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chispas-and-broken-bindings · 5 years ago

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I’m posting a preview of the next chapter of Know The Love - Part II. This chapter is taking me longer to write than I anticipated, and I have a crazy busy week coming up at work, so it is looking less and less likely that I’ll have the full thing posed to Ao3 as soon as I would like.

So, I thought I’d share the WIP to anyone who follows me on Tumblr, below the cut:

Sansa relaxed into the hot, spring-fed bath, settling back until only her lips and nose breached the steamy surface. She closed her eyes, remembering.

Jon, what are you trying to tell me? That there's another secret Targaryen, vying for the Iron Throne?

(Not a trueborn Targaryen…)

Stars danced behind her lids.

(And he has no interest in ruling the Seven Kingdoms, I promise you.) What are you saying?

Slipping completely below the water, she let the weight of his secret pull her down.

(I keep telling you…I'm not a Stark. I'm not your brother, Sansa. Trueborn or half.) Stop, Jon. You're the very image of father. (It is not uncommon for a nephew to resemble his uncle.)

Days had passed since Jon's revelation, but her blood still pounded in her ears, hot and heady, like he'd only just told her. It had taken her a foolishly long time to understand what Jon was trying to say as she stared at him across his solar, her eyes flitting helplessly to Lord Reed, who only gazed back, stoic as ever.

(Lord Eddard was my uncle.) But you're too young to be Uncle Brandon's, and Uncle Benjen was too young to be a father…

Jon looked pained as understanding reached her at last. Her chest strained, painfully.

You're Lyanna's...Winter's rose. (Yes.) Stolen by the Dragon Prince. …and Rheagar Targaryen's… (Bastard.)

When he said it, she had been too thrown, too off balance to hear the loathing Jon bit into the word. The ground had shifted beneath her feet, the sky slanting so she was sliding down once more, drowning, and all she had the sense to ask, in a keening breathless voice, was, Who else knows?

"Sansa!" Her name came, muffled, through the water, but when hands disturbed the warm void, grasping at her arms, she woke from her reverie and resurfaced with a gasp. "For heavens sakes, Sansa! Are you trying to scare me witless! I'm already frantic over Theon's trial." She blinked into Jeyne's concerned, fire agate eyes, as rivulets raced down her brow and into her heavy lashes.

"Sorry Jeyne, I was only daydreaming," she sighed.

"I implore you, dream with your head above the water, please." Jeyne stood, shaking her head and frowning at her now soaking sleeves. "You're as bad as Arya used to be when we'd swim in the godswood. She'd challenge the other girls to try and hold their breath as long as she. Once, long after the others had given up, she floated to the surface, face down. When I turned her over, with tears burning my eyes, mind you, Ayra sprang to life, spouting water in my face, cackling like the Crone."

"I was just wetting my hair, not attempting a lark." Sansa squeezed her heavy locks, before twisting them together over the tub's edge, to dry.

"Be that as it may, you are not a fish, Sansa. You won't sprout gills beneath the surface if you stay down too long. You'll drown."

"Duly noted." She closed her eyes again, trying to recall her train of thought, but Jeyne continued prodding.

"Are you feeling well, my lady? You're flushed."

"Of course I'm flushed. I'm poaching in a steaming bath." Irritation seeped into her voice, and she glanced at her friend, contrite. Jeyne did not deserve her sullen mood. Theon's trial was only a few hours away, and Jeyne had stayed awake half the night, fretting over him. Now, she was fretting over Sansa.

"It's only, you haven't seemed entirely yourself, the past few days. You've been-" Spinning like a top into oblivion? "-distracted."

When Sansa rose, Jeyne and one of her maids came to either side, wrapping her in a robe and helping her step from the copper tub. She laced her fingers through Jeyne's, relaxing her face into an easy smile. "I suppose I'm just tired. In the songs, they always leave out the verses where Jonquil spends her days mediating the lords' petty disputes or counting sacks of grain." Jeyne squeezed back.

"Well, when your Florian returns, you must beseech the king to appoint someone else to those duties. You and your knight will need time to reacquaint yourselves." She winked, playfully, and Sansa's belly dropped. She had no Florian; only an over-eager, impatient heir with more ambition than advantage, and a trail of ruined women behind him…and ahead. He was due back to Winterfell any day, after a decisive victory at the Dreadfort. Her stomach roiled at the thought, but she mustered a smile, nonetheless.

"Alas, the king works harder than us all. He does not deserve a princess who eschews her duties for any knight, especially while she is still wed to another."

Jeyne pushed her to her vanity, where her maids began to dress her. "Where is the romance in that, princess? Think on it. This may be your only chance for a true love affair." Sansa gaped at her friend, scandalized. "And wouldn't it be sweet, to be lovers first, before you are man and wife?" It would not be sweet. She'd had a glimpse at what an affair with Harry would entail, and she saw no appeal, with him.

"I must stay a maid, to annul my marriage to Tyrion," she reminded her friend, who only pursed her lips a moment, before responding.

"There are ways to take a lover and still preserve your maidenhead." Jeyne whispered, and Sansa marveled at the young woman's coy suggestion. After all she had endured, Jeyne had a spirit as hardy and irrepressible as the yellow yarrow that spread across the North in the summer, sprouting wherever the sun kissed the earth, from barrow to marsh, ditch to crag, no matter the quality of the soil or the quantity of rain. It stirred something within Sansa, and her cheeks burned at Jeyne's bold words. She pressed her eyes shut, but it was not the Young Falcon she imagined, standing before her. Grey eyes caught her. A kiss, searing and too brief, whispered across her lips. See? What consumes you, devastates me too.

I'm not your brother, Sansa.

Her eyes snapped open. She was being foolish, to conflate the Jon she knew before with the Jon she knew now. The Jon who chased her smiling lips with his own down a dark corridor, and burned through her restraint over darker waters, was wooing a different woman. The Jon she knew now had only meant to convey essential information to the only family left to him.

Who else knows? (That lives? Myself. Howland. Now…you. Your father was the only other, as far as we know. Sansa, this is a dangerous secret. The kind that starts wars and kills thousands.)

As if she didn't understand. Only minutes before, the northern lords had packed Jon's solar, railing against two unknown Targaryens, half a world away. She knew how the North viewed the disgraced house. Madmen. Rapists. Inbred Dragonspawn. If they learned that their own king, already holding together a fragile kingdom, was the son of the man who had kidnapped and raped the beloved Lyanna Stark, sparking the flames that led to Brandon and Lord Rickard's deaths and a rebellion that changed the face of Westoros…why, they would turn on Jon like rabid dogs.

Then, why are you telling me? She had asked him, eyes flying again to Howland in desperation.

(No more secrets, remember? We promised.) He had looked at her with such intensity that she was forced to look away once more, imploring Lord Reed for assistance.

If anyone else finds out, you'll lose the North! She turned to Jon. You must remain Ned Stark's son. The lords will never back a Targaryen. The look in Jon's eyes was positively mutinous as his advisor nodded back at her, and she continued to shake her head, in horror.

(You think I don't know that! That's why I'm telling you. You, of all people should know whose claim you are actually backing. There is still time-) No! You are still a Stark. This changes nothing.

But it changed everything. She had fled Jon's solar a short time later, her thoughts too jumbled to handle more than an awkward pledge to keep his secret safe and a hasty word of gratitude that he had entrusted her with his true identity. Only now, after days of strained interactions, and painfully polite run-ins with the king, did she begin to understand. She had asked the wrong questions and offered only the weakest absolution. You are still a Stark. This changes nothing.

-----

Later, she observed him, from a distance, in the Great Hall, as the lords and ladies filtered in for the upcoming trials. The king stood apart, head bowed in discussion with Val, who had returned with the Ironmen held in Torrhen's Square. Though Sansa had never seen a Targaryen in the flesh, Jon had none of their oft-recited characteristics. In the dim light, his dark brown hair and grey eyes appeared as black as the cloak resting on his shoulders, his face as long and drawn as the stone kings of winter standing sentinel deep beneath their feet. It would be easier to believe Ned Dayne was a secret Targaryen, for whatever Prince Rheagar had left Jon, it was buried deep inside.

Now, questions burned at her lips. What really happened to Lyanna? How did Jon come to be raised by Howland Reed? And how long had he known the truth of his birth? And how did he feel about it? How did her father feel about it? And why had he not shared the secret with her mother? Perhaps, these were the questions she should have asked when Jon first told her the truth. Perhaps she should have asked them at any point in the past few days, when the revelation was new and her curiosity would be expected. But, whenever there was a moment where they found themselves alone, her body would rebel with unknowable emotion and her heart would beat in her like a caged bird in her chest, her tongue heavy and thick in her mouth, and she would flee the room before whatever was growing within her, had an opportunity to bloom.

"Princess, are you well?" She startled at Baelish's words, too close, before tilting her eyes away from Jon to the lord beside her.

"Quite, my lord. And you?"

"Quite. They make a stunning pair, do they not?"

"Hm?" She asked, distractedly as Baelish's lips twisted in a knowing smirk.

"Why the king and the wilding princess, of course. Were you not just watching them?" His eyes narrowed, and she flashed Jon and Val another glance, before smiling faintly back at the lord.

"I hadn't noticed where my eyes has settled. I was lost in thought, my lord."

"Hm. Well, still, my questions stands. Would not the wilding princess make a fine wife for your half-beast brother?"

"Half-beast?" She raised an eyebrow. "Be careful with your words, Lord Baelish. There are those that would take offence to you speaking of your king so." Her voice was mild, though, and his green eyes glinted slyly back at her.

"I meant no harm, my Princess. The north will need a fierce, beastly leader to keep its hard-fought independence. Eyes in King's Landing may be turned inward for now, but that cannot last forever…And you still evade my question. What do you think of my match?"

"Val is no princess and Jon has already more or less gained the wildings support. He needs a wife with more to offer."

"Ah. In that case, here comes another enticing option." Sansa followed Baelish's eyes to Lady Wynyfryd Manderly, gliding into the Great Hall in a gown of deep blue, offset by a string of rose pearls gracing her slender neck. She stopped before the king, falling into a graceful curtsy and Sansa watched Jon's eyes sweep down her form with a sour taste in her mouth. "As I understand it, the king in the North has still not fully won over his wealthiest, most well-connected lord. There can be no argument against the advantages in him marrying the Manderly maid."

Satin caught Sansa's eye across the hall, gesturing for her to take her place. "Excuse me, my lord, it looks like the trial will soon commence."

Before she could extricate herself, however, Baelish leaned close, whispering, "Careful little bird. He is your brother. Unnatural relations have toppled kingdoms more stable than his." She pulled away, her heart racing and legs weak.

I am not your brother, Sansa.

He should never have told her.

----

She barely registered the accusations against Asha Greyjoy, Theon's sister, and the leader of the Ironborn who invaded Deepwood Motte and were defeated by Alyssane Mormont. Beside her, the king sat, just as in the previous trial, but this time his hand did not bridge the distance between them, nor did she reach out for him. Instead, she sat, staring out at the accused, yet seeing nothing. She was frightened. Littlefinger already watched them with suspicious eyes, and now she suspected Jon's secret was writ across her face every time she looked at the king. He should never have told her. It was hard enough to see him as her brother when she believed it to be true. Now, she didn't know how to meet his eyes.

She was snapped to attention when Asha Greyjoy was given a chance to answer to the charges against her.

"I'll take the black." She called out, with a wry smirk.

Sansa felt Jon's eyes light on her, but she stared straight ahead, so he responded. "There are no women in the Night's Watch."

"Well then, I choose freedom." The crowd chittered, and once again Jon tried to catch Sansa's eye before Asha continued. "I heard you let the Frey men, men who aided in raping women and mutilating children, choose the black, yet I, who simply held a castle that had been abandoned by its lord, and kept my men from harming a single hair on an innocent's head, am not afforded the same opportunity? Because I don't have a cock between my legs?" Gasps from the crowd. "Where is the honor in that?"

"And if we banish you from the North, you'll only return one day to raid our lands again. It's a tired tale. The Ironborn's broken promises." Jon called.

"Well then. I suppose you'll have to take me as a thrall…though again, I thought the North was too honorable for an arrangement so close to slavery." Her tone was mocking, and Sansa looked closer at the Ironborn woman. She was lean and long legged, in black breeches, her short black hair, tied loosely at her neck, revealing a thin face and a hawkish nose, tempered by a wickedly impertinent grin. "I suppose you have only two options left, Wolf King. Take off my head or take me to bed."

Again, the crowd chittered, and Sansa burned. The Greyjoy captive was making a mockery of their justice.

"As fascinating as your offer is," Jon answered, "the wolf is not tempted by the squid." The crowd truly laughed this time, but he rose, cutting them off. "Asha Greyjoy, you are hereby fined five thousand gold dragons. Until which time the debt is paid in full, you are forbidden from leaving our lands. You are free to live and to earn your repayment by any lawful means, though if you should break our laws again, I will be taking your head."

The Hall stood silent now, and Sansa hazarded a glance in the king's direction. His face was calm but stern, and there was no uncertainty to find on his face. After a moment he nodded to Maege, who prodded her men-at-arms to action, cutting away the Greyjoy's wrist binds.

"And what of my men?" Asha asked, before she could be fully dismissed from the Hall.

"I suggest they choose the black," was all Jon offered before holding a hand out to Sansa. "Bring the other Greyjoy. We'll resume shortly." Sansa stood, and let herself be led into the privacy of the gallery.

"Are you well, my Princess?" He asked, as soon as the door closed behind them.

"What…yes, of course. Why does everyone keep asking me that?" She couldn't meet his eye. He was standing too close. She could feel herself flushing. Everything was flushing. She tried to step away, but his hand was at her elbow.

"You lie." He murmured, low, and why was she so warm? "It upsets you. That I'm not a Stark."

"You are a Stark." She snapped, still trying to pull away subtly, but he only led her closer to the checkered windows.

"Sansa," His words came out in an anguished flood. "My grandfather murdered your uncle and grandfather. My father raped your aunt. You have every right to be upset. I'll give up the crown. Just say the words and I'll make you queen. I'll leave the north. Just tell me what you want me to do." He didn't understand anything, and he was standing too close.

"Jon!" She hissed. "You are not my enemy. Your grandfather murdered your uncle and grandfather as well! Your father…" Why must he be so obtuse? "Lyanna Stark was your mother. You are a Stark, regardless of who your father was. I've already told you, this changes nothing. You are King in the North! I want you to be king." It felt like her veins were lifting from her body.

"Then why can't you look at me? Why do you flinch every time I draw near? You hate that I'm a Targaryen. Admit it. It is I who should be standing before you in the Great Hall, to answer for the crimes of my family." A shiver ran down her spine and she pulled away once more, trying to think of anything that wouldn't reveal her true thoughts.

"You are mistaken." She blinked up at him, trying to disprove his point, and it would be so much easier if he weren't looking at her like he was; like her words mattered, like her opinions mattered. And it would also be easier too, if he didn't have so much power over her, she admitted weakly to herself; if she didn't notice the breadth of his shoulders as he leaned closer, or the way his lashes seemed impossibly long around his smoky grey eyes.

#know the love #part ii #wip excerpt #jonsa fic #jonsa fanfiction

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cruddyborderlandstheories · 5 years ago

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Athenas Masterpost

This is going to cover everything Athenas, like the official page and trailer, both new trailers, the art book preview, and some stuff shown in the ign trailers. It’s a lot.

There will NOT be endgame spoilers in this post. If there’s anything that comes up that I want to discuss, you can find it in a spoiler post I’ll be making soon :) I DO discuss a thing that occurs during the first 3 hours of BL3, though I think that’s pretty okay with y’all lol

tl;dr: there’s too much to summarize. 13 days until bl3. lmao im screaming on the inside.

“A misty, tranquil planet that has recently attracted the wrong kind of attention. Athenas is mostly uninhabited, save for a sect of monks known as the Order of the Impending Storm who have made their home in the high peaks of the mountains. What secrets do they guard here, inside ancient walls that were built long before humans set foot on Athenas?”

We definitely got a lot less info for Athenas than the other planets, and I can see why. They want to keep it mysterious.

Also, I’m not saying I totally called it that the pyramid was Eridian, but I totally called it. I am surprised it’s implying that the entire area was built by them, but what can ya do 🤷‍♂️

Anyway, since this post is long overdue, let’s just jump right in!

The Athenas video is nearly half the time of the Eden-6 one, so there’s not a lot to cover unfortunately:

We’ve seen this shot multiple times before

also the emphasis that Athenas is ‘tranquil’ and ‘peaceful’ ahahahaha no it’s not.

i love these dudes! Order of the Impending Storm!!! I wonder if their funky goggle things have anything to do with Sirens, like how they have Siren-trackers. I also really love their outfits. lowkey want one of these robes.

a great overview look of the area leading up to the pyramid. I got more to say about this... but it’s probably best if i leave it for later on in the post after we get more info

also, note the water and the rocks and stuff on the left there. This will come into play later... not even in this post. a later post.

also i totally called this being an ancient aliens reference lol

Vault logo on the flag there. definitely shows how much these guys worship the Vaults

This!!! I have so much to talk about here!

alright so now that we know what the vault keys look like.... this doesn’t appear to be part of any of the Vault Keys we’ve seen. especially not the Promethean one. not even the pyramid shaped one.

im mostly interested in this because this is obviously a monk, her robes match the ones we saw above with the hood. she doesn’t appear to be Eridian because we’ve seen the Watcher and the other Guardians, who are built in the image of the Eridians, and she looks wayyy too human. We’ve also seen statues of the Eridians in that one shot of the Pandora temple.

so it seems like the monks have gone inside the pyramid before and... built this statue? for some reason??? It’s interesting that she has an extra pair of arms as well. I wonder if she is like the Siren ancestor of Amara. which could prove my theory that the next successor of Amara would have another set of arms... it might also explain why Amara’s tattoos are everywhere on the buildings (outside of her being the Tiger)

it would also explain this shot, the skeleton with the book, which we now know we’ve seen before with Maya:

so even though they’re protecting the pyramid/temple, i don’t think they’ve been avoiding it entirely- at least not for the first time after discovering it. maybe they stopped going in after they discovered something bad, somethin like iunno... the Rampagers?

it would be Really Weird if the Eridians built that statue, especially when they probably didn’t know what humans looked like at the time. unless of course they helped shape humanity or smth. meaning they probably personally created Sirens. oh that’d be wild... i wonder if we’re going to learn about how early Sirens shaped humanity in that case. discovering fire could be entirely different lol

“hallowed land”

i wonder if this is where we’ll have anointed gear explained to us... i imagine the order is still worshipping Eridian/Siren stuff, so them having all sorta knowledge of this stuff would make sense

more Maliwan. you guys notice we see cultists purely on Eden-6 (outside of the crashed ship), but Maliwan purely on Athenas? a mix on Promethea, tho that’s bc we’ve actually gotten gameplay.

So my guess is Maliwan has joined up with the cult (be it through whatever means: Maliwan is in) and they’re looking for the Promethea key. which makes sense. they’re attacking Rhys on Promethea, so when he helps us out, word probably gets back to Maliwan (somehow) and they swap from wanting to take over Atlas (either by defeating them w/ Zer0/that giant space laser/whatever or just changing priorities) to wanting to open that fuckin Vault. Teaming up with the CoV is the best way to ensure that happens. I’m sure there will oodles of betrayal going on between the two parties.

I LOVE THESE THINGS

THEY’RE AMAZING

GOOD BOYS

in all seriousness, actually, im curious why we don’t see these good boys on Promethea. maybe they’re only for the top-tier squads? (mechanically, probably higher-level enemies) they look super high tech, so i would not be surprised if Maliwan thought Atlas would be an easy takeover so they didn’t send everything they could have

Nog! not much to say here tbqh

“Protect Athenas Before It’s Too Late”

I imagine before Maliwan gets the Vault Key or some other wild power, like power over the Rampagers. seriously, in the We Are Mayhem trailer, there’s a rampager are fighting on the side of Maliwan (altho if this is The One Rampager, or just One of Many is hard to tell. it could morph depending on which element it is. we just don’t know. personally i think there’s 1 per planet... i’ll explain later)

From the Art Book Preview:

Alright yes. “Maliwan forces have already seized control of the monastery, where part of the Promethean Vault Key has been located, turning a simply recovery mission into a vicious firefight...... A large and foreboding crypt built into the side of the mountain was also designed, and might perhaps have housed the Vault Key fragment deep within its gloomy interiors”

i don’t think this means the crypt is like an actual area. it would be interesting to discover that the pyramid is a giant crypt because... jesus. it would fit with the whole pyramid theme, at least. altho im wondering if this is more like a labyrinth situation where they’re trying to keep a Rampager inside as well as the treasure... which MAY be a Vault Key Fragment

Actually, this brings up a great point: did Atlas spread the Vault Key out throughout the planets? Is this where Typhon originally found that Key fragment? wtf was in the Vault that Atlas needed to disassemble the Key and return its fragments? oh boy i hope it’s something scary

From the Moze Eden-6 E3 Gameplay:

oh ye this. okay so this is definitely 100% Eridian. I’m guessing we get this from Athenas because this seems like a fairly important object and, well, Athenas is all about Eridian stuff. When we go through the next few videos, keep an eye out for the temples. You’ll see the glowing red diamond shape constantly reappearing there.

one of the devs admitted that there are hunks of Eridian Writing left around the world that will ‘open up’ things for the players, so I imagine this is exactly what we’ll use to get to it. If this IS only for endgame stuff I’ll be slightly disappointed. I know we have access to this before Eden-6, since there are gameplay videos that show the player breaking the Eridium chunks with this thing. the above one is from the Moze Eden-6 gameplay, tho I’ve also seen newer footage from the Balex gameplay with this same tool

The following clips can be found in this video:

im mostly interested in the wall art here

what looks like a sun or a planet

this symbol which makes an appearance elsewhere

these two are the same area, im imagining this is the fight up to the pyramid, with Maliwan forces and barricades everywhere

the sun again in the background (middle top)

this cool piece (bottom left of the above pic) which looks like a hand covered in glowing blue. i imagine this is some sorta representation of Phaselock? mainly because of the blue orb in the palm of her hand

not much to say about this area tbh. looks like a residential area to me, so possibly not in the residential district

writing on the top mid-right.

idk why i just noticed these trees are green and not red but yeah, that’s interesting. so probably a different area from Amara’s trailer aka: not Partali

and yet we see amara’s tattoos on the building in the back right. sorry for such terrible quality btw, tumblr ate these images and spit them back out

These clips can be found in the Borderlands are Yours trailer:

looks like the small building we see directly next to Maya and Ava

altho very clearly not the same exact area so im curious what these are supposed to represent. tbh im kinda reminded of graveyards. i really hope there aren’t corpses in those omg

another better look at the two pieces of art. i imagine the one on the right has something to do with the eridians given its in a diamond shape, which we know has something to do with the eridians now

also im not playing amara first (possibly last. depending on how i feel fl4k may go last) but HOLY SHIT her action skills are beautiful

THIS FUCKER

i know he’s probably a vault monster but like...

idk i feel its kinda sad gearbox is showing off a VAULT MONSTER of all things in so much promo material. like why is he fighting with Maliwan/the cult in the We are Mayhem trailer??

sup with that?

does he have multiple stages?? is that’s why he changes elements? goes from two heads to wings to extended necks. like wtf is up with this guy?? he definitely looks like he can be elementally charged given his eye sockets aren’t glowing when he emerges like they do

here but then

this dude looks like he has an entirely different skull like...

this dude is a corrosive one who also seems to be working with Maya (who i guess IS probably the corrosive aligned siren)

and we’re guessing the nuclear charged one is the one from Athenas... for reasons i’ll explain below

AND honestly i've been thinking and maybe the fire one is actually from Promethea? and maybe there’s another that’s on Eden-6 and another on Pandora?

alright so i have 2 reasons for this. one involves spoiler talk with the cloth map, so that won’t be discussed here (but if you see the map and the planets, you’ll understand what i’m alluding to here, most likely). the other is that in this screenshot of all the quests from the Eden-6 demo:

we see immediately after “hostile takeover” is the quest “the impending storm”. which is, indeedy, a reference to the Order of the Impending Storm. We know they’re on Athenas, so I imagine we run over to Athenas to get part of the Vault Key. We’ve established from the art book that’s where it is.

but then after The Impending Storm, Space-Laser Tag (which we all know is that giant-ass laser thing in the asteroid belt), and Atlas, at Last, there’s a quest called Beneath the Meridian.

And we know this area... is definitely underground. we’ve seen with the fire-y boy that the ceiling is just rocks

then we see this shot with the nuclear (?) one where the window outside is clearly showing off mountains/sky, which we know is kinda Athenas’s deal

and we know these two areas are the same v ^

since there’s the same ‘Vault’ in the background

so my only problem with this entire theory that there’s multiple rampagers is that

we see the twins killing/absorbing the red/fire one’s power which is also on athenas since the background is the same as the vault area from the above two pictures. unless there’s a similar vault-thing on promethea and eden-6. we know there’s one on Pandora, but that one is outside so.

so i guess they are the same beasty boy but... why why why show us one of the vault monsters

it’s so cool going in blind and not knowing what you’re going to get out of it.

so im going to say this is a minor vault monster (especially given it’s not exactly the same rock-like design as the other vault monsters) and the ‘vaults’ are actually something smaller. maybe they hold keys, or the pieces of the keys, or they’re part of that teleportation network i keep talking about (and i guess i should just make a seperate post about it) but i don’t know if these are actual Big Boy Vaults. especially when the Rampager doesn’t match actual Eridian-created Vault Monsters

that said given we see a bunch of dead guardians on the floor, its possible the rampager killed them? but i get the feeling we might actually be the ones to pull the trigger cause... combat is fun

so. yeah. if the rampager is guarding something that’s fine. i wanna believe teleportation network. i’d love to see the twins come in, walk out of that vault, absorb the rampager’s powers, and then walk out after locking us in like ‘peace’ and we have to use the teleportation system to make it back to promethea with the vault key fragment or whatever

[im here after the cloth map reveal like... uh huh. i see. u dumb bitchard.]

idk i just thought this was a fun screenshot lol

BoRdErLaNdS

ah yes

that’s eridium

this also appears to be in the temple, but, like, again if there’s more than one temple this could also be on Pandora or even Eden-6. Kinda leaning towards Pandora. HOWEVER since we only know for certain this sort of temple area is on Athenas (from that one statue shot), we’re gonna analyze this bad boy right now (also lowkey think this is Pandora because of the varkid nests but shhh)

what do i actually have to say about it? uhhh not much tbh. i think i’ve said all that needs to be said concerning the twins mutating cultists with slag/eridium.

i will say im pretty shocked at, like, the eridium HORNS and shit. so maybe this is just some cool little miniboss. (okay not mini because look how big he’s gotten!! just like Bloodwing :D)

you know what, it looks like he’s standing on one of these

floor tile things, and now im super curious. is the fire part of a trap? is it powering this lad up? i definitely know he’s a cultist because he’s got the neon light tubes on his shoulder pad

see here

you can see these on other cultists like goliaths and such and such

also this is pretty similar to what we’ve seen in the LLE (especially the powersuits) given their bodies also form eridium crystals when they’ve ascended

i feel like its powering him up

you know during the fight with bloodwing when Jack powers up bloodwing using the elemental flamethrower things? would be interesting if this is similar to that.

like dis

yeahhh

the radiation boy is back and he’s actually elementally charged this time

huzzah

also i love the chest mouth lmao

has anyone here seen stretch armstrong? like that one episode where Gabe (crostini man) gets turned into a bunch of flexarium monster chunks

but yeah, awesome mouth my guy.

im curious if it’s being elementally charged to cryo or if it’s stopped being charged. if this is like a cutscene between different stages in the fight, etc etc.

this also looks fairly similar to this area here

but red this time. which... may tie into the elemental stages. which maaaaay tie into those floor platforms elementally charging that demon baby up above. bloodwing 2.0!

You can find the following clips in the Official Guide to the Borderlands:

god i keep telling myself to be on the lookout for athenas clips but i get so distracted by the gorgeousness of this fucking game i forget and have to keep going back

if that dude in the back floating was t-posing i would have lost my shit

new Siren tattoos!!! we haven’t seen these before. they’re very flowy, i love them. i hope we get to meet the siren with them!

i also loooooove this area in the back. i hope we get to climb it and explore. i would love to just be able to climb to high up areas in bl3 and look down and see the area i just came from. it’s possible! we have the technology! thousand cuts / bnk3r ascension 2.0!!!

more of amara’s awesome looking powers

zane has 2 trans pride skins im so happy 😄

also look at how teeny tiny that ‘Vault’ is in the back!!! it’s only like 2x the size of Iron Bear!!! gimme BIG vaults!! GIANT VAULTS

also also

the VOID vault

i get a feeling these are connected somehow.

sniper spoooot

not much to say about this tbh. zane’s claw things look fucking dope tho. i want one irl.

we’ve seen this shot a few times before already

alright before you get mad, let me explain why i think this is athenas

you see this picture

this maliwan jackass. the building to his left is 100% athenas architecture.

the rocks in the top picture look identical to the ones next to him. plus we’ve seen water in the distance of some of the areas of Athenas

it could also be Eden-6 (which honestly i would not be surprised if it is instead) but given the ivy and the rocks i felt it was worthwhile to put in. plus the moving eridian structures are so cool looking. i feel like that’s going to be a puzzle.

oh oh also

maybe that area leads into/exits from here? because they’re both underground in cavern-like areas

but like... it could also be eden-6... because of that one shot of the temple area in the side of the cliff ASDFHDGJFJGFHSD

still radiation charged.

also seriously this ‘Vault’ is wayyyy smaller than a regular Vault. like... the one in BL2 that you can walk right up to... huge. and nothing even comes out of it. the Warrior climbs up from over the edge

the bl1 is much bigger than this one, too. also the vault of the traveller, i would argue is the biggest out of all of them but eh

for the Vault of the Sentinel, the actual arch we see... i’ve already gone over why i don’t think that’s a ‘real’ vault and that its all more of a simulation, but you can read that whole thing here bc i am trying my damndest to not get off topic for this post because holy fucking shit. this got long.

Alright so. Onto the website pictures

another cool shot of the academic district, really showing off the pyramid in the background. god i wanna know what that is. could be the temple (underground things notwithstanding). it’s probably holding that statue with the vault keys in either arm

you know the one, it’s at the beginning of this post. but damn that thing is huge!! i am hoping it holds more than just the promethean vault key.

did i already talk about how there are siren tattoos written along the edges of this area??? because... damn.

also the symbol for what is probably Vault Key sitting right smack dab in the middle??

also sorry i just noticed those blue shapes are moving. like a fountain or something?? weird light.

i mean... the trees are also warping in the background. wonder wtf is going on here...

anyway whatever she’s holding actually doesn’t match up with any of the vault keys we’ve seen so... wtf are you???

a very nice shot overlooking the water. also a wind turbine in the background. i think the area on the left is where we’ve seen ava and maya? but dont hold me to that lol

definitely looks the same. even has the tree

another shot of that area i think we’ve seen Amara fighting in

big shot of the pyramid with the vault symbol everywhere. and the planet with the beams coming out of it. which in retrospect...

anyway that’s spoiler talk so let’s talk in another post.

another shot of athenas from a slightly different angle, we’ve seen this one before, too, and i remember because i complemented the road signs

annnnd im tired. good night everybody.

#borderlands #bl3 #borderlands 3 #athenas

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horrorblyyy · 6 years ago

Text

Announcement

Hello, all! So, as you’ve probably been able to tell, I’ve been gone for quite a while. My Instagram has been pretty dead too, sorry! A lot has happened in the last couple months, mostly all good, so I thought it was about time to update you.

First off, some life changes. To start, I recently got a part time job! I love it, but it’s been a big change for me and I’m still getting used to it. This leads me to my second, very awesome announcement. I mainly got this job to save up for… an online store!! Yes, I am going to be launching my own online store, hopefully within the next month. I’ll be selling stickers and art prints mainly, but also jewelry organizers and possibly some embroidered fashion items. In the future I hope to have a lot more merch (buttons, shirts, etc) because, second big announcement time: I’m planning to start attending conventions by next year! It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and I think I’m finally ready to work toward it seriously.

All this has come after a great deal of soul searching on my part. I’ve recently come to realize that art is extremely important to me. It’s who I am, it’s my life, it’s my reason for getting out of bed in the morning. For years I’ve tried to run toward “real career” options, only to feel unfulfilled and unhappy. I’ve never felt more comfortable than deciding to make art my career, no matter how hard it will be. This is another big change for me, but one I’m hoping will take me in wonderful directions.

Now, this is where the not-so-good news comes in. As you know, KYS has been on hold for the past few months and has also been taking lots of breaks. I also feel the quality has sharply declined. I’ve thought deeply about my next move as far as comics are concerned, since they are something I want to be doing for the rest of my life and will hopefully be part of my income someday. This wasn’t an easy decision to come to, but starting now KYS will be on an indefinite hiatus. I know this is probably upsetting, and it is for me too. I love this story and these characters, but recently I’ve lost inspiration for both.

There are a few reasons for this. To start, KYS was supposed to be a “practice comic” to help me learn and grow before starting any of my other stories. Of course, it ended up growing much larger than anticipated. However, I only worked on this one for roughly a year before beginning and I think I don’t have quite the same attachment to it as I do with other stories. Not to say I don’t love it, because I absolutely do, but I’ve recently realized something else. I’m not in the same headspace I was a few years ago, when I was dealing with bad mental health issues. KYS was my way to express those feelings I’d had and to advocate for mental illness, which I still want to do. Only, it’s been surprisingly hard to get in touch with those feelings when I’m now in a much happier, optimistic state of mind and being. I didn’t anticipate this to be a problem until now.

Basically, KYS will not be returning. It hurts me to say that, but I don’t want to force it and give you all something severely lacking in quality and heart. I will say it’s not totally out of the question I will return to it someday. And if I decide 100% I won’t be, I’ll definitely write up a synopsis about what would have happened. I want to give it a while first, though, to see if the inspiration returns to me. Now, this doesn’t at all mean I’ve given up on comics. On the contrary, I have some more exciting news to share with you all:

I am currently in the process of plotting and beginning TWO new comics. Yes, two!

One I’ve had for a couple years. It’s the story of three bands brought together for a “fusion tour” around the world. There will be lots of comedy, a fair amount of smut, and even more fluff. Of course, a little bit of relationship angst, too. I don’t want to give too much away, but I hope to start this sometime next year.

The second one I’ve had for six or seven years now. It’s an LGBT love story set in Eastern Kentucky. This one has a lot more sensitive material. It deals heavily with abuse, including sexual abuse. As always, nothing will be overly explicit. However, as weird as this sounds, it’s actually the most cavity-inducing, fluffy story I’ve probably ever written. The level of sweetness definitely combats, if not outweighs, the angst. These characters are so, so close to me that I’ve actually cried plotting the story (lol). This one I plan to start next year, too, but I want to have at least a year of finished pages before I start uploading.

I’ll have more information for both stories in coming months, as well as some preview images. You can always check my Instagram ( @horrobly ) for character sketches and updates! I’ll also be posting picture of merch from my online store there, as well as a link to it once it’s up and running. I may start using this tumblr more, too, to keep in touch with all of you and keep you posted on all the amazing things to come.

I apologize for this information dump, and for the discontinuation of KYS. I hope you’ll stay with me despite that, and share in many more stories to come. I love all of you, more than I can put into words. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t feel remotely as connected to the world and as full of love as I do now. You inspire me every day and I look forward to the years to come.

Stay awesome, always,

Wren

#update #kys #important #webcomic #comics #comic #art #artists on tumblr

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quirkyresources · 7 years ago

Photo

- ̗̀ How to Make Gifs with Photoshop and KMPlayer (Very Detailed) by quirkyresources © ̖́-

♡ All my tutorials ♡

Hi! I'm no expert, but I've been making gifs for at least like four or five years, and over that time I've learned a lot, so I want to share that stuff :) Also, someone requested that I teach them how to gif. I hope this helps!

This tutorial will teach you how to create simple but quality gifs, like the ones in the gifset above! Those gifs are all from TV shows, but it should apply to giffing almost anything. I’ll be using KMPlayer and Photoshop.

This is the gif I’ll be showing how to create, as an example:

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to message me here :) And I’m somewhat new to writing tutorials, so if you notice that I got something wrong, please let me know. Thanks!

Please like/reblog if this is at all useful to you. Thank you so much if you do!

You need:

KMPlayer (link below)

Photoshop (I'm using CC 2017, but I think any version with the timeline should work)

A video to gif (recommended source below)

A sharpening action (recommendations below)

A PSD / or to know how to color gifs (recommendations & tips below)

I'll go over:

How to buy/download PS, download KMPlayer, and download a video!

Taking screencaps in KMPlayer

Importing the screencaps into Photoshop

Cropping and timing the gif, organizing layers, etc.

Adding a PSD or tips for coloring it yourself

Adding subtitles & learning font settings

Saving for web

Posting to Tumblr

Various tips along the way!

The tutorial is under the cut. Have fun and good luck! ♥

[Note: If a photo looks too small, right click it and choose "open in new tab"]

Step 1: getting Photoshop, KMPlayer, and quality videos

Get Photoshop: I was able to buy my Photoshop, so I don’t have any free downloads to recommend, I’m sorry! But there are plenty of other Photoshop blogs on tumblr that can help with this stuff :) And there are some deals from adobe that might help you afford it if you want to buy it instead. They had a great one for college students that totally helped me. Anyways, if you can get it somewhere/somehow, here are the next steps...

Download KMPlayer: Here's the link (it's free!): kmplayer.com You can use it to watch videos, but in this case we use it to take screencaps of them to use for gifs.

Get your video: If you’re going to download a movie or show, I recommend getting torrents from thepiratebay.org and using μTorrent to download them. (Here's a tutorial for how to download stuff with it.) Be careful with viruses and stuff, though! When you look for a video, try to get one that's as HD as you can find, meaning one that is 720p or 1080p! That tells you what the height of the frames will be, in pixels. They are usually big files, but should be much better quality than others. Also, try to find videos that do NOT have network logos or ads on them!! They can make gifs look pretty bad, and it takes some serious cropping to get rid of them, which then makes it look even less quality.

Step 2: taking your screencaps Open your video in KMPlayer. (Open KMPlayer and press CTRL O.) Get to the exact scene/clip you want to gif. (Tip: it's hard to find the exact place you're looking for, so I recommend using your right/left arrow keys to skip through a little at a time.)

Once you're at the part of the video you want to gif, press CTRL G. This brings up the "frame extraction" window. This is where, as you can probably guess, you extract the frames for your gifs! Here are the settings I use:

I use these exact settings almost every time, except for the image format section. I go between JPEG and PNG. I use JPEG if I'm making a smaller gif (like 268px width or less) and I use a PNG if I'm making a larger gif (like 540px width.) This is because (or at least I've heard) PNGs are the highest quality option, JPEGs are the middle, and bitmaps are the lowest (don't use them!!) The only downside is that the higher the quality, the higher the screencap's file size. So use PNGs sparingly if that matters to you.

You can also change the "prefix" of the screencap filenames.

After figuring out all of these settings, click "start"! Then press play on the video, play until the end of what you're giffing, and press "stop" and pause it.

Then, in the frame extraction window, click the "open" button that’s to the far right of the "extract to" bar. This will open up the folder location of your new screencaps.

Step 2.5: organizing your screencaps What you'll want to do now is organize the screencaps into separate folders for each individual gif. This is something that's good to do whether it's all from one scene or you're doing a compilation of different clips. This is because, when you upload the screencaps into PS, it's best to have them in their own little folders!

(Tip: Personally I use 75 frames or less in each gif. This is because that’s the limit on the sharpening action I use, but I also think it's a good amount to stop at.)

Step 3: importing your screencaps into Photoshop

Next, we're finally going to move the screencaps you took into Photoshop. Yay!

Open file > scripts > load files into stacks. (Tip: Sometimes this function doesn't work on certain Photoshop downloads. If this is the case for you, here's a tutorial on how to get around that!) This brings up this window:

Click "browse" and find the folder with the screencaps you want for your gif. Select all of them and click "open". Then click "ok" and wait for them to load. Each screencap will load as its own layer in the layers panel, which is what you want to start with.

Step 4: changing the screencaps from layers into frames in the timeline

Once they're all loaded as layers, go to window > timeline. This brings up the timeline!

At this point, things should look something like this:

Now we can start using the timeline! In this method we convert the layers into frames that live inside the timeline, which we’ll use to make the gif move.

First click on the button in the middle of the timeline panel that says "create frame animation" right here:

Then click on the little three bars icon on the top right corner of the timeline. Click "make frames from layers" on the thing that pops up .

It depends, but you might need to reverse the frames (if it imports them in backwards). So just click on that three bars icon again and click "reverse frames".

Step 5: cropping the gif

It's really important to know the Tumblr dimensions! If you have a gif that doesn't fit the dimensions most Tumblr users view it at it can get distorted.

So the width dimensions you should use are:

A row of just one: 540px wide

A row of two: 268px wide each

A row of three: 177px & 178px & 177px

A super helpful explanation of good dimensions to use is this one made by karazorel. It's very close to the way I do it.

So to crop it, go to the crop tool (duh, sorry) and enter in the dimensions you want into the area I highlighted here:

Here's what the gif looks like so far:

You'll probably notice it moves really fast and stops moving after playing once. That's because we haven't gotten to the step to fix that yet. But that's next!

Step 6: timing, looping, etc.

Timing: Select all of the frames. You can do this by selecting the first frame, holding shift, and clicking on the last frame. Now click the little arrow next to where it says "0 secs." under any of the frame previews right here:

Click on "Other..." and type "0.14" into the text field. That represents the number of seconds, or usually the fraction of a second, that each frame will play for. (It's "0.14" in this case because of the way we entered the settings in KMPlayer in the "Frames to Extract" section. The number depends on what you enter there.) Press enter/okay.

Looping: Next change the looping setting from "once" to "forever". Here's where I'm talking about:

Step 7: sharpening the gif frames

This step can either be done at this point (before coloring it) or later (right after coloring it.) I go back and forth on which is better, and different people say different things. So just play around with it!

I use this sharpening action. It can sharpen up to 75 frames, which is a really good amount in my opinion.

Once you have a sharpening action downloaded, go back to Photoshop and go to window > actions. Click this little menu button, then click "Load Actions...".

In the window that pops up, choose whatever sharpening action you downloaded and open it. This will load it into your actions panel!

Next, click the menu button on the upper right corner of the timeline panel and click "Flatten Frames Into Layers". Now there will be a new set of layers that are labeled Frame 1, Frame 2, Frame 3, etc. Keep those, and then you can delete the OLD set of layers. (That can significantly lower the file size, and it doesn’t mess anything up if you do it right!)

Now select the very first frame in the timeline, labeled "1", and select the corresponding layer, labeled "Frame 1".

Then open the sharpening action's folder within the actions panel and select the folder labeled with the number of frames you have in your gif. For example, I have 18 frames in my gif, so I selected the folder labeled "18 frames". Or at least that's the way they labeled things in the action I'm using. You may have to explore yours to figure it out.

Then click the play button on the actions panel:

Now that should have sharpened all of your frames/layers! Woohoo! Here's what the gif should look like by now, all cropped, timed, looped, and sharpened:

If this way of sharpening doesn't work for you, here are some other gif sharpening tutorials:

How to use sharpening actions in Photoshop CC by peacelovegifs

Gif sharpening tutorial by manofsteel.co.vu

Sharpening for Photoshop CC by completeresources

Sharpening all gif frames at once by thosetutorials

Sharpening masterpost by itsphotoshop

Gif sharpening action tutorial + download by themazerunnrs

Step 7.5: grouping your layers (a baby step!) A bonus step that I recommend you do is to put all your layers into a group to keep things neat. Just select all of them and press CTRL G.

Step 8: adding a PSD and/or coloring it yourself!!

Here's the fun part! Now you can let out your creativeness with the coloring. It takes a LOT of practice to get good at this, trust me. I've been doing this for YEARS and I still hate my results sometimes. But if that happens to you, too, don't let that stop you from trying again! (God, I sound like a motivational speaker or something, sorry!)

Here’s some background on PSDs for beginners, but you can totally skip this bit...

"PSD" stands for "Photoshop document", meaning a file you make or edit in Photoshop (sorry, kind of self explanatory). On Tumblr, when people talk about PSDs, they're usually referring to a document with layers that add effects (mostly adjustment layers) to a gif/photo/graphic, etc. Also referred to as a "coloring". They usually include things like brightness/contrast, vibrance, curves, selective color, etc. People post these so you can download them and use them for your own work! (Just don't repost and claim as your own. Not cool, man.)

All you have to do is download the file, open it in Photoshop, make sure you have the layers panel open (windows > layers), and drag the PSD file's window on top of your file's window, but keep them separate so you see both at once. Then drag the PSD file's group of layers (but not the background!) over to your file.

(Then you can close the PSD window.) Then on YOUR file, mess around with the adjustment layers and stuff to change it to whatever you want it to look like. I usually edit mine like crazy!

Anyways, here are what your options are.

Finding a PSD (and then I recommend editing it to however you like it)

Here are places to find some great PSDs on Tumblr! (FYI, some are tag pages with sections for PSDs, with different types to choose from. So look around.)

QuirkyResources (Navigation) (Yup, shameless self-promo!)

QuirkyResources (My PSDs)

CompleteResources

ItsPhotoshop

ChaoticResources

YeahPS

DrunkandColoring

AresColoring

That's just a few of my favorite sources, so message me if you want more recs! :)

Coloring it yourself

I'm not going to do a full-on coloring tutorial right now, but here is my tag for those made by other people!

Basically you should learn how to use the most important adjustment layers: curves, brightness/contrast, selective color, color balance, hue/saturation, vibrance, levels, exposure, and gradient maps. At least those are the ones that I use the most and find super useful. Many of the tutorials in that coloring tutorial tag I just linked go over how to use those. So check them out!

In this case, I used my current fave PSD by dracoharry. (I’ve noticed it works on most shows I gif, so it’s super useful! I actually used it for all of the gifs in the gifset I made for this post.)

Here are the layers I kept hidden/showing:

FYI, I changed the layers' settings and whatnot a bunch.

And here’s what my result was:

Step 9: adding text & learning font settings (optional)

This is usually when I add text to the gif, if relevant.

There are various fonts and settings you can use for this, but to make things easier, here's a font PSD by adorkablelena. It’s for subtitles/quotes. I recently started using it. It's really cute! If you're not into it though, here's my tag for other font PSDs you can check out.

When you find a font PSD you like, open it and drag it into your document the same way you would with a regular PSD.

Select the text tool and replace the text with your quote. (Tip: Try not to misquote or misspell things if you can help it! I've done it and it sucks when that happens. Ugh.)

As far as colors go... For the primary quote I make the text white, and the secondary quote I usually make it yellow (#ffde00). And if there is a third I'll use some shade of orange, and anything after that I just use whatever I can make look the best. The stroke color I use varies sometimes, but I usually use black (#000000).

Finally, select the move tool (V) and make sure "smart guides" are turned on. To check this, go to view > show > smart guides, and make sure it's checked. Now when you drag around the text (select its layer first), you can see little purple vertical/horizontal guides pop up when you drag the text to the center of either direction. For the subtitle we're making, we want it to be centered horizontally and close to the bottom of the gif, but not too close. Also, if you have more than one line of text, just press enter somewhere in the text that splits it into similar-sized lines. Here's an example of all of this stuff put together:

Step 10: saving for web

There are a lot of settings to remember and play around with when saving for web, and specifically for Tumblr.

First, go to file > export > save for web (legacy).

Here you'll see a lot of settings to choose from, but they're not as intimidating as they may look!

Here are my usual settings:

Red highlight: There are multiple options in the top drop down list in the area I highlighted that are good to use. I usually use “Adaptive”, but “Perceptual” and “Selective” are good options too. In my experience, the rest make your gif look pretty gross. For the drop down list under that I choose "Pattern". This arranges the pixels in a pattern, and I like the look of that more than the two other viable options, ”Diffusion” and “Noise”.

Orange highlight: This is where you choose the number of color shades that are in the gif. I use the top amount allowed, 256, because this achieves the highest quality possible! If you need to make the gif's file size smaller, you can lower this amount, but I don't recommend it. If it's a B&W gif you can sometimes get away with using less and have it still look just as quality.

Yellow highlight: Looping options: Forever. Very important! Like I showed earlier, you can also set this setting before you get to the "save for web" option. Either way, this makes it so the gif loops forever.

Green highlight: Gif size! As I mentioned earlier, there is a limit for Tumblr. This example is a pretty small gif (592.9K) and the current file size limit on Tumblr is 3MB. Tumblr seems to change this limit a lot though, so you may want to look that up once in awhile to stay up to date.

Turquoise highlight: Always check the box next to “Convert to sRGB”. I just learned that this setting is important. It basically keeps the vibrance intact when you take it from Photoshop to Tumblr. Read a much better explanation here! :)

Then just click "Save...", choose the file location, and press "Save" again.

Step 11: uploading/posting to Tumblr

Now, last but not least, it's time to upload it to Tumblr! I probably don’t need to explain this, but I’m going to anyways. It's super-duper easy. Just go to your dashboard and click on this button:

Then the post creation window pops up, and just go on from there. Upload your images/gifs, drag them around to arrange them however you like, and add a caption if you want.

(Tip: Don't forget to add tags! It's super important to add tags if you want people to actually find your post. Only the first 5 tags show up in the main Tumblr tag-search results (ugh wtf, right?) but sometimes the other ones you add will show up on the general search page. I don't really get how to explain it or how it works tbh, sorry! But I do know that many fandoms have developed their own tagging-language to find people's posts more easily (and avoid spam) which is very useful once you figure it out. For example, if I was posting a gifset of Cheryl Blossom from Riverdale, I'd tag it with things like "riverdaleedit" and "cherylblossomedit" and maybe "madelainepetschedit". So basically the name of the show/character/actor/ship plus "edit", no spaces. Or an abbreviation of any of those, like "spnedit" or "dwinchesteredit". I hope that at least makes a little sense? As far as the amount of tags that will show up on individual blogs, I'm not positive, but I believe you can use up to 30. After that the post won't appear on the tag's page. Grrr.)

Then, of course, just post it! I recommend saving it as a draft and then posting it at a time when a lot of people are likely to be on Tumblr. (There's research done on this timing!)

THE END! :D

I really hope that was at least somewhat helpful. Sorry if it was annoying that I went into sooo much detail, I just thought I should explain everything so it would make sense to most people, especially total beginners. Again, if anyone has any questions at all, you can absolutely ask me here! Or let me know if you think I got anything wrong, I would definitely want to fix it! Thanks for reading, and please like/reblog ♥ I’d really appretiate it!

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nochuie · 8 years ago

Text

Gif tutorial (Avisynth, Photoshop and Topaz)

okay so I’ve gotten a lot of questions asking me how I get my gifs so nice and smooth and HD and normally I don’t really go into depth because it’s kind of a combination of stuff I’ve learnt over time. My old gif tutorial only outlines using photoshop and is like over a year old so here’s an updated version.

Everything below the cut

So I’m going to break this tutorial down into 3 key parts, avisynth, photoshop and topaz. So you can pick which section that applies for you and each tutorial is basically independent.

Avisynth

disclaimer: not recommended to start out using avisynth, learn and familiarise using photoshop to make gifs first.

some background - why I use avisynth is because it’s a way to downscale the video without/next to no loss at all, so the quality is retained. Definitely check out brandinator’s tutorial and explanations here as he’s basically the innovator for avisynth gifs. He’s also super friendly so if you have any issues definitely hit him up. His tutorial basically explains everything and I guess I’ll just outline what it’s telling you to do.

Drag your video file onto normalwebmrange.bat and a command prompt will pop up

if your file does not work with normalwebmrange, then useless lossless intead

Type in your start time and hit enter, do the same for the end time (must be in hh:mm:ss format, i.e. 00:00:03 for it to start at 3 seconds)

Then after all the frames are done processing resizer.html will automatically open up in your browser

From here you figure out the sizing of your video (please refer to brandinator’s video here because it explain it really well)

For the following steps just refer to the rest of the video because its visually easier to learn off

When you copy your code across, dont include the crop line of code just in case you want to move things around in photoshop later

What do all the options in the resizer.html mean?

GIF size - Here you just plug in the value that you intend for your gif. Refer here for the tumblr post width guides. I personally use:

540 x [anything] for single gifs

268 x 350 for double gifs

177/178 x 250 for triple gifs

Opacity - This slider is just so you can see which part of the video will be shown in your given dimensions and is really useful as a preview to see if everything you want in your gif is visible for that dimension so you can go back and tweak your size if necessary

Resizing - In the bottom right hand corner of the video itself you can click and drag to resize the video so that you can find the desired size/zoom for your given dimensions

Pre-processor - Okay this is the important one and where all the smooth and HD quality comes from. In the first box you are given these options

Use for standard video formats (mp4, avi, mkv etc)

None (choose none for every video that is not a .ts file)

IVTC (tbh idk what this does, but you don’t need it)

1 in 5 Dupe (some videos have a duplicate frame for every 5th frame and this fixes it, kind of rare to use)

Only use for .ts files Basically the 30 and 60 is talking about 30fps or 60fps, recommend that you choose 30fps for single gifs because you’re going to find it hard to fit anything of substance under 3mb for single gifs. Double gifs can be either 30/60 at your own discretion. Triple gifs can definitely be 60fps without worries about cutting out frames. The fast and slow options are the encoding speed once you’ve saved the avs, slow renders at a better quality but its barely noticeable so you can use fast every time

qtgmc 30 fast

qtgmc 30 slow

qtgmc 60 fast

qtgmc 60 slow

In the second box you can pick between resamplehq, debilinear and dithertools. All you need to know is that you choose debilinear every time and for every video format

Didn’t want to make another comparison gif so just reusing this one again, it’s slowed down so you can really see the different between 30fps and 60fps which you don’t normally feel too much if the gif is faster but definitely makes a difference. Notice the quality differences also between the first two, thats what avisynth helps with the most; making sure the quality loss is minimal

Photoshop

if you haven’t used avisynth to cut/resize your video then you can do that in photoshop, although I recommend that you cut the video first in another editing program so there’s less loading time and strain on photoshop itself (I use to use Adobe Premiere for this)

Refer here for the sites that I use to download my videos from.

Importing/Resizing

Import it into Photoshop (File > Import > Video Frames to Layers)

Match the settings to these

Select the part you want with the slider on the right and hit okay

Once it’s all into Photoshop, make sure you have the timeline/animation window open (Window > Timeline) and you should be able to see all the frames of your gif

If you’ve used avisynth you only need to crop it (Image > Canvas Size; and input in the desired size of your gif) otherwise you’ll need to crop it and then down size it to the desired gif size (Image > Image Size; setting width to either 540, 268, 177/178). Remember to set it to Bicubic and locking the width when you resize it

delete all the unwanted frames from your gifs

Sharpening

At this point I normally apply topaz (so refer below) otherwise you can do standard sharpening now

Select all your frames and layers and then convert it to a video timeline (bottom left of the timeline window)

Convert your layers to a smart object (Filter > Convert to Smart Object)

Then use Smart Sharpening (Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen)

These are the settings that I used before, feel free to tweak them to whatever you like. (Note that .ts files resized with avisynth rarely need to be sharpened at all because sometimes they already look over sharp, and thus we use topaz to clean them up)

After you’re happy with your sharpening, flatten the layers back to frames, make sure your gif is on the first frame (top right hand corner of the timeline (Convert Frames > Flatten Frames to Clips) and then create the frames again (Convert Frames > Make Frames from Clips)

Click the bottom left again to change your video timeline back to frame view and delete the first frame (it should be blank) and your first layer (it should be the one thats still a smart object)

Now everything should look like it did before you did your sharpening except now your gif will be sharpened

Colouring

I’m not really going to tell you how to colour your gifs because everyone does them differently and it’s also kind of each individual’s signature thing, like often I can tell who’s gif it is just by the way its coloured. Things to note here that too many colours and over saturation will lead to your gif file being extremely large. If you want to lower the file size of your gif it’s helpful to note that darkening the blacks and/or brightening the whites helps a lot. Colouring overall can drastically change your gifs so much. Here’s an example

of course you don’t want to change the colours so heavily every time but its just an example of what’s possible

Timing

To change timing (speed) for your gif you just need to select all your frames and then click on the arrow at the bottom of any of the frames and someone will pop up for you to input the time. Generally this is what I use for my gifs

0.02/0.03/0.04 for 60fps

0.04/0.05/0.06 for 30fps

Exporting

After all your colouring and timing is done you just need to export your gif (File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)), double check that your gif is less than 3mb (in the bottom left) and also here are my export settings. Never lower the colours unless your gif is black and white or you’ll probably lose quality

200212 update: gif size limits have been increased and can reach up to 8mb but have exponential loss in quality the larger the file size. The optimal size is to remain under 3.5mb-4mb, another larger and you’ll start to notice a loss in quality.

Topaz

I’m not going to tell you where and/or how to download topaz because you can probably look that up yourself, there are a bunch of tutorials how on tumblr/youtube etc so you can sort that out. I use Topaz Denoise and Topaz Clean. Topaz Denoise does exactly what you think it does, it removes the noise from your gifs and it helps clean everything up. Topaz Clean is basically the same principle of sharpening but it’s a lot nicer and doesn’t over sharpen like smart sharpening does most of the time. Topaz takes a lot longer than regular sharpening because it processes it frame by frame so if you don’t want to bother and wait for it that’s alright.

Following the same two steps as the sharpening section of the photoshop tutorial, you’ll have a video timeline and a smart object

Then apply Denoise first (Filter > Topaz Labs > Topaz Denoise)

Play around with the settings as you see fit

Then do the same for Clean (Filter > Topaz Labs > Topaz Clean)

After you’re happy with the settings you’ll need to flatten the frames back (refer above to the sharpening section), and then just put on your psd like normal

Sometimes topaz isn’t as noticeable but when compared to original and smart sharpening it’s more noticeable

Smart Sharpen, while it does sharpen the gif also increases how grainy it is so for gifs which are originally grainy it’s not a good solution. Meanwhile topaz sharpens it without increasing the grain and can also reduce it. (The gifs above aren’t that grainy so smart sharpening doesn’t look that bad)

Here’s another example of how topaz removes the noise from gifs

Wrap-up

Okay so this is a pretty comprehensive post about everything and anything I know about photoshop and gif-making in general, it outlines all the little steps I take to make my gifs look really nice and just for an overall comparison to show you that the little things really add up

and slower for you to notice the framerate

Additional Video Tutorial Resources:

Basic gif tutorial (photoshop only)

Gif Tutorial

How I adjust for coloured lighting

Colouring tutorial - levels + exposure

Blurring text/captions

If you have any other questions on this or felt like I’ve missed something feel free to send me an ask. Happy Gif-ing!

#text #tutorials #okay this is was longer than i thought it would be #i really hope it covered everything #hmu if you think i missed anything #i proof read it but i probably missed smth so cut me some slack #ive been @ this for like 1387201 hours #long post #this is the most comprehensive thing i've written in my life

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yukipri · 8 years ago

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Hey, I want to start posting my own art but i don't know if i should do it on tumblr or instagram...which one should i choose? i noticed that you use both, but all your art has your blog URL... any thoughts?

Okay so here’s my best attempt to answer this, it got a bit long sorry! ^ ^;

I think different people have vastly different experiences posting art on various social media platforms depending on what you post, how you want to present it, how many followers you have, and how you regularly interact/WANT to interact with those followers.

I technically have an instagram which I tried to get myself to restart using after my last convention since so many cosplayers use it, and i tried putting a very small amount of art on there but tbh it’s already fallen back to its original use, which is to sometime post photos to tumblr through it ^ ^; I realized Instagram’s not a great platform for me personally to post art because 1) I personally do not have a lot of followers on it, 2) of those followers, many are rl people who found me through fb which i try to keep separated from my fandom blogs, 3) Instagram heavily controls image dimensions so it’s not great if you frequently post tall or long posts and the majority of my art is portrait, 4) Instagram is good for individual aesthetic images, not so great for long story-telling multi-page comics, which is a lot of what I do, 5) I’m not entirely sure how people find your blog on instagram since no reblogging and tags and stuff seem strange and most of the attention seems to come from people who already follow you, and I’m too tired to learn another social media platform now, and 6) Instagram is full of a TON of art theft and I’ve had too many personal bad experiences to have a good impression of the platform as a whole.

So uh, yep, in other words for me Instagram is mostly for cosplay, selfies, pet pics, and merch pics ^ ^;

I also post on Twitter, but that has its fair share of issues too. It, like instagram, is pretty bad for posting portrait images and works better with square/landscape aligned images. It absolutely SUCKS for long comics and multi-page things because the previews are awful. The text limitation is also pretty miserable for someone like me who loves talking a LOT on my posts. It also has a really weird HUGE hit or miss gap between art posts, and I feel like the amount of followers or comments you get per successful art post is far fewer than Tumblr, though others may have different experiences. It IS good for connecting to a less English and tbh far less America-centric community though ^ ^;

I personally prefer to use Tumblr as my main art posting platform for several reasons, some simply because I’ve been more successful here and that’s motivation to continue, and some also just because of what I post. This was the first fandom social media I was really active on, and I’ve been active for YEARS and have sloooooooooooooowly but steadily gained more success, bit by tiny bit through various fandoms (so yeah, tons of art posts with only single digit notes? been there, done that WHOO).

Because Tumblr’s been my main social media, I’ve gotten used to formatting my art specifically for it. Almost all of my art uses Tumblr’s ideal image posting proportions (2 width: 3 height, for those wondering, anything taller blurs), and I’ve learned to take advantage of Tumblr’s vertical scrolling to make posts that stand out when you speed scroll. I’m also the kind of artist who again, rarely posts a “look a pretty picture anyone can appreciate” type art, and more “here’s a really obscure hyper specific AU comic that you’ll have to follow all the links and read the text to appreciate,” type work. This latter means that being able to write long comments (and being able to put it beneath a cut), add links to other posts, and properly tag is really important.

I’ve also found that when I personally post this hyper specific content, on Tumblr and only Tumblr of my social media platforms do I get significant feedback. This is almost entirely because my own unique followers are truly amazing and I’m so incredibly grateful to them, but also partially because there’s so many methods of feedback for people at various comfort levels. There’s the askbox, which I can respond to publicly and where people can send anon if that’s easier. There’s IMs, which I can rarely respond to but it’s an option. There’s replies and comments in reblogs of posts. And there’s tags for people who want to ramble but don’t necessarily look for responses from me. The combination of all of these results in quite a decent amount of feedback that I can enjoy ^ ^; And again, this isn’t for every post; I find that art with less specific context, even if it gets exponentially more notes just don’t have the same type of feedback as my more specific content. And experiences will vary heavily between users, but this is just the community that I feel has grown around my own art here (Thank you all, dear followers, you’re all amazing ;A;).

Tumblr’s url is the one stamped on all of my work because it’s the one I’ve created my brand on, it’s the one that contains all of my content as I meant for it to be seen (comments, tags, links to other related posts and all) so it’s the one that most of my reposts on my other social media link to anyway, and also to be blunt, it has many more times the number of followers than all of my other social medias combined >.

Of course, Tumblr has plenty of cons too. As noted above, but horizontal images are CRAP to post on Tumblr bc they take the least amount of space when you’re vertically scrolling so even it’s a ridiculously huge and detailed long post, it’ll barely blip on most dashes. There’s a limit of 10 images, which can be annoying for me sometimes as a comic artist who has to work around that. Tumblr also does this ridiculously stupid thing where it resizes the image that appears on the dash so it’s really crappy quality and it’s a pain for people to open up the actual resolution image. Tumblr also has, ah, a very specific and rather hostile culture around many things, and depending on what you post you could get a lot of unsavory comments that will be a LOT more rare on other platforms. I’ve found that users on other platforms tend to understand the “You control what you consume,” concept a lot better ^ ^;;;; And given the above various forms of interacting with your followers that I’ve listed above, this also means that people have a variety of tools to make you feel like crap too! And then there’s all that stuff about safety mode going on recently, among other problems. Not a perfect platform, not by a LONG shot.

So which social media platform will be right for you? Again, it really, REALLY depends. If rl people follow you on one or the other and you want or DON’T want them to see it, that’s a factor. If you’re used to talking to your followers on one account and maybe they’d be interested in seeing something else from you, that’s an option. If you want to divide personal from fandom or combine them, that’s a factor. If you prefer more “artistic” or aesthetic art, perhaps instagram and twitter would work far better for you than me. If you have a certain art orientation you prefer, that’s a factor (again: Instagram = square, Twitter = square/landscape, Tumblr = portrait/square). If you want to write a lot of comments or post multi-page work, perhaps Tumblr is better. And of course, it certainly doesn’t hurt to try posting on multiple simultaneously and seeing what works for you, which could be everything!

But most importantly, please don’t get too discouraged if your work does not immediately get the response you were hoping it’d get. Gaining a following takes time and there are so many factors involved beyond your skill level alone, including the popularity of the fandom if it’s fanart, timeliness, frequency of your posts, and the biggest one is sheer dumb luck. Most if not all followers won’t ever comment. Most of your followers won’t even bother to hit like. It WILL feel exhausting and unrewarding and thankless if you go into it for the notes alone. So please, it’ll be hard but it can be a wonderful and rewarding thing to share things you’ve put your love and passion into, so enjoy drawing, draw what you love, and share because you want to share that feeling ^ ^

Sorry this got SUPER long, but I hope it was somewhat helpful! ^ ^;

#YukiPri replies #Anonymous #art #longpost #long post #YukiPri rambles

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jeunesseproductreviews-blog · 5 years ago

Text

SENuke TNG vs SEO AutoPilot Review [Overview | Walkthrough] Backlinking Software

SEO AutoPilot Review

youtube

Hey hey guys Brian ponal here thank you for all the messages I’ve had lots and lots of emails since my email this morning main question being does software still work with building backlinks and also people confirming to me that they’re even though they bought lifetime licenses or whatever of SE nuke they’re still just having having issues with it I do still use software to build backlinks not as aggressively as I once used to and I definitely do not create thousands and thousands of backlinks using software but first I just wanted to just show you that this is just something for ram.4 SE nuke and you know look at all these red fails and that that’s actually posting the article so where is black I don’t know if it’s it might be a bit difficult to see but this here means that there it wasn’t didn’t manage to create an account but where is black so that’s gray and this is the this is black it’s create an account but it still can’t post to these sites which to me just makes it pretty goddamn useless and so I haven’t used SE nuke for a long time but I have been using SEO autopilot and what I like about SEO autopilot is its success rates with regards to the backlinks to the bills okay so this is a fresh copy that I’ve just put onto my laptop just managed to get some extra licenses for myself while I’m doing this doing this for the guys because you know they they were extremely extremely hard on making sure that the size or the software builds builds the backlinks but has these has a high success rate okay so I’m just gonna just very quickly show you what I would do to create a campaign so I’m gonna go over to where wicked article creator am in it and I’m going to type in yes yeah I search engine I’m just going to create a campaign of a lot of different sites all to do with SEO with in SEO autopilot and I just want to show you what what I believe is the best way to use this tool especially in the beginning now I’ve got lots of friends who will blast directly straight at money pages and I don’t do that but that’s because I just think that’s a little bit too aggressive however you can water down any backlink or anchor text just to diversify and make it look a bit more brand heavy or you are out naked URL heavy to the to the site if you’re going to do that make sure that the the content is is decent content you know super spun articles are great if you’re interested in that let me know and I can tell you a bit more about that but just high quality articles which is not what I’m going to be doing right now okay so we’ve got let’s go back to wicked article creator I wonder what’s going on here oh it looks like it’s crashed my bad my bad yeah it’s crashed okay let’s try this again this machine hasn’t been turned off too sometimes so could be having a bit of a mare right now so let’s go to keyword let’s go to search nation here we go and just gonna spin this you can actually spin it in the program here at while it’s doing that I’m gonna add a campaign so I’m going to call this SEO auto pilot on okay and I’m gonna choose a am I gonna choose a diagram I’m going to do one my own never go let’s just do it web directly to the money site just it was nice and quick I’m gonna go yep let’s do that primary keywords because government this is only a rip their high quality contextual backlinks okay they take a little bit longer for Google to actually pass the juice through in my in my experience but that doesn’t mean you know not to use them doesn’t mean that at all so I’m just gonna say Muslim do the plain you are out one hundred percent and then I’m gonna put the threads up which I’m not going to go all the way cuz that’s just asking for trouble that’s that’s good too I don’t know how many proxies are put in here just do that post instantly what I would normally do is I would actually go and I would don’t find some images and some Europe videos that are related and I’d put these in here okay and you can actually do you know google embed stuff in here as well so tags I’m just going to miss you too I’m gonna come back to this article put that into there and then you can do indexing and all that kind of stuff but I’ve not got that set up in here post title just gonna come back say I’ve got no keywords so I am going to excuse me if you can hear that come out of here I’m going to do titles those that do that games with a I’m going mess something up yep put that in there and what I’m going to do this is what I want to show you I want to make sure that I’ve got variation of my keywords in the title so SEO water pilot and then I’m going to pipe it type it review pipe reviews okay so sometimes it will have just SEO autopilot I have down that wrong do that do that space in between there and now if I preview it every time it’s gonna have a CA water pileup I see a water pilot I see a water pilot okay so it’s got my main keyword in there and then it’s gonna be the naked URL you’re not yeah it’s very very difficult to get penalized by using naked URL but we’re passing here great Authority here in the title okay and then blog subdomain here I would SEO come to the numbers wherever they are now this year auto pilot leave it at that this one here is going to be Oh keeping doing that get in and that’s just the numbers are there just to you know if it’s already taken and things okay and as I said earlier I would normally go in here and put some images and it will just randomly take images and then it puts the position in then you couldn’t embed like maps and whatever else you wanna you want to embed into them so I just click on to create what I might actually do turn that up as high as possible okay you can see here they’re all they’re all high-quality ones okay now if I click start now might fall over a bits of what did up as high as possible and I’m doing Camtasia okay Camtasia you know it does eat up a lot of bandwidth width of a gutful takes up a lot of processing power so it’s starting it’s thinking about it and it’s gonna go through and it’s gonna create these web okay now what I want to show you here is in one of these in SE nuke tumblers in here but it just fails every time for click onto account creation premium social networks right tumblr it’s never ever worked see that zero percent so where it’s not where the ticks are with it where it’s not green is where it’s where it’s failed basically you know and these that these are the only premium networks that they’ve got in here yeah I don’t know what that is 30 maybe and so you’ve got say you’ve got 50 1 2 3 4 5 so there’s 8 there now if I come in and have a look in here out of the eight two of them then wouldn’t even didn’t even couldn’t add an article in you know so the IP addresses that are in this software in SE nuke the same IP addresses that I’ve got in here and there you go it’s creating an account discuss ok so it’s thinking about it it’s gonna do you know 10 at a time but you know I’d rather it take care take it sweet last time there you go done another one brave net now okay so that yeah that’s that’s how I would recommend you guys use it is if you’re going to go to a money page naked URLs as your links and then have your keyword in your title and also if you’re going to a money page use some decent content because you can get these things to rank by themselves as well okay and you can you know you can make up tiers and all that kind of stuff but that’s for another video I just wanted to show you that you know here we are we’ve got another ones created so it’s already created for even WordPress it’s got another one here yeah it’s just creating them you can see right in front of you okay I will blur these out so you don’t go in and try and mess with them but all right that’s it that’s it for now okay geez for now bye bye you

As found on Youtube

Originally posted 2019-06-28 14:56:05.

https://reviewsarena.net/marketing-software/seo-autopilot/senuke-tng-vs-seo-autopilot-review-overview-walkthrough-backlinking-software/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=senuke-tng-vs-seo-autopilot-review-overview-walkthrough-backlinking-software

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productreviewsamazon-blog · 5 years ago

Text

SENuke TNG vs SEO AutoPilot Review [Overview | Walkthrough] Backlinking Software

SEO AutoPilot Review

youtube

As found on Youtube

Originally posted 2019-06-28 14:56:05.

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productreviewsfree-blog · 5 years ago

Text

SENuke TNG vs SEO AutoPilot Review [Overview | Walkthrough] Backlinking Software

SEO AutoPilot Review

youtube

As found on Youtube

Originally posted 2019-06-28 14:56:05.

0 notes