#i've included another possible angle under the cut because this is just such a Thing

[front-facing-pokemon]

[mosaickiwi]

Nails, TV, Moving

Rendacted paints your nails and 'asks' you to move in. 1.3k words, GN reader c:

14 Days With You is an 18+ Yandere Visual Novel. MINORS DNI

~

"Unfortunately for our contestant—" the host’s words get cut off as you press a button on the remote.

"Booooo," you jeered at the TV from your spot on the floor and changed the channel. 

Ren hummed softly at your voice, but didn't look up. Despite the dark bangs that obscure their eyes, you can tell they’re focused. He was happily painting your nails—the same shade of black as his own—at your request. He insisted you sit as close as possible on the blanket he laid down, instead of across the coffee table. He'd only ever painted his own nails after all, so the angle was very important to keep him from messing up. You were certain he just said that because he wanted the closeness.

The screen barely flashes a few frames before you're changing it again. A football game, a cartoon, a drama, and then—you finally stop. There's a couple wandering through a cabin, with a disembodied voice narrating all it had to offer. One of the many house hunting shows that came on every so often.

"Oh, this one's pretty." You put down the remote to watch. The couple head upstairs where the master bedroom is and your excitement quickly dies. "Maybe not. The bathroom is a huge let down."

Ren casts a glance up at the TV as the camera pans over the room once more. He took in the slanted ceiling, with the tub stationed on the lower end, lit up by an angled skylight. He didn't really see whatever problem you had. "What's wrong with it?" he asked.

"The ceiling is already so low. You'd have to fold yourself in half to get in that tub, tall as you are. And you'd probably hit your head every time you got out. We couldn't live there," you grumbled and rested your chin on your free hand, eyes never straying from the screen. "No way I'd put you through that."

You didn't notice how he perked up when your concerns involved him—you even said ‘we.’ A miniscule drop of polish fell on the paper towel under your hand. He wasn't sure if you were being considerate, or if your perfectly normal relationship was at the point of buying a home together. He hoped it was the latter. Either way, including them already planted ideas in their mind. "So then, what's our—your ideal home have?"

"My ideal home…" You’d only really thought about things you didn’t want, thanks to your current apartment. "I can't say I'm very picky. No holes in the walls, enough room to breathe, no rats," you paused for a bit—now they were in a rather awkwardly shaped second bedroom. "When I was little I wanted to live in a bounce house. Or have a freezer dedicated to ice cream."

Ren smiled while he carefully painted the nail of your pinky. "One of those is doable."

"True, but I'd rather not blow up my house every day," you joked and continued pondering. "The location is probably the most important, right?" He silently nodded in agreement as you went on. "Corland Bay's nice and all—having everything so close together makes things easy. Except sometimes I wanna fall asleep without hearing cars pass by or Violet playing games. It's much quieter here. Plus your bed is comfy."

"You're more than welcome to live here, Angel," he innocently offered. “Although maybe you’d enjoy somewhere more secluded.”

“Like just out of town? Not too far from civilization. I'd still wanna be near the beach." You watched the couple fuss about the kitchen in another house before you really processed what he just said. You turned to look at him for the first time since the show caught your interest. "Are you asking me to move in with you?" 

"Oh, is that what it sounded like?" His tone was full of shock, but you could see the way his snake bites pulled up in a faint grin. He examined your nails and lifted your hand once he deemed it finished. "I do have all this space, though. The library’s close by. Beach is a short walk away, too. No neighbors, no noise. I've never had a rat problem. I guess it hits all the marks f’you, doesn’t it, Angel?"

"Ren…" You rolled your eyes at his antics. 

"If you really want to move in that badly, I'm not opposed," he said teasingly. "Other hand."

You didn't respond just yet, merely giving them a playful side eye and placing your hand flat on the table. Gently, you blew air on your wet nails while he went to work. The noise of the TV faded into the background as you thought about his offer.

It was a big step to take. You already spent a fair amount of your time at his place. The ever-dwindling amount of laundry you did at home served as proof. Cohabitating with them wouldn't be much different from now. Ren always gave you space when you asked, even with his clingy personality. He was tidy, quiet, and never made a fuss—the perfect roommate on paper. The real issue was money. A place like this would cost way more than a librarian’s salary could pay.

"As much as I want to, I have to consider rent first," you thought aloud, causing him to stop and look up.

"Angel, you don't need to pay anything." His answer was almost immediate and it surprised you how firm he sounded about it.

You shook your head. "I know I probably can't do half, but I’d like to do my fair share. How much is your rent each month?"

"Well, actually," he stalled and idly rolled the nail brush in his fingers before putting it back in the bottle. The rent was one thing he couldn’t be bothered to keep track of. "...I have no idea?"

"How—what?"

"It's an automatic payment so I never think about it," he admitted, explaining further at your incredulous expression. "I mean I definitely saw it when I found the listing—and when I signed the lease. But I can't remember it off the top of my head."

You had a hard time believing what you were hearing. You knew your own rent by heart—it mocked you every time it took a chunk out of your bank account. A question about how he budgeted weighed in your mind, although the rather calm way Ren spoke clearly answered it: he didn't. It seemed obvious now; he'd been a frivolous spender from the beginning.

The blank look on your face made him a little worried. "Honestly, Angel, it’s not an issue. I’ve been paying it on my own just fine," he insisted. "You don’t have t’worry about any cost if you stay here, I promise.” He’d be happy as a clam to pay triple whatever he already was if it meant you'd move in. Hell, he’d even pay for you to live in one of the empty units next door.

"Fine then," you sighed in defeat, glancing towards the TV screen for a moment. The show was already ending. "If I tried to give you money you'd just find a way to give it back anyways.”

Ren let out a faint breath as if he was holding back laughter, but didn’t disagree. "So, how about it? Gonna move in?” he asked with a sincere smile.

You couldn’t help but smile the same in return. “Yeah, why not? I’d be crazy to say no. I can talk to my landlord and be out in a few weeks, probably.”

His excitement only seemed to grow at your words. He was radiating silent joy, fingers tapping rhythmically on the table as he uncapped the bottle of polish once more. You could almost imagine a tail wagging behind him as he tried to make steady brushstrokes over your nail.

“Are you really that happy?” you laughed and he nodded. “Maybe I should just move in tomorrow.” His hand barely slipped, leaving the tiniest streak of polish on the side of your ring finger.

“Oops,” he muttered.

[crehador]

hi! sorry to bother but i had a question about the hypmic lives? i recently got back into the fandom after several years and i wanted to know if there was a general set amount of time we have to wait before the dvds for the lives are for sale? and if its possible to buy any of the previous ones?

hii first of all welcome back to the pit fandom!

you are in the right place with this question bc i definitely know a thing or two about this <- guy who owns multiple copies of every live lol (except the solo lives bc oh god that was expensive)

this'll get long so answer goes under the cut

to start: i am a strong supporter of pirating media you cannot feasibly access otherwise, so don't hesitate to do that. i can't tell you where to actually find the lives online bc i personally do enjoy collecting the physical copies of the lives and throwing my money at the franchise, so i have no idea. but i'm sure they're all out there somewhere if you want to look!

if you are interested in buying them, they'll usually be out within a year of the actual lives taking place. 9th live just released a few weeks back, and 9th live took place nearly a year before that, so sometimes it can be a pretty long wait

10th live may be a somewhat special case because it's the first time we've had multi-angle cameras for the livestream, and i don't know how or if they'll include those on the dvds? i've heard each day is like a 3hr live as well so i'm sure it'll be a big (and pricey) thing even if they don't do anything with the multi-angle camera stuff

in short: i would expect 10th live dvds to be out in about a year, and i would personally guess that they'll cost in the neighborhood of 20k yen at least

(zero out was 16,830 yen on amiami, same price for dvd and bluray, and it seems to me like 10th live is an even bigger live... so i'm expecting it to be more expensive)

if you want to watch 10th live through an official avenue and don't want to wait, it is currently still available for streaming on abema. you can pay for the stream and watch it as many times as you want until the 14th (so there's only a few days left of that) but you'll need a vpn for it to be available in your area (unless you happen to live in japan)

as for the previous lives!

9th live is actually still available on amiami, where i usually get my lives. neither the bluray nor dvd is sold out yet, so you can pick it up that way (but again they are 16,830 yen each)

for older lives, you can generally find them on proxy sites (again, that's only assuming you don't live in japan)

personally i use fromjapan as my proxy. i don't think it's necessarily better than other proxies out there, but it's the one officially affiliated with hypster, which is what i'm mostly buying from lol, so it was just more convenient for me to set up an account there

you can typically find listings for the older lives for quite cheap, sometimes you can even find big lots containing all or most of the lives (usually some cds as well) for a really good price

they also sometimes pop up on mandarake, but won't necessarily be cheapest there

although the prices can be really low (like less than 2k for some lives; for example i just did a quick search and see a copy of six shots for literally only 1,150 yen) keep in mind that there will be shipping! so factor that into your budget as well

one tip on searching, do your searches in japanese (for example search for "ヒプノシスマイク" instead of "hypnosis mic") because sometimes a lot of things don't show up when you search in english. that's the case on fromjapan at least, not sure about other proxies

another tip is do not buy from sites like otaku republic... or whatever it's called, i don't really remember. basically even with expensive overseas shipping, proxies are still so much cheaper, in my experience, than these other sites that mark up prices to absurd rates. like i'll see these english sites selling a doujin for 10,000 yen that you could get for literally 500 yen elsewhere, it's absurd

but ahem yeah tl;dr

10th live dvds should be out in about a year

10th live stream can still be purchased on abema for viewing until the 14th

9th live still available on amiami (possibly elsewhere as well)

older lives best bought through a proxy (fromjapan or whichever you prefer)

keep international shipping in mind if you do not live in japan!

1st live does not exist btw*

2nd and 3rd live are bundled together on one dvd

*like there is no published dvd of it, some footage has been released as part of anniversary celebrations though i'm not sure if that's still available... i'm sure it's somewhere!

[camelliagwerm]

hey harper!! sorry if this is a little random but i was wondering if you could share what kind of settings you import your gifs from photoshop with (if you use it?). :-) i'm getting into gif making myself but i'm kind of a newbie and since your edits always look rly good, i figured i'd ask. tysm. <3

Sorry this took a little bit to get to - I was really Going Through It yesterday. So I'm really bad at explaining things properly, but I'll try to explain it the best I can. I've pretty much been using the exact same method since 2017 so it might very well be outdated for most people but it works for me. I'm using a cracked version of Adobe 2020.

For the purpose of this, I'm making a gif of a Hawke I might potentially play with if I find myself wanting to play DA2 (usually pretty unlikely - a lot of my attempts at DA2 these days die in the prologue or act 1) and finally see Carver content + do the Merrill romance. I'm going to put this under a cut because it includes screenshots.

After importing the video, first thing I do is work on cropping it down to both the dimension I want and what parts of the footage I want to do (that little middle bit in this case on the TL in this case.)

Then once I've done that, I right-click on the bit I want and chop the duration down to 2 seconds (or occasionally 2.25) and slow down the speed of which that part of the video plays to 60% - my ideal speed but I sometimes will go 55% if it ends weirdly at 60% or has a hard cut to another angle. Do this as many times as needed for however many gifs there are going to be in the set.

Delete the bits of the footage from the timeline that you aren't going to use, trim it down to the dimension you want (in my case, I like it to be 540px in width.)

Now I think this might be where I differ from others, because I think this is where people export it - but I prefer to colour it here rather than do each layer individually. I tend to use the same few actions which have turned into my bread and butter: colour balance, selective colour, brightness/contrast, vibrance and curves. Sometimes exposure if it's needed. Colour balance is the real MVP, especially for games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect where lighting is all over the place or very predominantly one colour (e.g. Orzammar being very Yellow). (Don't ask me how to sharpen - I don't know how to do it and at this point I'm too set in my ways to learn how.) Generally speaking with colouring I prefer to keep it as close to the original as possible but Nicer. Just play around with it and see what you think looks nice.

After that, I go to File -> Export -> Save for Web (Legacy). Make sure the looping option is set to forever. Let it run through a few times to make sure it isn't wonky (also, see all those colours you see on the side? I tend to colour pick from those for gradient text so matches the gifset - I use this HTML text colouriser to generate the gradient.)

If you're happy with it, hit the save and send it to the appropriate folder.

Generally speaking, I try to keep it under 5MB a gif but certain games really dislike that, especially since I tend to prefer 540px ones as it allows me to use bigger font sizes - I can't do small font any more on gifsets - especially on text heavy ones like my Pathfinder gifs; I'm so prone to missing typos.

Speaking of subtitles, actually - I then open the gif into Photoshop so I can access each frame individually and then make sure I have the top layer selected on the sidebar, not on the timeline. Then add a new layer with the font option with the dialogue for the gif. My subtitles now tend to be around the 16-20pt, Calibri + bold and italic with outer stroke in black for the outline to make it more visible (to access Stroke: right click on the subtitle itself -> blending options)

Once I'm done with that (including proofread for typos, making sure it's aligned properly), same thing: File -> Export -> Save for Web (legacy). I'm fairly sure this isn't how others do it, but it worked for me and this is how I taught myself back in 2017.

Also - this is Florence (Flora), I guess.

[jeanjauthor]

One of the things not covered in this video directly, but which is visible most of in the diagrams, is the system of rises and baffles. There is a well just past the firebox, and a raised bump. Embers and ash will hit that bump (most of the time) and fall down into the well, while the hot smoke rises up over the bump.

In all the side-view drawings you will see that the floor rises from the fire side to the chimney side, but in the more detailed drawings you will also see that the roof of the smoke chamber also rises. The floor above is level, and this means the mass by the fire side is thicker, where the gasses are hottest, while it's thinner at the far end, where the gasses are coolest.

The final bump before entering the chimney area is a wind baffle, to help slow and prevent cold air backdrafts (iirc; I am not an expert!) The chimneys themselves aren't necessarily extra-tall, but they are tall enough to help provide natural draw for any heat in the system. in some cases, the kitchen area is inside the building, but in many cases where it's located outside the house, the kitchen side will face the prevailing winds, to help further push air through the system, ensuring a good draft.

There are a few videos out there that are more detailed. They will show curved chambers and side paths twisting and spiraling in the smoke box area under the floors. This is because you want the overall length of each channel to be approximately the same, so they all draw evenly, and corners don't turn stagnant. You also want curves instead of right angles wherever possible to help guide the air along. And though this does mean corners get "cut off", you can put short side-channels into those corners to help distribute the heat. The shortness prevents the air from getting too stagnant...which is a place where creosote could build up and cause problems down the road, from what I understand. (Again, not an expert! I've just done some studying of the subject as a knowledge-seeking geek, lol.)

The biggest difference between Korean ondol and Roman hypocaust systems is that the Romans put their floors up on pillars, with one big open area (not counting all the pillars/columns) for their Caulderium or Hot Room, and then put hollow bricks along one wall on the far end for the chimney, which gets vented upward. They don't have bricks lined up in channels supporting the floor, like the ondol system.

And unlike an ondol, which relies on bridging the tops of the brickwork with large stones slathered in clay mortar, the Romans picked a different method. Instead, the pillars would be spaced fairly close together, and big heavy-duty earthenware clay tiles would be created. These would be slowly dried literally for months, if not a year, specifically to ensure no cracked formed. (Failures could be re-wetted and used in other projects, or if they were fired, broken up and crushed for grog to help prevent shrinkage in other pottery projects...including yet more floor tiles.)

Then they would balance the four corners of the tiles on four pillars, and fill in all the gaps that way, each column supporting one corner of these carefully engineered, dried, fired tiles. On top of that, they would slather a layer of cement mortar, then another layer, and finally put down marble tiles. Depending upon the bath house, these marble floor tiles would either be covered in wooden slats to keep from burning the feet of the people using the caulderiums, or they would wear wooden sandals to protect their feet.

Most of these Roman versions were used in bath structures, with the cold room being the frigidarium (unheated water pools), the tepidarium being for clothing (sharing one wall with the caulderium chimneys but not under floor heating), and of course the caulderium, which would have the pool heated around its edges by the under floor chamber, as well as by copper kettles atop the fire box outside having a constant stream of water being heated there and poured into the hot pools, with the fires tended all day long by slaves, etc.

It was mostly only in northern-climate homes that Romans would use the hypocaust system to heat their homes in winter much more like an ondol system, even if they still used Roman engineering and Roman style chimneys. However, it needs to be noted that they, too, understood that smoke needs to be guided upward to prevent backdraft problems...so even the underflooring chambers of their hypocausts would be lower on the furnace side and higher on the chimney wall side.

[sheerioswifties]

Hello everyone, I'm so sorry I'm so behind on responding to all you beautiful kind people it honestly means the whole entire WORLD to me that you care; every message every like every reblog everything it truly just means more than words can express. You've all kept me going, kept be strong not just through this right now but the past 5 years living under duress in this horrible situation, unable to speak about what was happening to me irl but the connections I've had here just it's just everything. Sorry I'm a bit emo at the moment.

And your help with signal boosting is so important and so helpful I can't thank you enough nor begin to explain how much it helps, the impact it makes on the entire thing... please keep it up, send this around the world, get it on every continent- tomorrow begins another week, another day that Bill and Jeanette and their accomplices will be aggressively doing everything they can to silence me. So please, tell my story, tell the public, get it so far-reaching that it can't be buried.

They preyed on me, saw us as a scapegoat, this "perfect" victim on which to hang all their failures, all their debt, their personal and relationship issues, their crimes; Bill and Jeanette are trying to hang everything around our necks and then sink us. They thought that because I'm disabled and had been estranged from my own abusive family- cut off from any help or resources- and because my illness has required me to be physically isolated so much that they thought I've got no friends to turn to either; they thought that because they'd worked my husband thousands and thousands of hours and haven't paid him, forcing us into an artifical destitution, that we'd be unable to defend ourselves from them legally or socially (and I mean like they literally told us this they'd taunt us all the time about how we'd not be able to do anything)... they thought they'd covered every possible angle of our lives, thought they'd trapped us into having to just take the abuse, take on their debts, and live and die under their complete control...

But there's things they didn't account for. They underestimated our resolve. They have failed to actually research the minutiae of the legalities of their actions. They have stubbornly kept their heads planted firmly in the 20th century, and have been so willfully ignorant of the climate they're trying to do this in and negligent of things that humans on every side have already agreed are problematic... they are leaning on their titles, their standing in the community, their friends in high places to aid in this attempt to destroy and bury us...

There's a lot more to unpack and I've got so much to say but the point I was getting to in this moment is this: they did not account for swifties. They, like so many ignorant people, look at me being a Taylor Swift @taylorswift fan as something silly and childish, something that's for 12-year-olds, something that means nothing- but they're so, so wrong on that, aren't they? One of their family members in particular has always looked down on me and my husband, has always spoken to us with such an arrogant air if superiority, thinking he's so much better than us, smarter than us (sadder, badder, cooler? oh-) because he thinks bc on paper he's got better education (only achieved thanks to the hard efforts of everyone in the family including my husband who was supposed to then be next up for that same opportunity except then Jeanette tore their family apart and left him to fend for himself from 16) and because he's traveled the world and has all this perceived culture and experience- I can imagine that person seeing these accounts of mine and laughing at me. Thinking I'm childish. Thinking I'm "slow" (just like how Jeanette told my husband that she thinks I must be r******d because she heard me watching the movie Frozen, a "kids movie" ddgggggsgd)... but... we know.

Swifties know. And Swifties go hard. How many times have we all been so severely underestimated by the world? How many times have we as a group been waved off as some silly girly fan club with no social or political power? How many times have we then stood together worldwide and demolished all the stereotypes and affected real change?

They didn't account for swifties. Help me show them, and again the world, just how much this group of simple "social media fan accounts" can make an impact. Please help me reply to these abusers the way Taylor would. Swiftie F#$*ing Strong.