#(and thanks ;v; hopefully it's a quick fix and I get the blog back)

[ossacruenta]

@highfivethesky commented

" is that the best you can do? "

( cups @ the devil n sorry about your y!marik blog hope it revives -sends support && cookies- ) ✧ Assorted Questions ✦

"Do you really want me to do my best?" He is currently observing his claws. . . should really get them done again, "You're brother isn't here to talk you out of being reckless."

[pokemonapex]

Alpha Build 8 Now Available!

It's here! It's finally here! I hope you all are as excited for this as I am! The story now continues into the southern mountains of Abbadon where mysteries and danger abound. Here are the highlights:

Story Continuation - The story goes on! See what awaits you in Chapter 3!

New Areas - Explore Mt. Belial, the town of Nysa, the Crystal Channel, and a strange abandoned lab on the snowy mountaintop. Each area is packed with items, Pokémon, secrets, and battles!

New Music - Three new toe-tapping tracks have been added to the game's soundtrack. I hope you like them as much as I do!

New Custom Items - Use the Warding Charms to keep away wild Pokémon at the cost of draining money on each step. Use the new Impulse items to give experience to your Pokémon. And don't forget new Artifacts to play around with!

New Quality-of-Life Options - Use Fast Mode to speed up gameplay, helpful for repeat playthroughs. Also, you can now disable weather effects for those who have perfomance issues when weather occurs. Find these options in the Options Menu.

Hard Mode - This newly-added mode cranks up the difficulty by restricting saving to special sigils found throughout the game, and causes a Game Over upon losing a battle. Don't worry, though, as most trainer battles can be surrendered in this mode, letting you instantly end the battle, while still caughing up the loser's fee. Additionally, prize money from battles is increased while in this mode. This mode is still experimental, so try it out and see what you think! Start a new save to try it out.

Item Drops - Wild Pokémon now have a chance to drop the held item they were holding. It's rare, but it should hopefully help you gain a few free items for defeating wild Pokémon.

Loads of Changes - A whole heaping helping of changes, fixes, and tweaks have been added. See the changelog for details!

I've been working super hard on this build, and I really hope you guys have fun with it! I already have lots of plans for Build 9, so hopefully development for that won't be as long this time. As always, please report any bugs you find on the subreddit, come discuss the game on our Discord server, and contribute your knowledge of the game to the Wiki (we really need some active contributors!).

I'd like to take this chance to thank our contributors for their hard work. Lesser Bay composed the amazing new tracks, and CandiHyphenPants created some cool new trainer class designs. I'd also like to thank the people who worked to playtest this build to squash a LOT of bugs. I daresay this will likely be the most bug-free launch we've had! (Fingers crossed super hard)

Downloads are available in the Launcher now! See the blog for more info.

Read on for the full changelog:

Additions

Dahlia can now give the player TM27 Return if shown a Pokémon with perfect happiness.

Two new Secret Hollow locations in the Acacia area.

New item balls in Acacia area.

Mt. Belial, Nysa, and various sub-maps are now available!

Wild Pokémon that are carrying items now have a chance to drop the item upon defeat. The Pokémon must still be holding the item upon defeat, and there is a percent chance equal to the Pokémon's level that its item will drop.

New items: Vitality Impulse, Life Impulse, Supremacy Impulse. These give a set number of EXP to a Pokémon. Good for leveling up multiple times, especially at lower-levels.

New option: Fast mode. Enable to play the game in slight fast-forward. Good for repeat playthroughs.

New option: Weather effects. Disable to hide weather on the overworld for those who experience slowdown when weather is displayed.

Added a few examination events to The Secret Spot.

Added high-resolution Gen V back sprites (created by Dreadwing93 on Deviantart)

Added three new music tracks for new areas.

Added a temporary way for players who used the temporary event in Build 7 to return to Nascene City in Chapter 3 to get back on track.

Tweaks

The 10-yard markers in the Nascene High football field have been moved to the sidelines to be more realistic.

Altar of Fortitude has been renamed to Altar of Will.

Added a primer on Pokeballs in Rosemary Market.

Slight contrast bump to a few tiles in the desert tileset.

Pokémon are no longer healed by placing them in the PC.

Updated the Ancient Map to reflect changes in future story locations.

Added more detail to Sagaxis Deep Wood.

Minor tweaks to Sagaxis Forest tileset to improve color balance and perspective.

Slightly clarified quick start intro dialog.

Added more detail in Jagged Pass South.

Added more detail to road construction area in Nascene Suburbs.

Added a hint if the player returns to their apartment after receiving the skateboard.

The player can no longer name the protagonist certain restricted names (mostly important NPC names).

Bonsly now learns Mimic at lv17 (down from lv33).

Umbreon now learns Curse at lv50.

Shuppet and Banette now learn Shadow Claw instead of Shadow Ball at lv30.

Minor color tweaks to Holly's sprite.

Added small details to the dials in the Dajjal Temple dial puzzle.

Magneton now evolves into Magnezone in Aegis Generator Room.

Added suspicious wall spot events to Jagged Foothills.

TM60 has been changed from Quash to Avalanche.

The Spooky Plate has been renamed to Soul Plate.

The Up-Grade has a setting-specific tweak to its description.

Feebas can now evolve while leveled up at night while holding a Prism Scale.

Shelmet and Karrablast now evolve when exposed to a Dusk Stone or Dawn Stone, respectively. Their PokeDex entries have been modified to reflect this.

Cave floors now register as rocky terrain.

OST Organization is now played during the cutscene in Jagged Cavern during the Prologue.

The player can no longer enter school during the chase with Dante in the Prologue.

Minor pacing tweaks to the first cutscene in RevTex Textile Factory

RevTex Textile Factory now plays OST Abandoned Lab Battle during battle.

Slowed down lighting flash in RevTex Textiles Front Office.

Added a few Potions to the early sections of RevTex Textiles 1F

Improved visibility of ghost dialogue.

Matthias now has a unique overworld sprite.

Temple Catacombs and Temple Dungeon now play serious wild battle music.

Wild Munchlax and Snorlax now only rarely spawn with a Leftovers.

Reduced difficulty of the Training Dummy in Unknown Side Room.

Action Kid Carson has been renamed to Action Kid Mitchell to avoid name overlap with Biologist Carson.

New texture for locked doors in bars in the Temple Dungeon.

Medic Ollie now has better shop handling, and can no longer be sold to.

After battling Sayaka in Jagged Pass South, she will now heal your party.

Sandstorm Warning events in Jul'far no longer trigger during the bandit siege.

Added in-battle message for Bandit Boss Tariq.

Updated Abbadon region map for new and future areas.

Player no longer has to fight Lolita Astrid in Puzzle House Challenge 1 upon failing the second puzzle. Instead, they must re-complete the first puzzle.

Wild double battles now play both foes' cries.

Various Rock-type moves have had slight accuracy increases: Rock Throw, Rock Slide, Stone Edge, and Rock Tomb.

Removed mention of unused out-of-battle function for Teleport from its move description.

The Temple Catacombs now allows use of Escape Rope.

Money is no longer lost during battles in the Unknown Dungeon section.

Changed PP of Sucker Punch from 5 to 10.

Updated years on splash screen.

The player's party is now healed after the battle in the Altar of Truth.

Ice types are now resistant to Grass-, Water-, Bug-, and Dragon-type moves.

Fixes

Fixed an invisible wall in Jagged Pass South.

Fixed map transfer from Jagged Pass South to Jagged Cavern placing the player on the wrong tile.

Fixed a rare Essentials bug where the game would crash if metadata could not be loaded from a save file.

Fixed static pronoun usage in journal note #3.

Fixed error message during multi-trainer battles.

Fixed generic player icon on map screen.

Fixed issue where talking to Dahlia while she's following you in Sagaxis Deep Wood makes certain events freeze.

Fixed cutscene objects in the Altar of Truth not resetting if the battle against Samael is lost.

Fixed various tile layering issues in Nascene City.

Fixed a tile priority issue in Amon Desert, causing some ledges to be able to be jumped over from both sides.

Fixed an Essentials bug where attempting to deposit a Pokémon in the PC while the target Pokémon is held above an empty party slot crashes the game.

Fixed bookshelves in XENO Corp. Lab 1 being able to be read from all sides.

Fixed a missing tile in Acacia Town.

It's no longer possible to examine the door to the Rival's Apartment while the Rival is waiting in front of your apartment during the Prologue.

Fixed missing transfer event into Flowertown Florists in Nascene City Downtown.

Benches in Nascene City can no longer be walked onto from the sides.

Fixed inconsistencies with lighting in Jagged Cavern.

Fixed some stray tiles in Acacia Temple.

Fixed an uncolored line of dialogue in Matthias's speech in Acacia Temple.

Fixed an NPC outside of the Jul'far gates using the wrong sprite.

Fixed a bug where there bandit outside Jul'far Pharmacy re-charges you every time you want to go in.

Fixed a typo in NPC dialogue in Naptha Inn.

Fixed a typo on the fence break event in Jul'far.

Fixed artifact acquisition event turning the room dark in the Altar of Will.

Sayaka no longer turns randomly during an event in Murmur Tower.

Fixed a missing tile in Sagaxis Deep Wood.

References to "Temple of Dajjal" and "Forest Temple" have been changed to "Dajjal Temple" for consistency.

Fixed inconsistent lighting in transitions into Jagged Cavern B1F.

Removed a stray impassable tile in Jagged Cavern B1F.

Fixed missing color code in Spelunker Hikari's rematch text.

Fixed broken replacement code in Medic Damian's defeat text.

Player can no longer use shortcut keys during cutscenes.

Fixed artifact in XENO Corp. Lab 4 not appearing during cutscene.

Fixed a bug where giving EXP to a Pokémon via items leveled it up if the total EXP given was less than what was needed to level up normally.

Fixed a typo in Note #205 (Journal Entry #5)

Fixed an Essentials bug where using Fling causes an error message.

[dfenestrate]

hello all! here’s a quick reflection post on this blog in 2018 and more! 

STATS

max milestone reached for followers: 500

max milestone reached for notes: 9000

MY TOP 5 POSTS

1. x 9452 notes; lol i definitely cracked myself up a lot while making this. also this post is a rare example of moments when i know how to caption

2. x 4012 notes; another one that cracked me up a lot. i just love him, man. and it’s hard not to notice such strange parallels when you’re watching all his shows on constant repeat for “self care” 

3. x 3541 notes; so i see a trend with posts that make me laugh a lot. these three are pure idiots and that’s all i can say 

4. x 2710 notes; the COLORS in this one. hoooo boy im in lOVE (although my eyes at night aren’t) 

5. x 2534 notes; this one was my first bold text/type of set like this. really REALLy liked making it haha

MY TOP 5 POSTS I LOVED THE MOST 

1. x 246 notes THIS ONE! THIS ONE IS ART! IM SO SURPRISED I MADE THIS! there was a LOT OF layering and collaging and OH MY!

2. x 4 notes (dudes wtf?) THIS ONE????? I LOVE THE WHOLE OLD PIC THEME BC IT’S MY CHILDREN THE GUARDIANS AND THAT’S THEIR BRAND AND THEY WERE TREATED IN A WAY THEY DIDNT DESERVE IN IN FINITY WAR AND NOW IM EMOTIONAL AGAIN

3. x 71 notes this one was v funny and it was the first time i played with saturation and one prominent color. idk kinda wished it got around more

4. x 69 notes guys? this one is REALLY pretty

5.  x 32 notes i worked VERY VERY hard to fix THE COLORS of this damn MOVIE and i understand it was made that way for a certain reason but still it was a NIGHTMARE and this came out VERY NICELY plz give it more LOVE

POSTS THAT DESERVED BETTER; or, in other words, posts that didn’t get the traction that i had wished that they would get 

1. literally all of the ones mentioned in the “posts that i loved” section

2. x x x x x literally all of my 5sos posts :( although, i do understand that at the time i was posting them, i was p new in the new face of the 5sos tumblr fandom lol rip. hopefully next year i’ll be able to interact more with my fellow 5sosfam (rip ill cringe that was v 2013) 

3. x x x x x literally all of my gotg posts :( this i do not understand :( although i am felling a little of an exaggeration of what i should fell but lol gotg are my ultimates so fight me

4. x x the few pvris posts :( again, same thing with the 5sos fandom, only i think the pvris fandom is quite small on tumblr? so that kinda made it hard to find people to tag for the gifs :( 

4a. x this gifset was of a collab pvris did with tonight alive and it was v pretty :(

5. x x x my few fantastic beasts gifs lol rip i think i just giffed them too late in relation to the waves of gifs created from the trailer for fantastic beasts 2

CONCLUSION

overall, i think it was a fairly good year. at least, it was a fairly good first half in terms of productivity and whatnot with a vacant second half of the year. i’m terribly sorry for that. college and mental health were my priorities and unfortunately tumblr fell short of being integrating in my routine. i’m working on it now, and hopefully we’ll see some results soon! 

in terms of gifs/edits, i improved A LOT given the fact that i started end of last year. as you saw above, i had a lot of good ones i’m proud of. with that come gifs that i’m not too happy with, mainly because of the amount of time i spent on them (too much) ( x x x x x ) and their end result. i have a PLETHORA of gif ideas (even some from last year) that i have to get to. some of them are certain time commitments, and that has definitely waned my enthusiasm to make them. 

never fear however, for 2019 is a new year! i hope to come back with a bang with better gifs, MUCH BETTER CAPTIONS, and hopefully a lot more interacting with y’all. thank you for an amazing first “official” year of making gifs (i’ve been on this site with this blog for over 4 years and have just started contributing to this mess)

once again, happy new year! 

[peachhplum]

WHAT'S THE BEST CAMERA FOR A BLOGGER, CONTENT CREATOR OR INFLUENCER?

Without fail one of the most frequently asked questions to me about being a content creator is 'what camera do you use?' or more specifically 'what camera should I get?' so here's the tell all about the first camera I got as a blogger and then what I upgraded to and why. FYI - I bought all of this stuff, no freebies. 

IF YOU'RE A COMPLETE NEWBIE

It goes without saying that if you're a complete newbie to blogging or content creation then you don't wanna invest all your money into equipment that you're not even sure how often you'll use or how to use properly yet. The cameras on new smartphones like the iPhone, google pixel, Huawei etc seem to be incredible quality and you really can get some great images from there with a little editing and tweaking in 'post' (that's what photography people call after you've taken the shot). Some of the images on my insta feed are still iPhone snaps. I just use Snapseed to deal with any imperfections and edit slightly. Snapseed is great for basic editing tools such as brightening, adding contrast, sharpness etc. You can also fix the 'temperature' of the images (if it's too yellow for instance). Then I use a stronger filtering app like colorstory to give it a filter or 'look'. Sometimes just a quick correction on Snapseed is enough - the overly filtered look is pretty circa 2015 and the modern look is clean, crisp and almost unfiltered.

Here are some shots that I took on my iPhone 8+

IF YOU'VE DONE THE WHOLE SMARTPHONE THING FOR A WHILE AND WANT A PROPER CAMERA NOW

I would suggest the Olympus Pen EPL-8.

It was made with bloggers in mind so looks great for starters but also packs punch inside a little camera that portable enough to take anywhere and not look completely obnoxious (no one wants to photograph their food with a giant whopper lens unless you really are giving no fucks, but in which case I think you're pretty cool tbh).

It's what they call a 'micro four thirds' camera which means it has a smaller cropped sensor. this may sound like gobbldeygook but all that means is it takes lower resolution photos. But that's fine for web and instagram. If you want much higher quality you may want to upgrade, more on that later... 

Anyway back to the EPL-8. Here's why it's great for your first camera. 

It's affordable (around the £400 mark for basic kit lens and camera body)

You can buy additional lenses to swap around (gets you that lovely soft blurred 'bokeh' background that everyone is so into though personally I'm kinda over it), these lenses are also affordable, starting from around £120 (secret - lenses are what start to make your pictures look way more pro!)

It's dinky!

It's easy to use - even off automatic 

It has wifi enabled so you can send pics straight to your phone

You can film on it too

The screen flips down for selfies and up / around for overhead shots (the screen flipping down can be V annoying if you want to Vlog though as it gets in the way of a tripod, just a heads up)

I thoroughly suggest at this point investing in a two day course to learn the basics of photography. It'll help you get off automatic mode and have so much more control over your images. You know like when you're in low light and it is blurring all the pics? There is a way to stop that. But you need to know how the shutter speed, ISO and aperture all work together. Once you get your head round it, it's actually very easy! I did a two day beginners course at the London Institute of Photography and it completely changed my photography for the better. The course is £195 and worth every penny!

Here are some images I shot on the EPL-8 with various lenses on my travels last year

and here is a video shot on the Olympus...

This was my exact olympus setup...

IF YOU'VE BEEN SHOOTING A WHILE AND WANT TO UPGRADE TO SOMETHING MORE PRO

This was the situation I found myself in recently. I'd been shooting with the Olympus for a while and started to reach the limits of what I could do creatively with it. I wanted to do a lot more flash photography and I had learnt about editing with Lightroom (thanks to LIoP's course that I've been doing) and so I wanted higher resolution images. I also wanted higher resolution video as I'm doing more filming and crisper, more pro images. After extensive research I went for the Fujifilm XT20. Its a lot more expensive (£849 with basic zoom kit lens) but sooo worth it. 

Here's why!

It's still quite small (though the lenses can add bulk)

It has higher resolution images than the Olympus

It shoots 4k video

It has a mic input line (something that really bugged me about shooting video on the Olympus as you had to rely on the ambient sound from the camera mic)

I liked how it looked and 'felt'

It has an viewfinder! The Olympus doesn't, it just uses the digital screen which is fine for a while but I wanted to really get inside the photographs and to me a viewfinder helps with this

The lenses were a lot more pro and gave much crisper images

It has a traditional hotshoe (this is where you connect a flash. The Olympus you could only use certain flashes and hotshoe connections)

The white balance is better (I found the Olympus struggled slightly with any yellow lighting situations)

I lost a the flippy screen from the Olympus (Fuji has one but it's not quite as good) but overall the pros far outweigh the cons (well, the one con). 

Here are some photos that I've taken on the Fujifilm XT20 with an 18-135 zoom lens

and here's a video I've shot on it (the sound isn't great as I didn't have a plug in mic at this point)

This is the exact equipment I use now...

Hopefully I'll get some more lenses for this camera soon too. 

So there you have it, that's my camera setup, hope it helps you out! Feel free to comment with any questions or hit me up on insta and I'll share anything I know!

S x

*this post contains affiliate links so if you shop these link I make some cash. Not like, baller cash, maybe like, a sandwich at Pret A Manger cash*