#i was originally going to make a transparent version but i think it's funnier how it appears in game

[autistickaitovocaloid]

Taking him

[steve0discusses]

S4 Ep37: Return of O R B S

Heyyyyy boy, look who’s back, it’s orbs!

So we’ve seen a lot of orbs on this show and I fully admit that I kinda started...I started feeling a kinship for the orbs. Something about these mysterious death balls of Yugioh that we see over and over just became really relatable during a pandemic. Being trapped in a bubble and unable to get close to anyone you know is such a 2020 vibe, youknow?

These orbs that are apparently so normalized in this universe that everyone is just max chilling in an orb and just doing their best at not thinking about whether or not they’ll still have to poop in this completely transparent orb in front of all of their friends.

Also, welcome back, Yugi. Apparently he was just taking a nap this entire time. That’s canon and you know what? Good for him.

And then everyone else just kinda showed up, tired, in an orb, feeling kind of frustrated because there’s literally nothing else they can do to get out of this situation. It’s basically a zoom call in 2020.

(read more under the cut)

TBH if Pegasus was in a zoom call, you know he’d just be talking about wine. You know he’d just be in a zoom call with a bunch of straight-laced teenagers just going off about the weird wine he got from a subscription box that he bought when he was day drunk a week ago. You know he’d just be like “I mean is it good? Should I keep it? Should I drink it anyway?” While popping the cork on stream and just pouring it directly into a cereal bowl.

I can feel the orb life going on here. I can especially feel Seto Kaiba, who fell asleep during the zoom call without turning off the camera.

On the other side of the room is people dying as they get sucked directly into their impending doom.

Long ago, about...last year I think...I recapped an episode from the beginning of the season where Pegasus introduced this blank card--that I assumed was blank.

But that card from that episode--it wasn’t actually blank. It was a symbolic blank card and the show runners were like “our child audience will surely get that we just don’t want to spoil the ending” as I, a full grown adult, completely thought this card was blank.

But like...this is Pegasus. You can’t just be tossing out blank cards like that!

...anyway...it’s fine, because we get a little bit more about the time that Pegasus donned that quantum hat that is sometimes square and sometimes round and then just harassed a bunch of people in Egypt until one guy tore out his eyeball and replaced it with a Christmas ornament.

I freakin have the hardest time believing this guy was married once.

PS, now I know that when you uh put people’s hair into strips like this, it’s a lot of effort to animate and it doesn’t look anything like hair. Glad Yugioh taught me that none of us ever need to do that. Ever again. Erase that idea from your to-do list, it doesn’t work.

Anyway, Pegasus lets us know that while he was trying to revive his dead wife and putting a cold compress on his new golden eye-socket, he was also like...obsessed with finding these three dragons.

And he was like “but they didn’t exist anywhere else!” He looked in outer space?? In atoms??? all over the place (this was in the show, PS, he looked on a molecular level for these duel monster dragons) until he was like “ah! That’s because they DID never exist!”

PS...are there...molecular duel monsters?

Just asking for a friend.

...so they did exist, they just had exactly the same names they do now, but were humans so I guess Pegasus just...didn’t realize that they were the same. Kinda like how when I used to read manga as a kid or watch anime and they’d go into chibi forms I thought those were different people. It’s just like that.

Anyway if dragons are turning into humans please don’t tell that to Kaiba. Blue eyes white dragon wife is much funnier as a dragon.

But like...I get that mechanically, in the game, you have to change them to human to make the cards work but...why do we care if they’re human or dragons anyway? Dartz comes from a world where most people turned into monsters. And like if no one’s trying to date them, not even Kaiba...who cares? Dartz’ wife is a freakin monster and I don’t remember seeing him divorce her at any point.

Anyway, it was an odd thing for the show to throw in there about cards we have no relationship with. It’s a complicated season, and we spent way more time on our minibosses than we ever spent with the three tragic dragon characters that are going to actually save our asses.

Now back in the soul hut, Dartz has decided to do the strategy where he convinces Pharaoh to give up. Which youknow...

The show acts like Pharaoh has any idea of who he used to be and it’s like do you even know how long Marik spent trying to teach Pharaoh anything about his past? Like Marik stood there with his back exposed and was like “I wrote it down! See? That’s about you!! Read my back scriptures!!!” and Yami kind of squinted at it and was like “Nah...” and then the island exploded.

So anyway, the only way that Dartz can convince Pharaoh to kill himself is to show Pharaoh the invite code to the orb zoom call. And so Dartz like “your friends are having so much fun in death zoom right now, don’t you want to hang one last time? Don’t you want to see what they’re up to? Don’t you want to hear them complain about working from home and how small their orb is and how their back is cramped all the time because the park is closed so they never go on walks anymore? Don’t you want to hear and secretly enjoy how much weight Joey gained from eating Doritos for 8 straight months? Don’t you want that in your life, Pharaoh?”

And then he just...decided to possess his bean because obviously that wouldn't work.

Freakin Usagi Tsukino over here.

Speaking of:

I’m also imagining that this scene in the big ol bathtub was probably...longer...in the original version? Just saying that because...what’s the point of putting a shirt on the boy? Unless it was implied that at some point you saw the whole boy? Maybe I blinked and missed a shot of the whole boy?

Anyway this scene felt heavily edited, that’s my hypothesis, if it wasn’t and someone was like “yo put a shirt on the boy” then I...don’t know what to say about that. It’s a pair of shoulders. I’m pretty sure half of their cards are racier than that.

Do you like the evidence that we have here that Tea and Tristan totally biffed it last episode? I do.

Anyway, as the Orichalcos shrinks and threatens to take Pharaoh’s soul, the puzzle taps into his dark powers, and the power of friendship and also all the minibosses who died kinda formed a ring around him and bumped the orichalcos back into place.

Nice that Mai got added to the friend pile, but only in death. Also, I’m pretty sure Alister is here and Pharaoh never met him? But there’s more of a reason as to why the mini bosses are here, since they have their own agenda outside of Pharaoh and being his best buddy so I won’t question that too much.

This is friendship from Yami’s perspective, and like...Yami kinda wants to be friends with most people. Hell, if Bakura were introduced this season, he’d be here, too. That’s just how Pharaoh rolls.

Yami decided that, although he’s a huge mess of a human being and screw it at every possible opportunity, his core isn’t made up of a dark magic curse with a crusty soul left over from some kingdom that botched it 5000 years ago. He’s decided that he’s moving on from that sort of anxiety--becoming his own sort of person--separate from Yugi, separate from his past, and separate from the powers that he’s often defined by. And it’s about time. It’s about time he recognizes that he needs to stop clinging to the ancient past (although I’m pretty sure his ancient past will be the entirety of next season)

He should give himself a real name while he’s at it, but youknow, he's not going to. Yami hasn’t quite figured out names yet.

Nightmare foreshortening, that’s what this is. Like you have to just roll a dice when you do foreshortening, and sometimes you get snake eyes, the rest of the time, you get this.

So not only are these guys voiced by Seto, Yugi, and Joey, they have faces that are like a blend of Valon, Raphael, Mai and Alister (yes that was four people for three dragon people, just go with it)--but the show doesn’t really focus on that, or at least not in this episode.

But, it does give the three mini bosses a reason to be chosen by the Orichalcos, if it’s inferred that they were some reincarnated version of the original dragons. Especially since Valon had the ability to just punch out the Orichalcos when he was still alive, and apparently that is the same thing this card does.

I can’t believe that him punching stuff was foreshadowing. I should have known. The answer in this show is always punching.

And so the episode ends with some...something that happened, but don’t ask me about it.

One of the reasons I don’t go over card games here. I mean...c’mon.

Come the freakin on.

Anyway we have some more episodes before this is over but at least this guy is at 0 hp so like...how long can you draw out one single play of cards? (I say, knowing they can stretch this game out...infinitely)

anyway, here’s where you can read these from the top. Hope y’all are staying safe!

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[yeonchi]

Doctor Who Series 11 Review Part 2/10: The Ghost Monument

Air date: 14 October 2018

The second episode of Doctor Who Series 11 is here and I have to say, I’m liking the Thirteenth Doctor already. Most of the negative pre-series thoughts I have on her are out of the way for now, but I’ll keep a look out for anything strange in that regard.

I am aiming to get each review out during the middle of the week, preferably on Wednesdays, but since I am usually pre-occupied (or distracted) with other things, this isn’t a guarantee.

This week’s spoiler-free thought is not really that spoiler-free, but whether you’ve watched this episode or not, you’ll probably get this reference if you’ve watched a certain tokusatsu series - “This is all Tim Shaw’s fault!”

Regardless, this review will contain spoilers if you keep on reading.

New titles

There were no opening titles in last week’s season opener, but the new titles made their debut in this week’s episode.

The new titles for this series aren’t as dynamic compared to those of previous series. They just feel like they’re over and done quickly. There’s an obvious mirroring effect this time around, which is similar to some Classic Series openers, specifically those of the First and Second Doctors. Like the theme, it’s pretty obvious that the inspiration for the titles has been taken from the Classic Series. They’re not bad, in my opinion.

Where we left off and some background to this episode

We last left off in the last scene of the previous episode, where the Doctor accidentally teleports herself, Graham, Ryan and Yaz into space. They are then picked up by two ships, piloted by Angstrom (Susan Lynch) and Epzo (Shaun Dooley), who are heading to a planet that is apparently named “Desolation” - the closest to a name that anyone knows.

While Angstrom lands on the planet with Graham and Ryan, Yaz finds herself witness to the Doctor bickering with Epzo (like an old married couple, as they say, but not quite) as his ship crashes onto the same planet.

This planet is the final stage for the final Rally of the Twelve Galaxies, a race that the Doctor compares to the Paris-Dakar Rally, hosted by Ilin. With Angstrom and Epzo being the Rally’s finalists, their target is to get to something called the “Ghost Monument”, which has been appearing in the same place every thousand solar rotations. This “monument” is revealed to be the TARDIS, which was originally at the location where the Doctor and her friends were found; the planet had fell out of its original orbit.

“This is all Decade’s fault...”

I’ve found Epzo’s character in this episode to be similar to the main character of Kamen Rider Decade, Tsukasa Kadoya. From my observation, Epzo seems to be a more cynical version of Tsukasa, considering his cocky and apathetic attitude in this episode.

Where Tsukasa was teaching aesops to the AR World Riders in Decade, Epzo has become the one who learns these lessons himself. He gradually becomes a bit nicer towards the end of the episode, but I don’t know if he’ll take the lessons he learnt to heart considering that he suddenly disappears at the end of the episode. However, if it’s any consolation, Angstrom and Epzo learn a bit about sharing, given that it was Epzo’s cigar that saved them from the Remnants.

Ilin’s character also reflects Tsukasa, but more during his time as the Great Leader of Dai-Shocker. The way in how he treats the participants of the Rally comes towards Tsukasa’s unforgiving nature. Eventually, the two characters are “put in their place”, though in Ilin’s case, it was a case of Angstrom and Epzo wanting him to recognise the two as equal winners of the Rally, while in Tsukasa’s case, he was betrayed by the true enemy of the All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker movie.

“...or is it Tim Shaw’s fault?”

Given Epzo’s bickering with Angstrom, you would have thought that either they or their races, the Muxterans and Albarians, were in a feud, but it turns out to be even deeper than that, because we learn in this episode that half of Angstrom’s family were killed by the Stenza in a systematic cleansing, including her wife (did I mention that she’s also lesbian? At least she doesn’t repeat that fact throughout the episode), with the rest of her family driven into hiding on the planet Albar. This parallels Kamen Rider Ryuki’s Ren Akiyama in that their characters are fighting for their loved ones, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make here.

In fact, what I really wanted to say was this: “Curse you, Tim Shaw! This world was destroyed because of you and your people!”

I get the feeling that the Stenza are part of this series’ story arc - that gives me more excuses to ironically blame Tim Shaw whenever they’ve done something bad to some people. This is going to be the running gag of this review series now and the even funnier thing is that I’m doing this while Kamen Rider Zi-O is airing in Japan - a series that has been lauded by fans as “Decade 2.0″. No, I’m not sorry for bringing Japanese tokusatsu into this and I don’t regret it.

In addition to this, the planet Desolation was also conquered by the Stenza, who used others to create and test many weapons, including the Remnants and SniperBots that are seen in this episode.

During the scene where the Doctor and the others are confronting the Remnants, we hear a mention of “the Timeless Child” when one of the Remnants extracted it from the Doctor’s memories. If this is going to be another thing like “the Hybrid” in Series 9, then I’m probably going to be disappointed. Regardless, the story arcs in this episode were introduced subtly; until this week, you wouldn’t have thought that the Stenza would have something else to do in this episode.

Anyway, I’m honestly hoping that Tim Shaw will become the leader of the Stenza by the finale, provided that the DNA bombs haven’t destroyed him by that point; although a few contrivances may have to be made in that regard. If that happens, then my running gag for this review series will have reached its peak - Decade 2.5, anyone?

With regards to Ryan and the theme of family

Ryan’s character development has been demoted to having a minor part in this episode. This time, we additionally focus on his relationship with his step-grandfather, Graham, who he still doesn’t seem to recognise as a proper family member. Ryan’s grandmother, Grace, is also mentioned in this episode as they reflect on her death towards the end of the previous episode. The funny thing is that according to the Doctor Who Wiki (TARDIS Data Core), Grace’s actor, Sharon D Clarke, has been listed as a recurring character for Series 11, which means that there is a chance that we will be seeing her again in this series, whether it be in flashbacks or something much more serious.

Ryan’s dyspraxia is also briefly repeated in this episode in the form of a slight dread of ladders. It’s great to see the Doctor encouraging Ryan to overcome his condition (by having him remember facts about acetylene) and I hope that we can see some improvement in this situation by the end of this series.

Imagine unironically thinking that every video game skill works in life-or-death situations. When the Doctor and the others are confronted by the SniperBots, Ryan takes a gun from a fallen SniperBot and uses his “skills” in Call of Duty to shoot down the robots, only for them to get back up right after. His shouting during this scene is reminiscent of raging kids in the voice chat of FPS games, while the scene overall is a good premise for the Doctor to teach the others about her “no guns” policy.

The theme of family is an underlying theme in this episode, just as it was (albeit more subtly) in the last. Aside from the relationship between Ryan and Graham, we hear about Epzo’s “tough love” relationship with his mother, Angstrom’s motivations for joining the Rally (which I explained earlier) and a bit about Yaz’s family, to which Angstrom tells her that she should never take them for granted.

The new TARDIS

Like with everything else, I’ve steered away from any leaked materials, so this is the first time that I’m seeing the new TARDIS for myself.

The new console room’s lighting resembles that shown in Series 1 and 2, albeit orange. The “round things” are now hexagonal things in honeycomb formations while the beams are reminiscent of the old coral console room used during the Ninth and Tenth Doctors’ runs. The time rotor in the centre column does not go up to the ceiling and is no longer transparent, so no moving parts can be seen inside it. Also, there is a food dispenser now - a custard cream dispenser, in fact, if the Doctor Who Wiki is to be believed. The sign on the door of the TARDIS is now white text on black, the St John Ambulance badge is gone and there are slight shade modifications on the exterior.

I think the new TARDIS is alright; once again, it’s a significant deviation from previous TARDISes. Not the best in my opinion, but not the worst either (I don’t really have a place for “worst TARDIS console room” in my head).

Other general thoughts

You know the Venusian aikido the Doctor does in this episode? Yeah, to me, that’s more like an intergalactic Wuxi Finger Hold (though not really). I honestly doubted that it was a real technique until I did a quick search and found this clip from the Third Doctor’s era. Until now, I thought Venusian aikido was more like this; I guess I was mistaken.

The way Ilin mentioned not to touch the water, I thought something like the Flood from The Waters of Mars was in it. In actuality, there were flesh-eating microbes in it, so it’s similar to the Flood, but not the same.

Some things I missed in the last episode

After looking at a few things, I realised that there were a few things I had to address. However, I don’t want to edit the previous post because either then I would need to post the link to my pages again or you would miss out on what I had left out. Therefore, if there is anything I’ve missed in one episode, it will be briefly covered in the review for the next.

So I’ve learnt that this series has been filmed in a 2:1 (18:9) aspect ratio, also known as Univisium, using anamorphic lenses. The inventors, namely Vittorio and Fabrizio Storaro, created it in 1998 to unify all future TV and cinema movies into the one aspect ratio. In the linked Wikipedia link, you can see what movies and TV dramas have been filmed in this format.

There was also “Salad Guy” throwing bits of his salad at Tim Shaw, as some people have pointed out, so that’s a thing.

With the “no guns” scene in this episode, I should have also pointed out this line from the Doctor: “Only idiots carry knives”. This episode and the last reinforced the Doctor’s values so that the audience is reminded of them as she gradually tells her new companions/friends about them.

Summary and verdict

We are likely heading into a story arc involving the Stenza and “the Timeless Child”. This will probably be something to look forward to, whether they are resolved in this series or the next.

I think there were other things I wanted to write about, whether they were from this episode or the last, but I might have forgotten about them since I took too much time to write this. Oh well, no need to worry.

This is another good episode overall, which introduces what the first episode left out. The red flag situation is the same as last week - they’re most likely throwaway lines.

Rating: 7/10

We’ll be heading into history next week as I review the third episode, Rosa. Stay tuned!

[ubercharge]

dave ubercharge’s really good meme baking tutorial

i serve the people.

i usually use paint, photoshop cs6, and paint tool sai, but you can do this on just ps. the reason i also use sai is to speed up the ‘saving as jpeg multiple times’ thing, and i think sai’s low quality jpeg is lower quality than ps’. without further ado:

1. pick the text. this is the most important step, of course. for this tutorial, i will be using the text ‘my nipples are fucking frozen’. i said this in a competitive match once when i was very cold. we still won.

2. pick a relevant image to use as the background. you can also use a solid colour or whatever else you want, but i think images are funnier. i’m gonna use a picture of a blizzard from google images (filtered ‘labelled for reuse with modification’).

3. apply the text to the image. i do this on paint because i’m fucking lazy and the kinda but kinda not anti-aliased text edges are funny to me. you can do this on photoshop. i use large size (large being relative to the image) bolded and italicized arial.

i gave myself a bit more canvas space for the next step.

4. apply the same text on top in a darker/lighter colour. i like putting it to the upper left of the original text. with ps, you can just fiddle around with the 2nd text layer to get it in the right position. with paint, you might have to try wiggling the text box a few times. it’s a waste of time compared to ps but for me, it’s just a part of the process making the end product funnier.

make sure your text is visible on top of the image! if it’s not, no biggie, use the fill bucket or just try different colours.

5. apply an overlay on top if desired. red is funny, but it doesn’t really work with what i want on this specific image, so i’m gonna use blue. it doesn’t really matter because the following steps are gonna ruin the colours anyway.

i used a light blue with linear burn. i saved it as a .jpeg after this.

remember to have lowest quality. even on this small version, you can see the start to the terrible things this image is going to endure!

6. here’s the fun part! you can mix these steps up, but i’ll just show how i more or less usually do it. go to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen. you can fiddle with the sliders and whatever.

save the image as a .jpeg again.

7. go to filter > blur > motion blur OR filter > blur > radial blur. motion blur is the diagonal (or up/down, or left/right) blur, radial blur has both the spinny and zoom blur. you can use more than one, if you want. since my abomination is already kind of annoying to read, i’m going to be light-handed with a spinny radial blur.

wow! that already looks pretty fucking bad, but we can go further:

8. go back to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen and apply that again. you can also do more overlays and blurring.

i decided to do all of that. here it is with another blue overlay, motion blur, and radial (zoom) blur.

i changed the sharpen settings before sharpening it again. do whatever you think looks good (or bad).

here’s the final image:

you can keep going, but i have stuff to do. some better baked images of mine:

i have a thing for 1. cropping the text weirdly and 2. red

other stuff you can do includes:

doing both (or 3+) text layers on paint with a white bg, then stretching it weirdly before pasting it on the image bg (transparent selection, 2ndary colour should be white)

using the fucking impact font for bad memes

using lens flare (funnier if you have eyes in the image)

stretching/distorting the image at any point

using other filters, ps has plenty. experiment!

 repenting

the beauty of this is that if you make mistakes, you can just re-bake the image, apply more effects, and it probably makes the image funnier.