#I copy and pasted some of my messages to this post to save time lmao

[marigoos]

I’ve been so ill this past few weeks and been hospitalized because of medical concerns. Found out that I have a tumor and it was already malignant. I have a Stage 2A Cervical Cancer and needs help ASAP. 🥺

GOAL: $1800

Oh this is gonna be so fun. Buckle up, children, time for

✨SCAM EDUCATION✨

1:

Someone you don't know sends you an ask and asks for money

This in itself is an alarm bell. Maybe you're used to it if you're a big account, but if you're a smaller one that alone should make you suspicious af. This user does not follow me nor do I follow them. The only case in which this is acceptable is if you're running a donations blog (you know, the ones who collect people in need and make periodic posts to boost them? Which are way more expert in checking for possible frauds, or so one hopes)

2:

If you scroll down their blog, they're very recent

This is their first ever post, notice the time stamp. If it's still active when you're reading this, you can check yourself.

It's even worse because, while it makes sense for someone very desperate to open accounts on any social media that comes to mind and start begging, you scroll down their blog and their posts are mostly untagged gifs of popular shows and scantily clothed women. Which in itself is not a crime, I often do it too (though I don't go around asking money to strangers) but when you've known for weeks (see pinned post) that you were sick, and your blog is only 5 days old, I would expect at least one post about it other than the pinned one, no? Or even just one single original posts instead of only reblogs and one answered ask to another 6-days-old account

Also I'm not one to judge others' sexual preferences but if you're a mom I would expect at least one of the thirsty posts to be about a man, but oh well. Definitely not enough

3.

Check for others' warnings

There's a whole blog dedicated to listing all the scammers here in Tumblr, but I can't fucking member I should follow them if and when I remember

The fastest way is to search for their PayPal account name. First, though, you have to be CAREFUL about clicking suspicious links - always copy the link and paste it in the url bar to quickly check where it redirects you. In this case I saw It did redirect me to PayPal, and I did load it only because I don't have any PayPal app or credentials saved on my phone, so I don't risk payments or credentials getting sent automatically.

Unfortunately this must be quite recent, because searching for Christine Owaga (this guy^'s PayPal) only got me some Facebook accounts, and I don't remember my password so I'm not gonna check those.

However, since this is an ask on Tumblr, I looked on Tumblr for terms like "scam alert", "scam warning", "donation scam" and so on, and I did find something interesting:

Same exact message several times, more than one account, only one of which is still active.

Then I scrolled a bit more and found this one with a sliiiightly modified text, gonna bet that it's because that was when the victim brought a link to someone with a much bigger collection of receipts lmao just gonna link it here

The PayPal account name is different tbh, which means this dude is at least a bit smarter than an actual bot and knows how to spam semi-efficiently. Kudos!

This is not how a legit ill person should behave. Not even trying to bring some evidence, just leaving a trail of deleted accounts.

Gonna tag everyone I saw reblogging the scammer's pinned post so that they can delete it and maybe warn their followers (assuming they're not bots themselves)

@thecherry95 @back-in-19something @underthewingsofthblackeagle @fantasticcollectorkitten @takineko @razzgamer5 @jacks-ace @windywillows-world @aurelia-which-means-sunrise @comradesmooches @loch-tess-monster @urazayt @boodubious07 @satinfables @rateater69 @irontyphoonobject @blackfairyemoji @dannyfoggings @helloparzival13 @rusalkascave

[ghostbustermelanieking]

Aight, so, I saw your post about rereading your fics and I knew I had to drop in because any besmirching of your inspired xf fics CANNOT stand because I cherish them too much. If you didn't already own the rights to them, I'd bind myself legally to you in court just so I could split and keep the "kids" because your fics? They just don't miss. They don't.

*cracks knuckles*

I have THREE-- count 'em-- THREE Google docs of copy-pasted fics and original and backup links to your work because I was struck with terror one day deep-diving your archives that I could wake up and they might be gone; and that began my feverish mission to tag them all for my extensive rereads. They total 311 pages and I reread them obsessively. I'm not ashamed to say that your IVF three parter is part of my top of all time fics; and particularly this one: it's seared into my brain, you cannot remove it from my amygdala, I have worn the equivalent of Braille grooves into my eyeballs by how much I hungrily eat that story over and over and over. Your post half-light short fics? Part of my soul. YOUR AUS??? UNMATCHED ON THIS GORGEOUSLY GREEN AND BLUE PLANET. Your Tumblr prompts? Omnomnom-- that's me eating them up with a spoon.

Cast that FILTHY self-doubt from your presence because it is not worth the mud under your tiniest toenail.

...This may be a bit dramatic, but your fics were some of the first I'd ever written; and without you and a select few other authors, I wouldn't be as entrenched in fanfic as I am now. So... thank you. XDDD

thank YOU ❤️ ❤️❤️ you have no idea how much this means to me!! writing x files fic was such a huge part of my high school experience; i loved it dearly, and it did a lot to make me the writer i am today! (i feel like i cut my teeth on writing spooky x files fics lmao -- i want to be like a ghost story novelist someday.) it means so much to know that not only are people still reading them, but they cherish them this deeply. i'm so glad you like them so much!! (i promise that i personally won't be taking down any archived fic, unless there's legal issues waayy down the road, and even then... but the lack of permanency that comes with the internet scares me, so i don't blame you at all for saving them.) thank you so much for your kind message, your encouragement, and your relentless support/promotion of fanwork and fanfiction writers!! i love that people are still coming into the fandom, and i honestly do miss it a lot. someday in my life i will definitely have an x files renaissance, and hopefully finish phantom weights, bc i hate having left it unfinished

(also, if it makes you feel any better, the fic i was talking about is one i wrote a couple weeks ago lmfao -- although the fact that i was a teenager when i wrote txf fic makes me a little scared to revisit it �� it has less to do with the overall quality and more with my overall nitpickiness when it comes to my work, lol)

[tinytimdyke]

First time watching LOTR thoughts post as they come (spoilers probably?)

Ahhh it's so cute it's so like Narnia (without the overt catholic propaganda but yk)

The music is so goodddd how is it making me feel nostalgic I've never seen it beforee

"we should join Sauron" exCUSE ME

Not sure I'm a fan of this Seaman or whatever his name is

I was so annoyed cos at first I was like "hmmm I don't trust his face" and then he called Gandalf his old friend so I thought "ok maybe he's cool" and THEN he's like "we should join this super evil dude who's been dead for two thousand years" it really was a rollercoaster of emotions there Saruman sir

I don't trust "one simply can't" meme guy

THE HOBBITS ARE SO CUTE I LOVE THEM

"you will be the Fellowship of the Ring" jfkdkkdkkFUCKYES

Sourman really has it in for Gandalf jfc

"Some living people deserve to die, some dead people deserved life, are you going to give it to them?" f u c k m e u p G a n d a l f

Pippin is such an idiot someone save him

Frodo sure does get stabbed a lot

Suddenly obsessed with the Kh sound

THE

M U S I C

GOD

YOU. SHALL NOT. PASS. my wig will not pass

Lady of the Wood more like Architect of the Wood damn that's an amazing staircase

Is that Cate Blanchett djdjkdkdkxkz

Ok meme guy is cool he was just trying to be edgy

Is that a pensieve wow

Ok Cate calm down

Frodo's hands are strangely smooth is that the Hobbit-ness of it all

Stop being so sour Sourman jfc

That light Galadriel gives Frodo looks like a dildo I'm sorry

Sam and Frodo are the cutest and that is all

I will never be over the music I think

Sorry for this but it finally came to Netflix and aaaahh im so happy I watched it

Watch this space for a new Lord of the Rings fan blog

[simply-victoriax]

How to copy worlds - TUTORIAL (with pictures)

So, I came across this tutorial on MTS about copying worlds and did a test and, to my surprise... it worked! But, the tutorial had no pictures. Well, it had one, but it didn’t really tell me how to do anything lmao. I’m sure other visual learners can relate. So, I thought I’d add some v v helpful picaroonis to it. All the good stuff is under the cut!

I’m going to just copy-paste the tutorial with a few clarifications in [bold brackets]. Full credit goes to Tamlo31 on MTS, I’m just adding some pics :)

ETA: If the pictures are too small, you can right click > open image in new tab and they should be much clearer!!

---

So what is the point of this? On a very basic level it increases the number of lots you have a available in your saved game, but to give you some idea's of what I'm currently using this for:- I've duplicated Newcrest and turned the duplicate world into a retail shopping center. I've duplicated Granite falls and turned the duplicate into a winter themed world. There is perhaps many other idea's you can use duplicate worlds for, perhaps a upside down world of strangerville. (stranger things lovers) Or even a you can duplicate one world 10 times if you wish and have some form of legacy version of the game where each world gets more advanced and each new generation will move into the next world. One last possibility you find a good world somebody uploaded to the Internet and you wish to include part of that world in your current save game. Is this safe to do to my favorite saved game? I'm going to be honest and say this is still in testing, but I've not found any problems so far, but I do recommended that you backup everything in your saved game folder. Will this slow my game down? The load times will increase if you add a silly amount of new worlds with hundreds of new Sims, to be honest I've added several new worlds and it loads about the same length of time. Do I need any mods? No, but I will post a few recommended mods that will help if you wish to make a unique world.

The Sims 4 Mods: World Type Changes (Destination to Residential or vice-versa

Just one point about this mod, it works on both the original worlds and the duplicate worlds https://zerbu.tumblr.com/post/17339...ges-destination Fan Made maps https://www.dershayan.de/fanart-maps Part 1 1 backup your saved game 2 Download the latest version of S4 Studio http://sims4studio.com/board/31/dow...g-sims-4-studio

Part 2 1: Part 1 was the easy part just to get you into the mood

2 Drag and drop the saved game onto the S4Studio - Shortcut, it will load straight away.

3 You need to find the Save Game Data, click on this.

4 Scroll down until you see neighborhoods and click edit items

5 On the left side you will see [Neighborhood Data] on the right side you will see the name of the world, if this is the first time and your a virgin to world duplicating I recommended at this point you pick a world with very few lots [like] Glimmerbrook, granite falls, something with less than 8 lots and don't pick any special worlds or anything with a blank name. [just to make it easy on myself for this tutorial I chose Magnolia Promenade since it only has 4 lots]

Just on a side note special worlds do duplicate but very few of them actual work in the game they don't have world maps, the way around this, would be to make a mod that will replace them worlds with a map but that goes beyond this guide.

6 On the left field click copy to copy the world you did choose.

7 Scroll to the bottom of the left field to find your copy, on the right field you should see the neighborhood_id we need to change this, so we are going to change one number, it really does not matter what number you change but to make life easy we going to change the first number and add 1 to this.

 So for example if you picked Granite Falls and the neighborhood_id was 09290A60407127C5 (this number is unique in every save) you would change the number to 19290A60407127C5. It's also a good time to write this number down, if your fed up, you can just make a note of the last 3 digits.

8 Under description fill this in, example:- A verdant, sprawling region of lush bayous and rolling plantation land that is home to aristocratic farmers, southern gentry, and swamp-dwellers.

9 Next edit the name example:- Newcrest Shopping Centre

10 Click save

Part 3 1 I hate this part, we need to go into zones, it's at the bottom right of the right field, click edit items.

2 Now for the fun part the left side shows the ZoneData and somewhere in them files we need to find the files that are needed for our neighborhood, I will say they will be all grouped together. So what need to do is scroll the right field down to the bottom and 7 lines up you should see neighborhood_id. If you remember I did say to [write] down your neighborhood_id number, so the granite falls number before the change was 09290A60407127C5. So what we need to do is find the number on the left field that are equal to that number in neighborhood_id. No easy way to do, other than searching until you find one, all the files that you need will be around the same location on the list.

3 Now that we have got rid of all people who can't find the correct ZoneData file we can carry on. We need make a copy of all the ZoneData files with same original neighborhood_id number. So hold down shift on the last file and then click on the top file you need and click copy.

4 All the copied files will be at the bottom of the field, so move down to find the copies. On the right field we need to change neighborhood_id for all them files we are using for example granite falls neighborhood_id was 09290A60407127C5 we should change all the id's to 19290A60407127C5 on all the ZoneData file that say 09290A60407127C5.

5 I did say this part was bad, but we are nearly done, scroll down to the last Zondata file and this time we need to change the zone_id. So what we are going to is add 1 to the first number on the right field that's says zone_id (at the bottom of the field). For example if the unique code says 09290A6040712B18 we will change that code to 19290A6040712B18. We need to repeat this for each of the Zonedata files that we need change (all the copies)

6 Click Save

Part 4 1 At this point [you’re probably] thinking is this all worth the trouble, but you are on the last part and nearly done and two minutes away from a spanking new world. Anyway go back into neighborhoods and edit items

2 Move the left field down until we find the copied world we started with and we need to go into lots so click edit item under lots on the right field

3 In the Zonedata we changed the first number of each copied file, we replaced the first number with a one, so what we need to do is under zone_instance_id on the right field we need to add 1 to the first number of every file in this section.

4 click save, save again and click save one last time, this time you should get the message saying that Your package has been saved.

5 Exit and test out your new save game.

[editor’s note: this is where i ended the tutorial but there is much more you can do, which can be found in the original link.

I will say, this was very tedious, but kinda easy once you get the hang of it.

If you are like me and desperately want some kind of custom world functionality in sims 4, hopefully this will tide you over until EA listens (unlikely) or modders find out how to do it (much more likely) I hope this helps!]

[beastars-takes]

Zootopia Takes: Darker’s Not Better

The Shock Collar Draft

So, it sounds like people are largely positive on me doing some Zootopia posts on this blog, and I wanted to talk about this tweet I saw the other day:

I’ll punt on explaining why Beastars isn’t “Dark Zootopia”--that’s a great topic for another post. But I would like to talk about why this popular yet stridently uninformed tweet is so, so wrong. Why the shock collar draft was not better, actually.

And obviously, I’m not writing several pages in reply to a single tweet--this is a take that’s been around since the movie came out, that the “original version was better.” It’s been wrong the whole time.

Let’s talk about why!

Part 1: “Because Disney”

Let’s start with this--the assumption that the film’s creators wanted to make this shock collar story and “Disney” told them to change it.

That’s not how it works.

I try to keep stuff about me out of these posts as much as possible, but just for a bit of background, I’ve worked in the animation industry for about half a decade. I know people at Disney. I have a reasonable idea of how things are there.

There is this misconception about creative industries that they’re constantly this pitched battle of wills between creative auteurs trying to make incredible art and ignorant corporate suits trying to repress them.

That can happen, especially in dysfunctional studios (and boy could I tell some stories) but Walt Disney Animation Studios is not dysfunctional. It’s one of the most autonomous and well-treated parts of the Disney Company.

The director of Zootopia, Byron Howard, isn’t an edgelord. He made Bolt and Tangled. He knows what his audience is, and he’s responsible enough not to spend a year (and millions of dollars in budget) developing a grimdark Don Bluth story that leadership would never approve. It wouldn’t just be a waste of time--he would be endangering the livelihoods of the hundreds of people working under him. Meanwhile, Disney Animation’s corporate leadership trusts their talent. They don’t generally interfere with story development because they don’t need to. Because they employ people like Byron Howard.

Howard and the other creative leads of Zootopia have said a dozen times, in interviews and documentaries, that they gave up on the shock collar idea because it wasn’t working. They’ve explained their reasoning in detail. Maybe they’re leaving out some of the story, but in general? I believe them.

But Beastars Takes, you say, maybe even if Disney didn’t force them to back away from this darker version, it still would have been better?

Part 2: Why Shock Collars Seem Good

I will say this--I completely sympathize with people who see these storyboards and scenes from earlier versions of the movie and think “this seems amazing.” It does! A lot of these drawings and shots are heartbreakingly good, in isolation.

I love these boards. They make me want to cry. I literally have this drawing framed on my wall. Believe me, I get it.

But the only reason we care this much about this alternative draft of Zootopia is that the Zootopia we got made us love this world and these characters. You know what actually made me cry?

Oh, yeah.

So let’s set aside the astonishing hubris of insisting Zootopia’s story team abandoned the “good” version of the story, when the “bad version” is the most critically-acclaimed Disney animated feature in the past SIXTY YEARS.

“But Beastars Takes!” I hear you say. “Critics are idiots and just because something’s popular doesn’t make it good!”

Fair enough. Let’s talk about why the real movie is better.

Part 3: The Message (it is, in fact, like a jungle sometimes)

This type of thing is always hard to discuss, in the main--a lot of people don’t want to feel criticized or “called out” by the entertainment they consume, and they don’t want to be asked to think about their moral responsibilities. But it’s hard to deny that Zootopia is a movie with a strong point of view. Everything else--the characters, the worldbuilding, the plot, grows out from the movie’s central statement about bias.

And the movie we got, with no shock collars, makes that statement far more effectively.

To dive into the full scope of Zootopia’s worldview and politics (warts and all) would be a whole post on its own, so I’ll just summarize the key point of relevance here:

Zootopia's moral message is that you, the viewer, need to confront your own biases. Not yell at someone else. No matter how much of a good or progressive person you consider yourself to be--if you want to stand against prejudice you have to start with yourself.

That’s a tough sell! For that message to land, we need to see ourselves in the protagonist.

Judy’s a good person! She argues with her dad about foxes. She knows predators aren’t all dangerous. She’s not speciesist. Right?

Ah fuck.

Let’s fast-forward to the pivotal scene of this movie. In an unfortunate but inevitable confluence of circumstances, Judy’s own biases and prejudiced assumptions come out, and she shits the bad.

Nick, who’s already bared his soul to her (against his better instincts), is heartbroken. But not as heartbroken as he is a minute later when he tries to confront her about what she’s said, and she makes this face:

Whaaaat? Come on, Nick. I’m a good person. Why are you giving me a hard time?

People like to complain about this scene. That it’s a hackneyed “misunderstanding” trope that could be easily resolved with a discussion. They’re wrong. Nick tries to have a discussion. She blows him off.

This isn’t Judy acting out of character, this is her character. Someone who identifies as Not A Racist, and hasn’t given the issue any more thought. This is not only completely believable characterization (who hasn’t seen someone react this way when you told them they hurt you?) it’s the film’s central thesis!

Yes, Nick somewhat provokes her into reaching for her “fox spray,” and her own trauma factors in there, but she’s already made her fatal mistake before that happens.

(As an aside, people also make the criticism that the movie unrealistically deflects responsibility for racism onto Bellwether and her plot. It doesn’t. All the key expressions of prejudice in the film--Judy’s encounter with Gideon, her parents’ warnings, the elephant in the ice cream shop, Judy’s early encounters with Bogo, Judy's views on race science--exist largely outside of Bellwether’s influence. She is a demagogue who inflames existing tensions, she didn’t invent them. Bogo literally says “the world has always been broken.”)

So, anyway. But we love Judy. She’s an angel. She also kinda sucks! She’s proudly unprejudiced, and when her own prejudice is pointed out to her she argues and doesn’t take it seriously. This is bad, but it’s also a very human reaction. It’s one most of us have probably been guilty of at one point or another.

Look at Zootopia’s society, too--it’s shiny and cosmopolitan, seemingly idyllic. Anyone can be anything, on paper. But scratch too deep beneath the surface and there’s a lot of pain and resentment here, things nobody respectable would say in public but come out behind closed doors, or among family, when nobody’s watching. It’s entirely recognizable--at least to me, someone who lives in a large liberal city in the United States. Like Byron Howard.

Wow, this place is a paradise!

Wait, what’s a “NIMBY”?

Part 4: Why Shock Collars Are Bad

So, with the film’s conceit established, let’s circle back to the shock collar idea. Like I said, it’s heartbreaking. It’s dramatic. It’s affective.

It also teaches us nothing.

If I see a movie where predator animals are subjected to 24/7 electroshock therapy, I don’t think “wow, this makes me want to think about how I could do better by the people around me.” I think “damn that shit’s crazy lmao. that’d be fucked up if that happened.” At a stretch, it reminds me of something like the Jim Crow era, or the Shoah. You know, stuff in the Past. Stuff we’ve all decided couldn’t ever happen again, so why worry about it?

The directors have said this exact thing, just politely. “It didn’t feel contemporary,” they say in pressers. That’s what it means.

If anything, the shock collar draft reifies the mindset that Zootopia is trying to reject--it shows us that discrimination is blatant, and dramatic, and flagrantly cruel, and impossible to miss.

And...that’s not true. If you only look for bias at its most malicious and evil, you’re going to miss the other 95 percent.

The messaging of this “darker version” is--ironically--less mature, less insightful, less intelligent. Less useful. Darker’s not better.

Part 5: Why Shock Collars Are Still Bad

So what if you don’t care about the message? What if you have no interest in self-reflection, or critical analysis (why are you reading this blog then lmao)? What if you just really want to hear a fun story about talking animals?

Well, this is trickier, because the remaining reasons are pretty subjective and emotional.

The creators have said that the shock collar version didn’t work because the viewers hated the cruel world they’d created. They agreed with Nick--the city was beyond saving. They didn’t want to save it.

The creators have said that Judy was hard to sympathize with, not being able to recognize the shock collars for the obvious cruelty they were.

Fuck you, Judy!

But we haven’t seen the draft copies. We haven’t watched the animatics. We have to take their word for it. Anyone who’s sufficiently invested in this story is going to say “well, I disagree with them.” It doesn’t matter to them that they haven’t seen the draft and the filmmakers have. The movie they’ve imagined is great and nobody is going to convince them otherwise.

But the fact remains that the shock collar movie, as written, did not work. And, if behind the scenes material is to be believed, it continued to not work after months and months of story doctoring.

There’s even been a webcomic made out of the dystopian version of Zootopia. It’s clever and creative and well-written and entertaining and...it kind of falls apart. The creator, after more than a little shit-talk directed at Disney, abandoned the story before reaching the conclusion, but even before then the seams were beginning to show. How do you take a society that’s okay with electrocuting cute animals and bring it to a point of cathartic redemption? You can’t, really. The story doesn’t work.

Does that mean people shouldn’t make fanworks out of the cut material? That they shouldn’t be inspired and excited by it? Hell no. This drawing is cute as hell. The ideas are compelling.

But I suppose what I’d ask of you all is--if you’re weighing the hot takes of art students on Twitter against the explanations of veteran filmmakers, consider that the latter group might actually know what they’re talking about.

See you next time!

[daeyeolss]

how I make my gifs: a tutorial

Hi everyone! Just in case someone asks in the future + for those curious, I'm here with a tutorial on how I make gifs! If you have any questions whatsoever, please do send me an ask! I’ll be glad to help! The gif I made with this tutorial is the one right here! 

So... let’s start this tutorial with the programs I use.

Adobe Photoshop 2020 - To make the gifs, majority of the work is done in this program.

TopazLabs (Topaz DeNoise 6 and Topaz Clean 3) - To "denoise" and "clean" the gifs, as the names would suggest. Links for download: Topaz DeNoise 6 & Topaz Clean 3

KMPlayer (an alternative would be PotPlayer, or any other video playing program that allows you to capture the frames) - To capture the frames. - I use an older version of KMPlayer, though I don't know which exact version that is.

Now let’s continue onto how I use these programs to create gifs!

Step 1: After you’ve downloaded the necessary programs, download your video. The way to get the best gifs? Quality videos. That’s the first step. For K-pop performances, I recommend this website (the hq files are in .ts form, KMPlayer should be able to open these). Bookmark it! It’s really handy :) Get the video you want to make a gif from and open it in KMPlayer (or PotPlayer or any other program, but for this tutorial I’ll use KMPlayer). Open your video in said program and look for the part you want to make a gif of. Then press CTRL+G (I apologize because I cannot for the life of me remember if this was a standard shortcut or not)

Step 2: After pressing CTRL+G, you’ll be met with this screen:

I’ll briefly explain the numbered parts, but before that, these are my standard settings and just make sure you have them all the same and it should be good!

1: This is where your captured frames will be extracted to. I have them extracted to the standard folder, but you can change this if you want to. You’ll need this folder later when opening the frames!

2: Like it says, this is the image format. I use PNG in the highest quality, as the name would suggest, for the quality.

3: These are the amount of frames the program captures. Say you put in every 2 or 4 frames, you’ll get more choppy gifs. To get the smoothest gifs, put “every frame” (this in turn will increase the gif size as the amount of frames will obviously be bigger).

Once you’ve put in the correct settings and you’ve put the slider where you want the capturing process to start, press “start” (now, before you do this I recommend putting the video on mute as the audio will start to get kinda demon-y the longer you record lol save your ears pls). Then, when you’ve captured all the frames you need, pause the video, press CTRL+G again and click “stop” and close the pop-up/program.

Step 3: It’s time to open up Photoshop! Then go to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack... (for older versions/another version I used in the past this one didn’t work and I had to use the “Load Multiple DICOM Files...” instead. It should work similarly though, if I remember correctly).

You then get a little pop-up that looks like this:

All you have to do here is click “browse” and navigate to the folder where your captured frames have been saved in. Select all the frames you need, wait for them to load in and then click “OK”!

Step 4: Depending on the amount of frames you’ve selected to load in, as well as the beefiness of your PC/laptop, the frames loading part might take a little while. Photoshop is importing every frame as a separate layer into one file, so just... grab a drink or something and wait a bit! When you’re done waiting, if you haven’t already, go to Window > Timeline. This will show you the animation timeline. For older Photoshop versions this is slightly different (I believe it’s called animation). Then click “Create Video Timeline” and click the 3 squares on the left bottom side (in older versions it’s on the right bottom side, not sure). 

Step 5: After you’ve done all that, you’ll want to select all your layers. You can do this by pressing ALT+CTRL+A or going to Select > All Layers. With all the layers selected, you have to go to Layer > Arrange > Reverse. You only have to do this if you used the “Load Files into Stack” option!

Step 6: After reversing all your layers, you’ll want to go to the three lines you see in the following screenshot, and click “Make Frames From Layers”.

As the name suggests, this turns all the layers into frames. I don’t know why but the first frame will always be 5 seconds long, so to make it easy on yourself when you want to check your gif while editing, just put that on 0 for now. You can do that by clicking the seconds under the frame and clicking “No delay”. After this, check to see if you have the right frames and if you need to delete some (you can do this at any point in the process but I didn’t know where to put it in the tutorial oops).

Step 7: Time to crop the gif to the correct size! For this gif I’m using as an example, I’m making it specifically for Twitter, so the sizes aren’t that obvious (for Twitter I usually use a width of 850 px to keep it sharp, for long size gifs (more height than width for example), I add a background so that it eventually still becomes 850x850 pixels). There’s many posts on Tumblr about the correct sizes for gif/photosets, but a brief rundown of my most used sizes: one gif spanning the entire width of the post has to be 540 px in width. Two gifs next to one another need to have a width of 268 px. I use these dimensions the most! For others, you can Google! 

Step 8: After you’ve cropped the gif, you can do either of two things: either you first add the coloring of your choice and then sharpen the gif OR you do it the other way around. I usually switch these two around depending on how sharp the gif already looks before sharpening because I can’t stand looking at 2 pixels while coloring (lmao). For this one I’ll do the sharpening first.

The whole sharpening process is actually quite simple but you need to make sure that you do the following little steps in the right order or else it won’t work! Select all the layers (CTRL+ALT+A or Select > All Layers) and then click this little thingy:

Then you’re going to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters

If you don’t do it in this order, your gif will end up... well, not being a gif and not moving. If that happens, track back in your history to see if you did it in the correct order! :)

Step 9: The actual sharpening process! After clicking the “Convert for Smart Filters”, you’ll want to go to Filter again and find the Topaz Labs tabs. Personally, I usually do it in the order of DeNoise first and then Clean, but this is a personal thing, really.

I recommend playing around with the settings to see what fits the gif but here are my go-to DeNoise settings (tip: save these as a preset so you only have to click that for faster giffing!):

And my Clean settings:

Press OK when you’re done with these and then go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. These are my SS settings (just copy these, and again, save as a preset!):

Depending on how sharp you want the gif to be, you can input the same settings or go to this in the layers and change the percentage.

Now that we’re done with these... it’s time to flatten it! Just follow these little steps:

And then you wait. Again. I know.

Step 10: After playing the waiting game, you’ll click the three little squares again and do the same thing you did earlier: “Make Frames Into Layers”. Delete the first frame. Add a coloring of your choice (can be a PSD, can be your own coloring, etc. this is honestly just... playing around with things and see what it can do). After you’ve done coloring, select all your frames (same lines as previous screenshot except now you’ll see a “Select All Frames” option, click it!) and change the time to whatever you like (I usually go for 0.05, 0.06, or 0.07. Again, just play around with this!! Try different things!) 

Step 11: Final step! Saving :) I use shortcuts a lot to make things faster so either press ALT+SHIFT+CTRL+S or go to File > Export > Save For Web. Not much to do here, just copy the following settings and save the file!

!!! NOTE: After making a new gif today I realized there’s a weird dotted border on the top of my gifs, it’s a bit difficult to explain but I had no idea what it was. Turns out that the reason why this showed up was because, as shown in the screenshot below, I had “Transparency” selected. If you’re experiencing this too, UNSELECT the transparency and it should be all good!

Also make sure that the “Looping Options” is set to Forever, or else your gif will play only once and then stop!

Tip: While making gifs for Twitter I at one point noticed that if I added in a white background, no matter what I’d do, it’d show up as yellow-y in the preview box. After googling I found that going to the options (1 in the screenshot) and then clicking “Sort by Luminance”, then double-clicking the lightest color (not the transparent one, 2 in the screenshot) and selecting white (or FFF) will get rid of this! This likely won’t be that useful for Tumblr gifs but just in case you ever want to have a white background...!

Then just... save, and upload to Tumblr! :)

Final note: Tumblr has a mix gif size of 3MB. If you have a gifset of 4 gifs you want to upload, all 4 gifs can be max 3MB each. Keep this in mind! If you’re over 3MB, delete a few frames and try again, or resize/crop your gif!

As it turns out, Tumblr has increased their gif size to 8MB, however, the quality tends to get compressed with larger gifs like that so per recommendation: keep them below 5MB! (thank you @yeoli​ for letting me know!)

I hope this helped! If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message and I’ll try my best to answer them.

[auroraluciferi]

a white supremacist apparently had an issue with this random post I made.

my post was about the shocked reactions people all over the world were apparently having to American ads for prescription drugs played on the break during the Meghan Markle interview.

the point I was trying to make is that the avalanche of consumer ads for prescription medicine is yet another insane hallmark of the profit-driven US healthcare system which most people fortunately do not experience and no one seems to fully understand.

I feel this one detail helps to breach the facade shielding the dystopian reality which divides us, and it helps to explain for many why the United States has been especially crippled by the effects of the global pandemic. the suffering, deprivation and cruelty of our health infrastructure is an essential feature of capitalism, not a glitch. For many people it has been a time of reckoning.

so this worthless asshole clearly decided now was the time to plant his racist flag - he messaged several times over two days, then I guess he got upset with what I was saying and blocked me.

what follows is unpleasant and contains racist and deeply offensive language, copied verbatim from my inbox and chat.

it has been formatted to fit your television screen.

dee6000 submitted:                                    

Can your socialist BS. The ads/big pharma are separate from or profit medicine. What harmed US medicine was result of democrat politicians copying Europe’s socialists that treated citizens rights with contempt. In the past US medicine was the envy of the world, British, Europeans, Canadians many others would travel here to receive care. Dems blocked enforcement of immigration laws hospitals went bankrupt and taxpayer funded medicaid was overburdened. Just as the influx of tens of millions of illegal aliens and migrants caused rents to skyrocket and wages to be dragged down. Hospital based infection skyrocketed as well hospitals started hiring illegal aliens who did not follow cleaning rules. These infections weren’t new, they are the norm in Latin America and other third world countries. Years later these hospital infections started showing up. Obamacare requires doctors under threat of fines to refuse to perform some diagnostic testing on some patients. Socialist and communist countries have even worse outcomes. And Britain and Europe are experiencing the results of 3rd world imported substandard doctors and nurses.

@auroraluciferi:

lmao. "ads/big pharma" are somehow "separate" from for profit medicine and everything else is the fault of these filthy immigrants from the third world

good luck with whatever ax you're trying to grind

dee6000:

Lmao, people controlling their own labor, by charging for their work, unlike in your communist, socialist sewers where the government elites enslaves people and profit off those slaves like parasites.Big pharma came about under globalism, globalism is Trotskyite international communism. Prior to Clinton’s pushing manufacturing out of the US, US pharmaceutical companies manufactured product here, under fda law, the drugs were tested. Now drugs made in communist China and socialist India are not manufactured safely, there is no oversight, illnesses have resulted as a result and while workers in those countries are abused hypocrite Chinese and Indian elites profit. You might resent truth but that is your problem. Superbugs took hold in western countries as they started allowing displacement of their citizens in health care jobs, from cleaning, nursing, etc with third world people, who yes do not respect hygiene and health and safety rules. That is a fact. When US citizens cleaned hospitals and nursing homes there were no superbug outbreaks, before illegal aliens were illegally working in US food manufacturing, children weren’t  being sickened and killed from eating ecoli, salmonella, and mold contaminated peanut butter and peanut products as dozens of children and adults were in 2008-2009 when Peanut Corporation of America machinery then operated and “maintained” by illegal alien Mexicans, had developed toxic black mold because the illegals didn’t bother cleaning the machinery despite knowing that was the jobs they were paid to do. Hearings in congress were held and parents spoke about it. I don’t care what you think, I know you are a fascist

@auroraluciferi​:

Okay then, I'll humor you - honestly I feel sorry because it clearly took a lot of effort and mental gymnastics to type up that word salad you sent me. Let's look at each of the "points" you just tried to make.

"People controlling their own labor by charging for their work" - that is a laugh. How exactly do you control your own labor if you are forced to sell it to the lowest bidder, competing against millions of others? If a business lays you off or goes bankrupt due to mismanagement, market fluctuations, accidents or a natural disaster, your labor then becomes worthless. The choice you are given as an employee or contractor unsupported by social welfare programs is "accept whatever pathetic wage we decide your labor and time is worth" or "lose your home and starve to death".

Your idea of "control" is an illusion in an economic system where human survival is based on abritrary market conditions and greed rather than the quality of life itself.

"Big pharma came about under globalism, globalism is Trotskyite international communism." - are you suggesting that some of the largest and most profitable companies on earth are the result of a global, communist conspiracy? Johnson & Johnson, Bayer AG, GSK and others follow the corporate conglomeration and consolidation model pioneered and perfected by 19th and 20th century capitalists and industrialists like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, William Hearst, and Cornelius Vanderbilts. Hardly a group of jaded communist revolutionaries.

The multinational companies they founded and combined have systematically destroyed competition within their respective industries, forced both their consumers and employees to accept substandard, dangerous products and poverty wages, then used their wealth to influence both conservative and liberal politicians to deregulate industries and labor laws for their own benefit. All done by willing and eager students of Adam Smith, not Karl Marx.

"Prior to Clinton’s pushing manufacturing out of the US, US pharmaceutical companies manufactured product here, under fda law, the drugs were tested." - I assume here you're talking about NAFTA and Clinton-era regulations, both of which were enormous gifts to those same companies I just described.

These manufacturers left America to gild their pockets by voluntarily exploiting the workers of countries that do not have labor laws, have substandard or nonexistent environmental protections, and would accept even lower wages than Americans. They could have easily remained in the US, paid higher wages to American workers, followed the most basic regulations, and still would have made obscene levels of profit - the demand of shareholders for more profit motivated the outsourcing of US jobs, not because a spineless corporate lackey like Bill Clinton forced them to.

At the same time, NAFTA enabled US agribusiness to flood the Mexican and Central American economy with cheap, government-subsidized corn - instantly destroying the ability of Mexican farms to collectively set fair prices, driving millions facing starvation and poverty into cities and ultimately North into the United States. It's pretty ironic that your illegal immigration crisis was created by massive corporations supported by the US government, but I guess that's inconvenient history for you.

Again, this is another pretty obvious feature of capitalism, not communism or socialism. Businesses have a natural tendency to cut expenses and maximize profit any way they can. In an actual socialist system, there would be no incentive to do that - healthcare and medicine would be provided as a right, rather than a paid-for privilege as exists in our current system. Workers would not have to compete with each other to survive if their basic needs were provided for.

Also just thought you should know, the FDA regulations apply both to drugs that are imported just as they are to drugs that are manufactured in the US. Furthermore, there would be no FDA at all without American socialists, reformers and consumer advocates pressuring Congress into creating it - not sure how you can pretend otherwise. It was made specifically to address how the 19th-20th century market failed to "self-regulate", resulting in toxic food and drugs manufactured here, in the US.

"Superbugs took hold in western countries as they started allowing displacement of their citizens in health care jobs, from cleaning, nursing, etc with third world people, who yes do not respect hygiene and health and safety rules." - This is pretty racist, and also the opposite of reality. "Superbugs" are the natural result of bacteria and viruses adapting and evolving to ever increasing levels of antibiotics, antivirals, and hyper sanitation in our food supply and cleaning products, as well as natural mutation. Diseases like the coronavirus are inevitable - the US has failed to respond effectively because our for-profit healthcare system does not have a market incentive to create stockpiles or public infrastructure to combat an outbreak, whether it's from China or Cleveland, Ohio.

People from other countries know how to wash their hands. They know how to clean. You have absolutely no evidence which would dispute that, just your own feelings and the idea that filthy brown people caused this totally avoidable disaster rather than a lack of basic planning.

Finally, when people are sickened by improperly cleaned equipment or tainted food and medicine, it is the result of a failure by the manufacturer or producer to properly train and supply their facilities out of negligence, to save on operating expenses, or because they ignore existing regulations and are not penalized for doing so - not because there is an army of dirty, ignorant Mexicans at the controls. Untrained, underpaid, and unsupervised workers will have a greater tendency to make mistakes regardless of if they are White Americans or immigrants.

"Facts" and "truth"? I don't see anything besides your own personal bias, poor logic and uncited bullshit that you have no proof of. The American healthcare system and things like advertising for drugs on TV are mocked and reviled across the rest of the world because people can clearly see how vulnerable it is to inevitable pandemics like this.

But I guess there will always be people like you who are happy to ignore reality and instead demonize normal working people for fleeing their capitalist-raped economies and come here in an attempt to provide for their families - exactly the same thing you would do in their situation.

dee6000:

Lmao! Then explain why for decades and they, the WHO, Doctors Without Borders and other wastes of resources still bemoan the fact that in Latin America, take Mexico for example the majority of the people not only don’t wash their hands before eating a meal, they don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom. They send nurses into schools to make a game of washing one’s hands but it doesn’t take. Next you’ll tell me that it isn’t true that child rape is part of Latin American culture. Mexico is so substandard health and hygiene wise that it’s water supply is contaminated with feces. Which is why foreigners are warned not to drink it or anything with ice in it. Because intestinal diseases, parasites are the norm. Go into any hospital in the US that employs illegals and they do not smell like antiseptic but dirty. I do not care what you think, the data shows superbugs started showing up in the US a decade after hospitals and nursing homes felt entitled to ignore employment laws and hire illegals. And yes, US corporations that off shores and were indulged by  communist China and the rest that have no environmental regulations, no labor laws (because under communism and socialism the people are slaves of the state) are only paid what the government thinks they deserve which is very little) they could profit more, or so they think. They became addicted to it and allowed their patents etc to be stolen. Under capitalism a worker has the right and power to reject a low wage. Under capitalism in the US a middle class grew and flourished, and poverty shrank. Under democrats and RINOs, who serve the same interests as democrats, the Clinton, Bush’s and Obozo the middle class was decimated, and poverty skyrocketed. Under Obozo more people became homeless, more so than during the Great Depression. You can spin and spin all you like. Your lies fall apart easily. Under illegal alien invaded democrat run California, the streets are tent cities, cholera, typhus and the plague have been found in Los Angeles, as well as other diseases.

At this point, he apparently blocked me. I didn’t realize this until after I was done writing my response, but here it is anyways

@auroraluciferi​:

It's pretty clear you feel all of your grievances can be blamed on those black and brown people and "Communist" China that you hate so much. I feel sorry for you, but I don't actually believe that anything I say is going to change that.

Your illusions are so wrapped up this weird ethnocentric pride and your comforting blanket of privilege that you're basically helpless against what's coming. You're burning all this energy being angry at people of color for "wasting" resources you apparently feel you are especially entitled to, when you can't even see that the scarcity of those resources is a dominant feature of capitalism.

The wealthy and powerful who benefit from that scarcity - both here in the US and in China - look down at sad little racists like you and they clink their champagne glasses together and smile. By blaming their crimes on Mexicans or whoever it is you clutch your pearls about, you're just making it easier for them to divide and conquer the working class globally.

So go ahead, do their work for them - whatever makes you happy.

Waste all your time and energy hating someone you do not know, whose experience and culture you do not know. Blame all the diseases and scarcity and crime on them, instead of on the cruelty and pointless waste of capitalism

Squabble over the pathetic little crumbs they kick down to you from above or whatever you can compete with against your neighbors for, then proudly claim your little dirt heap for an imaginary concept of white culture.

Like I said before, good luck with that.

[spiderweb-bf]

anti-cheating software - a list of resources for students

I found a list of anti-cheating software that some schools use. I’m compiling a list of what they are, what they do, and how to tell if your school is using them.

this isn’t to help anyone cheat or whatever so don’t come for me. it’s just useful information to have so you don’t get an angry email about copying and pasting things from google when all you were trying to do is copy and paste the  √ symbol so you could show your work on a math question. not speaking from personal experience or anything.

also, this is morally challenging for me in more ways than one. there’s the question of the ethicality of schools using what is essentially spyware to monitor students taking tests. is it okay because it’s installed only on school-issued computers, not personal ones? is it okay because it’s in the name of academic integrity? honestly I’m not sure, but that’s not what this post is here to discuss. I only bring these things up because I don’t want people coming after me and getting mad lol. all this post is about is informing students of the software their school might be using so they can determine how likely they are to get caught if they do decide to cheat and evaluate if it’s worth it or not. and like I said earlier, it can also be super helpful in avoiding accidentally getting pinged as cheating lmao. knowledge is power and all that.

• GoFormative

This in and of itself is not anti-cheating software. But if your school has you take tests with GoFormative, you should know that it does have anti-cheating software in it.

GoFormative can tell when you copy and paste from “any source.” The discussion I found specifically mentions “webpages, documents, [and] PDFs.” This isn’t the same as plagiarism detectors because in another discussion, a teacher was notified about a one-word answer being copied and pasted, and one word can’t be plagiarized. According to the discussions I found, teachers will get a red exclamation point on answers that contain copy and pasted material and can see which website you copy and pasted from.

source 1: x source 2: x

• LanSchool

If LanSchool has been downloaded on your school device, basically just know that you are being monitored at all times. Can teachers see your screen at all times if they choose? Yep. Can teachers  “[s]ave screenshots of a student’s screen to share in parent/teacher conferences or conversations with the student?” Most definitely. Can teachers get notifications when you search a specific term? You betcha!

When I say that everything you do is being monitored, I mean everything. It’s not just your browsing history and application use being saved (although that’s definitely happening). Every single press of your keyboard is also being saved. “All web browsing, application usage, and even keystroke history can be captured and viewed later...”

This application does a lot more than just that, so here is the link to all its features if you’re curious.

How to tell if your computer has LanSchool on it:

“A LanSchool icon (green circle of circles) appears in the system tray at the bottom right corner of the computer screen in Windows. On the Mac it appears as a small icon at the top of the screen. On Ubuntu, the LanSchool icon is located in the center of the panel.”

If that doesn’t help, check out this form to see if it gives you more information.

source 1: x source 2: x

• GoGuardian

This one seems really similar to LanSchool so I won’t go over it too much. Teachers can see student screens, block certain websites, etc. but it doesn’t seem as... invasive and dystopian as LanSchool. (When I was doing research for the LanSchool part of this post, I found a really concerning article that literally sounds like something out of a science fiction novel. But anyways...) Here is the listed features on their website. Here is an article about how to tell if your school computer has GoGuardian on it. If you can’t access the article right now, basically look for a blue circle with a white triangle in it and a black circle with a triangle in it at the top right corner of your screen when you’re on the google homepage. You can also look at the browser extensions that are installed, but this seems to be the easiest way.

• Hapara

Again, this one is quite similar to GoGuardian. Here is what it does. To see if it is installed, look for a symbol of three rectangles decreasing in size from right to left. The one furthest to the left is dark blue. The middle one is lime green. The one on the right is a lighter blue. This link might provide more information if that doesn’t help.

• LockDown Browser

What is it? Well... “LockDown Browser is a locked browser for taking exams and quizzes in Canvas. It prevents you from printing, copying, going to an unauthorized URL, or accessing other applications during a quiz. If a Canvas quiz requires that LockDown Browser be used, you will not be able to take the quiz with a standard web browser. LockDown Browser should only be used for taking Canvas quizzes. It should not be used in other areas of Canvas.”

This one is different than the others on this list because it uses your webcam... “You may be required to use LockDown Browser with a webcam, which will record you during an online, non- proctored exam. (The webcam feature is sometimes referred to as “Respondus Monitor.”)” ...and tracks your eye movement. “Respondus Monitor is a proctoring application that uses a lockdown browser and a webcam to assist with the academic integrity of online exams. ... Respondus will record student movements and will automatically flag the exam if a student leaves the view, if their eyes wander, or if another person comes into the screen.”

As far as I can tell, since this program is specifically for Canvas quizzes, that’s the only time it will be used. So if you’re taking a test in Canvas, expect to have your camera be recording you and your screen to be monitored. You will also probably be locked into the tab the test is on and unable to open new tabs while the test is in progress. If you are being recorded, there will be a camera icon and text that says “recording” at the top right corner of your screen.

source 1: x source 2: x source 3: x

This post is incomplete.

These are just some of the anti-cheating programs out there, and I want to keep updating this post as I discover more. If you have any information, questions, comments, or concerns, my messages and asks are open. Or you can put more information, corrections, and links in the reblogs.

Date posted: February 12, 2020

Date updated: February 12, 2020

[hegodamask]

I think you've already talked about this before but I couldn't find the post on your Tumblr, so I was just wondering what your process was for making animated gifs. Like what methods you use to make them, what software you use, etc? Also, what parts do you find most fun or difficult or challenging? I've started making some animated gis, and while I don't know if I'll ever be nearly as prolific as you are, I was interested in learning more about them.

Oh hey! Thank you!! I don’t think I’ve ever gone through the process of how I make gifs in detail before, mainly because I don’t use Photoshop so I just assume my advice won’t be helpful to anybody. I don’t know how helpful this will be to you, but I’ve done a little step by step walkthrough of how I make a gif with a few general pointers thrown in. I was gonna try and keep it brief but it turned out much longer…..sorry.

I’ve put what I find most difficult and fun at the end, so you can just skip to that if you want.

As for the rest, here goes….

So, background: I taught myself how to make gifs using Serif Photoplus X2 because we used their products in highschool. Then a few years later, I updated to Photoplus X7 (made hardly any difference though). Serif doesn’t even make the Photoplus range anymore (they still sell X8 but it’s rubbish and crashes a lot, and their new product Affinity doesn’t even let you make gifs!). I’ve tried to use Photoshop in the past and everyone says it’s better, but I’m stuck in my ways like the stubborn old woman I am.

Anyways, when I want to make a gif I start off by capturing screenshots for the frames. I’ve always used GOM Player and their “Burst Capture” option to do this. GOM Player lets you choose the format your images are saved as and where you want the frames saved to. I have a special “captures” folder for temporarily storing the files in. So for example, these are my frames:

A good general tip for making gifs with any software is to use the best quality video you can find. Most of the stuff I make is with 1080p or 720p quality. I find it helps when it comes to colouring and making the gif look clearer.

Once I have my captures, I copy them into my animation “canvas” (or SPP file) which has a base colouring I’ve already made on it. It’s kind of like a PSD on Photoshop. I select my captures and drag them onto the canvas which looks like this:

The canvas is 1080p, the same as the captures but everything will be resized later. I originally captured 100 screenshots here, but I’ve decided to use only 40 in the end because I want to make a 540px width gif. If I used all 100 frames for a 540px gif it would end up being way over the 3mb limit and it wouldn’t work on Tumblr.

Now this is where the time consuming work comes in for me. Once my captures have been copied into the SPP file, they actually become layers which I have to turn into gif frames (if that makes sense). So at the moment they look like this

But I don’t have any actual frames yet at the bottom of the screen. So what I do next is go to the layers tab at the top of the screen and click “hide layers”, making them all invisible

Then basically what I do next is create a frame at the bottom and assign an individual capture to it by clicking the little grey square (making it visible again). So as you can see, my first frame is for my first capture/layer. The next frame will be the capture/layer on top of that.

So yeah, that means I create each frame individually. It’s veeery time consuming but you get quicker at it the more you do it (it’s also faster to do on a laptop touch pad rather than a mouse.). 

Once I’ve created all my frames, I reselect the colouring layers at the top so they’re visible on every frame. It should look like this

Next, you need to crop your gif and resize it. I want my gif to be 540px by 270px so I put 54.00 and 27.00 into the crop feature to get it accurate. This allows me to crop the canvas into the right dimensions.

Once I’ve cropped the canvas, I then go to the Image tab at the top and click “Image Size…” and set the image size to 540px by 270px. I usually ignore the Print Size bit.

540px is the best size for a full width Tumblr gif, anything bigger or smaller will make your gif look blurry. This gifset is a good guide for making sure Tumblr doesn’t blur or crop your gifs.

My gif is almost ready to be exported. But I want it to look clearer, so I sharpen all the layer/captures (yes, individually again). I have no settings for sharpening, but I find using the standard “Sharpen” effect under the “Effects” tab is enough. 

Once I’ve sharpened everything, I get to the colouring and exporting which is the biggest challenge for me. Photoplus’ options for exporting gifs are limited, so the only decent export options are these

“Web-safe” and “Ordered” makes the gif look like this

“Optimized” and “None” makes it look like this. Okay, but the background looks low quality and patchy

“Optimized” and “Error Diffusion” is the only one that to me, looks the best quality. That’s probably why it produces the bigger file size too (the gif below is 2.78mb)

But there’s other downsides to Error Diffusion which I’m still trying to figure out to this day.  Like how it makes parts of the gif “glitch” (that’s the only way I can describe it) or look extra fuzzy. The only way you can fix it is by playing around with the colouring. And by “playing” I mean adjusting and previewing until you want gouge ur eyes out :)

I think that’s why I like giffing The Terror so much, because the film they used has a grainy texture to it, making it easier to hide all my Error Diffusion sins. Though there’s been many times I’ve posted something and hoped no one’s noticed all the mistakes. 

Some general tips for colouring

Unless you’re going for a certain effect, emphasise on the colours that are already in the shot. In my gif  above for example, I turned up the blues and cyans.

Use Levels or Curves instead of Brightness and Contrast.

Zoom in on your gif to spot any Error Diffusion glitches.

Be mindful about whitewashing POC, especially if you’re following the pastel gif trend.

Look at how other people colour their gifs and use PSDs for reference but don’t rely on them too much.

Colouring can increase or decrease the gif file size. If you need to get below 3mb, try toning down super vibrant colours. If the shot you’re giffing is dark, make it a bit darker. If it’s light, make it a bit lighter. 

If all else fails, just make the gif black and white.

Reading all this back makes how I make gifs look like a nightmare lmao. But I’ve been doing it this way since like, 2012 and i love it. I started out making very bad Star Wars and Lady Gaga gifs but as time has gone on and I’ve gotten better, I’ve found I enjoy making things for smaller fandoms much more. I like that if I want a certain set or edit on my blog, I can just go and make it (with varying degrees of success) instead of waiting for someone else to do it.

You appreciate the work that goes into making a movie or show when you make gifs too. Like, you notice subtle little things in the actors performances or something the cinematography is trying to convey. You get to revisit a scene in detail and then share it with everybody else and if you’re lucky, watch them scream in the tags get some nice comments.

There’s lots of other stuff I like about making gifs but I’ve rambled on far too much so I’m just gonna shut up for now. But I think I’ve covered all the important stuff. I don’t know how much of a help I’ve been (there’s still stuff I don’t understand myself) but if there’s anything else you want to know just drop me a message. Good luck with your own gifs!! I’m sure you can do  a much better job than me!

[dxmagedrose]

GET TO KNOW THE BLOGGER!

Tagged by: my lover @hammurabicomplex​ I’m tagging: anyone and everyone who wants to pick this one up! share with the class if you feel like it! tag me in it!!

PRESENTING. RANDOM DEEP DIVE WITH INDIGO-MUN AT 2AM ;

FIRST NAME Good fucking question… It’s (sort-of) currently Dylann! I was Kieran before that, though; it’s still used as one of my first names and I’m not used to Dylann quite yet bc I’ve just started using it. 

Indigo is one of my middle names though, and I’ve used it as an online handle elsewhere forever so I use it here now!  [ Fun etymology facts: Dylan(n) is a mythology name generally meaning “born of the wave” (aspiring diver & a water witch at heart). Kieran means “little dark one” bc of my love for horror, && I chose Indigo bc as a kid to be it was neither boy (blue) or purple (girl) and was both and neither as well as my absolute favorite color as this vibrant ass mystical color. ]

STRANGE FACT ABOUT YOURSELF hmmmmm…. I’m a horror lover at heart, so as a child (I wanna say 12), I was walking through an antique store (I have a few cool finds, I considered putting my other one as the fact tbh) and I turned the corner and I saw these two dolls staring back at me at the foot of the stairs of this antique building. my blood froze, and i felt my stomach drop. i got actual, physical goosebumps stumbling across these two creepy dolls staring back at me in the corner, and i couldn’t leave the store without them. perhaps the little painted porcelain boy would be somewhat spooky by himself if it wasn’t for the terrifying lidded gaze of the porcelain girl with the hairline fractures and slightly open lips. i cant look at her. i dont really find dolls scary, I like to find the spookier ones ones, and she makes me paranoid as hell. i keep her face covered and her up in my closet except for when i bring her out to show her off proudly as the spookiest thing I have but……. i dont really collect dolls anymore.  even thinking about her brings a fearful tear to my eye.  i don’t like to think about her for very long, but that’s why I’m so fucking proud to own her. ( YES — I’m THAT white person in the horror film )

TOP THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU FIND ATTRACTIVE ON A PERSON hhhhh a beardy jawline, high cheekbones, crooked canine teeth >:3c

A FOOD YOU COULD EAT FOREVER AND NOT GET BORED OF b.l.t.’s with avocado. ahhhh. my mouth is watering just thinking about it, oh my god. just a bit of salt and pepper???

A FOOD YOU HATE barbecue anything, i hate the taste of bbq sauce, you keep your nasty black goo to yourselves at the grill. twice in my life i have presented with barbecue pizza and both times i cried literal tears. why would you do such a horrible thing to a person? what kind of a monster are you? how do you sleep at night?!

GUILTY PLEASURE the sims. constantly. always. i’ve sunk thousands of hours into my households. oh also uhhhhhh i run two 80s horror blogs, one being a shitpost blog with occasional art of mine and one gremlin fanfic ship blog for horrible, terrible self indulgent fanfics i’ll get the courage to finish writing & post so i can be cancelled on tumblr for at some point. NO, i won’t link them. as i pretend they’re even all that hard to find, within a day i was found on both by someone i admire here a lot :’) ilu bby thnk u eternally for supporting ur local horrifying dumbass wtf

WHAT DO YOU SLEEP IN the same clothes i’ve been wearing all day usually, my sweats & long sleeve raglans or my hoodies. i like being cozy day & and out. and ugh. efoort. just throw me in a blanket in a cool room and im out.

SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS OR FLINGS serious relationships with some openness or poly. i wish i could fling! just not exactly easy for demisexual autistics lmao.

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN THE PAST AND CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOUR LIFE, WOULD YOU AND WHAT WOULD IT BE I think I would be adopted by my grandma as a kid. It would save me some trauma but mostly I think it would get my autism diagnosed way earlier and save me angsting all these years of wondering why & thinking it’s my fault I’m struggling so much and so loud and affectionate and different in a world that i didnt fit in the same way. 

ARE YOU AN AFFECTIONATE PERSON when i get drunk i text people how much they mean to me in my life. does that answer your question? ahhh. i’m sometimes a cuddle monster with friends, i message people with long texts about how much they mean to me, but I sometimes really don’t like to be touched at all. 

A MOVIE YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN FLYPAPER.  F L Y P A P E R.  FLYPAPER.  FLY, and, I can’t stress this enough, fucking PAPER. ( Though also Whole Nine Yards and both Re-Animator & Bride ). I have watched Flypaper already like, 5 times this week and I’m still not done, and the other movies have been on repeat for days in this household within the last year. In the past it has also been Donnie Darko & the new Nightmare on Elm Street.  roast me.

FAVORITE BOOK White Fang by Jack London. Have I actually ever finished it? No. Do I still own a copy I’ve had since childhood thru multiple dogs eating it, taking it to and from school, and highlighting and circling all the best parts of chapter one ever since I was a kid and it was too hard of a book for me to read? You bet your ass. If I ever need inspiration I just reread chapter 1. Although one of my other favorites was Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes. But White Fang is like, a weirdly personal text. We stan London’s writing in this household.

YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO KEEP ANY ANIMAL AS A PET, WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE FENNEC FOX!! I used to daydream about having my own named Shiloh when I was a lil kid. they’re adorable little things and i am obsessed. i mean, gimme any fox and im happy, marble foxes, red foxes… but I was obsessed with fennec foxes. Also tbh ferrets. I want a ferret.

TOP FIVE FICTIONAL SHIPS [IF YOU ARE AN RP BLOG, YOU CAN USE YOUR OWN SHIPS AS WELL] Rosa & @ninetyscnds‘s Luke, Rosa & @iimpulsivity is already screaming my name, Rosa & Constantine, Jesse & Andrea from Breaking Bad, and the joker and harley of 80s sci-fi Dan & Herbert from Re-Ani.  I am but a simple opossum. 

PIE OR CAKE Pie! I’ll take both pumpkin & melty apple over cake. also, cheesecake is more pie than cake soooo, pie wins.

FAVORITE SCENT my dogs / my blanket. :’)  It’s the most grounding smell in the world. 

CELEBRITY CRUSH oliver jackson-cohen, i’m fucking GAY and im angry about it. there i was, minding my own business, and i saw that asshole in a certain SHIRTLESS GIF and it AWOKE SOMETHING IN ME. dont talk to me about it, holy shit im obsessed with beardy men now god fuckkdafjaask i hate him why did he make me this gay i was perfectly fine being into girls but NOOOOOO him and his dumb hairy chest and sweet rugged face and I——  I also am obsessed with the archaeologist & television personality Josh Gates and may or may not be considering making a fan blog for him bc idk if my anthropology docuseries host is Dad or Daddy but i love him lots

IF YOU COULD TRAVEL ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD YOU GO I would go on a dive with anthropologists and archaeologists doing fieldwork research in the ancient cenotes of the Yucatán Peninsula. My actual dream job, catch me crying & fantasizing about being underwater documenting Mayan skulls given as offerings. Fuckkkk, I love anthropology so much!!  take me anywhere in the world to immerse myself into culture & archaeology.

INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT Introvert. I have a real life friend I see roughly once a month, and that’s it. Plenty of online relationships, I’m chatty, message me all day every day. but i dont do people well.

DO YOU SCARE EASILY I used to! Really bad. I don’t as much anymore. I do get paranoia a lot still. Having therapists telling you that the FBI could be outside your house watching you through your windows will kind of nervous. ( no google results for: yes hello fbi i am a writer please dont put me on watchlists i just have research i need to do for this idea im working on, would you like to try again? ) I have nightmares nightly but not they never make me afraid, they just make me feel like crap. jumpscares and loud noises and seeing people reaching into their pockets dont set off as many brain alarms anymore tho!! progress haha.

IPHONE OR ANDROID I like my android better bc of capabilities but meh

DO YOU PLAY ANY VIDEO GAMES My mom, her husband & I play COD for family game night, and Silent Hill is my life’s blood. I’ve sunken hours into Sims & Skyrim, and Norman Jayden from Heavy Rain is my #1 fictional character in existence, why do i love the druggie babies

DREAM JOB Oh… You’re asking me to pick? I’d love to be an anthropologist doing work out in the field. Underwater archaeology is peak, but I’m also heavily considering being a body recovery diver or police diver. I’d love to see myself in uniform someday, if possible. Just the thought makes me teary eyed & proud.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A MILLION DOLLARS fund my person creative & educational endeavors. get myself a spooky ass abandoned house to make my own home to create in, and travel to the world’s best dive sites. just live a mild life of education, creation & exploration. that’s the dream TM.

FICTIONAL CHARACTER YOU HATE dr. hill is a gross and whiny lil bitch this post brought to u by the miskatonic crew, how is everyone here an even worse bad guy than herbert west precious dan excluded talk shit get hit tho john winchester from spn and both walter white & todd from breaking bad are all in my crew of hated characters. i jusT…   the reani novel is difficult to read because i have to deal with this old sack of shit.

FANDOM THAT YOU WERE ONCE A PART OF BUT AREN’T ANY LONGER Supernatural :-)

… AND THIS CONCLUDES A DEEP DIVE WITH INDIGO!! //

[artnurse]

what are some songs, albums, or artists that you have a strong attachment to?

AHHhHHH omg this is a loaded question because I can go on forever for music (and also thank you for sending me a message that isn’t about lingerie or my face lmao)!!!! I’m going to include some links because I love to be able to share music with people! These are in no particular order – just in order of me thinking about them. 

Hollow Knight soundtrack. Christopher Larkin did an AMAZING job composing this soundtrack – and the game is amazing as well (one of the few games, in addition to Shadow of the Colossus, that makes me cry when I think about the ending). My favorite track on it is City of Tears. Check it out!

A lot of the songs and instrumental pieces from the original 1990′s Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon was my dang childhood and inspired me in a lot of things. Some of my favorite tracks: 

Instrumental: Princess no tame ni…, Sailor Uranus and Neptune theme, sadness, otome kokoro, holy grail, eternal no ai

Songs: Moon Revenge, Kaze mo sora mo, kitto, Moonlight Densetsu, Senshi no Omoi, Ai dake ga dekiru koto, Ai no Senshi, 

Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. The first time I heard this song, I was 18 and working my part-time job in a cutlery shop at the mall. Manager let me listen to whatever music I wanted when I did the store openings on the weekend, so I’d always listen to the classical music station. This piece came on and I was so moved that I sped home to download it on Napster and then find a physical copy of it on CD at Tower Records so I could listen to it on repeat for a month. 

Marina & the Diamonds “Electra Heart” album. This got me through a particularly bad breakup and I listened to it several times a day. I loved her entire concept for the album and all the art that went into the promotional videos for it. I have a few characters on WoW that are Marina references. Some of my favorite tracks are: Starring Role, Valley of the Dolls, Fear and Loathing, Radioactive … I’m pretty sure at least 10% of my tumblr posts in 2012/13 were Marina-inspired. Such a good era. 

The Beatles Eleanor Rigby. I grew up a Beatles fan because my mom was – she had all the vinyls, a bunch of memorabilia.. etc. Something about this song (And the entire Revolver album) gets to me.

WHAM! Last Christmas and Aqua’s Barbie Girl – these are two songs that I have always, and will always, sing my heart out at karaoke. 

Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster album. I’m pretty sure that I did a million views alone on that Bad Romance song. Still one of my all-time favorites. Her Born This Way album means a lot to me too, because I listened to it a lot in Mists of Pandaria and that’s probably when I had the most fun w/ my friends and guldies in that game. 

Mew - Repeaterbeater is probably one of my top songs from them. My ex (with whom I am still best of friends) introduced me to the band when we started dating in 2009 and like, I felt like I had missed out on life by not hearing of this amazing Danish band til then. I have about 20 CDs/albums from them – a lot of overseas limited prints and hard to find stuff. I really adore this band, and missing their show in SF due to the stomach flu in 2010(?iirc) is one of my biggest regrets. Comforting Sounds, Apocalypso, Am I Wry? No, and Satellites are also in my top songs from them. 

The band 30 Seconds to Mars (at least, their A Beautiful Lie) holds a place in my heart because I listened to this a lot during my emo years and played this album a lot while PVPing in Lineage2 and also to and from classes. I’ve probably seen this band the most live – in two different countries as well! I have heard some problematic things about Jared Leto in the past few years that has kind of tarnished my love for the music, but it’s still an album that evokes a lot of emotion for me. 

Poe - Haunted. She was one of the first performers I saw at a small venue for the 21+ crowd at a bar up in Orangevale (called The Boardwalk). I thought she was so cool, and bought her most recent album when we saw her. A lot of people may recognize her Hey Pretty song though. (Side note, first ever concert I attended was the Family Values Tour in 2001 w/ my friends in high school –  Stone Temple Pilots, Linkin Park, Puddle of Mudd, Staind, Static-X, and Deadsy played.)

Honestly, anything by Patrick Wolf. LOVE HIM. Such a talented musician. Reminds me of one of my closest friends who introduced me to his music. One of my favorite songs by him is Hard Times. His acoustic album Sundark and Riverlight was also amazing, as was the version of The Libertine from it!

Röyksopp - What Else is There? Karin Dreijer Andersson (The Knife/Fever Ray) has haunting vocals and it pairs so well w/ the music. I pretty much love most of Röyksopp’s stuff, but this song in particular reminds me of a friend I lost contact w/ over a decade ago. 

Kings of Convenience - I’d Rather Dance with You. I’m sorry, but this is probably one of the best songs of all time. And, yes, this song was one of autoplay songs on my Myspace forever ago, lmao. Erlend Øye is literally so cool and you will never be as cool as him ok?

Mystery Skulls - Ghost. Man oh man. I remember listening to this on repeat while raiding cuz I was being emo over some guy LMAOOO. But I still really love this song, and the band is awesome as well! I’ve gotten a few of my friends (and my mom!!) into Mystery Skulls! Also — I’M PRETTY SURE ONE OF MY FRIENDS HERE ON TUMBLR WAS THE ONE WHO LINKED ME THIS SONG AND TOLD ME TO CHEER UP.

Deadmau5 - Ghosts n Stuff  2009 was a really good year for me personally, and also a lot of great music was filling my ears that year, including the For Lack of a Better Name album with this track on it. I love Pendulum, so having Rob Swire pair up on this track w/ Deadmau5, to me, was AHHHHmazing. 

Janet Jackson - Velvet Rope. A really great song and it had a lot of personal meaning to me back in high school / college. I have always been a huge Janet fan and this came from one of my favorite albums of hers. 

Gotye - Heart’s a Mess. I know a lot of people associate him with the popular track Somebody That I Used to Know w/ Kimbra, it’s a great track, don’t get me wrong, but this song is my favorite from him. Another song I listened to frequently through a breakup. I love Gotye’s very Peter Gabriel-esque vocals. 

I could actually keep writing for like…. another hour but I will save you guys that and just end it here. Let’s just say I am a VERY auditory person 

[nebulous-wanderings]

Tokyo Trip/Kurenai Enishi October 19-21, 2018

Wow look who procrastinated writing a blog post for this for 2 months (me). I made a mini-post when I got back but I didn’t really explain everything I saw and did in my 48hrs there so I’ll do that here. More pictures and me rambling about Tsukista below~

I only went on this little weekend trip because my friend and I had gotten tickets to see Tsukista’s 6th Stage Kurenai Enishi. I would’ve stayed longer but I wanted to save my vacation days for next year :P Luckily, my friend was able to meet me in Tokyo from the area of Japan she currently lives in and stayed with me for the weekend to watch the show.

I arrived Friday evening and checked into the hostel. It had the best prices for the area and was super clean and easy to check in and out - I would definitely stay there again! After that I met @lavendermintrose at Animate since I wanted to buy a penlight and shop around for a bit. We then made a spontaneous visit to the karaoke place with the Tsukista drink collab~

My other friend arrived at the hostel later that night, and we ate a late-night meal and were up until like 2am drafting fan letters on our phones to write onto stationary the next day.

On Saturday we went to Harajuku for breakfast (see first pic at the top) and scoped out the Tsukipro Harajuku Shop. We had timeslots to enter on Sunday, but we passed by it to take a look at how it was set up. After that we tried to get to the train station as fast as possible in order to get to the theater in time for the merch queue to start but Takeshita Dori was looking like this:

which is sooo much worse than Times Square so we were crawling at a snail’s pace back to the station. After the trainride, we got off in Shinjuku where the theater was and it was a bit complicated to find since Google Maps had us cross through and mall and back outside to find the theater (that’s also connected to a movie theater). The line had only opened up 5mins before we got there but there were already so many people ahead of us:

(the entrance is a little past that white sign board with colored rectangles). The wait didn’t feel too long ince they opened sales a bit earlier than the scheduled time and it moved pretty quickly.

My and my friend’s matching tsukiusas (+ my Sing Together Forever usa). I don’t do itabags so I at least brought these little guys.

The merch form~ They got stricter with the purchase limit for this stage (like one copy of each CD per person). (+ check out that girl's Aoi and Yoru itabag in the background)

The hallway to the merch sale tables/entrance to the theater was lined with Kurenai Enishi posters with art of the nenchuu by Jiku-sensei. They matched the red walls nicely lol.

(My face looks really weird in this pic so I covered it lmao) but I was super excited in line 😂 After buying all of out stuff there was a little over an hour until the show started so we got some food and the food court next door and started writing our letters:

My friend wrote one for Yuusaku and gifted local omiyage from her region. I wrote one for Yuusaku and one for Yuusuke. Technically my friend wrote it for me since my handwriting absolutely sucks and we were pressed for time (I would’ve taken forever to write the kana) but I wrote the whole message and she just copied the Japanese onto paper. I handwrote the English I included at the end and also signed it. I included some gifts I brought with me from NY to give to them as well.

We got to the theater as doors opened and placed our letters and gifts in the boxes then picked up the premium seat bonuses (2 group bromides and a shrine charm in the 3rd pic from the top). The charm was one of six color combos depending on which day it was and luckily for me that day was the Rui/Iku colors! Ours were in the 6th or 7th row off to the right. The stage was very wide and we were right in front of the little side-stage area where the actors come out from.

I won’t spoil the plot but I will say that people cried during one of the more dramatic scenes. I wouldn’t say it’s as sad as Yunemigusa though lol (I saw ver. Red btw). It was really cool seeing the new cast for the first time, and I think they all did a fantastic job!

The Mutsuki-kun higawari had Gaku (Haru’s actor) as some evil guy trying to defeat Kakeru who is trying to become a stronger ninja. At first it was just a pair of sunglasses talking while Gaku did the voiceover from backstage but then he appeared on stage in a white lab coat. It was really funny, but I can’t put my finger on what exactly his character was supposed to be referencing lol. Also random note: there was a reoccurring mushroom joke that I also found really funny lol.

The songs in Kurenai Enishi weren’t my favorite per se (I’m not a huge fan of slow songs) but they matched the mood and tone of the show very well. However, I do love the theme song since it’s catchy and makes me want to chant along with it lol.

Since I watched the Red version with Procellarum as the focus, the dance live was their group songs and solo character songs from the 2nd season of CDs. The background dancers were the Six Gravity counterparts from the same age group. Rui is my fave and Yuusaku was soooo cute performing “Oh… Yes!” Ryoki did a great job as Iku, and his dancing looked so pro I was amazed. I was really bopping to You’s “Manatsu no Summer” and he went into the crowd for fanservice as usual lol. For the entirety of Yoru’s song, I was just staring at Yuusaku’s face cuz he’s so bright and sparkly~ He had a big smile on just like Tani’s Yoru and looked like he was having fun. During Kai’s “Beast Master,” I was on the side Haru was mostly dancing on, and let me just say Gaku went IN on the hip movements and overall risqué dance moves lmao. Can’t wait to see that again on the DVD 😂 Taka had big shoes to fill as Shun, but he was great throughout the play and dance live (sasuga idols) and his Shun voice was even super similar to Tomoyuu’s.

At the end they performed “Tsuki no Uta” with both groups which was a lot of fun. I was debating whether or not to change penlight colors at each verse but it would’ve been too difficult lol. I had them on Rui and Iku for the whole duration of the song, but did all the name-yelling fanchants which was fun to be a part of (this was my first time at a jp live event). At the end when everyone runs back and forth on the stage waving goodbye, I was sitting close enough to the stage to tell who in the crowd they were looking at, and I got waves from Iku (who probably saw me frantic waving my green and brown penlights) and Kai! Kai also did a finger gun shoot to the girl 2 seats away from me (sitting next to my friend) since she had a Kai uchiwa and she was crying tears of joy all after that lol.

The closing message for that performance was from Yuusuke, and I could tell he was a bit nervous trying to get words out but he looked genuinely happy to be up there on stage. (Honestly, stan Akiba Yuusuke, he’s adorable).

After it was over, I wanted to watch it again, it felt so short! But we met up with Lavender for some more Tsukista collab karaoke and talked about the show and fangirled over stuff. I kept getting Shun coasters when buying the collab drinks, but in the end I ended up with a Rui at least so all was well. I need some more Growth fans to karaoke with so we can all harmonize on the songs 😂

On Sunday, we went to the Tsukipro Harajuku Shop, but I’ll include that in a separate posts since I hit picture limit in this one already. Overall, I had a fun time and I’m super glad I was able to fulfill one of my goals which was to watch a Tsukista show live! I landed back home at 8pm on Sunday and thankfully I was able to wake up in time for work the next day (due in part to me sleeping most of the plane ride back). 10/10 would do a weekend trip (or longer) again for a stage play or concert 👍

[babygirlgiles]

Commissions so Ells can get top surgery!

As some of you may know, I am going to get top surgery this July (yay!), exact date tbd. Long story short, I’m over the moon excited but there’s been a wild mix of financial circumstances that I’m happy to detail upon request so I’m opening commissions!

I’m so so grateful to everyone who reads, reblogs, or tags my fics-- I’ve thought about doing this before but it’s all the support I’ve gotten that gave me the confidence to try this out!

TLDR: I’m charging $4.00 for 1000 words, accepting payment via PayPal preferably, and I’m generally super flexible. You can have access to tracking my progress via google doc and email.

Details under the cut!

Pricing: 

I’m going to be doing $4 for 1000 words. Here is a pretty good example of what almost exactly 1000 words will get you! You can also check out the myfic tag I have to see some of the other stuff I’ve written.

I’m not going to put a word limit on what you can commissions but just know that over 5000 will probably take longer and that honestly you’ll probably be more pleased with my shorter writing lmao.

You also get one (1) revision on any part of the fic! If there’s a part in the final product that isn’t to your liking, I’m happy to go back and rework it. No questions asked, no hard feelings, because you’re paying for a service and I want provide you with a quality product.

If I happen to write over the word count you purchased, I won’t charge you anything for the extra words. So, for example, if you buy 1000 and I actually write 2000, you’ll still only pay $4.

PayPal  is preferred but if that’s completely impossible, other electronic methods like venmo or zelle can be discussed.

What I Can Write:

Basically anything involving SNK! Some bullet points:

Either NSFW or SFW are both totally fine! Romantic relationships, platonic relationships, or single character pieces (like a character study) are all very doable.

I’ve mostly written about the Veterans and some of the Shiganshina trio in the past. But! I’m willing to explore any character in the series, granted that you know it’ll probably take a bit more time for me to go back and re-read/watch for ~research~.

I’m open to most any ship. Obviously, I only post eruri- but I’ve also written levihan and eremin in the past. Again, any ship that I don’t know anything about (which isn’t many tbh???) will take a bit more time to work on.

I’m happy to write alternate universe, canon-divergent, etc. I mostly write modern AU, canonverse, and my transwin AU but I’ve also been toying around with a university!AU and a figure skating!AU so I’m very open to anything. Again, if I don’t know anything about that universe, allow time for research, etc, etc.

Same thing with kinks. Happy to write whatever, if it’s something I’ve never heard of (which is unlikely after how long I’ve been on the internet lmao), allow extra time.

This is important: your idea for a commission can be as vague or as specific as you want. I’m always shit at commissioning because because I think wanting hurt/comfort with no other specifications is ~too vague~ but I’m totally cool with it. Tbh, half the fun for me is talking with people as hearing their thoughts on snk!

Tracking:

A la @valisi-clark, I’m going to be doing a public spreadsheet for you (and the entire world!) to track progress on your fic! I’ll also give you a random order number that only I’ll know, add you to the spreadsheet, then you can watch my progress! Of course, if you have any questions or concerns along the way, don’t hesitate to get in contact.

Other Stuff:

If you notice that I haven’t been making progress for a while or you just have any concerns, please do not hesitate to email/message me!! If that happens I’m probably just being slowed down by a life related mess but I will do everything I can to deliver the fic in a timely manner.

My email is ellswritesthings@gmail.com but I’m also happy to message on Tumblr and if both those are impossible, I’ve got basically every messaging platform under the sun.

I’ll need payment in full before I can send you the finished product. I’ll send you a Google Doc link that you can save in whatever format tickles your fancy so you can have a copy forever. If you want to keep the commission private, that’ll be that! Otherwise, I’ll post it to tumblr and tag you.

Still wanna help with my top surgery but don’t wanna commission:

Smash that mf reblog button.

Special shoutout for @ackbang for the idea, @kittyboo8015 for the encouragement, and @valisi-clark for the super helpful advice! And thank you for taking the time to read this and, I can’t say it enough, the love I’ve got from all of you means the world!

[eternalfrowning]

>>replying to several messages ! ´ ᵕ ` ♡

(sorry for being so late,..i’m thankful to everyone for taking the time to send me a message)

!!! !!SASAKO IS THE BEST. (Need...to draw again ....(anime version is nice too..<3))

thank you, and !!! im honored;;

HEHE!! >:D you sent me this before the e3 trailers i think, you’ve probably seen them now and ahh! Her new look is so cute! Her skirt is way less puffy(?) than in my drawing but auoegbuoeg she looks adorable (shorter hair.♡)

woh.;;;..thank you!

I don’t know if i can answer your questions satisfactorily(is it a word?), sorry in advance;; (and sorry for being LATE, very late)! I sort of talked about this in this post, but i will copy/paste it since there is a lot of text so it will be easier for you like this (it was an answer about improving drawing anatomy and poses):

“ Tbh I don’t feel the most qualified person to answer this, because i struggle so much with anatomy and poses it makes me cry

but what i can say is that i noticed some improvements in my drawings when i started to really draw regularly from life ; if you can, don’t hesitate to attend life drawing class with models etc, it really helps and it’s interesting.

Drawing from life in general is really a good exercice (and if you don’t know what to draw but damn you want to draw, it’s the best)

you can also look at yourself in the mirror to see if the pose you’re drawing feels natural (how would you place your hand if you stand like this? is this way of sitting really humanly possible, etc) (and take a photo if it feels necessary)

and don’t hesitate to draw feet/shoulders/whatyouwanttoworkon thousands of times !! or well, until you feel familiar with it :>

References are great. (i’m talking about inspiration/refs that help)

(you learn better by copying a picture than by tracing it imo) You will understand the human body better by intense observing;

for poses, the point is getting familiar with how the body is, how it moves, and how all the parts are connected with the others to make it look natural

Drawing simplified poses can help; draw them fast, without overthinking, to have the ‘essence’ of the poses

(I used to work from kpop dance practice video !) (i shoud do it again..:’^o)

I can recommend the Croquis Cafe channel on yt for drawing from models

https:// www (.) youtube (.) com /channel/ UCAZZ8kXStsAD_SJS9LWNdEQ

you can also take a look at websites like posemaniacs, quickposes.. (there are probably more)

And yeah, in the end, i just want to say: you will improve with practice and time, be sure of it !! “

But you had already your ‘keys’ in your message ! trust yourself! <3

and maybe you can try drawing faster without polishing everything or erasing etc

I will just edit a bit what i said in my old text by saying that if you’re young/unconfortable with nudity, life drawing class with model is not absolutely necessary of course, and you can make a lot of progress by drawing yourself, and by drawing your environment / the people around you / etc etc! Also tracing can help a lot (for practice!), but you can trace, then doing the same drawing with the ref without tracing, to see if you understood the forms. (sorry if i’m not clear i’m bad at explaining) photos and observations/study from life (paying attention to the light too!) will definitely make you improve

reference photos really are life saving when you struggle with something in particular. (Had to use one on my latest drawing (you can guess for what......)(..*whispers*toes.), and i looked intensely at my hand to draw kaneki’s and hide’s hands in the process as well.)

but well what i think in the end is the same: you will improve! You’re already improving, with every drawings you make and by questioning yourself.

maybe said like this makes the exercises seem boring or tedious(?) or something like that but really it’s not! :^D ; and don’t pressure yourself too much, have fun and keep drawing <3

i dont take requests now im sorry;; but thank you so much for your interest and for your kind words, it means the world..!!!;;

girl i guess ɿ(｡･ɜ･)ɾ

@i-amtragedy​ thank you..ily....;__;

<3<3<3

;;..thank you so much anon, i don’t know what to say...

again, im sorry for being so late at replying.

<3

oh <3 thank you; it didnt make me sad no worry! i dont think anon meant to sound mean! (even tho at first i thought like you and i panicked for 0.5 second lmao)

!! this message is probably from a long time ago but im happy my Hide travelled with you !（*´▽｀*）

[mysticalmistake]

spooky request!!~~ 🎃 rfa + minor trio seeing fem!MC in a sexy halloween costume ;) like MC dresses up as a kitty and or a maid, lmao!! could be fluffy or nsfw, ur choice!! 💗💗

This was asked so many times. So much pressure to make it good. Also, this is all semi-NSFW. There’s no fluff. Sorry? :D I haven’t done this in a while but just because this getting so long after Zen it’s going under a “Read More”. Sometimes that causes issues on mobile, if it is copy and paste the link and open it in a browser. That should fix it! 

I’m gonna front with you guys. Vanderwood and Saeran aren’t in this because I had everyone but them done yesterday, and thought “Oh, I do them this [Halloween] morning and then post it]”. Then a lot of work and personal relationship drama happened, and I didn’t get home until 7 am this morning. I’m oversharing because I feel bad because I really wanted to use the morning to write more Halloween asks and I have to leave for work soon and it’s not gonna work out that way. And I’m sad it won’t. I’m sorry guys. I love you all~!

~Mod L 

Yoosung You had found a costume that was based on the armor from LOLOL but decided it would be more fun to leave the base clothing off. Once you were dressed and saw yourself in the mirror, you almost blushed just seeing yourself but kept it together. “Oh, Yoosung~” “Yes?”“Do you wanna see my costume?”“I thought we agreed we were just staying in tonight?” You had to keep yourself from giggling at the confusion in his voice. “Just sit there and wait~” You heard the all too familiar creaking of him sitting down on the couch. “Okay….” You took a deep breath before opening the door, leaning against the doorway, again having to suppress a laugh as you saw his jaw drop and his face turn red. “What do you think?” As he tried to stutter out a response, you took some steps towards him, the heels you chose to wear adding to your stride. “Don’t you like it?” You asked in an innocent voice, sitting in his lap. “I- I think I more than like it,” he replied, trying to steady his voice. “I’m not sure how well it’s gonna protect you, but I can do that for you”.“How brave,” You smiled, leaning into his neck. “I like that,” You whispered against his skin kissing it, biting him softly.“A-Ah~” He gasped, his hands gripping your waist. You smirked, feeling the heat from his cheeks. You pulled away far enough to gently press your forehead against his, your lips inches apart. “Why don’t you show what those levels are good for, and just how manly you are~?” 

Zen Of course, you got your inspiration from one of his characters [x]. You found an outfit similar enough, covering some of yourself but leaving most of your skin bare. You found some fake chains to chain yourself to your bed and waited until you knew Zen would be leaving practice and texted him.Zen! I can’t really explain, but I need you to hurry home. I’m in a bit of a… predicament. You waited patiently until you heard the ding of a response.Are you okay?? I’m almost home, just wait! You almost felt bad but knew he would forgive you. You turned your phone on silent and tossed it to the side, and put the chains on. You hadn’t been waiting for long when you heard the front door open.  “Babe? Where are you?” “In here~” “Are you okay..?” You could hear the shift in Zen’s tone in reaction to yours, going from less worried to confused. You stretched out, laying on your back with your hands above your head in the chains. “I just need my knight in shining armor to come save me,” you called out.“You’re not really in trouble, are you?” You heard his footsteps approaching as he spoke. “You don’t sound like-” His sentence stopped as soon as his eyes fell on you. “I thought I’d surprise you and dress up like your character, but something went wrong and now I’m stuck here. Can’t my knight in shining armor save me~?” You tried to make your voice sound innocent and helpless, even if you anything but. Zen smirked as he took off his jacket, tossing it to the side. “I don’t know princess, I might not be the knight you want,” he said as he climbed on top of you. “You look awfully cute in these chains,” he whispered as he traced his fingertips up your thigh. “I might just have to keep you here all night”.

Jaehee You two had talked before about how silly some Halloween costumes were. It was strange how you could take anything and put “sexy” before it, and then it was a costume. Which gave you a rather silly idea. You took a spare apron from your cafe, wondering what Jaehee would think of you wearing it. Of course, you both knew what it looked like with your uniform, but what about with nothing else? It was a bit difficult turning an apron into a ‘sexy’ costume, but you found a cute matching pair of panties and you knew you were set. You had barely finished doing your hair when you heard Jaehee coming home. You stayed hidden in the bathroom until you were ready to come out. “Welcome home Jaehee~” You called out.“Hi honey!” you heard her reply over the sound of clanking. You couldn’t help but roll your eyes at how much coffee she drank. “Hey, I think I have the perfect Halloween costumes for us. Hear me out, okay? Sexy baristas~!” You heard her laugh as she moved from the kitchen to the living room. “That sounds terrible sweetie”.“Oh come on! You don’t think it would look great?”“I’m sure you’d look stunning,” she replied, taking a sip from her coffee. You decided to pop out then, and it took her a moment to look up from her drink to see you. “It’s just not-… very…” her voice trailed off as she saw you. “Not very what?” You asked innocently as you bit your lip, looking at Jaehee. “I know we said we weren’t going to do much for Halloween, but I thought I should give you at least one treat,” you winked. She cleared her throat before standing up to go over and take your hand. “It was a bit of trick,” she laughed as she lead you to the bedroom. Her eyes drank in all of you as she spoke. “But, you certainly will be one sweet treat”.

Jumin You knew what you had to be for Halloween. It was obvious, and you did it the first Halloween you spent with Jumin. Thankfully, sexy cat costume was relatively popular and easy to find. You just had to be careful about paying with cash and hiding it from him until the day came. And you knew Jumin, so you bought a fuzzy pair of handcuffs to top it off. You quickly threw them on, keeping your hands in front of you as you heard Jumin come in. “Oh, Juminnn~ All done with work?” “Yes, sweetheart. Where are you?” “Ah, I’ll be out in a moment. Just sit in your seat and wait for me, won’t you dear?” “Of course,” he called back before you heard him sit. You carefully peeked out the doorway, making sure he was facing the other way before stepping out.  “If you stay facing that way I can give you a surprise~” You saw him tense up a bit, but didn’t face away. “What is it?” “I know we’re not doing much for Halloween, but I thought it would be fun to dress up anyways,” you explained as you walked up right behind him. “I see. And what did you dress up as?”“I’m something very, very bad,” You put your arms around his shoulders from behind him, so you could gently run your nails across his chest and he could see the handcuffs on your wrists. You couldn’t see it, but he couldn’t stop his jaw from dropping for a moment before quickly shutting it. You kept your arms around him as you walked around him so he could see your full costume, and you could sit in his lap. “I think your kitten has been naughty”. Jumin paused for a moment, admiring your costume while his hands found their place on your hips. Then, without hesitation he stood up keeping your legs wrapped around him, taking you by surprise. He turned to push you against the wall. “Well, if that’s the case,” he said in a low voice, and you could feel his hot breath against your skin as he continued. “then kitten’s going to get punished”. 

Seven It was almost embarrassing how well his maid costume fit you. You weren’t sure what was going to happen when you put in on, but you looked good in it. While you waited for him to come home, you made a few adjustments to it so it showed off more of your body’s curves. When you thought it was perfect you heard Saeyoung come through the front door. You ran over so you could hear him, but just out of view.“Hey, Saeyoung!” You shouted. “I wanna ask you something!” “What is it?” “Maybe we should dress up for Halloween?” “Yeah? What should we be?” He asked. You tried to not laugh before asking your next question. “Maybe I can take your maid costume?” You heard his laugh and the plop of him sitting down on the couch in your guys’ living room. He was facing your direction now, but you were still hidden behind a doorway. “That’s mine! Besides, if you did I don’t think we could go out. If I see you in that I would have to keep you to myself all night”.You popped out from behind the doorway, putting your hands on your hips. “Does that mean we’re still going to have a night in tonight?” The remote in Saeyoung’s hand fell to the ground, along with his jaw. “O-Oh”.“I thought this costume works since you’ve been such a dirty boy. I should really clean you up,” you winked as you walked towards him. “I- I-” Saeyoung stuttered as face turned as bright as his hair. You can tell you really caught him off guard, and secretly felt a bit proud of yourself for it. “Can’t find the words?” You laughed softly as you straddled his lap. “Don’t worry, I’ll find something for your lips to do instead”.

Jihyun When you thought about surprising Jihyun with a costume, and about how he told you he wanted to an artist, you thought of just the perfect costume for him. It was rather inexpensive too, as you only had to buy a necklace. You were so excited when he got home. He knew you had a surprise, he just had no idea what. When he got home you messaged him to come in with his eyes closed, and he played along. You lead him to sit in a chair in front of your guys’ bed and then dropped your robe to reveal your costume to his closed eyes. You laid across the bed, trying to be quiet.“Can I open my eyes now?”“Not until you guess what I am~” “I finally get talked into that surgery just for this,” he chuckled. “Do I get any hints?”“Yup~! You get these four hints. First is there’s a drawing pad and pencil next to you”. You paused while he felt around for it, then took it in his hands. “Next is that I’m a character from an American movie. It’s based off a true story, and we’ve both seen it”.Jihyun thought for a second, tapping the pencil against the pad. After a moment he slouched in his chair, shaking his head. “Sweetie, I have no idea. Please tell me?”“You’re no good at this,” you giggled. “I’ll give you one last hint. The most iconic line in the entire movie”.“Okay…”You bit your lip before saying “I want you to draw me like one of your French girls,” you paused as you saw one of his eyebrows raise. “Wearing this,” you gently shook your necklace so he could hear it. “Only this”. Jihyun opened his eyes to see you laying on the bed, only wearing the necklace Rose was in the Titanic. You were laying in the same pose she was, biting your lip while looking at Jihyun. A blush formed on his cheeks. “I suppose that makes me Jack then? I think I’d make an awful Jack,” he said as he said the pad and pencil back down.“Hm? And why’s that?” You asked as you watched him stand up and walk towards you.“Well,” he replied, climbing into bed over you. “I don’t think I’m going to be drawing you. I think there’s something else I’d much rather do with you”.

[thedappleddragon]

how's about 4 days worth of logs because I kept getting too sleepy ok go

Today I fucked around made a lot of pasta spent too much time outside with my cat cut some more paw pattern pieces hand sewed the fingers as much as I could started makin the lining but gave up took a shower and did some much needed moisturizing did dishes ate candy and drew caras oc and started Anna’s final render but I need to do some cleanups

I woke up from a dream that my mom got the dog she signed up for but it was like a golden retriever that actually turn into a fat copy of my cat with bad eyes. Had a bagel for breakfast and saw my dad got chive and onion cream cheese :) Igot ready for the dmv and realized I should probably do laundry soon and put away clothes I’ve let pile up. Left for dmv after a while, went around the area a little bit, it started raining, waited inside dmv, a little nervous but not much, talked to same lady as last time (she was very nice and funny :) ) we had to sprint outside to the car because it was POURING OUTSIDE during the first half of the test and suddenly cleared up the second half. Ran over a big puddle. HOORAY I PASSED! Picked up subway, at half at home, went to grandparents house to look at old photos and read my moms old diary from her last family vacation before marrying my dad, stayed for entirely too long, came home, finished subway, laid down, drew and finished the princess lineup, now it’s only 1 am butn sleepy good night. Perhaps I will remember to post the past 2 days in the morning. Yesterday made 2 pastas and resin-Ed old new leaf charm

Writing the days summary through text for the 3rd day in a row because I am sleepy

I woke up pretty damn early, before 9am. Went outside with my cat, played webkinz, snacked. Then mom asked me to pick up her city barbecue which was my first time driving truly all by myself. I trusted myself to know how to get there but I was one street over and then going from the wrong direction and had to turn around, it was a mess. But I got the food just fine and got home safely and without problem. I wanted to drive a little more, so I went to the park, walked a lap around the perimeter, and came back home, sitting in the driveway for a little bit. I hung out for a bit, played stardew valley, quit because I accidentally died in the volcano, fucked around, idk. My friends ex tried snapping me but I didn’t answer and instead texted shit about him with the groupchat. Then we started talking about lgbt labels which tbh made me a little mad and overwhelmed and frustrated, and people were talking faster than I could type, and we talked about asexuality and lack thereof and everyone got uncomfy and fuckin. AAAAAAAH. I got mad and got a headache from hitting myself stimming and decided to try calming down by washing my hair in the dark. I like showing in total darkness occasionally. There’s nothing I need to see anyway lmao. I found myself not even noticing it was dark if that makes sense. Then my dad scared me by opening the door which I didn’t realize I hadn’t locked and telling me dinner was ready. I ate and we talked a little bit about job applications until I went back to bed and got in a weird board mood, and a mint chocolate chip Klondike bar, and now I’m going to sleep I guess. Lily is better at eating and existing on the floor like an animal after I put her food on the floor

today was very rainy and nice. I went with my sister to drive around and pick up food for mom. we dropped it off at home and went to go get our own food. Emily got a gyro and I got 5 guys. the gyro place had a little store attached off to the side with very cramped isles and kinder eggs, which was interesting because I thought they were still banned in America. 5 guys was very overwhelming because of how busy it was. after getting our food we drove to the top of the parking garage and ate there, looking over the main roads and stores and everything, watching the rain. we ate and watched tiktoks and hung out until we decided to go to mcdonlds for water. 2 large waters was only 54 cents so I paid in coins lmao. we sat in the target parking lot for a moment before shopping around. Emily got some shorts and a face wash, and I got a succulent in a bunny shaped pot. I'm 80% sure there's not any dirt in there, and the succulent is glued in, so I got it mostly for the pot. it looks like the bunny is holding the plant, so I think I'll use it for holding pens when the plant dies. right now it’s sitting on my window, looking very cute. after driving home I sat in the car for a bit watching tiktoks until my sister called me and my phone died. apparently my cat was looking for me and even jumped up onto my sister’s bed. so I spent some time in bed just hanging out with her, playing Webkinz and hopping onto animal jam for th first time in months. theyve added some stuff which is cool I guess. I'm not gonna try to log in every day like I did when I was hyper fixated on animal jam, feral, waking, and Webkinz Next all at the same time. that was A Time. maybe I'll jump onto feral tomorrow to see what’s up there. it’s a very pretty game, and the few mini games they have are fun. I just wish there were easier ways to get new avatars, or at least have more than one design for one species. bleh. anyways my friend sent a tiktok she made about our friend group so I spent the next several hours drawing it but as our royal bloodshed au sonas. saving all the frames to my camera roll filled up my phone and I had to delete Tumblr. its fine because I haven been able to use it on mobile for over a year now I think. my phone is so stupidly fulll because I don't delete messages or pictures x-x I just need to upload them all to a drive and delete them all or something. im proud of the animatic but I've only gotten one response in the grouch so far, probably because everyone’s asleep lmao. now it’s midnight and I'm just gonna take a Tylenol and hang out until I fall asleep.