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libraries are fantastic resources, partially because they provide books and other media, but also partially because they offer community and social events, classes, game nights, book clubs, author talks, meetups, and more!

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Oh so it was just straightup embezzlement. Fantastic, I was hoping it was.

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Youtube just took away my advanced features, which means chapters don't work anymore.

I'm not gonna give them my ID or phone number so who knows if I'll ever get the features back 🙃 The timestamps in the description still work and the links are in the text document at https://dl.khat.us/overlays where you can also download the video. Alternatively:

🔶 COMPOSITION 🔶 Rule of thirds, framing, focal points Framing & composition tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYlgj1hwcYw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XBYt-_U4WE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyb6r0sekXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM64ycm7tz4 Elements & principles of design in film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPRFAbIsPXw Juxtaposition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVmVir2Uwb8 Focal points: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-focal-point-definition/

🔶 MATCH CUTS 🔶 my how-to guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxmge5RRykM types of match cuts: text explanation: https://www.soundstripe.com/blogs/how-to-use-match-cuts-in-film-and-video-editing video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptXlYulVAsM

🔶 FLOW 🔶 Demystifying the art of vidding: https://vidders.github.io/articles/vidding/demystifying.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Jjxb6Lw7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7fHwLEtx3U Couldn't find a guide on it, but flow generally improves when you vary sync types. Two most broad sync categories are internal & external. Internal sync is syncing stuff that happens in a clip with the audio (eg the character falling on the beat) while external sync is manually syncing something (e.g. cut to another scene on the beat).

🔶 KEN BURNS 🔶 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t16je0AOXU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns_effect

🔶 COLORS 🔶 Color grading vs color correction, explained: https://vimeo.com/blog/post/color-grading-vs-color-correction-explained Both processes, in-depth: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/video-editing/color-grading-vs-color-correction-process/ Psychology of color in film: https://nofilmschool.com/color-psychology-in-film

🔶 BLENDING MODES 🔶 Some software call these composite modes ADOBE https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/blending-modes.html

VEGAS page 386 https://archive.org/details/vegaspro13-0-manual-enu-477102/page/386/mode/2up https://www.manula.com/manuals/fxhome/vegas-image/1/en/topic/blend-modes

DAVINCI RESOLVE page 423 https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/UserManuals/DaVinci_Resolve_12_Reference_Manual.pdf https://mixinglight.com/color-grading-tutorials/guide-to-composite-modes-davinci-resolve/

🔶 MASKING 🔶 Vegas: https://youtu.be/OMzLcqiDonM After Effects: https://youtu.be/K1KgBfEBU8o Alight Motion: https://youtu.be/_72N7KHkR4Q

Adobe plugins that I use: Simple mask: https://www.creativeimpatience.com/simplemask/ Feathered crop: https://www.creativeimpatience.com/feathered-crop/

Standalone AI masking program: https://github.com/Zarxrax/Sammie-Roto

🔶 KEYFRAMING 🔶 DAVINCI RESOLVE Transition curves, v12, page 404: https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/UserManuals/DaVinci_Resolve_12_Reference_Manual.pdf

Keyframes and animation, v19, page 532: https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/UserManuals/DaVinci-Resolve-19-Beginners-Guide.pdf?_v=1741161610000

How to video (v18): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGejXa-j1ZY

VEGAS http://vegaspro.helpmax.net/en/using-vegas-software/using-automation/keyframe-animation/ Visual representation of the presets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cosovVbHMvg manual keyframing with curves: https://creativecow.net/forums/thread/vegas-keyframe-interpolation/ video: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/custom-manual-keyframe-interpolation--117322/#ca731221 tip: https://www.reddit.com/r/VegasPro/comments/m32yyk/keyframes_interpolation_faster_workflow/

PREMIERE General: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/controlling-effect-changes-using-keyframe.html Graph: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/adding-navigating-setting-keyframes.html#view_keyframes_and_graphs

AFTER EFFECTS General: https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/keyframe-interpolation.html Graph: https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/animation-basics.html#the_graph_editor

🔶 MISCELLANEOUS EDUCATIONAL LINKS 🔶 Cuts & Transitions 101: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAH0MoAv2CI AMV structure: https://web.archive.org/web/20140403113138/http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=110534 General help sites: https://amv.tools https://amv101.com/ https://links.bentovid.com

I made this guide about creating & using overlays for vidding, but the first half is all about flow & composition, which are editing fundamentals. It's very information-dense. I packed everything into 15 minutes. It's program agnostic. It has chapters, captions, and several more guides (mostly text but some more videos) in the description. You can also download the video if you don't want to keep referring to youtube. Please check it out! ❤️

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Trees, like animals, can also experience albinism, though it is extremely rare.

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I'm very curious to hear your take on Zuko as a disabled character? All of your analyses of disability in fiction have been very interesting to read so far, thank you for sharing your thoughts/expertise.

Thank you!  Follow-on from this post about Toph.

What I mean by saying Zuko is a disabled character: the social model of disability basically states that disability is any bodily difference that gets problematized and/or treated as abnormal by society.  This definition includes facial differences, AKA any scarring, skin marking, and so on that leads to staring by nondisabled society or other forms of stigma based on the person’s appearance.  Part of the reason for this inclusion is about complicating the disabled-nondisabled dichotomy; facial difference and facial scarring are identities within that framework.  Part of the reason comes from the U.S.’s history of Ugly Laws, which literally made it illegal for people with facial differences to appear in public in some cities as late as 1974.  Part of it is the huge overlap between ableism (giving more privileges to the nondisabled) and lookism (giving more privileges to the normatively beautiful).

Avatar: The Last Airbender has some high-quality anti-ableism in showing Zuko’s story, including how other characters respond to Zuko and how Zuko’s appearance informs but does not define his characterization.

One of the ways this comes out is by turning nondisabled characters’ gaze back on them:

In “The Serpent’s Pass,” Jet says to Zuko “You know, as soon as I saw your scar, I knew exactly who you were…” and then goes on to describe his almost hilariously wrong conclusion that Zuko’s a Freedom Fighter waiting to happen because Zuko’s village was presumably also destroyed by the Fire Nation.  We get to see Zuko’s moment of terror that he actually has been recognized turn into incredulity as he then gets invited to join a guerrilla force opposing everything he (currently) stands for.  Jet looks stupid for jumping to conclusions based on appearances.

In both “Zuko Alone” and “The Cave of Two Lovers,” that same jumping-to-conclusions works in Zuko’s favor, because both Song’s mother and Li’s parents assume that anyone with a burn scar must be a veteran of the fight against the Fire Nation.  Again, the emphasis is on the fact that the people judging Zuko based on his appearance are wrong.

In “The Chase,” Azula becomes the only person we ever see mock Zuko for his appearance, when she covers her own left eye to draw out the “family resemblance” for Aang.  The moment gets a horrified reaction out of Aang — Zuko’s his enemy, but Aang also realizes that this is a nasty thing to do — and helps to establish Azula as not just a villain, but a sadistic one.

In “The Beach,” Zuko blows up at Ty Lee for commenting that stress can cause breakouts.  His response is unnecessarily mean-spirited, but it also draws attention to the relative level of privilege (the biggest skin problem she has to worry about is acne) that informed her careless comment.

In “Crossroads of Destiny,” Zuko assumes that, when Katara calls him “the face of the enemy,” it’s a way of calling him frightening to look at — and it’s Katara who looks like a jerk for implying it, even accidentally.

The other big way that this comes out is clapping back at the implied treatment of disability as demanding explanation, or the “But why are you like this?” form of ableism:

The show makes it clear that Zuko does not owe anyone — not Song, not Li, not Jet, not his crew, not his friends — an explanation for why he looks the way he does.  None of the Gaang ever ask Zuko what happened, and the few characters who do (Li, Song, Lieutenant Jee) don’t end up looking good when they do so.

“The Cave of Two Lovers” clearly underlines the show’s theme of “my body, my business” in the scene where Song tries to touch Zuko’s face.  The tone (including literal musical tones) signals that Song is being inappropriate and invasive.  It’s understandable that she wants to make a connection, but it’s also emphatically not okay to touch body parts of strangers one has not received permission to touch.

To be clear, taking people’s ostrich-horses is also not okay, Zuko, but Baby’s First Grand Theft Auto helps drive home just how thoroughly Song has let her curiosity and rudeness sour a budding connection.  It also shows that, while she’s right that she and Zuko have some things in common, she has privileges he lacks because she doesn’t have to disclose her scars if she doesn’t feel like it.  Plus, that moment contrasts to Katara and Mai both touching Zuko’s cheek — Katara just after they’ve shared a moment of vulnerability, Mai just before they start smooching — because they’re both doing so in a way that’s respectful to Zuko himself.

When he wakes up from a dream of turning into Aang, the first thing Zuko does is touch his left eye to make sure he’s still himself.  It’s part of his identity, and the only time we see adolescent Zuko without it (earlier in the dream sequence) it’s a way of showing that Zuko isn’t truly himself.

Zuko grapples with the fact that he’s always going to bear evidence of having survived abuse, and a big part of his character journey is concluding that he’s free to make whatever meaning he chooses of that scar, regardless of what Ozai might’ve intended.

There are other elements of Zuko’s story the Avatar writers do well.  He bears a superficial resemblance to the thousands of villains (especially in SF) who become villainous because they incur facial scarring, but of course his story is infinitely more humanized and nuanced than “skin bleached in a vat of acid, might as well go rob banks now.”  His appearance incurs very different reactions depending on his current wealth and political power, emphasizing the intersections of disability and imperialism.  He discusses the possibility of a cure with Katara, but also goes on to live a long and fulfilling life without one.

Maybe there’s no clearer evidence that Zuko counts as disabled in the sense of “society treats your body as a problem that needs to be solved” than the way that adaptations of AtLA treat the scar.  They tend to minimize, hide, or otherwise avoid it.

[Image description: Sepia-toned image of the Gaang from a Legend of Korra promotional that appeared on the Nickelodeon website.  Zuko has his head turned and his hair swept forward in such a way that none of the left side of his face is visible.]

[Image description: Screenshot of Zuko from the 2010 adaptation The Last Airbender.  Dev Patel has a very subtle amount of makeup meant to convey minimal scarring around his left eye.]

Like I said: facial difference counts as a disability because society treats it like one.  In the social model, that’s what counts rather than, for instance, how much peripheral vision Zuko does or doesn’t have.

I’m not linking to any of many works of fan art that depict Zuko tilted to the right, occasionally even when other characters are presented facing directly ahead.  Nor am I going to link to any of the equally-plentiful works of fan fiction that keep most other elements of canon the same but specify that Zuko’s face is unscarred.  (A similar number, it’s worth noting, also make Toph sighted.)  This isn’t a callout.  It’s an explanation of how Avatar does an effective job of showing how Zuko’s facial difference informs his identity without making that difference the sum total of his identity.

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This animal came back and this video is slightly better quality. Still have no idea what this is. I doubt it's a fox now. Can anyone identify it? I'm in the northeast USA.

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Somebody tagged this post of my fic authors note with "Tamysn Muir type shit" what if I cried??

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The timing of when my camera took this photo to send through my email. LOL. I thought this was a bat at first.

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Skunk in my front yard. The video's not worth uploading because the quality is very bad haha.

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I forgot how to update my custom pages on my tumblr webpage LOL so I updated my sticky post instead.

Hello 👋🏽

This is a personal blog. I mostly reblog things related to visual media.

I'm in my 30s. I run a vidding discord server called BentoVid. You can find more of my social links on this page.

Personal Tags: #vidblog - seldom-updated vidding dreamwidth blog

#sqland - Related to my house (usually my pond or landscaping)

#sqcam - Photos & videos from my security cameras. Usually wildlife.

#sqvid - my vids (mostly AMVs)

#tumblreet - It is like a tweet, but it's on tumblr. I use #fanvidfriday to share an old vid on fridays (via my queue).

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I got security cameras recently.

Did some research, found some cameras that didn't need a subscription to use. I went with Reolink. They were running a sale on Argus 2 (their current model is argus 4) so I got them at a pretty steep discount. They also had a veteran discount too so I think I got 2 camera for like $100? If they have a wifi connection, they will email me motion updates. It's been great so far. They have a mobile app AND ALSO software for the computer. The PC version gave me some trouble at first, but all is good now and I'm very happy my purchase! The camera on the side of my house uses my home wifi. I bought a separate wifi hotspot for the one at my pond. I'd never heard of the Solis Go before, but decided I'd give it a shot. It was relatively cheap (in comparison to the wifi hotspots I use for my home internet) and it came with an included lifetime plan of 1GB per month. 1GB/mo won't last long if you were actually using it for internet, but all this does is send emails with a ~1MB image attachment, so it should be more than enough. I've had the one on my house up for about a month already with no issues. The pond one gave me some trouble due to where it was pointed originally but we're all good now. The solis has only been out for a few days but it was also seamless to set up. I'm so happy with them that I'm actually debating buying some more LOL. I actually bought these specifically to see the wildlife around my property. All the trail cams I looked at required some type of subscription to give me updates. While I currently have a trail cam that I'm happy with, going out to check it has become pretty inconvenient. The main difference between Reolink and my current trail camera is the trigger time. Trail cams have much faster trigger time - 0.1 to 0.2 seconds. It starts recording immediately. The reolink can take up to a full 2 seconds to start recording, which kinda sucks. But the convenience of instant updates and not having to manually get the SD card out have been worth it for me! I guess I should come up with a personal tag for the videos that come out of this, because the few I have so far have been great! Already got a bear, gray fox, skunk, and a few cats. I think I'll use #sqcam

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I'm not entirely sure what this animal is, but I'm leaning toward gray fox that somehow lost its tail? It comes back out of the trees at 0:18 This is my front yard by the way

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Gray fox checking out my pond

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Bear in my front yard

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Thank you to everyone who's been following along with this blog and supporting me as I share my art. All these pieces and more are available as prints in my shop!

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While I was away this summer I tackled reading the whole Animorphs series. I'd heard it was good, but I wasn't expecting it to be that good. The turmoil, the increasingly grey morality...

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Nothing in the world feels as unjust as the fate of the Disco Elysium developers.

Imagine you build this in-depth fictional setting over the course of decades with your friends, and then decide to turn it into a game for fun. You end up creating one of the most celebrated and well-written RPGs of all time and become celebrated for reviving a dying genre.

A few months later, you're fired from the company you founded for criticizing the new direction its taking. The company has the copyright not only to the game you made, but literally everything in the world of the game, which spans decades of lore you built for no profit with your group of friends.

Like, this is a nightmare that I didn't even know existed before I ran into it. To have, what is essentially a passion project that branched off from a TTRPG campaign, be pulled from your hands by a corporate entity that only yearns to abuse your creation for maximum profit. I couldn't imagine myself going on creating anything after that.