#i'd probably edit/redo it in the future

[fedyasolnishka]

you can call me nay or nana, nineteen, yumejo, Southeast asian, feel free to interact as long as you're niceys, I'm fine with spam likes, inbox and dm are okay but Pls be Nice!

Love: bsd Fyodor, dead dove/dark taboo fiction, pandora hearts, gothic fiction/literature, being loved, dolls

Dislike: bsd Fyodor haters, ppl that harass others over dark fiction, ppl that makes fun or hates selfshippers, bullies (both online and real life), mean spirited condescending smuggy ppl

[non-euclidian-nightmare]

welp may or may not be working on another project in which photoshop and i fight—

[detailtilted]

In Search of Supernatural Fans from the Early Years

Hi! I’m looking for the legends who originally recorded old Supernatural convention panels featuring Jared or Jensen, or possibly Misha. See "What I'm Looking For" below. If you know one of them, or if you're a member of a community with people who were in the fandom in those early years, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could let them know about this post. I can be reached at DetailTilted@gmail.com or here on Tumblr.

If you aren’t familiar with my project, see the “Project Background” section below. This is not a low-effort exercise to merely repackage old videos. I’m putting many hours of work into each video to improve their watchability and accessibility. I will always credit my sources unless you wish to remain anonymous.

Even if your videos are on YouTube, I’m likely to have more success upscaling them if I can get the original video files. Thanks to the videos AgtSpooky kindly sent me, I've learned how big of a difference it can make when I have the original files to work with. That's why I’m putting more effort into finding those elusive original video takers.

The problem is that they all seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. Most of their YouTube accounts, LiveJournal accounts, and whatever other accounts I’ve dug up haven’t had any activity in 10-15 years. I’ve left a few messages on some of them, but I doubt they’ll be seen on dormant accounts. I’ve also gone down some crazy and twisted Googling paths trying to find current contact info for them, but without much success. In one case I even messaged the wrong person, who was at least kind enough to reply to the psycho asking for videos to let me know she wasn't the person I'd hoped she was. Oops!

What I’m Looking For

I’ve already finished CHICON 2007, Comic-Con 2008, and CHICON 2008, so I don’t need videos from those events, but I’d be happy to try to upscale your videos for your own collection if you have some you'd like to send me.

Actually, I could use CHICON 2008 Breakfast videos if you have any. I plan to attempt to redo that video either late this year or early next year.

I’ve been trying especially hard to reach people with original video files from either LA 2009 or Asylum 3 (2009), and I’d also be ecstatic to get some from LA 2008.

Any other old con videos you’re willing to share that have Jared or Jensen in them would be awesome. I hope to get to all the old conventions eventually. I haven’t yet defined “old”, so I don’t have a specific cutoff point.

Even if you just have audio files without video, those could be helpful too.

Length doesn't matter. Both long and short videos are welcome. Maybe I won't end up using them all, but the more options I have the better. Even if I don't put your video in my final edit, it would still be used because I always listen to every single video I can find when I'm finalizing my subtitles. Each video sounds at least a little different, and sometimes just hearing the audio in a slightly different way lets me catch a subtitle I'd missed or misheard.

Also, just to be clear, it isn’t necessarily my intent to exclude Misha. I’ve watched and enjoyed many of his convention videos and I liked Castiel for the most part, especially in the earlier seasons. I’m just not obsessed with Misha like I am with Jared and Jensen, and these videos do take quite a lot of work, so I’ve been putting my energy where my greatest interests lie. I’ll absolutely be including him when he’s in panels with Jared and/or Jensen, and in the future I may consider doing some of his solo panels.

So if you have original video files of Misha's solo panels that you’d like to send me, I’d be happy to add them to my stockpile for future possible use. If your videos turn out to be mostly complete, and if they upscale easily, then I might go ahead and do his panel at the same time I do the other panels from the same convention. If they'll take more effort to work with, I’ll probably skip them for now, but I may come back and tackle them if/when I run out of old Jared and Jensen videos to work with.

For any con videos you send me, regardless of whether I use them or not, I’d be happy to try to upscale them and send them back to you for your collection. I can’t always get things to upscale, so I can’t promise success, but I’ll definitely try.

Project Background - Enhanced Edition Con Videos

You can find my videos on my YouTube channel. (If you're already familiar with my project, skip to the next section -- there's nothing new to see here.)

I started this project in December 2023 to enhance old convention videos. My goal is to make them easier on the eyes and more accessible to both new and old fans from around the world. The videos on YouTube from that time can be difficult both to watch and to understand due to a combination of the older technology used to record them, the difficult recording conditions the fans were working with, and the lack of subtitles that make any sense.

I’m enhancing the videos as follows:

Visual Improvements: I’m upscaling the videos if possible, making color corrections if needed, and adding some slight stabilization to reduce the jitteriness. The end result is far from perfect because there’s only so much that current technology can do, but it's noticeably improved if you compare it to the originals.

Subtitles: I’m adding good, color-coded, English subtitles that can be turned on or off through YouTube’s CC button. The color-coding makes it more clear who's saying what when multiple people are speaking, and YouTube can auto-translate them into other languages to improve the accessibility.

Multiple Sources: If one video has gaps in it, then I'll try to find another that I can edit in to fill those gaps so the end result is as complete as possible. If I have more than one source that captured the same portion of the event, then I'll cut to whichever video I think had the best view of the action. In a few cases I’ve added a split screen with two different videos showing simultaneously so we can see action that's taking place in two separate areas. For example, when Jared and Jensen are on opposite sides of the stage. (There were also the infernal talking head bubbles on my Comic-Con 2008 video which nearly made me throw in the towel, but taught me a lot. 😅)

Extra Content for Context: These older videos don’t take up the full width of a modern video frame, so I’ve taken advantage of the extra space to display some still images with text to add extra context for many of the things they discuss. Some things are a lot funnier, or at least a lot more relevant, when you know exactly what they’re talking about. I clarify Supernatural episode references and pop culture references among other things. Sometimes I’ve also inserted short video clips, usually just a few seconds’ worth, if I thought it would add worthwhile clarity or entertainment to the topic at hand.

Current Project Status

If anyone has been wondering how I’m doing on my current video and what’s next… I’m almost done with the last video from CHICON 2008, which was Jensen’s solo panel. I should be ready to publish it on YouTube this Friday, May 24. I plan to use the same schedule as last time and put the Tumblr post up the following Tuesday when it’s a little more likely to be noticed here.

The next sequential conventions are LA 2009 and Asylum 2009, but I haven’t had much success in my attempts to upscale the available videos. If I were to work with what I have now, I know I could turn out something better than what’s on YouTube today, but the end result wouldn’t be nearly as good as what I might be able to achieve if I can get some original videos to work with. So I think it’s more logical to skip over these conventions for now and give it some time to see if I get any responses, in hope of a better end result.

I do intend to come back to the skipped conventions eventually, even if nobody sends me anything. Once I run out of conventions for which I can upscale the videos, if I still don't have anything better to work with for the ones I skipped, I’ll just do the best I can with what’s available. Even if I can't upscale, I can still do color corrections and stabilization, plus the subtitles and extra content. Some of these panels are split up into a bunch of very short videos, so it would also add value if I can combine them into something more sequential and cohesive. (I found 130 videos from the Jared and/or Jensen panels at LA 2009, and most of them were under 2 minutes long. 🤣) I don’t know if there’s enough footage to cover the entire panels seamlessly, but I’m itching to get my hands on that jigsaw puzzle of videos to try to make sense out of them.

So… the next videos I intend to work on will be from Vancouver 2009. This is one of the conventions that AgtSpooky attended and sent me videos for and they upscaled very well. Her breakfast video had already found its way onto YouTube, but wasn't properly credited. Her main panel videos aren't on YouTube as far as I could find, so that version may be new to newer fans. I'm only just starting to play around with upscaling the other sources out there, but my first attempt at the other main Breakfast source came out well. Both breakfast videos were taken from extreme opposite angles, so that should provide some useful editing opportunities. I’d still love to get more videos of this event if anyone has them.

If you made it this far, I am in awe. Sorry for putting this wall of text on your screen! 😅

[katnissdoesnotfollowback]

heyo! architecture nerd here! i was thinking about (and maybe drawing too.....) the everdeen's house plan and also peeta's in spellbound, do you think they're twin homes? or do they have a different structure perhaps? do you have any specific room placements in mind? tbh i've been having trouble finding refs of cottage style homes big enough that fit my daydreams 🥲 that ain't stopping me though

Hey Anon! So ngl I have been holding onto this for awhile because while the layout of both their houses has existed in my head all this time, I've never put it to paper. I'll go ahead and confess that I ran into the same problem as you, so I decided screw it. They're custom built houses and therefore I can do what I want. Let me also caveat this by reminding everyone that I'm not an artist, and I'm not an architect. Scale is probably crap or nonexistent on these drawings lmao. As you will see, they are definitely not twin layouts. Also forgive the shitty quality, my scanner is not great.

Now, I encourage you to continue to dream whatever the heck you want and toss my drawings to the wind if you don't like them lol ;) Thanks for the interest!

First up! Peeta's house. So it's been a hot minute, so I don't expect anyone but myself to remember, but Peeta first slept in a different room because it was in better condition. I labeled it as such on the upstairs layout, but that could also be labeled as "Bedroom for future toastbaby" lol. EDIT: I just realized a huge mistake I made here so I may need to redo both layouts anyways. *sigh*

Next up! Katniss and Prim's house. I can't remember whether or not I had them looking at something out of kitchen windows that would be made impossible by this layout. If I did, I think I'd rather edit the story than this layout... But I may need to anyways because I think I mentioned something in the story that I didn't include here... sigh.

[thedeal-if]

Progress update June 25

A reminder that on June 18 the demo was updated to add a few scenes that were originally missing for those who chose to be attracted to women/aromantic (again I apologise for the error)

Progress = I wrote a lot 🥺

+6k words (total update +17k words)

Chapter 1 Part 1 and 2 word count: +40k (wow what the fuck that's actually a lot?)

In other news:

(Not counting the August 9th update bc I don't want to delay it)

I'd like to recruit some beta readers for Chapter 2 and all upcoming chapters ^^

Probably will make another post about this in the future but I'm manifesting people ready to put up with my feedback excels

I promise any interested alpha/beta readers a very organized and meticulous experience

I've edited the intro post and am working on redoing the character page with newer and better descriptions! + Tropes

(I'm a perfectionist and things like these keep me up at night)

[divergent-paths]

First things first, I'm very grateful there's still interest in my older work. I'm so happy my characters and art have people hungry for more! To address the issue of finishing the comicking, there's a few things making it difficult, but it probably isn't super interesting to a lot of people, so I've put in it the cut below. tldr; it would need a redo from scratch in order to post because reasons.

In an OCT (original character tournament), the work is heavy on the use of other people’s OCs, and with that, there's implied permission to use those OCs, but only within the confines of the OCT. This means that for a number of the OCs in the final round's draft, that permission is definitely invalid this many years passed, and they need to be completely edited out of the draft.

Secondly, on where to post, ughghhh, I really, REALLY do not want to go back to deviantart. When I said I was done with that hellhole, I meant it, and I genuinely haven't gone back, but... that does kinda mean I'm still without a good art 'home' as it were making it difficult to choose where to post anything. There's not really any site out there that comfortably caters to such a wide range of posting, styles, themes, etc, I've never exactly stuck to a single niche that the bigger art sites want.

Next up, I also don't feel like what I had was actually any good, and it wouldnt've been something I'd be proud/happy to post because my pacing was garbage, the writing focused too much on irrelevancies, and the art in progress was lackluster, so I'd probably need to just scrap what I have entirely so I can write a new ending that's self-contained as well as something I can be happy with in the future too.

While at the time of writing I haven't yet played the Blueberry part of the ScarVio DLC, I have seen that there is a curious little device allowing players to possess their Pokémon, in a manner of speaking. It's certainly a ways off from where we're at with posting right now, but that might be the best place to bring up Alex's past adventure in Lato and how it concluded. Food for thought at least.

For everyone who made it here, thank you for reading my thoughts about this, I appreciate that people care about my characters enough to ask such questions. I hope in the meantime you also still enjoy the current story we're on, even if Alex is an absolutely horrible teenager to watch. :'D

[elvenbeard]

I have too many VP ideas HELP. I need to write them down somewhere where I'll find them again so here we go, what is a blog if not a notepad?

Done:

part one of an attempt at making a big edit - gonna be a set of four pics, revolving around Vince's Arasaka past and how merc life is honestly the same shit, just a different packaging (the project I mentioned earlier this week that I needed a lot of pics for XD it's also inpsired by a song that fits him so well that I've been listening to non-stop on repeat basically for two weeks now xD) ✅ done!!

the harness photoshoot: gonna make two photosets here too, one a bit more clothed than the other xD ✅done!! :D

Currently in progress/still need to edit:

A photoset of V through the years (inspired by several other's amazing takes on this <3) - headcanon/lore posts for the most important moments or timeframes in his life -> pics taken, still need editing and writing though xD

V showing Kerry some of his favourite places in the city and vice versa -> started this, but now I wanna write something for everything too and aaahh xD

Some pics to accompany the post-canon fic I spontaneously started writing -> have a couple taken already, need editing still

Part two of the big edit thingy from above: with more song lyrics that just hit the spot XD -> have a few pics taken but might scrap and redo them

Currently not started on these yet, but the ideas are not leaving my head and/or have been with me for a bit (some a lot more complex than others):

Dirtbike tour through the badlands, because hell yes - would like to incorporate this in a little fic somehow, post-canon but not too far in the future

Just V chilling with Nibbles in the penthouse garden - the grass may be fake, but I think it's been a while for both of them since they touched grass and they deserve some peace and happiness XD (might incorporate this in the same story/ time frame as the idea above - we'll see!)

V and Kerry hanging out, listening to music

Kinky Kings (I am tempted to change their ship name ngl xD but I think I'll keep it and do a cool photoshoot instead)

Some promotional pics (sorta) for Kerry's new album (potentially in black and white? I'm not sure yet but I'd really like to do a bw set!!)

Not really a big VP thingy, but I've wanted to do a headcanon post about Kerry's cyberware, what all of it is and does and when/how he got it/ had to get it - need close up pics for some of that though (and any excuse to look at Kerry for prolonged periods of time honestly)

V and Kerry on a bike tour through the city at night - no deeper meaning here other than "let's blow off some steam" "okay :3" *five minutes later* "okay, this is not what I had in mind o.o but still fun!" (also Night City at night <3 but I have no idea yet how to pull it off with traffic and all probably running me over repeatedly as I set this up, but we shall see xD gonna be an interesting challenge for sure!)

More photo stories with V and Jackie, but no concrete ideas here yet

A photo story/ fic with pics of "that one perfect morning" I mentioned in a oneshot once, meaning the morning after Boat Drinks - also ties in a bit with the "favourite places" idea) - I am also tempted to do this as a comic instead, but don't even get me started on my comic ideas and all that's in progress there... the day needs more hours!

Also I wanna do more spicy stuff :3c but no concrete ideas here yet (maybe I'll redo the window photoshoot some time because with the graphics update their reflections might look even nicer... we shall see though!)

Road Trip with V and Kerry!!

Just some nice aesthetic model-y shots with Vince because he's pretty xD

[ashiyn]

Hi! Hope it's all good, I wanted to ask you what software you use for your edits I've honestly no clue where to start but I've loads of little clips of yours saved :D

hiya!! im so sorry for the delayed answer, i swear tumblr doesnt give me notifs about my inbox im fuming. this is quite long so the answer and some editing tips are under the cut! please feel free to reach out if there's something that doesn't make sense or if you ever need any tips or help!

i personally use adobe after effect 2020 with some plugins! most people would probably use adobe premiere pro for compilations like the ones i do but im WAY WAY WAY more used to after effect due do making daily fancams/edits in the past (i do not recommend doing this btw- got burned out after doing it for about a year LMAO). so for example if you're interested in making edits like this or this i'd go for after effect but if you wanna make stuff like this or this, premiere pro is probably the way to go, even if i use AE for both 😭

adobe products are very expensive and you need quite the computer for it to run it without crashing all the time so if you dont have the resources or want to dedicate some time into researching turrenting + vpn and how to install it properly + the plugins on top of learning a pretty confusing (at first) program i'd recommend capcut! it's a free phone app and ive personally never used it, but ive had a lot of mutuals before use it and it looks great and pretty simple to use once you get the hang of it.

learning after affect is extremely frustrating i wont lie, but it's probably the best software if you want to do complicated stuff or simply just get smooth slow mo that you often use in edits! it's worth it in the end after you get the hang of it! there's a lot of youtube tutorials out there and i'd love to help with settings and keyframes if needed!

using AE can be a little bit of an overkill if you're only looking into trying editing to see if you think it's fun and worth the time it takes, so phone apps is honestly an amazing start to get into it. i just decided to go 120% out of nowhere due to getting a hyperfixiation on deciding to learn how to edit and doing it in a more "professional" way and potentially become an editor in the future -> which did not happen. or well. i did end up having a tiktok account with 45k followers when i posted a lot of my edits of shows that i liked but i was potentially thinking of becoming a yt editor or maybe work in media more. however im a burned out nurse student now LMAO

personal tips when it comes to editing;

i use while editing is to make a mindmap or simply just write down key elements you want in your edit to make it easier and prevents you from having to redo your edit (which is painful).

to make the edit "run more smoothly" make sure to fade the clip to be more dark at the end and start the next coming clip with a fade from dark to light. learning slow mo can be tricky in any app, but if possible i use the same thing with clips where it starts faster, is the slowest in the middle of the clip, and starts to get to normal speed at the end of the clip to make the transition over to another clip seem smoother and not like a raw cut.

this might be more of a editing style preference but i always add a slight zoom (either in or out depending on the transition) at every clip so that it's not as awkwardly still. i also always add a slight shake that you cant really see unless you focus on it for the same reason as the zoom. i found that even if the transitions are extremely simple or not even there at all, these small things make an edit look way more "professional" and less choppy.

next thing is "just" to learn what transitions you like after that and dont be afraid to mess with settings, even if you follow a tutorial. its all about finding your own editing style and what you like more!

i download youtube videos using loader.to but screen recording also works! i download mine to make the fps be correct to match when im slowing down a clip but that might be a bit overkill. youtube4kdownloader.com is a great website to cut clips from youtube videos to download too! just make sure to use adblockers when using the websites!

also: editing takes a lot of time and dont feel discouraged if it takes long to finish one! once you have more of an editing style it becomes more of a routine the more you edit!

these tips can be used on any editing app (with the slow mo being an exception in some apps) but then again, dont feel like you need any of it and just go ham on whatever ideas you have! id love to see any edit of yours :D

[buddha-in-disguise]

I'm not going to review the season finale in quite the same way as I've usually written something afterwards. I'm ultra tired due to distinct lack of sleep. So it is more truncated than I'd intended. Also unedited so advance apologies if something makes no sense or is misspelled etc.

The episode was facing the challenge of not only being edited after COVID-19 shut down production, but what was intended to be the penultimate episode became the finale. So I'm trying to take that into consideration.

First part in Kara's loft. It was choppy. Don't get me wrong, I had nothing against the humour, or the scenes in general. Although they missed the glaring opportunity to place a "flew here on a bus," moment! It felt pretty disappointing they didn't recognise what has become an iconic line within the SG fandom, and made it even more iconic.

Before the bus though, back at the loft, considering that Lena had literally only just arrived at Kara's, with all that entails, it felt completely out of place for that context. Did it have been overwhelming heavy at that point? Absolutely not. But it was too close to slapstick at times for me and internally I was cringing. I admit, I'm not sure where they could've put it in, but perhaps if they'd just lowered it a fraction, made it a little more subtle a couple of times, it would've helped for me.

Some of the dialogue (especially early on) was also all over the place for me. It did get better as the episode wore on, but I wonder how much was the need to redo parts of the episode because of COVID-19? Unless they think to put an episode as intended in a future season DVD (perhaps S6 DVD), or someone gives us full details via an interview we will probably never know.

Which brought me to one piece of dialogue that I wish they'd not put in at all!

In 5.18, as I've spoken about a lot on Twitter especially, the way Lex screams into Lena's face, and Lena's flinch, and how that had been me 20 odd years ago. They then had the line as Lena talks to Kara; "Go ahead. Scream at me if you have to, I know I deserve it."

I know for many, they'd just see it as a line to use, but .... for many of us who have suffered abuse, who recognised (& in some instances were triggered) by last weeks episode, to not have acknowledged why that line was so problematic is worrying. It heavily suggests they're not going to address Lena's trauma and abuse because they really don't understand it (& again, if anyone believes she didn't suffer trauma and abuse, but accept others in SG do, go away with your bias from my page), but considering they haven't addressed much of Kara's trauma, particularly watching Argo destroyed again, being stuck for months during Crisis like they were, etc - then I guess it isn't a surprise.

But it is uncomfortable as hell to watch a line like that glossed over.

Overall though, I did enjoy the episode. Once that 1st half was over, especially (baring a few moments, including watching Alex do her badass Mission Impossible meet Cirque du Soleil moment because that was awesome) it felt much more like SG of previous seasons. So that was great.

Watching Lena as she watched Alex and Kara hug behind her was so emotional. Watching siblings love unconditionally. Something she thought she had with Lex, only to realise he hadn't changed at all. Lena didn't need to say anything, as once again Katie's acting brought all the emotion Lena was feeling to the fore.

Having Lena and Alex mirror they choice of words in regards Kara was pretty iconic. Then having Alex whisper, "Jinx." really made it work.

Seeing Dreamer in her element, including some great lines again. "I can't believe you left to fight Earth, Wind & Fire without us." "Guess they didn't take the bait? Maybe you should've been meaner?" As they begin the fight with J'onn, M'gann Alex and Dreamer - Alex to Dreamer: "You ready?" Dreamer. "Nope." Alex. "Me neither." Dreamer at her best imo.

Kelly going all, damn my girlfriend is hot & I want sex right now despite the circumstances was pretty cute and funny.

The Kara and Lena monologues being in unison. Now that was pretty amazing and one of the best parts of the whole episode imo.. But again, you feel as if they're matching Lena and Kara together with those scenes as a couple.

Lena not only protecting Kara, but stopped Andrea from going down a dark path as Acrata. Was also great.

Last frame of Lillian. Does it turn out she is the head of Leviathan? Because again they laid out more than once the leader was a woman. It has been noted several times now in different episodes. I was hoping Lena's biological mother, considering she knew of the legend of Acrata, but it is now looking more likely this reincarnation of Lillian is who it is, unless it is a character we've not been introduced to, but I highly doubt that.

The 2nd half of the episode was what we missed so much this season. In fact aspects throughout the episode were missing for too much this season.

This includes the women being the focal point of it. Brainy though absolutely rightly taking a strong subplot to what else was going on. J'onn ably supported by M'gann. M'gann who managed to advise Nia on embracing her dreams and not trying to avoid part of them. Dansen actually working together and both being badass in their own way (after all, this is something I've advocated for much of the season, & while fantastic to see, it never should've taken this long. Now where have we heard that before?)

But we still have glaring unanswered questions that I can't imagine would've been answered in 5.20.

Every indication since 5.17 is Kelly knows Kara is Supergirl. Yet we don't know for certain, because they've failed to show us how or when. I've said before, considering every other person who knows Kara is Supergirl, we had them tripping over themselves to explain to the audience how it happened. I'm pretty annoyed that we as the audience don't get given the same courtesy with Kelly. This is why so many of us feel short changed on some characters this season. The really aggravating thing is would only take a few lines to clear it up!

Now onto Alex. This ties in with J'onn. Where are they getting the money to survive? Did J'onn manage to accumulate enough over all the years he was on Earth to finance everything & pay Alex a wage? No clue.

Also, are Kelly & Alex living together? Or do they have keys to each others apartments? Yes, Kelly was at Alex's in 5.17 so the answer is pretty much yes, but nothing has been said! We knew more about Brainy & Nia's living arrangements from 5a than we do Kelly & Alex.

Kara's trauma. Lena's abuse & trauma. See above.

Lastly, the one most I know want (except a few vocally against), leaning towards Supercorp becoming canon. Again for another season, we end up with the, 'Maybe they'll do it next season.' being said. Particularly as in 5a they really went all out on Supercorp parallels to Clois and at times Dansen, plus even a little on Brainia. But unless something pretty fundamental changes behind the scenes, they're going to recognise what their biggest draw is, keep baiting but never fully go into it. And that is what I fear the most. When you've got media, even non-Supergirl fans saying it, but the show refusing to acknowledge it - that could be their legacy, and it will not look good or have a lot of fans look back kindly on them for it.

The 4 seasons it took for Lena to find out Kara was Supergirl was, in the end, terribly executed. This waxing and waning as well of; is Lena good or bad? Will she follow in the Luthor footsteps?

She is flawed. She's made some pretty awful mistakes. But now they're said she is good. She isn't evil or a villain. So now that line they've drawn needs to stay there! No more ambiguity on her character being a villain.

But you know what's not good? Feeling you can't trust the show to draw a line under that aspect of the character. That doesn't mean you have to have any one of them not be flawed, or to even cross some lines (they've all done it at some point, some moreso than others, but not one character is innocent).

When the show is now generating that level of mistrust on how they could handle future events, that is a problem.

Season 5 overall (particularly 5b) was absolutely horrendously bad. It had some moments of sheer brilliance (either individual scenes, or some episodes), but the rest was just flat out awful. Irrelevant. Messy. No cohesion. 5b became too much of the Lex Luthor show. Certain character additions were vastly unpopular and definitely caused down turns in viewer numbers (& again, from far more than a section of fandom). As did keeping Lena away from everyone for so long.

To sum up. Season 5 was a disaster.

Season 6 needs to have considerably different direction to even try & pull back some viewers (if they can at all). Distrust is rife.

The worst is no-one in the cast deserved this, especially as they're so talented. Some of the performances, even with how poor much of the season was, have been magnificent. But as the saying goes, you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

I've never been so relieved a season is finally over. We'll watch our favourite episodes for sure, of which there aren't many, but a full rewatch of the season we normally do will not be happening. Some episodes were better off consigned to the trash.

[delightfullyquirkydoodles]

Is there anything you wanna share about Penelope? I'd be delighted to learn anything you're in the mood to talk about in regards to her

Oh god, yes, please let me talk about Penelope. She’s been on my mind lately and I’ve been itching for the chance to ramble about her.

(Under a cut, of course. I don’t want to clog up people’s dashboards with my lengthy posts.)

Okay, so, Penelope was the third character I ever made for D&D Fifth Edition, after Cai (elf cleric) and Aurin (tiefling bard), respectively. 

She’s an artificer, which means that I’ve had to redo her character sheet several times, since artificers aren’t. Y’know. A base game class and their kit keeps getting revised. Hopefully I won’t have to tweak her again, since the artificer rules that appear in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything are supposed to be the final version, but you never know.

Backstory wise, she’s lonely-rich-kid-turned-mad-scientist! Her parents were minor nobility who decided to have a child for Clout™, only to her off to their servants once it was no longer fashionable to bring her to galas. As a result, Penelope grew up with only her family’s staff for company. Now, this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing -- Alfred, her goliath valet (and a friend’s D&D character), became both her teacher, bodyguard and best friend as a result -- but it also wasn’t a good thing, if you catch my drift. Though she learned a lot about history, philosophy and (mostly importantly) science, she didn’t have many opportunities to practice etiquette. Or interact with people her own age. Or, uh, anyone who wasn’t being paid to spoil her, basically. So it’s not really a surprise that she became... a strange young lady, to put it mildly.

She was really interested in mechanical engineering for a while (she built her clockwork owl familiar when she was only fourteen), but eventually shifted her focus to biochemistry, figuring that it would be more interesting for her to study the bodies of living things rather than build bodies for artificial creatures. Somewhere down the line, she developed the theory that the origin of magic was tied to some biochemical reaction within the bodies of otherworldly creatures. Determined to prove this theory, she packed up her chemistry set and set out to do some field research. (By that, I mean finding monsters -- everything from beholders to illithids to angels -- and cutting them up to see where their magic comes from and maybe harness some for herself. Alfred usually tags along, just to make sure she doesn’t get killed. Or, uh, kill anyone she’s not supposed to.)

She also works part time at a prestigious college, though it’s very rare to actually find her on campus (she keeps odd office hours and takes lengthy sabbaticals). Not that her colleagues mind. Most of them don’t like her very much. She has a slightly better relationship with her students, though some still spread rumors that she’s involved in... unethical experiments. No one can prove anything, though. No one alive, anyway.

TL;DR, she’s an extremely wealthy, socially inept alchemist who believes that magic is a chemical process and is willing to dissect god to prove that theory. 

I initially based her on Patricia Tannis from the Borderlands series, but somewhere along the way, bits of Yzma from the Emperor’s New Groove started creeping in. (I blame Alfred’s player, honestly. He gave me a Kronk-like bodyguard to interact with.) 

She also has a probably-non-canon descendant named Petunia living in the far future. (By descendant, I mean the descendant of a clone she created, because she was in no way interested in having children the conventional way. Not that the players in my Starfinder campaign, where she was an NPC, ever found this out.)

[bheaton-uni]

The intro took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. I had all the shots animated after a long day of work, and then went to bed, and forgot to save it because I was so exhausted. When I woke up the following day, I found that my mac had shut down and all my work had been lost. I thought "Either I can complain about how unfair this is, or accept my mistake and get on with it."

I got on with it, reasoning too that most of the shots weren't very interesting anyway, and so could probably have done with redoing anyway.

I took a lot of inspiration from the intros of The Simpsons, Only Fools and Horses, and the American version of The Office. For instance, the opening shot panning down from the skyscrapers to the tiny little Thunder Fire office was intended to evoke the imagery of the shot of Del Boy's car in Fools and Horses, while the rapid movement of Jim, Mr Kennedy, and Mike was influenced by how Bart, Homer, and Marge move in the opening of Simpsons, and the general idea of showing all the characters in their settings like this is a tribute to The Office.

I had a lot of fun coming up with the backgrounds and moving them about (this came out of necessity as I felt if the backgrounds were moving, it would add some more motion to the characters, and make the environment feel more three dimensional, even if they are just flat images).

I had initially planned to have the characters' names appear (via name tags on the screen), but I realised I just didn't have enough time to get those done. This made me reflect on the importance of time management, and hopefully for future projects, I won't make this mistake.

I'm not remotely an expert on music, so I didn't know where to start in getting a theme for this series. Initially, I'd planned to work with a music student, at the University of Brighton, as they had a very similar project, but we realised this would probably fall under plagiarism rules, and so this fell apart. I scoured dozens videos of royalty-free no-copyright music on YouTube, trying to find a piece that best fit the vibe of this series. Eventually, while watching another video* in my free time, I noticed a piece of music they were using that really hit the right spot. Even though they were using the piece to communicate a happy-go-lucky vibe, I felt it would fit with the lighthearted, yet sinister, vibe of this series. I contacted the maker of the video to request where he got the music**, and he gave me the link, and told me that it was royalty-free, and that the composer actively encouraged people to use it in their projects. I downloaded it, edited it, and fit it to the actions of my intro. I think it works nice, like how various beats match up with actions/transitions, and how it gains in momentum at the ending with the reveal of the photograph of the characters.

*Scam Bites: Paying by Bitcoin (How to Don't) - Scambaiting - Atomic Shrimp (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3lGw0Xrqu4)

** Sprightly Pursuit - Cooper Cannell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQS02RIoB_w)

[feynites]

Hi fey! I adore LG to bits- it's my favorite fic- but I just wanted to mention that if you feel like it's not going anywhere and want to redo or abandon it even- I'd support that completely! Sure I love the story and I'd be terribly sad to see it discontinued, but I have absolute faith that as long as you're still writing, you'll produce stories just as wonderful for us in the future, even if it's not /that/ story. I hope inspiration strikes but if not, that's fine too. Have a great day~

Thank you very much Anon! This was very encouraging!

I might redo stuff - probably more like revise some things - if it comes to it. I was re-reading some of my earlier chapters and found some stuff the bugged me, that I think I could do better now. But on the whole I still have high hopes for carrying on with it, and actually my current endeavour is to do some editing/revising and work my way back to the point that was frustrating me, and then see if I can keep going with it that way.

But I am very, very glad that you still like my writing, even when it’s not LG!