#i wanted to do fish or code in the background but i couldn't figure out a way to make it look nice

[sunlightsilence]

If only I had reached out sooner,

could I have caught you?

[azuphere]

ten of pentacles: success, accomplishment, permanence, domestic bliss, wealth, financial stability, and solid foundations. despite any setbacks and challenges, everything will work out in the end. all your effort will eventually pay off and you will be proud of your accomplishments. your legacy will stand for a long way to come.  (sources: 1, 2, 3) 

my submission for @dnptarot, long explanation under the cut!

comparison with the original/most common design for the 'ten of pentacles' card [example on the left]:

so bc the card centres around accomplishments and a sense of permanency, i rlly wanted to include the phouse somehow - especially the selfie they took when everything in the living room was already set up and they were no longer #boxboys

and in the 'original' tarot card design, the foreground in front of the archway includes a wealthy old man who's accomplishments provided financial security to his family + future generations, and there are family emblems and flags on the wall

so for my card, instead of showing literal generational wealth, the foreground is used to pay homage to a bunch of their old projects/accomplishments - like their tours, awards, radio show, etc. so i like to think of it as past!dnp setting the way for current!dnp to live comfortably and 'everything working out in the end'

and the 'original' card having two dogs was the Perfect reason to include a shiba inu and corgi. and i also had to include the golden pig, seal, and lion and lioness, cause they're literally part of the phamily

and the 'original' card also includes grapevines and moons as symbols, so i incorporated the grapevines on the walls and their clothes. and the moons are incorporated in the moon-inspired rug (which is also a throwback to dan's moon rug which looked dif), and in the pentacle design where each pentacle is a dif moon phase

and the pride over their accomplishments also being represented by them wearing their own merch - dan in the wad merch, and phil in the glitch hoodie. and the green pants were originally inspired by their dapg pyjamas, but i incorporated the grapes instead

and current!dnp being in the background means that i like to think of it as their 'journey' not being over yet. like there are still projects in the works, represented by the tablet/notebook on the sofa and phil's glitch merch originally saying 'to be continued'

and some extra details that are less obvious:

the blue box on the sofa represents the box from the tatinof/tabinof reveal trailer, as another way to represent dnp's relationship with their audience and how their legacy will continue to live on

in the wall mural, i wanted to incorporate truth bombs somehow, so i used ba-bomb (which they have a plushie/statue of in their gaming channel room) with a lil "T" on top. in the same panel, all the lil lines is meant to represent danandphilbeats cause the lines are based on the spotify code for their artist page

i wanted to incorporate their japan trips somehow, so instead of doing the bamboo painting (cause. i couldn't figure out how to draw it sdjfs), i did a pair of koi fish instead. and idk if this goes against standard tarot rules, but since the meaning of the tarot card is different when the card is pulled upside-down, the koi fish will still be upright regardless. so bc koi fish can represent good luck, perseverance, and balance, i like to think of it as a hopeful sign even when the card is upside-down <3

[girderednerve]

okay these are workflow notes that i made for myself! they are about making podfic

record the thing. try to do it in one go somewhere that has consistent background noise, or break it up naturally—if breaking it up as chapters, drop in a label track & mark them out. leave ten or so seconds of contiguous silence in there. remember to put the pop filter on!

immediately export completed audacity recording **pre-editing** as a flac or whatever & dump it in some kind of labeled folder on the external hard drive ("[short title] raw")

normalize to max -1 or so. noise reduction using silence sample, then apply to whole recording. if you have individual tracks in one project for some reason normalize & reduce noise separately, then combine.

sync-lock the label track

edit that sucker! correct flubs/make a final decision on multiple line reads, silence or trim out loud breathing/background sounds/weird mouth noises where possible, check for timing, adjust volume. 3 seconds of full silence at section breaks & before new chapters. save at each section break or interruption in work or suffer disappointment

export a flac when you're done ("[short title] edit")

add in sound effects or music if you're doing that, being careful to match volume; remember sync-lock & track muting. retain credit info. also this is when you should make cover art

last-pass stuff (must be done on windows to use my beloved fish fillet plugins, whose retro interface is so charming): use envelope tool if that seems appropriate after primary editing -> de-ess using spitfish (remember to toggle 'listening' off before applying) -> compress using blockfish (quick speed, high volume, low saturation). listen through a couple different chunks of audio before applying to the whole piece, because it's slow as hell.

save, export flac/s ("[full fic title as it ought to appear in metadata]") & mp3/s. archive flac/s on external hard drive.

for smaller mp3s, update ID3 to include cover art using itunes or puddletag or whatever, upload to gdrive/mega & IA (also upload cover art), update metadata as needed, proceed to ao3 post.

[do on desktop, not laptop] for larger/multipart works, chunk out mp3s as appropriate & chapter-by-chapter (we love options! we love audacity Shift+Ctrl+L!). also export chapter-by-chapter flacs with detailed metadata ("Chapter # ChTitle"), rename files fictitle1.flac etc., save into a folder together with cover art, then break out m4b-tools in terminal. command structure: m4b-tool merge -vv --jobs=6 --audio-format=m4b --audio-bitrate=96k --audio-codec=libfdk_aac --audio-channels=2 "INPUTFILEDIRECTORY" --output-file="DESKTOP/FICNAME.m4b"

upload m4b plus maybe a zipped version to gdrive/mega/IA, editing metadata as needed. time to Post

for ao3: lazily copy html from one of your other fics, remember to apply private workskin Podfic1 to work, then update all the links to go where they're actually supposed to, add notes as desired/appropriate & invite polite criticism, preview & fix errors, post!

edit file names as needed, look through remaining project files & move to HDD or delete. do not keep that huge .aup on your internal drive you will not need it

m4b-tools works great but it took me so much trial & error to figure out the command structure that works for what i wanted to do, & i couldn't initially get it to install because one of its dependencies is archived code & so not available as a package, & i couldn't figure out how to make it work with the actually live fork of mp4v2. so thank you to my beautiful girlfriend for figuring that one out. i found very little guidance online about how to make an m4b with user-friendly FOSS options (like sure okay there's someone on the archlinux forum who thinks we should all just use ffmpeg! okay dude maybe we should but i'm stupid!); there may be better ways to do this than the one i chose but i'm happy with the result.