#<3.s.t

[queenlua]

The crisis of the last year with student protests has made even the richest institutions aware of how much of their presumed wealth can be yanked away from them by a donor class who are increasingly inclined to exert their influence and authority in openly oligarchic ways. The obsession with safety—and the contradictions of that obsession—is as much about financial management as anything else. But that also is a wider sociocultural formation: the American upper middle-class is generally an asset class now who think about safety in the same way as universities both because all institutions with asset-based wealth have to and because they personally have to safeguard their assets in the same fashion, and face some of the same risks from liability exposure. [. . .] Moving away from the caretaker era can’t just be a matter of exposing students to risk and dismantling systems that make safety the mandatory product of an intrusive regime of surveillance and correction. If the people in charge inside the university and outside of it aren’t equally exposed to the natural consequences of their actions and decisions, all this means is forcefully communicating to students—or perhaps all young people—their relative powerlessness and vulnerability. It means deciding that the lesson you really want to teach is that it’s bad to be powerless and thus you should strive in life for power and wealth in order to be beyond consequences. Arguably, if the caretaker era and the bystander era were both aligned with a wider social ideology that was broadly shared across a generation, then this in fact the new ethos of our time—that there is no safety but in power, and that where power believes people are not being sufficiently punished for the things that power disdains, it will find a way to make consequences where there have been none.

bleak essay that nonetheless collects a lot of idle thoughts i've had in one place & puts them together with more coherence than i've ever managed

[fairytale-poll]

ROUND 3D, MATCH 1 OUT OF 2!

Propaganda Under the Cut:

Original Fairytale:

The OG, she suffered so much more than Ariel in the Disney version, and gave up her love for Christianity. When she's turned into a human her feet are in agony with every step, but she dances anyway to enchant the Prince. The Prince marries a princess who found him after the Little Mermaid rescued him. The Little Mermaid is distraught at the prince marrying another, so her sisters give her a dagger from the Sea Witch that will turn her back into a mermaid if she kills him. She refuses to kill him, and then she turns into sea foam and dies, but because she was a good person she becomes a spirit of the air and does good deeds for 300 years until she dies again, gains a soul, and goes to Heaven.

Erika:

[No Propaganda Submitted]

[fanmade-cores-competion]

ROUND 1

[bwaldorf]

trying to get my review game up on goodreads so i can maybe try and get some ARC copies of books in the future 🙏🏼

[jimiin]

I marveled at how unashamed she was. I wondered what it must be like to walk through life with her self-assured air. She was like a modern-day princess, with a face sculpted by generations of thoroughbred intermarriage and a mouth shaped for giving orders.

— S.T. Gibson, An Education in Malice

[salemoleander]

lost in the dark (Hunger AU) webweave

Created as a tribute to the absolutely incredible fic @definitelynotshouting is writing, up to the current plot beat!

// Sources under readmore //

What is a webweave? Previous art: Third Life | Void Falling | Attempt 33 | Martyn | Limited Life | Nightingale Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | singing songs to the secrets behind my eye | A Hundred Things We Had Not Dreamed Of | solving counting sheep

Pt. 1: Flutter / Valerie Hammond ◆ Sanssouci Palace + The Black Ice Cream Song edit / @mountainqoats ◆ Excerpt from The Average Fourth Grader is a Better Poet Than You (And Me Too) / Hannah Gamble via @blackberryjambaby ◆ of course i bite textpost / @valtsv ◆ Lie Down / Ellen Jenkins ◆ 27 / Daniil Kharms trans. Matvei Yankelevich ◆ Embrace my Soul / Sergio Borga ◆ Color Changing Magic Potion / DirksenCraft ◆ Fragile Bird / @cocoabats ◆ Holding Onto Black Metal / Debra Baxter ◆ Excerpt from III. The Child / Quinn Newell via @voicedwords ◆ Crawler Pot / Rose Schmits ◆ Metamorph / Gunnel Watkins ◆ Untitled eye / Henrik Aa Uldalen ◆ tumblr guide for chad twitter users (real) / @arahir ◆ the best way to solve problems tweet / @wolfpupy

Pt. 2: Reoccurring Nightmare comic / @deep-dark-fears ◆ Knotted Serpentine / Hannah Russell ◆ Garden + Blues in Dallas edit / @mountainqoats ◆ The Watching Moth / Cady Shaye Poorman ◆ NOCTURNAL Series 11 of 20 / Santiago Caruso ◆ Watching Moth / Cady Shaye Poorman ◆ Afterglow / Pei Wang ◆ Sun in an Empty Room + The Young Thousands edit / @mountainqoats ◆ Study for "Mathematics," "The Sciences" / Kenyon Cox ◆ Hard to Swallow / Debra Baxter ◆ Molly Brodak / Molly Brodak via @kafk-a ◆ 02112022, S.T. / @ryebreadgf ◆ Woman with Red Hood / Alice Pike Barney ◆ Come On, Motherfucker, You Survived! / @selfhealingmoments ◆ Excerpt from The Blind Assassin / Margaret Atwood via @flowerytale ◆ Heirloom II / Cindy Rizza

Pt. 3: Excerpt from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock / T.S. Eliot ◆ i love you. i can't tell you / @/tturing (OP altered, original contents linked) ◆ Hope is the Thing - Sunset Flight / Erica Wagner ◆ Poppies + Nova Scotia edit / @mountainqoats ◆ Untitled (open/end) / Debra Baxter ◆ Excerpt from Alive at the End of the World / Saeed Jones via @geryone ◆ Weeping (Lamentacia) / Dezider Toth via @amare-habeo ◆ NOCTURNAL Series 7 of 20 / Santiago Caruso ◆ Fridge Funerary Epitaph / @catilinas ◆ Untitled (Trail of eyes) / @julialepetit ◆ Stained Glass Hellebore, California Poppy, + Poppy / Jessica Saunders ◆ 世界の声が聞こえるとき (When the voice of the world is heard) / Tomohiro Inaba ◆ Still from Don't make me do this again gif / @cibastion ◆ Excerpt from So I Locked Myself Inside a Star for Twenty Years / Jeremy Radin ◆ Excerpt from Invisible Monsters / Chuck Palahniuk via @quotespile ◆ Potion Bottles / Edited from Panel 1 Source

[the-bi-library]

Bisexual books out in May 🩷💜💙

Books listed:

A Swift and Sudden Exit by Nico Vincenty

It Ain't Over Til the Bisexual Speaks by Lois Shearing, Vaneet Mehta, etc

The 7-10 Split by Karmen Lee

The Z Word by Lindsay King-Miller

Bisexuality: The Basics by Lewis Oakley

Til Death Do Us Bard by Rose Black (Hardcover edition)

Road to Ruin (Magebike Courier, #1) by Hana Lee

Blood Remains by Cathy Pegau

The Only Light Left Burning by Erik J. Brown Garner for Gold (Lustrous Divinity, #2) by Catherine Labadie

The Last to Pie (Pies Before Guys Mystery #3) by Misha Popp

The Girl in Question by Tess Sharpe

Smoke and Steel (Scions and Shadows) by Dax Murray

Fake Dating a Witch (Bewitching Billionaires #1) by Brigid Hunt

A Girl Can Dream by Emily Barr

The Ride of Her Life by Jennifer Dugan

A Little Kissing Between Friends by Chencia C. Higgins

Meet Me in Berlin by Samantha L. Valentine

The Sins on Their Bones by Laura R. Samotin

We Were the Universe by Kimberly King Parsons

Evocation by S.T. Gibson

Adrift by Sam Ledel

Don't Be a Drag by Skye Quinlan

This is not an exhaustive list so please do let me know of the books I missed 💖

[kimi-co]

interesting aronelli recap and evaluation of the sources of media pressure, +an f2 driver popularity ranking based on ig follows lol

this is honestly the biggest 'problem' with paul imo. he didnt want to demonstrate that loyalty and he was not as docile as kimi but ykw leaving proved ultimately good for him (no more yapping abt them)

+ interview with gwen and toto on what they look for in the junior drivers. basically, they want kids who are fast, but more importantly, humble and loyal, who are willing to listen to them on anything. they want them with good parents who instill these values BUT also, just willing to listen to the team. like families that don't interfere with merc's decisions and preferably with less money/power/knowledge s.t. no decisions get made if merc didn't sponsor them. but merc invests a lot into their juniors and brands themselves as creating lifelong projects: they make sure to help them find success even if they move on to other series. now i'd say paul seems to lack some of the humility and maturity they're after, and he&his brother had way too many ideas—valid ones, but not what merc would have liked.

but i guess kimi is exactly what they’re talking about? his dad’s a touring car driver who later become team manager, but he never envisioned anything beyond f4 for kimi for financial reasons. so his son would mostly likely become a professional outside of single-seater like how george was offered a DTM seat before merc retained him by offering sponsorship and completely altered his career trajectory. for kimi merc decided to step in way earlier (maybe bc of verstappen) and cover all of his expenses when he was still in karting. his dad always told him to be critical of himself before blaming others, and there’s this whole ‘don’t ever complain when you just start working’ doctrine that got his teammate pretty concerned . he’s listened to merc the whole time so he’s been surprised twice in his 3 years of single-seater racing by the series he was told to join: the only like he had on twitter was the f3 calendar and he did a lot of iracing at the f3 tracks before he was asked to do freca instead. and then the jump to f2 this year. merc also picked prema instead of VAR (ollie’s f4 titles winning team + max’s old team) for him, or else him&ollie could’ve been teammates already in 2021

anyway back to the article:

like i totally feel this remember his quali interview at aus he was so nervous blinking and licking his lip like crazy (spun the next day too)

also reminds me of ^

but taking the time to train kimi into a pr robot is probably for his own good and im sure the 'no interviews unless enforced by the series for half a year' is all part of that

english is not my first language but punchy means that when people hear what toto said they sometimes really want to punch him in the nose right

nothing more to say here. i’m a ferrari hater 90% of the time, so i don’t really know what the italian press cooked up or what the whole deal with calling charles il predestinato just to crucify him later was—hence the fear of a repetition. but i do find the comment "there is no worse anti-Italian than a hateful Italian" from that original article about kimi getting announced at monza interesting. and i agree with the observation on the difference in the degree of destructive defeatism vs. unconditional support within the argentine vs. italian reception. like, some will support their drivers even if they’re bad because it’s about representation, while others seem to turn on their own when things don’t go as expected

unfair is the word i think for kimi all the hype and news coverage really don't benefit him when he doesnt need sponsors and he's only judged by his own team. compared to some other drivers who might need exposure, media, and f1 team attention. but press wants headlines and his age makes that easy. and then all the pressure comes.

kimi’s second on the list, but even ollie has to admit that kimi might be facing more pressure than he is

[fvnalgirlcomplex]

Hey! Ur blog is so awesome and I love the way u write- it’s so authentic <3

I was wondering if u could write sth for Sophie Thatcher (plays Natalie Scatorccio in Yellow Jackets and is quite like her)?

I’ve been crushing on Sophie since I first saw her and she’s so afgfhhsrfhfv

And in that fic she would be like head over heels for the reader / y/n and just veryyy whipped- u can choose anything else

I hope u are having a great day!!

TANGLED IN LOVE ✸ S.T

heyyy!!! thank you sm that’s all very nice and i appreciate it so so so much!! i think we’re all in love with her she’s just so cool with everything she does and i assumed you wanted this to be a written piece so here it is!! sorry for the wait and i hope you’re having a good day too!! and ik i said i was posting the drew fic first but… i lied. also this was supposed to be longer but i just wanted to post it so sorry that it’s so short

warnings: use of yn (sorry ik people hate that), tooth. rotting. fluff. once again girlfriends being girlfriends! unedited so probably errors

masterlist

summary: in a world full of art, sophie only wants to admire her girlfriend.

Sophie loved mornings like these. With only the sound of the two lovers soft breathes as they relished in the calm of the early morning before they inevitably had to get up and leave each others arms.

Yn wasn’t awake yet, which gave Sophie time to admire (stare) at her without having to worry about coming across as creepy. Because it wasn’t creepy. She was just head over heels in love. So no, it wasn’t creepy that she always wished to wake up before y/n to give herself time to admire every small detail, every freckle, every blemish on her girlfriends face.

And it definitely wasn’t creepy that she couldn’t seem to get close enough to y/n even when she was practically under her girlfriends skin, she still tried to pull her impossibly closer. Because she was just head over heals in love.

“What are you staring at, creeper?” Y/N jokingly asked, sleep still present in her voice and eyes staying shut. But Sophie wasn’t phased by the fact she had been caught, still amazed at how beautiful her girlfriend could look after just waking up.

At Sophie’s silence, Y/N peeked her eyes open, staring back up at Sophie was resting on her elbow, head on her hand still admiring the woman below hers loveliness.

“What?” Y/N asked, her voice much softer now as she clearly became flustered by Sophie’s stare. Moving her hand up to fix her bed head only to be stopped by her girlfriends own hand.

Sophie was still silent as she moved Y/N’s hand down to rest on her stomach, dropping it and bringing her own hand back up to rest on the side of Y/Ns neck, her thumb rubbing back and forth on her jaw.

No words were shared as she leaned down to share a kiss with her partner, putting all the love she had into the kiss. The two lovers basked in the small amount of sun peaking through the curtains, making them feel like they were in their own private paradise.

[mossyivy]

Ever since you mentioned Chris’s wife having a friend who just HATES him, it’s been stuck on my mind.

The two of you would probably be highschool friends; Let’s call her Isabella, Bella (Bella? Where the hell have you been loca? 🤪) for short. That girls seen you dragged through the mud and back. She was the one that saved you from you last husband, the one that consoled you at 3 AM as you came knocking on her door. It was the last straw. You were done with him being so controlling, abusive, and toxic with you and your little boy.

You didn’t even have a plan in mind—you just packed up your things one night and drove. You’d deal with all the other divorce shit later, you just needed to get out. It was pouring rain, parking your little Honda in your best friend’s driveway and quickly picking up Ollie in your arms and shielding him from the cold heavy rainfall.

Ollie was only a year old, still so small, way too small to go through this. You knocked and after a minute or so, the door finally opened. You just broke down sobbing, asking Bella to please help. If you could just crash at her house for a couple days while you got back on your feet you’d be so grateful. You’d pay her once your check hit.

Being the best person in the entire world, Bella invited you in. Grabbing the things from your car so you could carry Ollie and stay warm in the living room, letting you stay in an old spare bedroom. You just told her everything. What he’d do, how you just packed up, how you were the worst mother in the world for allowing your baby to see that.

It had been almost a decade since that, and Bella still couldn’t get over that day. You’d be forever grateful for her, still paying her back and doing whatever sweet gesture to keep your promise. Ultimately, you moved on and started dating Chris. Your knight in shining armor, the man of your dreams. Bella was SOOOOOOOOO worried. That girl conducted an entire background check on him, literally finding out he had a sister before you did. Finding his old high school graduation pictures even.

Oh, she’d hate him. Send him nasty glares across the room, talk to him, maybe even slightly threaten him when you left to go to the bathroom or something. She was like an eagle watching over him. Even at your wedding, she was still so skeptical, practically bore a hole through his face from how hard her stares were. Bella knew how great of a guy he was, but she still had that fear. She couldn’t let you get dragged down by another man. Not on her watch. She’d make sure you’d never go through that again.

- Anon! 🎀

(Bella is the kind of friend you need in your life.)

I could imagine how worried and horrified she'd be when you came to tell her about this loud mouthed douche from work who never shuts up when you're trying to do your comms job. How you ran into him in the office one day after hearing someone call him Redfield, recognizing the name immediately, and you walked up to him. Ripping him a new one about "shutting the fuck up on radio when you're relaying something important." And he just kinda stood there like a deer in headlights because you wouldn't let him get a word in otherwise.

AND NOW SUDDENLY YOU'RE GOING ON A DATE WITH THE GUY!? You tell her not to worry, it's not a date. He just wants to apologize for being a dick. But Bella knows better by now. You don't talk much about him because even you could tell it was worrying Bella. But whenever he came up his name went from "that asshole" to "Redfield" to "Chris" so quickly... She saw this before with Turner, your ex-husband, and she refused to let it happen again. Not as her duty of your best friend and definitely not as Ollie's aunt/Godmother.

So she'd do a full background check on him, PAID HUNDREDS TO GET EVERYTHING SHE COULD ON THIS MAN! She even got his record of discharge for the Air Force and started making calls... Found out he became the guardian of his little sister in 1994 and took care of her after their parents died. Found all his old S.T.A.R.S. members teammates names or at least the ones who were alive. Called a few people posing as someone looking into him for a job. The only one who was willing to talk was Rebecca but she just seemed so nice Bella couldn't take advantage of that...

You understood Bella's reasoning but it did feel extensive... You got into an argument over it. Didn't speak for a few days. But you came around and you both apologized. You knew why she did it and didn't blame her but at the same time she had to let you make your choices. You're both adults, she can't stop you. But you'd still reassure you that nothing was going on... It's not like that!

And then you were out with her and Ollie getting lunch one afternoon and you just so happen to run into Chris and Claire.

You barely knew anything about Claire but she seemed so excited to get to meet you. "My brother won't shut up about you! It's so nice putting a face to the name. You're just as pretty as he described." :)

Oh... Oh. It is like that...

This is also when Chris gets to meet Ollie for the first time. The man's weakness is babies. He's infatuated with the kid (who's about a year and a few months now) Ollie's excited cause new person. Claire and Bella are chatting each other up but Bella's watching Chris like a hawk as he dotes on Ollie and talks with you. Apologizing for Claire's habit of blurting out the first thing that comes to mind. All while feeling the glare from Bella as she talked with Claire. You'd have to explain that.

Then Chris asks you out again, it's been a few times now and you've hardly talked about your past with him. He's told you what he could of himself. So... you told him everything. All about Turner and all the horrible shit he put you and your son through. You had a lot of baggage if Chris wanted this to go anywhere. A baby and an abusive soon-to-be ex-husband. But he saw it as you just being strong and doing the right thing for yourself and your kid. And he said he wanted to be with you. Even with all the problems.

Bella was still so skeptical for a while until Chris ended up helping you get in contact with a good lawyer after your ex-husband tried getting partial custody of Ollie. No way in hell would the 3 of them let that sweet little boy go anywhere near him. Chris had a little bit of experience after getting custody of his sister. Thankfully everything worked out when you could prove that he'd do do more harm than good in court and you were granted full custody and even a restraining order against him for both you and Ollie.

Everything felt right now. You'd been dating Chris for 6 months, Ollie was almost 2. Bella started to ease up on the hatred (even deep down she knew she didn't actually hate Chris but she just can't stop being on high alert). You find out you're pregnant with a little boy with Chris and he's honestly so happy he gets to be a dad. Besides Ollie who adamantly calls him daddy. It's nice to finally see you happy with someone who cares about you and treats you like gold.

Finally you get Bella's blessing during her maid of honor speech at the wedding and from then on it's just snarky back and forth between the two. Still says she hates him but she doesn't. It's obvious.

[patroclusdefencesquad]

i only read 5 books this month because brain went BLEUGH (i also picked up my crocheting again which consumed my brain) but here's my top 3 queer recs for april :

a dowry of blood by s.t gibson

dracula's brides. polyamory. queer. what more need i say? beautifully lyrical writing style. slaying (literally).

can't spell treason without tea by rebecca thorne

it's like legends and lattes (the author literally says its heavily inspired by it) but a lot more plotty and in depth which i loved. i love both the main characters i love their relationship i love the vibes i love the story it's just an excellent cosy read i want to run a bookshop tearoom with my girlfriend where there's magic n dragons n shit it's not fair

cemetery boys by aiden thomas

again an excellent premise and plot (even if i did guess the twist like immediately lmao) because who doesn't love queer people and ghosts. i may or may not have shed a tear or two and if by the end of the book yadriel and julian hadn't found a way to be together it was going to be ON SIGHT but everything turned out okay and i really enjoyed it :')

[grimmoire]

Thanks for the tag @becomethebooks <3

Make a poll with five of your favourite books and let booklr pick its favourite out of those.

Tagging without obligation: @moonofiron @antii-me @thesimplicityofchance @creamy505 @delirious--mistakes @ghostdata @xanthippe-writes

(also feel free to add manga and audio books as well if you want!)

[fairytale-poll]

ROUND 3B, MATCH 3 OUT OF 4!

Propaganda Under the Cut:

Ella:

Listen, is the book good? No. Does the idea of a trans Cinderella slap? Yes.

Sam:

Best of the early 2000s modern Cinderellas. Not even Disney?! Hillary Duff and Chad Micheal Murray do the whole Cinderella story in High School! Everyone in it is amazing. Sam can wear roller skates and go to a masquerade ball in the same night! And she is exposed as Cinderella which is different from the typical story line where the stepfamily tries to keep her identity hidden. And she makes it rain! In a drought!

So the love interest in this is the worst but Hilary Duff is pretty iconic. The moment that she came out to the dance in the dress and the 2000s pop song is playing… it made my childhood.

She's a classic. She's Hilary Duff. She got a kiss in the rain during drought.

Because she still has the stepmother (and dead father) and step-sisters who treat her horribly and the charming "prince"/football star, but she actually saves herself! As far as I remember, there is no shoe fitting scene, Austin finds out in another way - from emails that Sam's sisters find and spread around school. But Sam stands up to her stepmother after finding a letter (and will) from her father and sorts her life off before getting the guy.

And, to be terribly honest, I've never been a fan of Cinderella stuff, but I did like this film. Probably because of the change to the story and Hilary Duff. And Sam's best friend Carter.

[burtonbabygirlguster]

the S.T fandom when Jonathan gives up all possibility on his decade+ long dream collage to go with Nancy, but doesn’t want to because 1) it’s her dream, not his, 2) he wants to be with his family, and 3) he’s not well-off on money like Nancy is, but is afraid of telling her because he fears that in turn, she’ll come to him, give up on her dreams, and end up in a loveless relationship; and he doesn’t want that for her, which is why he’s ignoring her and lying to her- because he wants to delay that experience and interaction as long as he possibly can:

[kaiserouo]

Hello! In this post I will describe the details of making a render of Apex Legends stuff (namely the video you're watching) so you can make a photo / video to your liking! Even if you don't wanna render things, I think you might still find the process interesting, OR, especially, the tools useful in you future work.

Why am I doing this? Because I'm taking a train and I'm bored. Also there's too little Bloodhound content here. Maybe someone will actually do some cool rendering of them after this.

Idea

Do you know in training mode, Bloodhound will wait for you indefinitely like a puppy with their cute little look-around motion?

Precious footage of Houndy on Youtube

I want them to be my background. So the most important requirements are:

3 Bloodhounds looking around and waiting like that of training mode. (why only 1 if you can have 3?)

Firing range background.

Looks overall good or something (e.g., lighting, motion not synchronized, 1920x1080 for my computer, etc.)

Let's get started.

Model

Well, there won't be multiple Bloodhounds waiting for me in the firing range in-game. I am also not intended to mod R5Reloaded just for this. So we'll use Blender to pose them.

First we need the model. The details of how to use Apex Legends model in blender can be found in this tutorial I found. Basically you just need Blender, semodel + seanim loader, Legion+, and the game itself. You COULD find archives of some models on the web, but manually extracting will guarentee that you can get everything you need.

Reddit Apex Legends model tutorial

Apex File Archive (by Biast12)

Model name list (may be incomplete)

I made an auto shading addon btw

There are a lot of tutorials of how to use Blender. I will not include the details here.

We need:

Models of 3 Bloodhounds (pilot_medium_bloodhound, bloodhound_v21_pilot_level03_w, bloodhound_v21_heroknight_w)

Animation of them waiting indefinitely (mp_pt_medium_training_blood_idle_A_0.seanim)

The names are a bit weird. You can just try to import all the models / animations to find what you want.

Background

Map files are large and hard to load. In my case I never even imported any map in Blender successfully. Fortunately we are looking for a still image background.

I used R5Reloaded's photo mode (or something like that) to get a clean picture. Quite a lot of steps to get a background picture, I know. I used R5Reloaded for other things at that time so this was the most convenient way for me ironically.

R5Reloaded does has a lot of potential, though. Maybe you can use it on other stuff afterwards.

R5Reloaded official page

But if we just make a render in Blender and composite the result with this background, the perspective will certainly not be aligned and the result will look very weird. Probably need a disgusting amount of time just to adjust this stuff.

Thankfully, by the theory of perspective and projective geometry, we can calculate the focal length, the height and the angle of camera all from a single image by your favorite subject: math!

...I mean, by fSpy. We have computers. We don't do the math that others already did for us.

fSpy official page

After getting the parameters of the camera, you can import them into blender directly. The camera from fSpy already has the background image composited so you won't need to do much else in Blender.

Posing & Lighting

We have almost everything we need. So just:

Import all models and camera (from fSpy)

Shade the models and adjust size / position / orientation so it looks good on camera

Import animations on model and adjust the keyframes s.t. they don't do the exact same motion every frame.

We are using the existing animations so posing won't be a problem. If you want to make your own pose you might need some more proper rigging. Not expert on this so that's all I will say.

Now we need the lighting. The lighting environment in the firing range is not really available to us if we don't have the skybox or the map file. Maybe you can find the skybox in Legion+ or archive, but I use lights in Blender instead.

Namely, a sun light to simulate the light from the sun, and a plane light at front for overall light adjusting (probably also simulates reflection from the ground and the environment).

And wait for like half an hour for Blender to spit out all 285 frames and we're done! I let Blender store each and every frame as an image and use ffmpeg to composite them all into a video because I thought I need the high resolution images for something else. Blender does have a setting to just output a video without the intermediate result if I recall correctly.

Conclusion

This is definitely not a complete guide on how to do rendering pieces of work with Blender. I myself am not even well experienced in this kind of stuff. But I think the process is fun and the result is rewarding, especially when seeing your favorite character moving on your background.

I hope you do check out the reference of tools and tutorials above. After all, as an artist (kind of), having the model is like possessing THE absolute reference for a character. Very recommended for every artist to learn how to use Blender and search for models. In 2024 a lot of games are in 3D and there WILL be someone on the web sharing how to extract models from the game or simply gives out the entire archive. You name it! Apex Legends, Titanfall, Destiny, even Ultrakill has like a 1GB blender file for high quality models, if you just google for that ever so slightly.

...Welp actually you can just treat this post as a huge Bloodhound advertisement. The end.

[mooncaps]

Sounds like Lemongrab.

That should end well.

😈

Why do I feel like them leaving stuff behind is gonna be significant?

Okay, that's definitely gotta be significant, right?

Kinda figured that's where that was going.

Okay, but I still kind of feel like this episode's gonna come back around somehow. If it weren't for the vague impression I have that the show gets complicated, I'd probably assume all of these episodes were just barely linked together episodic fluff, but I guess I've come into it biased to look for deeper meanings.

Dorito spotted.

Dipper. (grabs spray bottle) No! We just had an episode about how it's wrong to belittle people for not meeting certain gender standards.

Given that I've heard Disney made this show censor a lot of stuff, I'm surprised that this was allowed.

Well, that's a reaction image waiting to happen.

The game references are fun.

Wait...did other episodes have gibberish in the credits? Lemme just...

Oh shit! That's gotta be some kind of cryptogram! I love cryptograms! Now let's see...

ZHOFRPH WR JUDYLWB IDOOV QHAW ZHHN: UHWXUQ WR EXWW LVODQG KH'V VWLOO LQ WKH YHQWV FDUOD, ZKB ZRQW BRX FDOO PH? RQZDUGV DRVKLPD! PU. FDHVDULDQ ZLOO EH RXW QHAW ZHHN. PU. DWEDVK ZLOO VXEVWLWXWH. KZKVI QZN WRKKVI HZBH: "ZFFTSDCJSTZWHZWFS!" V. KOFIRYFH GIVNYOVB MLG S.T. DVOOH ZKKILEVW HLIIB, WRKKVI, YFG BLFI DVMWB RH RM ZMLGSVI XZHGOV.

Hrmmm, this is gonna be tricky. I'm sure there's probably a wiki or something that has it solved, but I wanna try it myself.

Okay, nothing's quite lining up. Unless there's some total nonsense, made-up cartoon words, or old-timey speak in here. Or I guess if there's more than one key. There are 3 journals, so maybe it's every third episode. Maybe if I just do episodes 1, 4, 7, and 10.

ZHOFRPH WR JUDYLWB IDOOV FDUOD, ZKB ZRQW BRX FDOO PH? KZKVI QZN WRKKVI HZBH: "ZFFTSDCJSTZWHZWFS!" HLIIB, WRKKVI, YFG BLFI DVMWB RH RM ZMLGSVI XZHGOV.

Okay, there are only so many four letter words that start and end with the same letter, so HZBH could be big. A, B, C, D, no dead doesn't fit, E, F, G, ... Oh, S! Says! That's why it's got a colon after it. Now we're in business.

[sorry, dipper, but your wendy is in another castle.]

Fits the episode. Okay. And I've cracked enough to reasonably say this one is just the alphabet backwards. So that means:

[paper jam dipper says: "auughwxqhgadsaduh!"]

Trolly writers, throwing that gibberish phrase in.

The reverse-alphabet key works on 7 and 10, but not 1 and 4. So I guess every third episode isn't the method to the madness. Let's see if it fits any others...

[e. pluribus trembley] [not h.g. wells approved]

So it only fits 7, 8, 9, and 10. Are the first six all one key then? Let's see...

Okay, I'm seeing QHAW ZHHN twice. That bodes well. KH'V is hella sus. It's? He's? We'd? And all these doubled-up letters. Hrmmm...

[welcome to gravity falls] [next week: return to butt island] [he's still in the vents] [carla, why wont you call me?] [onwards aoshima!] [mr. caesarian will be out next week. mr. atbash will substitute.]

Okay, that last one's a little out there, and I'm not sure who Carla is, but the rest of the letters made it say that. Maybe it'll make sense later.

So, this is pretty fun.