#i have it blocked like three diff ways but it never matters!

[tiny-huts]

The speed at which I am blogging bitches who put X reader stuff in the bg3 tag

[chubbybuckydumpling]

Hello, having seen your requests are open, I would like to request your thoughts on

Andy Barber and Reader going on vacation together for the first time (rating up to you)

A Much Needed Vacation

words: 2.5k

pairing: Andy Barber x female Reader

warnings: mentions of smut, implied smut, fluff

A/n: I don’t know why I struggled so much with this, I hope it’s okay. I’m so nervous (because I really want to impress @slothspaghettiwrites ) pray for me please! :)

My Masterlist

Andy had always had trouble making and keeping friends. He had a couple of colleagues and acquaintances, but a true friend he could confide in? Not really no, his past trauma and toxic habit of keeping all his emotions bottled up made him seem arrogant and standoffish.

But then you came along. You, with your perfect smile and golden heart and the patience of an angel. No matter what Andy tried, how distant he acted, you wouldn’t budge. The opposite actually. His behaviour intrigued you and the way he made your thighs clench by only looking at you added to his appeal.

So when you regrettably went to go for a swim in the morning because you felt too exhausted yesterday evening and saw this delicious piece of man in just a pair of trunks? You knew it was time to get that man to become yours.

You situated yourself at the end of the lane Andy was using, thighs spread and calves dunked in the cool water, your swimsuit tight around your body. A smirk plays on your lips as you watch the man of your desire move closer to you until his hand hits the edge of the pool and his head pops up.

You can see from his expression that he did not expect to come face to face with your crotch, eyes wide under his goggles and mouth agasp. He panted heavily and took off his glasses, beard and hair wet, a few droplets running from his forehead. ”Hey, Andy. What are you doing here so early?”, you asked with a smile.

He struggled staying in one spot, because you were blocking the edge with your thighs, hindering him from holding himself up. Grinning, you reached for his hand and placed it on your leg. Andy’s had snapped up to stare at you in shock, yet his fingers tightened around your flesh to keep him steady.

“I like when it’s empty in the mornings. Fewer disturbances”, he answered and lowered his gaze. Now he was right back to watching your crotch and a delicious blush covered the apples of his cheeks. Quickly he glanced to the side to try and be respectful.

You pouted and splashed some water with your foot, “Am I disturbing you?”. Andy squeezes your thigh erratically, “No, absolutely not. It’s a real pleasure that you’re here”, he responded a little too eager, which he must have realised because he started to backpaddle, “I mean that in a really respectful way not that I get off on this or something. That’d be weird”

You raised an eyebrow, a smirk playing on your lips, “Not that you’re weird, you’re obviously very attractive and beautiful, not that I’ve been watching you, bu-“, your giggles interrupted him. With a loving gaze you cupped his face, “Wanna race?” Confused, Andy agreed, but before he could part from you, you pulled his face close to yours.

His breath was fanning over your lips and you could perfectly make out all the flecks and shades of blue in his beautiful eyes, “Will you take me on a date if I win?”

You’re very glad you got Andy to open up to you, especially now that you’ve been dating for ten months. Never before have you felt this happy so consistently and even though Andy still struggles with fully discussing his feelings and thoughts, you think that he has been sharing your excitement. You’ve become his rock, the one constant in his life, the shoulder he leans one. In return he treats you with the utmost respect and love. There wasn’t a moment where you didn’t feel like a queen in his care.

Sadly, you couldn't spend as much time with him as you wanted, his work as an assistant district attorney taking up most of his time.Of course that didn’t hinder your growing love for the man, but it left you feeling lonely a lot, particularly because your occupation as an architect allows you to work from home quite a bit.

Once you moved together, you felt slightly more connected to your boyfriend. Falling asleep in his arms every night and waking up with kisses being peppered all over your face was like a dream come true. For the first few weeks, you were in a constant state of bliss, cooking and providing for Andy while he kept you happy and satisfied. Soon enough however, Andy received a new case to work on and your fairytale vision was destroyed. The reality of life settled in and your rose coloured glasses were ripped away.

You still enjoyed living with your boyfriend, every time you saw him, butterflies erupted in your belly, still do, you just wished you could spend more time with him. Never before have you been so in love with somebody. All of Andy’s little quirks and ticks had you weak in your knees. The way he acted so delicate and gentle, especially around you, while his muscles were bulging. To see this huge, sculpted man be so caring and soft made you feel all kinds of things.

But it must have been your lucky day when Andy came home early with a big smile on his face. “Sugar, the case is closed. You’ve got me all to yourself for the next three weeks”, his arms open for you to fall into with loud giggles. “For real?”, you asked, excitement bubbling in your chest, “Yes, for real, honey!”, he grinned and pulled you closer, his beard scratching against the delicate skin of your cheeks as he pressed his lips to your temple.

You’re currently sitting next to Andy on a flight to “You’ll like it, I promise”. Your head rests on his shoulder, eyes closed peacefully. His breathing calms you down and even managed to lull you into a deep slumber. He’s been reading some kind of book and occasionally glanced over to you, checking if you’re doing alright. The flight has been quite calm, smoothly flying over the clouds.

The first class seats are a blessing, the constant stream of food that’s been given to you and the extra leg room added to the whole level of comfort. Andy’s warmth makes you feel very small and cuddly, his muscular frame a stark contrast to your softer, smaller form; a thing that you’ve come to appreciate quite a lot.

“Did you have a nice nap, honey?”, his deep voice rumbles as one of his hands moves to cradle your face. You nod and cuddle yourself further into your boyfriend’s chest, his distinctive smell consumes you as you continue to practically melt into his side. “We’ll land shortly, shortcake. Are you ready to find out where we're going?”, he asks into your hair and nuzzles his nose into your scalp. A loud yawn escapes your mouth, “I guess. I’m just happy to be with you again”, you whisper and turn to face him.

Of all the places Andy could have picked, he chose this particular place, because he knew you would love all the new experiences and adventures it would bring. He’s aware that you love to experience new things with all of your senses, how you become so excited whenever you discover a new smell or feel a foreign fabric under your fingers, the way your eyes glaze over when you spot a novel view or an object of interest. The way you grin when a new taste warms your body, there’s nothing that Andy loves more than seeing you beam with such childlike joy.

“You’re taking me to Marrakesh? No way”, you gasp, suddenly awake. The grin on your boyfriend’s face mirrors your own as excitement courses through your veins. “I’ve never been to Morocco before! Or Africa!”, you stare at him for a split second before your head whips to the other side. The window doesn’t suffice with your sudden hunger to explore the city, you can barely make out any landmarks. Yet you can’t stop squirming in your seat. The wanderlust has fully taken over and you latch onto Andy’s arm, giggling uncontrollably.

Your laughter is infectious and soon your boyfriend is cackling next to you, desperately trying to silence himself when he sees the man next to him staring at the both of you with a death glare. If looks could kill.

The next two hours pass in a blur. Andy maneuvered you through the airport safely and carried most of the luggage as your eyes were trained on the different people that moved past you. The drive to the hotel was no different, your nose practically glued to the window, “Look, Andy, look!”. He entertained you, of course, and looked out of the window every time, a smile on his soft, pink lips, “Good job, shortcake. Did you take a picture?”. The check-in went smoothly, all of your bags stored safely in your room.

You’re sitting on the softest king size bed ever, anxiously waiting for your boyfriend to finish up in the bedroom. “Hurry up, please. I can’t wait to get out to see more of this place”, you shout, phone in your hand to take a picture for your family. “Relax, honey! The sights won’t run away”, he responds with a chuckle. His deep timbre makes goosebumps arise all over your arms. All your excitement must have caused an increase in your blood flow to your lady parts.

With a shake of your head you try to rid yourself of these thoughts. The attempt fails horrendously once Andy comes out of the en suite. His loose, unbuttoned shirt and the form fitting shorts make you weak in the knees. Your boyfriend is just that handsome. The thought of ripping his trousers from his body dissipates quickly when he asks if you’re ready to go see the souks. Hell yes, you are.

The sun is setting while you and Andy overlook the Jemaa el-Fnaa from your table on the restaurant’s balcony. An almost empty plate of cake between you and your boyfriend. He’s holding your hand on the table, gently tracing your knuckles with his thumb. “How’d you like your first day, honey?”, he asks gently, affection clearly shimmering in his eyes.

“I loved it! I don’t know what I liked most? Everything is so interesting and beautiful”, you jump in your chair, giggling happily. “I loved all the different little shops in the bazaar! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many different foods and clothes in one place and everything smelled so good. I really loved all the spices, we should make something like this at home!”

“What, a whole wall filled with spices?”, he snorts, shaking his head, the smile never leaving his face, “I think we should leave the colossal spice walls in the souks”. A pout forms on your lips, but the squeeze of Andy’s hand makes you melt back into your blessed state. “I really loved all the different things they sold. I’m sure you could find about everything there”, Andy pieces the last piece of cake and holds it up to your mouth. You open up to reach for it, but he pulls the fork away just efore you get to it, “Andy!”, you whsiper yell at the grin on his lips.

“What’s the matter honey?”, he asks sweetly, a mischievous glint in his eyes. You playfully glare at him, smirking, “Are you sure you want to play this kind of game, Mr. Barber?”. He nods at you like you’re being his bratty teen, in need for some serious attitude control, “Don’t be all venomous, I don’t like snakes”. As soon as he spoke those words regret washed over his features, “Oh dear, here we go…”

“I can’t believe you’re scared of snakes! You’re the biggest man I know and you’re terrified of snakes!”, you burst out with laughter, tears forming in your eyes. “I just didn’t want it to touch me”, he mumbles, arms crossed in front of his chest. “Please, Andy you should have seen your face. It was a tiny little snake”, you giggle and reach over the table to take his hand into yours again, but he doesn’t budge. “It was laying on your shoulders, it could have killed you!”, you keep trying to loosen up his arms, a few giggles still slipping out. You get out of your seat and move to your boyfriend, “The kind owner was standing right next to me, everything was fine”,

With a sigh, Andy opens his arms and pulls you on his lap. His beard tickles you as he places his head on your shoulder, gently kissing and lapping at your neck, “I just want you to be safe”.

You cuddle further into his warmth, smiling at his overprotective manners, “I’ve got you with me, I don’t think I could be safer”.

A smile on your lips, you turn around to kiss him, his scent envelopes you with a sense of comfort. His soft mouth against your own, the setting sun warming you from the outside, the love and adoration coursing through you from the inside. It’s gentle, full of emotion as if he’s trying to put all his wasted feelings from when he was working so much into it. After a while you pull back, breathing heavily. Your hand cups his face and you run the other through his soft hair, a couple of knots tangling between your fingers.

“I love you, baby”, you whisper like you’re telling him a secret, “I love you too, honey”.  A warm breeze blows over you and you turn to watch over the place below you, the last rays of sun painting it in a delicious golden glow. “Let’s ask someone to take a picture of us. Our first day on our first ever vacation together”, you smile and press another kiss to his lips. “I’ll find someone, stay put”, Andy grins and squeezes your hips as a sign for you to move back into your seat.

You watch your boyfriend’s retreating figure, a happy flutter in your chest. You can’t believe that you’re on a beautiful vacation with your beautiful boyfriend and about to take a beautiful picture to glue into your memory book. Excited, you let the atmosphere envelope you, completely floating in all the different sounds and scents. It’s really peaceful, the loud and busy streets quiet for a change.

Andy’s voice coaxes you out of your trance, “You ready, sugar?”. The two of you stand in front of the balcony, his hands rest on your waist when he suddenly bows forwards, making you fall backwards in turn. With a gasp, you reach for his shoulders, holding onto his strong frame. His warm breath grazes your cheek as his blue eyes stare into your soul. You hear the camera clicking, but it’s faded into the background. The only thing you can focus on is your boyfriend and his enticing body, the exposed skin that’s glistening deliciously.

He leans even closer to you until his lips brush your ear, “I can’t wait to have you all alone tonight. Just you and me, finally”. You gulp at the list and arousal in his voice, thighs clenching at his tone, “I’ve been waiting for you all day”.

Safe to say your vacation with Andy was very satisfying.

.

.

Taglist: @teetles-and-other-stuff @winteralpine @slothspaghettiwrites @marvels-gurl @gotnofucks

My Masterlist

If you enjoyed my work, please consider leaving a reblog with feedback! It means the world to me. Your support keeps me going

Be added to my Taglist here.

[mini-moongi]

Notification [REVAMPED] || 2

Taehyung x reader

Genre: Slice of Life, comedy, fluff, slow burn?? Idk I feel like I’m describing an anime lol

Summary: Alert!AU, School!AU; A mysterious app appeared on your phone and you can’t get rid of it?? It texts you people’s thoughts. One day, you accidentally send the star basketball player, Min Yoongi, to the nurse’s office.

-A/N- This revamped version is already super diff from the original lol I have some stuff planned so this might be a bumpy ride on the love coaster.

Chapters: 1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 coming soon!

series masterlist

─── · 。ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The last school bell rings, signaling that you can finally escape this hell-hole. A sigh escapes your lips, and you look back on the wild roller coaster of today. You fell, re-sprained a guys ankle, ate lunch with hot boys, and then suddenly a new forensics partner too. You asked Yoongi for his schedule earlier, and you’ve just picked up all of his assignments. The teachers praise you for your kindness as you walk out of each classroom.

It’s been about 15 minutes after school officially ended, but you’re still roaming, trying to find the exit. You’re walking down the now empty hallway when you suddenly see girl and a guy around the corner. You press your back against the wall; you’ve stumbled upon something you shouldn’t have. It’s almost like you’re intruding on a very private matter, oh wait, you are. The two are blocking the nearest exit, and you really don’t feel like walking across campus. 

“...I’ve liked you for awhile now, Jungkook.” A feminine voice echoed in the desolate hallway. “I know other girls like you too, but I couldn’t wait any longer. Will you accept my feelings?” She’s timid, and you start to feel guilty that you’re eavesdropping like this. 

You’re in it for the long haul now; if you started walking, it would definitely ruin their moment. You were hoping for the boy to say yes and then leave, but a heavy silence fills the room. You grow anxious and peek around the corner to get a glimpse.

The guy named Jungkook is just standing there. He’s very attractive, and he has a very well built figure. He’s not looking at the girl, and his body is stiff. He’s like a statue; a very intimidating statue. The name Jungkook was familiar, but you can’t pin point why at this time. It’s probably because you’ve seen him in the year book, that’s all.. His brows are furrowed, and he is silent for a painfully long time.

“...I can’t.” His words are clear and sharp, piercing you like an arrow. The wound is cut clean, but the pain still stings and lingers. You aren’t even the one who confessed, but damn, that hurt. Without another word, he walks past her. He’s coming your way, and way too quickly at that. 

Panic fills your heart, and you have to think fast. You pretend like you were just walking down the hallway and definitely not listening to their interaction, but Jungkook strides quickly down the hallway as if he never saw you. His eyes were zoned out, and you could hear his shaky breathing when he passed by. It was like he had a tunnel vision. Curiosity ate away at you, and you followed him.

 He ends up against a wall, sitting down with his head in his hands. His breathing is ragged like he’s been exercising for hours, and his fingers are trembling. Is he having a panic attack? Your good citizen heart thumped in your chest at the helpless stranger. 

“..Hey, it’s okay.” Gently you place your hand on his shoulder as you whisper in a soft voice. “What do you need?”

“I.. I can’t... breathe..” His eyes are dilated and darting in multiple places. His breath is shallow and short, too distraught to come to his senses.

“Concentrate on it. Breathe with me, slowly.” You count slowly as he breathes in and out. His hands open and close, as if he can’t feel them. “Do you need something to hold?”

When he nods, you grasp your hand onto his left one. It’s a gentle squeeze, but it reassures him that you are there. After another minute, he calms down. He’s come to his senses, but he still seems uncomfortable by you. It suddenly occurs that you never introduced yourself, and you mentally facepalm.

“--Sorry! I’m L/n Y/n. I have a cousin who has panic attacks sometimes, and I just did it without thinking..” 

He avoids your gaze but he mumbles a “Thank you.” Another moment of silence passes, so you get up to leave. “W..Wait!” He stammers. When you turn to look at him again, he stands abruptly. He bows like his life depends on it and speaks to you. “My name is Jeon Jungkook, I’m a sophomore, and I really appreciate what you did for me today.”

His super formal introduction surprises you. You thought he’d be older than you at first glance, but now that he mentioned it, you can tell how young he looks despite the muscular build. “Oh. It’s no problem. If you ever need help, just let me know.” You send him a pleasant smile and finally head towards the exit.

He hesitates, but jogs to catch back up with you. “Is there any way I can make it up to you? I’m actually... really shy around girls.” His hands are in the pockets of his hoodie as he looks to the side. When you give him the questionable hum, he quickly adds in. “--I’m not sexist or anything..  You seem really nice! I swear!!” 

You laugh. It’s a sweet and innocent laugh as you look at him. “It’s okay, Jungkook. I believe you.”

“Where are you going?”

When the words left his mouth, you wondered. Where are you going? You have Yoongi’s assignments, but you forgot to ask him where he lived. “I was going to drop off homework to this guy named Min Yoongi, but I forgot to ask for the address..” You don’t have any of the Bangtan boys’ numbers, so there really is no hope in going to his house today. You shrug,” Well, I guess I won’t go today.”

Jungkook looks at you in surprise. “You know Yoongi?” When you nod to him, he says,”I was just about to head over there to see how he was doing. Can I give you a ride? My friend’s about to get here.” A smile lights up his face, completely destroying the intimidating impression that you had of him. ” I’d usually take the bus, but my buddy just got his license.”

And so, you both wait for Jungkook’s friend to take you to Yoongi’s place. As you wait you check ECHO for the last time, curious about what Jungkook thought of you.

[16:30] Woah... who is she??

[16:32] A hero? An... angel?

[16:33] oh fuck she’s leaving uhhhh do something!!!!

[16:44] Is she like a secret Bantgtan member or something?? That would definitely explain how she knows Yoongi... 

[16:47] She’s so cool, I hope we can be friends ヽ( ´ ∇ ｀ )ノ

A black car pulls up to Jungkook, and the driver rolls down the window. Jungkook’s shoulders block the window, so you can’t get a proper view. He talks to his friend for a minute, and moves out of the way to introduce you. The first thing you see is a pair of wide eyes and messy brown hair. “Y/n?”

Jungkook looks at you confused, but your feet move on their own. When you approach the car, Taehyung smiles. “You missed me that badly? I would’ve waited for you if I’d known that you needed a ride.” He sends a wink your way, but you mentally swatted it away. It’s just who he is, y’know? You can’t take anything this guy says seriously..

You roll your eyes at his flirtatious comment, but it makes you grin nonetheless. You and Jungkook get into the backseat of the car, and head to Yoongi’s home. During this encounter between you, Jungkook, and Taehyung, you’ve realized why you recognized the sophomore. 

Of course it’s all connected... He’s another Bangtan guy. He’s super young, really buff, and talented at literally everything. You don’t know much about Jungkook, but you heard from all of the girls in his grade that he was really intimidating. To girls, he was curt, rude, and many of them started to think that he was gay. The boy you’re sitting next to though is shy and innocently sweet, contrasting to his reputation.

“...Jungkook, you’re not secretly a thug, are you?” The question falls from your lips while you were lost in thought. You didn’t mean to say that out loud, but you are curious of his answer.

He looks at you incredulously,” What?? No, why?”

“My sweet Kookie would never!” Taehyung pipes up from the front. He sounds like a soccer mom who’s defending his son for cheating during the game. “He’s an innocent little boy.”

A small protest full of giggles ensues,” Hyung!!” 

You laugh as you apologize to him. “Sorry, Jungkook. It’s just that.. When I first saw you, you looked like you were going to murder my secret lover in my sleep. It was straight out of a soap opera!!” You and Jungkook laugh at your ridiculous analogy.

Taehyung gasps,” As if!! I would never get murdered in such a way.” Him implying that he was the secret lover made Jungkook practically howl with laughter. His smile is so big and uplifting, you wondered where his murderous look ran off to. His doe eyes are shut closed, and he’s holding onto his stomach. 

“Taehyung, I...” He tries to fight out the sentence in between fits of laughter,” I did abs today.. I’m so sore!!” 

Somehow, you all managed to arrive at Yoongi’s in one piece. One by one, you each stumble out of the car with happy tears in your eyes. In that duration, you three managed to create a whole k-drama-esque episode, full of comedy and unrealistic reactions. Jungkook leads the way as he walks up to a door that was attached to, presumably, Yoongi’s house.

He lifts his knuckles to knock, but suddenly the door opened. Instead of the Yoongi you were expecting, another figure stood in the doorway as he shouts at someone inside the house.

“Yah, how am I supposed to remain immortal if you keep stressing me out?!” The man in the doorway has all three of you stunned, and you could only watch him argue with the mysterious voice inside the home. He grumbled to himself,” ...just you wait. I’m gonna come back with the ingredients, and I’m going to shove it down his--”

─── · 。ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

-A/N- 

Chapter 3 will hopefully be up sooner than this one did. I’m going to work in a uhh cute?? moment w y/n and Taehyung lol What will happen in this crackhead household?

[lauralikesbaking]

Feedback on my short story?

Hello! So as a writing exercise I wrote a short story based on one of my secondary characters to understand the character more and now I have a completely different character than the one I started off with. And now I’m hoping to get some feedback on the character and my writing style. 

The short story just mainly follows the inner dialogue of the character, Jack Drummond. He’s the lead singer of a band and he’s supposed to be writing music but he’s having a bad bout of writer’s block and anxiety. His label creates a contest - Jack is going to pick a fan with an original song the fan wrote and produce it in his studio. It goes into his back story of how he became a musician and a certain gay love interest, and why he chooses the winning song. 

The book I’m writing is going to follow the contest winner’s point of view - this is like a prequel to that. The book is going to focus on how music production works and what it’s like to work up close and personal with your favorite band.

Anyway please and thank you in advance!!

Shit. Shit. Shit. Absolute shit.

Jack Drummond was lying on his back on his old leather sofa, cradling his laptop between his stomach and his thighs. Scattered around him, stuck in between the cushions and on the floor, were various open bags of beef jerky and peanut m&ms. A couple of empty cans of Monster energy drink were on the coffee table beside him.

Jack had lost count of how many nights he had spent in the studio. He was trying to force himself to write something, anything. It had been over two months and he hadn’t been able to write a single lyric, melody, or even a decent beat to work off of. He was sifting through his library of saved voice memos on his computer, hoping something would spark inspiration. He had over 500 tracks of recorded material, and he had so far been unsuccessful..

So much fucking shit.

His voice memos contained different melodies, drum beats, harmonies and various compositions that had come to him on the fly. Scores and instrumentals he drafted while he grocery shopped. There were harmonies inspired by a flock of sparrows nesting in the trees who called out to each other. Composed guitar riffs and percussion to match the beat of his nervous energy while sitting in interviews. He’d be on the toilet in the middle of the night and find that his hands would be tapping out a rhythm. It never seemed to matter where he was, or what he was doing, or what time it was - there was always music in his mind.

For the last two months however, his mind had been quiet. His normally restless hands remained steady at his sides. His knees didn’t bounce when he sat. He wasn’t walking to the pace of the half formed song. There wasn’t a soothing lullaby in the back of his mind either to lull him to sleep. He was no longer overwhelmed by the music notes no one else could hear. His brain remained stoically and numbingly silent.

Jack reached the last voice memo. A jarring, pop beat played out from his speakers and just as soon as it started playing, he hit the spacebar, cutting off the music. He groaned, rubbing his hands over his eyes that were sore from staring at his computer screen from too long. He had listened to all 500 recordings he had made over the last three years and every single one of them were absolute crap.  

He was supposed to be working on demos for a new album. Now that the Archives cycle was over, he was due to hand in 10 to 12 new songs in a year and a half from now. Usually, around this time after the last cycle had ended, he would have handed in five, different sounding demos. His label would then approve the ones they liked and would tell him to write more like them. By now, he should have already had ideas lined up that he had thought of while he was way on tour during the long bus commutes from city to city. He had some half assed ideas, but when he recorded them listened to them, he’d just as soon as scrap it.

His band mates suggested that he’d take some time to do some solo research and travel to a couple of cities famous for music. He decided on the U.K., hoping the country’s old rock sounds and history of producing world famous bands like the Beatles and Queen would give him inspiration. He toured all the old famous recording studios; Abbey Studios, Olympic Studios, and Trident Studios. He visited the venues and cafe’s where The Who had first played at. He browsed through vintage record shops and scored a couple of rad guitars that he couldn’t wait to play around on. He even went as far to travel to Scotland, but the only thing he gained from that trip was a severe hangover after being challenged by a local to a drink off in the pub. It turned out the pub had a fun time tricking Americans into drink offs, get them completely wasted, and then take their photo and add it to their “Make Americans Drunk Again” Wall of Fame. Jack returned home to the states with two new guitars, a severe headache, and still no new ideas.

He dreaded the meeting between him and the label when he returned. He knew that once he explained to the label he still hadn’t thought of anything new, they would threaten to let him go. There was no point for a label to continue to support a musician who couldn’t produce music.

Instead, the label had suggested the fan contest. For one week, Jack would work with a fan one on one with the fan’s original song and produce it in his studio. Jack wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of having a fan shipped out here. It wasn’t that he despised or was afraid of his fans, even if he’d get the uncomfortably personal question at almost every meet and greet, or the time he was gifted a handmade doll of himself made with the fan’s own hair. He loved his fans, and he was grateful for their unyielding love and support of the band. It was himself he didn’t trust. He was afraid that he would disappoint the fan, that the fan would show up, eager to produce their song and Jack still wouldn’t have any fresh new ideas. The winning song is supposed to be released digitally at the end of the week of the fan’s stay, and if those digital sales and streams tanked, it would be Jack’s fault.

. The contest was a good idea. Sometimes working outside of your own work to someone else’s sound sparked creativity. But he also knew the contest was the label’s last ditch effort to get him writing again. If he didn’t, then Jack would know for certain; he would be done. He’d be Jack Drummond, former lead singer of the band 5 Years From Now, officially washed up at 27 years old.

Jack ran a hand over his tired face, feeling the scratchy stubble that had started to grow across his chin and jawline. It had been over a month since he bothered to shaved. He didn’t have any gigs, music videos, photoshoots or interviews he had to prepare for. He wasn’t supposed to be assigned to one for a while anyway. He was supposed to be using the time away to write music.

With an exasperated sigh, he closed out of his iTunes library and opened up Twitter. He ignored the hundreds of notifications he would get daily from fans tagging him in posts. In the search bar, he typed in #5YFNMYSONG. The page reloaded and displayed all of the fan entries, from most popular to most recently uploaded. The contest had closed a few days ago, but fans were still submitting entries.

Jack was responsible for picking a winner. Each of his band members and his team at the label were helping him sort through the entries, but in the end Jack would have the final say. The problem was there were literally thousands of entries. Word had spread about the contest, and aspiring musicians from all across the country were entering. The entries had a wide range of aged contestants, the youngest he had seen being about ten years old to contestants in their 20s.

They couldn’t help but remind him of his time in Hollywood when he was on Great American Voice, the country’s singing competition. There were thousands of people who had tried out over the course of the few days he was there. They had driven from all over the tri-state area. There were people of all ages, which had surprised Jack since the show had only ever cast competitors ranging between mid teens to mid twenties. There were little kids dragged in by their parents who hoped to make money off by sticking them in front of cameras. There were adults who hoped to at long last chase their dream of pursuing music. And everyone he talked to had a deeply personal, traumatic, backstory; one girl had been abused by her father up until she was 13 years old; an 18 year old boy suffered from severe bouts of depression. There was another girl who had at last minute decided to enter because she wanted to make her recently departed mother proud. These were the type of contestants who got film time with the celebrity judges, and that was when Jack realized what they were doing. They were using their trauma, deaths, mental disorders, any type of leverage they could to get themselves filming time with the celebrity judges.

Several fans who uploaded videos to his contest were doing the same. They would spend a few minutes before performing their song to explain their own backstories of depression, anxiety, death of a loved one, abuse, and other various traumatic experiences, and how music has helped them become stronger. He wanted to believe their stories. But he wasn’t interested in selecting a fan just because it was their parent’s dying wish. If they were talented on top of their tragic backstory, then great. But Jack needed someone who was both talented and sparked his own creativity.

Truthfully, Jack hated singing competitions, and he despised the fact that this fan contest was essentially just another form of one. At least this way, he could just choose one person and be done with it. He knew first hand the true toxicity of reality competitions. It had been over ten years since he was on Great American Voice, but the memories still burned in his mind.

It was difficult from the start. In the beginning he was sectioned off into group harmonies with contestants who thought they were better than everyone else and tried to take charge. Those first few weeks of group harmonies and group performances were tests to see how well you collaborated with the other contestants. The test was designed to make you feel uncomfortable. Really, they were just picking out anyone who succumbed to the stress early on and send them home.

As Jack advanced through the weeks, he found each week was always harder than the last. There was constant pressure to sound great, look great, and be great. You had to convince the judges and the fans each week to vote you back for the next round. It didn’t matter if he nailed Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” last week. If you got a bad review from one of the judges, it could cost you your spot on the show. Soon sounding and looking great weren’t enough. There was always something new added each week. Photoshoots, interviews, and costume fittings. Charities, children hospital visits, school visits, parade appearances and sponsorship commercials. And you were still expected to do four to five hours of vocal rehearsals. The schedule was endless.

By the time Jack was finished with the show he had lost about 15 pounds and was struggling with episodes of insomnia and depression. Jack thought he’d be relieved when he was kicked off the show. He could finally sleep in. He could finally eat whatever he wanted and not what his vocal coaches and stylists told him to avoid. He could finally relax from being under the spotlight, from being picked apart week from week by his stylists, the publicists, the judges and from the public. He didn’t have to be followed by camera crew from the moment he woke up to when he lay his head down to rest in the evening.

But he wasn’t relieved. He’d lay awake at night, angry that he had come so far in the competition, and with a single vote, he was kicked off. He had developed his own sound on the show. He loved working on new covers each week with his production team, and each Friday night he couldn’t wait to get on stage and show everyone what he had been working on. But the show had left him high and dry. He beat himself up, blaming himself for not being good enough to make it to the next round. He self critiqued constantly, watching and rewatching his performances, trying to figure out where he went wrong, and what he could have done better. The sickening truth was, he wasn’t done being in the spotlight. He wanted it more.

When he made the decision to stay in L.A. after the Great American Voice LIVE! Tour concluded, he jumped right back into the music scene, scoring a small one album record deal with Kathoulos Records. But that had been a mistake. Right before the album was supposed to released, the label was taken over by new management and dropped Jack and his band. The label refused to sell them back the rights to their album and the album was never released.

The days following the label drop crept from Jack’s memory like a slow, sinking infestation. The black, bleak days when he continued to make desperate attempts to get resigned by a label. The swell of bitter disappointment of doors slamming in his face over and over again; the paranoia of over hearing security guards murmuring into their ear pieces. The nights he spent stumbling through bars and dark alleys in a dizzy, drunken hazes…

He closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose. He counted to four and exhaled slowly through his mouth. The flashbacks were coming at him more often now that his mind wasn’t distracted with constantly writing music. It was why he was so desperate to get back to writing music. When his mind was silent, everything else he suppressed began to resurface. Each night he lost more sleep, and each night it would whisper in his ears, reminding him of who he used to be. Who he still could be. They would become louder and more insistent as the days and nights blended together. He heard it now as he struggled to slow down his heartbeat, quickly rising into panic. He needed to get back to writing music, and soon.

Not all of his memories from those years were bad. He still talked with his vocal coaches from time to time. His real saving grace during those first few months was his hotel roommate, Danny, a boy his age from Mississippi. They had become fast friends when they discovered they had a bunch of shared interests - music, movies, online gaming. Jack had never become so close with someone so quickly. Maybe it was just the pressure of the competition, and it was his own selfish desires to meet someone who wasn’t trying to sabotage his performances. When Danny and Jack had both made it to the top ten, they had celebrated by sneaking cheap champagne into the hotel room. They had gotten deliriously drunk and were jumping on their beds belting Queen. Danny had hopped from his bed to Jack’s, tackling Jack on to his back. As they lay there, laughing and out of breath, he had noticed the precise shade of green Danny’s eyes were. Clover green with specks of silver, like morning dew sparkling in the sun. The way his heart had pounded in his ears.

Jack forced his attention back to his computer, yanking himself out of the memory. He refused to let himself go back there.

He scrolled through the entries. Twitter automatically displayed the most popular entries first, and then the most recently added. Right now, the fan favorite was a girl from Tennessee named Missy Maeve, the red headed version of Ariana Grande, except instead of singing about goddesses and ninety nine problems, Missy Maeve sung in a strong country voice about being true to yourself in a world of fake media. She stared confidently into the camera, pouring all of her energy into the performance.She had spared no expense in creating her video, using professional cameras and lighting, and had an entire back up band performing behind her as she danced around on stage with her long red ponytail swinging hypnotically behind her.

Right away, Jack knew she wasn’t the one. He had seen these types of artists before. They may have sounded and looked good, but at the end of the day, they weren’t connecting with the music. They’d be more focused on how they looked and sounded to other people. A real musician didn’t care about performing; he played music for the sake of music. He didn’t give a fuck who listened. He also would rather be caught dead than write a fluff piece about being true to yourself.

There were several decent entries, but none of them had what Jack was looking for. Jack wasn’t even sure if it existed in other musicians. He was searching for the moment when the musician was no longer a musician. It was those moments he felt himself, when he became so in tune with the music itself that reality fell around him. He’d forget he was on stage, performing in front of hundreds or thousands of fans. The music would fill him so completely, it was like he was the music. Every time he performed like that, it would leave him shaking and exhausted. It was the best kind of high.

He sifted through the videos. He felt guilty knowing he couldn’t possibly watch all of them. There were just so many. His label assured him not to worry about watching them all. The label was responsible for looking at the numbers - meaning who ever had the most likes and views. The band was free to look through them at their convenience, just as long as he had an ideal entry picked out by tomorrow.

There were a lot of good videos - too many good ones, in fact. A lot of the fans showed off their riffing skills, as if that was the one vocal skill that proved how well of a singer they were. Jack secretly despised artists who used too much riffing in their songs. It always sounded like the artist was trying to say “look at me! Look out amazing I am at singing! No one else will be able to copy these incredibly complex arrangement of riffs because I’m so amazing!” There were artists who tried to over compensate with autotune, which he detested more than any other sound engineering tool. It always felt like cheating. If you can’t hit the note, why bother pretend you can?

Jack continued to click through the entries. There were just as many bad ones as there were good ones. There were fans who recorded with voices too flat, or too sharp. They were monotonous, or pitchy. Some hadn’t even tried to submit an original song and sang a cover of one of his song. It was almost always his song, “Perfect Chasers” that he had written about the toxicity of perfection and his own personal addictions. Even though it had been years since he released it, it continued to be a fan favorite.

He kept sifting through hoping a song would jump out at him or he’d find an artist with unique vocals. He kept checking the time. 12 hours before he had to pick someone. Then it was 9. Then it was 6. Jack shifted his weight, so he was lying on his side curled up and had his computer sitting on the coffee table and continued to scroll with his wireless mouse. The couch perfectly cradled his thin form. His eyes burned from the white light of the endless scrolling through Twitter…

“DUDE!”

Jack jumped awake. The bright lights of the studio blinded him. He blinked away the the thick eye crust coating his eyelashes. He made out a silhouette standing in front of him.

“Huh?” Jack mumbled.

“We’ve been trying to get a hold of you,” said the silhouette that Jack recognized as Cody, his guitarist. “The meeting with the label is in a half hour.”

“Shit.” Jack sat up. The room spun around him for a moment and stars popped into his vision. His neck and back was sore after another night of sleeping on the couch. He grabbed his phone to check the time. It was dead.

“Did you pick someone?” Cody asked.

“Um…” Jack couldn’t remember. He saw him computer still sitting on the table. He reached over and tapped the keyboard. The screen lit up and showed all of the Twitter entries he had been looking through. He had gotten deep into scrolling through the entries last night. He was almost at the end of the list.

“Yeah,” he lied.

“Cool. Get ready, the guys and I are out back.” Cody left.

When he was gone, Jack groaned and leaned into his hands. Taking a moment to gather himself, he breathed in deeply. He figured he got maybe three or four hours of sleep. His head ached, rebelling against him for the lack of sleep. After a few slow deep breaths he got up and washed his face and brushed his teeth in the studio bathroom, ignoring the dark shadows under his eyes that matched the shadow of his beard.

When he finished he sat back down at his computer. He still had to choose someone. At this point he didn’t care if they were bad. He couldn’t show up empty handed. He randomly chose a name, scrawled it on a piece of paper and tucked it into his jeans.

Jack climbed into the backseat of the bassist player, Mark’s truck. He slid in next to Brendon, the band’s drummer..

“Good morning, sunshine,” Mark called back to him from the driver’s seat. “You enjoy sleeping in?”

“Mhm, right.” Jack mumbled, if you counted barely sleeping at all as sleeping in.

Brendon looked at him. “You kinda look like hell man,” Brendon said, concerned. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. Brendon handed him a pair of sunglasses.

Out of everyone in the band, Jack had known Brendon the longest. They had gone to grade school together and form a band after Jack finished on Great American Voice. Jack was close with all of the guys, but Brendon was always the one who somehow understood Jack and noticed all of Jack’s warning signs. Like right now.

Jack gratefully accepted the sunglasses.

Thank God for coffee, thought Jack as he filled a styrofoam cup.

At the label meeting, everyone was going around the room, pitching their chosen contest candidates. Someone mentioned Missy Maeve and Jack immediately shot it down, claiming if he had to write a bubble gum pop country song, he’d cut off his ears.

Each of the guys in the band got a turn to present someone. Jack waited to go last, since he technically didn’t pick out anyone in specific. He trusted his band, and hoped they would find someone decent enough to produce for that wouldn’t want to make him chuck himself over a cliff. Each band member played the video and explained why they chose it. Their reasons were good and valid, but despite the talent presented, none of them inspired Jack. He had been betting on one of the guys would find someone for him.

“Alright then Jack,” the label manager asked, swiveling his chair towards Jack. “Who did you pick?”

Jack swallowed the lump his throat. “Yeah, I’ve got someone. Her name is…” He pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket and read the hastily scrawled note. “...Robin Jones.” He walked up to the front of the room to the computer that was projected onto the pull out screen. He searched for her name in Youtube. Her video came up as the 7th result on the page.

Christ, she only has 6 views. Jack kicked himself. Why didn’t he bother to check the view count? He hit play. Please don’t suck, please don’t suck.

The video began with a blurry close up of blonde hair. The camera refocused as Robin leaned back from the camera. She was sitting at a baby grand piano. Around her were music stands, stage risers, and a variety of other instruments were stacked up against the wall. She looked like she was recording from a high school band room.

The girl cleared her throat and stated to the camera, “Hi. My name is Robin Jones. I am 18 years old. I am from Boston, Massachusetts and this my original song, Candle Light.” She turned to the piano, a curtain of blonde hair falling in front of her face. She paused for a moment to take a deep breath. Then she began to play.

She was nervous. Her movements were slow, calculated and careful. The notes began higher on the scale, and then steadily dropped into lower notes as she began to quietly sing the first verse.

“When did it begin?

Couldn’t you tell me where the start of it ends?

Cause I got caught in the light.

Yeah, it was too damn bright.

It left me blinded, just for you.”

She sang in a soft, lower register, which surprised Jack. He thought by the tone of her voice, she would have sung higher. But she was good. Thank God.

Her voice shook slightly through the first chorus. It wasn’t until she broke into the second verse, he noticed a shift in her performance. Her voice grew stronger, and she tucked the hair that had curtained off her face behind her ear. Jack found himself nodding along with the gentle rhythm of the song.

I had to take the long

way home, did you know I barely survived

I couldn’t see how and I,

Couldn’t see why after all this time

the goodbye still hurts you more.

Jack almost paused the video on that last line. It stood out to him. It was a good, subjective line that he liked to use in his own music. It was one of those lines he knew came from her specific experience, but it could relate to anyone. It could relate to him. It did relate to him. The goodbye still hurts you more. Jack knew exactly just how it related to him.

Memories of Danny popped back into mind. He saw Danny standing to the side of the stage with everyone else advancing, crying when Jack was voted off. He saw Danny fight with him at the end of the Great American Tour when he didn’t want to move back out to L.A. with Jack. The look on Danny’s face when Jack spit harsh words out of anger and regret. He saw himself a month later, staring at his phone, wishing Danny would just fucking text him back. Danny and his stupid, morning dew green eyes.

The harder lessons are learned

When you see the scars are from the burn

Wish I wasn’t so afraid to believe

That there could still be so much more.

There was Danny was again in the last line. Robin was good with her lyrics.

She launched into the chorus with a change of confidence. She sang with a soulful vibrato. Her eyes were closed as felt her way through the song, her fingers finding the right keys on their own. Her performance looked effortless, but Jack could tell she was pouring everything inside of her into the music.

Her fingers danced across the keyboard, racing towards the bridge. Robin’s entire body rocked along with the rhythm. Suddenly the song tapered off to the quiet notes from the beginning of the song.

I could for now, just stay where I am

Though I still don’t know how this all ends.

Until then I’ll hold on to a little light

So one day you might find me again.

When she finished, she rested her hands on the keys, drawing in a few deep breaths. Her hands dropped so suddenly from the keys, like someone had caught her playing when she wasn’t supposed to. Robin turned back towards the camera and leaned in to end the video.

There was silence in the room. Jack was holding his breath, waiting for someone to respond.

“Well,” the assistant manager started. “She has a nice voice, but -”

“This one,” Jack interrupted. “I want this one.”

His manager looked at him, arching an eyebrow. “You want this one? A romance song?”

Jack was equally surprised. What was he doing? He doesn’t write romance. He doesn’t even like songs about romance. And the memories that she pulled from the back of his mind should have given him enough of a reason not to pick this one. And yet, it had slipped out. He wanted this song.

Jack looked to his bandmates for their confirmation. He wasn’t about to make a decision without them, especially when it involved all four of them. They looked between the three of them, silently discussing the song. After a few moments, and some shrugging, Brendon nodded to Jack.

“Yeah,” Jack said. He cleared his throat. “She’s got a great voice, and the song sounds a little different from most romance songs I’ve heard. I think maybe the lyrics could use a little help, and I think if we put in some percussion with some better acoustics - “ Jack caught himself. He almost didn’t notice the click in his brain. It was like suddenly he turned on a light. Or lit a candle after the power had gone out. His was brainstorming. He was writing.

At that moment he knew for a fact - this was the winning song.

He looked around the room, waiting for everyone’s opinion. They exchanged glances, debating.

Finally, the manager stood up. “Alright, I guess that’s it then. We’ll go with…” He squinted his eyes, looking up at the project screen. “...Robin Jones. Tomorrow we’ll go live with the announcement.”

The meeting concluded. Everyone started packing up. Jack let out a breath of air he didn’t realize he was holding.

The guys approached him.

“So...romance now, huh? Didn’t know you had such a soft spot all of the sudden,” Cody remarked, smiling.

Jack shook his head, just as surprised as they were. “I guess maybe I need to start looking into the romance writing genre.”

“Hah, yeah man.” Brendon clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Good to have you back man.”

Jack gave him a smile of thanks.

When he got home, he pulled up Robin’s song again and rewatched it, beginning the process of drafting different types of instruments and background sounds he could add to the song. The ideas came easy, and he could feel something in him relax. He was relieved. He was writing again.

The song had resurfaced those memories of Danny that he fought for so long to forget. Some part of him still thought he was insane to want to work on this song. But another part of him, the part that he had shared with Danny all those years, demanded him to work on this song, and it refused to be ignored. He felt a nervous tingle in the pit of his stomach.

He didn’t want to acknowledge it, but the song had given that part of him a new, stronger voice. And it was screaming at him.

Jack continued to write.

[privateplates4u]

Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE: 4th Place – 2017 Motor Trend Best Driver’s Car

We’ve all heard about the bad old days at GM when no car was allowed to challenge the Corvette’s performance supremacy. Those days are long dead. Team Camaro has applied its 1LE handling philosophy to the monstrously powerful ZL1, and the resulting monster is the most track-capable road car GM has ever sold. Up front, the standard Camaro ZL1’s 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 still makes 650 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque because frankly it didn’t need to make more. Being an enthusiast’s car, a six-speed manual is the only transmission on offer. An electronically controlled differential rounds out the powertrain. Out at the corners, magnetic shocks are replaced with Multimatic spool-valve shocks, and like the rest of the suspension, they’re hard-mounted with metal bushings, not rubber. The ride height, front camber, and rear anti-roll bar are all manually adjustable. A bigger grille improves cooling, and dive planes on the front corners and a massive rear wing provide downforce across the car. Equally massive carbon-ceramic brakes do the stopping. It’s Best Driver’s Car week! Don’t miss the incredible story of how we chose the 2017 Best Driver’s Car right here, and stay tuned for the World’s Greatest Drag Race, coming soon. Put it all together, nail the launch, and you’ll see 60 mph in 3.6 seconds and an 11.7-second quarter mile at 123 mph flat. Going the other way, the 3,837-pound ZL1 1LE will stop from 60 mph in a scant 91 feet. Put it on a skidpad, and it’ll pull 1.11 average g. Fling it at the figure eight, and you’ll get a 23.0-second lap at 0.93 average g. We Say “This car needs five-point harnesses because the dampers are so unforgiving. It’s true this 1LE has incredible grip; however, the compression damping is way too harsh while the rebound damping is just right. I’m not sure where they tuned this, but it clearly did not have a lot of bumps and jumps. The steering is freakishly quick. It took me three corners to calm my hands down, so I didn’t steer into and across the apex. The power seems to be well matched for the chassis, for a change, unlike the Z06. Third gear seemed very tractable and had a wide bandwidth. This feels like what I imagine a ’60s-’70s Trans Am car would be like.” – Chris Walton “I know Jonny loves this car, but I just can’t warm to it. Probably because I’ve lost all my fillings, and my kidneys are bruised. With the exception of the best roads, the ride in this Camaro is punishing. I’ve encountered smoother paint mixers. I had to remind myself that based on the numbers, this car is fantastic. Endless grip, fade-free brakes, abundant horsepower. But the thing is, I didn’t care. The bouncing was so bad that I found myself reacting to that instead of focusing on sheer act of driving. The Camaro might be brilliant on the track, but I wouldn’t want to drive this to get there.” – Derek Powell Read about other 2017 Best Driver’s Car contenders: Ferrari 488 GTB Porsche 911 Turbo S Porsche 718 Cayman S Lexus LC 500 Mercedes-AMG GT R Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport Aston Martin DB11 Nissan GT-R NISMO Mazda MX-5 Miata RF McLaren 570GT “Simply tremendous … tremendous grip, tremendous brakes, and tremendous power. And how about that third pedal? This added that special connection to the vehicle that the Ferrari or 911 Turbo simply can’t match, which is why I ranked it higher than those two fancy (and expensive) machines. With the Camaro, I felt like I—not some fancy software—had a big part in conquering 198.” – Erick Ayapana “That’s a driver’s car! When the aero and the tires shake hands, it’s a moment of revelation. You are suddenly driving a hard-mounted race car. Unreal. So much power, so much control, so much stopping ability. An absolute monster of a machine. This is an uncaged race car. Being able to actually use all 650 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque is mind-boggling. I’m not sure how this car isn’t a podium finisher.” – Jonny Lieberman “Long name, amazing results! Everywhere a competitor put a wheel in the air, the Camaro stuck like glue. There’s a lot of vertical movement in the cabin, but the car just sticks no matter what. It never jumps sideways a foot when it hits a mid-corner bump, never moves around laterally at all. Even when it feels like you’ve carried too much speed into a corner, it sticks. I can’t count how many times I put the throttle flat on the floor. In a 650-hp car this stiff on this bumpy road, that’s seriously impressive. The eLSD takes a little getting used to. If you start to feed in power mid-corner, the car turns in more as the diff gets to work. Steer with the throttle? Yes, please! “Brakes have huge stopping power and great pedal feel. Squeeze, don’t stomp, and get exactly what you want. “I thought this car would be too stiff for the road, and that’s coming from someone who drove the Z/28 for a year. I was wrong.” – Scott Evans Randy Says “It was not perfectly balanced for me. I’m really trying to smear a little lipstick from the perfection here, but it would go from a little teeny bit of understeer, which was perfect, to a little bit of oversteer, which is almost perfect. But when we put it in the context of what it is, which is a front-engine rear-drive car with 650 horsepower, the traction was incredible. It put down power extremely well, I could drive it with everything turned off, and for me, that’s just so much more satisfying. “The dampers felt great. Basically I never thought about it. Which means nothing came into my awareness as being, oh, this is too stiff. Or that is too soft. I don’t sense roll. So when I just turn for the corner, it just lies over there. That’s not good terminology because I don’t feel it roll. I’m sure it does, but I don’t feel it. Which means it’s got good damping. When I’m down in the corner, in the middle, I still have a steering response, and I can still tighten it up. “It was happy coming out of the corkscrew. That’s always hard in a powerful rear drive car. Put the power down. When you’re in a low gear and it’s a hard right. It wants to power oversteer. But this one was pretty damn good. Especially at that power level. See, we have to keep this in context. “The car generated a tremendous amount of braking force, but for the first time in any high-performance Camaro, it had a long pedal. I was pumping it a little bit, and I remember going up that Corkscrew thinking, ‘Jesus and Heaven above, let these work.’ And boy did they work. It stopped so well. It was very, very pleasing and satisfying how late I could brake in this—what is a relatively heavy car. It’s light for a Camaro, a supercharged Camaro. A bad driver could crash it immediately, but for a reasonable guy who can drive really fast and doesn’t need stability control, this is the ultimate pony car right now.” 2018 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 (1LE) POWERTRAIN/CHASSIS DRIVETRAIN LAYOUT Front-engine, RWD ENGINE TYPE Supercharged 90-deg V-8, alum block/heads VALVETRAIN OHV, 2 valves/cyl DISPLACEMENT 376.1 cu in/6,162 cc COMPRESSION RATIO 10.0:1 POWER (SAE NET) 650 hp @ 6,400 rpm* TORQUE (SAE NET) 650 lb-ft @ 3,600 rpm* REDLINE 6,500 rpm WEIGHT TO POWER 5.9 lb/hp TRANSMISSION 6-speed manual AXLE/FINAL-DRIVE RATIO 3.73:1/2.00:1 SUSPENSION, FRONT; REAR Struts, coil springs, anti-roll bar; multilink, coil springs, adj anti-roll bar STEERING RATIO 11.1:1-15.1:1 TURNS LOCK-TO-LOCK 2.3 BRAKES, F; R 15.4-in vented, 2-pc disc; 14.4-in vented, 2-pc disc, ABS WHEELS 11.0 x 20-in; 12.0 x 20-in, forged aluminum TIRES 305/30R19 98Y; 325/30R19 101Y Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar 3R (Tread 100) DIMENSIONS WHEELBASE 110.7 in TRACK, F/R 64.1/62.8 in LENGTH x WIDTH x HEIGHT 188.3 x 74.7 x 52.0 in TURNING CIRCLE 38.7 ft CURB WEIGHT 3,837 lb WEIGHT DIST, F/R 55/45% SEATING CAPACITY 4 HEADROOM, F/R 38.5/33.5 in LEGROOM, F/R 43.9/29.9 in SHOULDER ROOM, F/R 55.0/50.4 in CARGO VOLUME 9.1 cu ft TEST DATA ACCELERATION TO MPH 0-30 1.6 sec 0-40 2.2 0-50 2.8 0-60 3.6 0-70 4.4 0-80 5.3 0-90 6.6 0-100 7.9 0-100-0 11.3 PASSING, 45-65 MPH 1.5 QUARTER MILE 11.7 sec @ 123.0 mph BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 91 ft LATERAL ACCELERATION 1.11 g (avg) MT FIGURE EIGHT 23.0 sec @ 0.93 g (avg) 2.2-MI ROAD COURSE LAP 1:34.30 sec TOP-GEAR REVS @ 60 MPH 1,900 rpm CONSUMER INFO BASE PRICE $71,295 PRICE AS TESTED $73,090 STABILITY/TRACTION CONTROL Yes/Yes AIRBAGS 8: Dual front, front side, f/r curtain, front knee BASIC WARRANTY 3 yrs/36,000 miles POWERTRAIN WARRANTY 5 yrs/60,000 miles ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE 5 yrs/60,000 miles FUEL CAPACITY 19.0 gal EPA CITY/HWY/COMB ECON 14/20/16 mpg ENERGY CONS, CITY/HWY 241/169 kW-hrs/100 miles CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB 1.20 lb/mile RECOMMENDED FUEL Unleaded premium The post Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE: 4th Place – 2017 Motor Trend Best Driver’s Car appeared first on Motor Trend.

http://www.motortrend.com/news/chevrolet-camaro-zl1-1le-4th-place-2017-best-drivers-car/

[komyou]

Part 3: What Can Be Done?

This is part of a series describing the history, context, and technical details of the modding we've been doing resulting in this big En Masse / NA TERA commotion:

Introduction. What's all this about?

Part 1: The History – A Timeline. Take a walk down memory lane from 2012 to today.

Part 2: Techno Mumbo Jumbo. The technical details of how and why these mods work.

Part 3: What Can Be Done? ⬅ You're here!

Conclusion (not yet published). Obligatory closing thoughts.

Feel free to skip around to the parts that interest you.

May 1st, the first scheduled protest day, has come and gone, and EME doesn't seem to have done much of anything with this subject matter, so it's time for the last bit.

The Past

BHS has done two things to try and kill off meters in March 2016, and they're both laughable attempts at best.

Encryption Keys

The first attempt was to update the key generation. As mentioned in the previous post, the client and server need two keys to set up encryption. What I didn't cover was that these two keys are manipulated to produce the initial encryption state. It's a little out of the scope of this post to explain in more detail, but Wikipedia is there for anyone wanting to learn more.

There's one thing that's particularly relevant to this case, and that's the circular shift. If you had a 4 digit number, such as 1234, and you wanted to perform a single circular shift left, you would move the "234" left and the "1" would go back around to the end because we want to stay at 4 digits. So 1234 after one circular shift left would turn into 2341.

Likewise, 1234 after one circular shift right would turn into 4123.

Why's this of particular importance to us? Because BHS's attempt to thwart meters was to change the shift amount in three of their circular shifts.

That's... That's it.

We have entire files dedicated to dealing with BHS's custom encryption scheme, and all they did to try and shake meters off their trail was change three numbers.

Seriously? Seriously. Really?

Look. It's bad enough that they made their own cryptography. It's something that pretty much everyone advises not to do. That's not too relevant here because the prevailing concern there is that your cryptography won't be secure and will be very vulnerable to an attacker.

That's not BHS's concern here. They're not trying to stop an attacker that's trying to hijack TERA connections in a coffee shop. They're not sending sensitive data where it's a privacy breach for a player if someone can read it.

They're only trying to stop things like meters and proxies and "third party tools" from playing with the data.

And that's fair. Totally a good idea for them to do, because that's the sort of thing that stalls widespread network data manipulation for years. It clearly hasn't stopped it, and it's certainly been around for just as long if you've read the first part of the series, but the less accessible you make it, the less you have that sort of stuff running rampant.

Rolling their own crypto is, to me, indicative of another problem: BHS has absolutely no idea what they're doing.

There's an algorithm called SHA-1. It's a hashing algorithm; that means it takes any arbitrary data you want and maps it to some fixed size value. It's supposed to be as difficult as possible to recover the original data, and as difficult as possible to find two things that have the same hash.

SHA-1 is a very well-known algorithm. That thing that shows you the padlock on secure websites—like this one, or PayPal, or even En Masse's site? For almost all HTTPS websites up until a few years ago, that was with the help of SHA-1. All the links I've been making to specific changes from GitHub? In Git, each set of changes is identified by a SHA-1 hash, so you can link to a specific changeset. Point is, this algorithm is everywhere and there's too many implementations of it to count on two hands.

And BHS still got it wrong.

Shrina and tera-proxy and everyone else has to include a custom implementation of SHA-1 as part of the overall encryption code because BHS can't get a ubiquitous algorithm right.

It doesn't look intentional to me, either. There's very clearly a set of constants that could've been changed in their custom implementation to make it like-SHA1-but-not-actually-SHA1. Those are unchanged. It's more like they went down the checklist of how to do SHA-1 but then wrapped it up and called it a day without realizing they missed the very last step.

Which more or less describes the actual issue in the SHA-1 implementation, but that's not a topic for this post.

Here's my point. They botched SHA-1, and then thought changing three little numbers would be enough to stave off DPS meters.

Reverse engineering that stuff isn't anywhere close to my skillset, but even I could tell you that you're gonna need a lot more than that, because that was fixed in practically no time.

Signature Detection

Around the same time as the encryption key change, in other regions that use one of those anti-hack systems, they added a block on Shinra's "signature".

Now, I'm not very well-versed in this stuff at all, and I haven't personally had to deal with this myself nor have I seen first-hand accounts, so I'm really going off speculation on how this detection works.

Antivirus systems have done signature-based detection for a very, very long time. The principle of it is that they know how certain key parts of unwanted programs look (the signature), so when they do scans of whatever's running on your computer, if they see anything matching a known signature then they can be reasonably certain it's a bad thing and take whatever action.

Based on what Shinra did, I assume that the anti-hack in whatever TERA region used a similar concept. Again, this is speculation, but here is what I think happens: the anti-hack looks at what programs your system is running, then goes to the .exe and reads it and computes the hash, and if the hash matches anything in its blocked database, it won't let you launch TERA.

It's an okay idea, because then it stops users from doing things like just renaming the file to get by checks on program names. But you might have noticed another very simple way to bypass it, and that's what Shinra did.

They added a useless line to ShinraMeter that they were absolutely sure would be included verbatim in the exe and wouldn't affect anything else, and then added a program to randomize that specific line. Now everyone's copy of ShinraMeter could be made unique.

And... that's it. That's really it. This section is done.

The Present

Over a full year after BHS's failed attempts to ward off these network-based mods, the next major incident brings us right up to the present.

On Developers

Three major developers—Bernkastel, Pinkie Pie, and myself—were all banned. Everyone else either changed GitHub names to mask their in game identities, or they never cared in the first place because they play on EU / other regions.

Want to know a common thread among all of them, banned or not?

Nobody stopped developing.

After the ban, Bernkastel released a costume-changing script for free and continues to support it and other scripts. Pinkie Pie? I'm not sure, really. I'm not in their Discord, but I hear there were talks of developing a private server.

(As for me, I'm taking a break. I'm a grad student pursuing an MS in Computer Science, thesis track. Between working on my thesis and writing this series, there's not much time left for work on proxy stuff. That's fine; I want to see how this whole thing goes anyway before I make any moves.)

These developers were toeing the line with their identities at stake. When they wake up one day and suddenly find out they're banned, you've taken everything away from them. For EME, there's nothing left to negotiate with. For a banned developer, there's nothing left to lose.

What do you think is going to happen when you suddenly snatch away something that someone has been building up for years?

I've played TERA for five whole years. On a roleplay server. I can tell you about each and every single one of my characters' roleplay personalities. I lead a guild that's existed since May 2012 and that nobody's even heard about because we're an insular community that just wants to play the game with each other and have fun without seeking fame and glory. At some point or another, I've mained sorc, priest, lancer, archer, zerker, and mystic. There's a ton of history there.

In fact, if you tallied how much playtime I accrued since the last time I checked and compared it to how long NA TERA has been out, it comes out to about 43%.

If I logged onto TERA every day since May 1, 2012 until the date in that chart, I would have had to be online for 10 hours a day. Every single day.

And that's only the characters that were on CH.

So when I wake up one day and see an email that says, "Hey, um, we were kind of cool before but today we decided you don't get to nolife in our game anymore," it's kind of hard to not have an initial reaction that isn't along the lines of, "Oh, well, I guess I don't have to be careful with anything anymore."

In fact, that's about one of the first things I typed since I found out the news:

o i got banned well screw playing nice i'm listing cheaty shit on the directory now 🤷

In the days leading up to the ban, I did a massive revamp of some stuff and pushed a number of changes to the proxy (around 1,000 lines of code added and 250 removed) in preparation for a solid, real, actual "1.0.0" release to line up with the upcoming major content patch. As part of the big update, I was also in the middle of stepping up the website and documentation as well, which would include a listing of modules that were on the arguably benign side for proxy users. I DM'd a number of module writers on Discord to make sure they were okay with having a specific list of their GitHub modules added to the page.

So when I got the ban, it was like I didn't have a reason to make it any more difficult for people to find the controversial stuff anymore. Why not list those too? Doesn't matter if I'm already banned. Automatic mana pots? You're in. Costume changers? There you go.

Since the ban, I haven't actually made any changes there, and I still haven't published the new website either. The documentation isn't done yet and I don't want to publish something that's blatantly unfinished.

Either way, these banned developers were just players that largely wanted to fix flaws in the game that have gone unaddressed for years. We put our names to these fixes, and generally tried not to go too far with our shenanigans. And when bad people roll up, exploit the rewards store and whatever else, and then when we get swept up in the banwave with paltry attempts at communication, there's not much of a reason for us to play nice anymore. If we wanted to blatantly exploit the game, it would not have been under our own names.

I'm not trying to argue whether or not the ban was justified. Everyone's already dumped their two cents on why it was good or bad. I'm just here to point out that the ban doesn't do a whole lot to developers.

For instance, I've mentioned it a few times but Alkahest is a project that aims to do the same as tera-proxy, but in a different programming language so it's much simpler to add a proper UI. The Alkahest developer had the same idea as me with a 1.0.0 release landing on the next big content patch, and we've been talking about interoperability so that people can use both tera-proxy and Alkahest at the same time if they want to. And then we talked with ShinraMeter about interoperability with that too, so people can use all three at once with minimal issues.

So. You've banned some major developers from NA, one who had a major public community presence for other reasons, and you haven't actually stopped any of the development. In fact, you went full Streisand effect and now a lot more people are aware of the proxy, which only gives developers more incentive to support their things, now potentially with malicious intent.

Hmm.

On Players

I don't really need to cover this, do I?

Forum threads are being locked or disappearing altogether, users are being shadowbanned, and others are being straight up forum banned—sometimes for seemingly no reason (update: official reply from Spacecats).

This is a mess.

Reddit learned their lesson and replaced shadowbans with more transparent account suspensions over a year ago. Why is this still a thing?

People want clear and transparent communication and moderation. Anything else and you have them feeling silenced and censored with a company that they feel is growing increasingly out of touch for a game that's been called "dying" if not "dead" for years.

I don't even have much to comment on this. So many people already consider it such a massive PR disaster that there's not really a whole lot else for me to say.

And you know what? The players that did get banned? They all know precisely where they messed up. A meter shown on stream or in screenshots or dumped in chat, or something a little more noticeable like automatically and instantly accepting all broker offers for the listed price.

EME did scare off a few people, I'll give them that. But everyone else is either continuing as normal, or laying low for this whole fiasco to blow over before going right back to business like usual. For many people, especially the ones that really needed things like skill predictions or can't get enough of delicious quality of life mods like automatic Vanguard completions, all you've done is make them less likely to show their game to anyone. Less screenshots, less streams, and... people still using the mods.

Banned developers. The developers still develop.

Banned some players. Many still play with their mods.

Hmmmm.

In the midst of all these bans being big news, why are people still doing it anyway? Because if you play your cards right, there's no way for EME to detect these things.

"Undetectable"

That's a pretty big statement to make, but with a few footnotes, I wholly stand by it.

I'm not trying to advertise this or anything as "our product is great because we engineered ways to get around EME's detection systems". The fundamental problem is that it is a cat and mouse game, and for any method BHS or EME takes to thwart these sorts of programs, people will find a way to get around it. It's only a matter of time and effort.

How can I be so sure? Think about it like this. BHS and EME have only one thing under direct control: the game servers. We can be reasonably certain that they won't be having anyone breaking in and fiddling with some bits or changing the server code and suddenly they're cheating. The server is, for most purposes, safe.

However, they cannot fully control your computer. Once you download the game, it's in your domain, not theirs. You can start up Cheat Engine—hell, go the extra mile and custom build an OS that can run Windows programs with some tools to directly edit memory without detection—and the only thing "stopping" you is the TERA client noticing it and refusing to play nice.

So then you just trick it so that it doesn't notice. Then they have to find a new way to detect it.

It's a cat and mouse game where the odds are in the end user's favor. This is the same reason why offline DRM systems in general are doomed to fail. Someone was able to use it legitimately, so it's just a matter of figuring out how to reach the same thing illegitimately with every tool at your disposal and absolutely nothing stopping you.

Sometimes, they do a really good job, but those sorts of systems get broken eventually. It's just a question of how much time and effort people go into breaking it. Just Cause 3 was protected by a system called Denuvo, and so have a number of other games. It took over a full year for a public crack of Just Cause 3, but other games started falling in months, weeks, and then days. Was Denuvo considered a failure? No. They know they can never be uncrackable. All you can do is delay the inevitable, and often times that's enough.

The only way EME and BHS can properly attack these "third party tools" in this manner is with increasingly aggressive detection tactics that quickly land a company in hot waters. Nobody likes things like GameGuard or PunkBuster—not even legitimate users. What about subtly introducing detection mechanisms? If all they do is throw up an error message and prevent the game from launching, people will find a way to get around it and you've only stopped the problem for a few hours, or days, or if it's a real good attempt, maybe weeks.

How about going more aggressive? How about applying a permanent hardware ban instead of just showing an error message? Well, are you ready for false positives and complaints about privacy? The big GUI system I was planning for tera-proxy uses something called Electron. You know what else uses Electron? Discord. Can you imagine if they did a signature scan and got a false positive on Discord, banning everyone that uses Discord on the first day of their stealthy anti-cheat patch? Yikes.

Now, look. Their past attempts did work for a while. TERA.exe uses something called Themida to make it harder for reverse engineering. The custom encryption system raised the barrier to entry for network reading and modification. They did their job... but not for long.

It's a technique called security through obscurity. If people can't figure out how your system works, then surely it's safe from attacks, right?

That's pretty much how TERA has been operating for five years. There's so many glaring security holes that I wish I could disclose, but I'd first love to see if EME would even be open to an attempt at responsible disclosure. It might not matter anyway, seeing as security issues from 2012 are still present today.

So when it's suddenly easier to see and poke at these problems... well, you're just plain fucked.

The Proper Response

Again, the only thing under EME's direct control is their servers. There is never any guarantee that any incoming connection is from a legitimate, vanilla TERA client. It could be modded. It could be a bot simulating the protocol. You never know.

But that's okay, because the server is the central authority. No matter what any client sends, the server has to verify and approve it.

TERA's servers do a moderate amount of that already. You cannot cast a skill before its real cooldown is over. You cannot cast a skill faster or slower than what your attack speed and other buffs dictate at the time of casting. You cannot cast a skill if you are under the effects of crowd control abilities. If you try to do any of those illegally (as in, outside of the rules for TERA's combat system), the server just says, "How about no?" and doesn't do anything.

On the flip side, you have the common thread with most everything else that everyone universally disagrees on. The things where the server doesn't properly check client input.

When you click try to buy something from the emporium, the server should be checking that you have the credits and that you have the reputation tier to buy it. It's really not rocket science.

When—not if, but when—someone comes along and finds out that you're not checking it, you can sure bet it's going to be a big problem, especially with something so closely linked to real money.

And then the rewards system gets taken down for fixing, and then brought up again a few days... allegedly with the exploit still possible?

Come on. If you didn't design it well enough for that to be a relatively simple fix, that system shouldn't have gone live in the first place.

Anyone who's ever worked with anything that communicates over the internet can tell you that you never trust the client. In fact, there's a very neat article written about the topic in the context of MMO games already; Gaffer on Games discusses it in light of a massive cheater problem in The Division. This is such a core part of building any networked system that you'd just be shooting yourself if you don't follow it.

Want to know one of the many reasons why Arborean Apparel hasn't gone anywhere? I wasn't happy with the networking. If you connect to an AA server that others are using, all it sends as identification is your own character ID. Anyone can spoof any character ID and forcibly play dressup with someone else's character. That's not cool and that's not acceptable. I don't even trust client connections to my own server.

We saw a sort of similar issue already with TeraDPS. Someone found their way to the admin panel and wiped the database clean. There were no solid, proper security measures taken on any sort of administrative actions. The site was, for the most part, trusting the client too much, and for that, it got bitten hard.

When the server is the central authority, it must make sure it verifies everything. Or at least with a reasonable room for error.

Take speedhacking. It's been around for a very long time. Most people don't abuse it because it's obvious when someone is, but let me tell you how the TERA servers handle it.

If you're within a few meters (somewhere under 10m?) of your last position, the server straight up accepts the new position no matter what.

If you move too far (as in, everything not covered by the above), the server forcibly disconnects you... but then saves the position anyway. When you log back on, you'll be in the new spot like nothing ever happened.

I don't even have words for this. It's been in the game for five whole years and it's still just as broken as ever.

You don't even need the proxy for this. Cheat Engine works fine, so it's not like it's suddenly become a problem now. People are just noticing it more often because it's a side effect of abusing improper desync handling in skill predictors.

How to Actually Correct These

I can't speak too much for the server side. I don't have their code and I can't analyze their design and architecture. It may not be trivial for them to fix quickly, and that's totally fair. In a game as big as TERA, I personally don't expect anyone to have a fix done in a day, or even a week or month. But five years is pretty inexcusable for a lot of the glaring issues TERA has had since launch.

If your server or service can't accurately verify things that are critical or exploitable, then you messed up your design and need to fix that. There is no negotiating this. You can't say, "But the client shouldn't be doing that anyway." Someone will find a way. You should never be allowing the possibility in the first place. Like I said, it may not be the easiest to do, but you should be doing it anyway. Safety and security is never guaranteed.

We can, however, definitely talk about clientside approaches, which is another problem that gets overlooked. It's much easier said than done to fix issues when you also have to account for user experience. People point to the skill predictors all the time and say that if we can do it in a few weeks or months, then surely BHS can do it too.

They're not necessarily wrong, but they're missing one critical component. Are our skill predictors in a state that we would release as part of the actual game? I don't know about Bern and Pinkie, but this is a pretty big "no" from me.

I'm not saying they're bad. Just that they don't meet my standards for what I'd expect from a game that has thousands of players on a daily basis. Some people find ways to abuse them, like forcing desyncs. Even getting innocent desyncs never feels good while you're stuck watching yourself shooting Rapid Fire blanks.

The more you start predicting actions on the client, the bigger chance you have of things getting horribly desynchronized. This is not trivial to fix at all, and I myself would find it fair if BHS can't fix it properly in a year let alone even bother attempting that sort of stuff after 5 years of being live plus whatever development time before that.

As one of many people who worked on these skill predictors, here is the main issue that we face. There are only two things we can ever do with an attack animation: start one, and end one.

If we had some way to adjust where in a skill animation we're at while in the middle of it, it might look a little jank, but on the proxy side we could better update things so the player has a better idea of what they're really doing at the moment, aside from delay due to latency. As it is now, it's pretty easy to just say, "Well, we messed up and properly recovering is hard if not impossible, so let's just do whatever." Which, in my case, is nothing at all.

But what we probably want is a much better, official way to handle it, and that's something that's not so easy to answer.

On one side, you can just make the server step its foot down. "This is where I say you are and what you're doing, no questions." So the client says, "All right, player, here is where we are and what we're doing because the server said so. Doesn't matter what we thought before." Teleport the player to the new spot and animate whatever they're supposed to be doing, no matter what.

It's the easiest solution, but it provides the opposite of a good user experience. No player likes seeing that.

Instead, the client needs to get updates from the server when either side thinks there might be desync, and smoothly animate things to the correct places. If a legitimate client hears from the server that it's several meters off from where it really is, it should gently nudge the player back to the proper position over the course of a half a second or more. For very small discrepancies, it might not even matter, and for the larger ones, it's less jarring than suddenly teleporting 10 meters to the side.

For clients that are way off? Trying to teleport across the entire zone? The disconnect is fine, but please don't save the new position. Does this really need to be said? If you want to play nicer and give the benefit of doubt, just throw up a load screen and drop the player back where they really should be.

But the very fact that they have to account for these sorts of issues of not ruining user experience means it's not so easy to just magically fix these problems either.

Either way, that's my take on the prediction stuff. I'm not a big game developer. I've never had to make a game that does clientside prediction. I'm far from an expert. But as someone who has casually worked on that stuff in my spare time, that's the approach I'd try taking if I have the resources.

The root of the issues should be clear by now. Can tera-proxy and skill predictors allow people to exploit desync? Yes. Does disallowing their use and banning the developers stop people from exploiting desyncs with or without them? Not even close.

Again, I'm not saying that the proxy and predictors are suddenly okay to use. If you think they're bad, period, I'm not here to argue that. If you think it's totally justified to ban me for releasing a tool that more easily allows people to do bad things, I'm not here to argue about that either. The main point I'm making here is that the actions being taken against them are doing nothing to solve the problems being faced.

If people are cheating, then your primary concern should be to fix the exploits.

When you're in charge of the server, the sole central authority, and you accidentally authorize malicious or illicit actions and then whine that people are doing them instead of actually fixing them, it makes no sense and doesn't solve anything.

The Community

The server and client code aren't the only things that need addressing.

The (NA) community is very divided on the topic, and to me, that's very understandable. What some people consider to be cheating is being conflated with the ambiguity of "third party tools". There's a spectrum of what players believe to be acceptable, and you can find at least one person at every level. Here's a list of pretty much every viewpoint I can think of on every one of these topics to get an idea of just how hard it is to cleanly draw the line.

Note: Every line in this section has an accompanying explanation of how some people feel about it. The phrasing does not mean I personally share or endorse the sentiment.

Game File Modifications

Everything under here is not formally allowed by EME, and discussion of them is not allowed anywhere on official sites.

No edits. You run the game as-is, and any other configuration should not be allowed.

.ini edits. For the most part, these are tweaks that are harmless to the game, but do make it run significantly better for many users. Most people think this is okay.

.gpk edits. We don't get stuff that other regions get, or sometimes people want to fix glaring issues like awful UI. Let's patch that right up without directly interfering with normal gameplay. Lots of people do this too, and they are very happy about their Japanese Elin voice packs and Alice in Wonderland dresses et cetera.

Macros

All human input. No macros, period.

Non-combat macros with presence. EME used to say this was acceptable. You can log onto a priest and have a macro that presses your buffs for you, and it's acceptable as long as you're actually there at your system watching the game.

Non-combat macros without presence. Is it fair to leave that buffbot on 24/7 and never look at the game? How about if you extend it to things like gathering? Why would gathering be okay when Felicity is essentially the same thing?

In-combat macros. I'm not sure if EME ever explicitly allowed this, but it is an important distinction to make. Now you gain a direct gameplay advantage, like with shield barrage block cancels. Most people have the line here or earlier, believing that these should not be allowed.

DPS Meters

Vanilla. No packet sniffers. If you want to know how well you're doing, you either figure it out through entirely in-game means, or you just have to live without knowing. Lots of people think that DPS meters make people do awful things.

If you're not being a jerk. This is how another significant population feels about meters. It's totally acceptable to want to know, objectively, how you (and others) are performing so you can become a better player. Just don't rag on people for not being 100% perfect.

Completely fair game. You're not modifying the client, and everyone has a right to know how everyone is performing, so it's okay. "If that IMS valk is doing under 100k/s, they deserve to know that they're trash."

Proxying / "Injecting"

Vanilla. Once you start being able to directly interfere with the game, it's a no-go.

Benign quality of life modules. Auto Vanguard, cutscene skipper, chat timestamps, disabling AFK logout timer. These don't give any direct gameplay advantages, or you were already going to do them with a few clicks or keypresses that are tedium rather than indicative of skill.

Simple quality of life modules. battle-notify allows full customization of alerts for in-game events, like ShinraMeter already does with things like boss enrages or Hurricane applications. Auto Nostrum applies after accepting a rez. Modules for enrage announcements and timers in /n. These sorts of modules do provide a combat advantage to some degree, but these add nothing new to what's already on the screen, or anyone committed enough could have already run timers or mentally timed it themselves.

Macro-equivalent. You could be macroing your buffbot skills. You could also do it just as well with a proxy module. If the end result is the same, shouldn't they be treated the same?

Skill predictors. Some people believe that these provide a universal advantage since even a 10 ms player can shave off that 10 ms, and that easily categorizes it as a cheat. Others feel that the 10 ms difference, plus the cost of massive desyncs, is nothing close to a noticeable advantage, while also helping 100+ ms players have fun again.

Clientside changes only. Some believe things like playing dressup should be fine if nobody else can see it. If people can preview those sorts of changes, they might even be more likely to spend money and buy cosmetics so other people can start seeing it too. More money is good.

Everything else. Unless I'm missing any remaining categories of scripts, the rest fall under what is pretty universally regarded as cheating or exploiting.

Talking to the Community

For every choice in every category listed above, I can guarantee you can find someone who would draw the line there.

There is no easy answer, even moreso when it's so hard to enforce.

The main part where EME messed up is having some of these fly under the radar, turning a blind eye to some of these for five whole years, and all of a sudden overnight attempting to blacklist everything that isn't the vanilla game—not only that, but denouncing everything else. Any possible reason for using anything more than the vanilla game is automatically and unconditionally irrelevant because it's against the Terms of Service. Are you an archer with 200 ms ping? Tough luck. Learn and play with an objectively inferior rotation. Maybe reroll another class.

People not only want clear, open, honest, and transparent communication. They also want to be acknowledged for where they came from. Stating that the answer to any "is it okay?" modding question is a hard "No, it's not." is a big slap to anyone innocently using .ini mods to get more than 5 fps in dungeons. Saying that "an honest player who appreciates tackling the challenges TERA has to offer" is probably "not a big fan of injection" spits on the players for whom ping reduction modules are the very thing that allows them to appreciate tackling the challenges TERA has to offer because the game grows increasingly unplayable the higher you go from 50 ms—which some people already think is unplayable.

Look. I'm not saying any of these modifications are okay. I'm not trying to say my proxy is fine and I should be free of charges. But right now, the community is probably the most divided it's ever been, and that seriously needs some addressing.

My take on it? I'm no Community Manager, so I can't say my approach will even work, but as a player, I have a pretty good idea of what I want.

EME needs to do some research and actually get in touch with its playerbase. They need to realize that, yeah, it actually really super duper sucks to play with high ping so it's understandable that people would want to try fixing that. It's still not acceptable, but they get it. Unfortunately, they can't enforce anything about it very well, so their next course of action is to put their foot down and start being serious about it.

They also need to realize that a significant portion of the hardcore endgame PvE community is aware of, if not already using, this stuff. They get to push the limits. That's what's fun for them. DPS meters let them objectively gauge it, and skill predictors make an effort to even the playing field. You can bet these guys are big fans of injection—not necessarily all of it, but at least QoL modules are all the more worth it for people that play for twelve hours a day. Some players, like myself, have spent this much time with the game and been subscribed or had elite for most, if not all, of our time here, only to land tier 4 in a "loyalty" system, so we don't also need disparaging comments on how your hardcore endgame community just isn't "honest".

Then, clearly delineate everything that is and isn't acceptable, with explanations. No, .ini mods aren't officially acceptable because we know some users do things like showing hitboxes and we don't think that's okay so if we see it in screenshots we will take action, but if we see FoV edits we might leave those be. No, .gpk mods aren't acceptable because we do not have the licenses for those things you're importing from Korea and we can't allow that so if we see it in screenshots or videos we will remove them from our forums. DPS meters are never acceptable, et cetera.

Then address how you plan to approach the issues. If meters are officially gone, will we at least be getting crusade leaderboards back to replace them for the part of the community that does parse runs? If we can't pretend to play from Chicago, will there be anything done to improve the game in that regard?

I mean, we all know the answer to these questions. No, and no. EME has to politely request that BHS implement any of these changes, and there's a high chance BHS won't think it worth their time and effort. (I'd love nothing more than to be proven wrong, though.)

But when all's said and done, I think that there's just one thing that everyone would like to hear. It won't solve all of the problems, and it'll still probably attract some hate, but it'll be a significant first step.

The players want to hear that you understand them, and while these modifications are not and never were allowed, you get it. You totally recognize their intentions, but you can't enforce any of it, and that's why you unfortunately have to start seriously putting the foot down.

Right now, that's the best outcome I can hope for.

The End?

Thank you so much for sticking with me through this very long series. I've probably written enough that I could actually get it published as a book.

I'm sure a lot of people still have questions, and there are some people making controversial statements about me and my work, so I plan to address as much of those as I can in the final post. If you have anything you'd want me to address there, send me a tumblr ask. The questions will be displayed anonymously, unless you mention in your ask that you really want your name on it.

Answers to those, as well as a summary of these big walls of text, will be covered in the final part: the Conclusion (to be published sometime later this week).

Corrections

May 2, 2017, 4:06 am: Changed "I don't even trust my own clients." to "I don't even trust client connections to my own server." I think some people are interpreting this to mean that I've sold my scripts. That's a cute interpretation for your narrative, but sadly not the case. I've never sold any script, period, and here I distinctly intended it to mean "network client", or "incoming socket" if you want to get technical.

[robertkstone]

Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE: 4th Place – 2017 Motor Trend Best Driver’s Car

We’ve all heard about the bad old days at GM when no car was allowed to challenge the Corvette’s performance supremacy. Those days are long dead. Team Camaro has applied its 1LE handling philosophy to the monstrously powerful ZL1, and the resulting monster is the most track-capable road car GM has ever sold.

Up front, the standard Camaro ZL1’s 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 still makes 650 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque because frankly it didn’t need to make more. Being an enthusiast’s car, a six-speed manual is the only transmission on offer. An electronically controlled differential rounds out the powertrain. Out at the corners, magnetic shocks are replaced with Multimatic spool-valve shocks, and like the rest of the suspension, they’re hard-mounted with metal bushings, not rubber. The ride height, front camber, and rear anti-roll bar are all manually adjustable. A bigger grille improves cooling, and dive planes on the front corners and a massive rear wing provide downforce across the car. Equally massive carbon-ceramic brakes do the stopping.

It’s Best Driver’s Car week! Don’t miss the incredible story of how we chose the 2017 Best Driver’s Car right here, and stay tuned for the World’s Greatest Drag Race, coming soon.

Put it all together, nail the launch, and you’ll see 60 mph in 3.6 seconds and an 11.7-second quarter mile at 123 mph flat. Going the other way, the 3,837-pound ZL1 1LE will stop from 60 mph in a scant 91 feet. Put it on a skidpad, and it’ll pull 1.11 average g. Fling it at the figure eight, and you’ll get a 23.0-second lap at 0.93 average g.

We Say

“This car needs five-point harnesses because the dampers are so unforgiving. It’s true this 1LE has incredible grip; however, the compression damping is way too harsh while the rebound damping is just right. I’m not sure where they tuned this, but it clearly did not have a lot of bumps and jumps. The steering is freakishly quick. It took me three corners to calm my hands down, so I didn’t steer into and across the apex. The power seems to be well matched for the chassis, for a change, unlike the Z06. Third gear seemed very tractable and had a wide bandwidth. This feels like what I imagine a ’60s-’70s Trans Am car would be like.” – Chris Walton

“I know Jonny loves this car, but I just can’t warm to it. Probably because I’ve lost all my fillings, and my kidneys are bruised. With the exception of the best roads, the ride in this Camaro is punishing. I’ve encountered smoother paint mixers. I had to remind myself that based on the numbers, this car is fantastic. Endless grip, fade-free brakes, abundant horsepower. But the thing is, I didn’t care. The bouncing was so bad that I found myself reacting to that instead of focusing on sheer act of driving. The Camaro might be brilliant on the track, but I wouldn’t want to drive this to get there.” – Derek Powell

Read about other 2017 Best Driver’s Car contenders:

Ferrari 488 GTB

Porsche 911 Turbo S

Porsche 718 Cayman S

Lexus LC 500

Mercedes-AMG GT R

Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio

Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport

Aston Martin DB11

Nissan GT-R NISMO

Mazda MX-5 Miata RF

McLaren 570GT

“Simply tremendous … tremendous grip, tremendous brakes, and tremendous power. And how about that third pedal? This added that special connection to the vehicle that the Ferrari or 911 Turbo simply can’t match, which is why I ranked it higher than those two fancy (and expensive) machines. With the Camaro, I felt like I—not some fancy software—had a big part in conquering 198.” – Erick Ayapana

“That’s a driver’s car! When the aero and the tires shake hands, it’s a moment of revelation. You are suddenly driving a hard-mounted race car. Unreal. So much power, so much control, so much stopping ability. An absolute monster of a machine. This is an uncaged race car. Being able to actually use all 650 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque is mind-boggling. I’m not sure how this car isn’t a podium finisher.” – Jonny Lieberman

“Long name, amazing results! Everywhere a competitor put a wheel in the air, the Camaro stuck like glue. There’s a lot of vertical movement in the cabin, but the car just sticks no matter what. It never jumps sideways a foot when it hits a mid-corner bump, never moves around laterally at all. Even when it feels like you’ve carried too much speed into a corner, it sticks. I can’t count how many times I put the throttle flat on the floor. In a 650-hp car this stiff on this bumpy road, that’s seriously impressive. The eLSD takes a little getting used to. If you start to feed in power mid-corner, the car turns in more as the diff gets to work. Steer with the throttle? Yes, please!

“Brakes have huge stopping power and great pedal feel. Squeeze, don’t stomp, and get exactly what you want.

“I thought this car would be too stiff for the road, and that’s coming from someone who drove the Z/28 for a year. I was wrong.” – Scott Evans

Randy Says

“It was not perfectly balanced for me. I’m really trying to smear a little lipstick from the perfection here, but it would go from a little teeny bit of understeer, which was perfect, to a little bit of oversteer, which is almost perfect. But when we put it in the context of what it is, which is a front-engine rear-drive car with 650 horsepower, the traction was incredible. It put down power extremely well, I could drive it with everything turned off, and for me, that’s just so much more satisfying.

“The dampers felt great. Basically I never thought about it. Which means nothing came into my awareness as being, oh, this is too stiff. Or that is too soft. I don’t sense roll. So when I just turn for the corner, it just lies over there. That’s not good terminology because I don’t feel it roll. I’m sure it does, but I don’t feel it. Which means it’s got good damping. When I’m down in the corner, in the middle, I still have a steering response, and I can still tighten it up.

“It was happy coming out of the corkscrew. That’s always hard in a powerful rear drive car. Put the power down. When you’re in a low gear and it’s a hard right. It wants to power oversteer. But this one was pretty damn good. Especially at that power level. See, we have to keep this in context.

“The car generated a tremendous amount of braking force, but for the first time in any high-performance Camaro, it had a long pedal. I was pumping it a little bit, and I remember going up that Corkscrew thinking, ‘Jesus and Heaven above, let these work.’ And boy did they work. It stopped so well. It was very, very pleasing and satisfying how late I could brake in this—what is a relatively heavy car. It’s light for a Camaro, a supercharged Camaro. A bad driver could crash it immediately, but for a reasonable guy who can drive really fast and doesn’t need stability control, this is the ultimate pony car right now.”

2018 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 (1LE) POWERTRAIN/CHASSIS DRIVETRAIN LAYOUT Front-engine, RWD ENGINE TYPE Supercharged 90-deg V-8, alum block/heads VALVETRAIN OHV, 2 valves/cyl DISPLACEMENT 376.1 cu in/6,162 cc COMPRESSION RATIO 10.0:1 POWER (SAE NET) 650 hp @ 6,400 rpm* TORQUE (SAE NET) 650 lb-ft @ 3,600 rpm* REDLINE 6,500 rpm WEIGHT TO POWER 5.9 lb/hp TRANSMISSION 6-speed manual AXLE/FINAL-DRIVE RATIO 3.73:1/2.00:1 SUSPENSION, FRONT; REAR Struts, coil springs, anti-roll bar; multilink, coil springs, adj anti-roll bar STEERING RATIO 11.1:1-15.1:1 TURNS LOCK-TO-LOCK 2.3 BRAKES, F; R 15.4-in vented, 2-pc disc; 14.4-in vented, 2-pc disc, ABS WHEELS 11.0 x 20-in; 12.0 x 20-in, forged aluminum TIRES 305/30R19 98Y; 325/30R19 101Y Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar 3R (Tread 100) DIMENSIONS WHEELBASE 110.7 in TRACK, F/R 64.1/62.8 in LENGTH x WIDTH x HEIGHT 188.3 x 74.7 x 52.0 in TURNING CIRCLE 38.7 ft CURB WEIGHT 3,837 lb WEIGHT DIST, F/R 55/45% SEATING CAPACITY 4 HEADROOM, F/R 38.5/33.5 in LEGROOM, F/R 43.9/29.9 in SHOULDER ROOM, F/R 55.0/50.4 in CARGO VOLUME 9.1 cu ft TEST DATA ACCELERATION TO MPH 0-30 1.6 sec 0-40 2.2 0-50 2.8 0-60 3.6 0-70 4.4 0-80 5.3 0-90 6.6 0-100 7.9 0-100-0 11.3 PASSING, 45-65 MPH 1.5 QUARTER MILE 11.7 sec @ 123.0 mph B from PerformanceJunk WP Feed 3 http://ift.tt/2fiGOzi via IFTTT