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lunarleonardo · 3 months

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hihi!!! :D fanfic author to another fanfic author hehe

i’ve read all of your drv3 fanfics and they are very intriguing, in canon characterizations, plot driven stories that make me very happy to read and look forward for more! (abso love trans shuichi hc too aaa)

i was wondering if you make pre-planned outlines for your fanfics or do you go straight into writing and planning it as you go? i’m struggling in finding a fitting method myself to write my fanfics because i often jump straight into writing, but that got me stumped in my writings at times. asking for advice because i really love your compelling writing style but you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to :D!

First of all... Hi! :D Thank you so much!! I do my best <3 💕

Second... Oh boy, I sure do have a process xD (this might be a long post but I like yapping and overexplaining so bear with me qwq)

if you don't want to read it all though, the shorter answer is: Kind of? I don't fully plan it out, but I don't always totally wing it. I take notes and I build off of important scenes, and then I jump in and hope for the best lol

When I first decide I want to write something with intent to post it, I create a document soley for *notes*. Theres a few things I note before and when writing.

1. I replay/rewatch the canon game and take notes on everything I possibly can. For example! I'm replaying DRV3 chapter 5 (cus i, unfortunately, had an idea q_q). I note down what I see as important or what really stands out to me :) Hell, sometimes I'll even "transcript" down canon dialogue! For example, this is what some of my notes look like (ss1 is taken from my drv3 c5 notes, ss2 is taken from my blue eyes notes):

2. Little things matter. When starting my notes, I often write down the date I started and the basic synopsis of what the story will be about. I try to think of a name for the fic later because my #1 weakness is naming things >.> ... But also! Writing down the important details of your story is suuuper helpful, because you don't want to lose track of stuff like that!! It can prevent accidental retconning, unnecessary repetitions, and stuff like that 'cause i ran out of examples... Oh well. Here's a screenshot of the start of my notes for Motive 5 (⁠.⁠ ⁠❛⁠ ⁠ᴗ⁠ ⁠❛⁠.⁠)

3. Believe it or not... i don't always plan ahead. I write a lot of my fics with one or more certain scenes in mind, and then I blink and there's suddenly a 7k word document in front of me and Oh Fuck I accidentally made a whole fanfic on that one idea. It happens more than you'd think. Using Motive 5 as an example again, there were a few scenes I had in mind when I was first writing! I don't remember what order they came to me in, but a few significant ones I fell asleep to was Shuichi losing his hand, Hajime and Maki facing off, Nagito and Shuichi meeting after the Coffin Puzzle, and the aftermath of Shuichi's "punishment" (PS. did you know he was originally gonna be tortured with sound? then i wanted to hang him from the ceiling periodically, but i gave that up for the "detention" theme.) this one is getting long but when it comes to planning, I always build off of important scenes in my mind. "How can I make this happen?" "What do I do to make this/these character(s) react like this?" or, my favorite... "What can I do to totally fuck up these sad gay losers?"

You mentioned you get stumped writing sometimes, and THAT'S OKAY. i do too. Chapter 8 of Fever Frost was a whole ordeal because I realized "wait. Kokichi would never confess his feelings first in this situation??!!!" While planning ahead may certainly help save you from some of those moments, they won't stop it entirely. It does feel really refreshing when you manage to skirt your way around the issue, so really what can you do ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

So yeah, I do kind of plan ahead. I plan MOST of the plot (I didn't even know I was gonna kill someone in Fever Frost at first >.>) and then as you write, stuff tends to tie together and build from there. In my experience, 70% of writing is just "shit kinda happens" xD

This is just how I do it, and it's okay if it doesn't work for you. I'm just the kind of person that will replay an entire game to write a fanfiction (⁠─⁠.⁠─⁠|⁠|⁠）I hope this could help a little, though! Good luck on your fics! :3💕

#smookies asks #i promised i would never replay the fifth chapter #and yet here i am now #replaying the fifth chapter #life comes at you fast #trans shuichi hc is based btw glad we can agree!

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iamthekaijuking · 2 years

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The thing about synapsid jaw evolution is that we have a pretty good idea of how the bones transformed, but when it comes to life appearance and functioning of all these forms we can only guess - I`ve read a lot and still haven`t found a more or less definitive answer of what the ears of e.g. a gorgonopsid should really look like.

Jaw articulation is hard to see in screenshots, but the hips are a problem indeed. Maybe they`re not even synapsids but some sort of mammal-imitating reptiles, kinda like how some mesozoic crocs were trying to get into mammal niches?

As for Tobi I fail to see why it is less wyvern-like than Magnamalo. Sure it has that snake-like head, but the fart tiger seems far more aberrant to me.

As for pangolin scales and mammalian feathers, the scales look rigid enough even without beta-keratin. And a hypothetical pango-feather most likely wouldnt have the complex structure of a real one - merely a superficially feather-like form, no separate barbs or anything, just good enough for gliding. Though this is all unnecessary if we assume the dino-hipped beasts aren`t real synapsids like a said above...

Finally, I was thinking that maybe pronated hands are important and they indicate common ancestry among most flying/bird/brute wyverns. Maybe they all descend from a single unusual group of maniraptorans that radiated really hard into increasingly aberrant forms after the K-Pg? They`d be burrowers like you suggested, evolving the powerful pronating hands without flight feathers as well as much more flexible bodies and tails than other dinosaurs. Even wyvern pseudofingers could originally appear to help with digging.

Speaking of pseudofingers, what if they and the neighboring fingers eventually had the biochemical pathways for their development so entangled that a simple mutation could replace one with the other? That would explain some wyverns having extra fingers. Or maybe some pseudofingers just became indistinguishable from the real ones, possibly by co-opting some of the genes involved in their formation.

But this is all just idle speculation of course, I`m not trying to prove you wrong or anything.

(I’m actually going to post this one if you don’t mind because there’s some particularly interesting bits to talk about)

Fair enough, soft tissues do have a hard time showing up so yeah maybe the ears were different.

The Crocodylomorphs you might be thinking of are notosuchians. They were notorious for many of their convergently mammal-like features, and one of my UHC friends, Dr. Masiaka (mentioned in the UHC Kushala vid) actually thinks this is where fanged wyverns lie.

As for Tobi, I tend to ignore it not just because of its aberrant nature and you are right in your assertion that it’s just as wyvern-like as magnamalo. I suppose it’s just that I have a hard time fitting it into any particular group on my flying wyvern tree. I guess it could go near the base with the common ancestor of flying wyverns, but even though it lives similarly to my purposed FW ancestor it also looks nothing like it. Maybe future games will give us a new monster that can bridge the gap and make me restructure my tree. I know Somnacanth, and more recently Giasmagorm has done that for my piscine and elder tree, which will come out soon.

I think it’s worth mentioning that the whole beta keratin problem specifically refers to bishanten (and maybe garangolm) and not any other monster.

I’ve been pretty vocal about my displeasure of bishanten as a monster hunter design due to its deranged combination of monkey and bird features. I could make a way better tengu monster than monhun B team.

Pronated hand ancestry theory actually seems pretty interesting.

And the idea of the biochemical pathways for fingers and false-fingers is an interesting one. While I doubt that the pathways for fingers and certain wrist bones would become entangled, pathways for phenotypic expression is also something that I don’t know a whole lot about, so my statement could be wrong. It definitely gave me something to think about for a bit.

#ask #questions #monhun #monsterhunter #monster hunter #monster hunter biology #speculative zoology #speculative evolution #speculative biology #thesumlax

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jasper-dracona · 1 year

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The only thing I ever saw on the internet almost as often as I saw tumblr screenshots was Reddit stories. Plus, yeah, it was a really good resource for getting a question answered, so we saw Reddit come up a lot when we were curious or confused about something. That site of y’all’s was a helpful friend sometimes, and we appreciated that :)

Oh, and the fact that the site was very user-run and functioned on the work of dedicated volunteers is very much a spirit that I think Tumblr vibes with. Like, xkit makes our site function how we want it to, and maybe I’m just too new a user to know (joined 2018) but, as far as I can tell, that’s operated and updated by a mysterious ring of volunteer wizards or something.

But think of yourself here as your own mini-mod! Filter tags related to things you keep seeing but don’t care about, filter tags of things you find scary or gross, filter tags related to political discussions or sensitive topics that you’re not always ready to hear about, block people who post about stuff you don’t like or don’t care about, and don’t feel ashamed to unfollow someone if they’ve stopped posting about stuff you like!

My filtered tag list is pretty long compared to most, other people have blocked a lot more blogs than me, but it accomplishes approximately the same goal of making sure that my Tumblr has stuff I wanna see and is a place I want to go and look at stuff. I know it’s not gonna be filled with unnecessary discourse, or a show I don’t like, or news about something really bad and depressing. It’s gonna be fanart of shows and games I like, positive messages, stupid jokes, radical queerness and helpful advice!

I stopped using instagram after I joined an activism group and made some friends and followed them all on there, because all they would do all day every day was share posts about depressing stuff about big political topics, and how we need to be doing more about this and this and this too, and doing more and more and more and I couldn’t stand to open the app anymore. Never gonna have that problem here and it’s great.

Anyway some examples of tags I have filtered:

#dsmp - ‘cause I could not give less of a fuck

#abortion ban - too heavy to be hearing about all the time

And an example of the other way around: a friend of mine has ornithophobia, fear of birds. But I LOOOVE birds, so that’s kind of a problem, right? Wrong! I just have to remember to quickly add the tags #tw bird and #bird tw so I can reblog all the bird pictures I want without her having to see them, because I know she has that tag filtered!

So yeah, welcome to Tumblr, Reddit refugees! Be your own mod, don’t be shy about filtering, unfollowing, or blocking, and also don’t tell anyone to stop posting about something you find annoying, because that’s what those features are there for.

#reddit #reddit refugees #Reddit refugee advice

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fancy-rock-dove · 1 year

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My two cents on the recent Tumblr Strategy Post

Some thoughts about the recent Tumblr Core Product Strategy summary post:

This? Genuinely kinda exciting. I know we all joke about the search function but it really would be nice if it were easier to find things again.

Tumblr please, please, if there is ever a possibility to let me search within my own liked posts? That would be so, so useful.

This? Is this what they call the increasing move to make Tumblr inaccessible without a login? This has been so, SO annoying recently, trying to share things with friends who are increasingly unable to see the content.

I support them incentivizing the ability to like things and find them later (rather than the screenshot platform cross posting that I think most people seem to use instead, e.g. Pinterest pins or twitter posts of Tumblr posts). But I think this would be far better served by the above point, making things generally easier to find within the platform, than trying to keep other people from seeing things.

NO. Please NO.

It’s the “all feeds” part of this that I hate.

Please do not touch my “Following” feed. One of the huge appeals of Tumblr is my control over what I see via rules which are known and predictable to me. Please do not change every available option such that it shows me things I didn’t ask for and hides or de-prioritizes things it’s decided I don’t want.

The organic, interactive nature of the site grows partly out of the fact that my experience is dynamic depending on the interests of the people I interact with, and isn’t some algorithmically-enforced horror that only shows me content for things that have interested me recently. I like having my horizons expanded thanks.

If this means they’re not showing the same post if more than one person has reblogged it? Then please don’t do this.

Seeing who among my mutuals has also found the same thing, and what each person is saying about it, is part of the real time conversation surrounding that thing.

What they say above this about keeping better track of different conversational branches on a reblog chain? That I could get behind. That I could be excited about.

I’ve seen a lot of people talking about this one.

Lots has been said about how dismissive this is of the fact that this is a microblogging platform, not social media.

I get what they’re saying about the difficulty of being very small and new, but I hope they’re talking about adding more to the “For me” feed, specifically. I feel horror at the prospect of losing my algorithm-free, chronological “Following” feed.

DO NOT.

THIS IS SO UNNECESSARY.

If I want to be here I will be here. I HATE this assumption that products need to insert themselves and be omnipresent and constantly remind me of their existence.

That apps and products in general have a right or even a duty to reach out and poke me, to grab my attention while I’m doing other things.

I WILL TURN THIS OFF IMMEDIATELY AND WITH PREJUDICE

Sure, yeah, theoretically this will get you more of my attention, this will advance the baseline goal of more engagement hours, but it belongs to the same class of thought that wants to expect absolutely no buy-in effort or knowledge from new users: maximizing certain blind metrics of “engagement” in ways that fundamentally change the nature of that engagement.

To me, this feels like Tumblr leaning into the mindset that it’s their job to shape what specifically people do and experience on their platform just because they’re doing it with a product provided by them. It’s the thing that, IMO contributes both to the wild engagement and the mindless, “junk food” feeling of both Twitter and TikTok.

Yes, it’s less work for users if you expand platform functionality to curate content for you, to start conversations for you, to want to open the app for you, to check for new content for you.

But the thing is, all of these things that we’re used to doing manually? That’s the essence of what engaging with the content here *means*. That’s part of the stuff we put in. It forms the core of the activity we are coming to tumblr.com to engage in. Right alongside writing posts or creating art or what have you.

Doing this stuff manually is part of what makes actively engaging with Tumblr more an act of creation and less an act of blind, thoughtless consumption than on other platforms.

The latter is easier, it maximizes engagement numbers, but in being easier it also loses substance.

Not to be over dramatic, but what is wrong with just providing a platform and letting people use it?

This is like buying a sewing machine and being told I don’t even need to do all those cutting and sewing steps because the machine will do it for me.

Like, thanks, but that’s kinda missing the point.

#just saw people reacting to this and wanted to put my thoughts down somewhere #is this over dramatic?#idk I’m just ranting #tossing my thoughts into the void #tumblr

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vibrantbluecats · 3 years

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Deltarune Chapter 2′s secret alternate route:

(img credit to u/lightiggy on reddit)

I haven’t seen any posts on Tumblr about this yet, so you guys should know that there is a REAL, VASTLY DIFFERENT genocide route in chapter 2 of Deltarune. I will provide details below, but first, be warned:

In my opinion, this route is massively more disturbing than the Genocide route in Undertale. If you can’t handle this sort of thing, please stop reading — I’m not kidding, it’s seriously fucked up.

Also, I did not discover this route, and this guide was written mostly with the help of this google doc and this video (which is where I got the screenshots from).

So, one of the big differences between Deltarune and Undertale is that in Deltarune, enemies run away instead of dying when you reduce them to 0 HP. This means that even if you try your hardest, the best you can do in chapter 1 of Deltarune is make a lot of people angry, since they’ll run away before you can do any serious harm.

Enter Noelle.

When Noelle first joins your party, you’ll notice that she has two support spells similar to Ralsei, but interestingly enough, a very powerful ice damage spell...? Well, if you use this spell to reduce an enemy to 0 HP, then instead of running away, it is frozen solid. This is the key to unlocking Deltarune chapter 2′s alternate route.

STEPS:

1. I’m not entirely sure how much your actions in the first chapter affect this route, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be fine no matter what. In any case, you can just start a new file and it’ll work.

2. When you enter the dark world, defeat every enemy in your path until Noelle joins your party. Now, you must backtrack as far left as you can go and interact with the locked door to Spamton’s shop.

3. On your way, encounter every enemy you see, and be especially careful to defeat them with Noelle’s ice attack only (the easiest way to do this is to block with Kris, then use the spell with Noelle. Do this every turn). You can tell whether or not you are on the right path because at the car room, no cars will appear and enemies will spawn instead.

4. Continue until you reach the room with the ferris wheel. AFTER killing all of the enemies running around with Noelle’s ice and BEFORE doing anything else, interact with the ferris wheel. She will comment about wanting to ride it with Susie. Choose “I will ride with you”, which will make Noelle decline politely, and then “Noelle will ride with me”. (As the video succinctly puts it, “act like a weird clingy abusive stalker” at all the dialogue prompts and you’ll be okay.) She will comment on your weird behavior, but dismiss it as a prank. EDIT: It appears that interacting with the ferris wheel is actually unnecessary for this route.

5. After talking at the ferris wheel, interact with the NPC at the far right, who will offer you Dating Shoes. When Noelle hesitantly says that you are just friends, say that “We’re something else”. As you try to walk away, the NPC will stop you and instead offer you a powerful FreezeRing for $1 more than you have. Noelle will decline at first, but just continue selecting “Get it”. Noelle will ask what you’re telling her to do; keep insisting, and...

Noelle kills the NPC (it’s a fade-to-black) and takes the FreezeRing. Instead of being horrified at what you have coerced her to do, she rationalizes it as “becoming stronger” and thanks Kris.

6. Equip the ring, and walk down, progressing normally until you reach the lightning gate. Unlike in a normal run, she will offer to stand on the switch so you can walk through and let her across. Afterwards, she says that she considered stepping off the switch and killing you as you walked through the gate, but tells herself that “it’s horrible” to think that. Tell her “It’s natural”.

At this point, a slowed-down version of the City theme should start playing, and enemies will begin to run away from you when you see them. Continue, killing everything as usual.

7. When you come across the next car room, there should be no cars. Like in the normal route, there is a secret room here (if you can’t find it, go to 14:00 in the video). You will not encounter Toby Fox, but instead continue to the following room. Interact with the dumpster to speak with Spamton, who should tell you “4 LEFT”. If he says a higher number, you have missed some enemies, or you may have not cleared out the current room yet. If you clear out the car room and Spamton says a number greater than 4, backtrack and look for any enemies you might have missed.

8. The next room is the mouse puzzle. When Noelle asks you what to do, instead of acting like a normal human, only say “Proceed”. Continue selecting “Proceed”, slowly backing her into the force-field.

At the very last moment, she will freeze the puzzle over (in a fade-to-black), letting you proceed without solving it. Noelle rationalizes Kris’s behavior as “just making me stronger,” and you hear an audio cue to let you know you’re on the right track.

Continue onwards, killing all of the enemies in your way, until you encounter the next puzzle (the one that Berdly monologues over in a normal route). Noelle will offer to do the puzzle herself, and the screen fades to black. She tells herself that she “can do things I could never do before” as long as she listens to Kris, and freezes the puzzle over. Again, you will hear an audio cue.

9. Continue as normal until you have killed enough enemies to satisfy Spamton (it should be 2 encounters after the previous puzzle), then return to the alley and buy the ThornRing from him for $1997. This ring hurts Noelle gradually, but halves the TP cost of all spells, making it essential to continue the route.

10. Equip the ring and return to where you were. In the next room, you encounter Berdly, whom Noelle will offer to freeze for you (thinking that he is another enemy). Understandably shocked, Berdly will ask what you are doing with her. Respond only with “Proceed”. A fight will begin.

In the battle, Berdly uses harder versions of his normal attacks, and only targets Kris. Noelle will also have a new spell called SnowGrave, which normally costs 200% TP. This makes equipping the ThornRing essential, as otherwise you won’t be able to cast it.

11. Once you reach 100% TP, tell Noelle to use her new spell. She will at first tell you she doesn’t know it, but persist, and...

Berdly fucking dies. Noelle acts confused as to what happened, and declares that she’s “going to go home” before walking upwards out of the screen.

And you’ve done it. There’s no way to back out now, so the rest of this post will just be dedicated to showing what happens next.

You follow Noelle’s path and see a manhole, which you enter. This takes you to the entrance of Queen’s mansion, where you reunite with Ralsei and Susie, who have been wondering where you are.

When you enter the castle the music playing is significantly slowed down, and the petrified Rouxls Kaard is blocking the cafe, so you can’t buy anything. An NPC comments that “a strange force has taken over the mansion”, and the staircase path is blocked by a forcefield, meaning you must take the secret passage (which is unblocked by default here) straight to the 3rd floor.

All of the minibosses (Mauswheel, Tasque Manager, and Werewerewire) are found in different locations, allowing you to encounter them despite the abnormal layout. All of the portraits have Spamton’s face on them, and the giant room of trays is instead filled with strange blue dots, which trigger an encounter with “Pipis” when you touch them. Interesting...

It generally continues like this until you pass Noelle’s room, which Susie enters to try to talk to her. Ralsei tries to get you to shift to Susie’s perspective like in the normal route, but for some reason it doesn’t work.

Susie returns from her date with Noelle, which we skipped this time, and says that, like in the normal route, she has told Noelle that everything is a dream, greatly reassuring her.

You continue to the top of the mansion as usual, but both Queen fights are skipped. Ralsei reveals his story about the “Roaring” before instead of after the fight, so after a brief conversation she decides to come with you to the Dark World at school.

Susie leaves to talk to Noelle and Ralsei stays to talk to Queen (blocking your path backwards), meaning you must continue to the fountain by yourself. Right before it, there is a save point and a convenient vending machine selling CD Bagels, which you will definitely want to stock up on.

When you reach the fountain, you get ready to seal it, but suddenly...!

Spamton swoops in to save the day (from you)! He explains that “YOUR [Total Jackass stunts]” have allowed him to achieve his NEO form, before making you fight him. Alone.

Obviously, Spamton isn’t really looking for mercy, so you have to FIGHT him. He gives some very interesting alternate dialogue, so go watch the video if you want to read it (though the player goes through the text kind of fast).

Finally, after a very long and difficult battle, you reduce Spamton below 10% HP, at which point he activates his “[Bluelight Specil]”. In this form he takes only 10 damage from each attack, recovers HP every turn, and only uses one move (which you can easily dodge).

Your only choice is to ACT. You call for Ralsei...

You call for Susie...

Finally, you call for Noelle, just barely whispering her name. Spamton mocks you, but suddenly realizes that it’s getting kind of cold. The screen fades to black, and...

Spamton fucking dies. Your soul arises from the darkness, and suddenly everyone wakes up back in the computer lab. Noelle is immensely happy that she has woken up, calling her experience in the Dark World a “nightmare”, and is further relieved when Susie denies having a tail (as Noelle saw it in the Dark World). Except, not everyone seems to be so lucky...

Berdly refuses to wake up. You gather up all of the stuff in the lab, and leave him there by himself.

The last major change happens when you visit Noelle’s father in the hospital. Noelle and her father are playing a game together like normal, but instead of listening to her father and using Fireshock, Noelle first suggests Iceshock. Hmm, sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

The conversation continues as normal with slight changes, but just as you leave, Rudy asks Susie to stay behind. You leave the room without Susie, and one final fade-to-black cutscene occurs.

Noelle talks to herself, still shocked from her experience in the Dark World, and says that she is hearing “a voice unlike Kris’s” telling her what to do. She also comments on your strange behavior, at which point you can interject. Regardless of what you say, the following happens:

No matter your choice, before Noelle can respond, Susie interrupts after finishing her talk with Rudy. Noelle quickly leaves, and the rest of the chapter continues as normal.

And that’s it! Congratulations! You’ve successfully traumatized your oldest friend, possibly murdered your fellow classmate, and basically massacred the entirety of the Dark World.

What I love about this route is that it doesn’t change the ending significantly, which means it technically satisfies Toby Fox’s promise of “only one ending”. In any case, I’m sure this route will have massive story implications down the line, but for now we can only wonder. I hope you enjoyed! (Or didn’t enjoy, which is honestly more reasonable.)

#long post #deltarune #deltarune chapter 2 #deltarune spoilers #deltarune genocide #deltarune genocide route #snowgrave route #deltarune snowgrave #deltarune snowgrave route #SPOILER WARNING #MASSIVE SPOILERS I AM NOT KIDDING

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missmecustomized · 3 years

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How to remove seams from Sims’ bodies for renders

So I’ve noticed an uptick in people using Renders instead of in-game screenshots when advertising content. I also noticed that people seem to have trouble with hiding seams when doing renders and I thought that I would offer my two cents on how to get rid of them.

For this I’m using Blender 2.90. Tutorial below the cut.

So I’ll try to make this quick because there's not a lot to getting rid of seams. It’s just a few clicks really.

The reason sim bodies have these seams is because they are low-poly/game ready so when taken out of the game into render programs like Blender, 3Ds MAX/MAYA or Cinema 4D, you can see these seams. We have to make the Sim’s Body render ready.

To start, select the Sim’s body.

Take it into edit mode and select all faces by pressing A until it’s completely orange.

Press the space bar in the 3D Viewport to bring up the search bar. In that search bar, type in “Merge by Distance”. Click the first option and it might freeze for a second.

After it does that, in the very bottom or top bar (depending on which version of Blender you’re using) It’ll say the number of vertices that were removed. This removes doubles/unnecessary vertices and merges the seams of the Sim’s body.

When you take it out of edit mode, you’ll see that you can see the seams a little less now but they’re still there. The next step might bring your work process to a crawl depending on the capability of your computer.

I recommend that you make sure you have everything you want in your render setup to the point where you’re sure you won’t fiddle with it too much because this modifier doubles the poly count of the body.

If you are happy with how the seams look now or are confident you can take them into Photoshop/GIMP and get rid of them completely then you can stop off here.

For everyone else who wants to get rid of the seams completely without any additional 3rd party program work then keep reading.

Now to smooth and blend the merged seams together, we have to use the Subdivision Modifier to add more polys to the Sim’s Body.

Be aware that this could add either 100k or 1 Million Polys to your scene depending on how much stuff you have attached to the Sim’s Body. As you can see, I have my clothing and any other accessories such as hair, glasses, etc. separated.

I recommend you do this too before applying this modifier or else your Blender could run really slow or crash outright.

Anyway, when you’ve added the modifier, you’ll see that you can barely see the seam now which is great but now we have these weird...rolls on the sim’s body that shadows are catching.

We’re going to get rid of these.

Take your mesh back into edit mode with everything selected and press the space bar to bring up the search bar again.

This time, type in Quads and click “Tris to Quads” to turn the sim’s body from triangles to Quads.

Now when you go back into Object mode, you’ll see that the seams and rolls are completely gone now! Now when we render, you won’t see any obnoxious seams, yay!

Before:

After:

Hope this helps~

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greenplumbboblover · 3 years

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UPDATED: Functional Sheep (Look! A living sheep!) V1.1 & V1.2

Some of you might have noticed update V1.1 (Which I totally forgot to share! 😬) So I figured I’d combine them in this announcement post! :)

Get them here:

MTS | PATREON

What's new?!

V1.2 (hotfix):

Accidentally made a jig object that, if the sheep used that a lot, could generate about hundreds of them, which caused a massive lag around the sheep area (or the horse ball rather than they were using)

HOW TO FIX THIS IN YOUR EXISTING SAVE: I was creating some very unnecessary Jigs. So around where the horse ball is, make sure that with Nraas and use the 'Debug enabler' radius purge (so you click on one object, say, the horse ball, and go to nraas > Debug enabler > Radius purge. That should delete all the jigs (which are hidden) With the new update this won't happen anymore and no Jigs are created (aka no more lag around the horse ball) Alternatively, you can also do this by doing: "MC > Object Stats > Non-Inventory > [jig] > Flush" which is a great thing to do anyways as EA also doesn't always remove jigs properly Huge thanks to SonjaYU for the bug report!

V1.1:

Optimised an issue where the Alarms assigned to the sheep in the background were slowing down the game. (other lags are actually not related to the sheep, I've tested this throughout as of this update)

NPC sheep can now do more needs-related stuff. (however, they won't die if you don't give them a hitching post or whatever)

NPC sheep can now be used to get wool for Zoe's knitting mod

NPC sheep can be abducted now. But you won't be able to save them!

Fixed a bug where sheep would use the Horseball all at once :p (or stand awkwardly in the ball after finishing, resulting into some awesome images sent in by some people testing the mod :p)

Fix for when switching worlds and there are incredibly buggy sheep (I'll spare the technical details) But if your sheep are disappearing after loading/switching a world, that's why. I'd recommend re-buying said sheep.

Increase the move time to fix lag on low-end computers (between 30 min - 60 min)

Brightened the texture for the eyes (see new screenshots) because I do read Reddit and I have seen the comments on the sole eating darkness in the eyes (Which I agree with lol) So this one is for you! Next time feel free to comment that here though, I can take it :p

"I'm not seeing the ‘collect wool’ option!"

Make sure to do 2 things to fix this:

Buy a new sheep after each update. Else things get buggy!

You can't just endlessly shear a sheep! So once you have bought that new sheep, you have to wait a few hours before the option shows up. Sheep come with a cooldown before it reaches '1'. Every 20 min, the growth increases by +0.10, which can be tuned with Nraas Returner!

Important NOTE: It may happen after this update that nraas will throw an error on either the sheep or lot. This is because on each worldload I'm 'resetting' the sheep, which could mean that it either complains about null references that are being cleaned up right at the same time nraas loaded the world, or because of setting up the animations. Don't worry about this! This is just a conflict issue with nraas's 'error checking' and my mod re-instantiating your sheep :)

#functional sheep #update #ts3cc #sims 3 #the sims 3 #sims3cc #thesims3cc #cc #custom content

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feelingofcontent · 2 years

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DNP Rewatch: What Dan and Phil Text Each Other 2021

Date video was published: 12/21/2021 (X)

DNP Main Channel Rewatch: 452

The final video of 2021. Phil teased it and caused chaos, of course. I can’t believe (but am so glad) this is the sequel we ended up getting.

0:00 - tree background! they had the tree up and decorated by December 7, when Dan shared pictures

0:03 - great start. love that he immediately looks to Dan for his reaction

0:20 - calling himself out for “casted” and very unnecessary creepy eye editing there

0:25 - Phil’s face as Dan sits down 🥺 plus giving him the fireworks effect

0:33 - I like this Dan sweater! (and not really this Phil one, sorry)

0:39 - that was very quick from both of them there. then the jump cut before Dan can come up with another come-back and it’s basically a compliment 😂

0:57 - that was the least subtle thing ever and the bleeps did nothing. Dan really wanted to be sure everyone got it though 😳

1:04 - Dan slowly scooting closer to Phil

1:06 - the annotations here...though Phil did not say anything about his “favourite thing”s before this

1:18 - Phil’s side-eye as he decides to tease Dan about that

1:28 - and even closer. what even. I would say he was trying to leave space to put the text screenshots, but they end up putting them in between them sometimes anyway

1:35 - I miss Dan’s reactions to Phil’s comments so much when we don’t get joint content for a while

1:41 - what is Phil even doing

1:54 - I mean that’s adorable. I like that he also sent one called “beautiful hawk”

2:23 - Dan just saying that...alrighty then. this might be the most we’re-in-a-relationship joke they’ve ever made on camera? in 2017, Dan shared a couple of text screenshots (1, 2) and he did have a photo for Phil then

2:35 - Phil editing this and putting the “JC” over his own face 😂 or maybe they edited together like they used to do with the PINOFs

2:55 - oh that’s bad. Dan refused to share that photo on Twitter

3:10 - awww, Phil “I wouldn’t betray your trust”

3:13 - I think most of these (with the exception of a few) are in order throughout the year, so guessing this was just Dan looking for birthday gifts for Phil in January

3:16 - so Dan wrote this and sent it to Phil, who then slightly edited it and posted it as a tweet. I wonder how often they do this, but good to know that sometimes Phil’s tweets may sound like Dan for a reason

3:25 - awww 🥺 and a tree they took to the new house

3:29 - Dan immediately laughing...don’t know if I want to know the context for that one

3:32 - Dan had tweeted about the Bernie meme just a couple days after Phil sent this to him

3:55 - they talked about seeing Steve in the wild during one of the Stereo shows

4:00 - I feel like a lot of the random texts at ~10am like “Bip” here are them checking to see if the other person is awake if they’re not getting up at the same time

4:15 - this makes it sound like Dan did a lot of the prep work for this video

4:24 - Phil just staring...and then licking his lips

4:28 - this is one I’m not sure is in order or not...there was no “up” at the filming flat so this was either after they moved or they meant something else (or were somewhere else)

4:51 - that’s a picture they showed in the CAH video, though Phil is sending it to Dan here

5:04 - this was a new photo of the entryway and tree that we hadn’t seen before! this must have just been Dan sending those photos to Phil to use for a video though, because he had already made that tree by summer of 2020

5:14 - imagining Dan just scrolling through his pictures of Phil and sending him the worst ones 😂

5:33 - Phil gets the weirdest ads I swear. Dan with the immediate “damn”

5:45 - Phil must have sent this to Dan to say he was going to make it his icon? why didn’t Dan say he didn’t like it then!

5:57 - controversial, but I agree with Dan here. 🤐 his face does look mask-like! I think it’s something with his eyes in that photo

6:18 - Phil knows immediately! they eat dinner SO late

6:34 - this is just the next day. and exactly a year before the cherry blossom selfies 👀

6:42 - they way that Dan said “are you gonna reveal it...” feel like something more than showing a painting

6:44 - I’m still not over this gift and that they have this memory of the Japan trip hanging in their new house. also bamboo forest day in Japan was the same day as that one Insta story of very soft Phil and I am not okay knowing that 😭

6:57 - Phil posted some these photos the same day he sent them to Dna here. and the one Dan sent back was one of those, so maybe Dan was picking out which he should post

7:13 - “we were trying to decide” everything they do is a collaboration, isn’t it? even if it’s supposedly “solo” merch or projects

7:24 - “I’m not just simping, Phil” christ. he does have to clarify

7:50 - Dan’s immediate smile at Phil supporting him. Dan had released his new merch at the end of November too

8:03 - I love Phil texting for permission to eat the snacks (which were clearly for both of them) while Dan was out

8:15 - the sending of vibes thing just makes me want to weep 😭 Dan was recording some of his book that day, though he didn’t share this particular picture until the end of April

8:28 - zero context. though Dan was apparently feeling anxious that day

8:31 - another one where I feel like Phil is checking to see if Dan is awake

8:44 - there are a lot of those we don’t actually see and I’m not sure I want to know

8:52 - the house was getting closer! Dan had shared a Insta story with a picture this day too

9:07 - Phil just agreeing that they were “very flattering.” Dan had shared those pictures of the entryway in July

9:12 - welp. alrighty then Phil. this must be the nerd cave room?

9:26 - and this must be Phil checking to see if Dan is coming to bed? right? this would have been later in the night after Phil was watching some Jujutsu Kaisen

9:53 - they start doing this and I’m pretty sure the ‘blessed family’ one is the only one they don’t rate 5/5 😂

10:01 - didn’t quite go with the whole “Philip”

10:08 - these annotations seem like Dan wrote them, which he very well might have

10:16 - the glue incident. like I said in that post, this is earlier in May than I thought it had happened from the video

10:20 - Dan trying to calm him down via text since he couldn’t go with him 🥺

10:40 - this is also hilarious to me, that Phil was sending him interview ideas/jokes 😂 it looks like it might have been even longer than what they showed here

10:54 - getting the un-blurred version of this photo that Dan shared on May 21. also the heavy breathing/foot showing editing...not quite as good as the golden pig fight, but still a great editing joke from 2021

11:13 - what even. no guesses for this one

11:23 - was this just Phil checking that the thumbnail was okay with Dan? I would say he had sent it to Dan so he had it for promo purposes, but Dan just retweeted/reposted Phil’s stuff

11:52 - awww, Phil is right. and Phil is proud of him!

12:09 - they were so excited about the house!

12:24 - and back to slightly earlier in the month. so many scans for Phil 🙁 Phil just sharing “I’m not dying” every time; Dan looks like he doesn’t know what to think about that

12:34 - I’m cackling at this one

12:42 - this is right around when they shared they were actually moving, so I’m guessing this has something to do with the garden at the new house

12:55 - this must have been when Phil was heading home from getting his COVID vaccine. also, Dan trying to act unamused

13:12 - okay definitely out of order now. we were just in June, but you can see the tree in the background of that video so that must have been from much more recently. Phil did share it as a Short after this video was posted

13:54 - emo Dan and Phil saying it “send me vividly back to 2011″ is a lot

14:06 - yeah Dan barely promoted his involvement in that at all

14:18 - Phil sounds so disappointed about the furry bit being cut

14:22 - we don’t see Phil’s response in the screenshot there, so unsure if he’s actually reading it or just making something up because they didn’t want to share what he actually said

14:26 - needy Dan indeed! I love that he sound so whiny in his reading of it too

14:33 - I wanna know about “Blop blip blop...lmao” that they didn’t read

14:36 - yeah that’s just disturbing, slightly. Phil had shared a “haunted” photo of himself from the doorbell too, in late August

14:42 - little taps to Phil’s arm there

14:48 - okay this is my favorite one for some reason. something about how soft Dan sounds when he’s reading it and how completely incomprehensible it is

15:01 - again maybe an are-you-awake check. Phil thinks 9:53am was too early though

15:09 - the ghost editing with the doorball footage 😂

15:27 - I mean, this was less surprising because Phil had already said “roleplaying as a catboy” in one of the Stereo shows

15:34 - Phil went through about 7 different emotions in a second there deciding whether or not this was a YouTube-appropriate story

15:50 - candid Dan photo! Phil looks so pleased/fond about it

16:04 - Phil giving zero shits about Dan’s sassiness there, lol

16:32 - this must have been on a train north the evening before filming in Rawtenstall since they were spotted filming there on July 22

16:54 - Dan is being diplomatic about YouTube here, but he really wanted it to be longer and include different bits

17:01 - more needy Dan!

17:09 - texting memories to each other I CAN’T 😭

17:17 - Dan is wrong - this was from when the went to see Mission Impossible in the US (1, 2). they had seen Infinity War in May 2018.

17:41 - does Dan just text Phil every time he needs a drink refill, haha

17:48 - how the hell would anyone interpret what that meant

17:56 - guessing Phil was with people for his plant calendar shoot. he was doing that ~September 23-24, at least from what he shared (1, 2)

18:21 - has Phil literally been doing all of their laundry for years...what. the next one is from October, so this could be when Phil went to Isle of Man to visit his family? (if Dan didn’t go and was home alone?)

18:30 - I know “moonpig” is a card brand but also

18:35 - this still haunts me. I did not need to know that Dan calls Phil “moon butt.” there is no way to interpret how he reads that other than as a nickname. WHY did they include that

19:11 - Dan had posted that at the end of November. I wonder if that somewhat inspired this video

19:30 - Dan just sending him the double question mark after that 😂

20:05 - Phil looks so sad for him. this is like a follow-up to the first video of the year when they were so hopeful for things happening in 2021

20:30 - “at some point, somehow, in some way” is so vague; I am constantly on edge especially with how quiet they’ve been this spring

20:52 - Dan saying “tolerating” while Phil says “treating” 🥺

21:20 - love the sign off

Another contender for my favorite video of 2021. I know I’ve said that about 4-5 times but there are just so many good ones. It is so much more unhinged than the first texting video - either because they didn’t share the weirdest ones before or because they were outside/apart more for the texts in the first one, rather than mostly texting each other from inside the house. Also, I adore this “outtake” of a Kath text that Phil posted as a Short. They didn’t say much about what they were doing for Christmas (other than Phil going to see his family), but both Dan and Phil did share an Insta story.

#dan and phil #dnp #dnpRewatch #amazingphil #daniel howell #phil lester #danisnotonfire #amazingphil videos #What Dan and Phil Text Each Other 2021

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midorikawa-lettuce · 2 years

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also yes i have been keeping up with the reboot but i haven’t been livereblogging mostly because i’m enjoying it too much to pause to take and post screenshots. thoughts:

- while I still think the change to Mint’s story was weird and unnecessary and we could have had her big moment with Zakuro without making her the first mew mew and changing all of that, I DO absolutely love how those scenes not only fleshed out both Zakuro and Mint, but absolutely made Zakuro just as gay for Mint as Mint is for Zakuro. Like wow they dialed the lesbianism up to 11. good for them!!

- despite the above i’m not crazy about most of the changes to Mint’s character. They removed her ballet entirely, it feels like, and I just want her to be a rude mean girl. I think they made her Too Nice in this version.

- they made Kish SO much creepier in this reboot and I’m not sure how I feel about it lol. still love him tho

- i almost cried when I saw Taruto. Son boy. Boy son. son boy allowed. I missed my shitty little child.

- I LOVE what they’re doing with Ichigo and Masaya’s relationship in this adaptation. I feel like they’re giving Aoyama some much, much needed development and while I always thought Masago was a pretty solidly written, healthy relationship, I feel like they’re giving Masaya some more inner thoughts development which makes the relationship feel a lot more even, like they’re BOTH very visibly into each other. In the manga and the original adaptation, early scenes with Masaya and Ichigo were almost entirely from Ichigo’s perspective, so it was sometimes hard to gauge Masaya’s feelings for Ichigo.

i probably have more but that’s the gist for now. looking forward to a lettuce episode next time!!

#12yo me would be screaming for ryolettuce #now i don't really care for that ship but i'm still excited to see lettuce :)#lettuce talks #tokyo mew mew new

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mckkachins · 3 years

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gif cut-out tutorial

ok ok so @subtledean requested a tutorial on how to do stuff like this post with the gif cutouts and the text effects. hopefully this helps aria ;w; i’m not the best at explaining things but i included some screencaps for clarity. i’ve tried to compress all the sample gifs and screenshots down to under 3mb to avoid tunglr compression on mobile so if they look a little different from the actual gifset, that’s probably why!

what you’ll need:

photoshop, i’m using PS 2021 but any version of photoshop will work out

a basic knowledge of gif-making (i’m assuming you already know how to make a gif and color it).

step 0: storyboard

this isn’t strictly necessary but i HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend it. you don’t have to do any photoshopping this first step, but it’s really important to check out your footage and the shots you have gathered to see what works, especially if you’re trying to combine three or more gifs onto the same canvas. like literally take a piece of paper and draw out where you want the character’s faces to be, where you want the cutouts to be in relation to their faces, and think about whether or not there’s enough empty space to the right or left of characters heads for a cutout to be placed. is there too much movement that would be distracting or messy in an already busy gif?

things like that really help, and it also makes you double check on your footage quality and feasibility. if you end up making a gif where you want one character’s face to be on the left side of the gif but it turns out there’s not enough empty space on the right side of their face to place a cutout and you then have to hunt for new footage or start all over, it’s kind of a trainwreck and you just waste another hour of your time as you deepen your procrastination hellhole. that’s not a real story—

step 1: make the base gif

i’m assuming you know how to color it already. and aria i KNOW you know how to color already so :) size it accordingly to your desired dimensions.

as you can see, i left enough space on the right side of abaddon for the knight cutout to be placed.

save this as a .psd file. you don’t actually have to sharpen and do everything that comes at the end of making a gif right away, but make sure your layers are clearly labeled. do NOT convert to video timeline/smart object just yet.

step 2: make the cutout gif

this is critical: make absolutely certain your cutout gif has the same number of frames as your base gif. otherwise it could get really messy! abaddon has 20 frames, so the cutout will also have 20 frames. again, do not convert the cutout gif to a video timeline/smart object. just keep it as a frame animation. here’s my cutout gif. it’s just a simple b&w gif but i added a touch of purple for color consistency sake whatnot.

now for this particular gif i’ve actually cropped abaddon to be roughly exactly where i would want her face to be in relation to the first gif, but that is unnecessary. helpful, but unnecessary. you do NOT need the cutout gif to be cropped exactly perfect in order to make this work.

step 3: combining the two gifs

there are many different ways to combine two gifs onto the same canvas. some people like to do it via video timeline. i prefer to do it by frames and convert everything to a video timeline only at the end (it’s just a personal preference). here’s a tutorial if you prefer working with timelines, but i’m gonna go over how to do it by frames.

first group everything in your base gif into one folder. then group everything in your cutout gif into one folder as well. you can name them however you want to keep track of things.

then, select all of the frames in your cutout gif. in this case, all 20 of b&w abaddon get selected. make sure its not just frames 4-20 or whatever, but all the frames you made. you can click frame one and then shift-click your last frame to double check.

click the timeline tab group options bar and then go to options > copy frames

now go to your base gif canvas. select ALL the frames of your base gif as well (it’s critical that all of them are selected).

now do options > paste frames.

a popup should appear and you’re going to select the “paste over selection” option. do not link layers.

your cutout gif should now be completely or partially obscuring your base gif. however, now you should see two groups on your sidebar of layers. one for the base, one group for the cutout. if you labelled them with names you can tell which one is which.

step 4: creating the cutout

in order to create the cutout, we use my favorite thing in the whole world of photoshop. layer masks.

to make a layer mask, you simply select a layer or group you want to mask and then click this little icon on the row of icons at the bottom of your layers panel.

white on a layer mask means whatever group or layer is getting masked is completely visible. black on a layer mask means that the group or layer is invisible. if there is 50% gray on a layer mask, then its 50% visible. so on and so forth.

i love these so much i abuse them on the daily. i’ve made a few gifs where i’ve masked every frame one by one because i wanted to get some cool effects. admitting that kind of embarrasses me but oh well.

anyway this is simple though. just find a picture or an outline of a knight. i used these boyes:

obviously i cropped out the knight of the bunch, got rid of the watermark, and then i placed it on the canvas where i wanted it to go.

select the interior of the knight with the magic wand tool. should be pretty simple since it’s all black.

now click over to your layer mask. make sure you have selected the mask and not the group. you can tell you have selected the mask when a little white rectangle pops up on it.

when you know you have the mask selected, click command+i or control+i to invert. if for some reason you do not have this keyboard shortcut, just take a brush tool and color over the area in complete black. as long as the magic wand tool is still selecting just the interior of the knight, it should be fine.

now once again, black means a layer will NOT be showing, white means a layer will be showing. so right now after i disable the visibility of the top layer we used as a reference for the silhouette, it looks like:

do not fear the clownery. layer masks are great because they are always non-destructive. meaning that even if you somehow mess up and your canvas is showing something completely gross, you can always go back and edit your layer mask and your original gif would be unharmed as long as you did not touch any layers in the group, only the mask. simply invert the mask (again, make sure your mask is selected and then command+i or image > adjustments > invert) to get:

for a layer mask that looks like:

you could have also just made a black layer mask to begin with and then inverted the knight outline to be white. many different ways to do the same thing.

another tip: if you select your outline and then click layer mask upon a group or layer with no mask at the current moment, it will automatically make a layer mask with your selection as white and the unselected pixels as black. this is normally how i do my cutouts, because it’s a time-saver even if it like. saves a few seconds max. but i typed out the above for explanation and clarity, so hopefully i didn’t just make anyone more confused.

anyway.

now say you don’t like where the cutout abaddon is positioned. layer masks can also be linked or unlinked, depending on the little link icon you see between the group and the layer mask in the image above. if the icon is visible, the layer mask and the group are linked. if you cannot see the link icon, they are unlinked.

linked layer masks will move in conjunction with the group if any type of transform is done upon them. if the group moves, the layer mask also moves. but if a layer mask is unlinked, you can move the mask and the group independently of one another. for instance, i can change where the cutout is located on the overall canvas of the gif by simply moving ONLY the layer mask (and thereby changing where the blacks and whites of the layer mask occlude the cutout gif contents). but i can also transform the cutout gif layers without changing where the overall outline is located relative to the canvas itself. basically, i can transform the interior contents of the cutout independently. so here (make sure all of your frames are selected):

group unlinked. i’m also making sure that now i am selecting the GROUP (ie. the frames of the layers you are actually going to move) and not the layer mask. you can tell because the little white rectangle around the layer mask can no longer be seen.

now i can transform/adjust the contents of the cutout solely “within” the cutout, and i don’t have to worry about changing where the cutout is located in relation to the overall gif. when transforming, make sure all the frames of your gif are selected. like select the whole group and not just an individual layer, basically.

i’ve seen a lot of how to combine and cut out gifs tutorials on this website, and here is a really good one that i know sully also used <3 big shoutout to all the photoshop queens being inspired by each other!! however i haven’t seen anything that mentioned the linked vs. unlinked layer masks, which i really feel like deserves a shoutout. you don’t have to crop your gifs out perfectly every time, you can always adjust them later. for demonstration, i’ve positioned abaddon in a few different positions with an unlinked layer mask.

step 5: creating the outline

so in order to emphasize the shape of the cutout (the knight), i simply delete the white space surrounding the picture of the knight in the original silhouette that i used. magic wand tool + delete. you can also make a new layer, then paint bucket tool it. many ways to do the same thing.

now with only the knight on a transparent background, i double click the layer to pull up the effects. select outer glow. i used these settings:

when you are doing this, make sure you are on frame one of the frame animation and the “propagate frame one setting” is selected, otherwise you might end up only applying the effect to one out of your many frames, which blows.

then i go change the fill setting to 0%, BUT i leave opacity at 100%. fill is basically like opacity, but it doesn’t affect layer effects (whereas opacity does). so you basically get only the outline but not the black. you can also set the blending mode of the layer to screen and get the same effect, etc, etc. feel free to adjust however you see fit, in addition to the outer glow settings.

i move this layer over a couple pixels to give it the little offset effect, but you don’t have to.

step 6: adding the text

okay the two fonts i used are avenir and perla. i think a LOT of gifmakers use them because they’re really pretty.

i make TWO different text layers, one with avenir in a smaller size and one with perla in a bigger size. this is because for the perla one, i’m going to be changing the blending mode whereas i don’t want to be changing the blending mode for the smaller text. i position the text where i want it to be and make sure the perla font is in the color i like:

then i change the blending mode of the fancy text (perla) to difference. ONLY that layer, and again make sure to check “propagate frame 1″ and make changes on the first frame to apply the change to all of your frames.

but i still don’t think it produces enough of a difference. so i right click on the text layer for knights of hell, and then go to: select pixels.

then i click the curves adjustment layer. this will automatically make a curves layer with a layer mask that occludes everything BUT the area you selected. beautiful. i drag the curves around until i get enough of a difference that i like. normally i make the lights lighter and the darks darker. yeehaw.

again there are sooooo many different ways to achieve the same effect on photoshop. this is just want comes easiest to me, and it’s totally okay if you find a different way that works better for you at producing the contrast you want or the colors you want.

step 7: export and cry

NOW you can convert everything to a video timeline, put your video frame layers to smart objects, and then apply your finishing sharpening filters. export, cry, and hope tumblr compression doesn’t screw you over.

hopefully this was helpful! pls like... idk support my edits if you found this helpful or reblog this post. feel free to dm me about how u do some of the text effects as well bc i’m always trying to learn new things and i am by no means an expert on like. any of this.

aria please go write your fucking thesis before i delete this entire tutorial challenge. :D

#subtledean #THIS IS FOR YOU #I FEEL LIKE THIS TUTORIAL HAS MORE WORDS THAN UR THESIS ATM SO!!!#tutorials #mine #idk what to tag this but PLS pls pls feel free to talk to me abt ph*toshop #or ask for help or point me towards other tutorials <3 #shoutout to sully too its in there somewhere #resources #100n #ps

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ender-baggins · 3 years

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Just watched 14x13 Lebanon.

Will preface with the fact that this was a bit of my commentary on the previous episode, and that I do think John Winchester was a crap parent

Lebanon was a pretty good episode, actually. I know some people hate it, and I started off prepared to seethe every moment that John was on screen. but then I managed to get one foot out of the John-crit zone and put it in Sam and Dean’s shoes, and looking at it from both perspectives? The episode has a lot of nuance to it.

Spoilers for this 14x13 Lebanon (obviously)

Overall I think the most important thing to remember about this episode: the theme is that some things are too good to be true.

I knew which episode it was, but I was surprised because I thought it has been in season 15, and then John didn’t show up for a while, so I thought I was wrong until the Pearl came up.

I gotta hand it to Jensen. When John appeared, there were so many emotions packed into Dean’s face in that first short scene, I had to rewatch it several times to get them. Part of it was simple shock, but I could also see… something a little like panic in his face, along with Waay too many emotions for me to name.

The conversation between Sam and John was… I started off mad and then focused more on Sam’s perspective and realized that… yeah, Sam isn’t the same person he was last time he saw his dad. And he didn’t get closure. He never got a chance to get real closure on it, and then here, he did, at least in some form.

Also, interesting thing I noticed- I could see the beginnings of how it could turn into another argument, and John said something that seemed a little accusatory, “you didn’t have a problem talking about it before you left,” and then Sam was like “nope, not gonna argue, not gonna do it, REDIRECTING-“ Which, after what Dean said in the scene before—

—Sam doesn’t want to mess this up for Dean. No way is he gonna start a fight, not now, not when they just got their dad back.

I don’t like the last line of Sam and John’s conversation: “But you did your best, dad. You – you fought for us, and you loved us, and… that’s enough.” Because honestly- it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t. And… dammit he could have done better. But then again, that’s Sam’s dad, and he’s been dead for over a decade, and sometimes people tend to put rose-colored glasses on over the past. So I’ll still happily condemn John’s parenting but I won’t condemn Sam just because he’s unable to see things for what they are in this case.

Now- my absolute favorite part of this entire episode is the section of Sam and Dean going to get groceries and noticing things are changed, and realizing “oh shit, what else is different?”

One, gotta love Dean for implying that Sam being a kale nut is a worse thing than Dean being considered a serial killer by society (which, it’s not like society is wrong??). Like, ah yes, wonderful priorities there, Dean. You’re a wanted killer with your face up in the town, but clearly Sam giving a lecture about the wonders of kale is a much worse thing. (If you can’t tell, I’m being incredibly sarcastic here)

And then here. Castiel’s appearance. I was screeching watching this. Completely freaking out- so much adrenaline. I bet if I’d taken my pulse it would have been skyrocketing-

This was followed by the scene of Castiel and Zachariah in the restaurant, which was Awesome, very clearly highlighting the difference that Dean and the Winchesters made in Cas’s life (later this will be relevant in the Confession - “You changed me, Dean”).

*cue me posting an unnecessary amount of screenshots*

Castiel unfurls his wings—

(Note the messy hair from flying around everywhere. Not the same as his old haircut, but they did what they could with Misha’s hair at the time)

Notice that Dean’s got the angel blade point down, and when he attacks Castiel, he’s using the blunt end to hit him, not the sharp end

(On the other hand, Sam uses the sharp end of the blade to swipe at Castiel. No judgement from me here, Sam sees this as “not our Cas” while Dean still sees this as “my Cas, I can talk him away from Heaven again.”)

Then, the most interesting thing here- when Cas pins Dean agains the wall, Dean’s not even trying to fight Cas here.

See how his hand settles on Castiel’s chest? Not really pressing, just touching. His other hand is gripping Castiel’s wrist, I imagine to try to remove enough pressure from his neck that he can speak. Trying to use his connection to Cas to get Castiel to stop hurting him. And it doesn’t work. Castiel stares him the eyes, not even a flicker of doubt or questioning.

You’ll note that I referred to alternate Castiel in this episode as exclusively “Castiel” and not “Cas.” Because it’s not Cas. Cas is the angel that saved Dean from Hell, and the angel that’s been by Dean’s side for 11 years (at this point in time). And this Castiel has not done that. So he is not Cas.

I’m reminded of the scene wayy back in season 5 where Cas beats Dean up in the alley for trying to give up and give in to Michael. There, Dean actually encouraged Cas to kill him, at the end, and Cas softens. Can’t exactly parse out the parallels there because my brain isn’t working, but there you go.

Now, probably my favorite conversation with John is this one, with Dean.

Right here. The way that Dean says “I have a family.”

It feels almost defiant. “I do have a family. I have Sam, Cas, Mom, Jack. My mother, my brother, my best friend… and I have a son, we all have a son. And beyond that, I’ve got Jody and Donna and Claire and the girls. I do have a family. Yeah, it doesn’t look like the apple pie life, the white picket fence, wife and kids, and yeah, our son is the child of Lucifer, and yeah, I’m in love with my best friend who’s an angel in a man’s body, and I wouldn’t trade him for any woman, and you’d hate that. But they’re my family. And I’m good with that.”

It’s proud, it’s a little defiant, it’s also a little bit of a reassurance, as we see from John’s smile afterward. I don’t think John caught the hint of a challenge in there.

I loved that moment. That might be my favorite line in the entire episode. “I have a family.”

I also like… Dean’s acceptance, “I’m good with who I am.” Part of that… I think it’s both a good thing and a sad thing and also a half lie at the same time. I think he’s good with who he is, in the sense that he’s accepted that he and Sam are the people that have to fill this role in the world, y’know, saving everyone. I think he loves the people he’s with, he loves his family and wouldn’t trade them for anything, not even having John back. No way would he ever trade Cas or Jack or Sam, or Mary, for anything else, ever.

It’s sad, though, because it’s like… he can’t imagine who he’d be if he had a different life. Yes, he’s had a few runs at an apple-pie life, but they weren’t happy, there was always something wrong nagging at him. He… I think he believes there’s no way for him to be happy, and that this is the best he could have.

I’m not even sure how to analyze the goodbye scene. I mean, the clearest thing here is just so much grief from everyone. They got a taste of their father back, and now he has to go back to being dead. There’s so many complicated feelings for both of the brothers, because of the complicated relationship with John, but in the end? They can’t help but love him, and they can’t help but feel grief at losing him. I won’t fault them for that.

In short, I wanna give Dean a gigantic hug and also give him therapy-

And then Cas coming back to the bunker when he did. I bet he sensed something and headed back to the bunker as fast as he could. Also, no clue what he experienced during the whole “Castiel and Zachariah are alive” thing. I imagine it’s possible there were two Cas’s running around for a bit? Because Mary didn’t get affected by the pearl. And Sam was there with his own memories, despite there being videos up of him doing things in the parallel universe. As for Cas, he’s part of Dean’s group of “people” so my guess is two Castiels running around for a little bit.

I like how Dean looks at Cas at the end. He’s relieved to have his angel back.

In summary-

The theme of this episode is “some things are too good to be true.” John came back, the four of them got their moment together, but John couldn’t stay. Things were good for that single afternoon, because everyone was just happy to see each other again, but it sent so much stuff into chaos that it couldn’t last, it had to be undone. And even then, if they’d tried to keep going with it, I know it would have degraded, the illusion of perfection would shatter, and they’d fall into old habits, old arguments and new ones.

And so it had to end.

#THIS IS NOT JOHN APOLOGISM #JOHN IS A TERRIBLE PARENT #HE MAY HAVE APOLOGIZED BUT THAT DOESN’T ABSOLVE HIM OF HIS ACTIONS #john winchester #spn 14x13 #spn Lebanon #dean winchester #sam winchester #mary winchester #castiel #jack kline #destiel #supernatural #Ender’s musings

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whump-a-la-mode · 3 years

Text

Nemesis - Part 3

This part is a little more plot heavy, but I added in some nice Whumpy bits too! I hope you guys enjoy, and thanks everyone for their suggestions!

Also, the next part of this may be a bit late, as I’m planning for my next piece to be the continuation of Villainsicle!

CW//Mentions of law enforcement, mentions of therapy/treatments, restraints, medical abuse, begging, screaming, forced sedation, needles, blood

Open the door.

It would be so simple. The entrance was constructed of little more than wood and a flimsy lock. Even someone without the benefit of powers could break it. And, based on what Hero had seen so far of this place, it may not have even been locked.

Just open it.

Open the door, and they could sleep again.

Open the stupid door.

But...

Hero’s hands clenched into fists, their gaze moving upwards, fixing upon the metal plaque upon the door.

‘43′

Beyond the simple plank of wood, their nemesis was laying. Suffering. Trapped in their own mind.

They could open the door, just twist the knob, and save them. In any other time, any other instance, it was what they would have done. They knew the way the others spoke of them, joked about them. Saying they’d jump off a bridge, even if their friends hadn’t done it first. They couldn’t control their impulses. That was what Leader always wrote, in the reports. Impulsive. Reckless.

That’s what they were. Reckless.

But that was back when it didn’t matter. That was back when the only one in danger was them. Hero. Now that Villain was part of the equation?

They had to think. They had to be smart.

Hero bit their tongue with enough force that the taste of bloody iron washed over their taste buds.

They didn’t open the door.

Around the corner, a doctor in blue scrubs furrowed their brow, and dipped away to make a phone call.

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“If I’m being completely honest, Hero, I wasn’t expecting you to contact me again.”

Hacker spoke with their head down, sheepish, as though a child apologizing for breaking a toy.

Again, the two sat in the same diner: It was busy, but crowded enough that they could simply blend into the lunch rush without fuss. To avoid questions, the both of them had ordered an appetizer, though neither of them had much of an appetite to speak of.

“You weren’t? Why’s that?”

“I mean...” They leaned back in their seat, pressing their spine against the padded booth seat back. “I didn’t think you’d care? That sounds kind of rude now that I’m saying it out loud but... The stuff I was showing you, I assumed you were already aware of it.”

“You thought I knew the way Villain was being treated?”

“Kind of? That’s the kind of stuff they tell you, right?”

“Eh...” Hero dropped their gaze. “Not really. That’s not our business. We catch the crook, what happens to them after isn’t really our focus.”

Hacker frowned.

“It’s not?”

“No.”

“So you didn’t know?”

“Not at all. I knew they were at that facility but... I thought it was fine. I thought Villain was fine.”

“Maybe I should have told you sooner, then.”

“You knew?”

“Well.” There came the embarrassment once more, their cheeks flushing. “For the scale of your organization, your cybersecurity is a little... lacking. Everything from that rehab facility, it’s stored on an off-site backup. Their on-site security is decent, but once it goes through that external data channel, it’s caught right in my net.”

“Is that right?”

“Don’t tell anyone, please?”

“Trust me, I wasn’t planning on it. I have much bigger problems than low level hackers.”

“Hey!”

“That’s not to say you’re a low-level hacker.”

“That’s better. Then, if you’re not here to like, arrest me-”

“That’s what you thought I was doing?”

“Kinda. If that’s not what you want, what do you want?”

“I want to know more.”

Hero had made the decision upon planning this meeting that they were not to tell Hacker about their visit to the facility. Despite the aid they had already offered, it was hard to trust someone who admitted to criminality with such nonchalance. And, besides, Hero was almost certain that their superiors wouldn’t be happy to know about their distraction.

“More?”

“You’ve been watching them for a while, right? I want to know more. Everything about Villain, everything about the whole place. How much do you know?”

“A lot. I have a considerable amount of files, though I have no way of knowing how many more there are that I don’t have. How many they keep on-site.”

“But you have information?”

“I have a lot of junk. Taxes, insurance, quarterly reports, formalities. Prescriptions for mundane crap like, I don’t know, allergies. But, I think I have a few diamonds in the rough. You’re going to have to be more specific than that, though. I do need something to work off of.”

Hero nodded, biting their lip. They hadn’t exactly thought this far ahead.

They were getting Villain out of that so-called rehab facility. They knew that much. But they needed to be smart about it. They needed information. They needed to know how they could get their friend- foe out of that place quickly, safely, and with as little noise as possible.

“The facility.” They began. “How does it work? It’s a relatively small facility housing a relatively large number of dangerous criminals. How do they... help them? They’re not all treated like Villain, right?”

“I don’t think there’s enough drugs on the continent to keep them all like Villain. Their methods of treatment are... unclear. The patient reports indicate what therapies each one is undergoing, but they don’t have names. Just numbers. Codes. Whatever they do in there, they keep it in house. My doctor friends have never heard of any of it, before.”

“Then how do they do it? Drugs?”

“If they have some kind of secret therapy, I don’t know about it. But they do have something else. They call it AMRS.”

“AMRS?”

“The Automatic Magnetic Restraint System. A fancy name for a crude practice. They’re vague about it, of course, but from what I can tell, each resident wears these four ring things. Bracelets, it calls them. One on each wrist, one on each ankle. A single push of a button, and they all link together. Any escape stopped in a second.”

“That seems...”

“Cruel? Yeah. But I guess it could be worse. As far as how the facility operates, though, that’s all I have. It’s not drugs, as far as I can tell. I have those dosage reports for everyone, and those that take medicine seem to do so for genuine medical conditions. Insulin, epilepsy medication, that kind of thing.”

“None of the others are sedated?”

“Not officially.”

“But Villain...”

“I think if they were any more heavily sedated, they’d go right from a temporary sleep to a permanent one.”

“You mean-”

“They’d die, yes. It’s called a euphemism, dumbass.”

“I know that. So, what about Villain, do you have anything else on them?”

“They’ve been kept heavily sedated since they arrived. Regular patient records, they just... don’t have them. No behavior reports, no treatment reports, nothing.”

“I guess they’re not really treating them.”

“Yeah.”

“They’ve really been kept like this, ever since I- Ever since they arrived?”

“As far as I can tell, yes.”

“Then it wasn’t reactionary.”

“What do you mean?”

“They didn’t try to like, blow up the facility, or kill up all the staff, or anything?! They were just knocked out. Locked up. They weren’t even given a chance to be good?”

Hacker lowered their gaze, nodding.

“Why?”

“Are you sure you want-”

“You know why?”

“I’m not certain, but-”

“Show me.”

Hacker startled a bit, but nodded once more, starting up their beast of a laptop and typing for a considerable amount of time. Hero could not help but hold their breath, and when the computer was at last turned to face them, they felt about to pass out.

“Wait.” Hacker spun the computer back. “You need to promise me something, first.”

“What?” Hero hated how desperate they sounded.

“Whatever you do, after you see this... please, just think it through.”

“Okay.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

“Okay.”

The screen was returned to Hero.

They halfway expected another video feed. A video of Villain, destroying and killing and doing something, anything to deserve their current treatment.

Instead, they were faced with an email. Or, at least, a screenshot of one. Passed through enough computers that the jpeg artifacts had begun to show.

An email from Director to Head Doctor.

The text was simple. Curt. A simple request to destroy a life.

“I am certain that you are aware of the new patient you will be intaking tomorrow. I request that you do not classify them among the other patients. Normal intake procedures will be unnecessary. You need only keep them contained. Alive if you can, dead if you must.

Villain must never see the light of day again. I trust that you will be able to accomplish this.

Thank you-- Do not forget that we will be meeting for lunch next Wednesday.”

Not even a hundred words. That was all it took, to turn a spirited fighter to a vegetable.

“Thank you, Hacker. I think... I think I need to go home.”

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Hero’s parting from the restaurant was sudden enough to make several other patrons look up. Hacker could not help but feel embarrassment well up in their chest. They hated being out in public like this.

They figured, even with the cold food sitting before them, they should be going. Finger on their mouse, they closed the email on the screen, revealing-

Not their desktop.

They had forgotten. They had meant to show Hero and they had forgotten.

Now, the video sat there, waiting. A chipper white arrow informing them that it was ready to play at any time.

They shouldn’t have. Hell, they could have at least waited to go home. But...

Hacker plugged in a set of earbuds, setting the buds themselves in their ears.

They clicked play.

Even on the rather low-quality security camera footage, the crash was loud enough to make Hacker jump. Three lab-coated figures, a mess of limbs and white coats, leapt atop the hospital gown wearing person like a predator after prey.

Villain was not facing the camera, but it made no difference. Their voice made them more than distinctive enough.

“Get the fuck off of me! Get off get off get off!“ The scream was loud enough to break the microphone’s volume filter, turning into a single, mournful screech.

If the labcoats heard, they did not listen. They positioned themselves along their captive’s body-- one holding their legs, one the arms, and one forcing their face to the tile.

“Please!”

The fourth figure wore a different outfit, a pair of blue scrubs, though the camera quality made them appear almost grey. Represented by only a few pixels, the syringe in their hand was none the less distinctive.

“Hold them still, please.” The doctor muttered, kneeling down beside Villain, their hysterical screaming not missing a beat.

“No! No! Please, please don’t do this! I don’t want to go! Please!”

There were no comforting words. Only the satisfied nodding of the head doctor as their needle slipped deftly to a vein and administered its contents.

“What is that, what is that, no no no please!”

A nurse handed down another syringe, and another, and another. The timestamp in the video’s corner dragged on in agonizing slowness as new pinpricks of blood welled up over Villain’s skin.

It took only a few minutes for their screaming to stop. Then their thrashing. Then, they closed their eyes.

It would be a long, long time until they opened them again.

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Of course, home was not a place of rest. Not as much as Hero would have liked it to be. They were not a civilian-- they were not that lucky. They did not have the chance to return home to a soft bed and a loving family.

No. When they went home, they went to work.

It was only past noon when they returned home to the HQ. A time at which the towering building stood largely abandoned, its occupants leaving in droves to flood the nearby restaurants like a locust swarm.

Riding the elevator to the floor containing their quarters, Hero hoped beyond hope that their team, too, had gone out.

But, of course, they had no such luck.

They didn’t even make it to their quarters. No, as soon as the elevator doors opened, their heart sunk.

“I saw you walk in.” Leader’s arms were crossed over their chest, a single eyebrow raised. “Let’s go to my office.”

“I was just about to go back to my dorm-”

“Actually, you were just about to follow my orders and go to my office.”

Hero slumped their shoulders. They didn’t have the energy to fight this, especially since they knew it was a fight they couldn’t win.

Leader’s office was a place they had all visited, though never under good circumstances. It was far too immaculately kept for what it was used for, a solid oak desk standing in a room well decorated with house plants and bookshelves. Leader took their seat, and Hero reluctantly did the same, across from them.

“So,” Leader began--they were not one for formalities. “When exactly when you planning on telling me?”

“If you’re going to yell at me about something, you at least have to tell me what.”

“Teammate told me, yesterday. They found out why you’re getting so distracted.”

Hero dropped their gaze. They weren’t exactly surprised about this. They only hoped Teammate had kept their mouth shut about their plans.

“It’s really nothing.” Hero tried. “I’ll get over it.”

“This anniversary you’re getting so upset over was ten days ago. By the time you get over it, another year will have already passed. So, no. You’re not getting out of it that easily. I need to know what’s gotten you so worked up.”

Hero gripped the arm of their chair.

“I’m worried. That’s all. Worried about Villain. It’s been too long. They’ve been so silent for so long.”

Leader frowned.

“I can personally assure you that Villain is being well taken care of. The rehabbers have more experience than you could imagine.”

“That’s just it! Villain spent so long terrorizing the city, and they’re still here. But they’re so quiet.”

Leader sighed, sitting up straight in their chair.

“This isn’t just a minor distraction. You need to know that. It’s reflecting on your performance, and heavily. Enough that Director has noticed.”

“Director?”

“Yes. They asked me about the situation, and I informed them of your current problem. They stated that, if it really is such a concern to you, they can have Villain moved to another facility. Somewhere farther.”

“No!”

“What? They think it would help, really. Out of sight. Out of mind.”

“No. They need to be here.”

“And why would that be?”

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Thanks so much for reading! Just like last time, there are two options along with every part of this story. Alongside each options is a question, so that you guys can give more specific suggestions if you so wish. The option that receives the most votes will be the choice that our Hero makes!

A.) Leader can help. Tell the truth - Should Hero tell Leader about Director’s role in Villain’s condition?

B.) Leader can also ruin the whole operation. Lie - What should Hero do next?

#whump #whumpee #whumpblr #whump community #nemesis #choose your own adventure #choose your own whump #villain whumpee #hero villain whump #drugged whumpee

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