#I still want to finish the my current wip

[princecharmingwinks]

This fic isn't finished yet but I can proudly say it is #1 on my WIP to complete and I have almost up to the +1 part, so hopefully it won't be too far away. Thank you for all your love and support. Special shout out to @jade-bright for not giving up on this WIP, and while I cannot give an ao3 link (yet!), hopefully another little snippet will be a nice treat! Thank you all!

“Have a great day and enjoy the read,”  Stiles said as he handed over the bagged books a customer had just purchased. The elderly woman smiled as she toddled towards the door which was being held open by a guy, roughly Stiles’ age he would guess, who had just entered. Nice to know chivalry wasn’t dead in this economy. 

“Good afternoon, welcome to Alpha Books. Is there anything I can help with today?” Stiles greeted, rounding the counter. It was then that he noticed a petite girl, again around the same vintage as Stiles, had appeared from behind the guy.

Stiles could instantly tell she was a sweetheart. Her smile was warm and shy as she gave a small wave in the form of hello.

“If I am being dragged along on this stupid venture, I’m not going to also be the spokesperson,” the guy grumbled and Stiles wondered how someone who had just held a door open in a polite manner for a stranger could also be so grumpy. 

“Always such a gentleman, Jacks.” The girl rolled her eyes affectionately as she took a step forward. “We have a friend who is currently reading the Bean and Pennywise series and we wanted to gift him the next book in the series,” she explained. 

“Oh! That’s my favourite series ever! What book are they up to?” Stiles began the trek over to the shelf that held the series, feeling true delight to meet another fan of the series, be it through a proxy.

“Oh, um, that’s a good question. Sorry, I don’t know the names myself,” the girl apologised.

“How is my sister-in-law such a dork?” The guy – Jacks? – pulled a piece of paper from the girl’s back pocket and waved it in front of her face.

“Oh! That’s right! I wrote it down. Um,” the girl glanced down. “he just finished book three.” 

Stiles halted the hand he currently had outstretched towards the series books. Oh. This fan was exactly like him. He turned fully back to the pair.

“I’m sorry to disappoint but the author is still working on the fourth and final book of the series. A release date hasn’t actually been confirmed yet, so I can’t even give you an indication. It has left us fans in quite a state of longing.” Stiles draped his hand across his forehead in a dramatic replica of a damsel in distress.

The girl giggled. The guy rolled his eyes, fully judgemental.

“That’s a shame,” the girl said. “I guess he’ll have to wait for the opportune moment himself then.” 

Stiles crinkled his eyebrows in confusion. Was that a metaphor for something else?

Thank you for tag, lovely @noyzinerd !! The snippet you provided on your post was brilliant! I have a few little fics on the go but this one is probably the closest to finished. Not named yet but it is a 5+1 Sterek where Stiles working at a bookstore slowly meets different members of Derek's pack who know Stiles is the perfect match for Derek.

It was a quiet Tuesday afternoon at Alpha Books, Stiles the only staff on while the bosses were away on their 2 year anniversary trip. He was happily humming along to the radio, reshelving when the bell jingled announcing a new customer. 

Stiles popped his head out of the aisle and smiled, “Welcome to Alpha Books, can I help you find anything today?” The new customer was a girl, maybe a few years younger than him and small in stature but her whole presence radiated Tough, with a capital T.

“What do you get your older idiot brother to distract him from the ridiculousness of his life?”

Stiles tried not to grin at the exasperated tone but it must not have worked because the girl’s eyebrows crinkled into a judgemental frown.

“Sorry,” He offered in apology before completely stepping out of the aisle. “What does your brother like to read?”

She huffed out an annoyed sound but Stiles wasn’t completely convinced it was aimed at him. “I have no bloody clue. How do you work out someone’s tastes?”

“Well, what’s he like? Maybe we can work it out together?” Stiles was getting excited now, he loved a good book hunt.

She nodded, taking a moment to think. “He’s one of those crazy morning people who actually enjoys jogging before 7am. But it also means he’s in bed like an old grandma by sundown. He doesn’t like anything too horror-y or gore-y. I guess maybe some kind of adventure series?”

Stiles lit up with excitement, this brother sounded like he may enjoy one of Stiles’ personal favourite series. “Has he ever read the Bean and Pennywise series?”

The girl frowned again, “Been what?”

Stiles held up his hand and ducked down another aisle, returning in a flurry with the first book in the series in hand. He offered it to the girl and gave her time to inspect both front and back covers, including the blurb.

“This Bean guy sounds just like his type.” She gave a small smile and Stiles had a feeling it was a rare sight he was beholding. 

He also had to fight against the blush that was probably forming when he realised he was about to admit that he related way too much to Bean. This girl was super pretty, if not also intimidating, and Stiles was sure her brother would be too. And based on her description, her brother sounded like someone Stiles would swoon over. Stating he was like the lead character in the novel who was apparently her brother's type was way too forward. 

“Awesome! I’ll ring it up for you.” Stiles took the book back and headed over to the counter, slipping the store’s bookmark that doubled as marketing for his blog inside the front cover.

Hope you liked this snippet! Tagging some mutuals since I'm not sure who has been writing lately or not. No pressure of course :) @fairytales-and-folklore @breakingjen @elisela @haletostilinski

[perfectlysanexd]

How do you do your Final Fantasy edits?

The hard way, my friend. No AI is used here, I do it all by hand. 🥰 I assume you mean the screenshot manipulations I create? I'll try and give a simple summary... First, I boot up Remake on PC and use a "free camera" mod(you can find the links to the mods I use on my archive pages for manipulations, which is on my pinned post) to take a couple screenshots that I think will work well together. Sometimes I change my mind and choose a different one. It can be hard to match the camera angles and lighting, so sometimes I have to mess with that later, as well. But it's easier if they fit together from the beginning. We'll take my current WIP as an example. I started with these two screenshots:

I open them in the free program GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), which anyone can download at gimp.org. Then the first thing I do is choose the base image. In this case, they're both facing the same way, so I choose to flip Sephiroth(you can't really do that with Cloud easily because of his earring, and his hair is less symmetrical). Since the camera was closer up on Cloud, and he's the smaller one, I usually choose Sephiroth's to be the base image. With that decided, I roughly cut Cloud from his background and paste him onto Sephiroth's image as a new layer. Then I position him, resize him, rotate him, whatever I need to do until he seems to be in the desired place, which ends up looking like this: (I ended up adding snow for this preview, so it would look more complete than it is when I showed it to my server, haha)

If you look at Cloud, you can still see a thick outline of his old background around his head. Once he's positioned properly, it's time to remove the rest of his background(I use a size 10 eraser with 100% hardness and zoom in about 5 times). Then I need to think about where they're connected, and how to make them look like they're touching, as well as layering to make them seem intertwined, as if they're truly occupying the same space together.

I cut away some of Cloud's shirt, and the rest of that effect will come with shading later. If I wanted Cloud even closer, I would make a duplicate of Sephiroth and erase his background, so that his lock of hair would appear to go over Cloud's face. I could also make it semi-transparent, so you could see the outline of Cloud's face through his hair. You can see I have some small game defects to fix, such as Cloud's hair clipping through his ear. I leave those tiny details for later, typically. Sometimes, because of their height differences, I have to "rebuild" missing parts of them from scratch, such as I did for this other manipulation:

It's a delicate process that's mostly the clone tool(to keep the textures) and some freehand drawing, but I don't have an art tablet, so I use my mouse for everything, which can be quite challenging. I've had a lot of practice from translating doujinshi, where I'd erase the words, rebuild the missing part of the image, and then place the translated words over that spot.

In any case, I decided I wanted more out of this manipulation than just leaning against each other. I wanted Cloud to be reaching up towards Sephiroth, and perhaps for Sephiroth to be pulling him closer. To do that, I needed pictures of their hands/arms like so:

I've taken hundreds of shots, so I looked through what I had first, but it wasn't the right angle, or was the wrong outfit for Cloud, so...then you open up those images and cut out the parts you want. After that, you work on positioning and things like that again. I haven't finished with that part yet, so it looks a little awkward. (And when you're doing these kinds of things, color matching is very important, but that's a bit advanced.)

I'm not fully satisfied yet, so I'll probably remove the rest of the background from the arms and then mess with the placement. As for Sephiroth's hand, I intend to thread it in Cloud's hair, so Cloud will need to be duplicated in order to create that layering effect, as mentioned previously. Which should end up looking similar to this one:

(I had to draw in most of Cloud's hand because I didn't have the camera mod back then, and the Sephiroth shot was provided to me by Coeurlwhiskers.) After that, it's a matter of shadows and highlights, remaining details, and finishing up the colors, etc. It's a long and difficult process, and can take many hours to complete, depending on how ambitious I get with it. Most of that stuff would be a much longer tutorial, and I did used to do some actual artwork a long time ago, so I...kind of know what I'm doing?? I probably do a lot of stuff the hard way(like not using layer masks) because I just don't have the time to teach myself more than the basics. 😅I know it may seem daunting, but it's really fun! I hope I managed to answer your question properly. Feel free to ask follow ups~

[charlotte-family-apologist]

It’s hit a thousand notes- to be honest I didn’t expect a doodle I made at 10pm to blow up like it did but thank you everyone who’s interacted with it!!

I’m not good at expressing myself through text, but I am extremely grateful for all the love and support I’ve been receiving on my art. I’ve always been insecure about my talent and skill so this genuinely means the world to me.

[starfacedstudio]

ID in alt!

A little something for Deltarune's 6th anniversary and a way to say im still working on this even though its been ages (though im sure everyone in this fan space is used to that kind of thing lol)!

happy birthday deltarune, i look forward to seeing where this story ends up no matter how long it may take! :D

[cdelphiki]

All thoughts of baby furniture left his mind when he heard a knock at his door, not ten minutes later. Jason’s eyes darted down to Matt, who was still peacefully asleep on the pillow on the floor next to him, where he’d chosen to sit. 

Carefully and quietly, Jason got to his feet and set the booklet down, then grabbed his gun off the end table next to his couch. 

Very, very soon he’d need to purchase some good gun safes to keep those in, so little hands couldn’t get ahold of them. 

Silently, Jason crossed the room and paused at his front door. He wasn’t expecting anyone to come over, and literally everyone was great at texting him first. 

Because he was jumpy, as everyone said. 

With one quick glance back at Matthew, who was still sound asleep, Jason leaned forward and looked through his peephole. 

Then sighed. 

Loudly. 

“Who told you,” Jason said, after he unlocked his door and swung it open. 

Bruce smiled his stupid dumb smile and said, “Hello Jason,” as he held a damn gift back out for Jason to take. 

“Yeah, hi. Who told you? Babs or Damian?” 

“Damian,” Bruce said, still holding the gift out. 

“I’m going to kill him,” Jason grumbled as he took the bag so Bruce would stop looking stupid. 

Because Bruce was an asshole, he pushed his way past Jason into the apartment as he said, “No you won’t.” 

“I’ll maim him,” Jason said, “I will. I told him not to tell you.” 

[loneliestpeopleinnewport]

wip for the marissa return to newport to help with the sethmer wedding and reconnect with ryan untitled fic...

[seijorhi]

Hello,

I still can't get the Beta idea out of my head, and I was wondering who do you think, out of all the characters you write for, would be most likely to end up with a Beta ? Or who would you like to write about in such a scenario ?

first of all i can and will make any one of those characters into a beta obsessed mess so jot that down fbhjdkjhvgfjd

no but idk, the possibilities are truly endless :))

[humanmorph]

the thought of working for 10h on 3h of sleep is preemptively making me exhausted

[kaiserouo]

wip

i don't wanna get RCE'd so no apex today. me sad

[angelfoodscake]

very rough doodle but i couldnt go to sleep until i drew this

[waywardstation]

May I share a small idea?

You could use the poll as some sort of list for some future WIP Wednesdays. The most popular choice is first and then the next in line comes on the next Wednesday when you got the time and so on.

It could save you plenty of time to prepare something and may lessen the pressure a little!

Obviously it’s up to you but I’m leaving the suggestion here for you to think about.

Hope you’re having a good time and remember to stay hydrated and take care of yourself~!

Oh this is a fantastic idea!! I think I will do this!! (Though I am hoping at least three of the options on there will be going up within the next several weeks, all of them are so so close to completion!!)

I will do this though!! Thank you very much for the suggestion friend, it’s a great idea!!

[kalmeria]

btw i originally read obbligato right after ariadne so if you are someone who has just read ariadne bc of the english release but havent read obbligato yet.. why not do it right now? come cry about tatsukana with me

[alchemocha]

(Looking at all my current wips) but what if I started a new project and learnt how to do basic animations

[illdothehotvoice]

Oh my god wait my brain is huge I can just finish WIPs instead of making whole new pieces for a commission sheet fjfhdbcbbdf

[malachitezmeyka]

You know what? Where Land Meets Sea is seriously one of my best fics, I really popped off with that one

[science-lings]

Me @ myself: we have to write, we have deadlines that we want to meet to be part of an event, there's only like two weeks left and we want to have at least two more fics done for it

Also me: I guess it must be time to break out the paints for the first time in over a year and think about a fic for a fandom I'm not currently focusing on bc I got one (1) comment about it