#what kind of video editing software do youtubers use?

[perilegs]

i know i'm still just a beginner at making edits but can you guys believe i only started video editing this year? i made a short shitty ass edit around? i think february? and then a gmv. and then i had a break but got into making edits in october. and the first ones were ROUGH, but my latest ones? actually pretty decent!!

[carnelianfoxx]

When I was 14 (or 15?) I was thrown into a school-wide film competition. The production went fucking awful. I had never wrangled so many people together before. Since we were all freshman, we were a rowdy bunch, and most of what I recorded made little sense and was impossible to work with.

So when I sat down to edit (at my church’s computer, because I had no machine to edit with at home), I decided to turn the whole thing into a youtube poop. Funny cuts, random xD jokes, and goofy editing. I had very rudimentary knowledge of Final Cut Pro 7 and photoshop so that made things exponentially harder. I did the best I could in a trial by fire.

I keep thinking about the day I was waiting for my parents to pick me up to take me home after working on it. I thought I was going to die. The footage sucked. The editing was embarrassing. It was an extremely low point in my life. The entire school was going to see this. There were tears.

The day of the premiere, I was prepared for the worst. Why did I do this? Why did I think I could compete against the school? There were seniors who had help from their teachers. I was all alone.

But when my film played, I was no longer alone. It was a hit. Every joke landed, every goof made the student body roar with laughter, and my classmates kept looking at me as if I was a hero. Seniors asked me what software I used to make the video. The “random xD” humor was perfect. It ended up possibly being one of the happiest days of my life.

I had a recording on my iPod touch of everyone’s reactions. I watched it on repeat for a long, long time. It was the first time I was recognized for an achievement with film. I always made videos before, but never had this kind of audience, and certainly not this nice of a reception.

I didn’t win the competition, but second place isn’t bad for a freshman. Everyone laughed the hardest at mine and talked about mine the most.

The iPod recording of the student reactions is long gone now, and I would give anything to see it again. I guess I have to go forward and make new memories.

[theoryofwhatnow]

i am actually quite depressed that i won’t be able to edit anymore after the ByteDance ban. bear with me while i ramble because the impending doom is about to kill me.

it has been my proudest accomplishment and favorite pastime to create content and share this movie with so many people. bringing in new faces and introducing people to this film who may not have EVER crossed paths with it if not for a platform like tiktok and the popularity of video editing. but now that’s all going away and there’s no substitute for it.

i can’t edit on any other software because A.) i only taught myself to use CapCut when i set out to “market” this film in the first place, and B.) because i can’t afford a better software or even a laptop to edit on. it would be useless anyway because there aren’t any other sites or apps that are as encouraging of editing and push out that kind of material.

it wasn’t ever really just a hobby, yk? i was absolutely determined to share Like Minds with however many people i could and i maintained that for over two years now, even at times when the best clips i could find were from old Youtube videos/trailers. And although i succeeded to an extent, it is incredibly disappointing to me that my endeavor will be cut short before i’m even slightly ready for it to end.

the days of explaining time and time again all the possibilities of the ending and receiving horrified but excited DMs from people who watched the film are over. i won’t ever be tagged in a new LM editor’s videos by a fellow fandom member who got to them before i did and then hold a long and heartfelt conversation with them while they gush about their enthusiasm for it. Even on this site, i won’t be able watch a few new profiles pop up after one of my videos do well and i direct them here for analysis content and just an overall fandom community that tiktok doesn’t seem to really have the algorithm to support.

i’m obviously not taking all the credit for making this film more relevant, that is not my intention or what i’m trying to say at all, i’ve had the help of a few other amazing editors that i will also be missing on tiktok specifically and also our lovely fandom residents on various social medias such as twitter, instagram and the hellsite that is Tumblr.com. but even just the dozens of DMs i receive monthly and the literal 10k+ comments weekly are so so important to me and are significant enough to have me distraught over their oncoming absence.

I’ve been so happy and honestly privileged to have taken on such a task and kept up on it for as long as i have, but i really don’t know how i’m gonna cope once i am no longer able to do it. because i have no intention of just “moving on” and forgetting this film haha.

i guess you guys are just gonna be stuck with me and have to power through how insufferable i’m gonna be now that i don’t have another place to express it.

damn this is SO SAD. i’m losing all the hard work and the profile i’ve built since i was fifteen. i hate it here.

[velkynkarma]

The book you binded looks so cool!!! I've been meaning to get into book binding as well, especially for One Piece fics and I love the format you did it in with Zoro's logo. How did you edit it? Would you be willing to share tips on how you did it? Did you watch book binding YouTube videos?

Thanks, anon! I'm glad you enjoyed! And I'm absolutely willing to share what I learned!

For the general book-binding, I used a couple book binding how-to videos.

Turning Fanfiction Into the Hardcover Book it Deserves by Jess Less

This one helped with:

How to use an old book cover/used book for the cover of the fanfic (you can also MAKE covers, and she has another video on this as well, but I love the idea of recycling old unwanted books into something new and loved)

The basics for formatting the pages (her bit about adding a compass design for the chapters is what inspired me to use Zoro's flag logo)

How to print and prep the pages/signatures

How to finish putting the whole thing together and add some interesting design elements

I especially liked this video because it's very beginner-friendly and casual, which helped the whole project feel a little less daunting. You can get special tools for book binding (there are kits online) but as shown, it's also simple enough to do with a thumbtack and some corkboard if you're low on cash.

That said, I found the stitch in this video a bit confusing, so I used the stitch from this video instead:

Folding & Sewing - Rounded and Backed Cased Book // Adventures in Bookbinding by DAS Bookbinding

Stitch prep is specifically around 7min in if you just want to skip to that. But the whole thing is an interesting watch too. This is more professional bookbinding and he has a lot of other interesting videos if you want to do some more complex things. However I found this stitch to be very straightforward and easy to follow and assemble, so I ultimately used this one when I put together Seven Deaths.

As for my personal tips and things I learned while doing this project?

Turns out Google Docs is kind of useless for this. You'll want actual word processing software like Microsoft Word. If you don't have the cash to spend on Microsoft's ridiculous subscription policy, you can use LibreOffice which is free (I did, and it works very well).

Fics are way longer on paper than they are digitally. Seven Deaths is 'only' about a 50K fic (less, in fact). But it still makes a 200+ page book. Pic a smaller fic to start with while you figure out everything you want to do.

Do some research on good book fonts for the body of your text. You can get crazy with other things (chapter headers or title pages) but pic something recommended for your text body so it's legible.

To add character symbols (like Zoro's flag) you'll need a transparent copy of it to save as a png. Once you pull it into the word doc you can resize and arrange as needed.

Also look at other "real" books you have lying around for ideas for things to add to your book! I turned an author's note into a "Forward", added an "about the author/publisher" section at the back, put in a table of contents, etc. There's other things I want to experiment with next time. Go wild! Have fun!

Test print a couple pages before printing the full project, just to be sure it's actually the right page size, your font is legible and spaced well, etc. If you don't have a printer and you don't want to pay a print shop for some expensive test pages, try your local library! Many let you use their computers and printers for an extremely low cost.

If you don't have a printer (or not one that can do quality printing for 200+ pages) you'll need to go to a print shop. DON'T bother with places like Staples or OfficeMax. I tried this, but their machines automatically staple "booklets" out of your signatures, which messes up your paper and costs extra for this "service." Instead, track down a local print shop in your area. It's easier to talk to them directly about what you want and the quality is better anyway.

On that note, this is an expensive hobby! Printing for Seven Deaths was about $87USD. The quality was worth it, but definitely do not start if you don't have your own printer or a little bit of spending money.

You do not need as much glue or thread as you think you need. Go less. Waste not.

A lot of the end stages is just...waiting...for...glue...to...dry.

You will inevitably, invariably, mess things up on your first project. I sure did! I underestimated the sharpness of some tools and put holes places I didn't mean to; some things glued in a bit sloppily; I didn't set up my page organization exactly right my table of contents ended up on the left page when I envisioned it on the right. But you know what? It doesn't matter! Because at the end of the day you have a book that YOU MADE. And it's still fucking awesome! And now you've learned some things for next time. Do it anyway and have fun with it!

Happy crafting, anon. I hope you are able to add some personal favorites to your bookshelf soon :)

[pafbar]

I FINALLY FOUND YOU AGAINN I SAW UR CONTENT IN YOUTUBE LIKE AROUND A YEAR AGO BUT COULDNT REMEMBER THE NAME OF THE CHANNELS AND THE VIDS HELLOOO!!!

What programs do you use for ur art/vids?

Since when have ya been workin on the story of Ted n Toby?

Also how do you write such natural n funny dialogues/interactions? (Also also massive props to the VAs they do amazingly)

Anyways thanks for making absolute peak all ur art akes me so happy ^^

HEHE HIII!! WELCOME WELCOME!!

So for my art and stuff usually I try to use free software - Blender for 3D animation and Krita for drawing/textures/some 2D animation, but for most video editing I use Adobe Premiere (at least until my student license runs out 😭😭) and I also use Toon Boom Harmony for bigger 2D animated projects (permanent license my beloved and feared)

I came up with ted whilst watching home alone the day before thanksgiving in 2018, and came up with Toby a few weeks later :) I’ve been writing and rewriting their whole sort of story since then, and have taken a lot of tries to figure out where I position their whole deal tonally i guess!! A few weeks ago I spent like 2 days wallowing in my bed trying to plan out a “real” narrative arc for the series and then I was like dude no. It’s so scary to try to establish conflicts and motivations that fill out an arc the way people advise, so I am just going to give them myriad background problems they navigate while we go to some different fun episodic shenanigans :D

And eee thank you!!! I do try to make things sound natural - lots of worthikids influence as I am sure you can notice!! but just in general, I am motivated by my spite against kind of canny, predictable, overly efficient dialogue that I see in a lot of stuff 😭😭 it’s kind of weird, sometimes the best way to write in a way that will feel natural is to kind of get really weird on purpose. phrase things oddly! Use slightly obscure words! Write a sentence you can barely imagine someone saying out loud, and I’ve found that that’ll lend your character a very authentic specificity. Also, timing is absolutely everything. The space (or lack thereof) between two characters talking says just as much as any sort of dialogue!! and you know damn well those VAs are killing it out there!! Can’t count the number of times I’ve given them really weirdly written lines and they have been so patient and done really great work!!

And thank you, I really appreciate the support!!! Hope I can keep up makin my stuff!! 😭😭

[diezmil10000]

hi 👋 you can call me diez or chisi

i am from spain and i like to draw lesbians. this is my main blog, if you're only here for my art and not for my reblogs you can follow my art-only blog!!

(FAQ under the cut)

what software and brushes do you use?

i work on ibisPaint X and Krita on a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite. i use a lot of different brushes for lineart but mostly these ones:

are your commissions open?

i will never do commissions, but thank you for your interest.

will you someday sell your art through an online shop / convention?

no, but feel free to print my stuff in good quality paper if you want to hang it on your wall.

how can i financially support you?

i have no need for that right now. please give your money to other artists or organizations.

can i repost your art / use it for edits?

i don't encourage it, but i don't mind. asking for permission and linking back to any of my social media would be appreciated too ♡ just don't use it for commercial purposes (sell merch, use as streaming layouts, etc)

how do you do X part of your drawing?

i recommend checking my speedpaints if you're curious, the name of the videos is the day i finished that drawing in YYMMDD format (as in, year-month-day). i also made a tag for my art thoughts, but if you still have a question feel free to send me an ask and i'll try my best to explain it!!

where did you learn anatomy?

i used to watch a lot of proko and sycra videos (on youtube), and also do gesture/figure drawings from photo references and k-pop dance practice videos.

when / why did you start drawing?

i started taking it seriously when i was 15. seeing lesbian fanart was what caused my gay awakening and i felt like there wasn't enough of it, so i decided to get better.

do you do traditional art?

i kind of dislike it, actually. i have filled over 1000 A4 sheets and 7 sketchbooks over the years, but it's all quick doodles to practise or warm up. when i bought a tablet i could carry around i stopped drawing traditionally as often, but i still find myself drawing in my sketchbook from time to time when i want to sketch midlessly or get better at something.

do you draw nsfw art?

very rarely, but i only show it to my friends. i do consume a lot of nsfw content tho, just not in public 👍

how do you keep yourself motivated?

a combination of drawing only what i like and a strong desire of seeing more lesbian art. that's why i mostly make fanart and almost never participate in art trades or make art gifts. i also don't want to make a career out of drawing.

have you gone to art school?

i have a college degree in graphic design, but it has almost no correlation with the kind of art i share online. before that i never studied art academically.

are you seriously a furry?

yes.

are you seriously a communist?

you call me a communist, socialist, leftist– i just want people to be happy and i heavily oppose capitalism on its fundamentals.

are you an anti or a pro shipper?

i am neither, i don't care about this.

are you aware that you follow someone who did something problematic?

i mostly follow other artists, so if i've been following someone problematic for a long time it probably isn't that deep for me to unfollow them.

do you have any ocs?

plenty! but i don't like to talk about them in public

can i be your friend / talk regularly with you?

i don't like to talk to strangers, but if i'm following you feel free to interact with me at any time~

what's the name of your cat?

yonyon ! she's a female cat but i treat her by any and all gendered terms

why have you disabled your DMs, story replies and sometimes comments?

because i dislike interacting with fandoms, especially big ones. i draw for myself and for the lesbians with niche interests, so i don't want to read weird comments, block overly friendly DMs or watch strangers have a public debate about my moral standards. i'm very thankful towards all of you who love my art tho, even if i can't read all of your positive thoughts!! also, there are plenty of ways to contact me, they're just not in plain sight 💋

[kellyscabin]

Hey I love ur amvs!! I was wondering if you had advice for someone that's interested in making their own? I'm not sure what the best programs are for editing or getting clips. Ty! :)

this is so flattering thank you so much!!!!! I LOVE making amvs…… favourite thing in the world to do so this is gonna be probably longer than you wanted…..

I’ve bounced around just about everything in the last couple years so I can give you a few different ideas!!

For clip sourcing:

initially, I used episodes that I had downloaded as supernatural was airing so the quality was iffy and there were logos on a lot of them… THEN I went the screen recording route (for when I was on my phone, I’ve never tried this on desktop but I know this works well for others!!) but I found that the quality still bugged me AND I ended up with nearly 2000 supernatural clips on my phone…… which was a nightmare to sort through… NOW I use this which is very fabulous and easy to use… you can select which eps to download if you don’t need all of them!! (and no vpn needed)

For editing:

I’ve used a lot of different programmes til I found one that worked well for me so definitely shop around…. youtube tutorials are your friend…. when I started, I was using sony vegas pro…. which worked fine even though my laptop was the first one ever made… but I didn’t want to pay for it and it got blocked on my laptop forever and windows would notttt let me get it back…….. SO, as I mentioned, for a while I was editing on my phone which I would personally nottt recommend for full length amvs… smaller edits would be completely fine!! I used splice which was very basic but it got the job done!! actually. looking through my videos- everything from mr perfectly fine to dean movies was made on my phone which is about 30 videos- so this works!! it’s just much more difficult and harder to polish up…. I personally make amvs much quicker and cleaner on my laptop.. and noticed a big big difference in my own quality since I switched….. NOW I use capcut since it’s free and my laptop can run it without any issues. I’m genuinely very impressed with it as a free software- lots of really good tools and effects, I find it so easy to alter colours and subtitle as well!! which I struggled with on other platforms!! very user friendly too!!! would be very beginner friendly!!

fun stuff :)

PLANNING is my absolute favourite part of making an amv…… normally I hear a song and can very easily picture shot by shot how I would amv it - once I’ve got the song and general theme I’m going for- I normally print out the lyrics and annotate them - jotting down timings, voiceovers, season, arcs and clips.. I can sometimes skip this if it’s just a simple video but if it’s anything complicated I HAVE to write it down. I also find it’s easier to make a video have a ‘point’ if I do this??? idk.. I think it helps but idk if this is something everybody does :)

there’s the spn transcript searcher which is very useful as well if there’s a line you’re looking for but can’t remember where it’s from!!

and of course homeofthenutty which is great for thumbnail stuff!!

editing things:

honestly… I don’t think there’s a wrong way to do this if you’ve got a really fabulous idea….. timings are the trickiest thing to get the hang of- I do dashes on my printed plan to kind of show where I need cuts and if it’s fast cuts I write down how long each clip should be so it looks cleaner. I find that my videos don’t really look finished until they’re subtitled either- so that always helps!! everybody kind of does that differently so definitely play around until you find a style you like!!

I wouldn’t worry too much about colouring when you’re just starting out- sometimes I find that filters can be distracting but I know others who swear by them so that’s just personal preference!! I really just tweak certain clips to make them less saturated or green-looking….

for posting:

I really recommend posting simultaneously on tumblr and youtube!! I have videos with basically no notes on tumblr but did really well on yt and vice versa!! the yt algorithm can be funny- I find that as long as it has a custom thumbnail and a few comments it does alright!! on tumblr- I always link the yt video since the tumblr player doesn’t always work for everybody…. also don’t be afraid to use taglists!!! I’m sure your mutuals would love to be tagged and please definitely tag me in anything you make!!! genuinely owe so much to my mutuals for their support 🫶🫶 and also don’t be afraid to self-reblog!! chronological dashboard means people WILL miss things if they aren’t online!!!

but genuinely the most important thing is to have fun…… I seriously love amvs…. I think they’re the best thing in the world and spend probably at least half an hour minimum a day watching amvs…….. and we need more of them!!!!! so thank you!!! and please please tag me when you make one!!! and feel free to dm me if you need anything at all!!! like all technical aspects aside… an amv made with so much love and to a fabulous song is a gift to the world…… 🫶🫶

[kuwdora]

For the vidder ask: 11, 18, 24, 26! :)

Ooohhh, this gets really really long because of the multiple questions ahaha and I also tried to be succinct in my answers but that's hard.

24. When and why did you get started?

A stargate friend way back in maybe 2004 was sending me bootleg copies of Stargate SG-1 episodes on a CD-ROM but also had included some music videos that had some pop songs to the characters. (I’m A Slave for Yu of Britney Spears for Lord Yu and My Goddess by the Exies for the Goa’uld stick in my mind). I thought these videos were really, really soooo cool. I also grew up watching MTV when they were still showing music videos regularly and had unconsciously been absorbing the visual language of short form narrative and grooving with the music. So it’s no wonder that I wanted to learn how to make music videos of my own to a show that I really deeply loved.

I started vidding in 2007 with a copy of iMovie. And pretty quickly I realized I wanted to do more of this video editing thing because I was having so much fun. I didn’t have the pirating knowledge back then so I used my entire summer job money to pay for a student license of Final Cut Express which I think at the time was $200 or $300 back then as well as an external hard drive. A small investment to dive further into the hobby that would become much of my creative joys for the future.

Around 2006 and 2007 I was scouring livejournal for other fanvids at the time to see what other people were making. Buffy and due South and X-Files and Stargate were all very popular shows to vid for and I found the vidding community on livejournal and just hit the ground running with the hobby. Reading people’s vid notes, reading people’s comments on vids. Looking up lyrics and seeing how people tried to connect story ideas of the song and shippy feelings to the show. This was pre-YouTube and streaming video platforms were only just starting to become a thing. All fan-made tutorials were meticulously written out in text and screenshotted. It was a combination of all the fannish resources and communities where people asked questions and me literally mashing every button and pulling on every lever in the software that I started to learn how to export and lose my mind over things called “codecs” and “aspect ratios” and more. You won’t hear people screaming about it much now but old school vidders will remember ghost frames and that weird green line that would appear in exports and other batshit visual artifacts that would end up in finished results. the tech was so janky back then and Final Cut crashed a lot. The technical aspect was so hard to get used to but it was really satisfying to learn enough to make the things.

I love making stories come alive in fanvids. ---

11. Have you vid any ocs?

I had to sit and think about this because I was only kind of sure the answer was yes. I needed to go and look and make sure it was only one or two instances that I managed to vid OCs because I’ve made SO MANY vids and have half-started others over the years that it’s hard to keep track.

Armour For Liars is a fanvid for synecdochic’s Stargate SG-1 AU fic A Howling in a Factory Yard. At the linked vidpage I have a lot of notes about making this vid at the time. It was a true delight to fan-cast for synecdochic’s original characters. It was also really, really great to recieve such enormous and surprised and awed feedback on that vid. I wasn’t not doing well at the time I made that vid so it was nice that I could still make something really cool and watch people get excited. Just take a look at the 40+ comments I got on that vid, it’s still wonderful to look back on it. :)

—

18. Favorite artist to vid to?

I have like five different answers to this depending on the day (and I also have another ask like this I’m answering with more and different detail.) I love vidding Kesha, Linkin Park, Lady Gaga, Audioslave, Bishop Briggs, 2000s music, etc etc.

Right now I REALLY look forward to vidding covers and mashups and medleys. This type of song allows me to create a more layered narrative/emotional landscape to use songs that are familiar but end up hitting very differently when applied to a vid. Also the songs are just really cool, IMO and tickle my brain. Let me give you an example.

Memory Leak (also on ao3) is my Matrix Resurrection vid. I wanted to vid this film and I specifically wanted to find a song that was contemporary at the time of the release of the original trilogy (so 1999-2003) but I wanted to have it be a cover. It’s a new take, re-visiting an old song. Similar to how the film is re-visiting the events of Neo’s life from the original trilogy after he's aged 20+ years.

I identified the song Adam’s Song by Blink 182 pretty quickly since it came to mind based on the subject of the film. The original song had depressive overtones (and you can read more about the song on Wikipedia) which I believe mapped out well to the emotional journey of Neo in Matrix Resurrections. However, the thematic arc and motivation of Neo’s journey is one of love and perseverance. I had like 3-6 covers of Adam’s Song that were more melancholy and hopeful, somber and positive. I settled on Albert Salt’s cover because it his vocals and his version of the song I felt matched the hope and love vibes that I got out of the film. This cover also ended up being a medley and giving me some extra lyrics from other Blink182 songs to play with outside narrative context of Adam’s Song and I think that also really helped elevate the vid. Also I think it’s just a really pretty cover, very lovely.

—

26. Any vidding rituals you have?

My main ritual happens before I even start actively working on a vid. When I’m ready to warm up my brain for a project, I create a vidsong playlist for my current vid interests. I will be listening to the vidsong about 4,000x before I even download an episode or make a clip or create a project file. I listen to it until it’s in my bones, my brain is saturated with it and no other music exists. I should be tired of the song by the time I start vidding it but it really helps grease my creative wheels.

I also love to create multiple vidsong playlists and shuffle things around for various reasons. It helps me keep some of my (too many) ideas somewhat organized and I love tidying my playlists and adding to them during this idea/discovery stage of the process. I have a main/general vidding playlist, a playlist for songs that are “incubating” and don’t have a show or film attached to it yet but I love the song and know the song would be great to vid. I have two (actually three) witcher-specific vidsong playlists, a ‘vidding graveyard’ playlist for song/ideas I’ve abandoned over the years. I have other playlists that are genre specific. I have show/film specific playlists while I’m either contemplating an ambitious project like a Vid Album or when I’m trying to listen to potential vidsongs back-to-back and audition them in my brain for the vid I think I want to make or would like to make. Honestly I could do a separate ask game just on my vidding playlist ideas or my vid wips and published catalogue for the sheer volume of music genres/artists and sources I’ve done over the years. If that’s something people might be interested in exploring. I could call it “Vidder Open House.” thank you for the ask!! Get to Know the Vidder ask game! Send me an ask!

[bracoeth]

not my usual kind of post but i think this is really cool

i stumbled upon this ARG on tiktok lately that poses itself as an investigation into a cancelled Wii peripheral called the Wii Reaffirmation System, and it's included software, Mind Master.

doing things like putting the videos into spectrograms and translating hexadecimal code into plain text, you can find various youtube and google drive links that explain what the system does and how it got scrapped.

currently we are on episode six, and just cracked a puzzle that produced a full report of how the device functions.

if you'd like to watch the series, check out the original creator's page: https://www.tiktok.com/@nebula_animated

and if you'd like to help solve the series, check out this google document that explains how all of the puzzles were solved, and where you can help us continue to research: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RTU5oP2jAH2ajU5ZsHZFrh7O-UtvwVEtkgS-pkYqvbQ/edit?usp=sharing

[hollownoire]

God I want to make a video game so bad. At this point I'd devote myself to any project I could get my hands on.

Alas I know absolutely nothing about coding and it feels like there's absolutely not enough time in the day to chase all of my goals/projects/dreams at once.

I want to practice art, I want to make art, learn it. I want to make games, learn how to make games...

Hell, I've been debating making a YouTube channel for years now. But again, there's like...4 or 5 steps towards that end I'd have to see through.

What video editing software do I use? Is the way I record optimal and enjoyable to view? What about my mic? What do I even record? I've thought of doing speed paints, drawing tutorials, video games...like I wanna do a mixed bag of things that interest me and are fun to make. I had this fun idea to have a speed paint of the thumbnail I made for the video at the end, kind of merge art into whatever other creative process I'm working with. Especially video games, I currently have a chunk of Lethal Company footage sitting in a dusty corner of my computer that I've just been staring at timidly.

But with recording things and possibly even dropping my voice into the internet for random people to hear, I'm horribly self-concious about how my voice sounds. I don't have the money to drop on getting proper voice training and finding time in my already packed schedule to practice solo is frustrating enough to make me wanna fucking eat chalk.

Still need to make an "about page/intro" page to pin to my blog, alongside cleaning up the formatting and just making it look nicer.

I have multiple art projects planned...a few commissions that I need to do...oh yeah, I still need to make comm price sheet to post/pin/link as well...

The cherry on top is paypal has my dead name plastered on it 🤢

I'm so goddamn tired.

[goombasa]

What's Your Default Software Spread?

This is a quick one to sate some curiosity I've had. With so many large software developers alienating their audience as of late, I'd love to know what sort of software people are using in their day to day lives or in their creative pursuits. Do you still use larger, well known brands or are you using smaller, more  independent or open software? Just be aware, I'm not interested in something that is ‘better’ than what I or other people use, I'm just curious what you use, and why you use it. So to start us off, I figured I'd give a quick list of some of the stuff that I use with some relative frequency, and maybe some of the other stuff I use occasionally. 

(Unless otherwise noted, the programs I use are totally free)

Librewolf: I've been in a position where I've been taking browser privacy really seriously lately, and so far, Librewolf has been my answer to that. It's basically a pre-hardened Firefox with everything that could be used for tracking and fingerprinting disabled by default. This does lead to some issues; anything requiring webgl basically won't work with this out of the box, and so websites that have a lot of interactivity don't always work, so I have to keep another browser on hand for those at times, but as it stands, Librewolf out of the box is really, really good if you are pretty privacy conscious.

Freetube: Youtube sucks. Or at least a lot of the corporate ideology behind it sucks. So I've taken to using Freetube for basically all of my youtube viewing. While it does keep me from engaging in the social aspect of Youtube (I can't post comments, for example), I can view my videos and subscriptions without ads and without an algorithm constantly telling me what to watch next. It isn't perfect (there are times when an update temporarily breaks its ability to play videos) but I vastly prefer it and the huge swath of customization options it offers to any of the official apps or the website itself.

Discord: This is one I wouldn't mind replacing down the line if a better option became available, but Discord is basically where all my friends are, and it's voice and text chat options make communicating with my friends very easy. It's also one of the few non-open source softwares I still use.

OBS Studio: While I would love to start streaming at some point down the line, I primarily use this as a means of recording footage on my computer, and at least on my system, it does so without taking up a lot of my system's resources, and let's me play around with a bunch of different layouts and building a fun looking visual, and keep different layouts for different uses.

Thunderbird: I prefer using a client to keep track of my email, and Thunderbird has made some really good strides forward in terms of layout and usability, and while I was using it beforehand, it's become one of my favorite email programs, especially after switching away from using Gmail as my main email client.

Web Apps: This one kind of straddles the line a bit. It's an app that comes pre-installed on Linux Mint and I've found it very useful for turning websites into standalone applications. Any time I want to scroll through a web feed or use a video-centric site like Twitch, I turn it into a web app so I have the site as a standalone app, which helps in making it much easier to focus on it if I need to. Sadly, much like Librewolf, it isn't fully compatible with every webiste, especially ones that are heavier on interactive elements, like virtual tabletops and the like, but it works decently well otherwise.

Audacity: Can't get much better for open source audio editing. It's not as powerful as other DAWs, and I do find it very clunky trying to edit together multiple audio tracks in it. However, when it comes to recording and editing voiceover and apply effects, I find this to be a very dependable, easy to use program, powerful enough to make my voice sound halfway decent.

KDENLive: As a Linux user, video editing is a bit difficult. Yes, you can use Da Vinci Resolve on Linux, but it's a pain to get working and an even bigger pain to keep working, and I prefer stuff to work out of the box if possible. There are a few native video editors for Linux, but when it comes to ease of use, learning curve, and doing what I need it to do, KDENlive is the best from my perspective. If it did have a native version, I'd probably rather use Hitfilm, as that was what I used back on Windows, but with how simple my videos tend to be, this one works just fine, at least for now.

Retroarch: It's one of the most versatile and wide-ranged suites when it comes to emulation you could ask for. Not entirely 100 percent, there are still some other stand-alone emulators that I have to use for certain systems, but Retroarch makes working with my older systems really, really easy to work with rather than having to have a bunch of individual programs for it, and pretty much anything I would want to play runs perfectly through here.

Solanum: It's a pomodoro style timer. There are a ton of timing apps like this out there, but I find this one to be the most helpful for me. I actually don't use it very much for working. Instead, I use it as a way of keeping track of how much time I've spent sitting, and when I should get up and actually stretch my legs a bit.

Onlyoffice: Office software is a must, because I generally don't like to store a lot of my stuff on microsoft or google servers. Only Office is the only software I've found that is open source and gives me the option to work on a document or spreadsheet cooperatively with a friend without having to sign up with a bunch of guff that I don't need, while also giving me some very solid Microsoft Office alternatives for when I prefer working on something locally instead of putting something on a server.

Trillium Notes: When I'm not working on a story or a video script, I've taken to using Trillium Notes to working on documents. Heck, I'm writing out this (along with all of my blog posts) in Trillium right now. It uses a tree structure that makes formatting and organizing my notes and sections of a document really easy, it lets me export my notes as HTML or Markdown, it easily lets me nest my documents together and group them based on topic so that I casn very easily organize and find what I'm looking for if I'm, say, doing worldbuilding for a D&D campaign or such, and probably my favorite feature is that it constantly autosaves. I've been spoiled by this program in that I have never once had to hit CTRL + S at any point while using it. It's fantastic.

GIMP: I'm aware that there are other Photoshop alternatives out there. I actually used Affinity Photo back on Windows, and really liked that, but Affinity doesn't run well on Linux, even under compatibility layers, and I don't really like using web-based applications. If you haven't noticed, I prefer local software, so while Photopea is really giving Photoshop a run for its money, I don't really use it that much. GIMP is a good image manipulator, and it works great for the simple tasks that I need it for, though I am under no illusion that it is the best. My biggest criticism for it is that it is very beginner unfriendly and fairly unintuitive in the way its tools and features are laid out. However, after some practice, it's easy enough to wrap your head around, and it works great for everything that I need it for, which is usually just putting together a basic video thumbnail or editing together a simple stream background or layout.

Krita/Inkscape: I'm putting these two together for right now because for me, they both are serving a similar purpose, which is learning how to do some proper art. I'm very early in my journey, but both Krita and Inkscape have proven invaluable for starting programs in learning how to properly art. While yes, they focus on two different kinds of art (Krita is more traditional raster images while Inkscape is for vectors), making some basic stuff in both has been really helpful with getting to grips with the fundamentals.

Blender: Much like traditional art, I've started learning some basics for 3D modeling as well, and of course Blender was going to be my starting point, it's free, it's powerful, and it basically has everything that's needed for every step of the process, with its newer versions being far more user friendly than it was before. I did actually try to use it back before version 2.8 came out, and boy was it a struggle.

Had to split the list because of the character limit for blocks of text.

Godot: If it isn't obvious already, I'm trying out a lot of different new hobbies and mediums, always slowly and perpetually moving forward with them, and game design is one of them. I chose godot mostly because of its open source and visual building capabilities, giving me the ability to learn how to make and build a simple game and ease myself into how to code a game as I go rather than having to learn to code right at the start, which, as someone who has not really had any experience in coding, makes me feel more at home with the environment, and with a lot of learning material cropping up for the engine as of late, I'm enjoying my time with it.

VSCodium: While I might not be much of a programmer, I do want to learn, especially as I get more into the weeds of game design, but this program is more for me to freshen up a passion that I had back in high school, which was building simple web pages with HTML, and this program is purpose built for viewing and editing code. I could use basic VS Code for this, since it does have a native Linux version, but VSCodium is basically the same program, just without the Microsoft telemetry. Yes, there are some add-ons that don't work outside of the Microsoft version, but honestly, any add on that I want to use is available for this version, so at least for me, I haven't lost out on much by keeping Microsoft's spyware off my system.

Tellico: I collect a lot of stuff. Books, games movies, I love going bargain hunting and coming back with a big armful of things that I didn't have before, whether they're rare or common, interesting or banal, I just like physical media. But sometimes it's tough to keep track of everything that I have. Tellico allows me to create and maintain a collection database that is pretty versatile and easy to work with and lets me enter in everything in my collection and keep track of it.

Calibri: As much as I love physical media, sometimes it's easier to just keep hold of a digital collection, and Calibri is fantastic for digital books in this regard, mostly because I don't have to worry about the file format or having it locked down to a single service. I can also use it across multiple devices, which is great when I have a very large library to maintain.

Handbrake: This one is lumped in with KDENlive somewhat, as I use the program primarily to compress the videos I edit since KDENlive doesn't have a built in compressor itself. It's also really useful as a DVD and blu-ray ripper.and that about does it, apart from basically listing out every program that I use for viewing or listening to the files on my computer, like Elisa for music files for example, but I don't really have a lot different to say on those, and I don't think they're worth listing out here at the moment. I'm interested to hear if you guys use anything similar to these, or if you use something totally different.What are the applications that you tend to use the most, and why?

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 5/23/2023

six sentences or less bc that's the kind of week it is

listening

straighten up and fly right from the nat king cole songbook, covered by sammy davis junior. i have a lot of fondness for the nat king cole songbook bc my grandmother had a lot of fondness for it, and this one was very comfortably in our (contralto) ranges. really burrowing into the comforting familiar as we enter the Cross Country Move Hellzone (tm). spotify

-

reading

lot of documentation for work bc i am trying to build a google sheet + calendar for our grants and reports such that when someone adds OR EDITS a row in the grant/report tracker it creates a new google calendar event OR UPDATES existing events. i may have to give up on that second half.

in non-work stuff, it is hysterical how many hackers brian krebs (infosec reporter/journalist/researcher) is able to interview. like when this guy was asked "yo is this your code targeting a specific mastodon server with a crypto scam" the response was

Clicking the “open chat in Telegram” button on Zipper’s Lolzteam profile page launched a Telegram instant message chat window where the user Quotpw responded almost immediately. Asked if they were aware their domain was being used to manage a spam botnet that was pelting Mastodon instances with crypto scam spam, Quotpw confirmed the spam was powered by their software.

“It was made for a limited circle of people,” Quotpw said, noting that they recently released the bot software as open source on GitHub.

we live in the stupidest possible cyberpunk future.

-

watching

i don't know jack about shit about cars and i don't know what the fuck jennings motorsports on youtube is talking about 80% of the time but a friendly guy with a calm voice talking through how he's going to get some cars in the worst shape you've ever seen up and running again? yes good thanks, i've blown through his entire backlog in the last week in my second monitor while i've cleaned data. this man is essentially rebuilding this rare limited edition shiny holographic car from half a frame and a panel LOOK how fucked this thing is.

love the Will It Run? videos bc the answer is almost always yes AND SOMETIMES HE EVEN DRIVES THEM DOWN HIS DRIVEWAY AND BACK even if the cars are barely holding themselves together. the horse souls in these machines can be coaxed back into resurrection with the proper burnt offerings and application of liquefied dinosaur

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playing

the charm of Powerwash Simulator is somewhat dampened by its extremely buggy achievements bc i KNOW i could get all 40 so fuckin easy if they just WORKED. i didn't get the "main campaign completed!" achievement despite spending nearly forty hours 100%ing every job, so i think the rarity of the achievements is somewhat inaccurate, bc it's more like, did you happen to play through that level at a time when the achievement was working? despite all that, it has been incredibly effective at damping generalized moving anxiety and it's a tremendous catch-up-on-podcasts game. it's hysterical to me this was published by square enix bc this style of simulator game is usually published by Playway or a Playway company, a shadowy network of about a hundred small polish studios, many of which went public and had IPOs in order to hand over a controlling interest of the company to Playway. long history of annoying business practices such as remaking more popular games with the serial numbers filed off and making demos to gauge interest and THEN only making about one full game for every twenty demos, which is very irritating for players. not this one tho, it's in fucking brighton in the uk, no relation!

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making

this is going to be cleaning and move prep for the next six weeks. i deep cleaned (even mopped!) my kitchen and bathroom last weekend bc it uh. really needed it, and that's the most exciting thing i did. no progress on cleaning the flip clock radio bc i do not currently have the patience to sit down with qtips and get in all the little grooves.

[saamaton]

hiiii many many amv ideas came to me in a dream (courtesy of brat ofc) but unfortunately, i know fuck all about editing so i figured i'd ask u creator of the brat f1 amv that lives in my head rent free !! mostly just wondering where u get clips from + how unreasonable it is to make an amv in windows' native editor (climpchamp)? thank you <3

hi anon!!!

i'll be honest i might not be the best person to ask this but i'll try my best to answer!! hope it helps at all lol <3 if anyone else has better suggestions/other good tips pls feel free to give them i'd also be happy to know them!!

so! finding clips is always the most difficult and probably the most time consuming part of making an edit for me.. but usually i just try to look for ready scene packs that all the very lovely people on the internet compile 🙏 but f1's own youtube channel also has a lot of very good content! you just have to know what you're looking for over there and you'll have to skim through a lot of other content to find the good stuff,, but their channel is especially good for racing content itself (obviously) and their videos are almost always available in 1080p which is a huge perk!! they also have some of their own compilation videos which can be very useful. and ofc teams' own social medias have a lot of content and usually their youtube channels have a lot of good video content about race weekends beyond the race (which, i think i'm stating the obvious here but yeah)! so honestly it's a bit of a scavanger hunt and you just have to be patient, especially if you're picky with the cohesion of your clips like me 😭😭

and i'll be honest with you i know nothing about clipchamp 😭 i used to use premiere pro until the free access i had to it at the time stopped and then i couldn't be bothered to find a good pc alternative.. but honestly i think it totally depends on what kind of editing style you're going for! if you have a similar style to mine i'm pretty sure most editing softwares have the capacity for that! as long as you can import clips, music and fonts and can work in enough detail (!!!) you can probably make it work with enough time!! ofc then the main differences between softwares are in the interface, intuitivity and usability so it might take a bit of trial and error, as well as getting used to, to find a software that works for you! then again if you want to use more fancy effects, transitions and tools you'll most likely have to look around quite a bit and usually free softwares don't have super great options on that front unfortunately.. there's a lot of recommendations on the internet tho so if that's the case you'll just likely have to spend quite a bit of time researching and trying stuff out but you might find something very good from people's recommendations ! (if you do pls share them with me lol)

also i can't believe i'm exposing my best kept editing secret just for you anon BUT if you're not opposed to editing on mobile i'd very heavily recommend an app called inshot, which is what i use!!! i think it has a super super impressive variety of different kinds of effects and a lot of very useful tools you don't find in every editing software! they keep constantly updating it and adding new features too, it's been heavily updated in the past couple years and seems like it'll just keep getting better! plus it's completely free, you just have to watch an ad while exporting your final video lol,,

anyways i hope you find something useful in my ramblings and i hope you succeed in your amv visions 🙏 pls let me know if you ever post any, i'd love to see them <3

[casliveblog]

Custom Toonami Block Week 181 Rundown

The Witch from Mercury: Now that Gund-Arm has been announced, Miorine and the rest of Earth Club she’s corporately conscripted have to decide what it’ll actually do. They ask Prospera how Aerial isn’t murdering people and she’s just like ‘idk love I guess’ and gives Miorine the hard data while not answering anything about the key details and kinda still getting jabs in about Miorine’s credibility. Meanwhile the Earth Club kids are not exactly happy about the obvious company direction of just being arms dealers and playing both sides to fuel a classic Gundam War brand war but they’re still working on all the PR proposals and missions statements and shit because they need more investment to actually do more than form the company. I get that they basically only brought on the research branches from the previous two Gundam companies but shouldn’t they be getting adults to help with some of the PR stuff because long story short the commercial they shoot ends up looking like a Youtube Poop. Like even if Phil from Prospera’s company only worked on building Gundams he’d probably have better software editing skills than a bunch of kids who’ve never done this before. Meanwhile Shaddiq is just standing there the whole time like “Lemme help for an innocuous share of the company I can deftly take control from” and Miorine is not having any of that. Eventually Miorine finds the promo video from the prologue about how the Gundam system was originally supposed to be for medical technology, limb replacement and physical therapy related to the various horrible eldritch disasters that involve corporatizing Space. The group basically forms the Gundam version of Doctors Without Borders which while not perfect is probably the most morally salvageable way to start a Corporation and shit just starts coming together in a weird school club kind of way which I feel shouldn’t fly in the ridiculously utilitarian corporate setting we’ve been shown where you get axed for not making exponential profits but we’ll hold onto that for later. But at the last minute Shaddiq updates the student council safety rules for new corporations/clubs to be like “no working on soul-stealing death machines” which I kind of feel like that should’ve been a rule in the first place but we’re gonna say this is a bad thing in this very specific scenario because it forbids them from making the soul-stealing death machines stop stealing souls or causing death and thus preventing death.

Inuyasha The Final Act: I love this episode, I love it a lot, it’s basically one long grudge match for a relationship that spans the entire series. Byakuya gives Sesshomaru a fragment of Kanna’s mirror demon that can steal Tessaiga’s power for Tenseiga and teleports Sesshomaru and Inuyasha into a demon dimension where they basically play Technique Tug of War with all of Tessaiga and Tenseiga’s techniques to see who will be the winner take all. Inuyasha is basically at his strongest here, full demon transformation with Tessaiga and most of his techniques as he takes them back from Sesshomaru one by one. And to Sesshomaru’s credit he’s not just being a pouty baby about this, Naraku doesn’t understand peoples’ capacity to grow so he doesn’t realize Sesshomaru doesn’t want to kill Inuyasha but he wants him to justify his right to wield the powerful weapon on his own path to acceptance. Eventually Inuyasha gets hit with the Meidou Zangetsuha and has to cut his own demon energy with the Dragon-Scaled Tessaiga to keep the portal open. Naraku can apparently control the sword since Kanna is him and the mirror demon is Kanna so transitive property I guess but Sesshomaru steps in to finish the fight himself, eventually allowing Inuyasha to take the rest of Tenseiga’s energy and break it, triggering the technique stealing effects of Tessaiga and granting it the Meidou Zangetsuha so Inuyasha’s moveset is complete at last. Inuyasha is eventually able to track Tenseiga and use the Meidou Zangetsuha to get him and Sesshomaru out of the hell dimension. Sesshomaru accepts that Tessaiga and all related techniques belong to Inuyasha and that he has to wield it in his own way and it’s a really great capstone on arguably the longest running arc of the series, like Sesshomaru popped up long before Naraku showed himself and now things are relatively good between them, like they’re still gruff emotionally distant brothers but they are also vaguely worried for each others’ wellbeing. Sesshomaru rejects the now Healer-only Tenseiga but Rin takes it anyway and promises to get him to bring it with him. I love episodes like this where they just devote the whole runtime to a huge fight with very little preamble, it’s even got some good comedy gags with Totosai’s bull acting as a projector so the group can stream the fight and Naraku watching by HDMI jacking his tentacle into Byakuya’s eye socket. Yeah, 10/10 prolly my favorite episode of Final Act overall.

Castlevania: Sypha has come down with a touch of the bloodlust and being a nomad her whole life combined with recently coming into the endorphin rush of killing demons means she doesn’t sit well with sitting still. Luckily the mayor has their next D&D quest ready and explains that the priory seems to have made a pact with one of the demons or some shit and it’s now calling disturbed Dracula sympathizers from all over like some kind of homing beacon and only some sort of bloodthirsty Avatar Nomad and her Jack Sparrow type husband can stop them. Meanwhile Isaac gives the Captain the short version of  Season 2’s story and tells him he’s going to go kill Hector for betraying Dracula but honestly considering where Hector’s at rn I think leaving him alive might be the better revenge. Still the Captain cuts right to the chase and advises Isaac to go on a full Vinland Saga character arc and get his revenge but then become a king of a land of peace and freedom rather than trying to genocide everyone since he’ll basically have a free kingdom once he gets done and considering running a genuinely good kingdom is both easier and harder than genocide, Isaac seems to take to this pretty well. Last and… well, last is Hector who’s getting his character groundwork in with Lenore until he tries to hold her hostage and she beats the absolute shit out of him, promising to get him better treatment but also never to fuck with her again because she’s fully capable of becoming a horde of bats which that’s new, don’t think we’ve seen that, like if Godbrand could do that I don’t think he’d have lost to Isaac. She also gives him a blanket so we can stop seeing his dick like we’re never getting full knob as far as I can see but there’s a lot of shots where we’re getting like 3/4ths dick. Hector really needs to make up his mind about whether he’s gonna lean into the Makima/Denji petplay thing the vampires seem to have going for him or if he’s gonna just die because watching him pathetically waffle between the two is really hard to watch, like if I was him I would either have smashed my own skull open on the bricks or committed to the bit and gotten a leash ready, like I’m kinda glad they’re not going for a straight ‘oh she won him over’ arc like was clearly Lenore’s initial plan but still he either needs to leverage their need for him or just stop pretending to have agency because this is hard to watch.

Konosuba: So Kazuma seems to have like legit PTSD from the whole Sylvia thing which isn’t explained very well but it’s just a huge middle finger to anyone who hasn’t seen the movie (though it is on Crunchyroll too so I guess there’s no reason not to). And I’m just kind of trying to figure out which part of it’s bothering him the most like if he actually feels bad for killing Sylvia who genuinely loved him or what but on the surface he’s just like ‘man girls don’t like me anymore that was all movie shit’ which is a fun joke but I also kinda wonder if that’s all this is. Still he wants to become a Monk and the rest of them join him on the journey to the Monastery to try and talk him out of it/laugh when he gives up. Megumin’s also got some Movie Fallout Syndrome with newfound feelings for Kazuma which he’s bad at reciprocating because he’s still a shitbag at the end of the day. Megumin does eventually get him to soften a bit but it’s an encounter with a person-mimicking monster that officially makes him decide that he doesn’t want to help people because people suck so he takes his money-creation mallet and goes back home and is rich for all of five seconds before Kris steals it off him. Still the euphoria of financial stability does exorcise Sylvia’s ghost from his pants or whatever and the group gears up for their next big score: dinner with the king while trying to not get killed for inevitably screwing this up. I like how this season immediately goes for a more serialized approach where even the random vignettes are in service of a small arc and character development from the last outing, I feel like I’m gonna enjoy this.  

Delicious in Dungeon: The group runs back into one of their two missing party members that have been kinda mythologized at this point in the story given how little we hear about them. Fun fact, Namari is voice by LittleKuriboh’s spouse and they’re nonbinary so that’s fun, the voice really threw me off for a sec so I had to look it up. Either way the episode’s basically about Namari getting back into the party’s good graces and Laios taking down a tentacle monster so their gnome patron can heal Marcille’s wounds. They unpeel the tentacle monster like a banana and Marcille’s healed but she’s basically running on empty. We FINALLY get an explanation on how death works in the dungeon which I feel should’ve been something explained upfront since ‘what happens if the characters die’ is kind of a vital stakes-setter. So essentially you can revive if you heal fatal wounds but only in the dungeon because it stunlocks your soul into your body so you aren’t really dead in the traditional sense just basically in a forever coma until your body gets back into working order. That kinda brings up the odd question since this show is all about eating of what happens to bodies that are eaten, like if the body’s been digested by other things it’d be kinda hard to heal, which does put added weight to them getting Falin back and also presumably if you die in an inconvenient or deep down spot it’d be really hard to get a rescue and may take a long time. So yeah that definitely should’ve been explained right away but good to know. Either way Namari helps Senshi trap the water monster that took Marcille out in the first place and they make it into a stew so Marcille can get her mana back. I’m not sure if Mana doesn’t come back very quickly in this world or if you just have like a set supply because they treat Marcille’s mana as exceedingly limited, it may just be they’re on a time crunch but they sure seem to make camp a lot and rest so this shouldn’t be as big a problem as they make it, like they make it sound like a mobile game where it takes twenty hours to get your energy back regardless of rest. Anyway despite teasing it back and forth for a while Namari decides to stick with the gnomes and not join the party to slay the dragon, guess she’s just in the Opening for no reason then, oh well.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End: The group runs into a town with the sleeping sickness from the Hey Arnold movie and luckily Sein is the only one immune to it because he’s a Priest. We do get a good classification on the magic system here, Mages study magic academically, Priests study it religiously and use books like Robin Fire Emblem and Curses are just whatever either side can’t figure out and are like ‘idfk, demons did it I guess’ though it does kind of undercut the agnostic take some of the previous episodes had where they were puzzling over the nature of heaven to know that this world almost certainly has a god giving priests their power, like I guess you could argue their Faith is what gives the spells their power regardless of whether or not what they have Faith in actually exists and I prefer that ambiguity but I guess it’s just a placeholder for what we can currently understand and what requires more guesswork and assumption in the end. I always kinda laugh when shows get a new party member and then immediately run into a problem that would be impossible without them like if they hadn’t met them guess they’d just be fucked I guess and they were lucky to have not needed them until this exact moment but I guess you could argue they would’ve given the curse a wider berth if they hadn’t had a Priest who could handle it. Next Stark gets recruited and they have to fucking My Fair Lady/Princess and the Pauper him because he looks just like this Lord’s dead son and they can’t let the people know the prince is dead yet. Also Fern gets recruited because I guess they can’t have a noble lady set up as his date and would rather just train someone he’s already comfortable with. It’s really just an excuse for some pretty shots of them in different clothes so shippers can make AMVs and gush about how romantic it is but it does its job well enough. The story with the Lord struggling with his son’s death and how he and Stark have to resist the temptation to use each other as replacement family members is kinda nice, I also like how this guy isn’t a dick to his untalented hardworking Rock Lee son like Stark’s dad was to him, like he’s breaking the anime cliché cycle and that’s nice.

Nekomonogatari Black: So apparently this part takes place during the initial Golden Week before the start of Bakemonogatari where Hanekawa had her first Neko episode so it’s a full flashback arc, I’m pretty excited about that since I got kind of frustrated with them just vaguely alluding to past events in the previous arcs without explaining them fully. Like ‘as you know’ is a writing sin and all but you’ve gotta find a way to be upfront about that info somehow. Anyway, young Araragi is contemplating love which really shocks Tsukihi because apparently he was ridiculously antisocial before all this monster shit started. And we get a long list of classic Monogatari verbal gags as they basically say ‘you know you like someone when you find yourself liking them’ and Araragi’s just like ‘what about the boobs though, she’s got really great boobs’ to which Tsukihi concludes he’s not in love and just being a horny teenage boy and needs to go jerk off. I was having fun and then we immediately get into more incest stuff which is admittedly a fun subversion of how Tsukihi thought the conversation would go and then Karen just comes in and fucking strips so we’ve lost all subtlety here and like just get this man away from his sisters and girls half his age please like I like Araragi a lot but I always wince when we go in this direction and the fact that he keeps punching down to girls that are so much younger than him/related to him is what makes that part hard to root for even though he is a pretty good Scumbag Protagonist, guess this means Hitagi’s influence changed him for the better? Sorta? I’m gonna say it’s that for the sake of my own sanity because I CANNOT handle another disaster on the level of the toothbrushing scene. So yeah, because the town the Monogatari series is set in is an eldritch hellscape that only teleports Araragi to the most plot relevant acquaintance, of course he runs into Hanekawa while buying fap material to try and forget her. We get a refresher on her backstory about how she has two parents who through a series of deaths and remarriages she has no actual relation to and how they have a neglect and dispassion to her that is almost worse than the actual abuse they also sometimes do. He agrees to not tell anyone her father hit her in exchange for a request which in true Scumbag Protagonist fashion he deliberates over an agonizingly long time but in the end just uses some of his vampire blood to heal the wound on her face and both parties leave feeling mildly empty inside like a lot was said but nothing really happened which is kind of standard fare for a Monogatari episode. I like this series quite a bit but for the love of god can we steer away from Araragi torturing lolis for a while, that’s why I stopped watching for a while after Nisemonogatari in the first place.

[a-room-of-my-own]

For screen time: I bought (the app? Software?) Freedom, and it is absolutely the best thing I have found. It will block the sites that you ask it at the times you ask it to and once it’s up and running that’s it, the site is blocked even if you reboot your computer, etc. Only thing is you can edit the times (when a session is not running). To get over that I blocked YouTube, for example, all day except for between 5 and 7am. If I REALLY need to watch something, I have to get up at dawn. My screen time on YouTube in April was a total for about 1 hour for the month, down from about 9 hours a day (an exaggeration but barely). My next purge will be Tumblr (I’m thinking of being off here for Pride Month lol, for my own sanity). What I have found more difficult however, is picking reading up again. I can do without (some) websites (still a work in progress!) but that hasn’t equates to having the patience, concentration or focus for reading. In comparison, books don’t give me the same dopamine hit, and that has been a real barrier :/ I am also trying to go down the route of organising more social activities (shorter but more regular) and atm I’m really busy with work, which has helped. However unfortunate, it is reassuring to see we all struggle with this, and it’s not just a gen z thing. I am not proud of my screen time and I’m a fully fledged adult! Please let us know how you get on, if you’re okay with that. I could use a support group!

Absolutely ok with that! When I got sick with long covid (so between 2020 and summer 2023) I couldn’t read more than a few lines at a time for literal months and I was so exhausted that I had to rest at home every time I was off if I wanted to be able to go to work.

So being in my bed / couch watching videos, playing games and reading articles (I could still read the news / short articles) became a habit, and now I’m better I’m trying to go back to healthier ways.

Also since a surge of activity could turn into a covid relapse I’m kind of hyper aware of my fatigue levels and tend to « freeze » when I feel tired now and immediately sit down / lie down / take a break. But it’s turned into « let’s lie down until I feel like I can get up again » which was fine when I was sick but now I think I’m tiring myself. Lying down with my phone just exhausts my brain.

My go to method would be « do something every time you want to use your phone » but the need to grab it is real especially when the things to do are random chores. I’ve just spent like 20 min researching random stuff 🤣

So I’m gonna try apps and training myself like a border collie (fun activities, snacks and walkies instead of phone time) and see if that works !

[vhouatroph]

okay, serious post time.

i'm 22, and started playing toontown in 2006. that's 17 years toontown has been in my life so far. toontown has been fundamental to who i am, and my life experiences- i would be an extremely different person if toontown was not part of my life.

toontown is something i can thank for my enjoyment of writing. in 4th grade, one of my first school papers was about how much i loved the game. a little later, i discovered toontown fanfiction. specifically, i discovered "GEARS," by TheEvina. i was enamored by the story, and wanted to write my own.

of course i wasn't actually that great of a writer starting out, but who really is? i just kept at it, and here i am today! i'd like to think i'm at least a half decent writer now :)

toontown youtube was another great discovery i had made when i was young. the random toon show was my absolute favorite youtuber, and i dearly miss him. the "heriotza" movies, inspired by madtoontownreturns's movies, also have a fond place in my heart despite no longer being on youtube, along with several of his oldest songs.

much like with the fanfictions, seeing the cool toontown videos inspired me to make my own. my favorite is probably this one:

again, my videos weren't very good at all! this one was made in windows movie maker, the peak of editing software at the time. but like with everything else, i continued to pursue getting better at videos. in high school we had to choose a track of classes to "prepare us for the real word" and i chose audio/video. even went to college for a/v before they kicked me out bc i couldn't afford it.

i don't think i can really move on from toontown youtube without mentioning joey's old ttmvs. fixing the silly meter is of course the one everyone knows, but he did have a couple others! some of them seem to not be on youtube anymore which makes me kind of sad, but i understand- i did the same with my toontown fanfictions!

to tell you the truth, i can't remember toontown's closure very well. that period of time in general for me is kind of blocked out. don't know why. what i do remember is when toontown rewritten entered semi-open beta and i played the game for the first time again through the playline on june 18th, 2014!

you "beta" believe i was excited- i stayed up until 3am for this! the experience was laggy as hell, and i think at one point loopy lane didn't even have cogs on it. but i was so excited to play toontown again, i didn't even care!

after playing toontown rewritten, i signed up for toonbook. i had been part of the original 2011 toonbook, but i wouldn't be able to say anything about that, as i do not remember it. toonbook was an experience. i met some of my greatest friends on toonbook, and it helped me learn a lot about myself. at the same time, it is a place i do not look back on fondly. i have very complicated feeling about the site.

on october 9 2015, i made Silent, my now main toon. she was royal blue at the time, and became a black cat later that year.

in toontown online, my first toon (skooby) was soundless before i had gotten terminated for hacking. (i was dumb and curious) silent would be the toon to carry on this tradition in toontown rewritten.

as the years continued, i continued to play toontown. even if i took long breaks, i always came back to it, and my friends were there to do activities with me. even if there was nothing big happening, sometimes it was nice to just sit at my estate and play with my doodles.

the night field offices released will live on in my memory as one of the best nights in my entire life. nothing will ever compare to being in a voice chat with my friends the first time we encountered the boiler. i don't really know how else to describe it besides magical. sure we crashed after one round, but another could be tried later!

that night, i completed my first ever field office on toontown rewritten, and it will still live on as one of my favorite experiences in the game ever. i of course continued doing field offices, and still enjoy them immensely. i haven't done a 4 star yet (need to fight 6 18+ cogs 😔) but i hope to some day!

with the most recent toonfest, i am so happy to be a toontown player. everything announced has me extremely excited, and i loved hearing all the backstory on the creation of toontown. this game has been a part of my life for 17 years, and i hope it continues to be part of my life for years to come.

happy 20th birthday, toontown.