#but I do have to upload all my finished stuff into google drive or whatever

[trashcreatyre]

Experiencing the consequences of my actions

[gardengobbo]

April 30th 2024

Not much of a garden update here, but I assure you there has actually been some progress. So here's a photo of one of my dove frens I took one the 28th.

Keep readin' if you wanna hear me blab on about the video posts and ADHD. You've been warned, it's long 😂

So I've been enjoying doing the video-style posts instead of typing 90 paragraphs of nonsense, but I don't want to keep recording with my phone since the videos take up a bunch of space. (As well as me having to take off my dirt-coated gardening gloves every time I want to record.) I could just delete the clips after editing into one video, or just all of them after uploading, but I prefer having things backed up instead of just uploaded online.

I know I could back them up to my computer too, but part of the reason I enjoy the quick clips of nonsense slapped together with minimal editing is because it's simple and I can do it all on my phone. Either plugging it into my computer or even uploading them to Google Drive on my phone then downloading them onto the computer adds extra steps.

Extra steps that seem inconsequential, but something I know about myself is I'm very all or nothing. It's very hard for me to only do half of a thing. In this example that'd be editing the videos together and then hitting the block that I've finished that part and uploaded, but now I need to plug in my phone to the computer to transfer the video files. Or if I back them up to drive, it only has so much space before it yells at me to upgrade lol

Drive seems like the most logical option though as it would give me the freedom to at least have more time before I have to download the backups, however I know for a fact that when that point comes I won't record any more videos even if I want to because I need the space to back them up, but I dont want to sit down on the computer to download the Drive backups because I'm doing other things and will get distracted if I do.

This is a struggle for me in a lot of aspects, can't do Z because I need to do X but I can't do X until I do Y, and I need to finish ABC before I can do Y, but all I really want to finish is Z. And worse is that most times to do Z, there isn't any need for the other stuff. It's just me wanting Z done in a certain way that to do it that certain way, it requires all those other steps. This happens in the garden a lot too, so this rant is kinda still relevant 😅

Thankfully all of that hasn't caused an issue with me just not doing garden things because I want to record it, because trust me when I say that's happened a lot in the past too. (That being me wanting to make a little video of something but not being able to figure out how I want to set up the cameras so I don't do the craft or whatever because I want to record it so it just never happens but sticks in my brain as the thing I want to do but can't till I figure the recording process out.) Depression is the reason why I haven't been gardening 🤣

All this to say I have like, 2 days worth of clips I want to edit into a post to show the progress so far. One day is clips on my phone, the other I recorded with a little action camera and I'm not sure how that's turned out yet since that requires me to upload to the computer to see better. (See computer related snag above as to why thats not done!) Today I might go even further and just bring out my small digital camera I got years ago to do vlogs with, that I never vlogged with.

Which leads me to my last point, and Ima make a poll for thoughts on the idea after this post cause I know this is a lot to read and most folks won't care, and that's fine! I think maybe I will use that camera for vlogging finally. I'd have to learn how to use an actual video editing software, and it'd have to be lightweight cause my once-top-of-the-line-parts-now-10-years-outofdate computer struggles hard to play Helldivers 2 right now, I can't imagine trying to run something like Premier Pro. But to be honest all I want to do is add auto-captions like Ive already done previously so I'm sure I can fine some free or cheap program to do so. I'm just not sure if like, amateur gardening vlog style videos where I mutter to myself as I pour dirt is really a genre of content lmfao. And if it is, it's probs better off on here or tiktok but I'm going insane trying to not film landscape everytime I go to record something.

So like, I dunno, I guess youtube? I can probs figure out how to sorta make it acceptable for portrait orientation viewing after the fact? I have no idea but if there's a gap in video updates for today, that's why 🤣

Alright that's all for now. I gotta get up, get sunscreen'd, and get out there! As long as it's not raining still... it was last night 😅

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Well, I’ve done it. Finished the Bugle back catalogue. Original run was 295 full episodes, 217 hours. Reboot is currently up to 267 episodes. That’s a lot of Andy Zaltzman. I have heard a lot of Andy Zaltzman, in the last year and a bit. Arguably more Andy Zaltzman than is recommended for your mental health.

To commemorate the end of this era, I thought I'd post a few things I have saved in my Bugle folder. Because it's always fun to go through that. This isn't exactly the same as posting the best moments of The Bugle. I heard plenty of fantastically funny moments that I never cut out and saved. This is just a small selection of Bugle moments that, for whatever reason, I decided to save to my hard drive. Probably so I could put them in a post or something (going with ones from the original Bugle only here, stuff from the reboot could be another post).

An old one, from June 2009, that I saved just because it made me laugh so hard. The time a listener remixed John Oliver’s impression of Delonte West going on a date. Beginning of the era of listeners making weird remixes of The Bugle and sometimes having it played on the podcast.

@lastweeksshirttonight, this one's entirely for you (I don't remember why I first cut it out, but quite probably I did that for you in the first place), the time when John Oliver played a phone message on The Bugle in which his Daily Show colleague Rob Riggle called him a "piece of French garbage" while threatening to murder him.

From late 2014: they found a news story in which the Chinese government tried to ban puns, Andy Zaltzman responds with a nuclear-grade Chinese-themed pun run.

John Oliver: I think we're all aware that they're waving a red flag at a very excitable bull, with you, with this story. And, just before you say anything else... just, over-responding, Andy, would that not be what the Chinese government wants? Are they provoking you into action, and is not the really strong thing here to do to show restraint?

Andy Zaltzman: Uh, no.

Andy Zaltzman's idea for a football chant at a funeral - it's up there with the hardest The Bugle has ever made me laugh. I was on a bus when I first heard it. It was a problem.

The time Andy Zaltzman tried to tell a regular "walks into a bar" joke. About the Queen Victoria. As a way to explain why he has so many stories about people hating him when he tried to perform in comedy clubs.

John Oliver trying to get through his prepared material on the band Pussy Riot, Andy Zaltzman keeps interrupting and making John Oliver laugh, I cut this one out so I could use it to illustrate how well their double act works, based on the fact that they find each other so genuinely funny.

Episode 61 of The Bugle, from January 2009 - Andy Zaltzman missed Obama's inauguration because it happened on a Tuesday so he spent that time playing comedians' football, but did interview some of the other players (Lee Mack, Russell Howard, Daniel Kitson) about the inaguration they'd all missed, and played the interviews on The Bugle.

I didn't have the clip saved, but found it on YouTube because I need to include Andy Zaltzman's iconic dog-themed pun run, featuring the memorable "bored her colleagues" (border collie) and "cold and wet weaver" (golden retriever).

Tumblr won’t let me upload any more audio files here, but I can still add a Google Drive link, and I need to also mention the clip from Bugle episode 112, from April 2010, when it was John Oliver’s birthday and he’d just taken the job of voice acting in the Smurfs and he was so excited to announce that, because it’s the cutest shit I’ve ever heard.

While I’m at this, I’d like to end with a couple of Bugle compilations I made last year. I actually made a few of those, but here are my favourites. One is the one that got wildly, unstoppably, incredibly out of hand. It was meant to be just a short collection of audio clips from a few different Bugle episodes, like my other compilations were. Then I added some pictures. Then a Daily Show clip. Then another Daily Show clip. Then some more pictures. Then some video footage. Then there was more and more of it. And basically, I accidentally made a feature film. It's 74 minutes long.

It features all the aspects you want in a good feature film. Tension, suspense, one man’s descent into darkness, tasteful nudity, explorations of the human capacity for anger and confusion, a battle for the soul of a nation, a tumultuous relationship between two opposing figures at the centre, increasing conflict but a note of hope at the end. At once point, Andy Zaltzman, in his role as one of the main character’s best friends, compares it to a romcom like Groundhog Day. I referenced that in the title. Because I had to give it a title. Because it’s a feature film.

…It’s just a bunch of Bugle and Daily Show clips, in chronological order, taking us through the journey of John Oliver having to cover the career of Sarah Palin. He didn’t enjoy it. He really, really didn’t enjoy it.

Some of the audio clips are overlaid with pictures and videos of the stuff they were talking about. One of those pictures took me several hours to locate, I finally got it by putting the Daily Mail into Wayback Machine, and then going through ages of their archives. But I think it was worth the effort.

And finally, the one thing I’ve made that I actually put on YouTube, because it took me a large number of hours and a lot of work and I was actually quite pleased with the result. The story of the time, in 2011, that John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman talked a lot of shit about everyone involved in the News International phone hacking scandal, even though The Bugle was funded by Timesonline which was owned by Rupert Murdoch, and quite soon after that, they were dropped by The Times.

At the time, they both said this was not a political decision, it wasn’t because of their comments, it was just that they didn’t bring in enough money. Which is probably at least partially true, decisions can be about more than one thing. John Oliver said a couple of things that at least kind of implied it might have been retaliatory, but Andy Zaltzman was more careful, insisting they were parting amicably (even though they clearly weren’t). I suspect the difference in reactions is because John Oliver had a lot of shit going on outside The Bugle so could afford to mess around, while Andy Zaltzman had… in the episode where they announced this, he used the words “Jack K. shit” to describe what else he had going on, and may have been too invested in keeping The Bugle going to say anything that would risk alienating potential funding sources (they succeeded, of course, managing to fund it via listener donations).

In a very recent episode that I just listened to this weekend, from May 2023, the topic of Rupert Murdoch came up on The Bugle, and Andy Zaltzman briefly told the story of how they used to be funded by his company, but were then dropped by that company, “suspiciously shortly” after they talked a lot of shit about Rupert Murdoch and everyone who worked with him. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard Andy Zaltzman acknowledge that there may be a connection between those two things. So that’s a cool sign. Twelve years later, and Andy Zaltzman has finally attained enough success and job security so he can say what he likes as well.

[saym0-0]

how does burning cds work

im not sure how it would work on a newer computer, since i was literally doing this on my moms 10yr old work computer, but basically:

i downloaded all my music files as mp3s onto the computer (since thats how i listen to music anyway i just copied the folder over from my phone via google drive, but theres plenty of fairly trustworthy youtube to mp3 converters out there. this is my current fav),

then dragged and dropped the folder with all my songs into windows media maker, into the lil tab that says burn (in the version i have theres literally three big tabs on the right and one of em says burn, im not sure where it would be for anyone else 😭)

then you can drag to reorder them fairly easy.

after that you just insert your blank cd into the cd drive and hit burn! and whatever you do do not accidentally hit the eject button before its finished uploading, you will have a cd with only half the songs lmao

aaaaand if all of this is defunct and ancient (it shouldnt be really, the mp3 stuff is probably the same) then herees the link to a post that came on my dash the other day, its mostly about cds getting old but theres a few good links at the bottom i think

[silentauroriamthereal]

My HP fics

Hey hey! 

From about 2003-2006, I was very involved in the Harry Potter fandom, with a trickling out of activity in the three years following that. I believe the last fic I wrote in that fandom was in 2010, and it definitely felt like an extra, very much last burst of will to make that one happen. The fandom was dwindling, JKR was JKR-ing, and people were already starting to move off the main fora: LJ for the social side, and a veritable flurry of archive choices. My main one had always been skyehawke.com. 

I got busy with my masters degree and life in a different city, and thought I’d moved on. Then, in the spring of 2013, I moved cities again, discovered the massive talents of Benedict Cumberbatch and thereby, Sherlock, and suddenly discovered that I wanted to start writing again. It was bewildering, because in that time, I’d lost contact with everyone I’d ever known in the fanworld in general, and a huge migration had happened - from LJ to tumblr, and from every archive to ao3. I didn’t know if anyone would even read something I wrote, especially as a newbie in a brand new fandom. I was startled to find that some people remembered me, and had also come over to the Sherlock fandom. As I started reconnecting with people, some of them started asking me if I was going to bring all of my HP material over to ao3. I always said no, immediately. I had lots of reasons: 

the fics were old, and the oldest of those were frankly not very good

I had no interest in either promoting them, or engaging with readers about them anymore

JKR is JKR, and she rather spoiled the fandom backwards for me. Between her unapologetic and highly public transphobia, her active queerbaiting in making characters gay after the fact without any overt inclusion of that in her canon, including in films she was involved in writing/making after said statements, and her active loathing for the fandom, especially the slash side of it, which was obviously what fuelled the epilogue that made writing Harry/literally anyone so much harder than it needed to be, I just decided I was out

it would have been a lot of work to reformat the stories, and there are a lot of them. I had written 1.7 words of fiction in that fandom, spread out over 105 individual stories, so yeah: a lot of work. Plus, I was painfully aware that many of them had many typos, and I wouldn’t have wanted to bring them to a new archive and thereby potentially a new audience in that state, so: even more work

However, not actively wanting to promote that work is a very different thing from not wanting to HAVE that work, or allow anyone else to have access to it ever again, so I had always said that I would let the entire collection stand, as is, on skyehawke.com. 

Skyehawke finally crashed for apparently the final time about two weeks ago. There was no warning from the archive owner, no chance for anyone to pull any of their unsaved stuff. Some of my stuff is so old that it was literally saved on floppy disks. The rest was saved on the hard drives of laptops now long gone. I was devastated. Rather than posting about it on here, I made my first post on LJ in literal years, asking without much hope if anyone happened to have saved a copy of any of my stuff, just wanting to see if I could regain any of it. 

What I received was yet another outpouring of the kind of fandom generosity that always just floors me. People linked me to reddit searches of my stuff, pointed me to the Wayback Machine (which I had never heard of, lol), sent me entire google drives, emailed me one or twelve or sixty files of my stories. Some emailed or commented on the post only to express their sympathies and best hopes for document recovery. It’s 48 hours later now, and I got every single word back. It took me hours and hours of downloading or copy/pasting from Wayback, but I have it all back now. 

So, I made a decision: I’m changing my mind. Some of these stories still make me cringe, and it will be HEAPS of work, but in gratitude for all of this, I AM going to upload my HP material to ao3, after all. It’s going to take me a lot of time, because if I’m going to do it, then I might as well make it typo-free, or as typo-free as I can. I need to reformat it anyway, so why not? That said, I’m going to hold off on starting this project until I’ve finished my current Sherlock story. This community, of fandom in general, is beyond amazing. It’s a stronger network of humanity and good will than I’ve ever found anywhere else and I’m so grateful to have this in my life. I once thought that I had “moved on” from fandom or outgrown it in some way, but that was an immature thought: fandom is for anyone, at any age, and even if I were to lose interest in whatever my current fandom is, I would stay for the community. Thank you for existing. Thank you for all your friendship, support, readership, and all of the fanwork you folks put out into this world, too. I love you all. <333333333333333333333333

[lucky-draws]

for the writing meme 1, 3, 22, 40 :)

Hi!! thank you for asking :-)

1. What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting?

OK i do care abt font tbh, i usually write in baskerville in google docs lol, size 9 or 10 maybe, i change it to 8 when i read through it all; occasionally i will change the doc into a completely different font like comic sans or something lol just so that it like. looks different + therefore hopefully gonna make me spot mistakes or things to change idk? but yeah baskerville my friend baskerville, it looks like this on my phone:

3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed?

I already answered this one but actually i guess i can say a bit more abt sort of how id go about sitting down to write, whether i 'warm up' or not or whatever. sometimes i might start off with typing up some handwritten stuff if ive got some left to do, before i actually write anything new, and that's like my warm up i guess. and i will keep reading through my work frequently of course, although sometimes you also have to take a little break or pause from it, because you end up having read it over so many times that it loses its impact; but if you leave it and come back to it in a few days or whatever your time scale is and read it all through from the start, then it hopefully feels fresh again and you start to really enjoy the bits you wrote again.

22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe to me your organization method, if it exists. What tools do you use? Notebooks? Binders? Apps? The Cloud?

hmm, i wouldn't say i'm like...disorganised exactly, but idk how organised i am either......when i write by hand i use like a5 size notebooks and black biro, and when i type it up i use google docs... hghgffj in my google drive i do have a lot of Untitled Documents lol, mostly notes/planning for fics. (and lately for shorter fics sometimes i don't actually think of a title until it’s finished and i'm uploading it to ao3, so it just stays as untitled document in my drive... oops..)

my document full of notes for a possible ocelhira fic is almost at 3k words or something (plus some scribbles in my real notebook) and it’s extremely messy.. i live in hope of someday writing it,but here's a snippet from my notes for now:

i also have another short bosselot fic in mind.. :

my notes like this on my phone tend to be just. lower case free from punctuation no speech marks just vibes. tends to be a mixture of more polished sentences that i will probably end up using in the final thing, as well as looser bits and actual like. notes to myself of outlines / plans / settings etc. i can't seem to find my notes for 'awakening', i guess i deleted them, but it would have been good to show my notes for a fic i posted recently so you can see what made it into the final thing and what didn't, ah well.

40. Please share a poem with me. I need it.

I already answered this but I'll go for another poem by the same author, Wilfred Owen, since there are several I really like by him. (His most well-known, and for good reason, is Dulce et decorum est, but i feel like that's the obvious choice with him, so I'm avoiding choosing that one lol. But it is very good..)

thanks 4 asking!!! :)

[muffinrecord]

Some Updates?

Youtube NA Archive Channel Updates

I’ve disputed a ton of videos (I’d say 60 out of the 66 currently waiting), and most of them are up again while I wait for a response from Sony. The way it works is that the Copyright Holder has 48 hours to respond, and if they don’t then the video will still have a claim but be available to watch on the channel. If they don’t respond within 30 days, then the video loses its Copyright Claim. So right now it’s just a matter of copy + pasting the same reply over and over where necessary, which is kinda time consuming but not too bad.

If you’re struggling with this issue, I use this very generic response. Feel free to use it, change it, build off of it, whatever:

“This video is not a substitute for listening to the original song. It is a recording of gameplay and story, with the background game music playing as a way to enhance the story itself. The actual gameplay is not an issue for copyright.”

Keep in mind that it’ll still take two days / 48 hours for the video to be able to go up. We can all still upload videos, it’s just that there’s going to be a wait period to combat these wretched Copyright Checks.

Unfortunately I had deleted some of the videos back when I planned on replacing them all instead of making disputes.

Some of them, like the above, are still within that 48 hour period. But once these two in particular are done (and the copyright claim on Chapter Nine is lifted), all of the Main Story will be available to watch again!

Lastly, like I said some videos are deleted. It’s kind of hard for me to tell what is up and what isn’t and what is just in the process of being disputed, so I won’t be uploading videos until things settle down a little bit more. 

Additionally, a stupid amount of videos are muted and will need to be reuploaded. I’ll probably be asking for help from people to check what is muted and what isn’t (things might be muted for like 30 seconds of the video and otherwise with sound, and I’d like to make sure everything has its proper audio).

However do not fear! If you’re a subscriber and worried about all these damn videos going up and clogging your feed, there is luckily a solution.

I’m not sure how long this has been an option on youtube, but it looks like you can make it so that uploaded videos WON’T show up in your feed! So don’t worry-- No spam!

If this isn’t true and there is, please let me know so that I can space out the videos instead of like, uploading all of them at once and overwhelming everyone x_x

Google Drive Archive

I have a lot to do here because I need to:

Upload JP Events

Upload JP Magical Girl Stories that are missing

Re-record old NA videos because their quality in the Drive is abysmal for some reason

Re-record a few missing videos (those videos are up thanks to a helpful individual who had ripped them from other channels, but I’d like to make my own and put them up)

Actually put together the three branch events for NA that I never finished and upload them

So what have I been doing? Recording Magia and Doppels! It’s actually kind of relaxing and this event with Half AP is great for it lmao. You can see what the folder for it here. There’s also a Spreadsheet that shows what I have up and what is missing so far.

I know that there are folks on tumblr who like to turn the Doppels and Magia into gifs-- feel free to use any of these! Unfortunately I don’t have really rare ones up yet (like Seika or Seira) because I’m limited to what I have and what my followers have.

... I’ve been thinking that once I have them all done, I might make a massive video for Magia and one for Doppels and upload them? That’s just scope creep though.

Memoria Blog Stuff

I completed all of the memos for Nayuta’s event!

I’m going to work on the ones I didn’t do in time for Sae’s event, and then do some missing personal memoria for Dependence Blue and for Alexandra.

My queue is really low at the moment. Right now, the queue is filled with memoria that have been stuck in there for months (but weren’t published in favor of other things). A lot of these memoria are ones that NA Refugees won’t have. I know that is kind of obnoxious, but I want to get these out of the queue because of how long they’ve been sitting in there for.

Right now I’m kind of focusing on building the queue with unlimited two-star and unlimited three-star memoria. I still have about twenty or ten unlimited four-star memoria to work on, but they’re all annoying ones to write. x_x So instead I’m working on the unlimited ones that are comparatively easier. I feel like also this is good because these ones are more accessible to F2P.

You guys have seen the little posts on this blog that collect all the completed events. I don’t imagine these are actually useful for anyone but me-- it’s my way of seeing what events I finished and what still need to be worked on.

Uhhh, separately, I’m beginning the slow process of going through old reviews and updating them. This is going to take a while, so if you see something on an old review and it looks off, it’s because its a WIP. I haven’t deleted any info in them though, so the review still works, I’m just trying to format it better.

Conclusion

That’s about it! Sorry for the long post. I just wanted to get everything out there.

I’ve heard that the last Tart event was really good and my friend Antimony suggested I liveblog it, so once it’s translated and I can read it in-game with the Rayshift Patch, I’ll try to do so! It might be a while though because I’m busy with other things (not just magireco related but also real life).

[prolestariwrites]

Are you still writing? I don't see you post as much stuff anymore.

I’m still here, alive and kicking and writing lol… I hope you don’t mind but I’m going to use this ask to give an update on me and what I’ve been doing.

The truth is, I write almost every single day. I have dozens of drafts and another dozen of nearly complete fics for different fandoms. I have some one shots that I never got around to publishing. I also have outlines for stories that I might or might not get around to doing. I have full fics that I’ve written in a discord server with my writing pals that are waiting for me to copy and paste into a document so I can edit and upload.

I’m going to go into my thoughts on these things, where I’m at, and what I’m working on under the cut. Maybe if you’re reading this you can help me piece it all together?

First I want to acknowledge that at least half of what I write, I do with my friend and writing partner @solynacea. We have novels of unpublished stuff that we’ve done just for fun that has never gotten published, and maybe never will. A lot of what I’ve written has been done with them, and many times we’re onto the next idea before editing and uploading and I think we’ve forgotten about half the stories we’ve written, lost into Google chat backlogs until one of us remembers something we can search to find it.

So if I’m doing all this writing, where is it? The truth I guess is that I’m still writing, but for a while I just haven’t been into publishing. And this isn’t going to be a sob story about not getting enough attention or credit, because I stopped looking at kudos and comments a long, long time ago. I like publishing my work because I like to know it’s somewhere where I can find it easily again. (My Google drive is a hot mess.) I like knowing that there is someone who read it and saved it to come back to again. If each of my fics has just that one person, I’m cool with it.

For me, writing is fun and publishing is work. I need to edit, I need to find visuals, I need to think of a title and write a summary and actually remember to update with new chapters. I need to be ready for other people to read it. So I’ve adapted this habit of writing without expecting to publish, and it’s helped me flourish.

But it’s also made me pretty inept at getting anything to the point where it can go on AO3. There is an expectation when publishing that things should be a bit polished. I’ve never been one to just throw whatever up unless I knew it would be finished, because I get the sense that people hate unfinished work. Am I wrong?

If you are asking about NnT, anon, I think we can agree that it’s unfortunately a bit dead. I do have one story to finish, The Dark Fate. I also have some outlines done, a bunch of completed or nearly (like just need one more chapter written) fics, some that were started and left halfway through.

But in general I feel like I’ve told the bulk of the stories I had for NnT. I don’t have much more left. Which really kind of sucks because it was the perfect place for a content creator. There were enough characters that you could interpret in a lot of ways, plenty of lore left undiscovered to flesh out, just fantasy enough to not get caught up in real-world locations or rules, but also not so big you get lost. Yet NnT is over and I’m not feeling the sequel. There’s just no inspiration.

I’m writing for a BNHA zine which is fun, and Kacchako is still one of my fave ships of all time. I have a story I’ve started about them that I can’t seem to get any gas on. The space though feels too big. I enjoy more of what other people do than what I can make myself. I do still want to write this fic though.

As for DMC, it was a nice place to hang my hat for a while, but I’m feeling like I’ve run out of things for it too. I wrote the things I wanted to say about Dante, Vergil, and Nero. I have a couple more chapters to do on The Wish and started writing a steampunk AU, but once those are done I’ll probably close the book, at least for a while. Writing in this fandom wasn’t at all what I expected coming from NnT, and the culture shock sort of zapped the inspiration for me, even though I’ve had a great time and met some great people. I also ended up liking the reboot more than the main games and finding anyone else in the same boat is like a needle in a haystack.

So what’s next? I’m on the hunt for inspiration. I’ve been catching up on Resident Evil and started writing for it. I’ve been editing an original work (supposed to be anyway, haha) and writing more original work with solynacea. I’ve tried my hand at the Witcher and looked into getting into other fandoms but nothing is striking my inspiration. Tried writing threads for a bit but it’s not my style. There are tons of things that I love, but it’s a whole other ballgame to have your own stories to tell outside of the original, and that’s what I’m waiting on.

I hope if you’ve read this far you can see that it’s not a lack of motivation or interest, just inspiration. I'm an author in need of a new home, so to speak. I’m not in a writing rut, and there are thousands and thousands of words unpublished that I’ve written over the past year since my publishing slowed down. I hope that RE can give me that push, and if it doesn’t, I’ll look for something else. Any ideas, anon?

In the meantime, I wonder, do you guys want rough or partially-finished stories though? Let me know. I can publish if you guys know what you’re getting into by reading it lol. And I don’t mind comments when people ask if I’ll ever finish xyz fic or asks like these that are about what I’m up to, so hit me up any time.

[fatoujallovv]

so here’s my disclaimer: I hardly know what I'm doing. This is my glued together homemade giffing method that I’ve created over months of just random experimentation and bits and pieces from all kinds of tutorials. there are probably better or more correct ways to do a lot of these things! this also isn’t a completely universal tutorial, some of the specifics are geared towards giffing skam, specifically skam france. 

I gif in photoshop cc 2020 on a macbook. Some things like keyboard shortcuts and little things about the photoshop interface will probably vary if you are on a pc/ other version of photoshop! 

this is very long and very unprofessional, but I hope there is something in here that someone will find helpful!

we’ll be going from this:

to this:

up to date as of October 25, 2020

downloading clips

selecting what part you’re going to gif

cropping

my action for resizing, converting to a smart object, and sharpening

coloring

exporting and setting the delay

tldr tips

1. downloading clips

4k video downloader (which you can get for mac or pc here) is great for things posted to youtube, especially from skam france because all the clips are on their youtube with no weird geoblocks or anything! it’s really easy, you just have to open the clip in youtube, copy the link, and go into the program and hit paste link. I like to put on smart mode first and set the destination folder so all my clips go into the place I want. 

There is a 30 video per day download limit, so if you’re thinking you really want to gif lots of stuff from the show, and want a big chunk or a full season it’s definitely worth hunting for a mega or google drive with full episodes to download because it’s just less hassle! I might come back to this post later and compile a list of all of those, but for now if you type “[remake] no subs google drive” or “[remake] no subs mega” into a google search, you’ll probably find something! the all of skam website has no subs for several remakes, but not all!

If you don’t have enough space on your computer to be keeping full seasons, I know there are methods to get screencaps without having to download (generally for giffing movies and regular tv I think this is a common method), but I’ve never done it so I’ll redirect you to this tutorial that explains it! you should probably just go there for the whole thing tbh it’s much more coherent than this, but I digress. 

2. selecting the piece of the video you want to gif

now that you’ve got your episode or clip you’ll want to just open it in photoshop! if you go the screen capping route the way to do that is a bit wonky, so you can keep following the tutorial I linked above and join back in here at coloring if you like!

if the timeline at the bottom doesn’t pop up automatically you can go to window > timeline and turn it on! now you can use the scrubber bar thing to find the moment you want to gif! 

The advantage of this over screen capping is you can scrub with more precision. the arrows circled in blue below let you jump only one frame, where in screen capping I'm pretty sure you can only go by ten second or one minute intervals. 

I usually drag the scrubber as close as I can to the start of the shot/moment I want to use, fiddle with the arrows circled in blue below to jump forward or back one frame at a time until I'm at the first frame I want. I move the left grey handle to the scrubber and then I hit the play button and let the whole shot/moment play. Pause and repeat the shuffling with the arrows until you’ve landed on the last frame you want to use and move the other grey handle. 

the moment you want to use should be between your handles (it’ll look like what I have circled in red), and if you hit play, you should see the thing you want to gif playing on loop above the timeline. the speed will probably be weird, but we’ll deal with that at the end. 

now I recommend doing command or control + s to save your gif as a psd (photoshop document). this is a working, editable file which means if photoshop crashes you can open your file right back up and keep working as long as you’re hitting command or control + s at regular intervals as you work. later we’ll go through exporting in gif format that can actually be uploaded to tumblr.

3. cropping

next I crop out any logos or black space at the top and bottom. Just click on the crop tool on the lefthand side of the screen, drag the edges and hit enter when you’re done. you can of course crop out more than just that, but regardless of what you crop out, now is the time to do it. 

you can set an aspect ratio for your crop at the top of the screen if you’d like to be positive that all the gifs in your set will be the same:

4. my trusty action: resizing, converting to a smart object, and sharpening with one click

Now is when I use an action I made that does all the resizing, converts to a smart object, and sharpens. I’ll take you through the steps so you can conceptually get what’s going on, but I highly recommend using the actions window to record your process as you follow along so you have this action as well. It easily shaves at least 5-10 minutes off of the whole process, and these steps will be the same every time. 

here’s how you make an action: go to window > action and open the action panel. click the plus symbol to start recording a new action:

in the window that pops up, give it a name and hit record:

now just continue with the steps below, and it will save them!

first you flatten frames to clips (I think it says flatten to layers on older versions of photoshop). this is in the menu at the top right corner of your timeline:

next you convert to frame animation by clicking on the symbol in the bottom left, circled in red:

if there is more than one thing in the frame animation, delete the extra one. you don’t need to keep the last one but it won’t let you remove it until there are other frames in there. also go into your layers and delete video group 1 and its contents. don’t ask me why these steps are necessary, I don’t really know, but I’ve noticed it sometimes gets wonky if you don’t do this:

now you want to make frames from layers and delete that first frame that was there before:

then we return to the timeline: 

use command + option + a (control + alt + a for pc I'm pretty sure) to select all layers and then right click within your layers window and select convert to smart object. It’s important to convert to smart object after you go back to the timeline, or the gif won’t move:

next I resize. gifs for tumblr should be 540 pixels wide. for recording your action you should just go into image > image size and only change the width to 540 in case you ever have gifs cropped to different aspect ratios. don’t touch the height, let constrain proportions figure it out!

now, here’s what our base gif looks like, no sharpening, no coloring:

now to sharpen. go to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen. this is up to personal preference, but my go to settings are:

this is what we have after sharpening:

now is when you can stop recording your action. 

just press the stop button in the action window:

this action is pretty much universal and after I select the moment the gif will be and crop however I want, I use it on every gif I make!  so although this initial setup is tedious, now you’ll never have to do these steps again, and the process is magically much quicker.

5. it’s time to jump into coloring!

I typically start with exposure and sometimes some brightness/contrast. with really dark gifs like this, you kind of have to make it worse before you make it better. I did this:

now the gif looks like this:

we have some static and some ugly bits, and this is where selective color comes in to fix it! boost blacks like this:

and now your gif looks like this:

the skin tone is looking a little sickly and weird, so I go into the yellows and reds in my selective color layer to fix it! I also messed with the greens here because I didn't want color in the background (that part is totally optional and just up to your preference):

now we have this:

to really take the color 100% out of the background, I did one more separate selective color layer for cyan (again, I just felt like it but this is optional!):

and now the finished gif:

there’s lots of fun extra things you can add like text and tints and overlays and all that I won’t get into, but feel free to reach out for help on those types of things! 

this gif was certainly not the most complicated to color. some ridonkulously dark clips (*cough cough* vendredi 20h27 *cough cough*) take tons and tons more effort than this and a lot of the time you’ll want to use color balance layers and vibrance layers and all of that to mess with your coloring. 

with all of this coloring business, I really just learned by doing. I don’t know all the technical purposes of each type of adjustment layer, and I tend to stay away from curves just because I find them confusing and annoying. The bottom line is that you should always experiment and find out whatever coloring works for you and run with it! I’m sure every gif maker you talk to does things at least a little differently! 

I highly recommend taking the time to go through all the types of adjustment layers and just move the sliders around to see what they do! That’s honestly one of the best ways to learn and decide what you like!

6. now to export and adjust the delay!

the keyboard shortcut for exporting on mac is command + option + shift + s, control + alt + shift + s for pc, otherwise you can go to file > export > save for web

my settings are here:

the settings only need to be configured once! otherwise just hit save and follow the pop ups to choose where to save and what name you want to give your gif. Since you saved as a psd way back, that will be the name it’s automatically given, but call it whatever you want!

then I adjust my delay by opening the gif I just exported (not the psd, the .gif file) and using one of my delay actions. I’ve made an action for each delay between 0.05 (real time) and 0.08 (really slow mo for certain super short shots, typically for more ~artsy~ sets). 

all my action does is select all frames:

adjust the delay (which will differ based on whether you want them slowed down and by how much): 

for reference, this is a 0.05 delay:

and this is a 0.08 delay

now you just export the same way you did before! 

remember if you’re recording this as an action, you don’t want to touch the file name, just say yes when it asks if you want to replace the file. if you always save your gifs to the same place, your action will now enable you to override any gif with the incorrect delay with the correct one with one click!

7. tldr: the main tips

for downloading 4k video downloader works well for non geoblocked youtube videos, the all of skam website is another place you can look to download with no subs, here’s the screen capping method if you don’t want to download

The main way I combat dark lighting is to bump exposure to the right, gamma correction to the left, and then enhance black in a selective color layer. The amount of these three adjustments will vary gif to gif. I know lots of people use curves, but I find them really confusing for some reason, so this is my method! As my graphics teacher likes to say: there are always at least 3 different ways to reach the same result!

there’s a little bit of additional coloring on this one, but here’s another before and after example so you can get an idea of how those steps get you a better lit result without making the lighter parts super over exposed:

besides those three steps, you have free rein to use the other selective color channels, as well as color balance, vibrance, hue/saturation, etc. to restore color that was lost or to change the colors altogether! mess around with it and have fun experimenting!

7a. bonus coloring tip: 

sometimes you can make use of selective color to completely alter an isolated color in your gif. You can get very adventurous with this, but here's a simple example of changing blue tones to teal (I got away with these gifs being longer because they were in rows of two in the set I posted them in. I'm too lazy to trim frames so I can put them here at 540 px without going over the 10mb limit so just ignore the quality ok):

7b. actions, actions, actions! 

if you find yourself doing a certain thing over and over, always record it as an action. the amount of time they will save you is honestly really impressive. 

You can duplicate actions, so, for example, if you have different sharpening preferences for different shows or scenes, you can duplicate your gif process action and go into the steps, double click smart sharpen, and alter it however you want! 

This could also be good to do for the different widths for tumblr if you ever do sets with rows of two or three! Duplicate actions is also how I made my actions that set delay at 0.05, 0.06, 0.07, and 0.08!

when in doubt, always make an action! it’s worth minimizing the tedious bits of the process as much as possible so you can focus on the fun part of seeing your awesome gifs come to life! any little task you find yourself doing often, make an action!

and for now that’s all I have. if any of this made no sense, if you want to suggest a correction or addition I could make, if you’re ever curious how I did something on any gifs I post, or if you have any other sort of questions, feel free to send me an ask or a dm! if I can’t answer your questions I’ll be happy to try to direct you to someone who can or a tutorial to help! again, I'm no expert, not even close, but I hope at least one person will find one thing in this mess that helps. 

[livlepretre]

I know you said that everytime you feel inspired you write on whatever you find but have you stuck to one format/place? I don't really like ao3, and google docs. I created a wattpad account years ago and just didn't feel like moving to anywhere else so I stuck with it, but I lost my account and don't feel like creating a new one.

I’m so normcore, I do all of my writing in Microsoft Word. Occasionally I like to write in a notebook or a legal pad, but the longer a story is, the more I prefer putting it in word so that I can easily search through the doc to brush up on plot points/things I may have already written. For multi chaptered works I literally just put every chapter in the same doc so it’s easy to search and when I finish a chapter, I change the font color to burgundy or gray or something like that so I know it’s the old stuff and then I copy and paste the new chapter into a fresh word doc so I can format it for upload. I keep a stream of notes on my phone mostly for those ideas or dialogue lines that hit me when I’m at work/the grocery/in the middle of the night.

I would say that ao3 is my favorite site once the fic is actually published, because it’s just so easy to correct the draft if I find typos or if there’s a sentence I want to rearrange or something. Fanfiction.net I find to be a huge pain and consequently all of my fics posted there are riddled with typos, whereas I do make an effort to periodically reread and clean up the ones posted to ao3.

I’ve never liked the idea of typing directly into a box for upload like an ao3 or ffn and truthfully google drive gives me bad vibes too. I’m too prone to accidentally hitting the back button and losing everything for that to work (I’ve lost tons of ficlets on tumblr this way LOL)

Good luck finding a format you like!

[selfcareparker]

(lovely anon) i'm so happy to finally be answering this oh my goodness hi gorgeous human being i feel that it has been too long 🥲 SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED SINCE THE LAST TIME I'VE WRITTEN ONE OF THESE HOW HAVE YOU BEEN

to answer the things you have said most recently- i'm so mad that spring break is over bc now i have to go back to life??? like dancing and school and shit that feels so unnessacry 😭 and like i can't just do nothing anymore? i was so used to it and now...... ugh. i STILL haven't played sims (i think it's because ✨depression✨ be hitting sometimes) lol but MWAHAH IM SO HAPPY FOR YOUR NEIGHBOR!AU AND THAT THEY HAD LITTLE BABY LEO!! i feel the name thing.. i just come up with something that sounds nice? i think leo is a nice name, it makes me think about lea michele and the fact that her son's name is Ever Leo but anyway. i don't name my sims after what i want to name my children irl either... idk why though. (i don't know why i'm telling you this but for boy names i love Liam🥰 and if i had twin boys i think i would do Liam and Peter though i am not married to the name Peter.... anywho)

LMAOOO the therpaist coming made me laugh thank you :)) i hope it's helpful? this may be tmi but i've only really had negative thoughts recently and not many healthy outlets so i'm hoping crossing one thing off this sad list will make me feel better :') i think during spring break my anxiety and my depression really spiked? idk, it comes in episodes but yeah THIS GOT REALLY SAD

i think a lot of things when i read your posts but i never say them hahaha so imma say it now: i googled what bon appetit meant ( i also just had to google how to spell it ) but ur right, i feel like bone apple tea makes more sense than bone apple teeth.. the "th" is throwing me off bc how i say it bone appa (like app-a) teet (like you're saying tit but teet lol) so bone apple tea makes more sense to me lol

i never know really know the time difference for anything lmao but est to germany (that's not gmt is it?) is like 6 hours wOAH so it's like 9pm while it’s 3pm here? wowee

i feel mega weird after watching this show called hollywood (darren criss is in it, so is laura harrier and a bunch of other people) but i don't like it💀 i feel really icky rn and idk why but reading your last response to my ask (?) always makes me feel better :')

i am doing what you said btw, i'm typing this on my computer first then gonna transfer it to my phone's tumblr lol but when you said a digital detox, it's interesting cuz i feel like i've been having one since tom's new project was announced? gOD i don't wanna get into it bc i get so triggered but i've been off of instagram since then bc instagram stans literally stand by tom through whatever even when something ain't right- i’m just gonna leave it there bc i’ll continue the rant, but yeah so i took a break lol

also heard abt your driving lesson thing (?) was it that bad? i can't find the old post but someone asked if you hooked up with your lesson person and i was sOOO CONFUSED LMAOO LIKE OK ARIA GET SOME BUT UHH HUH?

now to address the actual response HAHA the way you touch my heart :') by :') bringing :') up :') halle :') being ariel :') (i honest to God don't remember if i brought this up first, forgive me if i did, it's been a minute lmao) i'm always talking about it and i'm pretty sure my family is so tired of me talking about it lmao, but YEAH when i found out they weren't twins i was so surprised but idk why i always thought they were twins? but YOU ARE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE WITH THE DISNEY TALK- everyone is always like "tiana is my favorite princess" and yea she's strong and stuff but...... she was a frog. for almost the whole time. it's about time we got another one!! i do agree with some people on the fact that disney should just make another black princess but halle is adorable and i was ariel on stage so it's already really special to me :')

yeah lol there are good times with my brothers but they make me mad for a good portion of the time (there's the 12yo vincent and the 7yo daniel but vincent??? psshhh he is a piece of work and i'm not sure how much longer i can put up with him HAJAH AND YES VINCENT IS THE ONE WHO WAS 👁👄👁WHEN I CRIED AND THE ONE WHO DOESN'T LISTEN TO MUSIC- writing this now makes it sound like vincent is awful. which he isn't... we're working on him ig. not to add to the awfulness but no, he listens to obnoxious loud VIDEO GAME MUSIC and won't stop when we ask him to stop... he gets beat up a lot) anyway i imagine being an only child is really calming.. like you have time to yourself and its just you and your parents 😌

yeah let me know if you end up watching it (wandavision)! i think it's great but if you like it lmk!! tfatws is sooo good like PHEW i am honestly loving it. sidenote: j*hn w*lker makes me wanna jump through the screen and choke him to the ground. i was thinking right, and the falcon and the winter soldier (THATS SO MUCH EASIER FAJHKDAH) would techinally be like a 10 hour movie right? because every episode is an hour long and there'll be 10 episodes? like wow. i get what you mean though, abt the racism in the show etc, like looking forward to it but not like..... no i get what you mean i will not try and give another example lol but you make me wanna learn more languages like really badly (bc of what you said about the german to american translation) & if you end up watching hamilton PLEASE LMK ABT THAT TOO HAHAHA i love it so much, same thing with lion king lmaoo

speaking of germany, i was at lunch on saturday with my mom and her friend and we were talking about my schooling and like-- she planted this idea in my head lol like what if i just got my GED and went around the world (to england probably) to get a theatre experience??? and i think it sounds so cool but no where near practical lol, it's just..... the dream haha and i would then try and learn a language 😉

uh yes we absolutely should order basically a resturant meal at a cinema, how about burgers, chips (fries), and a large drink? any time next week works for me, should i pick you up?

also about cherry (which i still haven't watched yet lol) i got the timestamps from tumblr😌 i couldn't find them anywhere else, but i agree, i probably wouldn't even look twice at cherry if tom wasn't in it? like i liked tdatt a lot, but it's not a movie i would be itching to see ya know?

HAHAHAHA THE 24 HOUR NOTIFICATION- i think i have around 1030 hours on sims? but i've had it since 2019 lmao (reading the screenshots, yes u are 100% a genuis, i take screenshots too but on anon you can't upload them so i just read them and retype what i wrote lmao) i think the university experience in the game is fun, but time consuming and it's all work imo. idk why i do it so often tho 😭😭😭

and agreed!! when you're making good money in the game you have to find other ways to make it interesting. my cousins who play it just continously do "motherlode" and i'm like.... then what do you do in your game?? it just sounds boring to me... my current sims household, i had a famous comedian sim, her name was dylan, aND SORRY IM LAUGHING SO HARD WHILE WRITING THIS BC ITS A GREAT EXAMPLE OF THE UNI THING UNLESS IM JUST DUMB, she went to college for communications when i wanted her to be a comedian and when she graduated i realized that degree did nothing for the career 🥲 so yeah, i think i'm just dumb. but she had a kid in college, guy didn't stick around and she was pretty broke HA but then she got married to this (great) guy named steve, made good bank, had 5 more kids (two sets of twins and one more lol) but then she passed. uhm... yeah that's still an open wound . lol i'm kidding, but when you get rich like that, you have to find a way to make the game interesting and i chose a million kids.

(this was one giant paragraph until i broke it up uhh yeah) i seriously don't pay attention to the sims prices and just end up spending way too much money and not being able to finish the rest of the house😭 but then again, i'm so used to having sims live in apartments... if i end up building a house FIRST OF ALL it'll look like what you explained before lmao but i'll tell you if i actually end up building a house HAHA & planning out your sims game is so fun to me lol, did enisa and michael take in his daughter yet? i may be thinking too far ahead lol and i love that they fucked woohooed (i say woo woo lol) in celebration HAHA but when i was playing with this one couple i had them woo woo every night hoping the dude would have horrible pull out game and they would concieve, but one night they were too tired and i was like why? get back in there man. if i was in college and lived with my partner we would be fucking every night homie. be grateful. i have been talking a lot about sims, and like you said: enough 💀 i just love this game a lot 😭😭

SORRY LAST THING i think the sims romantic and sexual stuff is so nice bc its what i want?? LMAO IDK like the whole hot tub thing you're talking about- puh lease ITS JUST NICE TO SEE OKAY

i'm reading the german section over again and i said aloud "my german friend is so cool" lol (i was saying that to my brothers & i know they don't care LMAO) (& i'm glad the uni zoom call went well!!) so on a form, in german, it could possibily say Einführungsveranstaltungsteilnehmer because you would be a participant to an introductory event? i swear german sounds so cool 😌 but i love reading your german lessons!! it's really interesting, most of the time my brain can't comprehend it tho?? like that word makes sense to you, but i need a translation. like to be able to look at that and know what it says.... its just appealing and seems so cool lol i kinda wanna write something out in german but i feel that google translate will fail me. während googeln "google übersetzen" mein Computer war so verdammt langsam und es fühlte sich einfach wie etwas Gutes auf Deutsch zu sagen. ich bin nicht sicher, welches Wort ist "fucking", aber ich mag es lmao (did it fail me like i thought it would??)

LMAOOO THANK YOU FOR BRINGING UP JUSTIN BC WHILE AT THE RESTURANT THEY PLAYED A JUSTIN SONG AND I IMMEDIATELY THOUGHT OF YOU AND THIS STORY😭 lol i was thinking it's depending on your age but not even that either... i really don't know.... but tom's fans are hollanders💀 i would consider myself one? he's the only person i'm really into like that (like a lot lol) so idk lmao (directioners 💔💔the pain is real)

LMAOOO (both of these paragraphs started off with “lmaooo” smh) "i like my men when they look like they are on the brink of death" PLEASE, i don't like pete's blonde hair... i just don't. i'm not sure if i wasn't watching the most recent snls but yea. my mom thinks he looks like trash, but i think he's okay? like he said staten island people just look like trash LMAO and I STILL HAVEN'T SEEN KING OF STATEN ISLAND GIRL I ALMOST FORGOT ABOUT THAT!! now i'm gonna make plans to watch it lmao, & yes agreed i find pete hot, don't ask why i really couldn't explain it to someone he's just .

my favorite songs from rex are from pony oh my goodness 🥺 anywho i'm gonna go eat cereal (i ended up eating bun and cheese instead) and listen to the Stormzy songs you recommended... aria. aria aria aria. i would like to thank you for introducing me to stormzy i- i don't have any words or any emojis to express HOW GOOD STORMZY IS. i hope he's popular in germany/the uk because i haven't heard of him but GURLLLL

one second - delicious i love it. it's really good. it’s not my favorite from the album, but its great.

superheroes - at first i played the non-explicit one (on accident) and wondered why the words weren't playing but i was reading them in the lyrics??? THIS ONE THOUGH??? IS THE BEST SONG I THINK I'VE EVER HEARD. i am so SO SO into black people empowering songs (like brown skin girl by beyonce) and this song???? PHEW I CRYYYYY ITS SO GOOD.... i was gonna quote some lyrics BUT THERS TOO MANY I LOVE, "i am young, black, beautiful, and brave" "black queen, you're immaculate, it's coming at the world, they ain't ready for your magic yet, and that was never your fault" THAT WAS NEVER YOUR FAULT- I ALMOST CRIED THIS SONG IS SO BEAUTIFUL (i played it twice lol)

lessons is another beautiful one, like its slow and it feels intimate and nurturing and just OO chefs kiss, beautiful . like you can feel the apology and the regret... it’s so good

own it - OWN IT OWN IT OWN IT IS AMAZING!! swear you would catch me dancing to this song, this song is so fucking good i cannot comprehend like this one might be my favorite for real... "it's the way you wind up your waist, i'm so in awe, you never have to worry abt nothing, you know its yours, you know you own it" 🥲 i played it two or three times honestly

rachael's little brother - YES I DID LISTEN TO IT LMAO AND YES I LIKE IT, its a very complex song and it's very layered in terms of emotions i think and i really like that about it. i probably won't listen to it that often, but its really good. i would recommend this song to my "older brother" bc he would just absolutely love this

shut up - i was taking this song seriously (also very good) until i heard him say shu-T up LMAO, this one is good, i probably wouldn't listen to it 24/7 like rachael's little brother but honestly its still fire

before listening to blinded by your grace and vossi bop, i know you brought up the religion bit, i definitely don't mind that, especially because i'm Christian lol and i actually liked that he brought up God in some of his songs like idk i just like it🥰🥰

(i then went to bed after that lol but first thing in the morning i listened to superheroes and... that song is probably my favorite tbh, i was gonna write MORE quotes that i loved from it but, yeah no there's too many. if you want i'll tell you lmao but this is already so long i would just be quoting the whole friggin song)

VOSSI BOP IS A BOP (lol) I CANT EVEN LIE, i love a song that hypes up a dude's girl so the line- i love that my phone decided to fail to load the lyrics, lemme google it, okay the lyric "looking at my girl like what a goddess" i was like AYEEE its honestly just really good. and no one in america says "sauce" like "i've got the sauce" but now i do (thanks to love island and Nas from last season) and now stormzy so (also im gonna watch the music video for superheroes bc it looks great so 😛)

(because this is already so long i feel like i shouldn't finish the rest but . no i'm gonna do it)

now for blinded by your grace pt2 idk why i’m nervous lmaoo PAUSE I'M NOT EVEN DONE WITH THE SONG GIRL THIS SONG IS *chefs kiss* no words, speechless PHEW y'all gon make me start jumping around. why did i not know about stormzy before, he is amazing i- ok yeah i finished the song, all i have to say is that Stormzy is immaclucate. period. i am literally sending his music to all my friends he is..... amazing

you want my song recommendations 🥺🥺 hmm uh okay lol i listen to a lot of old music, whitney houston, marvin gaye, queen, celine dion, i love "more than words" by extreme uhmm okay, but for actual music i listen to on the daily? (this is a lot of different music like.... they do not go together lmao so be prepared) a song about being sad by rex orange county, betty by taylor swift and lover by taylor swift and... most of that album lol, treasure by bruno mars lmao, OOOO and versace on the floor by bruno as well, lazybaby by dove cameron, creep by tlc has been on repeat lol, deja vu by olivia rodrigo (i saw what you said about drivers license and AGREED LMAO but i like deja vu a lot more haha) and two albums that i listen to in general, rare by selena gomez and ungodly hour by chloe x halle 🥰 you don't have to listen to all of them or any of them lol but that's a sense of what i'm into :) so basically everything haha, i'm into literally every single kind of music really so i wasn't too surprised that i enjoyed stormzy :’)

HAHASBSJHAHA your h20 story cracked me up,, like "wow these actors are so dedicated, learning german just for us" 😭 the beauty of overdubbing

once again, math and maths, in my mind maths makes sense because its mathmatics, but saying maths doesn't feel right to me lol, like if i said maths i feel like everyone would look at me like ??? and yea i was taught it as math so its just more natural for me. but yes math/maths is disgusting, easily one of my least favorite subjects so .

mkay. i- the first time i read this i could not contain my laughter when you said the only pollen you know is sex pollen LMAOKOOSHBABJFAJF STOPPP I'M EVEN LAUGHING WRITING THIS,, anyway. wow! that's interesting, my dad (<<< mostly anything else) gets migraines from the sun and the heat and stuff, yesterday (sunday, i was outside for like hours watching my brothers play football, the american kind lol) i was in the sun for like ever and i got a headache😔

summer clothes🥲 i need to go shopping fr fr. for my birthday my mom and dad got me a giftcard like dedicated to a shopping spree and we've yet to go so..... i should bring it up to my mom lol, but!! i went bra shopping (ended up returning literally all of them cuz they honestly didn't work for day to day work? its a long story) and if i could i would walk around in this new "summer bra" i got, i would. it's so fricking cute and its really light fabric (which isn't perfect for my nipples but still) so i don't get hot in it, but that bra and some shorts would be perfect. its the closest thing to being naked so

IS THE BIRD STILL BOTHERING U ARIA, TELL ME NOW ISTG, i laughed really hard that the bird isn't stupid and is really trying to torture you LMAOO like i was rolling, it wants you to suffer, badly

when you said "mensus" it was still close to mens!!! latin speaking queen 😌😌

okay STORYTIME i was reading back your response and started (fake) crying bc i love you lol and my youngest brother (daniel) gon say "oh man, catherine's crying about something we don't care about, again" I--- i swear when i tell you about them they sound awful, but they aren't that bad, just the stuff i say about them is sounds really mean LMAO

but the thing you said about being kind, same, what i always say is: don't be the person that makes people say "i hate people" ya know? like there's no reason to be a jerk or anything.... but its true 🥺🥺🥺🥺 you are really kind and every time i talk to you i would like to personally fly to germany and give you a hug 💖💕💞💗💓💝💖💘

& i'm gonna show my stretch marks some love bc of you 🥺😭 i really hate how men have basically everyone conditioned that you can't love your own body </3 fuck them, y'all beautiful :')

also thanks for what you said :')) you literally are the kindest, sweetest person i think i've ever spoken to and i love you 🥰🥺🥲💓💗

READING YOUR TAGS HAHAHHAHA the spelling errors makes everything so much funnier. once again, i like your german lessons & yea!! i'm gonna play sims after writing this hahah

#catherine's tags are back #i don't think i've told you my name before?? #anyway it's catherine🥰🥰🥰 #i'm typing this on my computer (without emojis) and if i didn't edit this you would be reading shit shite like #heartface and pout and cry LMAO #yeah abt the tattoos #some stuff with my parents i'm like deal with it??? lol #my mom tells me "if there's something you enjoy or you like but i don't have the same opinion on it... why would my (my mom's) opinion matter? #and i love that #like i'm not gonna go and do whatever i want #but if my mom doesn't like that i swear (which isn't true just an example) #its like okay.... #but whatever #and your tattoo ideas sound really cute!! #and yeah @ your parents, i mean you aren't getting something wild #and the tattoo album>>> #i'm gonna look up ariana's butterfly tattoos just so i know what you mean lol #but i'm guessing you don't want something so incredibily simple, but not super like over the top? #correct me if i'm wrong lol #LMAO the tags were in order don't worry ! #and yeah lol ily2 <33 #and once again, again, sorry for this post JSHJS ITS A MESS AND LONG AS HELL #and you don't need to go in order of my post its literally longer than your german compound words #u're fine #also !!! while writing this the birds were chirping outside and i was like 😳 #and one of your fics (i’ve read all of them, i don’t remember lol) that valentine’s day one where y/n had lingerie on (the pancake one lol) #inspired me to buy lingerie #like when i look back on me “growing up” #that fic & basically you lol really helped with that #that made no sense and i don’t know how to make it make sense... but... yeah. like ily

hiiiiiiiiiii <3333

Dear catherine, 😌

(you have said your name before, but it wasn‘t like an introduction or anything i think you were talking about .... was it possibly the incident at the cinema??? And you said something like ‘calm down catherine‘ like you were telling yourself to calm down idkd dkdkkdkd anyway i didn‘t mention it cause i wasn‘t sure if it was an accident or not dkdjd but now i know 😌❤️ Catherine is such a cute and lovely name btw omg and so are your brothers‘s names 🥰

Sorry that I‘m answering this so late, it‘s been an emotional rollercoaster for me since last week but i‘ll get to that in a second lol

Sksklssk girl i haven‘t played sims in like 2 weeks now ekejdkdlldld ok that‘s not that long at all actually but i keep wanting to play but then i end up not playing for whatever reason, so no news about my sims game 😔 but i love the names Liam and Peter and for twins!!! That sounds really nice actually

okay i‘m trying to answer your ask in chronological answer even though i wanted to wait for the depressing stuff and write it at the end or something OKAY so. i thought that i‘d feel so good when i start uni and that i‘ll like... have a purpose in life again and just be happy (cause in the last year i didn‘t do much and i was depressed like half of the time lol).... anyway i kind of feel even worse now? 😭 i think it‘s because in my brain it‘s like: university!!! that means your life will change and it‘ll all be so exciting. and don‘t get me wrong it is exciting butttt..... idk the online thing is so weird cause you‘re not meeting any new people (i‘m introverted anyway but still lol) and it doesn‘t feel like you‘re listening to/talking to actual people cause it feels the same as just watching a video?

also i thought i‘d be busy again but i only have one lecture (90mins) a day and theres one day where i dont have any lectures at all and just one day where i have 3 hours but.... idk i mean i shouldn‘t complain about having so much free time but i just don‘t know what to do all day and in a pandemic there really is nothing to do but i also can‘t relax bc it‘s like during the week and i know i have uni the next day and .... yeah.

There‘s also this one assignment i had to do that took me AT LEAST SIX HOURS AND IM NOT EVEN EXAGGERATING????? so that was the only thing i‘ve been doing besides “going to“ lectures. for this one course we have to read two (really really long) texts (like it literally took me 3 hours to read them) and we‘re supposed to post it on this website that all the professors in our uni use. So after 5 days of anxiety (✌🏼) i posted mine this morning bc last night i realised that i didn‘t even know why i was having anxiety so i just posted mine today. The deadline is tomorrow at 12 and no one except me has posted theirs yet........ so i have anxiety again 🥰 cause idk if i‘m the only one who did it or if i even did it correctly

Edit while i‘m rereading this: my anxiety about uni is a lot better and i‘m not as d*pressed anymore maybe it was just hormones? idk but i‘m better so that‘s good

(I started writing this like 5 hours ago and then i randomly completely forgot lol)

I‘m in a better mood now though so let‘s move on from that (oh wait also, i think i‘m gonna see if i can find a psychiatrist bc with my anxiety symptoms (long story) i need to go to a psychiatrist, and so far i‘ve only gone to like psycholgists and it didn‘t help but i think that‘s just bc i was meant to go to a psychiatrist and not a psychologist so dldjdjsj

n e ways but yes you‘re not alone, ily, things will get better and yes i love you (i‘m not good at this type of thing🥲 but i‘d hug you right now if i could <3)

Yess i think the time difference between est and me is 6hours but gmt is uk time i believe? i think mine is called.... cet? For central european time? I could be completely wrong though lmao

Oof i completely forgot about hollywood, i remember when laura kept posting about it on instagram but i never actually watched it and i definitely won‘t now lmaodkdksjsn

Okay my driving lesson LEBDJDKDK I DID NOT HOOK UP WITH ANYONE AKSJSKSMMLM especially not my 40 or 50 year old driving instructor lol i like her but NOT LIKE THAT, the lesson was really really really good actually and i think i‘ll have my driving test soon, but i don‘t even remember why the anon would have thought that??? Oh wait now i remember okay KEKSKDLDL so during the lesson my instructor was like do you mind if i turn on some music? AND THIS WOMAN TURNED ON ONE DIRECTION I LOVE HER so i made a post about it and i said something about the song up all night and i guess i phrased it in a .... idk in a dumb way 💀 so the anon made a joke that i stayed up with my driving instructor all night and NO. No.

Wait did i read that right? YOU WERE ARIEL ON STAGE? SIALDBDJDKSLMSBDKDMDMDKDJSLSMDJFJJEDMBFEKLEFBJDLDVSIDLESKSKWKDKDJDOWNYUEKWNDUWLNSUFLWVSUDLEHDOENSIDBEISBEHENJELBSIEMWUDNRIW KB WOBE JO ON SBEUU HIII S HWS LV W ICH US KB okay this keyboard smash is getting out of hand but uh please do elaborate on that 💘😌???? Like you can‘t just drop that information and not say more??? I forgot if you‘re in like your school‘s drama group (is that a thing? lol idk anything about acting) or in an independent group? Either way - ARIEL that is so fucking cool

Your brothers loooooool, no i get it though obviously you love them and stuff but esp at their age children are so annoying so good luck with them 😭😭😭lmao

Yeah “anyway i imagine being an only child is really calming.. like you have time to yourself and its just you and your parents 😌“ yeah just me and my parents who constantly fight 🥰 lmao no i like being an only child, like i cannot imagine having siblings but i feel like if i had siblings i would be saying that i can‘t imagine being an only child so? but i do think it‘s quite different like i‘m trying to imagine having siblings and WHAT that‘s just so different omg i‘ve never really thought about it like properly ???

I saw a tik tok the other day that was like “sometimes i forget that my siblings have a life of their own. like i see them as side characters in my life“ and even though i can‘t relate obviously i felt that. lol, like i can really imagine how it feels idk what i‘m talking about like shut the fuck up, daria

(also my actual name is daria not aria but i dont like it, and also i wanted to be more anonymous on tumblr so now i‘m aria lmao. pls don‘t mention it though cause no one knows except for you and mel (peterbenjiparker) dkdkdkdnkdnd. but i‘m starting to identify with the name cause everyone keeps calling me that looool😭😭😭 (but i like the name, more than daria anyway? well it also depends on the accent, cause the way germans say daria is okay. the was Americans say it is also okay, but some of my family in England are from the north of england and i don‘t like how they say my name 💀 no offence to them(?) but yeah pls don‘t mention the name in your ask cause the chance of people seeing it is higher then (or if you want to say something about it just send a separate ask and i just won‘t post it (IDK what you‘d want to say about my name but yeah just in case slsldlldmsndnsns)

I‘m loving falcon and winter soldier so much but when i was watching an episode the week before last week (?) my laptop broke😭😭😭😭 during the scene where the dora milaje came at the end my laptop just shut down? And it had these lines all over the screen and i had to bring it to the shop where i bought it and they said it‘ll take 6-8 weeks to repair 💔💔💔 but at least it‘ll be for free, cause if i brought it back to apple it would cost like 400€ (i think that‘s nearly 500$) so yeah. but it sucks cause now i‘m “going to uni“ on a really old rusty laptop and on my phone which kinda sucks. oh yeah and also i can‘t watch anything on there 😭 i definitely want to watch wandavision but it‘ll have to wait🤧

Yessss you should def get your GED! I googled and I‘m still not entirely sure what it is dldks but from how you described it- YES!!!!!!

Idk if you know this? Like no idea if I‘ve told you this already (hmmm wait i feel like we talked about it actually?) anyway i was originally gonna go study in England, but for loads of reasons I ended up staying in Germany and I‘m def happy with my decision, but I definitely want to go to England sometime even if it‘s just for six months or maybe for my masters or something? And (obviously everyone is different) but i think everyone should go abroad and live in a different country once in their life, no matter if it‘s for school or what, and even if it‘s just for a few weeks. But i think that‘s something that you‘d never ever forget! And combining that with your acting/theatre??? You really would be living the dream 💘💘😌

how about burgers, chips (fries), and a large drink? any time next week works for me, should i pick you up?— sounds good see you soon 🥰🥰🥰

i used to be one of the people who‘d just do motherlode motherlode motherlode and just... what did i do? Why did i do that??? But not anymore lol. Like I said i haven‘t played sims in a few weeks but i‘ve been watching a few legacy challenge let‘s plays and usually i play with the aging off. So my sims just don‘t age 💀 but i could (should) turn aging on so that it stays exciting and i have limited time and everything. and once i get bored with my current sims i can just make them have kids and continue playing as their children when they get older- like recently i remembered that i haven‘t played the acting career in ages? and i haven‘t had a shop in ages? and i think you can even become a vet right??? like those are definitely some things i want to do in the next weeks!!! Also yes sksksjs i have a few hundred hours on sims as well (if not thousands 😭) it was just that one household that i‘d been playing with for 24hrs

AND GIRL SSKSKJD THE UNIVERSITY THING HAPPENED TO ME TOO, it was a while ago so i don‘t remember what degree and what job it was about but i made my sim study something for aaaaaages so she‘d get a better job from the beginning (you know what i mean like get in at a higher level)...... and i apparently studied the wrong thing cause i didn‘t get any benefits from studying and still had to start at level 1 and shit 🥴🥲

Oh also (this was like 2 weeks ago) Enisa and Michael did take in Michael‘s daughter and i think Enisa currently even has a higher/better relationship with the daughter than Michael but um💀💀💀 also i was hoping (since michael and enisa married (in their back yard i think lol) that the daughter (i forget what her name is😭) would have enisa as her step mom? Like you know how you can see the relationship and it says daughter or son or sister.. and i was hoping that it would say step mom but it doesn‘t say anything 🥲 but in my mind (and if the sims had proper family relations) she is her step mom😌 also Leo is a teenager now???? I mean I aged him up lol dkdk he was being too annoying as a toddler but i don‘t like children so i aged him up twice in one day and now he‘s a teen, but that means he can look after his half sister when she becomes a toddler which is good (the game recognises them as siblings tho even if they‘re just half siblings? why can‘t they have step family members in the sims🥲) okay i‘ve annoyed you enough with sims ✋🏼

I‘ve been a bit sick these past few days and now i‘m getting a headache so i have to finish this response tomorrow 😭😭😭 </3

.

It‘s not tomorrow, it‘s 3 hours later but i‘m better lol

oooff when sims are ungrateful and won‘t woo woo (lol i like that) cause they‘re too tired like?? Be grateful that you‘re not living with your parents anymore 🙄 no okay dkdkdkdl idk if you play with mods (i don‘t) but i know there is a mod (or it‘s part of a mod idk maybe wicked whims?) where you can adjust the percentage of how risky a normal woo woo is, like you still click woo woo (3dksksks okay i‘ll say woohoo again— wait is that what’s it called? 😭) but there‘s like a 25% chance that your sim can still get pregnant just like in real life there‘s always a chance of getting pregnant even if you‘re using protection (just not 25% lmao) but yeah i personally don‘t play with mods sksk and you can always just click try for baby but it would be cool if you could add stuff like risky woohoo to the game without mods (i have no idea how to download mods and i play sims on a really really old laptop and sims is literally tje only thing that works on it anyway so—) i repeat my words from earlier: okay i‘ve annoyed you enough with sims ✋🏼

okay i‘m so sorry i‘m gonna watch fast & furious 1 now cause i need to watch f&f 1-5 until the 30th of april cause they‘re only on netflix til then (i mean i could watch them somewhere else but the quality is never as good) so i will finish this tomorrow after all😭

it is now 1 am, i finished the film, can feel a new obsession coming up again (i always have these f&f obsessions for six months before and after a new film comes out)

THE GOOGLE TRANSLATE wkekdjdj tbh it sounds like someone is speaking with some kind of foreign accent i guess that‘s probably because it just is a direct translation and so anyway slsjsj i don‘t know if you asked me what the word fucking is in german? like idk cause the translation is a bit weird but in case you asked lol sidjsjs theres not really a good translation like we just say fuck for fuck lmao, i don‘t know if you typed in fucking in google translate and it came out as verdammt? cause that means damn (or damned sksjjs) ummm yeah idek if/what you asked so imma move on🤧

I‘m not gonna comment on what you said about every stormzy song cause you already said all the important things but SKSKSJSJSKNSNDBDUDOENWBSLSKKHSULSLSKSBSJSKSK I WAS SMILING SO HARD WHEN I READ YOUR RESPONSE FOR THE FIRST TIME BECAUSE AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH finally i know someone who loves him as much as i do 💘💘💘 also since you brought it up, i‘m pretty sure he‘s considered the most successful UK rapper or if not then at least top 3 so he‘s defffffffffinitely big in the uk, in germany more and more people are listening to uk rap too but not as much stormzy cause theyre dumb apparently 🙄 but anywY i‘m sooooo sooo happy that you like him. i think hith came out end of 2019 (i could be wrong but i think it came out on the 13th of december so (in a european way) you‘d write the date: 13.12 and obviously i don‘t KNOW this but i can definitely imagine that he chose that date because ACAB and yes, Michael. Yes. But he hasn‘t made too much music since then so i hope he‘s working on some new stuff 🤞🏼

Also i ordered the stormzy poster😌 also a nicki minaj one bc i decided i‘m gonna have one wall with red-ish posters (i already have two kinda red ones) and one with blue/green-ish posters (already have two) and i can add stormzy to the blue one and nicki to the red one, but i think that‘s it cause if my walls are tooo full it could look cluttered? I‘m not sure how that type of thing works lmao but my room is generally untidy so i don‘t want the walls to look unorganised too so i think that‘s it for now

I really want to finish this now but my brain is getting kinda slow and i need to sleep soon so this will have to wait till later after all 🥺🥴 (not that it makes and difference to you bc you‘ll see this whenever i post it buttttt i wanted you to know that i want to talk to you again but with my slow brain i‘m just taking too long to do it in one day😭😭😭 and i‘m so busy tomorrow hmm but i‘m sure i‘ll have 30 minutes to finish this then <3)

Okay wait I‘m so dumb I didn‘t realise I‘d nearly answered everything i could have posted this yesterday 😭😭

Oooohh that summer bra sounds so nice like if i was confident enough i literally would just wear a top that resembles a bra (or really is a bra lol) cause my tiddies always be looking amazing i‘m just insecure about my stomach sometimes 🙄🙄🙄 but recently i‘ve been loving myself more and more tbh 😌

also i hope you can go shopping for some nice clothes soon ✨😌

I‘ll be honest I haven‘t listened to your song recs YET but only because i wanna take my time with them and i‘ve been so busy and slso AJ tracey‘s album came out last week and I haven‘t listened to that one yet either so ekdkdj (he‘s also a uk rapper like quite popular and successful as well, but i feel like i‘m not gonna like his album cause whenever i‘m looking forward to an album it ends up being really bad and the albums where you weren‘t expecting it turn out to be bangers.... so yeah but i‘ll let you know when i listen to your songs!!!! :)

Omg i keep having to scroll up all the way to see the next thing you said so sorry if I completely miss some of the things you said😭😭

So when you sent this the bird was still bothering me oh my FUCK DKDLDMMDMDMD but now i‘ve been going to bed at like 1-2am so the bird is probably still asleep lool

Okay and for the rest of your ask my response is: 💘💖❣️💚❣️💛❣️💛💕💞❤️💓💟💞💕💕💖💘💝💟💟🧡❤️🧡💞💛💚💓💚💚💚❣️🧡💖💘🧡💝🧡💕💘🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥺🥺🥺🥰🥺🥺💘💘💘💘💘 (okay that looked cuter in my head i don‘t really like the green hearts dldkkdksndnd)

[mypoisonedvine]

sorry, but I need to bitch about how poorly series perform on tumblr

at least, my series.  I can’t really speak for anyone else.

I know it’s normal and reasonable to get less notes on each chapter of a series, for a number of reasons.  over time, readers from chapter 1 lose interest or simply forget to check up on the series.  new readers who see the series for the first time when you post a later chapter might be intimidated by all the catching up they have to do to understand the new update, might not have the time to go back and go through however many chapters were already posted.  

not to mention that newer chapters have, inherently, had less time to garner notes as their older counterparts so there’s obviously going to be less just because of how time works.  I understand this.

but I’m really fucking worried about ‘seeing red.’

you can see here I’ve charted my two active series.  in a lot of ways they’re very similar.  one is for sebastian stan (in an au), one is for bucky barnes (also in an au).  they’re both long-form, “slow” burn (for me; it’s a medium burn at best compared to the average reader’s repertoire), friends-to-lovers type stories.  

both of them involve a lot of humor, and a lot of yearning, and a subplot about an ex of the reader’s.  both of them will probably end up being 10ish chapters.

as you can see, seeing red started off with a bang, and the first chapter did really well.  bucky and the reader don’t get together until chapter 4, and I was worried at the time that people wouldn’t be willing to get involved in something with no immediate payoff.  the huge response to chapter 1 really inspired me and made me confident in the willingness of readers to wait for the relationship and tension to grow.  boy was I wrong!  anyone with at least one working eyeball can see the huge tank it took immediately after that.  

I mentioned before that the characters get together in chapter 4, so the spike shouldn’t surprise you.  but it really worries me.  did readers choose not to reblog until the smut made my content worthy of promotion and appreciation?  or did new readers hop on at chapter 4, completely missing out on the build-up and relationship-building that I was really proud of for three chapters in a row?  neither is a good feeling for me.

chapter 5 also contained smut but it didn’t do great either.  and now that I killed the tension by getting them together, chapter 6 is a record low and chapter 7 is projected to perform worse than ‘love, theoretically.’

let’s talk about that series for a second.  it performed significantly worse than seeing red, but it performed consistently.  it has a set of loyal readers whose comments I eagerly await with each upload.  yes, there’s a slight decline, but the latest chapter (which, keep in mind, was posted very recently) is already pretty much in line with the others and might even do better than some older chapters given a bit more time to earn notes.  and it doesn’t have any smut so I can’t explain the notes boost easily there.  the smut finally happened in chapter 6 and you’ll notice there isn’t a huge spike, because it’s the same troupe of readers as chapter 1, with a few missing who naturally didn’t keep track of it anymore.

ultimately it makes me feel like I failed with seeing red even though it had such a good response at first.  I would rather create something that’s meaningful to a select few (like love, theoretically seems to be) than something that’s tolerable to the masses (but is seeing red even tolerable if people aren’t staying?).

it makes me want to abandon the series even though I have over 10k written of future material for it.  this wasn’t even meant to be such a long series, it was pretty much designed to end with them getting together, but I fell in love with the relationship that bucky and the reader had, with the friendship that was originally just a tool to stall the smut.  now I regret extending it past that point because it feels like beating a dead horse, even though I actually like the content that has come from it.  clearly the fact that it was originally meant to be shorter is showing through in the writing and all these unplanned extensions feel forced; but even then, that doesn’t explain the huge drop in chapters 2 and 3.  when I look at that graph, all I can imagine is readers seeing that chapter 1 and being like “okay, call me when there’s porn, bye.”  

at least when ‘the kind of girl you take home to mom’ had an embarrassing turnout for the finale (chapter 1: 1221; chapter 3: 494... and people are somehow shocked I haven’t finished the alternate ending yet??), I knew the series was over so the lack of motivation didn’t really do that much.

just to be clear, I’m not going to stop updating seeing red.  I already have enough written for the next chapter and at this point I’m operating purely on love for the people who still enjoy it.  and I really hate making this post.  I’m posting it late at night in hopes that few people will see it because frankly I’m embarrassed by the way this exposes everything I’m insecure about with my writing.  

I’m not trying to hate on readers or beg for notes.  I think at this point, it would be impossible as a reader not to know why reblogs and comments are important.  we keep making the same posts over and over about how people just leave likes and that it’s bad, as if this is an education problem.  it’s not.  they know.  they just don’t care, because they’re getting free content and they don’t have any real incentive to change their behavior.  and obviously I don’t do this for the notes, I don’t do this for attention, I do it because I like it but I’m not going to pretend that outward reaction isn’t valuable to me because of course it is!  of course it matters to think that people like what I write!  I don’t need everyone to like it, but even just one person saying that they love what they read, that it made them happy, that it improved their mood, that it got them off, whatever, it’s really inspiring to me.  if that wasn’t true then I just wouldn’t post this stuff at all and I’d let it rot in my google drive.

the point here really is just to get this off my chest because it has been weighing on me ever since I noticed how hard seeing red was tanking.  I know nobody’s going to read this whole thing but at least writing it I feel less like I’m going crazy because this is just driving me nuts.  because when I look at seeing red I should feel pride or joy but instead there’s dread.  

all I can think is, ‘should I post the next chapter?  am I emotionally ready for it to perform poorly?  how low do the notes have to get before I stop posting?  what did I do wrong?’

and, for the few fans of my on-hiatus series ‘the bruises we give each other,’ poor performance also killed that one and it’s why I haven’t updated in over 6 months.  because I just couldn’t stand to look at it anymore, despite having three more chapters outlined and half-written.  I will finish it someday, I promise.

[rosesutherlandwrites]

This week:

A random dude on the periphery of my friends group felt the need to send me creepy dms

I discovered my housing situation is not nearly as secure as I had thought because the man who owns the place feels I am not entitled to any boundaries if they might interfere with him doing whatever he wants whenever he feels like it, and that even asking makes me an ungrateful disrespectful jerk. Oh and also the fact that my entire life is a shambles right now is entirely my own fault because I don’t know how to put down roots. Yeah that’s a quote.

Two of the dearest people in my life both found new jobs which is amazing but makes me keenly aware that I did not get the promised follow up call from my one and only job prospect as I was told.

Multiple people in my life responded to me trying to talk about these things with Oh that’s too bad now let me tell you all my problems you’re such a good listener

Last night my computer froze while I was halfway through working on the second last chapter of my novel. (You know the one I’ve been overhauling, with all the massive rewrites and additions -it’s really good, I think it might be really good- that is supposed to start being submitted for some stuff after a final line edit.) I have been religiously saving on the computer throughout the process, but was waiting to upload the whole thing to an external drive when I finished it TODAY OR TOMORROW...and now it won’t restart properly. Google thinks that it’s the startup disk. I can do nothing except wait for the local repair shop to open on Monday and try not to fall into complete despair until I know for sure if I can retrieve the file or not. I do have the previous drafts all saved separately, but this one had so much new work that I will just never be able to duplicate if I have to start over on it again. I have hope that it can be saved based on things google and a couple of tech savvy friends have told me, although it is likely that my computer is at the end of it’s lifespan and will need to be replaced with money I don’t have. Honestly don’t care, I just NEED my book back

TL;DR: I am now in my 9th month of unemployment, far more precariously housed than I thought and the one project that’s been keeping me from feeling completely like a waste of molecules may have just been lost. Light a candle or something, I am just out of all sense of how to proceed if things don’t improve.

[imanativeofswlondondahling]

Hidden In Plain Site (2)- Tom Holland x Reader

Word Count:  2348

A/N: This was inspired by this wonderful post by @starsholland. Without it this would not be happening. This will be a multi part fic, but I don’t know how many chapters or when it will be posted so if you’d like to be tagged let me know:)  Welcome to Tom being undercover on Tumblr. Quick notes- Y/T/B = Your Tumblr Blog

Chapter One || Master List

The edit turned out better than you thought it would. You had decided to use blue and red, since they’re Spider-Man colors and it honestly suits Tom and Haz so well. You still are wondering when the picture is from since you scoured the depths of Google and Tumblr to no avail. It’s either really old, or not really posted. Either way it made an adorable edit and will look great in your edit’s tag. It’s also sparked some ideas for a friendship imagine. It’s been so long since you wrote anything, with work and family stuff weighing you down, but you can picture the outline in your head so as soon as you finish the last touches on your outline, you click open a new document and drop a few lines down to get going. 

“What you working on?” Your brother calls to you from across the living room. He knows that once you’re home for the afternoon, it’s not normally work stuff, but sometimes your graphic design projects run into your post work day.

“Just some edits. Nothing too big.”

“Bringing work home?”

“Nope, just working on some extra stuff.” You type some more into the document, wanting to make sure that everything is hitting the moment right. In your browser, you pull up your tumblr and make a new post.

Ask me stuff while I work on my latest imagine. Give me a number 1-100 and I’ll give you a song from my writing playlist and a memory attached to it.

Across the ocean, Tom can’t sleep. It’s nearly 3am, but something is keeping his mind from sleeping. He should be able to sleep just fine. He isn’t working on any movies that have him worried, he doesn’t have any auditions coming up, and he doesn’t have press for a few weeks. So why can’t he get to sleep?

Lifting his phone in his hand he sees a notification from Tumblr saying that Y/T/B has posted. He swipes across and waits for the post to load. You want questions? Well, he can help with that. Plus, he’s interested in learning about what kind of music you’re interested in.

Anonymous Asked:

33?

Anonymous Asked:

86?

Anonymous Asked: 

69;D

Three Anons come in right after another. You weren’t expecting that quick of a reaction. Sure you had a couple hundred followers, but you didn’t tend to get that many reactions to your posts. At least not back to back. But you’ll take it, and reply. As soon as you send the edit to that blog that asked for it.

You pull up the thread between you and tomholland2013. You click the camera button and upload the edit you had done. 

Hey, here’s that edit. Hope this works for you! 

Surprisingly, whoever is behind the account messages back immediately.

That looks awesome! Thanks so muchX

Hows your night going?X

More like afternoon here lol. I’m just getting some work done after getting home earlier.

How about you? Is it night there?

It’s like the middle of the night here and I can’t sleepX

If it’s middle of the night there, did you see the news? 

What news?X

That Tom saved Spider-Man?! It’s been all over Tumblr since I got home from work.

It’s kind of the reason I made your edit in red and blue tbh.

I hadn’t had time to look at my dashboard to be honest. I’ve been busy with work stuff most of the afternoon.X

It wasn’t a lie. Over the past few days having talks between him, Bob and Tom trying to smooth everything over, there wasn’t much time to glance over the explosion that had happened since the original news had been released. But after clicking send on his message to Y/N, he clicks over to your main blog to see the reaction to the news. There are some general reblogs of the news announcing Spider-Man returning to the MCU but then there were also some general posts about Spider-Man and Peter Parker. Your tags are what really get to him. Some like hashtag my-baby-is-back-where-he-belongs and hashtag get-tom-drunk-more-often-if-it-saves-my-baby. He can’t help but laugh at the last one. True he hadn’t exactly been sober when he and Bob had first talked about getting Spider-Man back in the MCU, but he didn’t think that story would take the world by storm.

Going into his settings, Tom quickly updates his picture with the edit you had done for him. Honestly, it looked better than he had hoped for. You had done Spider-Man colors and if he wasn't trying to keep this blog on the down low, he would share it on his Instagram so his fans could see how talented Y/N was. As he hits save, another message comes through from you.

Do you mind if I use the edit I sent you as inspiration for an imagine?

A what?X

An imagine. It’s a specific type of fanfic. I had a great idea of one while I was working on the edit for you, but if you’re not cool with it, I’ll find a different picture.

You did all the work on it. Feel free to use it. What kind of story?X

Basically like a Tom x Reader with hints of Harrison friendship notes in it. It’s hard to explain lol

Have you written other stuff?X

I think everyone on this site dabbles in it from time to time, but yeah I’ve written a few pieces over the past few years.

Do you have a list of them?X

Sure, it’s here.

You had linked a page in your message. Apparently dabbling meant one.. Two.. three… his finger drags down the page as he counts the stories. Holy hell, you’ve written fifty stories about him, Peter Parker and even some of the other Avengers. But most of them revolve around him and x Reader, whatever that means. You had mentioned it in your message, but he wasn’t sure what it meant.

Ok, I’m new to the whole fanfic thing, so pardon my stupidity but what does x reader mean?X

It’s a self insert fic. Basically anywhere that it says Y/N or you, you put yourself into the fic. They’re one of the most popular types of fics.

Before he can reply to your message, a notification comes up saying that Y/T/B has posted a new post.

Anonymous Asked:

33?

Y/T/B/ Answered: Heather by Conan Gray. So I love this song and totally have screamed along with the chorus of this song when I’m alone at home and writing or in my car driving places (otherwise I would freak my family out). When I wrote a fic called The Smell of Your Sweater, on my master list here, I listened to this song on repeat for three days straight to be in the right mind set. Honestly I could probably listen to this song until the end of time and never get sick of it. 

Tom reads over the answer and can picture someone jamming out to a song so much that they love it. He pulls open his Spotify app and pulls up the song, because he wants to feel closer to you, even though you’re time zones apart from each other. The fact that it’s afternoon where you are and nighttime where he is makes him think that you’re in the United States.

So reader insert are some of the most popular type of fics, but what are your favorite to read?X

That’s not even something that I would share on a first date lol you’ll be waiting a bit to find out. 

Is sharing that you write fanfic something that you don’t talk about on a date?X

Not normally. Talking about it with tumblr friends is one thing because I link it on my blog, but what I read is a whole nother thing. It literally says so much about you with who you read, what ships you ship, and especially what kinks you look for.

KINKS? IN FANFICS?X

You haven’t read much yet have you?

Literally no. I’ve only been on tumblr since I messaged you the first time. That was the day I made my blogX

So you’ve been on for a month? And you’re deciding to get into fanfics?

No I’m thinking I should stay away from it still. It seems like virtual porn.X

It doesn’t have to have anything smutty in it. Just click on ones that say fluff or don’t say smut next to them. You can also block certain tags so they don’t come up on your dashboard. Like Starker is a popular one to be blocked for a lot of people.

I don’t think I even want to know what that is if people are blocking it who are into this porn esque writing. X

It’s not porn lol You seem to have only found smut so far. We need to find you some fluff. Maybe some Tom x Reader?

Maybe I’m just not ready for it after all.X

Does he want to read about himself? Not at all. That seems creepy. But other people write about him too. It’s not just Y/N. He decides to research this further. In the search bar he types in Tom Holland Fanfic. The first four post all say smut or NSFW so he’s not going to bother reading them, but the thing that catches his eye is the fact that they all have over 2,000 notes on them. Two thousand people have liked or reblogged about him in a sexual way? What the actual flipping hell?

Before he has the chance to flip out even more, another notification from your blog pops up.

Anonymous Asked:

86?

Y/T/B answered: Praying by Kesha. THIS WOMAN COULD MURDER ME AND I WOULD THANK HER FOR IT. Plus that chorus makes me want to write some epic breakup scene and have one of the people begging the other to feel the same as they are feeling. Oooooo maybe I feel a one shot coming up. Anyway, a memory of this song- my best friend and I blasted this song while we drove from California to Philly to visit a school. It literally got us through so many hours of that drive. Kesha is bae lets be real. Or is that not what the cool kids say? 

When he sent you these asks, he thought he would get one or two sentences in response, but he’s learning so much about you from all of these asks. Maybe he would send you some non song related ones, maybe some To- Peter Parker ones to see what else you liked. Purely science based research. 

If you’re not ready for it, don’t push yourself. Fanfics can be a weird mindset to put yourself in. I used them at first to distract myself from some shitty family stuff that was going on, but now I read and write them for fun too. I think I mainly read Avenger ones at first as well as some TV shows too. Plus would I be a teenage girl if I didn’t read a few Twilight fanfics back in my day? 

Twilight? Like Rob-Tom makes himself type out Rob and Kristen’s full names like a fan would-ert Pattinson and Kristen Stewert Twilight?X

That one exactly. I was the generation it was aimed for and so fanfics galore were my teen years. But I’m proud to say I’m a recovered Twihard.

Glad to hear it darlingX

What about you? What were you into as a kid?

I’ve always been a fan of Spider-Man, ever since I was a kid.X

Comics or movies?

Comics. They’re the originalsX

Which Spider-Man is the best? 

Is that a trick question? Obviously HollandX

Was that conceited? Maybe. But hopefully, Y/N doesn’t think so. Oh wait she has no idea-

It was a trick question. A trick question that you clearly got right. 

Another notification pops up and you suddenly remember the last number that you sent Y/N. Well hopefully the number doesn’t seem like you.

Anonymous Asked: 

69;D

Y/T/B Answered: Noice. 

But the actual answer is Bad Religion by Frank Ocean. This song got me through my last bout of depression lol. I remember sitting on the floor of my bedroom with the lights off and just playing this song on repeat. Always open about that here. It also gets me to channel some deep emotions into some pieces that I’m working on because it reminds me of being in that dark place. I also really like the beat of this though, like how it sounds like a mix of an electric piano and an organ. So if I ever name a one shot Bad Religion, it’s probably named after this song.

Tom feels like a weight is sinking in his gut. Almost like someone slammed an anchor into the lower part of his bowl. He didn’t mean to bring up something so dark with that number. He was hoping it would actually make her laugh. So guess he will send her one more number, but this one won’t be on anonymous.

Tomholland2013 asked: 36

Huh, he must have seen all the responses you posted. Between posting and replying to him, you hadn’t gotten much work on your imagine done, but you could post once more before jumping back to your word document. 

Tomholland2013 asked: 36

Y/B/N answered: The Night We Met by Lord Huron. I literally saw them in concert with my friends last month so a lot of the memories I have of them are about this. But I have a great fanfic idea for this song specifically. To not spoil it completely I’ll just leave you with three spoilers- first date, first dance, secrets spilled. It’s a work in progress.

Now it’s time to get off the internet and back to writing, or else you’re going to Tumblr your day away.

Taglist: @ serendipitous-amor @im-still-tryin-to-find-it​

[panharmonium]

Author Interview

Tagged by @jedirangerpenguin, who is one of my oldest friends from way back in our Star Wars days <3 I don't think the two of us have been active in the same fandom together for years, and yet I am still always so psyched to see her on my dash, posting fic and being awesome and creative - JRP, if I ever go back and finish playing the Mass Effect games, you will be the first person I talk to! :D

Name: Pan!

Fandoms: In terms of fandoms for which I produce writing - Star Wars, Teen Wolf, and Merlin.

Where You Post: My fic tag for simple, unpolished stuff.  AO3 for finalized works.

Most Popular One-Shot: Technically I have a work skin enabled on AO3 that hides stats from me (and i LOVE it; cannot recommend this function highly enough; do not know how I ever used to live without it), so I don't actually know the answer to this in terms of hits or kudos, because I can't see those elements.  By comments/bookmarks, I think it's Though Lovers Be Lost, which is a Obi-Wan-centric fic that I wrote for my dear friend dyingsighs.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: By comments/bookmarks, I think it's Take My Waking Slow.  Also a Star Wars fic, about Obi-Wan and young Anakin, set in the immediate post-TPM era.  (I...hesitate to really call it multi-chapter???  Because it's more like 3 vignettes.  But technically it is three chapters on AO3, so.)

Favorite Story You Wrote:  Wheel of the Year (my ~100k BBC Merlin fic set pre-Camelot, in Ealdor, focusing on Merlin and Will).  I spent over a year working on this monster every single day, and now that it's finally posted, I feel weird not having it on my daily schedule.  I miss hanging out in that world every day - thinking about it makes me emotional.  It was just such a big part of my life for so long, and writing it was like - okay, this is going to sound dramatic, but the process legitimately changed my life.  

Story You Were Nervous to Post: Also Wheel of the Year.  It's a very niche topic, so I knew that it probably wasn't going to see much engagement despite the massive amount of work I put into it (which is not a complaint by any means; I knew this would be the case from the moment I started working on it, so I was fully aware of what I was getting into).  I just had to make sure I was emotionally ready for that, once it was time to post. X)  And more importantly, I had worked on it for so long and poured so much of myself into it that putting it up to be VIEWED, by STRANGERS, in PUBLIC, when I had kept it safe with me in my room for over a year, felt like stripping naked.  

How You Choose Your Titles: No particular method.  Titles are the last thing I think about when I'm writing.  Usually they just emerge during the process.  For Wheel of the Year, I had the title pretty early on, because the eight sections of the actual ‘wheel of the year’/cycle of seasons concept provided the frame for the fic’s eight chapters.

Complete: On my AO3 page, four SW fics and two Merlin fics.  I've been on there since 2014...I am not a fast writer. X)

Incomplete: Works in Progress is a series of SW vignettes that will probably never be finished, unless I take a tumble back into active SW fandom (the title, weirdly, has nothing to do with the fact that the fic is incomplete; it was supposed to be a reference to Anakin's in-progress training and Obi-Wan's development as a master).  I have ~50k of Teen Wolf stuff on my drive that I do eventually want to get back to, when I'm not on such a serious Merlin kick.  And then Merlin-wise, the 'Will Comes to Camelot' AU is a perpetually in-progress project that I work on for fun, whenever I have time or need a break from my other stuff.

Do You Outline? Not in the traditional A, B, C sense.  I always thought that I *should* be that kind of writer - I am definitely a hyper-detailed, ‘needs to be in control of everything, plans for absolutely every contingency' person - and I have tried to be that kind of writer all my life.  But working on my last project showed me once and for all that against all odds, I am not an outliner; I am a discovery writer who just does a truckload of back-end editing.  I don't know why; I can’t explain it.  But it is what it is.  

I do prep for longer pieces, though.  Mostly what that looks like for me is a huge Google doc for each fic where I record ideas, imagery, dialogue, mini-scenes, etc as they come to me (so like this can be over days or weeks or however long the idea is marinating) and that will often organically generate a loose flow.  For Wheel of the Year, the prep looked like me doing months of research, taking notes in eight different books, reading an uncountable number of articles, and making a hand-drawn poster of the medieval farming year in a sketchbook too big for my desk.

Coming Soon/Not Yet Started: My current project is a multi-chapter Merlin BBC fic set immediately post-Season 3.  I also have the next segment of the 'Will Comes to Camelot' AU mostly done, though again, I only work on that one in the intervals between other things, so it might be a while before that goes up.  And I'll soon be (re)posting the 'Reincarnation AU but this time Will gets to come back' fic that I recently wrote for merlinobsessionist, because I've actually done real edits and re-writes on it now, and soon I'll be uploading it to AO3 in a polished form.

Do You Accept Prompts?  No.  But I will sometimes spontaneously write fic based on something a friend sent or said to me.  The “Will Comes to Camelot" AU was spawned completely from a message that an absolute HERO of an anon sent me, so - sometimes things happen. :D

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: I'm always most excited for whatever I'm working on right this second, haha.  But in a general sense, I am excited for the day when I can click on my AO3 page and see an extensive list of stuff sporting Will's character tag, because my personal mission in fandom is to saturate the Archive with high-quality fic featuring my favorite minor character. =P

Tagging: @merlinobsessionist, @vampiratesinaboat, @bobafett, @outpastthemoat, @madasthesea (only if folks are interested, as always!)  

[midzelink]

Twilight Princess w/o Text Boxes: A Dream Made Possible w/ Emulation

Okay.  So.

Over the past couple months of running this blog, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about emulating Twilight Princesss in Dolphin, and the other day I finally bit the bullet and booted up the game for the first time.  I had fun finally playing around with the emulator’s free look feature, and I decided now was as good a time as any to finally learn how to make GIFs the proper way--with Photoshop--so I messed around with the program a bit and ended up making this GIF, which I posted yesterday.  It’s not great, but I’ve seen worse, so eh, whatever, right?  At least I’m learning.

Anyway, @therealflurrin sees this GIF and it kicks of a conversation between us about emulation: how it works, what free look is, and what the potential for these kinds of tools are: GIF-making, edits, stills...general hilarity, y’know, basic stuff.

They ask me if I have any idea how to disable the UI of the game.  No, I say; I do a quick cursory Google, and something like that would require texture dumping, editing, and reloading, and that sounds like a heckuva lot of work, doesn’t it?  I’ll just stick to what I know how to do.

And then they say something else:

my DREAM is to capture all the TP cutscenes without the text overlays for AMV purposes......someday

And I'm like, ah.

Ah, shit.

I dunno about the rest of you, but back in the day, when I would stay up until 3 AM watching Midlink AMVs during a sleepover on my friends’ computers (because Hylia knows I didn’t have one, and what the f**k is a smart phone, it’s only 2007), I used to daydream about this exact thing.  I watched a whole ton of (mostly shitty) AMVs, and most of them either completely disregarded any scenes with dialogue, zoomed to somewhat hide their presence, or used the cutscenes with text anyway, and their quality suffered for it regardless--but that was over 10 years ago, long before emulation was so readily accessible (and long before I would discover it), and as time passed, I quickly forgot about this little dream...

...until @therealflurrin reminded me of it.

How hard could it possibly be?

I can’t currently find the forum post I found that instructed another user on how to remove the UI of another (non-Zelda) game in Dolphin, but I can more than summarize the process myself after the day I had yesterday.  Essentially, each aspect of the game’s UI is a texture in the game’s files; you can’t delete textures, but you can replace them using Dolphin’s built-in texture loading feature.  In order to do what I had set out to, I had to:

Navigate to the graphics setting in Dolphin and turn on the “dump textures” feature, which could create viewable .png files of every single texture loaded into the game upon boot and direct them into a single folder.

Boot the game, ensuring that the elements of the UI I wanted to eliminate were clearly visible.

Find the textures responsible for these elements in the dump folder, making note of their file names.

Create and duplicate a 1x1 transparent .png file, renaming each duplication to match each of the various textures I want to replace from the previous step.

Place each of these “textures” into a folder that matches the name of the folder created by the dumping process, moving that folder into Dolphin’s custom textures directory, and again navigating to the graphics settings and checking “load custom textures.”

Doesn’t sound too difficult, right?

...Right.

Some textures were easy, of course.  Getting rid of the text itself was as simple as finding the very few textures that had the letters of the alphabet on them and replacing them, but more than a couple of them were vague stills of nonsense, and combing through hundreds of these textures to find the right ones when I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for...

Well, it was quite the headache, and at some point I ended up saying “f**k it!” and just started replacing anything and everything that looked vaguely suspicious.

For instance, after eliminating the actual text from the boxes, there still remained the matter of the “glow effect” behind the text--upon inspection without the obstruction of this text, just a glowing circle.  I just skimmed through the dump folder that resulted from me booting up the game for just a few seconds and I counted more than thirteen textures that fit that exact bill (plus several others that looked like they maybe could have also been the culprit, somehow), and I just kept on rebooting and replacing, rebooting and replacing until those stupid circles were gone.  (Not the best method in the world, I know, but we learn from our mistakes.)  I spent ages looking for the surely-it-must-be-a-long-black-rectangle-texture responsible for the backdrop, was unable to find it, and replaced a metric shit-ton of unimportant-looking textures until it, too, was somehow gone--and after a lot of trial and error, I finally got the result I was hoping for.

In doing so, however, I had eliminated a heckuva lot of textures that didn’t need replacing, and the entire thing left a bit of a...foul taste in my mouth.

So, like the perfectionist I am, I moved all of the work I had already completed to another location...and began again.

This time, I replaced textures one by one, rebooting the game each time to ensure that it was the correct one.  That “long black rectangle” I was looking for ended up being a tall, transparent image merely 8 pixels wide.  Those glowing circles ended up being the dang circle that I suspected least, go figure.  Regardless, slowly but surely, I was able to replicate my previous success.

Now, my custom texture folder looks a little something like this:

And the in-game result has transformed this:

Into this:

(As you can see, I’ve replaced many other elements of the UI outside of text boxes, and I put them into their own sub-folders for organization’s sake.)

It was a lot of work, but as far as ten-year-old me would be concerned, I have created a means in which to achieve my once impossible dream:

Twilight Princess cutscenes without text boxes.

What does any of this mean?

Effectively, I’ve created a “texture pack” of a sorts that removes most of the game’s UI elements, including the text boxes that have obstructed so many of the game’s better moments.  It’s still far from completely finished, but as of now, it serves its primary function flawlessly, and all that’s left of my childhood dream is one eensy, teensy thing:

Recording, baby!

That is to say, video recording of all the game’s cutscenes with this texture pack in effect, so that kind of footage is available and out there--otherwise, all of this work I’ve done will have been for naught, yeah?  Fortunately, I’m not just an idiot with an emulator and Photoshop; I’m an idiot with an emulator, Photoshop, and OBS Studio, ready and capable to do all of the hard work of capturing these moments for me.

And now, all that I have to do...is play the game.

So, what happens next?

I’m not going to put an estimate on how long this kind of thing is going to take; I have a life outside of this blog and outside of replaying a game I’ve played more than a few times, but over the next few weeks I’m going to be playing through Twilight Princess on Dolphin with the intention to:

Find and capture each of the game’s cutscenes without UI interference, and upload them (probably onto Google Drive) for use by the general public.

Create save states throughout my playthrough and upload them as well, so any person with a good PC, Dolphin, and a North American Twilight Princess .iso can jump into the game at any point they’d like.

Find and tweak any remaining elements of the game’s UI that I can find to make the experience as clean as possible...and perhaps upload this “texture pack” for general use if I am able to do so.

...But mostly the first thing, yeah?  I may keep everyone updated on my progress, if anyone particularly cares, but I also may just keep quiet about it and then dump all of these files at once.  Who knows!  We’ll just have to wait and see.

TL;DR

There’s a whole lot of potential with this kind of thing, and even if it’s a decade too late and no one is really making Twilight Princess AMVs anymore, this is something I’m so stupidly passionate about that I intend to see it through regardless.  I mean, Twilight Princess just happened to be the game that I chose!  If it’s possible with this game, then it must surely be possible with others, and maybe this can inspire other similar "HUD-less” projects from others.  But, even if it doesn’t, I’ll be okay with that.

In the end, if I can make even just one person happy with this little project of mine, that will be more than enough.