#Ie the quality when it zoomed in

[asmodeusamaryllis]

Gyari, casual outfit ★

[userpeggycarter]

i was requested by anon to make a tutorial for this gifset and here it is!

DIFFICULTY intermediate/difficult. basic giffing knowledge is definitely required.

while my gifset has a fair amount of animation, the only handmade animations can be found in the second and fifth gif. the rest are assets (the checkmarks, the sharpie circles) (either gifs or videos) i found on the internet and pasted over my gif.

THE BASICS OF TIMELINE GIFFING

if you gif with frames, you will need to use a timeline for the animation to work (keyframes). i’m a timeline giffer anyway so this was another Tuesday for me. if you never used that method of giffing, however, it can be confusing, especially if you never used a video editing software before (the timeline works like video editing). 

so, here’s a breakdown of what is the timeline:

the player icons work like any video/music player in existence. ignore the volume icon.

the gear icon indicates the quality of the reproduction while editing it, not the quality of the end product. think like it’s Youtube reproduction settings on a video in order to save your 4G data, but with RAM power instead. this is very useful if your computer isn’t very powerful to begin with and gifs with VFX are very heavy to handle. 

i always click the loop option inside the gear panel because i like to see how the gif will be viewed by the public, i find watching to play only once isn’t very productive. you can stop and restart the reproduction by pressing the space bar on your keyboard.

every layer of your PSD file will have its own bar. the length of the bar means the duration of the gif, so a longer bar means a longer gif and a shorter one, a shorter gif. for everything that isn’t your gif/screencap-based (ie, coloring, typography, lightning, shapes, etc) can be dragged by the extremities as much as you want, making the asset last as long as you want. the only layer that is limited by its maximum duration is naturally your gif, but you can also drag it to make it shorter.

you can also drag a whole layer bar by clicking it and dragging it, making the start and finishing point different from the rest. be careful while doing that otherwise you will end up with blank frames, messing up the looping of your gif completely.

there’s a needle you can drag across the timeline and it works just like on a vinyl disc, the moment the needle drops, it’s the moment/frame Photoshop will show you.

you can also trim your stuff by cutting and deleting snippets of the bar. for that, you will drag your needle to the desired moment, use the scissor tool and then press delete to erase the unwanted bit.

it’s important to point out that the timeline only allows 0.03x or 0.07px speed, no matter what the speed the gif was before converting to that method. if the original speed is closer to 0.03x, then PS will define the new speed as 0.03x. if it’s closer to 0.07x, then it’s 0.07x. i always change the speed to 0.03x before converting to timeline for the sake of not screwing stuff up, which means i see my gif looping while editing in a faster way than Tumblr users will see when the gifset is posted. this takes a while to adjust to if you’re new to timeline giffing, but eventually you don’t think it’s jarring anymore.

that also means you will need to correct the speed after your gif is completely finished. to do that, i use this action.

you can zoom in and zoom out using the little mountain sliding bar. this will be useful later in the tutorial.

if you zoom to the max, you will see all the numbers above your layer bar. these are time marks. the thing is, they seem a bit weird at first. the bigger numbers indicate SECONDS (01:00f, 02:00f, 03:00f, etc), while the smaller and repetitive numbers indicate frames (5f, 10f, 15f, 25f). that means that the smallest drag of your needle possible (from point A to point B) refers to an interval of 1 frame. you will need to take this into consideration while animating stuff.

you can color code your layers, if you think that makes it easier for you to see what you are doing. this is something i do, not only in Photoshop but every Adobe product with a timeline. to change the color of a layer bar (the default is purple), you can right-click on your layer in the layer panel and click the color you want. the colors are the very last thing in the list when you right-click it.

another organization tip is the use of folders. if you create a folder in the layers panel, a folder is created inside the timeline and any layer inside of that folder will disappear from the panel until you click the little arrow next to the name of the folder in the timeline panel. you can color code your folder as well, making every layer inside of it the same color or even different colors.

THE BASICS OF KEYFRAMES

every change related to any property selected (transformation, opacity, style, text warp, position of the layer mask, activation of the layer mask) will be computed in the exact moment in the gif you change it. if that doesn’t happen, you can force Photoshop to do it by clicking the small diamond next to the property name.

let’s say you want an animation to start 0.5 seconds after the gif starts, so you will drag your “needle” to 0.5 seconds and then make the change (making a text bigger, moving a shape, etc). 

Photoshop will automatically bridge the gap between the state of the gif at 0 seconds and 0.5 seconds, thus animating your gif. 

to start animating, you will need to click the little clock next to the property you want to animate. make sure you click the clock while your needle is at the exact beginning of the gif.

every change (keyframe) will be marked with a small diamond under the layer bar, at the exact moment you changed it. that means if you make jarring changes in a short amount of time/frames, the animation will be quick and abrupt. if the interval is very long, the animation will be slow and smooth.

the selected(s) keyframe(s) will have their diamond painted yellow, while the unselected ones will be grayed out. 

you can right-click the diamonds to delete or copy them. if you have many diamonds and want to delete them all, you can click and drag to form a square and select all of them just like when you do to select many files at once on a PC folder. there’s also the option “select all” under the right-click panel.

you can also drag them and change their timing that way. if you have more than one diamond selected, if you drag them, their interval will remain the same, but the starting and finishing point of those two diamonds will change.

THE SQUARES BAR

the easiest of the two animations. this one doesn’t require keyframe animation, but i put this in the last bit of the tutorial for the sake of its flow.

first, i added the empty squares. they last as long as the gif lasts. after 6 frames, i added the first colored square and made that square last until the end of the gif. i repeated this in a staggered manner (+2 frames delay each colored square) so the colored squares appear at equal intervals. 

THE STATS BAR

the most difficult of the two, but don’t worry, you got this. 

first, you will need to structure your stats, ie, add the text, the dividing line and the pointed lines. that is, if you want to follow the exact design i used in my gif, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.

next, you will create rectangles that fill the entire stat bars. you will add a layer mask to each one of them and with a layer mask selected, select a rectangle about the size of your original rectangle, then paint it black. you will notice the original rectangle will disappear. if you delete the layer mask, the original rectangle will appear again. that is because you didn’t delete the original rectangle, you just hid it by using a layer mask.

there’s a chain icon between the layer and the layer mask in the layers panel, click it to unlink them.

click the clock next to “layer mask position” with your needle at 0 seconds/frames. drag your needle to the moment you want the stats to end and use the arrow keys to move the layer mask. you will notice the original rectangle will slowly be revealed by you moving the layer mask. you will also notice that a small diamond will appear in the “layer mask position” line in the timeline. you created a keyframe!

if you press play, you will see the animation from the bar going from null to full!

FURTHER READING/VIEWING

this tutorial uses layer mask animation to reveal text too!

a video tutorial for better visualization!

another keyframe tutorial, this time focusing on coloring!

if you still have any questions, feel free to contact me!

and if you (or anyone) else want, i can go in depth in animating each property, i just did a quick overview + explained the stats animation.

[sourcreammachine]

us state flag tierlist by how urgent the need to change them is

(not necessarily by objective quality, although they are ordered by my own personal preference within the tiers)

yeah everyone and their cunt’s done a tierlist of how good the us state flags are, but here’s one that’s more useful imo - how much they need to change. ie, how far up the statehouse’s agenda changing the shitass flag should be

the ‘perfect’ flags shouldn’t ever change. yeah, alabama’s good, i said it - it’s iconic and recognisable. and yeah colorado might be cheesy but it’s american cheese, it’s an icon. and arizona is the best flag do not @ me

‘ain’t broke don’t fix it’ means you can start nitpicking the flag, but honestly, nobody cares and there’s no point in changing. alaska and indiana are here because their mute colours hold back their excellent designs. california’s here because the bear should probably be bigger and have a different face. utah and mrs sippy’s new flags are both here because they’ve got the same problem - they’ve both chosen really horrible dark blues, honestly so bad that they should be in lower tiers, but they changed them too recently so they should stick for a while, until people get used to the, yeah, iconic and recognisable new designs. a placeholder for minnesota is here too, based offa the six finalist designs released on tuesday, because any of them would probably end up in that spot - imperfect but relatively good

‘minor tweaks maybe’ is where the nitpicks start becoming flaws and the good designs could be made perfect very easily. hawai’i doesn’t need the british canton, it just doesn’t. wyoming doesn’t need that seal inside the buffalo. and rhode island? well idk but it’s a bold design held back by, something. stew on it for a while

the final three tiers are the ones i believe should change. the first (non urgent) is for bad flags that remain somewhat distinct, and so are still managing to do their job - but could be had so much better. NC is ripping off texas. iowa and missouri are both overcomplicated and dull. and arkansas, ignoring the word ‘arkansas’ i’m definitely getting slavers’ rebellion vibes from it

the bottom two tiers unambiguously must change. ‘fairly urgent’ are the flags where there’s maybe one redeeming quality that sets the flag apart, and could be carried forward to the new one. LA’s pelican and OK’s osage shield are iconic, but they’re still a something-on-blue and need upgrading. florida is just alabama but with a seal, honestly pathetic and one of the list’s biggest tragedies. washington, yep, there he is, but it’s still just something on a plain background. i hesitated between putting delaware here or the tier below, but its boon is its recognisability with that yellowy diamond. then there’s georgia, probably the most controversial placement on the list. but yeah. that’s the fucking CSA flag. and the iconic state deserves so much better than just an undistinct crest on the slaver flag

and yeah the last category are where all the truly pathetic failures sit. the opening few have curious motifs that could be used for the new flag, like connecticut’s grapes, michigan’s elk and oregon’s 🅱️eaver. but they still suck utter pisswank, the distinguishing thing about them only becoming clear when you stop to look at it. the latter flags of the tier are fucking irredeemable trash. tell me you know which states those final four are when the picture’s zoomed out. it’s a fucking tragedy that new york the state is amongst the union’s worst, when the city’s iconic blue-and-orange could lend it so much inspiration (same could be said for IL being outshone by chicago). or if new york wants to make it distinct from the city, it could always look to old york shire’s iconic white rose. combine it with a tulip for old amsterdam and bam we’ve got a brilliant motif. i am honestly happy to call the vermontese flag the worst in the us, for a state with such history, with such a pronounced identity and spirit, how can it let itself have such horseshit. especially when the green mountain boys’ flag is such stupid, dumb brilliance. yeah, vermont is the worst because they should just change to the green flag end of story

BOUNS ROUND: provinces of canadada

perfect: la quebec

ain’t broke: sass, newfie & lab

tweak: nova scotia, new brunswick

non urgent: BC, PEI (both controversial picks ino, but they’re fuck ugly d@m)

change now: ontario, manitoba, albert

[yousignedupforthis]

Please I am a simple child whose editing skills are limited to using Paint... I just want an hq cloud pic that doesn't have a static countdown in the middle for my wallpaper

[thecloserkin]

fic rec: Flying Weight by flesh

fandom: Superntural

pairing: Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester

word count: 47k

Is it explicit: yes

Bottom line: the RoboSam AU that ruined me

Do you want to watch Dean Winchester in full-throttle self-destructive mode try to push Sam away for Sam’s own good? Do you want to watch Sam respond by clinging even tighter? Do you want to experience painnnnnn? Sister have I got the rec for you.

The thing about this fic is that unlike the show, the stakes here are very explicitly not “the world will end if we don’t do X.” The stakes are “do we give up on being a significant presence in each other’s lives.” And that is somehow worse. What does it say about Sam and Dean Winchester that the notion of going their separate ways and exchanging Christmas cards once a year is more unbearable than literally dying for each other?? I love these boys sfm but Zachariah was right, have you EVER seen a pair of more psychotically codependent motherfuckers.

This is a S6 AU and an amnesia fic. A re-souled Sam wakes to find that Dean, who’s been hunting with his soulless counterpart for 3 years, wants nothing to do with him. Sam persists until he pieces together why. I think it’s fair to say that the amnesia trope is generally powered by 1/2 of otp rediscovering why they fell in love with the other half. That is not what is happening here at all!! This is like, if the protagonist woke up from a coma and found his love interest had left him for someone else and wasn’t returning his calls and instead of idk, taking the hint like a normal person would, he decides to stalk his former love interest until he puts himself in so much danger that Love Interest is obliged to come rescue him. The overriding compulsion to find Dean, to stay with Dean whatever the cost, is terrible for Sam’s mental health but he never for a millisecond entertains the option of giving up. These boys don’t give up on each other.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

This fic is first of all a marvel of structural engineering. All the load-bearing parts are elegantly incorporated into the overall structure. When I was rereading this I got to the part in the beginning where Sam is combing through RoboSam’s storage unit for clues to “what happened during the three-year gap in my memory,” and he finds a book on falconry, and that one detail gave me the same spike of unease as if someone had walked over my grave. Because I knew what was coming. Then there are the rando hunters who kidnap Sam towards the beginning: they tie him up and taunt him about Dean, looks like that animal of yours has slipped his leash. I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out then, on the first go. The clues were laid out with exquisite care: RoboSam did not treat Dean well. RoboSam only fitfully treated Dean like a human being. Dw Dean extracts Sam from his kidnappers. And Dean riding to the rescue here neatly parallels a later climactic scene where Sam rescues Dean from these same hunter bros—who evidently have got nothing better to do than chase the Winchesters from one end of the damn country to the other—but the way Sam will rescue Dean is by feeding him his own blood. Oh, yes, Dean is a vampire now. Because RoboSam let him get turned (as in canon), and RoboSam declined to cure him (in a divergence from canon). RoboSam made the call that Dean as a vampire would be 1) a more effective hunter and 2) more tightly tethered to RoboSam (ie., Dean would fear losing control & drinking a clutch of innocents dry, so he’d rely on RoboSam to stop him). Fun fact: RoboSam never let Dean drink from him. It’s fucking poetic is what it is. It’s such a good fic.

The other fine quality that struck me about this fic is the cinematic sweep of certain scenes. The prose is mostly clear but unobtrusive so it gives your mind’s eye the space to zoom in and linger on certain objects. Like in the beginning Sam wakes up in Bobby’s panic room and he comes upstairs to find …no Dean but an empty whiskey glass sporting a lip stain. The glass is still warm. I am confident we in this fandom spend at least 30% of our time thinking about Dean Winchester’s lips—nice to know Sam’s rolling around in the gutter with us, is all. The whiskey glass will reappear at a crucial juncture later on, of course, because have I mentioned this fic is a MARVEL of structural engineering.

Here’s an early conversation between Sam and Bobby. Sam has just found out Dean’s a vampire:

”I need to find Dean," Sam says.

”Why?" says Bobby. "You gonna hunt him?"

It's not the brutality of Bobby's tone that stings Sam into silence. It's the fact he'd even ask Sam that. He's unsure, briefly, whether it's right or it's wrong that he never asked himself that.

”No," he says. "Of course not. He's my brother."

How Bobby must hate that phrase. He keeps on hearing it, because Sam and Dean keep on using it as justification for the stupidest, most selfish things. Sam hears how much Bobby's hates it in his whistled hiss of breath sucked in through gritted teeth.

”You know, I should'a had the guts and the sense to tell you boys this a long time ago. But I was a damn stupid coward and I kept on looking the other way. You and Dean are better off without each other. Whatever you think it is, love or loyalty or whatever, it's not. It's just plain wrong."

Bobby is asking, not unreasonably imo, if vampire!Dean should be considered a hunter or a monster. Not just because of what he is but what he’s done: Dean has spent the past 3 years pissing off a looooooot of people (some of whom recently got the jump on Sam and held him at gunpoint). Yet “he’s my brother” is as always Sam’s only answer. There is NO SCENARIO in which Sam can envision himself playing for the opposite team as Dean. Bobby’s maybe trying to plant the suggestion that Dean might be beyond saving, but quickly gives up and pivots to “you can both go to hell in the same handbasket, I wash my hands of the affair.” Lol fair enough. Bobby’s not an eejit, he uses the word wrong to describe the Winchesters’ bond and the insane thing is that the incest isn’t even the wrongest thing about it!!!

Here’s the scene where Sam finds out Dean and RoboSam fucked on the regular:

”You had sex with me?" Sam demands. Saying it out loud makes his cheeks burn red.

”No," Dean says. He's so adamant. He shakes his head at Sam, fingers splayed in front of himself to keep the mere suggestion of it at bay before it can get its dirt on him. "I know you, and I know not you, and that was not you. It looked like you, but it was not you-"

”It was me, it was my body!" Sam shouts. The words come out frothy with rage, but they're hard too, like he's spitting up stones. His face feels wrongly stretched, pulled out of shape.

Dean shuts down. Sam sees it in every inflection of his body language: face, stance, gaze. His mouth flickers, and Sam wonders if he's feeling those teeth pressing at his gums, ready to descend, hollow and hungry.

”They said it was all of you that was gonna come back. Which was basically nothing at all. It wasn't you."

He says it like certainty. Absolute, unshakeable truth. And maybe he's right. Sam wasn't there, Sam doesn't know. But it does nothing for Sam, because he's inherited this. His body played accomplice to his soulless self, and they messed everything up, and Dean let it happen. Dean took part in it.

He stabs a finger at Dean, and it wobbles dementedly in front of him. "You had no right," he says finally. The words are mangled and blunt-ended.

The line of Dean's jaw flexes, and Sam's savagely glad to see that weakening, just for its mayfly lifespan, before Dean is solid again. Dean nods to himself slightly, like he's thinking it over and finding no argument.

He shrugs a third time, final, letting Sam roll right off him. "That's why we can't hunt together anymore."

He's destroyed it. He fucked Sam and fucked up their lives and now Sam's left with fucking nothing. He's got nothing.

The takeaway here is: 1) If he doesn’t have Dean then Sam believes there is nothing else in the world that belongs to him, you hear that fam??? 2) Sam is hurt that Dean chose someone else over him. Dean’s never chosen anyone over Sam before, and now he’s gone and fucked RoboSam when he never expressed a single scintilla of desire for actual Sam, wtf??? 3) Dean thinks Sam’s repulsed by the sex, when in fact Sam is mad that Dean cheated on him (no, Sam and Dean weren’t together pre-Lucifer and the Cage, but you can cheat on someone emotionally). Way Dean sees it, he’s on trial as a criminal and he’s also the star witness for the prosecution. Dean brings out Exhibit A: Violated My Baby Brother, in a shameless gambit to get Sam to pronounce a guilty verdict, but Sam can’t even hear any of the evidence over the sound of “somebody is trying to sEpArAtE me from Dean”. “Somebody” in this case being Dean himself. Dean could be a convicted serial killer and Sam’s first move would be to find a way to join him in maximum security lockup.

It takes the remainder of the fic to resolve this initial misimpression: Dean thinks he’s so depraved that Sam can’t possibly want him anymore, and Sam thinks Dean prefers RoboSam over real Sam. Sounds absurdly simple when I put it in those terms right? Sounds like the plot of many a romance novel. Here’s Sam musing on it:

He’s Dean's ex-boyfriend. The way Dean talks about him it's clear he's on Dean's mind a lot, to be spoken of fondly and silently missed, remembered in every minute detail. And Sam can't compete with a guy who has such inhuman superiorities that he doesn't need to eat or sleep. Sam can't compete with a guy who got to Dean in a way that Sam's soul just won't let him … It was goodbye Dean had been saying at Bobby's, not hello, not welcome back.

I want to reach through the screen and shake some sense into this child so badly. HOW DOES HE NOT SEE that Dean stuffed Sam’s soul back into his body in the CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE that re-soulled!Sam wouldn’t want anything to do with vampire!Dean? And yet Dean did it anyway, because when you love someone you want the best for them even when their best life doesn’t have space for you in it.

This fic does a lot with Sam’s issues around bodily autonomy, which is a hobbyhorse of mine and a subject I find endlessly fascinating. It does a lot with the way violence gets your blood pumping just as much as arousal does—how for Sam and Dean the violence and the arousal may in fact be difficult to disambiguate. In the course of this fic Sam watches Dean hustle pool, drink human blood, fuck a one-night-stand…all while Sam looks on. In all these scenes Dean is putting on a show for Sam and there’s nothing hotter than that. Sam’s neuroses around bodily autonomy are so deep-seated that while he is watching Dean and some other guy get it on, he refuses to touch his own throbbing dick because he’s trying to prove something (that he’s not RoboSam? that he can treat Dean better than RoboSam?). Of course it’s for nought because Dean, being a vampire, can hear Sam’s arousal in his elevated heartbeat. Christ, what a scene.

This is Dean apologizing for not being good enough for Sam:

”I’m sorry this is what you came back to." He looks Sam in the eye as he says it. "I am, I'm sorry."

And:

“I get that it might all seem pretty nasty to you, but you know what? It worked for us. He didn't expect me to be any better than I am. We were as bad as each other. "

Jfc the volume of toxicity that circulates in this man’s body!! It’s a wonder his organs are intact. Dean hates himself, and he thinks Sammy deserves the world, ergo Sam must divest himself of Dean. The conclusion follows, ironclad, from the premises.

Sam is not leaving without a fight:

Sam isn't sure how Dean expects that to work. It's never worked before. Not Stanford, not the apocalypse, not either one of them dying. They run in orbits that always come back together, like planets moving on ancient stellar math.

And:

His mind's still back at the Impala, still thinking about how it's supposed to go: Dean standing quiet by his side while Sam chooses the dowry of guns he wants to carry away with him.

The thing that hits me hardest about this fic is that noted smartmouth Dean Winchester cracks a bevy of jokes, but in 50k words not one of them lands: Not for Sam, not for the reader. The RoboSam interlude has stolen that ease from the brothers, and now they’re weird around each other and on edge all the time and it’s a goddamn crime.

Ok real quick this is my favorite scene, Sam goes rooting around Dean’s duffel for a razor and discovers ….a muzzle:

”You weren't here. You won't understand, and I'm not interested in trying to make you." He cants his head briefly towards the duffel, more particularly to what's inside it. "You stay the hell out of my stuff. You stop trying to involve yourself in something that's got nothing to do with you."

It has everything to do with Sam. It's Sam's body, and what it did to Dean, and what Dean let Sam's body do to him. And it's Dean, which means that if only because of that, Sam would be involved.

Surprisingly shaky on his legs, Sam gets to his feet. His gaze won't rise any higher than Dean's knees.

”Muzzles are for animals and monsters," he says in a controlled voice. "He shouldn't have been –" He wets his lips and forces the next word out, "fucking you if he thought of you as either.”

Whaaaaat the actual fuck!!!! Sam defending Dean against an abusive ex is everything. Also, did you notice how when Dean said “it’s none of your business” Sam doesn’t counter “it was my body—of course it’s my business,” he counters with the more primal assertion that everything that affects Dean is, ipso facto, Sam’s business.

[pookiepoodle]

The boys buy you a paci ft. Shiratorizawa

Hi guys! After a lot of interest in my “little” stuff, I’ve decided to write some more! For those of you who aren’t littles but are still interested in my writing, I will continue to write other stuff too don’t worry! Please feel free to check out my masterlist, I don’t own any of the art here. All the pacis here cannot be guaranteed to be little pacis (ie, some might be for actual babies) but it’s the thought that counts. Enjoy!

For other parts of series:

Karasuno, Nekoma, Aoba Johsai

Ushijima

I hate to say this but Ushijima isn’t the most... creative? I mean, in terms of pacis at least. He buys you a purple one, though he’s not sure why. Perhaps it’s because of his time at Shiratorizawa, or maybe it’s because you look so pretty in purple. But, whatever the reason, he isn’t embarrassed to give it to you and will always encourage you to bring it with you, just in case you feel like you need it. 

Tendou

So, let’s talk about Tendou. This man is crazy, but in a good way and when he hands you a packet of pacis, you can’t help but blush a little. Why? Because they’re all telling the truth. Plus, if you ever have playdates with other littles, he likes to let their carers know who you belong to. You’re just far too adorable in his opinion and he doesn’t want to lose you to a “better daddy”. 

Semi

Oh my god, he thinks this is hilarious. You, glaring up at him as he turns the dial all the way to 1, the lowest possible number on the paci, giggling as he “shh’s” you. It’s useful for whenever he needs to let you know to be quiet, the simple gesture making you melt as he turns down the dial, making sure none of the band on the zoom call can see you before pressing a kiss to your forehead. 

Shirabu

He is a busy medical student and you know that he can’t always give you the attention you sometimes need as he has to study for his exams and such. But, he makes sure to keep you well stocked and happy, giving you two beautiful knew pacis with lovely simple designs. You always smile when nursing on them, knowing that your carer and boyfriend will be home from the library soon to cuddle.

Goshiki

He is very new to all of this and is so nervous when picking out a paci for you, bless his heart. He dithers between the plainer ones and the bedazzled pacis before settling on this trio pack. The colors are cute, the bear is adorable and they seem to be good quality! He hopes you like them a lot...

[captain-lonagan]

watching george’s spy manhunt i think i prefer the way this is edited to how dream’s manhunts are edited. like dream’s manhunts are fine but george’s edits have so many little quality of life tweaks (that are probably a part of why the video took forever and a day to make).

like the recent couple manhunts have had cuts or zooms to show what on screen got dream’s attention but sometimes they’re a little choppy (most of them are in chases so that’s understandable) but george’s zooms and cuts are just nice dude. and the little flashbacks to Relevant Information (ie in the library when he’s digging through the walls he shows a flashback to him seeing dream place a bed behind one of them). normally in manhunts we don’t really get whether dream’s traps are entirely riffed or if they’re based on previous information about the hunters. but in this one george does a quick show to the relevant info so that you get what he’s doing and it kinda adds to the tension? not to bring hitchcock into manhunt editing but it’s like that thing he said about how if you show the audience a family eating dinner and suddenly the table explodes, that’s a cool explosion but the buildup is questionable? but george shows us the bomb and timer under the table and it adds tension and makes the scene more effective imo.

there are other things that im forgetting about rn but like. god damn that was a well put together video. kudos to george

[churkey]

Hiiii!! I love your gifs! They are always so beautiful.

I was just wondering if you would be willing to share what you do to get your gifs so crisp and HD looking?

Oh man...

For the first time ever, in answering this question, I'm not going to talk about what programs and such that I use (although, for the curious, it's ffmpeg for making the gifs, inclusive of dithering, cropping, and scaling. Imagemagick for colour editing/adjustments -- brightness, colour temperature, and saturation).

Instead, I'll talk about what I learned in my quest to make the Most Perfect Gifs Ever. So these will be more tips than anything else about the factors that impact crispness.

Use the highest quality video source you can find. Of any and all tips, this is probably the most important. Most of my stuff is from bluray sources (or dvd or a high quality digital download).

Be very... conservative when it comes to editing colours, brightness, and such. The big limitation when it comes to gifs is their restriction to 256 colours. It's where most of the artifacts come from. These days, there are really only three types of edits I make: brightness, saturation, and color temperature.

Adjusting colour temperature is the best way I've found to deal with the yellow/orange tint prevalent in S&L.

Usually, if I brighten an image, I increase saturation because brightening usually means adjusting the white balance or some such, which will washout the colours.

RE: brightness, I used to partially accomplish this by increasing the gamma... Of all types of adjustments, experience has taught me this is the *worst* for creating artifacts (ie, those visible squarish pixel blocks). But if you do increase gamma, increase contrast to offset the impact.

Dithering! A lot of advice I've seen recommends error diffused dithering (like floyd steinberg) but I've honestly always had better results with ordered dithering (which is the type that, at lower settings produces that visible crosshatch pattern). You get greater control over the outcome using ordered dithering and, if your source is high quality, there's almost no visible difference between a higher ordered dither and an error diffused dither. But... I guess it's up to individuals here. When doing lower quality stuff, I prefer the additional crispness that ordered dithering provides, even if you can see the crosshatch pattern. Oh! I almost forgot to mention that ordered dithering can usually do a better job at reducing colour banding, which is almost always going to be present in gifs because of the limited colour palette.

If you're posting your gifs on tumblr, you most likely will end up scaling the gif down to 540 or 268 or whatever. Some advice I've read recommends doing any colour adjustments *after* scaling because scaling filters have to compress colours. I don't think I noticed a real difference between scaling before or after colour editing (right now, I adjust brightness/saturation/colour temp before scaling). But! If you do scale, you'll want to use some sort of scaling algorithm for best results. I think photoshop uses bilinear by default but it might not be the best. Outside of photoshop land, the lanczos filter is usually recommend when scaling down. It's what I use.

Cropping! Lately, I've been cropping at a 16:9 ratio, but I also like the 4:3 or 1:1 (the square!). Crop *before* scaling or adjusting colour. Cropping smaller rectangles is what gives you the 'zoom in' effect. But it can also mess with the colours/sharpness, if you crop a significantly smaller rectangle than the original dimensions, much the same effect as actually zooming in. It'll matter somewhat less if you scale down smaller with a filter that sharpens but... this also means that it's not great to crop *smaller* than what the resulting size will be. Scaling up usually requires a different filter and isn't something I've played with all that much. Obviously, you might not have a choice! Some of the interviews and stuff I've posted have source videos *smaller* than 540w. These rarely look super awesome but... you do what you can. This is usually when I lower the ordered dithering setting.

Framerate! I um, usually use 20 fps. Which is almost the same as film (which is usually 24 fps). This helps a lot with making the gifs seem HD, because it makes movement look smoother. I never go less than 15 fps, though.

Also, usually any colour adjustments (especially brightness) will increase the size of the gif, which usually means adjusting the duration or framerate to make it fit under tumblr's 10mb limit (which is a whole other thing, btw, the size of a gif is impacted by many factors). One thing to note is that any gif more than 4mb will be automatically further compressed by tumblr -- to 'gifv'/webp (which has the greatest impact in the mobile app). It'd be nice if tumblr just let us upload webp, since they do look nicer. Man, the 'gifs' you'd get if I could directly upload in that format...

Um, I think that's all I have for specific advice. Honestly, my most general one would be avoid adjusting colour/brightness/etc if you can or do the most minimal adjustments as you can. Of course, this boils down to aesthetics. I personally find the yellow/orange tint to a lot of the indoor scenes of S&L offensive, which is why I almost always adjust the colour temperature of those scenes. Likewise, the dim/dark lighting of TW is irritating to me because I have chronic migraines and try to keep my screens as dim as possible, which can make those scenes impossible for me to see. In my early days, I honestly didn't realize that I was making my gifs overly bright or increasing the gamma too much until I switched my monitor to a 'normal' setting for brightness. Now, I adjust enough so that I can *see* the images at my current settings and then stop, so they still look dark, just not as dark. One good way to keep an eye on how bright you've made an image is to look at the brightest regions (especially if there's a visible source of light, like a lamp or window).

Strangely, because both S&L and TW were filmed in Vancouver/the lower mainland in BC, where it tends to be cloudy, the outdoor scenes can look a little... washed out. I usually bump up the saturation, just a little, unless there's direct sunlight. Lowering the colour temperature is a good way to deal with the unforgiving nature of fluorescent lights (increasing is usually how you get rid of yellow/orange tints).

And, man, it took me a lot of googling to figure out that adjusting colour temperature was the best way to deal with that yellow/orange tint. I used to increase the blue levels, which still isn't a bad idea. But then you need to start delving into colour theory and colour spaces, which can be a bit much and definitely increases the complexity of gif making.

But honestly, you can get great results if all you do is use a good scaling filter and adjust the dithering as needed. Depending on your tools, making gifs can be... time consuming. I honestly can't imagine using photoshop and having to manually make each gif. My current methods allow me to adjust colour for an entire scene, then generate all the gifs I want. Most of my time making gifs these days is actually spend processing. Cutting videos, cropping, and generate the gifs take me very little time.

Hope this helps!

[hayjeon]

Tips on creating fun fanfic headers!

i had so much fun writing the fanfic writing tips yesterday and i got a few more questions about header-making, and so i decided to make one more of these! i hope these tips help somebody out there! hope you enjoy :) 

p.s. these tips won’t require any hard editing skills or photoshop skills, nor any expensive tablets/apps! 

typically i spend around ~5-10 min creating one header, and that’s either after i think of/finish a fic. i have so much fun doing it and sharing it with you that i figured i’d share how i do it! 

why headers? 

as I talked about in my fic tips, one of the most eye-catching things about fics are headers. when i’m scrolling through a rec page, my home page, a tag, or even someone’s masterlist, i’m immediately drawn to well-made headers. that’s what captures my attention, and then i’m more drawn in by the content. so, you can say that headers is your own version of an ad for your own fic, or an extension of it (like the cover of a novel!) 

if you were writing your own book, imagine how much time you’d spend figuring out what you wanted your cover to look like. i try to have as much fun and invest as much time making my own headers because it’s just the cherry on top to my finished product :) 

disclaimer: BUT HEADERS ARE NOT NECESSARY/DO OR DIE! if you don’t feel like you want to do this, then keep writing! its ok! this is just a suggestion. i’ve seen plenty of well-written fics without headers at all, so don’t beat yourself up over not having one/not wanting to do one. this is truly just a fun, extra kind of thing, and only keep reading if you want to learn how i do it! :) 

tips for people who don’t want to make headers: if you still want something to make your fic stand out, use gifs! i use them in my drabbles a lot! this will at least give ur fic a lil boost! 

how to find pictures

I typically use unsplash, which is a free website in which photographers upload their HQ pics for free use. the pics are really high quality, typically stock photos, and don’t have any logos on them like other ones on google. unfortunately, you won’t find any pics of the members or anything, but you’ll find beautiful stock photos of typical scenes like “ocean scene” or “desert scene.” I found the stock photo for cut me open (shown below) on that site by just looking up “medical” or “doctor”. 

i used to use google a lot and just use keywords like “desert scene HQ” and edit the search settings to deliver HQ pics, and a minimum # of pixels, but unplash is definitely better in terms of quality, more aesthetic photos, and no logos/watermarks. 

on some occasions, i will screenshot some scenes of youtube videos, turning up the quality to 1080p or 4k and zooming in so that the pixelation is as crisp as possible, and then editing it later to look good (which i’ll explain in a second!) 

the above photo was a scene from the specific characters from the drama, “100 Days My Prince” that I screenshotted from a youtube video that TvN uploaded, recapping the drama. I cropped it just right so that their faces were left out, which i’ll also mention soon! 

things to look for when picking pictures: 

you want the picture to reflect a specific motif/theme from your fic! if its a moody fic, then try to find a moody scene that you can edit with filters/lighting to look even moodier; or if the characters’ jobs are a big portion of the fic (like cut me open/doctor theme) try to look for stock photos with that shown very clearly!

make sure its high quality: tumblr really dumbs down the quality of the photo when uploading it, so try your best to find something with a lot of pixels in it so that when you start editing, you don’t sacrifice too much of the quality already

try to look for something simple/clean: a picture with too much subject (ie. people in the background, or too much detail) may end up taking away from the main point of your header, which is your title. so find pics without too much clutter! 

try to make sure its landscape: which will help during editing to save some of the quality better. 

editing your pictures

now that you have a specific photo you want to use, now its time to edit! I use VSCO CAM (free app) and my own apple photos cropping tool for faster crops. 

crop/adjust: if your picture is too large/wide, crop it to at least a 16:9 ratio. i’d say aim for skinnier if you can, so that you don’t take up too much space (especially if you’re planning to add headers to your masterlist). also crop out any faces, any clutter, any unnecessary details, so you have a nice, clean slate to work on when adding text. 

contrast/sharpen/clarity/white balance/etc.: i’m not gonna give you a lesson on photography, but i’ll tell you I learned like 80% of everything that i know just by fiddling with it on VSCO! So just try it out and play with the app, see what you can make of it. i’d say a rule of thumb to follow is that you want happier fics with a brighter tone, and moodier/angsty fics with a darker tone so that it can reflect the nature of the fic further, without saying anything! 

if you wanna be extra af like me, then go a step further and photoshop your pics. this one is a good example; when i screenshotted this scene from another youtube video for my fic One Year My Love part 2, i was specifically looking for a scene that would showcase the ornate/regal details of their clothing/environment in contrast to part 1′s modest clothing/scene (the first header in this post). 

i found this scene, but actually, this scene portrays the Crown Prince and the Princess, not y/n. So, the actors weren’t smiling at all! They were actually frowning at eachother in this scene, to portray the tension between the two characters and their marriage. 

So, I took the extra step, adjusting the pic with VSCO so that their shoulders/chins were at the same level, cropped off their faces up until their lips, and then used the adobe photoshop free app to photoshop their lips to be SMILING at eachother!!!! subtle, but important! 

call me crazy for taking that much time but i’m so proud of how it turned out and i loved every second of making this one. that way, this scene makes it portray the happy ending for Jungkook and y/n! 

adding text to your header

you can use any app out there, but i really like Font Candy! I actually ended up buying the 2$ version of this and never regretted it, but you can actually find a lot of their basic fonts on the free version; I tend to use the fonts: OSTRICH SANS, BEBAS, TREND, and INTRO the most! these are pretty clean-looking, block letters that look good whenever i put them as my titles. 

I love this app too cause you can easily control the spacing between letters to make them take up more space, add shadows, or even make them contrast their background using the overlay feature; like this one i made for wildest dreams (see how the text changes depending on what part of the photo its on? amazing! it’s literally with a click of a button!!)

And i’ll always add “written by HAYJEON” or “by HAYEJON”, space it out, and add it somewhere underneath as my own branding.

orrrrrr 

if you want to be more creative, you can even go a step further and use whatever you have on hand to enhance whatever you’re trying to portray. 

for this one, i ended up finding this amazing photo on unsplash and i thought it would do a create job of portraying the “movie-set” quality of what wildest dreams is going to be about. this stock photo had someone else’s names on it, so i used my ipad, and used instagram to just erase the existing writing with the color of the background, and then wrote in my own title and url with my own handwriting/apple pen!!! 

i thought this was pretty cool because it’s like wildest dreams is its own movie/has its own movie set, which, once it’s out, you guys will see that it’s supposed to be! 

saving/uploading

this is pretty easy/obvious, but i figured i’d mention it. all the apps i mentioned are available on the appstore, and they will save directly to your photos. after doing that, i’ll just upload them into a special folder i have on my google drive so that when i’m finished writing a fic on tumblr using my laptop, i can easily download the photos without sacrificing quality. easy! 

and that way, i can save them forever; even if i have to delete them from my computer, i can always redownload them! 

side note: making text separators

i just recently started doing this, but ever since tumblr took down their text separators, i’ve just been cropping the bottom like 5-10 pixels of the header to use as my text separators! (with my laptop)

i saw some other writer doing it and thought that it looked better than what i had used previously (a cropped photo of a random line i found on google); i found that doing this tied my fics together a little better and just looked better aesthetically; 

so there it is! hope you enjoyed! :) i would love to see what other tips you guys have been using, feel free to send me an ask or reply to this post; and if you end up using any of my tips, please let me know! I love to hear from you guys all the time <3 

lots of love, especially during these times, 

hay <3 

[kaiowut99]

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Episode 57 Subbed (Finalized)

The Kaiser VS Ed! A Battle in the Pro League

Kaiser Ryou and Ed Phoenix are set to duel in the Pro Dueling League.  While Ed’s deck is an E-Hero deck, it contains different cards and strategies than Judai’s, and so he Fusion-Summons “Phoenixguy.” The Kaiser strikes back with his Cyber Dragon cards, and Judai and the others, knowing it’s a deck he’s faced before, assume Ed to be weak.  At last, the Kaiser closes in on him with Cyber End Dragon, strengthened by his Power Bond, but...

And a newly finalized 57 is all done! Only took 2.5 weeks, so not too shabby, lol.  It’s a neat episode, establishes what the Pro League Ryou’s moved onto is like, we get some fated insight into our mysterious new freshman, and... Ryou’s spiral into Hell Kaiser is set into motion.  Also, Judai learns something new about his deck, which... c’mon, ya dork.  Overall, a good episode.

(Also, did want to note that, for Ed’s Heroes, I decided to use “[x]guy” as opposed to “[x] Guy” as I’d done before (ie, “Phoenixguy” vs “Phoenix Guy”); given that it’s a riff off of Judai’s “[x]man/lady” Heroes, and it’s written that way in Japanese without a space between “[x]” and “guy”, I figured it’d make sense.  Means it’ll be “Diamondguy,” “Diehardguy,” etc when we get to Ed’s D-Heroes reveal next time.)

On the fixes/edits side: had a few card fixes to do, but the big ones were adding Burstlady’s oft-forgotten shoulder strap and taking a crack at fixing the signs Ryou walks past in Domino City that were mirrored for some reason, though I’d handled this latter one as I prepared 56.  Details below the cut~

Enjoy, folks! After a little downtime (we do apparently have something happening tomorrow in the US which, however you go about it, you should consider taking part in if you haven’t yet [wake me up when dueling to settle world issues is being debated]), I’ll be looking more into working on 5D’s 28′s Dub-Uncut edit, mixed with preparing for finalizing both GX 58 and 59; as it’s the first real Judai VS Ed duel, and one of my favorites, I’ll be trying to release them together, so stay tuned!

Translations/Fixes!

As Judai and Misawa chat about Judai’s deck, he pulls out a magazine flipped to a page about Ryou and Ed; as I did in 53, I translated what was visible from the article and “editorialized” the translation such that what was visible vertically originally was visible horizontally.  After applying the translation in Photoshop, I recreated the zoom-in for the shot in Sony Vegas.

As Ryou enjoys the fine Domino City night and thinks about Ed’s deck, he walks past several storefronts where the awning signage is reversed for some reason; to fix this, I stitched together the entire shot, then used layers in Photoshop to flip the signage in question.  Once that was done, I redid the panning shot in Sony Vegas, masking Ryou and some of the attached building over the shot as needed to fill it out well.  Probably the most intensive edit here, as Vegas would keep crashing on me every few keyframes after a while (😭), but I fixed this as I prepared to finalize 56, so this didn’t take much editing time here.

During the eyecatch, I noticed a quick frame as Ed is moving upward past Ryou where he suddenly moves down before continuing to move up; I just replaced that frame with the one just before in Vegas.  Small quality-of-life fix, but y’know.

As Ed gets ready to fuse Featherman and Burstlady for Phoenixguy, when Burstlady appears on the field, she’s without her shoulder strap and arm band.  I used Photoshop to draw them on her in the frame once she’s fully materialized, basing it off of her appearance as she’s about to fuse with Featherman in the next shot, then when I worked it into the footage in Vegas, I did so first by working backwards and moving the edited frame down to match Burstlady’s position as she rises, then keyframing a brightness filter just on the added strap and arm band, and then finally masking in the rays of light from the Solid Vision over the strap and arm band.  Ultimately thought it came out better than 4Kids having to just throw on another burst of light over their edit, lol.

As Ed notes that Spark Gun being used three times destroys it, there’s a blank Effect Monster card where Phoenixguy should be; I first made a proxy for Phoenixguy, then threw it and a Sparkman proxy onto the first frame of the shot in AfterEffects, after which I redid the panning shot in Vegas.

As Ed looks on after Ryou summoned Cyber End Dragon, it looks like they left Phoenixguy on his Disk in his third Monster Zone with Shining Phoenixguy barely visible in his fourth--except he’d already fused Phoenixguy with Sparkman to leave Shining Phoenixguy alone on his field.  I just edited the Phoenixguy card out of the third Zone in Photoshop, then extended the frame for the whole shot before just masking out the newly blank Zone.

As Ryou declares an attack with Cyber End Dragon, a lone impact line looks to have been left over the back of Ryou’s Disk extending into the whooshing background; I edited the first 18 frames of the shot to remove it, recoloring Ryou’s Disk and the affected parts of the background, and then looped those 18 frames for the rest of the shot, as I noticed that was where they started reusing them.

[unpopularly-opinionated]

My friend shared with me this reddit thread where someone outlined a list of features they claim are “missing” from CP2077, and because I’m me and like to rant, I wanted to go through it and agree/disagree based on what I think should or shouldn’t be in the game.

So probably spoilers below, at least for gameplay.

- Walk toggle for keyboard.

Agree.

- Key re-mapping for certain elements.

Agree. The game has some rebinding functions, but not enough to be honest.

- Accessibility features missing (ie: text scaling for menus).

Agree.

- In-game benchmark feature.

Personally, I think this is somewhat extraneous and I wouldn’t knock a game for not having it since most games don’t, but sure if they add it I wouldn’t complain.

- Dash should be a separate key and not a double press of walking key.

HARD agree. It’s beyond me that they thought it was okay to have that as-is, honestly. It makes moving around while sneaking a huge pain because you accidentally dodge which puts you into a standing position which can reveal you easily. At the absolute least, they should disable dodging when crouched, but ideally allow it to be rebound to something else.

- Crouch and skip dialogue should not share the same key.

Again, HARD agree. It’s possible to rebind the key (I certainly did) but something I noticed is that, while the dialogue no longer skips when I press crouch, it doesn’t seem to register the crouch button at all while in dialogue, meaning you can’t uncrouch if in dialogue.

- The minimap is too zoomed in to be helpful in many cases.

I only noticed this as an issue while driving, personally. You’ll be going 90mph down the freeway and not know that your turn is coming up until you’re already 90 miles beyond it. Outside of that, I’m not sure why you’d need the minimap zoomed out but hey if it fixes it while driving, I’m for it. Agree.

- Missing a toggle aim feature.

Quality of life, sure. I won’t use it, but agree.

- Ability to respec attributes (Note: Existing item respecs perks only)

Personally, I disagree with this. I think respeccing perks is fine because some of the perks are kinda lame so I can understand wanting to undo that, but I feel like respeccing attributes would sort of negate the purpose of developing a character a certain way. It makes multiple playthroughs more valid, forcing you to develop your different characters different ways. Sooo disagree.

- Ability to disable objective marker.

Agree. Mild nuisance to be sure, but still a nuisance never the less.

- Ability to lower ADS sensitivity.

Quality of life, sure. Agree.

- Add proper ultrawide (21:9, 32:9) support.

Quality of life, sure. Agree.

- Add loot by area or/and autoloot feature.

Eh... I don’t know. I think there should be a “scrap item” button when looting added but I’m unsure about a loot all or autoloot feature. It’s a change that I personally think falls under “optimizing the play out of the game”. Disagree.

- Add “stash all” feature.

And then some. Inventory management is atrocious in this game, it’s actually unreal how they thought it was okay to ship it like that. You can only manage one item at a time, and the UI needs to completely reload each time you do. It’s obscene. Hard agree.

- Add transparency option for HUD elements.

Quality of life, sure. Agree.

- Add way to remove mods from unequipped weapons.

This was actually sort of news to me. I’ve just been scrapping weapons I unequip with the mods still attached, assuming the mods were just going back to my inventory. Evidently that’s not been the case, but I haven’t actually noticed it as an issue because mods are so frequently found. A bit arguable, to be sure, but I don’t see why guns couldn’t return their mods automatically when dismantled. So agree, I guess.

- Add toggle mouse acceleration.

Quality of life, sure. Agree.

- Driving markers and onscreen trajectory (alternative GPS).

I don’t actually know what this means. Does this mean have the line leading to your objective be in-world as opposed to the minimap? I can maybe see that being a thing, I guess. If that’s the case, agree.

- Body slider customization (height, weight, muscle mass).

Eh...I’m ambivalent on this one. It seems extraneous in that it’s unnecessary and just something someone wants rather than something the game strongly needs, but at the same time, with as much marketing that went into how customizable your character is in this game, it’s sort of depressing how poor the character customization really is. Because of that, part of me wants to agree with this, on the grounds that the game was sort of sold to us this way. So I’ll say I tentatively agree.

- Very few options for some of the character creation features (hair colour, tattoos, skin complexion, scars, etc).

See above.

- Animations for eating and drinking (excluding scripted ones).

The problem with adding animations to consumables is that not only would you need one for each type of consumable but that the animation would then need to completely play out each time, which can give players burnout. Going to have to disagree with this one.

- Unable to remove underwear outside of inventory.

I assume this means giving the player the ability to run around stark naked as opposed to in your underwear, and weirdly enough I have to agree. Much like the character customization, a significant amount of attention was paid to the fact that this game has nudity, and yet nothing is done with it. Even in the areas where you’d expect nudity to play a part (I.e. having sex, showering, etc.) it doesn’t, so it begs the question why even implement it?

- Vehicle customization.

This is going to maybe sound odd given my next answer but I kind of agree with this one to an extent. You can buy a fair amount of vehicles in the game, but you can’t customize any of them. At the very least, changing it’s colour and/or design I think is warranted.

- Apartment customization.

This I disagree with, again, to an extent. This isn’t Fallout 4 or the Sims, I don’t think there needs to be a fleshed-out feature to decorate your apartment. I do however think that some changes to it would be nice, even if they’re just preset changes. Like maybe the layout of misc. objects in your apartment changes as time goes on. Shit moves around, I don’t know. Or maybe you can pay for preset additions, like buying a lamp or poster or something that always goes in the same spot, but lets you feel like you live there I guess. Ultimately though, this is completely extra and unnecessary. Disagree.

- Cosmetic slots or transmog feature.

Hard agree. Again, customization of your character was made out to be a big deal, so let us wear the clothes we want to wear. The number of times I’ve had to run out in a skirt that says “Bitch” on it and a bra as a man simply because they’re my best clothes is unreal.

- Very few actual merchant stores in quantity and variety.

Quantity, I somewhat agree. The map could do with a few more of each type of merchant, although the map does sometimes already feel cluttered so perhaps not. Variety however, I disagree. I think there’s plenty variety in terms of merchants, I’m not sure what else you’d need. There’s merchants for guns, clothes, hacks, cyberware, resources, and consumables. What else is there.

- No garages or parking lots.

I assume this is related to owning multiple vehicles which I don’t yet so I’m not sure I understand where this argument is coming from. There is a parking garage at your apartment, so I don’t see why that couldn’t be a garage you can use, but ultimately I can’t weigh in on this without more information.

- Crowds have low level of reactivity and awareness to the game world.

This one bugs me because it’s like how much reactivity do non-interactable NPCs need? They run away from cars and violence. They say “oh shit” lines when you’re driving into them or shooting near them or they see a body, etc. What more do you need? Gonna have to disagree.

- Very few interactive NPCs outside of missions with meaningful dialogue.

See above and literally every open world game ever.

- Very few options to meaningfully construct a personality to V. You get to choose mission endings, but not an actual persona.

I disagree, I think you can pretty comfortably pick a persona for V. I mean it’s not the most advanced system in the world, no, but every game is going to limit your options. You can choose to be an asshole, a scumbag, a nice guy, honest, a liar, competent, incompetent, etc. It all depends on your attributes and what dialogue options you pick really.

- Lack of non-action oriented stories and quests about meaningful themes of cyberpunk dystopia.

This one I sort of agree with, but then again I’m a huge philosophy nerd so I generally can’t get enough philosophy in my games. I want every game to be as deep as Bioshock. I still have a long way to go in CP2077, so perhaps the quests get better, but many of them I’ve not found super interesting. Some have been memorable, sure, but very few, and of those not many are memorable for fitting the Cyberpunk theme explicitly.

- Player cannot smoke.

This one is just funny to me because, yeah in an RPG it’s not ideal to railroad the player, but because of the way the story goes, V doesn’t smoke. All so they can have a few funny lines of dialogue in the story, but w/e I’m okay without smoking.

- Weapon mods and skill trees largely irrelevant outside of marginal and mostly numerical improvements to combat.

I kind of agree with this. To be honest, I don’t even look at any of the stats outside of DPS and I get along just fine. I am playing on normal, so perhaps at a higher difficult these things matter more, but I can’t imagine how much more. So sure, I agree.

- Lack of emergent gameplay events in the game world (ie: dynamic and random triggers).

This falls under “how much is enough”, similar to the bit about the NPC interactions. From what I’ve seen so far, the only in-world ‘events’ that transpire are shootouts between cops and gangs that aren’t marked on your map as predetermined events. Could there be more? Sure, I guess. Does there need to be more? Eh, not really.

- Unable to alter character’s appearance (barbershop, tattoo parlors, plastic surgeon).

Agree. One mission I did, one of the rewards I received was a tattoo which made me think I was going to frequently unlock new customization aspects like that, but it ended up being a piece of cyberware for some odd reason. I think it would be neat if you didn’t have every bit of customization unlocked from the start and could change your appearance as you go unlocking more things.

- Lack of character reflection outside of the few mirrors available. This furthers the disconnection between the player and the character.

This was something I was thinking about genuinely, when standing in front of a mirror. A mirror has to be ‘activated’ in order to start showing your reflection, which I thought was odd, but I assumed it was because of performance issues which makes sense. At one point, even though my PC can’t run the game at ultra graphics, I switched over to it to see if mirrors would reflect all the time but they do not. I don’t however think we need to see our character all the time but more would certainly be better.

- No ownership of items (you can rob NPCs under their nose).

Yeeeeah, this bit I find kinda odd to be honest, especially because the UI for looting items is red which is commonly the colour used to denote “this item is owned and picking it up constitutes as theft”. Part of me thinks that the reason items don’t have ownership though is because of how clunky the stealth system is. There’s no way of knowing if an NPC can ‘see’ you or not. I feel like this is also why when you break a glass bottle or something, it doesn’t alert enemies because that would be so broken in this game because things explode all the time for no reason at all, you’d never be able to steal period. So I feel like no item ownership is because the developers know their game wouldn’t be fun with it.

- No prison or lasting crime system.

The lack of a prison is sort of explained (very briefly) in-game. The prisons are just way too overcrowded, and the police are basically a paramilitary organization who shoot on sight anyways, so there’s really no need for prisons. That said, committing a crime doesn’t have lasting consequences but again I think this is because the game knows that it’s too clunky to punish players for that. Driving is so wonky in this game, imagine if running over an NPC punished you beyond the small threat of police intervention? It would be unbearable.

- Wanted system is largely underdeveloped, with cops spawning out of nowhere and disappearing shortly after.

Yeah it is a little scuffed how cops just appear, that I will agree with.

- Cybernetics lack variety in meaningful choices that alter gameplay (except for limb weapons). Deus Ex has far more impactful mods that actually change the way you approach combat.

While I do sort of agree with there being a lack of variety, I feel the comparison to Deus Ex is a bit unfair. Deus Ex used cybernetics as it’s skill tree/progression system. When you leveled up in Deus Ex, you installed new cybernetics. That’s not the case in CP2077 though. I do however believe that outside of the legs, arms, and hands, not much really changes. I’m not sure what else they could do, but more would certainly be nice.

- The lifepaths are frustratingly brief and have little impact other than dialogue choices. V is essentially the same character regardless of path.

I can’t speak much to this because I haven’t even finished my first playthrough yet, but I will admit that there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot that comes from your lifepath. I’m playing as a Street Kid, and as someone who supposedly grew up on the streets, running with gangs, getting to know everyone, etc., it seems like there should be a bit more maybe. Like maybe Street Kids start with more gang rep because everyone knows who you are because you grew up together. The game tries to explain this away with “you went away for two years and have just recently come back” but right off the bat you meet one of the fixers who you knew and worked for before you left as if you were old friends, and two measly years is not enough for everyone to just forget who you are.

The traffic AI is lackluster and there are too few cars driving around for a large metropolis.

Disagree. There are plenty of cars for a reasonable driving experience. I don’t know if this guy was expecting bumper-to-bumper LA traffic or what, but there are plenty of cars to make the world feel alive and full while not being obnoxious and make driving impossible.

- Trains were obviously cut, even though the whole infrastructure is visible.

I genuinely don’t even know what this is referring to so I won’t comment on it.

- The world interaction is quite minimal. Among items that should be interactive: chairs, benches, toilets, stools, sinks, gym equipment, light fixtures, restaurant menus, smartphones, taxi, trash bins and dumpsters, most merchant stalls, microwaves, dancing floors, gaming tables, arcards.

This is a lot but some of it I agree with. You should be able to sit down on a lot more chairs, but at the same time I kinda understand why you can’t. The world is littered with places to sit, so much so that “Press F to Sit” would be on your screen 99% of the time. Taxis I was actually extremely disappointed were not in the game. The game literally sets up from the beginning that being a passenger in a car is a thing which gives you the impression that it’s a thing that can happen often, and that you’re able to either sit through the car ride or skip it altogether. I thought for sure that fast travel was going to constitute you hailing  cab and it taking you to wherever you’ve marked on your map, with the option to sit through the ride or skip it at-will. It’s actually a huge disappointment that that’s not the case (I even had my friend who is playing as a Corpo test whether Delamaine was specific to Corpos-only but alas, it didn’t work).

- You cannot preview wardrobe and weapon purchases.

I’ve not actually bought any guns or clothes so I can’t comment on this.

- There is no reliable cover system.

This one is odd because there is a cover system, but it’s only a weird hint of one. If you’re crouched by a low wall and you aim your weapon, you will peak around the wall, but it’s very finicky and poor. I think the game could do without one altogether, but the fact that there’s a hint at one already implies it’s intended, so it needs reworking.

- Loot system is overdone, invasive and distracting. You are constantly showered with redundant and marginally better items and have no attachment whatsoever with your fashion and weapon choices. (Dear god, I hate this one).

Hard agree. This seems like somewhat of a repeat to an earlier one about not being able to really customize your character out of necessity to wear whatever is best. Loot is prevalent, but hardly ever relevant.

- Enemies are too spongy and level design forces frontal assault way too often.

This one is interesting because I almost agreed with it until I played the game a bit more. In fact, I might’ve made a post about this before, I can’t recall, where I said that it didn’t feel like stealth was always an option. In many cases, I stand by that statement. The stealth gameplay specifically isn’t always an option, which is frustrating. If you’re like me, and you’re using stealth with quickhacking, then it becomes way more relevant. Being able to breach into a camera network and kill everyone with quickhacks is amazing. However, the game seems to somewhat punish this style of gameplay for some odd reason. I will go through and systematically kill everyone via cameras from outside the building, but the moment I step into the building, more enemies will show up out of nowhere. It’s not just that they’re hiding in areas outside of the cameras view, no they literally spawn into existence the moment you go inside. It’s really jarring, odd, and kind of unfortunate. Oh and as for sponginess...eh, yes and no sometimes. Weirdly my quickhacks sometimes one-shot enemies, and other times it takes like 8 quickhacks to kill one enemy. It’s seemingly random, or a bug, or something. I’m not sure.

- Robotics and drone control largely absent (outside of scripted missions).

Hard agree. I was genuinely shocked to find out I couldn’t control turrets when they started popping up more frequently. Drones I can let pass because they’re mobile and therefor a bit more complex to code properly I guess, but turrets are child’s play to code. They’re literally the same as cameras but with guns. It’s really odd that you aren’t even given a perk that’ll let you control them.

[jq37]

On a scale of 1-10, how difficult is it to make a podcast? I’ve been following ANA since you first announced it (I’m so excited for it) and the other day I came up with an idea that I think would make a good series

Hey, thanks for the message! And thanks for being interested. Absolutely No Adventures has been a lot of fun to put together and it's nice to see that people are looking forward to it.

As for your question I'd say maybe a 6? But that's a really incomplete answer and I did a lot of searching for help on how to get started when I decided to do this so I'll give you  more in depth breakdown of the steps and if you have more questions you can totally message me off of anon.

(1) Write The Thing

So yeah, no getting around it. The first thing you have to do is just write the podcast. For some people, this is the hardest part. For me, it was probably the easiest part because it's the thing I was most familiar with. You already have an idea, which is great. So now you probably want to sit down and figure out things like is this a limited miniseries or will it be on-going with multiple seasons? How long will each episode be?

You also want to make sure you write for the medium. For example, in a book, you can just say, "She hugged him." But if it's audio, you have to make there's some kind of indication for that (ie: Man: Oh, and now we're hugging).

Format doesn't matter too too much as long as it's consistent. I used film script format in Celtx (which is free) but people also use Google Docs. Just pick what's easiest for you and get going.

I also highly recommend you finish a full season of scripts (or the whole set if it's a mini series) before you move on. Some people write as they go and if you want to do that, cool, but it's one less thing to worry about once you're in production and you don't want writer's block to slow you down once you're already going.

(2) Casting

So this is where I left my comfort zone and had to learn to do things I was unfamiliar with. The good news here is, there are a lot of actors available to be a part of projects like this for varying amounts of money or no money at all if it's an interesting enough project. I will advocate for paying people if you can though because I wanna make money off of my art someday so I think it's only fair to reciprocate. If it is unpaid, just be upfront about that. It's common among indie projects so it's not scandalous or anything.  

Anyway, the basic process here is you write up a casting call that says what the project is, what the deadline is for auditioning, and has some audition lines for each characters (called sides). Then you post on Twitter which has a pretty active voice actor community plus some other places like reddit and certain FB groups and auditions will start rolling in. Casting calls tend to spread--people came to me from Discords I'd never heard of. Once you get a bunch you can pick who you like or, if you can't decide, invite back some people for callbacks and then pick.

I think 2 weeks is a good length of time to keep auditions open, longer if you're looking for something really specific.

It's also possible to simplify this step if you happen to know friends who have mics and wanna help or if you want to do a podcast with a very small cast--maybe even just one person who could be you. There are a number of podcasts with that format. I maybe should have mentioned this during writing but I'll mention it here instead. Anything you have to write, you will have to produce, so keep that in mind. Like, when you're writing, it's easy to have a bunch of extras and sound effects and crazy things happening, but remember that you have to bring that all to life later, so maybe a different character can give that exposition so you don't have to cast ANOTHER person as an extra.

(That being said, most actors I've worked with are chill with doing an extra voice or two.)

Oh! Also. Time zones are a thing. Keep that in mind. I do no regret casting an Australian, a Brit, and Americans across the country because they were all fantastic, but it was hell to schedule.

(3) Recording

So there are 3 main ways to record--in person in studio, remotely together, and remotely apart.

Option one is kind of a no-go right now because of Covid so let's talk about the other 2.

Remotely Together means you get all your actors on a Zoom call with you and they're all in their studios and you record as if you're all in the same room. I did this for ANA and I think it's the best way to do it cause people get to react to each other in real time which is great. The only thing is, it means you have to line up everyone's schedules which is a total bear. Still, if you can do it, worth it.

Remotely Apart means you give everyone their scripts and tell them to send in their lines in x weeks. I did this for some episodes of Secret Podcast Number 2 and it works fine. But for the more emotional eps, we still recorded together. This method is good because it gets rid of timing troubles which was necessary since we're doing a December release (which, trust me, is crazy quick for what we’re doing), but there are some things, you want people to be able to adjust their intensity levels for in the moment.

Either way, but especially in scenario 2, I'd suggest you do a table read first where everyone gets on call and reads through everything. It helps everyone get a feel for each other so they're not going in cold.

Wrt directing, it can feel a little weird to tell people how to talk or inflect or how much they should be crying, but, as long as you're polite, just go for it. They're actors. They can take the notes. That's what they do. All of my actors were always super great about it.

(4) Production

Alright so you have lines in from all your actors.

The next question is, how are you going to handle your production? The actual putting together of the lines and cleaning them up and balancing and adding effects and all that?

I specifically wrote ANA to have relatively simply sound design and it was *still* too much for me to handle so I opted to outsource for that and it was for sure where most of a budget went. If you happen to know how to do this or have the time to learn, you'll def save yourself some money. It is still very time consuming though. The one part that I did do--deciding which takes to use from the lines my actors sent (aka: picking takes) and putting them together to send to my sound guy--took super long as is.

If you're going to hire/recruit someone to do this stuff for you, I recommend you do it before you cast because they'll be able to let you know if the actors who want have compatible audio quality.

IDK what standard procedure is here but the way it works with my guy is I send him lines and then he puts stuff together and sends me a draft of the episode. Then I say what I want changed in an excel spreadsheet with time stamps and we go back and forth until it's done.

(5) Ancillary Stuff

Theme music! You probably want that! There are a couple of routes you can go here. You can get something from a music library--either totally free or for a relatively small fee. This is the most cost effective but will probably more generic and likely in use somewhere else if it's fully free.

You can write it yourself if that's a thing you're good at obviously. Or you can pay someone to do it which will probably cost you a couple hundred bucks but will be totally tailored and unique.

Cover Art! Also very important. People do judge things by their covers so I def rec getting a really dope one made. Canva is also your friend for like icons and stuff.

A Website! You'll want at least a basic one for like contact info, transcripts, stuff like that. I just use Carrd. You can get a pretty classic, website-like setup by using sections and you can link to a custom URL for only like 13 bucks a year which is great.

(6) Marketing

OK so, I'm gonna be real with you, this is the step I'm working on now so I'm still figuring it out!

Besides posting on social media and stuff, you also need to make a press kit which is basically a doc with all the info about you and the show. You can see mine on the ANA site.

I also have mood-board-y graphics I made on Canva to drop with each ep (or ahead of them. Haven’t quite decided). 

I will say, I’ve made friends in the community and a lot of them have hyped up my stuff without me even asking. Which isn’t me saying, “Make friends for what they can do for you.” Gross. What I’m saying is that just participating in the community can help.

Anyway, this is getting way too long. I hope this was at least somewhat helpful. Like I said, if you (or anyone else) has more specific questions, hit me up!

[monstersandmaw]

... What *is* the difference between damascus and damascened?

I’m so glad you asked!

Well. This turned into a bit of an impromptu essay, so forgive me...

Damascening is a method of application of gold to a surface, usually steel. This is not gilding, but rather the surface of the steel is etched, scratched, patterned/roughed up in some way, and then the gold is burnished or pressed into it in thin sheets or in wires. It’s a physical application, rather than chemical like, say, amalgum gilding very dangerous don’t try that one at home, kids.

Damascus Steel is a trickier subject because it’s a term that’s been somewhat muddied, with researchers and musuem curators using terms without really qualifying them (hence the confusion between ‘damascened steel’ and ‘damascus steel’ in the first place), and contemporary knife makers using the term ‘damascus’ in their context with a different process... In more recent years, however, terminology has become more rigorous. Essentially it’s usually called ‘wootz’, it’s crucible steel and it’s got a pattern inherent in it, but it’s not pattern-welded steel (see below). No gold involved.

Much longer version below the cut, with images:

Damascening:

This tulwar features elements of gold decoration on the blade - text and tiger - applied to the surface of the steel. This was done either by scoring the surface or by punching, evidence of which you can see in the image (click the link below to the original so you can zoom in).

It also features kundan work on the hilt (method of gold settings). (Koftgari is another form of damascening, usually with harsher/coarser marks in the steel, and the other extreme of that is nunome-zogan, in the Japanese tradition)

Source: Wallace Collection

Damascus steel is also known as ‘wootz’, and it fetched an extremely high price because it makes an extremely high quality steel. Modern knife makers use the term ‘damascus’ to refer to pattern-welded steel, which is a different thing entirely, though it originated in mimicking wootz. The use of the term ‘damascus’ steel in museum/academic settings (rare now, as ‘wootz’ is usually used) refers to a crucible steel, ‘watered’ steel, or ‘wootz’, and not pattern-welded (see below).

Damascus or wootz is a crucible steel, meaning it was completely molten at one point. That fact is important because not every steel-smelting culture made crucible steel, which means that those who did produce it could charge more for their superior blades. The reason that ‘damascus’ blades (and also the ulfberht swords, and/or Frankish steel) were so prized in northern europe (ie. by Scandinavians (yes, ok, Vikings) and Anglo-Saxons) during the early medieval period was because they were really good swords, were harder, and held their sharp edges longer than the ‘false damascus’ blades created to imitate the natural pattern of wootz.

Wootz/damascus steel has a characteristic pattern in it, caused by large crystals of cementite (Fe3C) which, when forged out from billet to blade, create the pattern. The blades (or armour, but that’s rarer because this stuff is expensive) and later the barrels of guns were etched with acid to reveal the natural pattern. It is this pattern which makes it distinctive, and what pattern-welding tries to emulate.

Wootz, when etched, looks like this:

[x]

To make it, iron was melted down with carbonaceous material (plants, straw etc.) in a sealed crucible. The process would take several days to melt everything down into a cake of steel, and it was then allowed to cool extremely slowly (we’re talking days, not hours, which is also why it was more expensive). The cakes of crucible steel were then exported to centres of arms manufacture (including Damascus), to be coaxed and extremely skillfully forged into various weapons. Forging broke up the crystals of cementite and created the distinctive pattern. By careful forging, it was possible to maintain the pattern (it’s really easy to overheat and/or overwork it it and just bash out and destroy the pattern completely, so not all crucible steel is damascus steel...) It’s only called ‘wootz’ if you can see a pattern in it after etching.

It’s also possible to polish out the pattern with over-zealous cleaning, but you can usually get it back if you etch it again. This is a controversial subject amongst museum curators and conservators.

Wootz was largely made in India and the Middle East, and by the 18th century, we even had helmets and even things as large as shields (not always practical because it was relatively brittle, being so hard) being made out of this patterned steel in Central and South Asia. It has always been highly prized as a status object both in the past and now.

A large number of the ulfeberht swords (swords with some variant of the Frankish name ‘ulfberht’ inlaid into them) are actually not wootz, but pattern-welded steel. Pattern-welding is a process by which two steels of differing carbon content are folded together to create a pattern when etched. Originally, it’s thought to have been done to create knock-off wootz, but now it’s used by knife makers and bladesmiths to create some truly incredible works of art, and is a skill all of its own. In jewellery, copper and silver (or other precious metals) are fused together and then worked to create ‘mokume gane’, or wood grain pattern, which is similar, but not done with ferrous metals.

Modern pattern-welded steel:

[Screenshot from The Artificery, Instagram - follow him omg his work is amazing]

[Mokume gane ring by Anne Wolf - source]

Dr. Alan Williams is a leading researcher in wootz, and I spoke to him at the Wallace Collection’s Arms and Armour conference back in 2016 - he’s a Mega Nerd(tm) for sure, but he knows his stuff. Here’s a video of him talking about wootz steel at that conference if you’re interested.

___

Hope that makes sense and is interesting?! I spent way too long answering this, so it’s back to writing my 12 Days of Exomas stories for now, but I’m a huge nerd so please feel free to ask me stuff like this!

[a-mellowtea]

RWBY Issue #1: An Elegy For Continuity

I’ve never been one for comic books. I think I read a couple when I was younger. I seem to recall Spiderman. I did pick up the Bone series at one point and fell in love with it. But beyond that, they never appealed to me. Now that I’m older, however, and finding more of an appreciation for design and storytelling alike, I really want to go back and just smother younger me in superhero and fantasy comics to make up for what I missed.

When I heard that RWBY was making a venture into the comics scene thanks to DC, I honestly got excited. It’s a perfect medium to tell stories that canon may not have been able to cover, and with the promised content being set in the area in-universe -- between Volumes 3 and 4 -- we have the least specific information about, there was no conceivable reason not to be at least interested.

RWBY #1 dropped on August 28th, 2019 under the subtitle “Prelude: The Elegy”. It’s narrated by Ruby Rose, one of the series’ titular characters and arguable ‘main’ protagonist out of the four, and covers in very brief form the Creatures of Grimm, the Huntsmen Academies, the fellow members -- Yang Xiao Long, Blake Belladonna and Weiss Schnee -- of RWBY, the Color Naming Convention/Rule, Dust, Semblances and the Fall of Beacon. It ends with the finale of Volume 3, and Ruby uncertain if they’ll be able to carry on.

The quality of the artwork and layout varies, but overall Mirka Andolfo and Arif Prianto do capture the look and feel of the characters (although, they can’t seem to decide whether Weiss is left-handed or not). Whether or not some of it seems off is an entirely subjective matter. Personally, while I find some panels to be absolutely striking (such as Tai, Yang and Ruby at Summer’s grave, the Volume 1-3 era combat panels, the initial Battle of Beacon Academy page, and the final panel), I also find others to be a bit... lacking (the Volume 4 design splash page especially).

An article by CBR appropriately labeled it an adaptation at a “breakneck pace”, which is honestly an understatement. The elements I mentioned get perhaps a page each, touched on in a manner I can in all seriousness relate to skipping a stone across a pond. Being a fan of the series, for me, that is perfectly fine; I already have as much of a grasp on things like Aura and Dust and the combat Academies as one who has been with the show since the Volume 2/3 hiatus could. On top of that, with Ruby as our narrator and speaking from in-universe, she may not see the need to go into incredible detail. However, someone just delving into RWBY with this as a primer or part of their proper introduction to Volumes 1 or 2 would in all likelihood be left winded by everything that zooms by with so little explanation. These elements are essential to the story and the world of Remnant. They, along with certain key events such as the Battle of Beacon, are the building blocks of the series.

On that front, it certainly doesn’t help anything that canon is shakily incorporated or, at points, firmly and summarily disregarded. See, the issue with RWBY #1 doesn’t lie in the art style or storytelling. Rather, it is with the connective tissue between the comic and its source material.

Most of these instances aren’t egregious oversights but are worth mentioning regardless. For instance, there is a panel in which Penny is shown wearing Beacon’s uniform, though she is from Atlas and was never shown wearing any of the Academy’s uniforms.

In the panel talking about Semblances, Weiss’ Semblance is described as being able to “summon any Grimm she’s slain”. While true, that is a facet of her Semblance, not her power itself. Weiss’ Semblance is Glyphs. She also never summoned before the Battle of Beacon, making the page of her summoning a Grimm circa that time also inaccurate.

In yet another, Ruby mentions rumors about the Maidens and magic. However, the only way she could have known about the Four Maidens before Qrow telling her and RNJR in Volume 4 Chapter 8 was through the fairy tale known as the “Story of the Seasons”. Only the Ozluminati (Ozpin, Qrow, Glynda and James) and Pyrrha knew in full about the truth surrounding the four Maidens. As this is being narrated at the end of Volume 3 (the “now”, as stated in the penultimate panel), Jaune also only knew that Cinder had acquired some sort of power; nothing of magic or the Maidens.

The worst of these errors come at the end of the comic, and are most plainly wrong. Ruby is shown having come back to Patch on foot, whereas she was most certainly entirely unconscious when she was brought back to Patch by Qrow. It is also implied that Ruby returned to help Tai take care of Yang; their conditions of consciousness somewhat perplexingly reversed from canon. 

Furthermore, though it is clearly stated and shown that Jacques was the one to take Weiss home after the events at Beacon, Willow also appears to be present alongside an AK-200.*

And finally, Taiyang is shown in the aforementioned penultimate panel waving goodbye to RNJR as they depart for Mistral.  The issues of this particular change are further-reaching than most of the others; Ruby leaving without a word to her father and sister other than a letter was brought up several times in Volume 4, and was part of what made Yang and Ruby’s reunion in Volume 5 such a good moment.

Some things are also oddly worded (and that’s without mentioning the run-on sentences), leading to unnecessary confusion. For example, at one point, Ruby explains that “Atlas, Vale, Vacuo and Mistral -- every Kingdom in Remnant has their own way of dealing with Grimm. But only the Kingdom of Vale has Beacon, the legendary Academy where my mother and father went to become Huntsmen”. This makes it sound like Beacon is the only Huntsmen Academy in Remnant, and the other Kingdoms have completely separate ways of dealing with the Grimm. I doubt that was the authorial intent; it could be explained away rather easily as Ruby simply stating that none of the other Academies are as good; ie, there is only one Beacon.

There is also another rather odd panel following the aforementioned, in which a young Ruby and Yang stand with Taiyang, their father, and Summer Rose, Ruby’s biological mother. While this family shot is very nice and certainly pulls on a fan’s heartstrings, the composition is strange. If this is meant to be an in-canon moment, rather than a symbolic one, then Ruby and Yang’s ages at the time of Summer’s death are thrown into question yet again. As stated by Yang in Volume 5 Chapter 8, “My mom left me. Ruby’s mom left too. Dad was always busy with school, and Ruby couldn’t even talk yet”. This shot, with Ruby and Yang looking closer to 6 and 8 respectively, contradicts that.

That’s not to say that these errors, numerous as they are, completely ruin the experience of reading the comic. Paired with Mirka Andolfo’s artwork, RWBY #1 presents a decent introduction to RWBY until the end of Volume 3, heading into the timeskip territory. However, being a recap of elements and events already covered in the show, it is sorely lacking and has absolutely no excuse to be. I saw someone mention that it feels like the writer, Marguerite Bennett, skimmed the show’s Wiki or otherwise did the least amount of research possible on the series before writing. I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment.

At the end of the day, RWBY #1 “Prologue: The Elegy” is a good attempt at summarizing the most basic and key material of Volumes 1-3, but ultimately fails, falls flat and devolves into a mess of inconsistencies, errors and nonsensical changes that fans should not consider being canon whether it has been stated to be in the category of “canon-until-it’s-not” or not.

I do hope they find their footing in the second issue of RWBY, as perhaps original content will provide better space for the story to flow largely unhindered by canonical information.

*Amendment: I originally stated that it was Winter in this panel. I’ve been since informed that that is incorrect. Apologies for the mistake!

[brotundsalz]

Call Me by Your Name: Is it better to speak or to die?

Original text by Hristiana Hinova

Illustration: elysieeh

A ten-minute ovation follows the film’s screening at Sundance. Director Luca Guadagnino opens Twitter and reads about people jumping and dancing on the streets after having seen his film. It is one of those rarely made films which produce an incredible sense of euphoria that lasts for months to come. Last year that place was held by American Honey. Both films are a spectacle for the senses—gentle monsters whose visuals are electrifying and the feeling they leave behind is truly truer than the truth we witness every day. Call Me by Your Name is a film about Love, the kind that turns life into an event, and emitting such an emotional charge life itself becomes an event. 

The 24-year-old American student Oliver is completing an internship at professor Perlman’s (his Jewish-American archeology professor with French and Italian roots; played by Michael Schulber, whose Oscar nomination hopefully becomes a fact soon) villa in the north of Italy. The atmosphere of the house is idyllic. The Perlmans are a dream family—highly educated, beautiful people who speak freely about philosophy, history and linguistics and kiss and hug whenever they pass each other on the corridors of the house. Elio, the professor’s son (an impressive debut starring Timothée Chalamet) is a 17-year-old spiritual and talented boy; he spends his days studying classical music, reading books, cycling and going out to bars in the evenings. 

Call Me by Your Name starts straight off with the conflicting event: Oliver's arrival. Oliver is an imposingly handsome and confident guy; the ancient Greeks have a word for it—kalokagathia: a Platonic ideal consisting of the harmonious combination of bodily, moral and spiritual virtues. During the first few minutes of the film, he is the object of adoration by every one of the characters (apart from the Perlmans, there are also minor characters, the most prominent of who is Elio's girlfriend, the French Marcia, played by Esther Garrel).

What happens next is magic: Elio's love for Oliver goes through several recognisable stages, which are translated on screen with a masterful ease of the camera: it glides among the characters effortlessly, like a puff of wind. (Behind the camera was Thai Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who has also worked with Apichatpong Weerasethakul on the dreamy, mysterious and visually perfect Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, awarded with the Golden Palm at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.) Director Luca Guadagnino had the following to say in this regard: "We had a Buddhist behind the lens. And you can see it in every frame." 

In order to convey my thoughts in a more organised way, I will divide the text into 5 parts. These 5 parts correspond to the 5 states of mind the main character Elio goes through during the 3 weeks in which the love between him and Oliver develops. This is an attempt to decode the power of the film, which I believe is rooted in the absolutely brilliant journey through the universal emotions of love. Call Me by Your Name wonderfully visualises the inner world of a person in love and the most elated, most intense states of mind that his enchanted soul can go through. I will include a few quotes from Roland Barthes’ A Lover's Discourse: Fragments which to me is the most poetic and refined translation of the love emotion into words. Not to show off but to present you the pleasure that is Barthes’ work. This film is the same kind of translation, slightly more accessible—but no less subtle and emotional.

For at least a year I hadn’t seen a love story that could move me so much with its genuineness. One of the best qualities of the film is its script: it lacks an antagonist and a conflict. According to textbooks, this is not how you write a script. It is risky—some might say even wrong. Since it doesn’t have the stereotypical Romeo and Julietesque problem where an external force interferes with the love of the two, nor is there a serious hesitation in some of the characters. Nobody dies. Nobody is less fortunate than the other, no one is whiter or darker than the other. We witness two people fall in love and thus create paradise, and—trust me—this is one of the most exciting stories to tell.

Desire This is the third and final instalment in Luca Guadagnino's thematic "Desire Trilogy”. The previous two being I Am Love (2009) and A Bigger Splash (2015). According to the director, the first one is a tragedy, the second—a farce, and the third one—a dream. While in both previous films there is some tragicomic element which works as a warning following the desire, Call Me by Your Name does not have one. Here, loving does not lead to anything bad. The pain after the loss is not harmful.

The film starts off with a half-naked Elio who must quickly vacate his room for it is to be occupied by the guest Oliver. Elio’s house is a spacious and cozy one (with doors open all the time and delicious meals being prepared in the kitchen); whichever room you enter, it is full with books you can read under the huge windows that let in the generous afternoon sun. Everyday life is a wasteful delight. The viewer sees this and sinks into his seat light-headed, dreaming of a similar life. Call Me by Your Name manages to strike a chord in us that is rarely touched; the melancholy for a paradise not yet lived, one ripen by the caress of the graceful nature, kissed by the sky, hidden from the dusty, sore city eye.

The sexual desire is not stated immediately. The scene in which Elio and Oliver meet for the first time, for example, is filmed in a rather unconventional way for this type of narrative. Typically, love at first sight is alluded at by showing the reaction of the main character, the one who is to fall in love first, in a medium shot or a close-up. Here, however, the scene is as follows: through a half-open door Elio and Oliver shake hands. Elio is showing us his back. On Oliver’s face we can read a polite smile tired from the long ride. BAM! Nothing special. No escalating music, nor an entertaining frame. Simple.

There is a reason for this. The story is based on a novel (written by André Aciman and adapted by James Avery). The novel is told in the first person, from Elio’s perspective. Therefore, by default, this is a story that comes from the inner world of the main character, ie. we would expect less eventful and more reflective storytelling. The director wanted to keep it as is in the book and translate it on screen. Hence, Elio’s ’slow’ falling in love (expressed at a later stage in the film with the regretful words: "We wasted so much time"). The ‘slow’ in question is really nothing more than a developing character, a man who grows before the eyes of the viewer, a man who loves and is loved for the first time.

Elio’s desire for Oliver is shown with his long glances directed at Oliver from the distance: Elio watches from his widow how the object of his desire walks, goes for a bike ride, dances, hugs and kisses a woman. Elio experiences a moment of frustration: on the one hand, he knows what is going on inside him, but his body doesn’t know how to react. The boy seems to be overcome by a fever. This is why when Oliver touches him for the first time to massage his shoulder, Elio pulls himself to the side confused. Desire causes ambivalence: often, instead of pulling us towards the object of our desire, it pushes us away from it; and this reaction is a defence mechanism: “Do not enter the beast’s mouth, because there is no way out.”

Elio falls in love with Oliver also through the eyes of others. He knows that this is a man who his father, the professor, likes and respects. This is also a body that others talk about; watching him play volleyball, the girls whisper to one another that he is “more handsome than the guy from last year.” This is what Roland Barthes has to say on the subject: 

The body which will be loved is in advance selected and manipulated by the lens, subjected to a kind of zoom effect which magnifies it, brings it closer, and leads the subject to press his nose to the glass: is it not the scintillating object which a skilful hand causes to shimmer before me and will hypnotise me, capture me? This “affective contagion,” this induction, proceeds from others, from the language, from books, from friends: no love is original. (Mass culture is a machine for showing desire: here is what must interest you, it says, as if it guessed that men are incapable of finding what to desire by themselves.) The difficulty of the amorous project is in this: “Just show me whom to desire, but then get out of the way!”

Anxiety When we cannot own something, we become obsessed with a fragment of it. After Elio becomes aware that he is in love with Oliver, he starts missing him. Oliver grabs his bike and disappears for a whole day. Elio is alone in the house. He goes back to his room and examines the beast’s dwelling. This is his very room, but changed forever—soaked in the presence of the one who is absent now. There are one or two marvellous shots where the camera focuses on Oliver’s swimming shorts hanging from the faucets in the bathroom. Elio grabs a pair of them, lies down on his bed and thrusts his head inside. This is the only thing he can possess. Just a fragment, and it isn’t even from Oliver’s real body. It upsets and scares him, but at the same time brings him incomparable pleasure. When else is pleasure confusing? Love is maddening: it tears you away from your own self and hands you over into the possession of something abstract like a Thought, Scent or Idea. Elio is lost in the labyrinth of the Other. And for the first time we can hear Sufjan Stevens’ amazing music in a moment of culminating anxiety. It is an exceptional scene: Elio’s face is blurred and it seems as though a film reel is passing through it. Elio is not a part of his own life—he is a projection of the collective, centuries old face of the One in Love: the one who has fallen victim to a spell. 

The following scene: Elio is together with his parents and the three of them are sitting on a couch. He is resting his head on his mother’s lap. She is reading to them the story of a princess and a knight from some French romance; the knight is so much in love with the princess that he doesn’t know what to do about it. The horror that he experiences in regard to his feelings escalates in the lines: “Is it better to speak or to die?” This startles Elio, who realises that his choice is indeed ultimate. The scene represents a key dramatic situation. The one in love is faced with a moat: on the one side stands he himself, like a boy, bent with a frightened look over the abyss, on the other side stands a tall, noble man. Can he overcome the moat?

Heroism According to Joseph Campbell, in every story with a prominent protagonist there is a moment of initiation, i.e. the moment in which the boy takes on a challenge and thus embarks on a path towards maturity. For Harry Potter, for example, this is his departure to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In our Bulgarian folklore, on the other hand, the hero kills the three-headed snake which usually brings him great fame and the love of the greatest beauty. 

What does Elio do to become a man?

Elio decides to speak. In spite of all the horror this action brings – putting yourself in a weak position, risking being misunderstood and humiliated, Elio exhibits courage and decides to confess. Courage, because confession is self-assertion and this is one of the manliest things to do: “I am here and this is how I feel. How about you?" As all the readers probably know, telling someone that you love them without knowing how they will respond to your feelings is a hard and painful thing to do. It can cost a lot of nerves, especially if one was brought up in the spirit of high classical values.

And Elio speaks. God, how good this scene is. I may even like it more than the last 10 minutes of the film. The scene is brilliantly conceived and filmed: Elio and Oliver are walking on the opposite sides of a monument commemorating the victims of the First World War. They are talking about history and Oliver is surprised by Elio’s vast knowledge. Then Elio, having gathered up the courage, says that he knows nothing. At least not about the things that matter. “What things that matter?” demands Oliver. “You know what things,” replies Elio after a thoughtful pause. He tells him everything by not telling him anything. Between them lies history – the stone monument, a symbol of suffering and heroism – and inside of them rages an equally important event: the Conversation.

Unity The fourth part of Call Me by Your Name shows the real relationship of the two after love has been established as a fact. It feels the longest. And this is how it is supposed to be, bearing in mind that this is a romantic film that is not specified by the genre restriction of either comedy or drama. The title of the film refers to exactly this part. Call me by your name are the words which Oliver gifts Elio and which actually carry all the charge of their relationship: true merging is when you don't differentiate yourself from the other, being so much in love that you’re sinking into the other. This is the moment of culmination: you are one with your Desire and your Desire is one with you. There is no conflict nor drama. The world is just a prolonged touch. Everything is simple and the pleasure is inexhaustible. A quote from A Lover's Discourse: Fragments:

Definition of the total union: that is “the one and only pleasure” (according to Aristotle), “joy without blemish and without impurity, the perfection of dreams, the limit of all hopes” (Ibn Hazm), “the divine splendor” (Novalis), this is: the inseparable peace. (…)

Dream of total union: everyone says this dream is impossible, and yet it persists. I do not abandon it. "On the Athenian steles, instead of the heroicization of death, scenes of farewell in which one of the spouses takes leave of the other, hand in hand, at the end of a contract which only a third force can break, thus it is mourning which achieves its expression here . . . I am no longer myself without you." It is in represented mourning that we find the proof of my dream; I can believe in it, since it is mortal (the only impossible thing is immortality). SYMPOSIUM: Quotation from the Iliad, Book X.FRANÇOIS WAHL: "Chute.”

Conclusion The fifth and last part, the one when Oliver leaves, has an almost instructive function. The father has the role of a sage, a teacher (figuratively and literally). He is supposed to evaluate the situation and interpret its meaning. He is the one who has studied art and the human nature throughout the centuries, the way in which humanity asserts itself. And yet, he is the man who admits that he has never been so close to the perfection of human relationships as his 17-year-old son has. The father’s revelation is striking: in the absence of love, one wears out. In the absence of courage to love, one withers away. Once again, this brilliant monologue deserves an Oscar nomination.

There are films that are magical. Do not doubt that Call Me by Your Name is one of them. And to put out the swollen pathos, I will tell you that the peach scene has been tested (in real life) both by Luca and by Timothée Chalamet. Seems like one can have fun in the most unexpected places!

[erinelezabeth920]

Love in the Time Of

Shame. Is the thing I want to talk about. Love in the time of shame.

I mean I don’t really want to talk about it. I’d really rather not actually, except that I have the sneaking suspicion that I’m not the only one. Not by a long shot. So here we go.  Last night I wanted to go to bed by 10pm, so I could get up early and go on a run BEFORE signing into Zoom at 7:45am to lead a yoga meditation class for my friends and family, BEFORE doing some reading of self-help books and solo meditation BEFORE I start trying to do an impossible job from my living room for an unclear number of hours per day with an attention span of basically zero to negative. 

When I write this it sounds absurd. I know that. But brains are weird. Especially mine. Remember the anxiety based overfunctioning/ underfunctioning I talked about last time? Overfunctioning much?  Anyway, that didn’t happen. We had finished a DnD session with my brother and college roommate, (my character is a rouge-gnome named Huckleberry Shake who has short purple hair, is really good at sneaking and lock picking, and carries a crossbow. I like to imagine a sort of cross between ‘Midsummer's Night Dream’ and Assassin’s Creed’.) Anyway, it was around 9:30 ish pm. It was also Cinco de Mayo, and we had picked up tacos from the neighborhood about a 15 minute drive south with a strong hispanic/ latinx population. The past couple weeks I’ve been referencing that line in ‘Wet Hot American Summer’ where they all pile into the pick up truck to go into town and go batshit crazy. “It always feels good to get away from camp, even for an hour!” Just to drive somewhere to pick up food feels like a crazy adventure these days. 

I made us magaritas when I got back; they were bright blue because we had some kind of blue liquor that I can’t remember the name of. After DnD I wanted to watch some TV. I made myself another margarita and some popcorn, which is my quarantine coping crutch. I watched this trashy but great Netflix show about teenagers in North Carolina called Outer Banks. Except the episodes kept ending on cliff hangers (OMG he KILLED HIM?), so I kept watching. I painted my toenails purple, using packing peanuts to space them out. I was kind of proud of myself actually.

It was about midnight when I went to bed. I woke up with a small headache, a result of tequila and salty popcorn and poor quality sleep. I was going to go on a walk/ run and listen to the news. I didn’t. I snoozed the alarm about ten times. It was raining out. I led my yoga class and ate some sourdough toast. And here we are. The light is filtering through the apartment windows, as I sit on the couch in my sweat pants. The crazy thing is, I just feel SO much shame. And guilt. Guilt for having a headache, shame for not waking up early to do all these things I honestly don’t even need to do. I feel shame for not writing more often, shame when I look at the dishes that are dirty. Shame when I don’t go outside to go on a walk, exercise, or when I close my work laptop early to lie on the couch and scroll through my phone.  I’ve been trying the past couple weeks to figure out this phenomena that seems to be happening to me, but also to other people I talk to. I feel okay for about 3 days, and then completely collapse. I just can’t do anything, flatline, but there doesn’t really seem to be a direct cause. It’s just like dropping on the roller coaster without warning. I was telling a friend the other day that on weekends, all I do is sleep. Usually I’m a very active person who has an almost clincally hard time sitting still. I haven’t felt like this, I told him, since I worked the hardest jobs in my life- full time wilderness therapy or residential treatment for children with Autism working 12 hour days. I work MAYBE six hours a day these days but probably more like four, broken up by lying on the couch watching documentaries and scrolling on my phone. So why am I SO DAMN EXHAUSTED? 

I did some research the other week into chronic stress for a newsletter article I was writing for parents of my elementary school. Chronic stress is different than acute stress, I found, because it has no concrete beginning and end. It’s not like a car crash or a loved one dying. Instead (for those of us with the intense privelage not to be on the front lines- god bless if you are) it’s a constant low hum in the background through news headlines, grocery store lines and crossing the street when another person is coming your direction on the sidewalk. It’s a disruption of normality with no conceivable ending, sending our brains into a low key 24/7 flight or fight mode, draining us with tiny doses of adrenaline and uncertainty that build up over time. It’s not in the forefront, but it’s there in our tight shoulders, exhaustion, inattention, insomnia, short fuses and total lack of motivation. Until we can’t take it any more and crash, seemingly out of nowhere. And then the whole thing starts again. 

As Brene Brown says, “We’ve hit our collective weary.” In one podcast episode she interviews a grief expert. He says, we are all grieving right now. Even if we don’t name it, we’re showing the symptoms. But instead of grieving the death of an individual (for most of us), we are grieving the lifestyles we’ve lost (work settings, close contact, friendships, normalcy). And grief exhausts us. BUT, because most of us aren’t experiencing acute grief (ie a loved one dying) we feel shame on TOP of that grief, that we shouldn’t be tired or inept when others have it SO much worse. It’s a meta emotion. Shame layered on grief like a terrible lasagna. How can we be justified in experiencing grief when all we do is sit on the couch and watch Netflix and eat snacks for hours a day? We’re not even in a wartime or something concrete that gives justification and purpose. Instead it’s just a vague, deep sense of disruption of life as we know it. But it’s just as real. I was walking on the beach at the time I listened to the podcast; when he said the words, “We are grieving the loss of the world as we knew it,” the sun was setting over the water. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

A few weeks ago, Andy cut my hair. When the pieces fell to the floor of our friend’s porch and the scissors snipped away larger chunks than I woud have liked, my stomach dropped. I started panicking. I felt like the world was ending. I don’t panic when I read the news, go to the grocery store in a mask, or even read the death toll. But when my hair fell to the ground around me in the gathering twilight, I absolutely lost it. I came home and sobbed. It was the first time I’d cried since the pandemic began, and it’s like it just all came out. I was so angry at Andy, and he felt so bad. I was a shell of a person for twelve hours. I cancelled morning yoga for the first time in six weeks, lamenting everyone would have look at me close up on a screen. I wanted to stay in bed forever, (until we fixed the haircut and it actually looked pretty good). But for a second there I was broken, and it was because of a goddamn haircut. I mean for Christ sakes, people are dying out there. It made me feel so petty and stupid. There’s a global pandemic happening, and I am distraught FROM MY HAIR?!

But that’s how grief works. We can’t look at the thing head on, it’s too much. A death toll is just numbers. Our brains seek to survive, to normalize, to adapt just to get through. So instead the trauma seeps into the corners, slowly creeping into our bodies and collective exhaustion until one little thing causes the world to come crashing down. The straw that breaks the camel’s back. And then we feel overwhelming shame for being so affected by something so little. For me, my lizard brain was honestly convinced I would never be attractive or happy again. 

(ALSO to be fair we watched, ‘Little Women’ a few days later. In the movie there’s the scene where Jo cuts all her hair off to give her mother money to travel to their sick father in the war. She’s then pictured crying under the stairwell. “Is it mother?” her sister asks. “No,” she says, “It’s MY HAIR!”. "See?!” I said to Andy.)

The underlying theme here is shame. We’re ashamed of our emotions because they don’t seem justified. Comparative suffering. My suffering isn’t nearly as bad as others, therefore I should not feel this way. I’m ashamed of myself for eating snacks and worried I’m going to gain a bunch of weight. Then I’m ashamed for being ashamed instead of being body positive. I’m ashamed of myself for enjoying an evening with drinks (yes plural), popcorn, painting my toes and watching teenagers who are actually in their twenties look for buried treasure. Honestly, it sounds like a great night. And it was. 

I just finished re-reading “The Four Agreements”, the Toltec wisdom book. The first agreement is “Be Impeccable With Your Word.” I assumed from the first time I read it, it meant “always tell the truth”. The reality though, is it means, our words have power. Especially our words about ourselves. Just this morning I entered my enchilada and margaritas from yesterday into my ‘Weight Watchers’ app and felt terrible. I told myself I was fat, lazy and useless. Which seems absurd when I write it out, but that’s the honest to goodness narrative inside my head. Being impeccable with our word means watching what we say to ourselves, because our words create a reality. We create our own cycles of shame. 

Even at this moment, typing this, I feel ashamed that this piece of writing is so scattered. My English major brain is mad at me. Get it together Erin. Find a cohesive theme and stick to it. Get emotional, but not too emotional. Tell stories, but not too many stories. But writing at it’s best is vulnerability and transparency;  and honestly right now it’s hard to hold on to any one thought for longer than a few seconds. And I’m pretty sure it’s not just me. Little pieces, scattered thoughts, just trying to put the puzzle together. (Oh and don’t even get me STARTED on puzzles... Andy is MUCH better than me at them, and, saving the face of our relationship, let’s just say that is another dangerous straw perched on the camel’s back through only the fault of my own...) Anyway, I think at this point, just find anything that makes you smile. Literally anything. I personally like Brad Leone’s Bon Appetite Youtube channel “It’s Alive.” He makes me laugh so much. The episode with him and Orville Peck making elote almost broke me.  Find those things, hold on to them and be kind to yourself. It’s okay to feel less than. Just remember you’re not. We’ve collectively hit weary, the point in the race where you’ve been running for so long, but the finish line is so far away. It’s okay just to go one step at a time. 

Paint your toes. Eat your popcorn. Drink your margaritas. Whatever we can do just to survive. One step at a time. You’re not alone. 

And that’s love in the time of.