#i didn't intend for this to be a tutorial i just wanted to explain that i'm not a 3d artist lmfao

[dengswei]

Hii you're so talented!! i wonder if you could explain how you did this gif effect with the squares? and do you have any tips on colouring because yours is always top notch <3333

heyy thank you so much 🥹 and of course! i've never really done a tutorial before but i'll try my best to explain it in a way that makes sense 😅

so i start off with making my two gifs seperatly and colouring them as i normally would, once i've done that i load both gifs into the same project and once i've done all that i started on the grid part:

now go to view -> add guides and this window should pop up:

(it's was so daunting at first when i saw this i was like ????? and started putting in random numbers and was like oh that's how this works 🤣)

here's the settings i used for my gif which is 540px x 500px in size with 5 squares x 4 squares: (if you want more or less you just have to play around with it)

once you've done that it should look something like this:

now the next part is really up to preference again: add a vector mask onto the gif that's above the other one like this: (ignore the name of my folder that is irrelevant 🤣)

and then i used the rectangle select tool (this is because the rectangle select should lock onto the grid squares making it easier to erase certain sections) + a black brush tool to erase the squares to show the other gif that's underneath (you can reposition both gifs to your liking which is what i did)

before & after:

so my vector mask looks like this afterwards

(you don't have to do the squares so close together like i did it was just how i liked it & because of the scenes i had chosen that mine turned out this way)

now onto the grid lines: i used the line tool with these settings

just like with the rectangle select tool the line tool should lock onto the grid line you want to redraw, do this for every line that you want/have for your grid & once you're done go to view -> clear guides and it should look something like this: (added a version with just a black background so it can be seen a little easier)

(i'm ngl idk why my lines ended up kinda faded and not white 🤣 i think it might be because i used a white fill instead of white stroke but it doesn't really matter to me because i got my ideal outcome anyway 🤣)

bonus step: you can stop here if you'd like but i wanted my lines to match my colouring & my intended typography so i put all my line layers into a folder and set the mode to difference & added a yellow fill layer with a clipping mask, like this:

and it should look like this:

you can also play around with the opacity of the lines too which is what i tried out but i prefered for my set the lines being at 100% opacity but it's really up to you with what you want to play around with

now once you're happy with everything merge those layers together (make sure they have the same amount of frames first before merging them) and either save as it is or add some typography like i did and you should end up with this:

for tips when it comes to colouring it really depends on what you're colouring, if you want to manipulate the colours as much as i do i recommend choosing a colour within the scene so you're not having to change too much, or finding scenes that have colours that can be manipulated more easy (any colour that aren't skin tones, unless you're working with red or yellow like i did here, i chose yellow because one of the outfits in the gif was yellow toned and it looked better with the gifset being yellow than my original colour which was blue), also looking for scenes were the people in it don't move as much also is a big help!

i hope this helps :) feel free to ask more questions if you didn't understand or want some more tips i honestly don't mind!

[raisengen]

Design of Strife's design is a real mystery to me.

After thinking about it, I think the intention is:

You play it like reverse CC: fight a hard enemy while helped by a large number of buffs, then whittle down the buffs until you're fighting them au naturel. This then unlocks the next difficulty, rinse and repeat.

Within battle, you're meant to exploit the lava fissures by deploying operators on top of them, managing the burn damage in exchange for bonus damage against enemies.

The thing is, the game is absolutely terrible at conveying this. There's no effort to make sure you know about the buff system, and there's no effort to make sure you know how lava fissures work.

The most the tutorial has to say is "if you use buffs you can't unlock the next set of stages". OK? The buff system isn't even available at the time they say that. It's not even unlocked until you lose a run at that rank (and even then it's relatively easy to miss). And besides, all I've been told is that I shouldn't use them, and since they're off by default maybe I should just ignore them.

Compare to CC, where you have to pass through the contract selection screen every time you start the stage.

The lava fissures have no tutorial at all, forcing you to rely on the poorly-worded tooltips. (Did you know you can long-press on special tiles to bring up a notification explaining them?) And you're unlikely to intuit their interactions, either; the lava only hurts friendlies, unless you put an operator on top, in which case they can scoop up some of the eruption and throw it on your enemies. Of course. They didn't even get a good animation, since they appear to only hit low tiles, but still deal damage to high tiles.

Compare to... pretty much any event with a stage mechanic, where they have dedicated tutorial stages focused on the interaction.

If these are (well, were) meant to be the experiments for new high-end content, then surely you should want players to be able to engage with it as intended, right?

[maryellencarter]

Quick reminder that if you follow me and your profile says "proshippers DNI" I will block you in accordance with your wishes. My pinned post used to say this, but I decided the YT to VLC tutorial was of more general interest.

Note: the term "proshipper" is not intended by those who identify with it to mean "problematic shipper". I didn't even know that was a meaning anyone was giving it until a few months ago. It's supposed to be "pro" as in opposite of "anti", which came first -- "you're anti these kinds of shipping? we are pro all kinds of shipping".

As far as I can tell, the "problematic shipper" meaning gets spread only by antis, as part of the myth that everyone who's not an anti is personally participating in The Bad Kinks like pedophilia, incest, noncon, etc, and just won't listen to reason because they don't want to give up being morally bad and icky for sexy reasons.

(This is exactly the same thing the far-right cult where I grew up always said about The Gays and The Trans.)

Other note: Both proshippers and antis have been known to attack each other with doxxing, death threats, and similarly terrible behavior. I do not support anybody doing those things for any reason, no matter how righteously outraged they are or who did it first.

Other other note: Every so often, I try to have a genuine conversation with someone who's curious why this is the position I take. It's... tiring. I don't feel like I've ever actually gotten through to anybody. I'm not gonna say never, because I only got *out* of that far-right cult because a lot of very kind people on the internet put in a lot of effort explaining things to me, and I feel like I should pay that forward, but... I just don't know if it's being worth the spoons to keep trying.

[avatar-of-the-vast]

Local man finds out that its website that makes knitting patterns actually creates much harder patterns than intended because it's a beginner

So, I make this cable knitting site (explained in this post) after just barely learning how to cable. I figure out 2x2 knitted cables and the rest on my own

And then, after looking at a tutorial to send to someone wanting to learn I see this

My guys, my friends, my pals my patterns have some kind of cables going on in every row

I both knit and purl the cables as needed and I don't find any of them to be more difficult than the other so I didn't realise this was a thing

Is this website wrong or are my patterns just more difficult than I intended them to be?

Edit: I'm aware that the site is incorrect about the leaning direction (you always hang it the same for the front or back regardless of what side you're working on) I was more curious about how common wrong side cables were and if they're actually beginner friendly or not

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Transmasc tip: get an eyebrow pencil!

I've seen lots of posts about contouring and masculine makeup but I don't own any of that stuff and I don't have the time and energy to do it every day. But I've found that just filling out my eyebrows is actually really effective in making my whole face more masc-looking, and it only takes a few minutes!

Lee says:

When I was younger (maybe in middle school?) I asked for makeup for Christmas, despite having sensory issues and no interest in makeup, because it seemed like something that 'other girls' had and did so I wanted to have it and do it too.

My aunt bought me a compact of makeup (the little box thing that has a few sections of makeup inside it) and I was pleased since I had asked for makeup and received it, but I didn't really know what the next step was so I asked her how to put it on.

She seemed pretty confident when she showed me how, and I thought it was great fun, and we went to show my mom and I showed her each of the little sections in the box and explained what to do with them as my aunt had shown me.

And that's when my mom explained that we had been doing it all wrong-- the stuff we put on our eyelids was blush, not eye shadow, the stuff we put on our cheeks was lipstick, not blush, the glittery stuff that we just kind of applied all over the face was actually eye shadow and not setting powder, etc. and the end result was we both looked clown-ish.

My aunt had some neurological stuff going on so that's probably why she was confused, and she didn't wear makeup when I knew her as an adult anyway, and I had never seen anyone put makeup on so I had no clue either.

I'm sharing this story because I wanted to share a silly experience that I had with my aunt (who I miss a lot because she has recently passed), but also because it goes to show you that if you don't get feedback from someone who knows more about it, you might not know what's goin on.

So to my fellow transmasc folks who have never heard of an eyebrow pencil before but think that they can just walk down to the pharmacy and locate and identify an eyebrow pencil and buy it and go home and draw on their eyebrows and look more masculine but in a discreet way where people don't realize that they're wearing makeup-- please get a friend or family member to take a look at the result before you go out into the world! Make sure they also agree that it looks subtle and won't look like you're obviously wearing makeup.

Some folks might assume that was the look you wanted and not say anything, and others might assume that you didn't intend that look but also be too polite to say anything, so don't assume that people haven't noticed if they don't comment on it-- that's why it's important to get feedback from a trusted friend who will tell you the truth.

You may also be able to tell if it's working simply by noticing whether you get misgendered more frequently (which means you've applied it wrong and it's backfired), less frequently (the makeup is applied correctly and is working), or whether it's the same (it has no effect but you may want to continue doing it if it makes you feel good).

Obviously, this story and warning does not apply to those of you who are not-like-me. If you already know what an eyebrow pencil is and have seen one in use, or are willing to watch tutorials on it, then please proceed ahead!

But folks who are unfamiliar with makeup and had to google the makeup words in this post need to be aware that using an eyebrow pencil to fill in your eyebrow may end up making you look more feminine instead of less.

If you overshoot and apply too much or use the wrong color, the effect can come off as wearing-makeup-but-badly instead of looking natural, and you can't always tell how it looks by taking a selfie-- it may be more noticeable to another person in the sunlight outside than it is in your camera in your room.

Anyhow, thank you for the tip anon :)

[farfromdaylight]

some thoughts on the first couple hours of ff13, after picking it up for the first time in a decade

it's fun how much the party 1) doesn't know each other and 2) doesn't like each other! it's very different for a JRPG for the party to just NOT get along to this degree. the only people out of the initial 5 who even know each other are lightning and snow, and lightning has VERY good reason to dislike snow on the outset. the rest are just complete strangers! it's such a fun dynamic.

the dialogue does a perfectly fine job of explaining what l'cie are. like, they explicitly tell you multiple times. fal'cie is a little more murky, but even then, it's not hard to figure out.

that said, the opening is pretty slow in both story and gameplay. not having any magic makes sense for the world, but it makes the game very dull to play for a good 90 minutes. i think if it was remade today they'd streamline it a lot more, because while it's a fine tutorial, there are genuinely too many encounters before you actually get your magic powers.

hope's motivation is pretty thin from the beginning, tbh. watching your mom get killed and being understandably upset about it is perfectly serviceable as a motivation, but then hope runs into snow and doesn't confront him right away. i actually think hope is written quite well, better than i remembered — he comes across as an emotional teenager rather than someone making logical, rational decisions. but if you don't give the character that grace i can understand finding him frustrating.

snow is almost intolerable. i'm really leaning hard on the memory that i liked him a lot more in lightning returns, because he is so fucking annoying in the opening here. calling yourself a hero when there's absolutely no evidence of you being one (and in fact clear evidence that you're NOT a hero) is just obnoxious. also, snow's friend group just comes across as a bunch of weirdos than characters i want to know more about.

vanille is also a weirdo, but at least i know that's wholly intended. i really like the subtle touch of her already having 3 ATB bars when you get to play her initially.

the overall choice to start the game where it does makes sense from a gameplay perspective — it's where the fighting actually starts — but weakens the overall narrative, IMO. FF13 begins in medias res and leans hard on the fact that there were 13 days of prior events that culminated in the Purge... but since the player has no knowledge of all this and a lot of the background isn't immediately clear, it makes for a harder sell. i personally very much enjoy the storytelling in this game, but i can understand why others don't. it requires you to put the narrative together as you go.

once you actually get your magic powers, the game takes off like a rocket. the gameplay remains SO much fucking fun. it's a fascinating evolution of turn-based combat and it works SO well. i do remember how long it'll be until i have 3 party members again, and that part of it is a drag, but the actual combat is so enjoyable i hardly mind.

the game still looks gorgeous. i'm playing on steamdeck and am frequently amazed at how good it looks. obviously the FMVs are still incredible, but the ingame models look SO far ahead of their time, to say nothing of the environments. (also, the fact that i can play a PS3/360 game on handheld and have it Just Work is like magic to me.)

there are so many save points! this is hardly important, but it's making me laugh because i really didn't remember there being a save point around every corner. it's certainly convenient, though!

i don't know how much of it i'm going to play — i'm really supposed to be playing new games right now, not replays — but at the same time i've had SUCH a good time revisiting it that i may carry on for a while yet. we'll see!

[1emontar7]

How to cheat in Persona 3 Reload (intended for console players that don't have the time or means to grind money and exp, or simply don't want to)

Tutorial under the cut!!

Disclaimer ; I'm writing this using info from my playthrough bc I didn't find any reaper farming guides on P3R only P5R so my knowledge is limited as someone who isn't good at the game ^-^

Arqa (upper) - Floors 44 to 69 (available on June 14th) needs to be available but you only need to be at floor 62 for the reaper warning to trigger.

Money and exp from the Reaper fight will give you an even easier easy mode that some early players will find useful if they like the Person part of Persona more than fighting (or want to fuse lvl 99s early too).

How to guide ;

Choose 'Easy mode' and you will encounter the Reaper by waiting around floor 62 (let him jump you because he gets 1 turn rather than 4 if it's the other way round) Then all you have to do is press the fast forward button letting your party attack him.

This will be slow, like super slow, my 1st fight took around 2 hours because unlike persona 5 reaper farming you can't use the despair(?) Exploit to kill the reaper after 3 tries.

Personally, I drew the entire time and whenever it said I died I'd click continue then carry on drawing again while my characters got killed over and over.

The exp the reaper gives will go to you and your whole party unless they've died when the kill-shot was dealt, you'll get to lvl 60ish 1st then the increments will lower so to be at lvl 99 it will take maybe 8 reaper kills.

How to increase damage dealt ;

-Once you get to a higher lvl you can use Theurgy attacks which deal large increments of dmg

- I'm waiting till the persona 3 reload+ comes out because the dlc will probs be free then, but if you buy the dlc persona then like P5Royal they'll cost no money and you can equip the lvl 99 at any time which definitely would make it easier to kill the reaper

Any confusion I'll try answer in comments just incase bc idk if I explained it well

[igb220auguste]

Assessment 3 Crabsplosion Postmortem

I really enjoyed working on this final prototype. Our group's game was a 2d platformer inspired by games like Megaman and classic Castlevania. I mostly worked on the coding, parts of the level design and the final boss design for our game. I think our game turned out really good.

Chapter 5 of the Game Design Workshop books describes games as systems designed to entertain players. These systems are made up of objects that have unique properties and behaviors that allow them to interact with each other (Fullerton, 2018, p130).

I think our game was set up to be a really good system. Our system was made up of all of the player's weapons and the different enemy types. Each enemy and weapon behaved differently creating relationships between weapons and enemies where different weapons would be more effective at taking out different enemies. For example, the rail-gun weapon created an area of damage in front of the player, damaging all enemies standing in front of the player. This made it helpful against the shield enemy since it would pierce through the enemy shield and therefore was able to do damage to the front of the enemy.

Later, Fullerton explains that "Also, a system’s components must typically be arranged in a specific way for it to carry out its purpose, that is, to provide the intended challenge to the players. If that arrangement is changed, the results of the interaction will change." (Fullerton, 2018, p133). Our system was very deliberately coded so that health and damage values were set up to encourage players to use the best weapon for each situation. For example, the shotgun didn't do any extra damage to the bomber fish, it was just more effective because the bomber fish would run up to the player and be in closer range; plus the bomb fish had the exact amount of health where it could be killed in one shotgun blast if all the pellets hit. The flying fish has just enough health where it can be killed in one hit from a homing missile, and the shield and regular fish have health slightly above the homing missile's damage to encourage players to save their missiles for the flying fish.

On page 148, Fullerton talks about the importance of giving the right about of information to the player about your system, and sometimes games want to fully explain their systems from the start with an open system (Fullerton 2018, p148). We made our system very open for players with a clear tutorial we iterated on multiple times, hoping that they would understand the best weapons for each enemy from the start. We wanted our game to be more about giving the player all the tools they needed to fully engage with our game in the best way possible rather than have the game be about experimenting and slowly learning about our systems.

If I was going to develop this prototype again, I would develop it with the upgrades system in mind and planned out from the start so that it could be a more core part of the game. Originally we wanted to have an upgrade system in our game but we had to cut it because of time and because we didn't have many ideas for it that we felt needed to be in the game for it to fully function. If I was doing this from the start again I would come up with big upgrades for weapons that would really change how they worked for upgrades from the start, designing the game with the upgrades in mind.

If I was going to redesign this prototype, I would try and re-balance the challenge to offer a better difficulty curve with a higher difficulty by the end. Chapter 4 of Game Design Workshop talks about the theory of flow, and how games need to find the perfect middle between being so easy that they're boring or so hard that they're frustrating (Fullerton, 2018, p97-98). I don't think our play testing put enough emphasis on asking about difficulty. I feel like our game was generally a little too easy, especially because checkpoints were very common and there was no punishment for dying other than going back to the last checkpoint. I also think the second level was a little easier than the first level which isn't good. I would redesign the game to gradually go from being easy as players get used to the controls and weapons to being much harder by the end, with a higher density of bomb and shield fish enemies.

Source:

Fullerton, T. (2018). Game design workshop : A playcentric approach to creating innovative games, fourth edition. CRC Press LLC.

[midzelink]

So, as some of you might know, one of my GIFs was recently featured on the Tumblr Radar - which is pretty cool!  I was fairly happy with how that one turned out, especially considering that I made it rather last-minute on a whim to acknowledge Valentine’s Day.  It understandably received a lot of attention as a result of this, and I’ve loved reading through all the comments and tags (especially all the ones about how people want to eat the heart containers from TP); however, I wanted to clear up a bit of a misunderstanding surrounding the creation of that GIF, as there were additionally a lot of tags along the lines of #3d art or #artists on tumblr in that influx of reblogs.  I don’t want to take credit for something I didn’t do, even accidentally, and so allow me to be perfectly clear: the heart container GIF is not something I modeled and rendered myself! It is the original in-game model, recorded in-game using the Dolphin GCN/Wii emulator, with very little done in the way of post-processing in Photoshop.  If that sounds impossible or confusing (which is perfectly understandable, for those of you unaware of what Dolphin is capable of), I’d like to take this opportunity to give you guys a bit of a “peek behind the curtain,” as it were, to show you guys exactly how I made that particular GIF, as well as similar ones I’ve made (such as those in my #items tag).  

I didn’t take screenshots of my initial process (nor did I save the edited textures I used), so I’ll be recreating it from the ground up for the sake of demonstration, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

First thing’s first: finding a heart container! For this particular GIF, I wound up using the one that spawns after the Morpheel fight at the end of Lakebed Temple.  I’m sure many others would work just as well (I think, at the time, this one just happened to be the most accessible to me), but let’s use the same one for the sake of it.  

Morpheel: defeated.  And I didn’t even need Zora Armor! (Seriously, we do that in the speedrun.  But I’m getting off-topic.)  Of course, we’re going to need clean, close-up footage of the heart container rotating in order to do what we want to do, so let’s shift into first-person mode and and get a bit closer to the thing.

Now, because the only UI-element in this shot is Link’s health (and it’s in the corner and relatively non-obtrusive), removing it isn’t strictly necessary - but I’ve already made a texture pack that removes UI elements as part of my Text Free TP project from a while back, so let’s load it anyway, for the sake of being thorough.  This shot is also still a bit too far away, so next we’ll be utilizing Dolphin’s free cam feature (which can be accessed by going to Graphics > Advanced > Free Look and checking “Enable” in Dolphin) in order to get the heart container in a more central position. Now we’re left with this:

And we’re already looking well on our way to making a nice, solid color background GIF.  But how do we get the solid color? Well, that’s where more texture editing comes into play - and here I have to give credit where credit is due, as this is a trick I picked up from 186px, after wondering how they were able to make this GIFset of Link fighting Ganondorf in The Wind Waker in a great, black void.  (Seriously, shoutouts to them, their stuff was and still is amazing.)

But, very basically, we’ll be using Dolphin’s texture dump feature in order to find the textures that need to be edited so we can replace them with pure black ones.  Texture dumping can be enabled by going to Graphics > Advanced > Utility and checking “Dump Textures,” and the file path for these dumped textures by default is Documents > Dolphin Emulator > Dump > Textures > [Game ID].  (In the case of Twilight Princess, the Game ID is GZ2E01).  After dumping the textures in the Morpheel arena, my GZ2E01 folder looks like this:

When editing textures, sometimes you’ll have to endure a bit of trial and error until you find the correct ones.  Luckily, in this scene, the textures making up the sand floor and the stone walls are rather large, so let’s isolate the ones we’re pretty sure are responsible (plus a few others that are obviously environmental, just to be safe).

Now, when loading custom textures, it’s important that the file name you’re trying to load matches up exactly with the original texture that you’re trying to replace.  I have a plain, black, square PNG that I keep on my desktop specifically for this purpose; I copy the file names of the textures I’ve isolated, then rename and drag and drop the black PNG into the folder where custom textures are loaded (Documents > Dolphin Emulator > Load > Textures > [Game ID]).  Like so:

And now, to refresh our custom textures by disabling and reenabling them in Dolphin’s graphics settings:

And voilà! We have something that very nearly resembles the GIF I made (well, a still of it, at least).  I skipped over a few details, such as the fact that TP has a pretty significant amount of bloom surrounding just about everything, which I’m fairly certain I disabled using cheat codes when I made the original GIF in order to give it an overall cleaner look.  It’s hard to tell from this still, but TP’s heart containers also sparkle considerably in a way that’s random and not loopable; I found the texture responsible for this sparkle and replaced it with a transparent 1x1 PNG, in order to remove it entirely (as well as the texture behind the “glow” of the thing).  After that, it was as simple as recording the game with OBS, dumping the MP4 into Photoshop, cropping and cutting it to make it loop, and adding some adjustment layers for contrast and color.  So...yeah!

I hope this has served to clear up any confusion about some of the things that I’ve made in the past.  I’m not a 3D artist - just a person with an emulator and way too much free time on their hands.  This stuff is really, super simple, and also lots of fun, so I would highly encourage anyone with the means to mess around with emulation on their own some time to see what they can do!  (Even if you don’t have Photoshop and can’t make GIFs, there are always edits, such as this one I made of Midna.)  For Twilight Princess in particular, I also highly recommend checking out TPGZ; it’s a patch you can apply to a clean ISO of the original game, designed with the purposes of helping folks learn and practice the speedruns (yes, I had to bring up speedrunning one last time, kill me), but it’s got nifty features like built-in savestates, cheat codes, and HUD removal, as well as the ability to freeze actors while maintaining the ability to move the camera freely, among other things (all things that are very useful as far as making unique graphics go).  Sorry this post got as long as it did, but I at the very least hope that some of you found it educational and/or interesting.  Cheers!

[crazybutgood]

The Perfect Gift

Happy birthday Neville and Harry! Here is the finished product of this Drarryville WIP, featuring a nervous Draco trying to decide on the best gifts for his boyfriends. Thank you @curlyy-hair-dont-care for the amazing and quick beta and your encouragement. Thank you fantalf for cheering me on through my frustration (much of Draco's exasperation here definitely mirrors my own 😬) while I folded these stubborn cacti 🙈

Here's the bulleted list of my HC, followed by the image of the origami I folded at the end (please click on image for better quality!) :

Draco has a YouTube channel, posts videos feat. fun creative artsy stuff he likes to do including makeup tutorials, origami tutorials, sometimes with voiceovers. 

Draco's too worked up over thinking of a perfect gift for his boyfriends, Harry and Neville, and before he knows it, there's a week remaining. One night when Harry's cooking a lovely dinner for them, as Draco soaks in the comfort and domesticity of the night, he plans to make something handmade for Harry and Neville's birthday because it's more special and what to get two people who can buy whatever they want? Plus the two also like to occasionally give handmade, heartfelt gifts to Draco too and he wants to do so as well.

With 5 days remaining, Draco films a video to post later, a bday special for his boyfriends: folding an origami cactus. The video has a voiceover. He talks about how the origami part of this gift is a throwback to the paper cranes he folded for Harry back in school, amused at the thought of how they used to fight often then and the antics he did to gain his attention, and now he had it. He goes on to talk about how there used to be animosity between him and Neville too, and how far the three have come from that time, fondly speaking about some memories of how their relationship progressed. He mentions how the cactus part of his gift is because of Neville's love for plants. 

His recounts are interrupted with a few curse words and slight yells of frustration as he tries to get the folds right. He knows he's going to have to edit these out later.

A few hours later, Draco pauses his filming, grumpy, hungry and upset. He's got the cacti alright, but he struggles to fold the flower pot. Along the way of his journey down memory lane, he was inspired to use one of the small candle holders that Harry had placed candles in during their anniversary dinner to use as a makeshift flowerpot. He threw in small stones that the three had collected from their vacation together at the beach.

4 days remaining, Draco tries again to fold the pot and succeeds. He studies his handiwork and can't help the gnawing feeling that this video special and the cacti gifts are inadequate. He's a perfectionist, and doubts if this is good enough for Harry and Neville.

The last few days before 31st, Draco spends miserably overthinking if his gift is ok and gives in and hits the shops to buy Neville actual exotic plants, throwing in a cactus as well. He buys cookbooks for Harry which include cuisines he mentioned he wants to give a try. Draco skims through the book and throws in seeds for some of the herbs needed for some recipes in the gift pile—they can grow those in their thriving garden.

Harry and Neville are delighted by his gifts, which Draco is relieved about. He's secretly sad about not being able to give them the origami cacti. Harry and Neville pick up on Draco's off mood, trying to lighten it with reassurances that his gifts are lovely and also with their usual banter. When it barely helps, Harry asks what's wrong, making a quip about Draco being as prickly as the cactus.

Draco snaps and fires back that he hopes Harry pricks his finger on the stupid cactus, and cacti are just hard to deal with, ok? Lord knows they gave him paper cuts when he— Draco stops talking, realising his slip up about the paper cut, stammering out a half-hearted cover up.

Harry and Neville pick up on it and realise that Draco must've got a paper cut while folding something. While Draco waves off their mild concern about the minor injury, they ask him if he'd actually folded a cactus too?

Draco hesitates before admitting that he did. He goes to retrieve the paper cacti, in their flower pots—one made of paper and one a makeshift pot using the candle holder—and sets them down in front of Harry and Neville, quietly explaining what he'd actually planned to do, and that he didn't think it was good enough. 

Neville cuts him off with a firm yet gentle reassurance about how Draco shouldn't doubt himself and his abilities, and how could he think that Harry and he wouldn't like anything Draco got them? The fact that Draco went through the whole process of making something for them made it all the more special. 

Draco is sniffling a bit and is largely relieved as he's enveloped in a hug from Neville and Harry. Harry lightly jokes that Draco is actually a softie, and he can't believe that Draco was going to keep this secret from them and they've got to watch his video now. Draco lets out a watery laugh as he smacks Harry's arm but agrees to show it to them.

The two absolutely melt over the video and suggest doing a cameo appearance at the end where Harry and Neville tease Draco about being a sap but also seriously say how much Draco's gifts and the man himself mean to them, and it's just a short soft session of the three reminiscing about the past a bit, light-hearted witty banter, and teary declarations of love.

Image description: a picture of two origami cacti, one tall and one short, folded using green paper. The tall one on the left is placed in a candle holder with the quote 'Continue to keep the flame alive.' The cactus is surrounded by colourful pebbles in the candle holder. The short cactus on the left is placed in an origami pot folded using brown paper and a bit of the crushed cream coloured paper balls intended to resemble pebbles are peeking out from the pot.

[minisception]

2021 Summer Painting Challenge: July 17

July 17th? Geeze, what happened? I take a break for like a weekend and next thing I know more than half the month is gone! What happened?

Oh, yeah. Bideo James.

I mean, it wasn't just that, I had a fair bit of house work and work work to catch up on, and my AC broke which left me largely unmotivated to do anything at all until I could replace it, but yeah. What free time I've had so far this month has gone to these two games, one a remaster of a game I loved from the PS1 era, and the other a moody atmospheric 2d platforming metroidvania with a soulsesque feel.

Sadly, Legend of Mana doesn't really hold up. Oh, sure, it still looks good - once you get over the janky mismatch of the clearly-designed-for-CRT pixel art sprites with the crisp, high def, water-color style background art. And the remastered music sounds great. But the combat gameplay was pretty bad by the standards of its own day, and nowadays it's just... I'm sorry, past me, but it's just aweful and absolutely brings down the rest of the experience.

Like, yeah, there's so much to do, so many systems to engage with between skills and special attacks and smithing and pets and spell crafting and robots, and absolutely none of it matters because the core combat system it's all layered on top of, with its sludge-like movement and extremely passive enemies, just doesn't give you any reason to engage with any of it. There's an option in the remaster to turn off the enemy battles altogether, but while the game's various story paths aren't terrible for action rpgs of its era, they're not strong enough to be an entire game in themselves. Such a shame, really. I was hopeing it would be something I could recommend to @retphienix, but while I'd love to hear his thoughts on it, I just can't recommend it as worth the time investment, despite how lovely everything /other/ than the gameplay is.

Ender Lilies on the other hand is actually pretty solid, and it did draw me in enough to 100% it. It's no Hollow Knight, IMO, but for fans of the genre it's absolutely worth a deep dive while you're waiting for Silksong. I'd say it's more on the Castlevania side than the Metroid side, but I honestly haven't played enough Castlevania games to say that with confidence. I do wish it was eventually a bit more clear on some basic details of the premise. Unless I'm mistaken, the game never really explains the 'Rain of Death' that is a core aspect of the premise. Like, does the rain cause the blight? Spread it? Activate it? The blight itself is emanating from the abyss deep underground, how does it get into the clouds to rain down from above? But whatever, the game's more about its atmosphere and tone and themes and gameplay and challenge, and those are all more than strong enough to make up for a bit of murkiness in the narrative, which is pretty common in souls and souls-inspired games regardless.

....

So, anyway. Yeah. With my new AC in place and video game fugue passing, where am I with the Summer Painting Challenge? IIRC my pledge for the month was:

Commission Raven Guard Rhino

10 Zombies

10 Dire Wolves

I had also intended to get some of those sidequest tutorials left over from June done this month, but now it's going to be a bit of a struggle just to finish my relatively modest pledge for July. Not as much of a struggle as the June pledge was, but still. The rhino definitely needs to come first - I was supposed to make commission progress along with the pledge last month and that just didn't happen. The last batch I finished for that commission was so brutally overdue that it's a wonder I can show my face in public. A bit of work yesterday leaves progress here:

A pretty decent start on the internals, which I want to get painted before assembly. The goal for today is to finish the internal painting and basic chasis assembly, as well as assembly & texture painting on the dire wolves and zombies. Goal for the weekend is to finish painting on the rhino chasis - leaving aside accessories like the doors & pintle guns.

The finished product should be something akin to the previous rhino I did for the same commission:

The new one one won't have the same round side doors & fancy modeled front plate, but needs to hit about the same painting quality & style.

[splitcycle]

So even though I love how strive plays and the slower pace helps me visualize what I want to do and act on it, I still really love Xrd.

My first fighting game was technically BBTag and I didn't really enjoy it because of me getting into it so late after launch, and the community that you encounter in-game generally not being very open to helping new players. I ran into a lot of people who had 13,000 wins clocked in the dedicated newbie lobbies and it was like "If these are the new players what hope do I have?" Even looking online in places like youtube didn't really yield a lot of helpful information, and the BBTag tutorial didn't teach me a lot of fighting game fundamentals and universal mechanics.

After that I hadn't. . . Given up on fighting games per se, but the next one I picked up I was leery of trying because I only got it as part of a humble bundle. That game was UNIEL and I couldn't really play it online with anyone I know, and the servers on pc seemed pretty dead.

A couple months later I picked up Guilty Gear Xrd Rev2 on a steam sale for 80% off and started with the tutorial. Thus far I hadn't learned anything meaningful from other games' tutorials, but I attribute that mostly to BBTag focusing on teaching character specific mechanics and assuming you already know all the basic fighting game mechanics from the start. Hit confirms, option selects, meaties, okizeme, how to start pressure, how to get Out of pressure, it really just teaches you the buttons and that mashing a single attack button combos for you and says "okay now go play."

I didn't bother playing UNIEL after I booted it up the first time because everyone who played it had already moved on to UNICLR and I didn't wanna wreck my muscle memory before I even got there.

Later I discovered that the in-birth tutorials feel like sitting through a community college lecture more than playing a game but by then I knew how to play games at a basic level already.

Xrd's tutorial is really well put-together and teaches you about Gatlings and Links, and how to actually do things instead of just what the buttons are called, and then tossing you in the deep end before you can dog-paddle. Once it makes sure you understand the basic concepts like how to run, how to attack, and how to airdash, it teaches you how to use momentum from running, how gatlings work, and how to actually sort of Fight. You won't be going to brackets any time soon or anything but you roughly understand how to play.

And then it lets you go. It says, "Okay, I've taught you how to play. Fight Jack-O and then you're free to go use what you've learned in a match." And you finish that match and go to play and you still get stomped. You realize you need to improve but don't know how, and you may or may not be sure of what the enemy just did to you.

But here's the kicker: unlike BBTag, where the tutorial doesn't teach concepts and the community playing will silently pubstomp you for a long time, Xrd has given you the tools to figure out what's happening to you. You get destroyed, but when you do you either see what you did wrong and can try to do better next time, or you get irritated because you can't figure it out and look into what's irritating you.

This leads you to Mission mode. Mission mode is a sort of secondary tutorial that a lot of games have but Xrd uses it really well to teach you increasingly complicated ideas at a pace you can handle. First I struggled with timing midairs and anti-airs. The game has missions for that that teach you how to do them with Sol.

Then I noticed a lot of other players were seeming to hit me before I was actually able to do anything and I was still knocked down. I went into mission mode and learned that not only does that have a name, but it's an intended mechanic that has counter options to learn. The game taught me what a meaty was and then it taught me how to use it and how to avoid it.

I struggled with me knocking down players and going in to set up an attack for wakeup abd would get grabbed or anti-aired depending, and they seemed to react faster than I thought was humanly possible. I went back to mission mode and was taught about Option Selects and how to use them and how to beat them.

It went down the line. Tick throws, dead angles, reversals, proper times to roman cancel, bursts, spacing, how to get around projectiles. Every time I struggled to learn by doing I'd mosey on over to mission mode and it would have a very short, succinct lesson just for me about how this thing I didn't get works. It explained what needed doing in two to three sentences, had a small sample video, and then it just let me sit down and fucking grind until I figured it out, and then grind some more until I could do it reliably.

If I didn't understand a concept in the universal mechanics mission mode was great but what about character-specific stuff? How are you supposed to figure out that sort of thing? What about characters with really subtle mechanics? Combo mode teaches you that.

Not only does the combo mode teach you basic combos with clear samples that display what you have to do on the stick, it teaches you every move the character has, including normals, command normals, and specials and then as new special mechanics come up that can't be taught with only an input video they pop up a little text box like, "Hey did you know that if you backdash as Slayer and then jump forward it cancels the dash but saves your invulnerability from his special dash? Did you know that if you backdash cancel and then do a special it transfers the i-frames from the dash into that move? Try it out." And then gives you an example situation where BDC will allow you to stuff an attack you otherwise couldn't.

You can't try the advanced combos until you can do all the basic ones at least once, which is a little irritating, but it constrains you to a smaller set of things to learn, and that's important even if you get impatient. If you can't handle the base mechanics then you'll just frustrate yourself when you decide to skip ahead. Having the advanced list not even visible really means that your checklist of mechanics and specific ways to make them interact is more manageable, in your head.

The game sadly doesn't offer the precise frame data in the game for your own study, but Dustloop Wiki is very helpful for that and they'll help teach you the combos that the game doesn't. When the sample and the explanation wasn't enough I went to the community and while you can't talk to them mid-game you can usually chat in lobbies and they have a lot of people and websites dedicated to giving you the knowledge and tools to improve.

Xrd just give you lots of tools to work with and the community does a lot of good for new players by offering lots of useful info to learn with.

Also I think it's really funny faust went from looking like this

To this

And everyone sorta just went "Yeah that's on-brand."

[sedvikit]

Not sure if anyone will see this but here we are sooooo. This post is about Vanny, Vanessa or presumably Ness. These are about the emails by a man(i think) named Luis he sent her. All emails are somewhat easter eggs in the newest game FNAFAR: Special Delievery. So if you wanna check them out here is a link; https://triple-a-fazbear.fandom.com/wiki/E-Mails

If you go under unintended emails they'll be the first couple entrys

Theres also a couple others that describe how glitchtrap may or may not have gotten into a company associated with fazbear entertainment.

These emails are all sent to you in your inbox on accident or because of a system error, most of these were intended for you to see. Most of them saying who they actually were addressed to.

Anyway lets start,

The first one basically talks about how Luis (A Manager in IT?) gets notified by certain words or sentences. He emails Ness/Vanny (I'll just call her Ness) that he was notified that she searched up "torture" and "Viking Blood Eagle Twelve-Month Calendar." Viking Blood Eagle is a type of torture (that i won't get into since its quite gruesome) but you can search it up on your own 😬. It ends with Luis saying they should go out and get a cup of coffee sometime

The next email goes onto explain how Luis thinks the system AI is smarter than they think and that it can pick up triggered sentences as well. He also states that some searches Ness searched "caught his eye." Them being "how to induce compliance in human subjects" and "how to include self-compliance." Which may be ways she will do glitchtraps bidding? Some more little notes for that email was that Luis really likes cookies and that Ness just simply searched help, which may mean she isn't fully in control with her body and may also mean glitchtrap is basically "possessing?" her body. It then ends with Luis talking about getting coffee with Ness again

The third email goes into detail about how Ness took what Luis said into consideration and stopped using red flagged terms or words. It also shows how Luis cares for Ness's well being. Luis had also observed that one day Ness is searching up bees and flowers(which may have been a hobby) to 'How far can a human being be cut in half before losing consciousness.'(this is a theory but, maybe that could be a way she'll do glitchtraps bidding or like i said before she may have gone crazy with his voice in her mind and wanted to split it so she didn't have to here him? 🤷) But Luis brushed all of it off to Ness just making a Screenplay

The Fourth email states that Ness had ordered lifelike human 'MALE' rubber masks. I'm not sure why they were specifically male masks but it may correspond with Glitchtrap being a man? But Luis again thinks that Ness is building a Screenplay or movie. This email is by far the smallest but it still gives me the chills

The fifth email says that Luis and Ness had they're first ever in-person talk. Luis says then how he feels he knows so much about her but she knows nothing about him (hmmm doubt). He also said that he had know idea she liked IT that much, but maybe she was a good listener. Which may have meant that she was mostly listening and nodding. (like someone under a spell?) It ends like almost every other email, he talks about getting coffee with Ness

The sixth and last email between Ness and Luis starts with asking if Ness is OK like it did in the third one. This email had unsettling details about how she was staring at her screen and not even budging even though Luis was basically yelling in her ear. It was like she was in a daze, in a different world or Dimension. He then went on to tell her not to look at the computer screen so close, which made him sound like a grandma he said. He also said that it would be nice or convenient to "shout out" or block the world like she did. He also assumed she was on a conference call because he heard voices, but it may have been glitchtrap who was communicating with Ness through the computer. He then goes on to say that if she ever need to talk to someone, he's there (shows he cares 🥺). He also points out a KEY detail about Ness's appearance, that she had rainbow streaks in her hair. This email surprisingly but not so much did not end with him saying that they should go get coffee but that her rainbow streaks brighten the "office"(hint at her job).

Thats all the emails between Vanny/Ness and Luis but if you want i can also Analyze the others! I have already read most of them. Also reminder that there may or may not be more emails between them that i have not discovered or that others haven't either!

REMINDER::: All emails are somewhat easter eggs in the newest game FNAFAR: Special Delievery

[kyandice]

13,14,15/07/2017

13th

So today is like a Thursday and I only have CEP tutorial for one hour and I’m done for the day. So like I could just go home but Bryan still had classes until like 4 or 5 pm??? 

But anyways, we ate lunch at foodgle and foodgle and I ate the Ayam penyet idk is this how u spell it??? But wtf the teh o ice was fking expensive it’s like $1.40?????? but its only like $0.90 at koufu????

And yeahhhh, Bryan got default golddddddd. anyways, I pretty scared for PA I really want to get gold, if I don’t get gold now, I don’t think I can get gold in the future when I’m fighting under black belt.

During the exam period, he was tired and like sleepy so he wanted to go home. But like I told him I have to study in school or I won’t study at home, and I asked him to make a move home first. but he refused he says he can’t just leave me alone like that in school. I told him it was alright. but he still refused to go home.he explained: if the tables turned and if he wants to study, I wouldn’t leave him too.

 But the weird thing is, now, he wants me to go back home immediately if I’m going to wait for more than an hour for him to finish the class, and he must also do the same. But I lied that I still have cpes practical so I could go home with him. In the end I told him I don’t have cpes prac 30min before his class ended, so I’ll know that  Bryan will be like: might as well wait for me and we go home tgt.

So when we got home tgt, everything was great I guess, except that I was sick and I didn't quite hear what Bryan was saying so I kept saying huh and he kinda got pissed and thought I wasn't listening to him. But okay we hugged in the end, kissed too so it was great. 

So when I went back home, Bryan already probably was sleeping yeap. And then I saw Yi Le tweet, she shared about this secure in love website thing where we do this quiz for us and our partner and find out more about our love styles.

Anyways, I’m putting the links and results here for future reference, in case, idk, people change so we can do this still, in the future.( http://secureinlove.com )

Mine, What I feel is me:

 (http://secureinlove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/05_LoveStyle_LoyalSupporter.pdf) (http://secureinlove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/05_PartnerLoveStyle_LoyalSupporter.pdf)

I don’t know what he feels is me cuz, he is lazy and he refused to do any more quizzes.

Bryan’s, What he feels is him:

 (http://secureinlove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/02_LoveStyle_ConfidentHero.pdf) (http://secureinlove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/02_PartnerLoveStyle_ConfidentHero.pdf)

                       What I feel is him:

(http://secureinlove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/03_LoveStyle_HesitantRomantic.pdf) (http://secureinlove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/03_PartnerLoveStyle_HesitantRomantic.pdf)

But yeah, so since he thinks that he’s a Confident Hero, this is what I shouldn’t do to him:

DON’T:

 • Assume everything is easy for them 

• Take them for granted or take advantage of their flexibility or generosity

• Forget all the hard work your partner puts in to make things look easy 

• Expect your partner to set firm limits, they often over commit and overdo

• Forget that they need help with balance particularly when they are stressed

• Expect them to understand your drama or your need for space

• Forget that they like to work hard and play hard

• Forget to listen to them, while they are easy going they get frustrated also 

And since I think that he’s a Heistant Romantic, this is what I shouldn’t do to him:

DON’T: 

• Lose sight that your partner is well intended and does not want to hurt you if they are being critical it is out of wanting to be accurate not that they are uncaring or unfeeling

• Crowd them or interrupt them and expect them to be present

• Be insincere in your praise

• Play games by threatening to leave them in an attempt to get them to chase you

• Overwhelm them with multiple complaints or grievances

• Assume they don’t love you because they show interest in other people or activities

• Use generalized language such as “you always” or “you never”

• Expect them to understand your differences, tell them what you want and need

Everyone should try to avoid doing this to their partner, but I asked Bryam, which one he wanted me to avoid doing the most, and it turns out that it’s the hesitant romantic. and hey, Guess maybe I know Bryan more than he knows himself after all.  

So apparently, 

YOUR LOVE STYLE is made up of two categories, your attachment style and your expressiveness level.

None of the seven love styles is better than the other, however, each of the love styles has unique traits, strengths, needs/wants and blind spots.

SECURE

Confident Hero = High Expressive (Maybe Bteh)

Reserved Playmate = Low Expressive

ISOLATED

Renaissance Lover = High Expressive

Hesitant Romantic = Low Expressive (Maybe Bteh)

NERVOUS

Expressive Giver = High Expressive

Loyal Supporter = Low Expressive (Me)

CONFUSED

Wounded Warrior

But from what I know, both me and Bryan are like pretty low expressive so I’m pretty sure that Bryan is a hesitant lover. The fact that he got confident Hero from the survey and don’t feel or relate as much as hesitant lover shows that maybe he lied like not really lie but like yeah like clicked the answers not consciously ok idk how to say but I think everyone gets it. 

Then after this whole secure in love thing, i decided to just ask him some questions I saw asked on The Lie Detective. Anyways, Lie Detective is like great I get to see the scums of earth and the loveliest human being ever. But idk a lot of westerners cheat?????? like why bruh. So anyways, a few questions from the lie detective were like, what is normally the cause of what makes you hard the fastest. Is it like real life sex, or porn, or just dirty thoughts. A lot of people truthfully said that it’s the dirty thoughts that gets them the hardest fastest and B said the same do he is prolly telling the truth. and tbh, dirty thoughts prolly get me turn on the fastest too idk lmao. 

14th

Today is a Friday, there’s training and it’s gonna be a tiring day. Nothing much happened today. Except that Bryan didn’t want to go for training but I still had to go becuz I had to kinda train up for PA. So after class, I just walked with Bryan to yck mrt and yayyyyy. I don’t spend as much time with him as much as a few months ago so I gotta treasure every sec with him, but lmao if I’m like alr sad now then army how. ok but, by the time he has army ill get used to it slowly. But yeah, after training I was tired. I showered, blew dry my hair and like went on the internet for awhile and I decided to sleep.

15th

So I woke up a t 1030 as usual and like ate breakfast/lunch and when i came back home it was 1230 and he replied he ate lunch/breakfast too and so like Bryan is asleep now.

Anyways, he sent me “dont doubt me” after seeing my tweet,  I cried, and I was like just really touched, cuz with that small phrase he said it makes me have so much faith and trust in him immediately. yes, this is exactly what I want. you telling me things, give me validation, every single time. I’m so sorry you have to date such a difficult girl.

Anyways, there was an update, but nothing much happened, so I’m pretty pleased and happy. I’m starting to get impatient cuz I really want something to happen, but if it does, that means it’s bad news and I don’t want that. so I should be glad :)))

CPES test next Tuesday I should get on with studying soon. I’m craving chocolates and its been really long since I ate chocs and I hope I can eat one bar soon :’)

ANYWAYS THIS IS IMPORTANT.

OH YA AND I WANT TO GO WILD WILD WET WITH BRYAN BY AUGUST 31ST. TIME TO SAVE MONEY CANDICE. AND YES CANDICE, ITS TIME TO BUY CONTACTS. YOUR CONTACTS RUNNING OUT OF TIME.

-SAVE $13 FOR WILD WILD WET (ITS $26 BUT I GOT 1 FOR 1 VOUCHER)

-SAVE $12 FRO 2 PAIR OR LUXURY BABE LENS.

- SAVE $40 TO PAY BRIAN SIR FOR PA

- SAVE $10 TO RETURN TO BRYAN BBY