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bump1nthen1ght · 3 years

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Deep Blue Sea (Shark Merman x Reader) Chapter 3

Pairing: Gender Neutral!Reader/Shark Merman

Genre: Urban Fantasy, Soulmate AU

Warnings: Slight mention of scars

Word Count: 3122 words

Summary: You and Cruz go for a morning swim in the reef

*Cross-posted to ao3*

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

That Friday, you stay up late, not drinking or binging a new Netflix special, but fruitlessly trying to decide between your athletic shorts are your more revealing swim bottoms. In a stroke of genius the only ever occurs to a person late at night, you wear the shorts over your swimsuit, topped off with a swim shirt.

With your water-proof swim bag, you sit at the tidepool and furtively lather your legs in sunscreen, waiting for Cruz.

Cruz swims up to the edge of the tidepool, pulling himself up and over the rocks before motioning you over.

“Okay, the cool stuff is just less than half of a klick away, I’ll be carrying you on my back the whole way, but some of it’s underwater. Would you-” Cruz stammers, “Would you mind if I took you down with me, to see it?”

You feel that involuntary smile creep up on you.

“I would love that.”

--------

It’s an odd sensation, sitting on Cruz’s back. You had worried yourself and all your gear would be too heavy, but Cruz barely seems to notice the extra weight. You're placed on the bottom of his torso, right before it connects into tail, but you can still feel it’s movements as he swims through the water. It feels almost like a python, muscles pulling and contracting, his arms reaching out occasionally for a large stroke to gain a temporary boost of speed. He’s not moving so fast that the wind or splashes of water hit your skin, but you can still feel the waves pushing over your feet and thighs. The view is breathtaking and you have a nice time looking at Cruz’s ripped back as well.

When you see some small rock outcroppings by the shore that Cruz stops and raises his head out of the water, adjusting you on his back like one would carry someone in a piggyback ride. The tips of his claws brush against your thighs. You are for sure blushing.

“We’re here. Do you remember the signals?”

You nod, responding with the Okay hand signal.

Apparently Cruz had self-taught himself scuba-diving signals, although he initially had thought they were limited to human “ocean-spies” trying to steal precious fish from the pod (“That’s what the older kids in my pod told me! Stop laughing!”). You yourself were a certified scuba diver, and had gone many times with your mother during college.

With a nod and a hand motion, you two submerge, a bloom of color all around you.

Your arms lang loosely around Cruz’s shoulders, chest pressed against his backside and legs hiked up around his hips to give him maximum mobility. A particular bright hydrocoral catches your eye amidst the rainbow, your heart leaping at the sight. You point urgently in it's direction, unintentionally clenching your legs in excitement. Cruz’s chest rumbles with a giggle, bubbles popping through his mouth and gills. He shrugs his shoulder to bring your body closer to it.

The purple stretches across the rocks in circular bunches, with the occasional starfish interspersed in between. With a good look, you can see the tiny spines and tiny perforations on it’s surfaces. You tap Cruz’s shoulder and throw your thumb up.

Once out of water and properly breathing, you fingers tap eagerly against Cruz’s shoulder blades.

“Cool, right?”

“Yeah! I’ve never seen that kind of hydrocoral up close before. I’ve heard the California corals were beautiful but wow, those were gorgeous. And that patch was so big, it must be- I don’t even know how old! They grow extremely slow, you see, and because of excess-”” Your eyes glance over your shaky fingers, fidgeting and dancing across Cruz’s as the words fall out of your mouth. You forcibly still them. You gulp. “They don’t have those where I’m from. Sorry, I talk too much.” You force out a giggle.

You peel your fingertips away from Cruz, picking at your fingernails as your neck tints red. The heat makes you pull your arms into yourself and away from Cruz’s slick skin. Your thighs lock tight around his waist to stay on.

“Does it have a name?”

“They just call it California Purple Hydrocoral, since it’s so localized. Nothing too fancy, even though it’s so unique.” Typically, to calm yourself down, you fiddle with your clothing or whatever you have your hand on. With Cruz’s body so close by, your first compulsion is to trace shape alongside his back, map the muscle and bone’s topography. But just the idea of such intimacy sends your head in a swirl.”

“What makes them so unique? Just where they live?” Cruz playfully scoffs, “Because I’ve lived in one area for years and you don’t see me getting any trophies.” You chuckle, Cruz arching his neck to smirk at you.

“Well not not only are they super old, but most corals lose their color when they die and California Purple Hydrocorals don’t. The pigment is so deeply embedded in their skeleton, it remains even after they’re gone.” You float your eyes downwards towards the sea, in the direction where you get merely a glimpse of the bright purple mass. “It’s kind of their legacy, hence the name. That color is so intrinsic to what they are, not even death or time could take it from them.”

The water is cool and the sun is hot, beating down at the exposed skin on your neck and back while your feet mindlessly kick back and forth. Cruz’s muscles shift as he turns his head farther back towards you. Your eyes are lost at sea, caught in the coral possibilities. There’s an absentminded smile on your face. It brings one to his.

“You’re really fun to talk to, ____.”

You’re snapped back into reality, eyes yanked out of the water and back to Cruz’s own. The inky black stares back, serious and focused.

“Wow, thank you. That’s very sweet of you to say Cruz.”

You avert your eyes in a polite gesture, rubbing the back of your neck. Cruz keeps staring. You can feel it tingling across your cheeks.

“I mean it. You’re really smart.”

“Oh, well, I just study a lot-”

“And-and you shouldn’t have to apologize when you get, y’know, into it.”

Cruz looks away, jaw clenched. “Not to anybody. Not to me, especially not to me, because you’re so-so….” He struggles with his words, chin shaking with unreleased energy, “You love it so much and that’s-you should be able to talk about it whenever. Because it makes you happy and any assholes out there shouldn’t ruin that for you, and I-” His chest heaves as he stutters, blue flushing his skin, “I-I like it, when you’re happy, I mean.” Cruz’s breaths are short and quick, his cerulean blush painting the back of his neck and crawling up to his ears. “Does that make sense?”

Words escape you at this moment, like Cruz sucked up all the energy in the moment. In a good way, he’s pulled the rug out from under you. Your eyes wander, brain turning over his words.

But Cruz can’t hear your inner thoughts, he can only feel your still muscles and the lull in the conversation.

“I-Shit, I didn’t mean-”

Your body jerks back to life as you lean over Cruz’s shoulder with a quick motion, eyes squinting in the middle distance. Cruz jerks.

“Cruz, submerge real quick!”

“What?”

You jerk your thumb down and shakily put on your goggles and snorkel with one hand. “Quick! It’s going to notice us!”

Cruz, befuddled, tightens his grip on your thighs and submerges. His head swivels back and forth, looking for what has gotten you so fussy. You extend both of your arms, pointing about 10 feet away, to the side of a bunch of coral. You then close your hands horizontally, interlocking your fingers into your signal.

Turtle!

Besides the small rock is a large Leatherback Turtle, blissfully unaware of the two creatures not too far from it, taking a leisurely swim. Your right arm wraps around Cruz’s clavicle as you lean over to get a better look, enchanted by her beautiful shell. Amidst the reef, she looks like a dolled up grandma, wrinkled and taking an afternoon continental in the garden.

Cruz ducks behind another rock as she swims closer, trying not to scare the turtle away. Your arm tightens around his shoulder, eyes never tearing from her.

You don’t notice, but Cruz feels himself falling deeper when he looks at the wonder in your gaze. Never before has he ever felt so jealous of a turtle.

She cruises along, Cruz dodging just out of her sight but close enough to give you a good view, all while giving you a spare breath whenever you gesture. As she swims back towards the open ocean, Cruz takes you both up and out of the water.

You whip off your goggles and snorkel, taking a long breathe in.

“That was- wow, that was incredible.”

“She was so pretty I didn’t think about eating her for like, forty percent of that time.”

You smack Cruz on the shoulder, but it’s light, half-joking, and an unflattering snort leaves you. Cruz shoots you a toothful smirk.

A light sea breeze rolls over you two, abating the hot sun, although just a bit. The water has thoroughly sunk into your swimsuit bottoms, pulling down with extra weight on your lower half, but you’ve never felt lighter.

In the tranquility, you rest your front on Cruz’s back, head now tucked into the nook of his shoulder. The smell of salt and a slight tang of fish immediately washes your nostrils. Cruz’s shoulders and deltoids stiffen for a millisecond and slowly relax in another.

“Hey, Cruz?” You whisper, almost mumble into his skin.

“Y-yeah?”

“Thanks.”

----------

Your muscles slightly ache from the long swim this morning, and boardwalk food is the perfect level of unhealthy to abade it for a bit.

As you walk back to the tidepool, arms cluttered with overpriced boardwalk food, Cruz’s eyes light up. You struggle to sit down easily, but manage to crouch down to Cruz’s level, motoning for him to grab the hotdog from the crook of your elbow.

He does, but Cruz’s eyes are locked on the two Cotton Candies which you hold in a tight grip; The water laps at your ankles and you don’t want the $7 you spent to go to waste.

“Trust me, this will be best after a full meal. Don’t want you getting nauseous.” Cruz lets out a facetious, over-dramatic sigh, but with one bite of a hot dog, his eyes alight once more. He devours the thing quickly, almost with one gulp, whipping his head around to the cotton candy. He wiggles his eyebrows and you sigh, motioning for him to come closer.

Cruz seats himself up on the rock next you, pupils sparkling as you hand him the cotton candy stick. He takes a large bite and is immediately overwhelmed by the sweetness and how quickly the sugar melts in his mouth.

“Is that supposed to happen?”

You chuckle, taking a much tinier bite out of your own cotton candy.

“Yes, it is. It dissolves in liquid, hence the ‘no water’ thing.” Cruz nods, spun sugar strings stuck to his lips as he attacks the cotton candy like a toddler. You smile, taking another bite.

The two of you continue to snack in silence. The end of Cruz’s tail flicks back and forth, stirring tiny ripples in the pool, extremely cute and reminiscent of an excited dog. After licking away the rest of your cotton candy, you lean over to the trash bag to drop off your paper stick. It’s then do you see them.

With your face up close to Cruz’s tail, you notice lines of discoloration, streaks of white, which pepper Cruz’s tail. Your eye catches one, then another, and another. By the time you pull back, you notice quite a few all near his pelvic fins, the tip of a larger one stretching to the bottom side of his tail.

Holy shit. How did I not notice those?

On the side of his tail, three marks stand out to you. Their pink, freshly healed, and rake along his skin for 2 inches.

“Uh, Cruz?”

“Yemf?” He asks, amidst another big bite of cotton candy.

“Did you accidentally cut yourself on some coral?”

About 20 pieces of coral, technically?

Cruz hesitates mid bite, sweet spun sugar and some sort of excuse on the tip of his tongue.

“What do you mean?” Cruz’s voice, same octave, is somehow quieter, devoid of emotion.

“It’s just, you have all these marks on your tail and…” You pull back and turn your back to him. Cruz averts his gaze, but the look he gives his tail is frustrated and simmering. “I got worried, that’s all.”

“They’re nothing, it’s nothing. You wouldn’t understand.” His intonation, like his furrowed brow, bristles with a hostile energy. You turn your whole body towards him, now a bit peeved yourself.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I said it’s not a big deal. I just did something stupid, went somewhere I shouldn’t have. That’s it.” Cruz still refuses to meet your gaze, knuckles clenched white around the cotton candy stick. Your eyes dart back to the littered scars.

Who did this to him? Was it those mermaids I saw?

“Does that happen often? Wouldn’t your pod-”

“Can we just fucking drop it? It doesn’t matter anyway.” Cruz bites back, almost a yell but not quite. Your eyebrows furrow.

“Well it matters to me. If you’re getting hurt then-”

“Then what? Why the fuck does it matter if I get a few scrapes now and again, why do you even care, huh?” Cruz’s glare burrows into your skin, you can feel your eyes go wide. Something deep, something heated and bitter, stirs in your gut.“You don’t have to do anything. Just because we’re soulmates doesn’t mean you have to pretend shit. I’m not so pathetic that you have to force yourself to-”

“Can you stop putting words in my mouth for one fucking minute!” This time, you actually do scream, which echoes off the water and the rocks. Cruz’s eyes widened, stopped in the middle of his tirade. Whatever burns inside boils over, released in hot breathes and the steam under your skin.

“Is it so hard to believe that I might care about you?” Your voice cracks with lost breath and the fast pounding of your heart. You pinch the bridge of your nose and with a deep inhale and exhale, you continue.

“My whole life, people have expected this one thing of me, and I spent so long doing everything I could to be the exact opposite. But I want-” You gesture your hands to yourself and Cruz, “-this. I want to get to know you, I want to hang out and eat expensive seafood and talk about bullshit! But I can’t do that if you won’t talk to me.” You take a deep breath, Cruz not even taking the moment to jump in. “And I get that it’s hard, that we don’t know each other yet. But I want to trust you. I want you to trust me.”

A wave breaks against a rock, the noises drowned out in the chasm of Cruz’s gaze and the beating of your heart. You can’t read the emotions on his face, what with a thousand thoughts flitting across it and the emotion welling in your eyes. The smell of brine seeps into your skin. You tuck your hands into your elbows, hoping that will stop their shaking.

“I just-”

“I-”

You both pause, caught in the middle of your thoughts. Cruz sputters.

“Sorry, I interrupted you, you can go.”

“No, no you can go.”

There’s another pause, each of you waiting for the other to go. Cruz finally steps up.

“I’m sorry for accusing you. I was making assumptions and-, and that’s not fair to you.” He expounds in one quick breathem sucking another in before continuing. “Since we met I’ve been….going through some stuff and I think I wanted to let it out. But I shouldn’t-I shouldn’t have, not on you, not for shit that’s not even remotely your fault, damn it.” Cruz laments, pressing his face into his hands. He takes a deep breath in, then out, and pulls his hands away. “I’m sorry.” He sighs again, scratching nervously behind his ears.

You let the sentence hang in the air a bit, trying to consolidate your mind and think hard about what to say. It’s far from easy, trying to find the words and express them properly. But it feels good. It feels right, cathartic almost.

“Thank you. And you don’t have to tell me everything if you don’t want to. We can take our time with all….this.” You untuck your hands and wave towards the air. Cruz laughs and this time, it actually settles the butterflies in your stomach. “I just want you to know that I’m here for you, whether to talk it out or even distract for a bit.”

Cruz hums in agreement, rubbing his fingers over his knuckles.

“Thanks, for that. And I-I’ll be here for you too, i-if you need it. I mean, you know where to find me.” You giggle, a bubble of exhaustion popping out of your mouth as Cruz joins you. You feel infinitely lighter. A wave brushes against your ankle, the ocean slowly eroding the thick stress in the air.

Cruz and you stand about 1 foot apart from each other, your leftovers discarded in the plastic bag by your side. Cruz fidgets with his fingers some more, eyes glancing back and forth between you and the rocks.

“Can I….Can I hold your hand?” Cruz murmurs.

You don’t respond, just nodding and lifting out your hand. Cruz slips his in.

His skin is damp, slightly cold, and he relishes in the heat of your palm. His fingers dwarf yours as they intertwine, his long claws just barely grazing your skin, careful not to actually cut the back of your hand. You brush your thumb over his knuckles and up his palm. His hands are soft, although his palms are dotted by small calluses. Cruz scoots closer to you, both of you looking out at the ocean. With a full belly and your muscles still quite sore, you rest your head on Cruz’s shoulder. You feel his muscles tense to jerk away, but they forcibly relax as he grips your palm tight. You rub his knuckles once more.

It may not be much, but it’s a start. And you think you quite like where it is heading.

#my writing #monster romance #shark merman #monster x reader #merman x reader #shark merman x reader #monster/reader #reader insert

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ask-mingle · 5 years

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A little something for @ask-star-singer Uncensored version here: https://inkbunny.net/s/1969558 https://twitter.com/AskMingle/status/1170716311628013569 Since we were talking about a possible scenarios in Dark Souls 3 me, and him could go through (but never did, for technical reasons XP ), and that was very inspiring. As a bonus, I decided to exercise my writing skills, and made a little erotic fanfic. You can read it, if You want, and let me know, should I do things like that from time to time, or should I never, ever do it again X3 But beware, if You never played any of the Dark Souls games (especially the third one), You may get very lost and confused, as I’m using in-game vocabulary, and terms. Mingle was getting a bit irritated. She died trice already, always waking up near this one bonfire of the Central Irithyll. Once by the hands of the burning-stake witch, surprising her with a tower of flame, rising from underneath her. Once she got overwhelmed by a bunch of some sort of undead slaves, surrounding her, and striking her with several greatswords. But the last time was the worst. She got past the beautiful, snowy square with the fountain, just to be invaded by some asshole with a fat-looking, covered partially with fur armor. He was clearly stronger than her, toying with her, making insulting gestures, and throwing knives at her. He finally finished her with a backstab, but not before groping her in a disgusting manner, squeezing her breast, and pressing her butt against his legs.

She took a moment to calm herself down after this unpleasant incident. The worst thing was – a part of her actually welcomed this erotic touch. She was traveling alone for such a long time, without taking breaks to… please herself, and her body just missed any caress at all. She collected her thoughts, determined and motivated. She can do it now. She will press forward, kill all the enemies, and find another bonfire. Mingle was sure of that. She just needed a little boost of health, so she stood up, and cracked an Ember in her hands. She felt strength flowing through her, and little burning flames started to dance on her elegant dress. She was ready to pick her sword, and march on, but then something caught her attention. A name written in glowing gold, right next to a bonfire. She was curious. That was not a typical placement for a summon sign. She just defeated an enormous skeleton engulfed in darkness, and a giant, wild beast defending the bridge. She did not expected another big adversary so soon. This would mean whoever left this sign, just wanted to help others, by guiding them through this place, and she found it very admirable, and sort of cute. She got on her knees, and gently stroked glowing letters, with her fingertips. The inscription read: “StarSinger”.

The flash of light came out of the sign, and she stared in awe, as from it, a well-built warrior with an angelic wings on his back arose, standing up, hands outstretched to the sky. When the glow disappeared, she immediately realized, that he was not enveloped in the golden aura, and she could see his features clearly. He must have been wearing an Untrue Dark Ring, which was yet another courtesy from him. In case they were invaded by anyone, he can act as a decoy, so their adversary will stay unsure, which one of them is a host – a much more rewarding pray, and which is the summon. This warrior already impressed her with his kindness, even if she saw him for just a few seconds, and they didn’t even set off yet. The face of the stranger was also very handsome, and he had a warm, welcoming smile.

They looked at each other for a longer moment, her mouth slightly opened in awe, and his eyes set on her face. They shifted a bit, presumably to get a better look at her, and then she saw his expression changing to the one, of a slight timidness, and a delicate blush popping on his cheek. She suddenly realized that she’s still on her knees, right in front of him, with her face almost at his crotch, staring with her lips half opened. And even worse than that, when she lowered her gaze in shame, she noticed that her nipples – erected from the cold of this snowy land, and a recent touch, were clearly visible from underneath her black, not fitted to accommodate the size of her breasts, blouse. She suddenly felt naked in front of this magnificent Warrior of Sunlight, and that excited, and aroused her even more. There was no denying it. She was horny, and wanted this stallion. Mingle opened her mouth wide, and let out a weak plea: - Take me! But seeing confusion on Star’s face, she remembered that voice does not travel across the different worlds, and she can’t communicate like that with her summon. So she closed her eyes, and started unbuttoning her shirt. For a moment a knight before her looked very abashed, and reached out with one hand, trying to stop her, but before he could, her blouse opened wide, letting her large breasts out, swaying slightly, and gracefully. That stopped him, and he retreated his arm, smiling. She dropped her eyes, below his waist, and saw a bulge, suggesting that the view was very pleasant to him. Mingle was really fascinated by this bulge. She tried to trace it down his leg, with her eyes, but it never seemed to end. At least not above the knee. She reached out with her hands touching it, which made it even stiffer. She couldn’t hold it any longer, grabbed his pants with both her hands, and slid them down. His stallionhood jumped up slapping her in her breast, on the way up to stop right in front of her surprised face. Star looked down a bit embarrassed, but then she took his cock in her both hands, starting to kiss, and lick it. She was quick, and passionate, while drawing circles with her tongue on his shaft, and he felt that pleasure is weakening his posture, so he swiftly drove his weapon into the stone floor they were standing on, and leaned on the giant shield, he carried with him, relaxing. It was a signal for Mingle to do whatever she wanted, so she opened her mouth wide, and put the end of his stallionhood inside, sucking, and moving her head back and forth. She was now so aroused, that she started playing with her own breasts. Star couldn’t see it, but she got all wet kneeling down, and pleasuring him. So much, that her juices started dripping on the cold stone tiles below her. She was out of control, and unable to stop. Star felt the pleasure building up, so he tried to slow her down, aware, that she can’t hear his moans, but then she pushed her head towards his body in one, strong move, forcing his entire shaft down her throat. He couldn’t bear this any longer, and came. Mingle felt her entire throat, and mouth being filled with warm, viscous substance. She tried to swallow whole, but there was just so much, that she pulled back, and a serving of sticky, white stuff landed on her lips, boobs, and dress.

She stood up, and bowed, thankful, and satisfied for just being able to serve this noble knight. But he noticed a wet stain on her skirt, and a small pool she left on the ground. He smiled. This warrior will not let her go, without making her come too. He approached her, placed a small kiss on her cheek, and then took a step backward, his cock still hard (apparently his journey was as long, and lonely as Mingle’s), and pointed his finger. Down at the stained floor first, and then moved it up, to her private parts. Her eyes widen, and a strong blush flooded her face, but she obediently reached down, and lifted her skirt up, exposing her naked marehood. It’s juices were dripping, and flowing down her legs. Star got even more excited, and so he got down on her, and started licking her. If he could hear her, he would know, how much pleasure he gave her. Mingle let out loud moans, but he didn’t stopped, until her legs started shaking, unable to support her anymore. He stood up, and turned her over, lifting her skirt up, and rubbing his stallionhood, against her buttcheeks. She quickly grabbed his Zwihander, sticking out of the ground, since she knew, she would not be able to support herself any longer. She barely did it, when she felt a long, warm shaft entering her marehood. She was so wet it went in quite easily, and the pleasure filled her entire body. She could barely maintain consciousness, when Star was pounding her from behind, holding her waist tightly, and thrusting his cock deeply into her. The never-ending Irithyll’s night bore witness as this warrior of the Sun mingled with the knightess of the DarkMoon, for a longer time, until they both were satisfied with an united, powerful orgasm, which filled air of Mingle’s world with a loud moan, and heavy panting.

This night later saw them setting off, carving their way through this abandoned city’s streets with their blades. Their worked well together, slashing enemies gracefully, and in unison, almost as if they were dancing together. His greatshield, and wings, always covered her, when she needed to take a sip of her Estus flask, and she always protected his back, with wide, frosty sweeps of her blade, whenever surrounding them adversaries got too close. He showed her the path, and all the secrets he knew of, leading right up, to the massive, beautiful church. She followed him, and from the stairs, she could already see the warm, orange glow of the bonfire – a goal, she was set on reaching. When entering through the main door, she saw inside another unkindled knight, her acquaintance, she met along the way, leaning against the wall. It seemed like a safe place to part ways. She looked back at Star, longingly, a bit sad, that their adventure is coming to an end. He probably read her thought, and possibly felt the same way, but it was time for them to part. So he took her hand, and kissed it, as it was the most fitting farewell for a noble knight, to give to a lady like her. But before he left he discretely pointed on stone statues that were stocked in the corner of the room, and rotated his hand, to give it a thumb down. A clear warning. He outstretched his body, and once again, lifted his arms way up, to the skies, praising the Sun, that was unable to reach this place, and disappeared in black, smoky swirl of the separation crystal, returning to his own world. Mingle looked at the corner of the room, squeezing a handle of her sword tight. She was ready to venture forth, alone again, and face whatever comes her way. But in her heart, she hoped, that maybe, even thought it was unlikely, she one day will once again come across a golden summon sign with a name, she will not forget, as long as she won’t turn hollow.

#mingle #ask-star-singer #star singer #pony #oc #fanfic #dark souls

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virmillion · 5 years

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Ibytm - T minus 45 seconds

Masterpost - Previous Chapter - Next Chapter - ao3

Words: 3,576

On a normal day, Logan will rise long before the sun, smiling at the sound of his pinging alarm clock and taking a luxurious moment to stretch his rested limbs before greeting the world with open arms.

Today is not a normal day.

His eyes stay stubbornly shut as his tingling hand fumbles around in the mess of blankets for his blaring phone. Virgil grunts softly from somewhere under the mound, and in the weak pre-dawn light, Logan can only just make out the ball curled up under the sheets.

When his fingers finally brush over his phone, sending shivers down his spine with the vibrations, he does his best impression of scrambling to turn it off. His sleep-addled body translates this command as wobbly sliding around for the snooze button, stubbornly ignoring the requirement to finish a set of math problems before the noise will stop.

“Should’ve never installed that fancy alarmy app,” Virgil grumbles as the ball shrinks in on itself. Logan squints at the full-brightness screen and scowls, mumbling the two digit multiplication problems to himself. Finally he succeeds, dropping the bedroom back into silence. An arm snakes out from the blankets and pats along Logan’s leg. “Good job, so smart. Go crush that meeting.”

Logan lifts Virgil’s jand and presses a kiss to his fingers, lingering in the moment for just a few more seconds. His own hand feels impossibly cold and empty as he changes and strides out of the room.

The kitchen—more of a kitchenette, really, but who’s keeping track?—is surprisingly high quality, given the deal Virgil managed to land on this place. Granted, it’s all a little cramped and bland, but Logan likes to think of it as ‘begging for an impromptu remodel.’ Which he manages to pull off, all in one go, as the broken keurig sputters to life, shooting wads of coffee grounds along the underside of the microwave.

Logan does not have the energy for it this morning.

He sets on a pot of real coffee to brew in time for Virgil to wake up and transfers the keurig disaster to his own travel mug, slipping in more sugar than it probably needs. He’s in for a long day.

Even the neighborhood is pretty nice, which was Virgil’s main concern when they were scoping out options. Compared to the people on those over-the-top reality shows, Logan thinks their requests were pretty darn reasonable. Close enough to the office to walk, in a nice part of town, and close enough to uber to the museum without completely punching a hole through their wallets. One downside to being so near to the office, though, is that Logan can never be that far from work. Not that this is a bad thing, per se—it’s just that, on the two days a year where he actually wants a break, he has to try that much harder to actually achieve it.

There are worse problems in the world to have, he supposes.

His work building looms tall and grey against the cold morning skyline, and the mere sight of it is enough to make him draw his shoulders to his ears. While he’s dressed nice enough for the meeting that could make or break his future, Virgil convinced him to wear the leather jacket over it.

“It’ll make you feel tough,” Virgil insisted, shoving the bundle of well-worn material into Logan’s arms the previous night. “Just enough of a confidence boost for you to nail the crap out of that meeting.”

Virgil wasn’t wrong, of course. Logan finds a certain bounce in his step as he bursts into the stale air conditioning and starts up the stairs. More of a placebo effect than anything else, but he’ll take what he can get. Especially today.

“Hey, Lo!” Micah exclaims, stumbling over his own feet as he bounds down the stairs.

“Gan. Logan,” Logan supplies, reaching out a hand to steady the overstuffed cardboard box in Micah’s arms. “Last trip?”

“Yeah, Alex is gonna bring home stuff I forgot as they find it. Half their desk is mine, basically.” Micah shoulders the drawstring bag around his back to the side, squeezing past Logan to get to the first floor landing. “It’s been a pretty solid run, though. Almost four years? That’s a good record for our floor managing to not kill each other.”

“That it is,” Logan agrees, almost to the next landing by now. It's a shame to see a good guy like Micah go, but internships aren’t permanent, and promotions aren’t guaranteed.

“Hey, wait!” Micah calls. Logan peeks over the spiral railing, now well on his way to the third floor. “Isn’t your big hunga chunga interview today?”

“Yeah, it is, actually. I don’t know when, though.”

“Well, whatever time they come for ya, best of luck. You deserve it.” Micah grins at Logan before scooting out of the stairwell, staggering under his box. Logan smiles to himself, forgetting to remove the expression before he exits onto the fifth floor. The first step in what could very well be a long line of mistakes.

“What’re you so happy about, specs?” Roman asks, appearing at Logan’s side and following him to his desk. “The only times I’ve seen you smile are when you’re with that museum guy.”

Logan takes a moment to breathe, reminding himself that it’s typically frowned upon to sock your coworkers in the jaw. “As I’ve told you several times now, his name is Virgil, and he’s not just some guy, he’s my boyfriend. There years not long enough for you to process that?”

“In my defense, we don’t hang out enough to be familiar.”

“We had lunch with you and Patton last week!”

“Yeah, yeah, bad short term memory.”

“Long term memory.” Logan slides open the third drawer on the right of his desk and pulls out a thick binder, filled to the brim and then some with papers and folders and cascading tab dividers. “Do you want to go to your own desk now?”

“Not really.” Regardless, Roman swings around to the desk that used to be Micah’s—with the intern moving on after more than four years of work, his prime spot desk was highly coveted real estate. The only reason Logan didn’t get it—by seniority, he had first dibs—was because he was used to his current desk. Not to mention the meeting coming up, of course. Ideally, he won’t even need his current desk after today.

Roman pops his head over the partition between Micah’s old desk and Logan’s, undoubtedly standing on the swivel chair for a better vantage point. “So, whatcha doin’?”

“Get off that chair before you hurt yourself. I’m going over major old assignments.” Logan regrets being honest the moment he says it. Now it’s a near guarantee that Roman will try to distract him. He was undoubtedly going to already, but still.

“Oh, right, you’ve got that huge meeting today! I completely forgot.” Roman folds his arms up over his chin, staying shockingly quiet as Logan riffles through the binder. “Hey, wait, that’s that dumb Neptune Theseus riddle!”

“Never did figure that one out,” Logan agrees absently. His eyes linger on the answer circled at the bottom, but he still isn’t convinced he had it right. He pulls the paper out farther.

“We’re seriously gonna get stuck on the Neptune thing again? Are we really digging up that horse to beat it some more? Hasn’t it suffered enough?” Alex groans, rolling over on their squeaky desk chair. While the office sprang for new furniture last year, they didn’t spring very far, since ‘gently used furniture from someone else is still new to you.’ This was met with no small amount of grumbles and dissent, all of which fell on deaf ears.

“No rehashing old riddles!” Cassidy chimes in. As her desk is now right beside Logan’s—replacing Joy’s old spot—she doesn’t have to move far to notice his overfilled binder. “Last minute studying?”

“Lil’ Lolo has his big ol’ test today,” Alex singsongs. “Watch him get higher than Mx. Oatmeal.”

“As if,” Logan scoffs, flipping to a different assignment. Calculating the landing point of a rocket being pulled down from orbit at a given time, assuming this malfunction and that overcorrection. He still isn’t completely convinced they didn’t just rip the problem wholesale from Hidden Figures. “And it’s not a test, it’s just a meeting to discuss my upward prospects. Don’t oversell it.”

“I promise nothing of the sort,” Cassidy says. “How much you wanna bet the promotion hinges on that Neptune riddle?”

“Gambling, I like it.” Roman reaches down the partition to snatch up the binder, ignoring Logan’s protests. “Woah, you’ve got things in here from your first week? You know that was all busy work, right? To scare off newbies who wouldn’t put in the work when it counted?”

“Give that back,” Logan demands, reaching toward Roman’s face. He easily holds the binder out of reach, still snooping through its contents.

“Wow, your handwriting really sucks, you know that?”

“Shut up, my mind moves too fast to bother with legibility.” It’s all Logan can do not to stand on his chair and grab back the binder. He’s smart, of course—there’s nothing incriminating on those pages—but he still doesn’t appreciate Roman invading his space like this.

“Illegible handwriting?” Alex repeats. “Sounds like you’re already one of them. Bet you’ll even surpass Joy.” The mention of her name draws the attention of some of the newer interns, whose names Logan hasn’t yet managed (or bothered) to learn. It wasn’t too long ago that Joy got promoted—in the last few months, actually—but she was still on the floor long enough to gain a reputation among the newbies. Her sudden promotion, completely unprompted, elevated her to a godlike status in the eyes of the new kids, all fresh to the inner workings of the program. At least, that’s why Logan assumes they looked up at her name.

He isn’t sure whether he’d love it or hate it if all these little interns would worship him like that.

Before Roman can pitch in his own two cents about the first inexplicable promotion situation, the elevator doors ping open, revealing Joy leaning against the mirrored wall. Cassidy leaps to her feet and sprints across the floor, wrapping her friend in a tight hug.

“You need to come visit us more,” Cassidy says sternly, pushing Joy back by the shoulders to fix her with a pinched stare.

“Acknowledged,” Joy says, barely lifting her chin. The cold silence lasts only a few moments before her facade cracks, revealing a bright smile as she squeezes Cassidy in a close embrace. “Butterfingers around here?”

Logan scrambles to yank his binder back from Roman and hide it in its usual drawer before answering, “I’m over here.”

Joy nods brightly as Cassidy carefully extricates herself from the boa constrictor hug. “Well, better get going, if you’re ready. They bumped the meeting from seventh to ninth, by the way.” She waits patiently for Logan to join her in the elevator, seeming to not notice the awed stares from the newbies. Logan isn’t particularly fond of the sustained silences from his more seasoned coworkers, either.

“Actually, I’d rather take the stairs, if it’s all the same to you.” Though Logan has historically taken the stairs for the exercise, he has a running promise with Virgil to avoid the elevator whenever possible. Virgil refused to specify why, but even if he’d never find out, Logan has no intention to go breaking promises when people aren’t looking. “I’ll just meet you up there?”

Joy hesitates, and Logan wonders whether he just completely screwed himself over, but her expression finally dissolves back into a grin. “Works for me.”

Logan takes the stairs two at a time, chased by the encouragement of his floormates. With every step, he jumps from one irrational worry to another. What if Joy thinks he thinks she stinks? What if she thinks he’s being uncooperative? What if she thinks he’s claustrophobic, and won’t be able to handle something so confined as a rocket? What if this is all a test, and he already failed?

He almost misses the ninth landing as his thoughts swarm. All that piloting time, straight down the drain.

The door can’t open fast enough.

Logan has just barely managed to force his breathing down to a normal level when the elevator door slides open, revealing Joy and—oh, great.

“She said I should come along!” Roman exclaims, bursting out of the elevator and jumping to Logan’s side. “That they might like a second opinion during your meeting.”

“Oh, great.”

“Yes, well, best be going,” Joy says, leading the boys down the hall to a set of floor to ceiling glass windows. Just beyond the frames is a long oak desk, ringed with cushy black office chairs. Logan wonders how many years it'll be until those become hand-me-downs for the fifth floor.

“I’m so excited,” Roman whisper-shouts. “I’ve never been up here before, besides for coffee runs.”

“This is where I leave you,” Joy says. She holds open the door and waves the boys in, patting Logan on the shoulder as he passes. “Good luck. You’re gonna crush it.”

“Fingers crossed.”

“Butterfingers?”

“Almond Joy.” A small smile spreads across Logan’s face as the door softly clicks shut behind them. Across the room is Mx. Oatmeal’s boss’s boss’s boss, Miss Katie-Lee, who literally and figuratively holds Logan’s future in her hands.

That is to say, she’s holding a model rocketship.

“Logan, please, have a seat.” She gestures to one of the several chairs, inclining her head slightly as Logan shakes her hand before sitting. “Oh, good, Roman, are you the second opinion I asked Joy to bring?”

“I am indeed,” Roman confirms, shaking her hand as well before sitting on Logan’s right. “Happy to be here, happy to help.”

“Happy to hear it,” Miss Katie-Lee says, taking her own seat opposite the boys. She pulls a stack of papers and folders from a nearby stool and spreads them out over the table. “Well, well, well, Logan, you sure have been busy these last few years, haven’t you? And I see here you have a change of mailing address, as well as the supplementary switch forms, very good, that’s what we like to see.” Miss Katie-Lee traces her finger down a bulleted list, mumbling to herself as she does. “Tuh tuh tuh, already a good amount of calculations under your belt, mostly correct, that’s always nice. Well on your way to completing the piloting hours, good to know you’re keeping that up. Recent physical on file, yes, sure deal, that makes this several worlds easier.”

She continues talking to herself, flipping between pages and glancing at Logan every so often for a nod of confirmation. “And Roman, you’ve worked closely with Logan, yes? Do you have any pertinent information to share regarding his performance?” She taps a little plastic cube set to the side meaningfully. “This is all being recorded, by the way. My apologies for not saying so sooner.”

Roman sits up straighter in his chair, and Logan immediately wishes he were a popsicle under the California sun. Oh, to be a puddle on the floor, free of the trials and tribulations involved in adult life.

“All on the record?”

“All on the record.”

Roman gives Logan a long look before opening his mouth again. Puddles would be a blessing at this point, Logan thinks. Logan would be wrong. “Logan is the single best intern I have ever seen working on the fifth floor. He easily works twice as hard as anyone on a higher floor—no offense—and I never see him without ink staining his fingers. He’s organized down to having a color coding system with his pens based on the difficulty and priority of his work. He’s the first one into the office and the last one out, and all the time in between is time he spends doing the best he possibly can.”

Roman laughs a little, and Logan finally feels his muscles relax, just the slightest bit. “I literally had to personally convince everyone to show up half an hour early today so we could beat him to being early. Basically, Logan is just a guy who really, really cares about what he does. There’s no one else I’d rather see at the top of this field.” Roman hesitates, glancing at Miss Katie-Lee. “Oh, um, not that you aren’t already doing a great—”

Miss Katie-Lee waves it off with a smile. “Thank you, Roman, that was more than sufficient. You can head back down to the fifth floor now.” Logan is still somewhere between numb and frozen as he watches Roman excuse himself, still processing the parade of compliments. He’d always assumed Roman merely tolerated his presence, since it would make being floormates easier than if they hated each other. Huh.

Shuffling the papers back into a neat pile, Miss Katie-Lee switches her gaze from the closing door to Logan. “Can I tell you a secret?” Logan nods, dumbfounded. “I already knew all that.” Logan blinks. “I’ve heard your praises sung by everyone in this building, from Mx. Oatmeal to Joy, to Micah at his resignation, all the way to the janitorial staff. They go out of their way to compliment how much easier you make their jobs, sticking around late to clean up after your floormates. To tell the truth, we’ve wanted to get you up here for a long while, but we just haven’t had an opening. A few transfers, a few drops, and now we find ourselves here.” Miss Katie-Lee folds her hands on the table, leaning in closer. “We want to start training you on level with Mr. Jolenta’s work.” Mr. Jolenta. Mx. Oatmeal’s boss. Logan feels more than a little light headed. “You would see an increase in pay, to be determined at a later date, as well as an increase in workload and hours. On the right path and at the right pace, I think we can get you where you want to go.” Logan nods dumbly, not completely processing her words. “So, what do you say?”

A million things race through Logan’s mind, each slipping out of his hands like an ice cube into boiling water when he tries to grab it. More pay. More hours. Less time with Virgil. A chance at the stars. A chance to move up. Time away from Virgil. Time away from home. Time, time, time. Never enough to give, never enough to take.

“I’d be happy to give you some time to consider—”

“I’m in,” Logan interrupts. His mouth didn’t even wait for his mind to decide, much less his heart. He’ll have to learn to get that under control.

“Well, we’re happy to have you on board,” Miss Katie-Lee says, standing and brushing off the front of her shirt. Logan shakes her hand firmly, thanking her for the opportunity and accepting a spotless new folder from her. He pulls the door shut as he leaves, determined to wait until he reaches his desk before looking at the papers.

The determination does not last longer than two minutes.

New benefits, new hours, new responsibilities, new calculation basics, new new new. The words and numbers and symbols flit around Logan’s mind, a deafening roar that blocks out the curiosity of his fellow fifth floor interns.

Can he call them his fellow interns anymore? He’ll have to ask Roman about that.

“So how’d it go?” Cassidy demands, slamming her hands on his desk and getting uncomfortably close to his face. Logan glances at Roman, whose face flushes pink when they make eye contact. He drops behind the partition.

“Spill it,” Alex adds, leaning on Logan’s chair. “It’s not like we didn’t notice that fancy new folder, or that almost smile on your face.”

Cassidy somehow manages to get even closer, and it’s a wonder Logan doesn’t flinch. “Stop the presses, Alex, I think that might be a genuine smile there.”

“Great Scott, she’s right! It’s a real smile! This is one for the papers, folks!”

Logan rolls his eyes and shakes his head good-naturedly, careful to keep the folder pinched shut. “Miss Katie-Lee just offered me a promotion, and Roman helped back up my credibility a little bit. It’s nothing major, really.”

“How high’s the promotion?” Roman’s voice asks. He’s still hiding behind the partition.

Logan glances around, well aware of the newer interns listening closely while doing a terrible job of pretending not to. “It, um, it’s on par with Mr. Jolenta?” It’s not a question, but he manages to make it one, anyway.

The floor is silent for a moment, two, as his words sink in. Alex breaks the silence first.

“Dude, nice!” This call is echoed across the floor, several voices tripping over each other to congratulate Logan. He nods, wearing a small smile and picturing how Virgil’s face will look when he shares the news. Or, wait, no, he’s supposed to be teaching Virgil how to make fettuccine alfredo tonight. That should obviously take precedence.

Then again, a promotion is pretty big. So is getting to cook with his boyfriend. Maybe he’ll tell him over dinner. Just imagining the look on Virgil’s face when he tells him is more than enough to double the size of Logan’s smile.

#labhwrites #mine #i'll bring you the moon #ibytm

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nextbigaiello · 5 years

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Count Floyd...Why Was He Just EVERYWHERE!?

Okay so like I should preface that I have no problem with Count Floyd. On the contrary. I actually love Count Floyd and the fact that SCTV news anchor Floyd Robertson was his alter ego. The two could’ve just been two separate Joe Flaherty characters that had the same name, but they actually went out of their way to make the connection, and I absolutely love that. I already loved Floyd and his clear superiority over Earl Camembert, and adding onto his character with another opposing side really upgraded him to one of my favorite characters in SCTV. Both are hilarious characters. Floyd’s straight and narrow need to mock Earl and just tell the news for the adults while trying to be a recovering alcoholic, and his switch to a goofy and child friendly who knows he’s shelling out shit on Saturday nights make the character more than just one note. It really makes me happy when they acknowledge that both Floyds are the same Floyd in universe. The first time was in the very first edition of Monster Chiller Horror Theatre (from series 1, episode 18), where it was clearly mentioned in the opening credits: "With Floyd Robertson as Count Floyd." During one newscast, Earl gave a heartfelt testimonial to Floyd who had been at Rolling Hills Rehabilitation Center for the past year, mentioning that in addition to his news career, he had delighted children for years as Count Floyd. Another was in the very last edition of SCTV News (from series 6, episode 17), where an obviously inebriated Robertson showed up late to the newscast after a Monster Chiller Horror Theatre taping, still wearing his Count Floyd makeup. During that broadcast, he announced that Monster Chiller Horror Theatre's sound engineer was retiring, thus completely upstaging Camembert's announcement that he was retiring from the newscast; which is my favorite moment of this. Floyd Robertson being Count Floyd was a favorite fun fact of mine. But, the two characters started to separate and one got more attention than the other.

Sure! As is to come with great characters! Count Floyd had a powerful personality that was much stronger than regular Floyd Robertson, who was typically just the straight man to Earl’s antics. It is to be expected that more extravagant and formulaic characters would be more popular and thus be used more often. There’s nothing wrong with this. It just personally saddens me in this particular case because I really liked that Floyd Robertson was Count Floyd and had another side to him that could be let loose, and they just kind of threw that away making me wonder why they would go out of their way to combine the two if one side was going to have more of a separate impact. I don’t know. But don’t think that I hated Count Floyd because of his popularity boost. No no. He was still great; with his werewolf howl that he had and I never noticed as to why a vampire would howl nor seemed to care until Joe Flaherty on a podcast decided to call everyone out for not realizing it and now I feel dumb.....thanks Joe. But Count Floyd and Monster Chiller Horror Theatre was great! But Count Floyd was used A LOT with other projects and I don’t know necessarily why.

In SCTV, it didn’t bother me that Count Floyd became his own entity and focused on Monster Chiller Horror Theatre and being scary more often. But it was when he spun off into other media that I started to wonder....why the hell is Count Floyd in this?

Count Floyd (1982):

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So this is a mini album....a VERY MINI ALBUM. There’s only four songs and they’re all strange. It's basically a comedy album and it sells that really well. I just don’t know exactly why they made it, especially in the height of SCTV. But prominent writers Dick Blasucci, Mike Short, and Paul Flaherty helped write and produce this with Joe, so there was some strength with this. It's just a strange little thing (literally) that kind of just escapes under the radar. If you want to check it out, go ahead. But don’t use it to nod off and get a lot of work done.

“The Weapon”, Rush (1984): https://youtu.be/iTBx0P0zOqA

Now I just stumbled on this today, but I feel like it should have a small mention. It’s not crazy like the other stuff I’ll talk about. In fact, its really cool and dope. It's interesting because this is just after SCTV, and we know Bob and Doug McKenzie were able to have Geddy Lee on their album in ‘81 due to Moranis knowing Lee from school, and we all know just how popular the McKenzies were and still kind of are. But Count Floyd had an opening video for the song “The Weapon” on Rush’s Signals and Grace Under Pressure tours, and it's a nice little fit. They use him well and it looks like everyone had fun.

The Completely Mental Misadventures Of Ed Grimley (1988)/ Cartoon Planet (90s): https://youtu.be/DcNi9qoaKqM

This is an interesting choice. Not a bad choice. Just an interesting one. The Completely Mental Misadventures Of Ed Grimley is really fun and weird and I highly recommend seeing it if you haven’t already. Even for an SCTV fan, it's very weird. Each episode actually pauses and takes time out to dedicate time to Count Floyd, which are live action segments against the cartoon world. It was no longer about scary movies and 3-D glasses, but a show about Count Floyd telling scary stories to an audience of kids who would mock him and tell him he wasn’t scary. But Count Floyd knew that the child friendly content wasn’t scary, and he always tried to make it sound scary so he could get paid.....that’s what his character was. But now he’s almost insulted now, when really the real Floyd could tell those kids to take a flying leap if he could. The reason for Count Floyd being on the show is because its Ed Grimley’s favorite show. Fair enough. I just think this starts a “Count Floyd is really just for kids” idea. Not that we wasn’t supposed to be something kids couldn’t watch, but Count Floyd and especially SCTV was something for all ages, and Count Floyd was meant as kind of a parody of those kinds of child friendly/spooky hosts from the 50s and 70s, so it wasn’t to be too sincere. But this started the trend of child friendly Count Floyd, and it would only go downhill from here.

Cartoon Planet just recycled the segments years later so they could have content. It features the characters from Space Ghost: Coast to Coast in a way that they’re trying to connect the two, but its clunky.

Making Real Funny Home Videos (1990): https://youtu.be/wLCDwrLCOVA

God this fucking thing-SO...I hate this. ‘Why’ is the biggest question I have for this. I don’t know the reasoning for this. All I know is that its dumb Count Floyd camp.

Basically what it is, is a “how to” style video in which Count Floyd....fully as Count Floyd, mugs to the camera for 30min and fails at teaching people how to make America’s Funniest Home Video videos. I’m annoyed by this VHS tape because this completely ruins the Floyd lore and makes Count Floyd this somewhat unstable and sad man. He has a full ass family; in SCTV he was “living with a girl and he wasn’t even married”, but also alluded to having a nephew. He never gets out of the character, and it kind of seems like he just kidnapped this family. Its less charming because this isn’t the same character from SCTV. This is a mad man who thinks he’s a vampire.

Look it isn’t the worst thing ever like I’m making it out to be. Its just character assassination in an extreme sense and its not even that funny. But I would at least check it out once if you want to see a strange little VHS score.

Smoke Detectives with Count Floyd (1990): https://youtu.be/2xb_My1HN6c

-_-

Must Be Santa (1999): https://youtu.be/1uXB9IR9vOw

A Canadian lifetime movie from 1999 has Count Floyd in it for a rough estimate of ten minutes. I also found this today. I skipped through it just so I could see how big a part he plays in the movie, and again....he doesn’t. The reason he’s there is because the main character’s name is Floyd Count, and the North Pole or whatever tries to do research on him because he’s like the new Santa, but Count Floyd shows up on the monitor instead and won’t shut the fuck up. It is a dumb cameo because its probably to be expected that they called the main character Floyd Count just so they could make this joke. But Count Floyd doesn’t do anything except howl and do intros to Monster Chiller Horror Theatre. A small cameo, but a dumb one nonetheless.

“Nightlife”, The Wet Secrets (2014): https://youtu.be/zYV1K3wyCnQ

It took a while, but this is a really good Count Floyd cameo. Well, I shouldn’t say its a Count Floyd cameo, more that its actually a Joe Flaherty cameo in which he plays a vampire. The music video is really cool and I appreciate it on a greater level because it kind of shows the difference between the past and the present and getting older, and how everything sucks, and especially that Joe Flaherty doesn’t need all this youthful shit that we have now. It's a really great video and song, and the end of the video gets me every time!

A Conclusion

Count Floyd is a really great character. I love his howl, his painted on widows peak, and his desire to sell kids cheap 3-D glasses for a stupidly large price. I love the fact that he was this alter ego to his staunch opposite, and the two could coexist together. I’m just annoyed that there were too many changes to cash in on popularity. If Count Floyd and Floyd Robertson were still the same person, Count Floyd wouldn't have been in those kid oriented projects. Because I like to think that Floyd Robertson has dignity (I mean as much as he can being an alcoholic). I like to think that Joe Flaherty is above this, and I think my grievances mostly stem from that.

No one talks about Joe Flaherty in the same sense of every other cast member from SCTV or the Second City stage. Sure hardcore comedy people will regale him as comedy gold, but that’s because he is. But there’s only so much I can take when I can only describe him to people as the dad from Freaks and Geeks and the “Jackass” guy from Happy Gilmore. And I’m not discrediting those roles at all. I love Freaks and Geeks and the part he plays in the show, I just wanted him to do more with that show! And Happy Gilmore is a really good movie and I actually really like that he’s given a somewhat big role in it. Joe Flaherty just flies under the radar for most people and it makes me sad. Especially when a lot of movies he does get to be a part of, they’re usually shit (Dogmatic, A Pig’s Tale, Home On The Range), or no one has ever heard of them or acknowledges him in the small role he plays (Going Berserk, Stripes, Snowboard Academy, Used Cars, Back To The Future Part II, etc..). Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird is my favorite movie of all time (sharing the #1 spot with My Blue Heaven) and Joe Flaherty is a big reason as to why that movie is continuously great. I just wish he got more recognition, and had film and tv roles that weren’t so cheap. He’s a comedy icon, and I want him to be treated as such. Count Floyd was a great character for him, but so was Floyd Robertson...and Guy Caballero...and Sammy Maudlin...and Norman Gorman, and Big Jim McBob, and so many others!

In the end, I just want Joe Flaherty and his creations to be cherished fondly. I want the character of Count Floyd to be the same Floyd from the very beginning with no hang ups and children to kick him while he’s down. Because then I know that comedy can still be just as funny throughout the years without aggressive changes that shoots for too low or too general an audience. Everyone can laugh at Count Floyd trying to describe the plot to the lost footage of “Blood Sucking Monkeys From West Mifflin Pennsylvania”, but I can’t say the same for adult child Count Floyd. To take from Guy Caballero and his wheelchair, all Count Floyd needs is some respect.

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zydrateacademy · 6 years

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Review: Conan Exiles

Quick disclaimer; I’ve only played single player with some interest in coop. I’ve yet to attempt open servers. As a result, I probably haven’t run into the more annoying stock of communities like purges and raids. I’ve played alone, modded, and at my own speed; that may color how I see this game. I’m okay with this. Let’s talk about Skyrim for a moment. Yes, it’s relevant. Do you all remember the first five to ten hours you played it? You were still weak, dealing with iron and steel swords and slashing your way through new caverns and dungeons while scrounging every bit of material you could for your smithing skill. Everything was new and different, and every new playthrough with a different race or weapon type. Then something happens. Several hours in, your smithing and sneak is 75+, you’re level 40 on Expert Difficulty one-shotting every bandit in every dungeon because you took a couple of very specific perks that make the entire game a cakewalk. Or you used alchemy to hilariously boost your stats in the several hundreds or thousands and now your armor rating is at a complete maximum and you’re doing sixty times melee damage on sneak attacks. At a certain point, Skyrim gameplay becomes less about mechanics and just about exploration. However, Exiles basically takes those first few hours and expands them across the entire experience. I get a bit of a Skyrim meets ARK and a lesser used comparison is that I’m honestly getting an Assassin’s Creed: Origins vibe, if nothing else certainly the aesthetics. Large sandy dunes and mountains with spotty greenery and oases, and I’m pretty sure I have an identical screenshot of climbing up a red mountain. My exile and Bayek would probably get along.

For whatever reason, I find Exiles to be a bit more accessible than ARK ever was. I think it’s perhaps the single player admin menu which if ARK has I have never found. Through it you’re able to manipulate things to an insane degree, like ten times the amount of experience and resource gain, as well as modifying how much damage you do and enemies take. I went through a largely unaffected run (though I did bump my experience up to 2X) the first time around and that sucked me in for several hours. In future games, I made it a little easier on myself with quality of life workshop mods including upping armor durability and reducing boss health pools. That last one might sound like a cheat, but when they have up to 30,000 health and I’m alone in the world, lowering it down to 10,000 or something makes the experience a LOT more bearable. I’m not saying ARK does not have these features (it does have workshop support) but it just wasn’t nearly as compelling as Exiles, which does in fact have a story contrary to what some reviews claim.

You start the game creating your character and get a randomized set of “crimes” which can include anything from punching a camel to lewd acts with corpses. It ranged wildly and there’s quite a list that can be quite comical, though the game itself is largely void of humor. Conan himself shows up to remove you from the cross and the game dumps you in a desert road, entirely naked and scrounging for fibers, rocks, and branches; all the things you’ll need to quickly craft a set of clothes and basic tools. The story doesn’t really hold your hand, nor does it tell you what to do. There are runestones dotted around the land that give you snippets and clues. The idea is that you have a magical slave bracelet that’s holding you in what is literally called “The Exiled Lands”, which is the whole area of the map you’re in. Go too far, and you’ll find a green shield that will automatically kill you. What’s involved in this is finding a large variety of bosses and McGuffins that will eventually remove the curse of the bracelet and allow your exile to leave.

That’s the basis of your presence in this strange world. What happens after that point is really up to you. Since you can hardly take on an undead dragon right out of the gate, you pretty much engage in the usual ARK/Minecraft flare. Build a house, hunt animals for hide, and generally spend a lot of time working your way up.

Eventually I found that I had the most fun when I had a decent set of medium armor and a good stock of weapons that I could repair on the fly and that allowed me to make various expeditions outside the comfort zone of what people call the “newbie river”, the southern-most landscape that offer you the most resources within a reasonable travel time. I eventually made it to the Hinterlands where I was able to harvest heavier leathers for better armors, which in turn allowed me to travel farther and take on more intimidating enemies. As you’d expect, you have to manage some resources including hunger, thirst, heat and weight. Thirst can be fairly easy to manage if you’re hanging around the southern portions of the map. Hunger isn’t too bad, and weight I’ve modded out entirely, which I’ll justify shortly. Beyond that there’s a full listing of RPG elements with various perks and stats you can acquire as you level up. In an unmodded game you can only max out a couple so in multiplayer or co-op games you may want to split roles between survivors, gatherers, and combatants. The most fun I’ve had in this game is just the unrestrained exploring, which for me has only been with the help of some workshop mods. I got an insane encumbrance mod early in my career because once I acquired a legit “decent” set of armor, my weight was at 70% regardless of how much stuff I tried to store away. Even in my most purist playthroughs, that mod will always remain. I am less irritated with weight in the likes of Skyrim because I typically have fast travel and stores to sell my crap to, but here I do not have that convenience. Fast travel in Exiles is possible but more of a mid- to end-game perk once you explore enough of the map. There’s a bunch of obelisks you can purify and then travel to through a map room, of which I haven’t done a lot of research and I’m not sure where to find that. As it stands, everything you need you have to get on foot. No horses, no mounts, just hauling all the ass.

The lack of fast travel is indeed a late-game annoyance. Alongside that are a variety of bugs that you’ll come across for a post Early-Access game. I’ve found that engaging in combat within certain variables will have me and the NPC I’m fighting just... sorta flail at each other for a bit. Neither of us take damage, and I noticed that it is because we had some buildings and terrain above us. I lured them out and now we both took damage again. Speaking of, the combat leaves a lot to be desired. It gives me Origins vibes again with some blocking, dodging and health bars. However there’s absolutely no lock-on and hit detection is very wonky when I try to do some light attacks right next to a crocodile only for them to miss entirely. I had to back up and try again and it would work. This happens about twenty percent of the time, depending on my attack. Conversely, a heavy spear attack always hits my enemy.

Some enemies also have knockback effects. I’d be fighting basic bird type enemies and they’d reel in, walk towards me and I’d be knocked over. Apparently they’re “charging” but they don’t go faster than walk speed and thus are difficult to detect. Maybe that’s my fault but it’s just a bit annoying. I also find base building to be vaguely irritating and I find myself doing the ol’ Fallout 4 thing of turning on god mode (in this game, admin mode), getting unlimited resources and at least starting with the basic shape of the building that I want. I’ve only resorted to that once in my ~5 playthroughs and my next semi-purist play will try to be a little more conservative and patient. Patience is really the key here if you want to get the most out of the game. I’ve tried rushing towards the revered “Star Metal” for the endgame gear but found myself perfectly content with some normally crafted heavy stuff, or light armor if I want to dodge enemies more often. Exiles is kind of a slow burn at first but once you find an established area with decent walking distance to most forms of resource, you’re probably in good shape. My experience shined when I was in expedition mode, treating every corner as a new experience. Maybe in a few hundred hours nothing in this game will be new to me, but for now all I can do is stare wide-eyed at the world before me.

#Conan Exiles #Conan the Barbarian #Conan #Gaming #PC Gaming #Survival RPg

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umbralreactor · 6 years

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Bermuda Triangle Coral Stride

Chouchou Headliner, Labria: G-Persona, so you can use it twice at most, but you'd probably only use it once. Not terrible, and you can't get full performance out of it because you aren't using Chouchous, but I could see an argument for "if you have a hand ful of garbage, this lets you send it back to the deck and try again." Not compelling enough for me to use this, mind you, but it's there.

Chouchou, Lillinel: On hit, pick a rearguard and you can either bounce it, or send it to the bottom of the deck and draw two cards. Not terrible, but you can't get full value since Chouchous typically give you benefits when they Gear Chronicle themselves and we don't have those here. Plus, the most likely use case for the non-Coral strides in this deck is "I ran out of Corals," in which case it's probably late enough in the game that an on-hit threat from your vanguard is meaningless, because they can't afford to let it hit anyway. Pass.

Duo Idol Emperal, Kuna: On hit, show your opponent two cards, get a second copy of one of them. You aren't going to get the countercharge because you don't have room to get enough Duos to make it remotely reliable, but it can be nice to provide some on-hit threat and maybe clone a card. But Kuna's on-hit isn't much of a threat for the same reason that Lillinel's isn't, so it gets the same verdict.

Festal Final, Final Priscilla: The GB8 finisher. Depending on how many Corals you have in the soul, it is entirely possible for this to not be as good as Frontier Star Coral, but if you already used those up, and are in GB8, this can work quite well. If your cards do stuff when you call them, so much the better!

Fluffy Ribbon, Somni: On hit, bounce something and call something and give it +3k. But it has the same problem Lillinel and Kuna, so Somni gets to hang out with them in the Not Included In This Deck Club.

Legend of the Glass Shoe, Amoris: On stride, bounce two. Boring and not super relevant.

Lucky Rise, Elprina: Basically Amoris. The bad news is that you have to pay for it via SB1, the good news is that because it's an ACT and not an AUTO, you can get some use out of it even if you stride into it with an empty field. Unfortunately, it has the same "bouncing stuff is not super relevant" issue that Amoris does.

Perfect Performance, Ange: This one is a little more expensive at CB2, but hell, you can afford it. It also has a nice use in that it lets you get around Lock, because it lets you bounce stuff in anything other than the vanguard circle, which means you can bounce stuff in locked circles. Plus it can swing for titanic numbers, and it'll probably get a bonus drive check to boot. Also worth noting is that this one actually has GB2, and of the Strides under considearation, this is the only one that does.

School Etoile, Olyvia: This was printed back when putting actual Generation Break icons on strides wasn't done for some reason, so even though this is basically GB2, it doesn't say GB2, so Layla won't give her another critical. Anyway, as for its merits, I think that in the context of this deck, it's a less good Frontier Star. Frontier Star powers herself up, lets you call two cards anywhere you want, soul charges, can flip anything it wants, is more flexible in what it lets you bounce, and is compatible with Aurora's stride skill. Which is not to say that Olyvia has no point, mind you, because Frontier Star won't put in full work if you didn't flip a Frontier Star via other methods already. So if your opponent gets the first Stride and you G-Guard, you can go into Olyvia right away, when the critical is relevant, and quality of hit still matters. This will slow down going into Frontier Star, though, so it's a judgement call if you want to do this, or even run the card at all.

Okay, so those are the relevant Bermuda strides. But that's not all the relevant strides period, because there's the Cray Elementals, and of course the Ultimate Stride. Megiddo is pretty good in the right deck, but I think it needs to be a deck that gives some sort of relevant stride bonus. Without that, then the best case scenario you're going for is "vanguard swings for 36k, then you get five rearguard attacks for 16k each (plus whatever triggers you got)." Which is nice, but again, Frontier over Aurora can pull that off pretty well, and it doesn't nuke your G-Zone in the process. Megiddo lets you call from the drop zone, but overall I don't think it's worth it in this deck. So let's move on to the Cray Elementals, once more skipping the irrelevant ones, but there's only four so I won't do the whole list thing. Heat Element, Merindol is an okay substitute if you can't get Arcadia Star Coral, Air Element, Sebreeze doesn't matter because even if the upcoming change to how Stride works didn't make it irrelevant this deck has nothing with Generation Break in it anyway, Miracle Element, Atmos should be skipped because if you've got Corals you should use them, and if you've already used them up then you should be using Snow Element, Blizza to swing for titanic numbers (and Blizza can also be a passable desperation "flip a Frontier Star" card, although you can just use a friggin' Frontier Star when you get down to it). Obviously, that's only twelve cards, so that means there's four left, which obviously are going to be the G-Guards. There's six to choose from (actually eight, but two of them require Chouchous we don't have), so let's get on with the list.

Blessed Sparkle, Sandy: The Super G-Guard, and it has an associated heal trigger, so I guess if you're using that heal may as well use this, maybe? It can guard for huge, but you have to be in GB1 and flip another G-Guard face up, so unless you're using Luxury Wave, Elly (or reasonably confident you won't be using all your G-Guards), I'd be careful with this one. Big guarding, though.

Chouchou, Palffy: A standard "hit the condition, get +5k shield" card, only notable because the condition is "have three or more cards in hand" and it came out well after the first wave of G-Guards. Pretty solid, and probably worth using, because Coral's got more drawing power than you'd think.

Hand in Hand, Leona: Bounce something, call something to guard, and if it's the same name as what you bounced then it gets +5k shield. I could see running it if you think you'll be calling triggers, or if you want to get extra guard value out of your interceptors, or heck, even use it to get some defense out of grade 3s. On the whole, though, I'm kind of eh.

Highest Society, Citron: Throw down a G1 or G0 and this guards for 25k instead of 15k, so it's pretty nice if you don't have a perfect guard but do have a fistful of triggers, or if there's some effect preventing the use of perfect guards.

Luxury Wave, Elly: The fact that this gets bigger with every sentinel and copy of itself makes me think it's meant for use with Transcend Idol, Aqua. The fact that you can SB1 to turn it face down after use makes me think it's also meant for use with Attractive Glow, Sandy, the grade 2 that can be pitched as a heal to G-Guard. We're using Aqua, but not Sandy. So I think this one is pretty nice, although the "turn it face down" part is probably not going to see much use, unless you're running Sandy as a G-Guard.

Sailor's Medly, Nasha: The original G-Guard. Show something with the same grade as a unit on your field and this gets +5k, which isn't very exciting. How reliable it is compared to Palffy is up for debate, though, because this requires specific cards you may not have, and Palffy requires you to have three cards and you may not, so eh.

So, what G-Guards to use? You can just roll with whatever's on hand, but if you're looking for something specific, I'd lean towards Elly, with maybe a Sandy. But if you're doing this, I'd say that Elly should be either "three with a Sandy," "four of it," or "don't bother." She benefits from multiples of herself, after all. So here's the deck, then.

4 x Aurora Star, Coral (Stride Bonus version)

4 x Shangri-La Star, Coral

4 x Shiny Star, Coral

4 x Active Pink, Larana

3 x Light Blue Heartbeat, Myrtoa

4 x Fresh Star, Coral

6 x Transcend Idol, Aqua

4 x Admire Successor, Lyrica

4 x Little Pride, Honoka

4 x Chouchou, Roberta

4 x critical of your choice

4 x Chouchou, Milena if you can swing it, but any heal will do.

1 x Angelic Star, Coral

And for the G-Zone, we've got:

4 x Arcadia Star, Coral

4 x Frontier Star, Coral

1 x Perfect Performance, Ange

1 x Festal Finale, Final Priscilla

2 x School Etoile, Olyvia

4 x Luxury Wave, Elly

And that's how and why I rebuilt my Coral deck. Pretty different from the last one, eh?

#Cardfight!! Vanguard #Bermuda Triangle #I wonder how many cryptid and mystery fans that last tag will bring in by accident

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softforimjaebum · 6 years

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nodus tollens | i.

chapter 1 : the wedding planner

Im Jaebum x OFC

Word Count: 3.2k

Genre: Angst

Summary: Where Jaebum meets the woman who will plan his wedding.

Author’s Note: Oh look, I’m not dead!!! But seriously, I’ve been absent for what I feel like has been way too long. I’ve been here, but not posting new stuff which sucks. BUT, anyway, the first chapter of a new series, a series I am hell-bent on finishing. I hope you enjoy this, and thanks for reading!

Jaebum’s photos by Match Point

Prologue

6 Months to Wedding

Jaebum and his fiancé, Sooyoung, sat in the waiting room of one of the wedding planning companies they were visiting that day, Sooyoung clutching tightly onto his hands. Fairy tale weddings were really not his thing, but it meant the world to her, and so here he was.

Three weeks ago, Jaebum had asked his long-time girlfriend to marry him. He wasn’t exactly sure if he believed in the institution of marriage, but according to society, he was at the right age to get married. After all he was twenty-six now, had a successful career in music, he had been dating Sooyoung for four years. His parents highly approved of her, as did his friends and colleagues. So natural progression was to ask her to marry him.

He wasn’t known to be a romantic man, so after weeks of his mother persuading him and telling him that this is how life went, he had popped the question in their living room, with simple words, and she had said yes before Jaebum really had the chance to think about what he was doing.

When he had put the ring on her finger, she had cried and hugged him, and Jaebum wished he felt more in that moment than he did. It was so mundane to him, like just another day. He wasn’t bursting at the seams with happiness, as naive an idea as that might have seemed for the day he asked a woman to marry him. Even with all his practicality, he wasn’t beyond his fantasies of feeling overwhelming love for someone.

“Hello, I’m Clove, I’m so sorry to keep you waiting”

Jaebum looked up at a girl walking into the room, her short hair styled in loose curls, wearing a satin white shirt tucked into some dress pants. She looked short, even with the heels she had on. He recognised the name, it was the same one he had been given when he’d made an appointment to come see them.

“Oh don’t worry about it” Sooyoung spoke before Jaebum had the chance to. “Nice to meet you, I’m Sooyoung”

Sooyoung got up to shake her hand, and then pointed down to Jaebum. “And this is my fiancé, Jaebum. He’s the one who called your office”

Clove smiled as Jaebum got off the sofa to shake her hand.

“You look like a lovely couple” she complimented, and Jaebum had to stop himself from actually rolling his eyes.

How typical, he thought. She was trying to flatter them, and by the looks of it, Sooyoung was buying it.

Clove led them to what looked like a meeting room, asking them to take a seat and what they would like to drink. These meetings were long and tedious, and there were four more to go before they could select one. Just the thought made Jaebum tired. So Jaebum decided having a coffee wouldn’t be an awful choice while Sooyoung stuck to water, her wedding diet was already in action.

“So, I was told the wedding is in six months?” Clove asked them, looking over what appeared to be notes scribbled down in her notepad.

“Yes” Sooyoung and Jaebum chimed in together, and Clove smiled at how adorable the couple was, or well, at least at the adoring look on Sooyoung’s face as she looked over to her fiancé.

There was something off about Im Jaebum, and Clove couldn’t quite figure it out. But if she got the job, she was sure she would find out sooner than later. Not many men who accompanied their fiancés were as excited as their partners but not many of them looked as disinterested and aloof as Jaebum looked either.

Clove stopped herself from thinking about his demeanour before it distracted her even more, and looked down at her notepad, pretending to look at her notes again when in reality she was recollecting her thoughts. She really needed to get a grip on her problem of being too involved with what didn’t concern her.

“Well, people start planning even earlier, but then again, there are so many people come to us with four weeks till the wedding expecting us to give them fairy tale weddings…” pausing to smile up at them. “Look, I’ll be honest. Six months can sometimes still be a less time depending on what kind of a wedding you want, so let’s start there. Give me a basic idea of how you want your wedding to be and I’ll quip in with how we can make it happen”

Jaebum felt unnerved by this woman in front of him, and he didn’t understand why. She hadn’t even said anything to him…maybe that was a part of why he felt like this. She had barely addressed him while she had spoken, its like she could see right through Jaebum’s facade of actually caring about how grand and put together his wedding was. She focused on making his fiancé happy, the one who truly cared about this wedding.

“Well, I have a couple of pictures from my parents’ wedding and I would love to have a wedding similar to theirs” Sooyoung said, pulling up the photos to show Clove.

Sooyoung’s parents’ wedding had been a simple, yet gorgeous event. The pictures, even with old cameras that couldn’t really capture the beauty of it, had turned out stunning. Ever since Sooyoung had been 6 years old, she wanted her own wedding to be similar to her parents’ wedding. Jaebum had heard about it non-stop ever since he had popped the question.

Sooyoung pulled up the photos she had of her parents’ wedding on her phone, passing it along to Clove who scribbled down some notes as she saw the pictures.

“Your mother’s dress is so stunning” Clove noticed, much to the delight of Sooyoung. “You should take inspiration from it when you start the shopping”

“You think so too? I was talking to Jaebum about it just the other day”

Clove smiled at Sooyoung, warm and kind, and it made Jaebum wonder if he was the only person who didn’t understand the concept of getting married. Of course a wedding planner would be excited about such things, it meant more business for them, but Clove’s smile was so warm it felt like she was truly excited for the couple. It made things entirely difficult for Jaebum, who wanted nothing but to categorise her into a box somehow.

Half an hour later, after being pretty ceremoniously ignored by Clove, their meeting was done.

“Well, I’ll get my team to send you some rough sketches of the ideas I have, and if you like them, we’ll get to work on them immediately” Clove said, extending a hand to Sooyoung to shake.

“I don’t think I need to see the rough sketches. I’ll be honest with you, you’re the first planner who I’ve met today who isn’t boring beyond words. I like you, and I like your enthusiasm for making this a fairytale for the bride. So how about you sit down with Jaebum and discuss the contracts sometime later this week?” Sooyoung suggested.

Jaebum didn’t know what came over his fiancé. She was usually a lot more calm and collected than making hasty decisions like this. Sooyoung’s sudden decision had left Jaebum unprepared to do anything but nod along to her words.

Clove smiled at them, and Jaebum saw a flicker of uncertainty pass through her eyes before she caged herself once again; warm, smiling and presentable.

“Are you sure about that?” she asked Sooyoung. “I mean, its a great ego boost for me, but I’ll give the two of a little time before we make any hasty decisions”

With that, Clove left the two lovers alone in the meeting room.

“What’s gotten into you, Sooyoung? We have plans to meet 4 more wedding planners, one more famous than the other, and you already want to settle?” Jaebum enquired.

“I’m telling you, babe. She’s the one. Just trust me on this, okay?”

And it was decided; Clove was to be their wedding planner. Jaebum didn’t put up much of a fight after Sooyoung’s words. To the world it would seem he was a doting boyfriend, but in reality, he was glad he didn't have to sit through any more of these meetings. Clove set up a date for the next Monday for them to meet and discuss the contracts as well as get a rough idea as to what Clove’s proposition for the wedding looked like.

Jaebum wasn't entirely looking forward to the second part of their meeting, he would rather let Sooyoung handle those while he handled the contracts but she wouldn’t be in town for the next two weeks, and the planning couldn't just be put on a hold for that long; which gave Jaebum no choice but to endure it.

Clove set their meeting up in a cozy coffee shop, tucked away in a quieter corner of the city where Jaebum wouldn’t be recognised and they could work without disruption of any kind.

Jaebum reached the address she had texted him, right on time, and asked the barista for her, like she had told him to do. The barista showed him to a corner of the cozy shop where Clove was already set up with her folders, busy typing away at her laptop as he approached her.

She was surprised when he cleared his throat to drive her attention away from her laptop.

“You’re on time” she said, re-checking the time on her phone.

“I like to be punctual”

Clove hummed, a thoughtful sound laced with surprise. It left Jaebum curious, wanting to know more about why her tone was the way it was.

“What? I can’t be punctual?” he asked, despite his brain telling him this wasn’t the time or place for this, neither was this any of his business. She could think whatever she wanted of him, it never should’ve bothered him.

“Ah, its not that. In my experience, not many people are. Its…refreshing, really, for a famous person to be on time and respect that my time also has value”

Clove’s reply startled him. He didn’t expect her to be so blunt with her client, most people would kiss his ass while planning a wedding for him but he could already tell she wasn’t going to be one of them.

“Really don’t like to sugarcoat things, do you?” he laughed quietly as he sat down across from her.

Clove shrugged. “I didn't think you would want to hear sugarcoated things”

“And how would you know that?”

She paused, taking a long at him before looking back at her laptop. “I do my research on the people I’m going to be working for. It always helps to know what they like…and more specifically what they don’t”

Jaebum didn't respond, settling to nod at her before ordering himself coffee.

The first half an hour of their conversation was purely about the contract, the money they were willing to spend on the wedding, the payment to the company, the commission Clove would get and what all duties she would have.

“Ah, contracts are so boring, let’s move on”

Clove gathered all the papers, filing them neatly into a folder and then dug through her bag, yanking out a much thicker folder. Jaebum groaned inwardly, knowing exactly what it was. The folder already had materials peaking out of the sides and if he squinted enough he could make out the vague photos amongst the papers. He knew what this folder was because Sooyoung had a very similar planner.

This was the wedding folder.

As she opened the folder, Jaebum could see the print outs of Sooyoung’s parents’ wedding. She had put up in the front, as if to remember the inspiration. The rest of the folder was extremely organised. Jaebum could now clearly see the tabs that ran along the side, neatly marked as location, bride, groom, catering, florist and so on. She flipped onto the location page, turning the folder and pushing it to the middle of the table.

“So Sooyoung gave me a vague idea of the places she had short-listed to host the wedding in, and based on that, I drew these up. Look through, tell me if there is something that strikes out to you, something you particularly like or dislike”

Jaebum looked down, studying the first one.

“I didn’t know wedding planners were into sketching out their venue decorations” Jaebum said out of curiosity. He wasn’t exactly expecting this.

“It helps me out, and I noticed early on that it helps the brides and grooms out too, so why not?”

Jaebum flipped a page. There was no doubt she was really good at what she did. The more he studied her sketches, and the more sketches he looked at, he saw how detail oriented she was. What stuck out to him was the sketch of a canopy of flowers, Jaebum guessed it was for the alter, it extremely delicate and simple, yet fitting with every sketch she had made. It was all so brilliantly put together.

“These are really good. How do you manage to make this shit actually seem interesting?” Jaebum said, awestruck, despite his usual numbness towards cliched wedding things like the ones sketched out in front of him.

Clove laughed, and Jaebum’s heart sped up. It was like music to his ears, and he wasn’t sure why he was suddenly itching to compose. He hadn’t been struck with inspiration like that in a long time.

“Thank you, I guess? Anything in particular you would like to keep?”

And just like that, Jaebum’s excitement was gone. This was his wedding they were planning. He just wanted to get it over with, let Sooyoung take care of this planning business. Jaebum wasn’t sure if his sudden disinterest was evident on his face, but he tried to mask it anyway by flipping through the sketches again.

He frowned at them, scrutinising, finding things that seemed unnecessary to him. Why was there a need for any of the fancy flowers and equally fancy drapes? Suddenly the sketches didn’t give him the feeling of awe any longer.

“Um, I like the canopy” Jaebum spoke, still looking down, avoiding her questioning gaze. He felt a weird anxiety at the thought of the wedding, even more so at the thought of spending his life with a person, of having to share his space, his entire life with someone else.

Clove stayed quiet, studying him. His colourful aura was gone, replaced with something much more grey and dull. When he had come in today, he felt different. She questioned her initial judgement of him, wondering if it was just an off day for him the first time they’d met. But it was back; the disinterest, the void in his aura.

“You could at least pretend to be interested” Clove said, quietly smiling. “Don’t worry about these, I’ll take up the decor with Sooyoung when she comes back”

“No- its not that, I just…-”

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t care, I’m no one to judge you” Clove shrugged. In reality, she cared; about people and their stories and their reasons for being who they were. She cared too much, and she cared about the wrong set of people. It was a habit she probably should work on getting out of. But Jaebum didn't need to know any of that.

Somehow her tone gave her away. She was saying she didn’t care but her tone was saying she cared. She wondered why his excitement was gone, why he wasn’t interested.

“I don’t understand fancy weddings” Jaebum said, pausing a moment before reframing his sentence, “Actually, I don’t understand the institution of marriage at all”

That was an understatement. Jaebum didn’t see a point to much, let alone a marriage and a fancy wedding. He was boring like that, unromantic, people who really knew him knew that. There was a time when it bugged him, his emotions being so dull while others felt their emotions with such a fire inside them. But he had gotten used to it, accepted his dullness.

“Oh”

Clove was surprised. She expected him to say something like he wasn't interested in girly things like this but this, this she understood. Jaebum watched her carefully, looking out for signs of what was going on in her head.

She looked up at him, her eyes soft and warm, almost melting away the walls that Jaebum surrounded his thoughts with. It made Jaebum feel uneasy. He wasn’t used to people melting his walls, let alone someone who was practically a stranger. He hadn’t even ever told Sooyoung about this.

“I don’t believe in marriages either” she confessed when she noticed Jaebum getting uncomfortable. And then she watched the look of surprise on his face as he processed her words. She could almost see his aura coming back, full of life and colours, as warm as a hot chocolate on a particularly cold day.

“A wedding planner who doesn't believe in marriages?” he asked, beyond amused at her.

“That’s me, yup!” she laughed, knowing the irony in that statement.

She intrigued Jaebum. Everything about her seemed to draw him in.

“Why do you do this work then?” he asked. He wondered if she secretly hated her job, if she just ended up doing this because there was nothing else, or if she found joy in doing work that she hated.

“Because I love it” she said, shrugging at his question.

Jaebum raised his eyebrows at her, questioning and curious.

“I’m sorry you’ve completely lost me. How can you love planning weddings when you don’t even believe in marriages?”

“Planning a wedding has nothing to do with my beliefs though. I see my job as a way to help people. There are people lucky enough to have the faith and the hope of still believing in marriages, and if they want their fairytale and why wouldn’t I want to help them with that?”

Jaebum stayed quiet, mulling over her words. He had to admit, it was a beautiful and unique way to think.

When he stayed quiet, she elaborated. “I admire people who have still have faith in that system. Like Sooyoung, I’m jealous that I can never have the faith she has if I’m honest with you”

She was staring off into the crowd in the small cafe, her mind drifting off elsewhere. And Jaebum looked at her, really looked at her, noticing how she fiddled with her phone when she was thinking, how there was an air of sadness around her when she spoke. He wondered if she ever felt as trapped as he did by the society, by his life and the people in it.

But before he could ask her anything, she snapped back into reality; the trance broken.

“I’m sorry” she said, shaking her head, trying to reason with her, to get herself back on track. He could see her realising she had said too much, gone farther than she wanted to, as if she had stepped across a line she drew for herself.

“Anyway, I should be going now. I’ll have my office contact you when the official papers are ready for you to sign” Clove said, quickly shutting the folder off and stuffing it in her bag.

Jaebum nodded, not sure if she even acknowledged his agreement, before she was practically running out the door.

#jaebum angst #got7 angst #7ornevernet #ahgasenet #jaebum imagines #got7 imagines #jaebum scenarios #got7 scenarios #got7 fanfic #jaebum fanfic #jaebum #got7 #im jaebum angst #im jaebum imagines #im jaebum scenarios

154 notes · View notes

chaos-weekly · 3 years

Text

"you gotta keep livin’ man. L-I-V-I-N.”

The bar was supposed to be Imogen’s safe place. No one that she knew from LA ever came in, mostly because the people in her lawyer life frequented classy, expensive city bars rife with celebrities, not highway exit trucker bars. This was exactly what Imogen wanted, though. She wanted to lead this double life, top notch lawyer during the week and truck stop bartender on the weekend.

She liked her life more Friday to Sunday than she did Monday to Thursday. Her clients at the bar were full of color, life, and stories. They treated her like a daughter, or a sister if they were young enough. Her clients at her law firm were pieces of cardboard-- no personality, nothing exciting to talk about. Their lives consisted of making money, staying in the limelight, and being in relationships with attractive people who boosted their own fame. Trying to maintain conversations with them was the most challenging thing in the world.

Weekends were supposed to be her time to recharge and get away, which was why seeing Xander at the end of the bar made Imogen want to shrink away. Sure, there was another bartender on duty, but he was on her half. Besides, he would see her anyway, and Imogen figured it would be much less awkward to get the introduction out of the way now rather than it come up if they ran into each other in the future.

“Hey,” she said, nodding and leaning on the bar across from him. He looked like he was having a rough night, but she decided against saying anything. Bartender Imogen was much more casual, more relaxed. “Need a drink? First one’s on the house.”

Xander looked up, recognizing her instantly. Surprisingly, amusement wasn’t one of the emotions in his eyes. Maybe he was too drained to find this funny.

“Yeah, a cosmo sounds good,” he muttered, resting his chin on the table.

“Consider it done.” She moved behind the bar, getting all of her ingredients. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

“It’s because I’ve never been here before,” he replied, sitting up slightly to talk to her. “I was on a drive, needed to clear my head. I saw this bar and thought, ‘Perfect, I won’t see anyone I know here. I need a drink.’ Guess I was wrong.” But he shrugged, not seeming too upset. Imogen supposed that out of all the people he could have accidentally run into, he was glad it was just her.

“I thought I was the only one who thought driving was the best way to clear your head,” Imogen said, smiling. “There’s something about being on an empty highway at night that makes you feel independent, in control. Free.”

“Most nights, yeah.”

This is where Imogen’s people reading skills came in handy. As a bartender and a lawyer, you needed to know when to step back, when to press, and what questions to ask when you made the big step. Huh. Maybe her two jobs weren’t so opposite after all.

Xander wasn’t exactly clamming up and his body language seemed somewhat comfortable. But she didn’t want to press about the issues of the evening, especially considering her legal advice was what had spurred them on.

She’d take a different route.

“I started working at this bar three years ago,” Imogen said, pouring the cosmo into a glass and sliding it across the bar to him. “I’d spent the first six months out of law school at the office slaving over cases. Come December, I was so burnt out that I didn’t think I could keep up. I went back home for Christmas and spent a lot of time with my dad playing tennis. It’s funny, I didn’t even know he played tennis because he’s always playing golf with other politicians and connections, but he does. He spends most of his time at the court on weekends. Sometimes my mom goes.”

A regular sidled up to the bar and sat in her section, greeting her with a toothless: “Howdy, Immy!” She noticed Xander smile at this interaction and took this as a cue that it was okay to put the conversation on hold. With a nod, Imogen got her customer’s regular drink, a Budweiser in a cold glass, and brought it to him, staying momentarily to chat about his route, his maniac boss, his wife, and his adorable grandkids.

“I gotchu anotha’ picture for the wall,” he said, pulling a folded up picture of his newest grandbaby from his wallet. “Nine pounds and fo’ ounces. Looks just like her grandma.” He was beaming, and Imogen smiled, looking fondly at the picture. She loved the childless life, but hell, she had crazy baby fever.

“She’s beautiful,” Imogen replied, hanging the picture up on the back wall of the bar. It was filled from top to bottom with pictures of their staff and regulars-- themselves, their friends, their families. It had been going on way before she’d been there. She’d added some of herself-- her graduation from law school, her with her parents, a few pictures of her with other employees and customers. It was sweet. This bar really was her second home.

Imogen returned to Xander, who was examining the wall. He didn’t seem to be bored and he didn’t seem to be upset that she was back. In fact, his focus returned to her immediately when she was in front of him.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “Randy passes through her about once a month, so I try to take a second to talk to him.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for. You’re working.”

“Oh, I’m not sorry I talked to him. I’m sorry I paused in the middle of a story.”

“Well you can make it up to me by continuing.” He was smiling. She could see his teeth. Who was this Xander? Was it the alcohol?

“Yeah, well anyway, my dad told me that when he first got into politics, he thought being successful meant spending every minute working and putting everything you had into relationships with other politicians and businessmen and whoever. He was exhausted. You know, I’ve never related to him more than I did then.” Imogen noticed his empty glass. “Need another cosmo?”

“Is that even a question?” Xander scoffed playfully, handing her the glass. She laughed, shaking her head.

“No. I could drink cosmos all night.”

“You don’t strike me as a cosmo kind of girl.”

“And what kind of girl do I strike you as?” Imogen teased, shaking the drink already.

“Like a ‘three fingers of bourbon, neat, girl.’” He chuckled, running a hand through his hair.

“On the rocks, actually,” she replied with a grin, handing him his second cosmo.

“Damn,” he muttered, taking a sip. “I was close. But tell me, how does your dad playing tennis relate to you working here?”

She’d got him now.

“My whole life was just work. Every relationship I’d built was because of work. Everything on my schedule was arranged around work. It sounds stupid, but even every piece of clothing I owned was based around work. I forgot who I actually was. It was embarrassing, degrading almost. I was driving around one night to clear my head and stumbled across this little place. It was karaoke night. I stopped in, got a drink, sang a few songs. It was the most like myself I’d felt in a while. The sign on the door said they needed help- a bartender to take weekend shifts. And I don’t know. It just felt right.”

Imogen leaned on the bar, tired of standing on her feet.

“People always say you’re supposed to work to live, not live to work. Neither of those things really feel right. I just want to live. Work’s part of that.”

He was staring at her and through her at the same time, lost in thought. She grabbed his empty glass and started making another cosmo. It took a minute before he decided to speak.

“Everything sucks right now.” He accepted his third cosmo and took a long sip. “Can’t seem to get my shit together. Not just at work. I can’t stop going back to her. She’s a magnet from Hell. And I’ve been a shitty friend. Don’t know how to fix any of those things, though.”

“Your relationship with relationships sounds a lot like my relationship with work,” Imogen commented.

“People always tell me that I need to be in a relationship to feel whole, to boost my career, to meet my needs. To fully experience life. And that if I don’t have friends and spend all my time partying with them, I’ll look like a loser with no life.” Xander was nodding his head, finally making the connection she’d been getting at all along. “I just want to live my life how I want to. Relationships are a part of that.”

“Damn, look at you, Boy Wonder!” She applauded softly, smiling. “And right at the tail end of your three drink limit.”

“You have a limit here?” He looked disappointed.

“Trucker bar. Remember all that, ‘Don’t drink and drive.’ stuff that’s supposed to keep you safe?”

“Right. Got it.” Xander yawned, stretching his arms above his head. “I think I need to hit the road. I’ve got a lot to think about.”

“Take the back roads. Less cops.”

“Typical cop-hating lawyer.” He shook his head with a tired smile. “But you’re not too bad.”

“You’re not too bad yourself. Drive safely.”

“I won’t.”

Xander tossed a bill that was way too much to cover his drinks on the counter.

“Take a tip and add the rest to my tab.” He grinned. “I’ll see you another time, Imogen.”

#chaos weekly #rising from the ashes

0 notes

terryblount · 5 years

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Anno 1800 Review: A Quality Copy of Itself

Anno 1800 is an engrossing and fantastic mix of city building, economic simulation, and real-time strategy. It’s so easy to get sucked in to the whole affair, as the hours fly by and your empire slowly expands. Granted, there’s much micro-management required, and the game strongly favors those of us with a patient dedication to detail. Still, there’s a soothing rhythm to it all if you can find the groove hiding within the various complex systems.

What is Anno Gameplay?

If you’ve never played an Anno game before, let me try to summarize what you actually do. Starting with an empty island, you place houses and production buildings thereupon, connecting everything together with roads. As your population grows their needs increase, which are fulfilled by newly unlocked buildings.

Our cities grow up so quickly! Fine craftsmanship, here we come!

After fulfilling all the current needs of your populace, you can upgrade their houses to unlock even more needs. Anno is basically a game of ever-expanding needs fulfillment—they once longed for fish and schnapps but soon will require sausage, bread, beer, and oh so much more!

Eventually you’ll have to expand to new islands because your people will demand more goods not available on your first location. This leads to the need for ships and trade routes, and soon enough you’ll have a huge fleet all for the purpose of meeting those pesky population needs.

There’s a pleasant ebb and flow to Anno. At times you’re perplexed as to your people’s desires, trying to set up new production chains and deliver the goods. Then a short while later everyone is content, and you can sit back and watch the gold roll in. Of course you can’t relax for long because there’s others who also are trying to seize islands and produce goods—the rival players, be they actual humans in the multiplayer mode or AI characters.

The diplomacy screen helps you try to make nice with others…or be a big jerk!

The complex interaction between building up your cities, producing goods, and dealing with other characters leads to an intense and intellectual challenge that has defined the Anno series for over two decades. Speaking of the series, let me explain the history of the Anno franchise because learning is fun!

An Anno Anthology

Anno began in the year 1602. Wait, no. What I mean to say is the first game in the series was called Anno 1602 and came out way back in 1998, created by a now-defunct company called Max Design. It was a 2D isometric city-builder with goods-based management systems and some real-time strategy elements, and it became quite popular, especially in its home region of Austria/Germany.

Just a pretty screenshot of a ship at sea. Anno 1800 is a very nice looking game!

The inevitable sequel, Anno 1503, was released in 2003, also created by Max Design. It, too, was well-received even if it was very similar to the first game. 2006 saw a big jump in the series with Anno 1701, featuring charming 3D graphics and excellent gameplay depth, winning over many new fans the world over. This new generation of Anno was created by Related Designs, a German studio new to the series. They would go on to develop all the rest of the main Anno games, although they were merged into Ubisoft Blue Byte a while back.

Three years later saw the culmination of years of fine-tuning with Anno 1404. Many consider this 2009 game to be the pinnacle of the series (at least until now, debatably). It was (and is) a brilliant mix of charm and complexity merged with polished 3D graphics, excellent gameplay, and much replayability.

This Anno gives you back the complex trade routes system from the prior Anno games.

Then developers opted to go where no Anno game had gone before: the future. 2011 saw Anno 2070, and 2015 saw Anno 2205. Confused yet? Both titles were disappointments to long-time Anno fans. It wasn’t the futuristic setting that was the problem per se—it was the dumbing down of the gameplay and extreme cuts to content.

Both futuristic titles saw traditional story campaigns mostly cut out. Proper AI enemies were lacking. Combat was contrived, and trading was overly-simplified. The games felt a bit soulless. Oh, and the games became “always online” and “games as a service” through Ubisoft’s frustrating Uplay system and other DRM schemes. In short, Anno’s future was a big letdown!

Anno in 2019: Copy & Paste

The prior history of Anno is necessary to understand Anno 1800. It’s an intentional return to the roots of the series: charming historical simulation with robust gameplay features. If you read between the lines of the marketing, the message has been clear: Anno 1800 is a good Anno game again with a story, proper AI, and all the beloved features from the Anno’s of old!

And they’re not kidding about this game including the features of the old games. They’ve recreated Anno 1404’s gameplay to such an extreme degree. Seriously, this game plays identically to Anno 1404 in all the significant elements. It’s not a stretch to say it’s basically the same game as the ten-year-old Anno 1404, and this is the game’s biggest strength and disappointment.

There’s a secret first-person mode (Ctrl-Shift-R). You can get some nice shots with it.

Being an Anno 1404 clone is wonderful because, as noted, the 2009 Anno is charming, expansive, and a joy to play, even to this day. However, it’s disappointing because long-time Anno fans have already been there and done that since 2009.

Therefore, your feelings on Anno 1800 will largely be guided by your experience with the series. If you’ve never played Anno 1404 then you’re likely to be quite mesmerized by Anno 1800’s creative spirit and whimsical world, never knowing it was already done in the same fashion a decade ago.

For me, though, I have played Anno 1404, and I’m honestly uncertain if I’d rather play the new, shiny Anno 1800 or the tried and true (and very inexpensive) Anno 1404. Read on to find out why I’m torn.

My Anno Experience

I began playing Anno with Anno 1701, but it was Anno 1404 that made me fall in love with the series. I spent several years putting over 400 hours into Anno 1404, and I even made the unofficial patch for the game, which fixes literally thousands of issues (it took a lot of effort!). In fact, the developers even contacted me years ago about including my fixes in a planned new version of the game, but that project was canceled sadly.

Back on topic, besides playing extensively I have a serious understanding of how these games work under the hood. This is why I was taken aback to see this modern Anno 1800 be programmed to function in virtually the same way as Anno 1404, including some of the same UI issues and quest bugs!

OCD players will find much to obsess about. I must build with symmetry! I must!!

Hence, I found it fairly amusing to read some of the developer blogs about AI, supply chains, and other gameplay features. They’d talk about creating the systems for this game, and I couldn’t help but chuckle because the systems are copied from Anno 1404!

I guess it’s not stealing if you’re stealing from your own prior game…but let’s not act like this stuff is new! Although Anno 1800 does include new features, to be fair. Let’s discuss the new stuff.

Anno 1800’s New Features

This latest entry does provide some excellent additions to the Anno formula, including concepts such as Workforce, Influence, Propaganda, Expeditions, and Electricity. We’ll tackle each one in turn.

Workforce requires you to carefully balance your population between a pyramid of classes, starting with Farmers and Workers, and moving up to Artisans and Engineers and beyond. The trick is only certain population classes can perform certain jobs, and managing this system is a rewarding challenge.

Influence is a new (and controversial) feature that grows with your population and must be used for various tasks such as military and trade expansion. It’s not explained well in the game, sadly. However, after understanding the system, it does feel like a nice addition to the game to guide you into specializations based on your gameplay goals.

The Influence system menu. It’s quite confusing at first, but it’s a nice system overall.

Propaganda is controlled by your newspaper, which is pops up every so often in your game, requiring you to choose to spend Influence to alter the news (‘alternative’ facts). It’s a fun system that adds a bit of flavor to the game experience, helping you see recent events or issues in your game world. Although, after playing for dozens of hours it becomes a bit of a chore to have to review the newspaper over and over. An option to auto-select certain Propaganda would been nice.

The newspaper screen. Notice my use of propaganda on the far right. Important news!

Expeditions are Anno 1800’s take on text-based ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ stories. You send out ships on long journeys, and if you equip the right supplies and items and fortune favors you, you might survive long enough to find treasures and return home safely. It’s a fun system to be sure, and it helps break up the typical gameplay loop. I really enjoyed finding all the different options and results from the various text-stories presented.

Fun text adventures! Notice my ship is ultra-powerful. I have a 195% chance to win. Good!

Electricity is a wonderful historical addition, given the industrial revolution setting of the game. After many hours of playing and building your empire, you’ll eventually unlock the potential to generate electricity to turbo-boost your production capabilities and allow you to attract the most lucrative population class to your cities. Figuring out how to lay railroad and manage your power grid is a challenging but fun late-game activity.

Building Culture: Museums and Zoos

Do you like collecting animals and artifacts? Of course you do! Anno 1800 knows this and includes two extremely enjoyable new module-style buildings: the museum and zoo. Both give nice benefits to your city, such as helping to attract visitors. There’s a very strong ‘gotta collect ’em all’ impulse that makes this gameplay element very addictive.

An expedition gives me some nifty sea creatures for my zoo! It’ll be zootopia soon!

How do you get these fascinating animals and artifacts, you ask? Several ways! Expeditions are a great source, but later you’ll get help from the World’s Fair. Speaking of which…

End-Game Fun: World’s Fair Exhibitions!

Another new and excellent addition is the ultimate end-game goal: building and operating a world’s fair. This is a very cool historical theme since the first world’s fair was held in 1851 in real life. Reaching this point is basically the equivalent of a raid or bonus dungeon in other games—it’s the final end-game goal.

Here is the World Fair building being built. It’s a very complex process to create such a place!

To put it into perspective, it took me about 80 hours to finally build the World’s Fair, and it felt really good to finally hold the biggest and best world’s fair ‘exhibition’ possible after about 90 hours of hard work building my empire. The reason this review is so late is because I wanted to ensure I’d experienced this final goal, and I can report to you that it’s gloriously good times!

The Rest of the Review: Issues

I really do love Anno 1800. However, the game does have a lot of issues. Much of my frustration is that they copied Anno 1404 so much but didn’t go the extra step of solving some of the problems the series has had for so many years. Hence, the rest of this review is going to be a whole bunch of criticisms and problems with the game, even though I do love playing it.

The Campaign: Weak!

I’ve gone this far in the review and haven’t even mentioned the campaign. I suppose that’s fitting because the campaign is nothing more than a glorified tutorial that plays out over some 8 to 10 hours (longer on higher difficulties).

The campaign has some cutscenes with voiced characters. It’s…decent, but not great.

The storytelling is weak but semi-adequate, giving a modest investment in characters and happenings. However, the story ends very abruptly and without much resolution. I also experienced a glitch wherein the final battle failed to happen and I won without completing the final quests, which was anticlimactic.

Also unfortunate is the lack of tutorial quests for certain key features. The game never bothers to explain trade routes, despite these being absolutely essential to grow your civilization and finish the campaign. A bizarre oversight.

Overall, the campaign is lame. It needed to go on a lot longer, with a proper plot and resolution.

Questing & Bugs

Anno 1800 features a virtually identical quest system from Anno 1404, although a few new types of quests have been added. Random residents will offer various quests from time to time. Trading partners and NPCs will also give quests such as escort, destroy, deliver, and photograph. Overall, there’s hundreds of these.

Sadly some of these quest types that are as maddening as they were 10 years ago, such as puzzle quests where you have to find and click on very tiny little objects in your massive cities. Then again, you can delete any non-story quest at any time.

There’s fun multi-part quests in the game. The 2nd part of this one is bugged though…

Unfortunately, a fair amount of quests are bugged. I find this pretty funny since many of the quest issues are literally the exact same XML programming errors that I fixed all those years ago in Anno 1404. Maybe they’ll fix the issues in future patches…of course they never did for Anno 1404 (see my unofficial patch for that game).

Old World, New World Blues

Another gameplay change from Anno 1404 is the two distinct world spaces. In Anno 1404, you played a single world space with the upper half representing Europe (Occident) and the lower half representing the Middle/Far East (Orient). In Anno 1800, the game splits the spaces into two unique “sessions” (Old World, New World).

Here’s the world map screen. You almost never use this view, but it’s pretty!

It’s true that it’s more realistic to have separate spaces for the different geography, and the concept is excellent. However, the execution gets a bit obnoxious and invasive to the play experience.

The simple fact is we humans can only focus on one screen at a time, so having two different game maps playing out with one always hidden means constant interruptions and unknown events occurring. Fighting a war on two different screens, for example, simply isn’t fun.

This is very much like trying to play two games of speed-chess at the same time. It sounds interesting in theory, but unless you’re a strategy god, the split-attention results in a lesser experience on both sides.

A Huge Fail: Missing Profile Tracking

One hallmark of the Anno series is robust tracking of your game accomplishments tied to your universal player profile. Anno 1404 is the gold standard in this regard. It features over 300+ tracked accomplishments and 25 special medals. Moreover, there were very fun unlocks as you progressed, letting you get new city ornaments, portraits, titles, and more. A huge joy for fans (called Annoholics) was to slowly make progress toward the fabled 100% complete player profile. It was a badge of honor to know and share your profile progress.

Anno 1800 lacks all of this. All you get is barely 40 Uplay achievements, and some boring ‘Club rewards’ you spend Uplay points to unlock. This is very unfortunate since the game has literally all the same features as Anno 1404 that beg to be recorded and bragged about.

Also strange is how there’s a photograph feature in the game, but it’s only used for quests. There is no photo gallery or showcase or anything like that. This is another missed opportunity to let players showcase their cities in a more permanent player profile fashion.

This is me taking a photograph for a quest, nothing more. There is no photo gallery.

In regard to quests, there are many extensive multi-part quests, but unlike Anno 1404, Anno 1800 doesn’t have any tracking system to prove you’ve befriended the AI and learned their back stories. And the new Expeditions feature would be perfect for tracking all the different outcomes. But alas, the developers couldn’t be bothered with all this.

To summarize, for a game that copies Anno 1404 in nearly every single way, it’s an epic fail to remove the amazingly fun tracking system that kept players motivated for hundreds of hours across dozens of playthroughs and scenarios. Bad developers!

Where are the Scenarios?

Speaking of scenarios, another totally absent feature in this modern game is custom challenges, known as scenarios in Anno 1404. In that game you could take on special modes requiring you to build a monument in so many hours or begin in great debt on a unique island.

Anno 1800 has zero scenarios and only has one game mode: the sandbox. I say this because even the story campaign takes place in a sandbox environment, opening up to an unguided sandbox mode after only about 10 hours.

At least you can select your difficulty and customize the game options. Expert is quite hard.

So let’s review. Anno 1800 copies Anno 1404’s gameplay in nearly every way, but it removes all scenarios, which added dozens and dozens of hours of diverse gameplay challenges. Epic fail.

DirectX 12 Crashing!

Note that many players, including myself, get constant crashes when using the DX12 renderer. I had dozens of crashes and two hard locks requiring a manual restart of my computer. Even after two patches, the crashes still occur. Fortunately, switching to DX11 completely eliminated the crashes for me, but the framerate is slower—a sad but necessary tradeoff.

Ubisoft Store, Epic Store, No Steam

There’s also the controversy with the way the game is sold. It was yet another title to be yanked off Steam shortly before its release. Now you can only buy it from Ubisoft directly or from the Epic Store (possibly). The good news is Anno 1404 is on Steam (it goes by ‘Dawn of Discovery’ in North America).

Other Various Concerns

The gameplay UI is great in some ways but horrible in others. The trade routes interface is especially obnoxious, with the ‘delete’ button overlapping other buttons at times. Some UI buttons simply don’t work, such as some ‘jump to event’ notifications. Overall, the UI is very workable, but it’s not ideal.

The game also features an Attractiveness system for each city. Honestly though, I mostly ignored it all because the game doesn’t do enough to show you the benefits of the system.

Here’s the Attractiveness system. Most players will likely ignore it though…

Despite a robust keyboard customization menu, certain commands can’t be bound to keys for no apparent reason. It would have been nice to have quick shortcuts for every building option, much like how most Windows applications have shortcuts to open Edit->Cut and this type of thing.

There’s also an unfortunate lack of statistics and charts to help you understand where you money is going and how to more efficiently manage your empire. Fortunately, the developers have promised to add a building in a future patch (first featured in the Anno 1404 expansion from 2010, ironically), so hopefully soon we’ll have more tools to manage our empire.

Conclusion: A Gorgeous, Great Game

I loved playing Anno 1800. Yes, the core gameplay is in many cases identical to Anno 1404, but an updated version of such a beloved Anno game isn’t a bad thing. The same engrossing ‘just one more hour’ gameplay draws the player into the world, testing the dedication, intellect, and patience of the player through cunning planning and strategies.

It’s an easy game to pick up and play, making some progress each gameplay session. Soon enough the narrator will say, ‘Warning: you’ve been playing for two hours,’ and you won’t even realize the time has flown by. Over weeks and months you can watch your empire expand, eventually reaching the end-game and proving your Anno-worth.

It’s too bad they’ve ripped out nearly all the player profile tracking and failed to include special gameplay scenarios. It’s also unfortunate online co-op isn’t ready yet and may take many more months to be included. The bugs and other issues also drag down the experience.

Here’s a screenshot showcasing Anno 1800’s beauty and charm after 80+ hours.

Ultimately, Anno 1800 is the smoothest Anno experience available, with some excellent new features to keep you hooked for a long while. So if you want to play the latest and semi-greatest, go for Anno 1800.

However, picking up Anno 1404 Gold Edition for super-cheap is also a very viable and excellent choice since it gives you the same fundamentally excellent gameplay with more actual content. …Just make sure you use my unofficial patch if you do play Anno 1404. And no, I ain’t going to make one for Anno 1800. The developers should have learned to fix their own darn Anno bugs by now!

Gorgeous city building

Engrossing management

Soothing ebb and flow

Expedition diversions

Museums and zoos

Late-game electricity

End-game world’s fair

Old/New world concept

Lame, short campaign

No scenarios (sandbox only)

Few achievements/tracking

Quest bugs, UI issues

DX12 crashes, locks

Lacks statistics/charts

So much like Anno 1404

Old/New world execution

Playtime: 100 hours total. Nick spent 10 hours finishing the story (tutorial). Another 10 hours were spent reaching 20,000 inhabitants. Another 20 hours allowed Nick to reach the ‘Engineer’ population level, with two nicely built cities. Then 10 hours was spent wiping out the remaining AI players and seizing their lands. So at 50 hours in, Nick had conquered all and could begin building his perfect empire, free from distractions. It took another 15 hours to reach ‘Investors,’ the game’s highest population level. At 80 hours, Nick ultimately reached his objective of unlocking all buildings and providing all goods to his people, with a final population count of 90,000. Many world’s fair exhibitions were held. The galaxy was at peace.

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

Also read the Anno 1800 PC Performance Analysis.

Anno 1800 Review: A Quality Copy of Itself published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

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endlessarchite · 6 years

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A Most Thankful Year

Instead of the traditional Thanksgiving with family, I spent this year’s break in Saint Lucia for a friend’s vow renewal. In one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, I found myself reflecting on a year to be very thankful for.

VERY personal post alert! If you like personal life updates, this is delving into things that I haven’t opened up about before. Those of you who only like the DIY stuff, that will be in the next post.

Hi, friends! I hope you enjoyed our little break over the Thanksgiving holiday. I spent mine in a rather unconventional way: watching two of my closest friends renew their vows of love and commitment to each other in St. Lucia. It was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my lifetime:

I’ve been planning on taking this trip for little over a year. When I was first invited, the premise was that my friends were renting a villa in St. Lucia for renewing vows on their five-year anniversary. They had gotten married in a friend’s living room with only a handful of witnesses, so they decided the five-year mark was an opportunity to have a ceremony with immediate family, their closest friends, and enjoy a honeymoon all at once.

Since they would be covering most of the expenses while we were there, it would actually be much more manageable than I would have otherwise been able to afford (and so very generous of them, too — but how awesome is an alternative wedding like that, to instead spend their budget on something like this instead of a single day??). I was beyond excited, informed my family of my plans (sorry/not sorry?), and began setting money aside for the plane ticket.

The trip did not disappoint for even a single second.

I took hundreds of photos and video, so all of that will likely take a considerable period of time before everything is edited and ready to recap/upload. Unlike the “relaxing” beach vacation I am typically drawn to, this one was nonstop fun. We rented a catamaran, went snorkeling/scuba diving, rode ATVs down to black sand beaches (wait until you see me do donuts on a beach, ha!), hit up an organic pineapple farm (which has likely ruined pineapple for me forever… it dries out so much in transit and I had no idea), enjoyed fresh caught fish, and soaked up the sun like it would expire by the time I came home.

And that view. That pool.

The entire villa was open air, so it was, essentially, the most elaborate form of glamping I’ve ever witnessed. If I had to complain of anything at all (or just make a funny observation?), it’s that there was zero privacy. People can and will hear you taking a shower, snoring in your sleep, or any of the 283 other things you might be self-conscious about when there is nothing but fresh air, a drastic change to your American diet, and a few strategically-placed slats of wood to separate you from your buddy in the next room. A small price to pay, really.

But back to the main subject of this post: giving thanks. We had Thanksgiving dinner that Thursday evening, replacing the traditional meal with fresh-caught tuna and local produce prepared by the house manager (we enjoyed her amazing cooking throughout the week — she was incredible). We went around the table, each expressing the many blessings we were thankful for; the loved ones we missed and wished were there to enjoy it with us; events and changes that we were either grateful to have embraced or ready to be rid of. If anything, being in a place like this, it was even more apparent to me of the year I’ve had and how distant a year ago can be.

A Year of Good Fortune

I am thankful for my work/blog/career path.

Blogging and freelance is such a bubble. It makes sense as a blogger to talk about blogging on my blog. But in person, I try to be tight-lipped about it, because it’s clumsy. For many, blogging is not a proper job; to express it as a legitimate occupation can lead to shared glances, mocked interest, or even air quotes. This perception has sometimes been from family, or close friends, or even significant others. As you might imagine, that can suck and lead to self-doubt. I get asked by strangers or near-strangers to get them things for free or to advertise their businesses for free. What’s supposed to be the quick intro at social events (“What do you do?” “Engineer, you?” “Blogger.”) often devolves into the same 20-question spiel of how you make money, no exactly how, no I mean where do the paychecks come from??? conversation that makes me both squirm and feel like an ass because there goes Sarah talking about blogging again.

I get where that skepticism comes from. I’ve thought it myself in periods of self-doubt. My point is, outward judgment — of any kind, so this is not exclusive to blogging — can eat at you unless you build up a thick skin for it. This year, I think I’ve done a much better job of not apologizing for what makes me happy.

Every job has a negative aspect or two. To me, this is just the price of an otherwise amazing, awesome job that I consider myself very, very lucky to have. With fellow bloggers or my friends/family who support what I do, it’s so much fun to talk about something I feel so passionate about (it shows, obnoxiously so), celebrate the latest sponsor under contract or another business goal achieved. I worked at something that actually became something. That’s so damn cool.

I am incredibly grateful for that support, those opportunities, and that I do something that has allowed me to meet people all over the country who feel just as passionate about what they do. I love hearing from readers who used one of my tutorials to transform their homes. Or meet a reader in person. Or brainstorm over the latest project. Or just plain create something. For all of those things, I’ll gladly take on the arrogant jerk who walks away mid-sentence because I said I was a blogger. This year was a good year for me. I will continue working hard, and especially because I love what I do.

I am thankful for my family, friends, and my support system.

For several years at the beginning of this blog, I didn’t do much dating. I was in an exhausting push to get myself through grad school — not much time between a full-time job, full-time school hours, building the blog into a business, etc. In 2016, I found myself very suddenly head over heels for a guy who I thought was smart, kind, and funny. My friends and family met him and were happy for me, but it also moved way too fast. I ignored red flags and my overall uneasiness (I was frequently nauseated but couldn’t figure out why). He ended things just as suddenly as it began several months later, and I was very hurt over the feelings of betrayal and the deliberate cruelty in which he seemed to speak and act. Breakups are hard in general, and I’m mindful of how one-sided recapping any details would be… so suffice it to say that a good chunk of 2016 was pretty rough.

Those of you who read my blog during that time already know the above, but what you might not know is that the stress of it all significantly impacted my health at the time. The nausea I’d been feeling for months intensified. At its zenith, I had a hard time keeping food down. I was also drinking way too much and losing weight — which was kind of confusing. As a woman, being showered with those kinds of “You look great! Wow, you’ve lost so much weight!” compliments and knowing that they weren’t from positive circumstances had an odd effect (and maybe added more self-doubt?).

I had never experienced stress to this level, but knew without it subsiding on its own, I needed to find help. That’s when I discovered the Talkspace app and subscribed. Over the next month I matched with a licensed expert and had ample opportunity to discuss things with an unbiased point of view. The anxiety I was experiencing began to lessen, and I got back into healthier habits. I ran with my running group more frequently to channel the extra stress. I started meditating every morning to clarify my thoughts (I was very skeptical, but it worked extremely well — the Headspace app is very good too, just FYI!). Between the bad habits and the good, I dropped about 20 pounds. Some of it, I kept off through the exercise; some, I gained back from more normal eating. On my 5’2″ frame, the change was pretty noticeable.

November 2016

I don’t know why it was such a surprise, but my closest friends — and several of the mutual ones between this guy and I — showed me such incredible kindness during this period that I am still in awe of it. The couple I mentioned with their vow renewal? They sat and listened whenever I needed. They cooked when I had a lack of appetite. The other friends who were on this Saint Lucia trip? They invited me out, kept me active, and were just plain there. They were also the first to make silly, petty observations that made me chuckle (“never trust a guy who’s that bad at pool,” that sort of thing… it strangely meant a lot). Countless other friends and family boosted me up. Went running with me. Met me for a drink. Dealt with my overall assholishness at times (and allowed me to apologize). Hosted me for a visit. Made me laugh. I don’t know how I managed to gain such amazing people around me, but grateful for their love and support is an understatement. Even now, I feel humbled and a little teary-eyed.

I am thankful to fall in love again.

For a while, I felt a little raw and stung. I tried jumping back into dating, but I wasn’t at all able. Those first few dates during that time weren’t even awful or funny or interesting — they just were. Despite wanting to move the hell on, my sense of detachment told me that I couldn’t/shouldn’t force it. I didn’t want to use anyone to help me get over someone else; that would make me a terrible person if I had.

It didn’t really seem all that strange to revert back to solo life — I was plenty used to it. I dove into work, and it wound up better than ever. There was plenty of entrepreneurial drive to spare — with the added layer of just wanting to focus on something else — and it felt good to see physical results from my efforts (especially when the emotional ones were much harder to measure). I felt renewed creativity and wrote a lot, though plenty of it was about those emotional pitfalls (these were for my own use and not published on the blog).

Eventually, I’d packaged up the mental gymnastics of the past year to make room for someone else. I was finally excited about the idea of dating and love again. Christmas was going to be coming soon enough, and I gave online dating another shot. I went out for a drink with a random dude whose profile had a cute beard and nice eyes. I felt comfortable enough to make him laugh, and he genuinely laughed — a good sign, and something that felt familiar.

We were about halfway through a drink before he asked me to his company’s Christmas party. He joked about how much fun of him his coworkers made of him being dateless the previous year. I found it both charming, silly, and surprising; he asked so suddenly, I almost thought he meant he wanted me to go later that night, like he was on his way to it and meeting me for a drink just before. That wasn’t the case of course, but the thought of it made me laugh hysterically. We went out on a few actual dates before the party, but it was fun.

Over the next few months, K’s quick wit, patience, and ability to make me laugh melted my bruised feelings. I fell in love again. Charlie gained a new best friend (I think it’s now tied between K and my dad). His dog Stella, whom you’ve already met, gave her own seal of approval of us immediately (her reactions to Charlie when they haven’t seen each other in a while are hilarious — as though she doesn’t want to admit that she missed her, so she gets almost imperceptible nods in her direction, while Charlie is instantly happier to have Stella around).

I became less active for a while, which gained back more weight (new relationships = couch potato). We’ve become more active again as of late, and I am very happy to have met K. If 2016 taught me humility and that I have more space in my heart than I realized, 2017 showed me how to fill it again.

I am thankful for so much more.

Many of you guys have sent emails, left comments, and messaged on other social channels in the last year. When I spoke of 2016’s hardships before, a lot of you showed me an incredible about of support; for that, I am very, very grateful you took the time to do it. And even though I say it every year, I just want you to know how much I appreciate that you read along regardless of the reason — for the personal posts, or just the DIY tutorials, or maybe if you’re a new reader who is learning how to adult and cook at home more (like I have recently!). My appreciation for you guys sticking around never stops being true. Every time I hear about one of your projects or when you give input, I just love it. K knows when it happens, too — he says he hears it in my voice.

I am thankful my friends and family were happy for me to get away. And again when they gave me crap for missing Thanksgiving (guilt is love, at least in my Catholic family!). I gained a new appreciation for my parents’ willingness to travel with me as a kid; it made me realize what a missed opportunity this would have been.

I’ve found myself very grateful for a lot of things this year. When possible, I’ve tried to tell others the same. But staring the pitons in St. Lucia and counting my blessings all over again, it just made sense.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving (Canada, this is a month late, but same). I realize 2017 has been rough for many, but I hope you also had things to still be thankful for. I’ll be posting a BIG DIY update to the dining room this week, so check back in soon!

What were you thankful for this year?

The post A Most Thankful Year appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

A Most Thankful Year published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j

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sherlocklexa · 6 years

Text

A Most Thankful Year

The trip did not disappoint for even a single second.

And that view. That pool.

A Year of Good Fortune

I am thankful for my work/blog/career path.

I am thankful for my family, friends, and my support system.

November 2016

I am thankful to fall in love again.

I am thankful for so much more.

What were you thankful for this year?

The post A Most Thankful Year appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

from car2 http://ift.tt/2BzcG85 via as shown a lot

#car2

0 notes

chocdono · 6 years

Text

A Most Thankful Year

The trip did not disappoint for even a single second.

And that view. That pool.

A Year of Good Fortune

I am thankful for my work/blog/career path.

I am thankful for my family, friends, and my support system.

November 2016

I am thankful to fall in love again.

I am thankful for so much more.

What were you thankful for this year?

The post A Most Thankful Year appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

from mix1 http://ift.tt/2BzcG85 via with this info

#mix1

0 notes

primaryideasuk · 6 years

Text

A Most Thankful Year

The trip did not disappoint for even a single second.

And that view. That pool.

A Year of Good Fortune

I am thankful for my work/blog/career path.

I am thankful for my family, friends, and my support system.

November 2016

I am thankful to fall in love again.

I am thankful for so much more.

What were you thankful for this year?

The post A Most Thankful Year appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

via Primary Ideas http://ift.tt/2BzcG85

#IFTTT #Primary Ideas

0 notes

darwinbigelow · 6 years

Text

A Most Thankful Year

I’ve been planning on taking this trip for little over a year. When I was first invited, the premise was that my friends were renting a villa in St. Lucia for renewing their five-year anniversary. They had gotten married in a friend’s living room with only a handful of witnesses, so they decided the five-year mark was an opportunity to have a ceremony with immediate family, our closest friends, and enjoy a honeymoon all at once.

The trip did not disappoint for even a single second.

And that view. That pool.

A Year of Good Fortune

I am thankful for my work/blog/career path.

I am thankful for my family, friends, and my support system.

Those of you who read my blog during that time already know the above, but what you might not know is that the stress of it all significantly impacted my health at the time. The nausea I’d been feeling for months intensified. At its zenith, I had a hard time keeping food down. I was also drinking way too much and losing weight — which was kind of confusing. Ss a woman, being showered with those kinds of “You look great! Wow, you’ve lost so much weight!” compliments and knowing that they weren’t from positive circumstances had an odd effect (and maybe added more self-doubt?).

November 2016

I don’t know why it was such a surprise, but my closest friends — and several of the mutual ones between this guy and I — showed me such incredible kindness during this period that I am still in awe of it. The couple I mentioned with their vow renewal? They sat and listened whenever I needed. They cooked when I had a lack of appetite. The other friends who were on this Saint Lucia trip? They invited me out, kept me active, and were just plain there. They were also the first to make silly, petty observations that made me chuckle (“never trust a guy who’s that bad at pool,” that sort of thing… it strangely meant a lot). Countless other friends and family boosted me up. Went running with me Met me for a drink Dealt with my overall assholishness at times (and allowed me to apologize). Hosted me for a visit. Made me laugh. I don’t know how I managed to gain such amazing people around me, but grateful for their love and support is an understatement. Even now, I feel humbled and a little teary-eyed.

I am thankful to fall in love again.

For a while, I felt a little raw and stung for a few months. I tried jumping back into dating, but I wasn’t at all able. Those first few dates during that time weren’t even awful or funny or interesting — they just were. Despite wanting to move the hell on, my sense of detachment told me that I couldn’t/shouldn’t force it. I didn’t want to use anyone to help me get over someone else; that would make me a terrible person if I had.

We were about halfway through a drink before he asked me to his company Christmas party. He joked about how much fun of him his coworkers made of him being dateless the previous year. I found it both charming, silly, and surprising; he asked so suddenly, I almost thought he meant he wanted me to go later that night, like he was on his way to it and meeting me for a drink just before. That wasn’t the case of course, but the thought of it made me laugh hysterically. We went out on a few actual dates before the party, but it was fun.

I am thankful for so much more.

Many of you guys have sent emails, left comments, and messaged on other social channels in the last year. When I spoke of 2016’s hardships before, a lot of you showed me an incredible about of support; for that, I am very, very grateful you took the time to do it. And even though I say it every year, I just want you to know how much I appreciate that you read along regardless of the reason — for the personal posts, or just the DIY tutorials, or maybe if you’re a new reader who is learning how to adult and cook at home more (like I have recently!); my appreciation for you guys sticking around never stops being true. Every time I hear about one of your projects or when you give input, I just love it. K knows when it happens, too — he says he hears it in my voice.

I am thankful my friends and family were happy for me to get away. Aagain when they gave me crap for missing Thanksgiving (guilt is love, at least in my Catholic family!). I gained a new appreciation for my parents’ willingness to travel with me as a kid; it made me realize what a missed opportunity this would have been.

What were you thankful for this year?

The post A Most Thankful Year appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

from Home Improvement https://www.uglyducklinghouse.com/a-most-thankful-year/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#home improvement

0 notes

lowmaticnews · 6 years

Text

A Most Thankful Year

The trip did not disappoint for even a single second.

And that view. That pool.

A Year of Good Fortune

I am thankful for my work/blog/career path.

I am thankful for my family, friends, and my support system.

Those of you who read my blog during that time already know the above, but what you might not know is that the stress of it all significantly impacted my health at the time. The nausea I’d been feeling for months intensified. At its zenith, I had a hard time keeping food down. I was also drinking way too much and losing weight — which was kind of confusing. Ss a woman, being showered with those kinds of “You look great! Wow, you’ve lost so much weight!” compliments and knowing that they weren’t from positive circumstances had an odd effect (and maybe added more self-doubt?).

November 2016

I don’t know why it was such a surprise, but my closest friends — and several of the mutual ones between this guy and I — showed me such incredible kindness during this period that I am still in awe of it. The couple I mentioned with their vow renewal? They sat and listened whenever I needed. They cooked when I had a lack of appetite. The other friends who were on this Saint Lucia trip? They invited me out, kept me active, and were just plain there. They were also the first to make silly, petty observations that made me chuckle (“never trust a guy who’s that bad at pool,” that sort of thing… it strangely meant a lot). Countless other friends and family boosted me up. Went running with me Met me for a drink Dealt with my overall assholishness at times (and allowed me to apologize). Hosted me for a visit. Made me laugh. I don’t know how I managed to gain such amazing people around me, but grateful for their love and support is an understatement. Even now, I feel humbled and a little teary-eyed.

I am thankful to fall in love again.

I am thankful for so much more.

Many of you guys have sent emails, left comments, and messaged on other social channels in the last year. When I spoke of 2016’s hardships before, a lot of you showed me an incredible about of support; for that, I am very, very grateful you took the time to do it. And even though I say it every year, I just want you to know how much I appreciate that you read along regardless of the reason — for the personal posts, or just the DIY tutorials, or maybe if you’re a new reader who is learning how to adult and cook at home more (like I have recently!); my appreciation for you guys sticking around never stops being true. Every time I hear about one of your projects or when you give input, I just love it. K knows when it happens, too — he says he hears it in my voice.

What were you thankful for this year?

The post A Most Thankful Year appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

A Most Thankful Year published first on http://ift.tt/2hUI8pL

0 notes