#like i'd like to know about this feature. Without Having To Make An Account To Find Out What It Does

[fox-guardian]

one thing about me is i fucking hate making new accounts

[marie-m-art]

Good Animated Omens - Behind the Scenes

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at the walk cycles I animated of Aziraphale and Crowley (original post here).

I'll reiterate that the character designs are @lookitsstevie's creation! I made builds in Toonboom Harmony based on their designs, and then animated the builds.

Long post under the cut, organized into four parts. Feel free to jump around or just click through the images and gifs to get an idea of the gist. (At least take a look at Part IV, where you'll see a version of Aziraphale without his jacket and a closeup of Crowley's torso!)

Hopefully this is interesting even if you don't know the first thing about animation. It's not a step-by-step-from-scratch tutorial, but it might give animators some ideas to think about when trying this software!

I'm happy to answer questions about what I cover here - comments, DM's, or ask-box questions are all fine by me. If you like any of the new gifs and want to reblog it on its own, I can make new posts for those upon request! (I'd prefer you don't reupload them, but if you do please at least credit me with a tag to my account - thank you!!)

Part I: The interface and some basics

Above is a screencap of the software interface.

In the centre is the Camera window, where all the drawing and animating is done. 

To the left, the Node View. It's a representation of how the pieces and layers that make the characters are grouped and connected to each other, which is what makes a character "build". Every piece in this window is called a node, and there are different types. Light blue "drawing nodes" contain the drawings themselves. Each drawing node usually has a green "peg" attached; the peg is used to move and rotate the drawing piece; you set a pivot point on each peg. Light grey nodes are groups that have more nodes within, and dark blue nodes are added effects (eg masks, the blur for the halo, etc).

Below, the Timeline - it's where keyframes are set and tweened. The red square dots indicate there is a new keyframe on a particular frame; the white dots indicate keyframes are on layers nested somewhere under the topmost visible layer. All the pieces of the characters can be found in the timeline and correspond to the pieces that exist in the Node View (and Camera). Typically you work with a collapsed view of the build layers in the timeline, which allows you to set keyframes on multiple layers at once.

To the right, a few tabs in this window - Tool Properties, Colour Palettes, and, shown on top here, the Library. The library is where you store your builds, so that you can bring in a fresh copy when animating a new scene. This library tab also has the Drawing Substitution window, which shows thumbnails of every drawing contained in a drawing node when that node is selected.

A second of animation is 24 frames long. Finished animation will often have keyframes on every second frame with the tweens removed, to help simulate the look and feel of traditional animation - this is known as animating "on twos", and saved time, money and paper in the old days. If you leave the tweens on, and/or have keyframes on every frame, the animation is "on ones".

My walks are on twos - it's the look I prefer.

When I say "tween" I'm specifically referring to the software feature that will automatically calculate and interpolate the path between two different poses/keys of a peg. An inbetween could be the result of using a tween, a new drawing, or both. On twos, an inbetween will look the same as any other keyframe on the timeline when you're finished - its relevance as a concept is during the process, not the end result.

Quality animation is achieved via a combination of moving/tweening pre-existing drawings using their pegs, and adding new drawings as hand-drawn inbetweens when needed. Toonboom Harmony also has nodes called "deformers": they offer a way to tween the shape of a drawing without needing to redraw inside the drawing node. (Part IV has the explanation for which pieces I used them for, and why.)

Part II: Navigating the builds

This is what their default poses with no animation look like.

Animation using builds is sometimes colloquially referred to as "puppet-style animation" because the way you can connect body parts to each other feels like making and handling a 2D digital puppet: you can connect a hand to a forearm so that they can move as a unit, and you can connect that unit to an upper arm to move the whole arm as a unit, and that arm gets connected to the torso, and so on.

When you want to connect two pieces, like a hand to a forearm, then you create another peg in the Node View and attach the two body parts together under that new peg. The screencaps below show the nodes that make up Aziraphale's and Crowley's entire builds inside their respective groups:

Things got a bit sloppy ... It looks extremely complicated, but once it's set up, you don't have to think about it too much when you're animating!

And I've zoomed in on the nodes that make their arms so you can see how there are pegs on top of pegs (all the green nodes), with wires connecting everything:

As I explained in Part I, new drawings are added and contained within a body part's drawing node (the light blue ones under the green ones), and the Drawing Substitution window is where you can see all the drawings that exist in a particular node. In the timeline, you set keyframes for moving the pegs, and you also choose which frame the new drawings will appear when applicable. You might have a lot of drawings stored in the nodes, but only what you set to appear in the timeline will be visible in the final animation.

You can select a body part in the camera view, and then find the corresponding layer in the Timeline or the Node View by pressing the "o" keyboard shortcut. If you select a body part by clicking on it, and then press the "b" keyboard shortcut, you will jump up to the next peg it's connected to. You can hide and unhide pieces using "d" and "a" respectively.

In the first capture above, I'm showing that the arm pieces can be moved separately or together, and you can see how the pegs in the Node View light up when I select them in the Camera window (hiding them turns them red). In the second capture, I pop down to the timeline to step back and forth between the poses - the light grey row (it appears between the rows of red dots) represents the hand's drawing node in the timeline.

Part III: Summary of animation process

In my head I imagined how their walks would differ from each other - Aziraphale bouncier but with very straight posture and limited arm movement, vs Crowley slinking and swaggering all over.

I also knew that I wanted the animation to look good for both a walking-on-the-spot version, and as a version walking across the screen (both versions are at the top of the post!).

Then I started doing some rough animation.

I set aside my finished builds for the roughs. For each character, I made a few drawing nodes and two pegs; a peg for the up-and-down upper body motion, which I tweened, and a peg for moving them across the screen. The legs and arms are drawing substitutions.

With these extremely rudimentary rough "builds", I worked out - how many frames long the walks would be, - how far the characters would move across the screen each step, - how much the upper bodies would move up and down, and - the key drawings of the legs and feet.

I didn't worry about animating clothing, hair, or Azi's arms in the rough stage. For those elements, the drawings would be spaced really close together and would be easier to figure out with tweens. (Note: this rudimentary setup would be sufficient if you want to clean up and inbetween characters by hand frame-by-frame instead of making full builds; my preference is build animation because the process is more fun for me)

Then I started working with the finished builds, using the roughs as a guide, and established the broadest motions first: the up-and-down motion in the upper bodies (I set a keyframe at the lowest point, a keyframe at the highest point, then tweened between them) and how far they'd travel across the screen. Then the feet were done.

I went back and forth between viewing them walking on the spot and walking across the screen to make sure that both versions worked. I also made sure they crossed the same amount of ground relative to each other.

After those crucial parts, I moved on to animating their arms, hair, torsos, clothing details, and finishing the legs, not necessarily in that order. I simulated twisting/rotating their torsos in 3d space by moving their waistcoats and lapels.

The first gif switches back and forth between versions (imagine a background scrolling by when they walk on the spot). The second gif is an example of bad "footslip" - they're moving at different speeds, and if you pay attention to their feet, Aziraphale appears to slip on ice while Crowley appears to slide forward on skates.

"You go too fast for me, Crowley!"

Part IV: Extras and details

Here is a version of Aziraphale's walk without his jacket, and a closeup of Crowley so you can see his swaying hips better:

One of the cool things about animating with builds is they lend themselves well to small modifications; the jacketless version took all of five minutes to make.

I'd be remiss not to include a close-up of Aziraphale's hair, the real star of the animation :) (Crowley's hair is also animated but I purposefully kept it understated since it's a much different texture.) And a closeup image of Crowley's snake tattoo:

The biggest unit for both of them are their upper bodies, which includes their pelvises. The up-and-down motion is only on one peg instead of on every single piece, which is handy because it means I can hide just that part of the animation when I want to work on the clothing details:

During the process of animation, I am often hiding then unhiding pieces like this so I can see what I'm doing.

Their clothing ended up being a lot of separate pieces, which I kept adding during animation rather than before, as it was hard to predict everything I needed. Their clothing also incorporates cutters (aka masks), and deformers (see explanation in Part I). In the next set of gifs the deformers show up as green outlines with handles and get turned on and off.

Aziraphale's torso functions as a mask for his clothing. The shape of his torso subtly changes via deformer. His lapels and waistcoat have V shapes that are masks/cutters (they cut a V shape out of those pieces); the same pieces that make the cutters also are used for the black lines of those V shapes via a special layering setup. The main shapes of his lapels are animated with deformers, and you can see how far beyond his torso shape they extend when I turn on the deformers in the second gif.

Deformers work best for shapes that change a little bit, and/or slowly. The minor shape changes in his and Crowley's clothes ended up being a great use case for deformers, because they pretty much tweened perfectly.

The reason I didn't use them on Aziraphale's legs was because those shapes change significantly between keys; I predicted I'd have to re-adjust every frame of a tweened deformer, so I drew the inbetweens by hand (halfway through, I realized I probably should have used them after all, but I was in too deep by then; hand drawing was fun though!). Deformers worked well on his bottom jacket:

Crowley's pelvis is layered above and below his thigh pieces and has a deformer. Also take a look at all the drawing substitutions for his hands:

And lastly the deformers on the hair:

Epilogue

I'm hoping the gifs all play at the same speed for everyone as they play for me. Hopefully the demo gifs are at least watchable, if not super clear... (I'll listen to feedback on the presentation of the information, for if I do similar posts in future!) Don't hesitate to ask questions about anything I covered, or about any details you noticed that I didn't elaborate on!

ko-fi.com/marieanimate

I'm shy about mentioning it, but I set up a Ko-fi account in case this post compels anyone to leave a small "tip" (but reblogging and sharing is just as good)!

Thanks for reading, and have a nice day!

[flawseer]

On the False Dragonets of Destiny

Recycled art... Forgive me, I can't physically draw more than I currently am.

Just a little while ago I was looking at some replies to my recent work, and I noticed a nice comment from someone who expressed they enjoyed my comics featuring the false dragonets of destiny, but couldn't really get into them in the books. I am thankful for that comment, but even more thankful for the opportunity to ramble at length about something I kind of wanted to talk about, but couldn't find a plausible excuse for. Until now.

All of this is just my reading of the material, of course. You don't need to agree with me on this.

Content Warning: Some discussion of abuse, trauma, violence. I don't know if it's severe enough to warrant a warning, but better be safe.

General discussion

The false dragonets of destiny, the alternates, or whatever one wants to call them. They enter the story proper in book 4, after having made a few minor cameo appearances before, and serve as a kind of hybrid antagonistic force and pseudo-allies for Starflight during his stay on the Nightwing Isle. During that time, they are very abrasive, stand-offish, uncooperative, and a bit annoying, and I guess that doesn't make them come off very well. But like, in spite of that or maybe partially because of it, I am really fond of these guys, and I'd like to take some time talking them up to you.

One can examine how these guys act and conclude that they are a bunch of dysfunctional screw-ups. And they absolutely are that, don't get me wrong. But one should keep in mind: the majority of the time they are in the spotlight, they are in an extreme, tense, and frighteningly uncertain situation. It's easy to forget how stressful these situations are because the books as a whole really like to gloss over the more frightening kind of subjects on account of being written for young readers. You can't really go deep into themes of abuse, trauma, and depression in a story like that without tripping over some kind of censor on the way, but the implications are there, between the lines for you to find.

Understanding the group

Who are the false dragonets of destiny? They are posited as a mirror image of the true dragonets of destiny, who have all been extensively schooled in matters of education and martial prowess. The first thing we see THIS group do on page is brawl, so one may think they must be trained and capable fighters. Viper and Flame constantly throw around death threats and aggressive quips, so one may think they are hyper-violent and dangerous. They are neither. Nautilus admits the Talons haven't bothered training them at all, they haven't seen real combat, they've likely been deliberately kept away from the war as a whole. Flame doesn't even know how to use his fire breath correctly. Starflight, who is by far the least physically adept of the arc 1 protagonists, is able to outpace them even as four of them team up against him.

They are neither killers nor a crack team of badasses, rather they are a bunch of play-fighting, posing delinquents who talk a big game with little in terms of actual skill to back it up. Realizing this is key to understanding just how out of their depth and ill-equipped they are to handle anything that gets thrown at them on the Nightwing homeland, especially past the negotiations at the Skywing outpost.

Abduction and imprisonment

When Starflight first finds them, they have been on the Nightwing Isle for a good while, and they are suitably bristly because of it.

Look at this situation from their perspective. These guys have known nothing other than their semi-peaceful life in the Talon camp. Then the leader of that camp, Nautilus--a figure they all know and trust, essentially sells them to a frightening stranger, who looms over them and is so physically large he could crush each of them easily. This stranger pulls them away from their home without even giving them a chance to say goodbye to their relatives (I'm convinced Avalanche would not have let Morrowseer take her son if there was a chance to intervene, so Flame must have already been gone when she found out).

A contingent of Nightwing awaits them, blindfolds them so they don't know where the entrance to the Nightwing home is. They pass through a kind of eldritch tunnel that pulls at their souls. When they are finally allowed to see again, they find themselves trapped on an island where there is no sunlight and every breath hurts as the air is thick with ash.

The Nightwings won't let them leave, in fact they don't know if they will ever be able to leave again. Nobody tells them what's going on, what they are meant to do, or what the plan is. They are left confined in some room with nothing to do, and they (sans Fatespeaker) can't go outside without being arrested. Food is brought very infrequently, and usually inedible, so they haven't eaten since they were forced to leave home. They don't know where they are, nor where their parents are, nor if their parents know where THEY are. They are completely cut off from anywhere, isolated, trapped in this little slice of hell with no means to escape and little hope to acquire any soon.

I think if I was in a situation like that, I would be pretty cranky too. More than that, I would be scared out of my wits, and I believe that they are as well. If you look at their actions through a lens of them being frightened, their irritating quirks suddenly become very relatable. Viper is coping by throwing out threats and making herself seem bigger and scarier than the thing trapping her. Flame makes offensive jokes about killing Fatespeaker because making light of the situation helps him keep his wits together. Ochre is hard to read, but I think he's just tuning everything out. Squid is convinced that his father--who is the most important and smart dragon in all of Pyrrhia--has made the correct choice and knows what's best for all of them. And Fatespeaker is in complete denial, choosing to trust an inaccurate vision of the future while ignoring all the red flags that don't fit into it.

I think it's interesting that you can read this as all of them having a different strategy to cope with the uncertain and frightening situation they're trapped in. That's part of why I like them; they're very flawed and make interesting decisions.

Trauma and Empathy

You can look at someone like Squid and see his surface traits: He is annoying, he whines and complains constantly, he brags about who his father is, and he seems completely incapable of doing anything useful. If this guy was in any other story, I would probably dislike him. But Squid has the benefit of being a whiny dweeb in a situation where it is very appropriate to whine and be scared. He has a scene where he makes a somewhat goofy speech at Morrowseer where he calls him stupid and wants to go home, and is subsequently exiled. It's a bit silly in execution, but for me it did succeed in making me feel bad for Squid as he desperately and pathetically pleads for Morrowseer not to send him to his death.

But then you can read beyond the lines a little and view the scene in the full context that isn't really dwelt on. Here, you've got Squid, who is inept even among his peers, sheltered and doted on by his father, whom he has never been away from for any real amount of time until now. This guy, who probably can't even feed himself (otherwise he might have been able to catch fish in the waters around the island), keeps telling himself that his father has a plan, that all of this, even the questionable stuff, is happening for a reason. He hasn't eaten in weeks and he's been the punching bag for everyone else's frustrations (because Fatespeaker is not around enough, hanging out with Starflight). Now he has been chased halfway across the world, forced to cross the ocean while tired and starving, to be told he has to talk to a bunch of violent strangers who hate his kind and want to kill him. He tries to hide but is grabbed by the throat and held in the air by a soldier twice his size. This is likely the first time his life has ever been threatened that directly and with genuine intent.

The strange new Nightwing who was sent with them somehow manages to deescalate the situation enough to save him, but then, without warning, more dragons burst into the room. Suddenly everything is on fire, including the soldiers who just a moment ago threatened him. He is close enough to them to watch their forms twist and writhe in agony as they slowly burn to death.

As he is made to watch this horrifying spectacle, all the feelings he repressed by reminding himself of the faith he has in his father come flooding back in at once. It becomes too much for him to bear, and he breaks. He starts crying and verbally lashes out at their abuser for the horrid conditions they have been placed in and demands--half asserting and half pleading--to be allowed to go home. This isn't really whining anymore, this is a full-scale mental breakdown, rendered to be simple and digestible to a young audience. Imagine how harrowing this scene could have been if it wasn't filtered through a child-friendly narrative.

Closing thoughts

There is a scene some time after that I found kind of poignant. At one point, Starflight looks out and he sees Flame just standing out there, silently staring into the distance. There's maybe one line dedicated to it, and when you read the book normally, you don't really dwell on it since it's so nondescript. But this scene happens shortly after the visit to the remote outpost. The soldiers that burned to death in there were all Skywings. Skywings like himself, and like his mother, who also was a soldier before she joined the Talons. Whenever I picture him standing there, I imagine he is reliving that moment, hearing the dying screams of his kinsmen. I think he will be hearing them forever.

So in conclusion: The reason why I like the alternate dragonets so much is because of the enormous, untapped potential they possess as characters, and how deep some of them run if you take some time to look at them. I feel like all of them have a story to tell, and it's a bit of a shame that Sutherland likely won't come around to telling any of them. If I had infinite time, money, and energy, I would love to make many more comics about them, as they are an interesting lot.

Especially Flame's story I feel is such a heartbreaking tragedy, and thinking about the way it ended saddens me. He's one of my six all-time favorite characters in the series, I wish he could have gone out in a happier, healthier way.

[bluegiragi]

I hate to ask this cause it feels stupid but I dont wanna do a bunch of research on whatever the recent cod mw fandom discourse is,

but I saw the reblog of someone accusing you of supporting people who write sexualized pedophilia and that really is personally my only """"moral"""" with nsfw shit, (I'm a patreon subscriber and ig I just wanna know where my money's going) is THAT true?

i used to follow an artist who, 5-6 months ago made racist art featuring gaz and soap in a slave context, which I didn't like, retweet or interact with in any way. they also made under-age art of ghost soap, which I also didn't interact with . people on twitter called me out yesterday, for retweeting (months before this incident) other art they'd made as evidence I stood by/encouraged/was an avid fan of all these tropes. The art I retweeted wasn't either of these previous examples of art, but one where ghost and soap were sleeping in a bed together, as adults, peacefully. I can't emphasise enough that I have not interacted with this artist at all, for over six months. The callout in question has framed me as a close friend of theirs when, in truth, our total timeline of interactions could probably be counted on one hand, and I haven't interacted with her in so long that I genuinely forgot I was still following her.

The crux of all is this is that I did not unfollow + block this artist earlier on when the racist art was posted months ago, and then I retweeted a fic tagged with "non-con" (ghost gets soap off in a context where he can't really properly consent, they're in front of a crowd of strangers and they have to fuck, but both parties are into each other) written by a friend as I wanted to support their writing.

The pedophile claims are because I retweeted a fandom bingo post that defended loli-con without reading all the squares properly, and then immediately un-retweeted it when I properly read it. All in all, the post was on my account for maybe a few minutes.

The zoophile claims are because people say i support someone who wrote zoophilic fic and called people slurs, and I genuinely don't know who they're talking about there.

The anti-asian racism claims come from the original accusers in the callout thread thinking that I made Horangi's eyes in the monster!AU sensitive as a way of making fun of Asian eyes. The real reason is because he's a cat hybrid in that AU and cats are sensitive to light.

I tried addressing all this in a casual way earlier on in a misguided attempt to sort things out more 'civilly', and responded to an ask talking about my "support" for the artist who drew the slave Gaz art by saying the fanart in question was tone deaf and in poor taste. It wasn't enough for some people, so I'm happy to say it clearly- yes, it was racist, and the reason why I didn't want to be more aggressive is because I didn't want to extend all this mess by throwing this artist directly to the wolves - I genuinely believed them at the time when they said that wasn't that their intention, and think they should've deleted the post at the time, but not unfollowing was a decision that I made. I know now upon reflection that it was naive of me, unwarranted and frankly irresponsible to take a stranger at face value and believe they had good intentions, when the act of not deleting the post in question was evidence of a lack in remorse. In the moment, I'd thought back to my own personal experience with a friend of mine who used an asian slur in my company, who later sincerely apologised and legitimately cleaned up his act after I gave him a second chance. It informed my choice to not unfollow at the time, but there's a difference between someone you know irl for months and a stranger on the internet you've interacted with a few times. I shouldn't have coddled them in my response, and I'm sorry for not treating it with the severity it deserved. It was callous, and stupid, and indicative of internal biases that I ever thought it was a light enough offence to "see through", and I deeply deeply apologise. I promise from the bottom of my heart to do better.

That's everything so far. I didn't unfollow an artist when I absolutely should've, which i'll always strongly regret. I also retweeted a properly-tagged fic on my clearly 18+ nsfw account. I've undone both of those actions now. I hope this can be the end of it.

[vincentbriggs]

@once-a-polecat replied to your post “My uncle's friend asked if I wanted this machine...”:

So do Whites have the same parts availability as Singers? I see them around for a fraction of the price, I’ve just been holding out for a Singer because the parts are relatively easy to source. I’ve seen some really lovely White machines tho! I bet yours is going to look stunning when it’s cleaned up. That cabinet is {chefs kiss}

​I don't know, I haven't looked into it because mine's not missing any pieces and still has all 6 bobbins.

I think that as long as you can verify that it has all the parts, and at least one or two bobbins, it probably won't need any new ones.. ever? The little rubber ring on the bobbin winder and the treadle drive belt degrade after a few decades and need replacing, but you can easily buy those, and everything else is highly unlikely to break from regular use.

The one thing I was worried about was accidentally stripping the screws while taking it apart for cleaning, and there was one screw that I didn't quite have the right size of screwdriver for and it started to look a bit ehhhh so I just didn't take that part off. It wasn't one of the really gunky ones anyways, and I did my best to clean around it, and may try again someday if I get more sizes of screwdriver. So I'd advise making sure you have all the right tools before starting and slathering all the stuck bits well in kroil (what the guy in a video I watched yesterday used) or wd-40 (what I used) or some such loosening thing.

It seems like it's very hard to find new bobbins, especially since there are different styles of shuttle and the bobbins are not interchangeable. Mine's a boat style and my bobbins wouldn't work in a bullet style from a couple years later.

While cleaning this thing it hasn't even crossed my mind to wonder where I'd find replacement parts because, well, what could possibly break? Nearly every single piece is cast iron or steel, and it's already been used SO much that the decals on the bottom are almost completely gone just from the amount of fabric that's run over it.

As mentioned in the previous post it's about 140 years old, was owned by a woman who made her living sewing on it for many decades, and it still works just fine! I haven't got the bobbin winder cleaned up yet and it's still off the cabinet, but I couldn't resist trying it out with just the hand wheel (using one of the bobbins that was wound long before I was born) once I got all the bits back on and yeah! Perfect stitches right away!

As long as it's kept well oiled it's just gonna keep on chugging along indefinitely.

Are you seeing these White machines in person at secondhand stores and such? If you can check to make sure they have bobbins and that no pieces are missing, I'd say grab one! Maybe keep some reference pics of working ones so you can look and see, or even better see if you can make a stitch with it before buying it, and presumably if it can do that even slowly and gunkily then it'll just need cleaning like this one did.

By all accounts they're REALLY good machines! I'm super excited to try mine out properly, and to post more about all the features. It has a lip around the bottom of the needle bar so that if some oil drips down it won't get on your needle! Genius!! Why doesn't every machine ever have that?! It's also fairly quiet AND you can adjust the bobbin tension right in the middle of a seam without disturbing the sewing or taking the shuttle out. Incredible.

The manual for mine says "The Best in the World" on it, and while that's just a normal Victorian thing to say about a product, I'm not about to argue with them. There are a few little things that I like better on Singers, such as the quality of the hinges that hold the machine to the cabinet, and the way the presser foot attaches, but all in all this White VSII is extremely goddamn good so far and I have no doubt that once I get the bobbin winder cleaned up it'll also work perfectly!

So yeah, GET ONE!

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for faking my death to get out of an abusive relationship?

Tw for verbal + mental/psychological abuse and suicide

I used to be in a discord server with some friends, there were about 40 people in it, only around 20 who were actually active. It was a while ago I can't remember. I was in that server for about 4 months.

From the start, people would occasionally get mad at me over something I didn't do. About every month or so someone would start a rumor about me and make the whole server gang up on me, I'd tell them it was false, but everyone would still avoid me for the next couple days.

I never did anything wrong, but I was always the center of the drama, and when I asked one person, R, why, he said he didn't know and that I didn't deserve so much hate.

About a week later R was talking in the vent channel about how I had manipulated him. I DMed him to ask why, and he told me it was because I asked him if he was my friend. I thought it was fucking stupid because it's not manipulative to be paranoid, but I pretended to be sorry because I didn't want him to be mad at me.

The server also had a bot where you could submit anonymous messages, and lots of people would use that feature to make up things about me to ruin my reputation.

After a while I left the server and only stayed in contact with a few people. However, every couple days another person would tell me I'm a monster and gaslight me into thinking I'm a terrible person, and every time I asked why they hated me they didn't give me an answer.

My only real friend, T, showed me some messages from the others after I left the server, and a bunch of people were making up stories about bad things I had done to them, and people who I had never even spoken to were saying that I had abused them and was dangerous.

Once someone told me thay they understood all the things R had said about me weren't true, but said it was still my fault anyway, and even told me that R had done nothing wrong (he lied about me in front of the entire server and is the reason I lost all my friends, and he yelled at me and called me evil because I was suicidal), and then they accused me of faking having amnesia because I had flashbacks.

Eventually, only four of my "friends" hadn't blocked me, and they almost never talked to me. Everyone kept calling me a terrible person because R spread lies about me and everyone else believed him instead of me.

It was to the point where I couldn't go one day without someone sending me death threats or trying to guilt trip me with false information, and I was getting very sever flashbacks of the stuff R had said to me, and I started failing classes because I couldn't focus on anything.

Eventually I had had enough, so I tagged them all in a tumblr post about how I was going to kill myself and then logged out of both that tumblr account and my old discord account forever.

(Also about a month after I had left, I got texts from irl friends, and it turns out someone on the server found the contact info of people I knew in real life just to ask if I was dead or not. And that scared the shit out of me.)

I've left out a lot of details of the abuse because of amnesia. I have a mental disorder which makes it hard to remember things, plus the brain often blocks out traumatic memories, so I'm sorry if some info feels missing.

The only reason I feel like I might be an asshole is because once I was gone, all of them switched targets and started to harass T. They said they hated him for being on my side, and sent him death threats on anon because he was mad at them for killing his friend. They started treating him the same way they treated me, and called him a horrible person but refused to give a reason as to why, and if I had stayed around they would've left him alone.

@should-be-dead (made a sideblog so I get notified when this is posted)

[powdermelonkeg]

Cybertron's Location

Okay so Alpha Centauri is named as Cybertron's star system in multiple continuities.

Easy, right? Just make up a planet for Cybertron to be. Plausible enough that there's one out there we don't know about.

NOPE. I found a spot for it.

The Alpha Centauri system has three stars in it. These are Rigil Kentaurus (α Centauri A), Toliman (α Centauri B), and Proxima Centauri (α Centauri C). I'm going to be calling them by their non-ABC names for distinction.

Alpha Centauri, as we see it, is Rigil Kentaurus and Toliman's lights being indistinguishable from one another. Those two are a binary star system of sun-like stars, so their orbit intersects and they look something like this:

Meanwhile, Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, and orbits at a pretty far distance, like so:

It's still part of the same star system because it still orbits around a common point, but in any planet that orbits Proxima, Rigil and Toliman just look like exceptionally bright stars in its sky.

So the question THEN is, which star does Cybertron orbit?

Proxima's the most obvious candidate. It even has a full planetary system:

Proxima Centauri b is in Proxima's habitable zone (the area where water could feasibly exist as liquid), and it's just a little bigger than Earth.

Generally speaking, Cybertron is depicted as larger than Earth, so let's set that aside for this post.

Proxima Centauri d is a tiny planet that's closer to Proxima and no smaller than a third Earth's size.

Proxima Centauri c is either a super-Earth or a gas dwarf, about 7 times Earth's mass, which is disputed both in its nature and whether or not it's really a planet (it's complicated). Regardless, it's outside the habitable zone.

So it could be Proxima c. That's our default option. The biggest problem is the lack of a habitable zone, because, while giant robots don't necessarily need comfortable heat to live, there's the whole "acid rain" and "sea of rust" deal that'd be hard in a planet that far from its sun.

Granted, sometimes Cybertron is seen hurtling through space without a sun or any of those features to speak of, but I'd like to account for it.

So what about the other two?

Toliman was claimed to have a planet orbiting it in 2012 (α Centauri Bb), but by 2016, it was more or less conceded that said planet didn't exist.

Rigil Kentaurus, on the other hand...

Meet Candidate 1 (α Centauri Ab).

It orbits within Rigil's habitable zone, has a period of about a year, and has a mass between Neptune and half of Saturn, with possible habitable moons.

Does it exist? Maybe.

The thing is about Candidate 1 (yes that is its real name) is that it wasn't observed for long enough to confirm its existence. It COULD be a planet. It could also be dust that got captured, or an artifact of the observational instruments.

THIS is my proposal for Cybertron.

TLDR: There's a (possible) planet that orbits the brightest star of the Alpha Centauri star system in its habitable zone and it's bigger than Earth.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Gamyga Debut: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Hey! I want a turn on the "talking about Subspace Freaks"! Gimme! Gimme! Subspace was like, one of my formative Weird Enemy Experiences! How have I NOT talked about any of these guys yet?!

Gamyga has always been one of my favorite Subspace Emissary enemies, and you wanna know why? It's because I have good taste, that's why! I mean, this is a really visually striking design, if you ask me. The trophy description it has in Brawl describes it as looking "like an avant-garde work of art from some young art-school grad." That's awesome. You KNOW I love things that are weird and abstract and artsy and pretentious! Gamyga is right up my alley!

I'd say this enemy was made for me, but it was more-so made for the purpose of having a really tall enemy that can serve as a road block that can shoot lasers at you from above while you take it apart piece by piece... That is, unless you are brave enough to take out the mask first and watch the whole thing fall apart all at once!

Of course Mod Hooligon likes the abstract, multi-segmented enemy that you can slowly dismantle or alternatively attack the head of to deal with it instantly. So what? I have a type! Don't judge me! I see no difference, love is love!

As I said, this thing is tall, which probably adds to the visual-strikingness, especially when combined with the fact it pops out of the ground without warning when you get near it! No wonder this thing left such an impression on me. I mean, imagine if you were just taking a stroll in the park when this thing appeared in front of you without warning! How would you feel? Gamyga Jumpscared? Or perhaps Gamyga Pleasantly Surprised...?

Well, no, you would feel "in pain" on account of the Gamyga Laser Blasts.

Sometimes, springs or platforms will be placed nearby that let you jump over Gamyga, or alternatively you'll be playing as a character like Kirby or Pit who can just fly over it. Otherwise though, this thing is going to block your path and soak up a ton of damage. But hey, if it's gonna do that, it may as well look good while doing so!

Man, I spent so long talking about the Whole Enchilada that I haven't even gotten around to talking about the Gamyga Bases on their own! That's right! With every Gamyga, you get Five Guys for the price of one, with One (1) mask and four of These Things! Could a Gamyga be considered a form of colonial organism like a siphonophore...? You don't need to sell me on this thing any more than you already have!

Though maybe it'd be better to analyze these as being something mechanical, given their stiff movements, and how every time they wiggle their arms, it sounds like someone moving a pinball flipper. I almost feel this design would be more interesting if it was biological, but there's something enticing about describing these things as being like "a robotic siphonophore". I honestly don't know which interpretation appeals to me more.

The posing of the arms and the hollow facial features almost remind me of the haniwa statues Gyroids are modeled after, but the presence of pupils and Teeth here makes them look considerably freakier, which as far as I'm concerned is only a good thing. Watch out! Gamyga Base can BITE YOU! Not in the game, mind you. I'm talking about real life.

Gamyga was one of the Subspace enemies they decided to give a trophy in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, for some reason. It's not in Smash Run at all, so I guess whoever was deciding on what things to include as trophies in this game just believed Gamyga was an absolutely vital part of Nintendo history that people needed to be aware of.

They were right, for the record.

[detailtilted]

In Search of Supernatural Fans from the Early Years

Hi! I’m looking for the legends who originally recorded old Supernatural convention panels featuring Jared or Jensen, or possibly Misha. See "What I'm Looking For" below. If you know one of them, or if you're a member of a community with people who were in the fandom in those early years, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could let them know about this post. I can be reached at DetailTilted@gmail.com or here on Tumblr.

If you aren’t familiar with my project, see the “Project Background” section below. This is not a low-effort exercise to merely repackage old videos. I’m putting many hours of work into each video to improve their watchability and accessibility. I will always credit my sources unless you wish to remain anonymous.

Even if your videos are on YouTube, I’m likely to have more success upscaling them if I can get the original video files. Thanks to the videos AgtSpooky kindly sent me, I've learned how big of a difference it can make when I have the original files to work with. That's why I’m putting more effort into finding those elusive original video takers.

The problem is that they all seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. Most of their YouTube accounts, LiveJournal accounts, and whatever other accounts I’ve dug up haven’t had any activity in 10-15 years. I’ve left a few messages on some of them, but I doubt they’ll be seen on dormant accounts. I’ve also gone down some crazy and twisted Googling paths trying to find current contact info for them, but without much success. In one case I even messaged the wrong person, who was at least kind enough to reply to the psycho asking for videos to let me know she wasn't the person I'd hoped she was. Oops!

What I’m Looking For

I’ve already finished CHICON 2007, Comic-Con 2008, and CHICON 2008, so I don’t need videos from those events, but I’d be happy to try to upscale your videos for your own collection if you have some you'd like to send me.

Actually, I could use CHICON 2008 Breakfast videos if you have any. I plan to attempt to redo that video either late this year or early next year.

I’ve been trying especially hard to reach people with original video files from either LA 2009 or Asylum 3 (2009), and I’d also be ecstatic to get some from LA 2008.

Any other old con videos you’re willing to share that have Jared or Jensen in them would be awesome. I hope to get to all the old conventions eventually. I haven’t yet defined “old”, so I don’t have a specific cutoff point.

Even if you just have audio files without video, those could be helpful too.

Length doesn't matter. Both long and short videos are welcome. Maybe I won't end up using them all, but the more options I have the better. Even if I don't put your video in my final edit, it would still be used because I always listen to every single video I can find when I'm finalizing my subtitles. Each video sounds at least a little different, and sometimes just hearing the audio in a slightly different way lets me catch a subtitle I'd missed or misheard.

Also, just to be clear, it isn’t necessarily my intent to exclude Misha. I’ve watched and enjoyed many of his convention videos and I liked Castiel for the most part, especially in the earlier seasons. I’m just not obsessed with Misha like I am with Jared and Jensen, and these videos do take quite a lot of work, so I’ve been putting my energy where my greatest interests lie. I’ll absolutely be including him when he’s in panels with Jared and/or Jensen, and in the future I may consider doing some of his solo panels.

So if you have original video files of Misha's solo panels that you’d like to send me, I’d be happy to add them to my stockpile for future possible use. If your videos turn out to be mostly complete, and if they upscale easily, then I might go ahead and do his panel at the same time I do the other panels from the same convention. If they'll take more effort to work with, I’ll probably skip them for now, but I may come back and tackle them if/when I run out of old Jared and Jensen videos to work with.

For any con videos you send me, regardless of whether I use them or not, I’d be happy to try to upscale them and send them back to you for your collection. I can’t always get things to upscale, so I can’t promise success, but I’ll definitely try.

Project Background - Enhanced Edition Con Videos

You can find my videos on my YouTube channel. (If you're already familiar with my project, skip to the next section -- there's nothing new to see here.)

I started this project in December 2023 to enhance old convention videos. My goal is to make them easier on the eyes and more accessible to both new and old fans from around the world. The videos on YouTube from that time can be difficult both to watch and to understand due to a combination of the older technology used to record them, the difficult recording conditions the fans were working with, and the lack of subtitles that make any sense.

I’m enhancing the videos as follows:

Visual Improvements: I’m upscaling the videos if possible, making color corrections if needed, and adding some slight stabilization to reduce the jitteriness. The end result is far from perfect because there’s only so much that current technology can do, but it's noticeably improved if you compare it to the originals.

Subtitles: I’m adding good, color-coded, English subtitles that can be turned on or off through YouTube’s CC button. The color-coding makes it more clear who's saying what when multiple people are speaking, and YouTube can auto-translate them into other languages to improve the accessibility.

Multiple Sources: If one video has gaps in it, then I'll try to find another that I can edit in to fill those gaps so the end result is as complete as possible. If I have more than one source that captured the same portion of the event, then I'll cut to whichever video I think had the best view of the action. In a few cases I’ve added a split screen with two different videos showing simultaneously so we can see action that's taking place in two separate areas. For example, when Jared and Jensen are on opposite sides of the stage. (There were also the infernal talking head bubbles on my Comic-Con 2008 video which nearly made me throw in the towel, but taught me a lot. 😅)

Extra Content for Context: These older videos don’t take up the full width of a modern video frame, so I’ve taken advantage of the extra space to display some still images with text to add extra context for many of the things they discuss. Some things are a lot funnier, or at least a lot more relevant, when you know exactly what they’re talking about. I clarify Supernatural episode references and pop culture references among other things. Sometimes I’ve also inserted short video clips, usually just a few seconds’ worth, if I thought it would add worthwhile clarity or entertainment to the topic at hand.

Current Project Status

If anyone has been wondering how I’m doing on my current video and what’s next… I’m almost done with the last video from CHICON 2008, which was Jensen’s solo panel. I should be ready to publish it on YouTube this Friday, May 24. I plan to use the same schedule as last time and put the Tumblr post up the following Tuesday when it’s a little more likely to be noticed here.

The next sequential conventions are LA 2009 and Asylum 2009, but I haven’t had much success in my attempts to upscale the available videos. If I were to work with what I have now, I know I could turn out something better than what’s on YouTube today, but the end result wouldn’t be nearly as good as what I might be able to achieve if I can get some original videos to work with. So I think it’s more logical to skip over these conventions for now and give it some time to see if I get any responses, in hope of a better end result.

I do intend to come back to the skipped conventions eventually, even if nobody sends me anything. Once I run out of conventions for which I can upscale the videos, if I still don't have anything better to work with for the ones I skipped, I’ll just do the best I can with what’s available. Even if I can't upscale, I can still do color corrections and stabilization, plus the subtitles and extra content. Some of these panels are split up into a bunch of very short videos, so it would also add value if I can combine them into something more sequential and cohesive. (I found 130 videos from the Jared and/or Jensen panels at LA 2009, and most of them were under 2 minutes long. 🤣) I don’t know if there’s enough footage to cover the entire panels seamlessly, but I’m itching to get my hands on that jigsaw puzzle of videos to try to make sense out of them.

So… the next videos I intend to work on will be from Vancouver 2009. This is one of the conventions that AgtSpooky attended and sent me videos for and they upscaled very well. Her breakfast video had already found its way onto YouTube, but wasn't properly credited. Her main panel videos aren't on YouTube as far as I could find, so that version may be new to newer fans. I'm only just starting to play around with upscaling the other sources out there, but my first attempt at the other main Breakfast source came out well. Both breakfast videos were taken from extreme opposite angles, so that should provide some useful editing opportunities. I’d still love to get more videos of this event if anyone has them.

If you made it this far, I am in awe. Sorry for putting this wall of text on your screen! 😅

[lindwurmkai]

hey, have you heard that pillowfort has ✨ drafts ✨ now? (as in, the ability to save your posts as drafts.) they're still working on the queue feature (update: it's done!), but drafts are a big step forward!

in case you missed it so far, pillowfort is like a cross between tumblr and dreamwidth/livejournal, with a simplified dashboard reminiscent of old school tumblr and some classic livejournal features such as communities, threaded comments, and the ability to make individual posts followers-only or mutuals-only.

what are communities? basically, central hubs for posts about any subject you want that, unlike hashtags, can be moderated. they may have rules, such as "[subject matter] must be tagged" for example. you can post directly to a community or reblog existing posts to it!

since the site is currently experiencing some financial trouble, i thought i'd help out by spreading the word once again.

edit: the fundraiser was a success! crisis averted! i knew we could do it :D

why you should give pillowfort a chance:

no ads

no venture capitalist funding

no spying on the users

completely free to use except for optional premium features

nsfw is allowed except for sexual depictions of minors. if you're unsure what exactly that means, their tos may help

communities and the privacy controls mentioned above are excellent features

great community, low drama compared to other websites (so far)

the site's features themselves encourage genuine connection and good-faith conversation over endless "discourse"

every blog can automatically be filtered by original posts only or reblogs only

reasons not to join:

if you enjoy algorithmic social media. there is no algorithm at all

if you want to post or look at machine-generated art. they're still finalising the wording and personally i hope some exception will be made for models trained on ethically sourced images, but basically an anti-AI rule is in the works (update: finished!)

if you cannot live without reblog additions (reblogging with comment). all discussions on a pillowfort post take place in the comments section, and only your own followers see your tags. this has its pros and cons for sure! a similar feature to scratch that itch may be implemented in the future, but it will never be exactly like on tumblr.

if you need everything to be an app. the website works fine in a mobile browser and a progressive web app will hopefully be released soon (basically it's like an app in your browser and on mobile these can be added to the homescreen like real apps i think? they have push notifications!), but there's not going to be a native app available through official app stores due to the restrictions of those stores.

other factors to consider:

yes, the userbase is still small. depending on your interests, activity may be very slow. but we can change that! and on the plus side, reblogging your post to a community is a good way to easily get more eyes on it; way more effective than simply adding tags imo

the site culture is a bit different than on tumblr. many people read everything that's been posted since the last time they were online and don't follow more users/communities than they can keep up with. it's still somewhat lacking in shitposts and heavy on "essays" but don't be afraid to post whatever 😅

there are no blog themes like we have them on tumblr as yet, but you can customise your blog's colours and use html/insert links and images in your blog description

likes literally do nothing except to let OP know you enjoyed their post. you can't look at a list of all your likes. beware!

the staff is small and development is slow. some highly anticipated planned features other than the aforementioned queue include: - multi-account management - dashboard filters/reading lists - post bookmarking (since likes don't work that way) but we don't know how soon any of those will be implemented.

there is a user-developed browser extension (well, a userscript) called tassel available that adds additional features much like tumblr's beloved xkit :)

✨ okay, so how do i sign up? ✨

if you're interested but confused by the sign-up process or still under the impression that you need to pay to sign up (false), i'll put some clarifications and invite codes under the read more below. plus a note on donating, premium features, the paypal issue etc.

in a nutshell:

it's free

signing up without an invite code is possible, but you may have to wait a short while - supposedly less than an hour atm. just submit your email to the waitlist

if you don't feel like waiting, you can either use an invite code from an existing user or pay $5 to sign up instantly

every user gets plenty of invite codes and we're all willing to hand them out at the drop of a hat. they're really not hard to come by

some invites to get you started (just click the link):

invite 1 ▪ invite 2 ▪ invite 3 ▪ invite 4 ▪ invite 5

invite 6 ▪ invite 7 ▪ invite 8 ▪ invite 9 ▪ invite 10

invite 11 ▪ invite 12 ▪ invite 13 ▪ invite 14 ▪ invite 15

invite 16 ▪ invite 17 ▪ invite 18 ▪ invite 19 ▪ invite 20

i'll try to periodically check if any have been used and cross those out.

...paypal issue?

ok so paypal doesn't like working with sites that allow nsfw. as a result, you need a credit card in order to donate to pillowfort, buy one of those insta-registration keys, or subscribe to premium features*. i personally happen to have a credit card and would be willing to help out anyone who trusts me enough to send the money to me via paypal, but i realise chances are only my friends will do this.

some users are currently organising various activities for the purpose of letting people who only have paypal contribute to the site's survival. it's not super relevant for new users and won't get you access to premium features, but i thought i'd mention it anyway in case someone loves the concept of the site so much they want to support it immediately. a fundraising community has been created to collect posts of that nature!

*premium features are strictly limited to two categories of things:

fun little extras that no one truly needs

higher image upload limits, because obviously big images take up bandwidth and are therefore a reason for increased costs

you will never need to pay for vital accessibility features or anything of the sort. :)

[putschki1969]

📢UPDATE📢"sprinter" LIVE AUDIO

Thank you to everyone who voted in my poll and left a comment in the reply section of my previous post on the matter. I was intrigued when @gslin sent me a link to this audio but I had no idea it would spark so much interest.

I received two very enlightening messages today that provided some substantial evidence. With the added information, I now feel confident that I can clarify the situation. This will hopefully clear up some of the confusion.

The first lovely follower (who would like to remain anonymous) sent me their personal recording of the live in question. They have been a fan for a very long time and got the chance to attend the concert back in 2008. First up, a big apology. I wish I could post the recording but they asked me not to share it so I will respect that. However, I've been given permission to talk about it so here's what I've been able to find out〈(•ˇ‿ˇ•)-→

Just in case you are wondering, there's no doubt in my mind that my follower's bootleg is legit. You can tell immediately that this was recorded from within the audience. There's clapping all around and the music is considerably louder than the vocals. You can still make out the song pretty well though. None of the voices sound off or out of place. It's blended together pretty well without losing the distinct vocal colours of the individual singers. Which is why I know that this can only be from the YKL Vol.#2 front act performance since you can clearly make out Maya during her "bokura ni dekiru koto wa tada" line and some other parts. From what we know, no other live performances of "sprinter" have featured Maya.

For the past hour or so, I've been listening to different versions of the song on repeat, mostly focusing on the YouTube audio and the newly acquired bootleg. While the bootleg is of admittedly quite low-quality, there are two things that very clearly set it apart from the version on YouTube. Those two obvious differences make it absolutely impossible for the recordings to be from the same live performance. And since we've already established that Maya was not present for any other "sprinter" performances, we can easily conclude that the YouTube audio is fake.

Difference #1: Absence of the infamous guitar riff. @octopusofpaint already mentioned this in the reply section of my original post. The YouTube audio has a pretty blunt opening whereas the bootleg recording starts with the guitar riff we are all so familiar with. It's hard to know how audios are cut/edited so I'd be willing to let this slide if it weren't for the next difference.

Difference #2: In the authentic bootleg recording of YKL Vol.#2, one of the final lines, "naite sakende kiete yuku bokura wa", is sung by no other than (!!)Keiko(!!). That is very surprising since it is usually not one of her lines. Look up any random official live performance of "sprinter", starting as early as 2009 on the NHK program Pop Up Japan, you'll absolutely never hear Keiko sing that line. You know who has always been in charge of it since becoming a three-person-unit? Wakana!! Now let's listen closely to the YouTube audio again, shall we? Whose voice do we hear? I'm giving you a hint! It's not Keiko's! But it's not Wakana's either!! Surprise, surprise, it's Hikaru's!! And do you know where Hikaru sings this line? Only in the studio version (and most recently during Kalafina covers at YKL but with a notably different voice so I won't take that into account here). And you know what else is very specific to the studio version? The lyrical cold open without a guitar riff. This leads me to believe that the studio version was almost certainly one of the main sources for this awkward mash-up on YouTube.

Now onto the second message I received today. This time from my lovely follower @concretebadger. Thank you so much! Many of you speculated that the 2010 live performance might have served as an inspiration for this supposed "unreleased" audio track. And I think you were not wrong about this. While I do believe that the studio version might have been the "main" source, I do think that the creator needed to add something else to make it sound more like a live performance. This is where the 2010 Red Moon version comes in. @concretebadger actually took the time to mash up the two tracks for a comparison and the result makes it quite clear that the two audios are eerily similar. Check it out for yourself〈(•ˇ‿ˇ•)-→

If you use the studio version and Red Moon live version as base layers and then add a few tweaks here and there to distort certain sections in order to make them appear more raw and unedited, you basically end up with that mysterious track that's currently floating around on YouTube. The previously mentioned line "naite sakende kiete yuku bokura wa" might actually be a good example for the layering/mashup of those two sources. While you can definitely identify Hikaru's vocals during that part in the YouTube audio (indicating the usage of the studio version as base), there seems to be a slightly different texture to her voice that makes it sound almost ethereal. This is most likely due to Wakana's singing of the line being added to the mix. It's very subtle and Hikaru's vocals are certainly more prominent but it's worth mentioning.

Anyway. Mystery solved. At least for me. Maybe you still have some thoughts on it. Feel free to share them below.

[xanderisbraindead]

Im gonna try to switch to a flip phone

Ive wanted to do this, or at least unplug a little from my smart phone for a while, but I always cave and reinstall my apps and start using my phone again. My screen time was 10 hours a day average last week and that is absolutely embarrassing to me. To keep myself accountable, I'm gonna list my reasons why I wanna do this.

Mental health: High smartphone usage is being linked to higher rates of mental health especially among teens. Social media and the constant bombardment of information is very stimulating on the mind and thats turning out to not be very good for you.

Attention Span: My attention span is kinda dogshit... I catch myself opening my phone to scroll social media while my sims game is loading WHILE I'm watching youtube...

Dumb shit: I see a lot of dumb shit (mainly on twt and insta) and it makes me so angry but then I catch myself wanting more and more of that. I know I have anger issues and for myself, I shouldn't be purposefully doing that. Internet discourse takes up too much of my brain space to where I'll talk about it in real life...

General dependence: It's just a piece of metal, why does it feel like a limb I need to have on me at all times? I don't need to fall asleep and wake up with this thing in my hands.

Oversharing: I overshare a lot to the point I get embarassed about it. It's a little harder to do this when you're using your computer because you have to be intentional about your internet use. You have to sit down and some features are limited on web (ie insta stories) so you can't just say anything.

I want to appreciate other things: As I said, I spend an average of 10 hours a day on my phone and I feel like I'm wasting my time. I don't feel like im doing enough in my days because most of it is going into staring into a screen. I want to read more and remember to flip my compost and do more things in a day than sit hunched into a screen.

Physical health: I have bad eyesight and a bad back. Staring into a screen is not helping either of those.

Compulsive shopping: I have got some cool stuff, but again, I want to be more intentional in my actions, including shopping. I've found myself spending money a little too loosely lately, and I'd like to think my purchases through more.

There's probably more, but thats all I can think of right now. I'm gonna make a big shift tonight and sleep without my phone in my bed. That sounds silly to make a big deal of, but ive done it for maybe 4 years now, even when I was on vacation last month.

So yeah, thats my new adventure: Beating the addiction to my phone.

[idyllcy]

from one admirer to another : fried?

pairing: leon kennedy x reader || masterpost: from one admirer to another

synopsis: from one admirer to another, an online penpal service, allows for two people with common interests to write to each other without ever revealing their actual address! Luckily for both you and Leon, you get matched up! What do eggs and Christmas even have in common anyway? sure hope it's that modeling business and NOT that Ada Wong addiction.

featuring: reader as scrambled eggs // leon as christmas

Dear scrambled eggs,

Happy Paris Fashion Week. I'm walking this year (finally???) but not the same show as Ada. I ended up cast by a different brand than her, which makes sense since we don't exactly share the same genre of face. Also, she's in Paris for shoots while I'm here to walk. Women and men's fashion week aren't even the same week. I found that a little sad. Also, my agent got me on some sort of makeup from my makeup artist and somehow he's made me look 29 like hello?? I am a literal child ?? (I'm not. but im still in my early twenties).

My letter this time is going to be short (again) mainly because I need to mail this internationally and I'd like for you to send me a letter to my airbnb (the host gave me the keys).

I speak Spanish and literally no French, so when a lady in a shop was talking to me I could only shake my head and tell her no in Spanish and I still have no idea what she wanted. I guess we'll never know.

Right. The last walk was alright. I got to walk with the model, but I got a death glare from their friend bc I swear I felt my soul slip out of my body. Like, sorry your friend is hot??? Sorry I'm no better??? :((( What's it take for a guy to score a date these days? I ALSO did not get their number again. Can you believe that? I turned around and they disappeared into thin air! AUGH.

Anyways, I'm sending you one of the luxury-brand paris postcards I received as a small gift. Hope you like it.

What are you up to the month that I'm stuck in Paris? Christmas

Leon finishes walking his show, backstage with a handful of models he's met here and there, mainly sticking with the group of raccoon models. Everyone's sharing the same Airbnb. It should sound like hell, except most people have their own room, and somehow it's the greatest blessing on earth because he knows Ada would ruin his life if he even thought of asking her about you.

His letter is mailed out first thing, shitty translator in hand as he's told Reverso is the better of translators for French, and he gets it mailed out with a quick wink from the old lady at the post office. He's sure she did it because he's on the more attractive side and not the fact that he's sending a letter to his penpal like some middle school boy. He should get over that crush on you too.

He starts his last walk of this fashion week, meeting new people to have a quick talk to, adding private accounts and getting to know a handful of other Ada fans at his last walk. It's the only one where he even gets to see Ada, and her walk is... no joke. Hatred be dammed that woman can strut. He wonders if there's another universe where he didn't accidentally get shot through the heart the first time he met her best friend.

The more Leon paid attention, the more he seemed to understand that one of the main reasons your contract got off so easy was because Ada had requested it. Some people even call you a result of nepotism. Well, not that you seemed to like the job all that much. Dare he say it, to you, modeling was just a side hustle.

How nice it must be to be in a position like that.

When the models finish up at the show, Leon's told he has a shoot the next day, and then a handful of shows scattered nearby. They're making him go to Spain for a handful of days for a photoshoot with Ashley, and then he's practically free for the rest of the time. He's sure it's because his manager's girlfriend wants to hang around the city. Leon's more than fine with staying in the city. It'll be a good break.

Shame though, he misses Sunny.

prev letter : masterlist : next letter

[artemis-entreri]

Hey y'all! As some of you have noticed, I'm not really in the fandom anymore, so I might as well make it official with this post. There wasn't anything that caused it, I just became more interested in other things. I made a Redbubble with some of my Artemis Entreri/Jarlaxle/Jartemis art that you can buy as merch, which includes the above images as well as some others:

You can find my other art in this tag: My LoD Art

If you like my art enough to follow me into other franchises, here's a link to all of my art accounts.

I'm still happy to try to help with Forgotten Realms and Legend of Drizzt questions, but I will no longer be keeping up to date about either, so you'll mostly be tapping into my knowledge about past stuff. In LoD's case, it seems that the book series has come to an end, as there doesn't appear to be any contracts for new trilogies presently, but who knows if that'll change in the future. For FR, your best bet is to get information from the sources directly, as that was what I'd use to stay updated. I recommend these places for asking questions:

Forgotten Realms Wiki: Hands down the best resource for anything Forgotten Realms related. Comprehensive and thorough, it is maintained by a small dedicated group of fans, and it's so good that official FR creatives reference it.

Candlekeep Forum: While the layout is certainly retro, it continues to contain the most knowledgeable and passionate Realms afficionados.

Greenwood's Grotto Discord Server: This is Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms', official Discord server. It is curated by a passionate group of Greenwood fans and produces FR content regularly featuring the archmage himself.

Forgotten Realms Discord Server: Smaller and less active than Greenwood's Grotto, but less likely that your question will get scrolled past without anyone noticing it.

Forgotten Realms Reddit: I've not used this particular sub much myself, but the large member base means that it's probably a good resource for crowdsourcing answers.

I still have a lot of WIPs of both fics and art in this fandom that I may finish up and post later, it's hard to say. I guess we'll just have to see!

[zoeythebee]

How To Make Your Code Actually Good

This is about programming structure and organization. Resources online are very sparse, and usually not super helpful. Which was unhelpful to me who was struggling with code organization.

So I wanted to make this, which will explain how best to structure your code based on what I've learned. What I lay out here may not work for everyone but it works well in my experience.

These resources were very helpful for me

Handmade Hero - https://youtu.be/rPJfadFSCyQ

Entity Component System by The Cherno - https://youtu.be/Z-CILn2w9K0

Game Programming Patterns - https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/

So, let's get started.

So first we need to cover a few terms. These are Decoupling, and Abstraction.

Decoupling

So, when we code there is only so much information we can keep inside of our brain at one time. If we kept all of our code in a single file, we would have to keep in mind every single line of code we have written thus far. Or, more likely, we would actively ignore certain lines that aren't relevant to whichever problem we are trying to solve. And miss possible errors by skipping over lines we didn't know were important.

This is bad, what we need to do is decouple our code. Decoupling just means to break something up.

We need to split our code into smaller more manageable pieces so that we can focus better on it without cluttering up our brain with useless information.

For example lets take into account a basic game loop

int main(){

bool running = true;

// Game init code

while(running){

// Game update code

}

// Game exit code

return 0;

}

Obviously in a real example this would be much larger. So an extremely good start would be moving chunks of code into different functions.

int main(){

bool running = true;

gameInit();

while(running){

gameUpdate();

}

gameExit();

}

Now, when we are working on loading the game, we shouldn't have to think about what's happening in the rest of the app. This may take moving some code around inorder to truly seperate it from the rest of the code. But it is a very worthwhile effort.

Abstraction

Abstraction is when we take complex pieces of code and put them inside of a function or structure to make that feature easier to use. Or to hide tiny details that would be a waste of time to type out over and over.

For example programming languages are abstracted away from Assembly. Which of course is a thin abstraction away from machine code.

Now abstraction is great, computer science is practically built ontop of abstracting away small details. but the point I'd like to make here is that you can go too crazy with abstraction.

If you are making a gui application, and you need to create a new button. And to do so you need to run a function that returns a new class that you pass into another function that returns a pointer to an app state that you use with the original class to interact with a gui state that takes in a general state class and a position.

You have abstracted too far away to actually getting that button on screen. And due to all the hoops your code has to go through you will face major performance hits as well. And nobody likes a slow program.

Generally my rule of thumb is one layer of abstraction. Obviously for really complex stuff like graphics more abstraction is required. But for our own apps we should strive to as little abstraction as possible. Which makes code more clear and easier to debug, if a little more verbose at times.

Note that breaking things up into other files and functions are pretty cheap abstraction/performance wise. But the number of steps your code has to go through is what's important. Like the number of objects you have to go through, and functions you have to run.

Now these are good general tips for programming. There are also other good tips like consistent naming conventions, and consistent function names and argument patterns. But that's all pretty basic good-programming-things-you-should-do.

Now when I was learning this sort of stuff, I got told a lot of the stuff I just put above. But the biggest question I had was "but where do I PUT all of my code?"

As projects grow in complexity, figuring out sane ways to organize your structures and code logic in a way that makes sense is pretty tricky.

So to kinda crystallize how I think about code organization is basically.

Pick a pattern, and stick to it

A design pattern is just a piece of code structure you repeat. And there are lots of smart people that have come up with some pretty smart and flexible patterns. Like entity component systems, and state machines.

But sometimes you have to figure out your own, or modify existing patterns. And the best way to do that is to not plan at all and jump right in.

Do a rough draft of your app just to get a general idea of what you are going to need your pattern to support. And you may have to build up a pattern, find out it sucks, and start over. The trick is to fail fast and fail often.

Grabbing some paper and trying to diagram out how you want your app to flow is also handy. But getting your hands dirty with your keyboard is the best.

Now if you are new to programming, the above method probably wont work the first time. The only way to really learn code architecture is by building apps, and when you are first starting out many of your apps are probably falling apart early on. But the more you build these apps the more you learn. The bigger the apps you make, the more you learn.

But there is something that's also very helpful.

Steal somebody else's pattern!

So I can explain this best with an example. I make games, and the complexity I have to deal with is having multiple game objects that can all interact with each other fluidly. Enemies, the player, collectibles, moving platforms. This is a pretty tricky task, and I wound up picking two patterns to follow.

The first one is a modified version of a State Machine that I call a Scene Manager.

A scene is essentially a structure that contains an init, update, and exit function and can store data relating to the scene. And I have a Scene Manager that I can dynamically load and unload scenes with. So if I need to create a main menu or a pause menu it's as easy as loading a scene.

For my actual game scene I chose to use an Entity Component System. I linked a video above that explains it very well. To summarize, an ECS use entities. Entities can contain data called components. And systems will grab any entity that has the required components and will modify that entity. For example a Move system will operate on any entities that have the Position and Velocity components.

And this has worked very well for my game. Now this doesnt solve every problem I had. I still had to fill in the gaps with code that doesnt 100% match the pattern. After all there isnt any pattern that will fix all possible issues a codebase needs to solve. For example to delete an entity I have to add it by reference to an array where it is deleted AFTER the game is done updating.

Elsewhere I used a bit of abstraction to make creating entities easier. For example i created a class that stores methods to create entities. Whereas before I was manually adding components to empty structures.

Decoupling entity creation meant I could focus on more important things. I also deal with window resizing and rendering in a layer outside of the scene. In a way that would affect all Scenes.

An Example

In the game I'm making, the most complex part of the program so far is the player update code. Which makes sense for a platformer. So the issue is simple, it's getting too long. But the other issue is things are in places that don't immediately make sense. And it's all packed inside a single function.

You can view the code as it is now here.

Our goal is to decouple the code into pieces so that it takes up less brain space. And to reorganize the function so it's layout makes more immediate sense.

So my first step is to figure out a logical way to organize all of this code. My plan is to split it up by player actions. This way all of the jump logic is inside it's own function. All of the shooting logic is in it's own function etc.

Here is the code after implimenting the pattern.

Notice how this decouples the code into more manageable pieces so we can work on it better. Also note how I am still keeping one layer of abstraction from the player update code. I also put it in a seperate file to slim down the systems file.

So the method I implemented here of observing a problem, coming up with a pattern, and implementing it. That at a larger scale is how to overall structure a good code base. Here in this small instance I found a working solution first try. But for more complex code you may have to try multiple different patterns and solutions before you find what works best.

And that's all I have to say. I hope it made sense, and I hope it helps you. Let me know if I should change anything. Thanks for reading!

[sageistri]

https://www.tumblr.com/sageistri/753740399764537344/httpsxcombillionduostatus1803352268810625399?source=share

Isn't that just a jikooker hoping it happens? No factual basis for this I think, it's just them wishing for it to be true

Just like yoominers did last year and they started acting shady when yoongi wasn't featured on smf pt2 or on the album.

I didn't see anyone of them say "and when the golden tracklist drops and we see the ft Jimin" because they know that wasn't happening but they'll never miss an opportunity to make jimin's projects about jk.

Check the quotes of the muse tweets on BTS and bighit accounts and you'll see a few jikookers asking about the travel show. The level of shipper brain rot that doesn't allow you to enjoy any content without thinking of your ship.

I want to see features on the album but hopefully not any member of BTS because 1) I don't see him being featured on their projects 2) there's way too many talented artists out there for him to limit himself to bts members 3) the discourse it's gonna create... If it's yoongi or Joon their stans are going to make it into him needing their help, if it's yoongi or jk shippers are going to be insufferable, I it's hobi or tae their stans are going to hate on him for it and it will be more trouble than it's worth because those two can't do anything for him anyways, again if it's jk jjks are going to go with their narrative of Jimin "leeching" off him because he's "Uber successful". I'm gonna stream regardless if a BTS member is featured but I'd rather not have to do that lol. I'd prefer one release where I don't have to argue with any of those stans over their fave's contribution to his album. With jk being credited on letter, rm on like crazy and the whole smf pt2 vs yoongi's smf discourse, I'd just rather not.

And a member being involved in muse in some capacity is a legit worry because we know how Jimin moves when it comes to his members. It's just annoying how him working with them can never just be as is, there's always some form of negativity attached and it's exhausting.