#also this was my first time adding alt text- let me know if i explained things poorly!!

[rosetintedjello]

3/5/25- Shadow getting his quills + makeup done :) as a treat

[futurebird]

Please, if possible, add alt text to your images. (Describe every image, please.)

I've seen people post before about how every image posted, ideally ought to have an image description. They generally get a lot of support from people already doing it, but also some objections, questions and even anger.

So let me first say: I understand that not everyone can add image descriptions for a variety of reasons. But, if i grab 100 random posts with images here it's lucky if one or two have a description. Now I know that not that many of you have some serious reason why you can't describe the damn images.

This simply isn't the case on other social platforms I frequent. Mastodon would be well above 60% described. Even twitter (before I left that hell-hole) had like 20% of the images described. Now both of these platforms have popular tools that will remind you if you forget a description, and frankly it's easier to edit descriptions there... so some of this is Tumblr's Fault. Tumblr make image descriptions easier and make a reminder!

But it's also about user culture. People here just don't think image descriptions matter. But they do!

I WILL NOT reblog posts if they don't have image descriptions. So I end up adding them myself, and frankly I pass over MANY posts that I would have quickly reblogged but I don't have the time to be everyone's mom and describe everything. So, I just do that for the really great posts I can't pass up. But having a description will make more people share your work since you aren't making work for us if we want to share it.

Why do I need to describe images? Because many people use screen readers and if a post makes no sense unless you know what's in the image your post is useless to all of those people.

Why do I need to describe art? Because people who are blind, and people with vision impairments also like art. My brother's kid loves my ant drawings. They're legally blind, but they can see if they enlarge an image and look close up, the description give them the context they need to understand what they are looking at. Frankly, I read image descriptions all the time myself when I find a post confusing, so it's helpful to... literal minded people too. And it just makes your post seem more complete and exciting. Why miss out on putting a neat description.

I don't know what to write! Imagine you are reading the post over the phone to a friend. What would you say "And then there is that meme with the guys in the hot tub, sitting five feet apart" put that. Even something short is better than nothing. Just explain the post for everyone. Since it's YOUR post you know best what matters most about the image. When I add descriptions after the fact they can get a little long since it's not my post and I don't know what matters most. OP's description in the alt text is the best description.

If you have other questions you can ask me. I'll find out if I don't know.

(Did you know you can add alt text to your images by clicking the "…" symbol in the lower-left corner of an image when writing a post? Having the description attached to the image is the best way and only the OP can do this, but I also often add descriptions in brackets [ ] when I reblog cool art, cats and ant stuff. So, if you can't add a description yourself, it's OK, there are people who will help.)

[swagcoolcat]

Hey, friends! I made a post saying I was considering making a bmc fan-kid post, because I have three different sets with my close friend, Moth! (They’re not on tumblr, unfortunately, or I’d tag them). For the sake of simplicity, I made them all on the same picrew to see them in the same style. (Picrew will be linked at the end of the post).

(This spans across five and a half years, so half of these kids are boyf riends kids and half are pins and patches kids)

Fan Kids below the cut!

EDIT TO ADD FOR PEOPLE THAT GO PAST THE CUT: Let me know if I’ve made any mistakes in any of the Alt Text! I’m trying to improve at it so I can start adding Alt Text to my art! Thank you!

**PICREWS WILL DEPICT THE KIDS AS PRETEENS/TEENS, MEANING YOUNGER KIDS WILL BE OLDER IN THE PICREWS THAN THEY ARE IN CANON**

The Mell-Heere Kids (TW for brief mentions of physical abuse in Ruby’s section):

Marcus Daniel Mell-Heere: Marcus doesn’t have much information about him regarding his upbringing before he came to be adopted by Michael and Jeremy. What feels correct to me though, is that Marcus’s parents passed away around the time he turned 5, close to a year before he meets Michael and Jeremy, which also explains why he starts kindergarten at 6 instead of 5- because due to the trauma and grief of losing his parents, he’s not ready to start school when it starts a month later. He’s incredibly outgoing and social, and he absolutely loves sugar.

Ruby Maye Mell-Heere: Ruby came from an abusive household before she was adopted by Michael and Jeremy. When we first meet Ruby, she’s shy and reserved. She hardly wants to speak with anyone, and takes some time to trust Michael or Jeremy, or anyone really. She comes out of her shell more the more time she spends with them, and grows an especially close bond with Marcus. She’s fiercely protective of him, and he’s the same way with her. She gains an especially close bond with Jeremy, as he had a similar upbringing to her after his mom left, and finally talking about it and having someone that understands the pain she went through really helps her in healing.

Robin Miracle Mell-Heere: Robin is the youngest member of the Mell-Heere family and their only biological child, born about 8 years after the events of the musical on Halloween. He’s a very happy baby who loves to explore. Robin has some weirdness going on due to the SQUIP. We didn’t end up exploring this too much, but what we did have was that his freckles would glow when his emotions got intense, and this would give Jeremy and people who connected with Jeremy’s SQUIP migraines. Robin also is growing a lot faster than most babies, which we explained as being due to the SQUIP as well (but really it’s because we were 14 and didn’t know how babies worked).

Jeremy’s Cousin (TW for mentions of Death)

Nate/Rain (last name unknown- but likely Heere): For simplicity, I’ll just refer to him as Nate. We changed his name to Rain partway through because we got attached to him more so than we thought and he was named after a real person. At the beginning of his story, Nate has been recently adopted by his older cousin, Jeremy, after his parents passed away in a plane crash. Due to the sudden trauma of losing both of his parents, a once happy Nate was suddenly thrown into a depression. He starts learning how to heal and starts making some friends after Jeremy meets and hires Michael, who specializes in helping kids. We ended his story going on a date with a boy in his class, Aidan/Hudson (same name situation as Nate).

Dillinger-Mell Kids:

Tao Dillinger-Mell: Tao is the oldest of Michael and Jake’s adopted kids at 15 years old. We made him and his sisters less than a week ago, so we don’t have Lore for them yet, we just have their designs, names, and ages. I do however know that Tao plays soccer.

Viviana Dillinger-Mell: Viviana is the second oldest of Michael and Jake’s adopted kids at 10 years old. We don’t really have anything established about her yet.

Sybil Dillinger-Mell: Sybil is the second youngest of Michael and Jake’s adopted kids, at 5 years old. The only one younger is Gaïana, her twin sister. Her left arm ends at the elbow, and that’s where her prosthetic attaches. Aside from that we don’t have any established lore yet.

Gaïana Dillinger-Mell: Gaïana is the youngest of Michael and Jake’s adopted kids at 5 years old. She’s the younger twin sister of Sybil, and she really likes cats. Aside from that, we don’t have any established lore for her yet.

Body type A Picrew

Body type B Picrew

If you have any questions about any of these guys please do ask, I’d love to hear them!

[softgrungeprophet]

*reddit voice* AITA????

i am just gonna post all the comments this person left as screenshots here to give an idea of what i'm talking about (some/many of the comments here are mildly to very NSFW just fyi)

So, there's a person who left some guest comments on Redline (my explicit Peter/Mac hotel hookup fic), who I had a long convo with (~11 comments apiece from each of us) that was variously baffling, amusing, and frustrating.

fairly typical opening comment exchange

this is a smut fic so of course conversations about the sex part are not that weird and i was fine with discussing that for the most part and being honest about why i even wrote the fic. i figured that would be fine.

their response?

brother what the fuck are you talking about, did you even read this fic? or did you just skim the parts where peter sucked dick. i think at this point I was thinking like, well they're a little off-base but i can sort of see why they might come to this conclusion, maybe.

"when they first began their trysts"?? This is their only hookup! It's not like there's a sequel to this fic!

trying to engage reasonably with the things they said that are actually relevant while gently dismissing the stuff that's incorrect.

Literally we're talking about my fanfiction in my AU where I can say with 100% certainty that they have never hooked up before, let alone multiple times, and I already said—both in my responses to this person and in my author notes—that this fic isn't even canon to my AU, meaning actually they don't hook up even once in-universe... i have no idea where they got the idea that this is an ongoing thing because the text makes it pretty clear that this is the first and only time the characters have boned, but sure whatever you want to say. multiple trysts.

also re: the pederasty comment, that's on me for being pretentious I guess, cause I made an offhand mention in the fic itself:

(also to be clear about peter's age, he is 19 here and moderately experienced, he's not like... an underage virgin or anything like that.)

But Also

(cont from comment above)

what?

i think this is the point where i was really just thinking to myself, like, this is getting a little weird. also, weirdly condescending. Like, bro, I know what pederasty is, I don't just toss random fucking words into my fics without knowing what they mean. you don't need to define it for me.

also the everything else.

sorry, between formatting and lengthy comments my reply is kind of long and weirdly laid out in the screenshots (but there is alt text if you need it):

Mostly talking about characterization. Being like, no, Peter would not be impressed, etc. First part non-sexual despite the blatant horniness of their previous comment about weight lifting.

(me, internally: how do i tell them their barbell comment is completely stupid without being a dick?)

In retrospect I probably should have just straight up ignored the comment about spanking and shifted completely to my explanation of the fact that they don't have that kind of relationship instead of explaining peter's masochism.

(cont)

this is just me explaining why they're wrong and adding some context from my AU as part of the explanation of why.

Again in retrospect I probably should have just not added the context about Peter's backstory or relationship to submission even though it was to explain that it wouldn't make sense in-universe but i have a tendency to over-explain a lot

(cont)

again prob just shouldn't have brought up literally any of this and left it at the initial points about their personalities and the point about peter having plenty of adults in his life. but foresight and conciseness are clearly not my strong suits.

also ugh the way i explain it make peter sound so wooby... misleading

Kind of out of left field (felicia was not mentioned in any previous comments or in the fic at all except like ONE sentence in my author's notes (which i have since removed for unrelated reasons)) but okay????

also just... "spidey's outlaw girlfriend and fellow rogue to scorpion" once more explaining shit i already know, as if i don't know who the black cat is. i'm not a fucking idiot.

(cont)

"i would like to think"? great i just told you this isn't the case because this is my alternate universe. And if we were talking about 616 it would be moot because we know they do know each other in 616 because felicia employed mac in the comics several years ago, but clearly we are talking about my AU and i just told you that this isn't true. (maybe i should have said that to them instead)

also as a scenario it's kind of out of left field but whatever, sure, threesome!

me: I am just going to smile and nod.

them: anyway i am going to talk about something else completely unrelated that demonstrates i did not pay attention to this fic despite trying to offer extensive analysis and speculation, and also i am going to end on something completely off-topic and random.

to be clear the word "speedo" was not mentioned even once in this fic but this single interaction is why they even brought it up:

I genuinely don't expect any of my readers to actually know what a dance belt is since it's pretty niche equipment but it would have taken literally two seconds to google it instead of seeing the word "thong" and assuming peter uses a swimsuit as underwear for some reason and then going on an aside about how peter ~canonically~ goes commando.

i have nothing to say about the bald part. i don't know what prompted it. it's completely irrelevant.

For those of you that don't know what a dance belt is, by the way, let me save you a google because I already explained it in my reply:

They did not respond to this at all. hm I wonder why

instead they started a new comment thread to ask a question that was answered in my author's note:

(cw discussion/mentions of child molestation and sexual assault/rape for the next few comments)

choosing to believe they genuinely had forgotten. kind of odd comment but again not that weird so whatever, sure, i'll engage, idk why i didn't just ignore them at this point and just say, "who knows!" or something. the need to over-explain strikes again, i am my own worst enemy, and so on.

(here is where i mention this in my author's note, btw):

...

the dramatic synopsis is genuinely so funny to me like?? this is a comment on gay porn fanfiction... why are you giving me a movie narrator summary of felicia's backstory...

and again the same thing happens and they leave a long hypothetical question—i really should have figured out this pattern by this point huh...

actually this is around the time i realized this person was just gonna keep leaving random unprompted scenarios every time i answered their questions or lightly deconstructed the inaccuracies in their presumptions.

they are right about one thing at least, which is the element of choice.

cue my polite suggestion that they make an account so they can just post fics instead of essentially writing their own fanfiction in my comments, considering how little half of what they've said has had to do with my actual fic. 90% of it is completely unrelated situations of their own devising that have nothing to do with my AU, as you can see by the number of times i've said, "I don't think that applies here" and similar things throughout this extended conversation.

this is where i just give up.

it's like talking to a brick wall, but all the bricks are horny. i should have just said "No???"

after that was silence for a bit, which considering my last reply to them was basically "idk lol" and the previous thread ended with me telling them what a dance belt is and why jock straps aren't practical for acrobatics, is not surprising.

i assumed they were done.

got another comment from someone else about ten days later (3 days ago)

A simple question, my explanation, and... some critique I didn't really ask for. Did I mention that the fic this comment is on... is a porn oneshot? and not a plot-based story? Also was amused/annoyed at the "confuses the audience" comment cause no one else seems to have been confused by it and kita told me she personally read the single line where I mention Mac's scar having not been there before as a way to gauge the passage of time. which was my intent so i'm glad that it comes across, btw, lol

Other than that, the story is okay.

am i being fucking negged???

but, whatever, sometimes you get crit you don't need or want, eh, it's fine

This is the same fucking person, right? This is the same shit? Same style of phrasing (i probably should have realized this when I saw the first comment though, since their initial question about Mac's scars is identically structured to the other questions this person asked before, but like i said, this was like ten days after i thought the convo was over so it's not like i was thinking about it anymore at that point), same sudden segue into power fantasy, pecs and body worship as a previous comment, same mentions of admiration and Manly Masculinity as before—like this comment isn't even a new scenario, it's almost identical to one of the first comments they left which I had already explained wasn't applicable.

The only difference is a guest display name!

but let me tell you after a dozen comments, most of which have had fuck all to do with my writing or story...

as you can see, I am done engaging with this person.

best part? normally i don't even leave guest comments on anyway because i'm self-conscious about my trans flash fics so i kinda leave guest comments disabled for a lot of the fics i post. i just happened to enable them recently on a whim. but at this point i'll probably leave them off permanently lmao

idk

maybe I Am The Asshole for being too friendly and then suddenly getting fed up without offering a previous, less rigid boundary, but also... i already went over the shit they're talking about! over 11 comments! I thought the convo was over by that point, anyway! why are you using a different display name to make a new comment that's almost exactly the same as one of your earliest comments two weeks ago?? do you think i'm gonna give a different answer if i think i'm talking to a different person??????

maybe it's a different person or maybe the response i gave is a sudden ultimatum on my part and i should have, in retrospect, just like... stopped engaging with their random apropos-of-nothing scenarios, but man! hindsight is 20/20 and i'm not very good at interacting with people either, clearly.

sorry if this post duplicates itself on my custom theme on web, read mores seem to play very badly with custom web themes atm...

[nimata-beroya]

Since I've been re-vamping my blog a bit, adding some fun stuff, I thought that a new self-promotion post was also in order. So here you go, an improved masterlist of all my works published on Ao3 and all other content I make here on Tumblr (Updated: Dec, 2022).

I'd appreciate your reblogs and comments if you enjoy any of my works 😊🤩🥰 Give the creator some love 💕💕 But if you like none of those options, you could buy me a ko-fi ☕ instead!

(IDs in alt text)

The Bad Batch Appreciation Week 2021 Masterlist (gifsets)

//

Rescue in Ryloth (complete, 670 words)

Teen | tw violence| one-shot | fix-it

The rescue of the Syndullas in Ryloth goes differently than it was planned

Rough Awakening (WIP, 9365 words of ?) ~~ Playlist

Teen | tw violence | 4 of ? Chapters | emotional hurt/comfort, whump, angst.

The Batch finally rips Crosshair away from the Empire’s clutches, but things don’t go so smoothly once he’s de-chipped.

On An Adventure (complete, 713 words) [SW X-tober Extravaganza ~ Day 2]

General | no warning | one-shot | Fluff

On a rare stormless night, 99 and Omega go for a little adventure.

Tomorrow Is a Good Day for Someone Else to Die (complete, 1152 words) [SW X-tober Extravaganza ~ Day 3]

Teen | tw referenced violence | one-shot | whump, bullying, minor injuries, blood

The life of Crosshair and Tech in Kamino as cadets has never been easy.

Seeing Red (complete, 1097 words) [SW X-tober Extravaganza ~ Day 6]

Teen | tw canon typical violence | One-shot | whump, serious injuries, blood, pre canon

The Bad Batch goes on their first mission to the battlefront. Things take a sudden turn south.

We Don't Leave Our Own Behind (complete, 1469 words) [SW X-tober Extravaganza ~ Day 8, 9 & 11]

Teen | tw at your discretion | one-shot | whump, dehydration, abandonment, season 1 finale fix-it

Hunter respects Crosshair's choice not to join the batch again, even if it's a karking ass-stupid decision. And yet, love, loyalty, and a tad of guilt —okay, okay… a lot of guilt— don't let him make the same mistake he did before, abandoning his brother.

•

Or the one where the batch goes back for Crosshair after leaving him stranded on the landing platform in Kamino.

Claiming the Soldier (complete, 919 words) [SW X-tober Extravaganza ~ Day 4]

Explicit [MINORS DO NOT INTERACT] | Tw sexual content | one-shot | smut, BDSM, femdom, male sub, x reader

You and Wrecker hit a life-changing milestone in your relationship.

More to come

On An Adventure (complete, 713 words) [SW X-tober Extravaganza ~ Day 2]

General | no warning | one-shot | Fluff

On a rare stormless night, 99 and Omega go for a little adventure.

3 Long Days (complete, 1573 words) [SW X-tober Extravaganza ~ Days 10 & 15]

Teen | no warnings | one-shot | whump, anaphylaxis, delirium

When Ahsoka falls ill, Anakin doesn't leave her side.

You're Still There, I know (complete, 2101 words) [SW X-tober Extravaganza ~ Day 25] ~~ Playlist

Teen | tw at your discretion | one-shot | whump, angst, post order 66, mind control, canon divergence

Riyo feels like she lost the man she loves. If only Fox would talk to her and explain why.

How to Save a Life (wip, 4027 words of ?) [Whumptober 2022 - Days 2,3, 16 & 31 + Bad Things Happen Bingo "Mind Control"]

Teen | tw at your discretion | 2 of 3 chapters | whump, angst, post order 66, mind control, post order 66, canon divergence, canon-typical violence, hurt/comfort, sequel to You're still there, I know.

No matter how much he screams internally or how many times Fox tries to kill Palpatine, or how many times he blames himself for not realizing the enemy was under his nose all this time, nothing changes. His body remains out of his control, only moving when Palpatine finally dismissed him from the office. He walks out like the automaton he has become, his mindless body following the orders of the Sith Lord.

Riyo will die at his hand, and there’s nothing Fox can do to stop it.

Something In the Dark (complete, 2569 words) [Foxiyo Week 2022 - Day 1 + Whumptober 2022 - Day 10 (Alt prompt)]

Teen | no warning | one-shot | Implied Torture, Whump, Hurt/Comfort, mutual pining

Senator Riyo Chuchi and Commander Fox have an unexpected encounter in the darkness.

High Above the Ground (complete, 1513 words) [Foxiyo week 2022 - Day 3]

Mature | tw mild sexual content | one-shot | smut, fluff, domesticity, no order 66, slice of life

Fox's very good, even if a little frustrating, start of a day.

More to come

Kadala (complete, 1197 words)

General | no warnings | one-shot | hurt/comfort, fluff

Mando returns to the Razor Crest after finishing a job and gets help from the little guy.

Drifting (complete, 359 words)

General | no warning | one-shot | angst

Din has seen death up close more times he can count and escaped it just as many. This time, he might not.

Sandawuni Va Umtidagir (WIP, 1524 words of ?)

Teen | tw violence | 2 of ? Chapters | canon-compliant, missing scenes, headcanons

The life of Din Djarin, beroya of the Mandalorian covert in Nevarro, turns upside down the moment he accepts the commission from the client. The quarry he’s after is like any other he has hunted before. He doesn’t expect to form a bond for a lifetime, nor the things he’s willing to do to protect the foundling.

Ramaanla (1k words) [Whumptober 2022 - Days 4, 17 (alt prompt) & 19 + Bad Things Happen Bingo "Hiding an Injury"]

General | TW mention of blood | one-shot | Whump, knees buckling, stabbing, hiding an injury, Mand’alor the reluctant

The duty of the Mand'alor is to look out for all Mandalorians. Sometimes, however, Din Djarin forgets to take care of one in specific: himself.

Magical Exhaustion (gifset) [Whumptober 2022 - Day 27]

Note to Self: Don't Get Kidnapped (gifset) [Whumptober 2022 - Day 30]

More to come

Help, I'm Alive (WIP, 2101 words of ?) [SW X-tober Extravaganza ~ Day 14 & 31]

Teen | tw at your discretion | 1 of 2 chapters | whump, trapped beneath debris, serious injuries, disaster zone

Ezra had imagined many times that he’d die in the heat of a battle against the Empire; he’s had several close calls already. But in his wildest dreams, he never foresaw that his death would come when a temple fell on top of him.

Road to Lira San [Series] (wip, 12,577 words of ?)

PARTS: One ~ Two ~ Three

Teen | warning; violence | 3 of ? works | angst, fluff, canon-compliant, whuump

Agent Kallus never imagined that the day he gets stranded on the Genosian moon, Bahryn, with the rebel Captain Garazeb Orrelios is the day he starts a journey to redemption. The path is not easy, full of risks, but it might be worth it when happiness such as Alexsandr has never known is waiting for him at the end.

An Explosive Situation (complete, 1897 words) [SW X-tober Extravaganza ~ Day 1]

Teen | tw canon-typical violence | one-shot | whump, hurt Alexsandr Kallus

After a solo mission to the planet Dela goes south, Kallus finds himself in a tight spot. The Spectres go to his rescue, but the actual saving turns out more complicated than expected.

Deconstructed Reality  (wip, 2.946 of ?) [Kalluzeb Minibang 2022] ~~ playlist

Teen | tw referenced torture and genocide, mind control, PTSD | 2 of 4 chapters | canon divergence, Bahryn with a different ending

What if Alexsandr Kallus has been a rebel all along, even if he doesn’t remember?

Running Out of Air (Complete, 1442 words) [Whumptober 2022 - Day 5 + Bad Things Happen Bingo "Clawing at Own Throat"]

Teen | TW Violence | One-shot | Whump, strangulation, force choking, implied beheading, implied massacre, nightmares

Kallus faces his worst nightmare yet.

The Tables Are Turned (3.1k words) [Whumptober 2022 - Day 25]

Mature | TW Implied sexual content | one-shot | mention of BDSM, whumpers are the good guys and the bad guys are the whumpees, role reversal, psychological torture, interrogation

Captain Rhamis of the Imperial Army takes the night off to indulge in his vices. Little does he know that his evening will go very differently than he expects. Instead of satiating his base urges, he falls into a trap, where former ISB Agent Alexsandr Kallus and Rebel Garazeb Orrelios force information out of him.

More to come

Orys Kinall: Post || Web page || Ao3

Lieutenant Onix: Post || Web page || Ao3

Sergeant Dropper: Post || Web page || Ao3

Corporal Clawbird: Post || Web Page || Ao3

Private Nock: Post || Web Page || Ao3

Private Ares: Post || Web page || Ao3

Nassa Luvira: Post || Web page || Ao3

Katkris Pex: Post || Web page || Ao3

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[hiccanna-tidbits]

Hiccanna--100 OTP Questions, Part 2

So I said I would finish this OTP question meme someday--and I decided, entirely on random impulse, that “someday” is today!!! My Hiccanna-centered account has not been producing enough Hiccanna content lately, and this simply WILL not do.

QUESTION SOURCE: https://the-moon-dust-writings.tumblr.com/post/159857601812/100-otp-questions

LINK TO PART 1: https://hiccanna-tidbits.tumblr.com/post/635744326176129024/hiccanna-100-otp-questions-meme-part-1 51. Does either of them know how to fight? I mean...canonically yeah, they both do??? Lol I mean Hiccup has his fire sword and obviously would know how to fight with the weapons he makes/invents, and Anna literally just instinctively grabs a sword to protect her buddies in Frozen 2 and I mean we all really love Sword Anna anyways and also she PUNCHES A MAN OFF OF A BOAT so long story short yes they can both fight 52. What do they do for Valentines Day? Anna rents a rom-com and pulls Hiccup down onto their couch to watch it with her, and he kinda internally groans because he figures it’ll be something super sappy and cheesy and Anna will just be squealing with delight the whole time. Legit as soon as the first scene begins, Anna begins brutally roasting the main couple. Turns out it’s a really terrible rom-com and Anna rented it solely to make fun of it. Hiccup is like “aight this definitely wasn’t what I was expecting but I’m on board” Also Hiccup gets Anna like 3 boxes of fancy chocolate because...do I really need to explain? Anna gets Hiccup a particularly aesthetic floral arrangement for their kitchen table, something she knows damn well he secretly likes but would never admit XD 53. Who swears more? Anna, for sure. This tends to surprise people, but Anna is actually a notorious pottymouth when she gets comfortable XD Hiccup has a pretty big and borderline pretentious vocabulary, and so he tends to express his frustration in more...articulate ways when things don’t go his way. Like he’d stub his toe and just say “wow, I’d literally rather saw off my other leg than have to deal with this right now” while Anna, in the same situation, would let loose every curse word known to man XD 54. Who has the better comebacks? Hiccup, absolutely. His smart-ass comments to every conceivable situation on earth go absolutely unmatched. Anna can’t help but envy how he can almost instinctually pull out a near-perfect snide remark within seconds, whilst she, at best, thinks of the ideal comeback in the shower 3 days later. 55. Who would start a fight with another parent at a bake sale? I feel like Anna would seek out the most passive-aggressive, bitchy, entitled Karen and just wait with barely-concealed anticipation for her to say something super awful so Anna can just nail her in the face right in front of all the other moms Hiccup and their kids, meanwhile, can’t help but be awed at their wife/mother’s impressive Right Hook 56. Who reads buzzfeed? Anna. Hiccup keeps being like “you know half the stuff on there is total bullshit, right?” and Anna just shrugs like “who cares? It’s entertaining!” 57. Who is the hopeless romantic? Anna, good god, ANNA. After the whole Hans debacle I imagine she’s a bit more subdued about so openly showing this part of her personality, but at heart she just can’t stop being a romantic. Once Hiccup catches wind of this, he naturally makes a point of frequently surprising her with Grand Romantic Gestures and such, which makes Anna’s entire face go bright fuckin red as she cries out “NO STOP WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS YOU’RE TOO NICE” 58. Do either of them know how to do a handstand? Nope! They’d both fall on their faces and it would be hilarious. 59. Who can rap better? I love the idea of them both being looped into a rap battle somehow and Anna just dreading it immensely because she figures they both really suck and then when it’s their turn Hiccup comes out and busts out the BEST, MOST SAVAGE RHYMES Anna has ever heard COMPLETELY ad lib and the poor girl just goes completely catatonic with shock for like 10 minutes. 60. Do either of them want to go sky diving? See initially I was gonna say Hiccup definitely would not because it would give the poor boy an anxiety attack, but then I remembered he basically skydives in canon??? And Anna strikes me as a bit of adrenaline junkie too, so fuck it--yeah, I think they’d both enjoy it. 61. What do they usually text about? They talk a lot about movies, games, books, and shows they both like, I imagine--Hiccup especially likes to overanalyze them to ridiculous extents and Anna thinks this is adorable. The rest of the time, they send each other dumb memes and talk about random animal fun facts. Anna likes to brag that her boyfriend knows more lizard trivia than anyone else on the planet, and how many lizard facts does YOUR boyfriend know? Probably little to none, you big loser. 62. Who is the dramatic one? Anna is INCREDIBLY dramatic. Although Hiccup certainly does have a “dramatic flair,” as he puts it, I still think Anna can out-dramatic him, at the end of the day XD Although perhaps admittedly not by much. 63. Is either one confrontational? Anna certainly can be. She’s usually pretty friendly, but if she ever feels like she’s being challenged, demeaned, mocked, or generally not taken seriously, she’s ready to go to WAR. She certainly not as soft as she might look! I imagine there’s situations where someone is being a dick to either Anna or someone else and Hiccup has to physically hold her back to keep her from just decking them XD 64. What is their favourite cuddle position? Probably just good old-fashioned spooning. Hiccup actually really loves being the little spoon (because Anna just makes him feel so damn safe), but he is loathe to admit it. They also have one I like to call the “Needy Cat,” where Anna just goes and completely drapes herself over Hiccup when he’s sitting on the couch. He’s usually in the middle of doing something else, and is forced to find ways to play video games/read his book/watch his show around Anna XD 65. Who are their favourite musical artist(s)? Hiccup has exactly 3 music moods--pretentious classical stuff (to listen to while working on inventions), obscure underground 90s hipster bands no one’s heard of (to play air guitar to when no one else is home), and some more well-known emo/alt rock stuff (to sing along to in the car dramatically). I can see him liking Panic! at the Disco, The Killers, Fall Out Boy, Linkin Park, that kinda stuff. Anna, meanwhile, likes the trashiest, most generic-sounding pop music and refuses to apologize for dancing to it in the car XD She is most DEFINITELY a Swiftie, no question. She also likes some “edgier” bands like Paramore and Hey Monday. She went through a hardcore Avril Lavigne phase in middle school and she still totally listens to her but is embarrassed to say it. Also I feel like Anna would be into 90s/early 2000s boy bands??? She relates to the boys’ endless pining and just flips the genders in her head so the songs are about Hiccup (before they start dating obs) XD I AM DEFINITELY NOT SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE HERE, NO SIR 66. What are their parenting styles? Anna would probably be like...kind of stern, when she needs to be, but intensely nurturing as well, if her relationship with Elsa is anything to go by. Hiccup would be a pretty laid-back, chill dad who would probably try too hard to be cool and make no end of absolutely horrible dad jokes XD They both lowkey seem like the kind of parents who would end up letting their kids get away with a lot though lmao 67. Who would be the more laid back one? Hiccup probably. I mean, he IS the pacifist/diplomat guy, besides have you MET Anna??? Girl absolutely has NO chill. 68. Who listens to more vulgar music? Anna, surprisingly! Hiccup just kinda enjoys what he enjoys and doesn’t really feel the need to “prove” anything by listening to songs that swear a lot. Anna purposely listens to vulgar music to feed her hidden rebellious side and because it makes her feel badass XD She honestly kinda hates being written off as 100% wholesome and innocent all the time and will readily pull out the “I’M NOT A SWEET LITTLE FLOWER I SANG ALONG TO THAT SONG THAT JUST SAID FUCK SEE” line whenever given even the slightest chance XD 69. Do either of them have secrets even the other doesn’t know? Kind of depends on when in both their timelines they meet. If they meet in the middle of HTTYD 1 or Frozen 1, they probably wouldn’t tell the other right away that they have a dragon and an ice-powered supersister, respectively XD I definitely think they would as they came to trust each other, though. Also I read a headcanon that Hiccup has burn scars from the Red Death incident where he lost his leg, and that’s why he wears so much armor and generally long sleeves--and I kind of love that. So maybe Hiccup would be cagey with Anna about how he lost his leg and that whole incident for a while before he finally opens up to her about it. Other than that I feel like they’d be pretty honest with one another, other than maybe trying to hide the more embarrassing parts of themselves to impress the other person XD 70. Who is their go to couple for a double date? Jackunzel, obviously! They’d probably all go to an arcade or an amusement park or something else pretty fun and high-energy. 71. Do they tip the waiter/waitress on their date? I mean yes, they’re not huge assholes????? 72. How do they work out a fight? I imagine Anna tends to get more worked up and yelley and loud, while Hiccup doesn’t raise his voice much at all but can say some damn cutting things if he wants to. Since Anna probably gets angrier, I imagine she apologizes first, whether or not the fight was actually on her or not--it’s just kinda this girl’s default to apologize for everything XD She’d probably say sorry for yelling and probably overreacting, while Hiccup would also be EXTREMELY apologetic if he realized he crossed a line with one of his jabs at her. I imagine a lot of what they fight about is Anna doing some impulsive Dumb Shit^TM and Hiccup just being like “oh god DAMMIT that’s DANGEROUS you can’t just go WORRYING me like that!!!” and Anna getting offended because she kinda views this as him being a little overprotective and not trusting her to make her own decisions. Ironically, Anna occasionally also gets mad at HICCUP for doing Impulsive Dumb Shit, so he’s not always nearly as much the Voice of Reason as he thinks XD Hiccup also sometimes gets mad at Anna for not taking better care of herself (take it from a fellow ADHDer--we tend to Wallow in Despair sometimes, or straight-up forget to do basic care things like eat lunch XD)--I have an IRL friend who reminds me a lot of Hiccup and he’s ALWAYS getting on my case about not eating enough, not drinking enough water, constantly berating myself, stuff like that. I imagine Hiccup sometimes slips into Mom Mode with Anna when she gets in a bad spot, which she appreciates after the fact but kind of annoys her at the time because she wants really badly to be independent and all that. Basically TL;DR most of Anna and Hiccup’s fights can be resolved by Anna and Hiccup agreeing to next time Use A Brain Cell before they do a thing, or Anna agreeing to take better care of herself XD 73. Who brings home an illegal pet? In literally every AU possible I like to think that Hiccup brings home some variation of illegal pet XD I mean, it’s probably just a dragon (”just a dragon” is never a string of words I imagined myself using in that order like what do you mean JUST a dragon lmao) in a standard crossover timeline, which he basically does in canon, but I do love the idea of a modern AU Hiccup showing up to their apartment with some kind of weird exotic monitor lizard from Bali and being like “I found him in an alley, he’s gonna live with us now” and Anna is like “D: Is someone gonna arrest you???” And Hiccup is like “Nah, no cops followed me home” and Anna’s like “Okay!!! :D” and then goes to PetSmart to buy a big fluffy bed for her new scaled friend XD 74. What side of the bed do each of them sleep on? I honestly don’t think either would care much, and they usually sleep in a tangled-up mess anyways so by morning you can’t really tell who started on which side XD 75. What is their favorite photo of them two together? One from before they got together: I’m just imagining a big group photo with the Entire Squad (Rapunzel, Jack, Merida, Moana, etc.), and Anna has her arms laced around Hiccup’s neck and her chin on his shoulder and a GIANT smirk on her face. Meanwhile Hiccup is laughing and trying to push her off, but his cheeks are BRIGHT fucking red and he’s trying really unsuccessfully to hide it because he’s a pale boi. Anna loves it because you can so CLEARLY see Hiccup’s blush, and she loves to tease him about how flustered he got around her. Hiccup loves it because it reminds him of what was probably the first time Anna was THAT openly cuddly with him, and how exhilarated and giddy he felt the first time he had her that close to him. 76. Who takes longer in the bathroom? Probably Hiccup, if only because I HC him as a bit of a germophobe who is a tiny bit obsessive about washing his hands sufficiently. 77. Who has more songs on their ipod? Anna, mainly because literally every time she hears a song she likes she’s like “!!!!! Gotta download it!!!!” LITERALLY EVERY TIME. And she wonders why her ipod is always running out of space XD 78. What movie did they first see together? As of the Modern AU Hiccanna one-shot I wrote ages ago, Revenge of the Ancient Dragon Masters! XD If we’re talking movies that actually exist, I imagine it would be a Marvel movie, a Star Wars movie, or some super-fancy-CGI high fantasy epic. 79. What do they like to see each other in? You mean like...which of the other’s outfits would they find the sexiest??? Aight, I’ll take a stab at this. Anna gets literally SO fuckin thirsty every time Hiccup wears his dragon rider outfit (the one from HTTYD 2), like it shows off his cute skinny body in the most perfect possible way whilst making him look like a badass and oh how Anna DREAMS of feeling him up in that! (One day, she finally gets to! XD) She’s also very into the scale armor from HTTYD 3 when she’s in...a very different kind of mood XD As for Hiccup, his favorite outfits of Anna’s are probably her coronation dress and her queen dress, mainly because he loves how she looks in green. He also really likes her travel outfit from Frozen 2, mainly because it’s sexy AND practical and damn, he’s gotta admit, that’s a nice shade of purple and she absolutely SLAYS in it XD 80. Who makes jokes during inappropriate times? Honestly both of them??? Like neither are great at picking up social cues, and Anna canonically DOES do this in Frozen! (Remember her comment about ice-selling being “a rough business to be in right now”???) I can see both of them attempting to lighten a tense mood by making an ill-timed joke, hoping to make things less uncomfortable, and they end up making everything MORE uncomfortable XD Honestly sue me, I love the idea of these two idiots bonding over how terrible they are with social cues in general 81. At what age do they discuss the possibility of children? I imagine not til like...their early 30s, if ever. Like I mentioned in the first part of the questionaire, I actually am not sure if they would even want to have kids at all, but if they DID decide to, it definitely wouldn’t be until they’re older and have settled down a bit, and have (somewhat) gotten both of their lives together. 82. What do they love about each other the most? Hiccup loves Anna’s energy and optimism, and how she’ll basically cheer him on and believe in him with all her being no matter how high the odds are stacked against him. And oh boy does he LOVE how hard she can kick ass when push comes to shove, and how goddamn overprotective she is of him. The sword skills and the general willingness to punch problematic people in the face are definitely up there as well. She’s like the perfect blend of fun and badass, and there’s never a dull moment with her for him. Anna adores Hiccup’s connection with animals and general animal skills, especially with the more less-loved and “scary” of the world’s creatures (i.e. dragons lol). She also loves and admires the shit out of his intelligence and inventiveness, and wishes she could make contraptions half as cool as what he turns out. And, of course, she loves that he’s a pretty humble dude who's actually pretty insecure about his accomplishments, and isn’t some cocky guy wanting to shove them in everyone’s face. And, of course, she loves his sarcasm and his dry sense of humor, and few people can make her laugh as hard as Hiccup can. Before she met him, she had no idea pessimism could be this entertaining XD 83. Who is the one that sees the big picture, while the other focus’s on the small details? Hiccup is very detail-oriented--he has to be, in order to make any of his contraptions work! Anna is very much focused on the big picture and gets stressed and exasperated trying to keep track of details--she figures she’ll either sort through the details as she goes, or Hiccup will help do it for her XD 84. What would they write on their partner’s social media’s for their anniversary? One of my IRL friends wrote “Happy anniversary bro, you’re pretty great” on his girlfriend’s instagram for their anniversary, and she wrote back “Happy anniversary, you’re a good buddy, I love you” and I just XD That’s the EXACT kind of weird dorky nonsense I can see Hiccup and Anna doing for their anniversary tbh 85. Who is bad at math? Anna, bless her soul, needs a calculator for literally EVERYTHING. Hiccup kinda trained himself to be decent at doing math in his head, since he often has to calculate measurements for his inventions and whatnot, but Anna is absolutely atrocious at it and generally would like overly-complicated numbers to not be anywhere near her. 86. Who googles everything? Probably Anna, mainly because she’s pretty forgetful and doesn’t trust her own memory half the time so she feels the need to verify everything on the internet XD 87. Who does stuff on impulse? Anna 100% canonically does, although Hiccup has some shades of this too more than he would ever admit, in fact, for someone claiming to be the Voice of Reason 88. How do they comfort each other when they are helpless to do anything about the situation? Hiccup’s approach is probably just to try and distract Anna and take her mind off of it, which he’ll do by either trying to make her laugh, telling her a story, or explaining one of his inventions to her (which she never gets bored with btw, because everything that boy gushes about is fascinating to her <3). Basically he figures if he entertains her enough, it’ll take her mind off of whatever is freaking her out and she won’t fixate on it as much. Anna’s approach is more to accentuate the positives in a bad situation (although like I mentioned in Part 1, not really in a condescending “count your blessings, it could be worse!” kind of way, but more in a “I hope he’ll feel better if he focuses on happy things” kind of way, if that makes any sense?) and also focus on when Hiccup DID do great and utterly kick ass and tell him he’s always better than he thinks he is. 89. What is an inside joke they have? If anything, him calling her “Tiger” as a pet name (which I think I mentioned briefly in Part 1??? Can’t remember) is this, because in my mind it developed because whenever Anna is about to do some Dumb Shit, or punch someone she really shouldn’t in the face, Hiccup has to physically hold her back like “Whoa, slow down there, Tiger!” This happens so frequently that eventually it just gets shortened to him nicknaming her “Tiger” and all their friends are kind of baffled as to why XD 90. Who makes the other smile with almost no effort at all? Hiccup barely even needs to start talking in funny accents or imitating his dad before Anna is just DYING laughing. She thinks he’s the funniest damn person on earth. He honestly gets a kick out of her impressions too--she can do some pretty amusing ones, if that deleted coronation dress-up scene from Frozen 1 is anything to go by. So the feeling is mutual!!! They’re super good at making each other smile and laugh with little to no effort!!! 91. What is their favourite holiday? I feel like Anna especially would get REALLY into Christmas/Yule, mainly because of how much Elsa can spice it up with her powers. And judging by the OFA short, Arendelle gets very hyped for the holidays in general, so it’s probably hard NOT to have a good time. Anna probably also like Mayday a lot because the dancing, the spring cheeriness, and the flower-related festivities are definitely to her taste. Hiccup just likes the energy and general vibes, and would rather sit back and relax and watch Anna dance around and have fun XD Also dun best believe they BOTH get hella into Halloween, because they’re dramatic motherfuckers who loves to dress up, and it gives Anna an excuse to buy a shitton of chocolate and eat all the leftovers XD 92. Who is the one that is calm and collected while the other is angry and destructive? Lmao Anna is definitely the “berserker” of the two of them. She DOES tend to get destructive when she’s angry, if being ready to fight a giant-ass snowman and smacking a wolf in the face with a lute is anything to go by. Hiccup is definitely the calm and collected one, and very rarely gets genuinely angry. 93. What is their favourite board game to play? Does Dungeons and Dragons count??? I can totally imagine Hiccup being hyped up over that or some other super nerdy RPG game and being so enthused to show it to Anna, who just falls even more in love with him after seeing how EXCITED he gets about it. Of course he’s super eager to teach her, and TBH Anna has a really hard time getting it at first because DAMN these rules are COMPLICATED, but after she finally gets the hang of it, she realizes she absolutely LOVES DnD and RPG games in general (I mean...have you SEEN OFA??? Girl gets just a little TOO into reminiscing about her old play-pretend toys XD) and she and Hiccup constantly geek out about it together. 94. Who accidental sets something on fire? Anna, 100% also this is an ever funnier question if applied to Hiccanna in my Fire!Anna AU 95. Who has the car ready while the other is robbing the store? Anna is waiting while Hiccup robs the store, if for no other reason than that Hiccup is much better at Stealth Mode than Anna is XD Anna’s uncoordinated ass would probably knock over like 5 shelves’ worth of merchandise before reaching what they were actually trying to rob XD 96. What artist/group did they go to for their first concert? I M A G I N E  D R A G O N S lmao Look what can I say Anna likes the Imagine and Hiccup likes the Dragons 97. Who sleep talks? Hiccup. He mumbles about dragons a lot. Sometimes he jolts awake randomly and just yells out “THE DRAGONS ARE IN TROUBLE!” and Anna has to calm him down after she dutifully manages to not burst into laughter at this. Doubly funny if this takes place in a Modern AU. 98. Who is the more social one? Anna! Hiccup generally prefers to either keep to himself or hang out with animals. 99. What are their karaoke songs? For some reason I feel like anything by P!nk??? Idk why, but I can see them like rocking out and singing along to p!nk songs together and getting really into it. Also basically anything by The Killers and, at Anna’s request, The Chainsmokers (Hiccup thinks this is very basic music indeed but goes along with it for her sake XD). AND “Whatever It Takes” by Imagine Dragons. And they sing it LOUD. 100. Who would get up on stage and make a fool of themselves just to make the other laugh? Highkey both of them??? I kinda feel like Hiccup moreso though, if his little comedy routine imitating his dad in HTTYD2 is anything to go off of. He definitely wouldn’t be averse to making an idiot of himself to amuse Anna, especially since she’s so damn cute when she laughs. Anna, for her part, loves returning the favor, and is all about trying to do all sorts of Goofy Antics to amuse her boyfriend. And she’s overdramatic af, so she gets WAY too into it XD

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-05-19

Figured an upd8 was coming, it’s felt like enough time has passed for one.

Huh, looking at my last post I’d completely forgotten I was supposed to play through Pesterquest sometime... work is busy and stressing me out a bit, I’m not sure when I’ll have the energy on the side to do that.  (Maybe I’ll livetweet it like I did Undertale a while ago, but this time not looking at my twitter replies so I don’t get spoiled by One Guy™?)

Also, including bonus commentary on A Threat Sensed.

Okay, going in completely blind.  I’d guessed from context that we’re hopping over to Meat side to get a chapter there before we can come back to actually see Yiffy?

Yep.  Okay, what is this about exactly?

(Agh, dammit, I’ve been copying and pasting so much at work remoting into Windows lately that now I’m automatically trying to hit control-C instead of command-C to copy.)

> CHAPTER 9. How Goes The Eulogizing, Dear?

CONTENT NOTE: This chapter contains Child Abuse.

Which one???

Wait

JANE: (Where is he?) JANE: (It's a question I've found myself asking many times in recent days.)

Holy SHIT we get two Candy chapters in a row???  So we might see her right away??  No, it’s gotta just be another tiny glimpse.

(Has two Candy chapters in a row happened before?  Future Boots, scroll back up and put this here. FUTURE BOOTS: “I forgot to scroll back up and put that here.” EDIT: Also, not the first time with two in a row, but it IS the first time with THREE in a row, huh.)

So Jane has to be talking about either Tavros or Dave.  --Oh, if this was a Candy Side chapter title, I guess Rose or Jade is eulogizing Dave for John?

> (==>)

JANE: (Where now is our merry savior?) JANE: (Where is the horn that was honking?) JANE: (Where is the cape and the codpiece, and the...) JANE: (The...) JANE: (Oh, fiddlesticks.)

What?  Is she reading a childrens’ book?  --Oh.  She’s eulogizing Gamzee.  So that gives us a third option, where the rebellion crashes the funeral somehow, probably audiovisually rather than in person.  (Which would make sense, given Candy practically began with Gamzee crashing Dirk’s funeral.)

> (==>)

Ah never mind, she’s still writing it.

That sure is a single button drama-remote that’s going to be pressed at some point.  Oh, and who the fuck keeps a spork in a pen cup???  --No no, don’t say it’s one of those pens with a spork at the eraser end, either ready-made or rubber-banded to the side.  That would make sense.  You totally know it isn’t that and is just a spork.

JANE: (Okay, poetry is out.) JANE: (What else?) JANE: (Hrm...) JANE: (I've always been pretty good at crying on cue.) JANE: (Could I try staging an emotional breakdown?) JANE: (That could work; playing to people's humanity.)

Why were you crying in Jake’s arms about his death if you didn’t care that much?  Did you just want him to hold you and kinda make him feel in on things again?  Or did you just cry yourself out about him?

JANE: (Or whatever is the more inclusive term.)

I bet the rest of Earth C figured out a more inclusive term millenia ago FUCK I accidentally added millennia to my dictionary misspelled instead of correcting it hold on--

...There, killed the entry for it.  ...Huh.  Take a look at my Chrome dictionary’s custom-added words over the years, apparently:

Caliborn Eridan Kanaya Matriorb Meenah Tavros alchemiter dichotomic nephilim reblogged uncaptchalogues uncaptchaloguing

That’s fun.

Okay back to reading. Millennia.  Phew!  Where was I.

JANE: (One really good and calculated weep could do it, I think.) JANE: (But then there's the danger that I might get carried away and do it for real.) JANE: (And I can't risk that.)

So still feeling something, just too used to calculating over the past years.

JANE: (What can I say about him that will stir up their emotions?) JANE: (Do I mention the stuff about the milk?) JANE: (Think Crocker, think.)

WHY would you-- how much did Gamzee normalize adult breastfeeding?!

JAKE: Ahoy over there!

Not the best time.

(The thing with the divorce papers from the Epilogue and John implying he was planning with Jake to execute something that sounds like a divorce... is that going to be sprung here?  Did her lawyers send the divorce papers way back when she was in a fit of pique, and he just had them available to sign now at the tactical moment? Or... let me pull the exact text...)

JOHN: now, harry anderson, i know that you and tavros haven't always gotten along. JOHN: but i am going to have to ask you to try and look out for him for the time being. JOHN: your uncle jake and i... well, i'll explain later. JOHN: let's just say that gamzee isn't the only family member jane is losing today.

(So is John going to submit the papers? Or did they already go through a while ago and default custody to John or something who’s going to adopt him too or some nonsense?  And did he plan this out with Jake NOW, or a while ago, and if only a while ago, is Jake going to KNOW whatever John’s about to pull in that respect is about to happen??)

> (==>)

Butte

Janepalme

> (==>)

JAKE: Er... how goes the eulogizing, dear?

Gah.  I completely forgot again that capitalized-first-letter chapter names don’t mean KANAYA is saying them.  That probably makes a lot more sense out of my wondering about the chapter title earlier to those of you who didn’t realize I was making that mistake.

JANE: It turns out that it's mighty difficult to find touching things to say about a person, the relationship with whom was predicated on deep-seated mutual loathing.

Hah!

--A loathing you regarded as largely more important to you than Jake ever was, by the way.  You asshole.

JANE: I imagine this is one of the reasons no funerary tradition was ever established on Alternia, besides the barbarism of their culture. DIRK: Jesus christ. JANE: Not only did a significant proportion of their interpersonality depend on romance in the form of hatred, but it was a society based on cruelty and violence. JANE: What reason could they have had to provide for the dead? JANE: What kind of last rites could they have even imagined?

I wondered for a moment why (bg!)Dirk of all people would react to a single line of her starting to bring up prejudices, but then I realized that (1) Brain Ghost Dirk is a little more Jakey, and (2) Dirk knew that more ranting would follow the first line.

JANE: I can't think of anything good to write about him because deep down, I hated his guts. JANE: But he was and is beloved of the multitude, so I have to think of something regardless. JAKE: Im not sure i understand. JANE: Don't worry your pretty little head about it. JANE: This is politics, Jakey. JANE: Lying through your two front teeth about people you hate is about as good a definition as it's possible to get. JANE: But, by gum, is it tiring work.

Mm.  It’s a position Jane put herself in, but it’s still a legitimate position once you’re there.

JANE: The funeral is tomorrow, after all.

Got it.

DIRK: Dude, the bowl. JAKE: Hm? JAKE: Oh, right. JANE: What is it now, Jake. JAKE: I brought something for our guest as well. JANE: You mean the prisoner. JAKE: Y...es.

Wait, bowl?

Oh god damnit which of you had the idea to feed her with a DOG BOWL.  Either of you could have thought of it, and either of you would be horrible for it.

> (==>)

Huh, that outfit on Yiffy looks familiar, like a reference to something.  And a black tail?  This definitely isn’t quite the look I was expecting from Jade Plus Rose, but I suppose the snazzy tie is a Roseish vibe.  Also reminiscent of Jade’s old Dead Shuffle dress.  Formal wear and soccer cleats??

JANE: She's over in the corner. JANE: Don't worry, she won't bite. JANE: I've seen to that already.

WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN.  I don’t see anything over her mouth!  Did she stick something in it, or drug her?  File her fucking teeth???

I mean I did forget the Child Abuse trigger warning to be fair.  Hoping whatever would be on her mouth is just not shown in-panel yet for stylistic reasons.

> (==>)

JAKE: Its only mac and cheese, sorry. JAKE: Its all I know how to make, haha. JAKE: ... JAKE: I um... hope you can safely partake of cheese? JAKE: ... JAKE: Well, JAKE: Bon appetit.

How the fuck did Jake eat on his island then?  --Oh right, preserved food cans that Grandma Jade stored up, I think I remember.  Why would cheese not be a thing for them, if it’s fine for Jade?  I know he’s probably not just worried about lactose intolerance.

Either way, if she’s drugged here, that’ll mean we won’t get a good idea of her for a while, so which is it...

> (==>)

DIRK: Bon appetit. DIRK: Seriously dude? JAKE: (What? Did i pronounce it wrong?) DIRK: Jake. DIRK: You put the food in a fucking dog bowl. JAKE: (It was all there was, ok???) JAKE: (I feel awful enough as it is without you getting on my case about it.)

Ah, missed the bone pun.  AND, yeah, Jake, you’re a fucking idiot, you could have put it in a cup or something.

JAKE: (So far ive yet to see anything come of that brilliant plan of yours.) JAKE: (Are you sure sending that message to the others was enough?)

Okay, so he IS coordinating this slightly.

> (==>)

Horrifying image to contemplate, eh Jane?

Or anger-inducing?

> (==>)

Seems about right!

> (==>)

Oh that’s a GREAT exasperated Jane face.

JANE: I hope you're not expecting dessert, young lady.

I like how Jane didn’t notice, comment on, or care about the bowl.  How can you hate a kid so much??

> (==>)

Oh I know why I felt like I recognized the outfit style, it’s because it’s ANIME AS FUCK.  Feels like some Persona 4 Arena nonsense, and I say that not having played any of those games or even remembering what they looked like.  Also, white hair, black fur’d dog parts?  Nice change of pace.

YIFFY: GRRRRRRRRR... JANE: Oh no you don't.

Red text?  What color exactly... “#D00009”?  Huh.  That’s nowhere near Alt-Callie’s #FF0000, and darker than Dave’s #E00707.  In fact, let me go back and check those spilled color pins the commentary pointed out from an update or two ago...  no, the red pin is #E63225, closer to Dave’s color.  (Also, is Yiffy blocking the doorway out?  That’s a pretty slack chain then.)

Did Jane see to it that she wouldn’t bite with like, a water spray bottle?

(EDIT: Oh my FUCKING GOD, THAT's why it's #D00009...)

> (==>)

FUCK I didn’t notice the shock collar in the Yiffy image!  FUCK YOU, Jane.

> (==>)

Keeping someone in line with collars, especially ones that punish whenever one strays out of line, has always been a decent way for her to mix in some Doomy control of others to show how she’s “grown” to balance her main role and her Tiara-controlled-like inverse for more power.  Doom in part represents boundaries that you can’t cross without getting hurt or punished.

> (==>)

FUCK, those little buck teeth!?  D’:

JANE: That's more like it.

She HAS to have more of a reason for hating her than hating her parents, right?  Like, more than that and general racism applying to partdogfolk?

> (==>)

Hey fuck off with that!

> (==>)

This is a pretty cool ima-- are those piercings on her dog ear?  I didn’t notice that in the first shot, neat.

JANE: You've been a thorn in my side ever since I agreed to enroll you at the academy, little madam. JANE: Back then, I was doing a favor for two old friends who made a disgusting mistake. JANE: I'm no longer going to play nice with you just because of your parents, however. JANE: That truce is over. JANE: Do I make myself understood?

What the fuck?  WHY would you do that?  Why does Jane run "Ms. Paint’s Home for Inconvenient Girls”?  What did Yiffy do to piss her off so much there, how much trouble could she have caused?

I don’t know if she’s referring to the behind-Kanaya’s-back part as disgusting or she’s just being MORE racist.

> (==>)

JANE: We don't want you passing out during the ceremony, do we?

Oh, just showing the hostage off during the clown funeral, huh?  Classy much?

> (==>)

JANE: Now, be a good hostage and get some rest, Yiffany dear. JANE: We've got a big day tomorrow.

For a politician, Jane’s not good at looking at herself in a mirror.

> (==>)

JANE: Night night. JANE: Hoo hoo.

> (Yiffy: Lights out.)

Huh, dream stuff is gonna be relevant out in Candy then? *click*

Okay, dark background all of a sudden.  Properly dramatic?  You even have to highlight the non-link “>” part of the Next link to see it.

> (==>)

-- thespiansGlamor [TG] began pestering adamantGriftress [AG] --

Well, I don’t know WHY it’s happening, but the white-backed pesterlog suddenly on the dark site framing is certainly evocative.  Of like, a mood, or something.

TG: i thought he was pretty quiet down there. TG: we'll make a rebel of him yet! AG: Lol. AG: I think it's more that he can't sleep. AG: I know how he feels. TG: yeah. TG: today was a lot. AG: ... TG: do you wanna talk about it? AG: Ugh, not you as well.

It’s really jarring to transition between Homestuck’s “kids jarringly mentally resistant to freaking out about the end of the world” to HS^2′s more realistic “kids traumatized by their first firefight even though it was an overwhelming victory-escape”.

TG: but seriously, do you? AG: Not really. TG: not even about... you know? TG: her? AG: No. TG: ... are you sure? AG: A8solutely. AG: What are you, my moirail? AG: Just leave it, Harry. TG: ok.

Are they about to have an “I wonder what Yiffy’s like” talk?

> (==>)

Very similar Tav/Vrissy convo to the previous one.

GG: I havent ever shared a bedroom before,,, GG: Not even for a slumber party,,, AG: Tavvy, you are just a8out the saddest person I've ever met.

Well, we have an even better idea how horrible Jane can be with kids, now.  From Nanna to THIS is quite jarring.  I wonder how the double Nannasprites that must still be around here somewhere feel?

> (==>)

TG: nothing about my dad is cute. TG: what are you even saying. AG: Lmao. TG: seriously! TG: i think he has something against that word, even. he gets super weird about it. AG: He's a strange and funny m8n. TG: yeah. TG: ... TG: i think something bad must have happened.

...um.  What?  Why would John have some sort of trauma about the word cute or being called it?

Did John dress up as a hint of his buried June ambitions as a kid and Dad lavish him with “SO CUTE” praise in an epic supportiveness backfire that caused him to shelve the idea of wearing non-masc clothes and being happier on the flipside of gender ever again???  Because if that’s how June gets canonized as promised, it’s a little harsher than the back of my mind was hoping.  I guess it kind of had to be though from the premise of how it was read into his childhood for the original idea, though.  Fuck, I hope this Cute business is about something different from that (like a Terezi reference or such) just to get less John Sads.  (But still June.  Definitely still want to get June.)

> (==>)

Oh, and now Vrissy is doing nothing but talking about what she said she didn’t want to talk about, of course.  (Also I like how JANE’s now being called the Batterwitch.)

AG: And the worst part was they didn't even fight a8out it! AG: That made me madder than 8nything else. AG: It felt like I was the only person who even W8S mad! GG: I dont think thats true,,, AG: What would you know a8out it?! GG: Maybe nothing,,, GG: Sorry,,, GG: Its just,,, GG: To me,,, all the way through the conversation,,, aunt kanaya looked even angrier than you,,, AG: ... AG: Adults are so fucking weird.

Guh, I don’t want to be reminded how hurt a good chunk of the fanbase is by Kanaya getting hurt this badly.

Original Tavros was always SLIGHTLY perceptive of others sometimes, but maybe perceptiveness is being hinted at as a Tavros specialty?  We still don’t know his classpect/hero-title or have any firm guesses based on purely him evidence.  (Also, frightened kids of abusive households tend to learn to get perceptive pretty fucking quickly I hear.)

> (==>)

TG: dad was sitting in the cafeteria with aunt jade and your moms. TG: it looked like they were discussing something important... they were whispering and stuff.

[etc etc] Alright, the what-happened-to-Dave bit.  And I imagine they’re kind of helping John grieve there, since Rose and Jade have talked that out already.

TG: aunt kanaya's was the only face i could see. TG: she was standing next to them, but she wasn't looking at what was going on. TG: almost like she couldn't bear to. AG: I doubt it. Kanaya's got a8out as much Emotivity as a very reclusive stone. TG: ok, i think that is bullshit but whatever. TG: she saw me standing there, but didn't say anything. she just shook her head slightly, and pointed back out into the hallway i came down.

Yep, giving them some space to grieve.  Also-- gosh, shouldn’t Vrissy have the same emotive senses that Aranea implied Vriska shared with her?  Kanaya isn’t that EXPRESSIVE but she’s certainly full of emotion.  Also, I hope part of her not bearing to watch wasn’t lingering anger toward Jade and Rose mixing with that, but there probably was a bit of that too, though Dave being gone is so much harsher than that. --I just realized they might not have broken the news to Karkat yet, either.

AG: I guesadxcxzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz TG: vrissy?

Put to sleep by someone slumping down on your phone keypad, or surprised by something about the other conversation?

Oh shit, “other conversation” reminded me I didn’t look at Tavros’s chumhandle:

glutinousGymnast [GG]

HHHHHhhhhuh.  Hm... huh? hhhh.  huh?  what, but.  Why would.  ?????

I really don’t understand what that chumhandle or any of its entendres should signify in this context.

Also, this means for our new four kids we have TG, GG, AG, and ??.

> (==>)

GG: I think she might have succumbed to sleep quite suddenly,,, GG: It would explain the,,,,,, interesting messages I've been getting for a while,,, TG: hehe. TG: i guess that tracks. TG: she does that from time to time.

That’s... strange.  Homestuck’s taught us to be suspicious of that.

TG: ... TG: tav? GG: Yes,,, harry anderson,,,? TG: what does it feel like to know someone who's died?

Who is Harry referring to? (EDIT: Yes I know Gamzee for Tavros, but I meant Harry talks like he's worried he'll have to feel that way soon?)  Is he just kind of inferring that something bad might have happened to Uncle Dave?  Got that perceptive “parents are about to tell me about a death in the family” vibe?  Or did he overhear more than he let on to Vrissy?

...alright, that’s the last page of this update.  Looks like this chapter is going to continue to have a good bunch of grieving, or talk around it.

---

Now for Bonus Commentary for A Threat, Sensed.  For some reason I have a dim memory of like... reading this myself without commenting on it?  Or skimming it?  But I’m pretty sure I didn’t do that.  Weird.  Must have imagined doing it.

Ah, I think I saw the opening paragraph scrolling Patreon, and my mind kinda filled in the blanks, this is still looking new to me.

Okay, mostly banter and japes in the commentary here.  About Dirk “throwing a huge tantrum in his philosophy cave”.

We’ve had quite a bit of speculation on whether this is “really” Andrew. To that, I think we’d say that it doesn’t “really” matter.

Really?  That was speculated about?  :/

Here we discover that Dirk has not, as some people have speculated, been directly intervening into the Candy timeline, or influencing it in any way. In fact, he has a very hard time seeing anything going on there at all.

Mhmm, and that was a pretty important thing to learn.

A couple of years ago I might have agreed with the take that everything happening in Candy is simply too outlandish to ever happen naturally, without direct, villainous interference, but that was before literally every fucking batshit insane thing that has happened on Real Life Earth started going down, and now I will believe literally anything. 

This is a nice bit of distraction from the idea that at least the opening parts of the Candy story were written/narrated by Original, Alive Calliope over on meat side.  To refresh your memory of what was pointed out to me:

ROXY: back when jade first got all effed up callie saw somethin and it made them freak out ROXY: it took me weeks to convince them that it was safe to come home ROXY: but now we got the opposite problem and they arent leavin the house at all ROXY: they stay home all day with the blinds drawn paintin some weird ass shit on the walls TEREZI: WH4T? ROXY: its not as bad as it sounds i promise ROXY: some of it is like ROXY: weird and violent?? ROXY: like lotsa nasty purple blood and um ROXY: nudity???? TEREZI: >:? ROXY: yeah yikes ROXY: but MOST of it is cute stuff like... various combos of all of us being happy and gettin married and shit ROXY: anyway thats kept callie kinda busy

Which tracks with the initial out-of-character-seemingness of almost everyone at the start of Candy, and how they kind of tried to railroad things back onto the “Happy??” track after Dirk derailed it with his weird self-accumulation suicide, along with some of the flowery-idyllic descriptions of characters seeing each other bathed in a halo of light and such.

Of course, they’re not going to out-and-out STATE that Calliope was at fault for that narration, helping the Candy story not necessarily fall out the way it did “naturally”, until we finally get a glimpse of her on the heroes’ ship in Meat probably still painting the continuing Candy events, inspiring them into the void of the singularity with her latent powers.  Til then, it’s a bit of misdirection whenever the topic is to be brought up.  Along with a mix of Roxy’s late-Candy point to John of more or less “why COULDN’T we have done this naturally? you don’t know”.

He might even think that he has more direct power over the narrative than Hussie does himself. Surprise, motherfucker, you are a fictional character. 

:p

I’ll quote this next part in full:

There’s been talk of whether or not this bonus was written in the two days between its release and the Yiffy reveal chapter. The answer is--no. It was written over a month ago. But I think the things it addresses were not difficult to suss out. Obviously, Dirk is highlighting the issues that the readership are having with Yiffy, in his typical Dirk fashion. If it seems a little defensive, well...I suppose it is. Yiffy is one of the two hard lines drawn in the sand, and all of us love her, and we’re hoping that everyone else will love her too. But more than that, it focuses on the fact that update culture has a rhythm to it--shock, revulsion, acceptance (or not), and then excitement (or not). Will it follow that pattern this time? Who knows. I guess we’ll find out. 

Yeah, given what was going to be dropped on us I expected they would have had exactly this lined up, especially because Andrew specifically mandated Yiffy.  --I wonder why they aren’t mentioning that somewhere in the commentary and only on one of their Twitters?

Also quoting this:

There’s something both incredibly “cringe” and self-indulgent, as well as philosophically intriguing, about the author arguing with his villain, especially since he’s writing both halves of the conversation himself. You are, for all intents and purposes, trying to solve a problem that you have created for yourself. You are looking an aspect of your personality in the eye and asking, hey, what the fuck, man?

But in the end, isn’t that what every story is? Trying to untie knots that you put in the rope yourself?

Since it’s part of the central struggle of this story, and kind of the question Andrew’s tried to imply with every Homestuck work about what right we have to keep these characters trapped in a story, and if they’d be better off escaping it.

I’m really trying to avoid quoting so much of this, since the commentary is paid...  but I think we can make an exception here?  I’ll have only quoted about half of it; just, the really plot-important half.  Plus, I left out a LOOOT of japes.

Dirk has a certain idea of how stories are supposed to go. That’s pretty much what the Epilogues is about. The audience also has a certain expectation of how a story is supposed to go. In a way, the Epilogues were also about that. They were taking a story that had reached the traditionally “acceptable” happily ever after, and saying, wait, no. What happens next? Thinking past happily ever after in any story is a terrifying prospect. Once Cinderella marries the prince, what then? Sure, she got what she wanted, but who knows that it will be everything she dreamt it would? What if she changes her mind, if not today, what about ten years from now? What if the prince dies of malaria? 

And I’m...

Yeah I don’t have anything else to add here, I’m kind of out of brain juice to think about this tonight.  BUSY day I had.  Y’all take care!

[bananagreste]

tutorial: how to make gifs (part 2)

Before proceeding, please check out the first part here. In this part, I’ll explain how to do gif colouring, how to add subtitles and how to save gifs.

PART A: GIF COLOURING

Gif colouring is done using the adjustment layers. If you haven’t enabled this option, you can do so by selecting Window > Adjustments. A panel of sixteen (16) adjustment layers will appear, as shown below:

The adjustment layers, from left to right, top to bottom, are:

Now, there’s no hard and fast rules when it comes to colouring. My best advice is to experiment until you find your own colouring style. When I make gifs, the way I make gifs don’t change but the way I colour gifs will periodically change.

This is one of my earliest gifsets, made in 2015.

This is my latest gifset, made in 2019.

As you can see, I didn’t start off knowing how to colour gifs. Back then, I wasn’t concerned in making my gifs look nice, I wanted to make gifs because people don’t make the gifs that I want to see.

Despite my constant complaints of the reds, the blues and the yellows of the show, I don’t hate the colours themselves, I just hate the fact the colours don’t pop. Take a look at the scene below:

It looks fine after sharpening and blurring filters, but personally, the original colours look dull. 🤷‍♀

Step 1: Curves

I create two markers, then pull one downwards and one upwards, careful not to stray too far from the original line. If the scene is dark and you want to make it brighter, pull the marker that’s usually going downwards, upwards, but again, don’t stray too far from the original line.

Besides ‘Curves’, you can also use ‘Brightness/Contrast’ and ‘Levels’.

Step 2: Selective Color

The bulk of your colouring takes place here. There are nine (9) colours: Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues, Magentas, Whites, Neutrals and Blacks. For this scene, I adjusted seven colours, minus Neutrals and Blacks.

(I don’t recommend messing around with Neutrals and Blacks since they usually affect the entire scene instead of specific areas. If you are like me who want the black to be true black, you are better off adding another ‘Curves’ layer.)

I don’t have any specific method besides -- adjust the sliders until you see the colours that you want. In fact, if the scene is stubborn, you may use multiple adjustment layers. Below is how I remove the blues from Marinette’s hair:

Step 3: Gradient Map

I wish I know how to explain why I use Gradient Map besides it being part of my finishing touches. For this adjustment layer, it is set to Soft Light at 75% opacity. For the scene above, I used this gradient:

#000000 | #ffffff

My usual choice is this one:

#9e868e | #a88589

My second usual choice is this one:

#383332 | #6f5b55

Do you have to make your own gradients? No. For my usual gradients, it’s actually from the gradient pack here. I encourage you to explore resources websites because they are helpful, besides, they are mostly free!

Q1: Do you need more adjustment layers?

For daytime scenes like the above, I usually maintain three adjustment layers. However, you may encounter scenes where one colour dominates the entire scene or the colours look out of place or the lighting is completely wack.

In order to fix the colours, I use either Hue/Saturation or Color Balance or Photo Filter, usually before, but may also be after, the three layers. It may or may not work successfully but at least it reduces your frustration at fixing the colours.

I will have mini tutorials covering how to colour these specific scenes later.

Q2: Do you have to use the same adjustment layers as mine?

Again, no.

As I said before, you need to experiment until you find your own colouring style. I may use 3 layers, you may use 6 layers, someone else may use 9 layers. In fact, I may use 6 layers for a specific colouring and then 9 layers for another.

It’s best to study the scenes and figure out what colours you want to bring out, what colours you want to eliminate, and what colour theme you want to present.

Q3: Can I use others’ colouring psd instead?

You can, but consider if it’s better if you learn how to colour from scratch, especially if the series in question has inconsistent colours, such as ML.

However, that doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to use colouring psds. If you are making multiple gifs and they have the same theme (e.g. outdoor, daytime, blue skies), it’s easier to just use the same colouring for consistency.

Eventually, once you are used to colouring the series, you may find it easier and faster to colour manually because the results are more or less the same.

PART B: SUBTITLES

Subtitles are great for providing context, but it can be time consuming. I advise starting off with small scenes, then work your way up until you are comfortable with the entire scene.

Step 1: Choose your font

The most important aspect of your font choice is readability, even in small sizes. Common examples of fonts used for gif subtitles are Arial, Calibri and Myriad Pro. All are set to 'bold italic’.

Step 2: Add the text

Drag your cursor to the right to create a text box, then type out the text. For 268px gifs, the font size is 14 pt. For 540px gifs, the font size is 18 pt. The font colour by default is black, so change it to white.

As you can see, the text is unclear. Before we solve that problem, we need to make the text box centered. Select the ‘Move Tool’ and choose the icon below:

The text box will be centered, but the text is too far from the bottom. Using your keyboard, press the down arrow key until you reach the bottom, but leave some space between the text and the bottom.

Or, you can position the text box close to the bottom then make it centered. Either way, it should look like the above.

Step 3: Blending options

Right-click on your text layer and select ‘Blending Options’.

Select ‘Stroke’ and copy the settings.

Select ‘Drop Shadow’ and copy the settings.

Press OK.

Your text should look like the above. Your text layers should look like below:

Step 4: Timeline

If you have multiple scenes in the gif but only one scene has subtitles, you need to adjust the timing so the subtitles don’t appear in the other scene. Use the slider to find the scene, then drag the text layer so it aligns with the scene.

Let’s say the scene is short and you want to find the exact frame but the timeline is short, use the icons below to shrink or expand the timeline:

The left is to make the timeline shorter, the right is to make the timeline longer.

PART C: SAVING GIFS

You’re almost done!

Use the markers to determine the scene you want to save, then select File > Save for Web (or Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S) and these are my gif save settings:

Voila, this is how a gif with subtitles look like!

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to send me an ask or a DM. Thank you so much for checking out the tutorial and I hope it has been useful. I look forward to see gifs from you!

[wainwrightjakobshammerlock]

finally. i decided to do this. anyways hello there, i am jake and today i want to talk about something; you see, if you are in the tf2 fandom, you probably know about heavymedic. Wherther you are a hardcore gamer who resents f2p’s or a person that never played the game but has trillions of notes on their art- you know heavymedic exists and most of all you probably ship it.

And I find that weird. In the few fandoms in my life I have been in I had never seen a single ship be so widely if not shipped, then accepted. Sure, maybe everyone in the GF fandom knows what Billdip is - for better or for worse. Sure, maybe the HS fandom is 70% shipping.

But I have never ever seen such a phenomenon in a prominent multiplayer game fandom. A fandom, sadly, oftentimes filled with toxicity. Overwatch is very similar here - yet ships are either a hot topic of discussion or straight up ignored. But TF2? In here for whatever reason we ship these two mercenaries. And in this essay I will try and find a reason or two why is that.

Apologies for any mistakes or incoherency. English is not my first language, I need to ramble, and my vocabulary is all over the place.

Content warning: mentions of homophobia, blood, death, mentions of WLW fetishization, nsfw mention. Also MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE TF2 COMICS.

Part 1: Canonical Evidence and Interactions

Let’s be honest: I could ramble about this one for days on end. But I’ll try and keep it short.

First and foremost we have the official videos. And of course the first thing that comes to mind is Meet the Medic.

At the very start of the part where Medic himself appears, we see him telling a joke about a particularly gruesome situation to Heavy.

He laughs along with him, visibly enjoying his company. He even smiles as he waits for another joke. Heavy only shows genuine fear a lot later.

And of course this damn scene always cracks me up. Medic slightly pinches Heavy’s cheek and strokes his lip gently (the other part is almost not noticeable unless you play the video at slow speed).

Of course we all know about the Hand Hold that happens somewhere halfway in the vid. I don’t think I have to explain the gayness in that. The fact their hands stay interlocked even after Medic helps Heavy up. The deep breath Medic takes because even he cannot handle the emotions. That few seconds is unresolved sexual tension manifest.

Overall the short shows a strong feeling of trust between these two. Medic confides in Heavy and reverse. Yeah he puts a baboon heart into his friend’s chest cavity but the fact (as proven at the end of the video) that Heavy was the first one to have an Ubercharge implanted into him shows that Medic at the very least considers him a lab rat.

I treat End of the Line as non-canonical, as do many others, and as such won’t discuss it here. But it will forever crack me up that Valve endorsed such levels of homoerotic subtext.

These two have some short moments in other videos, like for example in Invasion Heavy helps Medic up (CINEMATIC PARALLELS) but it’s nothing major so I guess I’ll skip forward.

Second is their interactions ingame. You might call me a weirdo for trying to find stuff in there but holy shit I have things to say and I’m going to say them.

You thought I was going to fanboy over the “i love this doktor” voiceline huh? Well not really. I wish these two had unique lines if they assist one another.

Heavy is literally listed on the official wiki as the “ideal medic buddy” and multiple pages on that exact wiki say some pretty interesting things.

I have to say something about the Gentleman’s Ushanka and/or Pocket Medic. They are both community cosmetics - but the fact they both got accepted by Valve says a lot. Above is text snipped from the actual wiki.

Last but not least: The Comics. Darned comics. The pair of mercenaries has basically no interaction - unless you count issue 6.

Heavy getting absolutely PISSED when Medic is killed by Ch*avy. Their reunion. Medic referring to Heavy by “my friend” in a totally straight way. Kind of sad Valve wasted an opportunity for them to hug. Maybe they knew their comic artist ships them and wanted to avoid having to answer the Question™.

Part 2: Dynamics

This part’s a bit trickier, mostly due to the reason that I’m new to this whole dynamic analysis thing. Yeah I’m good at spotting canonical evidence but very specific shipping dynamics often escape my gaze.

The most obvious one is Big Guy, Little Guy. Quoting the TVTROPES page:

[…] This trope describes a pair of guys who always fight together, are best friends forever, and quite often have a very obvious hierarchy: The little guy is often in charge […] The little guy is usually listed first, since he’s the leader, and they are always listed together, as if they are one entity. In fact, some episodes may center on the fact that they can’t live without each other. […] If this is a case of Brains and Brawn, the Big Guy is usually the Brawn, and the Little Guy the Brains. It’s almost never the other way around, but in some cases the Big Guy can be rather smart too. […]

A sub-type of this, a common favorite here on Tumblr is known as “small chaotic big calm” and hoo boy if that isn’t these two. I don’t really have much to say here - again I am not an expert.

Part 3: Fandom Impact

So you don’t think Red Oktoberfest (as Heavymedic is sometimes called) is super popular on anywhere else than Tumblr? Wrong.

It’s hard to find TF2 fics on Archive of Our Own not tagged with Heavy/Medic. Of course most of them only contain hints to their relationship but go in the main tf2 tag and I can guarantee you, you’ll gonna see “implied heavy/medic” all the time.

But these two go further than AO3 or Tumblr or Instagram or whatever. They are recognized even within the wider circle of the fanbase. Take this SFM, for example. (I am using the Saxxy Awards version of Secret Lives here mostly due to the fact that the Heavymedic moment is much gayer. In the normal version, the dialogue isn’t changed, but they simply hold hands.)

But it gets deeper. (WARNING: THE GAY MOMENT IN THIS ONE IS NSFW. NOT EXPLICITLY SO BUT JUST A HEADS UP TUMBLR PLEASE DO NOT FLAG ME)

And the best part? The comments are extremely positive. You’d expect hoards upon hoards of homophobes screeching but no, the comments are supportive. Even on places such as Reddit or Youtube, comments like “yeah they’re gay and in love” do not get downvoted/disliked to hell; in fact the opposite.

Part 4: Canon Status

Let’s be real. Most ships are shipped because people want to explore the dynamics in fanfic, fanart or something else. But Heavymedic is shipped because… well, I have no idea.

Actually, I kind of do - but only theories. You see, while the canonical evidence is here, the creators have never said anything about them. No confirmation, no disproval, no hinting, nothing.

But the ship is so prominent! There has to be something causing this!- you say. And to that I present you 2 theories on why Heavy/Medic is so popular.

Theory number 1 states that we simply all choose to interpret their interactions as homoerotic. And this is very easy to disprove - there’s simply no way we just collectively agreed on these matters out of nothing. There has to be something bigger.

And theory 2 states that, well, our interpretation is the desired interpretation. But this is even more ridiculous than theory 1 for a number of reasons. If they are in fact gay, why hasn’t Valve made them canon yet?

A Theoretical Scenario

I am going to ramble big time on this one, so buckle up lads. I’ll discuss a theoretical scenario in which, well, if that was not obvious, Valve confirms Heavymedic as canon. Maybe then we will see why they will probably never do so.

TF2 is considered by typical capital G, alt-right Gamers as a “non-political” game. This means no women (in the game itself, at least, and if even, sexy women only), no queer folk and no minorities (for some reason they accept Demoman but throw a fit if someone draws any other merc as not being pearl white). Team Fortress 2 was around before Gamergate and other things like Gamers Rise Up. It’s a classic and Valve is regarded as the good guy to Epic Game’s bad guy. If Valve did anything to confirm doubts, wherther it be clearing up popular fanon or confirming ships, these people would throw hands. (Although they seemed to ignore when one of the writers confirmed Miss Pauling is a lesbian. Huh.) Even those that don’t play TF2 would come to the aid of their bros.

Let me illustrate with two very similar examples. In both cases these confirmations were the first made by the company as a whole, both are fairly recent and both confirm a character as gay.

First we have the confirmation of Tracer from Overwatch as a lesbian. It was done in one of OVW’s comics. Tracer is the FACE of Overwatch as a whole and while most of the fanbase accepted it (thankfully the Gamers are reluctant to infest ow), some people threw what I can only describe as a hissy fit. At least her girlfriend’s a background character.

Second is Neeko from League of Legends. Unlike Tracer she was added a while before it was confirmed she was gay. LOL is much more toxic and filled with Gamers than OW and holy shit people smeared LOL so much.

Of course these are not accurate to Heavy/Medic. In both of the cases I listed it was girls being wlw and we all know how much cisgender heterosexual gamers LOVE yuri porn. Apparently only girls can be gay because they can jack off to it - if it’s two guys then it’s disgusting. Nevertheless I think these are good approximations - in every case the company gets “shat on” on social media and other sites. With the community that Valve has, I think even if they wanted them to be gay, they would never ever confirm it.

Conclusion

I’m sorry for that ending. I had to theorize a bit. Regardless I’d love if you shared this on other sites, reblogged or whatever - I wasted at least 1 and a half hours of my life on it. Feel free to cite this as a source if someone asks you why you ship the big heavy weapons expert and the feral battle medic.

[easyfella]

plaudite. acta est fabula: thots on my third vlr playthrough

annnnnd done

with all the alt timelines down and all but two secret files obtained, i’m feeling pretty good ending my 3rd (and probably last for at least a long, long time) vlr playthough at a slick 20 hours. i’m pretty excited for my dual phds in metaphysics and philosophy, earned from completing the famed “tripletion” (triple completion), to come in the mail!! anyway, i enjoyed the game, but holy shit, do i have some things to say (spoilers and everything else beneath the cut as always).

i guess i’ll start with the fact that this is a hell of time to pick this game up again, concerned as it is with quarantines and pandemics and plagues and all that. Radical-6 I think hit me harder than it did when I first played this game when i was 15 (context: i turned 21 this last december), for obvious reasons. I remember at one point the game says that 100,000 people died from R6 and it was a huge, global tragedy ... weird to see that so directly mirrored in just the US headlines alone. I don’t have much more to say about the pandemic aspect of the game, but it was a weird thing to start off my playthrough confronting. 

Like I mentioned, my first playthrough was when I was 15, my second I think I was 17, and here I am 4 years later. So why do I keep going back to this game? Well, for one, the plot is dense enough, and my brain is sparse enough, that i find myself surprised by one aspect or another every time. This time, Dio’s blackmailing Sigma to get the Axelever (sp? who cares), how much I liked K, and a lot of the plot after the final puzzle room were surprises for me. That being said, there were also things I dreaded and did not want to revisit: Quark’s and Alice’s suicidality, the part after the first AB game where you go to three different rooms and people info dump on you, most of the puzzle rooms tbh, and good god the part where Luna’s face melts off. I hate it. I hated it at 15, I hate it now. 

And, though my memories are quite fuzzy on ZTD, I’ll say (expanding on Luna’s face melting off) that this is the only game in the series that inspires genuine dread from me. I think, honestly, that it’s 70% how uncanny the models are. K is the only that looks remotely OK, and that’s because he’s a big silly suit of armor in a monk robe. On the flip side, though, this uncanny valley I think works tonally very well for the game. It makes me feel uncomfortable to look at the visuals. Half the environments look like they’re from the original Silent Hill, for God’s sake. It’s not good, but it’s serviceable, and even functional in an accidental sort of way. However, the visuals are the reason I’ve never been able to recommend this game to other people (that and the walls of text, the obscure psuedoscientific rants, the way Alice’s tits are just out ...). 999 is far-and-away the more charming game visually, but I think VLR in its own way has carved out a visual style that works, though it’s jarring initially. Though, I do wonder how approachable the game is in 2020 compared to in 2012, or in 2014 when i played it. I think our need for quality graphics and disdain for poor graphics (especially this sort of ugly, gumby shit) have only increased since. I guess if anyone has any more thoughts on how they feel about the graphics and how approachable it makes the game, pls feel free to dm me. I’d love to talk about how weird this game is.

Changing subjects, I remember liking the music quite a bit more on my earlier playthroughs. Maybe that’s nostalgia talking, or maybe I’ve just grown as a music listener since high school. Probably both. I think it’s really appropriate for the game and great for setting a mood (and I love, love the twist in the credits track), but I think some tracks were overused. “Dun dun .... Dun dun ... Dun dun”  ad nauseam. Uh oh! I know that track! Looks like something deeply horrifying is about to happen! ^_^ I sure hope it’s not that same ugly rendering of Alice being stabbed in the chest :3c (it is. it is the same ugly rendering of Alice being stabbed in the chest.)

Maybe I’ve come across as overly critical, but I do have a deep appreciation for this game. I think that it easily has the best premise I’ve ever, ever come across in a video game, and, no jokes, every game I’ve played since I first came across VLR has failed in comparison to how absolutely genius i think this game is. I’m not exaggerating. The way the plot mirrors the actions of the player, the unique incentivisation of replaying, the way it lets me just be straight up evil occasionally, the twists, the turns, the way i had to cut off my own arm using a warehouse door. the list goes on. The reveal of Zero Sr. is, I think, the most impactful twist in a piece of media i’ve ever experienced. Perhaps I’m a buffoon, but i think this game slam dunks it in terms of pure plot showmanship. that said, i think the exact details of what’s going on where and why (especially at the end irt Kyle, but that’s more of an issue to do with ZTD, and we’ll come to that when we come to that) can get quite murky. 

Admittedly, the game does explain what’s happening; in fact, oftentimes it takes an infuriating amount of time walking through the minutia of what was going on where (the infamous door and map animations are infamous for a reason), but i think that a vague gesture toward the plot is all i need, or really all i get from the game at the end of the day. For me, the plot is more of a vehicle for the scenarios of the nonary games, not the other way around. In a sense, I could care less who’s at what point in time where -- just let me brutally betray this old man in a prisoner’s dilemma situation.  And the game, after pontificating, eventually does. and I fucking love that. God, I adore just smashing that betray button. 

And that’s the fun of the game. Past the over-detailed plot, the predictable music, the gummy looking character models, I love vlr because of how it lets me interact with its world and its characters. I always get to choose either ally or betray, and what happens happens because of that choice that I made. I wish more video games operated like that. Also, I just love Phi. I know this paragraph isn’t about her, but i love rude girls. 

So, I think that’s that. VLR is a mixed bag, but I’m ecstatic that it evens exists, bizarre as it is. 

i’ll be starting my ZTD playthrough probably soon. I don’t remember much about the game besides playing on launch day, finishing it within 48 hours, and being vaguely disappointed, but it’ll be good to move on from all this murdering in VLR to a whole different set of murders.

[kitsunebishake]

Why Hríd is such an amazing character who just got done wrong during his “character arc” (SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE BOOK II AND FORGING BONDS)

WARMING: THIS IS JUST ONE LONG ASS LOVEMAIL POST FOR HRÍD

this was originally written as a thread on twitter but i’ll try my best to put it all here because someone asked for it some time ago

I’m putting it here because @chascah suggested i uploaded it here as well for those people who actually appreciate the icy boy

this is basically an analysis to most if not every quote from hríd, also adding some translations and little details from the japanese quotes (and some lore behind the whole idea of hríd’s new year alt)

let’s start then!

lemme start with the fact that hríd only appeared in 3 out of 13 chapters, yet is the character that caught my interest the most (funny because i already had a crush on alfonse, then i saw hríd and was like "oh, hello there")

hríd arrived like a half-dead yet somehow composed prince who somehow (x2) survived by himself in múspell for weeks (maybe even months, there's no exact timeline but it is canon that alfonse and the others spent some weeks in nifl, it probably also took them a while to navigate through múspell until loki arrived as ylgr)

he served as some kind of excuse to not put bruno too much with the main characters, practically a messenger only despite this guy being alive with burns and a broken sword (the crack on gjöll's blade hurts bc he couldve actually lost his sword and ended up defenseless in battle oof)

so, there was no really much use of his character other than being a magical solution for everything

he even helped unmask loki (though they never explain why hríd suspected of ylgr, we only know loki's own take)

btw, can we talk about the fact he probably outsmarted loki while the others weren't yet in múspell? he terrorized surtr's army and even outsmarted laegjarn and laevatein

and since he survived for so long i believe most of his wounds were made by surtr himself

they never really say whether he actually managed to kill surtr or not, but let's say yes just to add up on all of the things hríd does just in the story

at first glance it looks like he's doing nothing, but reading further into it and applying some logic

hríd's... he's pretty impressive for a prince so young

gotta also add how hríd appears less impulsive in japanese than in english

when "alfonse" blames him for being a traitor, hríd gets to the defensive immediately in english

in japanese, he's more in shock, probably because after all he's tried, he's being doubted by his allies (which shows a lot how much he cares about being perceived as perfect, something i'll get on to later if i have enough time)

I added this part in the middle of the whole thing because it was a different thread so excuse the sudden change of topic, kinda. It’s supposed to be from the last conversation in Book 2, where Fjorm tells Hríd she’s going to stay in Askr despite her “condition”.

"I understand your feelings, Sister. By all means, go. I will pray for your safety."

this is one of the quotes i'd like to put in that one hríd character thread i want to make

the feeling behind this quote got completely lost in translation, as there's no way to translate it properly

in japanese, hríd uses a pecular way of speech to refer to his sister here he says "... I get it. If that is what you wish, it's alright to go. I'll pray for your safety." the peculiar part, aside from hríds "..." is where he refers to fjorm, the "you"

hríd normally uses "kimi" to refer to people, which is like a more... gentle? way of speaking? men usually use it towards women bc they want to treat them nicely, and jps in general use it with people they don't know (it's that, or "anata" or "[name]-san")

yet here, hríd decides to use "omae" to refer to fjorm, which is more informal and even rude (specially for someone who normally uses "kimi", it means he wanted to express some kind of anger or frustration about fjorm's decision without saying it directly,,,,,,,,,,,,,which is very japanese to do so,,,,,, *looks into the distant "most japanese people i've known don't directly say 'no' and instead go 'hmmmmmm' '*very indirectly rejects*' and it's probably a fact*)

it feels like instead of being supportive, hríd just understood there was no way of convincing fjorm to stay with them

so he gave up and felt hurt by that

please protect hríd

Back to the rest of the analysis.

now let's talk about forging bonds, in the wiki there's only the opening part transcribed in japanese, the rest is only on english (i curse not having started playing 3 months earlier orz)

the first thing you can notice in the japanese version is how informal hríd is when he's stressed

while he speaks in an usually softer manner, here, he doesn't even greet ylgr and gunnthrá, he goes directly to "gunnthrá... ah, ylgr is here too" (he kinda does the same in the mainstory, where he just says “ah, fjorm, you’re okay... ylgr too :)”)

AND IMMEDIATELY, HIS NEXT TEXT IS HIM CALLING GUNNTHRÁ WITH "OMAE”

ALREADY DEEP INTO THE STRESS OF MÚSPELL INVADING THEM

this shows how easily stressed hríd gets and how much he lets his emotions dirve his attitude and actions (which makes sense with the part where he tells fjorm she should be the one wielding leiptr and not him, he's too emotional despite how much he tries not to be)

in these parts we also see some level of deattachment from gunnthrá, on english he goes "sister..." by the end of the opening conversation

in the jp, however, he stays silent, he doesn't even call her name

idk if it's just me overanalyzing it, but from my experience with animoo and vidya, it feels a little weird that he says nothing there, like he's thinking (this is probably foreshadowing hríd's inner feelings oof)

something that i particularily like about this event is that hríd seems so at ease when he's on the dreams, even in the english translation it seems like that he mentions it might be because he feels at ease with kiran but i feel like it also has to do with the fact they're just a dream, it's not the real world, there's nothing to worry in a world where there's no war

at least, that's the feeling his dialogues give me

the closest thing to that hríd is his lvl40 speech and ny hríd (who's happier)

the only quote where hríd mentions some type of concern for his mother btw

from here on it only gets worse when it comes to hríd, though

he speaks about the invasion and such he talks in a way that implies he's probably taking the role of a commander (same as how it is implied he trains the soldier, or that he trains with them, though since he's been training alone with fjorm for so long, it's most likely the former) aside from that, he's weighting on himself the responsibility of what happens to nifl and what happens to his family

and since he's doing so, here's when it comes the part of hríd not being able to care about himself

this young man is carrying a heavy weight, the hopes and dreams and lives of many innocent and PEACEFUL people who barely even know how to fight, on top of those of his loved ones

it doesn't seem like anyone asked him to, not even his mother or sisters

he just decided it on his own that he needed to be "the perfect prince/king" in order to "protect" them

/even if it costs him his life/

he prepared his sisters for that moment (which, might give an insight that hríd knew more than he says, but let's leave my conspiracy theories aside lol)

and to THAT PART, we can add this from the mainstory

in english, when he's rescued, he thanks them for doing so

but in the jp text he actually apologizes for it

not sure how to exactly translate it, but it's something along the lines of "my apologies...for having to be saved..."

idk you guys, but it sounds like what someone who just failed to commit suicide would say, instead of someone who's grateful to be alive

and it makes sense, with how obsessed hríd seems to be about "dying for his loved ones" despite it not being entirely necessary

i mean, look at that, he survived surtr and was aided by bruno as he escaped (probably? they never say what exactly happened, but since they're looking for hríd and not for bruno, it's most likely that they just found each other by accident)

and yes, even though he seems to calm down with those thoughts during the sequence, it is only a dream and we know he has no recolection of them

he forgets completely about that motivation to keep living, which leads him into further down the path of death  (whichinnorsemythologymightbecalledhríd,,,,,,orgjöll,,,ykow?)

im still not done, havent even gotten to his unit quotes lmao

hríd still did his best to survive for as long as he could, but it feels more like his strategic "i'm making time for fjorm and the askrans to make their moves" purely, out of the fact he didn't seem too happy to survive until he saw fjorm and ylgr

hat's all of hríd's quotes from that event, i can finally move on to his unit quotes

let's start with this one, luckily it is practically the same quote in both languages

this immediatelly counters any "hríd is boring" comment

though that is subjective, in my case what drove me even further into loving hríd was how different he was from usual characters related to ice

he might come off as cold sometimes, but it's purely because he's actually really dense/has a really bad sense of humor

in jp he tries to make an ice joke, but says "it's not suitable for him" (which is funny because in english he does have ice puns and i hate it)

1. he doesn't mention his mother 2. hríd blaming himself and being kinda gloomy part 1 

"I should have protected my people and sisters, I couldn't play that role... I can never forget that." 

this part hurts a lot (it's a little more poetic than the og one, i like it lol)

he could be talking about himself, about his sisters, his people, or all together, since the four of them have expressed desire for peace, and all four ended hurt by such thing

this part is scary, though it's not as much in english

NOT BECAUSE OF THE TRANSLATION, but because of his battle lines in eng (i'll get to that first and then come back to this one)

the most shockingly different skill trigger is the second one

the first one is exactly the same the third one in jp is "this is the last blow" (or smth like that) the fourth one is a little weird to translate (ice upon you works, but "freeze your life" sounds a little scary??)

OKAY BUT THE SECOND ONE ALONG WITH THE VOICE CLIP

IT KINDA SCARES ME A LITTLE FOR MY CUTE SWEET MOCHI BOY

it literally says "no mercy for the enemy"

IT'S LITERALLY SUGAR COATED, hríd went from a gentle giant to a merciless killer (who knows how many muspellians he's killed???) thanks to surtr and his fucking ass

hríd blaming himself and being gloomy part 2

the fact that he has not one, not two, not three, but about 5 to 6 lines that imply he's still dueling over everything that happened during the war is hurtful, he really can't forgive himself for that

he also sounds a little dead to me here (it’s one of the voiced quotes from his status page!)

which brings me back to the initial scary one

hríd is obsessed with earning his peace no matter what

and for that, he wants to get stronger

for that, he's willing to even perish, for everyone's sake

it's so sickening for me since i can kinda relate???? it reminds me a lot of the kind of wording they use for depression-themed japanese works, with the "peace" part and his willingness to just die anytime (which, is actually pretty normal for a warrior outside of FE. outside)

iT MAKES ME FEEL BAD BUT AT THE SAME TIME i kinda like he's written this way

AND EVEN WHEN HE'S LIKE THAT, hríd is still a gentle sweetheart who speaks so kindly you kinda forgets how merciless he is in the battlefield

like, the audio where he holds kiran's hands???? where he speaks about how the order of heroes saved nifl????? EVEN WHEN HE GETS STARTLED

he's always such a gentle and kind person

it makes me hate surtr even more because they didn't deserve this

hríd didn't deserve going through all of this fucking shit HE. DESERVED. HAPPINESS. AND PEACE.

then there's the ny hríd

he's an angel

a happy angel who makes me a little sad bc og hríd is not as happy

From here on everything was written like 2 weeks after the previous stuff :’) i’m sowwy

he's a resolute prince, he has the resolution of saving even at least one person,,,,,instead of being a "king", instead of being a "brother", or a "prince", he just wants to be "a hero",,,

hello, this is my opening statement of why ny hríd makes me cry with just existing

welcome

let us start with something that makes his quotes even better, particularily the previous quote and his lvl40 speech, which is the powerful meaning of this alt itself for a character such as hríd

in japan, new year used to be celebrated not at the end of the year, but at the end of winter, which is where geishun comes into the scheme, as it currently means "new years greetings" but in those old times, it was actually "welcoming spring" (or something along those lines i suck for precise translations)

and that's where our next quote comes into the picture

hríd speaks about nifl's winter, about how it practically symbolizes the nifleans' strength and will power

the alt itself is a more positive hríd, one who's willing to try his hardest for everyone, who doesn't regret his past, but looks into the future and has the purpose of being even better than before

of course, this hríd didn't suffer the same fate as the OG hríd, as he still has all 3 sisters (i want to believe ylgr was with them, just not shown bc of the lack of space for a sixth character) and now also 2 new allies to power their search for peace and strength to defend that peace

so, while our normal hríd is desparate to become stronger and suffers, this hríd is like his pole opposite, it's like the sun and the moon (too bad this hríd has no default special, sol would've fit him so well)

can we talk about how he feels so comfortable wearing the celebratory outfit?

the obi (the.....thing that acts as a belt) should be tied strongly enough so the hakama (the pants) doesnt fall down while he fights, yet he feels comfortable with it

i mean, it isn't as constrictive as a kimono as it doesn't prevent him from moving around freely, but he still shouldn't normally feel as comfortable with it as he is, he's never even worn something like that (it is implied, at least) yet he's loving it, isn't it adorable???

one time i joked about hríd being able to feel when winter is coming or when snow will start falling but

i think this quote pretty much confirmed it (YOU CAN'T SAY IT'S BECAUSE IT'S WARM, IT DOES SNOW IN ASKR WE'VE SEEN IT)

blessed boy munchs a whole fucking piece of mixed flour with FOUR HUNDRED GRAMS OF FUCKING SUGAR 

he's got a sweet tooth i know it, i know my people when i see them

it's just that he doesn't seem disgusted, and he also only mentions the mochi so we can assume he didn't drink sake or matcha with it

he ate the fucking thing alone and apparently liked it

we have a sweet angel, guys

i just think this quote is cute, he loves cold just as much as i love him

t HIS IS SUCH AN IMPROVEMENT FROM OUR NORMAL HRÍD HE'S SO POSITIVE AND DETERMINED I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

though in japanese, the last quote is a little more gloomy

im not entirely sure of how to properly translate it *looks at the jisho page of the kanji he cant understand* it's certainly a word

but it could be something like "to be in such a predicament from so early in the year... I'm unable to say it's pathetic..."

i???? imagine he says he "can't say it" because he's trying to be positive?????? or something along those lines, but saying it proves he's taking it way to the extreme

nasakenai can also be shameful or miserable, pitable, disgraceful stuff like that

i'm not sure how to describe this quote?

this time it's the english localisation that kinda throws me off, i don't understand what he's trying to say lmao

in japenese he's saying something about having been graced this early in the new year

7 years speaking english and i still can't break down complex phrases the only reason i've survived this long is through the power of deduction abilities

pray for me

u know hríd's damaged quotes in english are all grunts, right?

in japanese, this hríd has a peculiar quote i find adorable when he gets damaged

he says "as expected from you...!"

hE'S COMPLIMENTING HIS ENEMY, THIS IS THE SAME MAN WHO SAYS NO MERCY AS HE KILLS THE FOE

btw listening to his english quotes is so funny

he sounds so damn cool in japanese and in english he

he sounds like a fucking nerd

I THINK IM TAKING A LIKING TO HIS ENGLISH VOICE ACTING PURELY BECAUSE HE SOUNDS STUPID

compare this (JP) https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/feheroes_gamepedia_en/1/12/VOICE_Hr%C3%ADd_Resolute_Prince_SKILL_2_jp.wav

to this (ENG) https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/feheroes_gamepedia_en/6/6a/VOICE_Hr%C3%ADd_Resolute_Prince_SKILL_2.wav

it's the exact same quote by the two different VAs

HE SOUNDS LIKE A NERD IN THE ENGLISH VERSION I CAN'T

back to translations and analysis

i hate this one

his eng quote is more positive while the japanese one is something along the lines of "I was useless... I'm sorry..."

I

HATE

IT

look, say whatever you want, but hríd is such a sweet man

he cares for people and he tries his best to be the perfect prince everyone thinks he is

AND FOR HIS *MORE POSITIVE VERSION* TO SAY THIS AS HE IS DEFEATED IS JUST

WHAT DID HE DO TO U INTSYS TO MAKE HIM SUFFER THIS MUCH??

despite how "im so useless...!" his japanese version is

he way he says these two quotes sounds way more positive in japanese lmao it's the same translation, only that he's more "I'll repay you!!!!!!" in jp ( https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/feheroes_gamepedia_en/3/34/VOICE_Hr%C3%ADd_Resolute_Prince_MAP_3_jp.wav )

adorable

can’t use emojis on this pc so i’ll just leave the whole screenshot here

you see this quote here?

this is what it actually says

I DON'T KNOW WHY THEY CHANGED IT BUT I THINK IT'S CUTE BECAUSE I THINK HE DIDN'T JUST SWALLOW THE WHOLE MOCHI

HE ATE IT NORMALLY AND THINKS HE'S GOT SOME ON HIS CLOTHES BC PEOPLE ARE LOOKING AT HIM LGHDSKLGSDFKS

why are u so cute aaaaaaa///////////

this is probably the translation of hríd's quotes i hate the most  in english it just...sounds so rude

in japanese it's more like "could you please tell me if i'm wearing these clothes wrong? i'll fix it fast"

he's trying to be respectful to the hoshidans sobs

THESE TWO QUOTES ARE SO DIFFERENT BUT SO EQUALLY ADORABLE AND POWERFUL

THIS 180~195CM OR SO MAN IS THE MOST ADORABLE PERSON IN THIS WHOLE PUTRID PLANET AND IM GOING TO TELL YOU WHY

first, this is my fave quote on english

he sounds so confused as to why people think the hoshidan clothes suit him

HE'S. NOT. AWARE. OF HOW FUCKING GOOD HE LOOKS.

TELL ME THAT'S NOT THE CUTEST SHIT EVER HE JUST DOESN'T GET IT

to make it more adorable, in japanese, the original quote is something like "I wonder what makes a type of clothing 'suit' you..."

HE'S GOING ALL PHYLOSOFICAL ON THAT SHIT probably because people keep telling him he looks good in that kind of clothing

this man's density is so powerful that he can't even begin to understand people find him attractive and that the attire literally makes him go from a 10 to a 1000000000000000000

he doesn't get it and he wants to know if it's really true so he goes out of his way TO ASK KIRAN

i love hríd so much he's so adorabl e

i want to give him a hug

with this i finish my thread for now

for now

hopefully we will get another alt for hríd and i can come back to spam about how adorable his quotes are

please stan hríd he's literally an angel

[crystalninjaphoenix]

The Second Crossover Episode

Septics Inverted

A JSE Fanfic

People seemed to really like the first one, so I wrote another! Because there are a lot more boys that can meet each other across worlds, and a lot of these encounters are going to be...not so good. But some of them could be positive! Be optimistic, despite how most of my AU is just...villains

Again, you can find Swap Boys content on @huffle-dork​​‘s blog!

Read the intro story: Part One | Part Two

Various other AU-related stuff found here

Still not sure about adding the taglist to not normal AU material, but here I go anyways | Taglist: @evyptids​ @awkward-bullshit​ @watermelonsinmyattic​ @asunachinadoll @a-humble-narcissus @metautske​ @odysseus-is-best-boi​ @acuriousquail @beerecordings

Alt spent what felt like an hour wandering the streets before he finally admitted it: not only was he lost, but he wasn’t even in his city anymore. He recognized absolutely nothing. Every street turned where it was supposed to be straight, and every twist was actually a crossroad. He didn’t know where he was, or even how he got here. Alt stopped running right under a street lamp, looking around at low, dim buildings he’d never seen before.

He sat down hard on the curb and put his head in his hands. Why did this happen to him? Why couldn’t he just go home, see his cat, and be left alone? He wanted to blame Magnificent, but the magician had been seemed just as confused as he was back in that museum-type place. So he didn’t even have that explanation. He could feel tears prickling at the back of his eyes. He didn’t belong here. And he didn’t know how to get back, or if anyone would bother to come look. Nobody looked the last time. His shoulders started shaking as he let the tears fall.

“Excuse me? Are you okay?”

Alt looked up, hurriedly wiping his eyes on his jacket sleeve. There was a man staring down at him with concern. He wore a dark red hoodie and black jeans, and he...almost looked like Jackie. But less tired, and with longer hair, long enough to be held back in a ponytail that peeked out from inside the jacket’s hood. “Wh—yeah, yeah I’m...fine,” Alt said, pulling up his bandanna.

“Most people don’t cry when they’re fine,” the man remarked. “What’re you doin’ out here? Don’t you know it’s dangerous?”

Alt laughed. “You’re out here.”

“Well, I can take care of myself. Not everyone can. Not that I’m saying you can’t,” he hurried to add, seeing Alt’s eyes start to darken. “I just want to make sure you’re not in trouble. Or, you know, causing trouble.”

“I’m fine,” Alt insisted, resolutely turning away. “I’m just...lost. I’m new here.”

“Well, do you know where you need to go?”

Alt could feel the tears again. But he blinked them away. “I can figure it out.”

The man gave him a peculiar look. It wasn’t pity, thank god, but it was something similar. Sympathy, maybe. “Look, I’m still worried about you, not gonna lie. I’m out here with a friend of mine. If you want, you can just...hang around with us? It’s better to travel in a group.”

His instinct was to deny help again. But he forced himself to take a step back. He was alone in a strange city, Magnificent was on the loose along with what must’ve been some sort of evil duplicate of himself, and he had no idea what to do. And this guy wasn’t being a bossy ass about going with him, just giving him an option. “...fine,” Alt grumbled, standing up. “Maybe for a little while.”

The man practically melted with relief, smiling. “Great! I left him over on the corner, he was texting a friend. C’mon, I’ll show you.” He started to walk away, making sure Alt was following him. “Oh, my name’s Jackie, by the way.”

Alt faltered in his steps. “Wait, really?” He’d just been thinking about how this guy reminded him of Jackie. Was this...?

“Yeah. You, uh...okay?” the other Jackie asked. “You got really pale all of a sudden.”

“I just—I have a friend named Jackie, too,” Alt explained. “You, uh, kind of...remind me of him.”

The other Jackie laughed. “Cool. Good to know we’ve got another doppelganger out there. Besides you, I mean.”

“We?”

“Yeah, me and my housemates. We all sorta look alike. Some differences, but in general we’re, like, clones.” Jackie looked ahead. “Oh hey, I can show you. Chase!”

They’d reached the street corner, where a man was leaning against the pole of the traffic light. He was wearing a red snap-back cap pulled down, and was absorbed in his phone. The man looked up at the sound of the name ‘Chase.’ “Oh hey, you finally decided to come back. Find out what that noise was?”

Alt stopped, staring with wide eyes. He wasn’t sure his heart was beating. “Ch-Chase?” he asked in a strangled voice.

This other Chase gave him a weird look. “Yeah, that’s my name. Why, you heard it before? And also, you okay, dude? You look like you’re having a heart attack.”

Alt took a few steps back, reexamining what he was seeing. There was a lack of toned muscles that came with a life of fighting crime, and no freckles in sight. But there was absolutely no doubt. He’d know Chase’s face anywhere, and this was him, but he was so different. And wrong. Alt found he was breathing very quickly but he just couldn’t stop. “Th-this isn’t how it’s s-supposed to be,” he said, gasping. “I just want—I just want to go home. Why can’t I go home?!” When he shouted that last question, a glitch slipped in, vibrant pixels blinking into existence and fading away again.

The two others immediately snapped into action. The other Chase dropped his phone, letting it fall to the ground, and his hand went to his belt, where he pulled out a gun that had been belted there. The other Jackie jumped back, reaching into his hoodie pocket and pulling a large pocket knife out, flipping open the blade. “What do you think you’re doing?!” Chase demanded, pointing the gun at Alt.

Alt, for his part, was just even more confused, but that confusion was now mixed with fear. That caused his glitching to intensify. “I—I d-don’t know what—what are you—”

“What, did you think you could fool us like that, Anti?” Jackie demanded.

“Anti...?” For a moment, Alt panicked, thinking these bizarro versions of his friends somehow found out his real name when he’d never even told the real ones. But then he remembered. “W-wait—do you think I’m that—that other glitch? Black clothes? Eye-patch and scarf?”

“Well who else—?!”

“Jackie, wait.” Chase reached over and slowly lowered Jackie’s arm so that the blade of the knife wasn’t pointing at Alt anymore. He did the same thing with his gun. “I think we should hear him out.”

“Hear him—” Jackie glared at Chase, clearly exasperated. “C’mon, this is clearly a trick.”

“Well, I think maybe it’s not,” Chase snapped back. “I mean...look at the effects. They look...different.” He made a vague sort of gesture to the glitches surrounding Alt. “Anti has always had the same ones, why change now?”

“Uh, how about to fool us?”

“Jackie, just...trust me on this.” Chase looked back at Alt. “So, you’re saying you saw Anti?”

“Y-yeah,” Alt stuttered. This rapid turn of events was making his head spin. “He found me, and he offered to help me because apparently I don’t know what I’m doing, and I told him to fuck off and ran away.”

“Good idea,” Chase grinned. “If you hadn’t done that, there’s a good chance you’d be dead right about now.”

“I—what?” Alt stared incredulously at Chase. “You’re serious?”

“Dead serious.” Chase nodded sadly. “The whole bunch of us have been targeted by him multiple times. He’s serious bad news. People around him disappear, and if they’re lucky they’ll reappear needing therapy. He’s been after a friend of ours for a while now, and eventually he’s gone after the rest of us. That’s why we all live together, safety in numbers, you know?”

Alt’s glitching had completely subsided, but he hadn’t even noticed. He knew there’d been something off about that guy. The way he laughed, the way he never blinked, the way he referred to Alt as “human” as if he wasn’t. And why he’d been so insistent on helping Alt mere moments after acting all pissy towards him. It must’ve been a trap.

“Look, dude.” Chase put the gun back into his belt. After a moment of reluctance, Jackie folded the blade back into the handle of the pocket knife, but didn’t put it away. “If Anti’s got his eye on you...you’re in trouble. You need to get somewhere safe.”

Alt looked around. “I don’t...know where safe is. I’m not from here.”

Chase and Jackie glanced at each other. “Well, I think it would be better if you...stayed with us, then?” Chase suggested hesitantly. “Not permanently if you don’t want to, but...we have some protection set up at our house. It...might help?”

Alt considered it, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets as he thought. It would be pretty nice to have a place to stay in this new city. And, well, it was Chase. Maybe not the same Chase, however that worked, but Chase nonetheless. He was a good guy. “Okay,” Alt breathed, nodding. “Maybe for a little.”

Chase smiled. “That’s great dude! We can head home now, cut the night short. This is a bit more important.” He laughed. “Oh, hey we, uh, never caught your name. What was it?”

“I’m Alt,” Alt said immediately.

“Alt? Cool name. C’mon, we can show you the way.”

“No,” Anti whispered, eye locked on the feed from the street’s CCTV camera. “Nò,̢ ͝n̵o,̧ no!̡” He rammed his fist into a nearby metal shelf, hard enough to scrape the skin off the knuckles. As always, he felt nothing. “You fucking i̷d͞io̵t̸!”

Sam flew over from their perch on top of one of the CPUs, gently rubbing against the curve of Anti’s neck, catlike. He absentmindedly reached up to stroke them with one finger. “I guess it’s not really his fault. He’s not from here, he doesn’t know. Not even the people who live here know. But...who trusts a total stranger just like that?!” Sometimes, despite his ability to step into the deep recesses of their minds, Anti felt he would never understand humans.

He leaned closer to the screen, debating whether or not it was a good idea to swoop in and get the kid out of there. It would certainly get him out of immediate danger, but then again, he might go running back into it afterwards, still refusing to accept Anti’s help. Not to mention it might paint him as even more of a bad guy. “What’s this guy’s deal anyway?” Anti muttered. “Where did he come from? Why can he glitch? You wouldn’t happen to know, would you, Sam?”

Despite the throwaway nature of the question, Sam zoomed up in front of Anti’s face, swishing their tail once. They’d agreed early on that that gesture meant yes. “Wait, you do? How? What’re the answers?”

Sam, of course, didn’t answer, though their iris squished flat in an are you kidding me? look. “Right, right, can’t talk.” Anti watched the kid and the two freaks on the screen for a moment. “Alright, guess it’s time to play the guessing game. You know the drill, Sam, I spit out random ideas and you confirm yes or no. Let’s make this one quick.”

By the time they reached the house, Alt had managed to fill in the other Jackie and Chase about everything that happened, all the way from the colorful lights that had taken him and Magnificent to the museum, to seeing that weird other almost-Magnificent in the black mask, to his encounter with Anti. They listened carefully, taking every detail. Or at least, Jackie did. Chase took a slight detour to text someone on his phone shortly after Alt mentioned the black-masked magician. But he listened after that.

“Here, we are, home sweet home,” Chase said, pulling open the door. “After you, new dude.”

Alt ducked inside, taking in the spacious living room with an archway leading to what looked like a dining room, and an open hallway ending in a flight of stairs. It looked friendly enough. But instinctively, his eyes darted about, taking in the entrances and the windows. There was a man sitting in one of the armchairs, wearing a red vest and a derby hat, face hidden behind a book. Alt glared at him. He seemed familiar.

“Hey, Jameson?” Jackie said, entering the house after Alt. “Put the book down, buddy. I think you should meet someone.”

The man put the book down, and Alt gasped. He looked like Dr. J. What was the deal with the lookalikes?! For his part, this Jameson looked just as shocked. But he smiled, and gave a gentle wave. {Hello, there.}

Alt shrieked, backing up quickly and running into the now-closed door. He scrambled for the doorknob. He couldn’t—not this again—

“Alt! What’s wrong?” Chase waved his hand in front of Alt’s panicked face. “What happened?”

“He’s in my head!” Alt cried. “I can’t—I c-can’t—”

“Whoa, dude, it’s fine!” Jackie placed a reassuring hand on Alt’s shoulder. “Jameson can’t talk, but he can project—you know, in a telepathic sense. He’s just saying hi.”

Jameson had closed his book and stood up by this point. He walked over to the coffee table and grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. He flipped through it until he found a blank page, and started writing.

“Look, I promise you it’s fine,” Chase said to Alt, his tone reassuring. “If he could mess about in there, he would’ve done it by now.”

“How do you know he hasn’t?!” Alt demanded.

Chase hesitated. “I guess we don’t. But that’s what trust is.” He paused, and looked back over to Jameson. “You sure?” he asked. Jameson nodded.

“What’s happening?!” The question came out sounding more panicked than he would’ve liked.

“It’s okay, Alt,” Jackie said. “Jameson just told us that since you’re uncomfortable with the whole...mind situation, then he won’t project to you. That’s what the paper is for.”

Jameson smiled again, a bit smaller this time. He held up the paper for Alt to see. Unfortunately, he was still across the room. Alt’s eyes narrowed. He glitched closer, causing Jameson to jump, and grabbed the pad straight out of his hands, reading what he’d written. I’m terribly sorry. If I’d known how you felt about it, I never would have tried in the first place.

Alt glared at Jameson. “Fine. Fucking fine, whatever.” He shoved the paper back at him, then glitched onto the couch, ending up curled into the side.

Jameson blinked, looking back and forth between Alt and Jackie and Chase. “It’s a long story,” Jackie sighed. “We should wait until everyone’s home to explain it.”

“Lemme guess,” Alt piped up. “You have another housemate who’s German? Goes by the nickname Schneep?”

“Yeah, actually,” Chase said, visibly surprised. “That’s the doc. He usually works late at the clinic. How did you know?”

Alt laughed. “Well, sounds like I didn’t know everything. Never would’ve pictured Schneep as the doctor. God, this is—this is fucked, dude.” He shivered. “I—I don’t know what’s going on. Everything is switched around and I don’t...I don’t know why.”

“I actually have a theory,” Jackie said, flopping down on the opposite end of the sofa than Alt. “But I should probably wait until at least Schneep is home.”

“What makes you think I am not already?”

Alt jumped at the sound, twisting in his spot to see a version of Schneep, wearing a white coat that was torn at the cuffs over a blue sweater, leaning against the arch to the dining room. There was a steaming coffee mug in one hand, and his blue eyes were rather intense through the pair of glasses. Alt just stared at him. He couldn’t have heard Jackie, could he?

“When did you get home?” Jackie asked. “I expected you to be—be working for some time now.”

“It was a slow day.” Schneep walked over and plopped into the other armchair. Jameson also sat, reclaiming his seat and leaving Chase the only one standing. “I decided to come home early. And it seems I was a good idea, because I would have missed that.” Schneep took a sip of the coffee, staring at Alt over the top of the rim. “You are not Anti. But I saw what you did, and that is what Anti does. I wonder why this could be.”

“Uh...I don’t know,” Alt said, honestly bewildered at this point by all the differences, yet all the similarities as well.

“Alright, time for my theory,” Jackie said, sitting up straight. “I think you’re from another dimension. A parallel universe.”

Everyone seemed to sharpen at that. “That’s possible?” Chase asked. “I thought that was science fiction.”

“So did I!” Jackie said excitedly. “But I can’t think of anything else. Alt seems to know who we are, but things are different, and he has the same powers as Anti but is also clearly not the same—even that Magnif-who cares could be explained. He kinda sounded like a different version of Marvin.”

“Marvin?” Alt asked.

“He’s...one of the housemates,” Chase admitted. “But look! He’s not the same as your version. He’s a bit of a bitch sometimes, but not, like, evil.”

Alt frowned. He hadn’t stuck around to see much beyond the first confrontation between the magicians, but that didn’t seem right. But...as he thought back on those memories, he started to wonder if he was wrong. The images were spiraling in front of his vision, and...maybe he’d been {wrong}? Maybe he’d been wrong. This Marvin dude was fighting Magnificent, after all. “Fine, whatever,” Alt grumbled, slumping further into the couch. “Just don’t make me look at his ugly face.”

“I doubt you’ll ever even see it,” Chase chuckled. “First of all, never takes that mask off, he’s a bit sensitive about it. Second of all, he’s pretty much a hermit, goes back and forth between the basement and his room and only comes out for food. Pretty easy to avoid the guy.”

Alt rolled his eyes. “Didn’t you guys say you had another one beside him?”

“Jack,” Jackie explained. “He’s asleep right now. Plays video games for a living on YouTube. Also kinda reclusive, doubt you’ll see him at all.”

Alt checked his bandanna, it had started to slip and needed readjusting. He didn’t like how these guys were talking like he’d already moved in. He was just staying with them for a little while, that was all. Just long enough to figure out what the deal with Anti was, how to get him off his trail, and how to get home. That was it. {But who knows how long that would take?} Could be a while...

“Do you guys...have an extra bedroom?” he asked. “I’m...kind of tired.” It was all of a sudden, too. The long night of adrenaline must’ve been wearing on him.

“You can use mine,” Chase offered. “I can crash on the couch while you’re staying.”

“Oh. Uh, thanks, man.”

“No problem, dude,” Chase gave a thumbs-up, accompanied by a cheesy grin. Alt couldn’t help but smile at that, not that they could see it under the bandanna. Guess some things were universal constants.

“Oh, before you go upstairs,” Schneep said. “Jameson is wondering if there are any others from your universe who came over, if that is indeed what happened. And I am as well, frankly.”

Alt thought back on it. “I don’t think so. Other than”—he made a face while simultaneously shuddering—”Magnificent. I haven’t been able to find any if they did come through. And...I think the two of us were the only ones in range? So...no, the answer’s no.”

Chase had no idea where he was, or how he’d gotten here. One moment, he and the others had been looking for Alt, after that stupid magician had gone after him again. They’d been getting close, he was sure of it, but then the next moment there had been a noise and a rush of colored light, and Chase had found himself standing in a park, completely alone. 

This wasn’t the same city. He’d been patrolling it for years, he knew his city, and this wasn’t it. But the question was, where was he then? And where were the others?

After a while of wandering, he came across a drug store. It looked abandoned, or more accurately that surreal sort of empty that only came late at night when the white lights of the store showed off how few people there actually were. There was only one car in the parking lot, an old minivan. A woman with shoulder-length blonde curls was walking towards it, clutching a white paper bag in one hand and her keys in the other. Chase was hesitant to approach her, since it could easily come off the wrong way, but after a moment of silent thought, he decided it would be for the best. He’d just make sure to keep his distance.

He approached her slowly, staying a few feet away when he called out, “Excuse me?”

The woman dropped her paper bag in shock, two bottles of over-the-counter medicine falling out. She spun around, eyes wide. “Chase?!”

Chase gaped in turn. “Stacy?” He hadn’t recognized her. She looked...different. In tons of minute ways, but what he noticed was what he called the “tired parent look.” He’d seen it enough on Jackie, but never Stacy. She didn’t have kids, that’s why Jackie asked her to babysit for him. Did she? “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize it was you.”

Stacy didn’t say anything, just took a few steps toward her car. She adjusted her grip on her keys while also fumbling about with the clasp of her purse. She seemed...on edge. Scared, even. “Uh...” Chase glanced around. The parking lot was as empty as before. He pulled off his mask, thinking maybe that was the problem. “You okay there?”

“Fine!” Stacy squeaked. She’d managed to open the purse, and was now looking for something inside without taking her eyes away from Chase. “I was just—ah, Trev got sick and we were out of cold medicine, so I went to pick some up and I left them with a sitter—told the sitter to expect me back in twenty minutes, it’s already been twelve, I think—”

He had no idea what she was talking about. But he was picking up that she was...scared of him? Of him? That couldn’t be possible. Something must’ve been up. “Well, you dropped the bag of medicine,” he pointed out helpfully. “Here, I can help you pick it up—”

“No!” The word was more like an instinctive shriek. Stacy had pulled her phone out of her purse at this point. “I mean, thank you but I’m fine, I’m good, you don’t need to come any closer.”

“Stacy, is something wrong?” Chase asked, eyes lined with worry. “You’re acting strange.”

“No, I’m not! You—you—you know that.” There was a small flash from her phone’s camera, and Stacy immediately paled. “I-I-I-I didn’t mean to take a picture. You know how this works, new camera so confusing!” She laughed nervously. Her thumb was moving across the screen, tapping in very specific places.

“Stacy, if you’re in trouble, you know I can help you out.” Chase was starting to get desperate at this point. There was no way he could be misinterpreting this. She was scared. Of him. All he could think of was that maybe being seen with him was a risk of some sort. But what could she have gotten mixed up with for that to be a problem?

“I highly doubt that, Chase.” She made eye contact with him, and Chase realized she had been vaguely watching his hands the whole time. Her thumb had stopped. “Not when you know what the trouble is.”

“When I know what—?”

The question was cut off when Stacy suddenly dropped her phone with a small gasp. It landed screen-up on the asphalt of the parking lot. The phone was showing nothing but blank static. And then, with a fizz and a hiss, the static spread out from the phone, until it was a solid mass on the pavement. Chase gaped at it. The mass glitched, and morphed, and suddenly in a blink there was a man standing in front of Chase, dressed in dark colors except for the green scarf around his neck and the white eye-patch covering his right eye.

He looked familiar. But...it couldn’t be. “Alt?” Chase asked hesitantly.

The man looked at him and shook his head. “Not the one you know.” He turned to Stacy. “This is going to take some explaining, but basically this guy’s safe.”

“I’m safe?!” Chase repeated, bewildered. “Alt, what’s happening?”

“You shouldn’t c̛all̛ ̀me̷ ̶that ,” the other Alt said, his voice gaining an electronic filter. “It’ll probably just confuse you.”

Chase folded his arms. “I can’t possibly be more confused than I am right now.”

Stacy looked at the other Alt. “Anti? I’m...actually with him on that.”

Chase blinked. “An-Anti?” he repeated.

“My name,” the other Alt—Anti—confirmed. “The real name of your Alt, too, though I got the impression it wasn’t something he gave away easily—and now you’re staring at nothing like you’re having an existential crisis, great.”

It couldn’t be possible, could it? Alt couldn’t have been hiding that this entire time, right? Why? Chase turned around and put his head in his hands as he took this new fact in.

“Hey!” Anti pixillated into existence in front of him, glaring. “Crises later! We got more important shit to worry about!”

Stacy sighed. “He always does this.”

“Because it’s true! God, how can you get a̢n̶yt͏hin͝g̛ done like this?!” Anti grumbled indistinctively for a few more seconds, then fixed Chase with his best dead-eyed stare. It worked; Chase immediately stiffened. “Look, my fr—acquain—compan—fuck, I don’t know how we relate to each other, but their name is Sam and they told me you, and this Alt I met earlier, are from a parallel universe.”

Chase had to laugh at that.

“What are you...? I'͝m seŗi̴òus, Vlog-Man.”

“I know, I know you are, but...” Chase forced himself to stop “It’s just...god, that sounds so absurd. My life has truly become a comic book.”

“Well, you got the outfit for it, hero-type,” Anti said, giving Chase a once-over. “I hope you’re at least better than the one we have now.”

Stacy shuddered at that, just straightening up from where she’d bent over to pick up the bag she’d dropped. “Anti...if-if he’s alright, then I didn’t need to text you?”

“Not really. But it’s good practice for if the other one shows up.”

Chase looked between them, head turning rapidly. “Okay, so lemme get this straight. I am in...an alternate dimension. Alt is also here. You are not the Stacy I know, and you’re not...Alt. I’m assuming there’s another me here? Is that what got you so on edge, am I, like, a supervillain here?” He asked the last question with a crooked grin, but it slid off his face when Anti and Stacy still looked dead serious.

“Not exactly a supervillain, but not a shining example of a good person, either,” Anti drawled.

“Oh.” Chase fell silent for a moment, then started up again with what he thought was the most important topic. “You said you saw Alt? Was he okay?”

“He was,” Anti said grimly. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Alt’s gotten himself into some real serious shit. He’s in danger.”

The five of them sat around the kitchen table. Jack was still asleep, and would be for a while, and this Alt person had just stopped moving around upstairs. “So, to get to the point of this,” Jackie opened up the meeting. “What’re we going to do about him?”

Marvin scowled, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t fucking know. The other me was an asshole, you think this other him is one too?”

“Actually I think he’s the good twin,” Chase laughed.

“I do not think he functions on the same rules,” Schneep said, staring at the ceiling like he could see through it to where Alt was sleeping. “For one thing, I do not think he needs to take the naptimes. And I thought that he was very immune to whatever it is Jamie does.”

{He is,} Jameson confirms. {Or at least, his mind is a beast to get through, walls made of titanium. This one, however...most unusual. His mind is like an open door, but surrounded by traps. Easy to get into, provided you don’t set any of them off.}

“You didn’t seem to have much trouble,” Marvin said, a smile ghosting around his lips.

{Well, I have a lot of practice,} Jameson replied with the same phantom smile. {And it seems someone left the door open in the first place.}

“Y’know, we still haven’t answered Jackie’s original question,” Chase said. “What are we going to do with him?”

Schneep shrugged. “Well, I was thinking that since last time we did not learn the hows and whys of the glitching, we could try again?”

“Henrik...” Jackie warned. “You know that Alt can probably die, right? Not like him.”

“I know, I know,” Schneep sighed. “But I think it would be worth a try.”

“I’m just gonna say that I’m still pissed you didn’t share like you were supposed to,” Marvin muttered.

“I was going to! It was a two-week arrangement! Is not my fault it started to fall apart and got out.”

“We’re not going to go full operating-room-magic-basement on Alt,” Chase said firmly. “Not when there’s a chance he could just tell us.”

{I agree with Chase,} Jameson said. {We will not resort to that until we have no other way.}

Jackie sighed. “Well, that’s better than nothing, I guess. And we’re not going to kill him.”

The others all murmured agreements. The real question was, why would they get rid of their one possible chance to figure out how Anti worked? Why would they pass up an opportunity to get rid of him forever?

In the corner of the dining room, a hidden camera buzzed, the sound too quiet for the human ear. Usually it didn’t do that. But a spark of dark green electricity had just invaded its systems, and it was reacting badly.

At least three from the parallel universe had made it over. But where had the third gone? And more importantly, were there any more? Only time would tell.

[yeonchi]

Thinking about the future of EDGN

I’ve never asked a lot out of my fans over the years, but to some of my close fans (you know who you are), I’d really appreciate some helpful advice because this is an important decision I’m making that will affect both you, the fans, and myself.

To cut a long story short for a tl;dr, I no longer enjoy posting about the voice languages in localised Japanese games because of some recent events and realisations and I want to retire from the English Dubbed Game News page altogether.

It’s been about five years since I started all this with the Koei Warriors Rant Series and since then, everything I’ve done that’s related to English dub has brought me nothing but hate. I know it’s a bit of an exaggeration and some of my close fans may have something to say to the contrary, but I’ve been feeling quite negative lately and because of that, I think it’s a brutally honest summary.

After ending the Dub Logistics series, I thought the one thing I could do to repay my fans for their support over the years was to continue posting on EDGN. Personally, I think I’ve done enough already and also, as I said in a post back in August, I’ve been having doubts about the future of the page and what I want to do with it given my current interests. There are several factors that led to me having these doubts, which I’ll be outlining after the break. (I can’t even put horizontal lines in my posts with the rich text editor now, thanks Tumblr)

1. I was never interested in any game outside of the Koei Warriors series or any game I played in the past (eg. Dissidia Final Fantasy).

This really shouldn’t be a surprise to my fans because in the past, I’ve rarely posted anything outside of the series I was interested in, including the aforementioned series. If I came across something by chance and liked it, then I would do some investigation into it, but these days, the spark just doesn’t want to light up anymore.

I’ve never really taken the chance to buy new games because my family doesn’t believe in buying things that aren’t important and as such, I took that mantra to heart. While I never brought a PS3, I did get a Nintendo Wii, but I traded it in later for a Wii U and not a PS4, which I still regret to this day. I pirated my PSP, DS and PC games (let’s face it, who doesn’t) and played with emulators on my computer. I only got a Steam account to play Team Fortress 2 (laggy though it was on my shitty computer) and I never brought anything from it, which made it difficult for me to add friends on there (not that they really cared in the end).

By extension, this applies to anime as well, which is the reason why I never post anything outside of the same few animes on the Waifu Network or on my Facebook pages. My belief on sexism in anime has also contributed to this disinterest; the only reason why I’m still posting the same few animes is because I’m still somewhat interested in them and I’m grateful for how they inspired some personal projects of mine.

2. Various factors have led me to lose interest in video games, including the Koei Warriors Series.

The reason why I started my dub crusade in the first place was because of Warriors Orochi 3 (Ultimate) and Samurai Warriors 4 not being dubbed. The reason why I decided to jump ship was because of Dynasty Warriors 9 being dubbed, just not with the same cast I had grown to love. I know that there were extenuating circumstances for the latter, but given everything that happened between that time, my hope that the old English voice cast (since Dynasty Warriors 4-6/Warriors Orochi 1-2) would return to voice that game (and other future games) was gone.

In addition to the previous factor, I started to find myself with more commitments than I had in past years, along with some different interests that I picked up along the way. At first, I didn’t feel like playing games because of my commitments, but eventually, it got to the point where I didn’t want to play most video games again because of the disappointment I’ve experienced from Koei Tecmo. Learning about all the things that AAA gaming companies do to reduce expenditure and increase revenue turned me off from video games as well. In my opinion, it wasn’t so much a boycott (per se) than it was a loss of interest.

3. The original group of people who inspired me to start writing these rants are now gone.

I know I’ve had other fans since the start of all this, but the original group had a special place in all this because of it. There were four people in the original group, who I met on Koei’s original Facebook page, and they were as follows:

The first one did comment on my older stuff, but he left quite early, possibly since DW8E’s release. I saw that he deactivated his account some time in 2017.

The second one had a YouTube channel and he was an admin on one of my Facebook pages for some time, but then he left after a period of inactivity without any explanation.

The third one was the more prominent because of his LGBT status and mental health issues. In the middle of 2015, he announced to everyone that he was deactivating his Facebook account because it was a burden on his mental health. He reactivated his account some time later, but he deactivated it again in September 2017 and hasn’t come back since. During that time, I saw a post from him stating that he was going to take a lot of pills and commit suicide. I reported it to Facebook in the hope that it might encourage him to find some help, even though I remember him stating that nothing works for him anymore. When I noticed that he hadn’t come back to Facebook months after he deactivated his account the second time, I assumed the worst.

The fourth one, also known as the family man or “the last one standing”, deactivated his account in June this year. We never really talked much, but as I said in this post, I’m still grateful to him for helping me find the new weapon and Musou information in DW8E when the Koei Wiki didn’t have it yet (because the game was just released at the time).

4. The impact of the feud’s aftermath still haunts me to this day.

When I agreed to end the feud on a mutual understanding a couple of years back, I promised myself that I would quickly move on from the troll behind it and not keep reminding myself of everything that happened. However, I’m a person that’s prone to anxiety when I think of worst-case-scenarios and at times, I found myself thinking about what would have happened had my Facebook account been deleted just because a troll couldn’t take the L when he got owned by someone half his age (compare that to Leafy who made terrible criticisms of people who are older than him, then claimed that he can hide behind the fact that he is younger than them). Him coming back out of nowhere earlier this year didn’t do any favours for anyone either. Regardless of that, I’ve got my bottom ground and I’ll continue to live on it regardless of what anyone else thinks of me.

I’d like to take a moment to digress and talk about cancel culture and political censorship. Because both parties in the feud weren’t exactly that popular (we had our own little fanbases, but that’s it), me and the other party “cancelling” each other (admittedly) didn’t seem to have as much an effect as we had hoped. Other factors that contributed to this could be that cancel culture (an extension to call-out culture) wasn’t that much of a thing two years ago and when the other party tried to cancel me, he made no attempt to spread the word to his fans. It was likely that he was trying to show mercy, but that doesn’t explain why he kept reporting my posts relating to him and current events in Hong Kong, knowing that I would eventually get banned if I didn’t call him out on it. I was as much a victim than I admittedly was an offender of cancel culture.

Following the feud, I’ve become wary of social media censorship because I experienced what it was like for someone to get petty and get people deplatformed by mass reporting them. Other pages like meme pages have suffered the same fate in the past (mostly because people take certain jokes too seriously), but despite my hopes, it didn’t seem like Facebook was going to do anything about the petty mass-reporting of those pages. Recently, however, I’ve been seeing news on tech companies being grilled over the censorship of conservatives and President Trump criticising them for the same thing. I’m not saying that I’m supporting Trump backing the pages that are being censored (conservative, far-right, alt-right, you name it), but I hope that this can hopefully extend to random meme pages being reported for petty reasons.

5. Ever since I decided to stop being toxic, I found myself conflicted when confronted with more toxic comments to the point that I’ve started to become paranoid over negative criticism.

When I decided to change the #NoDubNoBuy page to EDGN, I hoped that the hate towards my page would be reduced somewhat, but I never expected that it would be gone entirely. Since then, three people have made negative comments on the page; one was a girl who saw one of my posts being shared on a private group, misunderstood the (new) purpose of the page and despite her attitude, was still somewhat respectful, one was a Europoor dub hater from Spain (from what I’ve seen and learnt, Europeans tend to be sub fans and/or dub haters because of their English comprehension and ability to read subtitles) and one was an Americuck soyboy dub hater who pointed out about “crybaby fans” (”fans” as in the gatekeeping term “fake fans”, never mind my theory that people, especially men, who call other people, especially other men, “crybabies” are actually spreading toxic masculinity) who liked stuff to be Americanised but didn’t acknowledge the Japanese origins.

I’m gonna go off on a tangent and do a bit of an ad-homimem here (but it’s alright because I’m going to rebut his point next) and point out that I called the Americuck a soyboy because he had quite a long beard, but to be honest, if I called everyone who had beards “soyboys”, that would make people like Count Dankula and Sargon of Akkad “soyboys” as well, so it’d be a pretty slippery slope if I didn’t clarify who I was talking about.

Now, I’m going to move back on another tangent and rebut the soyboy’s point, because I think this is a pretty important point to address. No one is saying outright that they want Japanese games to be Americanised in terms of cultural references (if 4Kids has taught us anything). Saying that Americanisation is responsible for bad dubbing is a bit like blaming video games for causing violence. If someone says that they would like a game to be dubbed into English in localisation, then it is presumed that they want the dialogue to be dubbed in addition to the text being translated (or “dublated”). Any cultural changes made to the game or the dialogue are entirely the responsibility of those who made those changes, like the gaming companies who censor stuff for Western audiences, so if you’re complaining about a Japanese game being too “Americanised”, don’t take it out on dub fans because chances are that they didn’t want the dub to be too “Americanised” either.

Completing the square and going back to the original tangent, I didn’t post any of their comments to the dub hater comments album because I had deleted it after the feud in the hope that I wouldn’t be as toxic as I had been before. You can probably already see how toxic I would probably be if the above responses were posted on the page and directed back at them, which would mean that I’m not upholding myself to the standards I wanted to follow.

6. I’m becoming more and more concerned about current events to worry about things like English dubbing in video games.

If you’re someone who has unironically thought that I was making a big deal over something you thought was minor, then this is going to sound very ironic for you. From all these years of learning and research, I’ve attained an expansive world view and while I have made jokes about current events in the past to lighten the mood or express my anger, deep down I’m actually concerned about these things, particularly in regards to Hong Kong during this politically sensitive time.

For some reason, my desire to make posts has decreased because in addition to the above factors, I’ve been getting more and more worried about current affairs. Granted, the point of things like anime and video games and the Internet is to provide an escape from reality, but in the end, I guess that you have to face it whether you like it or not.

Making the decision to stop posting on EDGN hasn’t been an easy one, but all the factors I described above have gradually made it easier. Like the Undub page did, I had considered changing the focus of my page to merely report on the voice languages of games without saying whether we approve or reject it because it isn’t dubbed in English/Japanese; that is, we report on them with an unbiased viewpoint. Not adding excessively biased pro-dub comments on our posts has made it more neutral, but in the end, it didn’t stop the dub hater cucks. I should point out that one of the reasons why I wanted to change the #NoDubNoBuy page to EDGN was so that we could reduce the amount of hate we were getting.

What was the original goal of me starting this dub crusade? If you have read my rants in the past, then you will have picked up my hopes that Japanese games would be localised to the West with full Japanese and English dubbing and that if game companies couldn’t achieve that, then they should apologise and explain why. Would I say that I achieved or failed to achieve this goal? Not really, because over the years, I learnt a lot about the video game and voiceover industries and gradually realised that it’s not as straightforward as I had initially hoped. To be honest, it was kind of stupid of me to hope that gaming companies would say anything straightforward about this, but on the other hand, I learnt that gaming companies are like politicians as well; they say the things they want to say and not the things people want to hear.

To my fans, particularly my close fans, feel free to send me your opinions about my decision, however if you’re trying to change my mind, then I’m not sure if it can be changed so easily. If you think that I haven’t lived up to what you expect from me, then I’m sorry, but in the end, I have to think of myself as well.

If I could say one thing to the dub fanbase, I want to ask why no one else has ever tried to do something like EDGN. You have your groups and pages on social media and yet, it had to take two people pissed off with the dubbing direction of gaming companies to do it. Granted, that was how the Undub page started, with the lack of Japanese voices in localised games, and yet they didn’t get as much hate as my page did.

If there is anyone out there who wants to follow in my footsteps and make a page like EDGN, let me be the first to give you my blessing because I’m not going to be like the Undub page when they discovered us and point fingers for copying their posts when in the end, games are the same to everyone. While transparency regarding voice languages has increased over the years, there was never a place where dub fans could know about what games were dubbed in English. You don’t have to be like me and make a series of rants about why some games aren’t dubbed, because I’ve already done it, but instead, I suggest going the unbiased route as I stated earlier. Of course, you don’t have to follow my advice - it’s your page, after all.

My plan is to retire from EDGN at the end of the year. I have 12 more games in the backlog, all with English voices, and I’m hoping to post them all on the page before then. I probably won’t remove myself as an admin (because I think there’ll be some petty, obsessed cuck who’ll dig out my posts and make a rant series on me or something), but I’ll probably have it so that I can forget about the page as time goes on.

With this, my dub crusade has come to an end. Once again, to the fans, I’m sorry and I thank you for your support. As always, it is your choice as to whether you wish to continue following me, whether on Facebook or Tumblr, after my retirement.

[itneedsaying]

a complete gif tutorial

hi! so i was requested by @popalice007 to make a tutorial on how to make gifs and i am very happy to oblige! this will cover pretty much everything, from capturing frames to saving the final product. this is just how i personally do it, and there are loads of other ways to gif, and i recommend looking at other gifmakers’ tutorials to get a more well rounded view on how to gif. please continue reading if you are interested, and please like/reblog if you find it useful!

disclaimer this is going to get really wordy as i try to explain where to find things and how to do them and my thought process behind why i do them, but please send me a message/ask if something needs clarified!

also some of the pictures can be viewed in full size by clicking on them!

part 1: required materials and other tips

just another heads up, i have a pc, and while i believe most of this should be the same whether you have a mac or a pc, i could be very wrong as i’m not a computer expert and have never really used anything besides windows.

so the two programs i use are kmplayer and adobe photoshop cs5 portable. kmplayer can be downloaded for free here. i have the 32 bit version for windows, so that is what i’m going to be providing the instructions for, since the 64 bit version seems to be a little different. photoshop is pretty expensive, but thepiratebay has several torrents for it, and other downloads and torrents for it do exist. i downloaded mine quite awhile ago so i don’t remember exactly where and how i did it so it might require some researching. i would just double check the comments and instructions to make sure the download will work. there are also dedicated photoshop tumblrs that will probably have links to downloads.

if you are giffing a scene from a tv show, movie, video, etc, you also need to have the video saved somewhere on your computer/flashdrive/whatever. hd-source is a good source for tv shows, and there are tons of other sources. i download a lot from thepiratebay using a program called utorrent (i just use the free version) but beware because since you are downloading copyrighted materials it isnt legal, and while i have never had a problem, i have heard of people getting warning letters from their internet providers. you can also download youtube videos and videos from other places and there are lots of other ways to get videos that i won’t cover.

no matter where you get your video, you want it to be pretty high quality, since the higher quality the video is, the clearer and nicer the gif will turn out to be. most of the time you want 720p if you can get it. 1080p is nice and if you can get your hands on it without the video size being enormous you can certainly utilize it, but it isn’t a necessity and usually i don’t bother. anything lower than 480p can get to looking pretty grainy especially if you are doing full size 540 px gifs, but if you are giffing something from a convention panel video taken by a phone, for example, you don’t really have an option.

additionally, if you are giffing dialogue, find a script online somewhere or find subtitles. you can transcribe it yourself if you want, but if a character is mumbling or has an accent or something i like to be sure of what they are saying.

and finally, have some patience! a lot of the popular gifmakers have been doing this for years and have streamlined their process so it doesn’t take hours, but as a beginner it takes time to get everything right,so it is totally normal if you get to feeling frustrated.

part 2: capturing the frames

first you will want to have an idea of what scene you would like to gif. before i get started i create a new folder where i want the captured frames to go, and i name it something memorable so i can find it again later. kmplayer does also automatically create a folder called capture that you can use if you want. if you are doing a gifset like this, i would have 8 different folders and gave each of those gifs/scenes their own folders. 

however, the example i’m going to be using throughout this tutorial is going to be a dialogue scene, specifically this one here, just because they can get a little more complicated imo (plus i want to show how i use the text tool etc). if i’m giffing a scene where characters are talking, even if the scene is a long one with back and forth dialogue, i usually like to cap it all at once and put it in the same folder, and then i separate it out later in photoshop. you can also plan ahead and put all the different bits in different folders, thats up to you and your personal preference.

next i open up kmplayer. kmplayer likes to update pretty regularly and will let you know when you open it if it wants to update. it doesn’t usually hurt to ignore it if you are in a rush, but i usually let it do its thing and make sure i don’t also download whatever browser service, etc. it also wants to install. sometimes ads show up on the right side, you can close them by hitting the little arrow between the ads and the video screen

to open the video, click on “kmplayer” in the upper left hand corner and then click on “open files”. search for your video file and double click it to open it

kmplayer will then open the video, and if its 720p often i have to make the window smaller because it fill up the entire screen and i need to be able to see other windows besides the video. if i remember correctly when you first download kmplayer it isnt automatically set to keep the aspect ratio the same, so if you need to, hit the f2 key to open the preferences or click the lightning bolt on top next to kmplayer, and then click on preferences. under general and then screen on the sidebar, and then under general again i have my settings like so, and hopefully that resolves that issue if you have it. you might have to reopen the video again for that to kick in but i’m not positive. if it still doesn’t work try to google it. i’ve had the problem a couple times and the answer is out there but i’m no tech pro.

anyway, i then locate the beginning of the scene that i want to gif. you can click around on the bottom along the progress bar, as well as using alt+left or right to jump forward and back a minute, the left or right arrow key to jump 5 seconds, or the f key to go forward a single frame. every frame counts, and it is preferable to have too many frames and have to delete them later than to find out your gif will only be 10 frames long because you started capping in the middle of the scene, or because you stopped capping too early. i typically will watch the clip a few times so that i have a set idea of where i want to start and stop.

once you are paused at the beginning of the scene you want to gif, press ctrl+g to open kmplayer’s frame extraction window. click on the folder icon so that you can locate that empty folder you had made earlier. this is where kmplayer will save the screencaps. i then set my settings to png, continuously, original size, and every frame, like so

now we are ready to start capturing! click start on the frame extraction window, and then click back over to the video (this is why i make the video window smaller, so that i can see the video and the frame extraction window at the same time). once i’m back on the window, i hold down and/or tap the f key. kmplayer will capture the frames as you go along. the audio plays along with it albeit choppily which is why i watch the clip several times beforehand, because it can be hard to follow and is disorienting. you can also click the play and pause button, but, again, the audio tends to play at a different rate and it gets confusing, so for me frame by frame is the way to go. keep tapping f until you get to end of the scene/wherever you want to stop. i keep the folder where the caps go open usually so if i mess up or change my mind on where to start/end, i can delete the whole folder and create a new empty one to start over again. this process takes practice and is often dependent on what you are trying to gif and its not a big deal if you have to try it a couple times to get it right.

once you have reached the end of the scene, click back over to the frame extraction window and click stop. if you are giffing multiple scenes from the same video you can click the folder icon and select a different folder to save frames into and then repeat the process of finding the scene and capping it, or if you want to cap from a different video, you can open a new video and cap from there. then if you are satisfied and have all your caps, you are free to exit out of kmplayer. 

part 3: making the gif

now it is time to actually make the gif! go ahead and open photoshop, and if it is your first time you can play around and familiarize yourself with where things are. basic gifs don’t require a lot of the tools that photoshop has, and you can customize some as to what windows and panels are open. below is what my workspace typically looks like so that i can get to certain things quicker, but i will explain as i go along where the controls normally are found in the toolbar. also, if you hover over a control photoshop will tell you what it is and what it does.

to open the frames, go to file, then scripts, then load multiple dicom files. then find your folder of caps, select it, and then click OK to open

be aware that depending on the number of frames in that file and the size of the images it sometimes can take awhile to fully load. once they are loaded, you should be able to see all those screencaps as layers on the right hand side of the screen. if not, go to the top where it says windows and click on layers. i frequently accidentally cap a couple extra frames where the scene shifts and i go ahead and delete those layers by highlighting them (use the shift or ctrl key to highlight several at a time) and then clicking on the trashcan at the bottom of the layers sidepanel.

next we are going to turn these layers into gif frames! i have combined this step into an action that i use to automatically do this for me to save time since i gif on a semi regular basis, but the steps are as follows.

first, make sure the animation bar is open. if it is not then go up to window and click animation, and then it should open at the bottom of the screen. you also have to be in frame animation mode. on the upper right hand corner of that panel is an icon with four lines and and an arrow. click on that and then click on  convert to frame animation. then in the same menu click make frames from layers.

this can also sometimes take some time if there are a lot of caps but when its done loading there will be frames in the animation bar. in the animation menu click select all frames. then, underneath any of the frames, there will be an arrow beside where it says 0 sec. click it and change the frame delay. what you set it to can be up to personal preference. i typically set mine to 0.07 or 0.08 which seems a bit slow, but i find when i convert the gif to a smart object (we’ll get to that) that seems to speed it up a little so i’ve just stuck with it. feel free to change the delay if you find later that that is too slow for your taste. also in lower left corner of the animation bar is where you set how many times the gif loops. change it from once to forever. the controls to play the gif are also below the frames.

since i gif a scene like this all in one big long take, it is now time to separate it into separate gifs if need be. if you are making a gifset like this you can skip this part because you most likely capped frames from different scenes and gave them their own folders, so they shouldnt need separating. 

sometimes you have to get creative on how you split apart the scene, and there arent really any hard and fast rules. here are some things i like to keep in mind:

the camera angles - this is the most important for me. if the camera goes from showing one character to another, or from one angle to another, i separate those into separate gifs pretty much no matter what.

the length of the gifs - this is dependent on the size you are going to crop to, how much movement the scene has, how much color, etc.,  but i typically try not to go over 80-100 frames in a 265px width gif. they can be trimmed down later, but if it takes 200 frames for the camera to switch to the other character, don’t make that one gif

the dialogue - if there is a natural break in the dialogue, that is a good place to end a gif. you don’t need 50 frames of no one speaking if you are doing a gifset with dialogue.

how many gifs you are making/size - at some point you have to decide how wide your gifs will be and how many of them. if your gifs will be 268 px wide (2 columns of gifs) then you have to have an even number of gifs, and you will need to separate to account for that

going along with the first tip, i’m going to separate the frames by camera changes. i do this first so that way when i crop the gifs, i get things centered how i like. 

you can see here by looking at the thumbnails of the layers what i mean by the camera changing angles.

first, press ctrl+n to open a new blank image. if the preset doesn’t say dicom files, click on that menu and click dicom files, that way the new image will be the same size as the original. hit ok.

next, highlight the layers in the original that are going to be the new gif. hold shift while clicking the first and last layer that you want to be in the new gif to do that.  click on them, hold, and drag them over to the new document. they will probably be off center and/or invisible. if the layers are invisible click an empty box next to one of the layers so that an eye appears and the layer shows up. then click the move tool and move the layers around til the fill the document correctly. be sure not to stretch/transform the layers by dragging on the edges and corners. as long as all the layers are still highlighted they should all move at once.

next, scroll to the bottom of the layers and delete the blank layer. then repeat the steps to make frames and set the time delay and there is your new gif!

the layers for that new gif are still in the original document, so go ahead and hit the trashcan to delete them, as well as the now blank frames. continue opening new documents and splitting up the scene until you have a new gif for every camera change. the last gif i leave in the original document. i ended up with 5 camera changes so 6 gifs to start with

at this point i crop each gif. tumblr has a guide for image sizes, and the width is the most important thing to follow there. the height is really up to you. if i’m only doing two or four gifs i tend to make them taller than if i do 8 or 10 gifs just because it looks better to me. i’m going to probably end up with 8 gifs because a couple bits are a little long, so i’m going to go with 268 px as the width and 175px as the height. again, the 268 part is the important part to get right since i’m doing two gifs across. to crop, find the crop tool on the left and set your dimensions at the top. make sure when you enter your dimensions, it is in pixels/px and not inches or centimeters.

click, hold, and drag to stretch to create a shadow for what you cropping. i usually go as big as the edges of the image will allow, and then bring the corners in a tad, since occasionally i get a video that has a black outline and i don’t like to have that in the gif. either hit enter or the checkmark in the upper right corner of the toolbar to crop.

you might have to zoom at this point and resize your window. in the bottom left corner there is a percentage you can change, and now that the gif is cropped it will be small enough that you can set it to 100% if it isn’t that already. continue to crop the remaining gifs to the same size. after this i usually play through each one to make sure i have everything in the frame and roughly centered. if you need to undo, press ctrl+z or ctrl+alt+z and recrop or redo whatever needs redone. there is also a history you can pull up under windows, and you can use that to backtrack multiple steps.

next i figure out if i need to break up any of the gifs because of their length. with a gif this size i can probably get away with having more frames and i can trim them later, but if a gif has more than 100 frames i look and see if i can either trim it down now because there is a lot of frames without talking or movement, or if there is a natural break in dialogue where i can split it into two gifs. there are also times when the gifs are really short that you can sometimes combine with a gif before or after that one. that’s your perogative ultimately and what you think looks good but will fall under the 3mb limit, and takes practice and experience to get an idea if a gif is going to be too large. sometimes i go back and rewatch the scene to figure out where to split things up. i also keep in mind that i want 8 gifs for this scene and right now i have 6, so i need to create 2 more, whether i separate two gifs in half, or separate one gif into three new ones.

ultimately i decided to split my largest gif of 180 frames into 3 gifs because it has quite a bit of dialogue, and the other gifs are either already under 80 frames or can easily have some frames deleted out of it. between using the script, rewatching the scene a few more times, and trying to lipread what the doctor was saying, i decided to separate between frames 65/66 and 120/121 so that way they were roughly the same number of frames. the process to separate them is the same as it was when we had the big original gif. i selected the last frame i wanted to include in the new gif so that way the eye appears next to the corresponding layer in the layer panel, and this is how i know which layers to drag to the new document. for example, in the picture i’m moving frames 1-65 to the new document, so i select frame 65, then find that layer and select all the layers below and including that layer and drag them. then repeat the steps to make the frames, etc.

go ahead and delete the empty frames, as well as any frames on the other gifs you may want to delete to trim them up.

so now we should have all of our gifs laid out! my next step is to sharpen them, and i do this using smart objects, and the steps are as follows. (i also made this into an action.)

first, select all the frames and all the layers in the gif. if you deleted some frames but didn’t delete the corresponding layers, don’t worry about it, it doesn’t matter and doesn’t affect the final product.

next, click on convert to timeline animation. this is in the animation menu where we earlier found convert to frame animation.

then, at the top go to filter and click on convert for smart filters. this creates a smart object and turns all of the frames and layers into just a single layer/object. this allows us to sharpen the whole gif at once instead of having to sharpen each frame one at a time (trust me that takes forever if you don’t have an action or do it this way).

next under filter again, then under sharpen, click on smart sharpen. this brings up a window with a bunch of settings. these are what mine are:

repeat this for every gif. look how much better they look already!

at this point, if you haven’t saved yet, do it now! this is a good time to save and take a break. go to file and then save. the format should be set as photoshop/.psd. i go ahead and rename the files too, for example, dwshades1 and so on. i number them too so i can get the order right when i upload them. with it saved as a psd, you could close out and reopen it later and the layers will all be there.

next is coloring! this is technically optional, but is usually the most fun part of giffing in my opinion, and i tend to find uncolored gifs rather boring and bland. this is where you can do some brightening, color correcting, make gifs black and white, and more! its time to get creative with those adjustments.

as there are so many ways to color things, and whole tutorials dedicated just to coloring, i’m only going to show the basics of where to find the adjustments and some of the different adjustment layers that i use most. my first step always though is to create a group just for the coloring layers. the button to create a group is at the bottom of the layer panel and looks like a folder. the button to the left of that is the one that contains the different adjustments you can make.

the black and white circle contains a list of different adjustments you can make. the two i like to use most are curves and vibrance. curves is really useful to brighten gifs and vibrance obviously adds vibrance. my advice is to just play around with all the settings, and look at coloring tutorials. a lot of gifmakers also have psds that you can download. you can either use them as is to apply to your gifs and credit the maker, or just study what they did and learn from it.

anyway, i went ahead and colored my gifs. here is a before and after look, as well as a list of adjustment layers i added:

in this case the before gif doesn’t look bad, but that isn’t always the case, sometimes they start out super dark and colorless. and i like the tone and colors of the colored gif better (you can see how much i like purples and blues lol). again, all personal preference.

whether you color or not, if you have dialogue in your gifs, the next step is adding it in! if the gif doesn’t have a dialogue or if you don’t want to add text, you can skip this next bit.

first, select the text tool on the left side toolbar, it looks like a T. next i choose my font, font size, and color at the top. here are my settings, the key thing is to make it easy to read.

there are more settings like bold and italics under window and then character. these are my settings.

after these are set, click in roughly the middle of the gif and start typing the text that goes with that gif. i usually start with white for the first person to speak, and then change to yellow for the second person and so on, so that way its clear who is speaking, but that’s up to you. when the text starts to go off the edge of the gif, i hit enter to start the next line until i’m out of text. otherwise photoshop will allow you to type right off the edge of the gif.

a little hard to read, right? that’s why i add stroke, which outlines the text. to do this, make sure the text layer is highlighted, and then click the fx button at the bottom of the layer panel, and then click stroke.

these are the settings i use. usually i only have to change the size from 3 to 1px. hit ok.

so much easier to read! also, double check to make sure that the text layer is above the coloring layers.

next, i want to move the text to where i want. select the move tool on the left, and first move the text layer all the way to the bottom. photoshop has it so that it is kind of magnetized to the edges. i then go back to the character menu and change the baseline shift setting to 5 pt.

however, when you click to a different gif it doesn’t reset back to 0, so manually reset it back to 0 before moving your text layer, then change it to 5 again.

next, to center it on the gif. first select the gif layer, then hold ctrl while you select the text layer. the order is important, if you select the text then the gif, the gif will be moved to center itself around the text. then, with the move tool still selected, click this button on the top tool bar to align horizontal centers. 

great! now save your gif again, and repeat all these steps for the text for every gif that you are adding text to. most of the time i type the text on each gif first, and then move the text that way i’m not switching tools a dozen times, but it really doesn’t matter.

your gifs are officially done! time to save them in a format that you can upload to tumblr. go up to file, and click save for web and devices. these are my settings, but you can play around with some of the ones on the upper right side. however, you want to make sure that it is a gif, and that it is set to loop forever. those are circled. hit save, name your gif however you want, and save it somewhere you can find it later. do this for all of your gifs.

the other thing i circled in the document size. tumblr does not allow you to upload images that are above 3mb. if yours is above this, you have a few options to cut down on the size. changing the settings on this window such as going from diffusion to pattern, or reducing the number of colors can change the size, but if you reduce the number of colors, you lose some quality. you can also change your coloring layers around, because making a bright gif with a lot of colors can increase the size. black and white gifs tend to be smaller.

the option i tend to go for if i want to keep the colors and quality, is to reduce the number of frames you have. its a little trickier to do in timeline mode than it is when the frames are all there, but this is how to do it. if your gifs are all under 3mb, you can skip ahead to uploading.

in the timeline animation bar, there are blue rectangularish sliders you can move at the beginning and end, as well as a triangular one that shows where you are within the gif. decide the new place where you want the gif to start and end, and move the rectangle sliders there, like so. one tick over does not equal a frame, so i use the triangle indicator to figure out how many frames over i’m moving.

then in the animation bar menu, click trim document duration to work area. this will set your gif to begin and end where those sliders were. at this point you can try saving again to see if your gif is below 3mb. if so, then save it! if not, continue to move the sliders and trim until your gif is below the limit.

so now all your gifs are saved and ready to be uploaded! upload them like you would any other photo post. i always save as a draft first so i can make sure they upload right and so i can look them over again to be sure they are looping correctly and have no typos. only then do i close out of photoshop. tag with the appropriate edit tags (for example, dwedit for doctor who) or tag popular blogs for maximum exposure, but be aware that only the first 5 tags count and will appear in the tags. post and you are done! congrats!

[italicwatches]

Laid-Back Camp - Episode 12

Alright, the last hurrah. One last camping trip with these girls. Let’s see how it goes. It’s Laid-Back Camp, episode 12! Here we GO!

-We begin…In a possible future. Rin’s camping ways have continued, and she’s taken more after her grandfather, with a cool motorcycle and sweet boots. She arrives to a campsite to find the others already waiting for her. Chiaki’s become the new Toba-sensei, treating all camping trips as an excuse to get her booze on…Well, I said the others, but Nadeshiko is a ways out still. In this fantasy, Nadeshiko didn’t just keep camping…She now owns a camping gear company, bringing American styled equipment to Japan. Also, Aoi still hasn’t lost her fang…

-And Nadeshiko arrives…On…

-Good.

-Fucking.

-God.

-She’s in the flying tent from the opening.

-So obviously this is our title-card shot. As much as I love all the other shots of the girls all grown up…I mean, come on.

-And this is all Nadeshiko’s idea of what it’ll be like when they’re all grown up. Which explains a lot. And Rin’s gotten back with stuff! Yayyyyy.

-Opening! So here’s the magic question for you: In Nadeshiko’s possible-future, did she imagine herself and Rin being married?

-Episode 12: Mount Fuji and the Laid-Back Camp Girls

-So doggo has to go. He’s picked up by Ena’s family to go back home to warm bed, while the others scrub their dishes and ask the question of who’s gonna take advantage of the actual baths first. Well, Toba-sensei is out.

-In the end, Aoi, Ena and Chiaki end up in the bath, in an actual proper hot bath no less. Which leaves Rin and Nadeshiko to stay warm around the fire, and they end up asking Toba-sensei if she doesn’t mind being out here all alone instead of with her lover…

-…That was her sister she was with, you dorks. Anyways, all of this gender and romance confusion has Nadeshiko so off-tilt that she ends up outright asking Chiaki if she’s a girl or not when the others get back. Do you want to die?

-So round two of the baths, chatting with Toba-sensei. Who has a camping history not entirely dissimilar to Rin’s, though hers is more group-oriented. Her dad was a huge outdoorsy type when she was a kid, so the whole family would practically be out every weekend in the summers. Her sister picked up the bug full-force, and she tags along.

-Also speaking of camping, Rin still doesn’t know what that thing she saw in the darkness was. It was your teacher. Aaanyways, by the time they get back from the bath, everyone’s done their hair up in a Shimarin Bun. Nadeshiko is surrounded by Shimarins and it’s wonderful! Rin is quietly a bit mad at that name.

-So Nadeshiko has enough hair that she gets the true Shimarin treatment: Having Ena do something ridiculous to her head. Which she doesn’t see until they take a selfie together. Alas, Nadeshiko. But now they’ve kind of used up their tasks, but it’s too early to sleep…

-So Chiaki has a treat. You know outdoor film festivals, and vintage American drive-ins, and all that? (GOD I wish I could justify using that shot of Anime To the Future) Well Chiaki just signed up for a data plan and streaming services for her tablet! It’s not quite a grand projector, but they can just dive deep until they forget what time is!

-Eventually they’re all tapped out…Until everyone else is asleep, and it’s just Nadeshiko and Rin with their heads poking out of Rin’s tent way off on their own, looking up at the stars. They end up talking about all the shows and stuff they watched, and possible journeys, and New Year’s plans, and just…just talking. I’m not sure if Rin will do these big group trips very often, but I think it’s clear she’ll be doing a lot of these little trips with Nadeshiko.

-And they doze right off, as quiet comes over the campsites…And all is peaceful…

-Until the first alarm goes off. It’s 5 AM Christmas day, and Rin wakes up next to Nadeshiko, just the two of them. I’m not saying they’re a few months at most away from one of them suddenly realizing “FUCK we’re a couple when did that happen crap crap crap what’s the anniversary is it the day we met WHAT DO I GET HER”, but it was aliens.

-Also Nadeshiko you promised to make breakfast so get out of that mummy bag and make with the grub.

-Of course, Rin ends up helping…And by the time the others gather, it’s a truly traditional meal. Some grilled salmon, a miso soup, rice, even natto. Exactly what a certain hungover teacher needs to clear her head. And as they all get their grub on…The sun tips over the horizon, and it is just magic. That first light, when your eyes have adjusted to the pre-dawn, is so overwhelming, and just…Amazing.

-Of course, then comes the end of the trip. The loading of gear, the packing up of campsites. Daily coming to pick various folks up, and of course, one last photo of them all together before they scatter.

-Cut to a new day at the bookstore. Rin’s just hanging out behind the counter…And she’s thinking she wants to go somewhere for New Year’s…Which is when Ena shows up, buying a magazine on winter camping.

-Over at school, Chiaki leads the crew on a full cleanup of their club room! …That took like two minutes. Until they get Rin or Ena to actually sign on, it’s the cramped storage room for another semester. And tragically, they’re both working through the New Year’s holiday, so they can’t even go camping together…Well, except for Nadeshiko, who can’t find work.

-Cue Rin texting with a PLAN. Ena got a temp job printing and delivering new year’s cards and they need more warm bodies. It’s only a week or two of work, but Nadeshiko’s super excited at getting some cash to turn into camping gear.

-And at last, the credits song plays, as we montage over a quiet calm for all involved with the sun low in the sky. Rin’s scooter dutifully parked by her humble home. Ena’s doggo wrapped up snug in his doggo bed. Nadeshiko’s sister after another road trip to a picturesque sight. Rin’s grampa watching the sun set from his latest campsite. Nadeshiko’s folks coming home with groceries. Toba-sensei’s sister setting up camp, and she herself wrapping up a day of teaching.

-And in that little storage hall, a few more photos added to Nadeshiko’s wall…Including the one magical shot that started the series, of them all together…

-Aftercredits! And not a skit, either. It’s post-New Years, the back end of winter turning into spring, and Nadeshiko’s pedaling her humble little bike, with its rack and her bag both full of kit, to a certain campground…It’s a hard ride, but she finally makes it, checks in, and finds herself nearly alone at a pristine lake. The very place where she met Rin, damn near the exact same spot, as she dutifully puts together her setup. Her tent, her little table…And her own little treat, the gas lantern she saw in the shop that day. It’s a perfect, gorgeous setup…

-When Rin texts asking if she’s working. She’s actually out on the road, and just got to her campsite! And thus they get talking, both of them out camping solo, as Nadeshiko hides where she’s gone, until she sends the photo…And Rin’s comes in…And she’s not even a hundred feet back. They both had the same idea and came to the same place. These adorable precious girls.

And that’s a wrap.

I…Damn, this one somehow feels way heavier than it should. The show’s just so warm and comfy that I don’t want to leave it. But there’s no more left(unless they do a second season COME ON YOU COWARDS), and thus there’s no choice.

I mean, except for the fact that I obviously have already made bookmarks for the manga to chew on.

It is no mistake that this show caused a lot of people to want to go camping. This was…Damn, this was real close to perfect for me, and quite frankly the only things that would’ve made it better would be trading some archetypes around to pander to my specific tastes, rather than actually doing anything objectively higher quality.

And that fucking ending. That last shot. That was just…Pretend your favorite meme image of a chef’s kiss is here, because that was perfect.

So what’s coming up now that we did that? A hard pivot to the exact opposite of this warm comfy slice-of-life stuff, and also me trying blatantly to build my presence Tumblr-side with a big-pop. You’ll see. Wait for it!

[lakelandseo]

Image Link Building — Best of Whiteboard Friday

Posted by BritneyMuller

Last week, we took you into the future with SEO expert Britney Muller to explore link prospecting in 2021. This week, we're going back in time — all the way to 2017 — for her concrete advice on an important part of building links: image link building.

Image link building is a delicate art. There are some distinct considerations from traditional link building, and doing it successfully requires a balance of creativity, curiosity, and having the right tools on hand. Let's dive in! 

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans, welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we're going to go over all things image link building, which is sort of an art. I'm so excited to dig into this with you.

Know your link targets

So first and foremost, you need to know your link targets:

I. Popular industry platforms - top pages

What are those top platforms or websites that you would really like to acquire a link from? Then, from there, you can start to understand who might be influencers on those platforms, who's writing the content, who might you contact, and also what are the top pages currently for those sites. There are a number of tools that give you a glimpse into that information. Moz's OSE, Open Site Explorer, will show you top pages. SEMrush has a top page report. SimilarWeb has a popular page report. You can dig into all that information there, really interesting stuff.

II. Old popular images - update!

You can also start to dig into old, popular images and then update them. So what are old popular images within your space that you could have an opportunity to revamp and update? A really neat way to sort of dig into some of that is BuzzSumo's infographics filter, and then you would insert the topic. You enter the industry or the topic you're trying to address and then search by the infographics to see if you can come across anything.

III. Transform popular content into images

You can also just transform popular content into images, and I think there is so much opportunity in doing that for new statistics reports, new data that comes out. There are tons of great opportunities to transform those into multiple images and leverage that across different platforms for link building.

IV. Influencers

Again, just understanding who those influencers are.

Do your keyword research

So, from here, we're going to dive into the keyword research part of this whole puzzle, and this is really understanding the intent behind people searching about the topic or the product or whatever it might be. Something you can do is evaluate keywords with link intent. This is a brilliant concept I heard about a couple weeks back from Dan Shure's podcast. Thank you, Dan. Essentially it's the idea that keywords with statistics or facts after the keyword have link intent baked into the search query. It's brilliant. Those individuals are searching for something to reference, to maybe link to, to include in a presentation or an article or whatever that might be. It has this basic link intent.

Another thing you want to evaluate is just anything around images. Do any of your keywords and pictures or photos, etc. have good search volume with some opportunities? What does that search result currently look like? You have to evaluate what's currently ranking to understand what's working and what's not. I used to say at my old agency I didn't want anyone writing any piece of content until they had read all of the 10 search results for that keyword or that phrase we were targeting. Why would you do that until you have a full understanding of how that looks currently and how we can make something way better?

Rand had also mentioned this really cool tip on if you find some keywords, it's good to evaluate whether or not the image carousel shows up for those searches, because if it does, that's a little glimpse into the searcher intent that leads to images. That's a good sign that you're on the right track to really optimize for a certain image. It's something to keep in mind.

Provide value

So, from here, we're going to move up to providing value. Now we're in the brainstorming stage. Hopefully, you've gotten some ideas, you know where you want to link from, and you need to provide value in some way. It could be a...

I. Reference/bookmark Maybe something that people would bookmark, that always works.

II. Perspective is a really interesting one. So some of the most beautiful data visualizations do this extremely well, where they can simplify a confusing concept or a lot of data. It's a great way to leverage images and graphics.

III. Printouts still work really well. Moz has the SEO Dev Cheat Sheet that I have seen printed all over at different agencies, and that's really neat to see it adding value directly.

IV. Curate images. We see this a lot with different articles. Maybe the top 25 to 50 images from this tradeshow or this event or whatever it might be, that's a great way to leverage link building and kind of getting people fired up about a curated piece of content.

Gregory Ciotti — I don't know if I'm saying that right — has an incredible article I suggest you all read called "Why a Visual Really Is Worth a Thousand Words," and he mentions don't be afraid to get obvious. I love that, because I think all too often we tend to overthink images and executing things in general. Why not just state the obvious and see how it goes? He's got great examples.

Optimize

So, from here, we are going to move into optimization. If any of you need a brush-up on image optimization, I highly suggest you check out Rand's Whiteboard Friday on image SEO. It covers everything. But some of the basics are your...

Title

You want to make sure that the title of the image has your keyword and explains what it is that you're trying to convey.

Alt text

This was first and foremost designed for the visually impaired, so you need to be mindful of visually impaired screen readers that will read this to people to explain what the image actually is. So first and foremost, you just need to be helpful and provide information in a descriptive way to describe that image.

Compression

Compression is huge. Page speed is so big right now. I hear about it all the time. I know you guys do too. But one of the easiest ways to help page speed is to compress those huge images. There's a ton of great free tools out there, like Optimizilla, where you can bulk upload a bunch of large images and then bulk download. It makes it super easy. There are also some desktop programs, if you're doing this kind of stuff all the time, that will automatically compress images you download or save. That might be worth looking into if you do this a lot. You want to host the image. You want it to live on your domain. You want to house that. You can leverage it on other platforms, but you want sort of that original to be on your site.

SRCSET

Source set attribute is getting a little technical. It's super interesting, and it's basically this really incredible image attribute that allows you to set the minimum browser size and the image you would prefer to show up for different sizes. So you can not only have different images show up for different devices in different sizes, but you can also revamp them. You can revamp the same image and serve it better for a mobile user versus a tablet, etc. Jon Henshaw has some of the greatest stuff on source set. Highly suggest you look at some of his articles. He's doing really cool things with it. Check that out.

Promotion

So, from here, you want to promote your images. You obviously want to share it on popular platforms. You want to reach back out to some of these things that you might have into earlier. If you updated a piece of content, make them aware of that. Or if you transformed a really popular piece of content into some visuals, you might want to share that with the person who is sharing that piece of content. You want to start to tap into that previous research with your promotion.

Inform the influencers

Ask people to share it. There is nothing wrong with just asking your network of people to share something you've worked really hard on, and hopefully, vice versa, that can work in return and you're not afraid to share something a connection of yours has that they worked really hard on.

Monitor the image SERPs

From here, you need to monitor. One of the best ways to do this is Google reverse image search. So if you go to Google and you click the images tab, there's that little camera icon that you can click on and upload images to see where else they live on the web. This is a great way to figure out who is using your image, where it's being held, are you getting a backlink or are you not. You want to keep an eye on all of that stuff.

Two other tools to do this, that I've heard about, are Image Raider and TinEye. But I have not had great experience with either of these. I would love to hear your comments below if maybe you have.

Reverse image search with Google works the best for me. This is also an awesome opportunity for someone to get on the market and create a Google alert for images. I don't think anyone is actually doing that right now. If you know someone that is, please let me know down below in the comments. But it could be a cool business opportunity, right? I don't know.

So for monitoring, let's say you find your image is being used on different websites. Now you need to do some basic outreach to get that link. You want to request that link for using your image.

This is just a super basic template that I came up with. You can use it. You can change it, do whatever you want. But it's just:

Hi, [first name]. Thank you so much for including our image in your article. Great piece. Just wondering if you could link to us.com as the source. Thanks, Britney

Something like that. Something short, to the point. If you can make it more personalized, please do so. I can't stress that enough. People will take you way more seriously if you have some nugget of personal information or connection that you can make.

From there, you just sort of stay in this loop. After you go through this process, you need to continue to promote your content and continue to monitor and do outreach and push that to maximize your link building efforts. So I hope you enjoyed this. I look forward to hearing all of your comments and thoughts down below in the comments. I look forward to seeing you all later. Thanks for joining us on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. Thanks.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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