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pricemarshfield · 3 years

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don’t go

A post-canon/canon divergence Climbing Class fic. Read on AO3 here. Does not name the monsters from UD.

The thing is, Chris never believed in ghosts.

Past tense, because though Ouija boards are definitely still bullshit, flesh-eating nightmares who are his friends from beyond made his internal perspective change, a little. Less focused on Ashley (now happily dating Sam, who'd have thunk), less focused on cleverness, less focused on everything other than survival.

The problem with that is, survival is way, way less of a concern everywhere else.

No matter how much Mike asks, Chris won't go to the gym, won't go running with Sam. Instead, he goes to the gun range and shoots, practices with a dozen different guns until he can hit a target from as far as they'll let him try. Someone asks him if he wants to go hunting, and he says, "No, thanks. I don't have the stomach for it." With a practiced, self-deprecating grin and a little anecdote about getting sick in health class after watching Supersize Me (but hey, he'll still eat fast food!), they just laugh, clap his shoulder, and say, "Well, maybe next time."

Chris knows now how to hunt. He won't go because he doesn't want to go back to the mountain, but if something happens, if Jess ends up going on her expedition to find Emily's remains like she keeps talking about, if any circumstance happens that'll force him back out of his safety, he'll be ready. He has a dozen books on how to skin and prepare wild game, has a YouTube watch history that he probably shares with a future serial killer, is slowly working his way through quizzes on edible plants in the area he can forage.

Two weeks after the mountain, his friends all found it normal. Six months after the mountain, he worries he's the only one still caught up in it.

Sam's still going out in wilderness semi-regularly, albeit with so many protein bars in her bag that she could feed a small army. Mike throws himself into whatever the hell project he's involved with. (Chris and Ashley make a point of not asking about it, just to see his face turn red.) Jess rock climbs now, but however it started, now she just seems to be having fun, and Chris doesn't want to ruin the mood by asking why she's doing it. Ashley writes, poems and prose and articles, jumping on their fifteen minutes of fame to get a foot in the door of publishing.

Josh doesn't do much of anything.

They'd found him next to the bodies of Matt and Emily and Jack Fiddler, emaciated and staring at the bodies with a hunger that had caused all of this. (Chris assumes. He wasn't there, wouldn't have been there even if he'd known he would have found Josh okay. He wasn't brave before, let alone now.)

His parents won't let him keep a handgun in the house, so he moves.

Finding an apartment is hard. Nothing to do with the publicity or lack of options or even money; he just is picky. It needs good WiFi, because he's still Chris Hartley. It needs a room without windows, easily defensible and big enough to be able to stockpile food. It needs walls that aren't painted a sickly green color that he jokes is scarier than the idea of going back.

justgidding: Terrible joke!

justgidding: Even if it wasn't in bad taste, it's just not funny.

sn0wflakequ33n: I thought it was funny Chris

gogogadget: thank you jess

screamking: Oh bro is that that place on Hilda St?

screamking: I looked at that place when I was trying to find a place

screamking: Definitely the worst

ladykiller: why did you move out, rich boy? don't you have like six bedrooms in your old place?

sn0wflakequ33n: don't be a dick, mike

smartcookie: Eh

smartcookie: Not the most dickish thing one of us has done this year

justgidding: Okay guys, let's not bring this up over TEXT!!

sn0wflakequ33n: why do you hate the internet sam

smartcookie: I always forget how much of a Luddite you are, babe

ladykiller: i don't know what that means

gogogadget: i feel like we've gotten farther from the point

gogogadget: which is how ugly these walls are

So, yeah. Apartment hunting. Would it be weird to ask Josh what place he found? He needs to move if he's gonna get a gun, and while he knows logically it's not going to help and that he's not in danger, he's pretty sure just having it around would be great for his peace of mind.

Also in the case of monster attack, but at this point, preparedness for monster attacks and his peace of mind are pretty much one and the same. Not only correlational but causal relationship.

gogogadget: josh dyou mind sending me the address?

screamking: Why, you coming over?

gogogadget: trying to find a place

gogogadget: or are you still looking?

screamking: Nah, here

screamking has sent you their location!

---

Chris is sure that the place Josh's sent him will be too expensive, because Chris is comfortable, but Josh is. Well. His family owned a mountain (past tense). But as it turns out, if he moves in now in February rent is cheaper for as long as he lives here. It's still a lot, but it's at the very upper range of his budget rather than completely out of it.

They don't allow pets, but they do allow (legal) guns, and Chris signs the lease right after seeing the place. The property manager seems thrilled, but Chris doesn't really care why; he's just glad to have a place.

Sam and Ashley are the only two friends available to help him move, though Ashley mostly just picks through his books. Chris doesn't have a ton of stuff, and the only really heavy things are the one box of books and his PC. It takes one trip in just the one car and then he's in his apartment, alone.

Unpacking takes the better part of a couple days, but that's mostly just building furniture and setting up his food stores. The place doesn't quite feel like his, but he's alright with that. It feels safe, and that means a lot more.

His neighbor keeps thudding against the wall, though, and at 2am, when it wakes Chris up, he bangs back in annoyance.

"Sorry," his neighbor calls.

"...Josh?" Chris responds.

"Oh, what?" Josh says, and then Chris' phone lights up.

gogogadget: dude what the fuck

screamking: My bad, dude

screamking: Won't happen again

gogogadget: look as long as it's not ghosts i'm okay lol

screamking: I've got some bad news for you

gogogadget: JOSH WE TALKED ABOUT PRANKS

He can hear Josh laughing from across the wall, and Chris texts back a bunch of middle finger emojis.

screamking: If the ghosts do scare you, consider this an open invitation to come over

gogogadget: there are BETTER WAYS to invite me over dude

gogogadget: game nights

gogogadget: weed

gogogadget: just a straight up booty call

Chris doesn't really realize what he's said until after he's sent it, and then he briefly considers skipping out on his lease so he can go lie down outside and wait to die.

screamking: So if I were to do one of those now

screamking: You'd come over?

gogogadget: if you have someone over and that's what the banging's about i'll literally never talk to you again

gogogadget: just so you know

screamking: Nah it's just a tennis ball

screamking: Helps with anxiety

screamking: Dude?

screamking: If this isn't your thing we can still be friends, man

screamking: That better be you knocking on the door

---

justgidding: Chris, wake up!!!

justgidding: You said you'd go to the farmer's market today

justgidding: I WILL break this door down I don't care about your security deposit.

justgidding: Ashley says you're not answering your phone

justgidding: Josh is, though :)

justgidding: I'm texting the group chat

gogogadget: groupchat is one word

justgidding: Get dressed now we're going to the farmer's market!

gogogadget's phone can no longer recieve messages! This could be due to a loss of WiFi or the phone being turned off.

justgidding: Bitch?

gogogadget's phone can no longer recieve messages! This could be due to a loss of WiFi or the phone being turned off.

#climbing class #until dawn #josh washington #chris hartley #christopher hartley #my fics

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momokiiafterdark · 4 years

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“You Can’t Run So You Must Hide”

Title is from the song Wyrd (Glass Animals) I do recommend it highly.

Yuuimori belongs to my friend @popsweeties

This Post Contains Themes of: Stalking, Breaking and Entering. Assault, Bone Breakage.

“Wanna know the story of how I got a BF?”

He looks to be around mid 20s, he’s tall, he’s got short dirty blond hair that rests perfectly on top of his shoulders and pretty hazel eyes, also freckles. I caught a glimpse of him while out shopping for dinner, he stole my attention extremely quickly. I needed to see more of him! So, I followed him around the store. Peaking around isles, passing him multiple times, pretending to look at things so he wouldn’t notice me, this was all short lived though. Soon I was forced to watch him check out, when he finished bagging his items and paying, I knew I had to act fast. Leaving my cart behind, I proceeded to follow him out the store.

I quickly scrambled in my purse for my keys and ran to my car, getting in while still watching the man. It’s dark out but I see His car, a galaxy purple Toyota, was parked across from mine. I reach into my glovebox and pull out a pad of paper and a pen. I scribble down his license plate or, what I can see of it in the moonlight, and put the piece of paper into my purse. I look back at him, his car’s running, I soon follow, putting the keys in my ignition and turning my car on. I wait for him to pull off, and I continue my pursuit.

My heart’s beating out of my chest, my hands are sweaty and my body is hot and shaky. I try my best to forget about my nervousness and focus on the car in front of me. We drive about 6 blocks until he pulls over to this small house. Letting out a small sigh of relief, I pull over across the street, but not where he can see me. I shut my car off, and open my window, the cool air hitting my sweaty face. The man is now carrying bags to the front door, his keys in hand. I stare and let out a displeased groan when he gets in his house, shutting the door behind him. I sit and think for awhile, before I write his address down. “I... I want to get in..” I say to myself. I soon start my car up, looking back at his house one more time, I sigh and pull off, returning to my home.

I didn’t get sleep last night, and I’ve been thinking about him all day. it’s already evening and I haven’t moved from my bed, I need to.. I get up, get dressed, (dark clothes obviously, can’t get caught now!) and grab my keys off my table, getting in my car, I drive to the address I wrote down last night. I park in the same spot and shut my car off. I look around, his car isn’t there, he must be out for the night. “thank goodness” I say under my breath as I get out of my car. I walk over to his home, looking in the windows, no sign of life, but I had to be sure. I try to open the front door, I knew it’d be locked but thought he might forget.. he did. It was that easy? “Ah!” I let out a surprised noise as the door opens. I look around to see if anyone has saw me, no one’s around and I’m not willing to get get caught, so I rush into his home, quickly shutting the door behind me.

It’s pitch black in his house, I feel against the wall for a light switch and voila! The room lights up, the brightness blinds me for a few seconds. His home is neatly arranged, roses in vases here and there, it’s very cozy. I search around, going through drawers and seeing if I can find something of interest.. I eventually find his bedroom, I impatiently open his bedroom door and turn on the light. His bed is all cleaned up, there’s a open laptop and papers on his desk across from me. I put it aside, and go into his closet, searching around through his drawers.

I find a small bottle of cologne, I take the cap off and spray some on my wrist, the smell intoxicates me, the urge to bathe in his scent overtakes me. But I snap out of my fantasy, and slip the bottle into my pocket for safekeeping. I turn around and I’m met with clothes all neatly arranged on hangers. My eyes falling on a light gray hoodie, I grab it, pulling it off the hanger. I push it to my face and inhale, smelling the clean scent of him.. I hold it to my chest and leave the closet, and walk over to that laptop. He left it on, tabs open of various social medias. Before I look even more on his PC, I go through the papers on his desk. His name on one.. “Yuuimori” He’s even got the name of an angel. The rest are drawings of various people. He’s very talented~ I find a blank piece of paper, and grab one of his markers, moving back to the computer, I write down all his social medias. His email and his passwords to each of the accounts.

I leave his house around an hour later with his cologne, hoodie and all his account data! I get in my car and set everything down on the seat next to me. I drive off hurryingly. Once I get home, I rush to get in my house his things in my shaky arms. I get inside my house, and sit down on my couch. I pull off my shirt and slip on his hoodie, it’s nice and warm and smells like his house~ I spend the rest of my night going through his accounts.

A week passes, I’ve got a shit ton of info on Yuuimori and I’m thankful for it. I’ve spent yet another day thinking about him.. Tonight however is different, I’m returning back to his house. I haven’t taken off his hoodie, I can’t.. that doesn’t matter, because tonight, I will be wearing every piece of his clothing. I get in my car, a metal baseball bat sitting in my back seat. I drive off in the direction of his house. The entire drive there, I think about him, and how we’ll soon be together forever.

Once I arrive, I’m shaking. Reaching into the backseat I grab the bat, and take it with me. I exit my car, my fingers wrapped tightly around the handle of the weapon. I reach his door, his car’s parked in the driveway, his lights on. My body is shaking almost violently at this point, my breathing has now turned into panting.. I swallow my spit, and knock on his door. I grip the bat in both hands now, quickly glancing behind me to see if anyone is around, no.. good. I ready my weapon as I hear his footsteps getting closer. The doorknob turns and so does my stomach, the door opens and in a split second, I swing my bat, HARD. I watch him as he topples to the ground with a loud groan. I must’ve hit him hard enough to break his nose.. I stare down at him, there’s blood pooling from his head, tears falling down his face. I ready my bat again, this time though, I swing at his legs, over and over. His cries and choked out screams echo within his house and possibly can be heard by his neighbors. I stop hitting him once I hear loud cracks. I knew I did enough damage..

I drop the bat and kneel down, grabbing his pathetic squirming body by his soft bloodied hair and drag him into his house, kicking the door shut behind me. I drag him to his living room. He’s loud, very loud even when his nose is broken, so I shove him hard against his floor, sitting on top of him. One hand clamped firmly around his mouth, the other is struggling to keep his wrists together. I shush him, tears falling out of my eyes.. I’m.. crying. I hurt the one I love.. but, he asked for it! He should’ve came up to me at that store! “FUCK!” I scream out, roughly grabbing his hair with both hands now, and I slam his head down against the carpet. There’s a half scream before more soft sobs slip through his lips. Blood pooling around his head, staining not only the carpet but his soft colored hair. After awhile, he stops struggling. I think I killed him, I quickly check for a pulse, he’s alive, he must’ve passed out from blood loss and trauma. I get off of him, throwing myself on the floor next to him, my face in his pool of blood.

I pass out with him, hoping to see him in the dreamland.

#Stalking #assualt #oc fanfiction

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pauonabudget-blog · 5 years

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Siquijor 2019

Tada!!! After 7 (??) years, I am back doing my first love - blogging. So for my first entry (again), I wanna share with you my solo travel adventure to Isla de Fuego aka Siquijor Island. It’s my 2nd solo travel for this year (6th overall) and I must say it is one of my favorites! (PS all photos are mine unless stated otherwise hehe). Btw I went to Siquijor June 16-18, 2019. All currencies stated are in Philippine Pesos

HOW DID I GET THERE?

Since I am always on the look out for piso fares, I got my roundtrip tickets Manila-Dumaguete-Manila for roughly 1,600.00 during Cebu Pacific’s snap sale (99.00 base fare). Not bad.

From Dumaguete airport, there are tricycles/habal habals (single motorcycles) that can take you to Dumaguete Port. If you don’t have that much of luggage with you (or if you are still not so sure on your haggling skills), it’s best that you find your preferred mode of transportation OUTSIDE of the airport since the drivers on the airport tend to overcharge.

Okay so once you have hailed a driver, tell him to drop you off at the ticketing counter of your preferred ferry going to Siquijor, So in my case, I told the habal to drop me off at Oceanjet ticketing office. Ticketing office is walking distance from the port entrance. To be on the safe side also, you can purchase your return trip ticket as well to avoid hassle on the day you’re going back to mainland Dumaguete.

Oceanjet from Dumaguete port to Siquijor port is roughly 50 mins to 1 hour. Just a reminder: Dumaguete port is really wavy. I don’t get dizzy easily but man Dumaguete port tested me lol. Before stepping inside the port, you need to pay P13.00 (I forgot what is it for lol but there is a window beside the port entrance). The port itself is clean and spacious by the way and there are kiosks there for those who’ll go hungry while waiting for the scheduled boat trips.

Once you arrive at Siquijor Port, there are tricycles/habal habals waiting outside the port. Up to you what you’ll take. Being a solo traveller and having just one backpack, I contracted a habal to take me to my accommodation and tour the whole island. Kuya Elbert (my habal driver/ tour guide. VERY NICE) and I have agreed for P800.00 for a whole island tour plus him bringing me to my accommodation and to the port. I also paid for his lunches and snacks. Kuya Elbert +639068382558

WHERE DID I STAY?

I stayed at JJ’s Backpackers Village (As recommended by the British solo traveller I met on Siargao). They have bunk beds there for 400/night. One dorm room contains 6 beds (2 single beds and 2 double deck beds) and a bathroom (decent, clean, well maintained, working flush lol). The hostel also has its own in-house restaurant and bar so there’s no need to worry of going hungry lol. But the real selling point of JJ’s Backpackers is the killer beach front since it is along Solangon Beach. It’s very chill and relaxing that I can just lay in the hammock all day and do nothing kind of vibe.

<Dorm room 400/night> PS bring your own padlocks for the lockers.

You may contact them at +639989704452 or go to their Facebook page

WHERE DID I GO?

Siquijor Island is so small that you can tour it in less than a day. There are even some travellers that do daytour and then goes back to Dumaguete. Here are the highlights of my habal tour:

1. SALAGDOONG BEACH

This is where the famous cliffdiving site in Siquijor is located. For those who want that jolt of adrenaline rush on the body, this is your place to go. I chickened out the last minute because the jump site is so high and scary hahaha so I opted to stay on the shore and swim. There is an entrance fee going here (I think 30 pesos but correct me if I am wrong).

2. PALITON BEACH

The beach where you can find the instagram worthy palm tree shots. When I was here, I can’t believe how chill and peaceful it is here. There are also locals who is standing by the famous palm tree that is ready to assist you on your creative instagram photo (just don’t forget to give them a tip - I gave P50.00). My favorite beach of all beaches!! Free entrance!!

3. CAMBUGAHAY FALLS

I fell in love with Cambugahay falls. The water is unbelievably blue like it will take your breath away. So for this destination, Kuya Elbert stayed on the motorcycle parking as there was a designated tour guide going down the falls (it has different levels btw). We went there as early as 7:00AM (normally there is an entrance fee but when we got there, the collector was still not on his post so that means it is FREE again lol). So yeah trying going there early plus also to avoid large crowds as it gets pretty crowded around 9:00 am onwards. So after frolicking in the blue waters and braving the tarzan swing, time to go up again. I gave my guide P100.00 plus I paid the motor parking P10.00

4. CENTURY OLD BALETE TREE AND FISH SPA

I did not try the fish spa since I am a ticklish person but the fishes were big so no thanks lol. The tree looks enchanting tho but I like the one in Baler. There is also a souvenir shop beside it. You can buy shirts, ref magnets, voodoo doll keychains and the infamous love potion in a bottle.

5. HAPITANAN CAFE AND RESTAURANT

I didn’t do the famous broomstick photo because I was not in the mood lol. But I did chill for a little bit on their backyard.

WHERE TO EAT

So for 3 days, this is how I survived lol

DAY 1

Breakfast - Cinnabon sticks and coffee from the airport (<300.00)

Lunch - 2 pcs chicken with rice and bottled water bought from one of the Dumaguete Port kiosk (P80.00)

Dinner - A hearty plate of gnocchi from Dolce Amore. This is the first time I tasted Gnocchi and it was da bomb!!! (plus their homemade chocolate cake and homemade coconut gelato - shared by us 3 roommates). My plate of gnocchi was P180.00 but it was so worth it! The desserts cost were split between us 3. (Spent around 285.00 for my meal)

DAY 2

Breakfast - Leftover cinnabon sticks (I still have 4 sticks left lol) plus coconut juice (40.00 for the coconut juice of Kuya Elbert and I)

Lunch - Kuya Elbert and I ate at an eatery at downtown. Hearty lunch for 2 is at P200.00

2 cans of beer - P120.00

Dinner - Beef burger with homemade patties at JJ’s (P180.00)

DAY 3 (I took the first trip of Oceanjet back to Dumaguete 6:00 AM since I have a 10:15am flight back to Manila)

Breakfast - Sansrival Bistro Dumaguete (continental Filipino Breakfast) - (P220.00) *walking distance from Dumaguete port*

Lunch - Since our flight was delayed for 2.5 hours, we had free lunch from Jollibee (FREE)

TAKE NOTE

1. Bring sunblock and cap

2. INSECT REPELLENT IS A MUST. Mosquitoes there are annoying as f*ck. Off lotion will not be enough

3. Always make sure to have your phones and powerbanks fully charged since there are schedules of power interruption on the island.

4. Be friendly to the locals and also to your fellow travellers.

5. DO NOT LEAVE YOUR RUBBISH ALONG THE BEACH. Throw them properly.

To end my post, I won’t be able to give exact amount but I can give you my DIY itinerary. I think 5,000.00 will be enough for 3 days as long as you have prepared your expenses. Let me know if you have questions.

Siquijor became one of my favorite destinations. Mark my words: I will be back!

#solotravel #siquijor #philippines #beach #itsmorefuninthephilippines #travel #siquijorisland #budgettravel

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leafyisherefanfic · 6 years

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please just write something, theres nothing for me to read. the well has run dry, i ... neeeed... leafy... fanfiction...

Hi! This is the second fanfiction I will be posting this evening. I have a lot of Leafy requests, but if you guys would prefer to have some variety, just pop a request in! Thanks to those of you that are still around

LeafyIsHere Fanfiction - Fight With Your Friend

Recently, you had become quite close with a particular YouTuber. You were currently attending a university out of state from him, but you saw nothing wrong with just talking with someone. After all, you were looking for someone that would listen to you and enjoy hearing about your day, and were willing to listen to him as well. It had become an everyday thing over a few months that you two would talk and over time you had also started to develop a strong friendship, at the least. Although, him always asking about your day and checking in with you to make sure you were having a good day was definitely growing on you.

Some of your friends were highly supportive of your new adventure, but others not so much. In fact, there were a few in particular that were giving you quite the hard time with even talking with Calvin. They claimed that he probably wasn’t even real or that someone was faking you out. It didn’t matter how many videos the two of you would trade or even if he was staring right back at your friends, they still wouldn’t take your word that it was a legitimate thing.

Calvin and you had grown to not only talking with one another, but also being a bit flirtatious. It was always a pleasant conversation and talking with him always put you in a good mood. The two of you were talking, as you do normally, when you suddenly received a message from your friend asking what was going on.

Having a normal conversation, it starts going downhill when you make a smart comment saying, “Yeah, it was funny because he was joking about me transferring to a University in Seattle.” Completely changing the topic, your friend starts going down a new tangent about Calvin by asking, “Oh, isn’t that where that guy lives? What’s his name again?” Laughing to yourself, as you know damn well that he knew Calvin’s name, you simply reply saying, “His name is Calvin and I wouldn’t transfer there with how many credits I have.”

Your phone buzzes as you read, “I don’t know about this guy, Y/N…” Quickly you respond, “We’re just talking.. it’s not like I’m head over heals for him..” Trying to change the conversation, you state, “Besides, I’m excited for this year’s season and I have to stay on track for graduation.” Completely ignoring your last bit, he says, “You obviously value his opinion a bit so it’s probably better to change the conversation before I say something.”

Getting a different notification, you notice it is from Calvin and read it to say, “Hey, I just finished my video, how was work and class?” Smiling, you close the other message to reply saying, “Day is going alright, what did you make your video on this time?” You reopen your friend’s message and reply confidently, “If you have something to say, then you should just say it.” A message pops up form your friend that reads, “There’s only so close you can get with someone online. There’s never going to be that level of trust you only get by being face to face with someone. You haven’t even met this guy.”

Eyebrows in a furrow, you ask, “Do you honestly think I trust him as much as I trust you, someone that I’ve known for multiple years?” You are a bit confused at this point. Sure, you were enjoying chatting with Calvin but it had only been a handful of months. You had been friends with his other guy for a few years, surely he wouldn’t think…”Yeah, I do” your friend responds.

A longer message about Calvin’s video popped up and you open it to read it but quickly return to your friend’s message. Immediately, you reply, “That’s fucked. Of course I’m going to trust you more than him.” A few minutes later, and several messages between you and your friend, Calvin sends another message asking, “busy?” You reply back explaining that you were in an argument with one of your friends, or someone you considered a good friend.

A set of messages spew back and forth between you and your friend. One fiery message after another and you getting more and more frustrated as the conversation goes. Calvin starts to notice your short messages and low tolerance for a simple joke he tries making. Normally, you are full of laughter to his jokes and now you won’t even laugh at one of them.

“Hey, are you okay? Maybe that conversation isn’t the best one to be in..” Calvin sends. Reading it, you sign and type back, “I’m sorry. I don’t really mean to be so rude or depressing. I’m just getting really frustrated in this conversation and it’s definitely affecting how I’m responding to you. I’m just honestly ready to cry at this conversation.” Completely unaware that the conversation actually is the result of bringing up your dear Calvin, he replies saying, “Y/N, just leave the conversation. It’s not worth you being upset. If he was your friend, he wouldn’t be making you feel that way. Just talk with me instead.”

Now stuck between Calvin and your supposed friend, you are a bit torn. On one end, you want him to understand that Calvin has been there when your friend hasn’t. Not to mention, you want your friend to understand how much you value your friendship with him. But, it’s clearly taking a toll on how you’re talking with others and your happiness.

Ever since you started talking with Calvin and made some new friends at your school, your friend has been trying to monopolize more and more of your time with other people. He says erratic things like you trusting too many people and how he doesn’t know if he can even trust you as the result of you expressing your feelings to these people. It’s almost as if your friend treats you like you’re in a relationship with him, even though you’re not.

Groaning loudly, you throw your phone down on your bed and cover your eyes with your hands. A few tears have already been shed, but you don’t know how much more you can take, or Calvin for that matter. The poor guy has been up the last few hours with you during the conversation and now it’s got quite late where you are and where he is. You decide to reply in short answers, as to not seem rude by blatantly leaving the conversation with your friend. He seems to take the bait and ends the conversation in belief that an understanding and realization has been reached. You sigh in relief that he has bought your lies and move back to your conversation with Calvin.

Logging into your Skype, per his request, you are shocked to see that he is clearly focused on you in the chat window. Smiling slightly when you see him, he says, “C’mon, I know you can do better than that.” Cracking a bigger smile, you look away and say a simple, “Hey… sorry about the whole conversation.. a bit of a buzzkill..” He speaks up again and asks, “Will you watch my latest video so I can see your reaction? I sent it in the chat before I post it.”

Smiling brightly, you quickly pull up the video, but leave the Skype window open so you can see Calvin at the same time. He is clearly focused on you as your chest erupts into a fit of giggles at some of his jokes. His face immediately brightens up and a smile stretches across his face. “See, I knew I could get you to smile before bed.” Chuckling and shaking your head, you say, “Of course you can, you know I like just about all your jokes.” Finishing the video, you spend the rest of the night until long into the morning talking. He makes you smile with a plethora of cute jokes the rest of the night. You can’t help but think, ‘I don’t care if we ever meet. It’s moments like these that make me happy and that’s all that should matter.’

As you talk with Calvin, you both are doing a couple different activities. Mostly, you laying in bed and him playing a game on his PC while you two talk. Smiling to yourself, you drift off to sleep on Skype, but not before hearing a quick, “Awh are you asleep? Goodnight, Y/N, talk with you tomorrow.” You find yourself counting down the hours till he can make you smile again.

Hi again! Hope you enjoyed this fanfic! Let me know how you liked it and if you prefer fluff like this, more emotional, or more sensual material. This fanfic is a little bit on the longer style and hopefully kept your attention throughout. Like I posted previously, I am going to try and post more frequently (I can’t believe I hadn’t posted in a year lol). I miss writing and chatting with you guys, so feel free to drop a message in my box!

100 Notes and I’ll make you smile with another fanfic ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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oldmacnewlife · 4 years

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Installing Linux Mint on a (Slightly Aging) PC

In this post, I’ll be installing Linux Mint 19.2 on an aging, though not obsolete, PC. This is an Dell XPS in an obviously custom case which is in no way overcompensating for anything. The CPU is a 4th generation Intel Core i7 with 24 gb of ram installed. Aging, but plenty powerful enough for my purposes here. I’ll be doing all the preparatory work from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The steps shouldn’t be different for any version later than that. I first attempted this on OS X Tiger, which failed to recognize the image file I downloaded. It doesn’t seem to have been a corrupted file, as I copied it over to a Mac running Leopard, and everything worked fine.

The first step is to grab the Linux Mint installer by navigating your web browser to the downloads page of the linuxmint.com website. You’ll now want to choose the 32 or 64 bit version of the OS, along with the desktop environment you want as your default GUI. No worries. You can always set up other desktop environments once you have the system installed. Anyway, I’ll be running this on 64 bit hardware, and I like the Cinnamon desktop, so…

...I selected those, and chose a mirror site to download from. Then save the file. And go have some coffee. Or surf the web. The 1.9 gb download took just under 20 minutes on my very middle of the road DSL connection.

So, the file has been downloaded (and moved to my desktop.) It’s an ISO file, which is a CD/DVR image file. If I wanted to burn this to a DVD, I could use Mac OS X’s Disk Utility. I really don’t need a permanent copy of the installation disk since I can simply archive the ISO file, so I’m going to prepare an installation USB stick. Unfortunately, you can’t just copy an ISO file to a USB stick and call it done. You’re going to need a disk image format compatible with USB sticks, and that format is IMG. Also fortunately, Mac OS X comes with all the software you need to convert ISO files to IMG format. For Windows users, there is an application called ImgBurn which can be used to perform this conversion, but as I’m doing this from a Mac, I won’t be able to cover that from here. A quick web search should get you pointed in the right direction.

The software I’m going to use to convert the ISO file to an IMG file and then burn it to a USB stick is all console based, so fire up the terminal. Navigate to the folder where you downloaded that ISO file. The command to perform the conversion is hdiutil, and the format for this command looks like: hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o converted_filename.img source_filename.iso In this instance, the command was hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o linuxmint-19.2-cinnamon-64bit.img linuxmint-19.2-cinnamon-64bit.iso Successful execution of this program results in the output pictured above.

For some reason, OS X likes to tack on the dmg extension to the converted file. Weird, but fixable with the mv command. Execute mv linuxmint-19.2-cinnamon-64bit.img.dmg linuxmint-19.2-cinnamon-64bit.img, changing the filename to reflect the name of the file your working with.

If you haven’t already, go ahead and insert the USB stick into an available USB port on the Mac.

To actually burn the disk image to the USB stick, we need to get the USB stick’s device node. Once again, the terminal provides. Execute diskutil list. This command generates a list of the storage devices connected or otherwise installed to the Mac, as pictured above. My USB stick is named ITSAUSBSTICK. It’s device node is on the first line of the listing for ITSAUSBSTICK, and it’s in the format /dev/diskn, with the n at the end of disk representing a number. The device node of ITSAUSBSTICK is /dev/disk2. Now execute diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk#, replacing # with the number from the device node of the USB stick we’re working with, in this case, 2. The command here is diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2.

We’re now ready to burn that IMG file to the USB stick. For this, we’re going to use the dd command. This requires super user privileges, so we’ll also be using sudo. The command will look something like this: sudo dd if=diskimage_file.img of=device_node_of_disk_to_burn_image_to bs=1m. So in this case, the command would be sudo dd if=linuxmint-19.2-cinnamon-64bit.img /dev/dusj2 bs=1m. Since you’re using sudo, you’ll be prompted for your password, which should just be the same password you use to log into your Mac.

DD doesn’t really give you any feedback while it’s running, so be patient. I was running this on a PowerMac G5, so it took a little time on such old hardware. Anyway, when it’s done, dd spits a couple of lines out to show its done it’s job and returns you to the command prompt. Your Mac will almost immediately attempt to mount the USB stick and throws out this mildly alarming error dialog informing you it can’t read the USB stick and would you like to Initialize, Ignore, or Eject. You don’t want to choose initialize, as this will erase the USB stick, so just choose eject. You can now insert the USB stick into an available USB slot on the powered off PC you wish to install Linux to.

You may (probably will) have to set up the PC to boot from the USB stick. You can do this from the computer’s bios setup utility. Every bios setup is a little bit different, but somewhere in there will be boot options that let you set what order to have the computer check potential boot devices for an operating system. Set the computer to check the USB device first, then choose the bios setup utility’s option to save and restart the system. After a few moments, you’ll see this splash screen.

Your computer will boot into the Linux Mint Live Installation desktop. (Sorry I didn’t grab a picture of it.) This is sort of a trial mode that lets you try out Linux Mint before committing to installing it. Just be aware that no settings or documents you create in this mode are saved. Once you power off the computer, they’re gone.

On this desktop, you’ll see an icon that looks like a CD titled “Install Linux Mint.” If you’re ready to commit to doing that, double-click the icon.

This begins the Linux Mint installation. I installed Linux Mint as the computer’s sole operating system, so I pretty much just followed the onscreen prompts. If you’re installing Linux alongside another operating system such as Windows or Mac OS, there are some additional steps, and that’s a subject for another post.

The installer does it’s thing, copying files to the hard disk. It’ll let you know when it’s done, offering you the chance to continue using the Live Installation (with the warning that nothing created on a Live Installation is actually saved) or reboot the computer into the new actual for real Linux installation. Select reboot. You’ll be prompted to remove the installation media (the USB stick) and press Enter.

The computer reboots. If you set Linux Mint to require you to enter a password for login, you’ll be taken to this login screen. Enter the password and...

...and you are now on the Linux Mint desktop! Have fun!

#computers #linux #linux mint #linux mint 19.2

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illusivegore · 5 years

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Eight to Consider: Games of E3 2019

It’s June and that can mean only one thing in the world of video games – E3 is upon us. It pains me to say it, but I can’t lie, E3 isn’t nearly as exciting as it was a decade ago when I got back into video games. That said, I’m not a completely jaded asshole (yet), so there were still plenty of titles that caught my attention. As I’ve done in years past, I thought I’d run down a handful of them.

Before I get to the games from this year, I thought it might be kind of interesting to see how the games from my 2018 list have come along. I’ll make this quick with just a few bullet points, so let’s take a look.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 – Still not released and no new information to speak of.

Cyberpunk 2077 – Still not released, but we now have a release date of April 16, 2020 and I’m still looking forward to this one.

Octopath Traveler – Held its release date and was great. It even ended up being one of my favorite games from last year.

Strange Brigade – Held its release date, but didn’t make much of a splash and I never ended up playing it.

Days Gone – Got pushed back a bit, but released earlier this year to mediocre reviews and I’ve decided to skip it for the time being.

Spider-Man – Held its release date and was well received, but I still haven’t had a chance to play it yet.

Concrete Genie – Didn’t make its 2018 release and is now scheduled for a fall 2019 release, but has sort of fallen off the radar.

The Last of Us Part II – Still not released and with Sony skipping E3 this year, there isn’t much new information to pass on. Here’s hoping Sony sticks to its word that it will still be a PS4 game and not pushed to its new console.

Resident Evil 2 – Held its release date and was amazing. I reviewed it earlier this year and it will certainly be in the running for game of the year.

I don’t know about you, but I like looking back and seeing how these things play out and how expectations and excitement can change over time. With all that out of the way, let’s move on to my list of games for 2019. Oh and while I’m still interested in Cyberpunk 2077, since we didn’t get much new in the way of gameplay (at least not for us plebeians of the public) I’m leaving it off this year’s list.

I’m also not really a Zelda or Final Fantasy fan, so while Link’s Awakening, the Breath of the Wild sequel, and Final Fantasy VII all look good, I wouldn’t say I’m excited to play them. I also decided to keep any games without gameplay off my list, so while I’m intrigued by something like GhostWire: Tokyo, you also won’t find it here. Now then, let’s actually get to my top 8 games of E3 2019, for real this time.

Super Mario Maker 2

Platforms: Nintendo Switch Release Date: June 28, 2019

I never owned a Wii U so I never had the chance to play the original Super Mario Maker. Well I guess that’s not completely true. I made the mistake of buying the stripped down 3DS version of the game and almost immediately regretted that decision, but let’s not talk about that. Super Mario Maker 2 looks like it’s evolving everything that made the original a great game with a larger assortment of level creation tools and even an expanded story mode. I’m not much of a level creator, but I look forward to seeing what more talented people are able to create. The wait for Super Mario Maker 2 is nearly over as, at the time of this writing, it will launch in just a few days.

Borderlands 3

Platforms: Google Stadia, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 Release Date: September 13, 2019

It’s a bit counter intuitive to say I’m not that excited for Borderlands 3 but still put it on this list. It doesn’t look all that much different from the previous entries in the series and that’s kind of a bummer. That being said, I love the Borderlands games and with new characters, abilities, and environments to explore, I know I’ll enjoy the familiar formula of shooting and looting.

RAD

Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC Release Date: August 20, 2019

I’ve found my enjoyment of Double Fine games has been rather hit or miss. With their new game, RAD, they are delving into one of my favorite genres, the Rogue-like, so I’m willing to give them a shot with this one. In RAD, each run will have you exploring a post-post-apocalyptic world (that’s right, the world has ended twice) with nothing but your trusty baseball bat, that is until you start mutating. With each journey into the wasteland, you’ll acquire random mutations that will add a variety of combat options, making each run unique. RAD is a $20 downloadable title, and for that price, I’m looking forward to trying it out this summer.

Watch Dogs Legion

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 Release Date: March 6, 2020

The fact that a Watch Dogs game made this list was a complete surprise to me. The original Watch Dogs was one of my most anticipated games when it was first announced at E3 2012, but with multiple delays and a somewhat mediocre reception upon release, I quickly lost interest and still haven’t played it. I also didn’t have much interest in the sequel after missing out on the first game, so when Legion was announced I never imagined it would have caught my attention like it did. The main gimmick of Legion is that you can recruit and play as almost any character you encounter in the new London setting. Maybe I’m a sucker, but once I saw an elderly woman beating ass, I was ready to throw down the cash to play this. We’ll see how it looks as it gets closer to release, but right now I’m interested and it might even get me to go back and try out the other games in the series.

The Outer Worlds

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 Release Date: October 25, 2019

I’m a big fan of the Fallout games and The Outer Worlds is being made by guys that worked on the original PC releases and the studio that developed New Vegas. So I’m hoping for some of that Fallout writing charm and similar gameplay and elements from the more modern Fallout games. The Outer Worlds is a sci-fi shooter set in outer space, so there should be plenty of unique directions to go to differentiate it from the Fallout series. With the debacle that was Fallout 76, I’m more than willing to give a game in the same vein as a series I love a shot since Bethesda apparently doesn’t want to do the series right.

Pokémon Sword/Shield

Platforms: Nintendo Switch Release Date: November 15, 2019

Last year I slept on the Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee! Pokémon games. I actually had no intention of playing either of them, but my love for Pokémon took over and I gave them a shot. Much to my surprise, Let’s Go, Eevee! became one of my favorite games of 2018. Moral of the story, I will never again sleep on a Pokémon title, so Sword and Shield make this list by default.

Remnant: From the Ashes

Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows Release Date: August 20, 2019

This was by far the biggest surprise of this year’s E3 for me. I didn’t even know this game existed before I saw it on some E3 coverage and I was instantly impressed with what I saw. Remnant: From the Ashes is inspired by From Software’s Souls games and normally that would be enough to turn me off because those games just never clicked with me. However, Remnant focuses heavily on ranged, shooter combat, and it just looks so satisfying. There are a variety of classes you can play as, dungeons to explore, and at least 20 bosses to fight, so it’s looking like a substantial game. I’m not sure if I have the skills to get through a game like this, but it just looks so good that I’m looking forward to at least giving it a try.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Platforms: Nintendo Switch Release Date: March 20, 2020

I’m not even sure what to say about Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This is one of the main reasons I needed to get a Switch and with what they showed off at E3, I’m psyched now more than ever for it. There’s something about Animal Crossing that just does it for me. I’ve been playing them since the GameCube game, spent hundreds of hours with New Leaf, and have recently been addicted to Pocket Camp. The more Animal Crossing I can get in my life, the happier I will be. Most of all, I’m looking forward to hanging out with my main man, Hamlet, in a new environment.

#Nintendo #Switch #Pokemon #Animal Crossing #PS4 #PlayStation #Games #Video Games #Xbox #Xbox One #Watch Dogs #Remnant from the Ashes #Remnant #Rad #Mario #Super Mario Maker 2 #The Outer Worlds #Borderlands #Borderlands 3

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terryblount · 4 years

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Dragon Ball Z Kakarot PC Review

It seems that gamers will never give Dragon Ball Z a chance to quit. Every time this 1989 anime looks ready for a peaceful retirement, it is once again dragged back into service sending 90’s kids spiraling into nostalgia, while a whole new generation falls in love with the show. Fighting games in particular have turned Akira Toriyama’s masterpiece into a magic goose with an infinite supply of golden eggs.

Yet, what lies beyond the fighting game genre for Dragon Ball Z has always represented something of an enigma for developers. The epic stand-offs against insanely powerful enemies are certainly a fundamental part of the anime, but they form part of deeper journey of Goku’s personal growth. No DBZ game has really been able to relay this in a meaningful experience.

Look Gohan! Daddy can move sideways in this game too!

Enter Dragon Ball Z Kakarot. With this game, Japan-based studio CyberConnect2 have taken the arena brawler formula from many of their Naruto titles, and wrapped the entire Dragon Ball Z epic around it. What they cobbled together is a wholly different kind of DBZ game with commendable respect for its source material, yet still falls prey to one too many of the open-world genre pitfalls.

Rock the dragon

Like the majority of Dragon Ball Z fighting games out on the market, DBZ Kakarot is similarly a melange of crucial story moments from the anime crafted into a playable experience. The anime’s main drawing point has always been the utter spectacle that ensues when powerful protagonists come face to face with god-like villains, and these moments are undoubtedly the stars of the show here.

Where CyberConnect2’s latest game distinguishes itself from its peers, however, is DBZ Kakarot’s interest in what leads up to these major showdowns. Rather than just ushering the player from one big fight to the next, the gameplay on the open-world maps becomes an opportunity to put time into grooming your character for the multiple boss encounters within each chapter.

I bet if you went through the anime frame by frame you would find scenes that match these pictures perfectly.

In other words, outside of fighting iconic adversaries like Androids, Frieza, or Cell, DBZ Kakarot takes on a much more relaxed and free pacing where the player can fly around the world hunting for collectables, can do some training, or pummel lesser enemies. Each locale has been utterly packed with oodles of the aforementioned loot which serves the purpose of enhancing your character’s abilities.

DBZ Kakarot is at its strongest when the game can make this entire experience feel like you are playing through the anime rather than watching it. Running on the Unreal Engine 4, the character models look utterly fantastic, and at times I had some difficulty distinguishing them from how they look on the show. This is easily on par with gorgeous visuals from Dragon Ball FighterZ.

The developers have also ensured that the fighting sequences do not hold back from eye-watering lighting and particle effects, as well as the actual sounds that defined the quirky aesthetics of the anime. By the time I reached the Kaio-ken four scene between Goku vs Vegeta, I squealed like a little school girl! You could feel that intensity through the screen, and in moments like these DBZ Kakarot shines.

Still my favourite scene from the entire anime

Unfortunately, while many in-combat animations have been done rather well, the open-world dialogue sequences are truly cringeworthy. The show’s real voice cast – including Seán Schemmel and Christopher Sabat – do their best, but the horrific wooden acting and Final Fantasy X-level awkward pauses between lines make these scenes an utter pain to sit through, and there are a LOT of them.

It’s over nine thousaaaaaaaand!

When the first moment arrived to try my hand at the combat mechanics, I instinctively switched over fighting game mode in my mind. As is the norm whenever I play a new fighting game, I anticipated the usual routine of pausing the game and committing some basic combos to memory before punching Piccolo right between his pointy ears…

Except there weren’t any combos or multi-button attacks to speak of. Instead, I learnt that the player will have access to the three basic actions throughout DBZ Kakarot’s combat sequences: Melee attacks, long-range energy blasts and that… blink/step… thing they do. That’s it. Only three inputs that always form the backbone for those flashy enemy encounters.

See how I totally missed Zarbon here? The game wants you to use energy attacks strategically, which means you cannot just spam them.

The reason why CyberConnect2 have gone with such a simplified, consistent combat system is to ensure that the leading character can be rotated as the story progresses, without the need for the player to learn new fighting moves. Moreover, keeping things simple also ensures that DBZ Kakarot keeps a balance between open-world, story-driven moments, and the more intense combat scenarios.

As such, the combat is based primarily on paying attention to the enemy’s attack patterns, and subsequently deciding what your character should do in that moment. Is the enemy close enough to attack, are they blocking, are they about to discharge an energy attack, or should I try to dodge their next move? You form an instinctive loop of these questions in your head the more you play.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Dragon Ball Z without the signature super moves, so the game does let the characters’ individuality shine through in these abilities. The player can therefore choose between a maximum of four different slots to fire energy blasts at enemies, and when fighting in groups, you can even call on your partners to assist with their super attacks.

I hope you like tutorial text; this game will throw A LOT at you! This is a big no no as this means the game was not designed so the player can learn how to play intuitively.

While combat is overall a robust and multi-layered system, I wish it could have been more responsive. The game does most of the work for you, but inputs are still dependent on the character finishing their animations, which means it was easy to descend into button-mashing. It was frustrating seeing characters failing to block, or not striking in an opening because they were still powering ahead with that combo you entered five seconds ago.

Open-world woes

I reviewed One Piece: World Seeker last year which, like DBZ Kakarot, is another Shonen Jump publication that finally shed the yoke of the fighting genre in exchange for an open-world design. Regrettably, several issues – such as a bland world and sterile gameplay – fatally ruptured what could have been a great recreation of the anime.

It seems that DBZ Kakarot was not paying attention to World Seeker’s failings as it duplicates several of them (albeit to a smaller degree). The most obvious problem in DBZ Kakarot is how the open-world gameplay yet again feels underdeveloped, and extremely repetitive.

You read that correctly, one of the side missions is literally helping Master Roshi find his porn. Why? Just WHY?

The different maps like Planet Namek or the island-strewn oceans around Kame House are decent replicas Dragon Ball Z’s settings, and they are pleasantly spacious. However, these areas rarely elevate beyond being collect-a-thon, sand boxes to find the same items over and over again. Even side quests are nothing more than finding lists of items, or fighting the same minor enemies over and over.

DBZ Kakarot’s reasoning behind these agonizingly generic, open-world quests is that the player is expected to use items like Z Orbs to upgrade their skill trees, or food ingredients to cook stats-boosting meals to consume before battles. In this way, the game is intended to convey the experience of preparing themselves for major encounters later on in the chapter(s).

Seriously, “She’s not happy”!? This is the best reason they could come up with for doing this side quest?

The reality is that I played through large chunks of DBZ Kakarot where I became aware of feeling utterly bored. Like One Piece: World Seeker, there is nothing broken in these systems even counting the cringy cut scenes. The issue is that the fun wears off after a few hours once you realise the open-world gameplay is a one-trick-pony. There is simply not enough variety in gameplay to justify the grinding.

Like anime, like game

I have an inkling that DBZ Kakarot was perhaps envisioned in the early phases of development as a turn-based JRPG since the game is built around strong elements of stats and grinding. This might explain why something feels seriously incomplete, and why DBZ Kakarot plays like different elements of open-world and RPG games that have been desperately cobbled together.

My takeaway from the forty or so hours spent in-game is that I vacillated between moments of nostalgic joy in reliving one of the most epic anime series ever conceived, and an overwhelming sense of ‘Are we there yet?’ There isn’t really another game based in the DBZ universe quite like this one, yet I cannot ignore how the devs failed miserably to make open-world gameplay more interesting.

Sorry folks, while DBZ Kakarot can certainly lay claim to a fairly solid foundation, I wish I had better news for you. It feels like a superior, more fleshed out Dragon Ball Z game constantly threatens to conquer the bland moments, but the experience just doesn’t get there. In December 2020 when the inevitable top ten lists come out, I’d bet most content creators are probably going to say “Oh right, I actually forgot about this game!”. Get it on sale if you must.

Good visuals

Engaging boss fights

Loyal to the DBZ narrative

Battle cut scenes

Bland side quests

Very repetetive

Too much collecting

Open-world cut scenes

Tutorial screen overload

Too much talking!

PC Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM – Played using an XBox One controller

The post Dragon Ball Z Kakarot PC Review appeared first on DSOGaming.

Dragon Ball Z Kakarot PC Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

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kayawagner · 5 years

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Happy New Year–Plans for 2019 and A Look Back

After taking an extensive break over the holidays I am back at work. This is also a good opportunity to give you an update what I have been up to lately. Without further ado, let’s get started…

Forbidden Lands and Shipping Woes In December Fria Ligan’s latest roleplaying game called Forbidden Lands was finally ready for shipping. It’s a sandbox fantasy roleplaying game which I backed on Kickstarter in 2017. When the game finally was done it was already a bit delayed but that’s something you get used to when you regularly support projects on Kickstarter.

Sometimes things don’t work as planned. Unfortunately, the shipping of the Forbidden Lands boxed sets quickly turned into a total disaster. Backers started to get grumpy when it turned out that the books and boxed sets were already done, but the distributor had to delay shipping because of another Kickstarter fulfilment.

When finally shipping started everyone was excited and a few people quickly got their packages but then things went downhill pretty fast. A lot of backers didn’t get any shipping information even though the distributor claimed they shipped everything. When Fria Ligan support contacted the distributor they got told that the packages have been sent out without tracking – which is a terrible idea considering some people were waiting for stuff worth up to hundreds of Euros. Then the same people suddenly got shipping confirmation emails with conflicting information. Quickly accusations were thrown around and it seemed as if the distributor was lying to both Fria Ligan and the backers.

At this point I decided to write an email to Fria Ligan support, the distributor as well the CEO of Fria Ligan and voice my concerns and displeasure with the whole situation. I usually don’t use my status as an “influencer” but this time I thought it might be wise to throw my weight around. And lo and behold the management director of the distributor reached out to me and they even posted an update to the Kickstarter explaining what went wrong. And only a day or two later packages which have been stuck in some warehouse for ages started to move again.

The whole kerfuffle was caused by the initial shipping delay. Shipment of hundreds of boxed sets coincided with a lot of traffic caused by both the Black Friday sales and pre-holiday online shopping. The distributor’s logistics partner was extremely overwhelmed. Even though they had hired additional help, some shipments stuck for up to two weeks in sorting hubs all over Europe. Bad communication between the distributor, Fria Ligan, and the backers caused a lot of bad blood, but luckily things calmed down after people finally received what they’ve paid for. And oh boy, Forbidden Lands is a beautiful product. The long wait was definitely worth it. I’ll probably write more about it in the future.

Hacking, Alchemy, and animated GIFs As you probably know I am not only interested in roleplaying games, but I am also a great fan of video games. I also dabbled in software development (which is probably a too big a word for what I’ve been doing) since my teens. So it’s no surprise that I enjoy many of the games released by Zachtronics. Most of their games consist of puzzles which are solved by programming. During the Steam Winter Sale I added both Exapunks and Opus Magnum to my collection. In Exapunks you play a hacker living in an alternative version of 1990s who has to work for a mysterious AI in order to pay for medicine they need to survive. To do your job you use EXAs (which are small software constructs) which you program with a programming language comparable to Assembly language.

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The other game I picked up is Opus Magnum which is set into world where Alchemy works. Your job is to design transmutation engines to – for example – turn lead into gold. It reminded me a lot of Zachtronics’ older title SpaceChem, but is much more polished in every way.

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You’re probably wondering why I mentioned animated GIFs earlier. This is easily explained. Most new Zachtronics games allow you to export your solutions to the puzzles in the form of animated GIFs! I’ve included one of my solutions to a Exapunks puzzle below.

Demons, Bomb Disposal, and Nausea Traditionally my wife and I spend New Year’s Eve with friends. Usually I run a roleplaying one-shot, but this time I just didn’t feel like it. So our hosts offered we play Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes instead. It’s a party game developed for VR headsets in which one player has to disarm a bomb only they can see, while the other players have access to a manual with disarming instructions. It’s a fun game where precise communication is key. This has actually been the first time I experienced VR on a Playstation 4 and I was surprised how well it worked.

Last time I had the chance to try out a virtual reality headset was when a friend lent me his Oculus Rift Developers Kit 2. My PC at the time was barely VR-ready and most of the games weren’t really optimized yet. When it worked it was pretty impressive, but also extremely nausea-inducing. Surprisingly the PS4 VR headset didn’t cause any of these problems, even though movement in VR still felt a bit weird.

After playing Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes for a while I also had the opportunity to try out DOOM VFR which was totally awesome! If you ever have the chance to play this game, you definitely should do so. There’s also a video of me playing this game which doesn’t look as silly as I feared, which I might upload to YouTube eventually.

Retro PC Gaming and Thin Clients The older I get the more I enjoy playing old computer games from the MS DOS and early Windows era. Some of these games just have a certain charm that modern titles lack. Tools like DOSBOX and online shops like GOG have made it much easier to play old games on modern machines, but there are advantages to running games on actual hardware. While browsing YouTube I stumbled upon various videos in which retro gaming enthusiasts talked about using thin clients for retro gaming.

A thin client is basically a stripped down computer basically not much more than a terminal used to access a remote server. Most of these machines use outdated hardware and are available for just a few bucks on eBay. After doing some research I found out that a good choice for a retro-gaming machine was the HP T5720 thin client. The CPU is not too fast and can be further slowed down by reducing it’s speed multiplayer and disabling its cache. This can even be done by software while the computer is running. This is perfect if you intend to play old DOS games.

Quickly I found an HP T5720 on Amazon Marketplace for less than 20€. Unfortunately the seller supplied the wrong AC adapter. Luckily he immediately sent me the correct one, but alas the thin client still didn’t work. This time replacing the CMOS battery did the trick. While opening the machine I also found out that the seller sent me the HP T5730 by mistake. For a moment I considered returning it, but then decided to keep it for some other future project.

A few days later I found an offer for a HP T5720 on eBay. After the auction was done it turned out I was the highest bidder and for less than €20 including shipping it was mine! This time I got the correct machine including the original packaging, all documentation, a USB keyboard and a PS2 mouse. Yay!

It took me a while until I figured out how to install Windows 98 using an USB drive, but after a couple of hours my retro-gaming PC was working fine. The sound chip included on the mainboard is unfortunately not 100% DOS compatible, but works fine under Windows. I own a couple of games intended for Windows 95 and 98 which are almost impossible to play on modern machines, which should work fine on the thin client. If you’re interested in reading more about this project, please let me know.

Roleplaying game plans for 2019 Over the holidays I also had the opportunity to think about how my roleplaying activities went last year and what my plans for the future are. When it comes to Kickstarter projects 2018 was for me dominated by Fria Ligan projects – and not just on Kickstarter. I have probably played Mutant Year Zero, Genlab Alpha and Mechatron more often than any other roleplaying game this year. I also own Tales from the Loop and have backed their successor Things from the Flood which I am very excited about. I have considered running the games for a while now, I just couldn’t commit myself to preparing anything yet.

Other games I would love to run in 2019 are John Harper’s World of Dungeons Turbo: Breakers, which uses a very cool and extremely streamlined variant of the popular PbtA mechanics (it’s also free!), Everywhen, a multi-genre implementation of Barbarians of Lemuria, Advanced Fighting Fantasy or its scifi variant Stellar Adventures, and – last but not least – D&D using the Rules Cyclopedia.

My last few years as a DM have been dominated by failures and even though I feel the itch to run a roleplaying game from time to time, I haven’t been able to commit to anything yet. I also know that I’ll have to make some unpopular decisions in the future. The group I regularly play with is just too big, so I have to make up my mind who I want to invite to a new game. Regardless of who I pick, scheduling will probably an issue, and this had lead to some serious burn-out in the past. I don’t know why scheduling issues are such a huge problem for me, but it drives me totally bonkers.

I also would love to write more in general and definitely more regularly for the blog, but my lack of writing is directly tied to my lack of DMing. It’s much easier to come up with interesting topics to write about if you run a weekly game. I haven’t run anything in quite some time, and I am not sure if it’s wise to bore you with stories of my failed attempts to get a new campaign running. Heck, I am already boring myself just thinking about it…

So what have you folks been up to lately? What are your plans for 2019? Please share your comments below!

Kickstarter: Forbidden Lands

Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year–Plans for 2019 and A Look Back published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

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blazehedgehog · 7 years

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Hey, kids! Can you figure out what’s wrong with my desktop?

I have some bad news: that Sonic Mania video review I’ve been working on for like, a month? It’s postponed. Maybe indefinitely. Well, not indefinitely, that’s dramatic, but the long story short is that my desktop may be dying or dead and I’m a little lost as to what to do. It’s a long story, and kind of boring, so you’ll have to click through to read the full post:

9/29/2017: I hook my computer tower up in the spare bedroom at my brother’s place where I’m living until we can move in to our new apartment. It has been shipped from Colorado to Nevada in a moving trailer with as much padding as I could find. It probably still wasn’t enough. The system boots up fine, but very slowly, and software (especially games) stutters. I shut it down and touch a few connections inside the system, making sure the RAM, graphics card, and HDD connectors are firm. It’s not very thorough as far as checks go, but I start the system back up anyway. Stuttering is still there. The system doesn’t have internet yet, because even though I bought a $15 TP-Link USB Wifi adapter back in February or March in anticipation of this moment, I absentmindedly left it in storage. Storage doesn’t have lighting inside of the units, so finding the Wifi adapter will have to wait until the sun comes back out. I think maybe the stuttering will go away once I connect it to the internet, since some games act funny when they can’t connect to the web.

9/30/2017: With the TP-Link USB Wifi adapter installed, the system updates everything but the stuttering problem persists. Friends urge me to open the system and do a full check of all the connections. Some suggest taking everything out and reconnecting it. I don’t do that, but I do find that the CPU cooler is loose and that the backplate on my 1060 is also loose (this is me pushing down on the metal plate, which has separated from the 1060′s chassis a little bit, allowing the loose screws to raise up). I take the 1060 out and gently tighten all the screws so the backplate doesn’t shift around anymore, and I manage to snap 3 out of 4 of the CPU cooler pins back in to place (it’s one of those generic, stock Intel coolers). The 4th one kind of snaps in, but it’s a little mushy and these coolers are fragile so I figure it’s good enough. Amazingly enough, the computer starts up much faster and all stuttering in games is gone.

10/1/2017: A new problem has emerged: when the system sits overnight without being turned on, on first boot it will show the BIOS logo, POST, and then instead of loading Windows, it gets stuck on a black screen. While on this black screen, if I hit the reset button, the system boots normally. One friend suggests a power supply issue. I contact EVGA, my PSU manufacturer, who claim to have a 10 year warranty. EVGA says that doesn’t sound like a power supply issue to them, and we start talking about what it could be.

10/2/2017: I have this strange paranoia about the power cable I’m using for the tower and whether or not the surge protector is too old. I grabbed a newer surge protector from storage thinking that may also fix the stuttering problem, but since it didn’t fix that nor the black screen problem, I plug the computer directly in to the wall outlet and joke to myself, “hopefully this isn’t a bad idea.” Is it a bad idea? I can’t quite remember.

10/3/2017: Out of options, EVGA suggests I just disassemble the entire PC besides the the CPU and see if the black screen happens. If it doesn’t, reconnect the entire computer component-by-component until it happens. Then, simply replace that component. That sounds like a lot of work, and given how small this spare bedroom is, I don’t have a lot of room for that kind of stuff. I’ll have to psyche myself up for it.

10/4/2017: Suddenly I realize: the first time the system started up, it didn’t have the black screen problem. It was only after I connected the TP-Link USB Wifi adapter. I pull it out of the system before I start it up, and sure enough, it boots straight in to Windows. A quick Google search reveals others, with nearly identical models of TP-Link adapters, suffering the EXACT same problem. It’s a long standing hardware conflict with a Windows 10 USB 3.0 Controller and TP-Link devices that neither are interested in fixing (and at least for some, seems to cause a variety of USB problems until they got rid of the device). This guy says his TP-Link device actually damaged a USB 3.0 port of his because of this problem. A friend suggests an internal PCIe Wifi card. It’s $60, which is a lot for someone who is still technically homeless, but you get what you pay for, and last time I cheaped out with the TP-Link adapter, it bit me in the butt -- so I go for it.

10/7/2017: The ASUS PCIe Wifi card arrives, I put it in, and it works with zero problems. The day is saved. Or is it?

10/11/2017 (12:45am): Around midnight I go to the bathroom and return to find my TV is turned off. My computer monitor is too big to use with my tower in this tiny room, so I have it connected to a TV. Same size, but the base is smaller, so it fits on this table easier. What this means is that when my desktop tells my TV to enter standby mode due to inactivity, the TV just reports “No Signal” and turns off after 30 seconds. Absentmindedly, I move the mouse but forget to to turn the TV on at first, and by the time I get the TV on and it stops showing the Vizio logo, the computer is already mid-reboot for some reason. Seems like coming out of standby with no display may have crashed the video card. Surely it’ll come right back on.

1:05am: Windows has been stuck on a loading spinner for close to 20 minutes. I’m getting worried and looking up stories from people who left their system sit on this same spinner for hours, even days, with no progress. The HDD activity light hasn’t blinked in a while. The system is just sitting there. Some solutions say to just shut it off and try again. So, I throw caution in to the wind and go for it.

1:15am: It takes at least another five minutes of loading spinners, but the system finally boots. Seems like Windows may have rolled back to a restore point as some icons have been moved around on the desktop to old positions, but not everything was rolled back (the event viewer makes no note of this). Not only that, but my ASUS PCIe Wifi Card is gone. Windows is complaining about there being no ethernet connection, which it shouldn’t be doing. Checking the device manager, the ASUS wifi card is there, but it’s saying there “aren’t enough free resources” for it to function. Code 12. A Google search on my tablet says this means it’s run out of IRQ slots. What? It wants me to disable other devices on my system to make room. Does that mean something with my Elgato or the 1060 is broken? Given this was apparently a video error, I’d say the 1060. The day before, GeForce Experience had notified me of new drivers and I ignored it because I was in the middle of something. Maybe I stumbled upon an IRQ bug they patched?

1:35am: I uninstall, reinstall, disable, and renable the PCIe wifi card repeatedly. I get out the CDROM that came with the PCIe card and install the “official” ASUS drivers instead of whatever Windows thinks it needs (Windows says it’s a Broadcom device; it’s not). Nothing changes: every time I reboot, it’ll say wifi connections are available, but when I connect, I get wifi for a split second and then the device disappears and stops functioning. I’m considering downloading clean Nvidia drivers on a USB stick using my laptop to see what that does.

1:50am: I’ve run the Windows Hardware Troubleshooter. It states the obvious: hey, your wifi card’s not working. It claims to do some magic behind the scenes but nothing works. The problem evolves and the Hardware Troubleshooter next says the wifi card’s drivers might be faulty, even though five minutes ago they were fine. Look, all I need is those Nvidia drivers. I plug in the TP-Link USB Wifi adapter, knowing that’ll give me internet long enough to download the driver update. This was a bad idea -- I’d uninstalled the device completely, and I think it needed the drivers disc before you plugged it in to the USB port. Windows seems to summon drivers from somewhere, for something, and instantly the whole system is brought to its knees and eventually BSODs with a DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION. This essentially means that a piece of software caused an extreme memory leak (or something similar) and this is Windows catching it before it could cause real data corruption from an overflow or something.

2:13am: The system boots up after the DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION blue screen and I load up Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), ready to, at the very least, clear out what is probably just a bad Nvidia driver. DDU says I should run it in Safe Mode, and I idly wonder if maybe I can just turn my antivirus off. I disable Malwarebytes, and for some reason pop in to the Device Manager to have one last look to see if the Wifi Card is still broken. Instead of being broken, it’s merely disabled. That’s... new. I re-enable it and suddenly Wifi just... works. I have full internet again. It’s like nothing was wrong. What? I didn’t actually fix anything. Why is it working now? Maybe it was me turning off Malwarebytes? Was it conflicting with Windows Defender? (for the record, I’d had Malwarebytes installed for a while but all of its real-time protections were turned off -- until the night before, where it updated to a free trial of the premium version and turned all the real-time protections on). Just to make sure no conflicts happen in the future, I uninstall Malwarebytes.

2:41am: Sure enough, I tell the Nvidia Tray Icon to update my 1060′s drivers and an entry appears in the Event Viewer saying the GeForce Experience is either missing or corrupt (The GeForce Experience handles driver installation and other things like video recording, etc.) The tray icon downloads and installs a fresh copy of the GeForce Experience to replace the corrupted stuff.

2:54am: Wifi disappears again. Same problem: there aren’t enough IRQ slots. When the GeForce Experience reinstalled and updated the drivers, the Nvidia Tray Icon went away and never came back. Maybe something’s still corrupted in there. I boot in to safe mode and use DDU to clean out the all traces of the Nvidia driver.

3:02am: When I restart with no graphics drivers, wifi is instantly working again. This looks promising. Fresh install of the drivers and everything’s looking like it’s back to normal.

3:40am: Wifi goes out yet again, because once again, it’s run out of IRQ slots. What do I gotta do to make sure this stays fixed? Well, since restarting last time fixed it, maybe restarting again this time will fix it.

3:45am: The system hangs on the “Restarting...” screen. Not sure what to do, I leave it there for a few minutes until eventually it cuts to a blue screen. Our old pal DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION is back.

4:02am: The system seems to have steady wifi for about 30-45 minutes before it runs in to that IRQ error and dies. Now, the IRQ error precedes a guaranteed DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION blue screen, usually by only a few minutes. I’ve also noticed that when the wifi runs out of IRQ slots, the ASMedia eXtensible USB 3.0 Host Controller also fails along with it (no error about system resources, it just stops working, this time with “Code 24.”).

4:45am: Something weird has started to happen. Wifi will dip out for just a second, but then come back and the system will be “fine.” It’ll still eventually BSOD with the Watchdog Violation, but it’ll keep the internet up until that moment.

5:10am: The event viewer starts spitting out weird warnings about “Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0.” followed by messages about retrying “IO operations” on the Disk at “logical block addresses.” Checkdisk seems to not care, says all drives are healthy. Earlier in the night a friend mentioned checking out software called “WhoCrashed?” that analyzes BSOD crash dumps and can help tell you what’s going on. I have to clear some HDD space for it, but eventually it’s just a matter of time of waiting for the next BSOD. I also install a system resource monitor called WhySoSlow from the same place just to see what’s going on under the hood. At this point, it’s been over an hour, and I start to think maybe I won’t have another BSOD.

5:20am: Idly, I run a system integrity check (sfc /scannow). This scans core Windows components for errors. It says everything is fine.

5:50am: Within five or ten minutes of the integrity check finishing, “Application Responsiveness” and “Kernel Responsiveness” in WhySoSlow spike HARD out of nowhere. They go from 0ms to peaks of 200ms or more. It’s like when I plugged in the TP-Link device a few hours earlier. The system is incredibly sluggish, but the Event Viewer isn’t reporting anything out of the ordinary, the USB 3.0 controller’s still working, and so is the wifi. Even the system temperatures are normal (40C and below), so this isn’t a loose CPU cooler again. Regardless, boom: we have our Watchdog Violation BSOD to analyze.

6:08am: Windows is LETHARGIC to start up. It takes forever just to get to the desktop, and even longer to show icons. I manage to get it to load WhoCrashed and it analyzes five dumps made by Windows. Unfortunately, I can only read one and half of another. The system won’t shake this sluggishness and I know what that probably means. I snap photos of the two entries so I can look at them in detail later, with the other three impossible to read.

6:10am: Windows BSODs again with another Watchdog Violation. WhoCrashed said the Watchdog “detected a prolonged runtime at an IRQL of DISPATCH_LEVEL or above” and that this was “typical of a software driver bug” and not a hardware issue. Of the second memory dump it read, all I could make out was that the error happened in asstor64.sys -- aka the ASMedia eXtensible USB 3.0 Host Controller. I try to get Windows 10 to boot in to safe mode so I can have a look at the rest of the dump analysis, but Microsoft removed the ability to boot you system in to safe mode by holding F8. Now you have to actually get in to Windows and pick “Safe Mode” from a menu option. Hard to do that when Windows “loads normally” and eventually BSODs before you can get to the Safe Mode menu.

6:16am: Windows is still starting up INCREDIBLY slowly. I can’t even get the start menu to come up. And, before I know it, once again, boom: Watchdog Violation. They’re getting closer together.

6:20am: As Windows 10 once again lurches back to life, I try and get it to shut down, but the start menu still won’t come up. Instead I hit the power button to force a shut down, but it gets stuck on the “Shutting down...” screen for several minutes before also getting a Watchdog Violation Bluescreen. Instead, while it’s on the BIOS screen, I just power the system off entirely, frustrated.

And so here we are. I’m back on my laptop now. My incredibly slow, incredibly small laptop. I’m lucky to have it, but this thing has problems of its own I don’t want to talk about right now.

So what do we think happened? I’ve spoken to four or five friends now, and there are three running theories:

One friend says it sounds like a bad motherboard. This is the motherboard I have, and I paid $140 because I wanted something reliable. It was “Tom’s Hardware Smart Buy 2014.“ (I bought it in 2015 when it was on sale for Black Friday). Apparently ASRock Mobos have problems where if they lose power suddenly, they can develop problems, and the power apparently did go out yesterday (10/10/2017) in the morning while I was asleep. The system was off, however, but it was still connected directly to the outlet -- opening it up to power surges. Still, one would think power surge problems wouldn’t slowly get worse over time, and you’d think it’d manifest as a power supply problem first, right? Either way, I have a 10 year warranty on the EVGA PSU and even though Newegg doesn’t sell my mobo anymore, this one is nearly identical and costs $100. That’s a lot, especially after I complained about $60 for the wifi card, but it’s either that or no computer at all, period.

Other friends say to boot in to safe mode and reinstall all of my motherboard drivers. That’s an inexpensive option to be sure, but it really did seem like things were getting worse, not better. With as slow as the system was getting, it seems like hardware damage may have been done.

Related to the above, the BSOD problems didn’t start happening until I plugged in the stupid TP-LINK USB wifi adapter without reinstalling its drivers from the disc it came with. Could that be mucking up the internals? But again, if it was getting so slow, that probably at least means reinstalling Windows 10...

Or perhaps a fourth option that you out there on the internet know about...?

Anyway, this has been a hellish night, on top of a hellish week, on top of a hellish three months. Sickness and hospitals (and hospital bills) and almost not finding an apartment and now my computer progressively having a worse and worse meltdown. Any tips you out there have would be welcome.

#computer #tech support #help

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