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agoodsfpage · 4 years ago

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“This is Morgan Winters, Barely Alive on GLNS News!” - Part 1

Hey! Posted this here and on the forum. Those of you who know me there will know this will not be the first time I've posted the first part of a story, promised to deliver more, and then abandoned the project within, like, an hour, but trust me, guys... I'm going to finish this one this time. I can feel it in my bones.

Anyway, something about the concept of a news reporter catching a cold has been weighing on my brain for just the longest time so I bring you this first part, in which our news reporters does *not*, in fact, catch a cold yet.

There is a little bit of sneezing and illness stuff at the end, but this is mostly about setting the scene, establishing some characters. I feel like actually having some kind of plot is a nice minimal standard to achieve with storytelling, but this might be why I'm always too lazy to finish telling them. If I do fail to post the second part of this one, my next story will just be called 'woman with a cold who is sneezing' and will just be about someone, like, going to various places.

With that in mind, do feel free to remind me to pick this up if you actually really want to see where this story (kind of inevitably) ends up going.

And, excuse the poor formatting. It is not my strong suit.

"...and despite facing calls to resign, the counselor has confirmed he'll remain in his post. From GLNS, this is Morgan Winters, back to you Alex."

Morgan yanked the earpiece out from her ear as quickly as she could, and ran a hand through her long black hair.

"How was that?" she asked Derek, from behind the camera, who gave a simple thumbs up in response. "Good," she said. "Now get me out of here. It's fucking freezing, and these old government buildings never seem to have any heating" "We got a taxi waiting for you outside to get you back to the studio" he replied, as he rewound the footage. "Think we're going to end up back in the van, though, if you ask me. Molly just took a phone call from the boss. Suspect she's going to be looking for you any minute now"

Morgan rolled her eyes and sighed. "Of course she is. What now? World's tallest scarecrow just collapsed? Local teen gets tongue frozen to lampost? Or are we going to interview the mayor's husband again, and hope he's sober enough to string together a full sentence this time?"

Derek shrugged. "I don't commission 'em, Morgan, I just film 'em. You'll have to ask her." "I'll have to avoid her, more like. I'm going to the office. I have a mountain of work to catch up on. I don't have time to do some twee interview with Farmer Dan about Potatofest '22, or whatever they want from me." "You do what you want. Taxi's that way, though. Next to the van" Derek replied, smirking, pointing to the east side of the building, and not taking his eyes off of the footage.

Morgan sighed and made her way to the city hall car park. She spied her taxi from across the road and started to walk towards it when she heard her name in an all-too-familiar and all-too-cheerful tone of voice.

"Slow down, Morgan" Molly called out, from behind her. Morgan closed her eyes, silently cursed her luck, and turned around to face Molly, who was dressed in a garnet-red beret, that (in Morgan's humble and, admittedly, uninformed opinion) badly compliment her curly, silver-blonde hair.

"I am so sorry, Molly, I almost forgot to wait for you," she said, forcing herself to smile. "That's alright, I'd just disappeared to make a quick phone call" Molly replied. "From the station," she said after a slightly uncomfortable pause. "Oh, they're always bothering us while we're busy. Well, I best be going, I need to get back to the--" "Could you do me a favor, Morgan?"

Morgan gritted her teeth, her green eyes lightly glazing over as Molly carried on.

"You see," Molly continued barely registering Morgan's expression, "the public health department just got in touch. It's that time of year when colds and such things are going around, you see. So, the department was wondering if we could send a reporter down to a local physician's to do a quick cold and flu safety report"

Morgan shook her head. "No, Molly, no, absolutely not. I told you, I'm done with these... nothing reports. I'm a serious journalist, alright? I have a degree-- two degrees! Two degrees, I have a Bachelors in Communication, and a Masters in Media and Journalism, okay? I should be covering far more serious topics than this. Health- public health isn't even something I know anything about. Can't you ask Alice to do it?" "We did ask Alice to do it!" Molly replied. "And?" "She can't" "Why not?" "Caught a cold."

Morgan rolled her eyes. "Well, what about Steve or Michael? They should be grateful for any work at this point, to be honest" "No, look, the department wants *you*. They've seen you! They think you have a really down-to-earth personality and a great presentation style. Perfect for delivering this kind of message."

Morgan paused. "They asked for me?" "Yes" "...and they think I have a great presentation style?" "Absolutely" "And a down-to-earth personality?" "Yeah, maybe. Anyway, look, if you do this, there's sure to be some more work coming your way. Good work, too. Not these fluff pieces, not these interviews with outraged retirees. You get to do what you want." Morgan really thought about it. "...No more local food and culture festivals?" "No more anything, just pure you." "...Fine. Fuck you, but... fine." Morgan replied. "When do they want me?" Molly looked at her watch and looked back up at Morgan. "Half an hour ago."

--------

It was not often that Morgan got to visit the more affluent side of town. She lived pretty far from here, and the people who did live here were wealthy enough to keep the cameras away from their neighborhood. While she wasn't thrilled about this assignment, she couldn't help but gawp at the mini-mansions, and luxury restaurants that lined the streets.

Still, all the money and lawyers in the world couldn't keep out the common cold. Almost every face she could spot from the van, was adorned with a red nose, or a tissue pressed tightly against it. Morgan shifted uncomfortably in her seat, as she turned her head towards her phone. She was really starting to regret this.

After a short drive, in which Molly had to negotiate with an incredibly congested toll-booth operator, the van pulled up outside the district's medical center. Derek scrambled out of the van to get the equipment ready, while Morgan and Molly went inside to meet the nurse they were going to be interviewing.

"Hey," Morgan said approaching the receptionist at the front desk, who was busy scribbling some notes into a pad. "Morgan Winters, I'm with GLNS news. This is Molly, I was told you both spoke on the phone about an interview?"

The receptionist looked up from her notepad and something instantly struck Morgan about her appearance. The long, wavy red hair, Morgan had already noticed from a distance. The bright blue eyes were distinctive but didn't immediately catch her notice. No, Morgan's attention was right away drawn to the sore, red rim that ran around the woman's nostrils, that was accentuated by the sudden and thick sniffle she gave.

"One moment..." she muttered, barely managing those precious m's and n's that would have lent clarity to what she said. She casually reached over a small PA system on her desk. "Ndurse Halloway? GLNS are here" she muttered, or something to that effect, at least. Some tinny, staticky voice gave a robotic reply, and the receptionist looked back up to Morgan. "Just take a seat with the oh-others... ih-ISHIEW!"

Morgan was grateful that the receptionist was able to grab a tissue. Still, she would have liked it all the more if the receptionist had actually managed to bring it to her nose, some time before letting out the surprising sneeze.

"Ugh... 'scuse mbe" she mumbled, using the barely touched tissue to blow her already sore nose. "Was the last one standing up until I came in this m-mordi-ih...it'SHIEW!" she sneezed again, clearly an aftershock from the previous sneeze, but this time, thankfully, with the tissue ready to catch it.

'Last one standing...' Morgan mentally repeated with a degree of exasperation, before directing Molly to sit beside her in the waiting room.

"We better make this quick, alright? I'm already regretting every second of this..." she whispered to her assistant, as the woman beside her, blew her nose for the fourteenth time. "Why, what's wrong?" she asked "What do you mean, what's wrong? This place is gross. I feel gross. I want to go back to the office, where it's... I mean still gross, but less gross than this" "Oh, hush. Don't worry about it, it's just a quick interview, bit of filming of... doctor-y things, and we can do the V/O back at the studio" "I don't know how you can be so calm about this" Morgan snapped, as the man next to Molly launched into a coughing fit. Molly simply shrugged. "I'm not bothered. I had my flu shot" she said, confidently. "Do flu shots protect against colds?" asked Morgan Molly paused for a moment. "I mean, yeah, of course, they do. They're basically the same thing. Wouldn't be much point in a flu vaccine if you're just going to get a cold anyway, surely!"

Morgan was skeptical, but before she could open her mouth to object, she heard her name called from the reception.

"Ms. Widters?" the receptionist asked, holding a tissue to her nose as she spoke. "Ndurse Halloway will see you both dow..." she managed, before sneezing three more times into the tissue. As she pulled it away, Morgan winced at how sore and red her nose was starting to look. At that point, Morgan realized that there was nothing she could do to protect herself. From the moment she walked into the health center, she was a dead woman walking.

#snz #snz kink

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trackerhunter995 · 4 years ago

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Almost Done With Darlingtongames123 Nr2003 Designs

Darlington Designs is the leading residential design & build firm in New Jersey. Specializing in major home renovations from landscape and hardscape projects to. Nov 16, 2014 - FREEBIES - Darling Designs 4 U - Merry Christmas Tree. Nov 16, 2014 - FREEBIES - Darling Designs 4 U - Merry Christmas Tree. Craft Instructions For Kids. Saved from darlingdesigns4u.com. Saved by Brenda Liston.

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Well as I am almost done with the original track update, someone on this forum sent me 2 tracks asking to take a look at them. They are basically broken and useless for now. I got to thinking, maybe just MAYBE I can take my track editing to another level. I want to try and fix the 'broken' tracks of NR2003. So i wanted to see if you guys could send me tracks via links on this thread. Maybe this can bring some of the other nr2003 players back to this community or even new people to the game. I'm not sure, but I would like to try and fix these tracks! Not sure when or even if I can fix them but I am willing to try over time. Also, tracks that need graphics updates or mips and such might be last on my list. I've been wanting to learn how to do all of that and I have somewhat of an idea not am not experienced with that yet. So with that being said send me any links you have! The message I received was for Melbourne. So i am working on that track and it is a pain! Haha.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I haven’t blogged in months. It should be expected by now, lol. There’s been a ton of things that’s happened since my last blog, much too many to write about here. Basically in the end, a bunch of things went down, none of it really bad, and I just neglected the blog for a while, and I’ll end up neglecting it again. But as the title of this post suggests, I’m slowly returning to my old ways. What does that actually mean to anyone that reads this? Well, let me think here…

I’m a fan of the racing sim NASCAR Racing: 2003 Season (NR2003), this blog was intended to showcase work I do for the game, provide me a private space to share files, and allow me to blog any ongoing projects. Instead I kinda posted a lot of stuff on other topics, which I’m sure I’ll do in the future as well, but hopefully not as much. So with that said, I’ve been working on a project that is mainly intended for NR2003, but anyone can enjoy this one. I’ve been making some new Sprint Cup Series models. It’s a big project for me, 5 makes in total. I just got tired of not having something that was much more accurate to the real cars to play with. Originally I wanted to get back into painting a few cool cars I seen from the 2016 NASCAR season, and I found out the models we had, just were not accurate. It forced me to change the scheme a bit, much of which was a pain because it really was quite a intricate paint job. so much of what I recreated after using photos for reference didn’t fit on the model. This was the reason why I quit painting cars in the first place. So instead of doing a half-ass conversion and ruining the original artist’s interpretation, I decided I’d just go ahead and make my own damn model. I made the Chevy SS and was just gonna leave it at that, but I had a lot of fun that I haven’t had in a long while so I decided to make even more models. In the end, I made 5 models total, the 2016 Chevy SS, 2016 Dodge Charger, 2016 Ford Fusion, 2016 Toyota Camry, and even the 2018 Toyota Camry. The models were a blast to make, especially the Charger. Seeing Dodge pulled out of NASCAR a few years back, I had freedom to kinda freestyle how I think it would look in NASCAR trim. And I feel I nailed the look. Even if I didn’t, the model looks bad ass nonetheless.

You can’t be a NASCAR fan and not love the looks of that, lol. So far, the bodies are complete, the mapping is mainly complete, though I might have to add a couple of things before release, and I’m almost done with the chassis and interior for the Chevy. These models, once finished, will be posted online for all to enjoy. I will be including the models (3ds Max 2009, 8 formats and obj), textures, and whatever else is required. They will be free to use for non-commercial use only, so you can use them in other games, apps, or whatever as long as you’re not profiting from them in any way, shape, or form. And you can bet your ass, they work in NR2003, I’ve already tested them in there. I did this once before with the Xfinity Series cars. only difference is they did not have any textures, it was just the bodies, rollcage, and wheels. In fact, here’s the link if anyone wants them…

These weren’t perfectly modeled, but they’re pretty damn good. In fact, I’ve actually started updating the models a little because I came across some reference to help make them way more accurate. But I won’t be able to get to them all till a while after I’m done with the Sprint Cup Series models.

Almost Done With Darlingtongames123 Nr2003 Designs For Beginners

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So for now, this is what I’ve been doing with my time. I’ve returned to my NR2003 roots, and man I can’t wait till this project is finished and people can get a up close and personal look at these models. I hope people get to enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them. Catch ya’s later. 🙂

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ceo-of-lions · 5 years ago

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Hello! I was wondering how you made the videos with the faces layered on top and such? I’ve always wanted to make some.

Putting this under a read more because I ended up severely overexplaining (as I do) and i’m not about to remove all this typing I did. Anon I am so sorry if this is ridiculously long and no help at all.

As a disclaimer, this is meant for pc/laptop. Phones can probably do it, but they’re much less capable in general and most editing apps are paid, watermarked, just plain bad, or a mix of those. Also, it’s entirely possible this is a very unnecessarily tiring and inefficient way do do this. This is just how I personally go about it. If this method gives you the ol’ jangle bones (cause it sure does that to me!) and it doesn’t quite feel right of fulfilling then I strongly recommend asking other people on how they do it.

To get started you’ll need a few things beforehand:

✦ A video editor of some kind (I’m using Lightworks; it’s free, unwatermarked, and autosaves your projects if it ever crashes)

✦ A photo editor (I’m using Pixlr E, it’s, again, free, and you don’t need any installation

✦ The video you want to edit characters onto

✦ A render for the charcter with a transparent background

I’m not sure whether or not installing Lightworks has any oddities i need to mention here, but if you (or anyone else) ever gets stuck, don’t hesitate to dm me or shoot me another ask!

First of all, you’re gonna need a good video. Trust me, once you manage to get into The Zone, this is going to be your only obstacle. And it’s an annoying one. Having a source that reliably uploads these kind of “short but sweet” videos (preferably around 30secs long or less) really is half the battle!

Once you’ve got your video chilling somewhere on your pc, you’re going to need a character render (or two) of some kind. Fandom wikias are often good (or at least decent) sources for this. Of course, you’ll need one that has as little covering/touching the character’s face as possible. Once you’ve got your renders, go to Pixlr E, click the blue “open image” button over over on the left get the pic you need n’ open it. After that, it’ll look like this:

Next, you’ll need the crop tool. Go ahead and crop away everything till the face is the main focus.

Once you’ve done that, zoom in and select the cutout tool. Then, select the “draw mask” option and reduce it’s softness all the way down to 0.

Once you have that going, just draw over the character until everything from their chin down is all gone, like this;

And it’s all done! Click “file” in the upper left corner, then “save” to download it. Make sure you save it as a .png file, otherwise the background won’t be transparent. You can just close the tab from here. I recommend taking a break here, get a drink or maybe a snack!

Next, open Lightworks. If it asks you to log in, do so. Take a tutorial if you feel like it. (I strongly recommend watching the “quick start’” video tutorial they have over at the lightworks forums along with some more in-depth ones; for creating simple videos with characters pasted over it, my guide will be all you need, but it might be useful to know how to mess around with audio, crossfades, greenscreen/chromakey, etc.)

Once you’re all free to do what you want, create a new project, give it a name, and set the framerate. (if you don’t know about this one just set it to “auto”)

Now, it’ll look like this:

Go to the bottom left and select “local files”. From there, select the video and your characters’ faces and import them. (tip: holding ctrl or left shift while clicking allows you to select multiple, don’t remember which one it was www)

Once you have everything, go to the “edit” tab.

Make sure the long red stick-thing at the bottom is all the way at 0, then double click your video to open the source viewer and press “b” (or click the button labeled ‘replace.). Once it’s in the bars at the bottom, you can get rid of the source viewer. Then, if your clip is anywhere under 5 minutes, you’ll be stuck with this gaping hole next to it:

Right click the empty void and click “close gap” to solve the issue. This is somewhat necessary, because if you export the video afterwards without the gap closed there’ll just be a black screen for 4 minutes. Make sure you don’t have any tracks hidden, otherwise closing the gap won’t work (though you probably won’t have anything hidden if you didn’t click anyting else).

Alright, now for the most soul-murdering part of the process (after looking for the video, of course): Image Key, a.k.a where we actually put the characters’ faces on top of the video. Go ahead and click “VFX” at the top, and you’ll have a menu like this:

In the effect library to the left, select the “key” category and then double click “Image Key”. You’ll need one of these image key effect for each face you’re using. (Also, you can just minimize the color correction if it’s unfolded, we’re not gonna be messing with it.)

So now, we’ve got this! For the sake of simplicity, you can rename the effects to the characters’ names so you don’t mix them up. Under “choose a file,” select the character faces. If you imported them into your project when you started, they should be easily findable under the “Project” tab. Right now, the characters will be in the center, right under one another. You can move the characters by either using the “Position” sliders on the left or by clicking and dragging them with your mouse in the actual video. For the most part, we’ll be doing the latter, but because the faces are stuck under one another in the exact center, you move both of them at the same time. To fix this, move one face away from the other using the slider one time.

Okay, moving on! This part is important not to skip. Notice the little timer-like icons to the left of the sliders? If you hover over them, it says “Enable/disable keyframes for this parameter.” Click them for every slider under “scale” and “position”. Now, we can start keyframing it; keyframing basically tells the image where it needs to be, when it needs to be in that location, how big, etc. For us, this means that we can make faces move along very fluidly with the video.

By now, we’ve made quite a bit of progress! I recommend taking another break before this to avoid feeling tired. Green tea helps! Once you’ve done that, go ahead and click “Graphs”. Since you enabled the keyframes, your effect should show up with, lo and behold, some graphs to go with ‘em:

I personally work by keyframing one face at a time. To do this undisturbed, I disable the little green light that says “toggle bypass” when you hover over it for the face i’m not going to be keyframing. It hides that face temporarily until i put it back on again. To decide what face i’ll be keyframing first, I just look at whatever face appears in the video first. Once you have the face that appears first, make absolutely positively sure the red bar is at zero to be able to set where and how the image starts out. Then, drag the face onto the poor human soul whose face we’ll be replacing today. Go back to the “settings” tab and slide with the “Scale: Master” until the character’s face is big or small enough for your liking. Then, if the person we want the second character to portray is not on-screen, we click the green (now gray) lamp on the unused face and drag it off: depending on your video format, either to the black on the side (which we’ll crop off when we’re done) or just off-screen if your video is fullscreen. If the person is on-screen, just drag the face on top of that person and adjust size like we did with the first face. These will be the locations the characters start on. Switch the green light back off for your second character, and move back to Graphs.

This is where the “””””fun””””” begins. So, right now, you have your red bar at 0, and you have your character where you want it. We need to move the character’s face frame-by-frame. Luckily, there’s an easier way to move frames: with your arrow keys. Every press with your left or right arrow key moves the video one frame into that direction. Now remember what i said about using your mouse to drag the images where they need to be? It comes in really handy here. Press your right arrow key thrice to move 3 frames ahead, and then drag the image to wherever the face is on that frame. Lightworks will automatically fill in where the image needs to be on the frames in between those frames so you don’t need to precisely move the image on every frame (though this might be helpful on shorther videos or videos where there is very fast movement.) Do this repeatedly until the video ends or the character disappears off-screen. Every 3-4 or so frames. For the remainder of the video. Entertaining. Very, very entertaining. (In short, it’s just: press arrow keys thrice > reposition image > repeat.)

Adding to this, sometimes the characters go off screen and then come back, but the faces move gradually to the spot leading to them appearing too soon. (sounds incredibly vague, I know, but you’ll know what it means when it happens.) To fix this, you need to go into the graphs labeled “position”. It’ll look something like this:

What you need to do here is click somewhere above or below the diagonal line in the middle to move your red line there. Press the arrow with the vertical line to the left to move to the previous keyframe. Copy the numbers that are to the left of the graph, press the arrow with the vertical line to the right, nudge one frame back with your left arrow key, paste the value you just copied over the one that’s already there and then press enter or the plus. That should fix it.

Okay. You have now keyframed all of the faces. It’s all done. Take a break here. I don’t care how determined you are right now. you Gotta. You Just Gotta. get some water, you deserve it.

After getting your water, go back to the “edit” tab at the top, right click your video and select export. Select the format, give it a name, and huzzah! Finally. Unless you have a video format with black edges, then it’ll look somewhat like this. To crop those sides off, we’re going over to Kapwing to crop it off. (You need to register (free) to remove the watermark, and i’m pretty sure Lightworks can also do it, but I haven’t found that option yet and I’m too stubborn to) Once you’re done with that, download it, delete the old version and you’re really done. You deserve a pat on the shoulder now because god fuck if this isn’t one of the most tiring processes to do out of free will (and that times 10 if you’re a slow worker like I am) but honestly making hundreds of people laugh is SO MUCH of a payoff you can’t help but keep wanting to do it wwww

if there’s any more questiong about this or if i forgot something (which i probably did) please shoot me an ask or dm!! all i am physically incapable of doing is simplifying this into less of a wall of text

#not twst #not a meme #ohhhhh my god #ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh #my god #i am never typing again for a week #i need to recharge and i ABSOLUTELY need a nap #i only just finished chapter 2 bc. lazy #i still need to process it #gonna upload the vid i used here in a minute or 2 #my brain is just coconut mall mario kart

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whnvr · 4 years ago

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Brain Drain

Ah yes, hello. It is once again time to drain these brains of mine. A couple of more thoughts on this ‘Morning Pages’ process. Firstly, I’ve decided to take the Artist’s Way wording to heart and think of this as a non-negotiable exercise and, at least for the time being, I am going to do the full 1500 words as a block before I move onto anything else in my day. I’m still going to take the approach of retroactively editing them before I sleep in order to be more formatted, but the main body of text will be done first as, based on yesterday, I think this will focus me far more than spreading the writing out. Secondly, the more I think about it the more experimental I realise this entire process is for me. It’s probably best thought of as a heavily modified and specified version of the ‘Artist’s Way’ approach, as one of the stipulations offered up by Julia Cameron is that these are to be for your eyes and your eyes alone - even then going so far as to suggest that these should be sealed away in an envelope so that even the practitioner does not read them. So in that sense I am both taking a more documentative, methodical approach to the process and I am altering the formula by hosting these in a public forum. I understand that privacy helps to remove any filtering one may do but I also believe that the potential for these to be read comes with its own benefits. To that end this feels like an experiment of being creatively candid in public which is simulatenously exciting and daunting given that it runs so counter to the common approach of creating behind closed doors. I’d love to explore these ideas further as this journal progresses and see how my relationship with creativity changes due to these factors. So, I guess I’ll start by taking the measure of my day, as I am very much enjoying the ‘touching base’ element of these Morning Pages. I definitely feel a lot more blocked than I did yesterday, and it seems as though there’s somewhat of a hump to get over when I do these within the first 500 words or so before I get into a state of flow with it - this was true of yesterday also. Maybe that is one of the possible benefits of this exercise, that 'ramping-up-to-flow’ stage is one I likely experience whenever I sit down to create and the Brain Drain may be a way of me overcoming that before I come to do any of the actual creative work of my day. It seems as though forcing myself to do all 1500 words yesterday put me into the same sort of flow-state I gain from working on a really successful piece of music, and then today I am once again reset back into that familiar place of being 'blocked’, which even now I am slowly working through and unpicking purely by writing these words. Looking back on previous creative work this would seem to make an awful lot of sense. How much more demotivating it is to have to wake up and untease the same blocked feeling each morning on projects that I care deeply about and am heavily invested in than it is to instead get that part of the process out of the way on an off the cuff exercise like Brain Drain each morning. Maybe attempting to ease such a block through the work we care about is where all feelings of 'I’ve lost it’ and 'this project is hard now. Therefore how much better it must be to work through those blocks in a format that we’re not quite so invested in. Even right now there is a part of me that is very much resisting this process. It is an anxiety that masks itself as restlessness and tells me to 'go and watch a film, Aaron. Why put yourself through something so hard?’. As it is the creative enemy I have decided to call this my personal Antagonizer. Other thoughts of the Antagonizer, or the 'me’ that feels uncomfortable and uncreative: - 'Go and make a milkshake Aaron. Don’t do this. It’s 30 degrees outside today. You really need to just cool down.’ - 'Get up and walk around. You really need to release some of this tension that you’re feeling.’ - 'Go and talk to a family member. Telling them about what you want to write would be much easier than simply writing it’. That’s right Antagonizer, I WILL use your criticism in order to help me hit this wordcount. Checkmate. Yesterday has taught me that past this feeling is where enjoyment and flow lie if I can only push through it. I imagine some days will be significantly harder than others, and I imagine that I will even have days where 1500 words won’t begin to scratch the surface of this block, but I would so much rather try to push through this block writing whatever comes to mind over-and-above pushing through this block attempting to create whatever passes for a masterpiece in my world. On to next steps then. I would like to select a new artist to listen to today as I get on with other work. This would also be a good opportunity to show off a little of how I organise my inspiration, despite how embarrassingly over-elaborate it is.

On Spotify I keep a folder of artists who I’m either interest in, inspired by, are important pieces of musical history, examples of current artists who are doing what they do incredibly successfully, or artists that I feel would be generally useful to experience. For each artist, I will create a playlist, and in each playlist, I will save that artist’s entire discography chronologically. I will then slowly work my way through each of the artist’s discographies, deleting what I’ve listened to and categorising songs that jump out to me either in terms of whether I love, like, or dislike them, the emotional qualities that I want to emulate in my own music, or the technical qualities that stand out as exemplary within each song. This allows me to simultaneously build a picture of what my musical tastes are, keep an accurate record of my listening history, and create song palettes for different emotional qualities that I wish to put into my own work.

(Above: the technical qualities of music that I have categorised. This forms up a reference library that I can use to further refine these qualities when I’m working on my own music)Here are the criteria I use to define each of these categories. Idea: the concept behind a piece. Narrative: the story told. Lyrics: how ideas are expressed through words. Mood: the emotionality of a piece. Expression: how ideas are framed and delivered through the articulation of the music. Musicality: the use of harmony, rhythm, and theory to communicate those ideas. Rhythm: the measure, speed, flow, and cadence of a piece. Timbre: the overall texture, tone, and sonic palette of a piece. Structure: the flow of a piece over time. Mix: how the timbre has been arranged as an ensemble. Master: how the piece has been polished. Delivery: the title, artwork, context, presentation, and moving image that contain the piece.

(Above: the emotional qualities of music that I have categorised as a reference library for how artists that I look up to achieve specific emotional qualities in their work). These are decidedly more abstract and are generally more subject to the songs themselves that are being added. For reference, here’s the current list of artists who’s work I want to study, all at various stages of listened to, completed, or not listened to at all: - Labelle - Car Seat Headrest - Snail Mail - Japanese Breakfast - Let’s Eat Grandma - Soccer Mommy - LCD Soundsystem - Big Thief - Have a Nice Life - Beebadoobee - Animanaguchi - 100gecs - Courtney Barnett - Chromonicci - Owsey - Dark Cat - Valentine - SOPHIE - Kamasi Washington - Prince - Aurora - Massive Attack - Haywyre - Maths Time Joy - Counting Crows - Jack Strauber - Blossom Calderone - Goldfrapp - Janelle Monae - Meteorologist - Easyfun - Saint Lewis - Julian Gray - Jade Cicada - Blake Skowron - 92Elm - Maxime - Stereo Cube - Chuck Sutton - Gemi - Queen - Laxcity - Duumu - Oh Wonder - Galamatias - Umru - Underscores - Brockhampton - Fleece - i Monster - Deaton Chris Anthony - Amy Winehouse - The Beatles - Sumthin Sumthin - Radiohead - Flume - Knapsack - Dodie Here are the artists who’s discographies I have completed via this approach: - Sidney Gish - M.I.A - In Love With a Ghost - Bowie - Pink Floyd - Baird - Rudimental - Iglooghost - Madeon - Porter Robinson - 100gecs I use a similar system alongside this over on Pinterest for visual work in order to better inform my visual style and aesthetic sensibilities. Here is how I define my visual observation: Interior & Exterior, the space of dwelling.

Colour, of which idiosyncrasy and primary colours are a main focus.

Tone, subtler than colour. An intangible quality communicated by shifting hues and gradiated layers.

Mood, the way an image feels.

Looks, clothes, & apparel: personal artistic image and identity.

Desolation, a quality not currently present in my own work, but one that I often observe and love within other work, as well as in storytelling and other environments.

Layout, the way things are arranged in relation to one another within a space.

Idea, the concept behind a thing.

Texture, the tactile quality of visual elements.

Form, the shape and bounds of a thing.

Presentation, the context a thing is placed within.

Render, the quality imparted by computer generated imagery.

Type, how words are displayed.

Pattern, the use of repetition.

As you can see, how I define sound and visual art share a fairly common language between them. Anyway, I divert. I’m going to select SOPHIE as the next discography to tear through and I am also going to continue working through the UE4 Beginner learning path, though before either of these I have some university paperwork/admin stuff to finish so I’d best crack on with that. Toodles!

#25.6.2020

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paulisweeabootrash · 6 years ago

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Retrospective Review: Rewatching Azumanga Daioh as an Adult

This may seem hard to believe if you are a younger reader or one who got into anime only recently, but there was once a time when recommendations spread by word of mouth, it was absolutely commonplace for anime seasons to last longer than 13 episodes, and the vocabulary of the anime fandom wasn’t nearly as full of internet-originated in-jokes. A time when the internet-savvy congregated on forums dedicated to specific topics instead of social networking sites, and the imageboards that generate so much of the internet meme landscape were just starting to take off among lonely nerds as an obscure haven for perverts, racists, and assholes instead of the role they have today as… uh… well... a well-known haven for perverts, racists, and assholes. A time when there was no such term as “weeaboo trash” because that Perry Bible Fellowship comic hadn’t been published yet, let alone used for that meaning. It wasn’t some golden age, but it was different, and today I’m taking a self-indulgent trip back to the end of that period, when I was in high school in the mid-2000s.

Azumanga Daioh (2002).

1. Why is this show important to me?

My introduction to anime consisted mostly of Pokémon and Sailor Moon, and took off with scattered episodes of several other shows that aired on WB and Cartoon Network, which were generally driven by action and combat. I can’t remember the circumstances or even who did it, but someone who owned, or perhaps pirated, a copy of Azumanga Daioh must have shown me a few episodes at some point.

Here was a show that had been on the leading edge of the moe trend a few years earlier, and although certainly available, such things were not yet common. Moe has, of course, taken over a large chunk of anime since, to mixed reception since it can range from innocently delightful to extraordinarily creepy. Azumanga is close to the innocent end of the spectrum, and absolutely delightful (as, BTW, is the author’s current ongoing manga series Yotsuba&!), with a softer, cuter art style than I was accustomed to and instantly-lovable characters.

It was clearly in a different genre and had a different sensibility about how to make a show, too. It had few repeated or filler elements, unlike any of the shows following the “monster of the week” formula. It was broken up into several vignettes per episode — a practice that I was familiar with from the format of many Nicktoons, but while American shows with that format told multiple self-contained stories, the short segments here were typically parts of larger episode-long stories, often focusing on different parts of the same event or different anecdotes about the same character. It showed us, the foreign audience, something about life in Japan, and at least for me was the first time I’d heard of distinctly Japanese school practices like applications for public high schools, students cleaning classrooms, or the particular kinds of seasonal festivals they have. It lacked story arcs driven by overcoming some enemy and instead was driven by character relationships themselves and the instantly-relatable experience of school. It was an encounter with something utterly different — and it made an excellent first impression.

Eventually, I bought a copy of the complete series of the manga it’s based on. Azumanga Daioh was originally, well, a manga, written by Azuma Kiyohiko and originally published in the form of a 4-panel comic strip that ran in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. See, it’s Azuma’s manga in Dengeki Daioh. Azuma manga, Dengeki Daioh. Azumanga Daioh. Ha. Clever. Anyway, in there, I encountered largely the same characters and interactions, a mix of believable school life and quick gags, just presented in a different format. I eventually got the DVD box set of the show, too, and I’ve rewatched a few favorite episodes several times, but this review is the first time I’ve revisited the whole series in years.

2. Who are all these people?

Rather than focusing on a small core friend group like Three Leaves, Three Colors, another much more recent adorable high school slice-of-life I greatly enjoy (and should maybe review?), Azumanga has a pretty large ensemble. Most of them are students and the “story arc” such as it is follows them through three years, from entering to graduating from high school, over a single 26-episode season. So rather than cover a plot synopsis, I think it would make more sense to dive into specific characters and their relationships. The show its at its funniest and sweetest with the dynamics of certain combinations of the main characters, and there are a lot of combinations available. Covering all of the recurring named characters approximately in the order we meet them (except a few characters who show up only in an episode or two each and another classmate named Chihiro who shows up on the periphery as a friend of Kaorin), let’s look at the relationships that stand out:

Yukari and Nyamo: Yukari Tanizaki, the English teacher who is the homeroom teacher to most of the cast, is unprofessional and insensitive from the first moment we see her, traits which are elaborated in later episodes into a sort of impulsive over-the-top-ness that clashes with the fact that she actually is a pretty good teacher. Emphasizing her less-serious attitude, students even refer to or address her by her given name (although the subtitles exaggerate this a bit by consistently calling her “Miss Yukari” when she’s usually just addressed as “teacher”). Minamo Kurasawa, the gym teacher, is a long-time friend of Yukari. She and Yukari (who calls her “Nyamo”) were even classmates at the same high school they currently teach at. In addition to being central to the gym class/sports-related episodes, she’s also Yukari’s more caring, approachable, and professional foil, which sets up interactions where Nyamo tries to be helpful and manage situations in the face of Yukari being antagonistic (and, outside of school hours, drunk) towards her and the students. Yukari in particular prods at Nyamo’s sore spots: being single and having done embarrassing things in high school.

Tomo and Yomi: Tomo Takino is 100% genki girl. I mean, come on, she’s the illustration for the TV Tropes article by that name. She’s not only enthusiastic, but loud, intrusive, and pointlessly competitive to the point of being just plain mean. She’s the kind of person who might mature into a less competent Yukari if she burnt out a bit. Koyomi Mizuhara, on the other hand, is much more serious and self-conscious, and although she still genuinely is Tomo’s friend and goes along with some of her silliness, she barely puts up with Tomo’s teasing and flurry of bad ideas. She is the Nyamo to Tomo’s Yukari, complete with Tomo enforcing a nickname on her, so she’s almost always called “Yomi” throughout. Yomi is much more considerate than Tomo, too. This often comes out in Yomi scolding Tomo’s insensitivity, but it’s also seen less directly when they are giving Chiyo (more on her below) birthday presents — Tomo offers first a joke that doesn’t go over well, then a magic wand she apparently expects Chiyo to believe will make her grow taller, which Chiyo dismisses, while Yomi offers a book which Chiyo enthusiastically accepts and says she expects to enjoy.

Osaka, Tomo, and Kagura: Ayumu Kasuga is a distractible and soft-spoken transfer student from Osaka whom Yukari, Tomo, and Yomi pester with misinformed questions and assumptions about her home city. Tomo, naturally, saddles her with the nickname “Osaka” as if that is her entire identity. The nickname quickly catches on, with even Yukari calling her that instead of her actual name in class. She is accepted as a friend by the other students who still consider her eccentric and baffling, but not annoying or embarrassing like you might expect. (In fact, the other girls react more and more to Tomo as the annoying and embarrassing one.) During the second year of school, she bonds with Tomo and Kagura (introduced as a star athlete from Nyamo’s homeroom during the first year, she becomes a major character in the second year) over their similar incredible forgetfulness and poor academics. Yomi calls them “bonkura”, translated as “knuckleheads”, and the three of them adopt the name for themselves as they study together — an idea which is doomed from the outset. The three of them together, or any two of them, play off each other wonderfully.

Chiyo and Osaka: Chiyo Mihama, a child prodigy who is only 10 years old at the beginning of the series, is so academically gifted it can upset and embarrass her classmates, but on the other hand is naive, and not just because she’s a child. She is in fact clueless about the outside world. She fails in the first summer break trip (ep. 5) to understand that the other characters’ families are nowhere near as rich as hers, and in the second summer break (ep. 14), even after a year and a half of being around high schoolers, she entirely fails to understand Nyamo’s off-screen explanation of “adult relationships” (kids innocently being oblivious to what sex is seems to be a common basis for jokes in Japanese media). Chiyo being five years younger than her classmates — and on the other side of puberty from them — also makes her lag far behind them in athletics. On the one hand, this makes her very self-conscious and afraid of being a burden on her classmates in team activities, and on the other, it sets up a running gag of Chiyo and Osaka teaming up to be by far the worst pair of athletes across the board. Oh, and Osaka’s dream about Chiyo’s pigtails in the New Year’s episode is one of the weirdest and most authentically dreamlike dream sequences I’ve ever seen. Although maybe that just says more about my own dreams than about the show.

Sakaki and Nobody (or, Multiple Kinds of Unrequited Feelings): Sakaki is considered effortlessly cool and somewhat intimidating — Kagura calls her a “silent lone wolf” — but she’s not big on that reputation. Students openly admire her, especially for her athletic talent, and treat her with distance and respect by almost universally calling her “Miss Sakaki” (since this is apparently her family name, not given name). She does not enjoy this treatment, but is also too private (and perhaps too insecure) to complain about or discuss it. She is indifferent to sports despite excelling at them, and doesn’t even recognize Kagura when she proclaims herself Sakaki’s rival, presumably because the first-year sports festival just didn’t stick out in her memory the way it did in Kagura’s. Despite calling it rivalry, however, Kagura quickly inserts herself into Sakaki’s life in a friendship that Sakaki responds to more with quiet tolerance than reciprocation.

Kaorin, meanwhile, mistakes Kagura’s one-sided friendly rivalry for a very different kind of attention, and accordingly treats her one-sidedly as a romantic rival (although she does eventually calm down about it). Kaori (family name not mentioned), usually addressed by the more affectionate “Kaorin”, is shown at first to ambiguously admire Sakaki, but it quickly becomes clear that she is infatuated with her. And, despite the insistence of many fanfic writers since, Sakaki never catches on to this, even with Kaorin gazing dreamily at her while dancing with her, or clinging to her arm while posing for a picture together. I'm sure, given how over-the-top she is, that Kaorin’s unrequited feelings are supposed to be funny, but I find it sweet and sad and end up rooting for her.

Sakaki and Cute Animals: Sakaki is not unfriendly, or even very socially inept, though. She gets along well with the main cast, especially Chiyo. But she is aloof, not just because of shyness but because she has a secret love of all things cute, especially cats and dogs, and gets caught up in her own thoughts about cute things. Although she loves animals, they don’t necessarily love her back. There is a series-spanning running gag with a cat in the neighborhood whom she repeatedly tries to pet, no matter how many times it bites her for doing so. In fact, in that very same episode where Kagura declares her rivalry, the strongest emotional reactions we see from Sakaki are horror directed at Kagura for scaring that cat away and, later, being moved to tears by a story she’s constructing in her head about another cat while Kagura is trying to talk to her. Sakaki’s thoughts on cute animals also yield a second running gag: "Chiyo's dad". An orange cat-like doll (evidently some kind of character or mascot in-universe?) that appears numerous times in the background early in the show appears in Sakaki’s New Year’s dream and introduces himself to her as Chiyo’s father, so Sakaki refers to the doll as “Chiyo’s dad” for the rest of the series without explanation, much to the confusion of the other characters. While he’s an inanimate object in the background before the dream, afterwards he appears as alive and magical, sometimes in Sakaki’s imagination and sometimes intruding into the real world as short transition clips between scenes.

Kimura vs. Everyone (mostly Kaorin): Last and certainly least, let’s consider Mr. Kimura, the literature teacher. Within a minute of the first time we the audience see him, Tomo asks him why he became a teacher and he blurts out that it’s because he likes high school girls. Which a group of creepy boys in the class call “brave”. Ugh. This presages chronic inappropriateness of varying levels from Kimura — from unsolicited suggestions for cheerleading uniforms to hanging out during gym class to watch the girls swim to heaping unwanted “favors” on Kaorin, to whom he is obviously attracted. Beyond the increasing variety of his inappropriateness, he doesn’t really develop as a character. He is, interestingly, shown as an otherwise decent person outside of school, but this is not portrayed as excusing him. Rather, it’s made clear that his creepiness is contextual, and his role throughout the series is consistently as a grotesque comic relief, not a sympathetic character. Kaorin even consciously tries to improve her opinion of Kimura because his wife is so nice, leading her to believe that this means Kimura himself must have good points to deserve someone like that, only to be immediately shown otherwise. We the audience are laughing at him, not with him, and at some points are genuinely upset at him on the girls’ behalf. Or at least, I hope that’s how the rest of the audience takes him.

3. Yeah, but there's some kind of progression, right, even if it's not really a story arc?

Again, it's not the kind of show that has an overarching goal or conflict. The goal, such as it is, is the characters' graduation from high school. The topic of what they'll each do after graduating comes up several times, as you might expect, but isn't that much of a plot point. Not all of the main characters even have clear plans laid out that we know of, but the plans we do know about match their established personalities well. Tomo changes her mind repeatedly between several half-baked ideas. Osaka decides at the last minute to try to become a teacher based on Chiyo straining to think of something fitting Osaka's... unique way of looking at things. Chiyo is perhaps overconfident, planning to study abroad in America despite being only 13 when she graduates. Sakaki anonymously showed interest in veterinary school early on, but didn't discuss it with her friends until much later, after she started showing her weakness for cuteness in front of them.

The main progression that happens is some evolution in the characters' relationships and attitudes. There is of course the progression from strangers to friends among the main cast, but also some character development growing out of things that started as gags. Osaka, for example, begins as the butt monkey of the class, but by the end of the first year, she is very well accepted by her classmates, and she even gets along particularly well with Tomo, who was originally shown teasing and stereotyping her the most but has now toned it down a bit. Nyamo’s miserable singlehood, previously a running joke, leads her to open up to the idea of trying matchmaking instead of dating. Sakaki becomes more willing to express her love of cute animals in front of the other girls, starting with Chiyo, and her running gag experiences with the hostile cat play out to a resolution when she adopts, of all things, an endangered wildcat which is the only cat that doesn’t bite her, then has a final encounter with the hostile cat where she tries to make amends. Chiyo's academic talents were met with light irritation and mockery at first, but by the end, her new friends are grateful for her help and rise in applause when she is recognized for her grades during the graduation ceremony. Kagura relaxes her Tomo-like tendencies more and more, and shows a degree of gratitude and sentimentality towards her new friend group that would’ve been shocking when she was first introduced. Even Tomo, usually the show's last bastion of immaturity, shows tiny bits of improvement: self-reflection and regret during a serious conversation with Yomi over what American audiences would call "finding your passion", and later leading the applause for Chiyo. To compare Azumanga to Three Leaves, Three Colors again, it’s true that this show doesn't go into as much depth in character relationships as that one despite running for more than twice the number of episodes, but I don’t think that’s a flaw in Azumanga so much as a combination of Azumanga’s larger main cast, gag comedy focus, and choice of a different “zoom level” on the main cast’s lives.

The show itself evolves a little bit, too. As it goes on, more episodes have segments that flow together and they contain more references to events in previous episodes. By the last few episodes, with graduation looming, it almost feels like it has become a conventional plot-driven show. The shift from shorter to longer segments, shorter to longer jokes, etc., is seamless — and pretty typical of comic strips where perhaps the author hasn’t “figured out” their own characters at the beginning. Surreal elements also get more common, like the “Chiyo’s dad” running gag and increasingly-elaborate looks into what characters are imagining. As I recall, these changes reflect the stylistic evolution of the original manga, but... uh... my copy of the manga is with my parents at the moment so I didn’t check myself on that.

4. How is it different in retrospect?

As I said, I first saw this in high school, so I was about the age of the main cast. Perhaps this was one of the things that made it so enjoyable. The characters seemed relatable, and I lacked the aversion to depictions of ordinary life that some people had because I didn’t have a particularly negative high school experience despite being decidedly uncool. (I was, in fact, neither interested in being cool nor in being self-consciously uncool, and was content with the set of people I got along with. I was never really an angsty teenager so much as a sad one.) My experience of the show is, if anything, even greater appreciation now. Some of that difference comes from knowledge and some from aging.

I’ve become a bit less of a poser and/or snob about some things since then. I’d seen a lot of obviously-atrocious dubs growing up, and they really put me off the idea that anyone actually cared about dubbing into English well. Since then, I’ve lightened up a bit, partly because it seems like nowadays distributors do a lot less 4Kids-style butchery of shows when they’re translated and partly because I’ve realized that there is plenty of bad Japanese voice acting, too, so sometimes the English version is just plain easier on the ears. So I’ve watched this mostly in the English dub this time around (some episodes in both to check the different versions of specific jokes) and I really enjoy it. The voices are character-appropriate and the English lines fit the lip movements better than the original Japanese voice track while only rarely resulting in rhythms and stresses that sound unnatural in English, which really impresses me.

Just from the sort of vocabulary one picks up by being weeaboo trash, I occasionally notice differences in meaning between the dialogue and subtitles when watching the sub version. And I even picked up on an interesting translation choice for a joke I hadn’t noticed before. When Yomi tells Osaka that Chiyo is a child prodigy in ep. 2, Osaka responds comparing Chiyo to a boy she knew growing up, resulting in her expressing a different misunderstanding in each version about how the boy was described by adults. In the English dub, Osaka says something about him “smarting off”, the joke being she thinks that means he’s smart. In the English subtitles, she says he was “precocious”, to which Yomi says she doesn’t think that meant he was smart by calling him that. This time around, I finally caught that the Japanese dialogue there clearly uses the phrase “otoko no ko”, insinuating that the boy is a crossdresser and/or gay. Even though I don’t understand the full Japanese joke, the implication is clearer than it was in English (because I, um, also didn’t think of the double entendre on the word “precocious” until now), as is the degree of the misunderstanding.

I appreciate now how many scenes are psychologically-savvy. Just in the episode in which the main cast of students move up to their second year of high school, we see two scenes that just click with me as “yes, people do this, and I don’t know why we don’t seem to notice it!”. I mentioned above Kagura wanting to compete more because of the sports festival while Sakaki thinks nothing of it at all, which hinges on the simple difference in the sports festival having been a memorable event in Kagura’s life but not Sakaki’s. That episode also features a scene in which Tomo eggs on her classmates to eat their lunches early because it’s a thing that (according to her) second-years do, which sets up Mr. Kimura to arrive the room for literature class, see everyone eating, and therefore assume he must be the one who has the time wrong and go back to the faculty lounge for his own lunch. This tendency to defer to others in decisions in our own lives, not through peer pressure per se but through assuming that something done commonly or confidently must be correct, is just something I don’t see portrayed or acknowledged much in Japanese or American media. And I love it. For those two scenes alone, this is one of my favorite episodes in the whole series.

As far as the characters, I still find the students charming and relatable, and I’m willing to bet that everyone knows someone like most of them in real life. They fit Japanese character archetypes to a certain extent, but are also developed enough especially in their interactions with each other that they come off as realistic to me. So they hold up well. But mainly, I find I have much more appreciation for the teacher characters as an adult. I can think of times when I’ve been the Yukari in a situation, whether that means being overbearing and inconsiderate when I think I’m being funny or whether it means or digging through a messy desk swearing that I know exactly where something is before creating a landslide. And I can think of times when I’ve been the Nyamo accidentally antagonizing the Yukari by trying to be helpful. I even appreciate Kimura, not because I think he’s relatable or a good guy, but because he’s distressingly realistic. His creepiness comes at the same time as genuine competence and, as far as we are aware, a normal and functional home life. It is widely-acknowledged yet never stopped by the administration, even though it ranges from unprofessional obnoxiousness to genuinely alarming sexual harassment. Kimura is unfortunately plausible and all-around frustratingly topical.

Revisiting these characters, I’ve also realized something about myself. When I first watched this show (and read the manga), I got a serious crush on Osaka. She would go solidly in the “endearingly pathetic” column if I were to evaluate her that way, and she also reminded me at the time of a few different confidently strange and spacy people I went to high school with. And then, getting older, I realized… She’s endlessly distractible by trivial things. She asks weird hypotheticals and follows odd tangents to other topics. She often misunderstands people. She’s hopelessly unathletic and clumsy. Oh no. I'm the Osaka of my circle of friends. So, uh, that’s a thing that happened, and I have no idea what to make of it.

Azumanga is relaxed, wholesome, and hilarious, and its characters and major events are believable even when highly stylized for comedic effect. When it's not in hyper-simple comedy mode, the art can be downright beautiful. It’s clearly an artifact of its time given, for example, the lack of cell phones (even basic ones) and persistence of film cameras, but that kind of aging happens to any show. The situations are still relatable despite not being topical, which makes me think — or at least hope — that this can last well into the future as something new audiences find worth watching.

—–

W/A/S Scores: 8 / 3? / 3

Weeb: There are lots of little things that will seem odd if you go in believing that Japanese school schedules and activities are the same as American ones, but anime is so saturated with high school comedies nowadays that it is much less weeb now than it was then to expect that background knowledge. Many non-school things like flower-gazing or the fact that seasonal fairs in Japan have different activities and expected clothing than in American ones will seem distinctly foreign but understandable to a naive audience, while a few episodes might need some looking up to “get” because they expect audience familiarity with things still obscure to most Western audiences, like lucky dreams in the New Year’s episode or the yōkai in the second culture festival episode. Mostly, familiarity with the conventions of other anime or of Japanese culture will enhance enjoyment but aren’t strictly required to enjoy it. The art style sometimes shifts for specific gags to a particular style of minimal-movement chibi characters on very simple backgrounds which is more at home in the 4-panel comic world in which Azumanga originated (and in pre-moe-era comedy anime, or at least the few I've seen) than in other manga formats or newer anime, creating an additional small hurdle even for those with different Japanese media exposure.

The show runs into more of a barrier with hard-to-translate jokes than anything else, leaving the viewer the choice between replacement jokes with similar general ideas in the dub vs. the occasional feeling that there should be a joke but you’re not quite getting it in the sub. One particular joke that they made no attempt to adapt ended up being utter nonsense in both the sub and dub unless you get that "Mr. Yukichi" refers to 19th Century Westernization advocate Fukuzawa Yukichi, who is on the ¥10,000 bill, and I gave the show an entire extra point on the Weeb scale just because I had to look that up.

Ass: Unless you’re Mr. Kimura, probably no “ass” score at all as far as sexualizing the characters, but there is the occasional sexual joke or implication. Even the obligatory beach episodes aren’t fanservicey in the way or to the degree that a contemporary moe high school show often is. Probably the single most sexual-looking thing is characters holding their skirts down in the intro, which is tame by comparison to anything released in the last decade. Kimura, however, does make the show unsuitable for audiences… well… younger than the show’s main cast, probably.

Shit (writing): I have very little problem with the bulk of the content. I think the show works and the characters are relatable and delightful. But I do have some gripes about translation, mostly in the dub. Although I still maintain the dub is unusually good in acting and synchronization, they do take more liberties than I’d like with changing jokes, and the dub and sub both lose some subtlety in how characters address each other, as mentioned before.

On top of that, there are some odd localization choices in the dub. For example, the way Yukari, their English teacher in the original Japanese, is not portrayed as teaching a foreign language at all in the dub, while still making a big deal of her foreign language skills outside of class, or how characters repeatedly say “taiyaki pastry” in the dub instead of just establishing once for the English-speaking audience that taiyaki is the name of a specific style of pastry and using the name “taiyaki” from then on. Also, I know this is very small and specific, but I noticed a place in ep. 17 where they inserted a strained pun in the dub where there was intentional awkward silence in the sub, so that’s just… weird.

Shit (other): The animation is often sparse, and although this is usually fine, it does sometimes come off as cheap. The biggest problem visually is that the DVDs I’m watching have noticeable and pretty frequent combing, which I was able to reduce but not eliminate by fiddling with video player settings. On the other hand, kudos to the director for hitting a sweet spot on shots that are lingered on or actions that are repeated for “too long” (e.g., Nyamo demonstrating chopstick use, or any of the scenes of Chiyo and Osaka failing at sports, or Osaka trying to wake up Yukari) because they end up hilarious when they could have been tedious.

Oh, and I love the soundtrack. Some people may also find the frequent use of recorders annoying, but those people are (1) wrong and (2) not writing this blog. The soundtrack is appropriately lighthearted and/or relaxing. The opening theme “Soramimi Cake” is catchy and accompanied by an opening credits sequence that decently shows who the main characters are. But “Raspberry Heaven”, the ending theme… ah… the sequence accompanying it is a beautiful dream and the music is movingly bittersweet for reasons I lack the music theory background to articulate. Like, this is a really weird example, but it conveys my feelings: have you seen Soylent Green? You know the scene where Sol is listening to a medley of classical music while he’s being euthanized? If the last thing I ever heard were “Raspberry Heaven”, I would die totally content.

Content Warning: Kimura.

—–

Stray observations:

- I think Kaorin may have been the first unambiguously gay character I saw in any anime. Sailor Moon or Cardcaptor Sakura would’ve beaten Azumanga to the punch with representation, but I grew up on the butchered-for-pearl-clutching-audiences versions of those shows.

- Kimura has, incidentally, produced one piece of lasting weeb culture. While trying to save his illustration for a proposed magical girl cheerleading outfit, he drops a picture of a woman. Tomo picks it up and wonders out loud who it is. Kimura responds, in heavily-accented English, “my waifu”. So… yup. We have him to thank for the whole waifu/hasubando phenomenon. Or, well, the terminology, since attraction to fictional characters is probably a phenomenon as old as fiction itself.

- More of a fun fact than a stray observation, Kuricorder Orchestra, who collaborated with Oranges & Lemons on the Azumanga soundtrack, recorded two Yotsuba-inspired concept albums, which are also adorable. They’re hard to come by in official copies, but I can’t help but notice that nobody seems to be stopping anyone from uploading them to YouTube...

- The background music in the cheerleading scene in ep. 6 is the “Grandpa Polka”, a.k.a. “The Clarinet Polka”, which fans of various other weird geeky media may recognize as the melody for the Candy Mountain song in “Charlie the Unicorn” and/or as the song between “Love Shack” and “Pump Up the Jam” in Weird Al’s medley “Polka Your Eyes Out”.

- My junior high, oddly, did have sports festivals somewhat like those depicted in anime, but I don’t hear much about other American schools doing similar things.

#weeaboo trash #retrospective review #anime review #azumanga daioh #this post is way too long

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nahasenterprise · 2 years ago

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Best windows media player with chromecast support

#Best windows media player with chromecast support how to

#Best windows media player with chromecast support full

#Best windows media player with chromecast support android

#Best windows media player with chromecast support Pc

#Best windows media player with chromecast support tv

If you have some media files that can't be streamed to Chromecast with VLC, try to convert the format to Chromecast supported format. All the methods mentioned above can help you continue your important work and simultaneously cast the files without trouble.

#Best windows media player with chromecast support Pc

if you are already using the Chromecast, your content will replace what’s on your TV.Īs the development of VLC Media Player, users can now, directly cast their video files from VLC rather than screening the whole view of PC or Mac.

Choose the Chromecast device where you want to watch the content.

At the top right, click "More"and choose "Cast".

#Best windows media player with chromecast support tv

In this case, you can use Google Chrome as an alternative way to cast your PC screen to your TV directly instead of VLC. If you have followed every step mentioned above but still face some problems and couldn’t cast your content on the screen. # Any Alternative Ways for VLC Cast to Chromecast? But now it's not free, you need to pay $19 to get it. Just drag-and-drop or add your videos, choose the right Chromecast, and click play. Or you can turn to The VideoLan Forums to find more answers.Īs for me, I like Airflow which is an app on Mac that can help you stream videos to Chromecast. Maybe you can get more information from there. On Reddit, some users discuss the problem they meet when cast local video to Chromecast via VLC. # why is VLC not casting to Chromecast on Mac? The Version 3.1.0 of VLC for iOS also came with a few of new features including the Chromecast support. The VLC Chromecast Support for iOS was first added in the version 3.1.0. The VLC player finally gives the iOS users the ability to stream content to their Chromecast. You are done! FAQS about Streaming VLC to Chromecast # Dose VLC Support iOS to Stream on Chromecast？

#Best windows media player with chromecast support full

Go back to VLC Player and full screen the video that you are playing. Follow the on-screen instructions to cast your device's screen to your Chromecast. From there just select the "CAST SCREEN" option. Open the Chromecast app you downloaded and tap on the menu button. Open VLC Player and start the file you want to cast. Now connect the Chromecast dongle to your TV and pair it with Chromecast app.

#Best windows media player with chromecast support android

Install the latest Chromecast app on your Android device. Below is the complete procedure for doing this. You can easily stream any video from VLC to Chromecast from Android device.

#Best windows media player with chromecast support how to

Here, we are going tell you how to stream from VLC player to Chromecast on your Android phone. You can use the controls in the VLC window to control the playback. The video file should play in your Chromecast connected TV. You need to select the "Accept permanently" Option. When you try to play the video, there will be an "Insecure site" prompt. Now open the video you want to stream to Chromecast on VLC player. When you find the Chromecast option on the submenu items of the Render option, just click it. It will start scanning the available devices. Now in the VLC player, go to the top bar menu items and click on the "Video>Renderer> Scan" option. Connect the Chromecast device to your TV properly. Use VLC to Cast Video from Windows to ChromecastĪfter downloading VLC Media Player 3.0 on your computer, follow the steps below to cast videos from VLC to Chromecast on Windows. Stay as close as possible to the Wi-Fi router for no interruptions during the cast session. Note: If you do not see Chromecast in your list of available devices, check that your computer and your Chromecast are on the same Wi-Fi network. Select " Renderer” option and you will find your Chromecast device name. Click " Playback "button in the upper menu bar Instead of that, you have to find the " option" from the settings. Unlike other Chromecast supported apps, you can't see a "cast" icon on the VLC media player on Mac. If you don't have it on your Mac, just download the latest version of VLC from its official website. To cast, you need to get the version 3.0 or later of VLC. VLC Chromecast Mac - Stream Video to Chromecast on Mac How to Stream VLC to Chromecast on Android DeviceĤ. How to Stream VLC to Chromecast from Windowsģ.

#Best windows media player with chromecast support

0 notes

tonkitour · 2 years ago

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Osd notetaker

#Osd notetaker how to#

#Osd notetaker software#

They also should minimize the need for user interaction if the user rearranges folders. We just had a somewhat interesting discussion over on the the novo libera forum about hyperlinks. Virtual nodes come close to this idea in Keynote, but filterable/ folderable nodes/tabs really are useful here. The importance with the relation is that I dont want to have to type (or copy/paste) the same data two or three times. It should also be easy to retrieve it and relate it to other things. It should be easy to shove data into the system. The hardest part would be to get a sophisticated enough backend with an easy and intuitive frontend. People are familiar with trees and document formatting. I imagine these types of programs as vast data storage devices with a nice front end so the user can think of things in terms he/she is used to. As you and rjbull mentioned, look at the discussions involving keynote 2. At some point the number of import/export routines becomes too big! I dont think it's a horrible idea, but if you want to take this genre on, it's going to mean a LOT of work. There are quite a few of these on the market and several more already in development. rjbull: I think (heh heh, cant get away from individual preferences in this genre!) that the ideal app would combine the ability to quickly take notes with the ability to go back and assign them a structure. Sorry, I cant resist this discussion! A couple of things I've thought about: Heck, if it was just me, I can't even say which program is the best for me! There's no way we can collectively pick one program as the ultimate.

#Osd notetaker software#

I think the review will ultimately have to be such that we subcategorize the software out there and say, "Well, if is what you're trying to do, then is the best software for it." So, different programs can be categorized as the "best" depending on what specific task is trying to be accomplished. Everyone has different needs for this type of software. In my opinion, it would be absoutely impossible to do a traditional review where we'd pick a couple of programs as the "best in this category. I know a lot of us would like to see a good review of this genre done here at DC, and we all know how hard that would be to accomplish, so maybe this thread could be a place where ideas can be collected. Anything you want to say, wishlist of features, what you like about existing programs, what you'd like the ideal program to do. To help us track our recruitment effort, please indicate in your cover//motivation letter where (jobsinteaching.ca) you saw this job posting.I don't know if this is a good idea, but I wanted to start a thread where we can all just brainstorm about note-taking software. Persons with disabilities who anticipate needing accommodations for any part of the application process may contact, in confidence, McGill implements an employment equity program and encourages members of designated groups to self-identify. We welcome applications from racialized persons/visible minorities, women, Indigenous persons, persons with disabilities, ethnic minorities, and persons of minority sexual orientations and gender identities, as well as from all qualified candidates with the skills and knowledge to productively engage with diverse communities. McGill University hires on the basis of merit and is strongly committed to equity and diversity within its community. Note takers must submit a sample of their notes to the OSD before being hired. The note taker must attend all classes or find a substitute for classes missed, and must deliver notes weekly. Note takers are hired for students eligible for paid note-taking services through select subsidy partners, including students with major functional disabilities. The note taker makes a copy (hard or electronic) of those notes, and conveys them weekly to the OSD student, following OSD procedures. Login to your McGill Workday account and apply to this posting using the Find Jobs report (type Find Jobs in the search bar).ĭuties: to take comprehensive and complete lecture notes at every class for the duration of the term, by hand or on a lap top computer. If you are an active McGill employee (ie: currently in an active contract or position at McGill University), do not apply through this Career Site.

#Osd notetaker how to#

Please refer to the How to Apply for a Job (for External Candidates) job aid for instructions on how to apply.

#Osd notetaker

0 notes

theuniverseisher · 6 years ago

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Hostage Negotiation

In which Tumblr absolutely dunks on the Discord formatting, starring:

@sunlight-magnificence @fouramour @sixpinsdie @itsjacktheknife @lassofthelaw @cautionarylaw @fastestshadeofgreen @undertakinggraveshift @dilldaydreamer @aceoflaw

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:04 PM

08: @Law

https://theuniverseisher.tumblr.com/post/178198725232/pvt-law

08: ;) ((for those who can't get on tumblr just now))

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:08 PM

WK: ....Release her. NOW!

Percy (06/💀)Today at 10:09 PM

She already had her relea--))

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:09 PM

((ADSFGH))

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:09 PM

((don t do th i s

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:10 PM

08: ;) You know my demands.

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:14 PM

WK: You want me to beg, you FILTHY URCHIN?! Please, come here so I can hear your carapace CRACK under my foot.

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:15 PM

08: Would somebody please inform His Royal Marshmellow why, precisely, that's ill-advised?

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:17 PM

WK: No, you won't die. I shall just remove every joint from it's socket until you're a shell with a still-beating heart. You will not GET to die.

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:18 PM

08: Still not a good idea, cupcake!

Resh (NB)Today at 10:19 PM

NB: Sir! Wait! Wait, she’s, well apparently she’s got the universe inside her! If you kill her, or damage her, maybe, reality itself may break. If the universe dies, we, goddamnit, we all die.

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:22 PM

WK: You're with the Felt then? I will end each and every one of them unless you return here with my wife, NOW.

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:23 PM

08: Yawn! 08: Really, you're cute. Thinking that bothers me. 08: Is that all you've got? You must really not care about your wife. 08: My husband would have bent over backwards to get me back. ;)

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:25 PM

WK: How DARE you imply that I do not care. WK: Is that what you want? Wherever you are, bring me there.

Resh (NB)Today at 10:26 PM

NB: Sir!? What the hell are you thinking we need to plan this!

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:26 PM

08: No. 08: I want you to beg. 08: Before all your people. I want them to see you on your knees. 08: Show me how much you want her back, Wilhelm.

ave (PS/Sol)Today at 10:28 PM

PS: Snowman.

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:29 PM

08: :)

Percy (06/💀)Today at 10:31 PM

06: Hey 06: I'm innocent. 06: Why are we threatening my life, I'm not involved in this. You should consider anger therapy. 06: Your wife gets kidnapped one time and suddenly it's an everyone problem.

Bunny (SS)Today at 10:31 PM

SS: oh there you are SS: left me on read you bitch SS: ....but this is pretty great not gonna lie

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:32 PM

08: 💋

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:33 PM

WK: >You kneel where you stand, in the middle of the street in the city. Where everyone can feel your unbridled rage around you at the epicenter. You don't know how or if she could possibly see you, but you're kneeling now WK: PLEASE.(edited)

Percy (06/💀)Today at 10:34 PM

06: Haha.

Bunny (SS)Today at 10:34 PM

SS: wow

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:34 PM

08: Someone get there and Skype me.

pixel~! (04/Dualscar)Today at 10:34 PM

04: on it.

Percy (06/💀)Today at 10:34 PM

06: Bitch we use discord now get with the times ))

pixel~! (04/Dualscar)Today at 10:34 PM

(( IT IS, IN HINDSIGHT, A HILARIOUS TIME JOKE TBH

Bunny (SS)Today at 10:34 PM

SS: cant wait to see this shit in the papers

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:35 PM

((LMFAO))

pixel~! (04/Dualscar)Today at 10:35 PM

04: is it just gonna be really obvious where he is, or should i close my eyes and assume i'll end up there.

Bunny (SS)Today at 10:35 PM

((pesterchum or bust))

fuck this shit (01/AR)Today at 10:35 PM

uninstall AOL messenger u cuck))

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:36 PM

08: Probably obvious! A little limited at the moment myself. FINE AIM ME YOU FUCKS))

fuck this shit (01/AR)Today at 10:37 PM

01: yo 01: snow 01: ill pay you for pics

pixel~! (04/Dualscar)Today at 10:38 PM

> Clover manages to find the king in record time, as he do. > There's now a livestream in-chat.

Bunny (SS)Today at 10:39 PM

SS: ha!

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:39 PM

08: 3 favors for a set of 5. 5 for 10. 08: Ohh, this is good. 08: Now, see? That wasn't so hard.

fuck this shit (01/AR)Today at 10:40 PM

01: mmmmm 01: yo WK how much you think snuff of your wife is worth just wondering

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:41 PM

08: I also have a cashapp.

Bunny (SS)Today at 10:41 PM

SS: id pay for it

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:41 PM

WK: Don't! Please.

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:44 PM

08: Now, see, this is fun! 08: On the one hand, there's the good, sweet husband and law enforcement, who surely wouldn't want queenly blood on their hands--given how Beloved she is to the ruling planet--no matter whether they personally care for her or not. 08: On the other, snuff of a Queen is once in a lifetime. 08: Race to see who has the better offer.

fuck this shit (01/AR)Today at 10:44 PM

01: definitely rather pay cash i dont trust your uh 01: creativity 01: on favors and shit

Bunny (SS)Today at 10:45 PM

SS: really snow? youre thinkin of leaving her alive?

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:45 PM

08: I'm all ears! Auction starts now. 08: 💋

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:46 PM

WK: Anything you want. Anything. WK: I will do whatever you ask.

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:46 PM

08: Anything is dangerous, sweet Marshmallow. 08: Are you absolutely certain of that?

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:47 PM

WK: If you return her, yes.

pixel~! (04/Dualscar)Today at 10:47 PM

04: ooooh.

Bunny (SS)Today at 10:47 PM

SS: didnt she take everything from you SS: what fun is it to let her go now that youve got her SS: you should do to her what she wasnt able to do to you SS: cull that bitch SS: and her husband too

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:48 PM

WK: I swear on my life that I will do whatever you ask so long as you return her. Please.

fuck this shit (01/AR)Today at 10:48 PM

AR: you should also refrain from bribery. and threats. and kidnapping. AR: on a public forum.

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:48 PM

08: Oh, darling, sweet Regulator. 08: Eat me. 08: Now then!

Bunny (SS)Today at 10:48 PM

SS: haha

fuck this shit (01/AR)Today at 10:49 PM

cop dad banging pots and pans SCATTER))

Bunny (SS)Today at 10:49 PM

SS: he said you could return her so SS: just return her body SS: everyone wins

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:50 PM

WK: ALIVE.

Bunny (SS)Today at 10:50 PM

SS: aw see now youre asking for a lot

pixel~! (04/Dualscar)Today at 10:51 PM

(( doin this for quick not-worth-a-dm-channel exchanges )) [04->08: i dunno, 'on death's edge' is still alive. :P]

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:51 PM

[08->04: ;)] [08->01: You'll get your photos. $Sn0wbitch send the cash.]

Percy (06/💀)Today at 10:53 PM

Death: Perhaps not my place, being human, but... there has already been one war between Derse and Prospit. Wouldn't murdering her constitute a second war, and are we all willing to cause a second war over this? I feel you have already... pushed good reason for such.

fuck this shit (01/AR)Today at 10:53 PM

[01->08: god bless you ya crazy c*nt.] [-Transfers 4k, because this is an investment mon dude.-]

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:54 PM

WK: Do you accept my offer?

Bunny (SS)Today at 10:54 PM

SS: freedom doesnt come cheap SS: kill the tyrants

pixel~! (04/Dualscar)Today at 10:55 PM

[04->08: you deserve more than just 'please', in my opinion!]

fuck this shit (01/AR)Today at 10:55 PM

[AR may or may not have just....closed the chat. T-minus 45 minutes for guilt and doing the right thing but I'm going to have a GRAND forty five minutes thank YOU.]

pixel~! (04/Dualscar)Today at 10:55 PM

[45 minutes is a long time to allow murder]

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:57 PM

[08->01: I'll send them once we're done here.] 08: Here's what I'm thinking, Wilhelm. 08: Immunity for this little debacle. No arrests, no charges--I walk out of this scot-free, as do my fine band of merry gentleman. No legal retaliation. 08: And I will have my ring back. 08: How's that sounding so far?

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:57 PM

WK: Done.

fuck this shit (01/AR)Today at 10:57 PM

[AR awknowleges the narrator's point with a steven universe struggling not to crack gif. Time is adjusted accordingly.]

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 10:58 PM

08: Ho. 08: Also this story is going to the press as we've written it, and none of your heroic-twist style narratives. 08: For that little extra salt in the wound.

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 10:59 PM

WK: I don't care. Return her immidiately, or bring me there.

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 11:02 PM

08: No, I won't be bringing you here. 08: And I will return her, when I am good and ready. 08: The drop off with be in front of the Regalia Hotel, two hours from now. 08: There will be no police presence. 08: Only you, and Mister Four of my outfit. 08: Any breech of this contract, and I'll slit her throat before you even get a shot off. 08: Are we perfectly clear on that?

pixel~! (04/Dualscar)Today at 11:03 PM

04: 🕓🕗✌💋

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 11:03 PM

WK: Yes. WK: Is everyone clear? Do. Not. Follow. Me.

Percy (06/💀)Today at 11:05 PM

06: That was easy.

pixel~! (04/Dualscar)Today at 11:05 PM

04: requesting permission to end stream, boss?

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 11:05 PM

08: Permission granted. 08: Be sure to save that.

pixel~! (04/Dualscar)Today at 11:06 PM

04: wouldn't dream of otherwise.-- The video stream cuts off. --

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 11:07 PM

08: A pleasure doing business with you, as always, Wilhelm!

pixel~! (04/Dualscar)Today at 11:07 PM

04: ✨

Imagine Dragons (09/WK)Today at 11:07 PM

WK:....

Mabs (PI/02)Today at 11:07 PM

PI: -Pembrooke Ingleton has signed off-

Carro (DD/08/WQ)Today at 11:07 PM

08: Oh! Yes, Clover,you're quite righht. 08: ✨

#ic #rp thread #Hostage Negotiation

7 notes · View notes

lahuertaflower · 6 years ago

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The Shard: Part 5

[[Authors Note: Okay, so this is much later than I wanted to get this posted, but every time I would sit to finish the chapter I would have a bunch of other things show up! It is done! In fact, I have two parts done so the wait will be much shorter, All rights of the characters are reserved to Pixelberry, I am just using them to continue to tell their story having been inspired by what was already told.

Book: Endless Summer/Hero

Tagging: @princesstopgun @endlesshero1122 @xo-endlessmayhem-xo @liam-rhys @emma-writes-stuff I am so happy you have all wanted to continue on reading this! I so appreciate it <3 As always, if you want to be tagged in the next part, please let me know!! ]]

The light began to filter in, causing Kaity’s face to scrunch up, wanting to keep it out and enjoy the darkness for a moment longer. Eyelids fluttering open, the hazy appearance of Jake standing above her, leaning down and smiling widely caused her heart to beat that little bit faster. Had the time on the beach just been some awful dream and now she was waking to this beautiful man she got to call her husband?

“Jake, I had the most awful dream…” Kaity hummed out, a complacent smirk dangling on her lips as she closed her eyes once more, opening fully and being immediately dissatisfied with what she saw.

No longer was Jake leaning down to her, instead the celestial being who had pulled her from the crystalline casing was watching. Kaity’s heart began to race,it sounding like a stampede of horses hooves crashing to the ground as she pushed her body backwards onto the rock formations. Breathing continued to hitch in her throat when finally a mournful cry escaped, hands reaching upwards and clutching in front of her chest. Even after having been placed in a forced sleep for five years, that first breath was nothing compared to this.

It was like each time the air would start to cascade into her lungs they would block it off, hyperventilation beginning to set in as she felt herself fall apart. The warmth of tears filing down her cheeks almost made Kaity feel sick to her stomach. The stress was causing knots to twist and turn her insides as she heaved for some sort of relief. Then her brain played through an image of Jake and the realization broke her to her core; he was hurting too now, more than before.

The starry form took a step forwards, stretching its hand out to try and offer some sort of comfort but Kaity swatted it away as if it was a deadly animal. She trembled, clutching her knees to her chest, sinking into a fetal position. The thought of Jake and herself holding each other, kissing, just thriving off of their love for that time was causing a tinge of anger to start to boil into the sadness. How could this be okay? Surely Vaanu and its people understood love and how wrong it was to keep them apart.

Once again the see-through hand moved itself closer, causing Kaity to wrap her hand around it and push it away. “Leave me alone!” Her shrill voice screamed, echoing through the surrounding caverns.

“Don’t you get it? You have ripped apart the one person who I love more than anything in this universe by not letting us be together after all this time! If you weren’t going to let us finally be with each other then why the hell did you even wake me up? You could have just left well enough alone and now Jake is on Earth hurting all over because you all think that because you are almighty time and space beings you get to ruin whatever doesn’t fit into the game you are playing.” Kaity’s voice cracked as she sat herself up more straight, glaring, “I am not your puppet and my husbands heart isn’t some play toy that you screw around with when you’re bored!”

There was no emotion radiating from this thing, the stars that trickled through it slowly spinning like the galaxy that surrounded them on this planet.

“I have awoken you because the ones who you cherish have now been put into grave danger. You as The Endless, as The Shard are someone who, although Vaanu would not care to admit, will be needed in this fight. Shall you choose not to, it shall mean demise for all who inhabit the planet Earth.”

Kaity felt her mouth dry out, making it hard to retort to this new revelation. Showing vulnerability for a split second, she shook it away and continued to be stern, cold in her facial attributes as her mouth pushed to a straight line. “You expect me to believe that? That I should be kissing the ground you walk on because you freed me and you need me? I don’t know if it is because all of you things have no face, but you really suck at lying even without one. Next you are going to tell me there are superheros flying around fighting evil.”

“Serilda.”

The voice that sounded was short, but you could sense the pure rage flood the area they sat. A ethereal being that was familiar jutted down the rocky terrain, meeting where they were. It’s head moved from Kaity to the other, deep crimson splitting through the once tender galaxy that omitted from it’s stomach. The different shades of red made it look like a firing volcano, meteorites spiking through the stars.

“What have you done? Are you nothing but a fool? You have awoken The Shard!”

This was most definitely Vaanu, the voice familiar to Kaity’s ears as she watched the interaction at hand. With the distraction, maybe she could find a way off of this Prism Planet and find Jake once and for all.

“Vaanu, I understand your anger but surely you know deep down that this spike in the energy field is being brought on by a power far stronger than we can handle. The Star Child and her now gifted friends will not be able to overcome if we do not give them every available resource we can.”

Serilda continued to remain calm, which almost seemed to make Vaanu more angry. The conversation was causing some mumblings among the other entities that were gathered around, sounding taken back by the information being presented. Vaanu and Serilda were now in close proximity, both believing they are in the right.

“Serilda this was never to be a public forum of conversation. You are in your position for many reasons however you clearly do not have the capabilities to fathom being sworn to secrecy.”

If there was a moment to run, it would be now and Kaity was not going to pass up the chance to escape her imprisonment. While initially agreeing to go with Vaanu was what she had wanted, seeing how Jake was living and the pure sadness was too much. This choice was made to make things better, but it was clear when they weren’t together that he was barely holding it together. She was no longer going to put him through it. Glancing behind her, she saw the perfect opening where there was a path through a crystal cave and none of the beings were even close enough to play defense.

Shifting her body away from being against the rock she had been using for stability, Kaity’s eyes shifted from side to side. She cinched herself closer to the entrance of the cave, biting down hard on her lip and causing it to bulge out slightly and turn red from the pressure. Allowing the hoods of her eyelids to cover over her eyes, the girl knew that in order for this to work, she needed to picture the goal. Sure enough, every single detail of Jake flooded in like an overflowing river. One thing that was going to be the driving force? Being able to see that perfect damn smile again.

With that, Kaity took to her feet and after slinking a further in, she began to run as if her life depended on it.

13 notes · View notes

hoergen · 4 years ago

Text

♲ Friendica News ([email protected])2020-09-20 19:40:38:

Friendica 2020.09 Released

We are happy to announce the availability of Friendica Red Hot Poker 2020.09, wrapping up the work over the summer. It bundles some exciting new features and enhancements with numerous fixes along the way. This release is composed of 230 pull requests to the development branch, that close 65 numbered tickets and enhanced several aspects of Friendica and the communication with other projects within the Fediverse. For a full reference, please have a look at the CHANGELOG file, some important things are worth highlighting them here:

The speed of the full text search was enhanced significantly. If you had disabled it before, please check it out now and let us know if it works now for you as we are considering to remove the option to disable it in a future release.

The themes got some updates. Among other things the way how a re-share is displayed. If you like the old display style better you’ll find an option in the user settings to switch back.

Some time ago we did a user voting about which additional features should be handled in a unified way on all Friendica instances. The last of these items are not reworked. One of these is, that all public calendar entries are now available as iCAL file from your profile.

Friendica is now supporting Activity Pub relay server. For more information please have a look at this forum thread

Additionally this release contains a fix for a problem that Roger Meyer discovered in the processing of Activity Pub messages. We encurage all Friendica admins to update their nodes to the 2020.09 release to prevent problems arising from this. Thanks to Roger to report the issue! If you are using PHP version 7.0 there is currently a problem with one of the dependencies of Friendica. Please see this forum thread for more information.

A wordcloud generated from the titles fo the commit messages merged during the development cycle of Friendica 2020.09

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions

If you are updating from an older version than the 2020.03 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version.

Pre-Update Procedures

Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently. We had no problems reported during the upgrade process from 2020.07 to the 2020.09 release candidate, so hopefully you will have a smooth transition. Please make sure to use Barracuda as MySQL DB file format for your Friendica database. Change your database settings before you proceed with the Friendica update. This change will take some time depending on the size of your database.

Using Git

Important: We are removing the master branch and are using the stable branch instead. Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well. cd friendica git fetch git checkout BRANCH bin/composer.phar install --no-dev cd addon git fetch git checkout BRANCH Where BRANCH is either the new stable branch or the develop branch, depending which version of Friendica you want to use. The old master branch will not receive any updates and will be removed soon. Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files

If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive (friendica-full-2020.09.tar.gz and friendica-addons 2020.09.tar.gz) and unpack it on your local computer. As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica. The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2020.09 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks

The database update should be applied automatically, but maybe it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script bin/console dbstructure update from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below. Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database.

Known Issues

If you are using lighttpd to serve your Friendica node the boolean AND operator for the full text search seems not to be working at the moment.

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum. Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places. Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible and have fun!

https://friendi.ca/2020/09/20/friendica-2020-09-released/

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briteboy · 7 years ago

Photo

stealing @bratsims format because i need a less ugly way to mass answer your messages which will hopefully motivate me to stay on top of this! at least i can say i tried

so if you sent me an anon message in the past...idk MONTH (i’m bad i know) it might be here. (older ones are near the bottom) if not, check my faq because it’s probably answered there. (and if you’re the person/people who sent the twin flame & 7th house asks, i plan to answer those separately because i have a LOT to say. get ready)

game of thrones, nuclear war, real life santis, lou theories, i’m evil, HERE WE GO!! i literally had to cut it off at the last one because it was just too much for now. i’ll try to answer some more later ok

we’re starting off on a great note

Anonymous said: gaddamn rooney's tiddies lookin' hella ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

STOP!!!!!!!!!!! THAT’S MY CHILD soaidfnjds she’s supposed to have like b/c cups (goals for me tbh, the big boob life is not fun) and sims 4 pregnancies just fuckin make them...NYOOM i’m mad you can’t edit sims’ bodies during pregnancy even with cas.fulleditmode on -___- so i let her live with her giant preggo tiddies for now

Ngl I want a kiss between Santi and Gianni (I'm sorry I'm literally trash)

then i’m here to satisfy your desires: they do kiss periodically because gianni is one of those people who’s like “why shouldn’t you kiss your friends?” free love 4 everyone

IM SCREAING AT UR YOUTUBE CHANNEL OK!!!! I LOVEEE IT, WOW

DON’T IT’S UGLY EXCEPT FOR LIKE TWO VIDEOS

hey this is kinda random but i thought joe seaward from glass animals looked kinda like santi? he has quite a weird face too lmao

oMG i actually love that, i know what you mean. that dude reminds me of a bull terrier lmao i actually saw glass animals like two weeks ago!! i didn’t really get a good look at the drummer but now i wish i did. missed connection

i just finished reading santi's story and ugh it almost had me in tears! beautiful, your story telling skills and editing skills are perfection!

ahhhhsdkgkds thank you so much ;____; that means the world to me <333

Unpopular opinion: im so done with game of thrones tbh. It's not even good anymore :/ I liked the first season but since then i've skipped through episodes because they are just sooo fucking boring and dragged out!

see like the first three seasons were pretty good because they stayed true to the books. (actually that’s a lie, littlefinger’s chaos speech in the s3 finale was real fuckin bad because guess what: it was original material LMAO) the fourth season was where it started to get messy and then the fifth season was a fucking shitshow because they completely IGNORED the fourth book and cherrypicked all the “good” parts out of it (read: the most action-y parts, while ignoring all the most important pieces of character development) and they botched the dorne storyline, oh and who could forget the iconic moment of throwing in a rape (THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN IN THE BOOKS) just for fun :) love it! but anyway if you think the show is boring i probably wouldn’t recommend the books, they’re even slower getting through them lmao. but it’s worth it in my opinion. there’s so much they don’t include in the show and it makes me Angery

Okay, game of thrones fan here, I haven't read the books (yet at least, I bought book 1) but I feel like dany is going to practically turn into her father, this season she is already showing traits like his.......

OH YEAH i definitely feel like they’re moving in that direction in the process of revealing jon as the “true” king of westeros and it’s so bad lmfao. the thing is, like...cersei is already mad king 2.0? why do we need another one?????? the entire point of dany’s arc is that she’s constantly trying to deviate AWAY from the way her father ruled, demonstrated by the fact that she freed the slaves (whereas all the targaryens before were slave owners), the fact that she’s not perpetuating the whole incest thing (LMAO GUESS AGAIN BECAUSE JONERYS HAS TO HAPPEN FOR SOME FCKING REASON), the fact that she has dragons which haven’t existed in how many years...like, if she ever ends up being like her father in the books, it’s NOT gonna fucking happen like this. but i don’t think she will anyway, george rr martin has been pretty clear about her trajectory thus far. anyway this show is so ugly, next question

rooney's eye are so BIG

just like her tiddies lmao i kno sometimes i forget how big they are and then she does one of those silly endearing animations and i’m like o ;-; hello big dumb baby cow eyes

Cows? Are you secretly Matthew Daddario?

WHO i had to google him lmao i was about to say “oh the teen wolf guy” but jk @ myself u idiot it’s shadowhunters damn i literally googled “matthew daddario cows” and

tru

I love how fragile Lou looks like but the truth is that she is strong af and you can't play with her bruh

SHE IS ;-; and that’s a huge theme in her story, i’m excited <3

ima leave ur blog and come bk and spam you so you will finally notice me

im part of this online forum of girls that talks about our period and weather or not one of us might be pregnant and once this girl posted saying that her husband invited his mom without telling her to thier honeymoon and she didnt find out until they arrived at the hotel and she was already there. the most recent part reminded me of it. but long story short, her dad moved all her stuff out of his house and her friend came to pick her up and they got a divorce.

OISOJDFAKNLJSD WHAT!!! i’m guessing you sent this because of that thing i said about the reddit post lmfaooo imagine your mom on your honeymoon. why. that’s soooooooooo good 4 her u know. u don’t need to be married to his mom as well

thanks 4 trusting my love santi. he's beautiful

thank u he thinks ur beautiful too 💘

do you have any tips for runing game in good quality and fast?

euhhhhh the only tips i have for you are to merge your cc, close all other programs while you play your game, maybe invest in a cooling pad uhhhhhh yeah idk any other tips you can probably find on google

You told that thing about unfollowing people and I thought you unfollowed me, but then I checked and you didn't and I'm crying omg

lmao omg ;-; i literally cut my following list in half, it was so chaotic and it was making me anxious. so if ever unfollow any of you please don’t take it personally (i know it’s a stupid thing to say, and it’s a lot easier said than done) it’s just my brain explodes when there’s too much going on at once and some content blends into others, i’m trying to only follow people who i’m genuinely interested in enough to keep up with their posts from now on

I haven't been able to sleep in over 72 hours thanks to the constant fear over the looming world war. I'm fine. Completely fine

Oh shit, have you noticed that the media has been putting out more 'what to do during a nuclear attack' kinda articles? This world is slowly going to shit, for real. I'm not even near any of the danger really, but it still absolutely terrifies me to see all of that bc it could very well go wrong and hit my place as well yknow? I have no idea why i send this to you but you seem chill and calm so thanks for reading my freakout askfjsls

YEP it’s pretty terrifying. but at the same time don’t let fear overwhelm you, fearmongering is an ugly, ugly thing and you don’t want to live your life constantly worrying. so just prepare yourself for what might come, but at the same time, just spend as much time with your loved ones as you can, do all the things you’ve ever wanted to do, and then if it doesn’t turn out as bad as we thought it would, you *tim mcgraw voice* lived like u were dyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyin’

@ Jesus anon: I really don't think it's the right time to complain about "using the lord name in vain" when there are people terrified of leaving their homes bc they are afraid to get killed (aka that poor, poor Jewish anon in charlottesville)

yeah idk like i want to respect everyone but it seemed to be in poor taste to bring that up at a time like that lmao. and also i’ve literally never in my entire life met someone who actually takes “don’t say the lord’s name in vain” seriously.

I asked about the poses and HOLY CRAP THANK YOU SO MUCH! I finally have good poses to use for story telling. Thank you soo so so so sooooo much!

YAY i’m glad you found some good stuff <3 and honestly just going through lana’s blog you’ll find a ton of good poses, it’s a gold mine

Idk how much tv you watch, but have you've ever come across a tv show that used music from The Sim? Because once in a while I'll hear Sims 3 build/buy music on some random show and I'll get a lil shook because I find it so weird that the generic music they're using comes from a major game title.

OMG LMAO NO what i wish i’d come across that tho. one time i used sims 1 music in a video i made for school and someone recognized it

I love your stories gosh I check your page "it's everyday bro with femmesim flow" Lol sorry for that awkward Jake Paul "poop" ❤️

lmao thank u i had no idea who jake paul was until my friends started talking about him

yo, I also remember once in french class real life santi asked me what videos games I like to play. When I told him the sims, he looked at me for a while and shaked his head. He was like, "why do you want to watch your sims use the toilet?"

WHY DO YOU WANT TO WATCH YOUR SIMS USE THE TOILET SAME that’s all i care about when i play

that rooney face in the 5 facts is so iconic, its my fave picture of her. You should blow it up and frame it

i should tbh. i should print it out and put it in my wallet to show everyone because she is my child

sorry the bother you, merging cc makes your game smoother? can you explain to me please?

boop

hi i love you ♡ pass it on

I LOVE U

Can I say that hearing a MacBooks fans screaming for dear life as they try to cool down when playing the sims has actually started to haunt my nightmares

SAME my macbook is actually doing it right now for no reason. thanks laptop

Maybe Santi should go to therapy to talk out his issues.

maybe he should 🤔 but tbh he’s already talked out everything, there’s nothing really more to talk out. he just has to cope with it. he’s treated lou like his therapist thus far and that’s not okay

i love ur story and omg i totally get where lou is coming from with being tired of being compared to molly by santi, thatd hurt so much esp with how much she cares about him

thank youuu ;-; i’m glad you understand, this was a part i’d wanted to get out for a loooong time now, and i know you guys were always like “um why does she put up with this” lmao. she just loves him, that’s why. but you’re right, it does hurt.

My theory is very similar to the other anons in that Fiona's dad/Lou's ex had a mental illness (schizophrenia, depression, what have you) but he actually did kill himself and that's why she's not completely losing it on Santi because I feel like most people in that situation would have not handled it as well as Lou did

🤔 you’re right about the last part, and there’s a reason she has so much patience, das all i’m sayin

i started your story from the beginning last night and i am in awe. Its amazing. It inspired me to put a little more effort in learning to edit and write. It was like reading screen caps from a movie! I didn't want to stop reading. Anyway thing was a super sappy ask, but i appreciate your stuff. And i'm bad at putting my thoughts into words.

omg ;__________; when people tell me i inspired them it means the most to me, my brain just can’t process it lmao. so thank you so so much ;-; <333 THE MOVIE THING ESPECIALLY GOT ME IN THE HEART because i feel like that’s my aesthetic with most things i create because i’m such a film person lol. don’t worry i love super sappy, and you did a good job of wording everything because it got me right in the feels <33

Okay I've been snickering for about 43 minutes bc SANTI GOT THAT GRU CHINNN

WOT is that i googled it and the only thing that came up was the dad from despicable me lmfaosdkjfs but ok

Please, please do punk edits of your some of your characters! I'd die.

WHAT DOES THIS MEANNN do you mean like. those 2010 tumblr edits of punk disney characters and then the joker from suicide squad looked like one of them. do u want santi to be the joker. because my boyfriend already relates him to suicide squad joker because of his face tatt lmao

You love to make me cry

i do i’m sorry. if it makes you feel any better i love to make myself cry too. but my biceps grow stronger with every tear

I reeeally dont think those chancla comments were offensive??? Why would they be?? I'm hispanic (born and raised in the sunny Dominican Republic, received a fair amount of chancletazos myself) and I laughed out loud when i read them 😂😂

I JUST WANT U TO KNOW I SHOWED @ichosim THIS MESSAGE AND SHE LAUGHED FOR 12 HOURS AT “CHANCLETAZOS”

whATT my little brothers name is santiago n we call him santi for short!! guess it's not rly that uncommon but we live in a small country and he's also 4 so like,, no other santiagos!! idk why im saying this its completely irrelevant just kinda surprised me :'))

OMG wow hell yeah another real life santi...santi acts like a 4 yr old so he might as well be your brother

Just curious.. Do you play sims or just use it for storytelling? Sorry if thats weird haha

well my recent gameplay pics should answer your question lmao. i do like to play but i don’t have enough time to both play and pose scenes so i mostly just pose scenes for now. :[ i am gonna be off work for like two weeks tho so hell yeah gameplay here i come!!

I'm starting a Fiona appreciation movement because she is the real star of santis story RT and i love her and she is way underappreciated and I love her KThxBi

SHE IS THE REAL STAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i’ve said this before but santi’s relationship with her is the most important to me, out of every relationship he has in this story. i’m so glad you love her so much, sorry about what’s about to come in the next few scenes tho

Oh my heart, Santi is alive, god exist

I have a pretty hard time understanding Santi's story mostly because I'm not English but I'm sure I'll figure it out:)

ahh oh no D: i’m sorry i wish i spoke every language in the world lmao. if you want, you can message me off anon and i’ll help you understand it!!

Lou is an angel honestly

“there are worse things than seeing an angel before you die”

what tablet do you use? or how do you draw hair? it looks so pretty.

omg haha i don’t have one! i wish i did tho. all of the brushes i got from deviantart, i’m trying to find the specific ones but they’re all elusive wtf. i’ll post them when i find them! for now, here’s a good guide to drawing hair, by airi <3

Nah nah I always knew you'd save him.....eheheeh.....THANK YOU FOR NOT KILLING BABBY SANTEEEEEEEEE DNDDNSKANW YOU WOULD HAVE HAD SO MUCH BLOOD ON UR HANDS AS ALL UR FOLLOWERS COLLECTIVELY DIE FROM A BROKEN HEART BUT DW WE DIDNT BECAUSE UR QN ANGEL....but I toooootally knew you'd save him... /sweats/

I’M GLAD U HAD FAITH <3 i know omfg i would’ve expected a mob at my house if i’d actually killed him. if i ever killed him i would just lay down somewhere and die. that’s it for me

Lou & molly almost always have teeth showing, do you draw them on each pic?x

no, only sometimes i’ve drawn them when i felt like their mouths weren’t matching the expression i wanted. but most of the time it’s just the pose.

is it too late to send 16k dollars to guarantee santi's inclusion in a loving home with loving friends

it is absolutely never too late to send me 16k i promise you that

I just bought school books for $550 who knew studying marine biology could be so fuckING EXPENSIVE

EWW WTF...i’ve been lucky and haven’t had to spend a ton on books in my college career (one time i even went to such lengths that i got access to free trial version of one of my school books in a pdf, screencapped EVERY SINGLE PAGE, which was more than 400 pages, just so i wouldn’t have to spend $70 on it. i love cheating the system)

waIT i never saw ur selfie where is it, must see

u could probably just search “selfie” on my blog and find it, or enjoy the ugly closeup drunk snap i posted last night

Hey guys I'm a happy trans man that has no mental illnesses. I'm fucking pissed about Trump's ban. And to any one that says it's logical FUCK YOU! I'm having flashbacks to don't ask, don't tell because this is the same fucking wacked up logic. I'm so angry, like I'm a human, yes I may require testosterone shots once a month but that's it, I even administer them to myself. I pay for them with my own god damn money so fuck you transphobic bigots who say this law is fair. It's not. WE ARE HUMAN TOO Also same anon that ranted. Sorry about that I'm just really pissed and I love and thank you for sticking up for the community. We love you and I love you. And you're right not all trans people transition. We all do what we want to. Some start on T or E and have the full surgery. Some just have top surgery. Some just do testosterone or estrogen. Some never do anything. We're all still trans and we're all valid.

YES ALL OF THIS, sorry i didn’t answer this when it was all happening. but askdkjfas thank you for this message, I LOVE YOU TOO, SO MUCH <333 and i’m glad you feel comfortable enough to voice this in my inbox. yes every trans person is valid no matter what they decide to do with their bodies <3

One of those old hot topic shirts that said " if Darryl dies we riot " but with santi instead of Darryl.

OMG LMAOOOOO NOW THAT’S A CONCEPT who’s making these i want one

your use of references and reaction pics and gifs fucken KILLS ME

Crystal anon here. I googled around my area to find there are none of those y'know, crystal, candle, incense, magic type shops. I have panic attacks when I go outside and I wanted to look into alternative stuff since I'm on meds and w/e. I wanted to know if you or friends had any experience or recommendations for buying crystals online like on etsy or amazon. How can you tell if they're real?x

ooooh ok. usually there are shops like those in cities or even in towns with like kitschy little promenades with independent shops. (i know there’s one around the town over from mine, which is so random lmao) i do have friends that have crystals but i think they mostly just collect them for the ~good vibez~ and don’t really look too far into the healing aspects of them. i would say first go with the one that coincides with your birth because those are the ones that are like specifically catered to you and strengthen your being. as for buying online, hmmmmm i mean i don’t really know any specific trustworthy sellers because i don’t have much experience with this, but definitely read the reviews! those will help you a lot <3

Hello could you please tell us how you edited the pic of rooney in that one post that the anon asked for the unedited version?

i honestly didn’t do much of anything that differs from my usual editing process! i made her eyes a bit bigger by using the clone tool, cloning the top of her eye and applying it a little bit farther up...if that makes sense. it’s hard to explain how to use that tool lmao. and i think i used the liquify tool to bring part of her eyebrow down to look more worried.

there's still a part of me that says she ain't dead and molly is just in a coma lmao end mE

OMFLDKGKJS yeah she’s not dead surprise. i WILL say there is still flashback stuff that will be revealed. well not “revealed” like molly’s death was revealed, like i just still have to showcase some things that happened afterward. because it doesn’t just end with molly’s death, there’s stuff after that as well :~}

I'm Mexican, have lived around Mexicans, have been to Mexico multiple times growing up, just came back from a family trip at practically the border between Mexico and Guatemala and never in my life have I ever heard the word "joder" i had to look it up xD (not hating or anything I just thought I'd mention it cuz I found it funny...lol) k bye...

OK NOT SURE IF the ppl you’ve been around just don’t curse or whatever but...joder is DEFINITELY something i’ve heard mexican people say before lmao

Okay so this is random, but i was telling my sister the name of one your characters in ur story (santi) and she kinda just starts singing his name, and she said "santi high, santi low, santi go." And im just sitting there, like woah.

LMFAO WHATKNJDSKJGD “woah” same

u gonna incorporate fis hat into a really like emotional sad thing in her story huh

oMG i wasn’t planning on it but hmm 🤔

Why no el chingo? NO ME GUSTA (I'm joking btw ily)

LMFAOOOO because i didn’t wanna have to defile my son by downloading the penis mod RIP

let santi grow out dem eyebrows 2kforever

omg he does let them grow out except for the little line he shaved in when he was 14 that never grew back RIP

in ur bio it says "kt" and i know why,, it means killing them as in killing off ur characters slowly i see u gurl

i bet this story was just an excuse for you to see the world burn. well done.

OMG i mean, that was definitely one of the side effects of it all. but really it was just that i NEEDED to get this story out after it had lived in my brain for so long.

ur dead 2 me

I... just.... can't... too much pain Y U DO DIS 2 UZ?!?!!!

#anonymous #nonsims #saviorhide #sunny answers

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my-ocean-is-bluer · 8 years ago

Text

In other news... Asperger's?

I'm very convinced that I have Asperger's. I suspected it for a while (past few months) but tonight I really sat down and did a lot of research, took available online tests (grounded in scientific research, they don't diagnose but suggest you get tested if you fall within a certain threshold) and for everything I tested very close to the average for females with Asperger's. I don't believe I was ever tested for this but the extreme social disconnect/difficulty I've experienced in college made me suspicious. Now, lots of things from my childhood and the rest of my life are kind of falling together and it's really really overwhelming. I'm just posting on this blog because I don't feel comfortable talking to anybody about this and this is kind of a log of my mental state, etc. 1. When I was a young kid, my teachers always expressed to my parents that they couldn't tell whether I was paying attention / engaged in class. My mom always told me teachers didn't know if I cared because they couldn't "read" my face and I was always very inexpressive. 2. Since coming to college, I can't tell when people want to talk to me. It's happened to me more than once that I and another person I know will be the only two people in a hallway. They'll gesture to me or say "hey!" and I'll still keep walking without responding. Then later I'll realize and will be like "Oh, were you talking to me?" 3. I tend to get really obsessed with certain things/hobbies but mostly for very short amounts of time before I move on to something else. When I'm still interested, I read entire Wikipedia articles, watch tons of videos on the subject, visit forums, join Facebook groups, etc. and I feel really incomplete if I don't learn everything there is to learn. I make checklists and organize all of this information once I've compiled it. 4. I've always tended to imitate characters or behaviors I observed during social gathering or conversations because I don't know how to act in those situations. 5. In my two years of college, I haven't made a single "close" friend (with the exception of my roommate. I get annoyed with her sometimes but sometimes I get really tired of being alone with myself and need someone to distract me). I used to think I struggled to make friends because of social anxiety, but I'm starting to realize it's not quite that... I just don't "click" with people. I don't understand how to communicate with others and I don't understand how friendships and relationships form. 6. When people are talking to me or complimenting me I can never tell if they're being sincere or if they're making a joke or being sarcastic. In the same vein, I can't always tell when people are being sarcastic and then they'll say "you know I'm joking, right?" 7. In high school and in college I've been told I sound really formal and I really don't get it! In high school I was in a play and my director kept telling me to drop the accent I was doing. I had no idea what they were talking about and had to keep insisting that I wasn't putting on an accent and was just speaking normally. In my first semester of college I wrote a personal reflection / free-write for class and when I was asked to read it aloud, my teacher criticized me for my writing style being too formal (even though I had no idea I would have to read it to others, that's just how I write). She mocked me, actually, and it was embarrassing. 8. I suffer from really intense anxiety because I never know what people expect from me, both socially and academically. This makes interacting with people really intimidating and makes assignments seem insurmountable. I overwork myself and never know if my work is good enough, then I get it back and it's always fine, but that fact doesn't seem to help. For this reason I always like to have very specific instructions for assignments or else I feel really lost. 9. I want to work in the film industry but never deemed myself creative enough to be a filmmaker because I can't think of a story without copying existing work. People always say, "but you are a creative person!" because I like to sing and act, but those things are very different from having to imagine your own stuff. I'm better at organizational skills. 10. I can't relax unless I've done everything I have to do for the day (often depression prevents me from doing so and so I get really anxious and have a hard time sleeping). I make lists in various formats and schedule everything I have to do, even the most minor things. 11. I adjusted really poorly to both high school and college and I'm terrified of change. I don't know what else to say about this one. One little thing gone awry in my schedule messes up my entire day, and if something unexpected happens I really struggle to get back on track. 12. My "friends" seem to cancel on me last minute all the time and it makes me super angry. I consider it really disrespectful and assume it means I'm not anybody's priority (which might be true because I don't feel connected to anybody-- why should they feel connected to me?) I'm starting to wonder if this seems to keep happening because I don't understand when people say "yes" but it's actually more of a "maybe, I'll have to let you know later". I think it's possible that I just can't tell the difference from their expressions and so I always take any kind of affirmation as a commitment and a solid "yes" and am totally caught off guard when they back out. Anyway, that's it. I just had to word vomit all of that out because I was feeling overwhelmed by everything and wanted to write it down. I have to wake up in 6 hours but at least I feel a little more under control. I don't know what to do about this. I had decided that I wouldn't get any mental help until the end of this academic year in 7 months, and then when I go home I'd try to reconnect with my high school therapist. I really want to hear her thoughts on this because I'm just the kind of person who needs to know instead of just kind of wonder. I put together all my results on a page/report and I'm going to print it. So, feelings. When I sat down to write this I was feeling kind of panicked because I sort of feel like I don't know myself. I was being treated for social anxiety but nothing was really working... if it turns out the signs are correct and I have Asperger's that kind of means transitioning to a "fixable" problem to something that's actually just ingrained in me and permanent. I've been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety, OCD, and an eating disorder not otherwise specified, and so I was feeling pretty sure of things until now. I'm wondering if some of those issues I thought I had, like OCD and generalized anxiety, could actually be results of Asperger's, since some of the behaviors line up. I also read that though Asperger's is present since childhood, it may not be noticeable until a certain situation pushes a person to capacity. I think going to college might be that situation that's pushed me to a point where I'm really starting to realize I don't act the same as others (at home I knew everyone since I was really young so meeting new people and forming relationships wasn't something I actually experienced to the extent I'm experiencing it now). I feel I've never tried harder to form friendships, but I'm still super unsuccessful and I genuinely couldn't tell why. So. Now all that's down, I can calm down a bit. I'm going to bed. It's been 2 years since I've seen my therapist, but I really could use some help. I've been drowning the whole time and the death of my dog has really destroyed me. An Asperger's diagnosis might be kind of scary but it also could be kind of a relief. I don't think these feelings/behaviors are a result of my grief since a lot of them are from before that happened and from my childhood. *P.S. Take everything I say here with a grain of salt. I'm not a psychiatrist. I need one to give me their two cents on what I'm experiencing to make conclusions.*

#me #mental illness #aspergers #autism #asperger's

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pebblesandjamjam · 8 years ago

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Critical Jam #9: Psalm for the Newly Anointed

Welcome to Critical Jam, J.A. Micheline’s monthly column on criticism.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but: nobody’s in charge.

For newer media especially--games and comics and whatever comes next--there is no established authority, no canon of critical texts that guides the consumer, the critic, the creator. There’s nothing enshrining us, nothing empowering us. No true criticism; a legitimation crisis.

This is freeing in some aspects, but frustrating in others. In her January Crown on the Ground column, critic Emma Houxbois touches upon the transience in comics criticism in particular, though her points are applicable to the present states of criticism elsewhere:

“One of the truest and most fundamental realities of comics criticism is that it’s a transient field with a very short life cycle. People come into it with little to no formal training because there’s little to none available and they have a crack at it until they move onto something more fruitful or diminishing returns catch up with them. As a result there’s no established and easily accessible canon, there’s little in the way of bodies of work to build from and refine the field, especially since the waves of consolidation and site shutdowns have wiped out massive amounts of it.”

In other words--with nothing shoring us up, we are vulnerable, scattered, and easily erased. Though some handful of us are protected by the pillars of major publications, the vast majority exist on social media, in the comments sections, and websites that fall just as soon as they rise. With a few exceptions, none are household names and none (individually) wield the power to make or break their subjects. This instability, the absence of permanence reflected both in where criticism can be found as well as its shifting flagbearers, has a great deal to do with why people like to say that modern criticism is dead, bad, or somewhere in between.

You can pin it to the rise of the digital age, certainly. The transition from analog to digital has meant that years of work can vanish with the closing of a site, with the click of a button. And in turn, anyone with access to the Internet can become a critic--present company included. Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr--all of them allow for greater access than ever before. Criticism has ceased to become (at least, entirely) the province of the elite and has expanded to a much more grassroots endeavor.

“Because The Internet” is an all right answer, but I think postmodernism--a concept that precedes the Internet by a longshot--is a slightly better fit. It’s a movement, literary, artistic, and otherwise, specifically concerned with the destruction of gods and masters in favor for contingent truths and individual narratives. (I’ve written a light discussion of postmodernism through comics here.) I favor it for many reasons, up to and including its revolutionary potential, but I hold it in tension with its force for destruction. The expansion and impermanence of criticism, while opening the doors to many, also makes it difficult for the lot of us to eat. Because anyone could potentially do the work we do, the labor becomes cheap and many of us go unpaid, regardless of the quality of our material.

Quality is hard to pin down too, under a postmodernist regime. Everything is subjective--no gods and no masters, remember?--so who is to say really, who is a good critic or a bad one. Greater access should lead to a more meritocratic system of rewards, but because there is no uniform set of criteria, the infrastructure inevitably collapses upon itself. The arbitrary rubric assigns value, but can only do so if its arbitrariness is allowed unjust sovereignty. We random users of the Internet are finally permitted the title of critic, but now the title means nothing at all, and so, we frequently work for free. Tricky. Frustrating. A double edged sword. In eroding the canonic power of the elite critic, we erode ourselves. Our crowded presence and eagerness to welcome everyone devalues the field.

So the death of criticism is frequently touted because we are no longer kingmakers or heartbreakers. There was a time--or so they say--that a restaurant, a play, a ballet, a film, would live or die by the word of an individual critic. Back then, criticism was Good--which is as much a designation of quality as it was a designation of power. After all, critics of the modernist tradition and style of these kingmakers still exist and still win Pulitzers for their efforts, but the impact of a single critic’s word, even of the Pulitzer-winning variety, has diminished over time. These days, a critic can write beautiful, carefully considered prose in discussion of their subject and be met with some variety of “Yeah? Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man” in the comments section.

Which, when all is said and done, is irritatingly just.

It is just my opinion and that it exists in such a way that it can be dismissed soundly in favor of someone else’s is an annoyingly just consequence of destroying everyone’s sense of authority. This monstrosity of collapsed power which leaves many of us working for free is the consequence of inviting everyone to the party, and for newer media, doing so before a canon could establish itself in the background.

Part of the problem is that the old ways are not entirely dead. Modern structures, specifically, power structures still exist and therefore still benefit from and exploit the hierarchy. As strong as grassroots efforts have become, criticism backed by established outlets holds more weight than criticism elsewhere. The would-be meritocratic rise of quality criticism is hampered not just by an inability to judge quality objectively, but also the same old devaluing problems we had during modernist times--that one’s criticism is only as good as where it appears and is only financially compensated when it appears in those forums. In other words--you’re not Good until you’ve been externally validated as Good, usually in the form of someone thinking you’re Good enough to compensate with capital.

It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg game: is the criticism presumed Good because the critic was paid well for it, or was the critic paid well because the criticism was Good? Or is it Good because it is exclusive, because not everyone is chosen to write for particular publications, so surely the choice was based on merit. “She must know what she’s doing if she writes for The Guardian,” and so on.

I’m not sure what comes next, what comes after this. We’re trapped in a righteous hell of our own making, because we don’t have the political strength to see ourselves paid fairly and because acquiring the political strength would turn us into the systemic monsters we seek to topple.

I don’t know what comes next, but, in the end, I think everyone starts to look for God.

For me, part of Seeing with eyes unclouded is continually reckoning with my own irrelevance, but at the same time--it’s tiring to have no one in charge, tiring to make every evaluative decision for oneself, tiring to wade through a sea of information without a single, certain guide for what is Absolutely Good or Absolutely Bad. It’s exhausting to permit such uncertainty. And so, we take shortcuts, we look for some form of God to pass us The Word so we don’t have to burden ourselves. It’s the sensible thing to do if we are tired, if our attempts to strike out on our own have burned us, if the world has been proven to be cold without Him, without some kind of authority on whose criticism is Good.

Maybe what’s next is a return to modernism, a retreat to structural certainty. Maybe the kingmakers will rise again. Maybe criticism will be Good once more.

But probably not. Postmodernism is here to stay and its embracing of fractionation is such that it cannot be defeated. The Internet doesn’t seem to be going anywhere either. So, as I find myself asking so often in this column: what’s to do?

We cannot and should not return to the old ways of denying access to the many, but we can all collectively take this access and make it something great. My solution, generally, has been to behave as though I possess the authority of a kingmaking critic, while still holding firmly to the reality of my complete and utter unimportance. I’ve decided to be my own god.

That most of us remain uncompensated is something that remains, largely, out of our control, but the way we conduct ourselves always is. The endpoint of this hierarchical deconstruction is the formation of us as new, smaller gods rather than erasing godhood entirely. If we, individually, are the newly anointed, then we must act with the same discretion, honor, and reverence as we would have expected from the old ones. We must treat our work and the work of others with the same respect as we would any old classics, while still realizing that it’s just our opinion.

It’s artifice, certainly, but it’s an artifice that improves us--which is rather the function of god to begin with. If there’s nobody in charge, nobody on the throne, nobody to worship--it may very well be that you’re the only one left.

Act accordingly.

Previous: On Conflicts of Interest

Next: We Must Be Better

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this piece, feel free to click here and buy me a coffee or follow me on Twitter at @elevenafter.

#criticaljam #criticism #postmodernism #emma houxbois

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memozing · 5 years ago

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#online learning

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endenogatai · 5 years ago

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Meet the makers of modular

When Dieter Döpfer, the founder of music instrument manufacturer Doepfer, decided to launch a brand new modular synthesiser system in 1995, no one could have predicted what would follow. Today, his “Eurorack” format supports an ecosystem of hundreds of manufacturers that have collectively produced thousands of compatible modules used by famous musicians, such as Radiohead, Chemical Brothers and Aphex Twin, and hobbyists alike.

Fuelled by passion not venture capital, most companies in the Eurorack space are neither startups nor established OEMs. Instead – and quite remarkably – the industry remains a long tail of boutique manufacturers, with some of the best-sellers still operating as one-person shops. Inspired by technology that is almost half a century old, and intentionally designed not to scale, these businesses might well be considered the anti-Crunch.

“My happiness is based on developing, not on the amount of sales,” one Eurorack maker told me, after I promised not to name his company for fear of generating too many new orders. “Of course I really appreciate if someone decides to purchase some modules, then I know my work makes sense, but the current sales amount ensures I have enough time for developing”.

He said that increased sales would lead to less time spent working on new designs and more time assembling modules and answering emails explaining why a particular item is currently out of stock. One solution would be to take on an employee or two but the associated bureaucracy would also be an unwelcome distraction.

“That’s not what I like [doing],” he said, comparing it to a friend who owned a single coffee shop and was happy making great coffee and fine desserts, but had subsequently expanded to three coffee shops and is now unhappy. “He’s thinking about selling two of his coffee shops to get his happiness back. More money does not ensure more happiness,” said the Eurorack maker.

It’s the kind of an existential crisis many founders find themselves facing after a company grows to a certain size, but for the makers of modular the reason for existing is often clear from the start. This is certainly true of Döpfer’s own story.

In contrast to the preceding two decades, the mid-80s ushered in the era of digital synthesisers, popularised by Yamaha’s DX7, meaning that instruments based on analog electronics – let alone a modular synthesiser system that had to be patched manually before it would produce any sound – were no longer in vogue. Modular systems from the 60s and 70s, such as those produced by Moog, Buchla, Arp and Roland, had mainly become the domain of vintage instrument collectors, while the modular synthesisers that remained in production were seen as arcane high end products priced well beyond the reach of most musicians.

In those intertwining years, Döpfer had pivoted his company away from analog electronics to produce one of the first digital sampler cards, followed by a more successful line of MIDI keyboards and controllers. However, by 1994 the designer was left feeling unchallenged, and perhaps noticing that second hand prices for Roland’s TB-303 and other discontinued analog synthesisers had begun creeping upwards, Doepfer introduced its first new analog synth in ten years. Called the MS-404, it was mainly designed for Döpfer’s “own enjoyment,” but sold better than expected, creating an even bigger itch in need of scratching.

Dieter Döpfer (Photo credit: Theo Bloderer)

By the following year Döpfer had developed an entire modular synthesiser system he called the A-100. Using repurposed circuits from the MS-404, the system consisted of ten individual Doepfer modules, each fulfilling a specific function, such as an oscillator, envelope or voltage-controlled filter. Just like the modular synthesisers of the past, the A-100 would require the user to create their own instrument by “patching” the modules together. Using cables with a 3.5mm jack on each end that are capable of carrying audio signals and control voltages, the synthesiser’s sound could be shaped or modulated in a vast number of ways and configurations, limited only by the user’s creativity and knowledge of synthesis techniques (or their appetite for experimentation), together with the number of different modules in their system and size of their bank balance.

“The idea was to make it affordable,” Döpfer told me during a call from the company’s office in Munich, Germany. “All modular systems that were available in the past were far too expensive for normal people from my point of view. And so I said, ‘there should be a modular synthesiser available, which is affordable also for normal people, not only for rich ones’. This was the idea behind the A-100”.

Doepfer’s A-100 suitcase

Despite its relatively low cost, Döpfer says the new synthesiser was initially met with bemusement by dealers. He was repeatedly told that nobody was interested in a modular system and that he should spend his time designing something different. “I said, no, I think it’s a good idea, I’d like to have something like that, and that’s why I continued it,” he recalls.

Once again, Döpfer’s instincts were good. When the A-100 made its first public appearance at an industry expo the following year, it was the company’s new modular synthesiser at the back of the Doepfer stand that grabbed most of the attention, relegating its bread and butter MIDI keyboard and controllers to a rather lonely looking affair.

Meanwhile, Doepfer wasn’t the only company developing a new low cost system in a bid to re-introduce modular synthesisers to today’s musicians. Unknown to Döpfer, the British company Analogue Systems had been working on a similar idea.

Purely by chance the A-100 and Analogue Systems’ RS Integrator System 1 were both “3U” in height (based on the 19″ rack standard), shunning the larger and more expensive “5U” design of most existing modular systems. The two systems also took inspiration from the Eurocard standard for printed circuit boards (PCBs) and faceplate dimensions, where width is measured in a unit referred to as horizontal pitch or “HP” for short.

Unfortunately, the exact position of the mounting holes on the modules’ front panels differed between systems, leading to gaps if the two brands were placed adjacent to one another. The power cable configuration was also different, although that was later solved when Analogue Systems redesigned its power supplies to provide Doepfer-style outputs so that systems could be mixed.

Quite brilliantly, however, Döpfer decided early on to publish the specifications of the A-100 module format on the Doepfer website, and in doing so had laid the groundwork for a Eurorack modular synth standard to emerge.

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“I thought if the people and the musicians are interested in a modular system, it should be an open system because it was clear to me that we were not able to offer all the kinds of modules the people want to have,” Döpfer told me.

“And so I said I’ll publish everything like the mechanical dimensions and electrical specifications and so on and after, I don’t know, two or three years, the first other guys asked me if it would be okay to offer modules in the same format and with the same design.

“I said, okay, it would be best if more modules are available from other companies, because then the people are more confident in the system, compared to a situation where we would be the only supplier of such modules”.

As modules from third-party makers started to emerge, Döpfer admits he was initially concerned about the effect competition could have on his company. However, as more companies entered the market, Doepfer sales went up, especially since the first generation of Eurorack companies focused on more specialist modules or plugging gaps in the now expanding Doepfer system. “That was really surprising for me,” he says.

“The one thing that Döpfer has done is he’s created an industry out of Eurorack,” says Allan “J” Hall, the founder and designer at British Eurorack maker AJH Synth. “If it wasn’t for Döpfer, there wouldn’t be any Eurorack. And he’s very generous in his approach to it as well. He doesn’t go around saying, ‘well, you know, it was me that started this, I should have all the glory’. There isn’t any of that at all”.

“I was hoping that we could sell the system, I don’t know, maybe for 5 or 10 years or something like that, but now we are close to 25 years,” reflects Döpfer. “And I never thought that it would last for such a long time, and that so many companies and so many modules will be available”.

***

My own journey into Eurorack is less than 12 months old, even though I’ve always loved the sound of analog synthesisers, particularly those used by funk and rock musicians from the 70s. Until recently, the only hardware synth I owned was a relatively basic single voice synth that has remained slightly underused in my home studio. Being “semi-modular” in its design, however, what it did offer was a number of patch points, either for internal pathing or – you guessed it – to external synth modules. One day late last year I decided to build a tiny Eurorack modular case to expand the sound possibilities of the synth.

My tiny 32HP Eurorack case

After purchasing a few modules, mostly second hand via a vibrant used market, it wasn’t long before I’d outgrown my humble 32HP case and a pattern developed familiar to anyone who has caught the Eurorack bug. I upgraded to a bigger case and obsessed over what modules I should buy and sell in pursuit of my perfect system (financial and space constraints permitting). Putting together a modular synth is the epitome of personalisation as no system is likely to be exactly the same. It’s a constant journey of discovery, too, spurred on by the wonderful “what if?” moments that often occur during patching.

It is also a journey that you don’t have to go on alone. The Eurorack ecosystem is well-established. Along with the makers themselves, there are online forums, such as the trailblazing (and oddly titled) “Muffwiggler,” various Facebook groups, Subreddits, YouTube channels, independent stores, and marketplaces like eBay, Reverb and Etsy. The community is generally welcoming to beginners and more experienced users alike, and people who inhabit the scene are often willing to share their experience.

As I immersed myself in Eurorack, I was also surprised to learn how small most Eurorack companies are: from one-person shops to boutique manufacturers of no more than a dozen people. Sure, some makers outsource manufacture and assembly, but it is common for a lot of the work to be done in-house, bar printing circuit boards and milling faceplates. In some ways it is a throw-back to how many hardware industries got started and is a little reminiscent of the very earliest days of the personal computer and the Homebrew Computer Club, except Eurorack is approaching a quarter of a century old.

Despite outward appearances, Döpfer itself only employs four staff (when I emailed the company for customer support, it was Mr Döpfer who replied!). Other examples include the U.K.’s AJH Synth, which has three full time and one part time member of staff, or XAOC Devices in Poland, which employs eight people. Meanwhile, Mutable Instruments, probably the most notorious company in Eurorack after Döpfer, is just founder Émilie Gillet.

“It is very much [a] cottage industry, and I think, purposefully so,” says Ben “DivKid” Wilson, who produces the popular Eurorack YouTube channel DivKid. “I don’t encounter many people that are so driven they want to run it like a corporation, or they want lots of staff. It’s that thing of, you know, if you’re an engineer for a car company, and you climb up the ladder, you’re probably going to end up doing less engineering, and more management. I don’t think anyone wants to let that go. They want to hold on to that reason that they got into this”.

Jason Brunton, who runs Signal Sounds, a Eurorack retailer based in Glasgow, Scotland, likens the makers of modular to the independent record labels he used to work with in a previous job. “The people that run modular companies have a very similar attitude,” he says. “A lot of the companies, it’s just one person’s vision… you can generally speak to the person that made the design, that manufactured it, designed the logo, you know, in some cases, it’s all the same person”.

This is very different to giant music manufacturers like Roland, Korg or Yamaha, says Brunton, where you never have a chance to find out what’s “going on in the heads of the people that make the gear” and only ever hear from sales reps. “You don’t get any insight into why the designers came up with particular ideas”.

***

You don’t have to look very hard to get into the head of Allan “J” Hall, the founder and designer at AJH Synth. Hall has been involved with synths, electronics and music for “more years than he cares to remember,” according to the company’s website, and like many Eurorack makers his entrance into electronics started with building guitar pedals. An interest in synthesisers and electronic music soon followed and for the last 20 years, Hall has been part of the DIY synth scene, including building and modding synth systems both for himself and other electronic musicians. He also spent five years as a service technician repairing and modifying Moog, Arp, Korg, Roland and other analogue synthesisers, along with some Pro Audio design work, including two years designing and building “boutique” valve guitar amplifiers.

“The reason that I went into modular was that at the time no one else was trying to make Eurorack modules that sounded and performed like vintage gear,” Hall tells me. “I was looking for the sound without the reliability issues, and the open architecture of Eurorack allows them to be interconnected in ways that weren’t previously possible”.

AJH Synth’s Allan Hall holding an extended Minimod system

Eighteen months in the making, AJH’s first set of modules was the Minimod released in 2016. The system is a painstaking recreation of Moog’s Minimoog Model D, arguably the most famous synthesiser ever made, and has been used on countless hit records spanning rock, disco, soul, EDM and hip hop.

“The Minimoog Model D… to me was the Stradivarius of mono synths. Then a few people said, ‘will you build me one? will you build me one?’ and I landed up as a Eurorack manufacturer. I wanted this thing to sound as nice as a Minimoog but I didn’t want it to have the limitations that the Minimoog has. If I wanted to try to use it with a SEM filter, I can just patch it in and see what happens. Or if I want to try it with six VCOs, I can patch it in”.

Hall says that designing a module that accurately reproduces the sound and response of vintage circuits that we know and love involves chasing the last few percent. To get to 90 or 95% of the way there is fairly easy and requires taking the schematics from the service manual and replicating it. But it’s the tiny nuances that require real work.

“With designs, it’s not unusual for me still to be working at 1AM,” he says, laughing. “If I’m laying out a complex circuit board then quite often I’ll put in 14-15 hour days. I only stop for meals and to go to the loo and just be full on at it. You find that a lot in electronics, computers and everything else… it’s almost the norm, it’s that human curiosity. The only thing I can’t understand is that some people don’t have it”.

When considering what to design next, Hall says he’s not really “commercially minded” and, as he continues to expand the AJH lineup, he is still building what he considers to be his perfect modular system.

“With something like the ‘Next Phase’, I just thought, ‘I need a phaser’. I don’t really stop and think, ‘is there a market for a phaser?’, I just go ahead and build it anyway… The initial idea really is: there’s something missing in my system, this is what it is, so that’s what I’m gonna do. So it certainly isn’t market-driven”.

To go from design to prototype, Hall says he uses the simulation program LTspice, which models various components so that he can get an idea of how a circuit will perform. He then has a prototype circuit made up and says it typically takes three different prototypes before everything either works as expected or he decides there is a better way of doing it.

Once a module is given the production green light, the front panels are designed, and then manufactured by a company in Germany, with PCB manufacturing outsourced to China. However, all assembly is done by AJH’s small team in the U.K., including SMD soldering and the required calibration of each module.

Allan Hall in his workshop

“We don’t have anything assembled in China,” Hall says. “That’s something I learned not to do fairly early on. If you’re a large company, and you have control, you have someone out there, then yes, by all means go that route. And Behringer have proved that you can go very big and very cheap by doing that. But for small companies like ourselves, you’re very much at the hands of the assembler and they tend to get quite ‘creative’ with the bill of materials”.

He adds that a small change in a component can seem innocuous to a third-party assembler but is often fundamental to a module’s design and the way it will sound and operate.

Distribution and retail, meanwhile, is something the AJH Synth founder is happy to outsource, and, unlike a lot of boutique makers, the company doesn’t sell direct to consumers. “We try to stick to doing what we’re good at. Packing up modules and taking them to the post office or getting couriers to collect them, we can’t do that as well as Amazon or the big box shifters… We just thought, well, if we can get rid of that, then we can concentrate on what we’re good at, which is designing and manufacturing.”

***

“This wasn’t the product of decision-making, it’s really a ‘one thing led to another’ story,” says Jason Coates, founder and sole proprietor of Manhattan Analog in Kansas, U.S.

In 2008 he was working in graphic design and layout, while building a modest studio on the side, and this led him “down the DIY path” by making a few custom panels for available circuits, just for his own use. After he posted his design to a few forums, he quickly discovered there was a need for panel designers within the Eurorack community.

“I started sharing my designs and taking on custom work,” recalls Coates. “At one point I got a request for a simple three channel mixer in 4HP, so I designed what would become the Mix. After sharing that one I had a slew of requests for more, so I did a run of 10. That sold out in hours, so I took the funds and invested in a run of 100”.

By the end of 2011, he says he was making twice as much at his “hobby” than he was doing layout design. “So I quit my day job to focus on Manhattan Analog full time, and I’m still doing it today”.

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For production, Coates says these days he generally does runs of 6-12 for an individual module (and always in multiples of three). He concedes that it would be quicker to manufacture in larger batches, at least up to a point, but says he is limited by physical space in his workshop.

“This all still happens in a spare bedroom that’s also shared with my studio,” he explains. “I have started outsourcing a bit more as the line has grown, but frankly I still enjoy doing the work. I feel like it gives me an advantage regarding build quality and it also allows me to be choosy about certain components that may not be available in the SMT, machine-assembled realm”.

For distribution, Coates was able to partner with a number of retailers very early on, but also sells direct through the company’s website, including offering DIY kits for people that enjoy assembling their own modules.

“From a maker’s standpoint, it’s fun to work in Eurorack because there really is that freedom to do whatever you can imagine,” he says. “You can offer small-run or niche products with very little risk, and there’s not a lot of overhead involved since the ‘bones’ of the systems, such as cases and power supplies, are already widespread in the market”.

In other words, it’s partly the modular aspect of modular that makes Eurorack an industry that attracts long tail businesses. “Even as a student you are able to design one single module,” says Döpfer. “You can design a very limited project as there is already a pool of thousands of modules which can be used in combination with your special module. That’s very different to other markets”.

“The other aspect that makes it fun on the supply side is the tight-knit community that goes along with it,” adds Coates. “That direct connection with the customer base is probably as important to the makers as it is to the musicians”.

***

“Oh, I gotta want it, first and foremost,” says Garren “G-Man” Morse, founder of G-Storm Electro in Oklahoma City, U.S. “There’s something about analog circuits I really go for. And luckily, others have wanted the same things. So that’s all working out nicely”.

A trained engineer and architect, Morse found himself out of work after the financial crisis hit in 2008. While he was looking for a job he studied up on electronics, which began with “circuit-bending” an old Casio keyboard.

“I was buying up used textbooks, Forrest Mims guides from Radio Shack, and studying old synthesiser service manuals and schematics,” he tells me. “I built a few kit things. When I felt confident enough, I got hands-on with synthesiser restoration and flipping synths. And eventually bought a small Eurorack system. Little did I know where it would lead me”.

G-Storm Electro’s growing lineup of Eurorack modules

He wouldn’t go on to launch his own Eurorack hardware business until 2017 and in the interim period, amongst other jobs, tried his hand at writing and selling software instrument plugins based on his love of vintage string synthesisers, such as the Roland VP-330 and Logan String Melody. He says he soon realised that “the plugin game is all about how many platforms can you satisfy,” and decided it wasn’t for him. “I just wanted to make these plugins once, not 12 times over”.

“Hardware has a very satisfying, tactile interaction you can’t get with software,” adds Morse. “Hardware has this physical presence that commands your attention and rewards the senses in a very engaging way”.

He concedes, however, that he still spends an estimated 60% of his time at a computer with module design, cost analysis, ordering, social networking, client interaction, and promotion. “But it feels more rewarding to me,” he says.

The soft aspects of running a Eurorack business, including social media promotion, applies to every company, no matter their size. However, for businesses like G-Storm Electro, which don’t have a distributor or retail partnerships, it is even more important. Currently, the only place you can buy G-Storm Electro modules is from the company’s store on Reverb.

“My appreciation for the internet and forums are greatly magnified when I think about musical instrument reps that promoted their product by jetting around the world to various dealers, or the DIY synthesizer instructions that were published in magazines,” says Morse. “The access to products, information, and specialised electronics components were relatively limited compared to now. On a frugal budget I don’t have such luxuries to jet around the world for promotions. So I wing it on social media, YouTube videos, and good old fashioned word of mouth. I love Reverb, their no-nonsense business acumen is so close to mine. Their fees are very fair, and I really do feel I have my own store within a larger store. It’s been indispensable”.

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As not every module sells equally, Morse’s strategy over the last six months has been to diversify by launching new modules rather than simply replenishing stock of his previous designs. He’ll typically make batches of about 5 or 10 modules at a time, which he says are hand-crafted in a “work-at-home scenario”. His latest creation is a faithful Eurorack adaptation of the main features of Roland’s revered SH-101 synthesiser. Earlier in the year, Morse also adapted the filter circuit found in the Arp Odyssey Mk1 synth (dubbed “G-Storm Electro 4023,” I purchased number 3 of the first 5 modules produced).

“My operation is small and nimble,” he says. “My space and budget for parts, assembly, and inventory on hand are meagre. So I’m always working within those confinements. I can envision opening shop someday, or possibly selling in stores, when I’m able to move more units. As long as I can keep up with demand, there is no need to outsource as of yet. I’m having fun with it. If it stops being fun, then I’ll be calling for help from someone or move on to the next thing”.

***

“My name is Émilie and I am Mutable Instruments’ product designer, hardware/software engineer, sales person, and customer support representative,” reads the Mutable Instruments website. “Mutable Instruments has, by design, no employees! Just me!”

Another one-person shop, Mutable Instruments punches above its weight like no other Eurorack maker. Over the years, the company has designed a series of innovative and best selling modules, proving that digital has a well-earned place in Eurorack and, as one Reddit user put it, “is just as elegant and organic as analog”.

Based in Paris, founder Émilie Gillet has a background in software engineering, having previously worked for tech companies such as Google, Last.fm and MXP4. She first gained a reputation within the music-making community after developing “obscure” music software including a granular synthesis tool for BeOS, and Bhajis Loops, a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) for PalmOS. However, the precursor to Eurorack came in the summer of 2009 when Gillet started building and eventually selling DIY kits.

The first of these was the Shruti-1, a hybrid digital/analog desktop synth, which initially sold at a loss before being sold for profit in September 2010. A year later, Mutable Instruments the company was born.

“I quit my main job in February 2012 because the company I was working for was going nowhere, while Mutable Instruments’ first quarter showed that I could live decently off the DIY kits even if we weren’t quite there yet,” Gillet tells me.

The first four Mutable Instruments modules were designed simultaneously, with Braids, a “macro-oscillator” that digitally modelled a vast range of synth voices and timbres, proving to be the most popular.

“I made an informal demo of Braids at a local shop and everybody agreed that it had a lot of potential,” she recalls. “The other modules were considered less original, or seemed to fill smaller niches. But Braids’ appeal seemed to be universal”.

Because of Gillet’s reputation designing DIY kits and music software, unlike other modular companies, Mutable Instruments didn’t have to overcome a “cold start”. This meant that retail partnerships were forged early on and the company only needed to sell direct for a short time. Today Mutable Instruments modules can be found in most independent stores and big box-shifters in the U.S. and Europe.

A selection of Mutable Instruments’ modules

Gillet typically prototypes new digital modules by writing C++ code and a command-line tool to process or generate audio files, or she’ll write a patch for the visual programming language Pure Data. To get more of a feel for how the software will interact with hardware, she may write an alternative firmware for an existing module so it’s directly testable with CV inputs and physical knobs.

Analog modules are prototyped on a breadboard, sometimes with interconnected through-hole PCBs. “I actually made a very large through-hole PCB for my latest analog design,” Gillet explains. “It’s easier for me to replace components, build little networks of extra diodes, capacitors and resistors in 3D above the board when it’s made of large parts. I maintain in parallel LTSpice simulations and python notebooks with all the calculations for part values, cutoff frequencies, gains, etc”.

Next the schematics are inputted into the PCB design software Eagle and discussions are initiated with UI designer Hannes Pasqualini, with whom Mutable Instruments has a long-standing partnership. “This is a dialog, features may be added or removed to make the panel more symmetric or elegant,” says Gillet.

Finally, the design is sent to a company in Germany that specialises in manufacturing and assembling prototypes, and front panels are ordered from Mutable Instruments’ production partner.

“At this point the prototype looks good and works well enough to fool people into thinking it’s a finished product. Then there’s a rather long playtesting phase. Just messing around with the module to get a feel for how long the excitement lasts, sending the module to the only tester who actually finds bugs, and for digital modules there’s a lot of balancing and curation.

“I [then] let the project rest for some time, and if I still feel excited about it, I move forward”.

Moving forward involves FCC/CE compliance tests, writing a user manual, and taking photos for the Mutable Instruments website and retailers. This is followed by a pre-production run of 20 modules to check that everything runs smoothly.

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“I tend to be present at the factory the day they are made,” explains Gillet. “They are [then] thoroughly tested and sent to people for some additional field-testing. At this stage it’s no longer about getting feedback about the design, just making sure unexpected things won’t happen in very diverse and wild configurations”.

If there are no reports of problems for 3 months, a much larger order is placed with the manufacturer, typically between 480 and 980 units, while a single module on average sells 3,000-5,000 units over its lifetime. Plaits, the successor to Braid, has so far required eight or nine batches of 1,000 units.

“Obviously I don’t build anything with my own hands,” says Gillet. “I receive the modules in their box, ready to ship to dealers. My contract manufacturers take care of everything i.e. board assembly, panel assembly, testing, and packaging. Thank god for that”.

***

If you go back and read or watch various interviews with Döpfer, something resembling an old joke emerges. For years the father of Eurorack has been saying that he thinks the bubble may have finally reached its peak, only to concede that the industry has grown even bigger the following year. However, throughout many of the interviews for this piece, there was a general feeling that growth in the last year or two may have begun to slow even if the market is more saturated than ever.

“I don’t think it’s at its peak, but maybe a slight plateau in its growth,” says Wilson, who recently designed and launched his own “DivKid” branded module in partnership with Befaco, a Eurorack maker based in Barcelona, Spain. “There’s definitely larger growth in people making modular devices than there is the market… Sales haven’t increased as much as the outside world looking at modular may think it has”.

“If I had to put my finger up in the air and sort of take a guess, I would say things are about static at the moment, definitely not the growth that was there about five or six years ago,” says Signal Sounds’ Brunton. “The [other] thing is that the mainstream retailers have moved into modular quite a lot, so it’s actually quite difficult to tell if modules are consistently selling. It may well be that it’s selling consistently it’s just selling less per individual retailer.

“People always want the new thing. And the other issue is, there’s always a new thing”.

For anyone interested in creating the next new thing and starting their own Eurorack business, what advice might existing makers and retailers have to offer.

“You have to know the scene,” says Matt “Matttech” Preston, founder of Matttech Modular, an online retailer in Manchester, U.K. “Immerse yourself in the scene, know what’s popular and then think whether you could either add something, make it smaller or make it cheaper… Come up with something that you can see there’s nothing like it out there”.

Mutable Instruments product shot

Another aspect to watch out for is the visual representation of your module, which, Preston says, too many makers initially overlook. “You need front on photos, you need demos — video demos, ideally, but at the very least audio demos — and you need all the text and information to be there”.

“You should focus on your idea,” advises Döpfer. “If you have an idea which you think is great, you should follow your idea and stay on track. Don’t look to the left. Don’t look to the right. If you are sure that you have a good product, you really should release it”.

AJH’s Hall says it is still possible to have a successful Eurorack product but you need to have something that’s different and that people want. “If you’re lacking in either of those, then all you’re gonna do is waste a lot of time and certainly a small amount of money, and possibly a large amount, depending on how you do it,” he says.

The first AJH Synth Minimod prototype PCBs

“Decide straight away what route you want to go down,” advises Brunton. “Do you just want to make 10 of them, or 20 of them and sell them direct? Or do you want to turn it into a business? Make the decision at the beginning and stick to it. And if you’re going to turn it into at least a part time business, get your pricing right at the beginning. Factor in not just your time and cost on components, but factor in a retailer’s margin and, if you can, a small distributors margin”.

Mutable Instruments’ Gillet argues that quitting the day job too soon is a rookie mistake, and instead you should aim for organic growth and “don’t expect things to work out right away”. She also warns that you could be “too late to the party”. Rather than releasing one more module, consider other clever ways of contributing to the Eurorack ecosystem, such as cases and power distribution, patch management, and interfacing with other tools.

“At this point in time I would advise caution,” echoes Manhattan Analog’s Coates. “If you’re going to get started now, you have a lot more to worry about than we did a decade ago when a hobbyist with some skills like me really could add meaningfully to the landscape… With fewer gaps in the market that need filling, you’ll need to be an order of magnitude more innovative and creative”.

“At no point in creativity can you can you say it’s all been done,” counters Brunton. ‘Everything’s been done, we won’t paint any more pictures or write any more books, because what’s the point?’ Within modular, there’s room to either reinvent the wheel, which is taking old ideas and doing them slightly differently or there’s infinite different combinations you can have just by taking an idea and plugging it into another idea. So sometimes it’s just combining certain things in one module, and then at other times it’s making interesting ideas more accessible”.

Which, perhaps brings us full circle, back to the very beginning when Dieter Döpfer took an old idea and made it infinitely more accessible.

“I’m still excited to go to work every day and I’m very happy,” he tells me. “So as long as this lasts, I think everything’s okay for me and for our company. We had ups and downs during the last years, but we are such a small company we are not that much depending on if sales increase by 20% or go down by 10%. For us, it’s important that it’s fun every day.

“We also have a lot of friends here in our neighbourhood, which use the modules in their system and also play live on stage. It’s a lot of fun for us if we can go to a concert where we see that 50% of the equipment on stage has been manufactured by our company. That’s something that’s incredible. And that’s why we still love this job”.

Dieter Döpfer (Photo credit: Theo Bloderer)

The Eurorack allure (in their own words):

“Modular is a spectacle. It is producing crazy sounds, patch cables going everywhere, flashing lights, and this beckoning conglomerate of knobs and faders. Musical instruments, guitars, and drums are already very personal in nature – it becomes a part of you, an extension of your spirit. Then add to that what modular brings, a highly customisable instrument, tailored by you – for you. I think modular enthusiasts are mostly hungry to discover things, new and old, in the realm of electronic sound. The more you discover, the more it feeds into the imagination, thus sparking curiosity to discover more – it is a virtuous cycle”.

— Garren “G-Man” Morse, founder of G-Storm Electro

“One of the great things about Eurorack is there is a choice… It’s different things to different people. That’s why there are over 200 manufacturers and each of them have their own approach”.

— Alan “J” Hall, founder of AJH Synth

“There’s some separation for me between sound and music. I think you can explore sound for sonic qualities, and learn and engage in that, almost separately to music. Of course, there is a huge crossover and a big grey area between the two. But I just really enjoy all aspects of it, just exploring sound, learning on a technical level, making music, it just felt right, for some reason”.

— Ben “DivKid” Wilson, producer of the DivKid YouTube channel

“It attracts and appeals to non-musicians, by which I mean non-standard musicians. So there’s a significant portion of people who get into modular and Eurorack who are coming from completely outside the industry, which means they haven’t really played a keyboard or guitar or any other instrument before”.

— Jason Brunton, founder of Signal Sounds

“To be your own mad scientist; the tangibility of tweaking knobs with obscure descriptions, making indicator lights flash to patterns clear to yourself but mysterious to the onlooker, to building the musical instrument of your own design without any limits (besides the size of your wallet)”.

— Tom Verchooten, DIY-er and founder of ThreeTom Modular

“From a musician’s perspective, I think the allure of modular synthesis is the absolute lack of limits, the near-infinite customisability. There are modules out there that can help you make nearly any sound you can imagine (and many more besides) and that’s very attractive. On top of that, modular synthesis is just plain fun. There are always moments of serendipity where the instrument will surprise you, and in my case at least, that’s irresistible. It’s also very satisfying to work with such a tactile instrument. Software is fine, I’ve used (and still use) my share like anyone else, but it really is missing something compared to working with real knobs, patch cables, touch interfaces, etc”.

— Jason Coates, founder of Manhattan Analog

“It felt for me like a very natural thing to do because with my electronics background, we are used to having components and wiring them together to create something bigger. Modular was a perfect fit for me… I feel flexibility when you can connect things in the way you want”.

— Dr. Leonardo Laguna Ruiz, founder of Vult

“I think the main difference to another instrument is that you don’t have an already built instrument. If you go to the guitar shop, you buy a guitar and then you have the final instrument. For a modular, it’s totally different: you have to build your instrument first. It means you have to collect the modules and install them into the case and so on before you can start using the instrument. So that’s totally different compared to other instruments. That first creative process is to design the instrument. So that’s a lot of fun from my point of view.

The second is that, in most cases, you have a very special instrument, which is probably the only one in the world unless you buy a standard system. But I think 90% of all the modular systems are totally mixed with multiple modules from different manufacturers. Each system is very unique”.

— Dieter Döpfer, the father of Eurorack

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