#And Ctrl is right under Shift.

[loupy-mongoose]

PLEASE show us your Bellsprout Takes omg

Okay you may see the funky dude now.

This will almost certainly be the last art I post before my gall bladder surgery.

[froggibus]

hiiiii :3 idk if ur taking reqs for dc right neow but a thought that tickles my brain rlly good is dick grayson/reader w a praise kink and dick exploits it n uses it to his advantage.... preferably afab reader but gn is fine :P

CTRL + H - Dick Grayson

Pairing: Dick Grayson x fem! best friend! reader (uses fem pronouns + has a pussy)

Genre: smut/NSFW

Word Count: 4.1k

Summary: when your best friend discovers porn in your browser history while fixing your computer, he decides to use it to his advantage

CW: friends to lovers, lots of praise, uses of ‘good/pretty/lovely girl’ dick calls you sweetheart/angel, dick is CORNY I’m sorry, mentions of porn/asmr porn, teasing, gaslighting (but not really), fingering, marking, unprotected sex, lots of sweat (its sexy i swear), dick fucks you over a desk, kinda rough sex, creampie, multiple orgasms, implied to be summer, i think thats it??

hey hi 👽 anon, thanks for the request! im sorry it took so long, it wasn't meant to be this long i swear, i just got caught up in the thought of Dick being all hot and sweaty and praising you while fucking you >~< and yeah this happened. really hope you like it (but if you don't, let me know and ill totally rewrite it!) lots of love yes i took an extra 30 mins to find nightwing #83 to take a picture of the comic book to make this banner lol

As if having Dick Grayson look at your search history wasn’t bad enough, now you have to live with the mortifying ordeal of him knowing you have a praise kink.  

When you had first invited him over to take a look at your malfunctioning computer, you’d thought nothing of it. You figured he would turn it on and off again, maybe update some drivers. So when he suddenly clicked into your browser and began scrolling through the long, long list of websites you’ve visited, you weren’t sure how to react. 

You noticed it at the same time as him, the glowing screen forcing you to freeze where you stand. There on the screen, from just last night, read: praise nsfw asmr. You swallow hard and lunge for the mouse to click out of your browser history, but breathe a sigh of relief when Dick does it first. 

There’s a beat of silence, your racing thoughts deafeningly loud as you try to come up with a reason to kick him out. Fanning your face as if that will help chase away the heat of the day, you swallow once more in an attempt to work some moisture back into your mouth. 

“F—find anything?” You say as casually as you can. 

It’s ridiculous how embarrassed you are, honestly. He’s just your friend, it’s just porn, it’s not like it’s the end of the world. Still, the rattling of your heart against your rib cage and his cruelly quiet silence make it feel like it is. 

He shakes his head. “Not so far, I should keep looking but—“ he flicks his eyes up your body, perfect blues tracing your every curve, “you seemed flustered.”

You raise your hands in denial all too quickly, your sweaty palms stretched out towards him. Dick raises an eyebrow, examining you in the way he does with strangers in coffee shops. 

“I just…don’t see how my search history is relevant, I guess. That’s all.”

He grabs your wrists, lowering your arms from the defensive position they’ve taken. Despite the familiarity of his touch, something feels off, different in a way you can’t explain. You shake the thought away. 

The world has not shifted on its axis because your best friend suddenly knows what kind of porn you’re into. 

His touch lingers on your wrist and he uses the leverage to gently pull you closer to where he sits at your desk. When he finally drops your wrist, a chill circles the space where his hand once was, refreshing your feverish skin.

“I just want to make sure you haven’t accidentally picked up a virus somewhere. If we can find one in your history, it’ll be much easier to get rid of it.”

The explanation only half seeps into the mush your brain has turned into under his gaze and you find yourself nodding without quite understanding. 

You were fooling yourself by inviting him here. While asking for his help was cheaper than hiring a professional, having him so close to you almost hurts—especially when lately you’ve been trying to force away the feelings you’ve harboured for him. 

“So,” Dick says again, “won’t you be a good girl and let me fix your computer for you?”

His words force you out of your thoughts, purely by short circuiting your brain. You blink at him with wide eyes, your heart pounding in your chest. 

“W—what did you say?”

“I just asked if I could fix your computer now.” 

You tilt your head in confusion. Did you mishear him, or did he call you ‘good girl’? He flashes you that signature smirk of his, his blue eyes suddenly dark with something you don’t recognize. 

Though everything on his face reads innocent, something not-so innocent lurks beneath the surface. Something that stares you down and screams ‘challenge me’. 

“Yeah.” You swallow. “I guess that’s fine.” You take a deep breath and try to steady the spinning in your head. 

Dick continues his work nonchalantly, hitting a few keys and opening your browser history once more. You turn your eyes away from the screen, instead focusing on the way your fingers grasp the desk until it hurts. 

You listen to him scroll for a while and try to pretend like he’s not looking through the most intimate part of your life. The idea of him seeing that part of you excites you as much as it nauseates you—a lethal combination. 

“You can relax.” Dick hums. 

You lift your head to look at him just to see him focused completely on the screen. You don’t dare glance at what he’s so focused on. 

“Why not sit down? This could take a while.” He says calmly. “I’m sure you’ll feel much better if you do.” 

You roll your shoulders. “I think I’ll just stand.”

There’s a shift in his eyes as if your words sparked something in them. He finally glances away from your screen, completely focusing on you with a newfound intensity. You want to shrink from his gaze, to run down the hall and hide in your broom closet, but you stay rooted in place. 

“It would help me a lot if you sit down. Don’t you want to be a good girl and help me out?” 

Holy fuck. “What did you just say?”

It feels like you’re waiting an eternity for him to speak again, your heart beating a mile a minute. He’s going to deny it, or make fun of you even more or worse—tell Wally about it. 

He pats his lap. “Come sit with me,” he purrs, “be a good girl, keep me company while I work.”

In your shock, you find yourself shuffling towards him and settling in his lap. Dick helps you adjust, tugging you back to his chest and keeping one arm around you while his other reaches for the mouse once more. 

He’s so close to you that you can feel the beating of his heart, his breath on your neck. You close your eyes and pray that he can’t feel the heartbeat that’s suddenly appeared between your legs.

You can’t remember a single time he’s been this close to you, a single time he’s touched you like this. The sudden proximity makes you dizzy, butterflies taking flight in your tummy. You clench the arm rests on either side in an attempt to keep your cool.

Dick shifts behind you, one of his thighs gently brushing your clit in a way that makes you squirm. “Don’t do that!” 

His hand slides from your waist to grip your thigh, a shiver running up your spine at the contact. “Don't do what? This?” He repeats the motion.

You squeak, lurching forward in an attempt to get away from the friction. You tilt too far and suddenly you’re falling head over heels towards the mat beneath your chair. Dick is quicker than that, wrapping one arm around your chest and another around your waist to tug you harshly back to him.

“Don’t do that,” you repeat breathlessly, “please.”

He rests his chin on your shoulder, soft strands of black hair tickling your cheek. “Why not? Use your words, angel.”

The nickname reignites something inside of you, rekindling a fire between your legs. You clench them together in the hopes it will do something to muffle the throbbing, but when you feel Dick smirk against the side of your neck, you know you’ve failed.

When you don’t answer him, he grins his knee between your legs once more, an innocent hum prompting you.

“You’re—fuck, you’re kneeing me in the cunt.”

Dick’s not sure if it’s from your brazen words or how entirely ridiculous this whole afternoon has been, but suddenly he’s laughing. A big, open mouthed, creasing at the corners of his eyes, laugh. 

His laugh surprises you enough to summon one of your own, sending you both into a fit. You shift on his lap to look at him, wrapping your arms around his neck to support yourself while the two of you laugh. It’s stupid and ridiculous and you’re not quite sure what you’re laughing at—just that you are. 

You’re laughing and laughing and suddenly his lips are on yours and his eyes are closed and—fuck, he’s kissing you. And then you’re not laughing anymore, your hands brushing up his neck and tangling in his hair. He’s not laughing anymore either, his hands gripping your waist like he expects you to leave at any moment.

You’re breathless when you pull away, refusing to open your eyes and face the reality in front of you. Because maybe the world didn’t shift on its axis when he learned your porn preferences, but it definitely has because he just kissed you.

He taps your cheek gently, using that terribly calm voice he does whenever you start spiralling. “Y/n.” He coos, “open your eyes, y/n.”

You bite your lip, shaking your head in refusal. You know as soon as you do, you’ll have to confront your feelings for him, and his for you, and all of that is just too much and god, when did it get so hot in here? 

You open your eyes one at a time, casting them down to where your thighs rest on his. Your hands come together, fingers twirling in your lap just to give you something to focus on other than the throbbing in your clit and the weight of Dick’s eyes on you.

He drags a finger down your overheating cheeks, tracing the outline of your jaw and tipping your head up to face him. His blue eyes are lined with something new, something darker—a need you’ve never seen before. 

“Look at me.” There’s a commanding tone to his voice before it softens, “c’mon, please?”

You finally force yourself to meet his eyes, the familiar ultramarine calming the sudden bite of your nerves. “Only cause you asked so nicely,” you say quietly. 

“Good girl,” he smiles and it feels like the sun pushing through rain clouds. He strokes your cheek gently, his thumb landing on your cupid's bow. 

You shiver beneath his touch despite the unbearable heat of the day. While his finger on your lips threatens to send you flying away, spiralling into space, his other does the opposite. His grip on your hip is tight, fingers digging in and sure to leave behind bruises. 

“Can I kiss you again?” He asks quietly. 

It’s only a small mercy that your nod doesn’t prompt another ‘good girl’ from him, or some other horribly delightful variation of it. However, when his lips brush yours and his hand slides to the base of your throat, all of the thoughts melt away. There’s no embarrassment, no overthinking, just raw emotion and the sensation of his skin on yours. 

You shift in his lap, sliding one of your thighs over his so you can straddle him. Dick offers a guiding hand while you slide forward, half steadying you, half tugging you closer. You shimmy up the length of his jeans until you’re as close as possible, your stomach pressing into his toned abs. 

A gasp leaves your throat when your clit brushes the very edge of the bulge in his jeans, the noise only edging him along. His teeth graze your bottom lip, both gentle and desperate, before his tongue slips into your mouth. 

The taste of him is intoxicating, consuming you until you’re grabbing his cheeks with both hands to pull him as close as possible. You whine when his cock grazes your clit again and Dick breaks the kiss to let out a breathy laugh against your lips. 

“Someone’s needy,” he teases, but his eyes are rimmed with dark and when he looks at you through his lashes, all you see is need. 

“Back at you.”

His palm sticks to your cheek with sweat when he goes to pull it away. “You’ve been so good for me today,” he hums, his other hand trailing up your thigh. “Let me take care of you, yeah?”

You mumble a breathy ‘please’ before his fingers are brushing your clit through your pants, the heat pooling in your panties near insatiable. You tighten your grip on him and bury your face in the tight black fabric of his t-shirt to muffle your heavy breathing.

While one hand rubs intense figure eights up the length of your pussy, his other hand is fiddling with the buttons of your pants. He sighs in triumph at the soft popping noise and then the fabric is pulling away from your skin, Dick somehow managing to tug them down with only one hand. 

You shift in his lap and prop yourself up on your knees to give him better access while he drags the fabric down your thighs. He takes advantage of your position to spin you to face your monitor once more, leaning back in the chair so you’re reclined against his muscled chest.

Warm breath fans the overheating skin of your neck just where your shirt meets your skin. Two calloused fingers dip into the waistband of your underwear, skimming the warmth and slick of your cunt. Dick sucks in a breath, his pants suddenly too tight.

“You really are needy,” he swallows hard. “Lovely, needy girl.”

His words only serve as a catalyst to the intense need you feel in your core, amplifying your desire tenfold. The pad of his index finger brushes your clit and you’re suddenly a goner. Your eyes squeeze shut and you throw your head back, imagining the circles of Dick’s fingers in your mind.

He gently kisses at the neckline of your shirt, his lips soft against the sensitive skin. His tongue runs across the sensitive skin there in tandem with the moving of his hand, the duality sending shockwaves through you. You have to bite your lip to keep from crying out his name.

His wrist slides further into your underwear, fingers moving away from your swollen clit to run along the rim of your aching pussy. You suck in a breath, not moving an inch while you anticipate what’s to come.

Dick sucks a dark mark into your neck. “Ready f’me?” He mumbles into your skin.

You eagerly nod, trying to shift your hips into his fingers and shove them inside of you, but Dick moves away. You frown, lazily looking over your shoulder at him.

“You have to use your words.”

You almost roll your eyes but in your desperation, let your head hang in defeat and open your trembling mouth. “I-I’m ready Dick,” you say, quietly adding, “please.”

“Good girl.” 

Then he’s suddenly slipping a finger inside of you, travelling the length of your spongy walls to sit deep inside of you. A gasp rips through you, his name tumbling off your lips faster than you can catch it. He grips your hip to steady you, strong fingers bruising the exposed skin.

He curls his finger inside of you, prodding at that sweet fucking sensitive spot. He only stops when you whine, slipping his finger out for only a second before shoving it back in. He repeats the motion, starting a rhythm of thrusting in and out, his hand on your hip tapping along in tandem.

You squirm in his lap, that ball in the centre of your stomach turning white hot and growing until you can barely contain it. One of your hands squeezes his wrist—whether to stop or encourage him, you don’t know.

“Dick,” you whine, your voice taking on a raspy tone you hardly recognize.

He hums in response. “Does that feel good?”

“S-so good.”

He rewards you by slipping his other finger inside of you, the two of them working in unison. His fingers are so long and thick that they reach places inside you that you’ve never been able to touch on your own, stretching your walls just enough to make your eyes roll back.

The impending waves of your orgasm roll over you, that knot in your core so tight that you know it's bound to undo any second. You squeeze his wrist tighter in warning, your fingers pressing into his veins until you can feel the steady thrum of his blood pulsing. 

Dick slips his hand from your waist up your shirt, palming your tit. “Cum for me,” he murmurs. “You’ve earned it, sweetheart.”

His words walk you right over the edge, that knot finally coming undone and sending wave after wave of molten pleasure through you. Every muscle in your body contracts, your pussy squeezing his fingers so tightly it almost hurts. Both your hands clench around the wrist currently in your underwear. Holding him steady while you ride out your high on his fingers.

Dick holds you, keeping you stable while you gush and thrash wildly in his lap. He can feel your slick soak through the fabric of his jeans, his thighs warm with your juices, but he can’t bring himself to care. 

He trails kisses up your neck to your jaw, your cheeks and finally, tips your head back until he can plant soft, chaste kisses to your lips. His wrist aches from how hard you squeeze him but he doesn’t dare pull away until your muscles are relaxing and you let out your first, panting breath.

“Feel good?” He prompts.

You shake your head vigorously, all sweaty hair and hot skin and aching lungs. Dick almost wishes he had a camera because the sight of you laying in his lap all fucked out is one he would love to savor and put in his wallet.

He shifts behind you, only now remembering his aching cock and how badly it yearns to be free of the denim confining it. “Think you could do one more? For me? It would make me feel so, so good, sweetheart.”

You don’t think twice about his words, lazily trapping his lips in a sloppy needy kiss and mumbling ‘yes’ against him. In your fucked out state, you’re only half sure that you’re even speaking, the world around you fading. Dick slips his hand out of your panties, his palm soaked with your juices, and rests it on your thigh. 

“I need you to stand up for me,” he says, only half asking. 

He helps you up on shaky knees, your pants that had been resting just above your knees dropping the rest of the way to the floor. You brace yourself against the desk, half bent over while Dick slowly tugs down your panties. The minute the sticky, soaked fabric peels away from your pussy, you gasp.

Dick stares at the mess he’s made of you proudly, your folds glistening with the slick of your last orgasm. He burns the image into his mind while he fumbles with the zipper of his jeans, standing behind you while he drags them to the floor with his boxers. His cock springs free, thick and dripping with pre cum, begging for you.

He strokes it absentmindedly, all of his thoughts only on you and your trembling thighs, bent so perfectly over the desk waiting for him. He lines the head of his cock up with your entrance, rubbing it through your folds and prodding your clit before repeating the process over again.

Each shift of his cock, each rock of his hips, forces shivers of anticipation down your spine. Heavy breaths leave your lips, your arms barely managing to hold your weight over the desk when you dip your head down to stare at him through the crook of your arm.

“Such a pretty pussy. So wet and needy,” he groans when he finally lets his cock rest at your entrance. “So ready for my cock.”

You nod even though he’s mostly talking to himself. You let your arms sag against the desk and rest your face against your forearm, the sweaty skin sticking to your forehead. Dick thrusts forwards and lets the head of his cock push inside of you.

Moans leave him the second he dips into your heat, the tip of his cock stretching you in a way that has both of your eyes rolling back. His fingers resume their earlier position on your hip, digging in so hard it almost hurts. 

He stills once his tip is nestled in your walls, listening to the whiny breaths you let out while you adjust to his size. Your clench your hands into fists, slightly shifting from left to right to help him fit better. He’s big, bigger than you expected, but the way he molds your walls to his cock is almost enough to have you cum right then and there.

Dick is so distracted by the sight of his cock dipped inside of you that he doesn’t remember to move. It’s only when you let out a needy whine and shuffle your hips backwards that he realizes you’ve been waiting so patiently for him.

He snaps his hips against yours, the head of his cock barreling so deep inside of you so quickly that it almost hurts. “Sorry, pretty girl,” he pants, “didn’t mean to make you wait.”

You try to tell him that it’s okay but you’re silenced with another hard thrust. You cry out his name into your arm, your teeth grazing at your skin in your attempt to be quiet. Dick grabs the other side of your waist, using his hands to push and pull you as he pleases.

You fall further against the desk, your body lazily resting against it while Dick’s hips snap into yours repeatedly. The room is filled with the sound of skin on skin, a chorus of your combined moans filling the empty space between thrusts. Each shift of his hips, each prod of his cock, only spurs you further along.

You squeeze your eyes shut, completely focused on his cock battering its way through your walls. You’re only vaguely aware of Dick talking to you, his praise sounding incoherent beneath the rush of blood to your ears. Your pussy flutters around him, his cock scraping your cervix with every thrust.

He thrusts particularly hard into you, his cock jamming hard into the very edge of your walls, forcing a loud cry from you. It aches as much as it pleases, and without thinking, you’re suddenly crawling forward across your desk. Dick tightens his grip on you before you can get very far, tugging you back hard against him and slamming your pussy down on his cock.

You nearly squeal from the pleasure, tears forming in the corners of your eyes. That familiar heat builds inside of you once more, spilling over more and more with each intense thrust.

“You’re taking me so well,” he coos. “So tight—god, it’s like your pussy was made for me. Fuck.”

His lewd words add to that growing knot inside of you and suddenly you’re coming undone in his arms. Everything is too hot, too much, too loud. Tears spill from your eyes and you’re barely aware of the half sobs, half moans you let out through your orgasm.

“That’s right, let it all out. Good girl, cumming around my cock like that.”

Dick holds you steady the whole time you cum, thrusts growing sloppy as your pussy sucks him in and tries to keep him inside of you forever. He’s almost as breathless as you while he watches you cum and the way your pussy seizes around him is enough to have him tumbling over the edge after you.

He wraps both arms around your waist, pulling your hips flush to his, before he lets the both of you fall back into the chair behind him. Your new position forces his cock deeper inside of you—as deep as it can go—and then he’s cumming inside of you.

You can barely feel the hot ropes of cum he spills inside of you while you come down from your own high. Your thighs shake where they rest over his and you’re grateful for him holding you. 

Dick lets his forehead rest in the crook of your neck, his sweaty hair wetting your t-shirt. Even after he’s done cumming, he holds you tightly against him, the two of you panting in sync.

It’s nearly five minutes later when you can finally bring yourself to speak, your hoarse voice evidence of the pounding you’ve just taken. “I take it you saw my browsing history?” are the first words out of your mouth.

Dick laughs, his voice gravelly and deep and sexy. “Yeah,” he says, kissing your cheek. “I did.”

You awkwardly turn in his lap, twitching at the way it adjusts his half-hard cock inside of you. You look up at his eyes, the blue finally starting to seep back in through the dark. He cups your face, his hand sweaty, and pulls you in for another kiss.

When you pull away, you can’t help but ask, “so, what now?”

“First, I think I should show you how to use Incognito Mode.”

masterlist | dc masterlist

if you enjoy content like this, interactions go a long way! i appreciate every like, comment & reblog i get ^^

[auroraeternal]

4t3 Conversion of Grouped posters by @cosmiccs4 + Recoloring PSD with tutorial

8 non-recolorable presets

1024 textures

Included PSD for retexturing (tutorial how to use under the cut)

113 poly, all LODs

Shiftable

Price - 5§

BGC

Compressed package

TOU, Ko-Fi

DOWNLOAD | ALT | SIMBLR.CC

Tutorial: How to use my PSD for retexturing

You need:

Photoshop with .dds plugin

My retexture PSD and package file of posters

19 pictures to your liking, preferably vertical

TSRW

Sims3Pack Multi Installer and Compressionizer

Step 1: Open my PSD file, open your images:

Step 2: Select (Ctrl+A) copy and paste to posters file (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) first of your images :

Step 3: Choose where you want to put it, for reference you can use one of the presets:

Step 4: After you decided with placement of your image. Move its layer in the Layers tab between "Poster x" and "Put your image here" layers, it will create a clipping mask, which allows the picture to be fit within the poster without cropping. Hide or delete "Put your image here" layer.

Step 5: Use Transform, Free Transform and Move tools to resize the image by your liking:

Step 6: Repeat the Step 2-5 with other 18 images:

*vibes are totally random, all images from Pinterest*

Step 7: After you've done, delete all the "Put your image here" layers, if you didn't it before. Right-click on the Layers tab and press Merge Visible (Shift + Ctrl + E). Now press Save As (Control + Shift + S) and save your image as .DDS with this parameters (2nd picture):

Step 8: Go to TSRW. Press Create New Project > New Import, and select package with my posters. Give for your recolor unique Title and Project name, otherwise it will override original posters:

Step 9: In Textures tab go through all the presets except the first one and delete them. Then go to Edit > Project Contents and remove all the textures of removed presets. Its pretty common when someone make retexture of TS3 mesh and leave that unused textures in file, which leads to increasing its size:

Step 10: Press Edit button next to the Overlay tab. Then press Import button and select your retexture. Press Done and when this pop-up appears, press Yes:

Step 11: If you want to add more presets press Duplicate and reapeat Step 10, but instead, when pop-up about replacing the texture appears, press No.

Step 12: After you've done, press File > Export > To Sims3pack or Edit > Project Contents > Export > To .package. If you choose the first method, convert your Sims3pack to Package and in both cases run it through Compressionizer. Test your recolor In-game, make thumbnails (if you want to share it) and have fun!

For those who read this tutorial to the end, click HERE to download this recolor.

@pis3update @xto3conversionsfinds @wanderingsimsfinds @kpccfinds @simfluencer-network @sssvitlanz @simblrcc-site

[stargazer-sims-cc]

Céline Scrying Bowl - DOWNLOAD

If we're going to have a rare white crow, we need a scrying bowl with a white crow statue on it, right?

This item is fully functional; however, it only works at Grim's headquarters (Headlessquarters) in Ravenwood.

The Life and Death EP is required for this item.

1 swatch

custom thumbnail

You can find this item in Build/Buy under Decorations (Misc) or by typing "Céline Scrying Bowl" in the search box in Build/Buy.

HOW TO USE

To be fully functional, this item must be placed inside Grim's headquarters in Ravenwood. To do this, you must first go to Grim's headquarters. Press CTRL-Shift-C to open the cheat box and then enter the cheat bb.enablefreebuild. This will allow you to place objects on the lot. You can place the scrying bowl anywhere in Grim's headquarters.

***NOTE - If you place the Scrying Bowl anywhere other than on the Grim's headquarters lot, it will not function as a scrying bowl. It will be just a decorative fountain.

ADDITIONAL IMAGES

You can do what you want with this item. All I ask is that you don't claim it as your own and that you don't put it behind a paywall of any kind

Céline Scrying Bowl - DOWNLOAD from SFS (free, no ads)

@alwaysfreecc

[boaillustration]

The Artisul team was kind enough to send me their Artisul D16 display tablet to review! Timelapse and review can be found under the read more.

I have been using the same model of display tablet for over 10 years now (a Wacom Cintiq 22HD) and feel like I might be set in my ways, so getting the chance to try a different brand of display tablet was also a new experience for me!

The Unboxing 

The tablet arrived in high-quality packaging with enough protection that none of the components get scratched or banged up in the shipping process. I was pleasantly surprised that additionally to the tablet, pen, stand, cables and nibs it also included a smudge guard glove and a pen case. 

The stand is very light-weight and I was at first worried that it would not be able to hold up the tablet safely, but it held up really well. I appreciated that it offered steeper levels of inclination for the tablet, since I have seen plenty other display tablets who don’t offer that level of ergonomics for artists. My only gripe is that you can’t anchor the tablet to the stand. It will rest on the stand and can be easily taken on or off, but that also means that you can bump into it and dislodge it from the stand if you aren’t careful. It would require significant force, but as a cat owner, I know that a scenario like that is more likely than I’d like.

Another thing I noticed is how light the tablet is in comparison to my Cintiq. Granted, my Cintiq is larger (22 inches vs the 15.8 inches of the Artisul D16), but the Artisul D16 comes in at about 1.5kg of weight. While I don’t consider display tablets that require a PC and an outlet to work really portable, it would be a lot easier to move with the Artisul D16 from one space to another. In comparison, my Cintiq weighs in at a proud 8.5kg, making it a chore to move around. I have it hooked up to a monitor stand to be able to move it more easily across my desk.

The Setup

The setup of the tablet was quick as well, with only minor hiccups. The drivers installed quickly and basic setup was done in a matter of minutes. That doesn’t mean it came without issues: the cursor vanished as soon as I hovered over the driver window, making it a guessing game where I would be clicking and the pen calibration refused to work on the tablet screen and instead always defaulted to my regular screen. I ended up using the out of the box pen calibration for my test drawing which worked well enough.

The tablet comes with customizable hot-keys that you can reassign in the driver software. I did not end up using the hot-keys, since I use a Razer Tartarus for all my shortcuts, but I did play around with them to get a feel for them. The zoom wheel had a very satisfying haptic feel to it which I really enjoyed, and as far as I could tell, you can map a lot of shortcuts to the buttons, including with modifier keys like ctrl, shift, alt and the win key. I noticed that there was no option to map numpad keys to these buttons, but I was informed by my stream viewers that very few people have a full size keyboard with a numpad anymore. 

The pen comes with two buttons as well. Unlike the hot-keys on the side of the tablet, these are barely customizable. I was only able to assign mouse clicks to them (right, left, scroll wheel click, etc) and no other hotkeys. I have the alt key mapped to my pen button on my Cintiq, enabling me to color pick with a single click of the pen. The other button is mapped to the tablet menu for easy display switches. Not having this level of customization was a bit of a bummer, but I just ended up mapping the alt key to a new button on my Razer Tartarus and moved on.

The pen had a very similar size to my Wacom pen, but was significantly lighter. It also rattled slightly when shook, but after inspection this was just the buttons clicking against the outer case and no internal issues. The pen is made from one material, a smooth plastic finish. I would have liked for there to be a rubber-like material at the grip like on the Wacom pen for better handling, but it still worked fine without it.

Despite not being able to calibrate the pen for the display tablet, the cursor offset was minimal. It took me a while at the beginning to get used to the slight difference to my current tablet, but it was easy to get used to it and I was able to smoothly ink and color with the tablet. The screen surface was very smooth, reminding me more of an iPad surface. The included smudge guard glove helped mitigate any slipping or sliding this might have caused, enabling me to draw smoothly. Like with the cursor offset, it took me a while to get used to the different pressure sensitivity of the tablet, but I adapted quickly.

So what do I think of it?

Overall, drawing felt different on this tablet, but I can easily see myself getting used to the quirks of the tablet with time. Most of the issues I had were QoL things I am used to from my existing tablet. 

But I think that’s where the most important argument for the tablet comes in: the price.

I love my Cintiq. I can do professional grade work on it and I rebought the same model after my old one got screen issues, I liked it that much. But it also costs more than a 1000 € still, even after being on the market for over 10 years (I bought it for about 1.500 € refurbished in 2014, for reference). The Artisul D16 on the other hand runs you a bit more than 200€. That is a significant price difference! I often get asked by aspiring artists what tools I use and while I am always honest with them, I also preface it by saying that they should not invest in a Cintiq if they are just starting out. They are high quality professional tools and have a price point that reflects that. You do not need these expensive tools to create art. You can get great results on a lot cheaper alternatives! I do this for a living so I can justify paying extra for the QoL upgrades the Cintiq offers me, but I have no illusion that they are an accessible tool for most people. 

I can recommend the Artisul D16 as a beginner screen tablet for people who are just getting into art or want to try a display tablet for once. I wouldn’t give up my Cintiq for it, but I can appreciate the value it offers for the competitive price point. If you want to get an Artisul D16 for yourself, you can click this link to check out their shop!

AMAZON.US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TQLGC81

AMAZON.JP: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B07T6ZT84V

AMAZON.MX: https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B07T6ZT84V

Once again thank you to the Artisul team for giving me the opportunity to review their display tablet!

[eddiediaaz]

hi alie! can i request on how to do this grey-white text? /post/721285784354865152/ thanks!

hiii, sure! it's quite simple actually, here are the steps for the text effect on this gifset (and settings/screenshots under the cut):

type out you text and select white for the color, then set this text layer's blending mode to Difference

double click on the layer to get to the layer style options and add a Color Overlay. choose the color white (black also works) and set the blending mode to Overlay. play with the opacity slider as you wish, this will brighten your text and it helps for gifs that have a high contrast behind the text.

if you don't need to brighten the text, put the color overlay's blending mode to Hue, you're actually done right here, easy!

optional: if you're using the color overlay as an overlay like i have for that particular gifset, you need to create a mask of your typography. to do that hold the ctrl key and click on the text layer's icon (the "T", the yellow box on one of my screenshots). this will make a selection of your typography. if you have multiple text layers, hold CTRL + SHIFT to select multiple layers. once your selection is done, go to the top menu and Layer > New Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Black & White > Ok. make sure that layer is on top of the text layers.

add a Drop Shadow if you want, and that's it, the effect is done :)

[papermint-airplane]

Do y'all use the Transmogrifier mod? If not, you really should. I consider it one of the top 10 "can't live without" mods in my game.

This is something I talked about on r/sims3 a lot back when I was insane enough to still post there and I was surprised how few people knew about it despite how useful it is.

Basically what it does is let you copy the functionality of one object to another object in two clicks. Turn your cheap bed into an expensive bed at no extra cost to your Sims. Turn your toilet into a bookcase. Turn a rug into a car. Turn your washing machine into a washing machine-shaped sculpture so your Sims will leave it alone. The possibilities are (almost) endless. Seriously! It looks like it's a super complicated mod and I'm sure under the hood it is, but it's so easy to use.

Open buy mode.

Ctrl shift click the object you want to copy the script of.

Click "copy script" and a little box will pop up at the top right to let you know it was successful.

Ctrl shift click the object you want to copy it to.

Click "change script" and the mod will automatically paste the script you just copied into the box.

Click "accept".

That's it! That's all there is to it! Anyone can do this!

But let me show you what you can do with it as a storyteller. 😏

I have the Pose Player sitting right in the middle of this picture. You know what it looks like by now. Little black movie clapboard with white stripes. Says "Pose Player" on it. Do you see it in this shot?

No.

You don't.

Do you know why?

Because it's this random pile of rocks now.

If you don't have this mod, you need to get this mod. I promise you that you will find more uses for it than you ever could have imagined.

[ryanyflags]

Flag Making Tutorial

This will be a more technical step-by-step tutorial on how I make my flags (also a long post because I wanted to be thorough, plus I love flags lol).

The program I use is Inkscape, a free vector (.svg) editor program for pc.

I have templates set up, so the actual flag making process is pretty easy/quick.

Hotkeys/Locations/Other Reference

I'll be mentioning these options, so I thought to put them here all in one list. (They list the keyboard shortcuts first)

Snapping: magnet symbol (top right of screen), or under the adjacent arrow ◀️ symbol.

Document properties: shift+ctrl+D, or under the file menu (top left corner of screen). Display (1st tab) Guides (2nd tab) Grids (3rd tab)

Fill and Stroke: shift+ctrl+F, or under object (top of screen).

Layers and Objects: ctrl+shift+L, or under object (top of screen).

Align and Distribute: ctrl+shift+A, or under object (top of screen).

Import (Images): ctrl+i, under the file menu, or by dragging into the Inkscape window.

Save As: ctrl+shift+S, or under the file menu.

Export: shift+ctrl+E, or under the file menu.

Selector Tool: S, or cursor symbol (left side of screen). Click, or click and drag around the objects, to select them.

Locking a selection: lock symbol between the width and height boxes at the top of the screen.

Transform Selections: the width/height and x y position can be changed by typing in the X,Y,W,H boxes (near top middle of screen), or by dragging the corners/edges (resize) and inside the object (move).

Duplicate: ctrl+D.

Delete: delete key, or right click on the object.

Node Tool: N, or below the selector tool (left side of screen).

Rectangle Tool: R, or square symbol (left side of screen).

Pen Tool: B, or pen symbol (left side of screen).

Gradient Tool: G, gradient square symbol (left side of screen).

Mesh Tool: swirly square symbol (left side of screen).

Dropper Tool: D, or dropper symbol (left side of screen).

Undo: ctrl+Z.

Redo: ctrl+Y.

Creating the Template

Download Inkscape and open it, under the Time to Draw tab, click New Document.

First, snapping needs to be enabled, and under advanced mode enable grids and guide lines snapping. (This is crucial for making the stripes equally sized, spaced, and the overall flag in the right ratio.)

I'll be making a template with a 2:3 flag ratio.

Open document properties. (I like to move these types of windows to the right side.)

Under display, set the width to 42px and height to 28px.

Under guides, just click create guides around the current page.

Under grids, make sure rectangular grid is selected, and click new. (Grid units should be in px.) For the major grid line every option, change it to 2. (I also prefer to change the minor grid line color to be transparent.)

That's pretty much it, your template is done :D ! Just save it wherever you want. I like putting it in an easy-to-access flag folder, as it is needed to open it every time to make new flags.

You can use a different width / height / grid size / flag ratio if you want, these are just the numbers I'm comfortable with / used to.

Also, since this is a vector, the image can be infinitely big or small without any quality loss, so the small dimensions above don't actually translate to a low res image.

Creating the Flag

(I'll be using the rainbow flag to demonstrate.)

Start by having the template open.

You can import images (like .png/.jpg files) to color pick / reference if you want. Said images can be transformed (resized/moved) by selecting and transforming them using the options mentioned in reference. (This is optional, they should just be off to the side so they don't get in the way.)

To create the stripes, use the rectangle tool. Click and drag from one grid corner, to a lower grid corner.

While the rectangle is selected, use the dropper tool to pick a color from a imported image. You can also use the fill and stroke (shown on right) tab to create your own colors / edit colors / etc.

You can make these stripes however you want, they just need to all be equally sized. (They don't have to all have the same height, if you intentionally want that (like the demisexual flag for example).)

Then select all the stripes and transform them so that they fit the page.

All that's left is to save/export it.

To export it, use the export tab, under single file, page, adjust the width and height (in px) to however high res you want your image to be. (I usually do 3000 by 2000.)

Type in the desired file name in the box next to the folder symbol, use the folder symbol to choose its export location (which can also be used to determine the file name and save/export it), the adjacent drop-down-menu to select what to save it as (,png, .jpg, .svg, etc.), and the gear symbol to adjust other settings (I leave it as default, with antialias turned off (set to 0)).

And done, you've made a flag :D 🏳️‍🌈

Extra Notes

Layers and Objects: a menu that can be used to manage objects. Like their layering position (whether they are above or below another object), and other options can also be done here instead of with keyboard shortcuts.

Vertically striped flags: it's very similar to above. You would just make the rectangles taller rather than wider.

Wavy stripes: first use the pen tool to create zigzags. (The pen tool works like a outline, so just click along the grid corners, and join the line at the end. The fill and stroke menu can be used to make it a solid colored shape, and remove/add outlines). The steepness/frequency of the zigzags is up to personal preference, they just need to extend off the page a bit. To create equally sized wavy stripes, have the all side lengths (highlighted in red) be equal except (depending on how you draw your zigzags) the first or last wave, which should have half the side length of the others.

Select everything, and with the node tool, select all the zigzag nodes (the corners don't need to be selected), and click make selected nodes smooth (half circle with point in middle symbol, at top of screen). (It'll likely look like it has weird lines in-between the waves, see glitch section at the end for how to fix that.)

Then resize it all to the height of the canvas. And done :)

This can of course be vertical too.

Gradients: You can use the fill and stroke dialogue, gradient tool, or mesh tool to do this.

To create the gradient, select the object, click the linear gradient symbol (gradient box) under fill and stroke. Or dragging / double clicking with the gradient/mesh tools. (The mesh tool is what I used to create the square gradient.)

To change the colors, click on the arrows or circles under fill and stroke, or by clicking the points on the shape, to select the nodes. Then use fill and stroke to change the colors.

To create new colors/stops, click on the plus+ symbol under stops (under fill and stroke), or double click on the gradient. Edit the new colors in fill and stroke again.

To change the location of stops, use stop offset under fill and stroke, or drag the nodes on the gradient. You can also move the end points on the object to make the gradient slanted or vertical.

Symbols: I make my own when I can (like the demi- triangle can be drawn with the pen tool, and resized to the correct proportions). When the symbol is too complicated, I import a .svg of it. Wikimedia commons is a great resource, and the popular twemoji comes in .svg format too. You could also edit it on over the .png in a rastor program if need be.

The align and distribute tab can be used to center symbols (or any other selected object). Select page for the relative to option, and use the symbols underneath to center/align it however you want. (You can also use different relative to options, like last selected, if you want to align it to an object instead.)

Deleting imported reference images: you can do this before saving it as a .svg, if you don't want to keep them / want to clean up the .svg file.

Antialiasing: an option that blurs things basically. A image with antialiasing off will be sharp pixels, while a image with antialiasing on will have transition colors between the main colors.

Below is an example. The left side is without antialiasing, and the right side is with antialiasing.

I can see why it might be preferable to have it on (like for diagonal shapes), but antialiasing can make recoloring .png (not .svg) files hard. The extra different colors messes with fill tools. I also think it looks cleaner without, so I prefer it off.

Exporting glitch: sometimes an exported image will have a thin line between the stripes, despite the fact the stripes are perfectly next to each other. (This seems to not just be a problem with Inkscape, but with vectors in general.)

Below is a zoomed in example of what it'd look like. The left side shows the stripes are all next to each other, but the right image has a transparent line in-between the stripes.

This can be fixed a number of ways.

You could select all the objects, and duplicate them twice.

Or overlap them. The stripes will still be the same size when overlapped, but they will technically be behind each other, so there will be no gap.

With all the different stuff mentioned, you can basically think of them as building blocks with the grid as reference. They can all be mixed and matched together.

I didn't mention all the options, just because there's that many different things you can do in Inkscape. I'd encourage you to play around with all the different options/tools yourself.

There's also some great Inkscape guides on YouTube, it's where I learned how to do a lot of this from (even if they're not for flags specifically, the concepts in those videos can be applied to flags).

Here's an overly elaborate flag I made, just to demonstrate some (but not all) of the things that can be done.

Anyways what a long post haha. But maybe this will be helpful for anyone interested in making (pride) flags.

[khywren]

how i make my gifs

recently i had a couple people who were interested in my gif-making process, so i thought i'd share in case anyone else is interested or wants to learn how to make them! tutorial is under the cut!

things you’ll need for this tutorial:

OBS (or some other software to capture your footage, but i find OBS works best for me)

photoshop (i’m using photoshop 2024)

optionally, the otis_inf photomode mod for bg3, which isn’t free but helps for more interesting footage!

after you have your footage recorded, open up photoshop and in the top tabs, select window > timeline to bring up the timeline at the bottom of your screen. this is where you’ll do a lot of editing for your footage. also, make sure you have your layers window open as well, which for me is hotkeyed to f7 by default.

next, we’re going to input the footage into photoshop. my footage is in .mp4 format. in the top tabs, click file > import > video frames to layers. click on the clip you want to make a gif of and hit open.

this window allows you to select the part of the footage you want to import using the sliders beneath the video. basically everything between the two sliders at the bottom is what you’ll be importing. you can change the settings to whatever works best for you, but make sure you have the “make frame animation” checkbox ticked. once you’ve selected the part of the video you want, hit okay. you’re limited to 500 frames, so keep that in mind!

once the footage loads, you should see something like the image above, with your frames in the timeline and reflected as layers in the layers panel on the right hand side. the first thing i do is adjust how quickly the frames play. 

if you look closely (red arrow), you’ll see that the frames will play every .02 seconds, which is too fast for me personally. I usually set it to .03 seconds or .04 seconds. you can do this by selecting the three little lines indicated by the green arrow and selecting all frames. then click the little down arrow next to any of the .02 numbers, click other, then you can input your custom frame delay.

now you want to select all the frames in the layers window. to do that, click the first layer, scroll up to the last layer, hold shift, then click that as well to select everything in between. you should now have all your frames and layers selected, which you can see here as they’re all highlighted.

next, click the little icon in the bottom left corner of the timeline. 

it’ll take a moment to load, but once it does you should see something like this:

now in the top tabs, select filter > convert to smart filter, and hit okay to convert it into a smart object. once that’s done, you’ll see something like this, with only one layer of animation.

congrats, you’ve made a gif! you could resize/trim it and call it a day there, but i like to do a little more editing. the first thing i’m going to do is resize the gif. pick whatever works for you, but tumblr’s dashboard is still 540 px wide, so that’s usually what i do. keep in mind that the larger your image, the larger the file size - you’re capped out at 10mb, which is always smaller than i think it’s going to be. basically, the smaller the gif, the more frames you can have.

i resize the whole gif with ctrl + alt + i. whatever you want to set it to is your choice, but i usually aim for 50% and below if i want most of the footage to be the gif, but if i'm only using part of the footage i'll obviously keep it a bit larger. i want most of astarion to be in the gif, so i resized to 40%.

from there i’ll resize the canvas with ctrl + alt + c and set the dimensions to 540 px in width and whatever i want for the length, depending on the composition of my image. you can also trim the frames down by dragging the purple bar in from either side to pinpoint the exact footage you want.

once i have the size right, i move on to coloring. there are a lot of ways you can go about doing this! 95% of the time i use adjustment layers because they’re easy and work best for me. the ones i use most frequently are highlighted below, and can be accessed quickly through the little half-shaded circle at the bottom of the layers tab. i also like to add a smart sharpening layer to crisp up some of the finer details.

after coloring and sharpening, this is my before and after result:

once you’re done with that, all that’s left to do is save (unless you want to add text, but we’ll be skipping that this time). my default hotkey for that is ctrl + alt + shift + s. you can also find this under file > export > save for web (legacy), but i find the hotkey faster. a window will pop up showing you information about your gif before you save it. 

i honestly don’t know what half of these settings do; the only thing i really pay attention to here is the size, and as long as it’s under 10mb you’re good to go. you can preview the way your gif will play, which i always do just in case there’s something i didn’t catch. hit done to save, and that’s it!

this is the first time i’ve written anything like this, so if there’s anything that doesn’t make sense, feel free to ask!

[dqmeron]

some quick info: ↳ this is specifically for the screencapping method. i use mplayer osx extended to get my caps, but there are a few other programs you can use as well. i’ll specifically be going over mplayer here. ↳ i’m using ps 24.4.1 on a 2020 m1 macbook air

[tysm to @kyubinz for looking this over and adding some things ily]

☆ feel free to send me an ask/message with any questions you have! ☆

「 setup 」

1. finding videos

one big thing to remember is that the overall file size of your video will impact the quality of your gif. the larger, the better. i almost never use anything below 1080p, and try to use 2160p whenever i can. 4k video downloader is the program i use for downloading videos from youtube, it’s free to install and works great! because of how large some files can be, i always store any media on my hard drive. i highly recommend using one if you plan to keep lots of files on hand. 

.mkv files are best, but .mp4 works fine as well (.mkv files are usually bigger aka better quality).

2. getting your screencaps

after downloading mplayer, go to the top bar and click file > open. open the video you’ll be screencapping. 

you can either drag the little time indicator or using the arrow keys on your keyboard to move to the spot you want to capture. the > key can also be used to move forward frame by frame. to start capping, pause the video and press shift + cmnd (ctrl if you’re on windows) + s to take a screencap. i usually just hold it down until i’ve gotten all the screencaps i need. 

by default, screencaps go right to desktop. you can set up a folder for them to go to automatically by going to settings > general and then selecting a spot in the menu under “interface”, but i just let them go to desktop and then sort them into individual folders so they’re easier for me to find while i’m giffing. in general, i try to stay under 80 frames so my gifs fit into tumblr’s 10mb image size limit. 

3. importing screencaps into photoshop

to import your caps into ps, go to file > scripts > load files into stack. this window should open:

click browse, and navigate to the folder with your caps in it. select all of the caps you want to import, and then click open.

click ok to create a file with your caps, and then wait until it’s finished loading your caps into the layers tab. once they’re loaded in, this is what your screen should look like:

(if you aren’t seeing the timeline at the bottom of your screen, go up to the top bar and go to window > timeline)

click create frame animation, then go to the hamburger menu at the top right of the timeline and select make frames from layers. once your frames have loaded in, select the same menu again and click reverse frames. play through your gif to make sure everything looks good. 

if you were to save your gif at the speed it’s set at now, it would be way too fast. to fix this, you have to set the frame delay. do this by selecting all your frames in the timeline using shift click, and then clicking (on any frame) where it says “0 sec”. select other from the menu that comes up, and you should get this popup:

the general rule of thumb for gif frame delay is 0.05 seconds. there are some cases — certain animated movies or video games, for example — where other delays are best, but for the most part, 0.05 is what you want to use (0.05 can slightly slow gifs, and sometimes using 0.04 better matches the clip's original timing. this is really a "train your eyes" thing, and picking the best delay gets easier as you gif for longer). you can set this by typing the number into the text box and then hitting the ok button or enter on your keyboard. 

at this point, i’d go ahead and save your file. you can go to file > save in the top bar, or just hit cmd/ctrl + s on your keyboard.

「 making your gif 」

1. sizing

after your frames are ready, the next thing is to size your gif. to crop your gif, press c on your keyboard to open the cropping tool. white borders will show up around your gif.

before doing anything, i would suggest making sure “delete cropped pixels” is unchecked. this will allow you to drag your gif around later if you want to reposition. you can find this option at the top of your screen. drag the borders on either side until you have the area you want selected. mine looks like this:

once you’re happy with your selection, hit enter on your keyboard to finalize it. 

the tumblr image guidelines require gifs to be 540px across (here’s a post detailing this). to change your gif’s image size, go to image > image size in the top bar. you’ll get this popup:

instead of setting the width right to 540, i’ll be setting it to 544, and then trimming down the edges using canvas size. this makes the quality just a little better, and also prevents any weird borders being made around your gif on the off chance photoshop decides to add them. this isn’t necessary at all, you can absolutely size right to 540, but i just like doing this. if you choose to do this, open canvas size right after you set image size (image > canvas size in the top bar), and trim your width down to 540 and your height down a few pixels as well. 

2. sharpening & other filters

sharpening is essential for good-quality gifs. the first step to this is converting our timeline from frame animation to a video timeline. select this little icon in the bottom left of your screen:

this is what your timeline will look like now:

you can use the little slider with mountains on either side to change the width of your frames in the timeline for easier access when editing. now that we’ve got all this set up, we can sharpen! i use this action pack to sharpen my gifs in addition to a few of my own settings (here is a video on how to install actions into photoshop). go to window > action in the top bar if you aren’t seeing the action tab. 

i’ll be using the sharper action from the pack. to use an action, select it from the list and press the little play button at the bottom of the panel to apply it.

in addition to this, i usually also add unsharp mask at 50% amount with a 0.5px radius:

there are a few other filters than can be helpful when giffing:

a. add/reduce noise noise (aka grain) can be added with “add noise”. go to filter > noise > add noise.

these are the settings i usually use, but the amount depends on the gif (i don't ever go over 3.5 for the most part):

(if you want a grain effect but moving noise doesn't work for the gif, you can also add a grain overlay and then mess with blending mode and layer opacity until it looks how you want)

reduce noise can be used to remove some of the pre-existing grain on a clip. go to filter > noise > reduce noise. here are my settings:

leaving reduce noise on its own at 100% is a bit too much, so double click this icon and change the opacity (i usually do around 45):

b. gaussian blur if your clip is a bit pixelated, gaussian blur can help with smoothing it out a bit. go to filter > blur > gaussian blur. my settings are 1 pixel radius w ~20% opacity (this changes based on the gif).

3. coloring

time to color! i want you to keep in mind during this section that everyone likes different colorings, and this is just my process! please don’t feel pressured to follow exactly what i’m doing, the best way to find what you like is to just mess around and experiment!

i like to start off with lighting adjustments: brightness/contrast, levels, exposure, and curves. 

a. brightness/contrast i usually start out with this first, just because brightening the gif right away helps me start thinking about how i want to color! here are my settings:

b. levels/curves levels and curves can either be used interchangeably or together. i usually use levels to adjust lighting and curves to adjust color values, but i’ll go over using both for lighting as well as using curves for adjusting color values. 

for both of these adjustments, i use the eyedropper tools to pick out white and black points. for levels, the top eyedropper tool to the left of the graph is used to pick out a black point. i do this first. use the tool to pick a spot on your gif that you want to be the base for black values. for me, that’s the shadow inside rey’s hood. the bottom eyedropper tool picks white point. use the tool to pick a spot on your gif that you want to be the base for white values. i chose the outside of rey’s hood. make sure you’re doing this on a new levels adjustment layer.

now, on to curves. you can either use the same eyedropper method or manipulate the graph directly. using the eyedropper is the same as levels, so i’ll just go over graph manipulation. 

shade lightens as you move to the right along the x-axis of the graph — black is the far left, white is the far right, middle is the midtones. generally, i don’t work with midtones.

i’m going to use levels for this gif’s lighting, and curves to adjust color values. here’s how to do that:

curves can be used to adjust the amount of a certain color in different lighting areas of a gif. for example, i can specifically decrease the amount of green in the gif’s whites. to edit these values, select the rgb drop-down menu and adjust them one at a time. here are my final graphs:

c. exposure this one’s pretty straightforward. the exposure slider adjust general exposure. the offset slider adjusts how dark your dark points are, and gamma correction can be used to lighten/darken scenes as a whole. here’s my settings:

d. color balance color balance is used to adjust overall tint of a clip. this is in general pretty simple, but i do want to point out that using the shadow and highlights tabs in addition to just the midtones can really help. here’s my settings:

e. channel mixer channel mixer is one of my favorite tools in ps, especially for coloring scenes that are a pain in the ass without it. to avoid taking up too much space, here’s a great tutorial covering channel mixer. here’s my settings:

[at this point, i’m noticing my gif is still a bit darker than i’d like it, so i’m adding just a bit of brightness/contrast to fix it. there’s also a patch of blue over one of rey’s eyes, so i’ve used a hue/saturation layer to get rid of that bit and masked it to her eye. i’m not going to go over masking here, but there are lots of great tutorials out there!]

f. selective color selective color can be used to adjust the amount of specific colors within a color. for example, if i were to go into the red tab and take out cyans, the reds would become more red. if i were to add yellows, the reds would become more orange, etc etc. this can be especially good for color manipulation. for this gif, i’d like to make the background more blue, so i’m going to use selective color to do this. here’s my settings:

g. color lookup color lookup uses 3dlut files to remap gif colors (it’s a preset — think instagram filter or something similar). i don’t always use these, but when i do, i almost never leave them at 100% opacity. color lookup is great for giving gifs a film-type look if you want to do that, it’s got loads of different options. here’s my settings (adjustment layer is set to 20% opacity):

atp i’m pretty much done with coloring! i usually end up doing a few extra little lighting adjustments at the end. for this gif, i added some brightness/contrast at +8. i’ve also noticed that my gif’s looking a bit grainy, so i’ve added some noise to lean into it. this is usually the way i fix it, but you can definitely do reduce noise/gaussian blur as well if you don’t want a grainy look. 

here’s my fully colored gif + a process gif (fast images warning):

「 saving gifs 」

1. frame rate

one thing you may have noticed is that my gif is looking a bit choppy. photoshop has a tendency to mess with frame delay after gifs are converted to video timeline. here’s how to fix that.

select all of your layers and convert them to a smart object (right click > convert to smart object). next, click on the hamburger menu in the top right of the timeline and go to convert frames > flatten frames into clips. now we need to change the timeline from video timeline to frame animation. click the little 3 boxes symbol in the bottom left corner of the timeline:

go to the hamburger menu again and select make frames (this is the same one you used earlier), then go through your frames and delete any duplicates. the first frame usually needs to be deleted specifically. once you’ve done that, set the frame delay back to 0.05 the way you did earlier. 

2. exporting

once you’re happy with how your gif looks, go to file > export > save for web (legacy). 

these are my export settings, but feel free to experiment with the menus where i have selective and diffusion selected, different settings work best for each gif. in general, most gifmakers only use selective/adaptive and diffusion/pattern because they generally work the best for tumblr. before saving, make sure your looping option is set to forever:

gif size for tumblr has a 10mb limit. my gif is under this, so i don’t need to make any changes, but if yours is over, you can either delete some frames from the beginning/end of your gif and/or adjust the height of the gif (width needs to stay 540px so your gif doesn’t get stretched/compressed on tumblr, but height is fair game). 

here's my final gif!

happy giffing, and please don’t hesitate to send me any questions you have! ♡

[aashiqeddiediaz]

hello! im a newby gimaker and i want to follow your tutorial on sharpening but i dont know how you got to the photoshop page you started from where it looks like a video timeline. can you tell me how you got there? <3

Hey!!

Welcome to the wonderful world of gifmaking <3 yes i can lead you through to that point. I have a mac so this might look different for you, but all the steps stay the same - I just shifted from windows to mac so i know this xD

I'm going to show you how to do this on this gif:

I prefer to use screenshots for my gifs (I also don't know how else to make them), so I use Mplayer for that. I used to use MPV player but that stopped working with my new computer system.

First, you want to make sure that you're using a high-quality file. If 1080p is available to you, use 1080p at the very least. This will make sure your gifs are crisp and sharp.

Open your file with Mplayer. Then find the bit that you want to gif. I sometimes search forward by frame by using the ">" key. Once you're at the start point of your desired gif, pause the video. Then, Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + S to start screenshotting. The video will start to play slowly as the screenshots are captured. (They go to the desktop automatically but you can change that in interface settings).

The rest of the tutorial is under a cut:

Once you get your screenshots, you're going to go Photoshop. File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack.

You're going to get a dialogue box. Click Browse and load the screenshots that you want. This is what that looks like when you finish:

Next, you're going to crop your gif, using the crop tool. You can press C on your keyboard for this or use the tool with this icon in the sidebar.

For this, I'm using an aspect ratio of 540 x 400:

Click that checkmark to crop. Once you do, we're going to resize the image. Use the Cmd/Ctrl + I function to bring up this box. For tumblr gifs, you want to change the width. The height doesn't really matter but if the width doesn't match up, Tumblr is going to fix it for you and it'll look funky. Per row:

1 gif , we use 540px

2 gifs, 268px each

3 gifs, 177, 178, 177 px

We're just doing one, so I'm using 540px.

Now, you want to make sure you can add the timeline. In the top bar, go to Window > Timeline

This will bring up the timeline.

From there, click "Create Frame Animation" (you might have to press the arrow in the timeline bar first.)

It's going to look like this:

We're going to use those three lines in the corner of the picture above. The first option we'll select is "Make Frames From Layers"

That looks like this:

Now, when these load in, you may notice that they're all in reverse. To make them go back in order, we're going to go back to that menu and click "Reverse Frames."

Then, in that same menu, click "Select all Frames." We're going to change the animation speed. You want to make sure you have the first frame selected. We're going to click the arrow next to the "0 sec"

When you click that, it will give you a menu. Click, "other..." You should get a dialogue box that says "Set Frame Delay", just like the one below.

You want to use anywhere between 0.05-0.1 seconds. I find that anymore more is just too slow, so I prefer 0.06. This is fully changeable at the end of my sharpening tutorial, and you can use what you want, but that's what I prefer.

When you do that, it'll change the frame speed of all the gifs.

Now, go back into that little menu, and click, "Convert to Video Timeline."

This is what it'll look like:

Now we're going to select all the layers in the right-hand pane. Once we do that, right-click and select, "Convert to Smart Object."

And you're there! Now you can use the sharpening tutorial to your liking.

Pro tip: Make an action with all these steps so you don't have to do them by hand with every single gif you make.

Hope this helps and it wasn't super long winded. Let me know if you have any questions <3 Happy giffing!

[triplesnet]

a gifmaking tutorial would actually be super appreciated :)

Okay, this is gonna get long and it might not be great but I will do my best to make it understandable.

Put under a read more cause we're not forcing anyone to look at all this.

We're gonna make this gif:

First of all you'll need 3 software programs downloaded.

4k downloader (to download videos)

Gomplayer (to get the frames from the videos)

Photoshop (I pay for it but there are other ways)

Some things to keep in mind

better quality video = better quality gifs

if you want videos in 4k you have to download them in MKV format as MP4s can't be 4k.

gifs can only contain 256 colours so gifs with a lot of different colours might get grainy.

if you use low quality videos or upscaled videos they sometimes have duplicate frames which will make the animations look weird, but you can easily remove those extra frames.

tumblr only accepts gifs under 10mb in size so all gifs have to be less than that (photos less than 20mb)

you can put up to 30 gifs/images in one post

ok here we go

Step 1: Download video

Step 2: Get the frames from the video

You will play the video using Gomplayer

Find the part you want to GIF

Press CTRL + G to bring up this menu

I haven't experimented much with these settings but you'll want to choose the place you want your frames to end up so you can find them later

4. Have the Capture all frames box checked (unless it's 60fps then do 0.03). You can capture up to 999 frames in one go.

5. Press "burst capture" and it will start getting the frames (video has to be playing) it will look like this.

6. Great you have your frames.

Step 3. Making a GIF

Open Photoshop

Load Files Into Stack

This will open the folders on your computer so navigate to where you put your frames and select the frames you want by clicking on the first and holding shift while clicking on the last.

3. Wait for PS to load the frames

4. Once it's all loaded the first thing you'll do is crop it. Press 'C' on your keyboard. There are a couple presets you can use or you can 'clear' that and crop however you wish.

I always crop out at least a little of the top and bottom cause there can be dark lines there.

5. Resize: for optimal quality on tumblr there are three sizes to keep in mind.

For sets like this with 3 gifs next to each other the width should be 177p, height does not matter.

For sets like this with 2 gifs next to each other the width should be 268p

And for a set like we're doing today with just 1 gif it's 540p

You'll want to memorise these numbers for future use.

177p, 268p or 540p will be the width of your gifs.

To open the resize menu you press CTRL + ALT + i

Change the width to in this case 540p (p as in pixels)

It will auto match the height to keep the same proportions.

Click OK and wait until it's done.

6. Make sure you have the 'timeline' window up at the bottom of your photoshop

7. Click 'create frame animation' (button might say video timeline but change that by pressing that little arrow next to it)

8. Press the button with three lines in the top right of the 'timeline' window and press 'make frames from layers'

9. The frames will have loaded in in reverse order so open the same menu and click 'reverse frames'

Step 4. Blurring the logo/text (optional)

Since we have a logo in there I will want to blur it but you might not have one or you don't care if there's a logo or text in your gifs.

First we have to make the gif into a smart object.

Select all layers by pressing CTRL + ALT + A

Convert into a 'video timeline' by pressing the button in the bottom left of the timeline window

3. Right click on your layers and click on 'convert to smart object'

4. Press Z to switch to the zoom and zoom in on your logo/text.

5. Press L to switch to the lasso tool and select your logo/text

there should now be a line where you selected.

6. Open 'Gaussian Blur'

7. Click OK

Now we have to get our GIF back to the frame timeline.

8. Click 'flatten frame into clips' using the timeline menu

9. Press 'delete' once to remove the smart object

10. Convert back to frame animation

11. Make frames from layers

No need to reverse this time. But now your logo/text is blurred, as long as it doesn't move but that's a topic for another day.

Step 5: Sharpening

If you didn't have something to blur let's go over smart objects again.

Select all layers by pressing CTRL + ALT + A

Convert into a 'video timeline' by pressing the button in the bottom left of the timeline window

3. Right click on your layers and click on 'convert to smart object'

5. Camera Raw Filter (Optional)

I use this for base editing of colours and the overall clearness of GIFs, it's not made for that tho it sometimes gets buggy. Works best on photos.

Press CTRL + SHIFT + A to open this.

It's best to do as little as possible in here as it can bug out.

I mostly mess with the effects, light and detail settings in here, don't touch the sharpening though cause we will use smart sharpen for that.

6. Smart Shapening

Most people have a sharpening action they use, including me. But you can also do it manually. You can find my actions in here.

To do it manually and make your own settings. This is how you open smart sharpen.

If you use my sharpening action remember it can be a bit much sometimes, in that case hide the second layer

Use an action or mess around to find a sharpening setting that looks good on your gif, usually don't need much.

Now we have to get our GIF back to the frame timeline.

7. Click 'flatten frame into clips' using the timeline menu (I'm low on images to use check the blur section for images)

It might take a minute since it has to process the new settings.

8. Press 'delete' once to remove the smart object

9. Convert back to frame animation

10. Make frames from layers

11. Select all your frames to set the framerate

You can click on any frame for this. Click 'other' and set it to 0,06.

12. Press CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + S to open 'Save for Web'

these are my save settings.

Click save and name and place it wherever you want it saved.

Congrats you've made a gif.

Step 6: Colouring

Now we have a problem cause there's already 30 images in this post.

For colouring I have a psd I use and adjust to the individual set. It's in my google drive you can find it here along with my actions.

If you're making several gifs from one video you'll want to adjust to the first and then copy that over to keep things matching.

We can go more in depth on this but that would have to be a different post since I can't put more images in this one.

Step 7: Watermark (optional)

A lot of GIF makers have watermarks these days as there's a lot of people who repost GIFs without credit. Make your own so people know the GIFs are yours even when posted elsewhere.

Step 8: Post

Post your hard work on your tumblr, use a bunch of tags so people have a higher chance of seeing it.

I hope this post was understandable and clear, let me know if you have any questions and if you want a proper colouring post.

[mspaesthetic]

Tidbit: Persnickety About Posters

If you want to avoid overly dark or blurry posters in your fan adventures, then follow my lead:

1) Download JPEG off of Google Images.

2) Import, scale down, and skew/shear it. Use an interpolation method such as Bilinear or Bicubic Sharper. Doing both transformations at once is better than repeatedly transforming the image (i.e. resizing it, applying the transform, and then skewing it), as it helps prevent the image and edges from becoming too blurry. This will be important later.

You can hold down Ctrl + Shift to constrain the Move tool along a single axis so it won't go out of alignment as you're skewing it. If you don't see the Transform Controls by default, enable it in the tool options bar at the top, or go to Edit>Free Transform.

3) Desaturate it. Desaturate means to turn color grayer, until it becomes black and white.

4) Adjust the brightness and contrast using the Levels adjustment tool. It's much too dark as it is! In Photoshop, it is located under Image>Adjustments>Levels..., but I recommend creating an adjustment layer from the bottom of the layers tab instead. Doing so will allow you to make edits non-destructively, meaning you can go back and change any parameters until it looks right.

You could use a Brightness/Contrast adjustment with "Use Legacy" enabled instead to achieve a similar effect, but it won't clip the shadows and highlights as easily. You would have to create an additional duplicate adjustment and turn the brightness and contrast way down on the first one to do so. It's somewhat easier to use but less efficient than Levels in this case.

5) Apply a simple sharpen to the image as it is still too blurry for our purposes. In Photoshop, it is located under Filter>Sharpen>Sharpen... Do not use any other filter, such as Unsharp Mask, unless you absolutely have to in lieu of a basic one. If you must, turn down the radius a bit and the threshold all the way to 0.

6) Make a selection around the image. Ctrl + left click on the layer's thumbnail to make a selection around it. Doing it this way makes it inherit the level of transparency any pixels have. If you can't, use the Magic Wand tool with "Anti-alias" enabled to select the transparent area outside, then invert it using Shift + Ctrl + I, or go to Select>Inverse.

Create a new layer above the image, then go to Edit>Stroke... and add a black stroke with a width of 2px located Outside. Leave everything else at the default. Doing it this way will create a stroke with anti-aliasing based on the selection you made. This should generally turn out pretty sharp if you follow my advice from Step 2. If you had used the Stroke Effect available from the Blending Options' layer styles, it will always result in a very smooth outline instead. You do not want this.

Voila, and Bob's your uncle, you're done!

The instructions above are Photoshop specific, but it should still be pretty software-agnostic. Here is the recreation PSD, and below the read-more link are additional notes, such as transferring the steps to something like GIMP.

ADDENDUM

You may be questioning why I deliberately made the stroke anti-aliased. "Isn't that an MSPArt cardinal sin??", I hear you clamoring. Well, my dear readers, let me briefly elucidate you on why your ass is wrong. Exhibit A:

The clearly semi-opaque pixels that can be found in every poster outline, which is especially pronounced here in the Little Monsters poster. I can also see that Hussie actually created a stroke on the same layer as the poster and merged it down into the white background like a dumbass. I omitted this in step 6 for the sake of convenience (and also the fact that you can't add a stroke to a smart object in Photoshop without rasterizing it first).

He had to use the magic wand tool in order to extract it from the layer for this panel, and then fill it in with the paint bucket tool. I can even tell he had the color tolerance set up very high on the magic wand to grab all those near-black and very light gray pixels, AND he had anti-alias enabled and the tolerance on the bucket tool set to be at least higher than 0 to tint similar colors. Exhibit B:

I also didn't address exactly how to desaturate something in Photoshop. Honestly it was because I was feeling pretty lazy. I would have had to rewrite step 4 to not include redundant information about adjustment layers. You can add either a Black & White adjustment layer or a Hue/Saturation one and turn the saturation all the way down to 0. The resulting tones will be slightly different from each other but I'll explain why that is in another tutorial.

Speaking of another tutorial, read this one if you believe this post is missing the step of using a posterize filter.

Now onto applying some steps to GIMP.

RE: step 2) In GIMP, there is a dedicated Unified Transform tool separate from the Move tool, unlike in Photoshop where both features are combined into one. This is how you scale and skew (AKA shear in GIMP) both at the same time, among other things such as rotating.

You'll also find that instead of any interpolation methods labeled "Bilinear" or "Bicubic", there are only ones named "Linear", "Cubic", "NoHalo", and "LoHalo". Basically, Linear and Bilinear are the same, so are Cubic and Bicubic, naturally. I guess NoHalo would be similar to Bicubic Smoother and LoHalo would be kind of similar to Bicubic Sharper as well. It's not an exact 1:1, though.

Honestly it doesn't really matter what you use to reduce the size as long as it isn't None/Nearest-Neighbor. You're going to have to sharpen it no matter what. This applies to Photoshop as well.

RE: step 3) Go to Colors>Hue-Saturation... and repeat turning the saturation down to 0, or go to Colors>Desaturate>Desaturate... and select the Lightness (HSL) method.

RE: step 4) Go to Colors>Levels... or Colors>Brightness-Contrast... The Brightness-Contrast adjustment tool already functions almost exactly like in Photoshop with "Use Legacy" enabled.

RE: step 5) In GIMP 2.10, the developers squirreled away the basic Sharpen filter, making it inaccessible from the Filters menu. To use it, hit the forward-slash (/) key or go to Help>Search and Run a Command... to bring up the Search Actions window and type in "sharpen". Select the option that just reads "Sharpen..." and has a description of "Make image sharper (less powerful than Unsharp Mask)". I find that using a sharpness value of around 40 to be similar to Photoshop's sharpen filter.

RE: step 6) Instead of holding down Ctrl, you hold down Alt and click on the layer thumbnail to make a selection around it. Make a layer underneath the image this time since there isn't an option to place the stroke outside the selection rather than the middle. Go to Edit>Stroke Selection... and create a stroke using these settings:

I recommend keeping anti-aliasing disabled however, as GIMP produces lines that are a little too smooth for my taste.

With "Antialiasing" enabled

Without

If you're using a program that doesn't have a stroke feature available, you could draw a straight 1px thick line across the top of your poster, duplicate it, and move it down 1px. Merge them together, duplicate it again, and move it all the way down to the bottom of the poster. Then repeat the exact same process for the sides. I used to do this before I even knew of the stroke feature, haha.

Another reason I had to do it this way was because my dumb ass did the thing I said not to in step 2, scaling down the image with the scale tool, and then shearing it separately with the shear tool. This caused the edges to become too blurry to be used for a stroke automatically. Oh well, live and learn.

[otterloreart]

the donut tutorial is too long so heres the abridged version

thought i would put my money where my mouth is and make my own donut tutorial. google blender donut tutorial if you want to see the original i dont need to give that guy any views lol.

left click new file

select box, press x, delete

*Shift*+a -> Mesh -> Torus

In the torus menu make the donut littler

left click the arrow at top right, check X ray box

left click this at top of screen. it will make a ring around your cursor when editing. see later on.

tab -> edit mode, numpad 1 to go to front view

double left click to select the middle line

ctrl + b to make more lines

double left click the middle line and hold S. scroll the mouses to adjust how much the nearby lines are changed

tab -> object mode, right click donut, left click Shade Smooth in menu

tab -> back to edit mode

used ctrl + b to add more lines at the top and bottom

left click and then use g to drag random vertices to shift parts of the donut and make it look authentically uneven (tm). scrolling while holding g makes the circles bigger and allows me to drag more vertices.

middle mouse button to rotate, shift + m button to move view to help see all around the donut

tab -> object mode, look at the beautiful donut

ok back to tab -> edit mode

numpad 1 for front view. drag left click to select the top half of the donut. shift + d to duplicate. right click to cancel move (when something is copied, "g" or "move" is automatically performed after that to move it)

press P, left click selection. you have removed those vertices from your object and made them a new object, see in viewer:

the duplicate object is named .001

tab -> object, select torus.001, tab -> edit.

click these buttons. this will make the vertices magnetically attach to the nearest object when you press g and move them.

left clicked the arrow at the far top right and hit random under color so i could see the difference between the frosting and donut

left click vertices and press g to pull them down to form a wave pattern around the donut. hold middle button to rotate and be sure to get all angles

just keep going

click 3 vertices in a row and drag them downwards to *e for extrude to* make a drip

each drip is about 3 extrudes long. g used to grab the vertices afterwards and shape the drip.

click the little wrench on the side for modifiers, torus.001 is listed at the top (aka frosting)

left click add modifier, click solidify

change the thickness to .02m (or whatever else looks good) and offset to +1.0000

left click add modifier, click subdivision surface

now things are smooth

apply solidify using this arrow. then apply subdivision.

tab -> sculpt mode

left click the lil inflate brush, uses on the tips of the drips to make them bulbous.

ok, to be continued.

[the-switch-conspiracy]

[Prev]

Chapter 6: [ctrl ->]

Content Warning: Description of Corpses.

The carriage shakes as it travels across rocky roads. A light breeze flows from one curtained window to the other. Shen Qingqiu sits lightly fluttering his fan with one hand, and holding a book in the other, pointedly not looking at the only other person in his space. To Shen Qingqiu’s surprise, the trip didn’t begin as painfully as he expected it to. Rather than an immediate confrontation, the first several hours consisted of Liu-shidi staring him down unblinkingly in complete silence. He sits still, his only movement a slight shifting of his weight when required, his mercury eyes bright and focused under the long black veil of his eyelashes. He manages to consume about half of his novel before Liu-shidi finally deigns to speak.

“Shen Qingqiu.” He closes his book and sets it to his side, turning his focus entirely on his shidi. It was inevitable that there would be some sort of interrogation, though he dreaded it, it only seemed right that it be Liu Qingge who initiates it. Straightforward, righteous, and the Sects’ protector, there was no way he’d let a potential threat remain. Just like when he saved his life, the first time around; Liu Qingge, saying out loud what everyone else thought. Liu Qingge’s phoenix eyes linger on his, before flicking to take him in as a whole. His lips curl into a grimace, as a hand lands on the hilt of Cheng Luan.

It was becoming increasingly obvious he wasn’t doing well at hiding the difference between him and the original this time around, and he has no clue what he’s doing wrong. Last time he’d gotten checked for possession a few times, before they’d eventually written off the change as memory loss. This time has been… different, very much so. His students seem awed by him, and not in the expected sense. In less than a week Yue Qingyuan has sought him out more than he did the first couple of months before. Perhaps it was simply paranoia speaking, but some of the questions the Sect Leader asked… they seemed strangely pointed, and his answers only returned knowing looks and nods. Mu Qingfang was more subtle about it, but he too often sought him out to ask questions about his recovery with an oddly fascinated expression on his face. Then, there was the man sitting across from him, and his reaction. Like he’d been struck. Like he’d seen a ghost.

“Yes shidi?” His eyes fell to the hand holding the sword, his voice remaining well modulated despite his rising pulse. The suspicion, though well warranted, stung worse coming from him.

“What game are you playing?” He was… there was so many ways he could respond to this, with righteous indignation, faux contempt, neutrality or good humour as he once had to a question just like this one. But… he’s tired. He doesn’t want to have to relearn how he has to act. He doesn’t want to have to recreate himself to fit what these unfamiliar versions of his friends, his family, want him to be.

After dying, the first time, he had to learn from the ground up how to be a perfect immortal. In some ways he took to it like a fish to ocean, a bird to air, but in others it was a struggle. There was a sense of unwarranted superiority. After all, he knew what was going to happen to these people, their places in this narrative, for he was the only real person surrounded by characters. He was self-centred, his decisions based on what would keep him alive and safe, rather than what was good for those around him. And if they helped some people? If they saved people who were fated for death? Well, it was a favour owed. It took a long time, in many ways too long, for him to realise, to change.But there was a change, and it came from the realisation that it was real.The world, the people in it; the man currently sitting in front of him, and the boy no doubt riding just beyond the curtain. His feelings for them were real, and they were more than just words on a screen.

With that realisation, many of the acts he put on felt less like acts and more like… like he was drawing from something deep inside him. Not every choice he made was his, but, despite the entity that bound his voice, that forced him to keep so much hidden, despite all he’s lost from both his first life and his second… he loves being a Peak Lord, he lovesbeing in this world. After decades of being Shen Qingqiu, longer than he ever lived as Shen Yuan, he’d finally felt settled. Like he’d reached an equilibrium. And now it was all gone.

A blank slate once more.

Yet here he was, despite all the epiphanies teaching him not to treat this world like a stage, trying once more to play his part. He smiles mirthlessly, the black eyes he’d come to recognise as his own, no doubt dull and tired for his shidi to see. He was facing the very real possibility of the world ending should he fuck up, and despite the OOC lock being disabled there was surely hidden lines he could not cross. The man in front of him fidgets, just briefly, readjusting his grip on the sword. The mid morning glow gentles some of his regal features and makes harsh others. An almost painful flutter presses against the inside of his chest.He takes a faltering breath.

“I’m not playing games shidi.” It left his mouth softly, with barely restrained sorrow. He keeps his hands still, where Liu Qingge can see them, but allows himself to slump against the wall. His head hits the surface with a dull smack, as he lets his eyes slide to a sliver. “I don’t have the time.” He wishes… ah… he wishes this was his shidi. The man who brought him monsters to fawn over, just because he mentioned reading them in a bestiary. The man who sat patiently while he poured him tea and chatted about his disciples – despite it being against his nature, the man who returned every lost fan – even the ones he didn’t much care for. The one he… he had…. Well, had to have quite serious personal reflections about himself over.

He averts his eyes, his chest suddenly uncomfortably tight and eyes strangely burning. Oh no. He wasn’t stupid. Or oblivious. But he did refuse to think about the things that bring him pain and discomfort. He let thoughts slide over him like water, found justifications and ways to talk circles around the truth, anything but to actually accept the obvious. To actually take a look at himself and judge what he found. And gods, the things he’d allow himself to be wilfully ignorant of… well it left him feeling strangely humbled in the aftermath.

You couldn’t run from the obvious forever, and well it was obvious he felt something other than just friendship for his favourite martial brother. And wasn’t that a shock? It took a long time and even longer introspection to come to the realisation he found men… that... he had certain feelings for people he didn’t believe he could. And even longer to realise that he had certain feelings for Liu Qingge of all people. It was a realisation that broke his heart, and caused him unbearable guilt. The sickening, crawling, sickly guilt that ate away at his insides, that made him feel shaky and nauseous at what it would do to... how it would hurt his hus…

how it would hurt his….

it would hur-…

it… it..?

[̨̨̫͚̟̏̋̓̊̋A̖̩̓͋D̪̝̱͊̓̂Ḿ̧̨̺͑͗I̙̕N ͌ͅCM̘̰̒̓D͍̘͉̈̏͌:̻͇͍̪͓̂̀̂̚͠ ̬̔ď͔̹̞͌͗͢͠ḙ̥͎̿̓͠le͓͉͌͞t̪̐ȩ̳̟̭̇̉͆̕ ̬̚p̼̹̈́̕at̮̤͇͚͗͋̊͌ḥ͉̦́̄̓:̨̬̄̅\̛̫\̻̜͉̯͙̐̎́̽̉m̪̳̬̑͑͘e̼̗͂̔m͚͕̬̟̝͌͐̃̓̅_̻̻̓̑f̨̚r̥͠a̢͓̠̝̓̓͊͞g̘̣̒͠2̪̉7͈̈́7̬̣̑̅3̫͛̈́̊ͅͅ5͇̖͌̐\̟̕U̟͐Ŝ͈̭͈̔͒E̓͟R̫͕͉̯͆̔͊͒\̖̣̥̿́̂͘͜shȩ̠̍͊͊͟n͈̍_̟̪̺̊͛̆̕͟y̨͍͛͞u̝̳̺̒̅͠á̢̭̆n]̢̳̯̤̄͐͘͠

[̰͡Å̢D͎̬̹̊̍̍M̤̖͗̈́IṆ̬̠̬͑͑͐́ ̡̍C͇͞M̡͖̪͌̌͑D͚̻̭̿͋̇:͓̞̙͑̆̚ ̻̭̲̀̄͠cò̹͔͘p̨̯̓͒y̯̼͋̀͒ͅ ̨͔̝̺̒̐̀̎̀͟p͓̩̲̈́̐͛a̅͜ṱ̭̖̰̃̓̿͘h͙̳̀͊:̧̨̦͆̒̄\̗̠̜͚̓͊̉͑͒ͅ\̭͐m̟͉̫̎̅́͝ͅe̫̝̩͓̐̌̑͡m̭͆_̫̣̱͍͖̈́̓̂̀̓fr̰̐a̙͙̍̕g2̲́7̥̣̾̉7̛̫̙̏͋͟3̩̞̫͙̎͌͆̉̚͢5̞̖̀͌̀ͅ\̯͈̊͐̄͟S̱̈́Y̠̮̘̾̾͘Ŝ̛̛̮̙̮̇͟T͚̤͗͡EM͔̩͋̊\͙͕̎̕ś̯̤͇̑̂̿ͅh̤̆en̘͇̜̱͑̓͞͞_̲̟̟̌͊́̒͟ẙ͍u̟̰̍́aň͖_ä̠ĺ̡͚̬̆͛t̨̜̟͈͒͛͑̓̈́͜]

“-ou don’t have the time? What do you mean you don- You..!” Shen Qingqiu blinks hazily, trying to focus through the loud ringing in his ears, and the fogginess coating his thoughts. What was he thinking about just then..? Ah, his shidi… his shidi was too good for this shixiong of his. His feelings didn’t come to anything in the end… such is the fate of any love rival to the protagonist. Not that Binghe was just the protagonist, he was his own uniquely realised person. Strong, an excellent fighter, peerless himself in looks and demeanour… and so full of love.

“Shen Qingqiu ..!” It was only right that someone like Binghe would end up marrying someone as exceptional as Qingge, leaving this poor excuse of a mentor and friend to look on and covet what wasn’t his. No wonder he felt so guilty, so wretched. He could only imagine the sight of them dressed in red… his breath leaves him in a rough shudder, his heart felt like it was being wrapped tightly with string, clinched enough to cut. They were perfect for each other, and Shen Qingqiu was overjoyed for them. After everything they both went through, they deserved it! They deserved their happy ending. Really… he’s happy.

“ - QINGQIU!” A frustrated face filled his vision, Liu Qingge’s pissed off gaze shifts just slightly to a concerned one, before sliding back into a measured, blank frown. His hand, half raised, gestures towards his own face, “You…” Ah he’s been ignoring his shidi, Shen Qingqiu parts his mouth to reply, tongue thick and gummy in his mouth, and pauses at the feel of a strange wetness against his upper lip. Inhaling sharply he is hit by the sharp tang of copper, and the feel of fluid travelling down the back of his throat. He lifts a shaky hand to his nose, pulling his hand back and spotting the bright red smear on his fingertips. A whistle escapes through his teeth. His head aches.

“Shizun..?” Called through the curtain, the silhouette of his favourite disciple appearing on it, “This disciple heard yelling, is everything all right?”

“Everything is fine Binghe, this master was distracted.” He pressed the tips of his fingers together and rubs, dimly observing the sight of blood thinning and drying tacky against his skin. “Your shishu was merely trying to gain this one’s attention.” He caught Liu Qingge’s gaze with his own, begging him with his eyes to agree, ignoring how his gaze had been just as fixated on his fingers as his own had been.

“Tch,” His eyes flick to the curtain briefly, before finding their way back to the red smears no doubt drying on his face, “Reading.” Binghe makes a knowing noise, followed by the sound of movement through a bag. A hand thrusts itself through the curtain, holding what was no doubt some kind of snack. Liu Qingge all but hisses, an inch of blade revealing itself at his side. Please don’t remove my disciple’s, and your future husband’s hand shidi! He forcibly pushes down the reflective discomfort the thought brings.

“Shizun must surely be feeling peckish, this disciple made sweets for the trip.” Ah Binghe! Always knowing what he wants! He delicately grabs the box from his student’s hand.

“This master thanks Binghe for the treat.” He smiles warmly, despite Binghe being unable to see it, and waits for the shadow to move from the curtain. The box is placed at his side with an audible click, dry carmine flecks transferring from his fingers to its surface, a cloth pulled from his qiankun pouch to press under his nose. Liu Qingge watches it all, visibly trying to find words. They spill from his lips in a hiss.

“You just Qi-Deviated.” Shen Qingqiu waves it off firmly, raising an eyebrow at the other man.

“A nose bleed doesn’t automatically mean a Qi-Deviation shidi, and I would know if I had.” He pauses, opening the lid of the box and smiling unconsciously at the delicately prepared buns on display. He misses the sight of Liu Qingge’s eyes widening and ears pinking, the nervous swallowing of a suddenly parched throat, lips unable to decide whether to part or twist into a familiar bullied moue. He does neither, merely looks on in conflicted silence, before stretching out his hand and drawing Shen Qingqiu’s attention.

“Your wrist.” So brusquely stated with that stubborn look! Qingge you never change. It was only familiarity with the demand that allowed him to raise his wrist, the pale underbelly of his forearm peaking from his slipping sleeves. Liu Qingge takes his wrist in one firm, long fingered hand, and sends a few questioning tendrils of Qi through his spiritual veins. It was nostalgic, Shen Qingqiu began automatically cycling his own spiritual energy as he used to, his shidi’s grip on his wrist flexing as he just as automatically seemed to follow. With the amount of time he spends on Qian Cao Peak with Mu Qingfang it wasn’t surprising! His shidi appears laser focused on his task. Eventually he withdraws both his hand and Qi in turn, leaving nothing but the remnants of warmth remaining.

“See, nothing to be concerned about, shidi.” His shidi pauses where he was readjusting himself, sending Shen Qingqiu an inscrutable look in reply.

“...En.” He turns his face away, staring out the sliver in the curtain. All sign of the fight within him washed away. In fact, he seemed to be doing his best to ignore him completely. All it took was the sight of a nose bleed to stop him from accusing him this time? Pssh! As if he would be so lucky. He bites into a bun a little more viciously than quite proper. The taste of blood bitters the sweetness.

~O~

There was an immediate sense of wrongness the second they entered the city. A thick miasma of dread hung in the air, further showing itself on the faces of the civilians around them. Tired, dead looking eyes fell upon the disciples, a profound lassitude to their movements. Liu Qingge had jumped from the carriage the second they crossed into Shuang Hu City’s bounds, Shen Qingqiu following soon after in a much more sedate manner. How did it get so bad, so quickly? Didn’t Yue Qingyuan have an agent in the area? Surely they would be able to pick up on the demonic energy hazing the air! Even the disciples were shifting under its presence.

Liu Qingge was staring in the direction of Master Chen’s Manor, arms crossed in front of his chest and high ponytail lightly swaying in the breeze. Shen Qingqiu walks over to him, fan fluttering lightly in front of his chest, his other hand swept behind his back.

“This is worse than expected.” An understatement, “Something should have been done before it got to this.” Liu Qingge sent him a cold look, before turning back towards the direction of the manor. He doesn’t see how this is his fault shidi!? He was most likely unconscious most of the time this was getting worse! If anything the man whose whole deal is hunting evil, maybe should have done something! Maybe it was unkind, but his shidi’s bitchy little remarks were starting to really irritate him as much as they hurt.

“Like the Bai Zhan War God patrolling our region of influence? The area the sect as a whole should protect? Yes, something should have been done.” He sneers over his fan at the man, despite regretting the words the second they left his mouth. But luckily, or maybe unluckily, his words fell on deaf ears. His shidi wasn’t paying attention in the slightest. Well then.

Shen Qingqiu turns towards his students, Ning Yingying and Luo Binghe stood front and centre before him. The other’s dressed neatly in their inner disciple robes stood at attention around them.

“Group up into threes or fours, the situation might be more dire than we believed.” A couple of nervous glances were exchanged, but the majority stood straighter, determined. “Remember what you’ve been taught, and open your senses. Ning Yingying, I entrust you to decide where each group will be stationed, and what investigative task they will be handling.”

With the state of the city as it was, it’d be safer to have them out and about than with him and Liu-shidi as they entered the lion’s den. Even if they can’t handle the source, at least they will gain experience in information gathering, an important part of night hunts and sect missions.

“Peak Lord Liu and I will confer with Master Chen. Keep calm, stay respectful, and be vigilant. We’ll return shortly.” Shen Qingqiu notices from the corner of his eye Luo Binghe suddenly straightening. A determined mien on his face. He side eyes him suspiciously over his fan, before shaking his head and falling in line beside his shidi. If they kill the demon quickly enough, there won’t be time for Luo Binghe to cause protagonist shenanigans. He freezes, surely there won’t be time. He refuses to look back at the youth, he’s already triggered too many plot flags as is!

As they drew closer to the manor, the thick, noxious demonic Qi strengthened. It wasn’t even trying to hide it’s presence! However, there was something off about it. A lingering sensation that seems almost familiar overlaps it. He exchanges looks with Liu Qingge, and both of them enter Old Master Chen’s mansion.

~O~

They had been shown to a room by one of the servants working in the manor, though they weren’t planning on spending much time there. They had their target, so easily seen with the years of experience he’s gained compared to his first fumbling attempt. Die-er was so obviously the Skinner Demon yet again! The demonic Qi oozed from beneath her stolen skin like the faint scent of decay. While listening to Master Chen fawn over a demon wearing a corpse, a sight almost as nauseating as seeing an old man fawn over a teen, Shen Qingqiu gestured a sign at his shidi with the hand behind his back. Don’t engage, meet up.

He’d forgotten that this version of his friend shouldn’t know the codes they had created together, but to his surprise he felt the returning tap of two fingers between his shoulder blades, acknowledged! Did this Shen Jiu create something similar? As a sect strategist who actually seemed to do his job, he must have?! Regardless, they had to come up with a game plan for taking down the demon, for if it was so confident showing itself like this, it must have something up its sleeve. Attacking it… would have been bad.

Liu Qingge paces back and forth in front of the bed, doing nothing to hide his disgust! His hands were clenched into fists, and his face was twisted into a rather frightening scowl! “So we've found our demon,” Liu Qingge growls, head whipping to stare Shen Qingqiu down in righteous rage, “they're barely even trying to hide.” He stops, “There was something strange in that room.” He didn’t say it but it was clear he agreed with his decision to withdraw and prepare. He was after all a seasoned fighter, for all that he preferred running in, he did have some degree of tact when needed. Shen Qingqiu nods in agreement.

“So what are we going to do about Die-er-” He’s cut off by Liu Qingge speaking over him.

“-Master 'Chen'.”

They look at each other, Liu Qingge's eyes narrow in a way that betrays his thoughts quite succinctly 'what nonsense are you spouting?' what nonsense indeed! Shidi how could you be so mistaken? “You claim Die-er? Why?” Ah so blunt, even if he could have said it more politely! This master does know what he's talking about about.

“We are hunting a Skinner demon, that's what the state of the deceased suggests along with the other evidence collected, one of the downsides of skinning bodies is that the skin must eventually decay, even if a Skinner demon can circumvent it at a high enough demonic cultivation.” He pauses in thought and continues,

“She was wearing a headache inducing amount of scented products, but this one could still locate a noticeable hint of rot underneath. That along with the way her skin moved and the fact that no amount of rouge could cover the imperfections of her skin mask led me to assume it was her. It’s a bit harder to determine precisely with the amount of demonic energy in the room, confusing the senses. Why do you claim it was Master Chen?”

He clenches the hilt of Cheng Luan, and all but rolls his eyes, “Not a Skinner demon, his aura was noticeable. Anyone with sufficient cultivation could tell.” Liu-shidi! There was a lot wrong with that statement! Anyone with sufficient cultivation could tell? With the amount of demonic Qi in that room the tables could have been Infernal Blood Mimic Stone and he wouldn’t be able to tell! And what do you mean not a Skinner demon? No, no, they can’t both be wrong. Which leads to one terrifying conclusion.

“Perhaps we are both correct in this instance, shidi. It could very well be two demons working together, or with the amount of evil energy in this area, even more. That would make this a much more dangerous situation, but I’m sure two peak lords can handle it easily.' Liu Qingge snorts derisively, looking towards the doorway.

“I can do it myself. Stay here.” Um excuse me? No. You’re not going to run off half-cocked and get yourself killed shidi! Sensing his rising irritation, Liu Qingge continues pointedly, “You’re injured, Qi-Deviated again. Zhangman-Shixiong will lecture me if you get injured.” He thought they’d decided he hadn’t had a Qi-Deviation! Was Liu-shidi just humouring him back there?? No, he’s not being a damsel this time around, just letting others make his decisions! Shen Qingqiu harrumphs, and turns his back to the other man.

“No.” Very succinctly put if he says so himself. He opens the door, and finds himself facing a very unfamiliar hallway. It was not the hallway they used to enter the room, nor did it look exactly like the hallways within Master Cheng’s manor. He looks back at Liu Qingge, who shoots him a look in return halfway between perplexed and dawning dread. Was it an illusion? For what reason would the demons have to do this? In the confused moments that follow the unexpected sight, the silence is lifted with a scream.

(U-U)

Ning Yingying rises from her knees, dusting her hands off in front of her. The talisman’s in the area had burnt away under the force of the demonic energy, forcing them to set up rather rudimentary arrays. Two, to be precise. One to protect the civilian’s in the area from the tainted energy, and the other around the bodies of the deceased. Before her lay a mass grave, filled with the bodies of tens of young women. All of them skinned, flayed muscles and glistening fat exposed beneath the poorly refitted skin. Delicate stitching appears across seemingly random parts of the corpses.

“Ning-shijie, we’ve sent the citizens in the north quarter to the safe area, they are being protected by our shidi’s best at protective arrays.” The city was worse off than it appeared at first glance. Soon after the Peak Lords had entered the manor, a large pulse of evil energy had radiated from that place. Lesser demonic creatures had appeared in the streets, no match for her and her martial siblings, but enough that they had to round up the citizens for protection. After killing what they could, Ning Yingying had continued with her investigation. She had been of the belief, that while her Shizun was most likely dealing with the big threats, the more information she could give him when he returned the better it would be for the people.

And the people were struggling, the deaths had gone well past the few that were documented. There was much Ning Yingying had observed, so much that hadn’t appeared in any of the briefings or documents. One of which is the size of the people killed, for some reason they had shrunk the longer the kills went on. It was in her examination of the bodies she had discovered why. The flesh covering the corpses was not the flesh that belonged to that person, and more importantly, the stitching was to hide the fact that large pieces of skin had been taken from the corpses. With the extra skin gone, the flesh couldn’t fit on the body it belonged to. So elaborate, so cruel, and for what? All of it to hide the missing pieces. She sucks in a breath, ignoring the stench, and refuses to cry.

The smallest body in the grave was a child. A child. Lost for what? Yingying steels herself and shakes her head, before beginning the odious task of cleansing the area. This much suffering in one place is a danger all on its own; these people really didn’t need restless spirits or rising corpses as well. She calls over shoulder at her martial siblings helping with this task.

“Does anyone if Luo-shidi has returned?” It’d been a while since she’d last seen him. He’d been sent to find their Shizun and Shishu after the Qi flare, since it was well known among them he was a prodigy at fighting. He hadn’t of course been sent immediately, in fact they had been missing for hours when they finally sent him, most likely seconds before he ran off himself. It’s been hours since he left.

“No, we’ve been watching the manor and no one has left, the energy’s gotten worse though.” Glaces were exchanged, and tension was rising. Ning Yingying lowers her head. The worst has come to pass. The Peak Lords were missing, a shidi was in danger, and the city was at risk.

“Send a spiritual message to Cang Qiong Sect, this mission is now a critical emergency.”

(O-O)

They began running through the halls in the location the noise came from. However it soon became obvious that there were running in circles, or perhaps more insidiously, trapped in an endless maze of identical corridors.

"Is this some sort of demonic maze array?" Liu Qingge’s face was twisted into a frown, brow heavily furrowed in frustration. He was staring back towards where they came from, at the identical hallways surrounding them. The exact time that had passed since they fell into this space was hazy, just like… the walls? Shen Qingqiu looked closer at the walls. They seemed... Less textured then previously. Strangely blurred like a jpeg compressed over time, or like the lower res textures of an old video game. Well at least to the faint memories of those long lost relics of his previous life he can still recall. "It... might be." Shen Qingqiu cautions, running his finger along the ugly, dull red and brown panels of the corridor. To his shock its surface flows under it like static on a screen. He quickly pulls his hand back, rubbing the tips of his fingers against his sleeve, a deep unsettled shiver travelling down his spine.What the hell was going on here?His shidi, looking the other direction, deigns to look back over his shoulder towards him. A sneer plays across bruise coloured lips. "Might be? Aren't you a scholar? Shouldn't you know!" He huffs his frustration drawing his blade with silver sparks. "The maze can only keep us inside if there are walls to pen us in,” A hum of power begins to form around him, his Qi noticeably swelling as he draws from his golden core and circles it faster through his meridians, further reinforcing his arms, “no walls no maze." and down along his blade, an extension of himself. It lights up, silver threaded in blue, Cheng Luan almost vibrating like its master in its desire to strike, to release the building spiritual power flowing into it.

Shen Qingqiu himself steps back, the dread of the situation sinking in. It won't work, the attack would be a futile endeavour, a waste of precious energy. It was subtle, but the space around them seemed to drain the excess Qi sloughing off the War God’s form.Tiny tendrils of something latched around them, suckling at the feast his shidi was providing. It felt… starved. A level of almost malevolent sentience that can’t occur in a maze array, no matter how complex it was. He had to say something, stop him from-

“Wait-” Spilt from his mouth in a faltering animal panic. Ignored.

With a single powerful flare of light, the wall is hit. It sends a vibrating ring through the air, sharp and pure. The blaze flowing across the surface like water poured onto burning steel, dissipating into coiling wisps. Absorbed. The rebound sent enough force out that even back as far away as he was, Shen Qingqiu’s hair whips his face. There wasn’t a single new scratch. The sensation of hunger grew. "The other option is that we've stumbled into a localised hidden realm, created either by the demon or natural in nature."Or something much worse. Hidden realms can be made of anything, their nature was nebulous in that way, which made them a convenient plot device for a certain writer. In that way they can also form sentience, can awaken with enough time, luck, and power. If that was the case here... Shen Qingqiu’s fan snaps open to hide his face from Liu Qingge's glare, and his own fear, "it's looking more likely as Liu-shidi has demonstrated. We may be in more trouble than expected in that case." Unveiling what they’re trapped in was only the first task to finding a way out, there had to be a trick to it. His eyes catch something, a difference.

"All we can do is continue on.” The other Peak Lord looks at him silently, Shen Qingqiu could feel him weighing the statement. The pause grows to an uncomfortable wait, before Liu Qingge finally graces him with a single, sharp nod. Shen Qingqiu releases a silent sigh of relief, before heading over to what he noticed. “This way shidi." He gestures with his head. He was right, the walls seemed to be losing texture, degrading, and it created a suspiciously notable trail laid out for them to follow. But what choice did they have? Who knows where the demons were lurking, and worse, what had happened to his students. If any one of them had fallen into this space between, or had run afoul of the monsters they were hunting… No. He violently shakes off the thoughts, bile in his throat. Further and further they move, twisting and turning in endlessly identical hallways and rooms. Left and right and right and right and right. The corridors are impossible, looping and winding in circles, again and again and again. The air however was changing the further they moved, an unnatural miasma forming around them. Shen Qingqiu wasn’t afraid to admit he was afraid. It wasn’t all natural, rather it tainted the air like a killing intent, triggering the animal instinct to flee within, and he wasn’t the only one affected.

When they both first entered the maze, the other man had been alert and notably irritated. Cheng Luan hung from his hand in a well balanced grip, his body loosely held but still vigilant even as he muttered curses under his breath and sent Shen Qingqiu sharp inquisitive glares. But as the miasma set in, as he breathed in the tainted air, the more the atmosphere affected even the fearless War God. His lips begun to pale from how tightly he pursed them as his shoulders tense tighter and tighter. The hand holding Cheng Luan a death-grip; the flesh of his fingers white around the hilt, his pupils shrunk to black pinpricks.

“What is this..?” Liu Qingge growls, his throat bobbing on an aborted swallow as he continues, “This place is. Unnatural. Even for a demon.” He breathes out, forcing the dread down with admirable skill. The War God straightens, meditatively cycling his Qi, slowly calming himself in the way Bai Zhan disciples were so obviously taught for moments just like this.

“Whatever it may be shidi, at least we seem to be getting closer.” Indeed, they seemed to be progressing deeper into this realm, the walls surrounding them were beginning to alter. A sudden loud beep startles Shen Qingqiu, a green box appearing in the corner of his eye. Liu Qingge twists towards him, partially drawing his sword, only to narrow his eyes as Shen Qingqiu waves away his concern with his fan.

[WARNING! User is entering a CORRUPTED ZONE. Please Locate lost WORLD CORE.]

His own eyes widen, taking in the sight that confronted them. The decay had grown and spread. Damaged panels started to appear in the otherwise identical halls, strange black cracks and squares scattering the walls and floors, back-lit with glowing red lines in anachronistic circuit like patterns. They ebb and flow in intensity, pulsating almost organically, like the heartbeat of a sleeping entity.

Long, segmented tubing hung down from the ceiling, coiled and twisted from one wall to another like wires as a strange black liquid dripped from any opened end, oddly pearlescent. Even the endlessly identical lanterns that had lined these hallways had been affected, now spilling a ghoulish scarlet haze. Breath was a struggle to take through a throat locked closed, it could only escape from him in shallow wheezes. This shouldn’t be here. Corruption… this is what the system warned him to look for? The sense of wrongness only continues to grow as their steps echo through the darkening corridors.

A buzzing static fills his ears, like the hum of machines, consumed by the sound of his own pulse racing. He licks his suddenly dry lips, his hand spasming against the wood of his fan guard as cold sweat forms on his hairline. Liu Qingge’s eyes were wide, the whites reflecting the dull red glow. The slight luminance of his mercury irises, the tangible proof of his immortality, seem to brighten. The unnatural fear tightens to a vice, squeezing his lungs, his heart, they must be closing in on it’s source. Liu Qingge comes to a standstill, staring just over Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder. He doesn’t need to gesture, it was plain to see.

Before them lay an enormous dark archway, stretching high above them atop a set of spiralling stairs, the room lined with unnaturally distorted columns stretching into the murky darkness above them. Red glitching lines of what appeared to be code lining the dark bricks of the stairs surrounding it. It was an ominous arch, spilling shadowy miasma the same way a window spills light. His nervous tension releases in a high gasping laugh, by his shidi’s concerned side glance it was a laugh edging on hysterics. But… it's like it's not even trying! All this room needed is a chest full of health poultices and it'd be a picture perfect 'you're about to enter a boss area' entrance that he's ever seen! A shuffle of movement to his left, then Liu Qingge was standing before him, shoving something at him to take. "Here, don't waste it." He glances over at the archway and frowns harder, "This is obviously an ambush." See, see! He wasn't the only one thinking that, and of course the bottle now clenched in his hand is full of Mu-shidi's wound sealing pills! Liu-shidi maybe save them for yourself huh? He smiles helplessly over at the other man, so filled with thankfulness at the fact he wasn’t alone, that his handsome, protective warrior was at his side, and Liu Qingge shuffles under his gaze. The tips of his ears flush ever so lightly as he averts his gaze and frowns over at the looming entrance. Right, scary archway, possible death ahead.

“We don’t know what’s ahead. Careful.” His shidi adds. Shen Qingqiu nods, the demons were hopefully ahead of them, and with them the way out. The best case scenario is it’s just his shidi and him in this place, none of the disciples, but he wouldn’t put it past them to take hostages. Wouldn’t that be narratively satisfying? He shakes the cruel thought from his mind, takes a fortifying breath, adds the pills to his sleeve, and summons Xia Yu. Well, into the abyss they go.

[Loading… World Stage: The Parlour. 1/6]

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[coldau]

Sorry to ask! I've been trying to find good resources to learn how to mod (both to create my own but also do mashups) and cannot seem to find any on my own that I can comprehend. So many rely on having basic knowledge of modding, and I'm at an assumed 0% of even where to begin. Do you have any resources you could share? ;w;

I long lost most of my guides but I'll make a walk-through for this here, with pictures.

HAIR MASHUPS:

Say you want to mash up a hair that's viera only with a hair that every other race has, like my longer styled for hire mod.

Find the hairs in Textools, and then EXPORT them as .fbx:

Next, open blender and import the hairs in from the dropdown file menu. It'll look like this. (NOTE THE FILES ON THE RIGHT SIDE! THESE ARE ALL VERY IMPORTANT!)

Now expand the files on the right side so they look like this. You'll be immediately joining the pieces together.

Select from the N_root of the hair you're stealing parts from, and drag up to the N_root you're making the base hair. HOLD SHIFT! Otherwise it'll be a bad boy.

and be sure to have ALL the things under that root node selected like I have it.

It'll drop the hair down to the ground like this. Click the orange box on the right hand menus and then, one piece at a time (don't select them all and try to do it, just won't work) rotate them to 90 degrees.

Next, join the bones together. They're those triangles.

SAVE! BEFORE! YOU DO THIS! Blender likes to crash randomly, but especially with "join" functions.

Select them either on the sandbox, or by holding CTRL and selecting the N_roots in the files.

Now you have one bone for all the hair pieces to work off of. You will have to reassign bones- i will show you later in the guide.

But now, we get to some very very important parts! Discussing node pieces.

First of all, before you do anything- look at their names. Au Ra Male is "1301", Viera male is "1701." I'll be renaming the Viera's pieces to match the Au ra's pieces in a minute, but don't start with that.

Instead, look to the numbers on the right. Those are the NODES. The numbers after the "." are just different parts, but the numbers BEFORE that are the actual different pieces!

0.X nodes will have different TEXTURES AND ATTRIBUTES than 1.X, 2.0 nodes. THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR TEXTOOLS! Pay attention to what pieces of hair are in "0.X" and so on.

But for the X.1, X.2, X.3? As long as they're all on the same node, you are free to join them.

IN A LOT OF OLD HAIRS THEY WILL HAVE A LOT OF PARTS! Feel free to join them if they're under the same main node!

Now, the Viera hair honestly can be one piece. It's got main hair and some fragments. So, I joined them together like how I would bones.

THEN!

I renamed them to match the naming structure (including this green thing in the dropdown) but put them on a whole new main node! (NOTE: see, it's 2.0 now instead of 0.0)

That's MOST of the technical bits out of the way.

Now we focus on modeling the hair. There's two tabs to model under. "Modeling" and "Sculpting."

Modeling is for deleting/moving individual pieces of polygons/deleting entire polygons.

This is the tool I mainly use: Poly Build. It allows me to click and drag polygons by their verticies and make new ones.

If you make new polygons, you have to triangulate your build when you're exporting your save to a new .fbx!

When you have "poly build" on, you can hold "Shift" and delete polygons or verticies.

(If you need to join verticies together, use the select tool and hold CTRL and click on the verticies you want to join one at a time, right click, and go to "merge at center" or "merge at first/last" depending on what you need)

Sculpting is for the entire shape of the hair you have highlighted.

Here are the tools I use in Sculpting:

The top one is "Grab", it grabs onto a vertex and pulls on it SHARPLY, so use it for very accurate things.

However, the other one that I have selected in that picture is "elastic deform." It grabs a VERY LARGE AREA and pulls on it gently, I use it for shifting things around by a large margin.

NOW! Let's say you did everything you want. You deleted, you moved things, you joined things.

Now, assign a bone. The part of the hair we moved from Viera doesn't have a bone anymore! So sad. So go back to "layout" and click the part of the hair the viera hair is on, and go to "Modifier properties"

Ignore the part at the top, just click on "object"'s box and select "n_root" and it'll have bones now.

You did it! Wow, look at that hair!

(results my vary)

Now you save it as a .blend once more, just to make sure it's there in case you fucked up somewhere.

Once you've done that, you're going to save it as an .FBX again.

Name it what you want, untick "add leaf bones" and "apply modifiers", while also selecting "Triangulate faces" if you NEED to- if not, don't bother.

You now have the hair modeled out. This... was only half the journey. Now you need to harvest the Normal and Multi layers of the hair you joined in with your base model and make a new texture.

To navigate to the different texture maps, it's on the upper right.

Remember, Normal files are _n, and Multis are _s

NOTE: TEXTOOLS ONLY ALLOWS FOUR TEXTURES /APPLIED/ ON HAIR. You don't have to delete unused textures, but you can only use four of them max.

Since my hair uses Viera hair 14, I go to Viera hair 14 on textools (note, for midlander based hairs you'll probably have to go to the midlander hair menus for the textures. You will see why in a moment.)

Export these as .dds, extract them from the folder they go to (lower right again) and now go alllll the way up to hair 157 on MIDLANDER.

Even though this hair is being made for au ra, it's ALL based on midlanders! IT'S A CONSPIRACY--

Next you click "more options" on the lower left, and this will pull up. Click the dropdown for "backfaces" and click "show backfaces"

then click the button "use unique textures". After you do that, it should look like this in the menu, and click "save"

You now have a blank texture.

Press "import" and put the _n texture of the hair on the normal, then use the dropdown on the upper right and go to multi and import the _s there.

REMEMBER THE TEXTURE NAME, it'll probably be something like Acc_C or Hir_C!

Once you've done that, it's a matter of uploading the .fbx.

Go back to au ra hair 157, press "import" on the "models" tab, and click your .fbx. Then, don't have any of the boxes checked (unless you are a miqote, then it's UV1 to [1,-1]) and press "open editor."

This is the part where I told you to remember which Root Nodes applied to which pieces of hair.

The base hair is on 0.X and 1.0, so all we care about is editing rootnode 2.0 in this guide.

Go to Rootnode 2, click the dropdown, click custom, then type in the Hir_B or acc_c address you need, then hit import!

BEHOLD, ART

Now you load into game, check if it works. If it does, go to "mods>create mods>basic modpacks" and select the pieces you changed.

Ask or DM me if you need anything else :)

Extra tips: if you want to scale things, but are having difficulty because the scale point is way too low- go to layout, click on "object" and "set origin" to "geometry," then press "S" and scale easier.