#guide collection

[jadedresearcher]

I feel like I'm kind of too dense for zampanio. I wanna fall down rabbit holes and find mind-twisting secrets too, but I'm bad at computers and don't know how to mess with webpage code to get very far at all.

My favorite part about zampanio is that there's a valid layer of it that is just explaining Zampanio to other people, even if that includes spoilers! That way there's something for everyone no matter skill or time commitment level! Might I recommend: https://lostinzampanio.neocities.org/ https://www.tumblr.com/existentialterror/755207000752865280/arg-notes-zampaniosim?source=share https://zampaniosim.fandom.com/wiki/ZampanioSim_Wiki http://knucklessux.com/PuzzleBox/Secrets/GuideOfObserversZampanioSimStory.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yndySSPVKs&t=152s

There's countless others, these are just the ones I like that seem to be summarizing mostly my own branch, which, if you're asking me, is probably what you're thinking of. I HIGHLY recommend looking into other branches as well, or even making your own. Zampanio is what you make of it, after all!

Oh! And if spoilers aren't your thing, I seem to recall The Medium through together a Waste (hacking) guide: http://knucklessux.com/PuzzleBox/Secrets/misc/waste_guide_byMediumSquaredOfSpiders.pdf

[toast-x-butter]

the kill bill weapon

[bitchy-craft]

PICK A CARD: what you secretly desire

Hello and welcome to this reading! Here I will tell you what you secretly desire. I hope you enjoy this reading!

Masterpost > Paid Readings > Patreon Masterlist

The extended version of this reading can be found on my patreon, the link of which is here

Pile 1:

You desire a home, a safe haven. Wherever you are in your life right now, whether it is alright or bad, you want something different. You want to be on your own, and have friends and family around you. You need a romantic partner who is there for you and looks out for your every need. You want someone to take care of you and help you figure things out; who supports you into becoming who you are. You want to have freedom, to not have to worry about things and finally be able to focus on yourself and heal. You’ve had a lot of shit over you, you went through lots of hardships that you haven’t been able to completely process yet. You always feel like you are on edge, your stress level being higher than most people, and you want that safe haven in order to be able to let that all go.

Extended reading > paid readings

Pile 2:

You want stability. You want a career with a solid salary, and some of you also want to have a partner as stable as you. You want to have a life in which you don’t need to worry as much, a life in which you don’t need to keep things in mind or be afraid of things constantly. You don’t want a life with constant adventures; you want to have solid and reliable relationships, a nice family of your own (kids aren’t required in order to get this) and predictable happenings. You’ve had so many things going on in your life that getting a non-adventurous future might be for you. This doesn’t mean boring, this doesn’t mean not having fun; it simply means that you don’t want lots of spectacular stressful things coming your way.

Extended reading > paid readings

Pile 3:

You desire a relationship. You want to be loved and cared for. You want someone to tell you and remind you of how beautiful and awesome you are. You want someone who tells you it’s worth it to keep going, that you are a strong person and someone who will never give up. You need that companionship, you miss it and you want it desperately. You want someone to love you, and want someone to love back. You need that comfort in words of affirmation as well as in physical contact. Even though friends and family compliment you from time to time it is not the same, not even close. There is a different kind of love you need, something more intimate, something that feels even more meaningful to you.

Extended reading > paid readings

[dailyfigures]

Tour Guide from the Underworld ; Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters ☆ Amakuni

[finelythreadedsky]

it always makes me smile when scholars in academic writing refer to the hypothetical reader with she/her. "let the reader experience the battle as if it was unfolding right before her eyes". "a reader accepting her own historicity". "gives the reader the impression that she is following the events". "when a student is asked to write an essay on the aeneid she will normally be encouraged to read some modern criticism". like yeah i see you. i know you did that for me.

[raqi-marr]

affini when when they discover that fancy biorhythmic entrainment and hypnotic centres are entirely unnecessary because you can completely enthrall the average terran with only a particularly shiny rock

[flwrkid14]

Training the Bat Way (aka Bruce’s Terrible Parenting 101)

Bruce Wayne, aka the Dark Knight, aka the absolute worst, has this little training exercise that the entire family unanimously despises. He calls it “building resilience” or “preparing for the unexpected.” The rest of the family calls it Bruce’s stupid sleep-deprivation kidnapping game.

Here’s how it works: Bruce waits until you’re at your absolute lowest—after a grueling week of non-stop patrols, minimal sleep, and a near-catastrophic Gotham meltdown. Once you’ve finally collapsed into a dead sleep (and sometimes, after he’s sneakily slipped you a sedative to make sure you stay asleep), he picks you up, sticks you on a plane, and drops you off in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes it’s a remote village in the mountains; sometimes it’s the bustling heart of a city on the other side of the planet. The challenge? Find your way home.

Occasionally, Bruce will leave you with some supplies: a wallet, maybe a burner phone, a little equipment if he’s feeling generous. But more often than not, you’ll wake up with absolutely nothing. No money, no ID, no tools—just the clothes on your back and a pounding headache from whatever the hell Bruce drugged you with.

Some highlights of Bruce’s 'training' include:

• Dick waking up in the middle of Germany with nothing but his expired driver’s license and missing socks (He'd hidden cash in them, so he can only guess Bruce found it).

• Steph regaining consciousness in Iceland with a crumpled €5 euro and zero idea how to exchange it for local currency.

• Damian waking up in the middle of the Sahara Desert. No gear. No money. Nothing but sand and the distant memory of Bruce’s smug face.

• Tim once took over a month to get home from a tiny town in Thailand. By the time he made it back to Gotham, he’d created an entire fake identity, complete with forged documents, an elaborate backstory, and several new international contacts. Bruce called it “impressive.” Tim called it traumatizing.

• Cass, of course, took this completely in stride. Woke up in India, dismantled a shady criminal organization she stumbled across, and then casually returned to Gotham two days later like nothing had happened. When asked how she managed it, she just shrugged.

• Duke waking up in the Grand Canyon with his phone at 1% and a granola bar in his pocket. He got home in less than a day, having hitched a ride, bartered his way onto a train, and charmed a group of tourists into helping him. He also got himself a pet chameleon on the way, somehow.

• Jason refuses to talk about his turn, but based on the suspicious amount of diplomatic immunity he now has in several Eastern European countries, it’s safe to say he didn’t play by Bruce’s rules.

If they’re lucky, Bruce leaves them somewhere within the U.S., in which case the Wayne name might help speed up the process. But outside of the States? Forget it. Flashing a “Wayne” credit card can cause more problems than it solves (That's if they're even lucky enough to have a credit card to flash in the first place).

To the rest of the family, this whole thing is less of a “training exercise” and more of a weird, sadistic game Bruce plays when he thinks they’re getting too soft. And no matter how many times they complain, Bruce insists it’s “for their own good.” Because of course he does.

The thing is, they all do get home. Eventually. And yeah, maybe they come back stronger or sharper or whatever excuse Bruce uses to justify it. But at what cost? (Mostly their sanity and a burning hatred of international airline fees.)

Still, the Bats have learned to adapt. They’ve formed their own set of unspoken rules:

1. Always keep some emergency cash hidden somewhere on your person (And hope Bruce doesn't find it, because he will take it).

2. Never, ever fully trust that glass of water Bruce hands you after patrol.

3. And if you wake up in the middle of nowhere, the first step is simple: curse Bruce Wayne’s name as loudly and creatively as possible. Then get to work.

Because at the end of the day, they will get home. And they’ll probably sucker-punch Bruce the second they do.

[starryeyed-seer]

me: I'm not a bat

Mr pages: (stuffing novels under its robe): I must abscond

[abolishthefed]

[satoblue]

one of the things satoru would do on a date is take you to a photo booth and while you think it’s for taking cute photos, the main purpose it serves is so he could fuck you in it and get clear shots of him giving you back shots but especially for the front view when he shoves your face in the camera to get pictures of your jaw dropped in pleasure and your eyes rolling all the way back to your skull from his thrusts

[laertive]

What a shame Terrence was

Transcript in alt text

[kuwdora]

A Vidding Primer

A guide written for @wren-of-the-woods who asked for advice about how to start vidding! This is far from comprehensive and I tried not to make it too dense because it's a big subject. I still wanted to share a variety of topics about getting into vidding because it's a hobby and art that is near and dear to my heart.

First Piece of Advice

watch a lot of vids and rewatch vids multiple times. Seek out vids on YouTube, AO3, Watch the TikTok and Twitter/X vids that show up on tumblr or wherever you’re browsing. They all have distinct styles and tools/techniques they use to make their vids and edits. Rewatch the vids and ask yourself what you like or dislike about them. The song, the editing, the source. That can give you a good starting point about how you might want to approach making your own fanvids. The TikTok style of 30 and 40 second edits are very different what you find on YouTube. YouTube editors tend to use a full song and a lot more effects and a lot more overlapping dialogue. Whereas the fanvids - Vids - from people who came into vidding in the mid 2000s/2010s have their own culture, different ways they approach song choice, clip choices and narrative. I also suggest watching vids for shows/films you’re not familiar with as well as your fandom favorites. You can learn a lot about how vidders try to tell a story even when you might not grasp the context behind certain scenes but you can still follow along with the emotional arc of the vid.

Second Piece of Advice

Have fun and enjoy yourself. Everyone starts a new hobby as a newbie. It can be a lot of effort to make 30 seconds or a 3 minute vid, but it’s such a unique type of fanwork that is fun to watch and fun to make. It can also be migraine inducing because of all the learning and technical issues along the way. But!! omg when you make a clip fall on the perfect beat with your blorbo crying that perfect tear or you find an idea and sources for the bestest perfect lyrics of the song, it’s a magnificent high. It can make you feel like a god. At least that’s how I feel a lot of times!

There are about 10 steps* to creating** a fanvid/edit:

• select your platform and software (phone/computer video editors) • gather your video and audio files • create a new project in your video editor • import audio into the editor • import the video into the software and mute audio tracks that contain your video’s audio • review, label and cut up the video into shorter clips - this step is known as ‘clipping’ in vidding parlance, but it’s also optional. Some people pull in movies and scrub through the whole film and just pull it directly onto the timeline • move the various video clips around on the timeline to match the audio track you’ve chosen for your project, add video effects and additional dialogue if you like • export the finished timeline • upload the video to a streaming platform and/or downloadable service • share your project!!! posting to ao3 and/or social media or share on discord, etc * there are a lot more steps involved with each of these steps. What what software to use, where to find video, how to deal with copyright blocks on Youtube, etc. Some of that will be covered in the links below but is not comprehensive. That would require separate posts and links and I don’t want to drop an encyclopedia on you right now! I’m happy to provide more resources that I can curate if you want more direction and pointers to resources and amazing vidders.

** like any hobby, there can and will be a learning curve and frustrations. Blank page for a writer, blank timeline for a vidder. Is anything you put down is any good, self esteem and confusion about what actually makes sense is part and parcel for any creative work. Once you're in the vidding process and committed, as long as you're enjoying yourself you gotta just keep going to get it done.

Getting Started Vidding

My knowledge and background and learning how to vid from people on livejournal and dreamwidth from 2007. I don’t have any experience in editing with a phone but if that’s something you’re interested in, YouTube will be a place for you to start finding tutorials for various apps and tools. Probably discord communities, too. Vidding Workshop - a great how-to/guide when you're starting out. This is on dreamwidth from the WisCon vidparty in 2014. Some of the tech discussions might be a little outdated but there’s a ton of relevant information. It covers technical subjects as well as developing vid ideas and actually getting started. If you have any questions about what you’re reading you can leave an anonymous comment and ask - some of these vidders responding inthe threads are still active. You can find them on AO3/YouTube, tumblr, discord and actually leave them questions about their vids. Many vidders are more than thrilled to talk about their vids and answer questions. Vexcercises - this is a dreamwidth community for short-form vid excercises. This is a very structured way of introducing vid concepts and constraints so that you can produce a vidlet. I highly recommend you check this out and participate! There’s even an AO3 collection so you can check out how people have done the different exercises, too.

The Process of Vidding

Watch Me Edit - @limblogs put together a fantastic playlist of YouTube editors who will show you beginning to end how they made their vid. A lot of these editors appear to be using Sony Vegas but the general process of vidding end-to-end will be similar with other nonlinear editors like DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, etc. It’s a great way to actually see the vid come together if you don’t know what that even looks like. Every vidder will develop their own workflow and approach (which might even change from vid to vid), but it’s useful to see in video how people actually DO the thing. @limblogs also created a handy YouTube playlist some vidders from Bradcpu’s Vidder Profiles (Fanlore page). These profiles are basically like a director’s DVD commentary on their vidding process, featuring the vidders talking over their own vids! So cool. Phenomnal insights from these vidders about how they choose song, use effects, think about their narratives.

Self Rec: I recently did a vidding textpost series called: do it for the process - a naked vid draft: What (Yennefer of Vengerberg). How I Edit by @vimesbootstheory is another textpost about their vidding process. Self rec: Here’s my text interview: Vidder Profile - Kuwdora 2011. I talk about my process with a lot of specific examples from my previous work and lots of screenshots. This profile is over a decade old but a lot of this still holds true for me today! videlicet - this is an incredible vidding zine that @limblogs put togegther with a lot of amazing contributors. These articles and discuss about specific vids and aspects of vidding. It’s really detailed and a fantastic piece of vidding culture. I highly reading recommend the Demystifying Vidding article by lim and the A History of Vidding by @meeedeee and…pretty much every article in the zine!

Doing the vidding!

I recommend joining exchanges and watching vids that come out of exchanges and checking out fannish cons that have vidshows and discords to get more exposure to vidders and vids. Many people have joined @festivids (AO3 collection here) and made their very first vid, it's a very fun and great way to get into vidding. It’s not quite festivids season right now but time flies and it will be time to nominate sources and do sign-ups in the blink of an eye. Follow @festivids and check out the AO3 collection and see what people are making. Join the Vexcercises community and make some short vids and share them on your tumblr or on discord or somewhere and bask in the thrill of making your first fanvids. Check out who reblogged the vidder ask game - go and read other vidders responses and ask some new-to-you vidders questions. Everyone has their own take on process and tech and everything. It's great to hear and see what a lot people are doing and making.

Final Advice - talking about vids and doing the vidding

• watch vids • rewatch vids • leave a comment and ask a question about something you saw in their vid! • Again: find someone’s AO3 page of fanvids and ask them something about their vid in a comment or send them asks on tumblr (people usually have the same alias or link to their tumblr or dreamwidth pages somewhere.) • YouTube can be a valuable resource for tutorials so if you don't know something, there is likely someone who has made a tutorial about how to use a cross dissolve transition or anything else you might want to replicate in a video that you've seen in a vid. • start making a vid, scream and cry, ask for help, and keep going until you get it done. Celebrate and bask in your completed vid and share it with everyone! • Follow vidders on tumblr that you find from the vidder ask game • Check out the vidding discord for community and questions and vid recs and news about vidding exchanges and cons. • Have fun!

Hope this helps you get started! Thank you so much for the ask! Let me know if you have more questions and I can help you out or send you to cool vidders who have great advice and suggestions. And please send me your vid if you make one!

[rovadeve]

Absolutely obsessed with the fact MXTX made that guys’ given name be Yao. As in jade. As in commonly a character in a girls’ name. As in jade-like meaning a gentle man who is pure of heart. As in jade symbolising being pure of heart in general. What did she mean with all that it’s crazyyy

[thehighpriestexx420]

[silvermoon424]

Do you know where to buy authentic old sailor moon merch for a reasonable price? I did search around for a bit but I just could not find a site or seller that I felt was 100% trustworthy that was also within my price range. I’m talking about things like the eyeliner that looked like the rods, or the brooches that could be opened and had storage room inside. I was unfortunately very young when those items came out and my parents refused to buy them for me and now that I’m grown and have my own money I seem to be unable to find them anywhere 🥲 help would be very much appreciated, thank you!

Hey anon! Great question, this is something I've been wanting to write a guide on for a long time. I'll give the short(ish) version here.

Nowadays there are tons of great sites where you can buy new and upcoming anime merch. Here are some recommended sites for NEW merch:

BigBadToyStore

Nin-Nin-Game

AmiAmi

Solaris Japan

Hobby Link Japan

Amazon Japan (via the international delivery service; not everything on there is eligible so make sure to double-check)

These sites all offer direct shipping to the US and many other countries.

For older merch, your best bet is to buy directly from secondhand Japanese sites; you CAN find stuff on sites like eBay, but the price is usually inflated (I do still recommend looking on eBay from time to time because there are occasionally good deals).

Most of these secondhand Japanese sites require the use of a proxy service. I'll get into that in a minute, but for now, I'll list my favorite secondhand sites:

Surugaya

Mandarake (no proxy required, has an international shipping program)

Yahoo Auctions Japan

Mercari Japan

For these sites, my favorite proxy services are:

Japan Rabbit- for everything except Yahoo Auctions.

Buyee- for Yahoo Auctions. Buyee lets you directly bid on items and offers a clean, user-friendly interface. There are many language options available, including English, Spanish, and Mandarin.

Both these sites have detailed guides on how to use their services. It's pretty easy, albeit pricey when you factor in international shipping fees and service fees. To make the cost worth it, I recommend saving up and buying multiple items when you shop instead of just one or two; having a larger order really makes the shipping fees more worth it (so basically, instead of paying like $30 in shipping fees for a single item, you'd be paying $30-$40 in shipping fees for multiple items).

Despite all that, buying multiple items via secondhand Japanese shops is still more cost-efficient than trying to buy the same items on Western sites. Moreover, sites like Mandarake and Yahoo Auctions Japan often have items that are impossible to find elsewhere.

Oh, one last thing: remember to search in Japanese! Here are some general search terms that you can try:

セーラームーン: Sailor Moon セーラームーン コンパクト: Sailor Moon compact セーラームーン スティック: Sailor Moon wand セーラームーン ぬいぐるみ: Sailor Moon plush セーラームーン 人形: Sailor Moon doll セーラームーン フィギュア: Sailor Moon figure セーラームーン カード: Sailor Moon card セーラームーン バンダイ: Sailor Moon Bandai セーラームーン 食玩: Sailor Moon candy/food toys セーラームーン 原画集: Sailor Moon Artbook

Btw, the yen is currently very weak against the United States dollar. So if you see something is 5,000 yen, don't freak out because it's actually like $33 lol.