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haldi-archived · 4 years ago

Photo

Hey guys! I got an ask wondering how I make my gifs and some people have asked me how I color my gifs, so here you go!

We’re going to be making this:

You’ll need:

VLC Media Player

Photoshop with working Import Video Frames to Layers function and timeline. I use Photoshop 2020, but any older versions with these functions will work!

A high-quality video (preferably 1080p)

Tutorial under the cut!

PART ONE: MAKING YOUR GIFS

You’re going to want to open up your video in VLC Media Player and open it to around a few seconds before your scene appears. If you’re giffing from a small YouTube video you can ignore this step, but for movies and TV, you’ll want to use VLC to extract the tiny part of it you want.

Pause it before your scene and click View >> Advanced Controls.

Above the play button, you should see a bunch of new controls. Focus on the red button I circled below:

Click this button and press play. VLC records are a little bit off, so this is why you want to be a few seconds before your scene actually starts so you catch it all! When your scene has played, press the button again. You’ve now recorded your scene and you can record as many scenes as you like for a full gifset.

You can find your recorded videos in the Videos folder. It’ll be named something like vlc-record-a bunch of letters and numbers.

Now that you have your scenes, it’s time to open Photoshop! When Photoshop has loaded, go to File >> Import >> Video Frames to Layers, which is a bit down to the bottom. It’ll prompt you to select a video; click on the video you just recorded, and a screen like this will pop up:

Use the white sliders to select the parameters of your scene. I would recommend going a little bit more on both sides so you catch your whole scene.

TIP: Make sure you do NOT select the button that says “Limit to Every 2 Frames,” because that will make your gifs look choppy and ugly. Love yourself!

Once your frames have loaded, you might not see them on Photoshop the way mine looks. If that’s the case, make sure you go to Window >> Timeline so you can see the frames!

Delete the extra frames in your gif that you don’t need by selecting the frames you want to delete and pressing the trash can button, circled below:

Now that you’ve done that, it’s time to crop. For this particular gif, I’m going for a full-width one, so the width I chose is 540px and I chose a height of 290px. Click on the crop tool and make sure your crop settings are at W x H x Resolution, or you won’t be able to input specific dimensions the way I’ve done here:

Position the crop tool where you want your gif to be:

And now that your gif is all cropped and sized, it’s time to sharpen! I have a pretty specific sharpening process that I’ll outline in detail here, but I have an action for this purpose so as to save time. I’m just making this part of the tutorial so you know what you’re meant to do in Photoshop.

First, go ahead and click the three little bars at the right edge of the Timeline/Frames tab and hit Convert to Video Timeline.

Now, your timeline should look like this:

Go to Select >> All Layers, and right-click on one of the layers in the Layers tab once they’ve all been selected. Select Convert to Smart Object. This allows us to sharpen the entire gif at once as opposed to by frame! Your timeline should now look like this, with all the little purple parts condensed into one:

It’s time to sharpen! Go to Filter >> Sharpen >> Smart Sharpen. I do two passes with the Sharpening tool; here are my settings for both:

It’s not too apparent in the pictures, but it does make a difference. Don’t worry about your gifs looking too sharp; I use this action on every single one of my gifs and it always works like a charm.

Now that our gifs are nice and sharp, it’s time to take them back to frames. This is because of a glitch in Photoshop that makes gifs saved in Smart Object form much faster than they would be in frames. Click on the small bars on the right of the timeline again and select Convert Frames >> Flatten Frames into Clips.

Your gif should have all those little clips that we had before we converted it into a Smart Object.

Then, go to Convert Frames >> Convert to Frame Animation.

Your gif should be back in frames again, but it’s all one frame. Don’t worry; we’re going to fix that by clicking Make Frames from Layers from the menu with the three little bars again.

Now all your frames should be back! We’re going to set the speed of the gif now. Hit those three little bars again and click Select All Frames. Now click on the little triangle under any frame and click Other, and a little popup will appear. I always set my gifs to a speed of 0.05.

At this point, I save my gifs as a .PSD file. You can delete these PSDS after you’ve posted your gifset (I usually do to save space!), but it helps to have them so you can edit your gifs later if you want. Hit Ctrl+S, and now the screen to save it should pop up. Make sure you save it as a PSD file and not something else.

Now you have a gif that you can color! Which brings us to…

PART TWO: COLORING, ADDING SUBTITLES, AND SAVING YOUR GIFS

I do run a pale blog so this is going to be a pale coloring tutorial. You can check some popular resource blogs to see if they have any tutorials for colorful gifs!

I start out by making a group with the little folder below the layers tab; I title it “coloring.” (Not pictured: I added a layer mask and painted one black dot over it so I could reference the original!)

I always start out with a Curves layer; here are my settings:

The gif at this point:

Next, I decrease saturation using the Hue/Saturation adjustment:

After this, I add a black and white Gradient Map layer and set it to blend mode Exclusion at 10% Opacity.

Then, (not pictured), I add a Selective Color layer and reduce blacks in Whites and Neutrals while increasing them in Blacks.

To make the background pale, I added a Hue/Sat layer, applying 100% Lightness to the Cyan and Blue channels and adding color to Azula’s skin by saturating the Yellows.

Here’s the gif after those adjustments:

Now I’m going to restore color to Azula’s skin following my own tutorial, so I’m not going to go into those details here. However, here’s the gif after all this. It’s not totally the same as Azula’s skin, but going any pinker makes the gif look awkward and oversaturated, which isn’t a good look:

After some minor adjustments and removal of the layer mask:

Now for subtitles!

Use the Text tool and make a rectangle at the bottom of your gif where subtitles go. I use Arial Rounded MT Bold, with Regular style, at 3.36pt and Sharp anti-aliasing.

Create a rectangle at the bottom of the gif where subtitles go and type in your text; then right-click on the text layer and select Blending Options and check Stroke, and these are my settings:

Now your subtitles are all ready! I’d recommend duplicating one frame of the gif and then duplicating the text layer onto a new canvas and saving it as a PSD so your settings and placement are always consistent across your gifsets!

Time to save your gif. Here are my settings, circled ones important:

I’ve seen gifmakers use Adaptive+Pattern but I personally think that looks grainier and the pattern is really obvious; in my opinion Selective+Diffusion looks smoother, but it’s all up to you! Experiment with what you think looks best.

Make sure your gifs are set to loop Forever or they’ll only loop a limited amount.

Here’s your finished gif!

I hope this tutorial was helpful! Please reblog this if you learned something, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Happy gifmaking ❤

#allresources #chaoticresources #yeahps #biresources #resourcemarket #useradeela #usermaira #userdanisaur #userchelsea #tuserivy #*mine #resources #tutorial

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siswritesyanderes · 4 years ago

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This is a series of asks bc, while I do LIKE all the charas of Fantastic Beasts individually, much of the romantic pairings dont sit well with me. By that mean the messy love polygon w Newt & I think I finally figured out why & I'd like another's opinion on it. For starters, Newt's attraction with Tina is too fast for me considering he was friends w Leta, got expelled out of Hogwarts for Leta, carried Leta's photo in his case, & basically loved her for YEARS. But this is all undone by a [1]

jaunt in NY having met a woman, who he admittedly went on a huge adventure w, over the course of maybe a few weeks. He's so taken w her she replaces Leta's photo w her own &, after refusing to go to Paris for Dumbledore, leaves immediately once he finds out she's there. I just find this unbelievable. I can rationalize it from Newt's perspective where Tina is a fresh breeze sweeping into his life on (percieved) unrequited pining, but this is my conjecture based on my understanding of Newt. [2]

The audience shouldnt be left to rationalize endgame couple of the mc on their own. & the whole thing w Leta is so messily handled I dont think they can save it even if they bring her back in FB3. How she feels for Newt vs Theseus & unresolved lingering affection, etc. She & Newt were SO important to each other & we SEE that & they dont HAVE to get together, but they need proper resolution bc they have actual history between them. God Leta in general deserved so much better. [3]

But my main gripe is that this love polygon serves no purpose to what I believe is the main selling point of FB: the world. HP having love stories makes sense bc we're following the story of a boy as he goes through adolescence & his journey through that via school is part of that, which is why the romance feels fitting. It's a very personal story. FB on the otherhand is the best peak we have at the wider wizarding world beyond school. HP introduces the world of magic, but FB rlly expands it [4]

To that end Jakob & Queenie's relationship is the only one I find myself liking, bc it's deeply tied to the world setting, the series' biggest selling point (in my opinion, should have said this earlier). It underscores the attitudes of the period & the conflict they face feels suitably substantial & not like filler. There's a moral question between them of are they worth it? And how far should they go to be together?

Imma be real hear & say FB2 was rlly Queenie's movie & they should have been ballsy & just make Queenie the mc for FB2, bc her story was actually considerably more important to the overall development of the story than Newt's, which mostly came off as a rushed & a tad clichè soap drama. & making it about Queenie I think builds more room for good conflict & independent narrative for Tina that would serve her chara better. [5? 6?]

If I bad to be REAL ballsy, I'd say my big issue w/ the relationships in the FB series & how it enhances or impedes the main story & what I believe to be it's biggest attracter (the setting) could have been solved if they made Newt's romantic interest a muggle. It attaches a deeper meaning & relevance to them & the story so it felt more deeply that they truly moved WITH the narrative rather than beside it but I guess Im just picky. Thx for putting up w this! [Final]

(My response below the cut.)

Yeah, pretty much all of this is right.

Regarding the Tina thing, it was definitely rushed, especially since there was literally nothing romantic between them in the whole first movie, except maybe the end part where they're stumbling over their words. Despite knowing how movies work and knowing that they were the male and female lead, I still found that completely out of left field, because they don't really share any interests and I didn't feel like they felt anything in particular for each other before that. She really wants to be an auror and feels really intensely about it; he just wants to travel the world and write about magical creatures and take care of them. I don't see a lot of compatibility there, and the movie didn't really do anything to reconcile that gap.

Jacob and Queenie made sense, because they actually sowed some seeds for it. It's not even about the fact that they both like to cook; they showed an interest in each other throughout. They noticeably like each other. Newt and Tina never really had that, to me, so it was bizarre for her to become his primary motivation in the second movie.

Queenie's trajectory in movie 2 overall bothers me, so while I agree it would have been better if they'd centered it more around her, I definitely think they needed to drastically rewrite pretty much everything she did. Enchanting Jacob at the beginning never sat well with me; I usually only have to say this in the Descendants fandom, but if one half of the ship is magical and the other half isn't, we can't have the magical one enchanting the non-magical one for romantic reasons without addressing what a violation of trust that is. Like, Jacob would be justified for never trusting her again, over that. Also, the fact that she apparently holds it against people if they think bad things about her is not something I would expect from someone who has been a Legilimens as long as she has, and not a detail I like, at all. Especially since it was used to give her justification to be mad at Jacob after she enchanted him in the first place. I find it sad, because Queenie was definitely my favorite character in the first movie. (Also, joining Grindelwald was a nonsensical thing to do. I can only assume she's there to spy on him or something, because it makes literally no sense.)

As for Leta, I really don't like how that was approached. First of all, I don't like how their mention of her in the first movie was "She was a taker; you need a giver," because once we actually met the character, that only made me resent Queenie for representing her that way. Leta deserved better in pretty much every way, and they definitely shouldn't have killed her off like that. I find the whole situation really iffy from a racial standpoint. The first black character to be written three-dimensionally in all of HP lore, and they make sure to preemptively tell the audience that she's a "taker", kill her in the same movie we meet her, and manage to trivialize her death by turning it into a little "Who was she saying 'I love you' to?" mystery. I like her relationship with Newt and Theseus, and I'd definitely want to see more of it.

Yes, it definitely would have been better, thematically, if they'd made the love interest a Muggle. (I'd honestly say they should've paired Newt with Jacob, but I know they're unwilling to do that. That would be kind of cool, though, to see the movie shaping up with two male characters and two female characters and have the men end up with each other and the women just live their lives as humans.)

With the story they ended up telling, though, I don't think that is needed; since Queenie is already dealing with the wizard/Muggle storyline, Newt could have a different conflict. Maybe his love interest should be a werewolf or something, to tie in the wizarding world's unresolved dislike for "half-breeds". And if he were in a relationship with someone already regarded as a creature, the wider wizarding world might take a different view to his studies and look down on him a lot more. Idk, a thought.

And then, with Leta/Theseus and Grindelwald/Dumbledore (if they were willing to actually deal with that), they'd pretty much hit every controversial beat they've got: wizard/Muggle, wizard/"half-breed", interracial, homosexual. Credence and Nagini are both creatures, kind of, but I still like them together, so their relationship doesn't have to tie into any theme; it just has to be developed way more.

On the whole, Crimes of Grindelwald felt like they skipped a movie. It feels like they needed a middle installment to make these relationships happen, instead of jumping from "Do Newt and Tina maybe have feelings for each other?" to "Newt loves Tina and Tina is possessive enough of Newt to be outwardly upset with him when she thinks he's engaged to someone else," and creating a whole relationship between Credence and Nagini that we see none of.

The fact that Queenie and Jacob were done well in the first movie gives me a fair amount of goodwill for them, but that goodwill only offers enough cushioning from the botching that movie 2 did that I'm near-indifferent to the ship, now, instead of actively opposed. I'd like to see things improved, but as it currently stands, I'd be just as happy seeing them end up not together as together. The fact that Leta's relationships with Newt and Theseus were more interesting than any of the aforementioned makes it that much more ridiculous that they killed her. What ship am I supposed to care about how? If I can't go into the next movie delusionally hoping Newt and Leta will get some moments, or enjoying the Theseus and Leta content, then I'll just be sitting there waiting for Credence and Nagini to share a screen, and who knows when that'll happen?

#long post #fantastic beasts and where to find them #crimes of grindelwald #newt scamander #leta lestrange #theseus scamander #jacob kowalski #queenie goldstein #tina goldstein #credence barebone #nagini

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galaxywhump · 4 years ago

Note

Hello! I’ve just got to know more about Wren’s father!!! What was Nathaniel’s reaction to finding out Wren’s alive? Does he feel at all responsible for what happened with Daniel?

General disclaimer: Nathaniel is an abusive father. Wren moved out as soon as he became an adult, but because neither of them ever addressed the abuse, they kept in touch, though very sporadically. Because of that Nathaniel will be appearing in a few post-captivity drabbles. There will be a resolution to that arc later on, but for now all those drabbles will be tagged with his name, as well as #tw childhood abuse and/or #tw childhood trauma where applicable. Stay safe!

cw: slavery whump, discussion of death and grief, briefly mentioned nausea.

~~~

SOS W. RACKHAM

It’s been over two years, almost three, since his only son died, almost three years of trying to move on, and now the message is taunting him from the screen, keeping his eyes fixed on it. He keeps rereading it, beginning to end, then random pieces, looking for any indication that it’s fake, from someone else, but all the confirmation is there. The name. The title.

Wren is alive.

The uncertain relief he feels is quickly overshadowed by everything else in the message that makes his stomach turn, the details that have no right to make sense as a whole, but somehow do.

SLAVE TRADE - SQUAD B46 P. BERKELEY

Berkeley. That was the name of the soldier who visited him some time after Wren’s death - "death"? - once he came back from the outpost he was assigned to. He brought condolences, nothing but praise for Wren, who, as he said, he knew quite well, and a photograph. The one that Nathaniel had framed and put on the shelf in front of the urn - just what is in there? - the one with Wren genuinely smiling, beaming, looking at something out of frame.

He wonders for a moment just why Berkeley took that picture, and he feels sick. He blinks, manages to close the message - and finally getting it out of his sight feels like taking a deep breath after being stuck underwater - and leaves his office, doing his best to focus. He can’t appear distracted, not when only a handful people other than him know about the message, and for now their operations need to stay covert. He wishes he could take part in them in person, but he can’t, he’s too far away, and a rescue squad has already been sent from a closer outpost. All he can do is stay on Earth, give orders, try to pretend that nothing is amiss, and fight the whirlwind of chaotic thoughts that broke into his mind when he first read the message and refuses to disappear.

He stops in front of the wall of remembrance, and the whirlwind picks up the pace.

Daniel Rooney.

Another one to come back from the dead, the man Nathaniel wished a quick and painless death all those years ago. But he survived, because of course he did. And now, apparently, he’s keeping Wren imprisoned on SV-240, and Nathaniel can’t shake off the feeling that revenge could be the reason.

His gaze moves to the other plaque that sticks out to him, that he has been trying not to look at too often those past few years.

Wren Rackham.

He wants to rip down both of them for completely different reasons, he wants answers, he wants to be able to do something - but for now all he can do is walk away from the wall of remembrance, put on the act of normalcy, and wait for news, whatever it may be.

#thanks for the ask anon! it made some words happen #slavery whump #death mention #grief tw #nathaniel rackham #sv-240 #my writing #it's a small thing so idk if i should tag people #oh well #asks

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foxy-exy · 4 years ago

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23 + andriel 👀

Bloom (forget me not)

Prompt 23 from here: “No, we’re going to talk about this now.” (and tattoo artist/piercer Andrew AU also came from Syd!!) TW: lots of talk about scars i’ve been mia working on my very-close-to-my-heart and very-long-compared-to-what-i’ve-been-writing-lately aftg big bang fic (WATCH OUT FOR THAT PLZ) but syd hit me w/ tattoo artist/piercer andrew right when my need for just one (1) tattoo and many (MANY) more piercings was highest so here we are (also my aftg server was talking about flower tattoos on jean and i was like oh worm flower tattoos on aftg characters you say??? so they are also partially responsible) also i may have never actually gotten a tattoo before but this is definitely Not How It Works, unrealistic, unprofessional, and general bad clienting but shhh you can also find this fic on my ao3 here!

Andrew’s pencil scratching is the only sound in the parlor — he thinks maybe his phone died an hour ago and with it, his music playlist. He should probably get up and plug it back in.

The cat eyes glare at him from his sketchpad page, though, and he can’t leave the face half finished now. He swings his chair back around to look at the picture on the shop’s computer screen that he’s sketching. God, this cat is ugly. He wouldn’t want this cat as a sleeve, but what the paying client wants, the paying client gets.

He blocks out the nose and jaw, shakes out his aching hand, and glares back at the drawing as he leans back in the chair and shoves the pencil eraser into his mouth to chew on.

“Hey.”

Andrew sends his sketchpad flying and nearly tips his chair over to turn back around. Nobody ever shows up for random walk-ins this early, it’s why he’s usually the only one on the schedule. (They retain more clients when Andrew is not the one who talks to them. Because Andrew is, as Nicky puts it, an asshole.)

Neil Josten stands before him, dressed as plainly as ever in his standard gray sweatshirt and baggy jeans, looking bemused and out of place in the strange context of Andrew’s workplace. He is not a piercings-and-tattoos kind of person. He is a somewhat-friends-with-Kevin-purely-because-they-like-to-yell-about-sports-together-on-Andrew’s-couch kind of person.

“Thanks for not even setting off the door bells,” Andrew says coolly, around a mouthful of pencil eraser, and takes it from his mouth immediately after, because Neil is smiling a little, eyes on it.

“Sorry, I’m pretty quiet.”

“No, you aren’t,” Andrew says, and Neil’s lips twitch again.

He and Neil are distant acquaintances at best. Kevin shares Andrew and Nicky’s apartment for rent purposes as Aaron moved out months ago to live with his girlfriend, but Kevin and Andrew don’t share friend groups. Even so, it is impossible to ignore Neil Josten when he’s worked up and shouting about Kevin’s favorite teams being terrible.

“What are you here for?” Andrew clicks off the cat photo and pulls up their schedule — empty for several hours, until Kevin comes in for an appointment with somebody who wants some script work. He doesn’t know why Neil is here when Kevin isn’t working, they’re the ones who know each other.

“How much for a…a medusa?”

“Fifty.” Andrew eyes him. The uncertainty in his voice is clear, which is…interesting. “I didn’t think you were into piercings, or Kevin would have bullied you into at least three by now.”

Neil doesn’t answer, because his gaze is glued to Andrew’s arms — his shirt sleeves have ridden up to show the patchwork pieces winding their way up his wrists and forearms.

“And…” This comes out more rushed now, clearly the actual reason for the visit, “What about tattoos?”

Andrew pulls back down his sleeves. “Are you asking for pricing? I can’t give you an estimate without any kind of idea of what you’re looking for. Do you even know the style you want? Where you want it?”

Neil drags his eyes back up to meet Andrew’s. “You covered up Kevin’s old tattoos, didn’t you?”

Andrew folds his arms. Enunciates clearly because he’s never been one to beat around the bush. “Are you looking for a tattoo consultation or not?”

“Yes,” says Neil, and his mouth flattens, brows pinching.

“Glad to see you’re so very excited about it,” Andrew deadpans, opens up an appointment entry on the schedule and types in Neil Josten, tattoo consultation: Andrew Minyard. He snatches up his sketchpad and pencil from the ground and curls a finger at Neil to follow.

***

“You don’t have tattoos to cover up,” Andrew says, when Neil tentatively perches on the edge of the lounge seat in the private office. “What do you want?”

Neil tugs at the fraying cuff of his shirt and looks pained. “I just…I don’t know.”

“That really sucks, because you’re paying me to help you figure out specifics on what you want right now.”

“Can you cover up scars,” Neil mumbles, and Andrew freezes. And Neil must pick up on this, because immediately he says, “Never mind. This was a bad idea.”

Andrew catches Neil’s shirt hem before he can completely turn towards the door. “No, we’re going to talk about this now.”

“I changed my mind, it’s okay, don’t tell Kevin, I just thought maybe —”

“I won’t tell Kevin,” Andrew says.

Neil tugs at his hair.

“I can cover up scars,” Andrew says.

Neil looks back at him, and he is very pale.

And then, because Andrew is stupid, “I’ve covered up my own scars.”

Neil’s face does something very complicated, his hands shake a little, and slowly, carefully, Neil sits back down.

***

Neil doesn’t know what he wants, exactly, he says. He says he likes what he’s seen of Andrew’s work, which isn’t all that helpful.

“Abstract,” Andrew says, and Neil shrugs.

“Animals.” Shrug.

“Skulls,” Andrew says, with a hint of impatience.

“Anything,” Neil says.

“You’re my least favorite client.”

“Even that one with the lion back tattoo?” Neil asks, and he is smiling again. Teasing. Andrew knows that Neil was in the house when he was telling Kevin about that client and his ridiculous whining, but he hadn’t realized Neil had been listening.

“Yes, maybe you’ll overtake even him,” Andrew retorts, reaches for the binder sitting in the corner marked Andrew Minyard — full of his past work — and tosses it at Neil. “I can’t work with ‘anything.’ That’s how people get tattoos they regret.”

“I liked Kevin’s black rose,” Neil says, and flips through the book, lingering on a page with more floral designs. “But you do color, too?”

“That is a style I do, yes.” Andrew watches Neil’s fingers trace delicate petals and fights back a curious rush. “Scar tissue can be unpredictable when it comes to holding ink, and it can hurt. But I’ve had experience with it. Do you want something like that?”

“I like these,” Neil says quietly, and Andrew shoves his pencil eraser back into his mouth and turns resolutely back to his sketchpad so he doesn’t have to look at Neil looking at his work.

“Colored flowers,” he says, drumming fingernails against his paper. “Fine. What flowers do you like? Where would this be?”

“Forget-me-not? On my arm?” Again, Neil sounds uncertain, and Andrew turns a glare on him.

“If you want this, you want this. If you’re not sure, I’m not inking an inch of you.”

He decides he hates looking at Neil’s soft smile when he is on its receiving end. This is the first time it’s happened, and he thinks if it happens again, he should check into a hospital for heart palpitations.

“I want it. Here.” Neil rolls up a sleeve, and Andrew clamps his jaw shut as Neil taps a finger to his forearm, covered in circular red puckers of skin and the occasional, familiar raised line of white. Andrew forces himself to lean closer to examine the canvas with clinical detachment, and press his fingers to the skin, measuring.

“This big?”

“Yeah,” Neil says, and that’s that.

***

“Why the hell was Neil on your schedule?” Kevin asks very loudly from the front desk as Andrew lounges across the waiting room couch and doodles blue petals.

“Huh, Kevin, I don’t see how that’s really any of your business,” Andrew says, and scribbles out another draft.

“No, seriously. He’s never wanted anything before. Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Contrary to what your ego says, not everything is about you,” Andrew drawls.

“Neil,” Kevin barks, and Andrew looks up to find Kevin with his phone to his ear. “Why did you come to see Andrew?”

Neil must apparently say something similar to Andrew’s sentiments because Kevin rolls his eyes. “You should have told me that you wanted something. No, I — he didn’t say anything to me. Neil —!” The last part is said to an apparently dead line, because Kevin pulls the phone away with a huff. “I don’t understand why he came to you without saying anything, I’m his tattoo artist friend.”

“Too bad,” Andrew says, and pulls out his own phone when it buzzes.

Thanks, is the simple text from Neil Josten. For not telling him.

Andrew doesn’t reply, but he tucks his phone between his elbows and pretends to ignore the warmth blooming in his chest as he flips the page and starts to shade another forget-me-not.

***

Do you like this? Andrew asks, and attaches a picture of his latest draft.

Almost immediately, the text is marked as Seen, but Neil doesn’t respond for a solid few minutes.

Finally, Andrew locks his phone again, irritated, and shoves away his sketchpad, feeling too jittery to sleep like he should be doing at — he checks the clock — 2 AM.

His phone chimes, and Andrew looks down at It’s perfect and thinks that having such a giant crush on his apartment mate’s probably uninterested friend is maybe really, really bad.

***

“Hey, Andrew.”

Andrew looks up from the fridge. He has been studiously ignoring Neil’s presence on the couch while Kevin chatters to him about the latest hockey wins. But Kevin has disappeared, and Neil remains, and Neil is…looking at him.

“I like it a lot. Like, fuck, really a lot.”

Andrew glares and slams the fridge closed. Neil’s smile only grows wider as Andrew stalks over to the table to deposit whatever leftovers he grabbed (that he most definitely did not look at) onto it.

“So, when are you free to ink me?”

Andrew’s going to die, and Neil Josten saying when are you free to ink me is going to be the cause of death.

“Tomorrow. 10 AM,” he grits out.

“Okay,” Neil says.

***

“Andrew.”

“Shut up.”

“Andrew,” Neil says again, shakily.

“Don’t.”

“Thank you.” Neil stares at the forget-me-not cluster blooming across pinkened skin underneath the plastic wrap, lips parted. Andrew wants to kiss them.

“Oh,” says Neil when he looks up, and Andrew is still too close, and Andrew would usually probably pull back but instead, he dips closer. And Neil would usually probably avoid physical contact like he does with everyone but instead, Neil kisses him back.

“Oh,” Andrew agrees, and starts to turn away, but Neil shifts with him, eyes too intense, and a finger hovers at Andrew’s collar to tug very lightly.

“When would be too soon to ask when you’re free again?”

“Has the tattoo bug bitten you already?” Andrew scoffs, and Neil looks down at his forget-me-not and nods. “You’ll have to schedule an appointment like everybody else. You’re lucky my schedule hasn’t been as booked lately.”

“Okay,” says Neil, and then, “and what about asking when you’re free outside of work?”

Andrew stares at him. “For?”

“What about a repeat of this kind of thing?” Neil gestures between them. “Or…lunch, on me?”

“Lunch, on me,” says Andrew automatically. “You just gave me a lot of money.”

“Okay,” says Neil again, and laughs. “Kevin’s going to be so pissed that he missed all this happening.”

“I don’t see why I have to tell him who I’m kissing,” Andrew says.

“You’ve only done it once.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow and fixes that grievous mistake.

Neil’s answering grin is not soft, just impish, but it does things to Andrew’s heart all the same.

#andreil #andrew minyard #neil josten #the foxhole court #all for the game #aftg #tfc #aftg fanfic #tfc fanfic #all for the game fanfic #the foxhole court fanfic #fanfic #xcazzy #kay answers #scars tw #kay fanfic #kaystuff #ficlet #off the court

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katelynn-a-fan · 5 years ago

Text

Why We Do What We Do (2)

First | Next

“Wow! Look at that!” “Woah!” “So cool!” A chorus of voices shouted.

Logan looked up from where he was into the night sky and caught a ‘shooting star’ streaking across the sky. He was mildly surprised that he had enough time to see it by the time whoever had seen it and exclaimed and he had looked up. He allowed a small grunt to pass through his lips.

Logan disliked calling them ‘shooting stars’, because they were merely bits of rock and ice that had been shucked off a comet or were tiny bits of rock and dust from impacts of planets or asteriods far away that just happened to enter the Earth’s atmosphere. The only reason they looked like ‘stars’ at all was because they were burning up in the atmosphere from the very high temperature molecules of the mesosphere being pushed together, causing a massive amount of friction to very rapidly wear away at whatever rock/meteor was entering the atmosphere.

Logan always found the Mesosphere fascinating though. Temperature wise it was the coldest layer, but yet each individual particle contains so much energy. It was very distinct from the Thermosphere above, in that it’s the last layer to contain a significant amount of ozone or even just air for that matter. This ozone was the reason for it to deviate so far into being colder than the troposphere of daily life, because the Thermosphere was the hottest layer of the atmosphere and that sits above the Mesosphere.

Logan coughed a little to clear his throat before continuing.

“Great job on spotting that Cal! Remind me when we go inside and you’ll get a piece of candy.” Logan projected while still gazing up to where the meteor had been.

“Score!” came Cal’s familiar voice to his right a few telescopes down.

Logan inwardly and sarcastically rolled his eyes, but he would never be so unprofessional to disrespect a student like that, much less his students.

College kids and their excitement for free food.

Logan dropped his gaze down from the sky and returned to what he was doing, helping one of his students navigate the controls of her telescope.

“When it comes to a telescope, even the tiniest movement can sweep over what you are looking for, so always double check the coordinates you have inputed into it, okay?”

The student, Grace, only kept her gaze on the telescope with an expression of a confusion that he probably had once shared the first time he had used telescope.

Logan waited for the student to say something, before adjusting his glasses and standing up from the stool he had been using when he was looking in the telescope when he got no response.

He patted Grace’s shoulder. “You’ll get the hang of it. You have the coordinates on your sheet, just use the paddle to input them and look through the eyepiece right here. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for, put the telescope on the lowest speed and move around until you find that signature faint green blob of the nebula.” Logan affirmed as he pointed his finger to the small eyepiece he had been observing through and then picking up the paddle from it’s place and then returned it back.

“If you still can’t find it, call me or one of my TA’s over to help. The universe is a big place, don’t sweat it if you can’t find what you’re looking for.” Logan smiled a small smile to punctuate his statement.

It could’ve been the very dim red lamps they used for lighting their workspace, but Logan thought he saw Grace blush as she mumbled a small “Thank you” before turning to the telescope and retrieving the paddle to do her work for the class.

Logan strolled over to where his 2 TA’s were standing, chatting about whatever.

“Hey Ramie, Mike! How are they all doing?” Logan’s voice was enough to stop their conversation, but Logan doubted any of his students who could vaguely hear what they were saying were perturbed.

Ramie spoke first. “Good! Theo is getting along nicely with the focus and Alex found the first nebula using the manual controls and the coordinate sheet instead of letting the computer do it.”

“Nice! It seems Cal has some competition for best Astronomy student of the class. But... you didn’t hear that from me.” Logan lowered his voice and placed his hand like he was trying not to let Cal hear to punctuate his statement.

Alex is a lot like me, wanting to prove he knows how to do things without anyone’s help. I just hope he doesn’t get too far ahead of himself. God knows I was too smart for my own good when I was his age.

“Ha ha! Sure, sure. All good here too. I love that tonight will be so easy! They’re all such good kids. Honestly I think this semester’s going to be a breeze.” Mike interjected with a laugh as Raime went over to a student raising their hand.

Logan’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it. It was not professional to check his phone while he was teaching, and he was sure it was a notification from one of the puzzle games he had to entertain himself with on his phone.

“Well, when you’re doing midnight labs, you only get the students who actually want to be here. Not many would want to have a class that ends at barely before midnight. And anyone who came here more for the party scene than to further their education would weed themselves out the moment they saw when Astronomy labs would be.” Logan articulated as he watched Ramie converse with the student about whatever problem they had. Instinctively and unconsciously, Logan lightly patted the pocket of his pants that contained his phone.

“True that.” Mike replied while also observing Ramie help the student.

They sat in silence for a moment or two before Logan’s pocket buzzed again, but Logan ignored it as before. Logan knew it was probably the secondary alert for when a notification stays unopened, he would clear it away later. Mike’s eyes flitted to Logan’s pocket for a second before seeming to think better of something, quickly returning to look at Ramie. Logan caught the glance, but decided to ignore it.

Mike could have whatever assumption he had, really, Logan couldn’t care less about stuff like that, as long as his assumptions didn’t hinder him in his duty as a TA.

After Ramie came back, Logan and the TA’s devised a game of Name that Constellation. Everyone would take turns scanning the sky, and when they found each constellation they would name it and any interesting fact about the myth. And if they couldn’t find a constellation or remember the myth to go with it fast enough, that person would be the next to help a student with their telescope.

Luckily, Logan was an astronomy teacher for a reason, and his TAs were grossly outplayed. Ramie was the first to fall and looked subtly peeved as she then waited for the inevitable hand raise. Mike, luckily for Raime, fell next as his eyes searched the sky for a familiar pattern only to be met by a indistinguishable field of dots.

Now, both of the TAs were waiting for Logan to falter. 1, 2, 3, 4 rounds and Logan always kept managing to spot countless constellations that they had apparently looked over multiple times with the ease of an adult reading a book for small children learning to read. And even the myths were explained in great detail, not just the basic premise of their myths, the full stories with their exposition, rising action, climax, and resolution.

Granted, this was the first outside lab of the year, but Ramie and Mike shared the same assumption: that they knew their teacher.

But with this development, both Ramie and Mike shared a look that they both knew meant We have a lot to learn apparently.

Not only about astronomy, but their teacher as well.

Now Logan did not see their shared glances as he was scanning the sky for his next target, but was broken out of his focusing when his phone went off again.

Logan’s heart sank.

It was a call this time.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to take this call.” Logan excused himself while keeping a mask of indifference with a small dash of embarrassment mixed in.

Logan’s pace remained measured as he descended the small flight of stairs near him, but once he was out of sight, his quickened his pace significantly as he reached the door back into the main classroom.

There was only was one person this could be calling and he knew that they would only call if it was truly important/urgent.

Logan’s heartbeat quickened as he opened the door to the empty classroom. He had pulled the phone from his pocket at some point in his trek, but didn’t want to answer too soon as to be unable to hear the call. Without looking at the lock screen, Logan pressed the call button to accept the call.

He brought the phone to his ear.

Before Logan could say anything Patton’s voice flooded into Logan’s ear. Patton only got through one sentence before his cries took over his words where they essentially became a part of his crying as the call dropped with Logan’s shitty cell reception.

That one sentence made Logan drop his phone with trembling hands as he burst into tears himself, making Logan sway before sinking into the nearest chair. However, Logan did not have the luxury to cry outright, only letting silent tears leak from his eyes as he took in what Patton meant.

Logan picked his phone back up and saw 10 missed texts from Patton, and kicked himself for not even considering to at least glance at his phone before Patton was resorted to calling him to get his proper attention.

Logan stopped short in his emotional mire, struck by a wave of realization, his jaw setting into a stern and determined expression. Logan knew what he had to do.

Logan swiftly composed himself, wiping away the stray tears from his eyes, as he returned back to his TAs, beckoning them over to where he was at the top of the stairs.

“I have to go. Can you hold down the metaphorical fort with just the 2 of you for the rest of class?” Logan’s mask of indifference was back, hoping that neither the TAs or the students near him could tell he had been crying moments before.

Ramie and Mike now shared a glance Logan caught at full force this time. “We’ll fine, like you said, most of the kids in this class are here because they know what they’re doing.” Mike replied with a hint of something more gentle than Logan had ever seen on Mike’s face and for that he was grateful.

The silence hung between them as a silent message was implied from what they didn’t say. We know you well enough to know that whatever this is is serious. We’ll cover for you. Go.

Logan nodded as he turned and briskly maneuvered down the steps, gathering what little paper material he required for teaching his midnight astronomy class and in short order found himself cranking his car into reverse and driving towards his destination, knowing exactly where he needed to go.

The problem was, in other circumstances, he would enjoy going to his destination.

But the sentence Patton uttered on the phone changed everything. Logan knew those 7 words would haunt him for years to come. 7 words to turn Logan’s world on it’s head.

“They found him, but it’s really bad.”

Taglist:

@ironwoman359 @lefaystrent @delimeful

#sanders sides #sander sides fic #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders side fan fiction #sanders sides fan fic #logan sanders #thomas sanders logan #sanders sides logan #ts logan #logan angst #human au #patton sanders #thomas sanders patton #ts patton #patton angst #angst #wwd2

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arlingtonpark · 5 years ago

Text

SNK 126 Review

TFW you know you’re going to die.

Just…where to even start.

God damn this chapter.

Rushed. Rushed. Rushed. Rushed. Rushed. Everything about this chapter was rushed. I don’t know what Isayama’s final destination is, but he sure pulled out all the stops to get there as fast as possible. Every possible chance Isayama could cut a corner, he took it. In every possible way.

People are speculating that we’ll get flashbacks that’ll sooth the sting of this chapter. I doubt it.

Attack on Titan has been pretty flashback heavy this past arc, but that was an artistic decision that served the story.

There was a three year time skip and that time needed to be filled out. We jumped ahead three years and suddenly Eren is AWOL and working with Zeke.

Showing events unfolding on Paradis interspersed with flashbacks to key moments during the time skip was a storytelling device.

Firstly, it allowed Isayama to control how much we knew about our character’s motivations.

Stuff happened in those three years, and those events have shaped the character’s actions in the present. Through strategically placed flashbacks, Isayama was able to slowly reveal new, relevant information about everyone’s motivations.

Secondly, flashbacks also allowed Isayama to build suspense. Again, flashbacks are strategically placed to reveal only what’s relevant.

When it seemed Eren was working with Zeke, we only saw stuff that made it seem like he was working with Zeke. Now that we know Eren was always working against Zeke, we’re seeing stuff that more directly deals with his true motivations.

And finally, having flashbacks helped keep things interesting. There’s a lot of political maneuvering during the post-Marley Arc chapters, and while well told, it could easily have been boring. Cutting between past and present was a way to break up these sequences of people mostly just talking with each other with something most would find interesting.

Having flashbacks actively improved the story.

Now think about chapter 126. What purpose would flashbacks serve here?

The answer is none. No artistic purpose, anyway. There probably will be flashbacks, but that’d be damage control, not artistry.

My hunch is that the gaps in the story are more due to rushed pacing, or even worse, Isayama just not caring. I think this becomes clear when you look at the totality of…whatever this chapter is.

True, we don’t see when Hange and co. made contact with Armin and co. and when they hooked up with Jean and Mikasa.

And it’s true we also didn’t see important beats like why Annie decided to join up, or why Magath and Pieck joined, too.

But we also didn’t see a lot of smaller stuff that we, nevertheless, *should* have seen.

Falco said he heard Connie mention Ragako Village while they were camped out. That didn’t happen on screen, but Connie was shown talking out loud, briefly. We are apparently supposed to take it as a given he mentioned Ragako, too. At some point.

When Armin and Gabi confront Connie in Ragako, they ride in on horseback and stop when Connie threatens Falco. But towards the end of the scene, we see that Armin and Gabi are standing on the ground. At some prior point, they dismounted their horses off screen.

Falco loved his brother. Then Colt died and Falco had a role in that. He died in Falco’s transformation. Hugging him. Crying for him. Falco never knew before now. His brother was dead and he never even realized. Now he learns it.

Off. Fucking. Screen.

He’s crying with Gabi and at first it seemed he was just overwhelmed by what happened.

Then I saw his speech bubble.

Falco [sobbing]: Colt.

Are you fucking kidding me.

Things reach peak IDGAF during Onyankopon’s execution scene. In one panel, Jean is standing to Onyankopon’s back right. Next panel, he’s teleported to the back left. Then Jean points his gun at Onyankopon, and he’s on the back right again! When Jean pulls the trigger, he’s back to being on the left.

I doubt there’ll be flashbacks to any of this shit. These moments were obviously skipped because Isayama dropped the ball.

Maybe the homebuilder will go back and add that much needed support beam, but considering they seemingly forgot to fireproof the chimney, they probably aren’t.

I call it the Principle of Brown M&Ms. Whenever Van Halen played a concert, they stipulated in their contract that their dressing room be furnished with a bowl of m&ms, no brown ones.

If there really was a bowl with no brown m&ms, they could be sure that venue management was diligent and on their game. If they cared to fulfill a small detail like that, they could be trusted to care about crew safety, etc.

Van Halen should trash Isayama’s house I will crowd fund the money.

I have little trust in Isayama to do this right. Looking at the totality of the chapter, it’s clear these are mistakes rather than decisions.

The through line of this chapter is suicide.

They’re all going to die. All of them. And they know it.

Just look at their faces in the final shot. Expressions range from stone-faced (Armin) to shitting the bed (Gabi). They all know this means death.

No one is doing this because they think they can win, except maybe Annie.

Connie’s logic was that he wanted to be a soldier his mom would be proud of. Fighting Eren is where this logic takes him. No plan for actually winning is brought up, he just decides fighting the good fight is what makes a mom proud.

Hange is doing this for the sake of not running away. They consider doing what Shadis rejected: living the rest of their days shitting on a mountain. The reason they’re not currently doing that is just what Levi said: they don’t stop.

Magath admitted last chapter that they couldn’t win, but that informing the world of the apocalypse was better than waiting to die. Fighting Eren against all hope isn’t far from that, so that’s probably their primary motivation as well.

I’m willing to bet Armin is similarly motivated. There’s a very revealing parallel between Armin and Connie in this chapter, though an underdeveloped one.

Connie wants to be a soldier his mom could be proud of. But, of course, Erwin is Armin’s idea of a soldier to be proud of. Erwin was charismatic, smart, and kept calm under fire.

Connie and Armin strive for essentially the same ideal. Being a good soldier. That means slightly different things to each of them, but broadly, it’s the same.

Mind you, Armin’s idea of Erwin is significantly more sanitized than the real Erwin was, but that’s not the point. For all his flaws, Erwin genuinely was someone to look up to. He showed true leadership, intelligence, and empathy. He was a good person all around.

Armin didn’t even want to think about fighting Eren; he had given up hope on that. Would Erwin have done that?

My guess is that Armin thinks taking down Eren is how he can truly become like Erwin Smith. Erwin never lost sight of the main objective, even if it meant long odds. Save humanity. That meant getting to that basement, so they went to that basement.

Right now, saving humanity means stopping Eren.

Chances are slim, too, but that never stopped Erwin, either. Armin knows that. Once a goal was set on, Erwin never wavered. He pushed towards it.

So you’ve got humanity’s fate on the line and an impossible obstacle to fight if victory is to achieved. Sounds like a classic survey corps mission. No wonder Armin is doing this.

Jean is doing this because of his conscious. Floch tempted him with a chance to peace out. Instead, he chose to peace out and kill Eren.

He could have lived a quiet life. Not just a life he wanted before, but arguably the life he deserves after all the misery he’s endured. He said no.

He let Marco infect his brain and now he can’t not be good.

This is what happens when you huff ashes.

Levi is doing this because he made a promise to Erwin and he stands by that. Killing Zeke was the last order Erwin gave him. Levi promised he’d carry it out. If he fails, he fails Erwin. I don’t think Levi’s ever contemplated failing, but honestly, it’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t take that shame to his grave.

Gabi’s already resolved to fight Eren, so she’s just sticking to what she’s already planned.

No idea why Annie is doing this, so don’t ask. >.>

They’re doing this because they refuse to roll over. They can’t respect themselves if they do. Not Hange, not Connie, not Jean.

They can’t take pride in themselves otherwise.

So they’ll march to their deaths, and they don’t care if there’s no hope. They’re throwing their lives away, but they know it’s the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, most of this, admittedly pretty cool, character work happens off screen.

God damn this chapter.

So. Much. Of this chapter was mishandled.

Connie’s subplot resolution was the most blatant example.

I already mentioned Falco hearing stuff from Connie off screen. And Armin and Gabi dismounting their horses…at some point. The BS continues afterwards.

Armin pleads for Falco’s life, but Connie claims Armin is telling him to give up on his mom, and Armin is totally shut down by this.

LOL.

This is the exact same objection Connie raised the last time they spoke. What stopping Connie would mean for his mom was specifically on Armin’s mind when he set out with Gabi.

Like, Armin, bruh, you really had nothing to say to that?

He really, really didn’t think to come up with a response. Armin. The guy who tends to overthink things.

Fine, whatever. So Connie’s objection causes Armin to spiral into self-loathing despair.

The stakes are dizzyingly high.

A child taken hostage.

A deranged man threatens to kill him.

The boy’s girlfriend is there. She’s smart, but still just a kid. And she doesn’t know this man. She doesn’t know how to talk to him, she doesn’t understand his motives, she’s not very emotionally mature herself.

But she’s desperate. Desperate.

Armin is the only one who’s kept his head. It has to be him.

He needs to calm the madman down, convince him killing the kid isn’t the right way, and maybe assure him an alternative solution exists.

Erwin probably could’ve done it. He was charismatic, smart, and calm under fire.

Armin…was not that here. It was genuinely stupid of him to not have come prepared. Like, at even a basic level.

He failed.

So fuck it, at least if the mommy titan ate him, Falco will live, the mom will be back, and Gabi can have her boyfriend.

So Armin throws himself at the titan, and it was only happenstance that everything worked out.

That’s the logic of this scene, but it’s all muddled. The stupidity Armin displayed dampened the drama.

The speed with which he falls into despair was unnatural. Armin’s badly insecure about living up to Erwin’s image, but it’s never been shown to be this bad.

There’s no believable progression to Armin’s feelings. He tried to be a hero, he face-planted, now he wants to die. They sort of skipped a couple of beats here.

Then Connie says maybe the stupidest thing he’s ever said in the manga: that inheriting the Colossal Titan would only have made his mom suffer.

???

So giving her the Colossal Titan would be bad, but not the Jaw?

I just assumed Connie thought turning his mom into a titan was worth it in the end. Did he just now realize how bad that would have been?

The series can’t just not address this. Connie named killing Falco and Armin as the bad things he did. Is he really not going to grapple with almost turning his mom into a titan, which he only implicitly admits was a bad thing?

Next scene is Louise and Mikasa.

Louise is a very devoted person. She cares deeply for Mikasa because Mikasa saved her life, and inspired her to devote her heart. She enlisted in the military, risked her life for her country, and now she’s on her deathbed, mortally wounded in battle. Not many people would speak ill of her like I would.

…

Is there anyone in this manga as pathetic as Louise?

Really, is there anyone?

Louise was saved from a titan by Mikasa. This inspired her to fight for her country.

Ok, that’s good.

She admires Mikasa and dreams of fighting by her side.

Yeah, that’s fine. We all wish we could hang with our heroes.

Then she took the scarf Mikasa threw away for herself. Because she thought it’d bring her closer to her.

Like how a stalker rifles through their victim’s trash for keepsakes.

That’s. pathetic.

It is pathetic how much Louise pines for Mikasa.

Compare Louise x Mikasa to Mikasa x Eren all you like, it’s not the same thing.

Mikasa and Eren were family. Their love is at minimum familial. Mikasa pines for Eren, which she very annoyingly never addressed, but there’s a sense to it.

When Mikasa lost her family, she was a helpless kid who had nothing. The Jeagers, and especially Eren, helped her rebuild her life. They took her into their home and accepted her as a family member.

The scarf matters, but only because it represents the humanity Mikasa was shown when she needed it most. She is endlessly grateful for that.

So of course she’d break the law for Eren, many family members would. Her willingness to do anything to save Eren bordered on derangement, but she’s gotten better at that. And she’s reevaluating her image of Eren in light of recent…happenings, which is good.

Louise is just a goddamn fangirl.

She doesn’t know Mikasa. She doesn’t pal around with her. She just stalks her like a creep.

Maybe they could have been friends. If Louise had just approached her, explained her story, and tried to befriend her, they could’ve become good friends. Certainly, Mikasa would have been flattered to see she inspired someone so much.

But that’s not what happened. Louise chose to be a stalker instead of a friend. I don’t think she was ever really interested in Mikasa as a person, though.

This is the likely last time she and Mikasa will interact, and Mikasa was so cold to her. Louise didn’t care. She got to fight alongside her hero for a time and that was enough. That’s so childish.

She looked up to Mikasa, but never seemed to want to befriend her. She just wanted to fight alongside her. I don’t think I’ll ever understand people like Louise.

If you respect someone so much, why wouldn’t you want to get to know them?

She said she’d die with no regrets because of this.

No regrets over never befriending her hero. No regrets over Floch, who lead her movement, putting people against the wall. No self-reflection. Nothing.

What a sad life to have lived.

She never questioned herself or what she felt. Just stunningly unself-aware.

…Maybe Daz would be more pathetic, but he’s more of a caricature of a pitiable person, so he doesn’t count.

Louise was a perfect fit for the Yeagerists. Louise, Floch, Eren. These people think with their hearts instead of their brains. They act on their feelings with no thought. It’s animalistic.

Eren loves his country, so now he’s off killing everyone else. Floch feels righteous indignation, so now he’s fucking over everyone who opposes him. Louise feels admiration for Mikasa, so now she’s dead.

Floch is holding his Trump rally, and declaring ultimate victory. i swear, Floch talks like a politician giving a stump speech. It’s the same prepared remarks with the same talking points over and over and over again.

“We are persecuted. All hail Eren the Liberator. He will set us free. Make me King of Ape Mountain.”

You can just tell Floch isn’t a very creative person. He’s repetitive as hell, a real one-man act.

Then one of the dumbest moments in the chapter happens.

Mikasa is watching Floch’s speech for some reason. Then Some Guy approaches her, and casually asks if she wants to help lead Paradis.

Who is this guy?

Why is he asking her this?

Why is this guy pointing out Jean for no reason?

Clearly the point is to establish Mikasa’s stance on helping the Jeagerists, and to hint at Jean’s coming betrayal, but, jeeeeeez, was this badly telegraphed.

Isayama’s never been all that subtle, but this is just bad. It reads like the first draft of a story than a finished product.

Next dumb scene.

Connie, Armin, and the kids are eating their way to Reiner, and they just bump into Annie, and even though she admits she’s committed awful crimes, Connie just starts paling around with her.

Huh?

His friends betraying him and killing other friends was, like, a thing with Connie. He had major beef with Eren for this exact reason. He specifically named Annie as an example of this.

Eren, Reiner, Bertolt, Annie. He trusted these people; they betrayed that trust and he was tired of it. Good people were killed by that betrayal. Including Sasha, whom he cared for more than anyone.

Now it’s all good?

This is terrible character writing. Connie’s character was totally shat on by this chapter.

I doubt we’ve seen the last of Hitch. That line about not finishing the pie alone is obvious set up for her searching Annie out and helping take down Eren.

Finishing off a pie is a group effort; the more the better. Also finishing off the zombie savior thing Eren’s become. That, too.

I’ve already talked about Jean, but wow, he’s such a good kid now.

The plan was for the Cart Titan to grab Yelena, Onyankopon, and Jean, and get out. They couldn’t have accounted for everything, though, like Floch happening to be in danger of being crushed as the Cart did her thing.

Floch and Jean do not get along. They’re enemies, politically and personally.

Jean still pushed him out of the way.

That was nice, but it was a critical blunder.

If Jean had held Floch close instead, they both would have been taken. Floch could have been their prisoner along with Yelena.

But, nope, Floch will continue to solidify his power and even if everyone survives, they won’t be able to oppose him.

The future looks super bleak no matter what happens. Eren will destroy the world and Floch will rule the Earth, or Eren will be stopped and the world will destroy Paradis in retaliation.

There is no way this is some gambit by Eren to unite the world. That makes no sense.

The world hates Eldians because they fear the Wall Titans will crush them.

The exact thing Eren’s doing now.

Eren will unite the world, but only in hatred of Eldians. If Eren is stopped, the world will be more committed to eliminating Paradis than ever before.

…Did the dialogue seem worse this time around?

“Titan doctor Hange.”

“We’ll listen before we shoot.”

“You just told me not to say a word, so I’ll show you with my actions.”

“Those burned bones would never forgive me.”

Who wrote that?

This chapter in general suffers from what you could call Season 3-itis. The anime adaptation of the Uprising Arc, in season 3, had a similar problem with rushing important moments. In season 3, part 1 important stuff happens and the characters engage with these events like real people. They react to what’s happening.

In the anime, stuff just happens. There are plot beats to get through, so the characters perform their beats and then it’s off to the next beat. The characters don’t react to what’s happening, they perform the story beat given to their character. It’s a robotic form of storytelling with no humanity behind it.

There is no gravitas.

So it is here. The fast pace of this chapter is unnatural. It breaks immersion and makes the story seem unrealistic.

This chapter was so inexplicable. Isayama just…stopped caring. Some other explanation would be nice, but in a vacuum, this is the likeliest one. He just stopped caring.

Never forget, this is Attack on Titan. A story about everything good in the world getting ruined. Up to and including the quality of the story itself.

So will they succeed?

Eren is apparently doing this to protect them, so if they just stood in a line in front of him, and dared him to kill them…

It might give him pause.

……They’re dead.

#shingeki no kyogin #attack on titan #snk 126 #snk chapter 126 #spoilers

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ratherashleigh · 6 years ago

Text

killing eve, queerbaiting, and why what sandra oh said in that interview is both 100% true and also entirely irrelevant

1. your personal disappointment that a tv show did not do exactly what you want is not queerbaiting just because what you wanted involves queer characters.

1a. yes, i'm going to refer to characters as queer. no, i do not take feedback.

2. actually i don't think 1. is sufficient to cover this topic. so i present:

What Are We Talking About When We Call Something Queerbaiting In 2019?

because this isn't just about language and how words may or may not have evolved to mean different things or include more things or people are just misusing a word because they just don't know. forget about the word. the word is irrelevant. WHAT IS THE ACTUAL COMPLAINT BEING LEVELLED BY FANDOM AT KILLING EVE RIGHT NOW?

pre-that gay times interview: they are never going to get together in a romantic relationship, i feel tricked into watching this on the promise of Queer Content.

post-that gay times interview: the show is denying that it is queer at all. fuck them they're wrong.

3. why the pre-interview complaint is, uh, wrong: queer content is queer content even if it's not the queer content you want.

fandom in general is obsessed with relationships. literally the verb for our single unifying activity is derived from the word relationship. the reason we, fandom, exist as a group at all, by and large, arises out of our collective desire for something that performative media does not do particularly well: relationships, specifically romantic ones, very especially queer romantic ones.

maybe it needs to be pointed out at this point that the relationship between fandom and the source is a bit like a dog chasing its own tail. or a snake eating its own tail, depending on the way the wind is blowing. fandom exists because it's not getting what it wants. and fandom turns on the source when it doesn't get what it wants. the problem: performative media, and especially longform media like television, is pretty much constructed by design in such a way that it will not give fandom what it wants.

(and it's weird that "fandom" is a term reserved pretty exclusively for ship-based fan activity, right? it's weird because fandom seems to imply we are fans, but all of this is about how the thing we are supposedly fans of is in some way not giving us what we want.)

i keep saying "what we want". i'm going to pause for a moment here to say something controversial: the story queer fandom wants has almost never, ever in the entire history of television, been provided to straight ship fans. because it's not a thing television provides, generally, at all. let me spell out what i think fandom wants, a conclusion based on excluding all the things i see being complained about, and attempting to find common elements in what's left over: queer couple in an expressly declared romantic relationship without conflict and with storylines centering around said relationship.

don't get me wrong, sometimes those things magically happen on tv, and overwhelmingly the examples of that will be het couples. H O W E V E R. those het couples are rare as fuck.

it's actually pretty straightforward as to why this is the case, and it is the reason i say performative media, especially television, does not, by design, give us what we want: narrative storytelling revolves around conflict. whether or not this is a good thing or not is irrelevant to the fact that it just is. romantic relationships in film and television tend to have two modes: UST and relationship problems. both of which involve conflict that impedes the relationship itself. the reason UST is generally what gets people shipping things is because the conflict is what's keeping them from being together, the implication being that but for the thing getting in the way the narrative has made some effort to show that these two characters WANT to be together. the reason tv tends to piss people off so much is because the default conflict once there IS a relationship is something that is going to break them apart. maybe they DON'T want to be together. the first inspires that sportsfan-like mentality that if we just try hard enough, we the characters but also we the fans cheering them on, will overcome the obstacle in the way. but overcoming something trying to break a couple apart is one of the singularly most unsatisfying narrative resolutions because the very fact of it required us to believe on some level that they could be broken apart. when your team is on top, it's not triumph you feel when they win but relief that they didn't lose. "they survived" is not the same happy ending as "they're together now," even if functionally it is the same outcome.

the other is more a function of how a tv show (much more than film) is actually constructed: a two lead cast with only minor secondary characters is RARE now. the kinds of shows that have the largest fandoms tend to be long season, large cast ensembles with either a plot of the week that means different characters interacting each episode OR is beholden to a larger narrative arc that needs to work to bring those other characters in over and over again. either way, the focus will never be exclusively and exhaustively on the two main leads interacting with each other.

4. so is killing eve not giving fandom what it wants?

like i said, the way stories are told does not, usually, facilitate this hypothetical dream ship: conflict free and the focus of the story. the thing being asked for barely exists at all. killing eve, magically, manages to tick one of the boxes, because the show does indeed revolve around the relationship between eve and villanelle. but the conflict? OH BOY IS THERE CONFLICT. it's not the relationship that fandom wants. it's not even close.

i'm not even going to pretend to understand how anyone watching this show concluded that the logical or even rational outcome for these two characters was happily ever after. but i'm also not going to straw man that extreme and dismiss the argument entirely. they certainly could have been together, even in an entirely fucked up manner. but what does that look like? sexual intimacy? i would argue we got that. expressions of attraction? we got that too. YALL. THAT'S QUEER AS FUCK.

what else, exactly, is required of this particular relationship to legitimize it in the eyes of fandom that doesn't take these characters entirely out of who they are? this is where i draw the line: WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT, GIVEN WHAT THIS SHOW IS? based on everything i have seen, apparently the answer is a kiss between them. and i think that ties back to this very specific fandom desire for evidence that the relationship isn't JUST queer, but also romantic. that distinction is the one that i'm starting to feel is the true conflict between those who call something like killing eve queerbaiting and those who think calling killing eve queerbaiting is bonkers.

and to be real fucking honest now, i don't just think it's bonkers, i also think it is misleading as fuck. because let's go back to what queerbaiting is, really, when you don't start trying to roll in every damn sin of storytelling about queer characters: queerbaiting is a maliciously intended trap. it's behaviour that is meant to entice people who want queer storylines, only to offer them nothing.

AND NOW TO BE REAL CLEAR: being offered nothing is NOT AND WILL NEVER BE the same thing as being offered something you don't like, or don't want, or don't give a single fuck about. it's not even the same thing as being offered something queer but harmful.

5. LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK: QUEERBAITING IS MALICIOUS WITHHOLDING OF QUEER CONTENT SAID TO BE ON OFFER.

the fact that metro dot co dot uk in 2019 had to define queerbaiting as "marketing an LGBT romance to attract an LGBT audience without exploring it properly on-screen" is honestly offensive in how it completely manages to miss the mark on what exactly is the harm caused by actual queerbaiting, and yet that really is the claim being made, isn't it? it doesn't count unless it's a romantic relationship? so let me say this: if one more person implies i'm not queer because i'm not in a romantic relationship, i'm gonna lose my shit.

(5a. and inb4 BUT THAT UK ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN. if you read that as a promise that the show was going to be ROMANTIC and not VILLANELLE IS A LITERAL PSYCHOPATH, i'm surprised you read this far.)

it's really obvious how this became the catchcry of the campaign for queer representation. it's a moral judgement against creators' manipulation of people's desire for something we are coming to recognise as an important aspect to popular media. representation IS important, and taking advantage of people's need for that is at the bare minimum a shitty thing to do.

it's not shitty to give people that representation. it's not shitty to write complex characters with queer sexualities that are not demonized but are also not in a romantic relationship. this endless cry of being baited with the promise of a romantic relationship only sends a message that we don't want actual representation, we only want one kind of representation. and that's not representation at all.

6. why the post-interview complaint is also totally wrong: literally all sandra oh said is that it wasn't a romantic relationship.

see: literally the last 1500+ words about why not giving fandom queer romance is not the same fucking thing as queerbaiting.

WHAT SANDRA OH SAID IS 100% TRUE: IT IS NOT A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP. IT'S STILL QUEER AS HELL.

the actual literal entire quote from the interview: 'And could that possibly mean a romance together? It's a discussion that the show's star... was quick to dismiss, saying to Gay Times that the idea is sadly not a "focus or a message" for the show.' in case long sentences are a struggle: the idea of a ROMANCE is not the focus or the message of the show.

7. and in case i haven't made this abundantly clear, killing eve isn't a romantic show?: GOOD.

#killing eve #tv: qu'est ce que c'est

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cosmotographer · 5 years ago

Text

The Leica M10 Review

…yes I know it’s 2020 and it’s late

This review was a long time coming since I had originally planned on writing this review last Spring. It was during that time when I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to pick up a second-hand Leica M10 in black from a fellow forum member in exchange for two of my lenses at the time (Summilux 35mm FLE and the Summicron 50mm V5). Was it worth selling my M240 at the time and trading off two lenses for the M10?

Before I continue with this review, I should caveat by saying that this is my second M10 as I sold the first one during the first draft of this review last year after my trip from Miami and Key West. I had sold it over the summer because I didn’t feel the premium wasn’t worth it to me, therefore I had sold it off and picked up a mint silver chrome M-P 240 which I loved and took it several trips with me.

Fast forward to 2020, an opportunity had come up for an M10 while I was at the gym one morning. I was catching up on Leica things during a break (as you do) and I had found a silver chrome M10 for sale for a price that was hard to pass up. A price so good, that I had completely stopped working out and went into full-time stalker mode with the seller on securing the purchase via text message. After less than 5 minutes of communicating back and forth, we had agreed on a price and a successful transaction was made.

I said farewell my beloved M-P (Typ 240) as it sold in less than a day to a gentleman in Texas. You were the best iteration of the best value digital Leica M camera, but how does the M10 compare and do I still think it was worth the money to upgrade?

My first Leica M10 in black

“Minute changes like these is what legendary products need. Nothing drastic, but incremental improvements.”

Introduction

When the M10 was first introduced in January 2017, it was a cause for celebration as reviews sang their praises as the ‘best Leica yet’ while commenting on its new 24 megapixel sensor paired with the latest Maestro II processor, a bigger viewfinder magnification with better eye-relief, a body that is as slim as the M7 film camera, a new manual ISO dial and what is this?

They’ve removed video recording!

Nobody cared. Moving on.

Not only did Leica giveth and taketh away with the M10, but they had also made the camera significantly more simplified compared to its predecessor. Leica’s new devotion to minimalism that could be seen back in 2015 with the introduction of the Leica Q, transferred over to the M10 as the camera now has less buttons, removed any superfluous menu options which led to a more structured and cleaner menu system. They even changed the power switch so that it only does one thing now: On or Off. This is a big deal as the Leica Q had a problem with some users accidentally switching to “Continuous” as the power switch had the tendency to go full-auto. Minute changes like these is what legendary products need. Nothing drastic, but incremental improvements.

Look at every new iteration of the the Porsche 911. It’s not the same car, but just improved.

As the difference in technology between the M240 (2012) and the M10 (2017) span 5 years, the improvements of the M10 can be noticed instantly with its new slimmer profile when you pick it up for the first time. While the M240 wasn’t a big camera compared to other full-frame cameras, but if you compared Leica’s other rangefinders, the M240 was a thicc boy. After a few weeks of getting reacquainted with the M10 again, I felt that the M10 is just like any other Leica: it’s more than the sum of its parts and more about its evolution rather than revolution. That’s why, at least currently, it’s the best digital iteration of Leica’s fabled rangefinder (until the M11).

My new Leica M10 in silver chrome

“…it’s more than the sum of its parts and more about its evolution rather than revolution.”

Build & Design

The M10’s new slimmer body and lighter weight compared to the M240 was very obvious and noticeable to me. As your right thumb rub against the right corner of the body next to the exposure dial, you’ll also notice the new paint finish as Leica had decided to use matte/chrome treated paint compared to the previous “black paint” finish in the previous gens. I personally prefer the black paint finish as the lacquer paint would fade over time, showing the dull gold glow of the brass underneath. This brassing gave the camera a nice patina, like a worn leather jacket after years of use.

Brassing on a Leica M240

I believe that Leica did this intentionally to give the camera a more timeless look as the brassing would give the camera an aged look over time, but I feel that the patina brings out the character of the camera. With each worn paint on different parts of the body, there is a story that comes with it. The new chrome paint finish will not age as gracefully, as it will just dull over the time, losing its matte luster to just a shiny sheen of metal.

Leica M10 Cutaway | Courtesy of Leica Camera AG

Tough as Nails

Just because the M10 doesn’t brass like its predecessors, doesn’t the camera feels cheap. The components are still machined from solid brass and magnesium alloy chassis, holding in all the components in such a small body. Nothing about the build quality is different with the M10 and they are still built to same high standards. Don’t let the smaller size of the M10 fool you either as the weight between the M240 and the M10 are almost identical (1.46 lbs vs. 1.50 lbs).

Width: 33.7mm

Weight: 1.46 lbs

Leica may not openly advertise this, but the body is weather-sealed against light precipitation and dust.

Refined Shutter

The shutter sound is definitely quieter and more refined than the M240, but the feel is about the same. Half press locks the exposure and full press releases the shutter with a refined “click”. I can’t explain the sound, but it feels slightly muffled compared to the M240. It’s definitely quieter than the M9’s robo-sex doll shutter cock sound, but I kind of like that as that’s part of the M9’s many charms.

I can’t speak for the shutter feel on the M10-P or M10-D as I don’t have any experience with them yet, but they have the quietest mechanical curtain shutters. Maybe one day I’ll pick one up (actually I know I’ll have one in the future).

Diamonds are Forever

Most of the back panel is dominated by a 3-inch TFT LCD monitor which has 1,036,800 dots and can display 16 million colors in addition to providing 100% frame coverage during live view. The difference in resolution between the M240 and the M10 may not be noticeable, at least to me, but the difference in contrast is very apparent. It’s also years ahead of the M9, which is only useful for checking exposure as it has the same screen quality of a GameBoy.

The LCD glass screen itself deserves its own paragraph as it’s sporting the latest Gorilla Glass, specifically developed for this camera by Corning. While the glass feel strong and strudy, I personally question its durability compared to the Leica M-P’s (Typ 240) more robust and exotic sapphire glass. Something that Leica had also omitted from the M10-P and M10-D. This is a big difference as sapphire glass is borderline industructible by conventional means, which is why it’s used on high-end watches that can only be scratched by diamonds. I wouldn’t be surprised if the M10’s screen is very similar to the Leica Q.

Balanced

Lastly, the body feels more balanced due to better weight distribution between the front and rear of the body if you hold the camera up by just the strap with a lens attached. This is one of the major benefits of the M10’s slimmer body as it pairs perfectly with compact lenses like the Summicron 35mm ASPH or the Voigtlander Ultron 35mm. This may not seem like a big deal, but weight distribution is counts if you want to pull some weight off your left hand, relieving some pressure off your fingers as you focus.

Miami, Florida | M10 + Summicron 35mm ASPH

“…body is weather-sealed against light precipitation and dust”

User Experience

There is something to be said about the user experience of a thinner, faster, and more accurate Leica rangefinder, especially with its improved eye relief for people with glasses. Compared to the M240, there are some noticeable improvements.

Pin-Point Accuracy

The new viewfinder has a magnification of .73x compared to the M240’s .68x magnification. This may not seem much, but that is a big difference when you’re looking inside a tiny window and you’ll notice it right away when you’re focusing your lenses. It’s much easier to nail a sharp focus and with fast lenses, this is a big improvement. By just walking around with the Voigtlander Ultron 35/1.7 ASPH I had at the time, I noticed that I was nailing focus with very little to no micro-adjustments to get a sharp focus patch. That means there is one less thing to worry about on getting a sharp focus. The second one being the quality of your eye sight to see the patch clearly.

This new viewfinder can also be a double-edged sword for those that wear glasses as composing with 28mm or 36mm lenses will have a more difficult time to compose since the eye-relief, while is improved, it’s still not ideal for glasses.

New Viewfinder | Courtesy of Leica Camera AG

Simplified Menu System

Leica had released a firmware update in 2018, which introduced the Favorites Menu that was brought over from the Leica Q. A very handy upgrade since it no longer required you to dive into the 2.5 pages of menus to change something as simple as White Balance. These are mostly quality of life improvements and once you set up your menu settings, you will very rarely ever go back in terms of shooting experience as I have everything that I need on the body of the camera: ISO, Aperture, Shutter. The dials feels solid and tactile, as you would expect from a Leica.

Carry Spares

The battery life will be a hit for people as the Leica M10’s BP-SCL5 battery has 1300 mAh of charge, which is noticeably smaller than the M240’s 1600 mAh battery. The difference of 300 mAh may not seem much and you should be able to hit 300 photos on one battery if you don’t use Live View (or EVF), but this is a far cry from the M240’s BP-SCL2 battery as a single one of those guys would last me all weekend.

Thumbs Up

The exposure compensation dial is just where it needs to be like the M240, but the Leica M10 has a slight curvature on the left side of the dial that acts as a pseduo thumb rest. Doesn’t seem like much, but it makes a noticeable difference in ergonomics, especially on a slimmer body like the M10. I still ended up buying a OEM Leica thumb grip and I recommend it wholeheartedly as we all know that Leica cameras were built for Lego people.

Controls at your finger tips

“…you will very rarely ever go back in terms of shooting experience as I have everything that I need on the body of the camera.”

Big Brains

The MAESTRO II processor is quick and depending on the Read/Write speed of your SD card, it’s as quick as the Leica Q on writing those DNG files. It’s capable of taking 5 shots per second on continuous which is impressive for a M camera.

Wi-Fi is Lo-Fi

The built-in Wi-Fi feature is nice to have, but I doubt I’ll ever use it as my dedicated source of raw transfers since I prefer to use the SD card to transfer photos via iPad Pro or on the PC. The app itself is cumbersome and the transfer speeds are abysmally slow. To make matter worse, using the Wi-Fi feature absolutely destroys your battery life.

A Bakery in Richmond, VA | Leica M10 + Voigtlander 35/1.4 MC II

“…thumbs up grip is crazy expensive at $240 a pop”

Things I Don’t Like

Despite all these improvements, not everything is perfect with the M10. This may be the best digital Leica M camera to date, but there are a couple of issues I want to point out as they were noticeable that prevented the camera from winning over me completely.

Double Thumbs

The buttons on the back are big and easy to use, but it will take some time to get used to getting around the menu system if you’re coming from the M240…especially when you want to delete a photo.

You first have to press the “PLAY” button, which is one of the three primary buttons on the back, then press “MENU” to bring up the delete option since there is no dedicated delete button anymore. Then once you do that, you have to use the center button on the D-Pad to confirm your choice (what would be the INFO button on the M240). It’s not very intuitive but neither was the M240’s use of the “SET” button on the left. This is a minor issue as you’ll get use to it after a couple of days.

That ISO Dial

The new ISO dial on the left of side of the camera was one of the defining features of the M10 and while it is nice to have, I personally think it’s highly overrated. To change the ISO, you need to lift the switch up to unlock it (which surprisingly takes a bit of effort with your left fingers) and then turn the dial to your desired ISO settings, then press the dial back down until it snaps in to lock the ISO dial. I’m not of fan of this effort of using the ISO dial and practically impossible with gloves on.

I personally leave the dial unlocked and upright position while I’m shooting without the fear of accidentally bumping the dial to the wrong settings since theres enough resistance to stay in place. The constant adjustments to the ISO dial will require you to alter your grip a lot when it’s in locked position.

Also, good luck using the ISO dial in the dark as you can’t see anything. At least on the previous M240, you could easily manipulate the ISO on the LCD screen while turning the exposure compensation dial.

Overall, I think they just should have made the dial more tactile to reduce the chance of accidentally bumping the dial, a la Fujifilm X-Pro3. It’s a cool feature but I hated using it and I promise you that this feature will either be revised or removed in the next generation Leica M11 body.

The Options List

This should come to no surprise to anyone as Leica anything is expensive, but I want to point out that the accessories for the Leica M10 are noticeably more expensive than the M240. Par for the course, but here is the breakdown in costs for my recommended accessories.

Leica Thumb Grip – $240

Leica BP-SCL5 Batteries – $190 (however, cheaper than the M240 batteries)

Periscope

This is a WTF moment for me and for those that need GPS coordinates baked into their DNG files. If you want this feature, it’s only available if you use the optional Leica Visoflex EVF which costs a cool $600, which is odd to me. I never used or cared about this feature but it made me raise an eyebrow.

Image Quality

It’s strange to categorize the quality of the image output from a camera body, so I guess you can call this part the sensor’s characteristics.

The overall fidelity and tonality produced by the Leica M10 is excellent and while it may not win any DXO scores because Leica couldn’t give a shit about winning sensor awards, the overall output is absolutely beautiful. This is also very dependent on the type of glass you put in front of the sensor, but to keep things consistent, I’ve used both the 35mm and 50mm Summicron lenses to get a good reading on how the M10 likes to paint its pictures.

The M10’s DNG files have noticeable bump in saturation, and contrast straight out of camera when you upload them into Lightroom. Compared to the DNG files from the Leica Q, the output from the M10 is consistently more “colorful” with a hint of warmer tones. Another underrated improvement over its predecessor is the the white balance. How the M10 figures out its white balance is a big improvement as it is definitely more accurate compared to the M240’s yellowish tint.

The dynamic range is actually pretty good based on my experience in Lightroom. You can pull several stops on both highlights and shadows without destroying the file, and it should be satisfactory as long as you don’t expect Sony levels of dynamic range.

This doesn’t mean that you should be lazy on setting your exposure before taking the photo because a good baseline photo in RAW is much more preferable than trying to salvage your mistakes in post. A good rule of thumb is to underexpose my photos just a little bit to save the highlights during your tricky in/out lighting situations.

Expose for those highlights

This photo was heavily underexposed but the dynamic range headroom on the M10 allowed me to pull up the shadows while maintaining micro-contrast. The windows are actually looking inside the factory floor with the flood lights and not actually looking outside.

In Summary

What Leica had done here was to take a successful formula and make minor improvements to an already successful camera, but doing this also risked alienating fans. This is a known problem with any manufacturer that have a rabid fanbase with a long history (a la Porsche 911). When Leica developed the M10, it took some risks with some of these changes, but it’s easy to see that Leica went back to what they were very good and just made improvements to their existing core strengths. They understood who their base customers were and listened. It simplified the camera to its basics (it has three menu buttons for crying out loud) and took video out. While most DSLR and Mirrorless photographers will laugh at the idea of taking stuff out but charging the same price (if not more) for such a “low-tech” camera, this is not what Leica is about.

They cater to the niche and not the masses – something they’ve been doing for a long time and longer than any manufacturer.

M10 vs. M240

Now, some of you on the fence of purchasing a Leica M10 may be asking yourself if this camera was worth the upgrade over the M240?

Yes and No. Let me explain.

I came from a background of owning the following Leica cameras chronologically.

Leica M9 (Black),

Leica M9 (Steel Gray),

Leica M240 (Silver),

Leica M10 (Black),

Leica M-P 240 (Silver),

Leica M10 (Silver).

So I’ve been around the block and back and I feel as though I have some experience on this topic and for the most part, I would say no, it’s not worth the upgrade in my opinion. While the M10’s improvements are tangible, I don’t feel as though the incremental improvements are worth the premium. For example…

While the ISO dial is great, M240 owners can just as easily change their settings using the rear LCD and rear dial.

The improved viewfinder is wonderful and the magnification is great, but if you shoot between 35mm-50mm lenses, you won’t really notice it too much.

The battery life is worse on the M10.

The M240 is thicker than the M10, but I don’t think you’ll notice the difference when you’re out in the real world taking photos, especially if you use a thumb grip for both.

The improved LCD screen is nice, but I never looked at the M240’s screen and thought it was crap in 2020.

ISO Performance – if you’re not Batman and prowl the street at night often and don’t shoot a lot in low light, this is hard to justify.

This is how I feel after owning the two cameras (twice) back to back, but it’s ultimately up to you if you feel that it’s worth it to you. Otherwise, the M10 is the best digital M camera that you can get right now. With the predictable upgrades without changing the primary formula of what made the Leica M so great, it makes you wonder what the future holds for the next Leica M as we’re going to be due for an upgrade in 2022.

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[eafl id=”5679″ name=”Leica M10″ text=”Leica M10″]

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[eafl id=”5421″ name=”Leica M10 Thumb” text=”Leica M10 Thumb Grip”]

[eafl id=”5267″ name=”Leica Summicron-M 35mm f/2 ASPH II” text=”Leica Summicron 35mm f/2 ASPH II”]

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[eafl id=”5285″ name=”Voigtlander Ultron 35 f/2 Vintage” text=”Voigtlander Ultron 35mm f/2 ASPH”]

I finally review the Leica M10 and wanted to share my experience and if it's worth the upgrade over the M240 The Leica M10 Review ...yes I know it's 2020 and it's late This review was a long time coming since I had originally planned on writing this review last Spring.

#leica #Featured #gear #m10 #review

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crystalninjaphoenix · 6 years ago

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The Second Crossover Episode

Septics Inverted

A JSE Fanfic

People seemed to really like the first one, so I wrote another! Because there are a lot more boys that can meet each other across worlds, and a lot of these encounters are going to be...not so good. But some of them could be positive! Be optimistic, despite how most of my AU is just...villains

Again, you can find Swap Boys content on @huffle-dork‘s blog!

Read the intro story: Part One | Part Two

Various other AU-related stuff found here

Still not sure about adding the taglist to not normal AU material, but here I go anyways | Taglist: @evyptids @awkward-bullshit @watermelonsinmyattic @asunachinadoll @a-humble-narcissus @metautske @odysseus-is-best-boi @acuriousquail @beerecordings

Alt spent what felt like an hour wandering the streets before he finally admitted it: not only was he lost, but he wasn’t even in his city anymore. He recognized absolutely nothing. Every street turned where it was supposed to be straight, and every twist was actually a crossroad. He didn’t know where he was, or even how he got here. Alt stopped running right under a street lamp, looking around at low, dim buildings he’d never seen before.

He sat down hard on the curb and put his head in his hands. Why did this happen to him? Why couldn’t he just go home, see his cat, and be left alone? He wanted to blame Magnificent, but the magician had been seemed just as confused as he was back in that museum-type place. So he didn’t even have that explanation. He could feel tears prickling at the back of his eyes. He didn’t belong here. And he didn’t know how to get back, or if anyone would bother to come look. Nobody looked the last time. His shoulders started shaking as he let the tears fall.

“Excuse me? Are you okay?”

Alt looked up, hurriedly wiping his eyes on his jacket sleeve. There was a man staring down at him with concern. He wore a dark red hoodie and black jeans, and he...almost looked like Jackie. But less tired, and with longer hair, long enough to be held back in a ponytail that peeked out from inside the jacket’s hood. “Wh—yeah, yeah I’m...fine,” Alt said, pulling up his bandanna.

“Most people don’t cry when they’re fine,” the man remarked. “What’re you doin’ out here? Don’t you know it’s dangerous?”

Alt laughed. “You’re out here.”

“Well, I can take care of myself. Not everyone can. Not that I’m saying you can’t,” he hurried to add, seeing Alt’s eyes start to darken. “I just want to make sure you’re not in trouble. Or, you know, causing trouble.”

“I’m fine,” Alt insisted, resolutely turning away. “I’m just...lost. I’m new here.”

“Well, do you know where you need to go?”

Alt could feel the tears again. But he blinked them away. “I can figure it out.”

The man gave him a peculiar look. It wasn’t pity, thank god, but it was something similar. Sympathy, maybe. “Look, I’m still worried about you, not gonna lie. I’m out here with a friend of mine. If you want, you can just...hang around with us? It’s better to travel in a group.”

His instinct was to deny help again. But he forced himself to take a step back. He was alone in a strange city, Magnificent was on the loose along with what must’ve been some sort of evil duplicate of himself, and he had no idea what to do. And this guy wasn’t being a bossy ass about going with him, just giving him an option. “...fine,” Alt grumbled, standing up. “Maybe for a little while.”

The man practically melted with relief, smiling. “Great! I left him over on the corner, he was texting a friend. C’mon, I’ll show you.” He started to walk away, making sure Alt was following him. “Oh, my name’s Jackie, by the way.”

Alt faltered in his steps. “Wait, really?” He’d just been thinking about how this guy reminded him of Jackie. Was this...?

“Yeah. You, uh...okay?” the other Jackie asked. “You got really pale all of a sudden.”

“I just—I have a friend named Jackie, too,” Alt explained. “You, uh, kind of...remind me of him.”

The other Jackie laughed. “Cool. Good to know we’ve got another doppelganger out there. Besides you, I mean.”

“We?”

“Yeah, me and my housemates. We all sorta look alike. Some differences, but in general we’re, like, clones.” Jackie looked ahead. “Oh hey, I can show you. Chase!”

They’d reached the street corner, where a man was leaning against the pole of the traffic light. He was wearing a red snap-back cap pulled down, and was absorbed in his phone. The man looked up at the sound of the name ‘Chase.’ “Oh hey, you finally decided to come back. Find out what that noise was?”

Alt stopped, staring with wide eyes. He wasn’t sure his heart was beating. “Ch-Chase?” he asked in a strangled voice.

This other Chase gave him a weird look. “Yeah, that’s my name. Why, you heard it before? And also, you okay, dude? You look like you’re having a heart attack.”

Alt took a few steps back, reexamining what he was seeing. There was a lack of toned muscles that came with a life of fighting crime, and no freckles in sight. But there was absolutely no doubt. He’d know Chase’s face anywhere, and this was him, but he was so different. And wrong. Alt found he was breathing very quickly but he just couldn’t stop. “Th-this isn’t how it’s s-supposed to be,” he said, gasping. “I just want—I just want to go home. Why can’t I go home?!” When he shouted that last question, a glitch slipped in, vibrant pixels blinking into existence and fading away again.

The two others immediately snapped into action. The other Chase dropped his phone, letting it fall to the ground, and his hand went to his belt, where he pulled out a gun that had been belted there. The other Jackie jumped back, reaching into his hoodie pocket and pulling a large pocket knife out, flipping open the blade. “What do you think you’re doing?!” Chase demanded, pointing the gun at Alt.

Alt, for his part, was just even more confused, but that confusion was now mixed with fear. That caused his glitching to intensify. “I—I d-don’t know what—what are you—”

“What, did you think you could fool us like that, Anti?” Jackie demanded.

“Anti...?” For a moment, Alt panicked, thinking these bizarro versions of his friends somehow found out his real name when he’d never even told the real ones. But then he remembered. “W-wait—do you think I’m that—that other glitch? Black clothes? Eye-patch and scarf?”

“Well who else—?!”

“Jackie, wait.” Chase reached over and slowly lowered Jackie’s arm so that the blade of the knife wasn’t pointing at Alt anymore. He did the same thing with his gun. “I think we should hear him out.”

“Hear him—” Jackie glared at Chase, clearly exasperated. “C’mon, this is clearly a trick.”

“Well, I think maybe it’s not,” Chase snapped back. “I mean...look at the effects. They look...different.” He made a vague sort of gesture to the glitches surrounding Alt. “Anti has always had the same ones, why change now?”

“Uh, how about to fool us?”

“Jackie, just...trust me on this.” Chase looked back at Alt. “So, you’re saying you saw Anti?”

“Y-yeah,” Alt stuttered. This rapid turn of events was making his head spin. “He found me, and he offered to help me because apparently I don’t know what I’m doing, and I told him to fuck off and ran away.”

“Good idea,” Chase grinned. “If you hadn’t done that, there’s a good chance you’d be dead right about now.”

“I—what?” Alt stared incredulously at Chase. “You’re serious?”

“Dead serious.” Chase nodded sadly. “The whole bunch of us have been targeted by him multiple times. He’s serious bad news. People around him disappear, and if they’re lucky they’ll reappear needing therapy. He’s been after a friend of ours for a while now, and eventually he’s gone after the rest of us. That’s why we all live together, safety in numbers, you know?”

Alt’s glitching had completely subsided, but he hadn’t even noticed. He knew there’d been something off about that guy. The way he laughed, the way he never blinked, the way he referred to Alt as “human” as if he wasn’t. And why he’d been so insistent on helping Alt mere moments after acting all pissy towards him. It must’ve been a trap.

“Look, dude.” Chase put the gun back into his belt. After a moment of reluctance, Jackie folded the blade back into the handle of the pocket knife, but didn’t put it away. “If Anti’s got his eye on you...you’re in trouble. You need to get somewhere safe.”

Alt looked around. “I don’t...know where safe is. I’m not from here.”

Chase and Jackie glanced at each other. “Well, I think it would be better if you...stayed with us, then?” Chase suggested hesitantly. “Not permanently if you don’t want to, but...we have some protection set up at our house. It...might help?”

Alt considered it, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets as he thought. It would be pretty nice to have a place to stay in this new city. And, well, it was Chase. Maybe not the same Chase, however that worked, but Chase nonetheless. He was a good guy. “Okay,” Alt breathed, nodding. “Maybe for a little.”

Chase smiled. “That’s great dude! We can head home now, cut the night short. This is a bit more important.” He laughed. “Oh, hey we, uh, never caught your name. What was it?”

“I’m Alt,” Alt said immediately.

“Alt? Cool name. C’mon, we can show you the way.”

“No,” Anti whispered, eye locked on the feed from the street’s CCTV camera. “Nò,̢ ͝n̵o,̧ no!̡” He rammed his fist into a nearby metal shelf, hard enough to scrape the skin off the knuckles. As always, he felt nothing. “You fucking i̷d͞io̵t̸!”

Sam flew over from their perch on top of one of the CPUs, gently rubbing against the curve of Anti’s neck, catlike. He absentmindedly reached up to stroke them with one finger. “I guess it’s not really his fault. He’s not from here, he doesn’t know. Not even the people who live here know. But...who trusts a total stranger just like that?!” Sometimes, despite his ability to step into the deep recesses of their minds, Anti felt he would never understand humans.

He leaned closer to the screen, debating whether or not it was a good idea to swoop in and get the kid out of there. It would certainly get him out of immediate danger, but then again, he might go running back into it afterwards, still refusing to accept Anti’s help. Not to mention it might paint him as even more of a bad guy. “What’s this guy’s deal anyway?” Anti muttered. “Where did he come from? Why can he glitch? You wouldn’t happen to know, would you, Sam?”

Despite the throwaway nature of the question, Sam zoomed up in front of Anti’s face, swishing their tail once. They’d agreed early on that that gesture meant yes. “Wait, you do? How? What’re the answers?”

Sam, of course, didn’t answer, though their iris squished flat in an are you kidding me? look. “Right, right, can’t talk.” Anti watched the kid and the two freaks on the screen for a moment. “Alright, guess it’s time to play the guessing game. You know the drill, Sam, I spit out random ideas and you confirm yes or no. Let’s make this one quick.”

By the time they reached the house, Alt had managed to fill in the other Jackie and Chase about everything that happened, all the way from the colorful lights that had taken him and Magnificent to the museum, to seeing that weird other almost-Magnificent in the black mask, to his encounter with Anti. They listened carefully, taking every detail. Or at least, Jackie did. Chase took a slight detour to text someone on his phone shortly after Alt mentioned the black-masked magician. But he listened after that.

“Here, we are, home sweet home,” Chase said, pulling open the door. “After you, new dude.”

Alt ducked inside, taking in the spacious living room with an archway leading to what looked like a dining room, and an open hallway ending in a flight of stairs. It looked friendly enough. But instinctively, his eyes darted about, taking in the entrances and the windows. There was a man sitting in one of the armchairs, wearing a red vest and a derby hat, face hidden behind a book. Alt glared at him. He seemed familiar.

“Hey, Jameson?” Jackie said, entering the house after Alt. “Put the book down, buddy. I think you should meet someone.”

The man put the book down, and Alt gasped. He looked like Dr. J. What was the deal with the lookalikes?! For his part, this Jameson looked just as shocked. But he smiled, and gave a gentle wave. {Hello, there.}

Alt shrieked, backing up quickly and running into the now-closed door. He scrambled for the doorknob. He couldn’t—not this again—

“Alt! What’s wrong?” Chase waved his hand in front of Alt’s panicked face. “What happened?”

“He’s in my head!” Alt cried. “I can’t—I c-can’t—”

“Whoa, dude, it’s fine!” Jackie placed a reassuring hand on Alt’s shoulder. “Jameson can’t talk, but he can project—you know, in a telepathic sense. He’s just saying hi.”

Jameson had closed his book and stood up by this point. He walked over to the coffee table and grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. He flipped through it until he found a blank page, and started writing.

“Look, I promise you it’s fine,” Chase said to Alt, his tone reassuring. “If he could mess about in there, he would’ve done it by now.”

“How do you know he hasn’t?!” Alt demanded.

Chase hesitated. “I guess we don’t. But that’s what trust is.” He paused, and looked back over to Jameson. “You sure?” he asked. Jameson nodded.

“What’s happening?!” The question came out sounding more panicked than he would’ve liked.

“It’s okay, Alt,” Jackie said. “Jameson just told us that since you’re uncomfortable with the whole...mind situation, then he won’t project to you. That’s what the paper is for.”

Jameson smiled again, a bit smaller this time. He held up the paper for Alt to see. Unfortunately, he was still across the room. Alt’s eyes narrowed. He glitched closer, causing Jameson to jump, and grabbed the pad straight out of his hands, reading what he’d written. I’m terribly sorry. If I’d known how you felt about it, I never would have tried in the first place.

Alt glared at Jameson. “Fine. Fucking fine, whatever.” He shoved the paper back at him, then glitched onto the couch, ending up curled into the side.

Jameson blinked, looking back and forth between Alt and Jackie and Chase. “It’s a long story,” Jackie sighed. “We should wait until everyone’s home to explain it.”

“Lemme guess,” Alt piped up. “You have another housemate who’s German? Goes by the nickname Schneep?”

“Yeah, actually,” Chase said, visibly surprised. “That’s the doc. He usually works late at the clinic. How did you know?”

Alt laughed. “Well, sounds like I didn’t know everything. Never would’ve pictured Schneep as the doctor. God, this is—this is fucked, dude.” He shivered. “I—I don’t know what’s going on. Everything is switched around and I don’t...I don’t know why.”

“I actually have a theory,” Jackie said, flopping down on the opposite end of the sofa than Alt. “But I should probably wait until at least Schneep is home.”

“What makes you think I am not already?”

Alt jumped at the sound, twisting in his spot to see a version of Schneep, wearing a white coat that was torn at the cuffs over a blue sweater, leaning against the arch to the dining room. There was a steaming coffee mug in one hand, and his blue eyes were rather intense through the pair of glasses. Alt just stared at him. He couldn’t have heard Jackie, could he?

“When did you get home?” Jackie asked. “I expected you to be—be working for some time now.”

“It was a slow day.” Schneep walked over and plopped into the other armchair. Jameson also sat, reclaiming his seat and leaving Chase the only one standing. “I decided to come home early. And it seems I was a good idea, because I would have missed that.” Schneep took a sip of the coffee, staring at Alt over the top of the rim. “You are not Anti. But I saw what you did, and that is what Anti does. I wonder why this could be.”

“Uh...I don’t know,” Alt said, honestly bewildered at this point by all the differences, yet all the similarities as well.

“Alright, time for my theory,” Jackie said, sitting up straight. “I think you’re from another dimension. A parallel universe.”

Everyone seemed to sharpen at that. “That’s possible?” Chase asked. “I thought that was science fiction.”

“So did I!” Jackie said excitedly. “But I can’t think of anything else. Alt seems to know who we are, but things are different, and he has the same powers as Anti but is also clearly not the same—even that Magnif-who cares could be explained. He kinda sounded like a different version of Marvin.”

“Marvin?” Alt asked.

“He’s...one of the housemates,” Chase admitted. “But look! He’s not the same as your version. He’s a bit of a bitch sometimes, but not, like, evil.”

Alt frowned. He hadn’t stuck around to see much beyond the first confrontation between the magicians, but that didn’t seem right. But...as he thought back on those memories, he started to wonder if he was wrong. The images were spiraling in front of his vision, and...maybe he’d been {wrong}? Maybe he’d been wrong. This Marvin dude was fighting Magnificent, after all. “Fine, whatever,” Alt grumbled, slumping further into the couch. “Just don’t make me look at his ugly face.”

“I doubt you’ll ever even see it,” Chase chuckled. “First of all, never takes that mask off, he’s a bit sensitive about it. Second of all, he’s pretty much a hermit, goes back and forth between the basement and his room and only comes out for food. Pretty easy to avoid the guy.”

Alt rolled his eyes. “Didn’t you guys say you had another one beside him?”

“Jack,” Jackie explained. “He’s asleep right now. Plays video games for a living on YouTube. Also kinda reclusive, doubt you’ll see him at all.”

Alt checked his bandanna, it had started to slip and needed readjusting. He didn’t like how these guys were talking like he’d already moved in. He was just staying with them for a little while, that was all. Just long enough to figure out what the deal with Anti was, how to get him off his trail, and how to get home. That was it. {But who knows how long that would take?} Could be a while...

“Do you guys...have an extra bedroom?” he asked. “I’m...kind of tired.” It was all of a sudden, too. The long night of adrenaline must’ve been wearing on him.

“You can use mine,” Chase offered. “I can crash on the couch while you’re staying.”

“Oh. Uh, thanks, man.”

“No problem, dude,” Chase gave a thumbs-up, accompanied by a cheesy grin. Alt couldn’t help but smile at that, not that they could see it under the bandanna. Guess some things were universal constants.

“Oh, before you go upstairs,” Schneep said. “Jameson is wondering if there are any others from your universe who came over, if that is indeed what happened. And I am as well, frankly.”

Alt thought back on it. “I don’t think so. Other than”—he made a face while simultaneously shuddering—”Magnificent. I haven’t been able to find any if they did come through. And...I think the two of us were the only ones in range? So...no, the answer’s no.”

Chase had no idea where he was, or how he’d gotten here. One moment, he and the others had been looking for Alt, after that stupid magician had gone after him again. They’d been getting close, he was sure of it, but then the next moment there had been a noise and a rush of colored light, and Chase had found himself standing in a park, completely alone.

This wasn’t the same city. He’d been patrolling it for years, he knew his city, and this wasn’t it. But the question was, where was he then? And where were the others?

After a while of wandering, he came across a drug store. It looked abandoned, or more accurately that surreal sort of empty that only came late at night when the white lights of the store showed off how few people there actually were. There was only one car in the parking lot, an old minivan. A woman with shoulder-length blonde curls was walking towards it, clutching a white paper bag in one hand and her keys in the other. Chase was hesitant to approach her, since it could easily come off the wrong way, but after a moment of silent thought, he decided it would be for the best. He’d just make sure to keep his distance.

He approached her slowly, staying a few feet away when he called out, “Excuse me?”

The woman dropped her paper bag in shock, two bottles of over-the-counter medicine falling out. She spun around, eyes wide. “Chase?!”

Chase gaped in turn. “Stacy?” He hadn’t recognized her. She looked...different. In tons of minute ways, but what he noticed was what he called the “tired parent look.” He’d seen it enough on Jackie, but never Stacy. She didn’t have kids, that’s why Jackie asked her to babysit for him. Did she? “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize it was you.”

Stacy didn’t say anything, just took a few steps toward her car. She adjusted her grip on her keys while also fumbling about with the clasp of her purse. She seemed...on edge. Scared, even. “Uh...” Chase glanced around. The parking lot was as empty as before. He pulled off his mask, thinking maybe that was the problem. “You okay there?”

“Fine!” Stacy squeaked. She’d managed to open the purse, and was now looking for something inside without taking her eyes away from Chase. “I was just—ah, Trev got sick and we were out of cold medicine, so I went to pick some up and I left them with a sitter—told the sitter to expect me back in twenty minutes, it’s already been twelve, I think—”

He had no idea what she was talking about. But he was picking up that she was...scared of him? Of him? That couldn’t be possible. Something must’ve been up. “Well, you dropped the bag of medicine,” he pointed out helpfully. “Here, I can help you pick it up—”

“No!” The word was more like an instinctive shriek. Stacy had pulled her phone out of her purse at this point. “I mean, thank you but I’m fine, I’m good, you don’t need to come any closer.”

“Stacy, is something wrong?” Chase asked, eyes lined with worry. “You’re acting strange.”

“No, I’m not! You—you—you know that.” There was a small flash from her phone’s camera, and Stacy immediately paled. “I-I-I-I didn’t mean to take a picture. You know how this works, new camera so confusing!” She laughed nervously. Her thumb was moving across the screen, tapping in very specific places.

“Stacy, if you’re in trouble, you know I can help you out.” Chase was starting to get desperate at this point. There was no way he could be misinterpreting this. She was scared. Of him. All he could think of was that maybe being seen with him was a risk of some sort. But what could she have gotten mixed up with for that to be a problem?

“I highly doubt that, Chase.” She made eye contact with him, and Chase realized she had been vaguely watching his hands the whole time. Her thumb had stopped. “Not when you know what the trouble is.”

“When I know what—?”

The question was cut off when Stacy suddenly dropped her phone with a small gasp. It landed screen-up on the asphalt of the parking lot. The phone was showing nothing but blank static. And then, with a fizz and a hiss, the static spread out from the phone, until it was a solid mass on the pavement. Chase gaped at it. The mass glitched, and morphed, and suddenly in a blink there was a man standing in front of Chase, dressed in dark colors except for the green scarf around his neck and the white eye-patch covering his right eye.

He looked familiar. But...it couldn’t be. “Alt?” Chase asked hesitantly.

The man looked at him and shook his head. “Not the one you know.” He turned to Stacy. “This is going to take some explaining, but basically this guy’s safe.”

“I’m safe?!” Chase repeated, bewildered. “Alt, what’s happening?”

“You shouldn’t c̛all̛ ̀me̷ ̶that ,” the other Alt said, his voice gaining an electronic filter. “It’ll probably just confuse you.”

Chase folded his arms. “I can’t possibly be more confused than I am right now.”

Stacy looked at the other Alt. “Anti? I’m...actually with him on that.”

Chase blinked. “An-Anti?” he repeated.

“My name,” the other Alt—Anti—confirmed. “The real name of your Alt, too, though I got the impression it wasn’t something he gave away easily—and now you’re staring at nothing like you’re having an existential crisis, great.”

It couldn’t be possible, could it? Alt couldn’t have been hiding that this entire time, right? Why? Chase turned around and put his head in his hands as he took this new fact in.

“Hey!” Anti pixillated into existence in front of him, glaring. “Crises later! We got more important shit to worry about!”

Stacy sighed. “He always does this.”

“Because it’s true! God, how can you get a̢n̶yt͏hin͝g̛ done like this?!” Anti grumbled indistinctively for a few more seconds, then fixed Chase with his best dead-eyed stare. It worked; Chase immediately stiffened. “Look, my fr—acquain—compan—fuck, I don’t know how we relate to each other, but their name is Sam and they told me you, and this Alt I met earlier, are from a parallel universe.”

Chase had to laugh at that.

“What are you...? I'͝m seŗi̴òus, Vlog-Man.”

“I know, I know you are, but...” Chase forced himself to stop “It’s just...god, that sounds so absurd. My life has truly become a comic book.”

“Well, you got the outfit for it, hero-type,” Anti said, giving Chase a once-over. “I hope you’re at least better than the one we have now.”

Stacy shuddered at that, just straightening up from where she’d bent over to pick up the bag she’d dropped. “Anti...if-if he’s alright, then I didn’t need to text you?”

“Not really. But it’s good practice for if the other one shows up.”

Chase looked between them, head turning rapidly. “Okay, so lemme get this straight. I am in...an alternate dimension. Alt is also here. You are not the Stacy I know, and you’re not...Alt. I’m assuming there’s another me here? Is that what got you so on edge, am I, like, a supervillain here?” He asked the last question with a crooked grin, but it slid off his face when Anti and Stacy still looked dead serious.

“Not exactly a supervillain, but not a shining example of a good person, either,” Anti drawled.

“Oh.” Chase fell silent for a moment, then started up again with what he thought was the most important topic. “You said you saw Alt? Was he okay?”

“He was,” Anti said grimly. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Alt’s gotten himself into some real serious shit. He’s in danger.”

The five of them sat around the kitchen table. Jack was still asleep, and would be for a while, and this Alt person had just stopped moving around upstairs. “So, to get to the point of this,” Jackie opened up the meeting. “What’re we going to do about him?”

Marvin scowled, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t fucking know. The other me was an asshole, you think this other him is one too?”

“Actually I think he’s the good twin,” Chase laughed.

“I do not think he functions on the same rules,” Schneep said, staring at the ceiling like he could see through it to where Alt was sleeping. “For one thing, I do not think he needs to take the naptimes. And I thought that he was very immune to whatever it is Jamie does.”

{He is,} Jameson confirms. {Or at least, his mind is a beast to get through, walls made of titanium. This one, however...most unusual. His mind is like an open door, but surrounded by traps. Easy to get into, provided you don’t set any of them off.}

“You didn’t seem to have much trouble,” Marvin said, a smile ghosting around his lips.

{Well, I have a lot of practice,} Jameson replied with the same phantom smile. {And it seems someone left the door open in the first place.}

“Y’know, we still haven’t answered Jackie’s original question,” Chase said. “What are we going to do with him?”

Schneep shrugged. “Well, I was thinking that since last time we did not learn the hows and whys of the glitching, we could try again?”

“Henrik...” Jackie warned. “You know that Alt can probably die, right? Not like him.”

“I know, I know,” Schneep sighed. “But I think it would be worth a try.”

“I’m just gonna say that I’m still pissed you didn’t share like you were supposed to,” Marvin muttered.

“I was going to! It was a two-week arrangement! Is not my fault it started to fall apart and got out.”

“We’re not going to go full operating-room-magic-basement on Alt,” Chase said firmly. “Not when there’s a chance he could just tell us.”

{I agree with Chase,} Jameson said. {We will not resort to that until we have no other way.}

Jackie sighed. “Well, that’s better than nothing, I guess. And we’re not going to kill him.”

The others all murmured agreements. The real question was, why would they get rid of their one possible chance to figure out how Anti worked? Why would they pass up an opportunity to get rid of him forever?

In the corner of the dining room, a hidden camera buzzed, the sound too quiet for the human ear. Usually it didn’t do that. But a spark of dark green electricity had just invaded its systems, and it was reacting badly.

At least three from the parallel universe had made it over. But where had the third gone? And more importantly, were there any more? Only time would tell.

#ayyyy cliffhanger ending because im thinking this is just gonna be a thing now that sometimes happens #just like whenever i have inspiration motivation and time #because honestly there are so many potential relationships to explore and its like the possibilities!!!!!!#jacksepticeye #jacksepticeye fanfiction #jacksepticegos #septic egos #septic egos au #antisepticeye #jackieboy man #chase brody #jameson jackson #dr schneeplestein #septic eye sam #brigid writes fanfiction #septics inverted au #invertedau

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cookieswriting · 6 years ago

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Can’t Be Happening Pt. 4 (SEAL Team)

((All the tears over the brotherhood in this last episode...especially my BroTP. Ugh, they wrecked me. Pretty sure I’ll be writing a follow-up of some kind since I doubt we’ll get one on screen whenever our boys are back. Sorry this took so long and is so short, class started up again and has me all kinds of busy and tired, but I wanted to get something out for you lovelies. Will probably actually be wrapping up in the next couple of chapters, so please let me know if there’s anything else you want to see!))

By the time the rest of the team finished cleaning up, Trent was just coming into the waiting area and looked exhausted. “Spenser?” Jason asked hesitantly, not liking the look on his medic’s face.

“He’s as stable as he’s going to get here.” Blood streaked his cheek as he ran a hand down his face, and Trent clenched a trembling fist. “They don’t have sufficient resources and infection is starting to set in...we’ve gotta to get him back to Virginia Beach if he’s going to get the transfusion and meds that he needs.”

Sonny resisted the urge to punch the nearest wall, and the entire team turned to Blackburn, who was already on the phone. Within minutes, everything was lined up to get them back to home and the team was packing up.

None of them spoke as one by one they made it to the tarmac, where their wounded brother was secured to a gurney with a bag of saline hanging from the IV pole. Trent was the last to arrive, taking a moment to clean himself up before exchanging information quietly with the Mexican doctor and shaking the man’s hand. The team followed solemnly as the medic eased Clay into the plane. The flight was similarly quiet, everyone anxious to disturb Clay despite his ghost-like pallor and utter lack of movement since they’d seen him carted away upon arrival at the Mexican base.

“Any change?” Davis asked when Trent sat down near her after going through his fifth checkup. The SEAL sighed heavily and dropped his head into his hands. Davis rubbed his back, wishing there was more that she could do to help her boys.

“He’s got a raging fever. The stab wound is infected, and the antibiotics they had to offer can’t even come close to touching it. He won’t wake up, the reset and splint job they did on his leg is mediocre at best...and none of this even touches what all of this has done to his mind. We have no idea how he’s going to react when he wakes up...if he wakes up.”

Davis shook her head. “One step at a time, Sawyer. No jumping to conclusions, Spense is nothing if not stubborn.”

“Landing soon. Medical crew is waiting, they’ll get him taken care of,” Blackburn murmured, approaching the team and gesturing for everyone to get secured.

Sonny settled in close to Clay’s head, eyes never leaving the youngest member’s face as they jostled. When the blonde man winced and gave a soft moan, Sonny reached out from his seat to squeeze Clay’s bicep. “Almost home, brother...almost there. Just hang tight a little bit longer, you hear me?”

Just as when they’d made it to the Mexican base, the medical team was seamless in rushing Clay off the plane and away from the rest of Bravo team. Sonny lingered, staring at a small pool of blood that had gathered underneath the stretcher. “He’s home...he’s in the best possible hands right now.” The Texan finally looked over at Lisa, seeing his fear reflected back in her eyes despite the reassurance in her voice.

“But will it be enough?” The soft voice of Bravo Two drew Sonny’s attention, and he watched confusion and then firm resolution cross his features. “Ray?”

The man in question held up a placating hand. “I hear you, baby, but if Clay pulls through this, he’s going to have to decide for himself if he is ready to see her. I’ll call you when we know anything more.” Ray sighed. “I’ll be damned if we give up on him, but Naima...it doesn’t look good. He’s in a really bad way, and having to fly back home for the treatment he needs didn’t help. We need to be with him...I’ll call soon. I love you.”

Sonny raised a questioning brow at Ray once he hung up, and the three finally deplaned together, several yards behind the others. “Wanna tell me what that was about?”

“Stella ended things with Clay right before we shipped out...which explains a hell of a lot about why he was so quiet. But she’d apparently tried to call him to fix things the day that he was taken, but we were already out on recon. Naima picked her up the day the video was released, has been with her ever since.”

Images flashed in his mind of Clay sending Sonny a half-hearted salute before shoving him back out of a building they’d just entered, a disconnected look in his eye as he made himself vulnerable to Doza’s men in order to protect the rest of the team. Rage simmered in his chest. “She sent him out-”

“I know, brother,” Ray assured, patting his shoulder. “But they’re both young, new at this...like I told Naima, it’ll be Clay’s decision whether to let her back in.” He gestured towards the hospital. “Let’s go wait with the others to hear what’s going to happen. I wanna make sure Trent gets cleaned up as soon as he’s told to stand down.” Sonny nodded, and Davis squeezed his arm affectionately to tug him along. They were met by Jason, Blackburn, Brock, and Ellis in the waiting room, and could do nothing but settle in for what they knew would be a long wait.

“He’s home? He’s safe?” Stella questioned as soon as Naima hung up the phone. The older woman tucked her cell into her purse and guided the blonde to a bench. “W-what is it?”

“The team found him and brought him home, but he is seriously hurt. They couldn’t treat him in Mexico, so they flew him back to the hospital here. Ray couldn’t talk for long, so that’s all that I know.”

Stella sensed hesitation in Naima’s voice, watched her face closely, and felt fear tighten around her heart. “C-can we go wait with the team?”

“No, I’m sorry, Stell...it’s got to be on his terms. If his health is as precarious as it sounds, we can’t add on to his stress until we know he’s able to handle it.” She reached out and took Stella’s hand, giving it a comforting and apologetic squeeze. “The team isn’t handling this well either...I could hear it in Ray’s voice; I don’t know what happened to the men that took Clay, but no matter what they’re still going to be looking for someone to lash out at...I don’t want that to be you.”

Despite the gentle tone, and the knowledge that Naima wasn’t trying to make an accusation, the gravity of her words felt like a suckerpunch to the gut. Bravo Team would lash out at her because they blame her, at least in part, for what happened to Clay. It wasn’t as though she could argue...there had been enough self-loathing going on already, it only made sense that they’d come to the same conclusion if they knew what she’d done. Tears filled her eyes as the full weight of countless emotions crashed over her: relief that Clay had been found and was so far still alive, fear that he still might not make it, guilt that this was at least partly her fault...worry that even if Clay allowed her back into his life, the rest of Bravo wouldn’t.

That, even if Clay forgave her, would be the true end of their relationship; if his brothers denied her, Clay would eventually be forced to choose between them, and she couldn’t do that to him. She would, however, do whatever it took to earn their trust and acceptance, because she knew that they were part of Clay. She respected them, their loyalty and protectiveness. Was grateful beyond words, because it was the reason he’d come home breathing...she only hoped they would give her a chance to learn from her mistake and prove that she wouldn’t abandon him again.

#seal team fanfic #clay spenser whump #clay spenser #sonny quinn #trent sawyer #ray perry #naima perry #stella baxter #SEAL Team

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ladyfl4me · 6 years ago

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A,E,F,G,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z ;o

Okay *cracks knuckles* let’s go! F, M, and S have already been taken from this list, so feel free to send in... B, C, D, or H, I guess. Yeehaw. This is really fucking long.

A: How did you come up with the title to [TMWCIFTC]? -- It started, as many things do, as a bad pun. The novel The Spy who Came In from the Cold was a cold-war spy thriller, about a British spy who goes over to East Germany as an apparent defect, except he’s actually there to spread misinformation and fuck shit up. He falls in love, becomes disillusioned with his superiors, and is shot dead over the corpse of his lover after climbing over to the east side of the wall. Needless to say, this is nowhere close to what happens in TMWCIFTC. I chose it early on because of the literal meaning: there’s a moth(man), he’s coming in from the cold WV weather, boom shaka laka, we have a title. Over time, though, it’s evolved into another meaning. Indrid himself is coming in from an isolated, lonely existence: he’s rejoining the family that cut ties with him, he’s in love, he’s warm and safe. The moth sure did come in from the cold, and hopefully he stays that way.

E: If you wrote a sequel to [TMWCIFTC], what would it be about? -- Hm. Considering my entire TAZ fic career is a tangled hairball of sequels and prequels, I kind of have this base covered. At the moment, TCOS - aka The Children of Sylvain, the sequel to TMWCIFTC - is about three things: a Pine Guard road trip race against time and the feds, the Spanish Sylvan Inquisition That Nobody Expected (least of all Jake and Hollis, who have to set aside their differences and past conflicts to save Kepler - and who knows, maybe they’ll fall in love along the way), and Alexandra the Interpreter getting woke to Sylvan politics and doing what she can from the inside to change them. In other words, it’s going to be a massive sequel that is the finale of the Amnesty alternate universe I’ve created. It’s this series’ Endgame. (That reminds me, I need an actual title for this collection of stories I’m writing. The “Tin Cinematic Universe” doesn’t quite have the ring to it that I’d like.)

G: Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order? -- eh, it kind of depends. It’s like a buffering bar on Youtube videos. I outline what I can until I run out of ideas, then start writing, then add outlines to the end, until the outline is complete and I just have to keep writing.

I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)? -- I don’t have one for reading, but for writing, I fucking love structuring chapters around songs. Classical or otherwise, I love music. All my stories play in my head like a movie screen, and I just do my best to describe what I’m seeing in my head with an accompanying score. It’s not so much a guilty pleasure as it is a writing process. Frankly, I don’t think I actually have a guilty pleasure; the act of writing itself is all the happiness I need.

J: Write or describe an alternative ending to [insert fic]. -- An alternate ending for The Devil Went Down To Georgia would be... interesting. It ended with Boyd-as-Jersey-Devil scaring the pants off some poor broke college kid, who stole his worthless fiddle; then he changed back, and he and Ned went on their merry way to go break into Aubrey’s house and send everything down the drain. If there was one thing that I could change in there, it would be how fast Ned ran. If he ran a little faster, he would have seen the alley; he would have witnessed Boyd turning into the Jersey Devil, or at least turning back into himself; and he’d get a very rude awakening as to what Sylvans are and that his partner (in crime, and everything that mattered) was a fucking cryptid. God, that’d be a fun AU to write. Who knows, I might go do that someday.

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with? -- At the moment, the only angsty idea that I’m actually conceptualizing is a Hollis/Jake angsty breakup for TSG. (Spoilers, I guess.) I once wrote a very grimdark ending to TMWCIFTC where everyone fell through the ice and drowned. It wasn’t fun. I’ve also mentally killed off each Amnesty protagonist and NPC in various ways, but I never felt comfortable writing them down. I only write angst with a happy ending because those are the kinds of stories I need to hear.

L: How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting? -- 9 times out of 10, I just throw it into the void. I write as much as I can in big chunks, and then kind of hope for the best. TMWCIFTC, for example, is a completely unedited, unbetaed vomit draft. I usually do a quick reread of my oneshots to catch grammar and spelling errors, but other than that I just trust myself that it’s fine.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you? -- Can I get some kind of resolution for To the Edge of Night? Can I please get some kind of resolution for To the Edge of Night??? I was 14 chapters into that bastard before I a) became a more casual MCU fan and b) discovered TAZ. It was such a niche fic with such a niche structure - LOTR as galactic Asgardian propaganda to cover up Odin’s mistakes - that at some point I lost interest in it. I just saw Endgame though, so now I might get some inspiration for stuff to bastardize.

O: How do you begin a story–with the plot, or the characters? -- Characters. When coming up with character backstories, I can usually find ways to slot their lives together that necessitate a plot. I love character-driven stories, where their actions actually do shit and their words actually mean something, in favor of getting dragged along behind the plot like tin cans behind a car.

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?) -- I’m definitely an architect, but in a really messy way. My friends can attest that I do an insane amount of planning for each story - often in their DMs, sorry about that, Fae, Cro, Indy and Aline 😬 - and all that usually ends up in a stream-of-consciousness rant outline on Google Drive. Knowing where the story is going helps me a lot, but the planning I do is definitely just building flower beds in which to sow seeds. Or building a greenhouse. I plan the bare bones of a story, and things get really wild within it, but it does follow a logical plot structure.

Q: How do you feel about collaborations? -- I have a lot of respect for the people who can successfully pull it off, but idk if i’d ever want to do one myself. I get really possessive of my stories and ideas and like to be the one in charge of their execution. That being said, some collabs have produced amazing stories. I don’t mind reading collab fics, but actually being in a collab grates on me more than it should.

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence? -- I’m definitely influenced heavily by Neil Gaiman. I read American Gods and Good Omens a lot while I was trying to write TMWCIFTC; not only was it a good brain break, but I was able to pick up a lot of tips on scene pacing, concise yet expressive language, and character interactions. My creative wriitng professors have always told us to read so we know what to steal - not in terms of content, but in execution.

On the fanfic side, @miamaroo is a huge inspiration for me. I’ve been reading Northern Migration a lot recently, and I love how its canon divergence is so worldshaking and so complex, but is still familiar in nostalgic yet terrifying ways. I read it back in October, went, “Huh, I wanna do something that wild. And if miamaroo can do it then I sure as fuck can too,” and I started planning TMWCIFTC during that one month dead zone the McElroys took last year. Northern Migration is one of the best, most coherent, most stunning, and most incredibly written TAZ Balance AUs I’ve ever read, and if I hadn’t read it, I wouldn’t have been inspired to take the fuckall huge plunge into TMWCIFTC.

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist? -- Bed sharing and cuddling, hand kissing, wrist kissing, whump, sympathetic villains. Canon divergent AUs are my absolute favorite things to both read and write. Anything that would turn me into Charlie Kelly slamming his finger on a bulletin board screaming, “CAROL,” is a fic I would give my life for.

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand? -- Not a fan of a) woobification and b) flat villain characterization, to the point where the story is riding on villain tropes instead of an actual person or plot. Character nuance is always something I look for when I read. I don’t usually get bitter about tropes, though; some stuff, when subverted, works really well. I fully subscribe to don’t like, don’t read, don’t write, which is why I don’t write anything that warrants AO3 content warning tags or an Explicit rating, in favor of focusing on plot. Every author has a reason for what they write and how - be it their level of experience, personal preference, or simply the joy of writing something and getting it out there - and I respect that. Within reason, of course.

U: Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much. --

@miamaroo, for reasons I’ve already discussed. My favorite TAZ Balance author hands down. Read Northern Migration and give it the love it deserves, or I’m replacing all the faucets in your house with silly straws.

@transagentstern. Fae has a bunch of absolutely incredible fics and an amazing grasp on characterization. We come from the same place with AUs, in that canon is but the bare planks on which we put the drywall of our plot an characterization. They structure AUs and character backstories from the ground up in believable and emotionally raw ways. Also they have great music taste. I especially like their interpretation of Indrid in Moth to the Flame; he, like all the other characters in the story, is far from perfect, and his character arc is explored in relatable ways that I love to read.

@keplersheetz. Aline - theneonpineapple on AO3 - researches like a motherfucker and has a wealth of knowledge/experience/viewpoints to draw on, making author-author interactions with her an absolute delight. She’s also doing the lord’s work with rarepairs. Spin a wheel, find a ship, and she’s probably written for it or at least conceptualized it. Reading her character studies and stories of the old Pine Guard - aka Mama’s original crew, before the current PCs joined - is always a delight. I’ve also hashed out a lot of details for The Children of Sylvain, especially for Mr. Boyd Mosche, guilt-wracked Jersey Devil extraordinaire, with her help.

V: If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose? -- Not gonna lie, I’m fine with a lot of stuff that’s out there right now. It’s been a hot few months since I’ve actually stopped to read fic, but from what I recall, most of the fics I’ve read have done a good job of keeping things intact.

W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones? -- The vaguer, the better. With really specific prompts, it usually feels as if the story’s been written for me already; with vague, general prompts, I have more agency to explore my own ideas. Some accompanying detail is usually nice, though. For example, the coffee shop/college/flower shop AUs that @transagentstern wrote are my ideal prompt for drabbles: premise, a little bit of open-ended detail, clear explanation of what’s going to happen while leaving the rest up to the imagination. Good stuff. If it’s for a long-form piece, though, I prefer full agency, or even just some time to lie facedown in the dirt and wait for an idea to strike me.

X: A character you enjoy making suffer. -- Yes.

Y: A character you want to protect. -- Tim.

Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate? -- I do read lots of major character death, yeah, though not always for TAZ. There’s something cathartic about seeing a character die, but sometimes it sits wrong with me in ways that I don’t like. As for writing, I’d rather kill a character for a reason rather than for shock value/for the Feels, though said Feels can accompany the reason.

#anon please dm me so i know who u are #please #i'm begging you #i'm in hell #asks #anon #ask game

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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Meet the man who created the fake presidential seal — a former Republican fed up with Trump

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/25/meet-man-who-created-fake-presidential-seal-former-republican-fed-up-with-trump/

“It’s cool people are buying this, that’s great and all,” he said. “But I’ve got to be honest, I am so tickled in the most petty way possible that the president of the United States, who I despise, stood up and gave a talk in front of this graphic. Whoever put that up is my absolute hero.”

Meet the man who created the fake presidential seal — a former Republican fed up with Trump

By Reis Thebault and Michael Brice-Saddler | Published July 25 at 6:23 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted July 26, 2019 |

Charles Leazott hadn’t thought about the seal in months.

The 46-year-old graphic designer threw it together after the 2016 presidential election — it was one part joke, one part catharsis. He used to be a proud Republican. He voted for George W. Bush. Twice.

But Donald J. Trump’s GOP was no longer his party. So he created a mock presidential seal to prove his point.

He substituted the arrows in the eagle’s claw for a set of golf clubs — a nod to the new president’s favorite pastime. In the other set of talons, he swapped the olive branch for a wad of cash and replaced the United States’ Latin motto with a Spanish insult. Then, his coup de grace: a two-headed imperial bird lifted straight from the Russian coat of arms, an homage to the president’s checkered history with the adversarial country.

“This is the most petty piece of art I have ever created,” the Richmond resident said in an interview with The Washington Post.

The seal wasn’t meant for a wide audience. But then, years later, it wound up stretched across a jumbo-tron screen behind an unwitting President Trump as he spoke to a conference packed with hundreds of his young supporters.

That was Tuesday. On Wednesday, The Post was the first to report that the seal was fake — and that neither the White House, nor Turning Point USA, the organizers of the star-studded Teen Student Action Summit, knew how it got there or where it came from. Leazott woke up Thursday and saw the news in a Reddit post as he drank his morning coffee. Then, a torrent of messages.

“It’s been chaos,” he said. “This is not what I expected when I woke up today.”

[How Trump ended up in front of a presidential seal doctored to include a Russian symbol]

No one expected it. A Turning Point spokesman said Wednesday the conservative group wasn’t even aware of the phony seal until The Post called him. He spent that night trying track down the culprit and determine whether it was an intentional act by a rogue staffer, or just an honest mistake.

The faux seal was on-screen for at least 80 seconds, in plain sight but largely ignored as hundreds in the room at the Washington Marriott Marquis trained their attention on Trump.

But the modified symbol was loaded with jabs at the president — subtle and overt. The Russian eagle, an allusion to accusations that he embraced the Kremlin, and the Spanish script, a reference to Trump’s controversial border policies and his denigration of Latin American immigrants. Instead of E pluribus unum — “out of many, one” — Leazott wrote “45 es un títere,” or “45 is a puppet,” a callback to a viral exchange between Trump and Hillary Clinton in a 2016 debate.

“I’m a graphic designer, it’s just something I tossed together,” he said. “This was just a goofy thing for some people I knew. I had no idea it would blow up like this.”

By Thursday morning, the Turning Point spokesman said, the group had identified the staffer responsible for turning Leazott’s design into a trending topic. He called the incident a last-minute oversight, the result of a quick online search to find a second high-resolution photo of the presidential seal to place behind Trump. He said the mistake was “unacceptable.”

“We did let the individual go,” the spokesman said. “I don’t think it was malicious intent but nevertheless.”

Leazott doesn’t buy it. He thinks whoever was responsible had to know exactly what they were looking for. He believes the person dug up the image he created and used it intentionally.

“That’s a load of crap,” he said in response to Turning Point’s explanation. “You have to look for this. There’s no way this was an accident is all I’m saying.”

After The Post story published, Internet sleuths went looking, too. They found the image’s origin, tracing it back to an online marketplace Leazott set up to sell shirts and stickers sporting the seal, along with other jokey “resistance” apparel. And the citizens of the Web wanted to buy his stuff.

[While bemoaning Mueller probe, Trump falsely says the Constitution gives him ‘the right to do whatever I want’]

In one fell news cycle, Leazott began making money and fielding calls from papers and TV stations from across the country. People wanted to support him. But the trolls came, too.

“The worst has been Facebook,” he said, which he hadn’t checked “in like a year.”

“Holy crap at the amount of vile, hateful Facebook messages,” he said. “It’s apparently a personal affront to some people.”

But, Leazott said, he’s the one who gets the last laugh. A photo of Trump in front of his seal is now his computer background, and the person who used it at the event is “either wildly incompetent or the best troll ever — either way, I love them.”

As of Thursday afternoon, Leazott’s shirts were sold out. He said he had to start working with a fulfillment center just to meet the demand. He also revived the primary website for his brand, OneTermDonnie, which includes a paean to the American Civil Liberties Union, where the site says 10 percent of all sales will be directed.

#u.s. news #politics #donald trump #trump administration #politics and government #president donald trump #white house #trump #republican politics #us: news #republican party #international news #trump scandals #world news #potus45 #potustrump #trumpism #impeach trump #against trump

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droneseco · 3 years ago

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Oppo Find X3 Pro Review: One of the Best Devices on the Market in 2021

Oppo Find X3 Pro

9.00 / 10

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