#also very generous of you to call it a tutorial btw lol

[egipci]

re: your flash-fic 'tutorial' (lol), I'm curious: what was "the sentence" that sparked your last few fics? (your choice)

do they normally survive until the final draft?

hello dear friend <3 so I would say a lot of the time "the sentence" ends up being the first or last sentence of a story, but sometimes it goes somewhere in the middle, especially in a longer piece, in which case I'm kinda stuck until I find another sentence to go first. A lot of the time for a flash I need both the first and the last sentence before I even start writing, so I have a general sense of the sound of the story. And I really try to make sure it survives, but it doesn't always happen, in which case it lives somewhere in my drafts until I write a new story for it (if I actually remember, but the good ones tend to stick around!)

So like, for "Vertigo," I'd already had the first sentence playing around in my mind for a long time, and I actually lifted it from a Mary POV fic I was working on (that sentence is sort of a madlib of a first sentence I really like from a Kathryn Davis short story-- which is a great way to come up with "sentences"). And then a final sentence came to me, which according to my gdoc history is

"But then you turned your head up to the sky, so I looked up, and it was huge and black, super-infinite."

I really really wanted the last word to be "super-infinite." I was very much in a John Donne mood (cf. fleas and mysterious bitey things in this story and in "Chorus"). I played around with all variations of "the sky was black and it was super-infinite," and "it was black and super-infinite," and "it was huge and black and super-infinite," "black, super-infinite" etc. for probably way too long. There was a weird discordant thing going on where I didn't necessarily want to write this story in first person, but that last line demanded it. And then by the time I'd finished the bulk of the story that line had to go, in part because of logical/practical concerns, e.g. how are they looking at each other if they sky is black? but also because it didn't sound right. First-person can very easily veer on excessively sentimental, and a fic context is doubly perilous because we know how the characters talk (not that 1st person fic has to sound like a monologue off the show or anything, but you know). And so it was cut, but having it as scaffolding was really helpful for me to figure out that I wanted that stargazing moment and the feeling of smallness that comes with that, which (hopefully) is more subtly translated in "to feel us so small again..."

For "Chorus" the "sentence" was also the first sentence, which had been floating around in a j/d draft since like, May 2022. It was initially "we hung from the rafters" (which now that I think about it could have worked, "We hang from the rafters and we watch," but I guess I liked the rhythm of those first four sentences more: "We watch from the rafters. It’s dusk. He’s in love. We send him home."

For "Miles Ahead" the sentence was that opening fragment and the last line as a unit. "What I was trying to tell you---" came first and I played around with it for a while until I got "is I’ll take you anywhere," and then all the stuff in the middle (the interruption/flashback) came in after. Needless to say, many many hours were spent agonizing over "I'll take you anywhere" vs. "I'd take you anywhere," but I liked the tense-trickery of the first one more.

For this (older) flash, the sentence was the (incredibly baroque lol) final phrase that had been on my mind for a while -- "quiet for little Sammy sleeping, then vigil for little Sammy gone"-- and the whole story is basically written to get to it.

In "Dubuque" (which started off as a flash) the sentence was the first sentence: "In the space of three hours that no-good son of a bitch Lee Webb had Dean swaying on his feet," but the reason the story ended up going further was this bit in the middle: "fingertips over strong muscle loving him and loving the weight of him. Loving his danger. His masculinity," which felt excessive to throw in in a flash.

But like, sometimes the sentence is not a sentence and just more of a story structure I want to play with. This story from earlier this year stalled for a couple of days after I nailed the opening until I remembered Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl," so that inspired the structure there. This birthday story has no stand-out "sentence," I just liked the rhythm of "Dad said and Dean said and Sam said," etc. (Though just now I'm noticing the sentence is basically the whole story!)

[bobzora]

acheron so good she makes me want to complete gold and gears to unlock erudition blessings

[kaijukat-art]

Hello! I was wondering if you could a small tutorial on how you render your pieces?? They’re all super pretty btw!! I love your art :D!!

Ahh thank you sm!! <3 0: i’m not very good at explaining my process, and it changes depending on what I’m drawing as well, but I’ll try my best to explain it!

imma use the choso panel redraw since it’s a pretty simple portrait (done in Procreate, but most of this can be applied to CSP too)

once i’ve got a decently refined sketch, i fill in a basic starting skin colour for the character. i start some shading once i have a basic idea of where i want lighting. colour-wise, i usually go a bit darker & warmer for the first pass. (i use a brush that’s a basic airbrush settings but i replace the shape source with a reuleaux triangle) besides where shadows will fall, ill also focus on making the colour more dense on the ears, fingers, around the eyes, and sometimes the blush area. (also let it be known i use Liquify a lot, and constantly flip my canvas. as you render you’ll often start noticing lil adjustments that need to be done)

ill build up passes of colour, going darker & more saturated as i do. as the colours darken, they’ll be in the more receded/hidden areas of the face (like under brows, under chin, inner ear, unless the lighting calls for otherwise) in this case though, he’s also kinda beat up, so i added more colour under the eyes/on the cheekbones to add to the bruise vibes

for the nose/brow/shoulder highlights, i made a new layer & set it to Add. it’s a handy way to get a highlight colour and brighten your hot spots for lighting. this is usually when ill mess with the sketch/linework, sometimes i switch the layer mode to Multiply if i know i want to fully paint over it. in this case i think i just Alpha Locked the layer and painted in the hair/eyeliner since i wanted them darker. once the linework is thoroughly fukt with, i make a new layer and start painting over. usually involves a lot of colour picking & making some adjustments, playing around with levels of colour. I also swap between the reuleaux and a funky dense rectangle thing for rendering, sometimes little sketch pens for smaller details too.

(technically the blue-tinge reflective lighting wasn’t very accurate for the bg/scene colour i chose, but i got carried away and didn’t wanna change it lol)

hair rendering is fun sometimesssss. i make a new layer, choose a slightly brighter colour, and messily block in where i want the highlights. idk how else to explain it besides like, think about using H-adjacent shapes when you’re erasing/refining the highlights. for the last step, i make a new layer, set it to Add, and paint inside the highlights for the sharper look.

When it’s getting to a place i kinda like, (added some blood/cuts on this one before moving on) ill usually start messing with some overlay effects. this usually involves picking a random colour, filling in a new layer, and seeing how it lays over the piece. depending on the vibe im going for it can change a lot, but i find myself usually liking Exclusion & Subtract a lot. (sometimes ill throw a Noise + Overlay layer on top as well, but didn’t for this piece)

i hope that makes some sense??😭 im sorry if anything isn’t clear, i can try my best to answer specifics if needed.

it’s not my most thoroughly rendered portrait but it’s one i got a decent amount of wip screenshots for.. my style in general is still a wip, and i change it up a bit every time. i encourage experimentation always!!! it’s helped me a lot. i’ll see about making a more thorough tutorial for a properly rendered piece soon too!

[murfeelee]

Hi there, just a question for you if you have the time ♡ I know that you allow people to convert your Cyberpunk items from TS3 to TS4 freely (you are amazing, you know that?). However since I have the game, do you have or know of a tutorial for exporting from my files? The one I found was very general, very not 'beginner friendly'. Else I will just bring some of your stuff over if it's not been done yet, miss having them in my game (and base game TS4 only is limited). Love you ♡

Hi! Yeah, feel free to convert whatever; I think CC TOU/policies are ridiculous, and perversely counterproductive to uploading content publicly on the internet anyway.

Just be warned that a lot of my CC's not that great, cuz C2077 uniquely does not use or include typical diffuse textures, so I had to make many of the textures myself (and that's never a good idea, LOL). Not to mention, I had to shave off 1/2 - 3/4 of the polys on most of the meshes, cuz they're just excessively high. Even after decimating the polys they're still too dang high. It's been a pain in the neck to do anything with this effing game, even when not actually playing it! (－‸ლ)

☽✶•.¸(✶•.¸★¸.•✶´)¸.•✶´☾ ☆«´¨`•°°•´¨`»☆    ☽.¸.•✶(¸.•✶´★`✶•.¸)`✶•.☾

Welcome to Murf’s School of Crap and Crap-Making!

School Motto: Prepare to be tortured! For Science!

Lesson #6B: MORE ON GAME EXTRACTING (PT2)

☽✶•.¸(✶•.¸★¸.•✶´)¸.•✶´☾ ☆«´¨`•°°•´¨`»☆    ☽.¸.•✶(¸.•✶´★`✶•.¸)`✶•.☾

Trust me: extracting from C2077 in general is not very beginner friendly--this is the hardest game I've ever converted from, next to all the Koei Warriors games. Because not only did I have to use EFFING COMMAND LINES again, but the way CDPR arranged the game files (particularly the textures--or lack thereof)--were just saturated in demonic energy.

Mind you, I extracted C2077 back in the EARLY days, within the first weeks of the game's release, way before the Toolkit updated and got a GUI and CDPR released its dev toolkits for modders, so it’s possible I’m giving you outdated information, as the process nowadays might be pretty different from how it was back when I did it.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I used the CP2077 Toolkit here, and followed the steps here.

To be fair, the steps themselves are actually very straightforward. I'm just a lazy, spoiled little ingrate who likes nice clean and simple GUI tools so i can click a button and see all the meshes & textures and go about my frikkin day. But no, instead i have to sit here with EFFING COMMAND LINES and try to figure out WTF these lines of code & text frikkin mean, with zero mesh preview tool to speak of. So I literally have no frikkin idea what anything looks like until I import it into Milkshape/Blender/3DS Max. GRAND. 🤬

(My horoscope told me I needed to get more sleep, and boy they weren't kidding, cuz I'm ornery AF today. 😩 )

But yeah, basically all you have to do is open the CP2077 toolkit .exe, and use the format the steps provide you with whatever the directory is where you installed the game.

As I've explained before in Pt1, all games bundle their files differently, so the trick with extracting is just to figure out what kind of bundle it is, what's in it, how to open it, and how to convert the mesh files into .obj format and the textures into .dds format.

For C2077, most of the files are in typical .bin files, with the meshes (.mesh files) & textures (.xbm files) in content\basegame_4_gamedata.archive | content\basegame_3_nightcity.archive |

So all you have to do is follow the steps and the formats they give you: copy/paste their extraction format code, and the "path to archive" is your installation directory: (e.g.: "archive -e -p "F:\Games\Cyberpunk2077\archive\pc\content\basegame_4_gamedata.archive" -w *.bin" to extract the .mesh files; or "archive -u --uext dds -p F:\Games\Cyberpunk2077\archive\pc\content\basegame_4_gamedata.archive -w *.bin" to extract the .dds files from the Gamedata bin archive).

Then just wait several HOURS (no exaggeration) for each archive to extract. I let mine run overnight for a a day or two--it took bloody frikkin forever.

Once you have all the meshes extracted, the good news is that converting them to .obj files The Sims can read is very easy, cuz all you have to do is use good ole NOESIS, THANK GOD~! ^0^ (Noesis can also open the .xbm texture files, BTW--it’s that clutch; I keep telling y’all.)

The issue with the textures is that C2077 just legit doesn't have many. 💀 It's a feature, not a bug--instead of using diffuse textures (like The Sims' overlay/multiplier diffuse), games like C2077 and Call of Duty instead use materials--kind of like the sample fabric swatches in a textiles shop or tailor, with dozens upon dozens of simple materials & microblends & patterns (a leather print, a metallic sheen, a paisley pattern, etc) shared between all meshes. It’s awful.

So you the extractor/porter/converter are now left with the sad task of patching all these materials together to make a lick of sense on a mesh that might very well use 100 different material files (no joke!) rather than 1 or 2 diffuse textures. And WOE BE UPON YOU if you’re trying to convert it for The Sims 3, where meshes can only use textures on ONE UV Map. The saving grace of TS3′s UV Mapping is that we have CASt, so often we can get away with having plain multipliers, so long as the RGBY Mask allows us to have recolorable channels that do a lot of that heavy lifting for us with patterns & color wheels. For TS2/TS4, however, I imagine more work would need to be done providing swatches, as nothing’s recolorable in those games.

So REJOICE at the pithy handful of actual diffuse textures (mostly decals & posters, etc) that CDPR bothered to grace us with in C2077--they're acts of mercy, I promise you. 🙏

And speaking of UV Maps--C2077′s are upside down. Which is absolutely frikkin lovely; who doesn’t love extra work, seriously. 😒

But yeah, that’s it for extracting, really.

Again, the method I used might be outdated by now, since I did all of mine in December 2020/January 2021, and I haven’t needed to stay up to date with the tools or anything since i already got what I needed out of them. :\

[stellarune]

kotlc yt au hc bc i want to write but cant *actually* write so its the next best thing

biana makes historical versions of famous costumes (disney, barbie, you name it) shes basically the cosplay queen. she did a lot of stitching by hand before her accident which cost her her arm, so now she mostly does it with a machine (look, amputee!biana is in every single on of my human aus). her videos are very chaotic bc shes mostly just making it up as she goes, but in the end, she gives a proofed step by step how to for the dress/coat/wtv. since shes so rich, all of her paterns are free as well. she has around 3m subscribers. she does charity streams.

dex is a maker. he does reproductions of weapons he likes from video game, movies, animes you name it. he has an ongoing series called “will i finally manage to make a lightsaber this year ?” it comes out every year in july, and is one of hs most viewed videos. he also works to make his own patinas and experiment with different kinds of finnish for his pieces. he took a year off off youtube at one point to learn how to make jewellery, and now hes back with a store, and some custom rings ! he has around 1.5m subs, but some of his videos can get as many as 10m views. he never monetizes his videos.

fitz is a baking youtuber, in theory. the first few years on his channels were basically just baking tutorials without voiceover. but he did one live strem for 100k and the fans were absolutely shook at his voice and face, and he just never could go back to anonimity. how did he get that many subs ? well, all of his videos had the fuck ups included, and step by step guides on how to fix these mistakes. also the editing job was flawless. now he does baking experiments, and some cakes on request. he has a few monetized videos, but only with small companies that really need advertizing, or ridiculous products. (hes been known for doing a video sponsored by chin workout equipent) he has around 3m subscribers as well.

keefe is the random guy. he does art challenges, and trends, and just videos that seem pulled out of nowhere (”i set up a fake shower in the middle of the street lol”) he takes part in drama, as in he watches from the sidelines, then makes a shitty edit summarising the whole thing. hes never pretended to eb serious, and the people watching him know hes not. hes released one song on spotify that is just a compilation of everytime katherin bennett said urinoirs in That Video. hes fairly unproblematic though, and everytime he sets up soemthing crazy like the bathroom stall, he finds a way (legal or not) to let anyone that might need it use it. he has arund 6m subs, and definitely does big charity dnations

linh and marella are gamers. they dont have the same channel, but their content is fairly similar, even though their approch to it is wildly different. marella always tries to follow the rules so much she creates chaos, and linh generally gets distracted by side quests for a whole episode. theyre mostly known for their extremely different DBH gameplays, with marella ending up with the bad ending somehow, even though she mostly followed the good storyline, and linh killing way too many people unnessessarily by panicking. they both have around 5m subs

tam and sophie both are editors. theyre the ones that make the videos. sophie works with biana keefe and fitz while tam works with linha and dex. marella has jensi. theyre the ones that get the crew together. 

linh and marella decide to do a collab, but jensi cant edit marellas half, since he has to leave for college or wtv, so sophie, who watches a lot of tams side videos (conspiracy theories) sends him an email being like “hi, i heard you needed an editor, and i dont sleep ever and editing keeps my mind off things i dont wanna think ab, so im here if you need me. oh and btw, links to the channels im the editor of” 

since sophie is a vv good editor, tam answers like “oh yeah thatd be great heres my number !” and now theyre chatting, both for work and just as friends. 

then comes the actual collab

its nothing special, ut its a fan fave, both linah and arella win a ton of subs from it

then fitz, one night, is like “oh, btw, do you know anyone who lives near **** bc im looking for a roommate” and sophie is like “yeah i gotchu, y cous dex lives nearby, and hed appreciate a bit of help for the rent so ill hook u up” 

anyways, theres a small “wait youre THAT sophie ????” from tam, but it doesnt matter, fitz and dex move in together. 

soph and biana are long suffering parents looking at their children who have a crush on each other, without realizing they also are the children who have a crush on each other. 

marella and linh get together quite easily, comparing to the rest 

they simply did a qna; and one of the questions was like “are you dating ???” and marella is like “nah, i wish” and linhs like “id be down”. and thats it.

dex and fitz egt together after an accidental kiss

sophie and biana are tipical oblivious wlws, and start dating after a kiss to piss off homophobes (its in character dont @ me)

no one knows wtf keefe and tam are. they dont know if they are dating, or hate eachother, or have the bromance of the century. its confusing to everyone and they like it that way.

does anyone want a part 2 ??

[wmhalliwell]

ashlee’s gif making tutorial

@amysperalta​ has requested a gif making tutorial from me and i’m happy to oblige! everyone has a different way to gif and some ways don’t work for some people, so this is just how i personally make them. i’ve also never made a tutorial before, so let’s hope this doesn’t end badly.

this is the gif i’ll be making for the purposes of this tutorial:

things you’ll need:

a version of photoshop

some way to get frames from a video file (i’ll give some options)

patience

step 1: getting your frames

there are many, many ways to do this. there are multiple different programs to do this with (kmplayer, uplayer, gom player) but i personally use mpv (via @kylos​ lovely tutorial here; which i also highly recommend as a gif tutorial since it gives a different way to create a gif file) because my mac doesn’t accept any other type of program. 

note: BE SURE THAT WITH ANY PROGRAM YOU USE, IT IS SET TO SAVE EVERY FRAME. some people may lie to you and say a program grabbing every other or every third frame is fine, but it’s 2019 and we don’t do that any more. the tumblr gif limit is 3mb, which means we can have smooth, non-choppy gifs by gathering every frame from a scene.

okay, so i gather my frames, and typically keep them in a folder, separating scenes cut-by-cut so it’s easier to handle. for example: 

from there, i import them into photoshop using: File --> Scripts --> Load Files into Stack; this screen pops up, in which you browse for your frames hit OK. this will automatically upload all the frames into the same file for you. be patient! depending on how many frames you choose, it can take a few minutes to upload all of the frames.

i always save my work after every step. so once frames are uploaded i save the file. be sure to have “timeline” (or “animation” on some versions of photoshop) opened in your view. my photoshop looks like this when i open the file:

now, i’m going to click “Create Frame Animation” at the bottom. This will give me a timeline to work with at the bottom. Next step, go to the three little lines on the right side of the thingy that says “Timeline” and go through these steps: 

and then

now, you have a working gif! you can hit the little play button at the bottom left of the screen and it should play for you.

step two: cropping and sharpening

there is plenty you can do for sizes on tumblr. the general widths are 540px (big), 268px (normal) and 177/178px (small). it’s all a matter of the type of set you’re making. also be aware that the gif limit is 3mb. the bigger the gif, the fewer frames you can have. most of my 540px gifs have between 20-35 frames, while some of my 268px frames can have 75-90 depending on the coloring of the scene.

but for the purpose of this tutorial, i’m making one 268x160. i go to the crop key at the left side, and set my ration up top to 268 and 160.

then i crop the gif! (note: sometimes, files will have a black line on one side of a video file; typically the bottom or on one side. the black line will be no more than 2px big and sometimes hard to see until you’ve cropped it. be sure to drag the cropped area away from the edge of the files that have this dark line, as it when appears on the final gif and looks bad. one of my more recent sanditon gifsets fell to this and i didn’t realize until i had posted it. 😖)

now we have to size it. you do do this by going to Image --> Image Size or using the keyboard shortcut. it should automatically keep the aspect ratio, thus when you change width to 268, the height should change to 160 automatically. 

hit OK and now you have your base gif!

next, we’ll be sharpening and setting the frame rate, two very important things. to sharpen a gif, there is no way you want to go do it frame by frame, so you can use an action! these are really helpful. i have one i use for most gifs, and one i use for lesser quality. the one i use for this gif is this one here. to use this, you’ll have your photoshop open, you can go to your actions in your barthingy on the right by color swatches which should look like this:

click that and find the three grey lines at the top right. click them and this will pop up. you’ll go to “load actions” and then browse for the action you downloaded. 

once loaded, it will show up like this and have a nifty play button! 

make sure you click on/highlight the “play me!” line and then hit the play button on the bottom of the box. it will go through the motions for you and sharpen your gif. once that’s done, you can hit the big action button to close this box to get it out of the way. now, to set a frame rate, you’ll go down to the timeline and highlight all of the frames and then click while holding shift and this will pop up.

you’ll select “other” and type in “.05″. this is the most commonly used frame rate. most movies and tv shows will look fine using this for scenes, especially ones with subtitles, etc. for more artistic scenes, sometimes i’ll use “.06″ to slow it down just a hair. also make sure that your gifs are set the loop “forever”.

and there you go! a gif fully sharpened and moving at the proper speed:

this is also the time you can choose your frames. meaning if you uploaded like 200 frames and only wanted to use 50 of them, you can go through and delete them in the timeline. there’s a little trashcan button there.

note: once you’ve sharpened and set your frame ratio, be sure to go into your levels box and click the top frame. it is also useful to have the first frame in the timeline always highlighted as you’re editing the rest of the gif. 

step three: coloring

there are endless ways to color. there’s loads of people offering psd colorings. (psd means an editable photoshop file btw) you can also make your own. i have a whole slew of psds i’ve made for certain scenes that i’ve kept and reuse, tweaking each time. this isn’t a coloring tutorial, but i’ll show you a quick way to make a simple coloring. (i purposely chose a well lit scene for this gif tutorial for this reason. making dark scenes look good, or scenes with bad color balance is a whole other tutorial lol)

first off, make a folder above your frames. you can name it whatever you want; it will automatically call itself “group 1″. this is where you’ll be putting all of your coloring layers so they stay together and you can also save it to use again.

from here on out, we’ll be adding layers, using the half black/half white circle down at the bottom; just click on it and it’ll pull up a list of things you can use. note that when you add coloring layers, you start at the bottom and add other layers on top of it.

always start with “levels”. i lighten up almost every scene i gif, since it gives me the chance to play with contrast on my own terms.

then we’ll do a “selective color”; this one is just to set some blacks while giving contrast. be sure to select “blacks” at the top and change just what’s below:

most gifs also need some “color correction” at this point. (this is a layer you’ll keep coming back to to tweak as you add more above it fyi.) for this one, i’ll make it a bit more green and red.

the gif right now looks like this....which isn’t perfect, but i can see where it will get to from here:

now we’ll add a layer of 100% “vibrance”

not every gif needs 100% vibrance, but i tend to like how colors look when i use it and we can fix any weird colored skin in later steps. and now some curves for contrast:

the gif now looks like this:

which is much too yellow certainly, but gifs always look worse before they look better when it comes to coloring! next, we’ll make another layer of “selective colors”. this is when you’ll play with each color within the same selective color layer. i’m guessing i’ll utilize more blues and less yellows under “yellow” and “red” but let’s see what happens:

now it looks like this!

which is a lot better. i’ll probably up the blacks +10 (using the same selective color layer) just a bit so crowley can be his angsty self entirely. i also want to up the greens because i love bright gifs.

the great thing about selective colors is that they’re easy to manipulate. and you can even have multiple of them over one another to really zero in on one color. and if you find that you can’t get the gif to look right at all, you can also return to your color balance layer and tweak it until it looks better and is easier to manage.

so now, my finished gif looks like this: 

(this is not the most exciting gif ever, but it works to show how to play with colors in a well lit scene).

there is a number of other things i do/can be done in making gifs, but these are the basics. 

be sure to go to File --> Export --> Save for Web and follow my settings to save your gif. (there are many ways to save a gif, and each gif tutorial will give you different settings. i recommend trying them out and see which works best for you.) pay attention to the “bicubic” quality at the bottom. and when your gif is small enough (under 3mb), be sure to click on the “original” tab at the top and save it while on that screen.

and, because i’m feeling nice, let’s have a quick subtitles moment:

bonus step 4: subtitles

i know there are easier ways to make subtitles but this is how i do mine. using the ruler around your photoshop space, drag one vertical line over your gif. the program should automatically “snap” them to the middle of the gif to create your perfect center.

then take the text tool and write something in it, no matter where or what size, just so you have something to manipulate. you’ll find that it too will snap to the center to match the ruler line, giving you a centered text box! you can have it whatever distance you want from the bottom (don’t go too close or tumblr will cut it off) and then you can edit the text color/font/etc. these are my settings.

and i also have an added stroke and drop shadow to it which you can get to from Layer --> Layer Style:

and so it looks like this: 

it is important to add your text layer ABOVE your coloring folder, otherwise the coloring will affect the text. and it’s good to have different colors for different people talking.

i hope that all made sense! feel free to send me any questions (i’m sure i must have made you confused or missed a step or something), or if you have any other tutorials you’d like to request.

[kintatsujo]

Um... This is going to sound like a weird question, but... you watched Yu-Gi-Oh back when it was still airing, right? What was that like? Did you have any theories or predictions about what would happen? Were they confirmed? What was the fandom like? Was there discourse? I ask because I was so little back then that I only caught snippets of episodes, so by the time I actually got into the fandom the series was over and I got spoiled pretty much immediately. Sorry if this is out of the blue!

okay lol sorry for taking a bit to answer this it’s been

one of those weeks

Okay so yes!  Yugioh was the first fandom I was actively in and yes, there was fandom fighting

We basically fought about literally everything; it’s a lot more laid back even if you consider that I’m better at picking people to be in a community with now

Some Debates included 

what continuity was Better (much like today but complicated by the fact that for a while it was harder to get one’s HANDS on certain continuities; which is why there are people who think Series Zero was Super Serious as opposed to being Pretty Silly)

Shipping wars, as you’d expect, but Silentshipping was actually a pretty huge ship at the time (and I’m still convinced its rarity now was because of a concerted bullying effort, given the reaction I still see to @shizukazilla every time someone finds it)

Whether or not Alister was a dude or a chick in the Japanese, which lasted about a week but was quite vicious

“Yami Terrence,” where someone insisted Malik was going to be renamed “Something stupid like Terrence” randomly on her personal shitty-ass Geocities site (which was literally just a profile about herself with a random rant about how much she hated the Yugioh dub) and then an entire section of the fandom took it as gospel that this was going to be his name until the episode he’s first called “Marik” aired

Lots and lots and LOTS of Tea bashing, which I am quite relieved most of the fandom has moved on from because I Have Seen Things Which Cannot Be Unseen

“It’s impossible to do a good nexgen”

I did indeed have at least one theory confirmed and that was basically that Atem was going to die (and I feel bad about that in retrospect but my tendency to be too genre savvy for my own good is one I’ve had for a long time)

The biggest subset of fandom theories was generally about what Atem’s actual name was going to turn out to be and they were pretty much all wrong

Also: The reason I never much got into Yugioh The Abridged Series is because initially it was literally all jokes we were literally all making with some shit that made me genuinely uncomfortable thrown in, go figure I guess?

There were a lot more fics and speculation based on the video games than there is now and I honestly miss it even though I never did play them

At its height Yugioh was absolutely more popular than Pokemon.  Like, I’d walk through the store and there’s Mai on the TV Guide.  I have so much random ass packaging from cereal bars and cereal; also the cereal was basically triangular Captain Crunch and again I genuinely miss it

The readership for one of the fan magazines thought Johnny Depp should play Malik in a live action movie and I’ve never forgiven them

A “dueling tutorial” DVD that one of these magazines put out where one of the kids insisted on calling Celtic Guardian “Seltic” Guardian like the basketball team and clearly was very smug about the dub pronouncing it “wrong” (the dub isn’t pronouncing Celtic wrong btw)

actually on that note of non-digital fandom both Junior and Senior year of high school I basically sat and watched my Junior year boyfriend’s buddies play Yugioh and DBZ every lunch and one of the kids insisted on calling his all-female monster deck his “Vagina Deck” (I know), plus there was a lot of ragging on Exodia

SO MANY little independent fansites like oh my god, like if the internet were a vast ocean and Tumblr were a continent these would basically have been the Pacific Islands 

one of the most notable fansites was run by this guy named Edo and a Big Theory is that Edo Phoenix was actually named after him; he actually made this like, really broken little computer game for the card game I think he never finished but which Invid played for like weeks worth of hours

There was a Mary Sue Test people kept referring people to that was more stringent about character design than whoever drew the Battle City background characters

there’s

there’s a lot

it was a lot

[xerxes-kun]

Manga Typesetting Fonts Masterlist

THIS IS STILL UNFINISHED. I WILL ADD MORE INFO LATER.

Heya! I’m a typesetter and I just applied to Sense Scans (rudeus is my username btw lol) so I’m going to make this masterlist for myself. But then I thought, why not post it in public? I hope this is useful for my fellow typesetters!

Some of these were taken from RHS and Imperial scanlations which are dead but they’ve been really active in the day. Props to them for making such a wonderful and easy to understand tutorial! Also, most of the bonus tips at the end came from csdgn. Thanks to these people, I’ve come to understand most of the basics! Their tutorials are really helpful for someone like me who once had no idea how to typeset~

First off, I’m gonna provide what websites you can download free fonts from! 

dafont

1001freefonts

download-free-fonts

fontsplace

fontsner

These are the websites that I get my fonts from, but of course it’s not the best suggestions. I personally prefer download-free-fonts.

Now then, let’s get to business!

Keep in mind you are not restricted to using just these fonts, these are just the ones I have come across.

☆ : Most commonly used

For normal text, it’s best to use:

Wild Words ☆

CC Astro City

Anime Ace

Dramatic shouting..

I want my TTR! Condensed 

Brushed

Also

DeathRattle BB

Edo SZ

Feast of Flesh BB

From Where You Are

Ignite the Light

LeviBrush

Mouth Breather BB ☆

MS-Scratch

Psycho Poetry

Yellow Jacket

Thoughts.. (Remember to put a 2-3 pixel white stroke on it!)

CCJimlee

Fawn Script ☆

Evil Genius BB

CC Astro City

Chapter titles..

Dirty Headline

Bebas Neue

Blue Highway D Type 

Elephant

Komika Title ☆

Handwritten text.. (foreword, letters, etc)

Doujinshi ☆

Kristen ITC

Go Boom!

LeviBrush

Small text..

Augie ☆

SwaggerBold

Hand of Sean

Boxes.. (announcements, introduction, etc)

Georgia

CC Meanwhile ☆

CC Astro City

Intro/Outro text.. (text outside the panels usually at the beginning and the end of a chapter)

VTC Supermarket Sale ☆

Gordon URW Condensed 

Bonus:

What do you need? Photoshop! The more recent, the better. Although you can also use GIMP, a free editing software close to Photoshop. Please don’t use Microsoft Paint-

Don’t know what the font is called? Don’t worry, you can use websites such as WhatTheFont, What Font Is, Font Squirrel, and Fontspring! They’ve always been accurate for me to be honest. It’s a useful tool. Just take a picture of the font and upload it there. A good alternative is Identifont! It asks you questions of what it resembles, looks like, and etc. Good luck!

If you are planning to do a high quality release, never use JPGs on intermediate steps. Such as passing from scanner to cleaner to editor to typesetter. Only the final release should be JPGs. They are lossy, meaning they lose information when encoding. Meaning if you encode an image multiple times in JPG format, you will lose more and more information on each encoding.

Give your text room to breathe. You don’t start writing your sentences on the exact left side of a piece of paper do you? I certainly don’t. You use margins. The same rule applies to speech bubbles and other bordered text. Give it some room and it will look much better. Crowding the edges make the text harder to read, especially at lower resolutions. 

I’ve found a dropbox link containing 300+ fonts for typesetting. This is very useful. Check it out!

Last but not least, enjoy and take your time! Typesetting is a very hard thing to do. Perfectionists like me are pleased with aesthetically done edits. You have to love your fonts, man! A good sense for centering is a must too. I came to love typesetting. At first, it was hard, but of course, by practicing, I came to learn bit by bit! Some scanlation groups offer trainings. That’s very generous of them! As far as I know, mangastream does offer one. Other groups that I know that are currently recruiting for typesetters are: Jaimini’s Box, Sense Scans, Helvetica Scans, Fallen Syndicate, and Fallen Angels. Go on and try to apply when you’re ready! As I said, take your time. You’ll definitely get used to it. Although if you actually want to create your own scanlation group, that’s nice! You’re definitely amazing either way. Have patience and courage, that’s what we are confident in. It may be hard, but you will get there. The feeling of happiness when releasing your project to public – it’s just exciting. The feeling that you can make someone happy. It’s sooo refreshing. It’s an amazing experience, no doubt. :)

[everyoneneedsalisteningear]

Dear Friend

I mentioned previously, not long ago actually, about my somewhat weird obsession with mental illnesses and mental health. 

I would just like to acknowledge here that I suspect myself for having depression.

It does not come all the time though, sometimes I feel fine and then I “go bad”, as I would call it. I then feel numb and empty, unmotivated and tired all the time. I literally would just lie on the bed with my mind blank, not feeling much, not thinking much. On worse days I feel a sinking pit in my heart that I have to hold something up to my chest to subdue. When I am alone I immediately lose my facade of “happyface” and today, when I was in the washroom cubicle, I started to cry. Out of nowhere, there wasn’t even a stimulus, my day was going fine--it was almost as if I have been holding back sobs for the whole day and I could finally let go for a moment, and just embrace the sadness more or less, instead of avoiding it.

The past 2 days were spent with me just trudging around the house with utter tiredness, despite urgency of examinations looming, I don’t feel any urge to do anything. 

Today I had the chance to pick up my favourite drink at a mall, I had a chance to hang out with my crush, I had a chance to sing and dance at home alone, and yet I have no urge to partake in them. I truly had no energy to deal with people anymore and I know I looked a lot like a party-pooper. Acquaintances my friend and I saw on the way mostly only waved to my friend and not me--likely due to my rather off-putting demeanour. 

I looked up how depressive people look to non-depressive people, and many say that they are able to hide it very well. I agree, just this morning I was making a hell of jokes with my friends, laughing and telling stories like no other, but I had to “take a nap” halfway to really get back in tune with myself, if you know what I mean. However, there are also those who don’t bother to hide it much, and that is what happens to me when I really run out of energy, or when I am alone. 

I don’t know if I’m actually depressed or if I’m just overreacting. Either way, I don’t know if I should consult e.g. my counselor about this because this was something I wanted her to pick up when I first went to look for her -- I suspected I had anxiety and depression -- but instead I got a full on tutorial on how to improve self-confidence. Which I admit, is a problem I have and could also likely be an effect or cause of anxiety and depression. It did not solve the root problem though, I don’t think. 

I have opened my eyes to friends who relate to me when I jokingly talk about how unmotivated I am, and now I realise, I think I see pain and defeat in their eyes. I start to see clues that my close friend may be showing depressive symptoms, clues that I like to leave for her too. Sometimes we want people to understand without being explicit. 

I am very aware that saying you’re depressed in this day and age is almost trendy for those who probably never been depressed. I just hope that I am not one of them. 

I have thought about this through again and again, and I’m not saying I’m depressed to fit in, in fact I stand out when I am experiencing depressive symptoms. No one actually wants that. However, I must say that other than the sinking pit in the middle of my chest, it can be slightly comfortable to just lie in it? Even with all the experiences of overwhelming self-pity, curling up into a ball under blankets, watching meaningless YouTube videos, satisfying the urge to cry and trudging around like your legs are made of heavy concrete. It is when you fight it and put up a facade of “happyface” that things really go sour. I feel even more tired than I already was and it just feels too forced to continue. 

With my friends I can put up with it for awhile. With my family I don’t bother too much, which then they see me as a bum just lazing around with no priorities and being sad for no reason. 

Sometimes I hint to them that maybe they should get me checked, like saying “I’m sad” constantly, which I actually am when I say it btw I’m not lying to get attention. Now it has become a slight joke, where my family just goes, “You’re always sad.” or “Why are you always sad lol”. 

I’m not sure where this is going to go or if I am really depressed, or just experiencing slight depressive symptoms, or just sad in general and its nothing to be worried about. 

It’s just that, these sudden dips in emotion and motivation come out of nowhere. Yes they are more likely to come when I am stressed, but otherwise I could just be doing nothing and nothing happened and suddenly I am in a gray pit of misery where all laughs and smiles are fake. 

I don’t know. Some things I didn’t tell my counselor before because I know I have a tendency to go into self-pity and exaggerate certain sad stories, and I want to be honest. 

Usually with writing I am the most honest I can be. Let’s hope this post was one truly honest, because I feel it is important to face whatever the hell this is I am facing.