rampage scenes versus Prince Ganglim whose sword fighting skills is so unparalleled that it’s so entertaining he actually killed a whole bunch of them alone and while remaining untouched, though that basically made his role a little predictable.

Characters

The movie itself is actually plagued with cardboard characters that lacked a past, a backstory to back them up. Just like when Ganglim is introduced once his ship lands in Jemulpo, though many was said in the plot about his past and his reason for going back to Joseon, the scenes itself did not give me much information about this, so I was confused why Ganglim was coming back from Beijing.

What I like about this character the most, though, is his character development: from a vain and self-centered jerk who is more interested with vices and women he left back in Qing, Joseon molded him to become righteous and a person that thinks more of his people above all else. It made him deserving of becoming a King through his actions.

There’s even one part along the end that his lines really made me cry. He said something about it not being true that a King should be above his people, because the people are who makes the King. So, the King should protect his people. I guess, it’s at that point that he has accepted the responsibility of becoming king after Joseon rudely taught him how to be one.

I think that Hyun Bin is able to own Ganglim’s character in this movie. He has owned the spotlight all throughout and because most of the action-packed scenes are centered towards him, it highlighted even more Hyun Bin’s commendable portrayal, though it is inarguable that his character leans on the more predictable side despite the zombies’ efforts on trying to bring him down. I think the character actually beats the purpose of such a grotesque zombie thriller, but I guess since I’m more of a happy ending person, I’m happy that he did not end up dead during the final scenes; something that I did not get from ‘Train to Busan’.

The other characters, though easy to sympathize with, lacked their own backstories and development in the story, so it was hard to connect relationships among characters and read their minds. So many of them had the potential to be something more. Like for example, Kim Ja Joon who was played by Jang Dong Jun. I think that he has portrayed the role so viciously that the role was so hateable even until his end, but at the same time it missed the opportunity to be something more. I think that the script itself prevented these amazing characters from growing, so I can’t really blame the actors for how they portrayed them.

Theme

I think that though I really enjoyed the movie to the fullest, it is right to say that it lacked consistency when it comes to the themes. There’s the zombie apocalypse and endless chase, gun fights and sword fights that will totally pump up adrenaline in your body, but sometimes it is overcome by the political struggle that period movies like this has. So, we go back and forth from a zombie invasion to a dramatic political war that involves families and vicious foes. Making it a little bit behind ‘Train to Busan’ in this area, since the movie’s theme felt like its everywhere, whereas its former zombie movie sunbae actually focused on a singular item with less dramatization of the situation.

Overall

Though there’s a lot of obvious flaws to this movie and there’s still a long way for ‘Rampant’ to catch up to ‘Train to Busan’ in terms of its overall production and impact, I think that the film overall is really good. Cinematography-wise it’s really dark and grotesque depiction of a zombie plagued Joseon is flawless, believable. The sound effects also added additional suspense to important scenes, especially when it’s about time the leads face their otherwordly flesh-eating foes. The cast is also able to turn a very plot driven story to something more character focused, though there’s a lot of times it’s hard to find a distict characteristic or emotion from them.

Rating this, I’ll give it 4.4 out of 5.0. There were times when I felt like I’m losing the hype I felt before while watching some parts of the movie and when I tthought there’s nothing really extraordinary about this other than the fact we’re seeing zombies in fictitious Joseon, that’s why I’m giving it that kind of score. Other than that, it’s a good watch. I’ll recommend it to you guys at any day.

[Film Review] Korean Period Action-Zombie Movie ‘Rampant’ To zombie apocalypse fans alike, I think that Rampant's plot is going to be a lot interesting considering that South Korea did use a juxtaposing mix of genre's in this one, possibly surpassing the uniqueness that '

#action #historical #Hyun Bin #Jang Dong Gun #K-movies #korea #korean #movie #Movies #popular #Rampant #recommended #review #south korea #thekoreanlass #zombie

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ciathyzareposts · 4 years

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Game 364: Morabis I: The Dungeons of Morabis (1991)

There’s some title confusion (covered later). I suppose the title is technically The Dungeons of Morabis: Morabis I: “The Dungeons of Morabis.”

Morabis I: The Dungeons of Morabis

United States

Independently developed and released as shareware

Several versions released for DOS between 1991 and 1992

Date Started: 2 May 2020

The CRPG world probably has more roguelike games than the player base can sensibly support, particularly when you consider that even the best examples of the genre are 1) free; and 2) replayable by design. (For those readers unfamiliar with Rogue and roguelikes, a trip to my glossary might help.) Roguelikes are almost all about mechanics; it’s not like you keep seeking out new ones for their stories. For a rogue clone to be worth playing instead of the original Rogue (1980), it has to offer something substantially new or different.

I’m on the fence as to whether Morabis I does that. Starting with a clear base in Rogue, it makes some major and minor changes, adds some major and minor features. So far, as many of them have been bad as good. Perhaps the most notable is a quasi-“real-time” gameplay mechanic by which your turn “passes” every second unless you act quickly. One of the features of roguelikes has always been how the turn-based nature of gameplay requires you to really think, so I don’t like that this one pressures you into quick action. Second, Morabis adds bigger dungeon levels. Much bigger. It takes about 30 minutes to fully explore a level. This makes the game longer but not more challenging.

From the Morabis Home Page, a map of a single dungeon level.

Third, while it retains the roguelike randomization of wands, rings, scrolls, et. al. into different colors and descriptions, it doesn’t maintain consistency in those descriptions. One silver ring might be a Ring of Protection but the next is a Ring of Invisibility, or a Scroll of Identification might be described as a red scroll on one level and an ancient scroll on the next. This is the sort of idea that might sound good if you fundamentally don’t understand roguelikes. Finally, there’s a search/hidden area dynamic that would have killed the entire genre if Rogue had featured it in 1980. It would have led me to ragequit after the second level if I hadn’t been forced to write about the game for some jackass’s blog.

Some of the facts of the game are hard to nail down. It was created by Michael S. Höenie (pronounced “Hay-Knee” according to the manual) of Salt Lake City and dedicated to his father. Depending on what web site or document you read, this game might be called Morabis, Morabis I: Quest for the Amulet of Sae’Gore, The Dungeons of Morabis: The Quest for the Amulet, or even Morabis II. Complicating matters is the fact that Höenie apparently wrote several versions between 1989 and 1992. I get the impression that at some point he felt the game had evolved enough to be a II rather than the original, but then later reversed himself. I could be wrong. It’s confusing. The manual that comes with the game titled Morabis I lists commands that are supposedly available in Morabis I but not the original Morabis, but they don’t actually work in Morabis I. Those commands include the ability to talk and transact with monsters, to cast spells, and to dig for treasure. It would be nice if they worked, if they ever did, as this version is a little poorer for their absence.

The backstory is more elaborate than the typical roguelike but ends up being somewhat nonsensical. It tells of a peaceful land being conquered by the evil Lord Devenon, who rules from Castle Morabis. In the final battle, good King Richards is slain, and his son, now King Daniel, vows to find the legendary Scarlette Sword and Armor of Power. Cut to character creation, where the character can be named anything, and he’s questing for the Amulet of Sae’Gore (unmentioned in the backstory) in the dungeons of Morabis. If you try to back out of the dungeon on the first screen, you’re told you can’t leave until you’ve destroyed the “deamon” (misspellings are rampant in the documentation, too) Satu’Nävas. Höenie really likes his umlauts.

After you name your character, the game rolls values for strength, dexterity, and starting vitality, then you’re sent to the first room of the first level of a 25-level dungeon. If I’ve interpreted things correctly, the dungeon levels are not randomized, although the placement of items and some monsters is. Some encounters are fixed, however; for instance, the second room is always full of ghosts that blink in and out of visibility.

A brief character creation process.

The game has some minor innovations that do improve upon typical roguelike gameplay. Neither you nor enemies can attack on the diagonal, so if you’re facing a roomful of foes from a doorway, only the one directly in front of you can hit. Shooting with a missile weapon brings up a targeting cursor that lets you aim at any square in range, whether it has an enemy or not, and it will strike whatever it intercepts first. Balancing this: missile weapons are a bit under-powered and you have to hit the “A” key before every melee attack–you can’t just shove your way into enemies.

Aiming at several foes with the targeting cursor.

There are about 35 monsters in the game. Originality is shown mostly with monster names that sound familiar but are a little different: gobnors and hobnorlins, kesthorns, ints, omnorfs, and wraglors. There are alongside more familiar snakes, spiders, ghouls, and ghosts. The monsters don’t have as many special attacks some roguelikes, but occasionally the author’s creativity surprises you. “Dust fiends” are capable of hurling little blasts of dust that cause confusion, for instance. “Ice warfs” can throw balls of ice. Dragons breathe fireballs. Like most roguelikes, Morabis assigns a letter to objects that you pick up, including weapons, armor, rings, scrolls, wands, food, and keys. Equipping weapons shows their “to hit” and damage values, and equipping armor shows its armor class, but wearable items might be cursed, meaning you can’t take them off until you find a way to remove them. Food is necessary but plentiful. The game is based on pre-NetHack Rogue, so there’s no intrinsics and no eating of corpses to get benefits. (Corpses sometimes appear randomly as food items, but they’re only for the desperate.) There are a few original items like Wands of Invigorate Monster, Scrolls of Chlorine Blast, and Rings of Double Damage, but most are from the Rogue list. One of the things I like about the game is that when you shoot a missile or wand or the enemy fires a missile at you, an ASCII representation actually travels across the screen, round by round, until it hits. You have time to dodge out of the way of some of these attacks if you’re swift.

“The zombie dropped a croissant” had me laughing for at least five minutes.

The difficulty of the game is a bit different than most roguelikes. The level of both monsters and weapons scales as you travel down the levels. On the first level, you might find a sword with +4 accuracy and +9 damage or a chain mail with an AC of 10. By Level 10, you’re finding those figures i the 50s or 60s. So there’s no chance of finding a superb weapon on the first floor and keeping it for the entire game; you must continually replace.

Similarly, your strength and dexterity increase every time you level up, but these increases simply keep pace with the added difficulty of monsters as you go down. In Rogue, an orc is an orc no matter where you meet him; in Morabis, a hobnorlin is significantly more deadly on Level 12 than Level 2. In fact, no matter what level I’m on, no matter what I’m wearing for armor, any enemy seems capable of killing me if they hit me two or three times, and any enemy dies in two or three hits from me.

As the levels increase, so does the damage multiplier.

You have a couple of advantages. Holding down the SPACE key or “S” rapidly regenerates health. Enemies don’t leave their rooms and rarely spawn in corridors, so you can generally rest there safely. Enemies are also pretty miserable at hitting you: their blows land maybe 20% of the time. This gives you time to dart to safety if they hit you once. But most important, Morabis is a “roguelite,” lacking permadeath, allowing you to save anywhere and even saving for you as you change levels.

Thankfully, the author didn’t get creative with commands, copying most of Rogue‘s right down to q)uaff. He actually improved on the typical roguelike when it comes to putting on and taking off objects. In Rogue and NetHack, you have separate commands for equipping and removing weapons and armor and putting on or taking off rings. In Morabis, you just open the inventory screen, highlight the item you want, and hit SPACE to equip or remove it

Scrolling through my inventory.

But for every positive, there’s a negative. There’s no in-game help, for one. The screen doesn’t redraw properly, leaving artifacts all over the place. The “Call” command, which supposedly lets you rename things, doesn’t actually let you see the new names unless you drop the item. Eating poisoned or bad food increases your hunger but often doesn’t actually display it on the screen, meaning you can starve to death with no on-screen warning. An encumbrance bug forces you to occasionally drop all your items and pick them up again to reset your weight. The “more” message, which flashes at the bottom of the screen when there’s more text to show you, remains on the screen and keeps flashing even after you’ve read the text. Small things like that get to you.

Note that there’s no “hunger” message on my character.

But nothing is more annoying than the search issue, which is an issue on Level 1 but becomes intolerable on Level 2. On Level 1, most rooms are full of hidden doors. You have to stand in the room and hit S)earch repeatedly–maybe 10 times to be sure–to find all of them. That’s bad enough. But starting on Level 2, entire rooms and passages are concealed, requiring you to hold down the “S” or pound it repeatedly to open up the dungeon, one square at a time. Moving through the dungeon becomes an exercise of hitting “S” after practically every step. I haven’t found it yet, but if there’s a Ring of Automatic Searching, it’s the most valuable object in the game.

Opening up the dungeon, one “S” key press at a time.

Anyway, when you’ve come to terms with that, you discover there’s another whole class of secret door you can only find by bumping into blank walls. Another annoyance is that the “search” command never finds traps–nothing seems to–and many of the traps are extremely annoying, chief among them teleport traps which send you to a random point in an already-too-large dungeon level.

This trap causes fireballs to shoot from all the walls around you and converge on you.

The lack of randomization of the levels lets the developer lay out some interesting scenes and settings. Unfortunately, a lot of them are annoying and a bit unfair. A common favorite is to require the player to thread his way over a large lava pit on a narrow walkway. Accidentally walking into the lava is instant death. As you walk, traps go off and freeze you in place or you get frozen by ice balls thrown by ice warfs. While you’re froze, dust fiends on nearby platforms blast you, confusing you. While confused, you wander the wrong direction off the platform and instantly die.

Stuck on a lava walkway while enemies pelt me with missiles.

Another common setup is to put a secret door at the end of a lava walkway. You sit there like a doofus, hitting s)earch round after round while you’re pelted by missiles from unseen enemies.

A secret door appears just as I get hit with a dust blast.

A miniboss comes up every five levels. On Level 5, it was Fennel the Fire Lark, and I faced Jahaÿ the Gobnor on Level 10. Both taunted me with textual taunts as I explored the level and neared their chambers. They’re a little bit harder than generic creatures of those types on the same level, but not overly so. Level 13 brought the game’s first dragon, guarding a pile of treasure in his lair behind him.

My understanding is that the umlaut over the “y” signifies that the name is pronounced “Ja-ha-ee.”

I try to dodge fireblasts while getting in melee range of the dragon.

I had hoped to win the game in one post, but in my initial six hours, I could only make it to Level 13. This is the first level that has required keys to open doors. The game gives you copious keys of different types but doesn’t require them for the first 12 levels.

Opening the door with a key.

Food is starting to get scarce, and I can’t seem to find the next down staircase. But I’ll keep at it, document the ending, and let you know if it offers anything new in its second half.

Time so far: 6 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-364-morabis-i-the-dungeons-of-morabis-1991/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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acoolguyscoollife · 5 years

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Chapter 8: Caste, Waste and Haste

“Well, here we are!” Aki said, making a small pose as if to say ta-da with her body, arms outstretched to show off what was ahead of us. We had finally reached the custom-built areas of the underground society, and it showed. The pipe’s flooring beneath us had changed to cobblestone, which, after a few more moments, had turned to grass as green as if it had been outside. In fact, looking up, it was barely even possible to see the stone roof of the cave, instead seeing bright blue skies manifested by magic abilities. I wasn’t sure how mutations allowed for magic, but then again, I wasn’t sure how being in a simulation allowed for magic either, and I sure wasn’t going to question that. Just ahead of us was the main castle, white with gold trim and patterns covering every part of the wall it could, causing the “sun”light to bounce off of it well and shine even more than it already did.

“Where’s this?” Tabitha asked, pointedly looking at Aki instead of Amy or I, since both of us could answer too.

“It’s Castle Freestone, where the royals of the underground live. I figured that if you guys were outsiders, it would be good to bring you here to meet with the royals.” Aki replied, glancing over at the drawbridge, which was already lowered. “It looks as if they were expecting people already, actually.” She added, putting a finger and thumb to her chin and lower lip, which was pursed slightly as she looked over, confused. Not seeing anything else to do, I began to move forward, motioning for the others to follow, and strolled leisurely to the drawbridge, glancing down at the waters beneath it as I did so. Unlike the sewer water, the moat’s water sparkled with clearness, and I might have washed my shoes in it if it weren’t for the fact that this water was most likely actually the main source of water in the underground. Two normal-looking people stood guard at the entrance to the courtyard, holding spears made out of twinkling rainbow light, meshed together in a worryingly sharp way.

“Hold.” One said, commandingly. “What business do you have here?” He asked, and I tried hard to think of a valid reason from the game that I could use.

“We’re here to-” I began, but was stopped by the abruptness of a spear being pointed at my jugular.

“I wasn’t asking you, dirtcoat.” He said angrily, and a cold chill went down my spine as I remembered exactly why the white coat that Tabitha wore worried me so much. I turned away from the guards, huddling myself with everyone else.

“Tabitha, we have a problem.” I said, and a glance over to Amy told me that she’d now remembered it too, her face as grim and stony as mine most likely was.

“What’s up, CG? Why was that guy threatening you?” Tabitha asked, and I breathed in, knowing that I was going to be spending a lot more time than I would have liked explaining this.

“The society down here operates under a mutation-influenced caste system, with people being grouped together and made to wear easily recognizable clothes to distinguish who has what abilities.” I said, barely taking a minute to space out my words.

“The hell is a caste system?” Seth asked, and Amy answered him before I could.

“Basically, a way of dividing people, segregation through differences in societal positions, race, religion, money, or literally any reason someone wants to make themselves better than someone else. In this case, it’s clothes and abilities.” Amy said, reminding me that she had spent a long time learning socio-economic stuff in high school and college. “In basic-ass terms, it’s just yet another reason for people to be assholes to each other.”

“Amy and Cool Guy are right; this is why I’m forced to wear these clothes.” Aki said, using a thumb to hold out a corner of her now-noticeably dark brown clothes, in a very similar shade to my own jacket. “I purrsess no contribution-worthy mutations, and as such, am on the lower end of the caste spectrum.” Aki seemed a little dejected saying it, but masked it quickly with her usual smile.

“How many different castes are there?” Tabitha asked, and I took a moment to count the ones that I could remember in my head. Eventually, a solid number came up in my mind.

“There’s thirteen, including the white one, which is the one assigned to royalty. Bronze, which is the one Aki and me are wearing, is pretty much the lowest.” I replied, glancing over at everyone else’s clothes. Amy’s tank top was turquoise, which was most likely closest to the Teal ranking. Seth’s V-neck, on the other hand, was Burgundy, basically placing him on the lowest end of the mutationspectrum.

Amy

CG, I don’t get you sometimes, how do you know words like turquoise? It’s such a random colour name, just say light blue.

Cool Guy

Is turquoise not a commonly known colour?

“Okay, so what you’re saying is that I’m in charge, even though I’ve never played this game before, and won’t know what to do?” Tabitha asked, and I nodded, not really able to do much else. As much as this situation sucked, there weren’t really many alternatives we could use. Changing clothes was possible, I suppose, but I would have had to take off my jacket. Plus, at the very least, Tabitha had abilities concurrent with the white she was wearing. All I had was the ability to swing a sharp bit of metal around, which, while totally badass, wouldn’t really help my case. “Well… shit.” Tabitha replied to my nod. “So give me a rundown, what are we trying to do here?” I moved to speak, but Amy was way ahead of me.

“Okay, so basically, we need to break the barriers of the caste system that’s in place, uniting the splayed factions of the mutants, while at the same time finding a way out of here. Normally this’d take centuries, but… well, it’s a video game, so we’ll be able to solve literally every problem in the world in enough time if the game wanted us to. Any questions?” Amy finished, giving a recap of all the important plot points of the game. Truth be told, the fact we had forgotten about the caste system was kind of dumb on our parts. It was very much a main part of the story, so apparently, we’d been tossing the idiot ball between the two of us.

“Only one.” Tabitha began, before turning to me. “Where the hell did you get that backpack from?” She asked, pointing to the shoulder strap of the backpack I’d forgotten I even had. The Court of the Court hadn’t taken it off of me when they’d kidnapped me, and I hadn’t realised that it would come with me to the next simulation.

“Oh, this?” I said, unshouldering it and unzipping the bag. “I picked it up in Apocalypse, but forgot all about it with the whole kidnapping thing happening.” I took out the newspaper as I talked, thumbing through it again and looking at the highlighted words. Multiple colours, on different pages, but seemingly no meaning, no matter how I ordered them. Tabitha took it off me, looking at the words herself and flicking through the pages. Her expression turned from curious, to unsure, then to something else, her eyes widening as she flicked through the newspaper quicker, then back to the beginning again, repeating this action a few times.

“Holy shit.” She said, then folded the newspaper back up, taking the backpack off of me and putting it on herself, the newspaper back where it was before. “Come on, you guys. I’ll explain more when I can. We’ve got a job to do.” Tabitha added, being oddly cryptic for someone like her. She approached the guards, who once again readied their weapons, but a flick of her hand and the spears were forced to the ground, with the guards either having to let go or be stuck holding a now-incredibly heavy spear. “We’re here to see the king.” She said curtly, staring down at the two of them behind her glasses. “Now.” She added, and the two quickly complied, straightening themselves upright and saluting her.

“This way, ma’am.” The first one said, leading us down one of the castle’s twisting hallways. The inside was ornate, lush red carpets with gold trim fitting the stereotypical castle look, as well as the golden chandeliers that hung above us.

“If Tabitha is this strong with her magic, I think this is going to be easier than we thought.” Amy whispered to me as we walked, and I nodded in response, thinking about what Tabitha had seen in that newspaper that I hadn’t. I had thought to check the words that weren’t highlighted, but there was too many of them to discern any kind of hidden message. So what, then? Why was she now so focused on making her way through this place? I had to say, the mystery of everything was pretty damn exciting, and taking a moment to indulge all the cool scenarios I envisioned was incredibly fun. But at the same time, this wouldn’t be something I’d admit, as I was much too cool for that. One more turn, and we were in the King’s throne room, which was, no surprise, where the King sat. He wasn’t known as anything except King in the game, so I didn’t expect much. You mainly interacted with the prince in the game, so it wasn’t too exciting to see the King.

“Atlas, why do you bring people to my presence?” He asked nonchalantly, barely taking the time to actually look at us. In response, Tabitha shoved Atlas out of the way, snapping her fingers and creating a ball of flames in her hand, which she quickly sent flying towards him. It narrowly missed, even though he had no time to react, and he shot upright from his lounging position, about to move for his trident.

“Okay King, I’ve got some requests for you.” Tabitha said, and the tone in her voice took me aback for a second. It was cold, collected, and with a hint of irritation. “First, you’re going to end this stupid system of discrimination, and make every mutant equal.” A second fireball knocked the golden trident out of his hands, sending it flying to the side. “Second, you’re going to answer some questions of mine about someone I’m looking for.” The King glared at her, the fire from her third fireball reflecting in his eyes.

“And if I say no?” He asked, but the tone of his voice gave away that he wasn’t going to.

“Do you know what happens to a mutant that’s set on fire?” Tabitha answered his question with one of her own, and the King shook his head. “The same thing that happens to everyone else.” Tabitha’s words were getting angrier, but she was interrupted from starting a new sentence from a tap on her shoulder.

“Um��” Seth began, as she turned around to look at us. “First off, that line was not as cool as you thought it was. It wasn’t even cool in the movie you stole it from.” He said, and Tabitha shrugged, but she seemed to be calming down slightly. “Secondly, I’m sure there was a much more diplomatic way of doing this. Why are you rushing so much?” Tabitha took off the backpack, producing the newspaper that we had taken. A flick to the first page with highlighted words, and she handed it over to Seth.

“Each sentence is in a different colour, and spread out across the pages.” Tabitha said. “Read them. I’ll explain it after I ask this guy some questions.” Tabitha turned to the throne, but the King was gone. In fact, so was Atlas, which was an incredibly worrying scenario. I had a feeling that soon people were going to break through any one of the many doors leading into here, so I thumbed through the newspaper, this time reading the message properly. When I had reached the last word of the final colour, I handed it back, wordlessly. I wasn’t sure about what I had just read, but I knew it meant that something bigger was happening.

Travel between different worlds can be achieved. I have to find him; I know he’s in here somewhere. Keep yourself safe, and don’t try and find me. He isn’t alone.

#cool guy #A Cool Guy's Cool Life #original fiction #story #creative writing

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vanphongchiasehcm · 5 years

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How to tailor your resume for remote work

by Chloe Bennet

Though working remotely is on the rise, most employers aren’t sold on it just yet. Some employers even believe that “remote work” means employees are lazy and less productive.

As a job seeker, this is a hurdle. It can be really hard to prove the strengths of remote work in a way that speaks to employers and their concerns. Here are some best practices for showing remote work on your resume.

Emphasize it in your career objective

If you have experience working remotely, your career summary or career objective is a great place to show it. Highlight your accomplishments and include some reasons why remote work helped you achieve them.

For example: “Experienced remote employee with more than 5 years of successful remote work in graphic design with [list the names of companies you worked for and some of your results].”

This is what I did in my resume. Later, my employer said that what impressed him right away is the amount of remote work experience I listed in my career summary.

If you want a remote role but don’t have any remote work experience, you should be explicit about your desire to work remotely in your career objective. Talk about the experience you have working in offices and highlight the ways it might translate to a remote role.

If the job you’re applying for is remote and you want to show that you are capable of doing it, make sure to polish the skills section of your resume. Make it easy for the hiring manager to see that you’re at the top of your game, remote or not.

Show it in your address

One of the best ways to show that you have worked remotely is to add it in the location of your employment. For example: “Graphic Designer, Tokyo, Japan.” It implies you were successful enough in your job that you were free to live where you wanted.

“Make sure that you state the location or address instead of just writing ‘remote.’ Just saying remote doesn’t say much, but a location does,” says Andrea Fuchs, resume editor at PaperFellows.

I always did this, and not just to brag about all of the places I’ve been to. But it manage to impress my employers and helped convey how competent I was.

Describe your home office and why it works

One of the biggest misgivings employers have about remote work and remote employees is their productivity and effectiveness. To allay their potential concerns, it can be helpful to describe your home office and explain why it boosts your productivity. Be clear about the details of how your process works.

This may not be obvious—at least it wasn’t to me. But it’s worth including in your resume. I always describe how my home office and arrangement helps me work better.

Use online tools to help you write accurately

Being able to write well in your resume and in email can be one of the decisive factors in getting a job. This is perhaps even more critical in remote work because remote relationships rely heavily on nonverbal communication. Employers are looking for someone that can execute business writing seamlessly. Grammar and spelling mistakes are definitely unacceptable here.

It’s worth using some online tools to make sure your writing is polished.

Resumention is a resume service that can help you create the perfect resume and show your best features.

Via Writing and MyWritingWay are grammar resources that can help you learn the most important grammar rules to follow.

Academized and Boom Essays are editing tools praised in Boom Essays review. They can help you remove all of the fluff from your writing.

Writing Populist and State Writing are blogs with useful suggestions on resume writing.

Assignment Writer and Essayroo are online proofreading tools reviewed by Australians Reviewer. They can help catch your hard-to-spot spelling mistakes and typos.

Study Demic and LetsGoLearn are career writing guides which can help specifically with business writing.

Show how well you work with other employees

Another key detail to describe in your resume is how well you can work with other people. Talk about some of your achievements in this area: how you communicate with your teammates, how your communication contributed to great results and so on. Don’t be afraid to list the tools you’ve used in the past—Slack, etc.

Show it in the skills section

Insofar as a company might prefer someone local over someone remote, it really comes down to your skills. You need to not only outshine other potential remote candidates, but candidates closer to company headquarters as well. Your skills section is the perfect place to do this. It’s also a great place to underscore just how well remote work suits you. Show how good you are at time management. Quantify how responsible you are and the size and scope of projects you’ve been in charge of. Remote work helps you build some amazing skills, most notably self-discipline and ability to work on your own without constant monitoring and management. These are worth reiterating.

Keep your online resume updated

Your online resume, possibly on LinkedIn or another niche resume or portfolio site, should always be updated to reflect your most recent employments as a remote worker. Employers usually like to take a look at these resumes as well as your social media profiles. Remote employers even more so, as social media is the way we know each other at a distance. Make sure that they are all updated and in line with your values.

Writing a resume is never easy. But a good resume pays off in getting a great job that matches your needs. Adding remote work can add a confusing layer to an already difficult process. Using these tips can help you stand out to remote employers in an effective way.

Image credit: Photo courtesy of Buro Millennial.

The post How to tailor your resume for remote work appeared first on New Worker Magazine.

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a-breton · 5 years

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