#lettering resources

[rowan-post]

RPC self-care

We all get worn down by life and often we turn to RP for rejuvenation. But more than once I've seen people on here that find themselves burnt out on the RP community itself. With nearly 20 years of role playing under my belt, I thought I'd share some of my favourite self-care tricks.

Block people. You don't have to explain yourself and 'weird vibes' is a legitimate reason. You deserve to feel safe and unbothered in your hobby space, and RP is based on consent. Just like with any recreational activity, you can withdraw your consent at any time and no is a complete sentence.

Turn off anon. This prevents anonymous harassment and gives you great insight into who to block or report if you get non-anonymous harassment.

Drop threads. I know RP etiquette suggests you need to tell your RP partner when and why, and sure, if they ask politely you can give it a go - just know that a pre-written variant of 'not feeling it' is good enough. In my humble opinion, I think dropping boring or vexing threads is everyone's prerogative and doesn't require explanation. Again, no is a complete sentence.

Talk it out. If you like the thread but things took a turn you didn't like, it's time to bring the RP into the workshop. Something like 'Hey I really like our RP so far but I'm losing my spark, can we talk about course correcting where the plot is going?'

Make clear rules and revise them frequently. I'd also advise against spending said rules excusing or explaining why you don't like or want a certain thing - I cannot stress enough how your preferences are not up for debate.

Get comfy chasing. A lot of RP is about inviting others to play over and over and over. Rejection is a part of it. See if you can't find some element of self-care in it - taking rejection well is a great skill to practice in such a low stake environment.

Notice and celebrate the good stuff, instead of digging holes about the bad. Tell your co-players how great they are. Marvel at all the hard work you put into your muses and graphics. Admire your own blog.

Stop. Take a break. Check in with yourself. Do you actually need to face something in IRL? Do you need to rest? A snickers? A walk? Don't bother with posts á la 'offline for the day' - leave your options open to reduce guilt or shame if you want to poke your head back in.

Happy writing. 🌿

[epsiloner]

　　　　(੭´͈ ᐜ `͈)੭ pink alphabet pngs 　　　　imgs do not belong to me.

[ladytemeraire]

Heads up for anyone who wants to get a jump on learning calligraphy: Calligrascape is currently having a sale on all of their masterclass lettering practice sheets (as of 11-Aug-2023). That includes blackletter, pointed pen, modern calligraphy, and more. Go forth and learn.

[roseschoices]

˗ˏˋ colorful mdni banners for writing . ´ˎ˗

▸ made by me / free to use / likes, rb and comments are appreciated! / enjoy. *kiss* [tried something new & different]

― roseschoices. [letters png credits: doexquisite in deviantart] • orange, yellow, black & white versions soon!

[streamkai]

       ╭ 。· ♡ 𝑘𝑖𝑚 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑦𝑢 𝑔𝑖𝑓 𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑘  ♡ · 。 ╮

by clicking the source link, you'll be redirected to 100+ gifs of kim mingyu, member of the kpop boy group seventeen from the variety show going seventeen. mingyu is korean and was born in 1997, so please cast him accordingly. the gifs are 268x151 & were made by me from scratch. i will be adding to this pack as i make more and i'll post updates when i do. DO NOT redistribute, crop into gif icons or claim as your own. if you want to use them in hunts, please just link this post. DO NOT use my gifs in krps, smut rps, celebrity rps or to portray any topics that can be considered t*boo. please like / reblog this post if you plan to use my gifs, thank you!

[kimsuyeon]

teach me your ways on how to color whitewash idols. it’s so pretty

hiii omg thank u !! i will say i make new coloring for every set + recommend that so ur coloring is unique to the lighting, idol, etc.! i only mask over the original at the end of coloring (otherwise it can trick your eye into thinking something is off), and i ask people for help making sure i didn't oversaturate sometimes. i'll color a yeri set from the same file as those irene gifs earlier to show my process :)

sharpen! my sharpening whitens highlights most times, so i try to color over it so i know it won't become overexposed when i go to export. base gif (sharpened in vs) versus sharpened fully.

2. gauge how pale they are compared to naturally light photos w/ minimal to no editing / general 'what is too pale'. she isn't very pale here so not too much needs changing.

first adjustment layer: levels, set the blacks using the eyedropper. helps with contrast and overall look.

second: curves, adding back highlights and depth (especially around nose and cheekbones, which tend to get removed when it is washed out).

exposure! make sure to adjust gamma as well, don't go too far. this is the no. 1 cause of overly white gifs with otherwise nice coloring.

next is brightness and contrast, which same rule of thumb as exposure. don't over-do it.

hue/sat: fix yellow or red leaning skin, and then i add saturation and darken skin channels to add life and warmth without making it too overdone (if you just saturate, it can look cartoonish imo)

selective color (#1): adjust reds, yellows, blacks, and whites. sometimes change neutrals (add magenta and yellow while lightening them overall) on very stubborn originals.

selective color (#2): fine-tune previous adjustments to look natural. ADD WHITE BACK TO HIGHLIGHTS! this helps with the glowiness

it can be done at this point, but i did one more fine-tuning hue/saturation (when i adjust other colors like blues to be the shade i want too). this is also when i use color balance or a second brightness/contrast to get my end result where i want!

base (sharpened in vs) vs. the final :D

i also like to color with the previous / done gif next to the new one to make sure they match :) like so - i copy and paste the coloring group and then adjust it (and sharpening!) as needed for cohesion

the psd for yeri, and the irene set from earlier if you'd like to mess with them. irene's is more extreme as the lighting was worse.

[nordleuchten]

ALL of La Fayette’s Grandchildren

(This post discusses the death and loss of children)

While four children are still pretty easy to keep track of, La Fayette’s abundance of grandchildren can be quite confusing. You often see the following graphic, published in Jules Germain Cloquet’s book:

Jules Germain Cloquet, Recollections of the Private Life of General Lafayette, Baldwin and Cradock, London, 1835, p. 227.

All fine and dandy, but I was looking for more detailed information and I wanted to include the children that had already died by the time Cloquet publishes his book – I therefor made a graphic of my own. :-)

I am tempted to make one for the great-grandchildren as well, since La Fayette was very exited to become a Great-Grandfather – but this one was already a wild ride and La Fayette had more great-grandchildren then grand-children, let me tell you.

Anyway, some names are written in italics, these are the names the individuals commonly went by. I find it funny to see that all of Virginie’s children went by their second name, just like Virginie herself mostly just used her second name. Anastasie’s second child has an Asterix to her name. I have only once seen the name spelled out, on the certificate of baptism. The twins were baptized in Vianen (modern day Netherlands) and the name on the document was the Germanic spelling “Maria Victorina” – I used what I assumed is the best French spelling of the name.

The dates in bold indicate that the corresponding documentation of the birth/marriage/death can be found in the archives.

Anastasie and Charles: Finding Célestine’s dead twin sister was actually a surprise for me since I have never before seen her being mentioned. Anastasie gave birth for the first time in a town near Utrecht in what today are the Netherlands. The achieves there still have the certificate of baptism (on February 30, was the clerk sloppy or did the region in 1799 adhere to a different calendar style where February could have more then 29 days?) and we can very clearly see that there were too children. By May 9, 1799, La Fayette wrote to George Washington and referred to only one grand-child:

My wife, my daughters, and Son in law, join in presenting their affectionate respects to Mrs Washington & to you my dear g[ener]al the former is recovered & sets out for france on monday next with Virginia—our little grand Daughter [Célestine] is well, will your charming one accept our tender regard?

“To George Washington from Lafayette, 9 May 1799,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/06-04-02-0041. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Retirement Series, vol. 4, 20 April 1799 – 13 December 1799, ed. W. W. Abbot. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999, pp. 54–59.] (02/12/2024)

I suspect that Anastasie had a stillbirth around August/September of 1801. La Fayette mentioned in a letter to Thomas Jefferson on June 21, 1801:

Anastasia Will Before long Make me Once More a Grand Father

“To Thomas Jefferson from Lafayette, 21 June 1801,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-34-02-0318. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 34, 1 May–31 July 1801, ed. Barbara B. Oberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 403–404.] (02/12/2024)

There is no mention of this child being born and both the achieves in Paris and Courpalay yield no information so that it is unlikely that the child was born and then died young. Georges’ daughter died very young and she still is in the archives. Given La Fayette’s wording we can assume that Anastasie’s pregnancy was already somewhat advanced and the term miscarriage is only used up until the 20th week of a pregnancy, after that it is considered a stillbirth.

Georges and Emilie: The couple lost at least one daughter, Léontine Emilie, young, aged just four weeks. La Fayette wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson on February 20, 1807:

My family are pretty well and beg to be most affectionately respectfully and gratefully presented to you—We expected a Boy to be called after your name—But little Tommy has again proved to be a Girl [Léontine Emilie].

“To Thomas Jefferson from Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, 20 February 1807,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-5122. [This is an Early Access document from The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. It is not an authoritative final version.] (02/12/2024)

La Fayette later wrote to James Madison on June 10, 1807:

We Have Had the Misfortune to Loose a female Child of His, four Weeks old [Léontine Emilie]. My Younger daughter Virginia Has Lately presented us With an other infant of the Same Sex [Marie Pauline]. My Wife’s Health is Not Worse at this Moment, But Ever too Bad.

To James Madison from Marie-Adrienne-Françoise de Noailles, marquise de Lafayette, 10 June 1807,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/99-01-02-1768. [This is an Early Access document from The Papers of James Madison. It is not an authoritative final version.] (02/12/2024)

As a sidenote because it confused me while searching for the letter; the archives list Adrienne as the author. I am certain that is wrong because a) Adrienne was not corresponding with James Madison, b) this is not her writing style but La Fayette’s, c) the letter does not have her typical signature and d) there is the passage about the authors wife’s health – this one at the least gives it away.

Identifying Léontine Emilie was actually quite a bit of luck as well. I found the letter to Madison by accident and that letter is the only source that mentions her that I know of. I have never seen her in any other letters, documentation, contemporary or secondary books. The letter helped to narrow her birthday and her date of death down and with that information I searches the archives in Paris and Courpalay in the hopes of finding the child – and I was lucky. While I of course understand the order of things, it still saddens me to see that you can be born into such a prominent family – your father was a Marquis, your grand-father was the Marquis, and still, not even your families biographers care to even mention you.

Virginie und Louis: For all I know, and I again have to say that I have not nearly as much data/correspondence as I would like with regard to these topics, Virginie never lost a child. There is always the question what La Fayette would feel comfortable telling and to whom. There is also the question if La Fayette himself was always aware of everything. For example, in the case of a miscarriage very early on in the pregnancy he might have not included it in his correspondence or in fact maybe not even known himself.

As much as would wish a happy family life for Virginie, stillbirths, infant deaths and especially miscarriages were and still are not uncommon.

I have put excerpts from a few more letters by La Fayette to his American friends under the cut that help identify his grandchildren.

La Fayette to Thomas Jefferson, June 4, 1803:

I am Here, with my Wife, Son, daughter in law, and New Born little grand daughter [Natalie Renée Émilie] taking Care of my Wounds, and Stretching My Rusted Articulations untill I can Return to my Beloved Rural Abode at La Grange.

“To Thomas Jefferson from Lafayette, 4 June 1803,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-40-02-0361. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 40, 4 March–10 July 1803, ed. Barbara B. Oberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, pp. 485–486.] (02/12/2024)

La Fayette to Thomas Jefferson, April 20, 1805:

Here I am with my son and daughter in law who is going to increase our family [Charlotte Mathilde]. Her father is to stand god father to the child and if He is a Boy we intend taking the liberty to give Him Your Name.

“To Thomas Jefferson from Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, 20 April 1805,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-1556. [This is an Early Access document from The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. It is not an authoritative final version.] (02/12/2024)

La Fayette to Thomas Jefferson, April 8, 1809:

(…) My Children are in Good Health. Two of them, My daughter in Law [Clémentine Adrienne], and Virginia [Françoise Mélanie] are Going to increase the family.

“To Thomas Jefferson from Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, 14 December 1822,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-3215. [This is an Early Access document from The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series. It is not an authoritative final version.] (02/12/2024)

[ghulehvous]

Behind every great Ministry is a horde of petty bureaucrats

His Unholiness Papa Emeritus Nihil (Emeritus) 

Veneration of Relics Hall

The Crypt

Ministry Headquarters

4 March 2020

Dear Papa Nihil,

We regret to inform you that you are no longer eligible for the Ministry’s final salary pension scheme and that payments will cease with immediate effect. 

The Ministry’s generous pension provision allows for the beneficiary to receive a guaranteed income, based on your previous earnings, for life. That is to say, while one has a corporeal form. 

You no longer have a corporeal entity and your spirit is now tied to another plane of existence. Thus, per the Ministry-Infernal Treaty (Afterlife, Additional Lives and Resurrections) of 1649, the maintenance of your ethereal form is now the responsibility of whichever realm or channel through which you choose to manifest. 

If you are unhappy with our decision you may make a complaint to the Pensions Ombudsman or pursue a judicial review. However, you should be advised that Hell hath no fury like a petty administrative bureaucrat scorned. 

NemA and kindest regards,

Ministry (In)Human Resources 

Cc: Ministry files - Emeritus, Nihil; Mr Saltarian

[14dayswithyou]

MINORS: DO NOT INTERACT ! Welcome to the official "14 Days With You" Tumblr! The FAQ, post masterlist, and general rules can be found below! Also, this is a side blog — meaning all replies and follows will come from @cutiesigh! ^^

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND ! 💖 Put your age in your profile, or you'll be blocked. 💖 Reblogs/replies are appreciated and welcomed!! 💖 Read the F.A.Q to learn the secret phrase for asks.

itch | discord | twitter | main | #14dwy tag

▋MASTERLIST !

💖 14DWY Lore updates & blog post retcons (check reblogs for current versions) 💖 Official character relationship chart 💖 Official character sheets + blank template (outdated) 💖 "Understand my ship in 5 minutes" sheet (outdated) 💖 NSFW Alphabet: Ren | [REDACTED] | Teo 💖 All of the 14DWY fics I've written 💖 All of the 14DWY art I've made 💖 Frequently Asked Questions

▋F.A.Q !

What is Ren's real name? Try and guess it!

Are Ren and [REDACTED] the same person? Yes, they are the same person. "[REDACTED]" is his real self and "Ren" is a persona he created specifically for Angel.

Will we get to see/learn more about [REDACTED]? You'll learn more about [REDACTED] in Day 7, but getting Ren to remain as his real self will all depend on the choices you make in the game.

How old is Ren? Ren is one year younger than you, but at least 18! However if you are 18, then he’d be one month/day/hour younger than you instead.

What is Ren's ___? Ren is non-binary (AMAB + prefers masculine and gender-neutral titles), uses he/they pronouns, born on February 14th, around ~6'5", half Japanese and American, and pan/demisexual.

Does Ren have a Spotify playlist? Yes! Here's a playlist full of songs that make me think of him, and here's a playlist full of songs that I personally think he'd listen to. Please look at my Spotify profile for the rest of the cast.

What are the cast's sexualities? Pronouns? etc. Here are their birthdays, here are their sexualities, and here are their pronouns.

What does the “canon” / “blog canon” / etc. tag mean? Posts tagged with "canon" means it complies with the official 14DWY universe set for the game, "blog canon" means it only applies to the universe set for this blog, "AU canon" means it's set in an entirely separate universe with its own lore, and "non canon" means the post is just for fun and shouldn't be taken seriously.

When will Day ___ come out? Whenever I feel like it. Please understand that I am a full-time university student who also works a part-time job, so it's difficult for me to make time to work on 14DWY.

Where is the best place to find updates? The 14DWY Discord would be the best place to receive game/development updates (as well as interacting with the community), though I do crosspost major updates on Tumblr and Twitter after a week or so.

Will there be a mobile version? No. My main priority is releasing builds for PC/Mac for now.

How many love interests are there? Just Ren. And although you can get a romantic ending with some of the other cast members, they won't have a dedicated "route" like Ren.

Do you have a Patreon / KoFi / Kickstarter / etc? I have a Ko-Fi now (purely for art commissions), but please continue to keep your money! Just knowing that you enjoy 14DWY is more than enough support for me!

Do you have an F.A.Q tag? Yes! Here's a masterlist of other frequently asked questions, and here's the general #FAQ tag for even more questions I get asked on a regular basis. Please check them out before asking something!

Is there anything you won't write about? I don't write about scat/piss, incest, noncon, self harm/suicide, major character death (Angel, Ren, Violet, etc. to avoid spoilers), pedophilia, or anything else of that nature.

Why haven't you answered my question yet? It probably made me uncomfortable, you didn't put your age in your bio, you didn't read this entire post properly, or I've answered it before.

How do I ask a question? To ensure you've read the rules: please include any of the following secret phrases in your message. Otherwise, I won't answer it.

Meowdy Saint! ^^

Say hi to renren for me

The 14DWY brainrot is real... >_<

This angel has another question! \o

I'm here to Redeem my kiss from [14DWY character] for reading the pinned post.

hehe >:3... hehesmirk, even 😼

Once you've selected a phrase, you can submit your question here (or use the ask button above!!) I'll occasionally update these phrases, so make sure to check before you send an ask!

▋TAGLIST !

Use the tags below for easier navigation!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 21, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 22, 2024

During her confirmation hearings in 2021, Interior Department secretary Deb Haaland promised “to responsibly manage our natural resources to protect them for future generations—so that we can continue to work, live, hunt, fish, and pray among them.” Noting her Indigenous heritage, Haaland tweeted, “A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior…. I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.”

Her approach was a shift from the practice the Interior Department had established at the beginning of the twentieth century when it began to prioritize mineral, oil, and gas development, as well as livestock grazing, on U.S. public lands. But the devastating effects of climate change have brought those old priorities into question. 

Republicans, especially those from states like Wyoming, which collects more than a billion dollars a year in royalties and taxes from the oil, gas, and coal produced on federal lands in the state, opposed Haaland’s focus on responsible management of natural resources for the future  and warned that the Biden administration is “taking a sledgehammer to Western states’ economies.”

On Thursday, April 18, the Interior Department finalized a new rule for a balanced management of America’s public lands. Put together after a public hearing period that saw more than 200,000 comments from states, individuals, Tribal and local governments, industry groups, and advocacy organizations, the new rule prioritizes the health of the lands and waters the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management oversees. Those consist of about 245 million acres, primarily in 12 western states.

The new rule calls for protection of the land, restoration of the places that have been harmed in the past, and a promise to make informed decisions about future use based on “science, data, and Indigenous knowledge.” It “recognizes conservation as an essential component of public lands management, on equal footing with other multiple uses of these lands.” The Bureau of Land Management will now auction off leases not only for drilling, but also for conservation and restoration. 

Western state leaders oppose the Biden administration’s efforts to change the Interior Department’s past practices, calling them “colonial forces of national environmental groups who are pushing an agenda” onto states like Wyoming. 

The timing of the Interior Department’s new rule can’t help but call attention to Earth Day, celebrated tomorrow, on April 22. Earth Day is no novel proposition. Americans celebrated it for the first time in 1970. Nor was it a partisan idea in that year: Republican president Richard M. Nixon established it as Americans recognized a crisis that transcended partisanship and came together to fix it.

The spark for the first Earth Day was the 1962 publication of marine biologist Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which showed the devastating effects of people on nature by documenting the effect of modern pesticides on the natural world. Her exposé of how the popular pesticide DDT was poisoning the food chain in American waters illuminated the dangerous overuse of chemicals and their effect on living organisms, and it caught readers’ attention. Carson’s book sold more than half a million copies in 24 countries. 

Democratic president John F. Kennedy asked the President’s Science Advisory Committee to look into Carson’s argument, and the committee vindicated her. Before she died of breast cancer in 1964, Carson noted: "Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself? [We are] challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves."  

As scientists organized the Environmental Defense Fund, Americans began to pay closer attention to human effects on the environment, especially after three crucial events. First, on December 24, 1968, astronaut William Anders took a color photograph of the Earth rising over the horizon of the moon from outer space during the Apollo 8 mission, powerfully illustrating the beauty and isolation of the globe on which we all live. 

Then, over 10 days in January and February 1969, a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, poured between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific, fouling 35 miles of California beaches and killing seabirds, dolphins, sea lions, and elephant seals. Public outrage ran so high that President Nixon went to Santa Barbara in March to see the cleanup efforts, telling the American public that “the Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.” 

And then, in June 1969, the chemical contaminants that had been dumped into Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire. A dumping ground for local heavy industry, the river had actually burned more than ten times in the previous century, but with increased focus on environmental damage, this time the burning river garnered national attention.

In February 1970, President Nixon sent to Congress a special message “on environmental quality.” “[W]e…have too casually and too long abused our natural environment,” he wrote. “The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done, and to establish new criteria to guide us in the future.”

“The tasks that need doing require money, resolve and ingenuity,” Nixon said, “and they are too big to be done by government alone. They call for fundamentally new philosophies of land, air and water use, for stricter regulation, for expanded government action, for greater citizen involvement, and for new programs to ensure that government, industry and individuals all are called on to do their share of the job and to pay their share of the cost.”

Meanwhile, Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin, visited the Santa Barbara oil spill and hoped to turn the same sort of enthusiasm people were bringing to protests against the Vietnam War toward efforts to protect the environment. He announced a teach-in on college campuses, which soon grew into a wider movement across the country. Their “Earth Day,” held on April 22, 1970, brought more than 20 million Americans—10% of the total population of the country at the time—to call for the nation to address the damage caused by 150 years of unregulated industrial development. The movement included members of all political parties, rich Americans and their poorer neighbors, people who lived in the city and those in the country, labor leaders and their employers. It is still one of the largest protests in American history.

In July 1970, at the advice of a council convened to figure out how to consolidate government programs to combat pollution, Nixon proposed to Congress a new agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, which Congress created that December. 

In honor of Earth Day 2024, Democratic president Joe Biden has called for carrying on the legacy of our predecessors “by building a greener, more sustainable planet and, with it, a healthier, more prosperous nation.” 

In a statement, Biden noted that no one can any longer deny the impacts and staggering costs of climate change as the nation confronts historic floods, droughts, and hurricanes. 

“Deforestation, nature loss, toxic chemicals, and plastic pollution also continue to threaten our air, lands, and waters, endangering our health, other species, and ecosystems,” he said. He noted the administration’s efforts to build a clean energy economy, providing well-paid union jobs as workers install solar panels, service wind turbines, cap old oil wells, manufacture electric vehicles, and so on, while also curbing air pollution from power plants and lead poisoning from old pipes, the burden of which historically has fallen on marginalized communities.

Biden noted that he brought the U.S. back into the Paris Climate Accord Trump pulled out of, is on track to conserve more lands and waters than any president before him, and has worked with the international community to slash methane emissions and restore lost forests.

And yet there is much more to be done, he said. He encouraged “all Americans to reflect on the need to protect our precious planet; to heed the call to combat our climate and biodiversity crises while growing the economy; and to keep working for a healthier, safer, more equitable future for all.”

Happy Earth Day 2024.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[woozapooza]

I was going to just screenshot this but screenshots can't do it justice. It reminds me of Dennis reading Charlie's campaign speech.

[kimsuyeon]

hi if its alright with you can I please ask your stage gif process 🩵 (I don't mind if its not too detailed but if you use vapoursynth or topaz or anything)

hiii! omg thank u for wanting to know 🥺🥺 i actually use two methods, depending on the source file (and how lazy i feel). either vapoursynth or mpv. i'll show u both!

long, the example gif has a flashy background, somewhat clear. i hope.

i source from .ts files on k24hr or twitter, fancams, and then the youtube version (which i then run through handbrake before vs or mpv) if there's absolutely no other choice. i try to avoid show music core because its backgrounds make sharpening hard, but i'm using one from there for this tutorial :) i will also use beyond live / blu-ray files when available (i.e. 4th world tour gifs i did of twice)

vapoursynth:

-> only use the deinterlace (60 slow) when it's 1080i 30fps! i use this on files from k24hrs. if the file is already 60 fps (i.e. those from srghkqud on twitter), i don't deinterlace or preprocess. i use finesharp on .7 any time i use vs!

this gif is 268 x 520 px! i leave the delay at .02 and set frame rate to 60fps. on the left, it is just changed to 60fps and run through vs with the above settings. the gif on the right is sharpened!

i change my sharpening settings on every stage (and most other sets as well)! i use an action, and then adjust by the background and quality of the source! this is using my stage sharpening - but i have removed a smart sharpen and reduced opacity of other filters i use on different (clearer) files!

show music core has these really visible leds in their background, so sharpening it tends to be harder! i avoid using my 500px smart sharpens when it looks like this, and use high pass and bigger radius smaller amount smart sharpens!

sharpening settings for above: 8.0 high pass on soft light blending (40% opacity), 241 .2 smart sharpen (60% opacity), 15 15 smart sharpen (50% opacity) i should also note that on really really pale stages, i use camera raw filter to fix whites / highlights before i add the other sharpening! this does really slow down export time and can be frustrating, so i reserve it for then!

then i color! sometimes i use ezgif (which hasn't lowered quality that i've noticed) to adjust the speed, if i feel it needs it! this gif has a fine speed so i've left it as is, but i normally speed up gifs by 120% on their speed feature to make the choreo look a little faster!

left: unsharpened except vs finesharp, colored right: sharpened, colored

my coloring focus is always restoring skin, everything else is pretty much purely stylistic. i try to leave colors in the background the same! i do really like making blonde hair pinker or more toned (since they're often yellow, i always make a point of essentially toning their hair for them - i.e. tsuki in dang! set)

when i color the rest of the set, i keep the first gif open next to it to make sure everything matches! i normally copy and paste the coloring group and adjust as needed :D

also, i check how it looks in tumblr on desktop + mobile, since web safe colors adjust the look of your gifs a lot (the ones with the little dots in the middle are web safe, everything else isn't) and try to fix what doesn't look quite right. i also ask my friends if something is wrong but i'm not sure what (mainly nini (@withyouth) so shout out to her for putting up w/ me, a big part of the stage gif process)!

mpv: -> i press 'd' and make sure it is deinterlacing (again, only 1080i ones get deinterlaced)! and then i screencap. i followed this guide on setting up mpv, and always use minimal compression settings for everything i screencap.

-> i turn my files into dicom files (you can just rename them on mac, on windows it is multistep) and then scipt->load multiple dicom files (faster than loading image into stack and, in my opinion, clearer too)!

for windows: -> alt+d in your screencap folder, cmd. enter. type ren *.* *.dcm into the window. enter. close the command window!

i make my frame animation + frames to layers. once it is on the timeline, i go ahead and crop before i do anything else. i tried to make the cropping like the vs gif, but it's not identical!

sharpening: since i didn't use finesharp, i can add more in ps. this is my normal stage sharpening with nothing added or removed!

left: deinterlaced, screencapped, cropped right: deinterlaced, screencapped, cropped, sharpened -> 8.0 high pass (soft light, 65%), 500 .3 smart sharpen, 241 .2 smart sharpen (60% opacity), 15 15 smart sharpen (50% opacity)

coloring: same one as the vs gifs!

comparison:

left: vapoursynth, fully complete right: dicom, fully complete

i normally use mpv, but sometimes i don't feel like waiting on the screencaps, or i think finesharp will add texture + depth that the original doesn't have (too smooth of a filter, whatever) so i use vs! my taeyeon mr. mr. and le sserafim rock ver. sets were both done via vapoursynth, though the sharpenings are different from each other and what it shown here (i change sharpening a lot, and sometimes by set... sorry.. KJHDFGJKH)!

anyways i hope this was helpful!!! thank u for asking it means a lot u want to know!! if u want more stuff answered or shown, u can always ask :D and i hope it's clear 😭😭 i know i ramble a lot

[positivelyadhd]

If anyone uses meditation apps I'd love to share this one my therapist showed me!

It's called Smiling Mind and it's a not-for-profit from Australia that offers a bunch of different meditation courses for different situations!

plus its free! no pay walls or ads and it follows evidence based practices for its courses! it also allows the choice between male and female voices for each exercise and if background music is in the audio!

I'm very on and off with meditation but whenever I go back to it I always use this app.

[sdmsims]

Girls are now resting...

a while ago, i was notified that the arikasa masterfolder on dropbox was gone. today, i was told their niconico was gone too.

This super bums me out, because if it wasn't for arikasa's touhou cc, this blog would not exist. i would have never started making cc, flat out. i would have never even touched blender, a program that is now something that i use every day as a part of hobby and freelance.

it sounds so silly, but its true! something as small as some meshes allowing for my favorite characters to get into barfights changed my life! and its so sad to see it all seemingly vanish without a trace

and while my touhou save may have corrupted years ago, i'm a packrat who never deletes anything off their computer. so i've reuploaded the entire(?) arikasa touhou collection, so maybe you can enjoy it as much as i did.

thank you, arikasa! i hope that you're alright out there.

もしあなたがオリジナル・アップロード者で、私に配信停止を望むなら、私に知らせてほしい。[deepL]

SFS

[nordleuchten]

A Guide to La Fayette’s Papers: Code

La Fayette was never one to write too much in code, but we see two episodes during his life where he relied on partially encoding his messages. The first one was in 1782 when he had just returned to France and his letters to Washington had to make the long (and potentially dangerous) journey across the ocean. His last letter in America was written on December 21, 1781, just off Boston, and does not use any code. His first letter back in France was written on January 18, 1782, in L’Orient. Both letters contain words that he would translate into ciphers in later letters. The first coded letter to Washington was written on March 30, 1782.

In a third letter, written between January 18 and March 30, 1782, La Fayette wrote:

the Next time I write to Your Excellency it Will Be in Cyphers and More particular.

“To George Washington from Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, 30 January 1782,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-07755. [This is an Early Access document from The Papers of George Washington. It is not an authoritative final version.] (04/13/2024)

Most editors have translated La Fayette’s codes and printed the text as it should be read, either with the ciphers written next to it, or without it or any other mentioning that code was used in the letter. To make this list, I relied mainly on the book The Letters of Lafayette to Washington, 1777-1799, edited by Louis Gottschalk (second printing, edited and revised by Louis Gottschalk and Shirley A. Bill, 1971) because here the cipher as well as the translation are printed side by side and this saved me a lot of going back and forth. When reading La Fayette’s correspondence, you actually do not really need to know his code, because, as I said, he seldomly wrote in code and his editors already did the translation for us. BUT – maybe you desire a deeper understanding of his writings, maybe you find an unpublished letter somewhere in an archive that uses code, maybe you want to up your roleplay and sound more like La Fayette – or maybe code is just your thing! If any of this applies, this post is for you.

The code La Fayette and Washington used in 1782 looks as follows:

We see La Fayette rely on code a second time in 1785 when he was discussing matters of religious tolerance in France (a matter dear to his heart) with Washington. The ciphers employed this time were a little different:

[gives-us-the-sleep]

eyeshadow transparent!