#Also creates and hacks stuff

[plumsaffron]

Seeking or claiming for realism or realistic, doesn't make what you sought good. Especially if it forces justification of foul behavior others have done against a character and all the plots and schemes marked against the character by an accursed fandom and victim of accursed fandom. I wonder if there will be another death or more thanks to lack of Evolution and people suddenly unable to handle certain divine hated character now being too much or rather picking what one wishes against such character while other characters doing unbelievable stuff more often and the environment of strange activity goes unnoticed. So then ironically predestine or seeking worse for such already divine hated character increases. It's real sad how it's real people will go out their way wishing for worse upon a stupidly hated character after seeing how Recreation went. Amazing nothing else better to do.

[iraprince]

gonna show u guys a little opalescent highlight hack i threw together today

rainbow gradient above your main figure (i usually have all my main figure folders/layers in one big folder, so i can clip gradient maps + adjustments to it!). liquify tool to push the colors around a bit. STAY WITH ME I KNOW IT LOOKS STUPID RN I'M GOING SOMEWHERE WITH THIS

THEN: set it to add/glow (or the equivalent in ur drawing program), lower the opacity a bit, and apply a layer mask. then u can edit the mask with whatever tools you like to create rainbow highlights!!

in this case i'm mostly using the lasso fill tool to chip out little facets, but i've also done some soft airbrushing to bring in larger rainbow swirls in some areas. it's pretty subtle here, but you can see it better when i remove the gradient map that's above everything, since below i'm working in greyscale:

more granular rambling beneath the cut!

u could also just do this with a brush that has color jitter, but what i like about using layer masks for highlight/shading layers is how simple and reversible it makes everything. i can use whatever brushes i want, and erasing/redoing things is super low stakes, which is great when i often approach this stuff with a super trial-and-error approach.

example: have u ever thrown a gradient w multiple colors over an entire piece, set it to multiply etc, and then tried to erase it away to carve out shadows/highlights? it's super frustrating, bc it looks really good, but if u erase something and then change ur mind later, u basically would have to like. recreate the gradient in the area u want to cover up again. that's how i used to do things before figuring out layer masks!! but masking basically creates a version of this with INFINITE undo bc u can erase/re-place the base layer whenever u want.

anyway, back to rambling about this specific method:

i actually have TWO of these layers on this piece (one with the liquified swirls shown above, and another that's just a normal concentric circle gradient with much broader stripes) so i can vary the highlights easily as needed.

since i've basically hidden the rainbow pattern from myself, the colors in each brushstroke i make will kind of be a surprise, which isn't always great -- but easily fixable! for example, if i carve out a highlight and it turns out the rainbow pattern in that area is way too stripey, i can just switch from editing the mask to editing the main layer and blur that spot a bit.

also, this isn't a full explanation of the overall transparency effect in these screencaps! there's other layer stuff happening below the rainbow highlights, but the short version is i have all this character's body parts in different folders, each with their own lineart and background fill, and then the fill opacity is lowered and there's multiply layers clipped to that -- blah blah it's a whole thing. maybe i'll have a whole rundown on this on patreon later. uhhh i think that's it tho! i hope u get something useful out of this extremely specific thing i did lmao

[humming-fly]

Good News for 4/20

My daily call reminder for everyone today includes some recent good news courtesy of this reddit post, which I've just copypasted wholesale for everyone over here to enjoy!

Resistance

crosswalks in Seattle were hacked to play AI audio of Jeff Bezos asking not to tax the rich, in reference to Washington’s regressive tax structure

crosswalks in Palo Alto were hacked to play AI audio of Elon talking about be being a friendless loser

A constituent at Marjorie Taylor Green’s town hall called her a “butch body bigot”

Constituents at Chuck Grassley’s town hall demanded they get Kilmar Abrego Garcia out of El Salvador (this was in IOWA, and was mostly older white people)

5 Calls posted that people are averaging 50 calls a minute to representatives via the app, specifically about Kilmar and CECOT

Posters went up around Philadelphia just before 4/15 about Elon and his companies not paying taxes

Protesters showed up outside a courthouse in Vermont in support of Rumeysa Ozturk during her detention hearing

People travelled from all over Missouri to speak out in opposition of a proposed abortion ban during a committee hearing

Home Alone 2 director wants to cut Trump’s cameo out of the movie

Attorneys in the solicitor general’s office of the DOJ are resigning

A group of current and former Big Law attorneys are organizing to fight back against the administration’s attacks on law firms

More associates have quit law firms that capitulated to Trump

Harvard refused to comply with Trump’s demands, despite losing billions in federal funding

Protesters marched to Fetterman’s Philadelphia office demanding he hold in person town halls

Universities are creating NATO-like alliances of “mutual defense compacts”, where they’d all support and defend each other if Trump attacks one

Farmers in Maine had a tractor “parade” to protest USDA cuts

Boise city hall is continuing to have their pride flag up despite a new Idaho state law banning pride flags on government property

Republicans breaking ranks

Mark Kelly said republicans will start to distance themselves from Trump and speak out against his policies, that they’re saying things in private they won’t say publicly

Lisa Murkowski heavily criticized Trump’s policies during a nonprofit leadership summit, also said there’s a “growing number of republicans” opposing Medicaid cuts

12 house republicans signed a letter to Mike Johnson saying they won’t vote for a final budget reconciliation bill that cuts Medicaid

17 republicans in the Montana state senate joined democrats to block an anti-trans bill that would have made it a felony for an adult to help trans kids under 16 access gender affirming medical care

The Libertarian Party of Travis County, TX passed a resolution calling for Trump to be impeached

Dems doing stuff

Chris Van Hollen went to El Salvador to put eyes on Kilmar Abrego Garcia and attempt to negotiate his release. After being denied access to CECOT or even a phone call on Wednesday, he was able to meet with Kilmar on Thursday

Robert Garcia and Maxwell Frost are trying to get a congressional delegation authorized to travel to El Salvador

Cory Booker, Maxine Dexter, Yassamin Ansari, and Mark Desaulnier have all said (separately) they plan to travel to El Salvador

Chuck Schumer is blocking Trump’s nominees for federal prosecutors in NY—this is different than when senators put holds on cabinet nominees and this would completely block the appointments instead of just slow them down

Becca Balint Led 67 House Colleagues in Demanding Answers from DHS and the State Department on Mohsen Mahdawi’s Arrest

Elizabeth Warren and Melanie Stansbury introduced a bill to create stronger ethics rules and crack down on conflicts of interest for special government employees

Sarah McBride forced the Trump admin to reverse course on slashing a manufacturing support program in Delaware

Sean Casten held a town hall in the deepest red district in Illinois

Democrats have identified 35 vulnerable republican house seats to target in the midterms

Texas state representative John Bucy introduced a bill to expand online voter registration

Kathy Hochul supported a law passed by NYC city council to shift payment of broker fees from renters to landlords, after the Real Estate Board of NY sued the city to block it

Tony Evers locked in an increase in public school funding in Wisconsin for 400 years, the state Supreme Court backed it up

Janet Mills refused to comply with Trump’s orders on banning transgender athletes, said “I’m happy to go to court”

Illinois house democrats advanced legislation to require public colleges and universities to provide reproductive health care services to students

Jared Polis signed the Protecting the Freedom to Marry Act, protecting every Coloradan’s right to marry who they love

Nevada democrats introduced legislation to help the state hire federal workers fired by Trump and Elon

Wes Moore signed legislation aimed at connecting laid-off federal health care workers with jobs

NC AG Jeff Jackson sued property management companies over using RealPage to set and inflate rents, the second largest one settled and agreed to stop using it

Legal stuff

A lawsuit was filed against the DoD on behalf of students at schools on military bases, stating that book removals and curriculum changes violate their first amendment rights

Gavin Newsom is suing Trump over tariffs

Newsom is planning to sue Trump over the dismantling of Americorp

Judge Boasberg finds “probable cause” to hold Trump admin in contempt over Alien Enemies Act deportations

Judge Xinis ordered two weeks of discovery in the Abrego Garcia case, including depositions of the four officials who signed affidavits, and doesn’t rule out holding them in contempt

An appeals court denied the Trump administration’s attempt to appeal the order from Judge Xinis to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia

A former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice had his law license suspended for 3 years for violating professional conduct rules during a probe of the 2020 presidential vote

A group of small businesses is suing Trump over the tariffs, arguing they’re illegal under the IEEPA

A judge blocked Trump’s EO targeting law firm Susman Godfrey

Appeals court blocked the ban on trans military service members

Supreme Court temporarily blocked deportations under the Alien Enemies Act

A court denied the administration’s attempt to appeal an order mandating officials’ depositions about Kilmar’s deportation

A judge blocked the administration from enacting a policy that bans the use of “X” gender markers on passports

Foreign students are suing DHS over their visas being terminated

A federal judge blocked the Department of Energy from cutting over $400M in research funds to universities

A judge blocked the EPA from withholding billions in funds from clean energy programs

An Idaho judge ruled to broaden medical exceptions to the state’s abortion bans

Misc

Trump’s approval rating among independents is -22, the lowest ever for this point in a presidency

Three pentagon officials have been suspended in a leak investigation

Spokane, WA city council is proposing an ordinance that would include Two-Spirit people in the city’s human rights code, double up on state shield protections and ensure city employees’ insurance covers gender-affirming and reproductive healthcare

David Hogg (DNC vice chair) is planning to spend $20M funding primary challengers against sitting House members in safe blue districts who aren’t fighting hard enough

Florida lawmakers unanimously approved making medical marijuana cards free for veterans

Run For Something reported that over 200,000 people have signed up with them to run for office since 2017, and they’re currently averaging 500 new signups a day

National Republican Senatorial Committee is warning republicans that democrats are out-fundraising them

Six men in Coeur d’Alene, ID have been charged after dragging Teresa Borrenpohl out of a town hall in February

Mike Lindell (MyPillow guy) cried to a judge that he was “in ruins” and had no money after refusing to pay sanctions to Smartmatic

Portland city council unanimously voted to grant an appeal to stop a Portland General Electric project that would cut down 397 trees in Forest Park to build power lines

Unions form pro bono legal network for federal workers targeted by Trump

Funding was extended for the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database (cybersecurity)

Democrats are more trusted on the economy than republicans for the first time in years

The FDA granted fast track status to a bird flu vaccine

Dems won against Maga candidates in the Newark school board election

Labor union reps in Utah got twice the required number of signatures to get a referendum on the ballot to repeal a recent bill that ended collective bargaining

Washington state senate passed a bill that would require insurance companies to cover a 12-month supply of hormone replacement therapy at a time

Betty Martinez Franco became the first Latina elected to Irvine city council. She came to the US as an undocumented immigrant and has since become a citizen, gotten a masters degree, started a PR agency, and is now elected to city council

Elon’s L’s

Elon dropped DOGE’s savings goal from $2T to $150B—less than 10% of the original goal

Elon was outed as dm’ing women he’d never met and offering to impregnate them, shortly after that he announced he was deactivating twitter’s dm feature

Elon’s meeting at the Pentagon on China was stopped by Trump (“what the fuck is Elon doing there? Make sure he doesn’t go”)

[furiouszealot]

UPDATE: As of 25/04/2025, 4chan is back up and running again. This post and its addendum will be kept as is, and will no longer be updated unless it goes back down again. If you were on /ghost/, it was a pleasure shitposting with you.

All right, I know no one gives a shit, but let me give you a recounting of the fall of 4chan from the perspective of someone who was there and has been lurking both 4chan and tumblr for a few years now.

I'll try to provide as much context as I can, but a lot of images were either lost or im too lazy to look for them in the +5000 reply thread in soyjak party.

Anyways, info below:

So, necessary context: a few years back, 4chan had a board called /qa/, which if you know little about the page, you may think every board is like /b/ or /pol/, which means a containment cess pool of grifters, (you) baiters, incels, and other deranged individuals. The thing is, /qa/ was somehow worse. The entire board was plagued and infested with soyjack edits, board culture was a nuclear disaster, anons were incredibly hostile in there, you know the drill, the big bad 4chan, but this time its actually true.

One day, moderation deleted /qa/, anons that posted there got mad, tried to raid other boards, failed, and then moved on to an altchan called soyjack party, which entire purpose you can guess from its name alone.

Apparently, the boards that allow pdf uploads (paper and origami, for example) didn't check if the uploaded file was actually a pdf file, so postscript files could be used to get access. This is as far as my understanding of web backend goes, sorry.

The hacker claims to have been working on this since 2021, and that he had access since about a year ago, but was recopilating data.

Now, what actually happened when the hack ocurred? Well, a banner of miku dancing with a song that played automatically was placed on top of every board, with the text "/QA/ IS BACK", this was possible because apparently no board was ever deleted, they were just hidden from the public.

A thread was then made on soyjack party, claiming authorship over the hack, and shit went south from there. Anons went en masse to talk there, a lot of weird discussion happened, the thread got the bump limit removed and got pinned, more than 5k posts were amassed on the first night alone. Keep in mind this happened at about 8 pm and most of the stuff went on through midnight.

So, the hacker leaked some things, first of all, the html files for the entirety of /j/ and the email address for every moderation member (important note: the pressence of .gov mails was disproven by the hacker themselves, so i guess there were never any feds), what is /j/? the board exclusive for jannies and moderators to discuss actions taken on the website regarding spam, ban evaders, threads spiraling out of control, etc. Among other things, some of the inner workings of 4chan got revealed, such as the web extension for jannies that allows them to do their job easily, how reports are handled, and other stuff. (Anecdotically, some guy got permabanned for calling anons jews or n-words over a 100 times in the same few threads)

Then, the source code got leaked. Important to say, the hacker removed the part of the source code related to the captcha, as to not facilitate bot attacks on the future, and all information related to email verification or 4chan pass users information also got removed, so all in all users are safe.

What was found on the sourcecode? That it was old, mostly. Most boards used code that hasn't been updated since about 2016, and /flash/ used the exact same code from when it was created back on 2011.

From there, desuarchive, a site that archives threads that die from bump limit, opened a dragon ball general on ghost mode, and thus began what later got called /ghost/, a solely text based thread with well over 20k replies as of right now, where a fraction of the 4chan population took refuge and is currently discussing random things with no particular topic. Kinda hard to read, but its comfy.

What does this mean for other sites? Not a lot, really. A lot of anons already crossposted in 4chan and tumblr already, and the ones that din't most likely wont come here. Some of the bigger/most dedicated groups, like /vt/, migrated to other boards. Various altchans are trying/tried to catch some of the flock of users that got lost, but i doubt it will get anywhere, since soyjak party for example was struggling with just the influx of users that came for the hack thread given its poor infrastructure. Kiwifarms saw a surge of new accounts apparently, but a lot of anons kinda loathe the idea of having to register, so theres that.

Smaller communities, such as generals that didn't get a lot of traffic, or boards on the slower end (say, /ic/, /lit/, etc) will probably vanish or disseminate until (or if) 4chan comes back up. I'd say give it a month, don't get your hopes up whether you want it to stay dead or want it to come back.

Given how many anons are staying on places like /ghost/ or other similar archives with the same ghost posting feature, i doubt it will be as bad as people are making it sound. Besides, the communities that are most likely to migrate to places like tumblr are either /co/, /vg/ or /lgbt/ refugees, which aren't THAT bad. Not every board was like the main cesspools (/b/, /r9k/, /pol/).

From now on, either 4chan comes back up in a few weeks (somewhere between 2 weeks to a month is expected), altchans capture the migrating anons, or a brand new imageboard rises from the ashes to become the new go-to site for old 4chan posters.

In conclusion, nothing ever happens, but also don't worry, chances are this won't affect tumblr in the slightest. If it does, you can cash in your "you were wrong" ticket whenever you want, i'll take the L.

As a footnote, keep in mind: NO users were compromised, if you ever posted there and are worried for your safety, physical or digital, you are safe.

Edit: Forgot to add, if you are a 4chan refugee, im BEGGING you to dm me and tell what board you were from and where are you migrating, if at all.

[marticoresims]

USEFUL SOFTWARE FOR THE SIMS 2

This is a list of programs that will make your life easier if you're an avid Sims 2 player. Click on program titles to get download links.

SimPE The most known software for The Sims 2 that lets you edit package files. You can do basic stuff like rename a Sim, change family name, edit Sims' genetics as well as edit/create mods. Don't use if you have no idea what you're doing, watch a tutorial first or back up your neighborhood beforehand in case you mess something up! The newest version also has a terrain editor.

Sims2Pack Clean Installer The best program for installing downloaded lots and Sims. Those don't just go into Downloads, you need to install them!

Hood Checker This program checks neighborhood references and can clean out ones that are broken. Also useful for bringing back lost graves (it's still good to have NoUnlinkOnDelete).

HCDU Plus The Hack Conflict Detector Utility lets you scan your Downloads folder to check if you have any mods that edit the same aspect of the game, so can potentially be in conflict. Also useful to navigate which mods load first (load order is important for some mods to work).

What Caused This When you have 'testingcheats' on, the game gives you error messages if there's something going on. Not all of them mean there's a serious problem, but What Caused This can help you navigate what the source is. Upload the log file (Documents/EA/TS2/Logs) in the program, give it your Downloads folder and it will scan it to look for the culprit. Might give you straighforward information on which mod conflict caused the issue or that you lack Smarter EP Check for a mod that requires it.

The Compressorizer You can compress your Downloads to take up less space.

Delphy's Download Organiser You can filter your files to a certain category, scan for orphans (files that don't fully work if other files are missing, such as meshes), duplicates, and clean up your Downloads folder in an easier way than trying to track it inside the folder manually.

Outfit Organiser You downloaded CC clothes that the creator marked as outerwear but you think they don't fit in that category? With this program you can quickly change that! It's also doable in SimPE, but Outfit Organiser is a lot easier to use.

CPack Editor If you want to make plastic surgery genetic, there's no need to do it manually in SimPE, especially if it's more than one Sim. In CPack Editor, you just choose your neighborhood's folder, run the program, and it changes ALL surgery faces in that neighborhood to genetic!

Lot Adjuster This program lets you edit already existing lots. If you want a smaller or bigger lot than possible in-game, you can do it here! Also great for creating pavilions or row houses that are all separate lots, as you can get rid of the 2-tile border separating buildings by making the lots smaller and copying them.

[maxwellatoms]

In one of your last answers, you said “series reboots are usually pretty gross and sad”, and I was wondering if you could expand on that? Assuming “reboot” covers any kind of continuation of a currently cancelled or finished show (and maybe that’s the wrong assumption!), from the outside looking in it feels like a pretty mixed bag. On one hand, if I love XYZ Show, it’s cool that I get more stories with these characters and another chance to support XYZ Show and its creators. On the other, it definitely feels like a lot of ideas can only get funding if they’re tied to something already, meaning creatives are having to now tie whatever cool idea they have to some reboot/relaunch/retread, which can feel pretty disheartening if you don’t want to do a reboot/relaunch/retread. Is that a similar feeling from your side of the industry?

Thank you so much for all your answers and insight!

Usually reboots and spin-offs are just cash grabs. It happens a lot in animation. In fact, I would argue that the entire industry is just one big cash grab now. In the 80s, everyone complained that cartoons were just half-hour commercials for toys. And they were right. And we're right back there, but now that you can't legally push toys all day, it's just general "IP". Mugs, posters, more spinoffs, whatever.

I was offered three show running gigs over the pandemic. All reboots that I would consider unwise to pursue because they were "of a different time" and didn't (in my opinion) have anything more to say. Two of them were properties created by notorious sex pests, so there's also that. The animation industry loves to prop up its sex pests.

I turned all of them down, partially because I didn't respect the original creators but also because none of them had anything going for them except just being "more of the same".

I don't think any of those projects survived the intervening years, so in retrospect I maybe should've taken the job. I'd probably feel a bit gross, but at least I'd have floors in my house.

The entertainment industry is in a bad spot. The whole thing. I've had I don't know how many pitch meetings in the last few years, and they all start the same way:

"Hey! Before we start, we just want to let you know that we're not actively producing anything right now. We think maybe soon, but we won't be picking anything up today..."

And then later:

"The little we are doing is IP, so if you have a new take on our IP or a new IP you're connected to that you can bring in, that'd be great."

I always wanted to make original stuff. There came a time when I'd had my fill of Billy & Mandy and wanted to do something else new and original. That never manifested, and I was constantly being offered IP to produce. I turned too many of those down, maybe, before deciding that it was probably better that I run the IPs that mean something to me rather than having some hack do it.

But now those jobs have all gone to celebrities and fallen live-action writers, who are also slowly being eaten by the system. WB was hot for Scooby stuff a few years back, so I pitched some ideas. A few of them were turned down for being "off-brand" in a variety of ways. WB has now made (I think) all of those off-brand shows (or something close) with celebrity show runners.

I was going through a whole Midlife Impostor Syndrome thing recently where I was wondering if maybe I don't just suck. Like, it's weird that for a couple of decades I'd have people calling me trying to get me to run shows, and now nobody will call me back about the possibility of a design job.

Talking to some friends and realizing that they were in a similar situation helped me feel like I wasn't alone. That was nice. Talking to some of the most talented colleagues in my industry made me made me realize that those people weren't getting jobs either. That was unnerving. Talking to complete strangers in other parts of the entertainment industry now has me thinking that the whole house of cards is coming down. That's real concerning, yo.

It's hard not to think it's purposeful, when deranged billionaires own the entirety of our media and want to shape a society where they can't be criticized. We're letting wealthy tech bros firebomb the very heart of our culture, and it's weird that no one is talking about it. Because (for now) we still have that capability.

[random-cockroach]

F*** my writing shyness, it will be bad and utter stupid mushy dumbness and I don't mind, because I need MUSHY AND TOO SWEET AND STUPID KISSES THROUGH THE SCREEN WITH CONFUSION

Swerve x Blurr silly short oneshot Reverse mecha au by Kerefon

Silly kisses inside the games is the normal thing for humans, Cybertronians don't quite have such interactive games, at least he never was interested in Cybertronian ones, Blurr doesn't know why he feels so shy over this friendly joke that he was perfectly pulling off in the real life by himself.

Blurr has been watching streams of Serving_Metal_Nerdulgist for over 1 year now. He still has no idea how he found this line since it didn't have registered ID in the interplanetary lists, but the streams on it turned out to catch all of his attention. Interplanetary streams weren't something new or interesting (most of them were boring stuff with their strange ugly food that they were munching with even more ugly sounds, some strange sports, absolutely wasteful dramas and other things), but this one he never saw before. It was a game, cubic game, vibrant, green, full of details, explorations, it was fascinating to watch someone explore a newly created endless world, go on adventures, kill interesting monsters and make creations out of blocks that looked strange as a separate but gorgeous as a one. He was making it look gorgeous.

He supposed it wouldn't have been so interesting if not the voice behind it, who always was sharing his thoughts and ideas. Blurr was listening to them and wondering how one comes up with such ideas while himself getting inspired thanks to it (he tried to make a little blocky house with melting metal, but ended up burning surface of his digits and "house" looked like nest of these Gazin ants with three mouths).

It became the part of his free evenings, the chat became his dream chat group come true with never ending different interesting topics about anything and everything. Not like he could properly write on "human" so most of the parts he was using translator. Translator kind of sucked because it had barely any idea what the "human" is as much as Blurr did (he supposed the cubic human inside the game was based on real humans) and AI was learning words and their adaptations pretty slowly.

Unlike the person behind the stream.

He learned fast and over the year almost became fluent in Cybertron. He said it was the power of nerds.

Blurr felt himself pretty happy (immensely gleeful) about the fact that Nerdulgist did so to talk with him, to be able to play and talk without the need to switch to chat typing (not like he could type with Cybertronian syllables anyway).

He was watching him when there were only a few people. To be more precise, first time he found him he also joined his game, since ID applied to the game too and Blurr thought it was open to join for everyone. Reaction of pure horror and sudden boost of comments applied it was not. But Blurr was spamming shift after smashing all the keys to find some way to show that he is… friendly? He perfectly knows about ban option in public places and he didn't want to be banned even if it wasn't a thing here (he found out later it was a thing indeed). Maybe Nerdulgist thought that being friends with someone who could join your game without host's permission is safer so he rolled with it. He still didn't get what the herobrine is though, some kind of hacking program? He isn't to be blamed for ID leaking.

They became game friends. It became Blurr's second favorite thing after winning races and outside races he was finding excuses to abandon wreckers to play Minecraft.

He was sure Nerdulgist also found his company pleasing. He was especially affectionate during the game today, it was a "chill stream day" (he was changing all the above blocks in the area on different colored ones to make something like clay forest). Over the year his followers count grew noticeably so now instead of non-stop chattery he could do non-stop question answering.

"Do I like Blurr? What a sil– no, stupid and offending question-"

Blurr's screen suddenly was filled with detailed cubic face skin of some, as he was told but didn't find the source, anime character, but with red hair, and then he heard a very characteristic and loud soft kiss in his audials.

"I love him, he is the man of my dreams, I would have built a home with him in real life and placed our beds next to each other."

Blurr saw that there was a sudden flood of comments but he urgently rolled out of the table with his digits to the face and he couldn't understand what Nerdulgist was saying. He felt his cheek plates warming up under digits. He did not expect it.

They were joking like this before, but before was much faster, more joking-like and Blurr was prepared, he could read mood good even inside the game. Here he was just caught off guard. And that wasn't because he found Nerdulgists' voice attractive lately due to hoarseness from his past sickness, no. And didn't notice after that that his voice actually always was quite attractive to him, no.

He was very good with physical contact and attention! He was the man of physical attention! He was expressing like this to the ones he considered enough to be pals.

He considered Nerdulgist his friend and he. Could. Do. Nothing. To show it! He reacts like this definitely because he can't find no "friendly hugging" functions and so he wasn't prepared for audial way of such acts. Acts of kisses? Not cheek kisses. When did they skip one part of the progress chain? Yes he wasn't prepared for it to be outside chat. If only he could somehow spend more time nuzzling with him so he could be prepared to steadfastly stand this affectionate attack! Sleeping on the beds next to each other didn't count.

"Blurr? Are you good?"

[Great_Cucumber: he probably passed out, you just kissed him, let him cool down]

[SweatNana243: Blurr ~ Come back, your man misses you~]

"Chat, shhh."

Blurr snapped out of his thoughts only when Swerve (Swerve said his name only to him and asked not to call him by his real name, so they were having fun by coming up with new strange names to "accidentally" say on streams) asked him on cybertronian if he is okay. Hearing it on cybertronian both deepened his warmness and got him back to his field of confidence. What is wrong with him? Two can play this game and he doesn't plan on losing!

Blurr: Yes, I am good, you have to kiss me longer to get rid of me

(The statement was absolutely true, he perfectly remembered his only few kisses he ever had in this life, he was drunk and it took noticeably more time for him to pass out. Of course he remembered real facts to apply to a silly game kissing, who doesn't?)

[Great_Cucumber: OOOOOOOOOOOO]

[Funtime90008: OOOOOOOOOOO]

[WBlurrNerdNation: OHOHOHOHOHOHOH GUYS]

There was a rich chuckle and chair creaking. "I'm going after my kissy plushie toy and I am about to measure your limits of hit kisses!"

[SweatNana243: your WHAT]

[Great_Cucumber: virgin spotted pointy finger]

[WBlurrNerdNation: I'm calling my friends, they can't miss it]

Okay, maybe Blurr wasn't as prepared to this. He rotated around in the search of something. Whatever. Something that also fits for a kissing practice, for no other reason but to not feel "attacked" if he also will do this dumb thing.

Blurr heard almost every possible transformer. Their voices became so common to him that when he first time opened interplanet stream with some ugly three mouths thing talking, the voice of that thing was disgusting, unusual, but mostly disgusting. Blurr was paying closer attention to people's voices, you could find so much information in them; and cybertronians' voices were consistent of precisely built in individual characteristics of waves. You could hear a silent static and a muffled echo inside throat. You could hear and sense the mood of the person if you knew how to do it. Organics? Their "static" voice cracks were grotty, they couldn't regulate their voices when they were loud, the sound was coming out of wet sources as if they were drowning. It was unpleasant. He didn't like noisy sticky figures.

Swerve's voice was… very pleasant. He guessed it had wet source just as organics, but it sounded dry, rich, vibrant, and when his voice was cracking up in excitement, it was contagious. When he was yelping and screaming on higher waves it sounded cute after his deep, slightly nervous bass. Funny even. He wasn't gulping after hours of talking like others did, he clearly needed water but he was too deep into explaining his new idea for the swamp area until his voice was becoming desiccated and he had to whispers while his chat was spamming "serve aqua".

Swerve indicated his return with two exaggerated smacking sounds of lips. Blurr laughed, nervously and generously. Swerve was a total maniac once he became comfortable. "Are you ready my handsome alien?"

Blurr managed to write "Wait a min dying laughin" before he clung to his knees with static laugh and burning cheeks. A cube person with strange skin was about to kiss him!

"I don't have the whole day, dear gringo, 1 minute and you will have to face me"

He clearly was in a very playful mood today as he said it in cybertronian to mock his viewers. It didn't help Blurr. Swerve's voice compensated all his hilarious looks. Where was his coolant?

Blurr looked around to check that the door was closed, he didn't want to die out of embarrassment. After making sure that there is no one sneaking on him (though the existence of guilty ghosts was especially believable right now) he braced himself and was looking at the screen.

Blurr: Deliver it (He meant "Bring it on" but translator didn't reach such levels of smugness yet)

Swerve seemed to lean closer to the microphone since the sound of skin pressed against the soft plushy was very clearly heard.

[Matador: SEND CREEPERS ON THEM WHILE THEY ARE BUSY]

[WBlurrNerdNation: SHUT UP, THERE IS RELATIONSHIP DEVELOPS]

[DBlurrNerdNation: WTF]

[JBlurrNerdNation: I will fight with mobs for the pride of their first proper kiss]

Okay. It sounded… soft. Blurr unconsciously touched his lips, he guessed his lips weren't as delicate as organics'… he had nothing to compare it with. Maybe jellied energon? He remembered his drunk kisses. They were soft for him but we talk about tender kind of leathers here. He felt frustrated but didn't stop listening and watching. That was an unusual sudden attention directed to him but he didn't dislike it.

Primus stop thinking about it with such seriousness it's a silly joke. From someone he found very nice to talk to. And listen to. Swerve is a great, very funny, smart dude. Silly a little bit, isn't it perfect? Oh, he heard a… breathing? Some fleshings had nostrils, looks like humans have them too and they are located above the mouth. And their breathing isn't as stable but very soft sounding. His vents suddenly clicked on to mimic the breathing rate, he gave up fighting with his processor. Sadly right now his attention was perfectly locked on one thing and was rotating only around arising from this event imaginations.

His imagination was too bright as he was imagining a presence on his lips. He closed his eyes and leaned in toward the sound. Then he opened them again and looked behind his back. No one was there. Thank Primus.

There were only a few bots who's voices he liked. Like, liked liked. But they were only transformers, never flesh organics. He might have liked liked liked this human's voice and vent (newly discovered breathing) more than all others that he liked liked.

Swerve budged from the microphone and made teasing chuckling sounds while still keeping hold of the plush. He was a streamer who felt like a scrapper in the metal pools after being sure that such jokes are good with Blurr.

"Still didn't fall under my obviously great and very expert kissing skills?"

[Great_Cucumber: you suck, I feel bad for Blurr]

"Hey what? That clearly was perfect! Not too long, not too short, with pauses, a little bit of teasing for the mood…" The microphone transmitted the sounds of his exaggerated hand gestures. Good microphone. "So what if it was only with plush? Do you not kiss your pets?"

[Great_Cucumber: I should be worried about your pets. But for your knowledge, my pomeranian kisses better.]

[WBlurrNerdNation: you are such a mood breaker, use your damn imagination, he wasn't kissing you!.. But yeah ah it sounded kinda gross actually]

"Chat. Chat, I hate you all and just for your knowledge, komondors are better than pomeranians."

[SweatNana243: look, he started mumbling under his nose, you all are so mean]

Nerdulgist turned away and got back to changing blocks while explaining all pros and cons of the bigger dogs compared to little ones. Blurr finally got back to his keyboard and mouse after his vents calmed down.

It definitely shouldn't have felt like whatever he felt but he couldn't help himself.

So instead he decided to not pretend to be dense and cool and started running laps around Swerve, shifting and jumping to lift their moods up. Worked perfectly, attention immediately switched and Blurr confused everyone with how getting pets where he is was kind of an illegal or kinky thing. They didn't finish what they planned because they saw turtles ashore and ended up breeding them while Swerve was talking about some cool mutated turtles, then just as usual they went back in their too gorgeous for Blurr's comprehension house with red and blue beds and orange and white carpets beneath them in the further room.

For some months now Nerdulgist was ending his stream first and then was spending some more quality time with Blurr until their attention was switching to opposite directions and they were chatting on absolutely different topics while still listening to each other.

Wreckers still didn't come back. Blurr was lying on the berth and rotating some favorite events from today in his head. Usually it was the whole stream and everything they talked about but this time he mostly was remembering the breathing and soft touching of skin that he heard, it was something new for him and he couldn't calm down and especially couldn't understand why he couldn't calm down. He wouldn't mind sharing a room with such cool person. He decided to run around the ship outside until his processor got overheated. ___________________________________

Swerve on the other side of the screen flying in heaven because he finally found someone who passed his vibe check, on who he could pull off all of his affectionate impulses and flirty jokes. ___________________________________ IN MY DEFENCE! Swerve here is the human from the beginning in this reverse version and he technically in the surrounding where he can feel less alone, nerds are all over the world on Earth so I believe this version of him is so much more confident in himself. He is the man of a good talents and great social education and awareness. He has a job that he even if don't love but clearly enjoys and it serves a good and visible purpose, he gets home and releases all the stress in other activities he likes. And it is known that confident people (not in an arrogant manner) are more attractive so his jokes get like, [10 buff due to him feeling sure not even if about them but about himself saying them. And yes aghsfa I think he would have a deep voice with a bit of a high cracking during laugh and nervousness. And he screams like a girl when startled, then coughs and screams again but now like a real man.

Blurr for me is only the friendly flirting kind of guy who does so to make people comfortable. And he will understand his interest in romance way with someone only when other close friend of his starts friendly flirting with him and Blurr will have to reconsider some of his life choises. And I just wanted Blurr to have a panic first. And find more attractive different qualities in Swerve. Please don't look at me I didn't even write it enough fluff for my liking I am holding well.

[Also Swerve added "Serving" in his name after he has read too many isekai mangas with 127 words long titles]

[millicent-bystandr]

SimWardrobe's Candy Crafting Station with Parsimonious Chocolate Boxes

I saw a reblog of @pixeldolly's recolored chocolate boxes for SimWardrobe's candy crafting station and I had a sudden urge to take it even further. I also just hit 200 followers so this can be my followers' gift, too!

The candy crafting station allows your sims or their employees to make five different types of chocolates and pack them in boxes for resale at an owned business. Each flavor has a different effect when a sim consumes them. You'll find it under Appliances/Misc for $5,000.

I changed the objects crafted at the station from the boxes of chocolate based on the pizza object, to the boxes from Parsimonious' For the Love of Chocolate set.

I also added hobby enthusiasm to the machine and the chocolates and added special bonuses for the sim that eats them.

The five types of chocolates are: Milk Chocolate: satisfies hunger, no special effect Dark Chocolate: increases fun and hunger Mint Chocolate: increases comfort and hunger Ginger Chocolate: increases energy and hunger Extra Dark Chocolate: increases hunger and adds love potion effect (eating disabled for children and toddlers)

I'm really excited that I got this to work and I think it's really fun, so I hope that you all will like it as much as I do. :)

Download: Simblr.cc | SFS

More notes and stuff below the cut:

Notes on the candy crafting station:

I did not change the GUID of the Sim Wardrobe station, so you can't have both in your downloads folder at the same time.

Sims gain cooking skill when making candy. (You must have the comm-skilling hack from MATY to gain skills on community lots.)

On an owned business lot, candy will go into the business owner's inventory.

New: Sims gain cuisine hobby enthusiasm when making candy.

New: Candy output changed to chocolate boxes from Parsimonious. (see below)

New: Changed icons on the machine from fruit to ones that match the "ingredients" of the different chocolates. Icons were created by FreePik at flaticon.com. They're crunchy up close, but I decided I could live with them. The originals were pretty crunchy too.

Notes on the chocolate boxes:

The chocolate objects were created by Kate at parsimonious.com. Polycount: 904

Sims will use the snacking animations when eating the chocolates. There is no half-empty or empty state. Sims will throw the box away when finished. If a sim lays the object down after picking it up, it will be turned on its side. Eating can be resumed if it is not empty.

Placing objects on displays using moveobjects on may cause the item to disappear after restocking. Turning off the cheat before placement or placing the chocolates in the Decra-Chill display seems to fix this issue.

These objects have new GUIDs, and can be used along with the original and its recolors.

Eating these chocolates will decrease fitness rather quickly, same as snacking on chips/cookies.

NEW: Sims gain cuisine hobby enthusiasm while eating.

NEW: Sims no longer burp while eating the chocolates.

NEW: Updated the price and catalogue descriptions for all and changed the box texture for the Extra Dark Chocolates. Prices are set as follows: Milk Chocolate $20; Dark, Mint, Ginger Chocolates $30; Extra Dark Chocolate $40

NEW: Chocolate boxes must be crafted and do not appear in the catalog. If you want to be able to buy them from the catalog, just give the objects a buy category using SimPE or whoward's Object Relocator. If you do that, you can use these objects with or without the crafting station in your downloads folder.

Credits and thanks: SimWardrobe/Paladin's Palace for the original candy crafting station Parsimonious for the chocolates @pixeldolly for the inspiration @crispsandkerosene for the tutorial on adding hobby enthusiasm to custom objects

[cavegirlpoems]

You know another thing that fucking sucks? I actually really enjoy RPGs that basically boil down to 'you're in a hostile unknown environment with lots of weird shit, dangers and potential rewards, go explore and try not to die'. Like survival-horror-ttrpgs, right? And, in theory, this is what D&D is meant to do. Hell, in the early editions - from the original little white books to probably early AD&D 1e - it's actually pretty tightly designed around doing that (with occasional interludes into flabbergasting racism, that we all quietly excise). The problem is that because D&D is marketed as, like, the everything-ttrpg that lets you tell big dramatic stories and have character arcs, the D&D-o-sphere thinks it's too good for that style of play. Like "here's a spooky hole full of traps, try not to die" is somehow looked down on as being unsophisticated reactionary dreck for grognards. And "here's a spooky hole, try not to die" is the only thing D&D is any fucking good at! You want big character drama and an epic narrative and emotional beats? You're on your fucking own, sunshine, D&D won't help you with that. But if you want to get killed in a cave by a spike trap or eyeball monster? D&D's great at that, it loves things that try to kill you. (This is, I think, a distinction between type-1 and type-2 D&D). (D&D 5e is also noticably worse at being D&D-as-survival-horror than earlier editions - except spiders 4e who is a statistical outlier adn should not have been counted - because in their effort to market it as an everything-game, they stripped out a lot of the stuff that actually cared about creating that experience, because some people don't like dying in holes what with taste being subjective and god forbid they play something else instead) And it kinda sucks because in theory if I want to go play a survival horror rpg where I go into a hole/ruin/alien spaceship/haunted house/heist/evil gameshow and try not to die, despite the fact that this is in theory how you're meant to play D&D, in practice that's not how it's gonna go down because 75% of the player base is ignoring the type of game D&D is actually written to be and desperately trying to beat it into the vague shape of a narrative game. Anyway this is why I like OSR stuff, it's like if D&D dropped the facade and stopped pretending to be stuff it's not. (I should note, to avoid pissing on the poor, that I play a whole bunch of stuff, from VtM to a bunch of PbtA hacks, to weird indie things, to larps, to shit I wrote myself. Die-in-a-cave-D&D is part of a healthy varied ttrpg diet)

[vintagerpg]

In another exercise in grabbing every possible license in hopes it will yield a hit RPG, this is The World of Tank Girl (1995). It hit shelves in February. The film came out at the end of March and, er, tanked. The books stayed on shelves. They are probably still there.

I saw the movie in 1995 and it was pretty bad. Wikipedia tells me that it eventually became a cult sensation. Wikipedia also told me, “A ‘naked Ripper suit’ incorporating a prosthetic penis was created for Booga and used in a filmed postcoital scene which was removed from the final version of the film at the studio's insistence.” I don’t think I wanted to know that fact, but it illustrates the fact you could tell back in ’95 that the studio hacked the hell out of movie because they didn’t understand it. You can also tell that it probably influenced a lot of stuff that’s come since. It surprises me zero percent that Margot Robbie optioned the rights for a reboot.

Anyway, cult hit or not, I don’t think anyone wanted this game. There are forty pages of rules here, including a detailed chapter on vehicle combat. If ever a game has screamed for a cinematic, hand-wavy system, it is the bombastic, often surreal and ultraviolent Tank Girl. The character is Chaos on two legs, and this game has the gall to think it can be made of rules? No. None of this works. Tank Girl is cool. Jamie Hewlitt’s art is cool. This game can stay on the shelf. And it did! Sometimes the market is right.

[seleneprince]

Continuation of this

All JL's kids in au know each other, having met through the years separately and eventually forming a tight friendship. And they have a groupchat called "Superdaddy issues" where they mostly keep each other updated about their lives and complain together about their families. After all, there aren't many children of superheroes and vigilantes who suffer from emotional neglect, morally questionable mothers and severe trauma like they do. They're quite literally the only ones who understand each other in a deep, personal level.

Since they each live in different cities, the communicate mostly through the chat and social media, but they make the effort of meeting all in one of their cities to hang out properly. They're not the best of friends, there are varying degrees of closeness in the group, but they got each other's backs no matter what. They're a team initially created out of spite for their parents, but in the end they became real friends.

Since most of them are involved in dangerous and very much illegal activities behind their families' back, they also exchange tips on how to do stuff and more than once they have worked together to get things done.

In short, instead of the power of friendship, theirs is the power of shared daddy issues.

The group chat is, of course, coded from top to bottom by Bruce's daughter so it never gets hacked or leaked. Complete privacy. If anyone saw what they're up to in that chat, they would have the federals and probably psychiatrists banging on their doors.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hi Miss Raven! I am here today to ask if you have any thoughts on Ortho’s age. I see a lot of people saying that Ortho is mentally a child which is the reason he’s left out of a lot of like x reader stuff which I totally understand why that would be uncomfortable. Sometimes I see people saying that Ortho is actually closer to 16 though? I’m kinda confused now so I wanted your opinion. Thanks and sorry if this is an uncomfortable subject or something.

Like I expressed in this post about Malleus’s mental age, I don’t think there’s a very obvious right or wrong answer to this. To the second anon, please refer to the post I linked to answer your question.

I understand that people can be uncomfortable shipping Ortho with other characters, who are typically teenagers or actual adults, due to how he appears very young. That’s entirely their right to do so, and it’s a valid stance to have. I myself choose to avoid shipping Ortho too, but I have additional reasons that I won’t get into here since it gets sort of personal 😅 However, I also hold the opinion that Ortho is not mentally a child, even if he may physically present as one because of his small stature.

Let’s quickly review the lore behind Ortho and why some fans see him as a child. He’s a technomantic android created by Idia and imbued with the memories of the original Ortho, the younger Shroud brother who passed away in a horrible accident. In 6-75, we learn that Idia was 10 years old at the time of this accident, meaning that Ortho was 2 years younger than him at 8 (since Idia is currently 18 and, in book 7, Ortho is starting his first year at RSA as a 16-year old).

Ortho mentions in his Birthday Gear vignettes that he has the strongest birthday memories of 11 years ago. If we assume Ortho is 16ish now (also stated in his Birthday Gear), this seems to imply that OG!Ortho died after his 5th birthday, perhaps as young as 5 years old. Idia would be 7ish around the time Ortho is 5. Factoring in the 2 years that pass after Ortho’s death, Idia is would be 9-10ish. This creates a potential contradiction, as the S.T.Y.X. researchers appear to claim Idia was 10 at the time of Ortho’s death and not 2 years after it. The only way this works is if they were talking about 10 year-old Idia in the present, but Idia was actually closer to 7-8 when he hacked the security systems 💦 I’m going to assume ghat the “strongest birthday memories” mentioned in the Birthday Gear vignettes simply refers to a very detailed memory due to the happiness OG!Ortho experienced that year, not that it was the last birthday he experienced before death.

It should also be noted that it took Idia roughly 2 years to actually make the technomantic android we now know as Ortho. If we add these 2 years to Ortho's original age at death (5 to 8), he would be around 7-10ish in his new form. For the sake of simplicity, I will assume the older age estimates in the rest of their discussion.

Ortho's official profile lists his height as 148 cm, which is significantly more than the height of the average 10-year old boy (~138.5 cm). His actual height is, however, very close to the average height of a 12-year old boy (149 cm). Ortho at this point also sounds different than the child Ortho we see in Idia's post-OB flashback, indicating that our Ortho is slightly older than at the time of death. Idia most likely designed robo!Ortho to match the age Ortho would have been at, had he lived those 2 years.

Altogether, this, at best, places Ortho at 8 years old minimum and 10, maybe 12 years old maximum. That makes him not even a teenager yet--so why do I think he's actually closer to 16 mentally and not 10-12? Because he knows much more than the average child does and is able to very eloquently verbalize his vast knowledge.

Now, I do think an argument can be made that Ortho only knows as much as he does (including his vocabulary) because of his inherent nature as a robot and not as an organic being. Ah, and here's the crux of the issue: can we judge an android by the same standards as that of a human??? In my eyes, a gifted or genius child cannot compete with the capabilities of a supercomputer. Ortho is equipped with very advanced learning algorithms, which allow him to pick up on and learn quickly--and this is something that I equate with his ability to grow and develop as though he were human. In Fairy Gala If, Ortho defines his own understanding of evolution and applies that concept to his runway walk. Even the emotions that Ortho currently expresses are the result of him learning from the media he consumes and then emulating them. He's formally recognized as a student late in book 6 as well, which effectively makes him a first year (most of which are 16ish). I assume that Ortho even starts to take classes meant for first year high school students at that point, and has no issues with the difficulty of the material. I think that, to label him as 10-12ish or even 8, it unnecessarily infantilizes Ortho minimizes his own advanced ability to learn and grow and change: things that are most definitely human.

I also think that Ortho's behaviors are too mature for a typical child. That's not to say that he's the peak of maturity (let's not forget how often he defaults to trying to laser beam his problems away), but Ortho is typically very logical and relies on cold, hard facts to make optimal decisions. He is also the one that usually moderates Idia and tries to encourage healthy behaviors in him, like socializing, leaving his room, sleeping on time, eating well, trying new things, etc. Ortho is essentially his brother's keeper for a good chunk of the main story and in vignettes (like Ceremonial Robes) and events (Harveston Sledathon, Wish Upon a Star, etc.). This isn't an absolute, of course. I can see people pointing out that Ortho only acts logical because he's a robot, or that little kids are sometimes forced to "grow up" faster due to their pressing circumstances (which, in this case, is Idia and his anxiety). These are valid interpretations too. If memory serves correctly, the students at NRC don't exactly treat Ortho like some baby that wandered onto campus. At most, they tend to just refer to him as Idia's kid brother. ("Kid" here not referring to Ortho literally being a child; it could also be interpreted as "younger" brother or the "younger/little" Shroud.) The few who do make fun of him for looking young tend to be mobs or painted as misunderstanding him (as is the case with Ortho's Ignihyde Gear vignettes). Ortho even seems to be surprised at being mistaken for a child by Diasomnia mobs: "A kid? Oh, you must not know who I am since you're freshmen."

Idia had the liberty to design Ortho's body however he wanted. As previously stated though, it's likely that he modeled the body off of the age of death rather than updating it to reflect a more mature mentality. In other words, Ortho's body doesn't reflect what he knows or how he acts. If I had to give a real world comparison, it's like how there are really short adults--but that doesn't make them any less of an adult just because they're short; they often can't help their bodies being that way. (In Idia's book 7 dream, Ortho at age 16 is still depicted as being short.)

I do think that, to some degree, Ortho is aware that he presents like a child and knows how to use this to his advantage to get his way. He sometimes plays it up to beg Idia to come out of his room, and, in his Ignihyde Gear vignettes, Ortho plays innocent to Trein so that it seems like some mob students are bullying him (even though the truth is that Ortho was playing embarrassing videos of said mob students for he public to view). "Professor, I was just minding my own business and drying the sheets when these two started yelling at me... *sniffle*"

Those are my thoughts! Please bear in mind that this is just my own interpretation; it's in no way canon, and nor am I insisting it to be. Ortho's age is officially stated as "undefined", so I don't think there's a clear number we can put to him. It's really up to individual interpretation! I hope that I was able to provide both sides to the argument and sufficient information for you to come to your own conclusions about Ortho's age ^^

[ms-demeanor]

Do you know of any resources for physical film photo manipulation? Not sure if there's different terms for non-digital stuff, but I'm having a hard time finding anything.

Okay so there are, I'm going to say (casually, informally, and inexpertly - photography experts feel free to correct me or add on to what I've missed), four major types of photo manipulation that are common with non-digital photography. They are: exposure manipulation, compositing, actually photographing weird bullshit, and just straight up painting.

Exposure manipulation gets you things like Ansel Adams "Moonrise." This is what it looks like if it's evenly exposed:

And this is what it looks like with significant modifications to the exposure:

That is. Like. SEVERAL layers of different exposures for the final print. This can be achieved through processes called "dodging" and "burning." "Dodging" is creating a physical mask so that the parts of the negative you want to remain darker are exposed to less light. "Burning" is creating a physical mask so that the areas you the negative you want to be brighter are exposed to more light.

This is a process that is really, really easy to do in photoshop, and really really hard to do in film.

Here is a very comprehensive writeup of how to dodge and burn, and why you might want to.

Compositing is a fancy way of saying "copy/paste". But more so. And with more techniques. Compositing is basically combining two or more images to create one new image. You can do this by making multiple exposures (exposing the negative to light multiple times), splicing film negatives together (physically cutting the negatives and taping pieces to each other), or by combining negatives and prints into a new print. For instance the image below is made up of six different photos, which were composited into a single image by Henry Peach Robinson in 1877.

This is an article written by a photographer who walks you through the process they used to make a composite print in 2020. It involves a lot of planning, cutting, pasting, masking, dodging, and burning. This is a writeup from a photographer who uses a more blunt method of splicing negatives together to create more abstract images.

Actually photographing weird bullshit is what I'm calling "in camera effects." There are all kinds of tricks that you can use while taking a photo to create surreal or magical effects. One that a lot of people know is the speeder in Star Wars:

The floating speeder wasn't achieved through later manipulation of the film, but instead through mirrors hanging in front of the wheels and vaseline smeared on the camera lens to create a blurred effect.

Light painting is perhaps the most commonly used of these kinds of effects:

That's a 6-second exposure, the first three seconds were of the cup and saucer still, then the light was lowered as the cup was lifted and light was swept up when the cup was in place to make it look like it was floating.

The Cottingley Fairy Hoax is one of the best known examples of manipulating photos by just photographing weird bullshit. In 1917, two girls cut pictures of fairies out of a book and took pictures of themselves with the paper fairies propped up in trees, then swore up and down that they actually found fairies.

This seems crude, but hey they couldn't reverse image search the fairies or anything back then. Some of the photos also make good use of forced perspective, which is something that we still use for in-camera manipulations (it was how a lot of Lord of the Rings was filmed in order to make the hobbits look small)

Here's a listicle with a bunch of "hacks" for using your camera and for testing out some types of in-camera effects.

Just Straight Up Painting is what I'm calling photo retouching. It's a bit of an exaggeration to call it "painting" but yeah sometimes it was literally putting paint on negatives or etching away parts of negatives. It's how you end up with photos like this:

Here's an article about retouched photos of Joseph Stalin (maybe the most well known examples of pre-digital photo retouching) and an article about the art of portrait retouching. These examples are relatively subtle, but you can also use these kinds of retouching and airbrush techniques to exaggerate parts of an image or add objects to an image (see the text added to the flag in the article about Stalin).

I can't think of any comprehensive resources offhand, but photographers love to tell you how they pulled of their photos (which is why quite a few of the links above are from photographers discussing process). This is by no means a comprehensive list of non-digital photomanipulation techniques, but hopefully it's enough terminology to get you started on what you're looking for.

[elden-hicks]

A note for the fellow strugglers in TS1

Hey, it's Seth! I know how frustrating TS1 can be (considering it's age and being the first game in the franchise), so I am here to introduce a list of personal must have mods and programs, which I always use whenever I re-install the game to make it more user-friendly. The list itself is quite short, actually, since it only consists of my personal gameplay choice mods. So there's no building objects, deco, skins and heads there.

MODS AND CC

This calendar will report the day of the month to your sims and -- and this is amazing -- even introduce a concept of days off. Sims should have about every 6th and 7th day off. - THE ABSOLUTE MUST HAVE. It's in the painting section and costs 15 simoleons. Works a bit wonky with children, but otherwise a very useful mod to have.

Call work/give interview job phone plugins to give your sim a day off. - I use those mostly when sims have to take care of the baby.

A family mod by Gothi_family_4ever. - another must have in my collection, introduces the familial relationships in game! No more inappropriate relationships between relatives. It's a 0 simoleon painting, which you can delete once you've done.

A hacked frigde mod by the same author. - allows your sims to put their food into the refrigirator, call the household members for the meal, and requires the usage of products (like meat and in-game vegetables) in order to cook a dish instead of insta-paying. You kinda have to build a grocery shop for your sims, so they could buy the required products, I prefer to install the stalls into the pre-existing farm shop in Old Town area. P.S DON'T FORGET TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE INSTALLING BEFORE DRAGGING ANY FILE. As much as I love this mod, I don't, for example, use their cereal add-on.

The Elixir ExpressiBuy Computer. - a computer that allows you to buy any in-game buyable product (like vacation gifts, grocery, tonics, etc etc) in stock. They won't magically appear overnight but would be brought by a special courier npc. It also allows your sim to research logic, creativity, culinary and mechanical skills. I'd also recommend diving further into their site, since they have a lot of cool and unique gameplay content as well!

MagiCo's Bookshelf of Dimensional Storage - the official Maxis item, that was in the 'Get Cool Stuff' section. Allows your sims to keep their magic coins and ingrediends in special bookshelf storage, I mostly use it so the kids could get the ingredients for their spells from the adults. It is in the Magic section, btw

The Magic Mirror - the only outright cheat object that I have in my possesion. This mirror refreshes your sims needs, builds skills, friends, stardom, etc. Saves headaches when you are not in the mood to fullfill your sims' mood, ha-ha.

PROGRAMS

SimEnchancer 3D - basically a program that allows you to change the basic sim's attributes, including their heads and bodytypes. If you are familiar with TS2's SimPE, you'd have the idea how it works. NOTE: if you have to run your TS1 game as an administrator, you'd have to open it up in the same vein as well. And don't forget to backup your UserData files when you are working with it, just in case!

The Sims Creator - the official Maxis program for players to create some basic skins content. The program is only suitable to work with head and skins textures and not the meshes! Likewise, if you have to open the game as an administrator, you'd have to do the same with that program.

NEIGHBORHOODS

This section for the fellow premade enjoyers out there, who mostly played TS2 before and decided to give the local premades a chance as well

Here you can download the original UserData 1 and 2 if you want to reset your neigborhoods as they were if you had already played the neighborhood before and want to start anew. The Sims Wiki also gives you an instruction for how to do so.

And here you can download the additional Maxis families like The Hatfield, The Maximus, The Mashuga, The Snooty, The Jones and that weird agent White House familes. For some reasons, some of them refused to function in my game, so I had to install the empty houses and recreate them by hand, using the SimEnchancer and Wikia to give them appropriate skills and careers.

OTHER

Sims 1 Alternative UI - refreshes your game by a margin. I really recomend this one!

Well, that's basically it! I hope, my list would help you as well!

[elaine19day]

Alright guys, I'm here today to address the pictures of the alleged 'new merch' that had been circling around in the English fandom for a few days. See how I said 'English fandom'? Because nobody really addressed it on weibo and XHS yet… at least not to that extent. (Sorry, I have seen these screencaps on tumblr, insta, X and discord, and I have no idea who originally took them, I don't claim to have taken those screenshots, merely providing them here so you know what I'm talking about.)

So what happened? A few days ago a random shop on taobao created new listings that offered a new series of badges and prints/acrylics - not just featuring the 4 main boys, but also He Cheng, Qiu, She Li and… Cun Tou…..?! Now let's take a moment and sit back and think about this for a while. First of all: Why would a random shop that's NOT affiliated with mosspaca in any way post new 'official' merchandise? (Because we can see there's the mosspaca copyright writing on the badges and acrylics, just like it used to be on the previous badge series) Why would this random shop post these things while neither OldXian herself nor her boss, moss, have posted or announced anything via weibo/XHS? Don't you think this is sort of fishy? You don't find this strange, you don't question that at all? Sure, some people said: It's leaked and it will be available on the upcoming signing event on the 29th which OX announced on her weibo. Sure. There is a possibility, of course. They could have a leak in mosspaca studio and some person got their hands on some undisclosed merch and decided to make bank by making a new shop and listing the items for pre-order, hoping they could cash in. NOT a smart choice if you wanna keep your job because such incidents get investigated thoroughly and we all know by now that moss himself is very strict about these things and already has taken legal action against shops before when they sell fake merch as official merch. The other possibility? Old Xian's apple account has been hacked by an outsider and then the same scenario as before applies - that person wanted to cash in before it officially releases.

Now. How has OX handled merchandise before? It was always announced before an event and sometimes even months(!) in advance when they were pre-order items. Also. Have you ever seen Old Xian making merch for Cheng, Qiu, She Li and Buzzcut? Sure, the first 3 have been on some old postcards way back in the day, plus they are depicted in some of the artbooks, okay. But actual merch with them separately? The last badge series had a very limited special edition button with He Cheng. That was super rare. And now OX suddenly makes merch of the 2 adults, plus She Li AND Buzzcut, who's a minor character which barely makes an appearance? (Sorry, Buzzcut fans, not trying to be mean, just wanting to drive home the point that OX creating merch of him is highly unlikely - unfortunately.)

So what can we take home from all the stuff I just pointed out? Yep, there is a high chance that this is not official. It might be fake merch, sold by a random person who used generative AI tools and editing skills to create these things. I mean, sure, some of the pictures look highly convincing, I give you that. But then again, there are fanartists out there who can perfectly mimic Old Xian's style and edit/draw the boys in new poses that make it seem 'real' and official. But then there's THIS. Please take a close look at the way the faces are 'drawn', the way that the eyes are sort of smudged, same as some of the abs, the way Mo's face is contorted in a weird angle, the way the hands look chunky and unreal, and so on. (click on image to enlarge it and see it in more detail)

Weird, right? Well, it's a very common, typical thing for pictures that are generated with free AI tools. Everyone who has tried one or the other and has fcked around with one of those tools out of curiosity will notice.

Also - have you noticed the sheer AMOUNT of things posted from this one random seller? 10 different badges, 12 different long bookmarks (acrylic boards?), 4 couple cards, plus a LOT of other random new things which all feature very old panels from the manhua… When has Old Xian ever released SO MUCH merch at once? Yep. Never. Plus the re-using of old pictures for new merch? Also doesn't make much sense. And there's a lot of the older illustrations being used for these supposed new things here.

So if you take all of this into account, you might conclude that someone is tryna pull your leg here, selling fake merch disguised as official by even slapping the logo onto it to make it more convincing and mimicking how it looked the last time around. Of course - there might be the odd chance that mosspaca suddenly took a 180° turn and completely changed their modus operandi and decided to do things completely different compared to before and that it was leaked after all and meant as a surprise for the new autograph event etc etc etc. Yep. There's a chance that all this is true after all. But there's also a chance that I step out of my house tomorrow and an airplane crashes onto my head. Of course, that chance is *extremely* small. But the chance is there… So there you have it. All I'm asking you here, is to take a moment to think it through logically when you see these things online. And that you don't instantly believe everything that other people post who are always so eager to spread false information just for the sake of stirring up the fandom without ever taking the time to verify their sources. (No, I'm NOT taking a jab at anyone here who posted/reposted these pictures and was confused and/or asked about it. I was just as puzzled as you guys. But I am criticizing those who post it and announce that it's definitely new, official merchandise…) In conclusion: Might be true, but chances are very slim, all things considered. Let's wait until Tuesday when the event takes place and keep an eye on weibo and XHS - let's see which pictures the CN fandom will post when showing their autographs. Then you can check if there's new merch present. If not - well, then it's pretty safe to say that this was definitely fake. (And if this turns out to be real after all, I will make a follow-up post, regarding the AI-looking faces. But you might not like that 'lore' so I will not mention it for now, to prevent possible drama.)

[when-the-uhh]

Does the rest of the world know sticks exist??

In AvA 2 Alan asks his friend for help after TCO goes rouge

It seems that

1 Alive stick figures existing is normal, atleast to alan and his friend

2 What theyre named establishes how powerful they are, their ‘level’

3 Stick figures attacking back is not uncommon

also what does he mean by “That guy”????

By in AvA 3, it’s now established that Alan is not special in his ability to create drawn stick figures, other animators and graphic designers are able to create them and likely are as informed on sticks as Alan is

It talks about how the world has been uninformed about the slavery of sticks but still doesn’t help determine how much the world knows about just the existence of them

The fact that the page was one of the top results and how casually alan talks about his drawing coming to life it seems that, atleast from 2006-2010s, most internet users likely know that drawn stick figures are exist in some capacity

In AvA 4 Alan is surprised by the fact that TSC can talk, before then most people probably assumed that sticks were the equivalent to shimejis or desktop pets, especially considering Alan’s previous treatment of … all of his sticks and the fact the stick slavery page even had to exist

Even after this he probably still doesn’t see them as fully sentient until after he gets to spend more time with them, considering the whole ‘i’ll let you live if you do something for me’

In AvM 9, Purple is shown living on someone’s mac, it’s very obviously taken over yet the owner is out of the picture and never shown, the mac was probably left on or abandoned since it’s unlikely that Purple would’ve been able to just .. convince some random person to let them take over their computer

In AvM 24 we for the first time actually get to see someone else interact with stick figures, his first reaction is to pull out a bow and then sword

It’s unsure whether this reaction was that of ‘why are there stick figures in minecraft?’ or ‘what are those things’

By this point, sticks existing within their own creators pcs should be known, if not slightly forgotten by time due to most sticks now living in the outernet, but if it’s the latter, then sticks were just a dated thing of the past and people have forgotten they exist

(As a side thing, even in the past people probably only knew of drawn stick figures and not of the outernet and stuff, like when Grace uploaded Mitsi she probably didn’t think Mitsi would come alive)

In the influencer arc we never get to see the in universe comments, so unclear if the general reaction would’ve been ‘who gave this stick a phone’ or ‘cool animation man, looks almost real’

In AvM 36, the most recent episode, the cg start going viral due to CHEATING in bedwars and we finally get to see a actual reaction

and it’s still unclear ????

1 Influencer arc is canon to AvM, thus Green should be known

2 Confusion on why there are sticks in hypixel, this could be due to sticks being known only to stick to their creators desktop, or that their confused on what a stick even is (purpled’s and cromn7’s comments seems to suggest the second)

3 People keep calling hacks, and that the sticks are cheating, either because the sticks aren’t playing the game right (CUS THEY ARENT.) or that their accusing them of hacking in a stick figure model in the first place

SO BASICALLY

1 people assume that these are rouge sticks that somehow got into minecraft, this implies that sticks are still known on the internet

2 people don’t know what these things are and this is the first time they’ve seen a alive stickman, sticks are a long forgotten thing of the old internet

3 people assume that they’re hackers that somehow changed their models to sticks, doesn’t really say anything about stick knowledge