#did they ever fix this hardware issue? no idea. if the new one breaks again i'm giving up.

[irbcallmefynn]

nothing like spending all of the money you have on steam on a replacement controller for your vr headset because the stick is busted!

yeah I've been wanting to play more vr for a long time but I've never wanted to deal with the stick drift and stick... twist? idk what you'd call it but the stick on the left controller of my index twists which is not correct. the replacement left controllers only got back in stock recently so i seized the opportunity and now ill be able to do vr again in like 3-5 days i think maybe.

yaaaayyyyy :333

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

From Eden: Two

Warnings: noncon sexual acts, mentions of mental illness; tags to be added throughout series

This is dark!Bucky. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: The mc suffers from agoraphobia. After a new neighbour moves in across the street, her home becomes even more of a prison.

Note: Yo, so here’s part 2! I hope you all enjoy. As before, there is a transcript at the end for anyone having issues with the images.

Thank you so much for your patience! And support!!

As always, if you are so inclined, please like, reblog, and comment. <3

Transcript:

Sunday

I called Dr. Tisha this morning. I told her about the neighbour. She said it was nice of him to help with the garden but ignored me when I mentioned the broken gate. I don’t know if she believed me. It didn’t seem like it. 

She’s coming by tomorrow to check on my progress. That means I can’t keep those magazines on the dining table anymore. The last time she made me throw half of them out. She didn’t listen when I told her some were so old they were priceless. Sometimes it feels like she doesn’t listen to me at all. Well, what do I pay her to do then?

I haven’t been back outside. I should water the garden as it’s only getting hotter but I don’t appreciate the unwanted audience. An intruder!

Later

I still haven’t found the courage to venture out. I made sure the bike lock was still in place from the front door. It is. Though, if that man’s metal hand could break the old lock, it will likely shred the chain lock. 

Thinking about it makes my heart race. I should go lay down. I’m dizzy and the humidity is making me sick to my stomach. Or maybe it’s something else.

Monday

Dr. Tisha came by early today.

I showed Dr. Tisha where I kept my medicine in the bathroom cabinet, the pills divided into the days. I check off each day on the calendar so I don’t forget either. She said that was good. The last time she was here, it was because I’d stopped taking the pills so I hope this made her happy.

Then she walked through the house, she said she was happy to see the top of the table this time. I laughed but it wasn’t really funny. Then she went to the kitchen and checked all the drawers. 

She found some books hidden under the sink and asked if I’d ever read them. I mean to but haven’t yet. She took them to the guest room where she found the bins of books stacked in the corner. Better than last time when they were a pile on the carpet. 

She said I have too many things. Too many things that aren’t mine. She says it’s okay to be sad about grandma but that holding onto all her stuff won’t bring her back. Like I don’t know that! I do know! But she left me these things so yes, they are mine.

Then we went to grandma’s old room. It’s the same as it was. As it’s always been. Dr. Tisha frowned and went to my room next. 

She asked me about the broken bed frame. I told her it was nothing. I made sure to replace the duvet I’d dragged out the couch to sleep without threat of rolling onto the floor in my sleep. Not that I sleep very much.

She opened my closet and found the magazines. That didn’t impress her either.

We had tea in the kitchen and talked. She asked me how I was feeling. About side effects and all that. Besides the occasional bout of nausea and vivid dreams, I’m fine. She agrees.

Then she asked about the tall shelf of vinyls in the living room. Which one is my favourite? I told her the old Vera Lynn record reminded me of grandma and it was still on the needle.

Then we argued. She wants me to get rid of the ones I don’t listen to. And the magazines in my closet! And she wants me to go through all the books, too. 

She also suggested that I think about redecorating. I told her I didn’t want to do any of that. I like the house the way it is. Who is it hurting if I have a few extra books laying around?

She calmed me down after I raised my voice. She made me count my breaths and explained that I don’t have to get rid of everything, just a little. She says it would help with my progress. And, she said, I could probably make a healthy profit off a yard sale. 

Well, I don’t care about the money, I don’t want to have a sale. I don’t want to deal with people and them thumbing through grandma’s thing for pennies. 

Dr. Tisha said she’ll make some signs and we’ll have the sale on Saturday. My task for the week is to decide what to sell and prices. We argued again but not very long.

When she left, I started crying. Everywhere I look, I see grandma and this place is empty enough without her.

Tuesday

Lorena showed up today.

I gave her my list, it wasn’t very long. She asked about the bike lock and I asked if she could stop by the hardware store and get a new mechanism. She asked me if I even knew how to fix it. I said I’d figure it out.

I told her about Dr. Tisha’s idea for the yard sale. She said it was a great idea. I still don’t agree but she offered to help me sort through the guest room. I shrugged and asked her how long she’d be at the store. She said the usual and left.

I waited by the door. I watched the front gate for her return. She had the combination to the bike lock now and could let herself in. I just wanted her to come back and drop everything off so I could be alone.

When she did return, she wasn’t alone. I saw her at the gate, fumbling with the lock. As the gate shifted open, a metal arm reached past her to push it all the way. The man held a paper bag in his other arm as Lorena carried the other.

He was smiling as he spoke to her and let her pass. He followed her to the door and he saw me before I could back away from the slated window in the door.

“Open up,” Lorena called as she tapped the door. 

I didn’t know what else to do but open the door. When I did she handed me her bag and reached for the one the man held.

“Sorry, but… I can’t let you inside.” She said glumly. “But thanks for the help.”

“No problem.” He glanced past her and I tried to hide behind her but he’s taller than her. He’s very big up close. “You have a great day. Both of you.”

“You, too.” Lorena said and he strode away.

When the gate clattered closed I waited until I was sure he was gone. I dropped my bag and rushed to check the lock. He’d secured it. Good.

I went back to the house and locked the door too. Lorena already had both bags on the table.

“He didn’t mean any harm,” She said as she unpacked the groceries. “He was just helping me so I figured--”

“You shouldn’t have let him in.” I told her.

“He was only in the yard. He didn’t come into the house.”

“I could have helped you.” I said.

“When’s the last time you went past the gate?” She asked as she pulled out a small plastic bag and slid it across to me. It was the new lock. “That should fit, if you can figure it out.”

“That’s not the point, Lor,” You slapped the table. “You let him into my space. A stranger!”

“He’s your neighbour. I’ve talked to Dr. Tisha and you know you’re supposed to be working on your socialising. This yard sale will be a good first step.”

“This yard sale is bull shit,” I was so angry I could have yelled. “I like being alone. I like it here. This is my home and these are my things!”

“Calm down.” She set down the carton of milk and neared me. “Look, I’m sorry. You’re right. I should’ve asked before I let him past the gate.”

I felt so tired. Suddenly weak, like the air had been let out of me. I felt bad for being so mad with her after she went all the way to town for me. 

“I’m sorry I got upset.” 

She forgave me and I forgave her. She convinced me to fill one bin for the sale before the end of the day. She left shortly after. Her and Shelby are going to see a movie. I’m watching one too. An old black and white movie Grandma had on her shelf of cassettes. It’s interesting but the edges are fuzzy and the audio is muffled.

Oh, well, I’m tired. And I’ll be sleeping on the couch anyway.

Wednesday

I tried to fix the lock today. I haven’t been outside that long since last week. The garden needs to be watered.

I took out grandma’s old toolbox, the tools half-rusted but intact. I got what was left of the old lock off easily but the new one was more of a task to get in. I had to open the gate to get it in. The holes for the screw were off-kilter but I couldn’t turn the lock enough to get them to line up.

Then he showed up. That man. Bucky. The lock slipped out as he scared me and my screw driver hit my shoe. My toe still hurts.

“You need some help?” He asked.

I shook my head and tried to close the gate on him but he was already picking up the mechanism and screwdriver.

“I can do it.” I sound like a dying mouse. I reached for the lock but he didn’t even seem to notice. “Hold the door steady and I’ll just--”

“I can do it myself,” I said louder but he still didn’t seem to hear me. Or chose not to.

He reached around the gate and pulled it closer to him. I grabbed the bars and he slid the lock into place. His metal fingers shifted it and aligned the holes.

“Do you have the screws?” He asked.

I found the box on the bunch of rocks just beside the gate. I handed him each long screw and he easily twisted them into place.

“There ya go,” He gave the screwdriver back and smiled.

I closed the gate, as good as pushing him out of the yard. He let me but looked confused. I took the key from the box and slid it in the slot. I turned it and the click slowed my racing heart.

“I still don’t know your name,” He said.

I didn’t tell him and left him there. You think he’d get the clue.

Thursday

It’s not even 5am. I woke up in a sweat. The fan is dead and the house has grown stolid, even as the night air slips through the open window.

I thought I’d closed it more but it is wide open and the power is out. There is an eerie silence as the buzz of the fridge is entirely gone and the house is pitch black. 

I swear I saw something move in the window. Maybe a bird?

I tried to get back to sleep but it’s too hot. I guess I’ll just sit and wait for the sun to rise. It’s already starting to.

I want to go out in the garden today. I just hope that man doesn’t bother me again. I hope the lock is still in place.

Friday

Well, yesterday was fine. The power came back on at noon as I watered the garden and trimmed some overgrown plants. The freesias had grown despite my neglect. 

Today was just as boring. I read at the patio table for a while but then the phone started ringing. Dr. Tisha was checking in. She said she put the signs up yesterday and hoped the turn out would be good. She asked me how much I got done. I lied and said a lot.

Now I’m going to go sort through the guest room and toss a few records on top to get her off my back. I guess I’ll just have to hide under the table tomorrow.

Saturday

Everytime I think I’m doing better, it all goes so bad! 

Dr. Tisha and Lorena arrived early to set up the yard sale. They unfolded a table just inside the gate, leaving it wide open, and helped me arrange everything on top of it. I was nervous and tired. I didn’t sleep very much.

I waited nervously and the first customer showed up. Gladys, an old friend of Grandma’s. She bought an old pin cushion and the Miles Davis record. I should have kept that.

I watched mostly as Dr. Tisha and Lorena took the money and helped people, both familiar and not. 

Dr. Tisha made me introduce myself to them at least. I hated it but they were mostly friendly. A woman with two children, I think she said her name was Essie? She said she liked my shirt. That was nice.

But then he showed up! I ignored him at first as he played with the ornamental cowbell. He took that and a few records from the table. He didn’t even seem to notice Dr. Tisha or Lorena as he came to me.

I kept my head down as I lined up the thimbles beside the painted sewing box.

“How much for the records?” He asked. 

I didn’t say anything and went to the other end of the table. He followed and I turned back and went back to the other end again. He followed me. Again.

“Now,” Tisha stopped me. “What are you doing? He asked you a question.”

I looked up and blinked dumbly. “What? I didn’t-- I was--”

“Bucky,” Lorena greeted him as she neared. “Tisha, this is the neighbour who helped with the groceries the other day.”

“Oh, hello,” She held out her hand as she blocked me from getting away. “I’m Tisha.”

She introduced me then and told me like a child to say hello. I did, quietly.

“Are you… the one who gave her the flowers?” Tisha asked.

“I did.” He smiled. “But I guess she already has enough.”

“She’s shy,�� Tisha lowered her voice. “She’s working on it. Now,” she turned to me, “how much do you want for the records… and bell?”

I didn’t know what to say. The man watched me and I felt as if I would melt.

“Come on.” Tisha poked me. “We talked about this, right? This is your sale.”

“Ten dollars each,” I doubled the price. “And twenty for the bell.”

“That’s a bit pricey,” Lorena said. I shrugged.

“Sounds fair to me,” The man took out his wallet as he leaned the record on the table beneath the bell and used his leg to keep it from falling. “I’ve never listened to these bands before and I’m trying to expand my library.”

He held out the money. Tisha had to elbow me to get me to take it. I snatched it from him and counted it. Another elbow as Lorena kept me from turning away.

“Thank you,” I said to him. 

“I hope you enjoy the records,” Tisha offered gently before she pulled me aside.

She took me closer to the house as Lorena watched the table. She lowered her voice. “What’s going on?” She asked.

“Nothing.” I lied.

“Nothing? Why were you so rude to him?”

“I don’t like him.”

“You don’t know him.” She insisted.

“I don’t want to.”

“Look, I know you’re uneasy around men, but he was nice. And he’s your neighbour. You’ll be seeing a lot of him so I think you should at least try to be friendly. And remember what I said about friends?”

“My only friend is dead.” 

I was so upset I ran inside. And now I’m locked in my room, waiting for them all to just go away.

[heyyyharry]

My Girl Series: Chapter 12 - I Love You

…in which Y/N wants to face her past, but Harry wants to leave his behind.

Series description: Y/N falls in love with the older boy next door who doesn’t feel the same, years later they meet again at a funeral.

AU: actor!harry, older!harry, younger!y/n; (4-year age gap)

Chapter 11: Paper Love - Y/N tries to compromise, and Harry tries to change.

warning: smut at the end.

OC version

.

Anyone who knew Y/N well enough would know that she never got on well with her father, and she deeply loathed his new fiancée Marcy. But no one, not even Celine, had an idea how much Y/N used to adore that woman.

It wasn't a coincidence that Marcy started seeing Bradford not so long after Tam's death. Before that, she used to be an employee at his hardware store in Holmes Chapel. She was clever, pretty, and funny — everything a man could ever dream of. And for an impressionable little girl like Y/N, Marcy was the kind of woman she wanted to become. She used to give Y/N useful advice on boy issues, on how to deal with mean girls in school, and she also had a great taste in literature and music. How could anyone not love Marcy?

How could anyone not love Marcy?

The more Y/N thought about it, the sadder it got. People like Marcy could have anything they wanted, even a married man; and those like her mother had no choice but to accept defeat and swallow the pain. 

Y/N felt very disgusted by her father’s wrongful affair, but most importantly, she felt like she'd betrayed her mother for even liking the person who'd torn their family apart. Her friendship with Marcy made her feel terribly guilty towards her mum, to the point where she ended up lying to Harry that she'd never met that woman before their dinner with her dad.

However, ever since Harry came back, those two had gradually become the least of her concerns. As a matter of fact, she didn't even hate Marcy as much as before. She knew she couldn't stop their wedding from happening, thus the only thing she'd asked from her father’s future wife was to leave her alone and stay out of her life. But Marcy didn't seem to get that. She went all the way against Y/N's request by showing up at her door three nights before the wedding.

"I'm visiting a friend in the city so I thought I should pay you a visit," Marcy said to the confused girl who was glued to the spot. "I'm actually going shopping. Wanna come with me? We can get you a cute dress for my wedding."

"Why did you think it was a good idea to show up here?" Y/N said, lifting an eyebrow. "Sorry, I'm very busy. I can't go with you."

"Wait!"

"What now?"

"I'm very happy that you accepted the invitation. I know this is hard for you but...please don't be like this," Marcy begged as she reached for Y/N's hand, causing the girl to freeze in an instant. "Please give me a chance to get to know you again...I—I'm not asking much just let me buy you a dress to the wedding."

At that moment, Y/N could envision her slamming the door and turning a deaf ear to everything Marcy had just said to carry on with her half-finished work in progress. In reality, however, she was actually considering the offer.

She'd told herself to stop running away from the past and focus on the future, because this grudge she held against her father and his fiancée had only been doing her damage. In the end, it was her own worries that ended up breaking her heart. Maybe she could never like Marcy the same way she used to, but she could give her a chance to fix her wrongdoings. A little effort to make peace was still better than nothing at all.

"Alright," Y/N said at last, making Marcy squeal in joy. "Wait here, I'll go get my coat."

.

.

.

As Jeff was briefing Harry about his shooting schedule for June, the actor let all the words fly from one ear to the other while his eyes stayed fixed on the phone, allowing his hairdresser to do whatever she wanted. He had put all the trust in her to make him look the best for tonight as he knew she had never disappointed him or his fans.

Yes, a red-carpet event sounded immensely fun and exciting, but truthfully, Harry hated these occasions and would only go when he must. If it hadn't been for Niall, who'd written most of the songs on the movie soundtrack and would be there as well, he wouldn't have agreed to attend that premiere.

Ping!

A text popped up on the screen, now distracting Harry even more from what Jeff was rambling on about.

⌲ Bambi: Just ran into Mrs. Huang. She complained about us being too loud again.

Trying hard not to laugh at the message, the man bit his bottom lip and quickly typed down a response:

⌲ Always fucked you good, didn't I? Pretty proud of myself. ;)

⌲ Bambi: Harry!

⌲ Well, you started it.

⌲ Now I cannot stop thinking about last night...

⌲ Bambi: Why are you always horny at the worst time?

⌲ Are you in class?

⌲ Bambi: Nope, dress shopping with THE bride.

⌲ Who?

⌲ Bambi: Marcy.

⌲ Lol really?

⌲ Bambi: Really.

"Done," said the hairdresser as she patted Harry on the back. "Let's get you dressed."

⌲ Gotta go. Tell me all about it tonight?

⌲ Bambi: Okay.

⌲ Bambi: CANNOT WAIT TO SEE YOUR RED CARPET PHOTOS!!!

Harry giggled at the text for he could hear her shouting with enthusiasm in his head. Jeff called him louder for the second time, causing the actor to look up and finally notice all the questioning stares his whole crew was giving him.

"Why are you still sitting there?! Hurry up!"

"Sorry, sorry, coming!" He shouted cheerfully, wasting no time to fly right out of his chair and following Jeff out of the room.

.

.

.

Y/N sucked in a deep breath as she stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror, slightly tugging on the flared skirt of her pastel pink gown. It now occurred to the girl that she hadn't gone shopping in a while. Lately, her life had been all about student debts, writer's block, and family drama. She seemed to forget how to really take care of herself.

Tilting her head to the side, she happily thought, maybe with some nice clothes and red lipstick on, she could be just as beautiful as the models Harry used to date.

"I think this looks cute on you."

"But it's pastel pink," said Y/N as she turned around to face Marcy. "I hate this color."

"You used to love it."

"Not anymore."

Little Y/N would grab all the pink items in the store and try on every single piece just because she was obsessed with the hue. But she was a different person back then — a bubbly young girl who saw pink in everything in her life. She'd read somewhere that the pink color stood for unconditional love and understanding, both of which she'd completely lost faith in as she grew up. Now without the kaleidoscope for an eye, her life was always either black or blue.

"Do you have this same dress in a darker color?" Marcy asked an employee in the store, but Y/N stopped that lady right before she could walk away.

"Can we take a break?" she turned to her future step mum. "I've been trying on dresses for half an hour already."

"Oh, alright." Marcy awkwardly nodded as she watched the twenty-year-old flop down on the sofa and pull out her phone — something she always did to avoid unwanted conversations. Taking a seat beside the girl, Marcy didn't mean to be nosy, but it was hard to ignore the beam on Y/N's face in reaction to her phone repeatedly pinging with new messages. It didn't take a genius to figure out who they were all from.

"So..." Marcy trailed off, hands linked together to rest on her knees. "You're going to the wedding with Harry?"

"Yes," Y/N replied shortly without looking at her.

So she waited a couple seconds more before asking another question. "Are you two dating?"

With this one, Y/N finally peeled her eyes off the screen and turned to her dad's fiancée, an eyebrow raised in annoyance. "What?" She scoffed. "Can't friends go to a wedding together?"

"Yes, of course!" Marcy freaked out. "It's just...your dad said—"

"My dad doesn't know anything about me." Y/N shook her head. "He doesn't even know my favorite book even though I used to rant about it at dinner every night. Do you really think he knows or cares whom I'm dating?"

"What Happens In London by Julia Quinn, right? Your favorite book?"

The question for an answer caught Y/N by surprise this time. "How do you—"

"—remember?" Marcy raised a smile. "You once told me your favorite quote from the book was: 'When a man writes a romance, the woman dies. When a woman writes one, it ends all tidy and sweet.' It's become my favorite quote ever since."

"It's still my favorite," Y/N mumbled; for the first time in forever, showing a genuine smile in front of Marcy.

That seemed like a good beginning for everything to go back to the way it’d been. Y/N forgot about her hatred for this woman who began to talk about how Sir Harry Valentine in the book was everyone's dream man, and all the things she adored about Lady Olivia Bevelstoke.

"Sassy, witty, and strong. That's why she's one of the best female characters." Y/N giggled, leaving a massive grin on Marcy's face.

"If you love Lady Bevelstoke then you should really take this dress."

"What does she have to do with this dress?" The twenty-year-old squinted her eyes in confusion as she looked down at the pink gown she was wearing. Such bright color always overwhelmed her, giving her the feeling that other people might stare, when all she wanted was to blend into the crowd or be invisible. She wasn't used to getting excessive attention.

But Marcy only rolled her eyes. "Don't tell me you forgot Olivia's 'Unmarried Lady Sorts of Things' list. The first thing is: 'Wear pastel colors'."

"'And be quite glad if you possess the correct complexion for such hues'," Y/N nodded her head slowly, chuckling to herself. "I remember."

"I don't make the rules, Y/N. Olivia did."

Marcy rose up, pulling a giggly Y/N back to the full-length mirror and telling the girl to stand tall, chin up.

"There you go," she encouraged, lips curved into a wide grin. "Lady Bevelstoke." 

The name got the younger girl smiling from ear to ear. With one long look at her own reflection, Y/N inhaled deeply. "Okay." She nodded at last. "I'll take this one."

"Yay!" Marcy squealed, clapping her hands. "You go change and I'll pay for this dress then we'll head out to dinner!"

In that moment, watching the woman dash away to go get an employee, Y/N must admit that she was genuinely happy. She changed back to her own clothes and brought the dress to the front counter, still wearing the same smile.

But she really should've known better — that every bit of happiness in her life up to that point had been all short-lived, including that moment right then in the store.

She saw Marcy hand the employee her credit card, and her stomach clenched immediately as she noticed the shiny little rock on Marcy's slim ring finger. Y/N's smile broke, and so did her heart. She frantically clutched Marcy's left wrist, yanking it up, causing the woman to release a startled gasp as her mouth fell open.

"Is this...my...my grandmother's ring?"

Marcy withdrew her hand when Y/N's grip became uncomfortably tight as if it was meant to break her bone.

"Yes?" She answered, fear overtaking her face. "It's also my engagement ring...What's wrong?"

"What's wrong?" Y/N laughed wryly.

Everything.

Her dad had used that ring to propose to her mother, who had never taken it off when she was alive, not even once, not even to do house chores, not even when they threw things at the wall and he screamed at her. That was how much the ring meant to the late woman. And the fact that Marcy was wearing it around her finger today could only mean one thing — Y/N's father took it from her mother's body just to put it on the hand of his new and younger wife.

She might've been fooled twice, but she wasn't stupid. She wasn't convinced that Marcy truly had no idea what was wrong. This woman was either extremely dumb, or viciously pretentious, and Y/N knew better than anyone that Marcy was a smart person. And even though she also knew what her parents had wasn't love, it was still painful to think how fast a person could erase from his memory the one he'd vowed to treasure for the rest of his life.

"This is not your ring," Y/N said with her fists clenched tight. "This belongs to my mother."

"For god's sake! Your mother is dead, Y/N!" The harsh emphasis on that one word punched Y/N right in the guts, causing her heart to wrench, yet Marcy didn't just stop there. "What is a dead woman gonna do? Dig her way out of her grave and cut off my finger?"

That was the final straw.

"I was right about you..." Y/N scoffed, quivering lips formed a broken smirk as she shook her head slowly. "You're nothing but a homewrecker. A husband-stealing whore that—"

Marcy's hand smacked across her face, snapping it back with force and causing the girl to clutch her cheek, eyes watering. The small cut below her eye marked by the ring could be easily noticed from a distance. And Marcy was petrified now that she’d realized what she'd done. 

Both of them could hear whispers from the other people in the store who didn't want to interfere with their conflict, even though it was shocking how those two had gone from laughing together to one slapping the other.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't...I didn't mean to..." Marcy reached out, attempting to touch Y/N's face. But the girl immediately took a step back to dodge those hands like a bullet.

Knowing how hot-tempered Y/N had always been, Marcy expected a slap for revenge right then and there, but all that she received was a sense of fear in those glistening eyes. Without another word, the girl ran fast out of the store, ignoring Marcy calling out to her. She ran and didn't look back.

Soon she found herself lost in a river of pedestrians, all were either in a rush or minding their own business, and would just raise their voice if someone accidentally bumped into them. Y/N swirled around those strangers as the panic rose in her chest. She didn't even think, letting her feet guide the way to end up outside Harry's house. 

Trying to steady her breathing pace, Y/N flopped onto the doorstep, holding both knees to her chest and trying to ignore the stung of the slap evident on her red cheek. Though the last thing she wanted was to bother Harry while he was having fun at the after party, she couldn't stop herself from pulling out her phone and dialing his number. She felt the need to be with someone, not just anyone, him.

.

.

"I just ran into Ruby."

When Harry heard those words from Niall, his nerves were frayed. The party around him still continued, the music was still blasting at maximum volume, and all the guests in fancy clothes were still dancing and having a blast; to Harry, however, the entire world stopped as his whole body turned to stone.

He had never been claustrophobic before, but right now he began to feel suffocated for he knew she was somewhere in that same crowd. She could be in a different room, or just a few steps away from where he stood, still what mattered was the fact that she was there.

The mixture of expensive perfumes in the air along with loud laughter and rowdy conversations caused Harry a headache. He looked from left to right, frantically searching for the figure of the woman he used to love, unable to decide whether he was trying to spot her so he could hide from her, or just to see her face again.

It was annoying, wasn't it?

Harry thought he'd mastered not thinking about Ruby, now the possibility of running into her had him plagued with a sinking stomach.

"But she wasn't at the premiere," He nervously blurted, making his friend heave a sigh.

"She probably skipped it. I don't know."

"Did she...did she say something to you?"

Niall's hesitation before answering that one question got Harry sweating in his suit.

"She asked me where you were. She wanted to speak to you about something, but I told her that you didn't want to see her again."

Harry nodded slightly as he muttered a weak "thank you" before rushing towards the nearest exit. Despite Niall desperately calling out to ask where he was going, the actor only walked faster. Once again, he found himself running away from the ghost of his past, like the same old pathetic Harry a couple months ago. It was awkward, embarrassing even.

As he stumbled through the door, his brain was filled with questions that needed answers. What had gotten into him back there? Why was he so afraid of meeting Ruby again? Was it because he still hadn't moved on? Wait. No. He was sure that he had. Because the only girl that'd been on his mind lately was his Bambi, only his Bambi. Maybe he should get back to her.

His throat was dry when he swallowed hard and got into the backseat of his car. He told his driver Y/N's address, hoping that she was still awake to let him in. While chewing on his bottom lip impatiently, Harry looked out of the window, watching streetlights passing by and processing all the complicated thoughts running right through his head. He didn't want to start guessing what it was that Ruby wanted to talk about.

The loud ringtone pierced right through the silence in the car, causing Harry to flinch as he took out the device from his jacket. Once he saw Bambi on the screen, he picked up without reluctance, but the girl didn't give him a chance to speak first.

"I'm right outside your door." Her voice was rapid and fear-filled, making his heart halt for a split second as he quickly told the driver to go back to his house instead.

"I'm on my way home," he said fast into the phone. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"I...I need to see you..." She sounded strained, which made him worry even more.

"I'm almost there. Can you wait five more minutes?"

"Sure" was all she said before hanging up on him.

Harry put his phone away and urged the driver to speed up, thanking God that it was late and the avenue was clear. In less than five minutes, he had arrived at his London home. He thanked the driver and rushed out of the vehicle to find Y/N sitting on his doorstep. With both knees held close to her chest, the girl only looked up when she heard his hasty footsteps on the pavement coming her way.

She'd been holding back from the moment she got there, but as soon as he showed up, it didn't take too long for her eyes to flood with tears. She didn't explain. He didn't ask. In silence, she fell into his arms and he held her tight, one hand at the back of her head while his other arm locked around her waist. She desperately needed that hug right now. But little did she know, he needed it just as much.

He kissed her temple as she clutched onto his jacket, telling her no matter what had happened, it was all fine now that he was there. It was dark outside so Harry didn't notice the welt on her cheek at first, but now that he had, he felt a physical pain surging through his bones. He took her face with tenderness. His hands were cold, but the softness of his touch made her feel warm inside.

"Did...did she hit you?" Sadness clouded his features when she shook her head to deny it, still, the look on her face screamed a loud yes. 

Quickly, he unlocked the door and pulled her into his living room where he could hold her for much longer without being afraid of curious eyes on the street. Harry didn't ask any more questions, knowing she would only tell the truth once she was calm enough and ready to confide in him. Now his job was to make her feel safe. He gave her one of his t-shirts so she could change out of her clothes and asked her to wait in the bedroom for him to return with a glass of water. 

She looked exactly like the night they first met. Underneath that hard shell she'd created for herself was still the same little girl who ran away from her parents' fight to a place where she felt safe. And he couldn't decide whether it was disheartening or endearing to see her this vulnerable. Maybe it was a terrible mixture of both. No matter how hard she tried to disregard the nine-year-old she once was, he knew from the sadness in her eyes that she had never really changed.

In silence, he watched her finish her water, smiling at the way his t-shirt looked too big on her. He wanted to just hold her in his arms and shower her face with sweet kisses until she fell asleep.

"I'll be right back," he said when she handed him back the empty glass. But when he turned away, her fingers were locked around his wrist, pulling him back to her.

"Don't go..." She begged. "Lie with me."

Harry was just about to say it would only take a minute, yet he didn't have the heart to deny Y/N's little request when she was giving him that face.

Nodding his head once, the man set the glass down on the nightstand then climbed onto the bed, pulling her close. Now that she was lying close to his chest, he thought she might feel his heart beat for her. They stayed in that position for a while, with him stroking her hair, and her fidgeting with the buttons of his white shirt. She loved the smell of his cologne which always put her at ease. While wearing his shirt and wrapped up in his arms, she was soaked in the scent of him, thinking she could stay like that forever and always.

"I read somewhere that when you lie too close to a person and can listen to their heart beat, your heart will slowly beat in sync with theirs," she said, which came out as a whisper and she felt his body shake with quiet laughter.

"Then your heart must be going insane right now." His joke made her eye roll, but he was staring at the ceiling so he probably had missed that precious smile she put on for him.

After another moment of silence, Y/N had regained her composure to finally tell Harry what had happened at the store, everything but the reason for the mark on her cheek, though she believed Harry had already figured it out. 

She breathed steadily, sorrow dawned on her face as she broke the silence once again, "when I was little, my dad used to say 'I love you' to my mum all the time. In the morning. In the afternoon. Before bed. Every single chance he got, he said those words to her. But one day he suddenly stopped. I assumed he just forgot somehow, not knowing the last time I heard him say he loved her would actually be the last." Her voice was trembling with various emotions. "From that day he raised his voice so often, he smashed furniture and made her cry instead of making her laugh. Maybe he never actually loved her. And those 'I love you's that he used to say every day meant nothing at all. It's just so depressing to think about it...isn't it? How fast a human's heart can change. How easy they can say those words and take them back whenever they want."

Harry's chest lifted when he sucked in a deep breath and slowly let it all out.

"Maybe he did love her at one point," he said, causing the girl to purse her lips.

"Is that what love supposed to be like? Something so fleeting that happens once and can just vanish the next moment?"

Those words really made Harry think.

"You're right." He nodded. "I guess not."

Shifting a bit so he could look at her face, he lifted her chin with his fingers so they were eye to eye and lips to lips.

"Don't think about him anymore," he told her. "Focus on me."

Y/N nervously giggled. For the first time since their kiss in the rain, Harry felt her shiver like a teenage girl being touched for the first time. There was something about the way the bedroom light reflecting in her weary eyes that got him hypnotized.

"Want you to fuck me," she whimpered, hot breath fanning his mouth before their lips attached for a passionate kiss. On spur of the moment, Harry shook his head rapidly, flipping them over so he was hovering above her. His pulsing member was right between her legs where she wanted him most now.

"Let's take it slow this time." He swallowed hard, stroking away the pain on her cheek with his thumb. "If that's alright with you."

Y/N could only answer by nodding fast, and that was all Harry had waited for to kiss her again, slipping his tongue past her lips, gasping when she held his hips down to feel him grow against her thigh. Slowly, as he wished, she unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off to reveal his bare chest, running her fingertips across his tattoos as if she was learning the map to remember every single detail inked on his torso. 

With a hand at the back of his neck, she pulled him down to get a taste of those lips again. She could never get over their sweetness and she enjoyed the way he groaned into her open mouth. His crotch was slightly rubbing against her clothed sex, creating some fiction to maintain the tiny bit of self-control he'd got left.

The feeling was so strange, overwhelming, yet made him feel complete. His t-shirt that she was wearing soon came off after she'd managed to get him out of his tight jeans. They made out slowly with only his boxers in the way as his fingers found their favorite spot between her thighs. He kissed her hard, wanting to devour down every single sound she made, loving all the different ways she whispered his name. He loved to know no one else had the privilege to make her feel this good. Only him.

"There you go, baby. Fuck, that's my girl," he growled into her mouth as she rode out her first orgasm, one hand gripping his wrist as the movements of his fingers was gradually slowing down. He could get off just by looking at the way her face screwed up for pleasure, knowing he was the only one who could touch her this way, kiss her this way, hold her this way. "All mine," Harry whispered, stroking her hair as he tugged down his boxers while she was recovering.

"All yours, H. Want you...fuck...want you inside..." The sounds she made was the most heavenly he'd ever heard. God, he loved every single word she said to him. The fact that they weren't in a rush turned him on even more. He was so hard for her that his eyes watered when her sweaty palm wrapped around him to stroke him slowly. It felt so good, but if she continued, this would end embarrassingly soon.

"Shit, baby...Stop..." He took her wrist and removed her hand quickly. His breathing became ragged when he rolled the condom on and kissed her again. Both of them gasped out loud the second he started to push in slowly for her to adjust to the fullness. Now they could feel everything at once.

His hand reached for hers and they interlocked as he kissed her tenderly, mumbling "you feel amazing" and "so tight for me" against her plump lips. He was completely mesmerized by the way she scrunched her nose and tossed her head back. He couldn't help it, he had to bite down on that pretty neck, causing her fingers to tangle in his messy hair. The feeling caused them both to shiver in complete pleasure and ecstasy.

His warm hands roamed all over her naked body, stroking her flushed skin with affection as he focused on every single thrust, going steady and deep, wanting her to feel all of him.

"You're so beautiful." He breathed into Y/N's mouth, making her laugh slightly as she opened her eyes to stare back at him.

"You're gorgeous," she whispered, holding onto his neck to bring his lips back on hers. He slowly massaged her my breast as they kiss, causing her back to arch as she rewarded him with another soft moan. For his every thrust, her chest rose and fell dramatically. He could feel her getting close as her drenched walls were squeezing him when they maintained eye contact. Her stare was intense, yet tender, and sweet. The noises she made when she fell apart would come back to haunt him in his most beautiful dreams. Harry pushed faster, one hand holding her face, the other holding one of her legs up so he could give it to her harder.

"Yes, baby, that's it...Fuck," he blurted through gritted teeth, feeling himself coming close but he didn't want to close his eyes in fear of missing out her reaction to how good he was making her feel. With one loud gasp, Y/N came hard around him. Harry felt so close to the edge, just a few pushes more...

But then it happened.

"Harry...I love you...."

His eyes shot open wide. In the haziness of his own pleasure, he could still hear those three words so loud and clear. It wasn't a mistake. Y/N breathed harshly through her nose as she clung onto his back when he shuddered and came hard into the condom.

I love you.

Those three words were now echoing inside his brain as both of them tried to catch their breath. Harry's expression hardened as he stared at Y/N, yet the girl only seemed confused.

"What's wrong?" She quietly giggled, stroking his cheek. "Did I say something silly when I came again?"

With that question, he knew she didn't realize it. She'd let those words slip out in the heat of the moment. She didn't even remember saying them.

"No." He pressed his lips into a nervous smile, but he guessed she couldn't see it through. "I kind of spaced out..."

Y/N stayed silent and kissed his nose. The beam on her face made him feel twice as guilty. What would he have done if those words hadn't got out by accident? Would he have said them back?

Now in the darkness of the room, with her warm body pressed against his, Harry felt so hard to breathe. The feeling was no different from having a panic attack, and he was glad that Y/N had fallen asleep and couldn't sense that something was definitely wrong. He couldn't even shut his eyes now, just lying there in silence, staring at the moonlit ceiling and thinking hard about those words she'd said, which scared him witless.

I love you.

Harry squeezed his eyes shut, pinching his forehead as he tried to get rid of the voice inside his head that sounded just like her. He tried to count sheep in the hope that it would help him drift off, when the buzzing of his phone on the nightstand struck right through his brain. Y/N was too exhausted to be bothered by the noise, still, she did shift around a little bit, so Harry quickly turned off the alert before it woke her. 

But the moment he saw who was calling, the color all drained out of his face.

RUBY

[hakka84]

Warren “The Mass-Murderer” Worthington III

Now that I’m trying to catch up with X-Men after I abruptly left in 2012 after the ending of the Dark Angel saga...

You might have no idea how it feels to discover your favorite hero (turned temporarily bad to good to bad to good to bad to good then... I stopped counting before Second Coming even happened) character ever is a mass-murderer that guys like X-fellow Wolverine pale in comparison. Given that I left right after the aforementioned Dark Angel Saga, I did know about Tucker Creek/Tabula Rasa (although I either forgot the detail or in the X-Force issues it wasn’t mentioned the population number), but... hm. So, old metal-winged Warry, as first action of his glorious but short-lived ruling of Apoccydom as King Archangel the First, murdered 5301 people. Ok. I guess... Fine. I mean, who’s the loser who doesn’t wipe out an entire city from the maps on a plan to start-jump evolution at least once in their life? Don’t get me wrong, I love to death (no pun intended) the X-Force/Uncanny X-Force run that ended with the Dark Angel saga, so beam me up to all this Warren-shaped murdering, Scotty.

But then the children he impregnated his Horseman Death with in a creepy one-night stand when he was still spoken for with some very in-love British ninja called Psylocke.. I was saying, those Worthington heirs, raised in the future by a time-traveler child-kidnapper who’s in serious need of reading some good-parenting books (because ordering your adoptive son to remove his twin sisters’s eyes as punishment because he failed to hate humans after you dumped them in a mutant concentration camp of a dark future timeline to have them grow out of that silliness that is “mercy”... is a no-no, in every good dad’s book; even Magneto isn’t that shitty, and he’s the worst father around, if you ask Scarlet Witch!), after some murdering here and there because of reasons (all their own worshipers from clan Akkaba / "out of mercy") go and put a plan in motion that will have all the population on Earth - minus the mutants - wiped out of existence thanks to the handy anger of a not-friendly Celestial. A plan that is successful (Earth is crushed and the Solar Systems loses its lovely third planet), that eventually fails and status quo is fixed back to its proper state (namely = an Earth standing between Venus and Mars) only because 7-something years later a stubborn Summers (what’s with the Summers? Everything’s always about them!) manages to win his anarchist rebellion (against the powers that be in the X-Heaven the mutants are living after Earth went kaboom) and his Uncanny Avengers can finally go back in time and change things so that Thor can stop the Celestial from blowing up Earth. Ah, yes, I was forgetting that the plan also came with the deletion of SEVEN TIMELINES that became one, so... how many bilions (of bilions) of people does this amounts to?

Way to go Warren! I’m so proud of you. As Archangel you surpassed your metaphorical father, that blue-lips small blip in history called a so-not-treating name like APOCALYPSE to ascend to Best Apocalypse ever. Clap clap. To know you will never discover how much you achieved with that night-stand (because I doubt anyone ever told you about the Apocalypse Twins, especially given you still were in your “Formatted Then Installed a Different Operative System Just Please Revert Back Because The Hardware Doesn’t Agree With The New Version” state at the time) brings me such sadness...

But, between you and me: just to be on the safe side, I’d opt for a vasectomy. I’m not sure if you’ll ever get back with Elizabeth again (after breaking up during the X-Man crisis) in the coming Dawn of X era (I will make sacrifices to the gods for it to happen because NOBODY TOUCHES MY FAVORITE X-COUPLE but I’m much pessimistic as of now), but I wouldn’t trust you and the former-ninja-assassin-killing-addict Betsy with an heir, not even adopted - let alone one who shares with you genetics and mutant abilities. We already have an Apocalypse (or not?), and a Galactus, and a Thanos for our mass-murdering evil needs: an Archangel Jr. with Omega-telepathic abilities and Hand-training skills inherited from mommy... hm, no. I’ll think I’ll pass, thank you.

Jean Grey went (or not) Dark Phoenix and ate a star, killing its star system (and its billion of inhabitants). Cyclops went (or not) terrorist. Beast... hmm, he plays with time continuum like we sapiens play with our tv remote control... What Iceman could do to keep up with his best-and-oldest friends? Bring back the Ice Age and kill all life on Earth? I mean, he cannot just twiddle his thumbs until the time comes he’s ready to become that Ice Master guy whose inability to pick his lovers will doom the galaxy. I mean, yes, that would put him right in the winning place, surpassing Jean’s Dark Phoenix’s deeds, and he would stand a chance to beat Nate Grey for the award for X-Man Who Fucked Up The Worst Ever, but that’s just tooooooo forward in the future. He needs to act now! I hear he encased Earth in ice at some point? I still have to get to that part or X-Title, but it’s not enough, my beloved X-icicle.

^ picture above featuring a confused Bobby Drake wondering what he should do to not be snubbed further by the “Mass Murders, Jerks, Terrorists and Friendly Time-place Continuum Threats Club” his O5-friends have founded without giving him a call (or not even sending him a card, how rude of them!). They go and award Professor Xavier the honorary membership* and him, the reliable joker and beer-cooler of the group, just nothing? Not a fancy certificate on precious paper with gold engravings to hang next to the accountant certification to make papa William and mama Madeline proud or to show to potential new lovers? Not even an invite to crash at the inauguration party? They didn’t even save him a Phoenix-shaped expensive canape or a piece of the Archangel-shaped blue and purple cake!

* Seriously, Charlie’s a jerk, a creep (coff loving 15yrs JeanGrey coff) a manipulative liar and someone who raised scared children into ruthless soldiers (coff Scott Summers coff) and erased the memory of the very existence of teens who died in the field (coff Gabriel Summers coff), but, recent-O5-strictly speaking...

Brought to you by 20th Century X, with supervision of the Cameron Hodge Right and in collaboration of Apocalypse Production, only on Mojo Prime: 

The high-flying Angel Gets Mass-Murdererer: the series. S2, E10: That one time when it was Xavier’s Fault that I got my metal wings spattered with blood and body bits and nor I nor my closest friends remember it happening because our putative father whom we trusted for the most of our lives manipulated our minds, including the one of our own Omega-level telepatic one/fifth, into forgetting.

[aion-rsa]

Nintendo Switch Sales Numbers Prove It Can Easily Outsell PS5 and Xbox Series X

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

While most eyes are fixed on the GameStop stock situation, an equally interesting video game finance story happened today when Nintendo released their latest financial reports. 

There’s quite a lot to break down from those reports, but if you’re looking for the headline or biggest takeaway, then here it is:

The Nintendo Switch has sold in 79.87m units after 46 months on the market. Here is how it compares to other consoles when launch aligned. In the same time frame, the PS4 was around ~67m and the PS2 was around ~69.5m. The Wii was just under 75m. pic.twitter.com/ox3NQy8Ye4

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) February 1, 2021

While few people would have guessed that the Nintendo Switch was anything but a success, the actual numbers remain stunning. The Nintendo Switch isn’t just a success; it’s a potentially historic device that will likely end up ranking high among the best-selling video game consoles of all-time.

Perhaps more importantly, the Nintendo Switch may have set a sales pace that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X will simply be unable to catch. That may sound impossible given how hard it is to find either high-profile next-gen console, but these key takeaways from the latest financial reports show that the Switch’s success in the console wars may be inevitable.

Nintendo Switch Remains the Most Appealing “Other” Console

The line between Xbox and PlayStation hasn’t disappeared, but it has blurred to the point where owning both consoles feels like less of a necessity than it may have been in previous generations. This is especially true for gamers who typically stick to major third-party releases and free-to-play titles that offer few exclusive benefits between consoles. 

The Switch is different. It was essentially released between console generations, which means that many gamers purchased one before they ever considered buying what would eventually become the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The benefits of that early release were especially apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic when the Switch became a hot item to add to the homes many of us were stuck in while Sony and Microsoft were still trying to get their consoles on the market.

We see this trend essentially confirmed by Nintendo’s historically impressive Q3 2020 numbers. Despite the fact that the Switch was competing against the release of the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 (as well as major releases like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Cyberpunk 2077, and Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War that are unavailable on Nintendo’s console), Nintendo posted one of their best Q3’s ever and the best holiday season in Switch history from a revenue standpoint.

That strongly suggests that even those who don’t already own a Switch alongside their PC, Xbox, or PlayStation either still intend to buy one or are continuing to rely on the Switch as their primary game console

Nintendo is Able to Make the Most of its Limited Releases

Nintendo was widely criticized for its lack of 2020 Switch exclusives. While the Switch’s somewhat lacking lineup can partially be attributed to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, most fans went into the year suspecting that it was going to be a relatively slow year for the console. 

Yet, the Switch’s weaker lineup of exclusives seemingly didn’t impact its sales in any notable way. Why? Well, a big part of it has to do with how successful Nintendo’s DLC releases have been thus far. Nintendo was late to the DLC game, but the numbers clearly show that fans spend a lot of time and money with whatever new Nintendo games are released. 

That success absolutely matters in an industry where so much revenue comes from DLC, but at a time when new content is still being delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasingly longer development cycles of major games, Nintendo has proven that they’re one of the best at maximizing the value of individual releases through downloadable content. 

Granted, they’ve got a long way to go (where is my Mario Party DLC?), but they can only improve upon what are some shocking numbers. 

Nintendo Switch Lite Could Easily be the Most Successful Budget Console

I found it interesting that Sony and Microsoft decided to release “secondary” versions of their main next-gen consoles (the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition and Xbox Series S, respectively). Their attempts to offer a “budget” next-gen option feels not only feel valuable during tough times but reminded me of the Nintendo Switch Lite: a console I haven’t really heard a lot about since it was released in 2019.

As it turns out, the Nintendo Switch Lite has been doing very well. In fact, there is a chance that the Nintendo Switch Lite alone will have outsold the Wii U by the time you read this. 

That information tells us two very important things. First off, while we don’t know how successful the PS5 Digital Edition and Xbox Series S will be in the long-run, Nintendo has already proven that the Switch brand is strong enough to support two pieces of hardware without negatively impacting the overall success of the brand. 

More importantly, the success of the Switch Lite shows that even when you remove one of the Switch’s core pieces of functionality (the ability to play games on a TV as well as in handheld mode), people will still buy it. That leads us to the most important element of the Nintendo Switch’s success…

Nintendo Switch Still Has the Most Impactful Exclusives

I truly believe we’re entering an age where streaming services, cloud gaming, and other features designed to allow people to better access a wider variety of titles at a fair price will be more impactful than exclusives alone. However, we’re not at that point yet. 

At a time when exclusives do still matter, Nintendo has proven time and time again that they regularly release the most impactful exclusives. Since 2017, two Nintendo Switch exclusives have sold over 30 million units, six have sold over 20 million units, nearly 10 have sold over 10 million, and 36 Nintendo exclusive releases have sold over 1 million units. 

By comparison, only one PS4 exclusive has sold over 20 million units on record (Marvel’s Spider-Man) and only one Xbox One exclusive (Halo 5) has sold over 8 million units. 

If you buy into the idea that exclusives still sell consoles, then it’s clear Nintendo is on another level in terms of exclusive sales. This all feeds into the idea that there is clearly a lot of people out there who feel they have to own a Nintendo Switch for at least one game. 

Nintendo Switch is Remarkably Immune From Nintendo’s Mistakes

We’ve spoken about it before, but it’s hardly a stretch to suggest that Nintendo does things their own way. While that’s sometimes a good thing, it also results in Nintendo making some very stupid decisions. 

Here’s what’s really interesting, though. If you look at the pure numbers, it seems that Nintendo’s biggest mistakes have very little impact on the Nintendo Switch. 

Do you hate how Nintendo Switch Online features a limited library of classic titles? Nintendo Switch Online is a proven money maker. Were you annoyed by Super Mario 3D All-Stars’ limited release structure? It’s already sold over 8 million units. Did you think that Pokemon’s long-awaited Switch debut failed to live up to expectations? Well, Sword and Shield are already the best-selling Pokemon games since Gold and Silver. 

Even the infamous issues with the Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons doesn’t seem to have impacted the Switch’s hardware sales in a meaningful way. The Switch just keeps trucking along. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

There’s just no clear indication that the Switch’s historic success will be slowed down by anything but the release of a new Nintendo console or some magical turning point when everyone who owns a Switch will have already bought one. 

The post Nintendo Switch Sales Numbers Prove It Can Easily Outsell PS5 and Xbox Series X appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3pE4UDx

[sanguinarysanguinity]

1-15 (as many or few as you like, or as best fit the work(s)) for Persistence of Memory; Desperate Men and Fools; Strange Angels

(Questions; answers for Persistence of Memory; answers for Strange Angels.)

“Desperate Men and Fools” follows!

1. What inspired you to write the fic this way?

I talked about that a bit in the announcement post on DW/LJ, but I’ll add that @gardnerhill‘s talents are wildly different from my own: my initial attempts to mimic Mayor Strade’s storytelling style were… well. Let’s just say I can’t do what she does, and leave it at that.

3. What’s your favorite line of narration?

Lock pushed up the lantern’s chimney and lit a cigarette from the flame. For a few moments his face was clearly lit, his eyes slitted narrow against the light. Then he set the lantern aside and turned the wick down, extinguishing it. All I could see was the glow of his cigarette’s coal, and the stars beyond him.

Doc’s heart is breaking right there, and damn him if he’ll say it. When I wrote it, I didn’t explicitly put together that Doc was fixing in his mind what was like to be his last image of Lock, but that’s what he’s doing: looking while he can still look, and then the light goes out and there’s just a hole in the stars where Lock ought to be.

And that, he thinks, is the last he’ll ever see of him.

I shut my eyes, against him and the stars both, and hoped he’d have the civility to ride out before I woke.

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

“I have never met a man with a gift for being silent as loudly as you, Doc.”

Which is, of course, playing with the famous line from “The Twisted Lip”:

“You have a grand gift of silence, Watson,” said he. “It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.”

5. What part was hardest to write?

omfg, the scene just after Doc and Lock recover their horses, when they’re supposedly talking out what happened with Dumont. Those two laconic bastards never talk, not like they mean it, so trying to get their issues out on the page for the reader… UGH. I thought I was gonna have to beat them both over the head with a tree limb to get either of them to say the thing.

6. What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

It’s a capital-W Western, which is a genre which I normally give wide berth. I talked about that a little bit in the DW/LJ announcement post.

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?

Louis Riel and the Red River Uprising, of course, which is the backstory for Strange Empire. The surveyor getting killed was an invention of the show, but everything else in “Desperate Men and Fools” about the Uprising is reasonably accurate, at least in broad strokes. Further, most of the details about the Metis and the Red River Colony are historical, at least as I best understood them. Other random bits are factual, too, like the lynchings during the New York City draft riots, and the mayhem of the Nevada silver boom.

That said, there are details I fudged. I don’t have any concrete evidence for putting that particular card game in Red River, the one with the stripped down deck and extra jokers (although there were French card games that used that deck, and there was a ton of French influence in Red River). Also, there was a point where I got fed up with trying to sort out the on-again/off-again steamboat situation on the Red River. Also, anyone who makes a strict accounting of the dates might discover July-through-September has a few more weeks than those three months usually have. (I blame the steamboats that were probably not running that year.)

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

The first draft had a different ending, jumping ahead to Bakerstown in 1885, the year of the Northwest Uprising / Second Riel Rebellion.

The original ending, starting just after finding Dumont’s bounty poster:

“Reckon there’s enough good left in the world to stop what’s coming to Red River?” I asked him later. It seemed that over the past year maybe Lock and I had become the same kind of fool Dumont was. Ever since she let us walk away that day, I’d been noticing the little bits of good still left in the world, and the people trying to grow them. Lock and I weren’t farmers, but sometimes we stepped in and tried to stop someone else from killing a thing. Sometimes we succeeded, but most times we couldn’t offer much more than vengeance.

Lock shook his head slow, turning the question over. “I reckon there never was enough good in the world to stop that.”

And maybe Lock was right – or maybe all the good in the world was looking the other way – but the army did finally come to Red River, and the surveyors got their stakes and string into the place proper after all. By the time they were done, a lot of those Métis lost their farms. I heard later a bunch of them settled up along the Batoche River, up in Saskatchewan. Maybe they thought that was far enough west to be safe from Ottawa’s surveyors, but then in 1885 it all happened again, this time with a lot more shooting. Some hangings, too, there at the end.

By then, Lock and I had washed up in a little Texas cow-town, where Lock was wearing a tin star, and I was taking the time to patch people up after I finished shooting ‘em. We still weren’t farmers, but Lock figured that he and that mayor there might make a place where other people could grow some good things if they cared to. I didn’t see much point in it, but didn’t mind letting him try.

“Think Dumont and her auntie got caught up in it?” I asked Lock, when I heard what had happened up in Batoche. I didn’t want to mention that baby, although it had to have been full-grown fighting age by then. I hoped its mother had taught it to shoot as well as she did.

“No telling,” Lock said. I knew he still had Dumont’s bounty poster, hid somewheres people couldn’t see it and get bright ideas about easy money. Whether he kept it hid for her sake or theirs, I couldn’t say, but I knew he still had it. Lock shook his head, looking like the world pained him sore, and I couldn’t say I disagreed. “Ain’t no telling at all.”

However, Saskatchewan isn’t Doc’s story to tell, and everyone who read that draft agreed. So that all went away, and I eventually settled on the ending it has now.

13. What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

For the scene in Red River, I recommend Metis fiddling.

For the Doc and Lock scenes, “Arms of My Love” was usually running around my brain, but Jay Ungar is much closer to Lock’s sound, especially some of that haunting fiddle-work. (Fiddler’s Elbow, Ashokan Farewell, Blue River Waltz, Prairie Waltz, Lover’s Waltz) I expect Southern Soldier Boy might make an appearance if Lock is in a particularly sentimental mood. 

However, while “Red River Valley” is (probably) period and topical, it is not on the playlist. From Wikipedia:

Edith Fowke offers anecdotal evidence that the song was known in at least five Canadian provinces before 1896. This finding led to speculation that the song was composed at the time of the 1870 Wolseley Expedition to Manitoba’s northern Red River Valley. It expresses the sorrow of a local woman (possibly a Métis) as her soldier lover prepares to return to the east.

Just… no.

15. What did you learn from writing this fic?

The Red River flows north. I checked that three times, then looked at some terrain maps, before deciding it was probably true.

Because of @bowiecadmium‘s generosity and diligence, I also learned: Horses are asses. Horses don’t travel faster than humans over long distances; they just carry more. Horses see better than humans in the dark. A dappled gray would have been super-distinctive in that decade and place, and thus shit for any kind of undercover work. Museum photos of Metis saddles typically show them stripped of all their hardware, which is not how they would have looked in actual use. Breaking trail on horseback is exactly as much of a pain-in-the-ass as breaking trail on foot. When camping with horses, you can hear the horses doing horse-things; if you like horses, you might even have warm feelings about that. One can turn a horse without using the reins, but one wouldn’t call that ‘kneeing’ a horse. Doc’s lack of emotional attachment to Betsy is likely an artifact of his war service, during which he probably had a disturbing number of horses die under him, and/or had to eat his.

And a horse fact that I picked up on my own after @bowiecadmium’s beta pass, so I might have fucked it up: roan horses sometimes have corn marks.

[terryblount]

God Eater 3 Review: Low Effort Manic Monster Munchin’

I’d never played a God Eater before this third entry. I’d seen them on Steam, but they were all low-quality handheld console ports. Yuck! Finally, with God Eater 3, we have an entry developed for PC claiming high-quality visuals, fast-paced combat, and a serious story!

As someone who put 100+ hours into Monster Hunter World last year, I loved the idea of getting another dose of monster hunting fun, but does God Eater 3 deliver? Absolutely on the combat side; not really on the ‘everything else’ side. Let’s dive in.

Last Gen Called; It Wants Its Visuals Back

Let’s begin with the bad. God Eater 3 looks and feels like a last-gen game. I could have sworn this was a port from a 2012 or so PS3 game because it feels like the developers accidentally built the game for last-gen hardware specs.

Some scenes have decent graphics in still images, but the in-game details are quite poor.

This low fidelity feeling is especially unfortunate considering the series’ chief competitor delivered a next-gen visual showcase with 2018’s Monster Hunter World. Whoops!

Outdated & Repetitive Content

Apart from lacking visuals, the game’s content feels outdated, too. There’s only a handful of actual game environments. These are nothing more than glorified arenas without any creative twists or clever layouts. Again, this feels so much like the developers thought they were working with PS3 era memory limitations and crafted functional but boringly basic level designs.

Yes, this is an entire arena…a couple hallways and rooms.

God Eater 3 reminds me of Dragon Age 2. Anyone remember that game? It had a handful of lame arenas you’d play over and over again on a supposedly epic quest. God Eater 3 is exactly like this.

Time and time again the game will excitedly exclaim, “Look, an epic battle awaits!” What actually loads is the same exact arena you’ve played 20+ times. Seriously? Low effort!

This location is pretty cool…but I’ve seen it dozens and dozens of times.

Attempted Grand Story; Totally Tiny Presentation

The same lack of developer effort goes for the story. The game, to its credit, attempts to tell a proper story, with ups and downs, character growth, and emotional weightiness. The game even delves into some quite dark subject matters like human rights, indentured servitude, and outright slavery.

Everybody get in their places and pose for the camera, please!

I do think at the core of God Eater 3 is an appealing story of friendship and freedom that’s worth hearing out. Sure, the dialogue is all very basic and there’s no true exploration of the game’s serious themes. But at least there’s an attempt to build a logical, thought-provoking story and world. Kudos for that.

Sadly, God Eater 3 succumbs to the all-too-common low-budget storytelling pitfalls of tell, tell, tell and show basically nothing. The game ostensibly plays out across a fictional version of Europe, but it feels like a film shot in just a few set locations.

It’s almost laughable how many scenes involve your team standing dramatically across the same backdrops over and over despite supposedly traveling to all these grand locales.

There’s a big world map for the story, but there’s actually very few in-game environments.

This lack of quality presentation kills much of the story’s momentum. If you tell me there’s an epic battle before me, you need to show me an epic battle. If you say something really matters, you’d better not totally forget about it fifteen seconds after the cutscene ends. It feels…low effort!

Here’s a nice tea time cutscene. Too bad these events don’t get expanded upon…

Despite my misgivings, by the end I did care about the story and had grown fond of my ragtag group of former prisoners and oppressed people. I genuinely cared about building a future filled with freedom and peace for my friends. Moreover, the game’s got a very strong ending and nice epilogue.

Only one with the power to resonate may pilot this ship. Thankfully, I can resonate…engage!

The Gameplay Flow

This is the flow of the entire game: load into the tiny mission hub, listen to serious talk, accept an important mission, manage your gear, warp to a tiny arena, engage in a manic brawl, get your loot, maybe see a cutscene, and then get dumped ingloriously back at the tiny mission hub to repeat. It’s not terrible… just simplistic.

Ash Crawler Chrysanthemum: Home, Sweet Home

In regard to the mission hub, most of the between-mission gameplay takes place on your own mobile base, known as an Ash Crawler. There’s real Mass Effect vibes in how you can walk around and explore your crew’s living spaces, talking with them about recent events.

However, the quality of Mass Effect isn’t present. Most of the crew banter is very basic and not voiced, and there’s not much payoff for exploring your tiny base. Low effort base design, basically.

Chatting with some of my crew, discussing philosophy.

Even more unfortunately, often the game forces you to talk to specific people at your base before you can proceed on your next story mission. It would have been nice to have some marker telling you where they’re at instead of wandering around until you find them. A minor annoyance, though, since your base is quite small.

Hyper-Combat Mania!

So far I’ve given you a bunch of reasons to not play God Eater 3, but now it’s time to get to the game’s saving grace. Yes, God Eater 3 redeems itself thanks to its wild and epic combat!

I told you the combat is manic! See me doing some crazy flip while lights flash everywhere?!

Battles in God Eater 3 have a chaotic ultra-frenzied fever dream feel to them. Yes indeed, this game has brilliantly mad fighting. So fast, so furious. Monster Hunter World looks like a slow-motion creaking antique compared to God Eater 3’s hip, stylish, and light-speed stabby-slashy-crushy mayhem!

God Eater 3 versus Monster Hunter World feels very much like Sonic versus Mario from back in the day. On one side you have the meticulously polished Mario and Monster Hunter, but what Sonic and God Eater lack in quality they make up for with a cool and confident “gotta go fast” attitude!

I think I’m winning…wait: is that my lightning or the enemies? Oh well, keep smashing!

God Eater 3 will have you rushing, flipping, slashing, bursting, and linking at break-neck speeds. Jump, double-jump, zoom across the screen, panic as you flip through your items while two gigantic beasties rip you to shreds. The poor camera finds itself dragged about, bewildered, and woefully inadequate, but when combat is this crazy, you just go with it!

Thanks to the incredible versatility of the combat systems, there’s an unexpectedly addicting rush from one combat encounter to the next. A large part of the appeal comes from the countless ways to improve your play and try new things to go faster and kill better next time around.

You can break parts of the monsters for loot and fun! Pretty orange monster part particles!

Combat Gear & Fancy Moves

What makes combat so diverse? Let’s start with the fact you get both a main weapon and a ranged weapon, unlike Monster Hunter World. You also get to pick a shield type. Then you get to select dozens of unique Arts. Those Arts can be augmented and leveled up. And all your gear can have Skills (the equivalent of Monster Hunter World’s Jewels) installed on them.

Naturally, you can also craft and upgrade your gear using monster parts. There’s numerous upgrade trees and paths for each weapon, just like Monster Hunter. Then there’s the four elements, allowing you to have weapons on hand for every monster murdering occasion.

You get a lot of strange loot from each mission. It’s all a bit confusing at first.

Beyond your gear itself, there’s many more combat moves than you’ll find in Monster Hunter World. You’ll be side-stepping, lunging, and performing crazy aerial combat that feels very much like the Devil may Cry series, interestingly enough.

To put it another way, if you enjoyed the freedom of movement of Monster Hunter World’s semi-flying Insect Glaive weapon (my personal weapon of choice), this is what every weapon can feel like in God Eater 3. When you can quickly fly around the combat space, why ever go back to boring attacks on your feet? Ponder that one!

Here’s one of the nicest looking locations. I enjoy zooming around and seeing the sights.

It’s All About Speed-Eating Delicious Gods!

In God Eater 3 we’re all about eating (called devouring) gods (big monsters), and I choose to believe God Eater 3 is called such because it does the god eating three times as fast as other games!

Everything is designed to get you into combat as quick as possible. You can get a mission, get in the arena, and get to fighting within a minute of loading the game, which makes this game perfect for quick-fix gaming.

Load the game up, start devouring monsters, and do it all over again as fast as possible!

What also cuts down on the tedium this genre is often know for is the removal of all that boring hunting for monsters so common in that one series…what’s it called…oh yeah, Monster Hunter. Basically, God Eater 3 serves up the monsters right in front of you, so get devouring!

The combat does have some issues. Many monsters fly about the arena at too-fast speeds with annoying area of effect attacks that often cancel your commands. The targeting system is wonky, and the camera doesn’t help much either. Sometimes combat does devolve into button mashing, but skilled players will learn how to deftly deal with even the most seemingly unbalanced encounters.

So Many Confusing Systems

Another problematic element with the game overall is the over-implementation of strangely worded gameplay systems. You’ve got Burst Arts, Burst Arts Effects, Engage Mode, Link Bursts, Acceleration Triggers, Charge/Quick/Air Devours, and a bunch more systems. It took me a good 10 to 15 hours to finally come to grips with what in the world the game was babbling on about in regard to all this.

There’s a lot of gear to equip and terms to study. (Yes, my weapon is called “King Baboon.”)

Music & Sound

There’s some standout music tracks in God Eater 3. You know the problem with them? Here’s a hint: it’s the same problem with all the content in the game. Yep, repetition. The excellent tracks get played over and over for every emotional or victorious story scene. There’s just not enough variety.

Sound design is minimal. Like most of the development, the game gives you just enough sound effects during combat to make things feel semi-powerful, but there’s almost no environmental audio touches. Cutscene audio has the basic stuff like footsteps, clinks of swords, and bangs of bullets, but that’s about it. Passable but not passionate (the effort…it was low).

One of the many short cutscenes between battles. Clinky clank!

Smart AI Teammates & Multiplayer

One of God Eater 3’s best features is your actually intelligent AI teammates! Perhaps the developers didn’t get the memo: AI teammates are supposed to be stupid and infuriating, duh! Yet somehow this game never once frustrated me with dumb AI. If I was downed in battle, my AI teammates would always rush to rescue me.

Throughout the entire game my companions would heal me, buff me, and help me in every single battle. They’re even powerful and capable of killing many monsters by themselves. Any Monster Hunter World player will tell you your companion AI in that game is infuriatingly stupid, so score a huge point for God Eater 3! Massive kudos to the developers!

We’re all being very serious here…meditating on how best to devour more gods.

Besides AI teammates, you are able to engage in either story-based multiplayer missions or larger 8-player “assault” missions with matchmaking (AI will fill the empty slots, thankfully). Honestly, most people will want to play this game solo since the game already features robust AI teammates. But if you’ve got a good friend to play with, that’s always fun of course!

Technical Performance

On the bright side, this game runs like a champ. It was rock solid for me, with nearly perfect framerates. This is expected given the very dated visuals and lack of complicated rendering techniques, but it’s nice all the same to have a game run very well. So kudos to the developers for delivering a quality PC game with acceptable customization options.

Difficulty & Controls

You’ll probably find the game to be pretty easy if you’re an action game aficionado. I never once in my entire playthrough wiped (had to restart a mission). You get ranked for how efficiently you complete missions, and I probably triple-S ranked (the top rank) about 75% of the missions on my first try.

Just getting another SSS rank in 5 minutes or less. It’s pretty easy, really.

Granted, I’m a serious fan of the Devil may Cry style genre that God Eater 3 borrows heavily from, but I was surprised at the ease of progression compared to Monster Hunter World. In that game I wiped many, many times, so in a way God Eater 3 was a nice change of pace. I liked being able to breeze through the game without worrying about all the micro-management of items and gear, like in most Monster Hunter games.

The game is definitely designed for a controller. The mouse movement is very sensitive, and there’s far too many weird button combinations to make keyboard usage very friendly. Even the default bindings on the controller are a bit weird. Thankfully you can rebind just about everything. I’d recommend changing the guard button to something much less obnoxious.

Dude, Where’s the Armor?!

One very lacking element in God Eater 3 is armor crafting. In fact, there is zero armor crafting. There’s zero armor at all, to be precise. There is optional cosmetic clothing crafting, but these top/bottom items are a bit boring (realistic jackets, tank tops, cargo pants). It’s like you’re shopping at some trendy shopping mall…what is this?

Do you like my raincoat and oddly-taped cargo pants? I got them on sale!

The armor department is yet another way God Eater 3 proves how woefully deficient it is compared to Monster Hunter World. Where are all the awesome looking armor sets to prove how much of an elite hunter I am? Oh…I guess the developers couldn’t be bothered to implement all that…what’s the term I’m look for here? Oh yes, low effort!

Warning: Scantily Clad Girls & Large Breasts

Yes, God Eater 3 continues the dubious anime stereotype of scantily clad girls and jiggly boobs because clearly breast physics is an important development priority over more battle locations or monster armors, right? Methinks they’re pandering to the sexualized anime crowd.

Then there’s the captain of your ship, Hilda. She’s a very strong and smart and capable woman with great voice acting and good writing. Hilda’s basically classy and awesome, but the developers gave her enormous scantily clad breasts for some reason.

Hilda is an excellent character, but her visual design egregiously clashes with her persona.

To add insult to gravity-injury, they didn’t even give her a bra…and put her in an almost bursting top. Seriously, her breasts are so large she may need breast reduction surgery. A lot of people don’t realize the very serious health problems that come along with being in the extreme end of the breast-size bell curve. Maybe God Eater 3 is trying to raise awareness of the issue? Yeah…I’m sure that’s it…

Concluding: God Eater 3’s Target Audience?

God Eater 3 is the perfect case for discounted games. The developers have chosen to give us a content-limited, low effort version of a Monster Hunter game. All told it only took a little less than 30 hours to finish every mission and obtain the highest rank gear. That’s lightning-quick compared to other games in the genre.

Besides all that, they haven’t even reached current day graphical standards. Plus they reuse the same arenas and monsters over and over. Yet they have the audacity to charge full price. Nope!

You’ll be seeing a lot of monsters up close and personal. Over and over.

However, many Monster Hunter fans will absolutely love the ultra-fast change-of-pace from the more plodding and tedious Monster Hunter World. There’s a real scrappy charm to this sort of budget monster hunting experience. It’s a bit of a palette cleanser, letting you chomp up and devour a few gods here and there before returning to the real-deal Monster Hunter World experience.

The Final God-Eating Verdict

God Eater 3 is very much a guilty pleasure sort of game. I really did love playing it, even though the whole time I fully recognized how lacking and lackluster many of the elements are. There’s fun to be had here, and the story is compelling enough that I kept dreaming of what could have been if the developers had put as much energy into this game as Capcom put into Monster Hunter World.

I just devoured this god known as Anubis. He was quite delicious. Next!

When its rival series can deliver a full-fledged modern-generation, immerse evolution of the series, God Eater 3 is simply too limited, too aging, and too stuck in the past to compete. It’s a darn shame, too, because what the genre really needs is a merging of Monster Hunter World’s quality and expansiveness with God Eater 3’s story-building and hyper-fun combat.

Once God Eater 3 goes on sale for 75% off or so, then I’d say it’s a real value and worth your time. For now, it’s probably best to avoid paying such a high price for such a low effort production.

Addictive, manic combat

Smart, helpful AI teammates

Colorful cast of characters

Comfortable mission grind

So many weapons and skills

Lengthy story, many missions

Strong ending, nice epilogue

Technically solid, runs great

A scrappy charm to it all

Very repetitive gameplay

Not enough diverse locales

Locations are basic arenas

Every mission is the same

Lacks armor crafting

Reuses enemies too often

World needs show, not tell

Outdated visuals and design

Sexualized anime stuff

Playtime: 28 hours total. Nick blazed through the main story and every optional mission in 24 hours (not nonstop!). Another 4 hours was spent farming for the best end-game gear. And that was that!

Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using an Intel i7-3930k CPU, 32GB of memory, and a nVidia GTX 980 Ti graphics card.

Also read the God Eater 3 PC Performance Analysis.

God Eater 3 Review: Low Effort Manic Monster Munchin’ published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

[andreafestefano]

Our beautiful back door transformation!

Goodness! I've been so excited to share this transformation with you! It's been in the works for a few months and then the lovely folks at Kwikset asked if I'd like to share a door transformation with you and it all worked out so perfectly! It is SO GOOD!

Years ago we replaced windows in our family room with these double doors: 

They were a total game changer for our house. They let in so much light and make everything feel so much more open. One of our best decisions ever. 

You'll notice they look like French doors, but only one side opens -- we were told that double exterior doors (that both open) can cause problems over time. This was such a great compromise. The look without the issues!

You might remember that I painted them a pretty blue last summer: 

I think I told you then that I had big plans for this spot outside...I've had this in mind for a long time! 

The doors have held up great, except for this middle section -- no idea why the paint started flaking but it was making a mess: 

AND that hardware had seen better days for sure. 

I used a scraper to take all the excess paint off before doing anything: 

Then I did a very light sanding to make sure all the chippy paint was gone. 

I repainted that part of the door and then tackled the hardware. I was so thrilled when Kwikset offered us new hardware for our exterior doors. One, because they were looking worn after all these years. TWO (this is the best part) -- they provided stylish and durable products with Kwikset's SmartKey security feature as well. Because I've changed out our hardware years back we were using THREE different keys for our exterior doors. It was way too much. This awesome product not only helps to protect against common and destructive break-in methods, but it also allowed me to easily change the key so that ONE works for all the doors. 

Mind blown. 

But first, more about the pretty hardware. 😍 There are a few DIY projects that I know people avoid because they seem too difficult. This is one of them -- but I think it would surprise you how easy it is to change out both interior and exterior door hardware. 

For the knob you just unscrew the hardware and pull it apart. Then replace it with the new version and match up the screws to the holes inside. It's pretty easy!:

Looking better already, right? If you paint your doors you really should take the hardware off -- it's really not that bad! I've learned from experience that you'll kick yourself for not doing it if you ever change your knobs later. 

Because I was changing this out from a knob to this nicer handleset, I only needed to add one hole at the bottom to screw in the lower part of the handle. I just used a drill bit to drill through the door and then screw it in. 

For the deadbolt it's not much different -- their instructions cover every single issue you may run into.   Again, you need to just unscrew the two pieces and take them off of the door: 

Then you'll need to replace the deadbolt part. Just remove the two screws and pull it out: 

This is the Smart Key awesomeness I was telling you about earlier:

More on that in a bit! 

The Kwikset SmartKey product offers better security because of their unique design that protects against lock picking and lock bumping -- I had to look up that last one. There's been an increase in those occurring in home burglaries. 

I also love that they provide the really long screws that you should use to secure your deadbolt plate to the door frame:  

The longer the better for these!

The lock part goes together like the bottom -- you match up the insides and then insert the screws to pull everything together. (More on that in a bit!) 

But this is the best part...they provide this little tool that allows you to re-key each lock to work on the same key. You follow their very short instructions with your old key and the new one, and insert this into the little slot:

And presto! Your key works on ALL OF THE LOCKS. Hello! I cannot tell you how nice and convenient it's been to operate with one key! 

I was able to change out our front door hardware as well -- and followed the same process. There are a couple little tricks the Kwikset hardware offers that I wanted to mention because you may need to know these if you tackle this project. 

When you fit your two pieces together on the door (front and back), there's a half circle metal piece that inserts inside the door. If you've ever installed hardware you know what I'm talking about. You can see it here:

If your hardware has this section facing the other way the fix is EASY -- you just tug on that half circle metal and then twist. It flips over to the other side. Takes two seconds. Brilliant. 

This next one is awesome. When you install your new deadbolt or door latch, you'll want that hole in the center to be in the middle of the circle:

If yours isn't centered this fix is easy too. 

You just press down the little buttons and slide it to the length you need: 

It was at 2 3/8 and I needed it to be 2 3/4. Again, so easy! 

I was able to switch out all of our doors in about 90 minutes. It worked so well and I'm still geeking out at how pretty it looks. (And...ONE key.):

I used the Chelsea handleset for this door and this Avalon set for the front door -- both in the Venetian bronze finish. 

Remember -- when you install hardware the screws always go on the inside! :) This goes for in the house too. You want to make sure you can use a screwdriver from the inside if you're ever locked in a room for some reason. 

OK! Now for the transformation I couldn't wait to share with you! I've always wanted to do this, but when we finished the pergola last it was decided it would happen. We just weren't sure when. 

The back of our house is all vinyl so I've always wanted to break it up a bit (see the before pics above). The double doors helped a ton, but I knew this would make an even bigger impact. I'm obsessed. :) 

Check out those doors now!: 

Holy cats, isn't it beautiful?? I've been dying to show you! 

It all came together so beautifully. We had the trellis built over the back door to match the pergola -- it's a similar design but simpler. 

Our door opens out (something else I'm so glad we did) to save space inside. It's not been a big deal at all, but we knew from the start we'd want to add a little something over the door eventually. Not a roof, but just enough that it would provide some cover from rain and block some snow from falling right there. 

This has helped already! And it looks SO good. On our RV trip a few weeks ago I ran into an IKEA and found these pretty trellises in their outdoor section. They match our stain perfectly!:

I've had the pots for years -- I spray painted them a couple years ago to give them new life and it's held up great. And aren't those pillows perfect with the door color? 

I picked up the chairs from Meijer on clearance for another spot and then put them on each side. My mind needs symmetry...it is my friend:

It really helps to break up the expanse of vinyl on the house. We just adore it. 

Our son said it looks like a place in the Bahamas and I just love that! ;) You can see that I strung some vine through the trellises -- I'm hoping they'll take to it and keep going! How pretty will that be?:

It ties in so well with out pergola design: 

Here's another before pic from last summer: 

And here's how it looks now: 

Gah. I just love it. The expanse of vinyl has been broken up just enough. 

It took a few months to pull it all together but I'm so happy with it. It's just beautiful. And the new hardware is like pretty jewelry on the door -- it makes it feel like so much grander of an entrance. 

Here's a look at night -- we love sitting out here in the evenings, and during the day this provides plenty of shade so we can sit out here and enjoy the space then too:

Thank you to Kwikset for the hardware -- I can't recommend that Smart Key feature enough. If you ever lose your keys or they are stolen, this makes it easy to re-key the lock in just seconds. I couldn't believe how easy it was. The kind folks at Kwikset are offering their Juno knob and deadbolt combo pack (with the SmartKey) in Venetian Bronze to one of my readers! If you'd like to be entered just leave a comment here! We'll have it sent out to the winner. (Deadline to enter is noon EST on Wednesday, July 5.) I've been dying to share this one with you! I hope you enjoy it. If you have questions about anything feel free to ask! This post is sponsored by Kwikset and they provided the hardware I used. All opinions are my own and I only share brands that I know and love with my readers. 

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[calculatedfashion-blog]

Garage Doors and Their Importance

Did it ever occur to you how important piece of hardware is the garage door? Probably not, because nobody takes the utility of the garage door seriously until something goes wrong. But to judge the importance of this portion of your home, all you have to do is go into the space and take a look at whatever is stored.

The garage is not only a place where you store your precious vehicle but also lots of tools and hardware to prevent them from getting stolen. This is why it’s important that you regularly repair and maintain the door to keep it in it's best shape. But no matter how much you try, there will come a time when the garage door will inevitably stop working. What do you do at such a time?

Do you go ahead and try and fix the problem yourself or do you call a professional like us to do the task? Well, the answer is easy. Unless you’re a professional and know how to tackle the intricacies of this seemingly simple pieces of hardware, you should leave the repair and maintenance job to Garage Door Repair Carol Stream IL. Whenever something malfunctions or breaks around the house, most of us try to rationalize how easy it would be to fix the problem ourselves.

We even try to save a few bucks by not buying the necessary hardware and make use of whatever we have in hand. But is this entire process really worth it? After serving a countless number of clients, we can say that trying to do something that you’re not capable or skilled enough to do is counterintuitive. We understand the importance of saving money for our clients, so all our services are available at very affordable rates.

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Garage door services

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[itbeatsbookmarks]

(Via: Hacker News)

March 22, 2017

· technical gaming

Secret colours of the Commodore 64

In 1991 I was fourteen years old. It would be fair to say I was obsessed with computers. I proudly owned a brown 'breadbox' Commodore 64 with an exotic upgrade - an Oceanic 5.25" disk drive:

In May that year, I was reading COMMODORE FORMAT and devouring the C64 game reviews. Suddenly I read a caption that stuck with me for years afterward. Underneath a screenshot of a colourful robotic dragon, it read:

Hold on... You can't get this colour on a 64! Well, you can if you swap pale green and cyan 50 times a second!

This was astonishing to me.

Thanks to the wonder of the internets and the passion of some great magazine archivists, we can excavate the exact page at which I goggled, long ago:

This was freaky. When you owned any 8-bit computer, you became intimately familiar with its colour scheme. This simple photograph blew my mind. That blue colour just wasn't possible.

According to the caption, by presenting two colours to the eye and alternating them quickly enough, a whole new colour emerged. What would this new, secret colour look like on your crappy early-90s CRT television? The screenshot was only a hint. Would it glow? Would it flicker?

Twenty-six years later, I found out the answer.

This article is all about colour switching on the Commodore 64. There are interactive examples to play with below. I haven't found anything else on the topic, so it's possible this is the only resource on the subject.

Let's take a moment to understand why secret colours were such a big deal.

The palette was the computer

Palettes were important.

A typical 8-bit computer could only display sixteen colours. Those colours were fixed in hardware when the computer was designed.

This meant the palette defined fixed boundaries for your computer. It constrained how the visuals looked and felt. It fundamentally differentiated the Commodore 64, from the ZX Spectrum, from the Apple II, from the Amstrad CPC. You could instantly tell which computer was responsible given a screenshot.

As you'd expect, hardware palette design was crucially important. With only sixteen colours to work with, digital artists needed carefully-chosen tones to help them represent the real world.

It didn't always go well. Pity the garish palette wired into the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, which produced visuals like a hot shit aneurysm:

As it happened, the Commodore engineers did a great job. The pic below shows the palette at the top left. The rest of the image explores the pleasing gradients possible with the C64.

Notice that:

It has earthy tones that match real-world objects. Compare with the hue explosion of the Speccy.

It has many shades of grey. This lets you render monochrome images as well as things like metal. Finally the neutral grey shades can be slotted into ramps with other colours to blend them together - you can see these on the right.

So C64 owners were accustomed to screens like this:

The pixellated images above would look much better - more subtly blended - on your typical fuzzy CRT television.

After years of obsessively looking at it, this palette is firmly embedded in my mind. The colours are immediately recognisable. They resonate with the frequency of nostalgia, and make my brain tingle. I actually use these colours as my avatar on Github:

With this in mind, the idea that you could break this boundary and invent new, secret colours on the C64 - and trick the eye into seeing something that didn't exist - that was high wizardry.

Colour switching

If you swap two colours rapidly enough - say at 50 or 60 frames per second - you can fool the eye into seeing something that isn't there. On a machine with sixteen colours, just one or two extra can add a lot to a scene.

Since today we all live in the future and you are reading a fully programmable document on a supercomputer, let's try it.

Simple demo

Here's a square flipping between two colours - red and blue - every second.

Click or tap on the square to alternate the colours at 60fps (or specifically, the maximum refresh rate of your current browser and display. It would be cool to see this on a 144Hz refresh monitor).

Notice how a third colour appears? That shade of purple is not being displayed. Only red and blue are appearing - your eye is fooled into seeing a colour that isn't there. I promise I'm not cheating. That's colour switching in action.

Hit the square again to slow it down and check.

Dragon Breed demo

So way back in 1991, I was intrigued by that review but never actually owned the game. What did Dragon Breed actually look like?

First of all, it turns out that fancy colour switching isn't used in the game at all until you hit the end of STAGE 3, when a robot dragon boss shows up glowing in that weird cyan.

Sidebar: One interesting reference is to check out the original arcade game. Since we live in the future, you can play the Dragon Breed arcade in your browser right now (hit the power button, wait for boot, press 5 to insert coin then 1 to start). That's pretty mind-blowing. Unfortunately to see the dragon we're interested in, you'll have to play to the end of STAGE 3. Good luck with that.

So surely someone's captured this effect on a C64 longplay video? Well after some digging I found our famous robot dragon boss on Youtube (audio warning):

VIDEO

There are two problems with this video. Because it's captured at 30fps,

It looks like shit. The sprites flicker distractingly, and

The colour switching effect is completely lost.

If you were to play the game on an emulator at 50/60fps, the effect is convincing.

Sidebar: A note on frames per second. The European PAL C64 updated at 50fps, whereas the US NTSC systems updated at 60fps (reference). Weird huh? This means the effect would be slightly more convincing on a US machine.

Can we show the Dragon Breed effect on a web page? Well, let's play through to STAGE 3 (using cheats, phew) and screencap the boss in a couple of frames side by side:

Next, with a bit of JavaScript we can alternate the images and see the original effect at 60fps. On a phone, you might need to zoom out a bit first. Again, tap or click to slow down or activate the colour switching:

Look at the three images all together - a totally new colour has emerged!

Also notice the flickery dragon tail: this is a limitation of sprites on the C64. The hardware didn't support enough sprites to give the player six tail segments and render all the enemies; so only three are displayed at a time and alternated every frame, producing the flickery side-effect.

We did it! We recreated Dragon Breed colour switching in the browser. Are we done?

Palette demo

Nope. If those two colours can be combined, what other combinations are possible? Put another way, what is the set of all possible secret colours on a given machine?

Let's find out. Put on your shades for this one! We're going to generate every unique pair of colours possible on the Commodore 64 in one glorious epilepsy-bomb. Again, tap or click to switch modes:

Pretty cool huh? It looks like the tartan for the Scottish clan McPuke.

Bear in mind every flickering square above is a unique pair of colours. I highlighted the combination that's used in Dragon Breed by giving it a border.

Notice that some combinations have a nasty strobe effect and will definitely make you feel ill. But not all of them! Why do some work really well? It all depends on brightness. Two colours of equal brightness will blend perfectly; whereas say black and white will flicker violently.

With switching in fast mode, find a blended colour that you like. Now tap to slow it down and see which two colours are mixing to give you that hue.

The End

And that is the story of how I read about secret C64 colours in 1991, and then twenty-six years later finally got to see them. If you're still interested and have functioning eyes, read on for bonus content.

Contribute to this article

Do you know any other games - for any computer - that use this approach? If so, let me know in the comments.

I'm collecting examples in the appendix below. I'd love to know if the Speccy ever did this...

References

Appendix: Full 1991 article

Before the internet, computer magazines were the only way you found out what was happening in the world of technology. It's difficult to describe how exciting it was to get your issue of ZZAP! 64 or COMMODORE FORMAT and read reviews of all the new games, or check out adverts for the peripherals you'd beg your parents/Santa for.

For maximum nostalgia, here are the full pages of that Dragon Breed review from COMMODORE FORMAT:

Appendix: Colour switching references

This is a list of every reference to 8-bit colour switching I've found on the web.

COMMODORE FORMAT issue 5, Dragon Breed review:

"Extra colours are achieved using colour switching, where pixels are assigned alternate colours every 50th of a second. This gives the impression of a completely new shade!"

COMMODORE FORMAT issue 13, Q&A:

"There's no way to increase the number of colours in the 64's palette, but there are clever software routines to give the impression of more colours. Activision's Dragon Breed uses very rapid colour switching to give an intermediate tone, and PD coders have produced a 'Fli-Pic' facility which enables you to use more than four colours per char block."

COMMODORE FORMAT issue 32, Mayhem in Monsterland developer diary:

"As with our background graphics we wanted more than the C64's 16 colours for sprites. However, we can't use the same method of colour mixing that we're using for the level graphics (see CF28) because we haven't got enough sprite colours. So I added a different colour mixing routine for the sprites. This rapidly flashes between two colours (of equal brightness) to create new shades."

C64.com's interview with the Dragon Breed programmer, Ashley Routledge:

"I especially recall the dragon with that strange shade of blue/cyan."

Appendix: How to flip images at 60fps

In writing the programs for this article I discovered it's pretty awkward to get two images to flip at 60fps without visual artifacts.

GIFs (true GIFs, not GIFV) are too slow for 60fps.

Manipulating a backgroundImage works but flickers like hell.

To make this work you need to create a couple of Image objects, set their src attribute and wait for them to completely load (using an event) before starting your animation loop. Phew! If you need this, view source for this article or check out this gist.

OK that's really it! Thanks for reading. If you've enjoyed this I'd love to hear from you below.