#like none of the tutorials which a lot of them is very similar worked

[blindecho6]

Literaly me today

[goodgifswithfreetoolschallenge]

Do you wanna join me (@scoobydoodean) in trying to make gifs of the highest quality possible using only free tools, with workflows as painless as possible??? Here you can find gif-making tutorials, software tests, and comparison and example sets of gifs made using free tools!

Navigation

Very very basic "How a Gif Works"

Best Practices for Quality/Best Visual Result When Uploading Gifs to Tumblr (regardless of gif-making method)

How To Reduce The File Size of A Gif

Sourcing Video Files

Full tool list on Google Sheets with filters

TUTORIAL 1 | RECOLORED GIFS

Making GIFs with DaVinci Resolve and FFmpeg or Gifski

LINK | EXAMPLE SETS

This is how I usually make my gifs. I find it to be the most efficient and most versatile (in terms of coloring, captioning, clipping) of all the methods I've tried for making quality gif sets. This method also does not require the traditional process of screencapping a scene frame by frame which to me is a huge bonus.

Operating systems: Mac, Windows, and Linux. DaVinci Resolve is a pretty high power software though and it does have hardware minimum requirements.

Needed software: DaVinci Resolve and either FFmpeg or Gifski (GUI or CLI version).

Difficulty: Moderate

Time: 🐢🐢 _ _ _ (example set took me 17 minutes)

Input: video files

Competencies: Some general familiarity with video editors and using your computer's shell helps but isn't required. Mac and Windows users: There is a workaround that allows you to avoid the command line. Familiarity with recoloring tools is great but not required.

TUTORIAL 2 | NON-RECOLORED GIFS

Giphy Capture and Gifski

LINK | EXAMPLE SETS

If you are on Mac and just getting into Gif-Making, this is a great way to learn the ropes with what is probably the most intuitive gif-making tool I have ever used. I would just recommend giffing scenes that take place outdoors or in well-lit rooms since you can't make color adjustments.

Operating systems: Mac

Needed software: Giphy Capture and Gifski (GUI version)

Quality potential: High for non-recolored sets! Watch out for odd frame rate effects.

Difficulty: Easy AF

Time: 🐢 _ _ _ _

Input: Any video you can play on your screen that doesn't have screencapture protections in place.

Competencies: None. Very very beginner friendly.

TUTORIAL 3 | RECOLORED GIFS

Pure FFmpeg: Making GIFs with Command Line Scripts

LINK | EXAMPLE SETS

If you love command lines, this one might be fun to you—and YES—you do get visuals. Command line haters: check out Tutorial 4 for a similar process but in a GUI tool.

Operating systems: Mac, Windows, and Linux

Software needed: FFmpeg

Difficulty: Advanced as far as gif-making, but this is actually a good first shell scripting project in my opinion if you've ever wanted to learn how. (I learned a lot about how my command line works while making this tutorial!) For people familiar with bash scripts, I think this will probably be easy!

Time: 🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢

Input: Video files OR frame by frame screencaps if you have them already.

Competencies: General familiarity with your computer's shell (Powershell on Windows, Terminal on Mac) helps a lot! I will try to make it as easy as possible to follow.

NOTE (for Command Line Aficionados): If you are interested in expanding on/improving this tutorial, or making a video -> GIFs version instead of videos -> frames -> GIFs, this is very possible to do. There is also a wealth of troubleshooting help and community-based example scripts for FFmpeg available online through r/FFMPEG and Stack Exchange, and almost all visual filter and complex filter options can be used on any input/output combination in FFmpeg.

TUTORIAL 4 | RECOLORED GIFS

Making Gifs for Free With PhotoScape X

LINK | EXAMPLE SETS

I really like this method as far as the quality you can achieve, and it's pretty easy to use. I plan to try to make more sets with this method later.

Operating systems: Mac and Windows

Quality potential: High

Software needed: PhotoScape X; a frame by frame screencapoing method (See FRAME BY FRAME SCREENCAPPING METHODS/TOOLS section below for a list of methods for this that I've catalogued).

Difficulty: Moderate.

Time: 🐢🐢🐢 _ _

Input: Frame by frame screencaps.

Competencies: General familiarity with photo editors helps but is not required to follow this tutorial.

TUTORIAL 5 | RECOLORED GIFS

Making Quality Gifs For Free On iOS and Android

LINK

If you don't have a computer, just an Android or iOS device, you can still make GIFs! This ones for you!

Operating systems: iOS and Android

Software needed: VITA and a video-to-gif utility or app (ezgif.com or Better Gif Maker shortcut (iOS only))

Time: 🐢🐢 _ _ _

Input: Video files

Difficulty: Moderate.

Requirements: General familiarity with photo editors helps but is not required to follow this tutorial.

EXTERNAL TUTORIAL 1 | NON-RECOLORED GIFS

u/ChemicalOle's "GIMP Gifs 101"

LINK | EXAMPLE SETS

This tutorial is 8 years old. See External Tutorial 2 for a newer tutorial or see NOTE 1 below.

Operating systems: Mac*, Windows, and Linux

Needed software: GIMP with AnimStack; FFmpeg; VLC Media Player

Quality potential: Untested (tutorial needs to be updated)

Difficulty: Untested (largely—I haven't tested captioning with AnimStack yet)

Time: 🐢🐢🐢 _ _

Input: Frame by frame screencaps.

Competencies: Some general familiarity with GIMP and your computer's shell helps but isn't required to follow the tutorial.

LIMITATIONS: 1) Frame by Frame gif-making methods can take up a lot of space on your drive in the interim. 2) A community-contributed GIMP plugin called AnimStack is required. Plugins could break after a GIMP update or developers could simply abandon them at any time.

____

NOTE 1: If you want to try this tutorial, note that 1) There is no longer any need to install GAP separately. It is now part of your regular GIMP install. 2) Filters > Animation > Optimize (for GIF) can be used in place of the color index step. 3) *Author states the tutorial is Linux and Windows, but I see no reason here in 2023 that you can't also follow this tutorial on Mac.

NOTE 2, for Mac users: You may not have to do this, but I had to manually create the scripts folder on Mac to place animstack.scm there. If you need to make the scripts folder, you should place it within the Library/Application Support/GIMP/2.10 folder.

EXTERNAL TUTORIAL 2 | RECOLORED GIFS

DekaythePunk's "How to Make Gifs On GIMP"

LINK

Dekaythepunk has made many tutorials on using GIMP to make gifs and graphics using special coloring techniques and edits. You can find all of their tutorials here.

Operating systems: Windows, Mac*, and Linux.

Needed software: GIMP with AnimStack, G'MIC-QT or McGIMP*, and Layers Effects plugins; a way to screencap frame by frame.

Difficulty: Untested (I'm working on it :D).

Time: 🐢🐢🐢 _ _

Input: Frame by frame screencaps.

Competencies: Some general familiarity with GIMP is helpful but isn't required to follow the tutorial.

LIMITATIONS: 1) Frame by frame gif-making methods can take up a lot of space on your drive in the interim. 2) Community-contributed GIMP plugins are required. These plugins could break after a GIMP update or developers could simply abandon them at any time. (Mac users: also see NOTE 1).

*NOTES (for Mac users):

A G'MIC-QT installer is no longer officially supported for Mac by the makers of the plugin. However, you should be able to install McGIMP on Mac which includes G'MIC, and will also find and use your AnimStack scripts from regular GIMP (McGIMP page | Homebrew install).

You may not have to do this, but I had to manually create the scripts folder on Mac to place animstack.scm there. If you need to make the scripts folder, you place it within the Library/Application Support/GIMP/2.10 folder.

I installed GIMP, then added my AnimStack scripts to GIMP and ensured they worked, then installed XQuartz, then installed McGIMP via Homebrew (you can also just use the provided installer).

EXTERNAL TUTORIAL 3 | RECOLORED GIFS

Lacebird's "How to Make A GIF With Photopea"

LINK

Theoretically, you should be able to use this tutorial to make nice GIFs even on a Chromebook.

Operating systems: Any. Photopea is a browser-based GUI. However, if your device has a very small amount of RAM or you are using certain browsers, you may have issues with the page reloading. You may also need to test with different browsers to see which internet browser manages your available RAM best (I used Brave to test this tutorial out).

Needed software: A good internet browser; whatever software you use to screencap. (See FRAME BY FRAME SCREENCAPPING METHODS/TOOLS section below for a list of frame by frame screencapping methods I've catalogued).

Difficulty: Moderate.

Time: 🐢🐢🐢 _ _

Input: Frame by frame screencaps.

Competencies: Helps to have some familiarity with photo editors or drawing softwares with layer panes.

LIMITATIONS: 1) Frame by frame gif-making methods can take up a lot of space on your drive in the interim. 2) You need a good internet connection to run this smoothly. 3) If your computer doesn't have a lot of RAM or you use certain internet browsers, you may have issues with the page reloading. You can backup your project as a PSD repeatedly in the event of a page reload.

VIDEO/GIF -> OPTIMIZED GIF TOOLS

These are tools that receive a video input or a large GIF and output an optimized/compressed GIF for the web.

FFMPEG

The linked scripts below receive video clips you've already cut to length and captioned (for example, in DaVinci Resolve—see Tutorial 1) and render them into optimized GIFs.

SCRIPT 1 TUTORIAL | SCRIPT 2 TUTORIAL

Interface type: Command Line (CLI).

Difficulty: Moderate.

Operating Systems: Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Input: Video files.

GIFSKI

Gifski was made purely for compressing videos into quality, optimized GIFs and absolutely nothing else. It is meant to be combined with other tools and it is very, VERY good at what it does.

GUI AND CLI SCRIPT TUTORIAL

Interface type: Graphic User (GUI) and Command Line (CLI).

Difficulty: Easy (GUI); Moderate (CLI).

Operating Systems: Mac, Windows, and Linux (CLI only).

Input: Video files (MP4).

EZGIF.COM OPTIMIZE PANE

The Ezgif Optimize tab will receive video files, existing GIFs, or a collection of image files to render into a GIF, and optimize them for upload in other tools.

Interface type: Web-based GUI.

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate.

Operating Systems: Any. You just need a web browser.

Input: Image files (GIF, JPG, PNG, APNG, HEIC, MNG, FLIF, AVIF, WebP) or Videos files (MP4, WebM, AVI, MPEG, FLV, MOV, 3GP).

FRAME BY FRAME SCREENCAPPING METHODS/TOOLS

You can get screencaps of videos frame by frame in several different media players, with various levels of clunkiness/tediousness. I am cataloguing various methods in this section. If there is a method you use and like that is not listed here, please let me know.

FFMPEG

This is my preferred method for grabbing caps. If you aren't scared of the idea of opening your command line, this is absolutely the most efficient and versatile way to get source-resolution quality frame by frame screencaps.

TOOL TUTORIAL 4

Operating Systems: Mac, Windows, and Linux

Interface type: Command Line (CLI).

Difficulty: Even if it's your first ever script, I think you can do it! I have a template for you and an example in the linked tutorial and I believe in you! :D

Input: Video files of any extension.

SCREENTOGIF

If you're on Windows, this is a nice, intuitive way to get frame by frame caps. However, note that the resolution of your caps will be limited by the resolution of your computer screen.

Operating Systems: Windows

Interface type: Graphic User (GUI)

Difficulty: Easy (for batch capping)

Input: Any video you can open and screencapture.

VLC MEDIA PLAYER

VLC has a function that can automate frame by frame screencapping, but to be honest, I have had difficulties getting it to work properly. However, you can also screencap manually frame by frame in VLC with hot keys.

EXTERNAL TUTORIAL

Operating Systems: Windows, Mac, and many popular Linux distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, ArchLinux, and more).

Interface type: Graphic User (GUI)

Difficulty: Easy (for batch capping)

Input: Any video you can open and screencapture.

NOTE for mac users: If you want to try the automated method, there is no section called "Preferences" in the Mac app. To reach the proper menus, in the top menu in VLC, click "VLC Media Player" > Settings > Video, then click the Show All button in the bottom left corner.

EZGIF.COM

Ezgif.com is a web-based GUI, so it can only accept a video file so large and is limited to a 20 FPS capture for 10 seconds at a time. However, if you have short clips or maybe a Youtube video you've downloaded, this is a good option.

TOOL TUTORIAL 5

Interface type: Web-Based Graphic User Interface (GUI)

Difficulty: Easy.

Operating Systems: Any. This is a free online tool.

Input: Any video clip under 100 MB. If you have a whole episode of TV, you'll have to clip to just the scene you want first to make your video file small enough to upload.

This section is for partial tutorials with one or more hurdles to being posted as a full tutorial (ex: not able to crop, not able to apply the same action to multiple frames at a time with ease, etc). If you want to pick up where I left off to troubleshoot/come up with workarounds (or maybe use the utilities that are available in a given tool to cover gaps in others) you're welcome to give it a whirl—and let me know if you make any headway!

UNFINISHED WORKFLOW 1 | LINK

Making GIFS with Autodesk Sketchbook

Operating systems: Mac and Windows

Needed software: Autodesk Sketchbook

Quality potential: High for non-recolored sets, but has various limitations to implementing coloring (even though some coloring options are supported) and also cropping.

Difficulty: Easy

Competencies: None.

ISSUES:

Can't crop frames in Flipbooks (you could crop externally with FFmpeg, GIMP, ezgif.com, Photoscape X).

Native text captioning options don't support outlining your text and have very limited drop shadow settings.

Limited FPS export options.

If you wanted to recolor your set, you'd have to do it one frame at a time in a very tedious way.

Let me know of any tools you think I should look into that aren't on this list!

✅ Tools I have tried + shared at least one tutorial.

🔄 Tools I am in the process of testing or have finished testing but have not shared a tutorial for yet.

☑️ Tools I am aware of but haven't tested yet.

GRAPHIC USER INTERFACE (GUI) TOOLS

DOWNLOADABLES

✅ DaVinci Resolve

✅ Gifski

✅ Giphy Capture

🔄 ScreenToGif | No tutorials yet

✅ Photoscape X

🔄 GIMP | WIP Testing | External tutorials available

✅ Autodesk Sketchbook | Unfinished Workflow

☑️ Blender

BROWSER-BASED

✅ Photopea.com

✅ Ezgif.com

COMMAND LINE (CLI) TOOLS

✅ FFmpeg

✅ Gifski

☑️ Image Magick

☑️ Gifsicle

[comicaurora]

Hey Red, after seeing all of the tutorials, I'm wondering: What's your favorite special effect (fire, lightning, ice, etc.) to draw?

Honestly I like lightning the best because it is so, so easy compared to the others. It's a very localized and targeted effect. It's fine-grained enough that you don't lose any detailing, and you can even use it to highlight other things - like on this page, where I cheat and use lightning the same way I'd use non-diegetic squiggles to indicate that Kendal is shaking.

Ice also isn't too hard to make look good, especially if you use ambient fog effects to make it feel more atmospheric and cold, but the end result is honestly pretty basic unless you're willing to go super hard on the transparency. I remember this page took me a while even though the end result looks so simple - I was playing around with a lot of stuff and none of it really worked better than ambient fog and a little bubbling.

Fire I like conceptually, but as that tutorial post indicated, it's a tricky beast to handle, especially when you need lots of it. I'm still not 100% happy with any of the pages that show large blocks of fire, like Dainix's transformed hand - it really feels better for the small-scale highlighting rather than the large swaths of fire, which often end up looking fairly uniform and essentially "blowing out the exposure" on the drawing - a similar issue found when filming fire. The technique doesn't feel perfected yet, really. It is great for the highlighting, though, and it also lets me cheat like the lightning effect does - extra flaring around Dainix's eye making him look more wide-eyed and distressed, for instance.

Wind is the effect I feel like I cheat the most with. It's pretty much impossible to convincingly draw wind, because it's air and air is invisible. The real way to draw wind is to represent it solely by the effect it has on the environment around it, but I don't have that kind of time, so we get blurred bluish-purple glowy lines and that's it.

Stone effects I love because they're so easy. Rocks are solid objects and adding a glow effect to them is barely an issue. Even a magma-y glow isn't too complicated. They don't lose detailing and it isn't hard to figure out how they'd look under these circumstances.

Life effects I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, they are so pretty. The simplest ones where I just paint glowy highlights along the effect or make the outline of the vegetation grow are actually also simple to do, which is a bonus, but the more complicated effects are where things get dicey. They use the fractal curlicue patterns I'd doodle in my notebooks in class, and they're very satisfying to draw, but, like all fractals, they are incredibly time-consuming. Even just drawing the plants without the glow can get time-consuming for the same reason. It takes a lot of detailing before a plant effect looks realistically fractal. Heck, if you look at this one, I definitely cheated - it gives the impression of being woven together from a huge mass of vines and roots, but a lot of it is just solid green with a mossy texture.

And adding the glowy life effects adds another layer of complication. I don't want to spoil so I can't show the example panels I'm currently thinking of, but there's a page in this chapter where just the glowy life effects took me an entire worknight, and that was after the underlying plant life also took its own worknight. But it's mixed feelings because there's something very satisfying about it, so even though it takes me a very long time I really enjoy doing it.

And then void magic is 100% easy mode in the effects department. Solid black shapes with purple highlighting and underglow. Drawing that is like a vacation. Even at its most intricate it's just a matter of adding black-and-purple no-glow versions of other tried-and-true effects, like cinders or lightning.

That's a day at the spa right there.

[livixbobbiex]

Organisation and task planning apps I find useful as an ADHDer

People often wonder how I'm so organised. The truth is, it's necessity and coping mechanism. This post is a recommendation of a few tools to help you all to improve your time management, so long as you can find just a little self will.

Apps will be listed first, and I'm closing this post with a longer explanation to try and sell you on the benefits and ease of doing this. I tried my best to include a variety for different preferences:

Remember the Milk

Available as a website and as an app

Good for people who like looking at lists

You create 'lists' (category of task such as home, school etc.), which you can also add tags and locations to

All of your lists combine into daily and weekly checklists

Imports to google calendar in the free version

Unfortunately a lot of options are paywalled, including app notifications. If you have an android, you can work around this with your normal phone calendar.

Trello

Good for more visual based people

Mostly a website, but available as an app

Better for long term tasks and projects

Would recommend for people more used to organisation as it can take a while to set up. However if you dedicate some time, you can get some great custom options.

A lot of functionality in the free version.

Habatica

Probably my favourite

Has a web and app version - where the app is actually quite easy to look at!

It is basically just a gameified version of your daily schedule. You get rewarded for checking off your tasks with RPG points, and you can buy items with coins and stuff.

Gives you a whole sense of progression and is great for dopamine.

A feature I love is the ability to set task difficulty, which gives you higher reward for harder tasks.

More of a daily habits type of thing, and not so great for one-off events.

All the functionality is free, the subscription is mostly cosmetic stuff.

Do it Now RPG

Similar in concept to habatica

What I really like specific to this app is the ability to assign tasks to specific character values. That means your character progression is actually quite realistic

Has an actual calendar which is a plus, however it is locked behind paywall. However it's about £11 for a whole year, so it's one of the cheaper options

Time Planner: Schedule and Tasks

Allows you to view tasks in these cool bubbles

You can also view them in list view and calendar view

Lots of customisation and easy to make categories

Most of the functionality is present in the free version including push notifications

Cute colour scheme!

Has a really good tutorial, which is kind of unique to these apps (which can be overwhelming)

Sectograph

Basically lays out your tasks visually on a clockface

Works best in combination with your existing calendar app

Has a home screen widget!!! You can have this be the thing you see whenever you unlock your phone!!!

Some features such as colour customisation locked behind the paywall, but it's a life time purchase of like £4 so it might be worth it.

Sweepy

A cleaning app specifically but I find it useful enough to mention here.

One thing I like is that it comes with existing task lists (editable). All you have to do is add the rooms in your house.

Basically requires very little set up and reminds you to clean at good intervals.

Benefits of doing this!

So immediately, you might think that this is super daunting. And no yeah, it is and I'm not perfect with these apps at all. But the thing is, with executive dysfunction being so crippling a lot of the time, any tool that helps is so valuable.

I find that writing down what I have to do not only makes it easer to remember, but also gives me more internal pressure to actually do it.

ADHDers generally enjoy problem solving and tasks that involve min/maxing. Just try and think about it like that during the set up stage. The set up is by far the hardest part. Good life advice in general honestly: gameify everything.

If none of these appeal to you, you can still do a lot on your phone's calendar app. Actually, back when I was doing my school exams, I made study schedules on excel spreadsheet that worked pretty well. There are so many options out there!

[youknow-igetit]

welcome to... another tiktok au because that apps controls my life but what’s new

- Kevin's verified and posts his exy highlights and his workout routines. Most of his comments are of people asking him to step on them

- Matt and Dan have a joint account and most of it is povs of them being accepting parents/being Very Attractive (think of the lesbian mob moms, the deity parents, and the cowboy dads). Most of their followers are queer teens

- Allison is one of the more chaotic posters, half of her posts are crazy storytimes and the other half is a mix of thirst traps and answering questions about her clothing company

- Renee posts mini tutorial videos about how to properly handle a knife, block and attack, etc. It's linked to her YouTube account, which is more in depth. she also has videos where she bakes bread and cookies like the cottagecore lesbian she is. Most of her comments are similar to Kevin's (especially in the breadmaking videos because... hh pretty woman strong arms)

- Neil is famous on plant tiktok, for many reasons, but mostly because he's attractive, he's queer, and he's funny (for a while his most liked tiktok was of him standing in his kitchen, holding one of those mini microphones and saying “my therapist said it would be good for me to get a pet but i’m not ready for that kind of commitment despite the fact that i’m married. so” *hauls in a very large ficus* “this is linda”)(it became his second liked tiktok after someone commented asking him if he would wear a maid outfit and cat ears and he was bored so he was like "fuck it: sure.")

- Nicky is living his best life. Most of his comments are people saying "it's hard to see someone else living your dreams" because all he does is post about his weird pets and his hot husband (he has 32 pets. Of those pets there are two dogs, three foxes, a sugar glider, and multiple snakes). Of the foxes, he has the most followers and got verified first

- Aaron's is strange in the sense that he answers a lot of questions on science and stuff, but he also posts thirst traps sometimes, which get millions of likes. He's verified and he has more followers than Kevin and Kevin's kinda bitter about it. (he’s like the sexy young adult version of hank green)

- Andrews is by far the most chaotic. He got a lot of followers initially because of the video he posted where he was trying to befriend the possums in his yard at 3 am when it’s raining by offering them cheerios and singing wap but replacing the word “pussy” with “possum” (most of his comment are " everyone: 'did you see that new dance?' my fyp:")

- despite their vastly different content, most people who follow Andrew also follow Aaron. one could be scrolling through their for you page and find a video of Aaron explaining cloning and then scroll down and find Andrew interviewing his cat about climate change

“what do you think about climate change”

*silence, because it is a cat*

“really? no comment?”

*a mrrp, a tiny meow mayhaps*

“are you trying to get me canceled or something? those are not the views i have been teaching you, young lady”

- Andrew: “i currently live in a long-distance relationship with my husband because of our jobs and contracts and such, and i miss him quite a lot, but i can’t see him, so i bought sixteen three-wick candles from bath and body works. they were having a sale.”

- andrew also has a lot of videos that look like they were taken at three am either in a forest or in a bathroom with the lights turned off

- andrew and neil still have their weird rivalry thing on twitter, so after they make a video together about neil finally moving in, all of the comments are like “i thought you guys hated each other???”, so they make a response video that’s just “oh no, i’m married to this asshole” and half of the comments are “!!!>??!” wheras the other half is like “i mcfuckin knew it”

- all of the foxes post at least one video when they’re all together for the winter holidays and all of the comments are like “the most daring collab ever” and they’re just like “nah bro, this is just christmas”

- there's multiple videos on multiple accounts of the foxes (minus aaron and nicky) all hiking in the middle of the woods, but for some reason it's at night and very very cursed (similar to Andrew's own content)

"how much do you bet me that I can't jump off this cliff" "fucking ZERO"

"theoretically, I could run off and live in the forest like a bog witch" "but you wouldn't have internet connection" "fuck. Nevermind"

neil jumps down from a tree out of nowhere and scares the shit out of everyone

“okay so we’re kinda lost but neil claims he can read the stars or some shit so”

“okay so we lost neil”

"I swear this is going to be a story from the magnus archive dude, like I'm pretty sure that one of us is going to be kidnapped by a supernatural being"

(they didn't end up being kidnapped. They'd been roaming the same three hundred yards of trees for two hours because they're idiots)

- most of allison, dan, matt, andrew, and neil’s followers don’t even know that they play exy (I didn't say Kevin because: duh). they post fun traveling videos for the olympics and the comments are like “lucky!!! i wish i could watch the olympics in person” and they’re like “no, i don’t think you understand, we’re playing in the olympics” and everyone’s like “w h a t”

- alternatively, followers are watching the olympics and finding the funky gay tiktok people on the exy court and are very very confused

(also i forgot to mention this earlier but all of them caption every single one of their videos) (also none of them can be found on straight tiktok)

[mdpthatsme]

4t2 Hair Texture Tutorial

So this is for @frauhupfner​ or anyone curious in reply to THIS post.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to resize the Sims 4 textures for better sized files for the Sims 2.  This tutorial can also be used for accessories.  And for beginners, this is a simple tutorial.  Don’t be afraid!

Edit: I made a video for those that are more visual learners.  It has no sound and can be found here: https://youtu.be/bgZ3UR_E3QU

Picture heavy with commentary under the cut:

So what do you need for this tutorial?  Well, you will be converting hair so Blender, Milkshape, Simpe, MeshToolKit, etc.  You already got all that for the conversion.  This is just for the texture specifically.  So you will need a photo-editing program.  I have Photoshop, but for this tutorial, I am going to be using Photopea because not everyone has Photoshop and Photopea is totally online and free to use.  They are a lot alike.  So if you have Photoshop, this should be very similar.

Let’s start with a preface to get you acquainted with the Materials tab and Texture Coordinate Editor in Milkshape.  Let’s start by pulling up that hair you are converting.

Select the hair mesh group and click over to the Materials tab.  

Let’s hit the New button, then the first <none> and find our texture, select it and then click the Assign button.  I generally change “Default” to “Ignore Alpha” to see the textures better.

You should have something like this. If not, right click on the 3D model and make sure “Textured” is selected.  I also make sure “Draw Backfaces” is unselected because backfaces will not show up in the game.

Let’s go to Window->Texture Coordinate Editor.

So I have scaled the image to .45 so we can view it better.  You will notice that the texture for the hair will be a vertical rectangle (traditionally 1024x2048 pixels) with the texture of the hair on the top portion of the image.  Sims 4 models have their textures for the sims on one texture file so hair and accessories will be on the top half, clothes and shoes on the bottom half.

Exit out of the Texture Coordinate Editor and click the Delete button in the Materials tab.  Let’s get our texture ready!

So this is where our tutorial really begins.  Go to Photopea (or whatever photo-editor you are using). Click File and Open then find where you have your project saved.  Select the texture.

Click Image->Canvas Size.

In the window set the Anchor to the top middle box.  Then set the height to 1024 (make sure it is set to pixels) so that the image will be a perfect square 1024x1024. Click OK.

Edit: If you encounter a 2048x4096 (because I notice they are becoming popular for some stupid reason), click the top left anchor and set width/height as 1024x1024.

Your screen should look like this now.  This is exactly what we want.

So now we File->Export As->PNG.  This gives us the transparent parts we want in the image.  This is especially helpful for when you convert alpha hair.

(This part is a little different than Photoshop. You can select the kind of image you want it saved as in the Save dialogue box.)

So it will save in your Downloads folder, at least that’s where mine did.  Since this is my first time using Photopea, I’m not sure if there’s a way to change the navigation, but for tutorial purposes, just find where it saved and move it to where you have saved your project files.

Back in Milkshape, go through the process of adding our new texture size (like we did at the top).  You will notice that it does not look quite right.  We are going to fix that. Promise!

In the Texture Coordinate Editor, you will notice the red dots (which are the vertices of the mesh) are squished.  Let’s un-squish them.

First, let’s check the “Lock X.” This will make sure nothing shifts horizontally.  Next, hit Scale, then change 1.0 to 2.0 in the second Factor box.  Then hit the “S” box.

Edit: If the original image size was 2048x4096, do not Lock X and set both factor boxes to 2.0 and hit the “S” box.

If you do those steps above correctly, it will look like this now.  The reason why this does not work for clothes is because it is on the bottom portion of the image so it does not automatically snap where the clothes are and you have to move it vertically to fit.  Luckily though, hair and accessories just snap where you want it.

If we view our hair, it should look like this.  This is what we want.  You can exit out of the Texture Coordinate Editor and continue with your conversion.

Tutorial now over. 

Edit: Remember when you go to select your image in SimPE during the converting process to select the resized 1024x1024 image; otherwise, it is set to the wrong one.  I know this seems like a common sense thing, but above you can see how these look similar, but you want the pink texture on the left.

[an-annyeoing-writer]

vulnerability. – chap. 3.

Story info:

Pair: Byun Baekhyun x Reader

Rating: +18 for mentions of s*x and violence (future chapters)

Genre: angst, smut

Chapter info:

Release date: 29th July 2021

Word count: 4 219

Warnings: none

Vulnerability Masterlist || Fanfiction Masterlist || Ko-Fi

Taglist:

@shesdreaminginoverdose @mybiasdashboard @marimsun @byuns-asscheeks @multi–kpop–fanfics @vunv @making-me-blush @skittlez-area512 @bloopbloopkai @byuns-asscheeks @baekyeonoreo @devotedexolnhottest @mingxia-nikki04 @velvetjongin @ssssssul (won't let me tag you T_T) @nemi-mei @buttercupbbh

Please, always comment on the newest chapter if you wish to be added to/removed from the taglist. I will be also checking the tags, so if you’re shy – feel free to leave a note this way.

Previous (Chap. 2.)

Chap. 3.

The tension that appeared the moment you received the phone call from Baekhyun did not dissolve with time. In fact, the opposite happened – it grew as the time passed, and as Saturday came closer and closer. Finally, once your Friday to Saturday night shift came to an end and you stumbled into your flat around 4 in the morning, you knew that you wouldn’t be able to fall asleep easily. Yet, you forced a whole cup of green tea into yourself in an attempt to soothe your nerves before sleep. Your alarm was set for noon, and you were supposed to meet at 3 PM.

You woke up feeling energized, but you knew this pattern all too well already – the tiredness would come and hit you with its whole power the day after, and you’d spend Sunday sluggish and drained. But that was okay, because Sunday didn’t matter half as much as Saturday did.

You felt a small urge to dress up; even more, actually, you felt a need to pay attention to details rather than looking fine at the first glance. Some common sense hyped up by years of watching other people and reading stories – a thorough shower, shaving, paying attention to not only what you wore outside, but also your undergarments. You lacked things that could be considered “sexy”, but – let’s face it – you didn’t think it mattered much; not after what you’d found out so far. Yet, it would be a shame if your panties had a hole in them. Wearing something neutral, but fresh was your best bet. Every few minutes, you kept reminding yourself – you don’t even know what will happen, you don’t even know if anything will happen at all. There was no reason to think that he’ll want you to undress in the first place, you said it yourself that you’re not ready for sex.

But then, it still helped you gather confidence that you definitely needed at a moment like that. Details allowed one less thing to worry about, and a better ability to focus on others, and so, you made sure the details were worked out well, and that you didn’t overdress, either; a beige shirt and jeans, all wrapped up with sneakers and another knitted cardigan of yours – neutral and polite, maybe a bit school-ish, but these were the things you mostly wore on daily basis, and you felt that going in the other direction – of tight pants, mini-skirts and see-through shirts – would not be appreciated. Your hair was pulled up into a loose bun, nothing like the ones you admired in YT tutorials, but the best you could do on your own. Maybe it was the age difference that made you feel obliged to show respect rather than expose yourself. You trusted your instinct on that, and so far, nothing happened yet to prove it wrong. The weather was starting to get warmer; these days were particularly sunny and dry, so you felt at ease without an extra jacket. It couldn’t get that bad in the evening, and you put faith in your cardigan.

Baekhyun must have thought similarly.

You stood in the bar’s entry, looking up at him for a moment; he leaned back into his usual couch, not aware of your presence just yet. He was wearing a black button-up and jeans as well, something he still looked pretty well put-together in, but not too formal – similar to your own thought process, noticeably.

You inhaled deeply, and took your time to exhale the air – until you felt ready to walk up to him.

“Hi there” he spoke as you approached his couch; as expected, he was there alone today.

“Hi there” you replied with a slight nod and a smile; your voice was quiet, as quiet as it could be without trembling in anticipation.

“You want to drink something before we go?”

You considered it for a second, and then nodded again. Baekhyun moved a bit to the side, encouraging you to join him on the couch, and you took the offer with gratitude.

“Beer? I don’t want to get you drunk, but we may sit here for a bit just to relax.”

“You can tell I need it?”

“Yes. I can tell. Your shoulders are very tense. May I?”

His hand reached to your shoulder and you nodded slightly, a bit unsure what you agreed to just yet.

He suddenly squeezed your muscle, and you whimpered. He kneaded it, and you found the tension dissolving gradually as he went on. Even with only one hand and unfavorable position, he managed to find some of the spots that required touch; that touch was welcome, slight pain coming along with it was desired for the best outcome. You didn’t notice when Baekhyun must have given the bartender some sort of a sign, but the man soon came with a beer and water that he put on the nearby table. That was when Baekhyun’s movement slowly ceased, cautiously letting go of your shoulders. You felt as if you were in a different body, the tension in your body almost gone, just as the one in your mind – the moments of physical interaction were enough to chase some of your worries away.

“You don’t drink?” You reached towards the table – it was closer to you than to him – and took the two glasses, handing him the water and keeping the beer for yourself.

“Not before,” he explained curtly, which you accepted without further questioning.

“So… what are we gonna do?” you asked carefully, sipping the beer through a metal straw, trying to give off a casual vibe despite focusing deeply on what you were about to hear.

“Depends. On how much will you allow me to do.” Baekhyun focused his gaze on something in the crowd; you felt as though it was his habit to avoid a direct gaze in an attempt to sound collected. “I had the idea of showing you some things. Just so you feel it out a little. It’s not final, but it may help the both of us figure out how we feel about it. Like a free trial, you see my point?” You nodded, but didn’t say anything, so after a moment he continued. “I won’t introduce you to everything, and it won’t last as long as usual sessions, either. I’ll talk to you a bit beforehand so we figure out some basic things. It shouldn’t make you uncomfortable. I won’t be trying anything beyond your comfort zone.”

“So, no deals a’la Fifty shades?” you felt silly the moment these words left your mouth. Baekhyun laughed awkwardly.

“No, it won’t be necessary. If you want to draw a comparison to that, I definitely won’t be dumping the whole scheme on you when you don’t even know what it’s like.”

And you won’t fuck me first thing in the plot, you added in your thoughts.

“There are a few things that I may ask you here, so that we have those out of the way,” he spoke; his tone lowered a little. “I need you to tell me if you have any illnesses or old injures that could influence your physical capacity.”

You thought for a bit; the answer was important, but you couldn’t recall much.

“I don’t think there’s anything important.”

“Is there anything unimportant?” His gaze pierced through you as he caught on your wording.

“Uh… I’m taking pills for my thyroid, but it’s nothing very dramatic” you explained. “Nothing else that I know of.”

Baekhyun nodded slowly.

“Fair. Next question, is there anything you’re particularly scared of? Phobias, or things you’re scared of in general, anything overly triggering that you want to avoid at all costs?” You already revealed some of these during your first conversation. But now you felt more at ease, and you thought you could be more detailed without sounding overwhelming.

“I’m… scared of fire. And hate my hair being pulled. I don’t know, why. I can’t explain it. It’s just…”

“It’s alright. You don’t need to explain yourself to me” Baekhyun looked at you with his eyebrows slightly furrowed. “You sound like it would stress you out to share. You don’t need to be afraid of that. You don’t owe me anything, keep that in mind. It’s not supposed to feel like an obligation.”

“I-I know.”

“I’m scared of heights, by the way.” You stared at him in confusion. “Hm? Just thought it’s fair to share if you did.”

“Oh.”

“Chill out.” He nudged your glass with his hand to urge you to drink some more of the beer you managed to forget about by then. It was halfway through – you didn’t want to leave the glass with some of it still inside, although it managed to make you feel just a bit sick already.

His own drink was at around the same level too, and as you finished yours, he drank the remaining water in one go as well.

You weren’t the best at handling alcohol, and even the small amounts made you a bit weak in the knees. But you felt sober enough as the two of you finally got up; Baekhyun paid for your drinks and you left the bar.

The weather was nice, as expected. Going out into the sunlight again startled you, somehow; you felt as though a lot of time had already passed. But no, it was still the same afternoon.

It was true that Baekhyun lived nearby. His apartment was in a different direction than your place, though, and you estimated it would take around twenty minutes to get from one place to the other. You knew this area, although not too well – there were only some tenement houses, but no stores or academic buildings that could gain your attention or regular presence. It was on the more expensive side, although not a place a well off office worker wouldn’t afford; just maybe not suitable for a student. The tenement houses were old, but well-kept, and you knew that the apartments were way bigger than in a place like yours.

Opening the door for you, Baekhyun invited you into the dark hallway of his apartment. There were no lights, as every wall had doors to other rooms: two to the left, one at the end of the corridor, and two more to the right, perfectly symmetric.

“Kitchen, my office, bathroom, my bedroom, and the living room,” the man told you, starting from the left. One glance into the living room on the right made you realize just how big the rooms were; enormous, in your honest opinion, with the area of something around a classroom at school, but with ceilings that reached far up, almost twice higher than in your own place. Heavy curtains hung from the top of the tall windows like limp branches of a willow tree, giving the most dramatic effect, and – likely – gathering tons of dust throughout their lifetime. Wooden, carved furniture added to the effect, and you, in all your sincerity, would not dare to ask how much such a set cost, although it would be a lie to say that you weren’t curious. Wooden panels on the floor were already worn and grey, giving you a thought that the interiors were kept in this particular shape for long years before Baekhyun began to reside in there.

“That’s huge,” you only uttered. Your eyes rested on a painting in the middle of a wall on the left side of the room, above an eclectic-green, velvet couch, in front of which was a wooden coffee table, and which gave a perfect sight into an old TV on the side of the room, as it was one of the old-styled, small models that would be hard to look at from the distance between one wall and the other. The painting looked old, but you wondered from the distance, whether it was not just printed in good quality, with all the details of lights, people and nature making it look like a piece of national heritage rather than a small private property. It portrayed a battle scene coming to an end, warriors in shining armor stained with blood resting upon trees and a small pond of pinkish water, at either sunset or sunrise – you weren’t sure.

“You like it?” He caught your stare and followed it, giving himself a few seconds to adore the painting as well, as though he hadn’t looked at it enough despite living here.

“It’s too violent,” you decided after a moment. “But it’s nice to look at.”

“It’s not that violent in itself, I think. But it does conjure the thought of it.”

He left the living room with you still in the doorframe, staying to look at the painting just for a few more seconds. When you turned around, he was entering the kitchen – this room also looked old, but less well kept; it was cleaned up perfectly, however the furniture was shabby, with the surfaces often partly rubbed off and grey; this room simply screamed for renovation. But you felt way more at ease with the fact that it looked similar to yours – the one that was over twenty years old when you moved with and you had no way of changing it without getting in trouble with the landlord. And not like you’d want to do it at all, since you’d move out right after your studies anyway. The only difference was that you tried to make your apartment look a bit warmer with colorful lights and other cheap ornaments here and there, while Baekhyun’s kitchen was just left as it was, as though he gave up on it the moment he moved in.

“Hungry?”

“Not much.” You were still full of the freshly consumed beer.

Out of the fridge, Baekhyun took a bag of half-eaten potato chips. You stared at him with your eyebrow raised as he ate a few of these, and then extended the bag towards you, to which you only shook your head and he put the bag back in the fridge. He caught your look.

“Food moths,” he explained. You slowly nodded in understanding. That’d be a useful tip if you ever got those. The summer was slowly coming; soon, your small apartment would also be filled with bugs, and fruit flies, mosquitos, and sciarids because you kept a few plants in (discovering that sciarids and fruit flies were not the same thing was an important step in achieving perfect harmony in your adulthood).

You sat awkwardly by the table, observing him as he reached for the bag he must have left on the counter before he went to pick you up, and took out leftovers – probably from work – putting them back in the fridge.

“You worked today?” you asked.

“Yeah, just an average thing, a strategic meeting with co-workers. My working hours are not regular, so I didn’t really know I was gonna be out today.”

Once he was done, he sat by the table as well, and you leaned a bit forward, resting your chin on top of your hand.

“You could have postponed it with me, you must be tired,” you said.

“Don’t worry, I’d rather have a chance to relax with you.”

That didn’t sound as innocent as he probably tried to make it, and he looked over his shoulder to make sure he didn’t scare you with the choice of words. You only laughed awkwardly.

“Anyway. Since, as I said, I don’t want to intimidate you, I think we’ll stay in the living room since you seemed content with that,” he spoke casually.

“So, no playroom?” you uttered. Baekhyun choked on the chip in his mouth.

“I don’t own such a place. I just usually use the bedroom. Or the bathroom,” he explained.

“Or the office?” you felt bold enough to suggest, giving him a small smirk.

“No, I assure you the office is for what offices usually are.”

You smiled innocently as Baekhyun stared at you, probably trying to mask sudden shyness.

“Either way,” he cleared his throat. “I told you some about what I want to do, but you haven’t told me if there’s anything you’re interested in trying out. I assume you did see some things, so… Is there anything that you’ve been particularly interested in?”

The harmless way in which he phrased the question absolutely didn’t change the fact that he was, basically, asking what kind of porn you watch.

“I uh… I like watching different things, just out of curiosity, but I’m not really sure if there’s anything I like particularly more than other things… I suppose bondage is the biggest basic.” You tried, you really tried to sound neutral, but your voice trembled a little. “But I’m not really sure, to be honest. I’m quite open-minded, I suppose…” You felt silly; how could you not be able to answer the most basic question – what do you like? But Baekhyun seemed to understand that very well, as he only nodded slowly.

“What about, let’s say, pet play?” You blushed slightly. “You know what I’m talking about? I feel like a lot of young women start from there.” It took you a moment to realize that you, too, were a young woman. “Behavioral training. Humiliation. Regression. A bit of pain, if suitable. Trying out a few things to see how you respond. What do you think?”

“I think it may be fun” you said slowly. “Does it have something to do with the…?” you motioned your neck, hoping he’ll get the cue. You remembered the collars the other people wore – they were the main reason you got interested in the first place, after all. Baekhyun smiled, catching on your observation.

“Sometimes, but not necessarily. It’s just a thing I like. Do you?”

“…I may,” you answered carefully.

“Gotcha. We may try it out. You know, everyone is different. The collars are different too. I usually order them after I’m sure the person’s gonna stay, and when I know what type will be the most suitable for them. I can’t do that for you yet, but I have some spare items.”

“Do you have the ones of people who you’re not with anymore?” you asked, out of pure curiosity.

Baekhyun was silent for a moment.

“I do. But I’d rather not use them. They’re there for memory, not for use.”

“Gotcha. I was just curious,” you quickly explained.

“Do you have a safe-word?” Baekhyun’s gaze rested on you.

“…Not really. Never needed one,” you uttered sheepishly.

“You have anything on your mind?”

“Um, the… thing with lights? The red light, yellow and green?” you proposed carefully.

“That’s a good one. Tell me how you understand them.”

“So, the green one means everything’s alright, the yellow is when we need to slow down, and the red stops the scene,” you recited, as if you were reading from a book.

“That’s right. It’s easy to remember, so we can go with that.” You bit on your lips to prevent yourself from getting too excited with the apparent praise; it wasn’t anything big, of course – but you felt as though it was a praise in itself, being acknowledged for saying something right. “Another thing is that I need you to know a few rules, before we start.” You were all ears. “First, I don’t want you to be reluctant for the fun of it. Whether you want to be a brat later or not, today we’re just trying things out and I don’t want to mistake your attitude with actual discomfort, do you understand?” You nodded slowly, memorizing the words and waiting for him to continue. “Second. No pain that I will impose on you will be a matter of punishment, unless I specify so. If you don’t enjoy it, you need to tell me so. It doesn’t mean I’ll stop right away, unless – of course – you use the safe-word. However, I still expect honesty. During, as well as after the scene, when we review it. Do you understand?” The breaks in between the points gave you enough time to acknowledge the information and encode it in your memory. You nodded once again. “And for the last. Do you trust me?”

The tone made you look up at him, finally focusing on his person rather than the words alone.

“I do,” you finally decided; knowing very well what this answer would lead to.

Baekhyun’s eyes sparkled as he smiled at you warmly.

“Well then, shall we start?”

* * *

You stand in the middle of the room, the cardigan and shoes are off, your feet feel cold against the floor despite socks wrapped around them comfortingly.

Don’t move a finger, you’ve been told, and so, you stare at the painting before you, the warrior in the front staring at you back with contempt you haven’t noticed before.

Your breath trembles in anticipation as you try to hear sounds from other rooms – you do hear some shuffling, but nothing that you can figure out for sure. He must be in his bedroom, you think. What is he preparing? Which tools out of many that you’ve seen on the screen of your phone all these nights that, despite spending perfect eight hours in bed, did not end in getting perfect eight hours of sleep?

Your arm itches, but you fight the urge to scratch it; be obedient, he said.

Steps echo in the corridor and you hold your breath. Your head snaps to the side the moment you hear him enter the room again.

“Eyes down,” he commands without sparing you a glance; you haven’t had enough time to see what he brought, but you instantly obey his words. “Don’t look at me unless I allow you to.” His voice is stern, and it makes your stomach clench nervously. But it’s not a bad sensation, not at all – you grow excited. “Down. On your knees.”

You try to comply, but he still scoffs at your apparent sluggishness. You almost fall over as you let your knees bend and you finally kneel down as well as you can, eyes facing down as well, although you feel awkward as you do so.

“On your toes,” Baekhyun commands; something small but hard hits your heels, startling you, and your head whips around to see a wooden pointing stick. You swallow the gasp of surprise at the sight.

You fix your posture, your toes instantly begin to cramp; that’s uncomfortable, and your toes aren’t too flexible, it seems.

“Straighten your back. You’re slouching.”

The task turns out almost impossible to do, the whole weight lands on your toes and you frown in discomfort.

“Is it necessary…?”

“Look at me.” It feels unnatural to do so now, but you oblige, turning your head to the side where he stands. “What’s wrong?”

“My toes hurt,” you admit quietly. Baekhyun watches you for a moment.

“Straighten them. Kneel as you did before.” You bite your lips and nod, uttering a small thank you that you find suitable enough as the position gets a bit more comfortable. “Back. Straighten.”

You automatically snap back into the position. But it does feel a bit silly – like something your teachers would say, don’t slouch! A laughter comes out at the comparison, but you attempt to stifle it.

Apparently, not well enough.

The pointer hits the nape of your neck; not too hard, but the message gets through.

Baekhyun stands in front of you and, most likely, stares you down – you can’t tell; your gaze is fixated on his lacquered shoes. The shoes then move, kicking the middle of your thighs.

“Spread.”

You feel a bit awkward as you oblige this command; you only glance down to make sure your pants aren’t ripped – you never know. To your relief, they’re not. Then you try to glance forward – but, what’s in front of you, makes you more shy than anything, so you just fix your gaze on his knees instead.

“You’re slouching again.”

“Pets often do,” you note before you manage to bite your tongue; you do remember your conversation from before – wasn’t it what he was aiming for? You thought so at first. But the words were not thought through at all; you just felt a need to say something, anything, just like you’d talk back to a teacher when they became too annoying in their remarks.

You hold your breath as Baekhyun crouches down to your level.

You feel his eyes on you, and you unwittingly tremble under his gaze, forcing yourself to look even lower, not daring to break the rule. The seconds seem to last hours as he doesn’t speak a word – and he doesn’t have to. You feel intimidated.

“You want to be a pet?”

He stands up; he’s right in front of you, if you so much as leaned forward a little bit, your forehead would touch his thigh. You slightly crave the touch; but not enough to move, not when you grow petrified. The question is rhetorical. You wait for him to finish the thought.

“Then I’ll treat you like one.”

Without waiting for your reaction, he steps behind you. You hear shuffling in what had to be a box placed behind your back; you see nothing.

But you hear the harsh, recognizable clink of metal and your stomach drops.

* * *

Please, reblog if you enjoyed, it'll help me a bunch!

Author's note: Hello, have you missed me??? I'm sorry it took so long to upload, it's hard to find time among exams I had in June, and now my (first) new job! The next chapter is already being written, so hopefully, won't take that long. Remember to reblog if you liked, and I'll be really happy to hear what you have to say about this so far. Stay safe!

Next (Chapter 4.)

[xbaebsae]

Changes and Deleted Content Part 2 - Far Cry 5: Features and Missions

This is a small passion project series of posts where I share some insight of what’s hidden in the game(s) files, but also some general observations. The main focus will be on character changes or deletions with a few words about functions and deprecated missions.

What will not be touched upon are a lot of the things the Resistance Mod on PC restores, namely deleted store weapons and clothes, weather systems and general gameplay related things like skinning animations. I also won’t go into audio files and their content, as @lulu2992 is already working on an amazing series for FC5 that summarizes them per character.

This part will be significantly shorter Edit from post finishing-Angy: This post turned out really damn long despite only discussing some scrapped or changed features and a couple of deprecated mission strings. I still hope you find this as interesting to read as I found writing and investigating it :)

1. Changed and Scrapped Features

1.1 Guns/Fangs for Hire

Just for reference, the release version of the game has 9 unique GFH/FFH available + 3 slots for random specialists you can hire throughout the world.

Among the game’s UI textures for tutorials is this image, showing an earlier version of the GFH screen.

What this indicates is that the planned amount for active GFHs you can have was originally 4; or the top row could function as some sort of favorites tab. We will probably never know for certain. 

Interestingly though, this version has slots for 20 GFHs in total, 18 either filled a character icon or a locked symbol, suggesting the originally planned unique GFH count was 18.

Considering almost every NPC in-game has spawn-able archetypes with battle audio fully in place it is possible that we were supposed to be able to recruit more of them. I will return to the matter of recruitment shortly.

Another thing I’d like to open up for consideration is that there may have been plans for (ex-)cultist GFHs or at least areas where they act friendly towards the deputy. Reason for this assumption is the fact that cultists have recorded lines for when you meet them (spawn them), aim weapons at them (the taunts GFH and friendlies do too), along with idle lines when you use mods to spawn them as friendly followers. The game has no purpose for most of these lines, as you never walk into peaceful cultists outside of the intro. In the intro you have no weapons to aim at anyone, making it impossible to trigger these lines. 

You may argue they were recorded for the arcade, but the Seeds are also featured in it and have none of those. However, they may also be a leftover from scrapped missions that would feature cultists that don’t shoot you on sight. 

Additionally to that early menu screenshot, I have also found an old reddit thread discussing the game’s Uplay page near release because of the following image:

Unfortunately I was not able to find this particular page myself anymore, and knowing how short lived everything is nowadays, it might be lost in time forever. The commenters discuss that the three additional slots here refer to potential DLC characters, but we don’t get to use any of the DLC companions in the main game (nor do the DLCs share the main game’s art direction). So, this might be another indicator for additionally planned GFH/FFH we never got to see.

One of these was likely the Eagle FFH called ‘’Freedom’’ (Character/Unique/FFH_Eagle_Freedom), which was partially restored through mods on PC as its loaders and everything are still present. It is unknown why this was scrapped.

It also appears that there once were inventory (purchaseable?) items for almost each GFH (Boomer and Jess have none), as these placeholder icons exist inside the game’s ui\icons\inventory folder:

Possible functions: Quest items you needed to obtain to recruit them (implying changed missions); Gift items (for potential level up?)

Now to return to the matter of recruitment: Deprecated mission strings suggest that originally you had to hire unique GFHs similarly to random ones; and that was part of quest lines. These lines appear in ‘oasisstrings’, the game’s main language file(s):

HIRE Jess RECRUIT Adelaide Drubman ADD Adelaide to your squad

In light of the old GFH screen I actually looked up the definition of ‘Squad’, and on wikipedia it is listed that a Squad is a team of 5+ members, further strengthening the theory that originally you could have 4 active GFH (plus the Deputy they’d be 5, therefore a squad). 

1.2 In-game Wiki menu

Some of the previous Far Cry titles have a sort of wiki menu that features short bios of characters, explanations of locations, resources and weaponry. New Dawn sort of brought part of this back with the ‘Survival Guide’ (accessible from the pause menu), but 5 does not have this at all. However, in the ui files there are still texture leftovers, implying this feature was planned and it had sections for Animals, Base Jumps, Characters, Destructible Structures, Fish, Locations, Parking Spots (Garages), Plants and Treasure Hunts. The following image shows the ‘undiscovered’ symbols arranged in that order.

Again, no text entries along with a lot of duplicate and unfinished images imply this was scrapped early.

You can view the additional images (minus characters, because they will be handled in the next posts) here.

2. Abandoned Missions

This section will focus on mission strings that still exist in ‘oasisstrings’. For the sake of readability I removed the style code the game uses and the line numbers. You can easily find them by searching part of the text in the files or website listed in References. Please keep in mind that only the mission titles themselves are 100% like that in the files, any assumption as to what they might have been used for is purely speculative, but I attempt to always provide a reasonable explanation with evidence for the theories presented. Also I am not perfect, so it is possible I missed something in-game. In that case please do correct me!

2.1. Investigation Type objectives

There is a set of objectives listed that imply a different setup for Willis Huntley’s mission. It introduces the objectives PHOTOGRAPH, TAG, LISTEN and INTERROGATE:

PHOTOGRAPH potential property PHOTOGRAPH an animal slaughter TAG the target PHOTOGRAPH the target LISTEN to the conversation INTERROGATE the target PHOTOGRAPH cult signs and rituals: BRING the photos back to Willis

The release build mission has you tail someone and steal a VHS tape. None of the above objectives appear. It’s interesting to see that at one point there were mechanics in consideration that included intel gathering.

2.2. Quest centered around Melvin

The only Melvin I could find in relation to Far Cry 5 is Nadine Abercrombie’s grandfather. Melvin Abercrombie joined the cult. It isn’t assured that these objectives refer to him, but if they do it’d mean a potential mission where you speak to a lower ranked cultist.

Please Note that mission strings are not always in correct order.

TALK to Melvin LOOT Melvin's corpse REACH Melvin's house WAIT for Melvin to arrive GO MEET Melvin

2.3. The ‘Redeemer’ Objectives

At some point there was a quest-line revolving around something called the ‘Redeemer’ in Holland Valley. I could not find out what this thing really was supposed to be, but it sounds like it was either a boat or a submarine (???). In this line it appears that the garage in Fall’s End had actual relevance.

FIND a similar engine BRING engine to Mary's garage TALK to Mary's assistant TOW Redeemer Back the Garage (this typo is also in the file) SUBMERGE the Redeemer FLIP the Redeemer upside down GET IN the Tow Truck PUT the Redeemer on the Flat Bed

What this also implies is the inclusion of tow trucks and that there was a ‘Mary’s assistant’ character.

2.4. A few seperate Entries before we focus on plot relevant ones

In light of the afore mentioned wiki menues there is also an objective type that goes very well with its character section:

DISCOVER this character.

This could be attached to unknown entries in the character list.

There also is an unused objective called:

FIND the cow in the field

Which at first glance made me believe it was related to the mission at Cattle co., but it is not used there or anywhere else. I suppose we will never find out what was so special about this mysterious cow.

TAKE Joseph's writings

is also an interesting entry, as it is not related to the mission where you burn his book. This is again an unused string with unknown original purpose.

2.5. Mary May and John Seed

There are two particularly interesting unused mission objectives in relation to these two characters. 

For one, it looks like originally we were supposed to rescue Mary May from John’s ranch:

RESCUE Mary May From John Seed's Ranch

This could either be a replacement for saving her in Fall’s End or it is a mission that appeared later on in which John possibly captured her. It gets more possible applications with the next one, though.

FIND John and Mary May's secrets

Now, this one caught my attention immediately, because there are two big things that come to mind in terms of possible application. It could refer back to the novel Absolution in which Mary May gets captured and tattooed by John, heavily implying that part of the plot that made it to the novel was originally intended to be shown in the game (we will get back to this in the character episode when talking about Holly). 

Additionally, keeping the previous objective in mind, it could also imply that Mary has been converted during her capture (or her capture was planned) and played a different role in the story overall. Of course, all of this is only speculation as we will probably never know, but the objective specifically says ‘John AND Mary May’s secrets’, refering to shared secrets, not just one of Mary herself (which would fit more into the tattoo theory). 

   If you have ever even considered the possibility that Ubisoft might have cut a lot of stuff from the Whitetail region of the game, the rest of this Mission section should finally prove this to you. I’d like to make clear here that this is unbiased. I have tried to dig up deleted content equally in all regions but it just turns out that this is the one they really went wild with. There is nothing that stands out in terms of deleted or changed missions in the Henbane area and the Holland Valley content is mostly not that plot relevant minus the last examples just mentioned.

2.6. Eli and the Wolf’s Den

In the final version of the game we are told that Eli is an important character, but he is not very active in any way. Where Mary May assists you on the way to John’s Ranch and Tracey and the others at the prison fight by your side in defense missions, Eli will stay at the Wolf’s Den and have you run his errands for him. Just like the other mentioned characters he has full fight capabilities though. His AI is capable of using that bow, despite him never leaving the bunker.

As it turns out, he used to be a far more active character and there were multiple ways you could encounter him for the first time. For reference: In the game as it is now you will only meet him when he and his people rescue the deputy after Jacob’s first trial. You cannot enter the Wolf’s Den prior to this point.

Inside the game’s animations folders are these three subfolders including the respective files (JJ and Key03 is how Eli is often referred to in the files, I will get back to this in the character post):

This means there were three ways that you would encounter Eli: Inside a cabin, through being captured in a net or by being released by Perkins. This was most likely Doc Perkins, giving her a bit more significance in the game.

The main cutscene files for these are not present anymore, only the animations remain so I could not find out where the exact locations for these were supposed to be at. I however, loaded these animations into a game cutscene so we get to look at them anyway. I have chosen Jacob’s death cutscene for the simple reason that there’s only the player + 1 NPC, it is daytime and there’s no intrusive DOF blurring everything. The video below shows all of them. 

Keep in mind that only the player animation matters in the first two! Ignore the rest. The third one features Doc Perkins and has her animation applied to her. As you can see it is very very unfinished, but it shows that she possibly unties the deputy or opens an animal cage, then drives away in a car.

This unused mission string supports the theory of these different ways further, as it implies that you met him somewhere and he would guide you to the den:

FOLLOW Eli into the Wolf's Den

There are several other objectives that suggest a more active Eli, who might have accompanied you on some missions:

WAIT for Eli to arrive GO with Eli GO inside the Wolf's Den

2.7. Jacob and the Veteran Center

Before swan diving down a very deep rabbit hole, let’s address this unused mission string first:

TALK to Deputy Pratt

Sounds very unspectacular and like something you would do at some point, but this is never an objective in the game. The intended function will forever remain unknown most likely, but possibilities are vast, especially with the upcoming abandoned objectives.

There are hints at an alternate useage of Jacob’s bunker (specifically called bunker here and not armory). Mission strings are:

FIND a way out of Jacob's Bunker LEAVE Jacob's Bunker

Again, on first sight you’d think these are just what’s there in-game. But they aren’t. During the final mission it goes from RESCUE Deputy Pratt straight to ESCAPE Jacob’s Armory. There is no indicator that you’d need to find a way out. The objectives above hint that it was similar to John’s and Faith’s bunker initially, where you had to do a few more things before escaping. 

An observation derived from the game’s subtitle file is that at one point there might have been a differentiation between ‘Armory’ and ‘Bunker’ as, most likely, a random NPC says "I don't know where Jacob's bunker is. I'm not sure anybody does, but it's out there somewhere." The armory is (other than John’s and Faith’s bunkers) directly next to a main road, next to McKinley Dam. It is quite impossible to miss. Therefore this statement, along with the inconsistent switch between calling it ‘armory’, ‘bunker’ or ‘gate’, could mean there was originally a different bunker and the armory really functioned as such. 

Before moving on to more mission strings, there is one more subtitle entry worth mentioning: "When you tried to arrest Joseph, Jacob got wind of it and things got real crazy here in the Whitetail Mountains." It heavily implies that at some point, Joseph’s family might not have been intended to be present during the opening, and they instead found out about the arrest afterwards. As far fetched as it sounds at first, it does check out with the inactivity and absence of the three heralds after you cuff Joseph (and in case you ever wondered what the three of them are doing while you guide Joseph outside, they de-spawn and are gone as soon as you turn around).

But enough about that and let’s get back to more missions we never got to see.

For instance there is:

GO TO the Veteran's Center

Which, as most of you know, is impossible during the game because you get repositioned everytime you attempt to go close. This string implies a different kind of mission at some point. 

HUNT Jacob

No, this also does not appear in the game. The final mission goes from DESTROY Wolf Beacons to KILL Jacob Seed. Possibility in combination with the previous entry is that you were supposed to follow him back to the Veteran Center and that’s where the final fight would be. It could also imply a different kind of trial.

Small observation because we are talking about the final fight: The Prima Games’ guide (based on a pre-release build of the game, it will be featured more prominently in the next post) depicts Jacob at the bottom of the mountain during this encounter. WIth a lot of perseverance I’m sure you can somehow manage to replicate this in-game. But it is interesting regardless that they chose this image. It might imply that at some point he was not positioned on top of the hill, and instead closer to the area he finally dies in.

Before we move on, here are a few other interesting unused strings:

TRAIN TRAIN yourself INTERACT with Jacob for finishing takedown TALK to Jacob

They imply a different way to end the fight along with the possibility to talk to Jacob at some point (unrelated to each other mind you). I have no clue in what kind of scenario you were supposed to talk to him. The only explanation I have is that trials were possibly supposed to be different at some point and maybe they had more intentions to explore the whole brainwashed aspect of it to the point you casually took strolls around St Francis. Now before you say I just made that up, I implore you to wait till after the next part to call me out on it, because there are reasons I offer that possibility up for discussion here.

TRAIN and TRAIN yourself might not be linked to this region at all. But it is interesting to have these sort of objectives as they form the ‘Train, Hunt, Kill, Sacrifice’ part of the region’s theme, when you refer back to other mission strings: TRAIN (yourself), HUNT Jacob, KILL Jacob Seed.

Now to get to the main part. If you ever used mods on PC that let you access the Veteran Center, you will have noticed that the AI acts very strange. Your assigned GFH might wander around, aim at nothing or even attack civillians. Cultists inside the area will not always attack you, while civillians will do. This is most likely why the developers were so quick to patch out the tricks to access the region without mods.

I have seen multiple speculations circling around, but the one that always struck me as the most plausible one is that there was some kind of mission after Pratt rescues you from the cage. It is a very discontinuous cutscene, in which you transition from the cage directly to the top floor of the Veteran Center, implying there were no problems for Pratt and the Deputy to get there, despite having to cross the entire guarded frontyard and going through multiple building floors to get to the office. So, naturally I wasted some time of my life trying to dig up stuff that proves this theory right and I...well I did find something.

Important note so you understand what’s going on here: It is very common in games to load objects underneath the map (outside of sight of the player) to assure they are properly loaded in when they are needed. I have seen posts circulating around which depicted Pratt underneath the building, suggesting they eventually had an area planned there. The more likely case is that Pratt was loaded there for later use in a cutscene.

Why am I saying that? Well, this following screenshot was taken underneath the map during the cutscene where Pratt rescues the deputy and it transitions to the top of the building. I have changed the time to daytime for a bit better visibility.

What you see here is an entirely unused set of either cutscene or gameplay elements. A truck, Jacob (who’s absent in the cutscene we see), Pratt, a random NPC, a bag, a small table (unseen in cutscene), a single door (unseen in cutscene), a double door and 3 small pieces of paper (only two are in cutscene). I have kept watch on these assets for the entirety of the cutscene and none of them were moved into place. Meaning that all of these were here to be used in either a different cutscene or even a gameplay segment.

It brings me back to the mission theory, where there was a potential stealth segment between leaving the cage and entering the office.  Maybe there was an alternate cutscene for the case where you’d be caught and the one we see in the game is the one after successfully sneaking up there? We will never know for certain again but it is one possible explanation as to why these assets even still exist. It would also check out with the TALK to Deputy Pratt mission string, as you maybe had to speak to him after reaching a certain area.

Here are also some additional screenshots of the room in front of the office:

It was modelled and filled with a few detail props we never get to see much of.

Another potential mission, which would explain the broken AI behavior better, is the already mentioned theory that they might have planned to do more with the whole brainwashing aspect. Cultists inside the Vet Center area do not shoot and are allied, while civillians act hostile, implying while the player is there they are considered to be allied to cultists. TALK to Deputy Pratt, TALK to Jacob or TRAIN (yourself) could have taken place during this also. Something that could support this theory is also this unused timelapse marking days passing:

3. The Game’s Title and Closing Words

Internally the game is often called ‘fc zeta’, ‘zeta’ or ‘fcz’. So *sigh* of course I tried to find a deeper meaning behind it all and came to the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet ‘Zeta’. If you count Far Cry: Primal as a real standalone title, Far Cry 5 is the sixth Far Cry release. But because the Greek were special snowflakes or something, the sixth letter actually has the value of 7. So Zeta is actually 7 despite being the sixth. If you count Blood Dragon as a Far Cry release it’d mean FC5 is the 7th release. However, these theories exclude all the expansions and stuff for earlier Far Cry games.

Another indicator that Zeta might have been more than just a number, is this texture used as a decal on some clothing materials:

I have not found someone in-game who has this anywhere, and they might just disable the transparency and use it only for the American flag. But still, why would they make such a decal texture in the first place? Maybe very early name of the cult or resistance group? 

Before closing this incredibly long essay, here is an old, unused version of the logo found in the files :)

Phew, we finally reached the end. If you made it all the way down here: CONGRATULATIONS you just read a long af essay! Again, i’d like to remind you that a lot of what you’ve read is pure speculation. I tried to prove my arguments as best as I could with evidence that I provided but only Ubisoft knows what really happened. And they are unlikely to tell us.

The next post will focus on the expansive character list and I may split it into parts because there is a lot to say and show about some characters. 

I hope you have a nice day and thank you for reading ♥

_______________________________________________________

References:

text.farcry.info (website where you can look through Oasisstrings yourself!) languages\english\oasisstrings.oasis.bin languages\english\oasisstrings_subtitles.oasis.bin animations\narrative\cin_key03_q01_b00_meet_jj_cabin animations\narrative\cin_key03_q01_b00_meet_jj_net animations\narrative\cin_key03_q01_b00_meet_jj_release domino\user\fcz_proto_ld domino\user\zeta_dlcm ui\resources\textures\04_menu\tooltips ui\resources\textures\06_icons\inventory ui\resources\textures\05_hud\tutorials\_images __Unknown\XBT\AE800D066AB2E84A.xbt __Unknown\XBT\FD080AA2BBABE691.xbt Zeta on Wikipedia (english) Squad on Wikipedia (english) Prima Games guide (2018, collector’s edition, print and digital) reddit.com/r/farcry/comments/89nsf1/so_theres_3_missing_guns_for_hire_here_maybe_3/ __Unknown\BIK\C6AB10EDBC81E933.bik

[jebazzled]

Level Up! Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced RP and You

Hello there! Coming to you again with tips & tricks for a top-notch roleplay experience! Today we're going to talk about writing levels and what they mean for your roleplay experience. We'll cover what these levels mean, how to gauge where you're at, and how you can improve your roleplay writing specifically!

WRITING LEVELS

"Writing levels" are often a descriptor sites will use in their advertising and site buzzes. They might be "semi-literate," "intermediate," "literate," "advanced," or any other sort of buzzword. The key here is that these descriptors are used by site staff both to advertise what type of writing is most common on their site and what type of writing they want to see on their site.

What writing levels are not is a value indicator. There's nothing wrong with being an intermediate writer or a beginner writer; advanced sites are not inherently better than intermediate ones, beginner sites are nothing to be ashamed of! Think of writing levels as an umbrella within the rp community. The same way a forum rp-er might narrow their search to jcink sites, a writer might narrow their search to sites which cater to their style of writing.

That said, it is good to define what each of these levels look like so you can figure out where your writing might fit.

BEGINNER Beginner writing is often very short and direct, without much in the way of literary flourish. Characters might be fairly undeveloped (or developed around one trait, for example, "goth" or "prep") and there's usually more discussion of their appearance than you see in advanced writing.

Examples:

Susie was short and very skinny, with big eyes and long mermaid-wavy hair dyed blue at the ends. She was sitting outside Firefly High in blue skinny jeans, silver Converse, and a black t-shirt. "I hope someone can give me a ride home," she said.

Raven sneered at Susie. She didn't like blue because she liked black, because she was a goth. "Are you listening to popular music? What a phony."

Bramblepaw sat down in the clearing. "Hello" he meowed.

Some guides will also give an example like 

patty threw a pom pom at susie! "take that u nerd!"

But I am choosing to believe that you're past that if you're deep enough in this hobby to be seeking out resources - I certainly never had that self-awareness until I was more in intermediate territory!

Beginner-level writing gets the job done, and can certainly move a story along. But if you've been writing a while, you might be ready to build more multifaceted characters, and to invest more effort in your writing.

INTERMEDIATE/SEMI-LITERATE WRITING Intermediate writing tends to be longer than beginner writing, with more variety in sentence structure and with more advanced word choices. There are likely more "beats" per post, by which I mean that instead of just answering a question or getting on the bus or etc, a character will likely do more actions in each turn writing. Characters are less likely to be a stereotype (see: Raven the goth who only wears black, Patty the popular cheerleader who is blonde and brainless, etc) but applications likely reveal one-dimensional characters. Common application styles I see from intermediate writers are "interviews" and "journals," as well as listicles (10 Things Raven Likes, 9 People Raven Hates, etc); this likely means a character is told rather than shown.

(Wondering what's so intermediate about interviews and journals? See my guides to interviews and journals!)

Examples:

Susie was born on March 20, 2003 in Farmville, Iowa. She didn't like how similar her classmates all were - they all listened to the same music, read the same books (none!) and had the most fun when drinking on a tractor. Susie was more deep, and liked to write poetry and sketch the animals that lived on her family's farm. Today she was sitting outside Firefly High, twirling the ends of her blue-dyed hair and waiting for a ride home. 

Raven wasn't like most girls. She didn't like horses or rabbits, but only liked goats, because they represented the devil. Raven also wasn't like most girls, at least in Farmville, because she worshipped the devil. She wore a lot of black to represent this, and when she saw Susie, she sneered. Blue! Susie must be a normie. "Are you listening to popular music?" She asked. "What a phony."

Bramblepaw had spent all morning hunting and was feeling lonely. All he wanted was to share a squirrel with a friend, and maybe have someone groom the tricky spot behind his ears. He padded from the apprentice den to the warriors', to the elders and no one was home. He sat forlorn in the middle of the clearing. "Hello?" He meowed.

Another common trait of both beginner and intermediate writing is that posts might not leave much for a partner to reply to. The whole point of this weird hobby is to collaborate with a partner - if you're finding that it is hard to keep writing partners, you might take a look at my guide for writing posts that beg a response.

Intermediate writing is stronger than beginner writing, but still sometimes falls flat when it comes to collaboration with a partner, and is almost never beautiful to read. Intermediate writing is when advanced writing is just over the next hill - and that hill comes with a fair amount of work.

ADVANCED/LITERATE WRITING Advanced writing can be long or short, but the writing in either case packs a punch. Advanced writers use a variety of sentence structures, words, and literary devices. They might have specific imagery they use for specific characters, specific literary constructions for different characters, and there is a strong character voice in each post. Advanced writers write multifaceted characters with genuine flaws and fears, and advanced writers produce writing that is enjoyable to read, elegant and emotive. Applications will usually be anecdotal - will demonstrate key moments in a character's life, allowing the writer to show them in action rather than tell the reader what they are like. (A guide to anecdotal freestyle applications is available here.

Examples:

Everything felt the same in Farmville: identical rows of corn stretching endlessly over the horizon, pockmarked by the occasional farmhouse, white clapboard and falling shutters. Every person felt the same - Susie and Mary and Sarah and Joseph, strong peasant names living strong peasant lives, and never straying more than twenty miles from the town in which they were born.

Even Susie knew she had her place in the sameness: the once-every-generation girl who fancies herself to be more, as though her sketches of the sheep and pigs are any better than her grandmother's before her. As though dying her hair blue were enough to make her different when she knew she belonged here as sure as the hogs in the barn.

The only difference between Susie and her classmates was that she didn't have a car to get her to her evening job at the Road Ranger gas station, and her bike had disassembled itself after she'd pedaled it into a gopher hole, so here she was, sitting pathetically outside Firefly High, waiting for a ride. She'd almost rather be fired than beg for one. 

It’s the principle of the thing, Raven had told her mother that morning. Yes, it was 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity; yes, there was not a cloud in the sky and the fields absorbed heat like a winter sweater; yes, she was aware that her white makeup and Wet n' Wild eyeliner was falling off her face like The Scream. But it was the principle of the thing, wearing the long-sleeved black shirt with the hand-cut thumbholes, a long dark skirt; her only concession to the heat, a pair of thin gray flip-flops instead of her beloved Docs. She listens to Death Wish; she doesn't have one.

But nothing makes a Satantic rebel feel more a phony than feeling it drip off of them in the rural Iowa heat, and Raven wanted to take it out on someone. Fair? No, but life isn't fair; she's got that on a sticker on the electric guitar she saved up her Hy-Vee salary for and never learned to play. Maybe pretending to be an asshole has turned Raven into one.

She has no real problem with Susie - Susie Q., from math, or Susie C., from human geo; who knows, they're all the same - but she scoffs at her anyway, loud enough to catch Susie's attention. "What top-40 garbage are you listening to?"

Hunting is something they do together, or they're supposed to. But in the whole time he'd been out in the woods, Bramblepaw hadn't seen a single other cat - not playing at the stream, not waiting in a tree for the finches to return, not sitting along the RiverClan border to taunt their neighbors. If he'd been a Loner, just passing through, he would have thought the entire territory abandoned.

It was unsettling, and when he returned to the Camp, it was more of the same: everyone gone, without a trace; had he imagined them being here at all? Was it all in his head?

His mew sounded small and pitiful to even him, the mewl of a lost kitten. "Hello?"

Advanced writing makes more time for descriptions, scene-setting, and other narration. It doesn't feel "cringey," by which I mean if you read it 10 years from now you're probably not going to want to drown yourself. Please do not ask me about the 2005 Proboards forum I adminned and referenced for this tutorial.

So now that we can recognize what writing our level might be at - how do we shop for a site?

FINDING YOUR FIT

Now that you have a sense of where your writing sits, it's time to use that data point in searching for a new site to call home. Some sites make it easy for you by self-identifying as beginner, intermediate, or advanced; some sites may use "semi-literate" and "literate," but I know I stray from those labels because it feels like a value judgment, and as I said before:

there is nothing wrong with being part of a beginner or intermediate community, if that is what makes the most sense for your writing and for what you aim to get out of your roleplay experience!

Before applying to a new site, you should do a little bit of digging around to see if it's a good fit for you: 

Look at accepted character applications. How do these compare to your own writing?

Skim some threads from top posters. How does this community write and structure their threads? Could you see yourself regularly keeping up with their speed, length, literary quality?

To the above point - does it seem like the community has a tendency towards your personal writing pet peeves? (For example, I personally cannot stand purple prose, and if the site community is prone to it, I am OUT.)

This is in addition to all standard due-diligence site-hunting routines, e.g. not diving into the world of Southern Gothic supernatural if you're looking for, say, urban fantasy.

It's also worth thinking about how the community behaves on the server, if you join it:

Is there a thread shoutout/compliments/etc channel? What passages are members calling out in there as exceptional writing?

Do the members strike you as open-minded and friendly or as more of a closed group? If you choose to shoot for a level above your standard writing as a growth exercise, this will be easier to achieve with an open-minded and friendly group than with a group of snobs.

Do you enjoy the vibe? Something frequently overlooked, I think. If you don't like the energy of the community, just don't join the site - that is going to be much more productive for everyone than you joining and then trying to get the staff to fully re-engineer their community.

Be honest with yourself! Regardless of how much you like a site's plot, lore, and community, joining a site that sits above your writing proficiency is challenging. You might find your characters routinely pended for lacking the development of other characters onsite. Other members may not be enthusiastic to write with you - not necessarily out of snobbishness or elitism, but because it's not fun to feel like you're not getting equal effort or quality from a writing partner. And you might find yourself feeling insecure about how your writing stacks up to others (I've been writing on advanced sites for 10 years and I feel insecure about my own writing sometimes!) which might sap your muse.

If you are looking for a minimal-effort, minimal-stress rp experience, stick to sites that are at or below your writing level. Writing with people of similar skillset will help take the edge off any insecurity, and because writing will be lower-pressure and lower-effort, you will be better positioned to juggle multiple characters and more big plots. "Lower effort" doesn't mean "lazy" - it just means that you free up headspace that otherwise you might spend on the mechanics of writing versus the excitement of plotting.

If you are an intermediate writer seeking to write on an advanced site, you need to take a much more deliberate approach.

One thing I see often is intermediate writers applying multiple characters to an advanced site at once. This is a losing proposition. While staff might be willing to pend an app and work with you on revisions, if they see you submitting multiple applications that require major revisions and overhauls, they see a pattern. While staff might be willing to help you develop one character to their site's standard, if they anticipate you needing that level of coaching on every character, they will question your ability to keep up with their members in threads. Staff cannot be expected to assist members on writing each thread post - at that point, it becomes easier to decline all of the intermediate writer's applications.

If you are an intermediate writer seeking to write on an advanced site, you need to treat this as a "quality, not quantity" project.

When I was 13 I was writing very much at a beginner and intermediate level, just little Neopets rps with my friends. Then I joined a horse rp - an advanced rp - with a 1000 word minimum per post. While I am beyond thankful ridiculous word count minimums aren't common anymore, I can credit this rp with much of my growth as a writer.

I wrote one (1) character. And I only plotted her with a couple of others. I was very active in the OOC community, and was eventually made a mod - but when it came to IC activity, I focused all my energy on one character and just a couple of plots, because I spent hours on each post, making sure that I was matching my writing partners as best I could. It was much more work than the beginner & intermediate forums I was on with my friends, and much more work for much less action. But stretching like that is what made advanced writing get easier and easier - until I could balance two characters on an advanced site, then four, until now, when I write 12 characters on multiple advanced sites with relative ease. The real challenge is in keeping up with threads - not in matching quality anymore.

If you are an intermediate writer seeking to improve your writing, joining an advanced site is a great option for growth, but you need to adjust your expectations.

Here are my best tips for intermediate writers looking to make the jump to advanced - or, for that matter, for beginners to make the jump to intermediate: 

Focus, focus, focus. Choose one (1) character to write - no matter how tempted you are by want ads, no matter how many other ideas you get, no matter what your muse is throwing at you. Use all those on sites at your current level. For your reach site, pick one character.

Be receptive. Your one (1) character might take a revision or two to get out of a pend. Remember that staff don't pend apps to be assholes - they do it because they believe in you and think you have it in you to do the necessary revisions! If they thought you were a lost cause they wouldn't have wasted their own time with a pend. Be open to the idea that they know what works and is expected in their community. After all, if your character and your writing aren't appealing to the site community... you're not going to have anyone to write with!

Focus, focus, focus, part 2. You should not choose this character based on the volume of plots they can attract. Choose a character who has one or two very close plots for you to focus on. You might consider identifying a particularly kind member of the community and filling one of their want ads, so that this close plot is ready-made for you, and so this person can be a friendly face on your writing journey.

Be realistic. You might think: well, if I focus on one character for a few weeks, then I'll be ready to take on another, right? You might be or you might not. Don't rush it. This entire journey is about deliberation and intentionality. Don't take on a second character on an advanced site until writing the first to the same standard is noticeably easier.

Be kind to yourself. This is a lot of work! If you have the time for it, you might consider also staying active on a site that is at your writing level, so you have a place for easy writing, indulging your plot bunnies, etc.

I hope this tutorial has been a helpful resource to you, both in identifying how to find the right rp for you and in figuring out how to improve your writing, if you so choose. Happy writing!

[sazorak]

Every Game I Played in 2020, Ranked

2020. Boy, what a garbo year huh? Didn't actually play that many games this year all-in-all. Happens! My backlog is getting pretty big, but I just find it hard to focus on games when I could be working on something. Or put off working on something, as it may happen to be at times.

My arbitrary decision from years ago to only attach a numbered ranking to same-year releases is getting increasingly silly, especially given my propensity to wait on playing games until I’m in the right mood, but whatever. That order matters than the dumb numerical numbering anyway.

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019

Later Alligator – 2019 – Steam – ★★

The style of this game is very cute, and the jokes are funny enough. But… ok, look, I’m not one to be precious about what is or isn’t a game. But this really isn’t a game. It’s a series of disconnected, unrelated challenges clipped from Atari Free Mini Game Collection 100, wrapped in a very non-interactive adventure-game. It’s cute, it’s kind of sweet, but it’s dull. Dull dull dull. There’s a pointless, mandatory sliding block puzzle early on that infuriated me by its mere existence. Them giving the ability to skip it because “wow you’re bad at this huh”, which, while accurate, also just sold the whole point meaningless of the “““interactive experience”””.

Also: when a huge part of your game is WOW WE ANIMATED EVERYONE REALLY GOOD, text boxes that reveal word-by-word, far away from the animations that occur when said characters talk? Kind of stinks!

8. Carrion – 2020 – Steam – ★★

What Carrion does well— the whole “You’re controlling The Thing and just rippin’ people apart!” shtick— is really neat. They made that bootleg The Thing animate real-ass good.

The actual game as a whole though? Kind of garbage. Imagine a Metroidvania with zero actual exploration, where every opportunity you have to venture off the path instead results in immediate railroading with constant, utterly inexplicable one-way pipes. It’s not that it’s linear, it’s that it actively slaps you when you attempt to explore. It’s very frustrating! Add the fact that the tentacle-monster-shtick makes challenging to actually, y’know, move around and control all your bits…  the only reason I finished the game was due to foreknowledge of its extreme brevity.

I think if the game were more open and less obsessed with constantly handing out upgrades, as well as having less of a focus on pure combat, I think I’d have enjoyed it more.

SD Gundam G Generation Cross Rays – 2019 – Steam – ★★

It is well documented at this point that I am both an active Gundam fan, and as well as an on-again-off-again tactical RPG aficionado. A SD Gundam game appearing on Steam with a good English translation and localization is… exciting, to say the least. That said, I have never had much context for this game series beyond the basic facts that the combat tended to be pretty well animated CG, and that it’s vaguely similar to Super Robot Wars. Turns out… it’s really different from SRW? I dunno how the rest of the series fairs, but Cross Rays is weird as hell.

For one, there’s zero tutorialization at all. None. Almost all of what I’m going to explain here is me figuring stuff out by trial and error, or by reading junk online. Gundam is insanely popular, you’d think they’d be interested in explaining how it all works, but… nope. Even Super Robot Wars has multi-level introductory bits for new folks to show them the rope these days.

So: Cross Rays is a tactical RPG where you can playthrough the storyline of various Gundam AUs. You can play through them in any order. These playthroughs are fairly literal translations of the stories. You take control of the lead mecha from those series, fight enemy mobile suits that show up in SRW-like tactical RPG combat, until all reinforcements cease. Pretty straight forward. There are occasionally mission variants like “prevent enemies from reaching X” or “prevent enemies from destroying Y”, but even those can be just reduced to “kill everything very quickly please.”

But here’s the thing: while there is a story progression, the characters in the story itself actually have no character progression. These characters and mecha are actually considered guests, despite it being ostensibly their story. Instead, you are able to field “permanent” mecha and pilots of your own choosing, which do have progressions. There is no plot justification for this or anything like it. The game does not recognize that it’s weird that during Iron-Blooded Orphans intro where nobody knows what a Gundam even is, you can have 25 Gundams show up at once and just fire lasers at everything. That’s because this game is actually about repeatedly grinding the same set of missions over and over.

Pilots are recruited by completing certain in-mission requirements. Mecha are acquired by either by getting enough kills with the progression-less “guest” mecha, combining mecha you already have gashopon-style, completing certain quests, or by leveling up mecha and then “evolving them”. This is the actual core of the game.

SD Gundam G Generation Cross Rays is basically Disgaea, it turns out? You’re grinding story missions at various difficulty levels in order to complete missions, try to recruit specific pilots, equip them with stats and levels to make them stronger, and then hitting mecha together in a sort of quasi-SMT fusion system until you get all the powerful mobile suits you desire.

The combat itself is kind of… bland? There’s a lot of systems, but they mostly seem in service of making an already easy game easier, or burning through tedium. There are four different difficulty modes, because there’s not actually that many different missions you can play through. The expectation is you’ll just work your way through every story beat while ramping the difficulty up over time to where the “guest” mecha would not be able to handle on their own. In fact, letting the story mecha act out the story beats is actually bad after a point, unless you’re still trying to get those lead mobile suits, or if you’re trying to complete some mission requirement in order to recruit Named Wing Grunt Pilot #246.

There is something to the notion of “I want to get N and N and N and N on a team, piloting weird but powerful mobile suits, and just solo every Gundam AU in a row,” but the whole premise seems kind of against purpose. Why bother recreating story beats at all, then? It’s not like the game even acknowledges any of that going on.

If the point is that I’m supposed to be, like in other grind-heavy tactical RPGs, breaking the systems to my own end in order to proceed… why not make the missions you play challenges focused towards that? The story progression literally only exists to facilitate the mission-based unlock conditions, which makes all the energy put into making them JUST LIKE THE ANIME really damn pointless.  

I like tactical RPGs, I like breaking RPG systems so as to beat hard challenges (I beat all the insanely hard extra bosses in FFXII for crying out loud), I looooove Gundam. I should like this. But I don’t really have the “god, I NEED TO FILL THIS LIST” gene that some folks have… except as an excuse to continue to engage in gameplay I enjoy. The gameplay here seems in service of the collection, rather than the way around.

7. Pokemon Sword: The Isle of Armor – 2020 – ★★★

Pokemon’s first foray into actually doing DLC is… a mixed bag. As a positive, they’ve improved the Wild Area concept I liked from the main game, and even brought back buddy Pokemon walking behind you. That’s neat. On the other hand: the actual progression in it is completable in like an hour, it doesn’t scale with you, so you’re bound to be over leveled for it, and all the raid stuff, while still conceptually neat, is just as flawed as in the base game. And so, you’re just left with even more new Pokemon to RNG grind on to continue to catch-them-all. Nah, I’m good.

Astral Chain – 2019 – Switch – ★★★

Platinum knows how to make good character action games. They’ve made a bunch of them. Bayonetta, Nier: Automata, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. They also know how to make some kind of mediocre character action games. Transformers: Devastation, Wonderful 101, their various shovelware character action games like Korra. Astral Chain falls somewhere in the middle, I guess?

Astral Chain has all the production of their good games. It has some stylish, cool action. It has a neat core mechanical idea, in that it’s essentially a two-character action game where you control both characters at once. It has a lot of the old mechanics from some of their best games brought in; witch-time last second dodging from Bayonetta, Nier’s shooting-and-slashing combination, the Zandatsu mechanic from Metal Gear Rising, even Wonderful 101’s multi-unit shenanigans. The setting is different, and there’s some neat world flavor all in all.

But, of all games I’ve played over the past few years, Astral Chain made me more vividly angry than any other. It’s not that it’s too hard— far from it, really, I found its combat incredibly mashy. No, the problem is that it has so many shitty mechanics slathered on that it become a chore to get to the “good bits”.

Why would you put forced stealth sequences in your character action game, especially when your movement controls are not suited for it?

Why the HELL would you put platforming sections in your character action game, constantly, especially when your stupid ghost buddy can accidentally yank you off the edge, your auto-combos can just throw you off the edge, or literally anything can knock you off the edge and make you lose life?

Why would you put so many constant excuses into the world to force me use the digital sensor in the game, that also makes it miserable to walk around while using it?

WHO THE LIVING FUCK THINKS THESE SHITTY BOX BALANCING MINI-GAMES ARE FUN???

These games are supposed to encourage me to perfect everything, right? Why keep putting fucking fights you need to complete in order to get an S rank behind backtracking, or Legions I don’t have yet? That isn’t adding replayability, that’s just wasting my time. There are even in-level missions that have fail conditions that you never even know about. Surprise!!! A lot of them involve chasing after guys and catching them with your chain, which is really obnoxious to do!!!! SURPRISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The story is just Bad Evangelion, straight up. Every story beat from Evangelion is here, executed worse. They also make your character have a twin just so they can have a character who can talk and feel emotions, because your boring-ass protagonist is stuck being an emotionless audience cipher. Cool!!!

Tetris Effect – 2018 – Origin – ★★★

It’s drugs Tetris. I personally don’t use, or have synesthesia for that matter. I imagine this game is better if you do. It’s an enjoyable enough experience but it feels incredibly slight for what I was expecting from it, or even compared to something like Lumines, which has tons of replayability by way of its difficulty. Tetris just isn’t that hard, unless you’re forcing yourself to do weird shit to get points. I WILL NEVER LEARN HOW TO T-SPIN. Never.

Castlevania Anniversary Collection – 2019 – Steam – ★★★

Kind of an unremarkable Castlevania collection. Neat that it has an official translation of Kid Dracula in there, but also… look, I prefer Metroidvania Castlevanias, OK?

6. Spelunky 2 – 2020 – Steam – ★★★

I’m not entirely sure why this doesn’t click for me where Spelunky 1 did. More annoying intro levels? Too many fiddly requirements for different ending-progression? Gameplay additions that just make things more annoying? Spelunky 1 was hard, but there was a kind straight-forwardness to it, even with its weird secrets, that made it much easier to grok and continue banging your head against. I’m just not having as much fun with this. Difficulty should be challenging, not a hassle.

5. Stellaris: Federations – 2020 – Steam – ★★★

This is the year that Stellaris just broke for me.

Federations itself is a good DLC; it adds some really interesting mechanics tied to various types of multi-national unions (the titular federations, as well as the Space UN), as well as the addition of unique “origins” that allow you to further specialize your gameplay. The origins in particular are a great addition that allows more specialization and roleplay.

I’m just tired of the sheer amount of busywork Stellaris forces you to do. Every DLC adds more junk you need to keep an eye on, and the fact that the AI doesn’t even bother with it (compensating with copious economy boosts in order to keep up) makes the whole thing frustrating. It’s like playing fetch with yourself; you just get tired of chasing after your own ball after a point.

I have to wonder if they’re pivoting towards a notional Stellaris 2 at this point? Might not be a bad idea for them, though it is weird with all they talked up adding more origins when Federations came out.  

4. GranBlue Fantasy Versus – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★

This is probably the fighting game I got most into over the past few years. There’s just this nice, almost Street Fighter-esque ease of execution to the controls, and that Arc Systems Works 3D-as-2D style continues to just do work. I don’t give a single shit about GranBlue Fantasy (frankly, I think I’d enjoy this game more if it wasn’t attached to a property) but the characters are fun enough to play and look at.

The big problem here is two things: no crossplay, and no rollback netcode. In the span of a month, this game became a total ghost town on PC, and it doesn’t sound like PS4 faired that much better. 

Ring Fit Adventure – 2019 – Switch – ★★★★

I’ve fallen on-and-off this game all year. At its heart: it works, it’s a fun exercise game. I don’t think it really feels like a “game” (in the sense that I’m not really coming to it for riveting gameplay or anything) as much as just a guided exercise experience, but… that’s fine? The in-game story is kind of flat, but funny in the fact of it existing at all. Buff Nicol Bolas and all.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen – 2017 – Steam – ★★★★

XCOM2: War of the Chosen is a great answer to what XCOM2 struggled with. As I discussed back in 2016 (Jesus Christ), XCOM2 tried to push against player’s worst instincts by incentivizing them to keep being aggressive through a whole bunch of timers— which, kind of just weren’t fun given how much accidentally walking into an ambush could “ruin” dozens of hours of play. War of the Chosen dials that back in some intelligent ways, by instead making the encounter designs themselves, as well as much more grab-and-bail mission types, encourage players to push ahead instead. Smart!

The addition of the Chosen makes the game feel more alive, and they really do make missions harder— particularly early on. But they’ve somehow accidentally fell into the hole, where XCOM just… isn’t that hard? Early on it’s challenging, particularly with the resource restrictions and all. But they keep giving you more and more options (that aren’t especially meaningful choices) that make your team more and more powerful, without increasing the strength of the enemy as time goes on. By the five-hour mark, you basically know if you’re going to steam roll the game or not.

The amount of additional character and variety in the gameplay is great, I just wish it had a more challenging difficulty curve. Maybe make the meta-layer of when enemies show up more targeted to where players are at. If a player is doing well, ramp up the difficulty, if they’re struggling, pull it back a bit. I should always feel like I’m just barely keeping ahead with XCOM, not like I’m bored. And by the end of War of the Chosen, I was kind of getting bored, really. Oh well.

3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 2020 – Switch – ★★★★

This is probably the video game that I spent the most time with hours-wise this year. I’m not entirely sure why? It’s a nice evolution of New Leaf, in that the crafting, environment shaping, and general quality-of-life improvements made are quite nice. There’s clearly been some thought on how people play these games, and ways to make the experience less frustrating.

… and yet, they kept so much tedium in the game. Like yes, the schedule stretching is the point, I get it. As someone who for some reason decided not to play with the clock, I only just recently finished the fish, fossils, and insects for the museum. But there’s just so many weird, little things that just make it hard to keep coming back to it. It’s like… to what end? When I’ve unlocked everything, and basically seen the entirety of the item list at this point, and the holiday events all being the game meaningless collectathons…. Why? I’m not going to try completing the collection; the museum stuff is about my limit, really (and even the paintings I can probably pass on).

I guess even an idealized, digital representation of a quasi-domestic life has the spiritual emptiness of consumerism-for-consumerism sake. Thanks???

Hypnospace Outlaw – 2019 – Steam – ★★★★

I grew up on the internet of the early 00s. I had an AngelFire website, mostly consisting of shitty sprite webcomics and hosted Gundam pics. I remember when Google wasn’t really a thing and you would heavily rely on website compilation sites like the Anime Web Turnpike in order to find anything of value online. It was weird, it was wild. It was exciting!

The internet seemed so different back then. There was a ton of garbage online, but also, like… there was a sense of optimism to it. Folks were shitty, there was plenty of bad stuff online, but it felt so disconnected from the fabric of the physicality of real-life that it was at the same time a perfect escape.

I was young when I first got “online”, something like 12. I remember having this notion that the internet was going to be this great equalizer, that it had infinite potential to change how people behave and interact. Boy, huh.

Hypnospace Outlaw is essentially a splendid alternate universe GeoCities recreation, where you’re a volunteer moderator of a grouping of websites on HypnOS, an internet-analog you access while you are sleep. At the surface level, it’s mostly about poking around the weird alternate-historical version of the internet they created, full of kids feuding, bizarre historical divergences, and plenty of amazing bespoke weirdness. All of this is great; there’s an incredible amount of content that’s just great to poke at, listen to, and explore.

Below the surface, there’s also a rolling plotline about the ethics of this industry-owned platform, those who run it, and the way corporations handle new technology, new platforms, and emerging digital societies. There’s a late game turn that’s pretty damn affecting. And as someone who has moderator his share of internet forums in his time, trying to balance ‘do it for the community’ and what your ostensible ‘bosses’ require of you, it was kind of a weird throwback in more ways than one.

Minecraft – 2011 – PC – ★★★★★

Turns out, Minecraft is really as good still who knew??? Started playing a bunch more of it this year due to Giant Bomb deciding to do so, and yeah: still good!

2. Hades – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★★

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again— Supergiant makes damn good games. I’d been holding off on checking out Hades until its full release due to my tendency to burn out on games easily, and I’m glad I waited. Hades is a fantastic rogue-lite experience. The way it makes narrative progression part of the reiterative, randomized rogue-lite structure is just perfect.

It’s got all the usual Supergiant bullet points. Great characters, voice acting, narration, and music. In terms of gameplay, it’s probably their least ambitious game— playing something like a cousin to their original game, Bastion— but it’s also been polished to a mirror sheen. It just feels really damn good to play, over and over and over.

That being said, the second (final?) ending feels kind of…. Tacked on? It’s fine as a goal to go for while continuing to do the game’s relationship mechanics for additional story bits, but it ends up feeling kind of unfulfilling compared to the payoff of the first one.

1. Crusader Kings III – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★★

I never could get into Crusader Kings II. Despite my interest, the sheer mechanical heft and unintuitive interface made the game a wall that I just couldn’t get over. I’m sure if I’d dedicated myself I probably could have learned it, but… ehhhhhh.

Crusader Kings III, on the other hand, has a good tutorial, a cleaned-up UI, and a very helpful highlight and tooltip system that make it much easier to understand how to actually play the game through resources inside the game itself. And, as it turns out: I rather love this game.

I mean, conceptually it’s an easy sell, isn’t it? Historical politics is something I enjoy broadly. I liked Stellaris but wish it had more narrative, roleplaying elements. They outright say that “winning” isn’t really the point of the game. Instead, it’s more about emergent storytelling and playing with the different systems and seeing what you can do with it.

My current game has had me taking the Haesteinn dynasty from its Viking origins into England, forming a London-seated Northern Sea Empire that encompasses all of Britannia, Iceland, Holland, Norway, and Denmark. I am currently working on hegemonizing Norse religious control over enough Asatru holy sites to finally reform the religion, such that more unified feudalization can occur. To that end, my current ruler’s predecessor invaded West Francia and conquered the whole of its territory, substantially reducing the foothold of Catholicism in mainland Europe… which seems to have kicked the hornet’s nest, given the Crusade I’m going to need to contend with next time I boot up the game.

Of course, a complicating matter is that my current ruler— the Emperor of the North Sea, King of Ireland and the Danelaw, liege of the King of Denmark, was elected from the extended Haesteinn family via Thing, the Scandinavian council of his erstwhile vassals. Where the previous emperor, the one who manufactured the invasion of Francia, was quite religious and beloved for his adherence to the old ways, I discovered as I took over as his successor that he really, really is into just boning down across Europe. We’re talking constantly attempting to seduce neighboring Queens and Princesses. His vassals are not thrilled with this. They also don’t care for his propensity for torturing people to death, constantly.

I had no real say in this; attempting to stay on top of a dynasty is kind of like riding a bucking-bronco, so many things are only tenuously under your control that some weird shit can happen. This is especially true when you use the systems that make it easier to maintain the coherency of your domain. The Norse religion encouraging concubinage results in you having a lot of kids, which means there’s a lot of domain partition going on (someday, primogeniture, someday). Naturally, using Thing election reduces that, but also makes you sometimes end up having to play Emperor Stabbo-Fucko because they thought he was the best candidate at the time. Hell, I thought he was the best candidate at the time until I discovered just how many people he’d be laying with on the low. But you just have to roll with it.

The way the game forces you to play ball with character traits is great. Doing things that match with the character’s traits makes them lose stress. Doing things against their character increases stress. Too much stress can force you to make the character take up vices (which can make them suffer health or opinion maluses, as well as altering their aptitudes), or even die outright. And sometimes those vices and attitudes can be boons, given they open up opportunities for different character interactions.

Emperor Stab-and-Fuck-Kingdom is perhaps the most relaxed person alive, it turns out, because his sadism makes him really enjoy sacrificing infidels, which makes the gods happy. It also freaks the fuck out of all of his vassals, so they’re a good supplicant mix of both appreciative of my religious sentiments and also utterly terrified of my skull piles. Some especially brave vassals occasionally try to assassinate me, but my lovers keep jumping in front of the knife and saving my life mid-coitus. Iiiiiit happens! :D  

The game can be incredibly fun to just watch, as it becomes emergently weird. Georgia right now is incredibly Jewish in game. I’m not sure how that happened; I guess someone made a random Jewish guy into a vassal, who somehow moved up enough in the world to make it a movement? The Byzantine princes elected a Coptic as Emperor, which over the course of the decade resulted in very accelerated balkanization as Byzantium just lost its shit. The Middle East and notional HRE haven’t really unified in a meaningful way, so I’m curious how things are going to go if/when the Mongols unify and roll-on in.

It’s one of those “Just one more thing” games that can completely devour time. I have more than a few times checked the clock mid-game to see that it’s 4AM and that I’ve totally ruined my sleep schedule in the process of play. Oooooops.

I highly recommend checking it out if you’re curious; the introductory, pre-release video series Paradox put out showing off the game does a pretty good job of showing the core gameplay loop and also how weird it can get.

[antibioware]

My final thoughts on Mass Effect: Andromeda (a 3 years late review)

So I spent the past week and a half playing a game I paid 13€ for, one that I promised myself I wouldn't touch but that in the end I gave a solid try to anyway, because I was willing to give Andromeda the benefit of the doubt. Because I'm aware that sometimes I'm a bitch, and that the Mass Effect trilogy had its own problems too, but I still regard it as one of the best gaming experiences of my life.

It wasn't as bad as I had expected it would be, but that doesn't make it good. Above all else, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a game that could have been interesting, had the creators actually cared to make something out of it outside of just “Dragon Age Inquisition in the Mass Effect universe”.

I wanted to write a more coherent post about what I didn’t like about it, aside from just shitting all over it like I’ve been feeling like doing since the canonical bury your gays in the game slapped me in the face. So here it is, an overlong post about a 3 years old game.

Before getting into the main elements that I disliked, I wanna preface this post by saying that I enjoyed parts of the game. The main characters, while not as well characterized as they could have been (no Bioware character ever is), grew on me the more I played the game, and by the end were the main reason why I kept playing. Unlike DA:I, the writers did a really good job building up the found family trope in this game, and while it turns corny at times, it’s very heartwarming. I think many of the planetary settings in Heleus were stunning to look at, to the point that I didn’t even mind all that much having to drive from point A to point B.

I didn’t hate the game, and I’m speaking from the point of view of someone who enjoyed it, but not enough to simply accept its many flaws.

The problems with the gameplay itself

There are three main things that I don’t think work well and are up in your face since the first seconds of the game: the game interface, the fight mechanics, and the open world aspect of the game.

◦ The first impact I had on Andromeda, right from the first 2/3 hours of playing it, was that it was very cluttered and very, very confusing. I had just finished playing ME3 and I had issues understanding how to move without having a proper map onscreen, how to read throught the thousand tutorials for the 100 new, useless elements they added to the game that are either reused from ME1 or taken directly from DA:I. The game didn’t need a crafting system, especially not one DIVIDED IN TWO DIFFERENT SECTIONS, it didn’t need an inventory system, and especially it didn't need to have the sheer amount of sidequest it had.

◦ The fight mechanics + leveling up/classes system is a hot mess. I understand they wanted to try something new, and in part they did make the fighting feel more fluid, but not being able to rely on teammates for necessary stuff like overloads/specific powers that you need during fights severely impaired the strategic element of the game. Now it’s just a third person shooter with teammates dying left and right because you have 0 control on how they fight, aside from putting them in one place or another.

The fact that you can only use 3 powers at the time is a consequence of the confusing leveling up system. Because you can have an endless amount of powers you can give your character, they needed to find a way to make them not too overpowered. The problem is…. You had more powers to use in-game in ME1. It doesn’t work so well.

When the fighting mechanics in ME3, a game that came out in 2012, feel way fluider and more enjoyable than the ones from the game that came out in 2017, something is very wrong.

◦ Open world games are a challenge, because too many developers don’t understand that turning a game into an open world doesn’t make it good, it just makes it bigger and slower. It was a problem with Dragon Age Inquisition, and it’s a problem here with Andromeda - with the only good aspect being that at least Andromeda gives you a decent car to explore the planets.

ME1 had some level of open world-ness, and there was a valid reason why ME2 and ME3 got rid of the concept: the maps you’re given are a big, cluttered mess of nothing. You have several thousands sidequests, many of which incredibly similar to each other, and nothing fucking else. Sometimes you will accidentally stumble upon something interesting, and then return to a 6 hours drive into the nothingness that keeps repeating over and over again.

It got to the point I almost stumbled upon the endgame because I got exhausted of running around doing errands, and I tried continuing the main plot, only to realize I was almost done with it. That was it.

Empty self-referencing

This is the term I used to describe my girlfriend why the way the game made call backs to the previous games bothered me so much. Call backs aren’t new to the concept of the game (the Mass Effect trilogy literally lived on characters returning from previous games, referencing things that had previously happened, etc.), but because this game wanted to be a separate thing from the ME trilogy, it couldn’t use this sort of material. And that’s completely fine! The game wanted to be its own thing, I was happy about it at first, because the trilogy was over and done for. If Mass Effect was indeed gonna continue, it needed a fresh start.

The problem is, it also needed to remind players that it’s a Mass Effect game, the game from which Commander Shepard came.

So, how to solve this matter? Well, instead of referencing stuff that actually happened in the trilogy, it solves the referencing aspect by putting a bunch of relatives of characters from the trilogy in the game. You get Conrad Verner’s sister, Nyreen Kandros’s cousin, a lost illegitimate son of Zaeed Massani, a brief cameo of Garrus Vakarian’s dad, a krogan on New Tuchanka being from clan Urdnot, and so on. And it was funny the first time or so, maybe even the second, but at some point it just turned awkward, and I started asking myself, “is this it? Is this all that’s left of the trilogy, just a bunch of big name characters to remind the player you belong from the same universe?”. The brief way they referenced back to Shepard was also very awkward and felt... out of place, with the rest of the game.

A couple call backs I really liked were:

Liara being acknowledged for her work as a Prothean researcher and being in contant with Ryder Senior, without much reference being done to her time in Shepard’s crew. It was good, seeing her from an outsider perspective.

The fact that Avitus Rix, being a turian ex-Spectre, knew Saren and was in fact his disciple.

Both these elements are things that make sense and tie the game back to the trilogy beyond just going “hey, this x character is the relative of this other x character, isn’t it crazy!”

The plot, and the problem with binary choices

It’s easy to make fun or critique the game struggling to find its own plot after something as big as the ME trilogy was. But Bioware isn’t an indie developer, it’s a huge fucking company, and they could have done better.

While I liked the design of the Remnants architecture and enemies, putting a plot point revolving around an ancient, long lost alien civilization who was much more technologically advanced, sounds a lot like a bad repeat of the Protheans.

I liked the Angara conceptually, but I didn’t like their design all that much and I often found it hysterically funny that angara are supposed to be a deeply emotional race, when the animators left them stuck with those mono expressive faces and unemotional eyes.

And on top of all of this, the kett are boring villains. The exaltation progress is really just a bad repeat of how Reaper indoctrination worked, and the way they talk reminds me of the big bad templars from the Dragon Age universe. It’s literally nothing new, and because of it, it’s boring.

When I was playing the endgame, all I kept thinking was “this is it? this is all they came up with? for real?”. I liked the twins aspect of the endgame, but aside from that, it didn’t feel satisfying.

And now comes the reason why it didn’t feel satisfying: the game got rid of the Paragon/Renegade system from the trilogy, and because of that, they also got rid of the possibility of additional problem-solving solutions during big choices. 

In Andromeda, almost every major quest has a binary choice attached to it: choose this or that. Burn the facility or save all the angara but leave the facility standing. Save the krogans or Raeka. Pick Sloane or Reyes. Keep Sarissa as the Pathfinder or not. Etc.

in the trilogy, complete, important binary choices were rare (choosing Ashley or Kaidan is probably the biggest one) and the consequences had long lasting effects. Not all of them did (saving or killing the rachni in ME1 and rewriting or destroying the geth in ME2 didn’t have so many long term consequences in ME3, for example), but a great deal meant big changes in the following games.

The issues with these choices in Andromeda? None of them matter. Characters will get angry at you for going against their will in a single dialogue line, and then never mention it again. The opinion on the Nexus won’t change if you expose Spender, Addison’s connections to the Exiles, or Nexus people targeting the angara. None of your companions will betray you or leave you for going against their will during their loyalty missions.

A Mass Effect game with choices that don’t influence the final result of the game feels like a joke, and while I know in many ways the trilogy also had a problem on this matter on some parts, dead characters stayed dead and betraying a friend’s trust meant losing them in the near future

The unavoidable part where I mention the issue with LGBT rep in this game because I’m a nonbinary lesbian and I can’t detach that aspect of myself from how I consume media

Endless gays and trans folks out there have already written this sort of matter so as my last point of critique, I’ll make it quick. Bioware has a long story with homophobia and transphobia in its character writing - this without mentioning the huge problems with racism in the character writing, too. Many gay/bi women in Bioware games are written by the same homophobic straight cis man with a lesbo fetish, AKA Lukas Kristjanson, and that alone gives a really good feeling on why such issues exist.

The original Mass Effect trilogy had very little gay romance options, out of the amount of romance options: as of ME3, there are two main gay romance options for fShepard (Liara and Traynor, without counting the mini-romances that were put in the previous games for pure fetish fuel) and two for mShepard (Kaidan and Cortez, both only added in the last game).

Andromeda wasn’t... the big breath of fresh air in the representation department they tried to pass it as. There are more romance options, but for once, there add to add another m/m romance option later on because the only gay romance available were with minor NPCs, and there’s an issue with the amount of content gay romances get compared to main het romances.

There’s a single trans NPC, and it's a random person you meet who tells you her deadname and the reason she transitioned right away. Ugh.

And now we come to the bury your gays mission that made me almost uninstall the game: the mission to find the turian Pathfinder with the help of his partner, the previously mentioned Avitus Rix,  who also happens to be the first gay male turian character in the game (the first gay female turian being Nyreen Kandros, who dies btw). You invest time to trace back to the turian arc, while listening to Avitus talk about how important the turian Pathfinder is to him, you realize pretty fast they’re lovers, and when you find out the turian arc, it’s all to discover that the Pathfinder is already dead. Not a choice in the game that could accidentally kill him, like with Raeka, or an active choice you make to keep him in his role, like Sarissa. He’s already dead, and you’re left with Avitus alone and mourning.

The game is from 2017. This sort of bullshit is unacceptable, and I will keep screaming it until Bioware manages to pretend like they care about their LGBT fans.

To end this mess of a post - Mass Effect: Andromeda lasted me a total of 50 hours of game, and in a way, I’m glad I got it out of my system. It was a delusion, but at least now I can cross it off my list and go back to playing other stuff. I understand that this is a game many ended up liking, and I’m sad I can’t say I’m among them, and that I couldn’t even fully enjoy the game at times. Also I promised myself I wouldn’t mention this but goddamn the facial animations of the game were so ugly.

DESPITE THIS, I really loved the characters, and I very much enjoyed Vetra’s romance, which was the main reason why I bought the game. 

[dilliebar]

The Story of Dinah: A TLOUP2 Theory

Hey guys! So during this quarantine I’ve been looking for stuff to do to keep myself busy, and among playing The Last of Us for the billionth time I also decided to continue analyzing the content we’ve gotten so far. Tbh I gave up a while ago trying to find out what’s gonna happen in TLOU2, but after one google search, though, I actually think I’ve found a pretty solid theory that explains a lot of what we saw in the trailers/screenshots/etc.

!!! Note that this does include content from the leaked gameplay videos and from the leaked screenshot that surfaced a while ago. only read on if you’re okay with knowing spoilers !!!

**Note: I was not raised around a specific religion and my only knowledge of the subject has come from what I’ve read on the internet and the information I’ve gained from different Jewish and Christian interpretations of the passages talked about in this theory. None of these are my personal opinions and please correct me if anything is misinformed. Thank you.

So the majority of us know that something is going to happen to Dina and/or Ellie, and the first question is, what?

Well, obviously what’s different from the original game and p2 is that p2 is going to have to do a lot more with religion, as Dina is confirmed to be Jewish and we also have the Christian group, the Seraphites. The theme of religion is pretty much the basis of this theory, and it all starts with the origin of Dina’s name.

Now when you probably saw the title of this post you were like “yo that’s not how you spell her name”, and that, my friend, is where you’re wrong. After digging a little bit into the origination of Dina’s name, I found that it stemmed from the Hebrew name, Dinah. The first famous holder of this name was a woman who had a small, yet significant role in one of the books of the Jewish bible (or the Torah, please correct me if I’m wrong). Now, I would’ve written this off as a coincidence, but after looking into the story of Dinah I noticed some similarities between her story and bb Dina.

The passage basically tells the story of Dinah, who ventures out to meet the people of the world, and while doing so is sexually assaulted by the prince of Shechem. When her two brothers hear about this, they’re enraged, and slaughter all of the men in the city and rescue her.

The reason this caught my eye is because Dina and/or Ellie being sexually assaulted is a pretty common theory among the fandom right now, and after applying this to the trailers, screenshots, leaked footage, and the leaked screenshot, it makes a lot of sense, especially with Dina being Jewish. So without further ado, let’s look at what this means for the story.

                                               I. What Happened

So if we’re following the original story of Dinah, the first thing that would happen is that Ellie and Dina head out on patrol the night after their kiss. Obviously this would mostly serve as a tutorial-like introduction, but it would also serve as the setup for the rest of the game. This is where the basement scene comes in, in which both of them are attacked and/or assaulted, and for whatever reason, they take Dina and Ellie escapes.

A lot of people have been speculating that the game revolves around the sole idea of revenge, and while Ellie’s clearly pretty jazzed off about whatever happened in the gameplay and release date trailers, it’s likely more of a “side quest” aside from her actual goal: to get Dina back. Naughty Dog games in the past, including The Last of Us, have always had a certain goal in mind that you’re working towards throughout the game. This also aligns with the story of Dinah, as she isn’t killed, but taken.

In addition to the supporting story, much of the leaked footage aligns with this, as well. For example, in the leaked gameplay in which Ellie wakes up bruised and beaten in a theater and calls out for Dina and Jesse, but why would Dina be there? If Ellie’s main goal is to get revenge on the group who wronged them, then neither Dina nor Jesse being there would make a whole lot of sense unless they all just want to have one big traumatic experience together; however, if Dina was taken, it would make sense as to why Ellie and Jesse would go after her, because they both have strong feelings for her, want to get her back, and want to seek vengeance. At the same time, by the cuts and bruises littering Ellie’s back, we can see that something clearly went down very recently, which was likely the rescue of Dina. We can also confirm that this wasn’t a dream or some wacky acid trip, too, because in the leaked screenshot we can see Ellie and Dina exploring Capitol Hill in Seattle together.

Now of course we all want to know that Ellie and Dina live happily ever-after, and this might (?) be true according to the story of Dinah, in which both of the brothers (represented here by Ellie and Jesse) return safely home with Dinah. Since this is where the story ends, is this where the game takes a twist? Possibly, but we’ll never know for sure until we play it. 

                                               II. Whodunnit?

Alright, so I’m gonna break this down into the two groups that are confirmed to be in The Last of Us 2: the Seraphites and the WLF. Though none of this is stemmed from the story of Dinah, the biblical meanings behind their names matched up pretty darn well with what we know about them already. 

Now, the thing is, after trying to look up the Hebrew origination of the word “seraphite”, I found that it wasn’t actually a word at all. What I did find, however, was the definition of the word “seraph” which is “of the highest order of the nine-fold celestial hierarchy, associated with light, ardor, and purity”, with another description being a “six-winged angel”. The Latin suffix, “-ite”, means to be a follower. In other words, the Seraphites see themselves as either messengers or followers of god. This description makes a lot of sense, as in the trailer with the mystery-woman, the Seraphites say to “clip her wings” in reference to Yara.

When it comes to the WLF, the meaning behind their name is much more simple. As we can recall from the gameplay trailer, we hear the Seraphites shout out “WOLF!”. In addition to this, poster released shortly after the mystery-woman trailer portrays a wolf shaped by flames. Thus, I decided to look up the biblical meaning of a wolf, as the two groups are likely at odds. Unsurprisingly, the term “wolf” is generally used to describe those who pray on the weak.

After looking at these two groups, I concluded that the culprit is ultimately the WLF for a few reasons:

1. The meaning of the wolf in a biblical context (which was first mentioned to describe one of Dinah’s other brothers, by the way)

2. In the release date trailer, we can definitely see the attire of those who attacked the two. They’re wearing jackets; the man who initially attacked Ellie is wearing a cap. If we look at the gameplay trailer, the Seraphites distinctly wear robes, and so they are likely out of the question.

3. In the release date trailer, Tommy says “you don’t know how large that group is; how armed” all the while displaying a group of men with guns, and one verrrryyy important dude that I haven’t really seen a lot of people talking about. And that is this guy: 

OK, I know, it doesn’t seem like that big of a revelation but take a look at this guy’s face, and then scroll back up to the beginning of this section. Look similar? They’ve got the same hair, skin tone, attire, etc. In addition, the people with guns in the photo also have similar attire and weaponry to those in the release date trailer. At the same time, in the basement scene, we can also see a man in similar attire and a similar skin tone holding Ellie down (though to be fair, we can’t see his face, and so this may not be the same guy, but the attire definitely separates them from the Seraphites). 

Did maybe the Seraphites get a lil’ chilly and decide to wear jackets if the attacked Ellie and Dina? Maybe, but my bet’s on the WLF.

                                   III. Patching Up the Plotholes

Alright, so this theory definitely leaves a couple of plotholes that I wanna possibly cover (though it should be noted that these are speculation):  

1. As we see multiple times in both the screenshots and gameplay, Ellie entered Seattle alone. Where did Jesse come in?

2. Joel is in multiple screenshots, and also talks to Ellie in the release date trailer. What does he got to do with this?

So first of all, answering the question of where Jesse came in is fairly easy to answer, and it’s that he followed Ellie. As seen in the release date trailer, about a handful of people in Jackson left to go out on patrol other than Ellie and Dina, one of them being Jesse. Given the incident that happened in the basement, I’m guessing Ellie didn’t decide to keep scavenging for supplies and returned to Jackson early in order to recover and spread the news, which means Jesse likely wouldn’t have been back yet, and didn’t hear the news and go after Dina until he returned to Jackson. Then the question of the change in seasons comes into play. If this theory is true, I’m guessing that the basement scene took place near the end of winter, while Ellie/Jesse going to Seattle took place in early Spring, or that Ellie/Jesse left as soon as possible and the journey took longer than expected due to multiple obstacles like what happened in the first game. 

Now, when it comes to Joel, I returned specifically to the story of Dinah. A while after the incident, when Jacob (the father of both Dinah and the brothers) is blessing his children, he expresses his disappointment in the two brothers as “in their anger they slew men” and “cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for it was cruel”. Based on this, I believe that the multiple screenshots from the game are in the context of Joel expressing his disappointment in Ellie, as she likely went out of her way to kill more people than she had to in order to get to Dina. This also correlates to the reveal trailer in which Joel says “you really gonna go through with this?” and Ellie replies, “I’m gonna find, and I’m gonna kill, every last one of them”. 

                                                  ~Conclusion~

Alrighty, so that’s pretty much it. Again, I don’t know if a lot of the biblical stuff is accurate since I wasn’t raised in a strictly Jewish nor Christian household, but I was intrigued by some interpretations and frankly I really wanted to get this out and see what everyone else thought about it. Please, if you have any additional thoughts about this, correct something I said, or point out any other plotholes, leave a comment! I’m in desperate need for some TLOU2 action.

[addictedtostorytelling]

Hello, there! Addicted- that sounds like an appropriate name kkkkk-, I would like your advice on one subject. I want to make a gif from a movie, "Fear" do you know it? I have it downloaded on my computer, Which program you advise me to use? I never made one before, so I'm pretty lost here.

hey, @mementovive!

you can call me aj, if you prefer. 😉

as far as gif-making goes, i make most of my gifs from dvds, but the process is pretty similar to making them from downloads, from what i understand.

the programs i use are:

handbrake (to convert files to mp4 format)

windows movie maker (to cut and manipulate the mp4 files down to the right scenes and sizes)

and adobe photoshop cs5 (to make the actual gifs)

the process itself is kind of involved, so i’ll put the instructions after the “keep reading,” if you’re interested.

__________

i suppose i should preface this post by saying i have a pc, and i have no idea if any of these programs work for macs.

so.

to make gifs, i start in handbrake, where i take the following steps:

(note: if your video file is already in mp4 format, you can skip down to the “windows movie maker” part of the tutorial.)

select the source from wherever i have the video file saved.

“browse” to find the destination where i want to save the converted file and save it under whatever file name i want.

select the “high profile” preset from the right-hand menu.

make sure the cropping is set to zero in all directions. (if a change to the cropping is needed, select “custom” in order to do so.)

make sure that the “anamorphic: none” and “modulus: 16″ size options are selected.

hit the “start button” up top and wait for the video to convert. 

the bigger the file is, the longer it takes to convert. 

(i typically try to only convert short clips, a few seconds or minutes in length at most, to avoid crashing the program.)

i then move to windows movie maker, where i select the little filmstrip icon in the center of the screen to import my newly-made mp4 file:

once the mp4 file uploads, i use the slide rule on the filmstrip to select where i want to crop the file. then i hit the “split” button and delete the excess video material i don’t want. 

since photoshop balks at longer files, i usually limit each clip to no longer than 25 seconds in duration. i also try to leave some extra frames before and after the scene i actually want to gif, as photoshop tends to shave off of a second or so from each clip when you upload to start giffing. 

after cropping the file down to the size/length i want it to be, i click on the blue “file” tab at the top of the program, select “save movie” and then the “recommended for this project” setting on the sub-menu. i then save the file to my preferred destination.

i am now ready to go to photoshop and begin giffing.

to open my intended mp4 file, i go to the “file” menu, select “import,” and then select “video frames to layers” from the sub-menu.

i then select the mp4 file from whatever destination i saved it to in movie maker.

at this point, a pop-up menu called “import video to layers” appears, like so:

if i want to gif the whole clip, i select the “from beginning to end” option. otherwise, i click “selected range only” and use the slide rule on the video viewer to select which portion of the clip i want.

in either case, i make sure that the “limit to every” box is checked, like so:

i typically choose 2 frames, as doing so makes the gifs smoother. 

(the higher the number of frames selected, the more gaps there will be between frames, which translates to the gifs ultimately being choppier.)

i also keep the “make frame animation” box at the bottom of the pop-up menu selected.

once i have selected everything i need to, i then hit the “ok” button, at which point photoshop creates an animation timeline at the bottom of my screen.

from here, my next tasks become

cropping,

sizing,

coloring,

and sharpening

my gifs, in that order.

my first item of business is to delete any extra frames i do not wish to gif from the timeline. i do so by selecting said frames in the timeline and clicking on the little trashcan icon at the bottom of the timeline, near the scroll bar.

once i have the frames i actually want to work with---which may all be for one gif or for multiple gifs i intend to make into a set---i click on the menu icon on the right-hand side of the animation timeline.

doing so opens up a pop-up “actions” menu.

i then select “select all” from the actions menu, which highlights all remaining frames in the animation timeline.

next, on the “layers” widget on the right side of the screen, i select all layers, making sure that they’re highlighted, and press CTRL + G to put them into a “group” folder. the name is this folder is unimportant. (photoshop will automatically name it “group 1.”)

i then return to the animation timeline, where, with all frames still selected, i click on the little black arrow at the bottom of a frame (beside the timestamp that says “0.03″ and select “other.”

i then input a set delay of 0.09 seconds and click “ok.”

now i select the crop tool from the tools widget on the left side of my screen. i use this tool to cut away any framing around the gif, like so:

next, i click on the “image” tab at the top of the screen and select “image size.”

the size of image i want will depend on what kind of gif(s) i’m making. if i am making a single gif or large gifs for a “stackable” set like this one, i make it no wider than 540px. if i am making a gifset that is two gifs across, then no wider than 268px. if a gifset that is three gifs across, then no wider than 177px. 

if i adjust my gif to the width i want and the height ends up being less than ideal, then i undo the width adjustment, input the height i want, and then crop the gif to the proper width (manually) using the crop tool rather than the “image size” menu, as doing so prevents skewing.

in any case, once i have the gif the size i want it to be, i start on coloring.

honestly, coloring gifs is the most artful and least scientific part of the whole process. the tools for doing so are found both in the “layers > new adjustment layer” tab at the top of the program and in the “adjustments” widget on the right-hand side of the program, adjacent to the layers widget.

there are lots of good tutorials on coloring available for beginners, both on tumblr and on youtube, so i recommend reading/watching a couple, just to get a feel for what all goes into the process. 

once you have the basics down, you kinda just have to play around to find what looks good to you. some gif-makers use psds, some color by hand.

i tend to have kind of a “base set” of coloration that i use and then go by feel on a lot of stuff, favoring bolder colors where i can, though i am still striving to achieve the kind of beautifully vivid hues expert gif-makers like @panchostokes create.

seriously! check these out. they’re gorgeous!

in any case, after coloring the gif comes sharpening, which is another process i suggest you check out tutorials to learn.

tbh, sharpening is one of my weakest skills as a gif-maker, and particularly as i most often make gifs of 90s and early 00s shows, which tend to have low resolution and therefore need a lot of work; in addition to using tutorials, i’ve been playing around with my own sharpening “recipe” lately, but i haven’t hit on the perfect admixture just yet.

once i’m finished with the gif---cropping, coloring, sharpening---i go to the “file” menu in photoshop and click “save for web devices.” 

before saving, i make sure that the lower left-hand corner of the pop-up shows that my gif is under the current tumblr gif size limit (to ensure maximum image quality).

at present---as of september 2020---the current limit is 8mb.

however, most gif-makers try to keep their gifs under 5mb, when possible, as tumblr compresses larger gifs, ultimately lowering the quality by changing them from .gif to .gifv files.

if i find one of my gifs is over the size limit, then i go back to make the gif smaller---by cropping it---shaving off the extra mbs. 

finally, i check to make sure that the “forever” looping option is selected, so that my gif doesn’t stop running after its first play-through. 

 once i have everything as i like, i click “save.”

---and that’s the basics of how i make gifs.

of course, mine is neither the only nor best way to make gifs, and i’m sure that more seasoned gif-makers reading this tutorial are probably side-eyeing my process 👀 👀 👀.

there are undoubtedly easier ways to do things and methods that achieve prettier results; this process is just the one i’ve developed through trial and error, so it’s the one i stick with.

note that i also didn’t say anything here about adding text to gifs, but that’s something else you can learn how to do through more thorough tutorials than this one.

my best advice for aspiring gif-makers is to find a gif-maker whose work wows you and see if they have any tutorials or tips; i personally learned almost everything i know about gif-making from this very excellent tutorial @everynineyearsandthirtyfourdays posted years ago.

anyway.

good luck giffing fear! 

i hadn’t heard of that movie before, but i see that billy plays a role. nice!

feel welcome to send more questions any time.

[artandhuddle]

Artist Interview with Daphne Hutcheson

Last week I had the opportunity to speak with Daphne Hutcheson, an artist I’ve admired for quite some time. Her work and knowledge in the arts has helped me, along with many other artists in the online community.

Daphne Hutcheson, also known as @paperwick on social media, has been creating artwork from a very young age, with works in both traditional and digital media. Her work covers a broad range of fandoms, original content, and client based works along with some very useful and resourceful tutorials. 

K: I wanted to first ask about your experience attending SCAD (Savannah College of Art & Design)?

D: My experience at SCAD was tepid at best. The teachers were good, but I mean very specifically the professors who were teaching in my major, which was sequential art. SCAD is really not a great institute for anyone who isn't rich enough for their parents' to cover the cost. That's my biggest issue with it, they will cripple you with debt, so if anyone is lower-income, I would highly suggest learning via some of great online courses or using a state college's art program to sort of direct you if you need direction and deadlines. I know I need them. SCAD's loans are no joke. The college itself was very good my first year, they do a lot to make sure incoming students feel heard and welcomed, and then after that they really don't try for you. As soon as you're a sophomore, they could care less about how you feel to be there. Their class attendance requirements are grueling and there's no room for accidents--you miss four class sessions and you fail the course. It's wild, and even if you're in the hospital, those absences will not be forgiven. If you're late, it counts as an absence.I don't recommend it. At all. All the learning I garnered there is online accessible these days, one just has to hunker down, find it, and put it to practice. My professors were great, but no education is worth that price tag. Depending on your major there, you will be treated differently by the school. For example, their fashion and fibers majors are doted on, whereas a major like animation is ground hard into the dirt. There were unrealisitc deadlines to meet for class projects and kids would be in the school buildings overnight trying to meet them. Some fell asleep in their chairs and Paula Wallace (the owner) saw that one day and had them replace the chairs with far less comfortable chairs. Some kids had heart attacks from staying up to meet deadlines. Such a bad work culture of "all-nighters". In part the students' fault, but none of the faculty really stopped it or discouraged it, save one teacher in a different major, and that being said, that teacher still gave ridiculous deadlines so we'd "be prepared for the industry". That's not at all what the industry is like (discluding the game industry right now). It is truly a hard place to thrive and everyone I've known who has graduated had months to years of burnout after finishing, including myself. I'd hazard real caution when choosing to go to a private art college, art institutes included.No education is worth that amount of debt.

K: Wow, that’s unfortunate to hear. I wonder if students are having similar experiences at colleges such as CAD or RISD?

D: I have heard very similar things about places like RISD and CAD where it’s all about the money, but I can’t point you towards any of the specifics. I really just want people to go into it with a clear head and know it’s going to be hard exiting. They really don’t prepare you for business.

K: What would you have done differently? Would you have signed up for online courses?

D: If I was to do it over, I would have liked to dive straight into developing personal projects, just making the work. Watching and reading free youtube videos and blog posts by artists. That would not have flown with my parents, they’re very by the book “go to college or get a job” type people. With than in mind, I would’ve gone to the local college I was within biking distance of as a sort of clean, and done fairly half assed studies by full assed my artwork.

K: That sounds like what a lot of artists, particularly those interested in digital art are doing. But, have you ever considered going back to school, or enrolling in a program or an atelier that you think would be beneficial to your art career?

D: Not genuinely. If I had time, I wouldn't mind enrolling in something that would teach me puppet animation, but between freelance and my day job, it's hard to find time to produce personal work and then also learn. I am pro-learning, always learning because that keeps your work fresh, keeps your mind sharp and ready to switch up on a dime. But course work is something I'm not super fond of, to be honest.

K: I understand. So, you've graduated and are currently doing freelance work along with your other day job. In your freelance work, what kind of work are you taking from clients?

D: Mostly I do storyboard animatics for a few advertising agencies, but I do some card art for games here and there, like Companion's Tale. I just signed on to do some tarot card artwork for a company called Legacy: Fables. I'll take anything that sounds interesting and that I have time for. It's all digital; traditional art is way more personal for me so I almost exclusively make traditional artwork as gifts for friends.

K: Are there any particular fandoms or genres that you tend to work more in?

D: As far as fandom work and commissions, it's Dragon Age all the way BABY! It's a good community and I owe a lot to them. I'm planning on reopening my tarot commissions here soon once I finish up a few of my freelance projects. I am an old hat with fantasy stuff and most comfortable there, but I really want to start working on robots and mechanics and cities. All that sci-fi goodness.

K: Wow, that's great to hear you've got very steady work, and they’re with industries and agencies! I hope you'll get to share that work once it's gone down the production pipeline. Have you ever considered applying for work with a company like EA/Bioware?

D: Yeah! I've lucked out a lot, it feels like all of this sort of dumped itself in my lap. My biggest resistance to applying to Bioware or any gaming industry position right is rooted in how they treat their workers. Bioware, specifically back when Anthem was released, had a nasty report come out on how management had run their workers to the point of many having mental breakdowns, and several just leaving and never coming back. They refer to those who have breakdowns while working during their months and months of crunch as "stress casualties", and I'm honestly quite disgusted by what I hear. I think once the gaming industry unionizes I'll consider applying, but the things I hear, not just about Bioware and EA... It's horrifying. Riot, Blizzard, Activision, Treyarch, Rockstar... the list could go on. Not to like tank the conversation into a dark place, I just have such strong feelings about it.

K: That's ok! It's good to hear different perspectives, especially when talking about the industry. Alright, on to the next question. Looking at your work, from sequential narrative to tarot artwork, I’m really impressed by your storytelling. When you’re creating stories and characters, do you pull a lot from your own experiences and emotions, or more from other sources such as music, film, or literature?

D: Ahh that's a hard one. I think I pull far more from outside of me than inside of me.The way things are shaped comes from my own experience, but I think a lot of my content comes from outside influences, like movies, books, music, and art.Howls Moving Castle, the book not the film, had a huge affect on me and how light I want the stories I tell to be, but I think I have a long way to go when putting stories together.I am super empathetic so it's easy to take outside influences and really feel them, but also it's hard to tell where I start and those influences ends.

K: Very well said, and the comment about the novel, I can really feel that in your personal work, especially your recent animated landscape piece.

D: Thanks!

K: The first time I came across your work was one of your Dragon Age tarot works, but also the tutorial on how you created them. It was incredibly helpful to me and I know to lots more artists. Your tutorials and words of advice have proven very successful, but have you ever received any advice or tutorials that really switched gears or level upped your techniques?

D: The answer is yes, absolutely. Let me see, I don't seek out tutorials anymore, but there was something I saw recently that was good. Sinix's head from any angle is a great approach to drawing faces at crazy angles. Also, check out Bunabi on Tumblr. Bunabi is so fast and her work is beautiful, and has great tutorials also, just incredible. 

I unfortunately can’t link to any specifics, but tutorials like this one do me a lot of good.  

People can just screenshot process stuff that reminds me that there are a million ways to approach art, like sketch up, grids, freehanding. I think I benefit from understanding that there are a million approaches more than following the tutorials super hard.

K: Great,thank you! I wanted to ask a few more questions, one about your Patreon. It seems like the next big wave for digital artists. How has it been creating one and keeping on top of the awards, and is there anything you would want to do differently with yours?

D: So Patreon is kind of a basket you can fill with prizes, maybe some of the prizes for money (probably prizes for money), and that works for a lot of people. I have a more of a "here's content I don't put elsewhere if you'd like it" approach to it cause I'm inconsistent with patron pay-outs. Patreon for artists with chronic mental illness is a struggle. Hands down. I started one hoping it would iron out my discipline issues a year or two back, and it didn't. It made me feel hella guilty cause I could not keep up with what I said I'd keep up with, and then I felt worse. It was disastrous. I refunded most of the pledges I got during the three months I had it open. Then I closed it for a year and brought it back online recently. Now all my content is free, it's still inconsistent, but if people want to support me I welcome it. I think Patreon is a good platform, but I will never be able to use it is intended. I respect the people who can keep up with it all, that kind of discipline takes a crazy amount of strength of character, but I don't motivate with money very well. In the end, I motivate through helping others as best I can, so it'll always be free content. I have very few plans for it, other than I want to put together a brush pack and share it there with brushes I made. I just need a moment to sit down and make that happen. I've got a tutorial for using photos to make quick painted backgrounds too, and I just have to organize that sucker.

K: Thank you for being so open about it. I think what you're doing is so insightful and helpful in what you're offering to your followers, especially those who may also be struggling with anxiety and depression.

K: Can you share what your process is like from a sketch to a finished piece? Do you thumbnail a lot before, use references to build from, and so on?

D: I like to do throw away thumbnails on notepaper.

And then I take those thumbnails and do a more thought out version digitally.

K: Wow, these are both beautiful. If you don't share these with patrons already, I would! I also like that you've given each one their own color, a good way to organize!

D: Thank you! I'll make sure to share these, I forget about them genuinely. I'll diverge in two directions from here depending on need. If what I'm working on is simple, I hop straight into color. If it's going to be complicated, ie crazy armor, specific architecture, I will do a line pass first and then launch into color. Either way, this is where most of my references come into play. Once that is solid I add detail work.

K: Reference can be so important in art; it really can bring work to a new level if used properly!

D: Yeah reference is king. I use it constantly, even when doing the most stylized thing, cause there's always stuff you forget. The waves I did for my last card, I had reference of barrel waves up constantly, and it helps a ton.

K: My last question is where do you see yourself in five years? I know this can be a challenging question, but if you had any goals or plans you’d like to see come into fruition, what would they be?

D: Five years? These questions are always a struggle for me. I try not to look past a week at a time because it's all so BIG. And my life has undergone so many huge changes in such a short period of time SO MANY times that it's hard to make long term plans. Especially when dealing with mental illness. So I try to think less about where I'll be in any amount of time, and more about what I want to progress towards achieving, it's a little easier and sets up less expectation. So this is not necessarily a five year plan, and more an eventual future plan. I want to have enough tutorial work to put together an art resources book/pdf online. I want to develop my freelance work further and create my own studio, ideally for illustrative style work, smaller animations, and maybe some classes for people interested in color and storytelling. I want to put together a small guide of sorts also for artists and people who need healing, since there's so many of us. That one is harder because it's an amorphous subject, but I think there's a lot of room for commentary there and a lot of people wanting to hear it, and I think it'll have to come from all those hurting. It's just a matter of how we'll organize that.I am a huge sap. That's my way. So in 5 years I'm hoping I'll be a better and more helpful sap.

K: Well, I hope you're able to make a lot of this happen, we need more empathy and help in the world. Thank you again Daphne for your time, this was really informative and an honest interview which I know others will appreciate.

D: Thank you, Kallie!

You can find more of Daphne’s beautiful works (and tutorials) here:

Patreon

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[yeoobiii]

A New Home | Neighbour AU | Chapter 3

Prompt: “Hey, I locked myself out, can I stay at your place until my roommate comes home?”

Pairing: Harrison Osterfield x Fem!Reader, Tom Holland x Fem!Reader

Summary: Y/N’s life couldn’t have been more ordinary. She lived together in an apartment with her sister, while being a student at the nearby college. The small flat next to hers stood empty for a while now, until one day two young men moved in. What at the beginning seemed like a simple new encounter, tured out to turn her world upside down.

Warnings: swearing, drinking

Word count: 3.3k

Prolouge | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

Your doorbell rang. You were currently not doing anything special. You were lying on your bed, scrolling through your phone. You got up and made your way to the front-door. You didn’t expect anyone or anything, so you wondered who could be at your door. The door doesn’t have a spy, which meant you had no idea who was standing on the other side of it.

As you opened the door, you were greeted by the smiley face of a blond boy with blue eyes. He was holding a paper-bag excitedly right in your face. A little panic started to spread in you. Since you were home alone and had no plans for the night, you were only dressed in a pair of black shorts, watermelon socks and a loose t-shirt with no Bra under it. Your panic was mixed with confusion. What was he doing here and why was he so excited?

Since the text he send to your sister two days ago, you haven’t heard from him. You really weren’t expecting anything anymore at this point. You also tried to do your best not to think about about him or this stupid kiss. You had to admit, it was hard and you needed a lot of distractions, but it worked somehow. Or actually it didn’t. You just liked to tell yourself that it worked.

So, now he was standing in front of your apartment on a Monday evening.

“I’ll be back in a second.” you told him and ran off, smashing the door back into its lock.

Harrison’s smile faded and was replaced with a confused look as the door was smashed shut right into his face.

You sprinted to your room and looked around for something to wear. You got out a bra. Also, you found a black shirt somewhere in the mess you called your room. You grabbed a pair of light blue skinny jeans from the floor and put them on. You decided the socks were fine. You got your hair free from the messy bun on your head, brushed it and pulled it together in a proper ponytail. After a second look into the mirror, you decided that you still looked awful, but not as awful as you did one minute ago. You rushed back to the door and opened it again.

Harrison was still here, looking around. His attention was back on you within seconds and he was still smiling brightly. The whole evening, he didn’t make one comment on what just happened.

“Hi, Harrison.”

“Hi, Y/N.”

You realised that you were still standing in the doorway, so you moved out of your way that Harrison step in.

As he put his bag on the kitchen counter, you asked:

“What are you doing here?” you didn’t know what to expect by this sudden visit.

“I hope you haven’t eaten yet.” he raised his eyebrows at you excitingly. You shook your head and signalised him to continue.

He took a deep breath and started explaining, while unpacking his bag:

“Even though your sister told me, you loved take out; I decided on something else, but still similar. Because I fucked up pretty badly last Friday, I wanted to make up for it. And I wanted to apologize. But I thought coming here and saying ‘I’m sorry’ is kinda lame. Even though, I really am. And since I have a secret source that told me you liked sushi, I thought I’d make sushi for you. Or we can do it together. However you’d prefer it.”

You were taken aback by his offer and his apology as well. In your head you always just told yourself that Harrison probably didn’t waste another thought about you, after he left your apartment on friday. And now here he was, apologizing and ready to make your ‘favourite food’ for you.

“I’ve never made sushi before.” you stated, since it was the only thing that came to your mind on what to say.

“Me either. See, that’s the point where I think this gets interesting. You can either watch me fail completely and use me to your amusement. In that case, I’ll probably end up buying take out for us anyway or you could help me and we could try to actually make some enjoyable sushi. So, what do you say?”

You were really impressed by his enthusiasm. It rubbed off on you a little. And suddenly, you found yourself, wanting to make sushi with Harrison Osterfield on a Monday evening.

You realised, Harrison was really sorry for what happened. From your point of view, he didn’t even have to be. He should be apologizing to his girlfriend out of everybody. Sure, the situation unsettled you, but in the end, it was you who overreacted. You were the one planning on apologizing to Harrison for handling the situation like this. But if it would have went your way, you probably just would have avoided him to the point where you were faced with the unavoidable. Maybe in the end, you and Harrison could become friends.

“Sure, I’ll help you.” you told him and with that made his lips curl up into a silly smile.

“Great!” he happily stated, “We need to cook some rice then.”

You and Harrison were hopelessly lost. None of you were really good at cooking, even though Harrison likes to believed that about himself. You were fast in telling him that microwaving eggs was not cooking. You could tell he was slightly offended.

“I can make pancakes too.” he tried to defend himself.

And you just weren’t the cooker. You rather spend your time on something else. In your case, something else meant lying around all day and night doing basically nothing. You were just lazy. And with that, your take out-habit developed.

The good thing was, Harrison thought ahead and basically bought twice as much from everything than you actually needed. The first pack of rice went to shit. It wasn’t until Harrison was about to open your second and last pack as you came up with the idea to watch a tutorial on YouTube on how to actually cook sushi-rice. And with that you actually managed to do it and you also figured out what the rice-vinegar and the rice-wine were for.

“I’ve just read it in a recipe and thought it sounded sushi-ish; I had no idea what it was for.”

“It sounded sushi-ish? Makes sense when it’s in a sushi recipe, don’t you think?”

Just as they thought the hard part with the cooking was over, they came to the part where they actually had to roll the sushi. This time, they decided to watch the tutorial right from the start. While you were chopping the veggies, Harrison was very focused on what the woman in the video said about how to roll the sushi. You found it quite adorable how serious he was taking all of this. He probably didn’t even realise he started to mimic the movements the woman made in the videos. You had to smile to yourself, what a dork.

“You got it?” you hinted at his phone.

“I think so?” he neither sounded and nor look a 100% convinced.

They finished cutting the veggies together. In the sushi-kit Harrison bought, was a bamboo-matt to roll. Getting the rice on the nori-sheets was already challenging enough for Y/N. She and Harrison ended up with rice all over their hands. The rolling itself actually went really well. You were impressed by how good of a job Harrison was doing. After the second roll you wanted to try it yourself, so Harrison showed you.

“You have to push it back.” he instructed you.

“Like this?”

“Maybe a little more.”

Your roll turned out okay. Harrison’s looked better though, so you let him continue. After you were finished rolling and the rice pan was empty, the only thing left was cutting the sushi. Harrison read somewhere that you should cut it with a wet knife, so it would make a good cut. After messing up the first few, you eventually got the hang out of it and it didn’t even look that bad. You got out a fancy plate you forgot you had and you placed the sushi on it. As you looked at your final result, you couldn’t feel anything but proud.

“We actually did a really good job.” Harrison stated, “I’m gonna be honest, I thought we would fuck this up completely.”

“Same here. I’m proud of ourselves.” you retorted with a smile on your face. You and Harrison high fived.

The kitchen was a real mess, though. Harrison offered to take over the cleaning, since it was his apology and it was his idea to destroy your kitchen. Harrison was carrying the plate with sushi into the living room where you told him to put it. Eating in the living room on the couch was also a thing you adopted after some time.

“What do you want to drink?” you shouted from the kitchen.

“Oh, I actually brought something, only if you don’t mind, though.” Harrison came running back into the kitchen and pulled out a whole pack of Capri-Sun.

“In case one’s not enough.” he grinned at you, and you couldn’t help but grin back, “I thought we better skip the alcohol this time, since that wasn’t a success last time.”

“That’s actually quite perfect.” you told him, and he was satisfied with himself. Even though you had to swallow a little harder at his last comment. Why does all of this bother you so much? The better question, why do you keep thinking about the way it felt when your lips touched?

You walked back into the living room and took place on the couch.

You even found some old metal chopsticks in one of your many kitchen drawers.

“I gotta be honest with you” you started and Harrison’s attention was on you, “I’ve never had sushi before.”

“Wait, what? No, your sister told me it’s your favourite.”

“My sister likes to mess with me and apparently with you too.” you admitted with a small smirk on your face.

“But what if you don’t like it? Then all of this was for nothing.”

“What do you mean? I had a great time making it. And I definitely imagined my Monday evening to be rather boring, so thank you.”

“Yeah, you had a good time?” he wanted to assure himself. You only nodded which was good enough for him. A proud smile formed on his face. You could tell he was satisfied with himself.

You ended up loving sushi. The mango ones were your favourite, so Harrison let you eat almost all of them. You decided against watching anything while eating and so you talked. Harrison told you on what projects he was currently working on and you told him about your major in college and what your plans for the future looked like.

You were both kind of in the same situation. As you told him about your future, you had no idea where to start, because you had no clue on what to do after college. And he was talking about what he was doing right now, but he had no idea what to come after. You figured that you were both the kind of people to just finish what they were doing at the moment and didn’t thought about what was about to come after.

“Do you like your major?”

“I actually do. At first, I started with a different one, though. I change after the first half of my first semester.”

Harrison turned out to be how you thought he would be. You probably could talk about everything and everyone with him and at the same time, he liked to place a joke here and there. Not once you felt uncomfortable or awkward while talking to him. He doesn’t take himself or anything else too seriously. You also liked the way his dimples showed when he was smiling wholeheartedly. His laugh was mesmerizing too. But you had to stop your thoughts right then and there. There was no way you were about to develop feelings for a guy who was already in a relationship. If so, there would be only one person ending up heartbroken.

Harrison kept his promise and went to clean the kitchen after you two finished talking. But of course, you weren’t the one to let him clean up the mess you fabricated alone. He refused to let you help at first but eventually gave in.

“When are you planning on getting Frankie back?” he asked as his hands were busy washing your dishes and more dirty stuff from the kitchen.

You didn’t expect that he remembered her.

“I’ve got finals this and next week and after that, we’ll probably get her back.” you couldn’t help the smile that crept on your face while thinking about your dog. You just now realised how much you actually missed her.

“Sounds great. Let’s say I bring my dog along as well and we go in the park with them together or something?”

He actually wanted to spend more time with you, and you were really happy about that. You liked Harrison and you were excited to get to know him better, maybe one day, you’ll even meet his girlfriend.

“That actually sounds fantastic.”

He was also glad, you wanted to spend more time with him. He couldn’t quite explain why he felt so comfortable around you, he just knew that he did. And it was reason enough for him to want you in his life as a friend. 

As Harrison handed you a plate to dry, soap dripped from his hand directly on your t-shirt.

“Oh, shit. Sorry.”, he tried to wipe it away not thinking about his still wet hands. He only made it worse, and you started to laugh, since he didn’t seem to realize what he was doing.

He was suddenly so close to you. Harrison looked up at you as if he wouldn’t understand what’s so funny, until he saw the mess he fabricated on your shirt. His cheeks slowly reddened out of embarrassment. He looked at you with an adorable and apologetic look. Harrison didn’t seem to realize how close the two of you were.

The both of you grew quiet, neither you nor Harrison broke the gaze between you. His eyes were the clearest blue you’ve ever seen. Your chest started to grow tight. What was happening? Before you could even register Harrison starting to lean in, your phone started to ring. The both of you exhaled deeply.

“I should probably get that.” Your voice was quiet and flustered.

“Yeah, you probably should.”

Harrison turned away from you as you went to pick up your phone. He went back to clean the last few items in the kitchen, while you saw a picture of your sister lightening your screen and making it ring and vibrate.

“Hi, Lu. What’s up?” your voice seemed kind of shaky as you started talking to your sister.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. What’s up?” you send an apologetic wave Harrison’s way as if to say sorry for the interruption.

“Wait, what happened?”

Harrison sensed that you sounded worried now. He wondered what was going on and if he could do anything to help. At the same time, he was still thinking about what almost happened two minutes ago. He tried to assure himself that it was nothing, he was fine. But he could not answer the question, what would have happened if you weren’t interrupted. He didn’t want to know. Or did he?

“No, no. I already ate … with Harrison, why? … let’s not talk about this now, okay?”

Harrison put the last spoon back into its place.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

Harrison felt guilty for overhearing your call, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that you sounded really worried.

“Okay, yeah. See you in a few. I love you.”

You hung up.

Harrison looked at you with a curious and worried expression.

“You should go.”

“Did anything bad happen? Maybe, I can help.” he suggested, meaning every word of it.

“I’m sorry, but my sister is supposed to be home any minute and she told me she had a fight with her boyfriend. She said she was fine, but I know when she’s lying. But thank you so much for tonight. And just so you know, I was actually planning on apologizing to you because I acted childish that day. I’m sorry-” you started to ramble as Harrison cut you off.

“It’s fine, alright? I’m the one in a relationship, and I could see I made you uncomfortable.”

You hated how he said that. Like, he knew anything about you or when you were uncomfortable, like he had any power over the way you felt or didn’t feel. But you tried not to think about this now. You just knew, when your sister came home, you had to be there for her, no distractions allowed.

“Listen, Harrison, I’m really sorry to kick you out like this. But I have to look after my sister as soon as she gets home.” you tried to explain.

“No, of course, everything’s fine. I’ll just grab my stuff real quick.” Harrison went to grab his jacket and shoes. “If I can help with anything, you know where I live.” he offered, already halfway out the door.

“Harrison?” you called after him.

“Yeah?” he turned around.

“Thanks, again.”

He just smiled at that and closed the door right behind him.

After your sister hadn’t shown up for another two hours, you started to get worried sick. You tried to call her at least twenty times and sent her over fifty text messages. You even thought about going over to the boy’s apartment to ask them if they would help you search for your sister. By the time your front door opened, you were lying passed out on your sofa, your cell phone right in front of you.

Your sister slid of her boots as quietly as possible, even though it was hard for her to stand straight. Due to the amount of alcohol in her blood system, she eventually woke you up anyway.

“Lu?” you called, rubbing your eyes.

“Hey, baby girl. Don’t… mind m- me. I’ll- jus go t-to bed.”

“Are you fucking kidding me, right now.” your eyes weren’t adjusted to the light yet, “I was up all night waiting for you to come home. I was so fucking worried after your call. Where the fuck were you.”

You sat up, your face in your hands, as you started to hear quiet sobs. As you lifted your head, you saw a girl. The girl seemed lost and messy. There was barely any colour in her face. Her black hair was dishevelled, and wisps of it hang loosely in her face. The girl seemed broken, a tear rolling down her cheek. You didn’t recognize your sister in this girls’ eyes.

“Matt’s leaving me.” she whimpered, the usual dynamic her voice carried was gone.

You scooped on the sofa and Lu slowly walked towards you and eventually sat down right beside you. You could see how hard she was trying to keep it together in front of her little sister. How hard she tried to stay strong in front of her.

“It’s okay.” You whispered.

It was that moment she broke down in front of you. The tears were now streaming down her cheeks, and her make up was all over her face. Her sobs grew heavier, as she dropped herself into your lap.

You knew it wasn’t the time to ask questions. You still wanted to know what was going on. But you figured that Lu wasn’t in the constitution to talk right now. At the moment she just needed you, her little sister, holding her and spending her comfort.

What could she have meant by saying that Matt is going to leave her?

–

Tags:

obsidianspidey, ixchel-9275

[kagaintheskywithdiamonds]

LUKEWARM BUT ORIGINAL SWORD/SHIELD TAKES

requested by @debonairmalchick

A lot of the most common complaints about SwSh I actually disagree with and/or don’t really care one way or the other, and the complaints that I DO have are things that I haven’t seen anyone else bring up. most of these complaints are nitpicky and therefore do not deserve to be called “hot takes” but apparently at least one person wants to hear them sooo here are my opinions

you can’t turn the vibrations off. I unfortunately became aware of this when I tried to do a lot of max raid battles at night while my parents were asleep. the max raid battles are probably the most vibration-filled parts of the entire game and said vibrations make a considerable amount of noise. I assumed you could turn the vibration off, as that seems to be a standard thing in video games, but I can’t find the option anywhere.

there’s no GTS?? I suppose having the GTS would make the pokedex too easy to fill up but still I didn’t expect that to be cut and it does make it harder to get certain specific pokemon (I’ve been wonder trading trying to get a scorbunny. LOTS of pages in my dex have been filled thanks to wonder trade, and I’ve been getting lots of the other two starters, but still not a single scorbunny. if there was a GTS it would be easy for me to just put up a baby sobble and get a scorbunny in return pretty much instantly)

“wonder trade” is now called “surprise trade” which is basically the same thing except slightly more confusing to use. It took me a couple tries to get the hang of what I was even doing with this. the main difference is that, unlike in ye olde wonder trade where you would sit on a waiting screen until the game found a trade partner for you, here I guess it does all that in the background and returns you to the main game while it finds a match, and then notifies you when the trade has been completed so you can get your new pokemon. IN THEORY this isn’t a bad idea, but in practice....

it normally only takes a few seconds for the trade to be completed, comparable to the waiting screens on old school wonder trade, so normally I just stand still on the overworld until I get the notification that my trade is done.

it seems to stop searching if you’re in a battle, or organizing your PC boxes, or doing stuff in the menus, or... almost anything. If I stand still in the overworld, my trade happens pretty quickly. If I try actually playing the game in the meantime, as I assume is the point of this feature, I find that I’m still waiting even after doing a bunch of battles. it’s as if only the time spent on the overworld counts. so far the only thing I can actually do in-game while wonder trading is hatch eggs, because that means 90% of your time is spent biking back and forth on the overworld. otherwise? I’ll just multitask with something else IRL while I wait for my trades to happen, as I often did with old school wonder trade.

raids are also very confusing to get into. Figuring out how to enter a raid, find new raid bosses, and ESPECIALLY join other people’s raids took me a while to figure out. I’m surprised they didn’t have a full tutorial on how to do raids, since it was such a big selling point of this game. instead the only tutorials seem to be the usual, standard “here’s how to catch a pokemon”-type stuff (which thankfully is skippable)

it’s almost impossible to walk around the wild area while wi-fi is turned on because of how laggy it gets. you can see all the other trainers walking around MMO-style, but... there doesn’t seem to be a reason for it. It’s not like the trainers you see physically walking near you are the ones you do raids with. there’s very little you can do to interact with the other trainers. they don’t seem to exist for any reason except to slow my game down to 2 frames a second. which is why, when I go into the wild area looking for raids, I will keep my wi-fi turned off until I find a raid boss I want to fight, then briefly turn my wi-fi on only to get raid buddies, and then immediately turn my wi-fi off after the raid is finished so that I’m not bogged down by all these other trainers on the overworld

this is also why you can’t wander the wild area while trying to do a wonder trade. if your wi-fi is on, the wild area is practically inhospitable, so it’s not like you can explore the place while you wait to get paired with a trade partner.

no overworld shinies. maybe I’m just spoiled because I played Let’s Go Pikachu before this, but I liked the overworld shinies in that game. it was exciting to run past a shiny pokemon wandering around in the tall grass only to do a double-take and then drop everything just to go after it. XD in SwSh you won’t know if a pokemon is shiny until you go into battle mode.

the fishing rod and pokemon box are listed as key items in the bag and that is also very confusing. the pokemon box basically allows you to access your PC boxes anywhere, which is a really neat feature that I enjoy. buuuuut the way you actually USE the pokemon box is by going to your party, then navigating from there to access the boxes. if you go to the pokemon box in your key items list, the game will just say “you can’t use this from the bag,” which leaves you wondering, “kay so how do I use it then??” the fishing rod is a similar story. it takes up a slot in your bag but you can’t use it from your bag. attempting to do so will give you the same message that your box does. instead, you use the fishing rod by pressing A in front of a fishing spot like you do in SuMo. couple issues with this whole setup:

neither of these things need a spot in the bag at all. it would be like putting the pokedex in your bag. yes, the pokedex, in-universe, is a physical item that your character carries around with them, possibly in their bag. but you don’t need it to be listed in the bag, because that’s not the primary way to access said object.

even if it’s not the PRIMARY way to access it, why list it in the bag at all if you can’t use it from the bag?? the fishing rod didn’t even give me a message like “you can’t use that here” as I struggled to figure out how fishing even worked early on. just “you can’t use that from the bag” which of course begs the question “then what menu DO I use it from?” and the answer is none. and in Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee the pokemon box was also a thing and was also listed as an item in the bag, but you could actually access it from the bag (in addition to the party menu) so it made sense to put it there. listing it as a spot in the bag when you can’t use it from the bag serves zero purpose. the flavor text doesn’t even give you any instructions on what buttons you press to actually use it. it serves no purpose in being there.

DESPITE ALL MY COMPLAINTS, I am really enjoying the game. this rant only seems long because adhd makes it impossible to say anything without writing a wall of text instead of saying what could be said in like two sentences. also my opinions were specifically requested, lol