#How is this your primary mode of creating

[laserbobcat]

@androgynous-agent69 "Take inspiration if you want" bruh I have the whole thing in my head already, and you got in there somehow and spied. Admit it. I mean it's a game about life and death, resurrections and messy families, so it's not surprising similar ideas float around.

Ok it ended up being LONG. My file says 1780 words. Buckle up. ⬇

I did think about Leshy trying to find the sibling's remains in Darkwood with what little is left of his powers, asking the lamb for help, hopefully to bring them back. I need them to go over the whole "Hey I was miserable because of your whole stupid cult and they killed my sister because she was too soft" at one point in their relationship, probably relatively early. Note that Morgan's grief is centuries old, and at this point it's more old sorrow than vivid pain. Meeting and fighting Leshy, and seeing the Lamb so calm about his own past, helped him let go of most of his lingering anger. Which is why he doesn't mind telling him that he was absent for the day to visit a particular tree, not far in Darkwood. He chose this place to go and remember his sister every year. He does ask Leshy about his past life as a god though. The god of chaos was elusive, only showing up to cause havoc, kill some of his followers, rewarding others apparently on whims, and leaving again for long periods of time. Leshy admits that he didn't care about any of it. The whole cult wasn't his thing, he liked the powers of a crown but not the obligations. He did care about his siblings, and his siblings insisted he had to have a following. He visited the mortals when he needed something, or when he was bored, and they seemed to be happy making up their own thing in his name and waiting for him to come back and cause chaos. He saw mortals kind of like funny insects. Or pets, at best. Morgan points out that he has some nerve to admit all of that to him, and Leshy simply says that he won't add insult to injury by lying to him. "I didn't care back then. I didn't even know there was something to care about. I care now, but it's too late." Morgan ends the conversation after a silence by saying that gods really were selfish and destructive, and leaves. He's not even angry, he sounds sad and tired, which is a billion time worse. So Leshy swallows his pride, and goes to the Lamb to ask for a favor. Find his eye, maybe there's some lingering power there he could use to track the dead cat's remains in his former domain. But it doesn't. The lamb finds it, it's a relic now that is useless to him for the time being, and the initiative fails. Morgan's been a bit distant after the whole conversation, and Leshy goes to him and apologizes for failing to help bring his sibling back. Morgan is astounded that he even tried, and that's the thing that finally makes him openly admit that he's a dear friend despite everything. And that he will have to murder him for good this time if he doesn't stop burrowing near the tailor workshop, so he should really stop, because murdering a friend is sad and he wouldn't want another sad story would he.

There's another part for this way later in the storyline, where the Lamb sends Narinder to the afterlife (he knows how to navigate it better than them) by lending him their power. He's searching for Morgan's soul, who is in a coma after a resurrection, weirdly stuck between life and death, his body frozen. Lambie could not find a way to bring him back properly. Narinder finds the yellow cat sitting under a tree, brightly colored compared to the complete white of the place. Sitting next to him is a ghost that is obviously his twin. She's carrying chains around her neck and wrists. She is eerily serene, and it apparently had a calming effect on Morgan, as they're both very peacefully sitting there, not even surprised to see the former god of death. Narinder tells the cat that he's being a pain in the ass for everyone and no, he's not dead and he has to come back pronto. Morgan wants to stay, at least for a while, he never got to be dead and have a break. It's peaceful here. He missed his sister. He barely had time to enjoy her company. To which Narinder answers that time flows differently here, and that back home he's been out cold for almost two months. When he doesn't really seem to care, he adds "My lamb is worried sick. Your friends are worried sick. Leshy is worried sick. Literally sick in his case. He dropped a lot of weight, and Heket is battling him every day to force him to eat. There's not a leaf left in his coat. I heard him say it's his fault that you died in Darkwood. But he even stopped throwing fits, he's silent now." Morgan is immediately on his feet, panicked, asking how he's even supposed to go back. Narinder starts scanning him, as he turns to his sister apologetically, but she smiles at him. "I listen, and I collect stories. I was so happy to hear yours. And so relieved you found some peace and happiness. When we meet next time, we will both have so much more to share!" Before he can answer, he disappears, after Narinder finally finds that the source of the problem was a faulty skull necklace that he immediately crushes. He is left there, relieved that this whole situation is finally resolved. The other cat is still sitting near the tree, thoughtfully watching him. She asks him if he wants to rest for a while, he seems tired. He answers that no, now that her idiot brother is not causing troubles anymore, his Lamb will finally catch a break, and therefore him too. He's about to leave, but he hesitates. There's something about the peaceful soul sitting here, all white and chains and serenity, that offsets him. She reminds him of the Lamb. He softens and asks her, if it was possible, would she want to come back with her brother. He warns her not to hope, he does not think it's possible. But he offers to try. She smiles and silently picks up the long phantom chain dangling from her cuffs, and hands it to him. "My name is Anya." Narinder disappears like Morgan did. He's back in his body, in the temple, near an exhausted Lamb, with the chain in his hand. Meanwhile in the healing bay, Morgan suddenly jolts awake and start frenetically repeating "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry I didn't realize I was gone so long I thought I was dead after what happened in Darkwood I'm sorry where's Lesh- Oh my Lamb you like like shit I'm so sorry why did you stop eating Narinder said that you stopped eating I'm so sorry I worried you-" and keeps apologizing as Leshy is silently crushing him in his arms. He does not let him out of his sight after that. Not that Morgan wants to go anywhere, he's constantly looking after him and making sure he's eating properly and recovering. The bettors are raging at this point. "Oh my Lamb- no I don't want to hear anything about proof they are obviously together now. No. No I don't care. "Nobody saw them kiss" I don't care. You owe me money. You already owed me money when they started "being roommates". Come on it's more PDA than 10 teenager couples combined. It's ridiculous. It's basically a romance novel at this point. And a cliche one. No shut up and give me my damn money."

Anya is brought back later after that. Lambie's been working hard on this kind of magic, and when the resurrection is successful, he's hopeful he can use it this way again to maybe find and bring back some of the sheep who were slaughtered to extinction. Narinder knows where they might be, despite being chained at the time, and Anya herself knows a surprising amount about them, since she spent her death traveling and listening. Maybe with time he can do it.

Narinder, Aym and Baal are calling Anya a warden. Some souls don't forget, or fade away, or merge, or change. They're exceptionally strong, and stay as solid and clear as they were the day of their arrival. They used to make them into helpers to guide the dead. Though they never noticed her, and she ended up helping in her own way, by sitting with other people who passed away and listening to their stories. She was distraught after dying, but rather quickly met someone from the Lamb's cult who thought she was Morgan, and ended up learning that her brother was safe. After that she decided to wait and listen for more. She ended up listening to everyone, for anything. When she realized that her brother was not joining her anytime soon, she decided to travel as far as possible to hear new stories. "Though the land of the dead is not a place that can be measured as you understand it. Everywhere is anywhere. But still, I traveled. I heard stories from all sort of people, old and young, sad and happy, kind and cruel. From places I will never know, from times long forgotten. Stories from fallen gods. They're all the same, and yet they're all different. Like currents in the same ocean." Because she knew the last Lamb saved her brother, and because the sheep she met told her about their fate, she paid attention to their tales in particular. She ends up spending a lot of time with Thena, the cult's scribe and record keeper, to put her knowledge to paper for them. Lambie is extremely grateful. They were only a child when the last sheep they knew was killed. They don't know much about them. Aym takes a liking to her, and ends up silently following her around like a guard dog. She appreciate his company. He says "She's the first normal person I met here" and he gets angry when people point out that the pale eerie cat who tells stories heard from dead gods is not normal at all, he's just as weird as her. Overall people like Anya a lot, she's such a good listener, and always know what to ask or say to help. What I mean by that is the cult now has a therapist. Aym's ace in this btw. Baal took all the horny, there was none left. Anya and him are platonically paired. I really need to draw her now lol

I also need to draw Morgan's dead twin sister. Might bring her back to life somehow.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Hi! Could make some writing notes regarding what happens to the human body when making out? Like the temperature increase and dopamine release, stuff like that? Or maybe just how the body reacts when you're nearby/interact to/with a loved one. I hope you're doing well! I love your posts!

Writing Notes: The Physiology of Love

Love can be distilled into 3 categories: lust, attraction, and attachment.

Though there are overlaps and subtleties to each, each type is characterized by its own set of hormones:

Testosterone and estrogen - drive lust

Dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin - create attraction

Oxytocin and vasopressin - mediate attachment

When we are falling in love, chemicals associated with the reward circuit flood our brain, produce a variety of physical and emotional responses:

Racing hearts

Sweaty palms

Flushed cheeks

Feelings of passion

Anxiety

Two decades of research shows that when it comes to early-stage intense romantic love—the kind we often think of when we talk about being lovestruck—a very primitive part of the brain’s reward system, located in the midbrain, is activated first.

Some Physiological Reactions to a Kiss

Pulse and blood pressure increase

Pupils dilate

Breathing deepens

Rational thought retreats, as desire suppresses both prudence and self-consciousness

Lust

Driven by the desire for sexual gratification.

The evolutionary basis for this stems from our need to reproduce, a need shared among all living things.

The hypothalamus of the brain plays a big role in this, stimulating the production of the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen from the testes and ovaries. While these chemicals are often stereotyped as being “male” and “female,” respectively, both play a role in men and women.

As it turns out, testosterone increases libido in just about everyone. The effects are less pronounced with estrogen, but some women report being more sexually motivated around the time they ovulate, when estrogen levels are highest.

Lust and attraction shut off the prefrontal cortex (includes rational behavior).

Attraction

Dopamine

Produced by the hypothalamus, is a particularly well-publicized player in the brain’s reward pathway – it’s released when we do things that feel good to us:

E.g., Spending time with loved ones and having sex.

High levels of dopamine and a related hormone, norepinephrine, are released during attraction. These chemicals make us:

giddy,

energetic, and

euphoric, even leading to decreased appetite and insomnia – which means you actually can be so “in love” that you can’t eat and can’t sleep.

Norepinephrine, also known as noradrenalin, may sound familiar because it plays a large role in the fight or flight response, which kicks into high gear when we’re stressed and keeps us alert:

Released more often at the beginning of a couple's relationship when many unknowns are present, putting the brain in a ‘proceed with caution’ mode.

Early in a relationship, there is heightened adrenalin, which causes feelings like butterflies in the stomach and a faster heart rate. There is also reduced activity in the parts of the brain that help us to make judgements, which is why you may be 'blinded' to another person’s faults in early love or infatuation,

Brain scans of people in love have actually shown that the primary “reward” centers of the brain, including the ventral tegmental area and the caudate nucleus, fire like crazy when people are shown a photo of someone they are intensely attracted to, compared to when they are shown someone they feel neutral towards (like an old high school acquaintance).

Attraction seems to lead to a reduction in serotonin:

It is a hormone that’s known to be involved in appetite and mood.

Interestingly, people who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder also have low levels of serotonin, leading scientists to speculate that this is what underlies the overpowering infatuation that characterizes the beginning stages of love.

This explains why people in the early stages of love can become obsessed with small details, spending hours debating about a text to or from their beloved.

Attachment

The predominant factor in long-term relationships.

While lust and attraction are pretty much exclusive to romantic entanglements, attachment mediates friendships, parent-infant bonding, social cordiality, and many other intimacies as well.

The two primary hormones here appear to be oxytocin and vasopressin.

Oxytocin

Often nicknamed “cuddle hormone” or “hormone of love”.

Produced by the hypothalamus.

Released in large quantities during sex, breastfeeding, and childbirth.

This may seem like a very strange assortment of activities – not all of which are necessarily enjoyable – but the common factor here is that all of these events are precursors to bonding.

It also makes it pretty clear why having separate areas for attachment, lust, and attraction is important: we are attached to our immediate family, but those other emotions have no business there (and let’s just say people who have muddled this up don’t have the best track record).

The Brain During a Kiss

The brain goes into overdrive during the all-important kiss.

It dedicates a disproportionate amount of space to the sensation of the lips in comparison to much larger body parts.

During a kiss, this lip sensitivity causes our brain to create a chemical cocktail that can give us a natural high.

This cocktail is made up of three chemicals, all designed to make us feel good and crave more: dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin.

Like any cocktail, this one has an array of side-effects.

The combination of these three chemicals work by lighting up the 'pleasure centres' in our brain.

The dopamine released during a kiss can stimulate the same area of the brain activated by heroin and cocaine. As a result, we experience feelings of euphoria and addictive behaviour.

Oxytocin fosters feelings of affection and attachment. This is the same hormone that is released during childbirth and breastfeeding.

Finally, the levels of serotonin present in the brain whilst kissing look a lot like those of someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

No wonder the memory of a good kiss can stay with us for years.

Love happens less in the heart and more in the brain, where hormonal releases and brain chemicals are triggered.

Dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin are some of the key neurotransmitters that help you feel pleasure and satisfaction.

So, your body often approaches love as a cycle.

It feels good to be with that person, so your brain says, "Do that again."

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ⚜ Notes & References ⚜ Love ⚜ Kinds of Love

Thanks so much for your kind words. Hope you're doing well yourself! Would love to read your writing if these notes inspire you.

[1x20]

hello and welcome to my tutorial on how to create gifs like this one! full explanation under the cut, but if you wanted to take a little peek at the gifset attached to this tutorial, here ya go!

for the purposes of this tutorial i am assuming you know

how to make a gif

what vhs footage looks like

STEP ONE: MAKING YOUR GIF

choose your footage and plug it into your desired software of choice! i use photoshop for this so i can only attest to the efficacy of these methods in that context

as for shot selection, you could feasibly choose anything. however, i prefer shots without too much movement in them - makes it look more like a home video.

because of the heavy amount of colors and filters, i'd recommend a gif somewhere around the 40-50 frames! but of course you can play around.

oh i also set the frame delay to 0.08 seconds. this is slower than most gifmakers tend to set theirs, but it makes it run buttery smooth imo.

STEP TWO: MAKING THE COLORING

here's where we get vhs specific. if you're unfamiliar with vhs footage, i recommend clicking through this youtube playlist! if you're not interested in the coloring, skip to step three (smart object fuckery + filters)

now while making a set i tend to choose some primary colors for my gifs. in the gifset i linked above, i chose to work with blue and orange-y yellow. in some of the other gifs i'll be using as examples (from an unfinished set) i chose green and yellow.

to create the above coloring i generally use these steps:

1) curves

i'm a maniac so i use the same curves layer to initially edit the luminosity AND colors of my gifs. the purpose of this layer is to edit brightness/contrast like i normally would and already start the process of changing the colors a little bit. this is my curves layer for the blue house gif:

to make the gif go from the left image to the right image:

as you can see i used the brightening curves to make the footage a whole lot lighter. i also increased the reds to get rid of the cyan tint a lot of blue footage has, slightly increased the blues, and once again decreased the greens to get rid of any cyan. this does make the blue hue a bit more purple, which is a nice bonus!

as for the gif of the boy, that one's a little harder to show a before and after for, but i'lls how the curves for good measure:

the original shot was already quite bright so i only edited the brightness a litttle bit. because i knew i wanted the gif to be green and yellow, i increased the greens, decreased the reds (except in the shadows), and decreased the blues (to get yellow)

2) channel mixer

now the channel mixer layer takes a little getting used to so i recommend experimenting. ALWAYS USE THIS LAYER ON THE COLOR BLENDING MODE for a more even result.

i use channel mixers to sort of... unify the colors a bit more. for the house gif, for example, i increased the blue channel to +110% blue, but decreased the blue in the red (-12%) to retain the yellow in the window.

if you want me to explain this more in depth, send an ask! it'll be kinda longwinded though

before / after of the boy gif with curves/channel mixer.

3) levels

this is where it starts looking more vhs-y! vhs footage has light shadows and dark highlights.

first, set your levels layer to luminosity blending mode to retain your beautiful colors.

then, crunch the hell out of your gif to make it very... mid.

this may feel a little wrong at first but i prommy it'll look okay at the end. a before/after for the boy:

now that's starting to look familiar right?

4) color fill/gradient map

because i want to unify my colors/make sure my gif is saturated, i usually add either a color fill or gradient map layer. in the case of the house, i chose to go with a dark blue color fill:

because the coloring of the boy gif was a little more complex, i decided to go with a brown to green gradient map.

this will make the shadows yellow, and the highlights green.

BOTH THESE LAYERS ARE SET TO OVERLAY. i usually fiddle with the opacity of them until i like it, but it's anywhere from 7% - 17% depending on what i feel like that day

5) curves (again)

this layer is probably useless but i do it anyway to make myself feel better. this is just a regular curse layer to up the brightness a tiiiiny bit and amke sure everything's clear. also it helps counteract the darkness your overlay color will add in.

6) color balance

this is my most subtle layer so i won't be able to show before and after but i fiddle with the color distribution a little until i'm satisfied. set this layer to color blending 'cause that's what you wanna affect!

i decided i wanted the house gif shadows to be a little more purple, for example, so i added in red (+3), magenta (-1) and blue (+1). etc etc. do what feels good!

STEP THREE: SMART OBJECT FUCKERY AND FILTERS

OKAY that was a lot. sorry or you're welcome. but good news: now's the fun part. convert your animation to a timeline, then select both your coloring and gif layers, right click, and select convert to smart object.

now that your gif's a smart object, i usually crop it. i tend make vhs aes gifs a 4:3 ratio (so 540 x 405 px) because that's what vhs footage was usually recorded as! crop your gif, resize, and then we can continue.

1) color bleeding

vhs footage usually bleeds its colors - this manifests as a short of... weird subtle halo around any object. the way to recreate this in photoshop is to duplicate your smart object.

set your copied smart object to color blending. now move it to the side a couple of pixels (i usually do around 5px, but you do you!)

as you can see, the tree and chimney (and everything else but less prominently) have a yellow shadow to them. this is exactly what we want!

2) filters

now's the time to add your filters and make it look like shit (but on purpose!) first, select both smart objects and convert to smart object again. this will ensure the filters apply to all layers evenly.

i use the following filters:

unsharp mask (amt 35%, radius 4px) - this will subtly add some sharpening but only on the edges of objects

add noise (amt 7.5%, distr. uniform, not monochromatic) - this will add the signature vhs grain.

box blur (2px) - i edit this to be 75% opacity with the little arrows to the right, just to make sure you can still make SOMETHING out when you're looking at the gif. MAKE SURE THIS FILTER IS ON TOP OF YOUR NOISE FILTER. tumblr will kill your gif otherwise

4) ONE LAST THING

usually at this point i'm not happy with either the saturation or levels. (usually the levels). so on top of your smart object, add another saturation or levels layer and fuck around!

in the case of the house gif, i thought it was too bright still so i set my output levels to 13 and 216. for the boy, i thought the shadows were too dark, so i set my shadow output to 11.

BEFORE & AFTER:

aaaand that's it! thanks for reading! if you have any questions, feel free to come to my askbox, i'm always happy to explain my process. happy giffing 🥰

[talenlee]

4e: I Like the Ardent

One of the elements of Dungeons and Dragons as a game system that I hold fast to as one of its greatest strengths is the nature of the class-species based system where a player is immediately invited to create a character the second they hear about the basics of the system. To this end, there is a design space in D&D where the classes in that class system regard the potential power carried in a name that meaningfully explicates what they do. Class systems, broadly, recognise the value of names for what a class is, because that conveys tone for what a class does. A Barbarian and a Fighter aren’t meaningfully useful classes but when positioned as game systems, one of them is immediately more technical than the other.

Even if, yes, I’m sure, Berserker is the more proper term.

Anyway, to this end, a D&D character class cares about what I think of as ‘name space’ – the kinds of things you can name classes in order to make those classes compelling, interesting and memorable, the handles that players can get a grip on. This means that some titles, like Wizard, Bard, Rogue, Sorcerer, the 90s idiot’s allure of The Ninja, have value and weight to them and you can almost always directly tie the quality of a class to the name it gets, as that’s a sign that someone had a real clear idea and wanted to do something. If the weird is generic (the Seeker) or completely obscure (the Factotum), then you were odds on dealing with something that was not designed with a strong class fantasy and were about to be in for A Bad Time that was maybe interestingly broken.

And then there’s the Ardent.

Ardents are a type of support character, a Leader in the context of D&D 4th edition. While by no means their first appearance in the game, 4th is the place where they got good. 3rd edition Ardents worked in a way that I will generously call weird, and were positioned as a psionic healer and therefore in direct competition with the Cleric, one of the best classes in the game that could always manage healing as an afterthought. Not a good look there at the best of times, especially with the strongest virtue of the psionic system of 3.5 being ‘guess what rules oversight I get to dance in.’

The simplest description for the Ardent is that they’re a melee psionic supporter that leads by example and expresses emotions hard. It’s a bit of a hard class fantasy to put into a single word, right? You’re a feeler. Wait no that’s bad. You’re an emotive? Nope, that won’t do it, either. You can tell Ardent is a rough word to use since it shows up in the flavour text of dozens of other things and the Paladin even gets a starting power called Ardent Vow.

Thing is once this idea is set aside, the actual mechanical package of the Ardent absolutely rules. For a start, it’s a melee weapon based Leader whose primary attacking stat is Charisma, and whose skills back that Charisma up. You can play a skulking streetwise Ardent or a sincere politician Ardent or even just a walking threat Ardent, they all have the compatibilities. They also rely on a big weapon, meaning you get some of that anime hero vibes of a character with a huge weapon leaping into combat to have a big impact.

Because their primary focus was how things feel they could put a lot of different emotional impacts on the kinds of moves they had. That could be something like leading your friends in a direct charge against an enemy or sometimes it could be about psychically dragging your enemy towards you so every friend you have gets to make an attack on them along the way like it’s an Assist Strikers spice reel from the attract mode on an arcade.

Ardents had a special ability that fired off when they got bloodied, which was rarely worth worrying about. They had another ability that change how you related to opportunity attacks, too – either you were better defended against them (prompting you to be more reckless about how you moved), you were better at dealing damage with them (and therefore became more mindful about forcing opponents into positions to deal with them) or you got to deal more damage when you got hit by them (in which case you were suddenly an immense idiot trying to get whacked on the snout all the time in combat just so you could retaliate with nova spikes).

They also grew well. See, they were a psionic class, which meant early on you picked some at-will powers and then instead of getting encounter attacks, you swapped those at-wills for other at-wills and got instead power points to choose how to fine-tune your powers for points in combat. This could lead to things like a slow burning opening turn setting up a late-combat nova, or vice versa, or maybe you’d find you had one power you loved to use all the time and focused on using it, with your other powers as niche, sometimes fooders. As an example, Demoralising Strike is a power you start with and, using no power points, just gives enemies a -2 to defenses when you hit with it. If you augmented it though, it would impose a penalty of -X, where X is 1+ your con mod, so in some cases, -5, or -6. This is a big swing and makes things very easy to hit and paints a very broad target.

On the note of painting a target, they also get the power Forward Thinking Cut, one of my favourite 4th edition powers ever. Used just on its own it’s a solid melee attack that gives everyone adjacent to you +1 to hit. That’s a perfectly reasonable power on its own. It can be augmented once to allow a higgledy-piggle side-step charge, but then it can be augmented a second time to instead allow two other characters to come with you on the charge. This kind of flexibility delights me, where it goes from a serviceable every-time power and then upgrades into a power for transporting people into the fray at the very start of combat.

It’s such a cool class about creating cool feeling moments.

Shame about the name.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[adviceformefromme]

💖 WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??  - 66 DAYS UNTIL 2025 - GLOW UP SERIES [WEEK 9] - 💖

We are officially 66 days till 2025. It’s creeping in fast, and the new-year, new-you work begins TODAY. You read correct. You don’t wait till 2025 to start showing up as your most ELEVATED, radiant-glowing-self, as someone with goals, purpose, dreams and visions. Someone who is actually putting in the work, no. You start that shit from today, and if you’ve been following the glow-up series it actually started last month. 

So what do you need to do/ know in order to elevate pre-2025. 

If you haven’t already you need to be clear on your TOP LEVEL GOAL. This is that one dream that would make you so happy, the main focus in your life. If it't not clear, or you have too many focus areas, you can brainstorm all your goals and then circle the top three that would mean the most. 

Next you want to break those goals down and figure out which one is going to change your life. For example, if your goals consisted of new car, earn x-amount, meet the love of your life, launch business, go back to college. If meeting the love of your life was the one thing on the list you wanted above everything else this becomes your focus. You need to break down what is blocking you from achieving this goal, what you need to do daily to bring this vision to life, and get really clear on how you want to feel. 

NOTHING COMES ABOVE YOUR PRIMARY GOAL. That means this is where your energy goes. You’re not clutching on to your goal desperate, you are in the mode of preparation and alignment to RECEIVE what it is you desire. 

Let’s break this down further... Your three focus points of your primary goal you need to be clear of TODAY (make sure your journal is with you taking notes right now). 

1] What has/ continues to block you (for example, you’re single keep attracting unavailable men - the root is lack of self worth/ unhealed traumas). You want to get into the nitty gritty of why you are not where you want to be. Get to the root. 

2] Get clear on exactly how you would feel if your top level goal was your reality. You can start with another brainstorm. And from this, you want to create affirmations, using I feel, I am, I decide, I am choosing and you want to record yourself on your phone on a rampage. You need to listen to this daily, getting your energy into the feelings of your desire. 

3] Daily actions. This is your tangible action plan. You’re in your masculine energy making moves in order to move forward. Example, you’re booked in for therapy sessions to finally heal your childhood trauma, you’ve committed to reading two books on the subject before the end of the year, and this week you are going to the book store to pick the first book and start reading 15 pages per day before bed, you are making an effort each day, looking and feeling your best EXPECTING to cross paths with love of your life,  you’re committing to one podcast episode per day on unpacking and understanding your relationship blocks as you go on your daily 10k hot girl walk…

Do you get the jist of what you need to be doing? You need an ACTION PLAN. You would never get in an uber without a destination, so why are you living your life without a clear plan? The GPS is your route, there may be twist and turns along the way, maybe some detours, but ultimately you KNOW where you are going and you have a plan. This is what this work is about. 

Today is the perfect time to take action. No more sleeping on your dreams. No more waiting for tomorrow. Make your plan, follow the steps above, and watch and see how wholesome you feel each day because you are actually investing in you. You’re not chasing anyone, your not following the crowd, you are putting you first and foremost. Remember the work you do today, creates the life you are wishing and waiting for come 2025. 

[thumpypuppy]

hey can you talk about I WON’T LET YOU GO HOME from ISAT and how you went about making it? It is so good. me and friends really like it. thank you in advance if so! the game is so good and your soundtrack has played a key role in making it literally life changing.

Lindar here!

Thank you SO MUCH for the kind words.

Firstly, I have to give credit to InsertDisc5 who gave incredible direction and has been to date one of the best people I've worked with.

So let's start from the beginning: We establish a specific instrumental tone with the pseudo-chiptune synth we've heard a lot, especially in the title theme. This was created using NI Massive, which was one of the most heavily used synths in the OST. We're doing kind of a basic heavy metal riff here, but making it chiptune-y.

Next we fade in for the first and only time in the soundtrack a SNES strings pad to fill out the chord structure and provide additional melodic content.

Then of course for our more intense moments we roll out Toontrack Superior Drummer 2 + Metal Foundry, featuring the amazing drumming styles of the one and only Sandra Baker. I think she went absolutely ham to contrast with how simple the first section is.

So next we hit our stride and establish what the piece is really saying. The drums simplify a bit to leave room for the melody, and then we hit a "drop" of sorts into the next section.

Now we're rocking to a reprise of the title theme in a more major tone, but it's feeling less hopeful and more like a longing attachment to memories of the past.

In the second half of the title theme we run a reprise of the death/loss theme as a counter-melody while also introducing a new little motif stab underneath. We hear it in the strings as sort of the response to a call that hasn't actually been made, and then it's repeated in the bass, and finally the whole band states it all at once as we move into the next section.

Again we're stating the title theme, but this time in a different mode with a gliding, reverby, monophonic lead that feels like it's floating. Each phrase keeps rising in intensity, desperately reaching for that memory.

Finally after all of that wildly changing energy and anxiety ramping up we hit a breakdown featuring probably some of the best orchestral composition I've managed thus far (not to toot my own horn). I was really shooting for "pained" as the sound of this section. Half-time feel drums where we're so incredibly out of energy, but no! The drums pick up into double-time as we desperately reach out for comfort!

I gotta say Sandra went absolutely wild with the blastbeat snare while still doing a half-time feel. Like it feels like there's so much tension even while we're winding down to the end of the piece, floating in a place where we keep moving towards hope but always resolving on the minor. We have a lot of movement here through different keys and modes that continually give us a feeling of moving forward while always returning to the feeling of loss.

Finally, for the album version, we cap the ending with a slow restatement of the beginning of the piece for piano and violin (I don't remember the specific piano I used here but it wasn't the Spitfire Labs muted piano for once, and the violin is from Spitfire's Sacconi Quartet).

As far as an in-depth musical analysis goes, I'd have to open the session again to get really specific with what I did on a theory level because it's been like a year or more since I wrote it, and my computer's primary hard drive died (luckily I have all my sessions on a different drive), so I'm spending the weekend reinstalling everything.

I think the crux of this piece in particular is that, while there is new melodic content that explains the emotional context of the scene, we still rely on the recontextualization of leitmotifs for added effect. I'm not sure if it makes me lazy or a genius, but it's something I leaned into heavily.

It's like…

Step 1: Someone is crying. Their friend tries to cheer them up. Play something kinda sad and a little bittersweet.

Step 2: Play that same melody in a different situation but slightly different to be totally appropriate while also calling back to the original event.

Step 3: Make it into a major-key power metal song because you're winning with the power of your friends caring about your feelings.

Humans are pattern-recognition machines. It works with motifs, it works with specific instrumentation, it works with pretty much anything. Make an aesthetic choice about your instrumentation, utilize it, and punch people in the feels.

As soon as the studio is back up and running I'll see if I can't add on to this with an actual theory analysis, and meanwhile I'm gearing up to start doing classes on mixing and sound design, so look out for that as well!

Thank you again for your ask!

[turcott3]

off the table

charles leclerc x fem! reader

warnings?: cursing, angst, kissing and fluff! (this is not edited apologies for any mistakes)

positions fics masterlist

~but i just wanna know is love completely off the table?~

-

your eyes fluttered open as the sun filled the las vegas hotel room. you roll to face away from the window and you’re met by a familiar sleeping face. the relationship you and charles had created was special but complex. you weren’t together. you’re primary relationship is sex and nights out together but it never extended beyond that. occasionally you received a grand prix invite, las vegas being one of them. he messed with your feelings often. one second it seems like he wants you and the other he’s leaning on a bar counter talking to another woman. you just let it happen because you wanted him, even if it does hurt you not knowing.

“good morning char.” you say quietly as the brunette stretches out and looks at you.

“good morning amour.” he smiles before getting up out of bed. you wanted to reach out and grab for him but you didn’t wanna push your limits. you yearned for him. all you wanted was to be his and his only, but it was starting to feel like too much to ask for. every day you’ve spent together, a bubble of anxiety grew in your chest.

“what time do we need to leave?” you call out.

“we have a few more hours no worries.” he smiles walking back into the bedroom and climbing back into bed, quickly nuzzling his face in the crook of your neck.

“how many is a few more?” you giggle, scratching his scalp lightly.

“like four or something.” he says, his breath on your neck was hot and sent goosebumps all over your body.

“i need to get a shower okay?” you say and he pulls away after pressing a short kiss to your neck.

“okay, ill be here.” he smirks laying back on his side, scrolling on instagram. you enter the bathroom, grateful for the escape you just made. he made your mind spin. when he cuddles to you and kisses you, yet doesn’t care to want you is the mode confusing experience you’ve had. you let the warm water soak your body as you stood in your thoughts, tears pricking your eyelids. eventually you lost the fight and let the sobs wrack your body. all you wanted was answers. tearfully, you finished the shower and dried off, staring at your puffy face in the mirror.

“am i just not good enough?” you whisper to yourself. you walk out into the bedroom to grab clothes from your suitcase, avoiding looking in charles’ direction.

“y/n?”

“i’ll be out in a second.” you say shutting the door behind you. quickly, you slip on your clothes and hang your damp towels.

“y/n?” he asks again as you walk out.

“what?” you say, eyes still red and face still puffy.

“come sit, what is wrong?”

“i don’t know.” you lie sitting down next to him, not wanting to possibly ruin this trip.

“yes you do. tell me.” he pushes clearly wanting an answer.

“you confuse me charles. you confuse me so much and you’ve made me catch undeniably strong feelings for you but you confuse the fuck out of me. one second i think you may want me and then the next you’re talking to another woman. i’m just confused on why you wanted me here.” you express as lightly as possible.

“i do have feelings for you. i truly do y/n, i don’t want you to think that i don’t.”

“then why don’t you want me charles?”

“i do i just- im just so busy and stressed with the season i don’t want to have more things to keep up with. not that you don’t deserve the absolute best, i just don’t think i can give you what you deserve.”

“well i’m here right now aren’t i? i’ll come to every race, every event, everything. i am here for you and you only. i don’t want to get in your way so im trying my best to stay out of the way and id say ive done pretty well.” you add, tears falling once more and he nods.

“is love just not something you’re looking for right now? tell me baby.” you say as he pulls you into his lap, wiping your tears.

“it is. i don’t know why ive been pushing you away. you’re too good to me and i feel like if i can’t be 100% here then it won’t work and you deserve 100%.”

“i’m willing to try, only for you.” you say and he kisses you on the cheek.

“mon amour. you’re incredible.”

“so does this mean?”

“yes, it means you’re my girlfriend, i’m not even gonna ask i’m declaring it now.” he giggles and hugs you closely to his chest.

“look at us, newest couple on the grid.” you laugh.

“and arguably the best, sorry everyone else.” he says placing a light hand on your lower back.

“definitely the best.”

-

“carlos, this is my girlfriend y/n. you’ve met before but i figured i should re-introduce with the proper title.” charles giggles at his teammate.

“hello y/n, it’s great to re-meet you.” he smiles sticking his hand out to you which you gladly shake.

“it’s great to re-meet you too.”

“alright well baby, we got to get to it so, ill see you in a bit alright?”

“alright, good luck out there char.”

“thank you.” he smiles kissing you sweetly on the lips before walking off with his teammate.

“i was waiting for this day to come.” one of the staff says nudging you.

“really?” you giggle.

“yes, last race you weren’t there and he was like ‘i wish y/n was here, she makes me calm.’”

“how sweet.” you smile at the woman before she follows behind them.

guess love was never off the table.

-

sorry this is so short😭

[uraberika]

ok new vicro stuff reaction here i go, beware of spoilers under the cut

ppl might be tired of it but i'm glad they seemed to take the girly route with shinohara's design, she is already my fave

YESS THE FEMALE COACH PRAYING CIRCLE WORKED!!

oooh more minigames, i'm curious to see them

ok Fei's adult design kinda eats, this might just make me watch chrono stone lol

MIND EATER?? WHAT?? i'm glad we have a plotline but WHAT??

ok Vic is giving major LBX vibes

ok wait does this mean that we get basically two stories in one game? like the vicro plot and then this chronicle plot which has all inazuma matches to ever exist wrapped in it?

the T-Pistonz songs slap as always

covers every match from all anime series?? damn, no wonder they kept pushing the date back and back

ok but having to recreate the exact ways the matches took place is actually such a fun idea, like i can already see myself ragequitting lol

ok seeing scenes from ep 1 in the new animation style is so weird tho, i gotta get used to that

this bond thing looks interesting, this is the biggest acknowledgement of shippers by LVL 5 haha

OK THE GOAL KEEPER IS A FAVE ALREADY

you can customize your team in story mode? that is so cool

MORE FEMALE PLAYERS I AM SO HAPPY

there is so much to unpack in this image: a possibly all-female team with a stunning coach? my jaw is on the floor. second: IS ONE OF THE TEAMS COACHED BY A LITERAL DOG?

I AM LITERALLY SPEECHLESS THIS IS LEGIT LIKE AN ANIME WITH ALL THESE ANIMATED SCENES, THERE ARE SO MANY NEW CHARACTERS AND THEY ALL LOOK SO INTERESTING I NEED TO LIE DOWN TO PROCESS THIS

they are adding realism?? into my inazuma game? (tbh i don't mind, i won't be playing much with the competition mode anyway I think xd)

omg they added so many features it lowkeys seems a bit overwhelming and i have doubts if they could create a balanced gameplay with so many features that are unique to specific characters but at least all fans are appeased i guess

the tournaments sound fun tho

oh yeah i forgot about the inazuma OC creator, big W for ppl with ina OCs

literal mini Animal Crossing in Inazuma, I am intrigued

i don't mind the digital only release but i know some ppl will be sad about that... but tbh it's fair that with all these cross platform things, a physical release would be risky

Final thoughts: This all sounds so great but I have two primary concerns: 1) How many of these features will be working fully without any issues and bugs from the first day of release? 2) With all these features, basically 4 games packed into one, how much will the price be?

Otherwise I AM VERY HYPED AND CAN'T WAIT TO SEE THE FINAL PRODUCT!!!!

[zoroara]

A collection of flame information

I decided to compile and categorize flame information that is both said in canon, not said directly in canon but is observable and then throw in a couple of theories of my own. In this post I will be separating them by type. It's gonna be fucking long so here's a read more. I will not be bringing up actual flame abilities here, but rather the concept as a whole.

First, the Canon ones, which I'll define as what is outright stated:

Every person has flames.

How flames manifest are determined by the wavelength they are.

Every person has different strengths of each wavelength, your strongest wavelength is your primary flame If you have multiple decently strong wavelengths, you are capable of manifesting more than one flame type, but it will take training and effort to manifest.

Flames are not determined by anything special other than these things.

Though the Vongola has rules on how they expect certain flame users to act as guardians, no other organization with flames does however.

Having enough dying will can prevent death, and should you have enough vengeance in your heart during this time, all types of flame can become black and become the flame of night and keep you alive indefinitely, as long as you have a body.

Hyper Dying Will Mode is separate to rings, and works differently, however can clear the body to be capable of manifesting flames through removing internal barriers, the previous mode Dying Will Mode, however only removed external, thus it did not manifest flames with the exception of the one on the head. However, it is not as strong as a person with a ring's dying will flames, but is on par with someone who can naturally bring out their dying will flame(eg. Xanxus).

Dying will mode minus state, is by temporarily turning your dying will into a state that is the opposite for seconds at a time hence the flickering look of it. During the Minus state, with practice you can make it possible to absorb and freeze other people's dying will attacks.

Rings, come in several varieties for each flame. These are the flames they will magnify the best and be able to work with.

Rings also come in grades, outside of certain ring sets(vongola, mare, etc) which have no limits due to materials used, A rank is the highest rank, and the lowest is E rank. These latter case of rings, have a limit on how much flame they can magnify at a time, and will break if put over said limit.

Rings can convert flames that previously were not manifested(eg. Yamamoto not being able to create flames without a ring), and when taken off, they will not be able to create flame, it does not react in any special way with flame users already capable of manifesting their flames or flame users that are in dying will mode.

Box weapons each serve a utility purpose to them, some only able to do one thing, others able to do many depending on how they were built. A majority of supplementary abilities come from box weapons manipulating how flames work.(Eg. Sky petrification only happens due to the box weapons, bester and natsu.) Each box weapon has rules of use and how it manipulates the flame put into it.

Sky flames can open any box weapon, however through this use, the box weapon is inherently weaker than someone of the same power and proper flame type using it.

Mammon chains(and their ring cover variant), when wrapped around devices that would help produce flame(eg. pacifiers rings), hide them from detection.

----------------------------------------

Next, are observational, things that follow a clear through line in canon and do not change, but are only noticeable through observation:

First starting with the manifestation of flames.

Being able to manifest flames without assistance of some form is an extreme rarity.

With the exception of Xanxus and some arcobaleno(as seen in rainbow arc when they lose their pacifiers), all other flame users require some intervention to do so. This comes in several forms, rings, dying will pills/bullets, pacifiers, Mukuro's eye, etc.

All this will end up with a flow chart that looks like this:

Though box weapons manipulate flames to a specific ruleset, it seems possible that one can use the abilities of a box weapon without a box weapon. Though training is required and seems to only show as rudimentary as possible(Eg. TYL Squalo creating a barrier with flame with only his ring, which TYL Yam had to use a box weapon for), special abilities of the box weapons seem to be unable to be re-creatable by simple flame.

Flames of wrath, within canon are only theorized to be a hybrid of storm and sky flames, however, through observation of how this works, it does in fact work like how one would expect this combination to work

As Hibari uses multiple rings to put in a box weapon before they shatter, it seems that using multiple rings can in fact spread out the strain on the rings long enough to be used, however it seems they will shatter quickly after use like this, thus is not an effective long period strategy, and rather is a way to short term raise how much flame you can actually output at once. (only works if you're already breaking rings though)

The crystals produced by zero point inherently feed and grow on others dying will. It is not produced by your own, but by absorbing and manipulating others dying will to create the crystals themselves.

(for clarity: I'm saying that the crystals produced at any point are only produced because the target has flames that can be manipulated to create crystals and aren't produced by the person using the technique, like the crystals aren't FROM tsuna, the crystals always grow from his target, so it's a manipulation technique of someone's own flame, to pull apart and neutralize it and from that point it neutralizes itself.

In addition to humans which produced flame, it works on box weapons because they're made of flame, it works on the moscas in the future because they have little batteries of flame, it works on ghost because it's made of flame, it works in the onsen because there's MANY TARGETS WITH POWERFUL FLAMES which is why it ends up so fucking big)

Mammon chains(and their ring cover variant), when wrapped around devices that would help produce flame(eg. pacifiers rings), prevent the device from producing flames all together. While not explicitly stated, the chains are always taken off or the covers open in order to use flames. With one exception being mammon. However in Rainbow arc, Mammon is capable of using a flame without a device(pacifier), so it can be observed that this is probably what they're using instead.

Flames, due to being energy wave forms, are detectable through machinery and their output can also be detected. This is observed at many points even being a main point getting to choice, however, it being the wave output that is detected is more observational so I put it here.

------------

NOW for what is straight up theory on my end, where there is varying amount of support for what i'm saying here, and is much more extrapolation on my end, so they are more... Ideas than anything substancial.

Earth flames are not real flames: This is more because of how they only manifested by the owners of the rings. To me, it is simply more likely, that the shimon rings, are capable of drawing the same wave lengths that sky flames use, but in an alternate way to produce a different set of flame, in the same way that Box weapons and vongola gear can produce much more distinct abilities, however far more extreme and in a set of rings. The additional odd parasitoid looks of the rings also give off that feel to me.

Flame hybrids are produced when a sky flame wavelength is equal to another wavelength: Pretty much what it says on the tin, I theorize flames like the flames of wrath are produced when a person's primary flame is sky, with another flame is equal strength to their sky flame. Then, the Harmonization factor of sky flame, melds with what would be another strong flame to create a new primary flame type. This does theoretically mean there should be more flame hybrids, however this combination must be incredibly rare to have a stable version.

Methods through the Vongola Tenants were probably chosen: Other groups are chosen through other means, such as the arcobaleno being chosen through simple sheer power. However it is noted that the vongola rules are not followed by the other groups at all. The Vongola statements are very specific, but looking through it simply, they had chosen these rules for what would be the best user for each flame. A storm flame who is willing to be violent in battle when the main ability of a storm flame is in fact one that's destructive in nature. An unwillingness to be, would make using the flame not nearly as useful. These are the personalities they believe are capable of using the flames the best. It also, happens to be the personalities that the original group showed, which means they likely determined that to keep the vongola clear on how they should act in the future, they should follow these tenants. It did not work out how they desired.

It is possible to change flames: Through external means, if one could manipulate the wavelength of their primary flame, they would be able to create flames of a different type. This would require much more experimental technology than what currently exists in khr.

Thank you for reading and I hope this information is helpful to anyone who needs a quick resource on how flames work as an overall, and not just their abilities.

[changelingsandothernonsense]

Top Five Blorbos!

HIIIII!!!

Woo five blorbos...hmm

Imma fuck this one up a bit because we're blorbafying people and cities as well as THE CHARACTER. Fuck the rules, blorbos can be whatever the fuck I want! :3

Zahīr ud-Dīn Muhammad (Babur)

The founder of the Mughal Empire and a guy who wrote extensively on his many failures. His autobiography the Baburnama is honestly so so fun to read, this guy has sass for days and measures a man's worth and attractiveness based entirely on how gifted he was in poetry. Don't mention losing Samarkand or the Fergana Valley or our most beloved Andijan THREE TIMES! Look, the melons might not be as good in Dehli or Kabul but at least you managed to KEEP THEM!

Anyway, I should start learning Chagatai if I want more info.

2. Timur

This guy! This guy so much! This guy! Look, how am I not gonna stan a guy who uses "Skull Pyramid in attack mode" as a primary form of intimidation? How am I not going to stan a guy who fucked the Iranian plateau, Afghanistan and Central Asia in the mouth? This guy stanned Temujin (Chinggis Khan) so hard he scoured the land to find a wife who was a direct descendant of the guy just to hold down his legitimacy. Something about "Hey me and that guy share an ancestor waaaaaay back" doesn't quite hit as well as "I'm a descendant of Chinggis Khan". Who the fuck is Tumbinai Khan anyway dude? Oh did I mention he suffered a leg injury early in his career and had to do a world mount whilst using a cane?

This guy can create an entire Central Asian Renaissance before the Europeans even knows what's whacking them over the head.

We do not speak about Khwarazm. (See skull pyramid)

3. Samarkand

This is me being a fucking dork about the Timurids and their art and architecture (which you might notice is what all the above art works except the bust belong to).

Look I love anything and everything about the Silk Road and Samarkand and Sogdiana was its heart. This is the birthplace of the Timurid Renaissance and thusly, the birthplace of the European one too (it was sparked through trade and plagues).

A city that had until very recently been the centre of trade from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Indian subcontinent. I will visit before I die.

4. Essahaddon/Assarhaddon

King of Assyria and everywhere else! No he will not hear of you're bullshit- get invaded! Yo, you weren't expected to inherit anything because you were the youngest son of Sennacherib but somehow managed to gain the position through being lit! So your brothers decide to wage a six-week long civil war only to get dead coz he's just that fucking good! Yo, did you just give women the most political power they've had since the Bronze Age? Maybe it's because you don't trust your male relatives to not be greedy fuck ups, or maybe your wife and daughters were just better at administrating a state instead.

My man has an unspecified chronic illness, he's paranoid and he's apparently got wacked by the depression stick. Yet he still manages to fuck everyone up the ass so thoroughly that he even managed to wrestle Egypt and Libya off the Kushites and slap around Elam a bit. He ensures a peaceful succession and his son, Ashurbanipal created the greatest library of ancient Near Eastern texts the world has ever known. (This is your Library of Alexandria, it's in Nineva). Neo-Assyria became a superpower under both their watch.

5. Ya boi

Congratulations! All the people here are my influences for my main mang that I commandeered from an NPC. Ensirhaddon'Sul-Sero Teldryn am'Urshilaku is a sum of all parts. He eventually does wield a reckoning against Vvardenfell and may have made the settled Dunmer remember why they used to fear Ashlander raids.

Then watch him crumble after losing it all. Yeah, he beat the Sharmat, but at what cost? Why can't he just be allowed to retire already?

Leave the Nerevarine to his misery.

Ask me my Top 5/Top 10 anything and i'll fuck up the answer for you!

[pixelmaniacsindie]

How our next game, ChromaGun 2, remains accessible with its color-based mechanics!

ChromaGun 2 is our next release - it's a first-person puzzle shooter, with mechanics based on a gun that shoots paint!

Essentially, you use the ChromaGun to color walls and littler worker droids in order to activate triggers and open doors. Droids are attracted to walls of the same color. And eventually, the player will need to mix primary colors to properly solve the puzzles. It sounds simple, but begins to increase in difficulty as new mechanics are introduced.

Here's the issue. If you have any form of color-blindness. This becomes noticeably more difficult and far less enjoyable.

It doesn't matter what form of color blindness you have. They all affect the core of the game, which makes using a filter or color-correction impractical; in order to compensate all forms of color-blindness, we'll need a different solution.

[Quick overview of forms of color-blindness by the NIH]

So how did we solve this?

Simple! We used shapes!

Huh? Shapes?

Yeah, shapes!

We assign each primary color an easily distinguishable symbol.

Triangle for yellow, straight line for red, and circle for blue! It is imperative that they're easily distinguishable. Both because it needs to be easy to tell the colors apart, and because they need to still be distinguishable when they mix together.

How does color mixing function?

See the gif above - when primaries are mixed, the shapes are combined together to create their own distinct symbols, allowing the user to put together the combination without needing the extra context of color.

Where do they appear?

Firstly, in the bottom-right corner of the screen, right next to the ChromaGun. This indicates what color is currently "equipped."

Secondly, they appear layered over colored WorkerDroids.

Thirdly, they appear dead-center on the surface of paintable walls.

Lastly, they appear on tertiary puzzle objects like boxes, vents, and other colorables! (see barrel above, for example)

Where can this be activated?

Currently, it can be toggled in the settings in the gameplay section of the main menu!

Does.. it work?

It has in fact been tested, and was successful in the titles predecessor, ChromaGun.

During my time at the Berlin Games Ground, I left the color blind mode active after a user mentioned they had difficulty seeing the colors. I thought ah, perfect! I can see our games feature in action. And.. it worked well! They immediately said everything made so much more sense, and in regards to the symbols, said that they appreciate that we used them rather than a filter.

Also, many non-colorblind players thought they were just a natural part of the game, as I left them on. So they're both functional, subtle, and visually pleasing.

In conclusion...

Accessibility is a core part of modern game design, and the inclusion of these features is imperative to the enjoyment of a game, especially when core mechanics are involved.

We don't want to exclude anyone from playing our game! Thanks for reading, and I hope you found this log interesting, and maybe even useful (especially if you're a fellow indie dev ;) )!

Iffff u wanna test it out, check out our steam page! We're currently preparing to do playtests! If your interested, let me know! (Email or dm!)

-Dean the INTERN

[utopianoverlord]

🎵 playlist cover tutorial (& psd)

In this tutorial, I'll be going over how to make a character-centric playlist cover using my template

✨ Firstly, thank you so much @withered-rose-with-thorns for your kind words on my edits and interest in learning how to make these! 😊

The core of our process is thankfully a simple one. We'll be using the clipping mask function to affix a character cutout and textures to 3 specific primary layers. Here, I'll walk through remaking a cover similar to that of my Vi playlist. To begin, download the following:

cover template (mega.nz)

My template is 400x400px in overall size and mainly features 3 named layers.

1.) CUTOUT — With the template ready to rock, we'll start by working on the heart of the edit, which is getting the character cutout for the portrait layer. (As a general rule, always try to use the highest quality images/shots for projects whenever possible.) In this example, I've used the Pen tool to free Vi from her scene:

For creating precise cutouts I will only ever recommend using the Pen tool, as anchor points allow the most control in achieving the cleanest results. If you're unfamiliar with the Pen tool and its settings, here's a 60-second guide to the basics. (i.e. connecting anchor points all the way around your character from the start to end > Make Selection > set Feather Radius to 0 and have anti-alias checked for smooth edges) Once you've made your selection, if you need, you can change the cutout size by using the Transform Controls or simply adjusting the overall Image Size.

2.) PORTRAIT LAYER — Back on planet template, we'll focus on the "middle portrait" layer. Above each of the 3 main layers is one titled *top clipping mask*, which we'll keep at the top for all. This is a means of ensuring all new layers created beneath it will stay clipped to the primary layer (as indicated by the little arrow pointing downward to the left of each mini thumbnail image). You can simply drag your cutout to the template, or just copy & paste it in a new layer, and use the Move tool to position the image how you'd like. (If any layer accidentally unclips, right click it and select Create Clipping Mask or just hit that Alt+Ctrl+G)

With your image now in position, you can then change the portrait background color by creating a new fill layer > Solid Color. Double-click the Solid Color layer to change the color at any time. Your cutout layer should sit atop the Solid Color layer and beneath the *top clipping mask* layer, as shown above.

3.) BACKGROUND LAYER — The bottom-most layer is our background color layer, which is gray by default. Feel free to adjust this Solid Color layer any time to your preference. Now with the basics covered (your cutout, middle portrait background color, and background color), let's add a texture or two! Since we're on the background layer now, I've downloaded and resized this unsplash texture and made it a new, clipped layer.

Experimenting with the Blend Modes and Opacity is key (and super fun)! Here, I've set my texture layer to Subtract with a 50% Opacity.

On top of the texture layer, I've added a couple of adjustment layers and color layers using the Brush tool for the sizzle.

4.) PORTRAIT LAYER — Back on the middle portrait layer, we can add a texture layer here a s we've done for the background, though if you prefer you can leave the portrait background as a solid color. For the purpose of the tutorial, I've downloaded this graffiti texture from unsplash and added it as a new layer, changing the Blend Mode and Opacity.

By experimenting with the Blend Mode on your texture layer, adjustment & color layers, you can create all kinds of wild effects to fit your subject and mood of your playlist.

In addition to fiddling with the portrait layer, I've also sharpened my Vi cutout and added adjustment layers above it - such as Vibrance, Color Balance and Curves - to make her shine against the saturation of the colors surrounding her.

When you're all done, save your cover as a .png to retain high-quality compression.

You may have noticed that we didn't make any adjustments to the 3rd "white border" layer after all, which is on purpose! Depending on what look you'd like to create for your cover, and knowing how a clipping mask works from previous steps, the set-up has been prepped to change as you please, if you please.

And if you've read this far, thank you! I appreciate you, and I hope you found some useful information. You're welcome to download the finalized Vi psd cover I made for this tutorial.

Happy Creating! 🧡

[dailyanarchistposts]

Monogamism intersects with other systems of power

Our lives are intersectional and Monogamism is not the only system that matters. For people who date or marry, it’s obviously not their sole identity or activity (though their “relationship status” is treated as a key part of their social status, dictates the ways other people are “allowed” to interact with them, and is often the subject of great preoccupation). A critique of Monogamism, like other anarchist critiques of institutions and systems of power, illuminates the ways that the social mandate of monogamy denies many people the material and social resources they need. From an anti-monogamy perspective, many problems central to anarchist struggle (economic inequality, generational wealth, gendered violence, immigration and citizenship, oppression of children, homophobia, racism, etc.) work in concert with Monogamism.

For example, consider how Monogamism intersects with the role of the nuclear family under Capitalism. What better way to sell more products than to isolate people in small, controllable consumer units and equate success to purchasing things for them? Advertising shows us which gifts represent affection, date and vacation packages that promise connection, homes or cars one must have to be a desirable potential partner, and home accessories that shore up a perfect family.

The couple itself is romanticized and marketed to us as a proposition of ownership: a person who is ”just yours” and meets your emotional and domestic needs, especially with women and femmes stereotyped into caretaker roles. Success under Monogamism requires possessing a good partner, which opens paths to higher social status, opportunity, and happiness itself. To critique these modes of relating is not to demonize individual people struggling to meet their needs within the current coercive social system, any more than to critique Capitalism is to demonize workers. All the same, it is important to be critical of Monogamist harms, and to create supportive community that allows us to resist them together. Building relationships that challenge Monogamism is key to building resilient communities that can fight back against Capitalism and the State.

Considering how Monogamism intersects with other systems of power suggests questions that can inform our liberatory praxis:

Monogamism + Ableism: Who is expected to provide care for someone when they are sick or injured? What if they have a chronic illness or disability? What bundled expectations will someone with chronic illness be unable or unwilling to provide in order to get the care they need? In what ways are they pressured or coerced to please a primary caregiver? If care work is privatized, how will people know when it is inadequate or harmful? Why is it so common for people to be divorced once they become sick or disabled, and how can we support them when this happens?

Monogamism + Racism & white supremacy: Most couples in the US are not mixed-race. If resources are hoarded within the couple unit and nuclear family, how does this affect cross-racial bonding and resource distribution? When in a group, who will people stand up for or support? Are both members of a married couple US citizens or is one dependent on the other for legal status? How do legal and social pressure to appear more normative affect inter-racial relationships, or relationships between US citizens and non-citizens? How do settler-colonial ideas of family limit expansive ideas of kin or community?

Monogamism + Patriarchy & gender: How does the dominant ideal of Straight couples restrict the ways Queer people relate to each other? Why are the most celebrated Queer relationships the ones that look the most like Straight relationships? In so-called Straight couples (see “Straight Ally is an Oxymoron”), why do women and femmes still take on the majority of domestic and child-rearing responsibilities? Who is expected to do (more) care work, and why is it often one-sided? What work could be shared more effectively in community than in couple units? When relationships are “private,” how can the community know when gendered violence is happening and provide support? If desirability is linked to acceptable gender performance or presentation, how will people’s freedom of expression (and sense of self) suffer? Why are so many people seeking gender-affirming hormones or surgeries afraid of their partner “losing attraction” to them?

Monogamism + Capitalism & property: With whom do we share resources? What are we supposed to buy to demonstrate affection? Is it affordable or possible to live somewhere without a second person? Is there housing available that supports co-living outside the nuclear family? How do families prioritize their own generational wealth at the expense of community? How does economic dependence on family restrict who we can relate to and how we meet our needs? In what ways does “dating” lead us to view people (including ourselves) as marketable items, or encourage us to possess them?

Monogamism + Amatonormativity: How do people meet their needs and desires for touch? What expectations are bundled with those? Are people required to participate in complex social rituals around romantic dating to meet their basic needs? Whose idea of “romance” is used as the script for our relationships? What resources, opportunities, and support will be denied to people who pursue intimacy in ways stigmatized under monogamy? How do we build deep and intimate friendships without normative scripts around sex and romantic love? What do community ties look like when attractiveness and desirability don’t shape webs of material support?

Monogamism + Prison Industrial Complex & policing: Who is expected to support someone who is arrested and held in prison? Who bears the brunt of the negative effects of incarceration? How do institutional systems favor those in normative romantic relationships? Due to deplorable conditions and intentionally restrictive institutional policies, how are people excluded from reciprocal care and connection while incarcerated? In the context of the “rules” in rule-based relationships, how do people police and enforce those? How do people react punitively to broken relationship rules?

Monogamism is not separate from these other systems of power; they all work together. To approach monogamous relationships as if they are somehow insulated from these systems of power, or have no effects besides interpersonal ones, is to deny all of these intersections. In doing so, it pushes us further from discovering new ways of caring for each other and meeting our needs together.

[life-take]

CSP Gamut Mask Part II

(continued from Part I)

Part II: How to use it

There's a few different ways we can use the gamut mask to pick colors! Using these, I made a palette of primary and secondary colors, with some neutrals!

N.B.: Now here's where things get a bit different from real paint. Clip Studio Paint has perceptual color mixing, but because each real world pigment has unique properties that also change based on the medium, we can't perfectly recreate paint mixing. That doesn't even get into white pigments to lighten colors! Everything here is approximate to real life. Here's the rule of thumb: You can't mix a saturated color from unsaturated colors. Check your mixed colors against the gamut mask (adjust the lightness if you need to) before assuming they're within gamut. This includes Blending Modes!

Technique 1 -- Eyedropper

The easiest way to pick colors is... use the eyedropper directly on the mask! This is guaranteed to not exceed saturation limits.

Then use the Lightness slider in the Color Picker Sliders tab to make it lighter or darker.*

(*Yes, apparent chroma and saturation can change with lightness in most color spaces. this is one of those approximations.)

Technique 2 -- Blending

CSP has a built-in color mixing window! Pick some of the most saturated colors (in this case, blue-green, magenta, and yellow-green) and mix them with the color mixer tools to get a basic palette. It appears that the blender tool averages the colors, which means the results will not exceed the gamut, provided your gamut border isn't a concave shape like a star, or separate parts.

Technique 3 -- Intermediate Color Palette

CSP also includes a fun little tab in the color picker called the Intermediate Color palette. Put whatever colors you want to mix in the corners, and it creates a spectrum of colors between them. It works by averaging, like the color mixer.

Conclusion

I hope this tutorial was helpful for you! I'm not an expert in palette-making myself, but I wanted to make a tool that would be helpful to me as I practice. The mask I made as an example was placed with no real thought in mind other than "triangle", so please do look up real examples of good masks and palettes! Just as a proof of concept, I saved my palette as a png, then opened it in the "Sub-View" window so I could eyedropper from it easily to paint this bird!

[black-aengel-07]

Scythe Model: Arrowhead

An interceptor-fighter craft known for its speed and unique style of combat that had made it the bane of all Imperial attempts at air superiority. The Arrowhead Model is specialized for Aeronautics combat, while its much larger and heavily armed variant, the Viper, is specifically constructed as an orbital fighter.

General Design:

Shaped like a leaf, the Arrowhead is quite small for an aircraft, not even nine meters long, with a width of three meters, its small profile makes it a challenge to target, especially when its right up in your face about its deadly intentions. Yet its proportions hide a surprisingly sturdy frame, on top of having a passive sensor mask that makes it very challenging for standard targeting equipment to get a lock on it or detect their approach until they are almost on top of its target.

Propulsion and Manoeuvrability:

The Arrowhead Scythe is propelled by six thruster engines at its caudal side that are not too dissimilar to the design of the plasma thrusters on void ships, if only with a much smaller profile. Furthermore, it is aided by grav-plates to remain suspended in the air without the need of wings to support its flight. However, these are not the most outstanding features of this craft, those would have to be the Gyroscopes.

Mechanicum adepts are still in heated debates as to the inner workings of recovered pieces of the Gyroscopes, as they have been dubbed, from dead Arrowhead craft. But what they all agree upon its that they are the singular most fundamental piece in the Arrowhead’s near physics defying agility.

Named after the device they most closely resemble in appearance; it is theorized they emit some form of gravitational anchor point that allows the craft to always be relative in their positioning to the closest primary gravitational well.

This is how the Arrowhead is able to remain in stable flight and turn without the need of any form of wings, as well as perform manoeuvres that would otherwise kill an organic pilot within. For instance, by simply rotating both Gyroscopes inside the Arrowhead in the same direction along a horizontal plane, the craft immediately spins on its axis without changing direction, allowing it to suddenly turn around on a pursuing target and light it up with its main armament before reconfiguring its trajectory back into a stable flight configuration.

For this reason alone, the Arrowhead has earned the righteous ire and fear of all Imperial pilots who have ever faced them in battle and survived to tell the tale.

Weaponry:

Arrowheads are a significant threat to face in combat, made all the deadlier by their arsenal.

Primary Weapon: Arrowheads maintain their weapons locked beneath their plating when in cruising mode or whenever they are performing their most famous attack. Depending on the Sub-Model of the Arrowhead, one could either expect forward facing twin linked las-cannons with surprisingly high rates of fire or a missile volley, ranging up to ten fire-and-forget missiles before the craft needs to fabricate replacements.

Secondary Weapon: Arrowhead Scythes all tend to be fitted with a secondary weapon on its underside, usually geared for smaller targets like infantry. These weapons tend to vary greatly from direct energy weapons like Laser Beamers and Volkites, or kinetic weapons such as RCGs.

Power Field Blade Wreathe: The most famous weapon of the Arrowhead, even if it’s the one with least range, if only due to the sheer gal of the Men of Iron to create a fighter craft specialized for melee.

Given its sturdy design and high manoeuvrability, the Arrowhead is designed to ram against enemy aircraft to immediately achieve a kill or shatter formations, forcing a chaotic dogfight where the Arrowhead holds the advantage or is actively forcing enemy craft to focus on it while other aircraft deal the finishing blow.

This final armament converts the Scythe into a flying Power Blade capable of slicing clean through a Lightning Strike Craft without hardly loosing speed, and given its agility, entering close quarters combat with these crafts is always a deadly dance where one wrong move could result in a swift end by the reaper’s blade.

[bedlam-moon]

an introduction to ritual circles: creation, maintenance, and disruption

(background stuff that might never get used in that story that might never be written)

first, one must be aware that the term "circle" is a misnomer - the area of affect of a ritual circle is most commonly a sphere. the circle part of the term refers to the visual pattern where the ritual circle intersects the ground.

when spells are cast, they leave echoes of their casting - imprints of their function on reality. in a highly-magically-active area - with many different spells being cast haphazardly - as one might find in the home of a young spellcaster, these echoes are misaligned in location and form, and tend to create an environment where more care is required to cast a spell than might otherwise be needed if casting in e.g. an abandoned area of the wilderness. to exclude other spells from an area is to increase the ease of your ritual.

thus the three requirements for formation of a ritual circle are repetition, alignment, and exclusion. when a single spell is repeatedly cast in a single position (remember, location *and* direction!), each successive cast wears the bleed from the exact shape of the spells matrix into the firmament. other spells become more difficult to cast at this location. the repeated spell becomes easier to cast, as the spell matrix slots easily into its groove. air, water, and fire in the area will subtly attempt to flow in the patterns embedding themselves into the firmament. finally, the iconic circles will start to form as a representation of the spell. a working of fire might char the ground or leave trails of embers, while water might leave the ground permanently slick or dewy. remember, the ritual circle is the full shape of the realized spell matrix in all dimensions (ritual circles offer some insight into dimensional topology and the refining of premier competing theories of spacetime and dark worlds, but these are still largely unproven, and a full breakdown of the insights is beyond the scope of this article).

with the formation of a ritual circle, a new opportunity arises: using the properties of amplification, haste, or component efficiency in a different spell. there are two major downsides to this option. first, the second spell must be modified from its base form before every casting. failure to properly take into account the flows of the ritual circle when casting a different spell will cause -at best- backfire and thaumic burns. at worst, permanent brain damage, catatonia, or death. this alone is sufficient to dissuade most from trying anything too drastic when using a secondary spell in a ritual circle. the second downside is maintenance: the primary spell must also be modified multiple times for each cast of the secondary. the modifications are to readjust the circle from the disruptions caused by the casting of the secondary spell.

disruption is the same concept as maintenance, but in reverse. where maintenance aims to hold the circle in a stable pattern, safe disruption of a ritual circle aims to weave a chain of ever-so-carefully different spells with the intended outcome of an area akin to the aforementioned home of a young scholar- unfocused high ambient energy. some disruption teams prefer to use a spell that is very close to the primary spell, but offset its location. this is viable, with similar risks as a variance disruption. too hasty of a disruption, with spells too far from the primary spell, will cause the failure modes thaumic burns to death, depending on strength of the circle, difference between the primary and disrupting spells, and how misaligned your disruption is.