#my photoshop decided to crash while making this for no reason

[partiallypearl]

insp.

[kenthenugget]

Adobe Broke Photoshop in 2023 (October Update)

Back in July, I made a post detailing how bad Photoshop has gotten for me this year, which you can read here. But if you want a tldr version of it, following new years Photoshop stability and reliability has taken a nose dive with constant crashes that prevent auto recover from being as effective to glitches that make working in it a nightmare. Its been over 3 months since I made that post and I kinda wanted to do an update on how photoshop has been. Has it actually gotten better? Kind of but not really. In some ways, its gotten better, in others worse but generally not much has changed. I guess two positives that come to mind is that one of the afformention glitches I noted was patched up at some point in July, so I was able to update finally. Though, I didnt experience the backlash from not updating photoshop like I had in March (fuck you Adobe). And I havent been experiencing the left click lock as much, although thats more to do with me not doing certian commands that I found could trigger it than adobe actually being a good company and fixing it. There's a thread on the adobe forums about this issue, and according to one of most recent posts as of the 22nd, they run a photo company and have called Adobe support 5 times about this issue, and it seems that no one at Adobe knows about this glitch. Yes a billion dollar company who sells programs at inflated prices because they're "industry standard" knows nothing about a single bug that has been in the program for 6 months, but will gladly add in new features no one will use.

Now when I say things got worse, crashes started happening more frequently again in late September and Early October. But instead of happening weekly, they happened almost every fucking day. One day I would have a crash, the next day nothing would happen, before a crash happening the following day. And what was more crushing about this was that it happened while I was dealing with selections and flatting comic pages... whats funny about this is that not only can selections not be recovered if you close the file (even if you save), but can only be saved by pressing a seperate save button which has no keyboard commands. Which made these crashes more horrible than if I had been inking or sketching. Once again, I consulted the Adobe forums for help and once again, the solution was to update my gpu driver which was out of date. I don't think its the fact that I had already done this and nor that somehow, the driver I had been using since March was already out of date by September that makes this situation so ridiculous. But its the fact that I've pretty much had to bend over to change my pc just so I could run photoshop within the same year. In contrast to how things were before 2023 where I didn't have to do a single thing and photoshop ran fine. Its only this year that for some divine reason that the program decided to be shit to me.

So why was I still using it if it was so bad? It was because of my first Chapter. Around the time I had that initial post, I was still hard at work on finishing my comic's first Chapter which has taken me 4 years to complete. I had anticipated getting it done around that time, but due to burn out I ended up taking much longer, finishing it on October 13th. During those final few months, I decided that upon finish Chapter 1, I would be done with photoshop and moving onto a different art program for the rest of my comic. And that program ended up being Clip Studio Paint which I got as an early birthday present from my dad, following photoshop crashing on me two times in that day, the latter happening an hour after I took a break to calm myself down after the first crash....I wish I was making that up. I went with CSP due to the fact that most tapas artists I know use it and because of the many good things they've said about it. Its a pretty highly regarded program, and even if my motive for buying it wasn't because of Photoshop's "quirks", it has features that make producing comics much faster in CSP than in photoshop. So with CSP in my hands, you'd think the nightmare would be over, right?

You so, my plan was to use CSP for my comic starting with Chapter 2 but after spending some time in the program, I realized I probably wouldn't be knowledgeable enough or adapted to it enough just in time for me to start drawing Chapter 2 with a release date of early 2024. So in the end, I decided to wait until Chapter 3 to make the switch, while limiting myself to CSP for spur of the moment drawing ideas and illustrations. Yes, Photoshop has been a complete failure to me but I am way more experienced with it than with Clip Studio. I dont want there to be a potential quality drop following the most recent episode and I want to be sure I can use it before jumping into creating comics. This isnt like the switch from traditional to digital for my comic back in 2021, because I had already had more than a years worth of experience with photoshop and digital drawing by that time. Because of that, the switch wasn't as rough as it would've been if I had done it earlier. I was going to save this announcement for one my kofi 'comic corner' blogs (btw if you want to support me on kofi click here: https://ko-fi.com/kenthenugget) but Im making this post now so why the hell not. But for the time being, Im still going to be using photoshop for Chapter 2, and my character sheets of course. Given how long I spent on Chapter 1, you might think Im crazy for wanting to use the program for another 4 years but I don't anticipate this chapter taking as long, due to skill and because its much shorter in comparison.

Im not going to lie, I have mixed feelings on continuing to use Photoshop for my comic. On one hand, Im glad I wont need to worry about a potential quality drop but on the other, I dont know how long I can handle crashes and glitches that only seem to persist as time goes on. I'll just pray to God to give me strength during the drawing of Chapter 2 once I finish thumbnailing. Hopefully, I and photoshop will be able to last.....

[deskofninak]

Operation Infiltrate Mystery Sleepover // Spencer Reid x GN!Reader

Masterlist

Summary: Reader has worked at the BAU for over a year now and their sleepovers with fellow colleague and tech analyst extraordinaire Penelope Garcia are legendary. Legendary in that nobody else is invited and the girls have so much fun being mysterious about them that everyone else in the BAU seems to think they're either crashing weddings or donning capes and protecting the city as vigilantes. Cue Emily and Morgan hatching a plan to find out the truth and sending Spencer to infiltrate the next sleepover.

Warnings: Gender neutral BAU Agent!Reader, use of ‘Y/N’ once, mention of eating food, reader likes reading (Perks of Being a Wallflower & Truly Devious mentioned), tooth-rotting fluff.

Word Count: 2540 | 6 sections

Happy Reading! :)

1.

Emily dropped the pen onto her desk and placed her chin on her propped up fist, watching as Garcia and you animatedly talked in the kitchenette. You had joined the team only a year ago and had managed to become closer to Garcia than even Morgan, which was saying something. You two were joined at the hip, constantly referring to secret jokes and giggling by yourselves. 

“Those two at it again, huh?” JJ’s voice snapped Emily out of her reverie.

She nodded without glancing at her girlfriend. “What are they talking about now?”

“Garcia said they were planning another sleepover over the weekend.”

Emily huffed and JJ gave her a bemused look. 

“They never invite us to their sleepovers,” Emily said, adding at JJ’s raised eyebrows, “Me. They never invite me to their sleepovers.”

“Why don’t you just ask if you can join them?” JJ said indulgently.

“I did.” A pause. “They said it wouldn’t be ‘my thing’.”

JJ chuckled under her breath. “Let me know when you’re done fuming so we can discuss where we’re having our date tonight.”

Emily distractedly waved at her as she left.

2.

The lunch break brought Derek Morgan to Emily’s desk where he decided to join her in watching you and Garcia watch a YouTube video together while eating. Derek had also long wanted to be part of whatever you two were up to but, as with Emily, had been informed that the sleepovers just wouldn’t be his ‘vibe’. The two sat festering in their exclusion, eyes narrowed, nostrils flared, looking for all the world like two bulls ready to charge.

They soon found their sight blocked by a tall, lanky figure. “What are you two doing?” The boy genius looked back at you and Garcia, and then again at the fuming duo.

Emily was too bothered to try to conceal her feelings. “I want to go to their sleepover,” she ground out, Derek nodding seriously. 

Your and Garcia’s sleepovers had become legendary within the team for the simple reason that you two refused to divulge what you did during them. What had started out as a simple joke had stretched to outright lying. At times, you claimed you crashed weddings, and ate and drank to your heart’s content. Other times, you claimed to don capes and save the city’s innocent residents from evil. Penelope had even photoshopped pictures of the two of you in capes to sell the joke. The more you were asked, the more ridiculous your lies became until the sleepovers came to represent something unattainable to Derek and Emily.

“I want to go to their sleepover,” Derek echoed, looking at Emily. “We need to plan a mission to infiltrate the next one.” Devilish grins rose on their faces.

Spencer frowned and backed away, but Derek stopped him. “Where do you think you’re going, pretty boy?”

“Away from you two and your crazy ideas.”

“Nuh-uh.” Derek shook his head. “You’re going to help us. And unless you want Emily to tackle you, I’d suggest you sit down.”

Reid sighed and perched on the edge of a spare seat.

“Rumour has it,” Derek paused, looking around to make sure no one was listening. Spencer rolled his eyes. Derek dropped his voice to a whisper. “Rumour has it you have a standing invite to their sleepovers.”

Emily’s eyes widened and she smacked Spencer’s arm.

“Ow, easy, Prentiss,” Spencer whined.

“I’ve been talking about attending their sleepover for weeks and you never mentioned this!”

“I didn’t want - stop hitting me, Prentiss - to gloat,” Spencer said.

“Here’s the plan,” Derek said, “Spencer is going to accept the invitation, and find out once and for all what goes on in there.”

Emily nodded. “Great plan.”

“No, not a great plan,” Spencer said. “I’m not going to spy on my best friends for two weirdos.”

“Okay, look,” Emily looked at Spencer so intensely the doctor looked away. “We know you have a crush on Y/N.”

“What? No!”

“Yes, you do and it’s really obvious to everyone except them.”

Spencer was readying more refusals but Emily shushed him.

“Don’t think of it as spying. Think of it as having a sleepover with your crush. That sounds fun, right?”

Spencer opened his mouth and then closed it again. Emily made it sound so nice and … Spencer shook his head, glaring up at Prentiss. “You’re a monster.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And,” Derek added, “who knows? Maybe they’ll fall in love with you.”

Love. The word clanged through him.

Spencer took a deep breath and looked at Prentiss and Morgan. “I will think about it.”

They let out an excited cheer because they knew, the way Spencer did, that the answer was actually yes.

3.

Spencer grabbed his go bag and headed out the door of the building towards Garcia’s car. He’d approached you and Penelope shortly after talking to Morgan and Prentiss, and you had been ecstatic that he’d finally decided to join in. Spencer, however, was a little nervous.

The tales of the sleepovers were wild and Spencer wasn’t sure he wanted to break into a zoo and feed the alligators, if that was even what you did on your rendezvous. He just hoped, whatever it was, that it didn’t require a lot of social interaction because he was truly spent for the day. He was relieved, thus, when you pulled into the parking lot for your apartment complex. 

As the three of you stood at the door, you fiddling with the lock, Spencer turned to Garcia. “What exactly are we going to do tonight?”

Garcia’s lips quirked up in a smile and she looked at you. The lock was open but you hadn’t opened the door yet. Spencer shot you a questioning look and for a singular anxious second, his heart dropped to his stomach.

You, his best friend, the person he trusted most, noticed the flicker of worry in his eyes and gave him your most earnest smile. “Nothing to worry about. We just have a rule for these sleepovers.”

Reid’s fist uncurled. Rules. Yes, he liked those. 

Garcia stepped in front of the door and turned to Reid. “You must solemnly swear to never tell anyone in the BAU what we will do tonight. If asked, you must make up a lie that is entirely too ordinary or entirely too extraordinary to be true. Do you agree?”

A hint of a smile flickered on your face and Spencer felt a wave of relief. “Yes, I do,” he nodded.

Garcia and you giggled a little. “Welcome, Dr. Spencer Reid, to the Island of Misfit Toys.”

Feeling brave and a little silly, Spencer sketched a bow and the trio entered the dark apartment. You flicked on the lights and the electric fireplace, and Garcia took the bags toward the bedroom. Spencer seized the moment to look around. The living room was tiny but cosy. The fireplace cast a warm glow on the cream sofas laden with pillows. A pile of books perched on the coffee table next to some candles. There were plants on the shelves and fairy lights on the walls, and Spencer could see a solitary tree outside the window, naked and swaying on that chilly winter’s night.

Unbidden, a thought rose in Spencer’s mind: I could get used to this.

“Isn’t this place just the cosiest?” Garcia said, leaning against the door jamb, suckling on a toffee. Spencer found himself nodding, the tightness in his chest easing.

You stepped out of the bedroom, cat ears on your head. “Shall we begin?”

“You guys still haven’t told me what we’re going to be doing? How crazy should I expect this all to get?”

Garcia and you exchanged a glance. “We don’t actually do anything crazy on these sleepovers. It’s just a night in to relax. We hope it’s not disappointing.” Spencer watched the excitement in your eyes and he was absolutely certain that the evening would not disappoint.

4.

The evening started by pushing aside the coffee table and pulling all the blankets and pillows to the floor. You’d ordered dinner and boy oh boy, was it a feast. There were noodles and pizzas and pastries and a bowl full of candy. You’d lit some candles on the fireplace mantle and the room was a glowing beacon of comfort. 

As you gorged yourselves on the food, you narrated childhood stories, Garcia told them about the latest online game she’d been obsessed with and, much to Spencer’s surprise, he spent a good 15 minutes talking about his latest reread of War & Peace, a book neither you nor Garcia had read or ever shown any interest in reading but you’d both listened all the same. It both left Spencer disoriented and made him feel seen. 

He might have supposed that Garcia listened because you did, but a quick rifle through his memories revealed the startling truth that Garcia had never before interrupted his rambles either. Honestly, the two hung out alone so rarely he hadn’t noticed. He vowed then to visit Garcia in her ‘goblin hole’, as she called it, more often.

Once most of the boxes of food had been emptied, you all headed to the kitchen. Garcia was sufficiently familiar with the area and began commanding Spencer to pack up the remaining food and place it in the fridge. You busied yourself with washing the dishes and Garcia elected herself in charge of music. 

Spencer had always preferred to listen to classical music but he had begun branching out his interests at your enthusiastic insistence. The music began to blare from the speakers, loud enough that he flinched at first. You noticed and it pleased him to no end when you subtly gestured to Garcia to reduce the volume. 

While packing the boxes, Spencer lightly began to tap his foot in time with the music. He’d never been a dancer and the small rhythmic movement might have embarrassed him had Garcia’s voice not reached his ears. He watched with equal parts shock and amusement as Garcia began to belt out the lyrics, extremely offkey even to his untrained ears, and he could see you at the sink, dishes in hand, shaking your hips and nodding your head, mouthing the words. Garcia walked by Spencer, giving him a hip bump and then perched herself on the kitchen counter. 

And there was something about that moment, with the candles and the fairy lights and the fireplace, with the cheery music and bawdy singing and joyful dancing, with the moon shining outside the window, illuminating the stacks of books strewn across the living room, with the cat ears on your head and the stars in your eyes, that reminded him of a quote from a book you had made him read called The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.

5.

Spencer stood on the balcony, watching the solitary tree. You often said how you loved that the tree looked so scary on wintery nights and Spencer found himself agreeing. He heard footsteps behind him and turned to find the person themself stepping out onto the balcony. “Hi,” you whispered, shooting him a shy smile.

After the concert in the kitchen, you’d all retreated to the bedroom, which, Spencer was delighted to find, was where the bookshelf was. They’d watched a movie which was quite fun, but even more interesting was your and Garcia’s reactions. You squealed and chuckled, and were entirely too invested.

Garcia had then decided to turn in for the night. She’d gone to the bathroom to take off her makeup, and you’d stood beside her chatting while she used her makeup wipes. When Spencer had awkwardly shuffled to the door, you had placed the cat ears amid Spencer’s curls, and given him a smile that turned the tips of his ears pink.

He’d retreated to the bookshelves and after perusing through the titles, stepped out onto the balcony, where he was now joined by you. “Hi,” he breathed out. 

“Garcia fell asleep,” you explained. You ran your hand along the dark wall and flicked on the lights. Spencer drew in a full breath as he watched the balcony light up with yet more fairy lights. Quite similar to the living room, the balcony also boasted a plush couch, pots of plants and stacks of books. “Did you have fun today?”

“I did.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

“I should probably tell you something.”

“Oh?” Your eyebrows headed skyward but a small smile played on your lips just the same.

“Emily and Derek put me up to this.” Spencer’s shoulders tightened in apprehension.

You chuckled. “I know.”

“You do?”

“Penny heard Derek and Emily cackling about their ‘evil plan’ in the file room.”

“Oh.” His cheeks warmed. 

“You have a question,” You smiled at him.

“Why did you invite me? You guys refused Emily and Derek.”

You sighed. “Emily and Derek are extroverts,” you chose your words carefully, “and Penny and I thought that a quiet night in wouldn’t really be their style.” You looked over your shoulder into the apartment and then back at him. “And I just really need some quiet sometimes. Don’t get me wrong though,” your words rushed out, “I love them and I love hanging out with them. But sometimes, I need someone like you, someone to have a full moment with, someone who enjoys the finer things in life.”

Spencer was so pleased, he flushed a dark red, looking like a human about to transform into a tabby cat. “That’s - I like that.” You gave him another shy smile.

“Anywho,” You walked over to a stack of books at the foot of the couch and extracted a book, handing it out towards him, “I read this book last week and I thought it was amazing and that maybe you’d enjoy it.”

Spencer took the book from you, looking at the words scrawled across the cover - Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson - and flipped it open. His eyes fell on the dedication - “For anyone who has ever dreamed of finding a body in the library” - and felt a smile tug at his lips. “I look forward to discussing it with you.”

“As do I,” you said. “Now, what would you say to popcorn and Doctor Who?”

“I would say, that sounds like a wonderful idea.” He gave you a full grin.

6.

The next day at work, you were walking back from the kitchenette with a full cup of coffee when you noticed Emily and Derek crowded around Spencer’s desk, no doubt a visit to extract secret information. You walked to your desk, set down your coffee and immersed yourself in your work, pretending not to eavesdrop.

“Spill it, pretty boy,” Derek was saying, ruffling Spencer’s already mussed hair.

The boy genius sighed. “We watched Doctor Who, okay?”

Emily and Derek looked at him in disbelief, then - “Fine, don’t tell us.” The two stormed off.

Spencer looked toward you, finding you smiling at him. He gave you a helpless shrug and you smiled wider. You turned toward the kitchenette and found Derek and Emily glaring at you two over their cups of coffee. Traitor, Derek mouthed and you dissolved into a fit of giggles.

xxxxx

Hope you enjoyed this! Comments and reblogs are much appreciated. :) - Nina

[moonrkgk]

.art program breakdown

I kind of wanted to make a list for myself, but i also wanted to make it available for others to view if they wanted a pro and con list of different art programs! I'll start my lists with pro's and follow with con's. I will be focusing on desktop programs.

Paint Tool Sai v1/v2 :

A program i started off with, very simple to use. Between v1 and v2 there are minimal changes so i will be putting them together.

PRO

Brush engine is very 'plush'. This may be dependent on your tablet settings, but i have found through Sai that you dont need a lot of pressure to get a good result.

Great starter program. Is by no means overwhelming, and everything is clearly labelled. (Or with a small amount of exploring you will be able to find the use of each button/function.)

Many layer modes, a few are exclusive to Sai. (shade/shine specifically.)

Save states (Sai V2)

Perpetual License.

CON

Program is made by a singular person, so updates are few and far between.

No dark UI.

You cannot import ABR's.

Desktop only.

Given that the program is fairly minimal anyway, i feel like deducting 'points' from it for not having things like importing assets would be a bad idea. So for what its advertised as, id say its a solid 3 out of 5.

---

Clip Studio Paint :

I have used this program for a few years, and have used on iOS and Windows.

PRO

You can import ABR's

3D models and other importable objects.

In app brush/object/material marketplace.

In app storage for art files.

'Teams' ( You are able to save your works and share them with another CSP user for coop on things like webtoons/comics or other projects.)

QA community, learn and teach, and showcase available in app.

Many layer modes, gradient maps, rulers, and materials.

Animation timelines. (CSP PRO only allows for 24 frames per animation. If you need/want more allowance you will have to upgrade to EX.)

Webtoon / comic creating features.

Mobile app companion.

Adjustable UI shades. (light/medium/dark)

Save states.

Timelapses.

CON

Limited perpetual license.*

Mobile version does not have a perpetual license and is monthly p2u.

Brush engine is very rigid.

SUT are not able to be used anywhere else but CSP.

*While i cant think of many cons, as of August 2022 and their decision to 'remove' perpetual licenses im docking them quite a few 'points'. A TLDR version would be while they do still offer perpetual licenses for version 2.0 onward, you will no longer get updates unless you pay for an update pass yearly fee ALONG WITH your perpetual license cost. You can read the entire article here. While the program is decent and widely used, their recent rug pull left a bad taste in the mouths of many so i will give it a 3of 5 for that reason. Use at your own risk.

Krita :

PRO

Free.

Open source.

Save states.

Limited ABR importation.*

Animation timelines.

*While you can import ABR's, it only imports the brush tip. You have to recreate the brush from there and this can be tedious.

CON

'Clunky' UI

No help desk.

Desktop only.

Performance and lag issues regularly.

I dont think ive ever had a particularly good experience using Krita. One of the main reasons i gave it up back in the day was solely because i was having so many performance issues and it was crashing regularly. These may no longer be issues, but i feel its important to add that it was a good enough reason that many people stopped using it because of. I give a 2 of 5.

Open Canvas / Medibang / FireAlpaca :

These three will get honourable mentions. While open canvas is not free, medibang and firealpaca are. Their UI is pretty much the same, as well as their features.

The most i would be able to say about these three is they are super minimal and basic. (However, if you do decide to stick with any i know people like Jax Sheridan 'Clockbirds' was able to create masterpieces with medibang. They seem to have since moved to photoshop as of ~4yr ago.)

2 of 5!

Photoshop:

PRO

ABR that are widely used and easily accessible.

Many layer modes.

Ruler and grid tools.

In app marketplace.

Cloud storage.

Mobile app.

Save states.

Accessible help desk / forum support.

CON

Monthly subscription.

Open GL issues.

Sporadic performance issues.

While i know a ton of people dislike PS CC because theyve had the market cornered for so long, i feel like the program itself is one of the best. You can find addons for thins like animation timelines, different UI settings, etc. (While not always free as they are user made.) The monthly cost is $9.99 USD (this may change based on your own currency or country.) which is fairly low. (I pay more for netflix per month.) They have been using this subscription model since 2012 when they introduced CC. Personally, the cost of using the program pays itself, but i understand the issues people have with this.

4 of 5.

Paintstorm Studio :

PRO

Save states.

Timelapses.

ABR importing.

Many brush layers, grids, rulers.

Active forum community and responsive help desk.

Extremely customizable brushes.

Customizable UI. (colours AND dark/light.)

OPEN GL.

CON

Issues with integrated graphics.

Occassional performance issues.

Perpetual license cost.

While paintstorm is not free, its $20 price tag is incredibly justifiable for what you get. They are fairly transparent with their plans, issues, and updates for the program (even with things like including animation tools or fixes.). I personally had some performance issues with the program and had to email their support and was replied to PROMPTLY with all the willingness to help.

The closest comparison i can make is that paintstorm is a mix of sai and CSP. Ive considered dropping CSP for this program entirely. (I just need a bit more time to get more comfortable.)

3 of 5.

OTHER HONOURABLE MENTIONS :

While these programs are not getting their own column, if you want to expand and try them out i wish you luck! (I may have either not used it long enough to form a solid enough yay or nay opinion, or i just dont particularly care for it either way anyway.)

GIMP

Rebelle

Corel Painter

Sketchbook

Procreate (iOS only)

ArtRage

I may at some point append this list as I grow, but for now i just really wanted to share what ive learned over the years with others. These are generally my own personal opinions, so youre free to take them with a grain of salt! But hopefully it helps someone out :)

[helloalycia]

my happy ending [one] // kara danvers

summary: your crush from work decides to make a move, but she keeps putting off telling you something that you don't realise is actually really important

warning/s: none

author's note: i'm still working on a bunch of stuff but here's some old stuff to tide you over as i do. this is part one to a two-parter! enjoy :)

part two | masterlist

I sketched out some designs at my desk, ideas for some new Instagram and Twitter marketing CatCo we were planning to do. I was in charge of social media marketing at CatCo Worldwide, so things like this were routine at work. What wasn't routine was the cute blonde, Kara, AKA Cat Grant's assistant, approaching my desk with a chirpy smile on her lips.

"Hey, Y/N," she greeted, before setting down a coffee cup in front of me.

I smiled automatically, Kara's presence instantly affecting my mood in a positive way. I glanced at the cup and quirked an eyebrow.

"Hey, Kara. Is this for me?"

She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose adorably. "I was picking up Miss Grant's order and I remembered you said you loved the chocolate orange hot chocolates Noonan's do. So, I got you one."

I felt my cheeks heat up. "Oh, wow, er, thank you. You didn't have to do that."

She shrugged, and I was sure she looked as flustered as I felt. "No biggie."

I took a sip of the hot chocolate and smiled at how good it was, but mostly because of who got it me.

"So, what are you doing?" she asked, walking around my desk and sitting at the edge. She glanced at my sketches and added, "Is that the new fashion post for our social media accounts? They look amazing!"

"Just some sketches, but eventually they will be," I said, before nodding. "And thanks. I just need the photos so I know what I'm working with. Gotta ask the new guy, James... you met him yet?"

Kara nodded. "Yeah, I just bumped into him earlier."

"Can you believe he knows Superman?" I asked with disbelief. "How awesome is that?"

She smiled with amusement. "Extremely awesome."

"Keira!"

Kara lost her smile when Miss Grant called for her, before looking to me apologetically. "I should–"

"It's cool," I said, nodding for her to leave before Miss Grant tracked her down. "Thanks again for the drink."

Kara flashed me a smile. "Anytime. See you later."

I watched her walk away, waving as she glanced over her shoulder. I found myself biting my lip to contain my own smile, feeling butterflies in my stomach.

Kara Danvers, assistant to Cat Grant.

Ever since she began working here, I found myself crushing on the blonde and her cute mannerisms. We were friends, occasionally hanging out outside of work and doing things together. But that's all it was, sadly. I knew she was friends with Winn – best friends, I think – and I also knew that the tech guy was practically in love with her. I didn't know him as well as I knew her, but I knew enough to not want to get in between the two of them. So, Kara Danvers remained a silly little crush.

I got back to my sketches, managing to draft up some mock-ups on Photoshop before my day ended. I was more tired than I thought that evening, ending up falling asleep earlier than usual. Which meant that I missed the biggest news in National City yet – a mystery woman saving a plane from crashing, possibly a new superhero.

I woke up the next morning to a million and one calls and texts from colleagues at CatCo, all expecting me to get on social media to post about this mystery woman. By the time I got to work that morning, I was caught up with everything and in awe at this new superhero we had. It was pretty darn awesome!

The amazement I felt however was short lived, as Cat was all over me when I got to the office, claiming I should have been on top of our social media coverage as soon as it happened. Apparently me falling asleep wasn't a valid enough point to miss it, so I was put to work instantly, working with the photography and marketing department to find some sort of coverage on this mystery hero.

As I was lining up some posts with the limited images available of this hero, I felt a presence stop by my desk and saw it was Kara.

"Morning," she greeted, before glancing at my computer. "Oh, so you heard?"

I chuckled. "Kind of hard not to. It's everywhere." I nodded to the many TVs around the office that were playing reruns of the news coverage from last night.

"Pretty cool, right?" she asked, a smile tugging at her lips.

"Very, but it also means I now have a lot of work to do, especially because I fell asleep when all of this went down," I said, jokingly. "Cat has been all over me about this all morning."

Kara laughed and it was literally the best thing I'd heard all day.

"So, I was actually hoping I could tell you something," she said, an excited smile on her face as she met my eyes.

I felt a little flustered under her gaze and found myself distracting myself with my computer screen momentarily.

"I actually have a lot of things to do right now,” I said regretfully. “Maybe later?”

Her smile faded as she nodded. "Right, no, yeah, that's totally fine. Sorry."

"No, no, don't apologise," I said instantly, feeling a little bad. "I just– if I don't get this done, Cat will kill me."

"I got it, you do this, it's cool," she said reassuringly, offering me a small smile.

"Sorry," I tried, a little sad that there was nothing I could do. I really needed to get this done, despite wanting to spend some more time with Kara.

"It's fine, good luck," she said, giving me a grin and thumbs up before leaving.

I sighed, before getting back to work. Unfortunately, it was a few hours before I could get away from my desk, and I managed to track down Kara at her own desk, remembering she wanted to tell me something.

"Hey," I said, earning her attention.

She looked up from her notebook, smiling when she saw me. "Hey, you manage to get that content done?"

"Just about," I said, before offering a small smile. "Sorry again for blowing you off."

She waved her hand dismissively. "It's fine, honestly."

"I'm free now though," I said optimistically. "Maybe we could grab an early lunch? You can talk to me then?"

Kara pushed a strand of hair behind her ear as she nodded slowly. "That sounds nice actually, yeah."

I felt a little relieved when she agreed. "Great. Well, I'll let you get your things and meet you by the elevator?"

She pursed her lips, suppressing a smile. "You got it."

We ended up getting lunch, as agreed, and it was nice to make it up to her. Though, I never really noticed that she never ended up telling me whatever it was that she wanted to tell me. I was so distracted by how smoothly our lunch was going that I forgot to ask her about it. Maybe if I'd asked, she might have told me the truth. Or she might have made something up and lied. I guess I would never know.

–

Did somebody say tiny umbrella drinks? #gottalovethetinyumbrellas #CatCoFoundation [image here]

I sent yet another tweet and picture out from CatCo's Twitter account, watching as it instantly got responses from everyone. I was at an event that Cat was throwing for all CatCo employees plus special guests. It was an event to raise money for Cat's foundation – a charity for children's hospitals in National City. My job was to live-tweet the heck out of the event, hoping to boost donations online.

It was a formal event, so I was comfortably dressed in some high-waisted pants and a silk blouse, it being my best attempt at 'formal' clothes.

The event wasn't too bad. There was free food and drinks, plus I got to hang out with some of my friends from work whilst doing the bare minimum. I just wasn't an evening person, I guess.

"Hey, stranger," a voice startled me, and I turned around, surprised to see Kara Danvers stood there.

I hadn't seen much of Kara in the past few months, despite working with her. She always seemed to be caught up with Winn, and she'd gotten quite close with the not-so-new guy, James Olsen. I wasn't stalking her or anything, but I began to notice when I would try to make plans with her like we used to – little things like grabbing coffee or going to watch a film after work – and she would decline or have plans already. Then I'd see her constantly being surrounded by Winn and James, so I figured she'd just made new friends.

"Kara," I breathed out, smiling as I took in her appearance. "Hey."

I hadn't seen her at all this evening and I was sure she just showed up because I definitely would have noticed how good she looked in that fitted red dress of hers.

"You look really nice," she said, looking me up and down before meeting my eyes.

"Thanks," I said, hoping my cheeks didn't look as warm as they felt. "So do you. You liking the event?"

Kara looked around, nodding. "It's beautiful."

"You did a good job," I said, giving her a knowing smile. "I know you planned it."

"This was all Cat, I just–"

"Kara, everybody knows you plan the events around here," I told her with a chuckle. "It's okay."

She smiled to herself, looking down. "Right." It went quiet for a moment before she looked up and said, "Do you want to dance?"

I was a little taken aback by her confidence, but nonetheless, I found myself nodding. She smiled as she held out her hand. I took it, feeling goosebumps from how soft her hands were.

She led me to the dance-floor, stopping and resting a hand on my waist, the other holding my hand. I nervously rested an arm on her shoulder as I focused on swaying to the music playing rather than stepping on her toes.

"I feel like I haven't seen you in a while," she said after a moment. I looked up and saw her blue eyes staring right through me.

"Well, we've both been busy," I attempted to give a reason.

She shook her head, smiling apologetically. "No, it's not that... it's my fault. I've been hanging out with James and Winn so much lately that I've been neglecting you."

I laughed a little awkwardly. "Kara, it's okay. You don't need to feel bad for having other friends. I mean, you don't have any obligations to me. They're your best friends. Of course you're gonna hang out with them."

She pursed her lips and I admittedly felt nervous as she stared at me, her expression unreadable. She was a little taller than me which didn't help with me trying to keep my emotions in check. She was extremely close to me as we swayed to the music and I could just about focus on it as she continued to stare at me.

"What if I want to have obligations to you?" she asked, and I almost thought she was joking until I realised that she wasn't.

I wanted to understand what she meant, but I didn't get to ask because she leaned forward and closed the gap between us with her lips. I was surprised at her boldness, pinning Kara for the shy type. Nonetheless, I returned the kiss, melting into her embrace and warmth.

We pulled apart soon enough, myself a little flustered from the kiss. My lips were still tingling as she met my eyes, a small smile tugging at her lips.

"I hope that was okay," she muttered.

I nodded slowly, still surprised. "Yeah, it was."

My stomach was doing somersaults as I mirrored her smile; the gala was merely a blur in the background as I realised Kara Danvers had just kissed me. I definitely wouldn't have thought she felt something for me other than friendship.

"I'm assuming you want this to go somewhere," I said, a little stupidly.

She laughed melodiously as she nodded, intertwining her fingers in mine. "That's the plan, yes. But actually, er..."

"Second thoughts already?" I joked, though inside I was genuinely believing she might be second-guessing her decision, judging from her sudden change of facial expression.

"No, no," she said, shaking her head. "It's just, I feel like we should talk first. I have to tell you something. Before this goes any further."

She sounded quite affected by whatever it was, so I nodded, losing my smile for a moment.

"Of course, you can tell me whatever you need to," I reassured her, giving her hand a little squeeze. "Do you want to talk now or after?"

She opened her mouth to reply, but tilted her head to the side as she grew distracted. I waited patiently, expecting her to snap back into reality, but she seemed caught up with something else.

"Kara? You okay?" I asked, growing a little concerned.

"What? Yeah, sorry," she said, shaking her head before meeting my eyes with apologetic ones. "I'm sorry, I have to go for a minute. I just realised I have to check on the desserts for the party."

"Oh, okay." I nodded, giving her a small smile. "You can tell me whatever it is afterwards then?"

She smiled, nodding. "Yeah. I'll be back after, I swear."

I believed her and watched as she let go of my hand, already in a rush to leave. I wondered what was so time-sensitive about desserts, but decided not to question it as I realised the very obvious and surprising fact that Kara liked me.

As she turned to leave, she quickly turned back to me and moved forward, pressing a haste kiss to my cheek. My face heated up as she flashed me a beautiful smile, before moving to leave.

Just danced with the most beautiful girl in the room #CatCoFoundation

I looked up and saw Kara by the door, about to leave, but she stopped when her phone vibrated. After glancing at the screen, she paused and a wide smile graced her lips. Her eyes lifted and she gave me a knowing look before disappearing. I found myself smiling like an idiot the rest of the night.

I guess I should have realised, once again, that Kara never ended up telling me whatever it was that she wanted to tell me. I was so caught up in the fact that she returned my feelings that I never remembered to ask her what it was that she wanted to say. Maybe if I'd remembered, things would have ended up a little differently.

–

Kara and I went on some dates, our relationship blossoming naturally. It was the best thing to happen to me at the time – finding someone who I thought truly understood me, and vice versa. We had inside jokes, an 'our song', a favourite restaurant we frequented; we were happy and it was amazing. I was really falling for her. I thought she was perfect. Nothing could change that, I thought. She was everything I wanted.

"What are you thinking about in that pretty little head of yours?" Kara asked, tilting her head to look at me.

It was moments like this when I was in awe of her beauty, inside and out. She was comfortable, with her hair tied in a loose ponytail and her face makeup-free. Her glasses were balanced on her nose as she stared at me with an easygoing smile and sparkling eyes. I felt a sudden overwhelming flood of love for her as she waited for me to reply.

"I'm in love with you," I blurted out uncontrollably.

She raised her eyebrows slightly, mouth agape as she realised what I said.

"I'm sorry," I said, shaking my head. "That was random. And weird. Too soon, right? I freaked you out. I'm sorry."

Kara blinked several times, straightening up as she shook her head. "No, it's not, it's..." I watched her with anticipation, as she found her words. "It's fine. It's... I feel the same way."

It was my turn to be surprised now. I raised my eyebrows, a smile forming on my lips. "You do?"

Kara pursed her lips, eyes flickering up to meet mine. "Yeah."

I breathed out. "I'm really happy to hear that, especially because I thought I freaked you out, but like, I feel like something is bothering you, Kara."

Resting a hand on hers, I squeezed it gently. She offered me a small, troubled smile and I wondered what was occupying her thoughts.

"I trust you," she said gently. "I do. I love you. And I... I want you to know that I think what we have is amazing. I've never been happier."

"This sounds like a breakup," I joked, chuckling nervously. She wouldn't break up with me right after saying 'I love you', right?

"No, no, it's not!" she reassured immediately, taking any doubt from my mind. She leaned forward and cupped my cheek gently. "I'm not breaking up with you, silly."

"Good to know," I said playfully, resting my hand on hers and moving it to my lips, kissing it softly. "What is it though? What's on your mind? You can tell me anything you know."

She nodded. "I know... I can. I will. Now."

I stayed quiet, watching as she had some inner conflict going on. What was bothering her so much?

"I want to say that I–"

But she was cut off by her phone ringing. She rolled her eyes and I offered her an approving smile as she reached to answer it.

"Alex, hey, what's up?"

I sat back, keeping ahold of Kara's hand as she listened to Alex on the phone.

"Are you sure?" Kara said, concern in her voice.

I wondered what was going on, as the blonde was scrunching her brows together with worry. Her hand slipped from mine as she stood up, pacing.

"Okay, I'll be there now," she finished, before hanging up.

"Hey, that sounded serious, is everything okay?" I asked, standing up, too.

Kara nodded, already in the process of grabbing her things. "Yeah, sorry, it's just some family stuff with Alex. I should get going and help her out." She stopped moving and turned to face me, a distracted frown on her face. "I'm sorry. I know we were supposed to spend the evening together and I wanted to tell you something, but–"

"It's fine, Kara, you can just tell me another time," I cut her off, moving forward and rubbing her arm gently. "I hope everything is okay with Alex. I'll just see you at work tomorrow, yeah?"

Kara smiled tightly, nodding. "You're too understanding. It's annoyingly admirable."

I chuckled, stepping forward and pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead. She had a few inches on me, so I had to step on my tip toes to reach, but seeing the little smile appear on her lips when I did made it worth it.

"Don't get stressed about whatever it is you wanna tell me," I added, meeting her eyes. "I'm sure it'll be fine. I love you and I'm really lucky to have you in my life. I don't think anything will ruin that. Just... remember that, okay?"

Kara nodded, her eyes flickering to the floor. "Thank you, Y/N."

"I'll leave you to it," I said, moving away to grab my coat and put on my shoes. "Good luck with whatever is up, and see you tomorrow."

As I was about to leave, her voice called out, "I love you, too."

I smiled widely at her before leaving, feeling lightweight because of all the love that was bubbling around inside of me. Once again, Kara managed to distract me from the fact that she had something big to tell me, as when I followed up the next day, she assured me that she just wanted me to know that she sometimes moved too fast in relationships and she didn't want me to feel like I was being rushed.

I believed her, blinded by what I thought was my happy ending, and that was that.

[junkworldusa]

Raudive Voices

(process post for TV comic)

i’ve been really into william burroughs the past month & haven’t had a chance to make much art until now. i decided when i had free time my first project would be a cut-up comic: i would divide pre-written dialogue into small sections and pull random images to go with each section. then i would faithfully copy these down & translate them into the form of a comic.  in other words, the dialogue would be transcribed exactly as written, while the images that went along with it would be random (first sign of cowardice; if i  was going all-in i should have mixed up the dialogue too).

burroughs described reading poetry with the TV on in the background and making notes of what he was reading when certain images were on screen. that’s the vibe i wanted, hence the TV frame (also a coward’s move-- ANYTHING can be on TV, no narrative framing necessary!). i wish i had had the randomness of TV but the internet sufficed.

[ask me about my collection of portentous jeopardy answers]

first i wrote a draft of dialogue to get a sense of the pacing. i printed it out, chopped it up into 20 "panels" and glued these to index cards (i ended up adding 7 more panels throughout the process). these were flipped over, labeled 1 through 20, & set aside.

i spent a day compiling screencaps of movies, commercials, TV shows, cartoons, news segments, etc. i tried not to think too hard about what these were in-context, but i did choose a couple movies for their thematic relevance (zero dark thirty, dr. strangelove, the day the earth stood still.) i printed the ones i liked best, cut them up, & numbered the backs. there ended up being 65 of these.

[ambien ad i liked but didn’t end up using]

the next day i laid out the 20 index cards & the 65 images face-down & pulled up two random number generators: one set to 1-20 and one 1-65. i began generating pairs and matching the corresponding images to their cards. i kept everything face-down the whole time b/c it felt fun and dramatic to get to flip them all at the end.

finally i began flipping over the cards & their images in sequential order, one card at a time. if a card had multiple images, i flipped the one that was generated first & only looked at more if i felt unsatisfied. this meant there was some kiana selection involved, as most dialogue cards had at least 2 images to choose from, but over half of the images in the comic are the first ones flipped (including some of my favorites). i fiddled around w/ pacing for a while, adding 7 new panels & generating images for them with a similar method. then it was time 2 make the comic

[what my desk looked like. the pencils are in blue so they’re barely visible, but they were finished at this point.]

i was really satisfied with the results of this experiment. there are strange & interesting juxtapositions of word & image that i couldn’t reach just by sitting around and brainstorming.

“Thousands of people dreamed about 9/11″ generated Neo waking up from the Matrix (welcome to the Desert of the Real). “I’ve always been an obsessive guy” returned Ripley holding jones the cat close to her chest. “Lots of demonic influence out there” generated an alien spaceship: a significant number of christians think aliens are demons sent here to deceive us, including my mom. some pairs i was unsure or dismissive of at first but soon grew on me, like the simpsons at thanksgiving dinner praying as the atomic bomb hits.

even after the exciting part was over & the significantly harder work of “making” the comic began, i was still finding new meanings/patterns (for example the successive trio of Ash/Neo/Max Renn only dawned on me once i started inking-- all men, all covered in fluid [milk/amniotic/blood], all interfacing with machinery).  at one point photoshop crashed and made glitch art-- that’s cut-up too.

if this process seems anathema to stuff i’ve written about comics in the past, that’s because it is. its also (obviously) stylistically different from brush and ink cartoon dogs. reason:

that being said, the inking took forever (5 days) at which point my enthusiasm had considerably waned (“FUCK IT, WE’LL DO IT LIVE!”) so i dont think i’ll work like this again. but i’m happy with the end product-- cold, eerie. america seen through multiple screens. or should i say...through a scanner darkly????? *shot*

thanks for reading!

[imanativeofswlondondahling]

Hidden in Plain Sight (3)- Tom Holland X Reader

A/N: This story is fun to write, but school is taking over little by little so sorry if this gets delayed more than I mean for it to be! Enjoy Chapter Three!

Word Count: 2165

Warnings: Swearing? Maybe? To be honest I can’t remember if I swore or not but knowing me I probably did. But there is mention of a killer moth so if that’s as trigger as it was when it was flying around my room then I’ll mention it here.

You had the absolute worst day. You were hoping it was going to be a good day since you had put on one of your favorite outfits to wear to work. But as soon as you got to work, everything turned into a shit show. A project you thought was finished didn’t save the last days edits, your boss got on you for something that was your coworker’s responsibility, and someone ate your lunch, which you’re not entirely sure how that happened, but it did. Add to it you have the start of what you think is a migraine, the last thing you want to do is anything work related, but because you’re behind on the project that is due tomorrow, you’ll probably be up all night working on it before going in tomorrow to continue working on it at the office. So heating up some soup to eat while you work, you decide to scroll through Tumblr while you wait for it to heat up. 

The news of Spider-Man, and therefore Tom Holland, staying in the MCU still hasn’t died down, which let’s be honest why should it? It’s fantastic news. Out of all the Spider-Mans, Tom’s portrayal of it is your favorite and you would be so sad to see him taken from Marvel just because Sony, Marvel and Disney couldn’t come to an agreement on things. It’s only been a couple days since it was announced, but you wouldn’t be surprised if this was talked about for weeks at least. You reblog a couple of photos, adding some of your usual hashtags. Honestly, you want to be distracted by asks, but you know that the likelihood that people will respond is low, plus you shouldn’t let yourself be distracted by Tumblr when you have the project due tomorrow. 

Hating seeing notifications, you click on the second icon from the right on the bottom of your screen. You clear off the notifications from reblogs and likes but notices your app is still showing a notification, on the messages side. It’s probably just from one of your friends. You flip over to the other screen and see a message from none other than Tomholland2013, who you’ve been messaging on and off over the past couple of days, ever since you sent him that edit.

You haven’t been super active on tumblr lately. Everything ok?x

Been super busy at work lol. Big deadlines coming up.

You don’t expect to get a message back since you figured from your messages where he mentioned he was in the early hours of the day while you were only in the late afternoon, that he was probably asleep since you got home later from work than you had planned. So you set your phone aside as you pull the broccoli cheddar soup from the microwave. However, you’re pleasantly surprised to see a message waiting for you when you pick your phone back up to head back to your computer to keep working.

Ah, big deadlines. What kind of work do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?x

Hm, this new tumblr friend of yours is awake even though it’s probably the middle of the night for him?

I don’t mind. I work in graphic design. Isn’t it the middle of the night for you? 

It would be if I was at home. I travel a lot for work. I’m currently in New York, so it’s only 9pm.x

But it definitely feels like I should be asleep. I’ve only been in New York for a few days and my mind is still on London time.x

What kind of work do you do? 

You set your phone down and boot your computer back up. You know you have shadows to deal with and layers to add back before even getting to the stuff you were meaning to get on today. This project was going to be the death of you. 

Tom stares at the message. How does he respond to that? He can’t very well tell you he’s an actor. That blows all of this. He likes being able to be open with you and the moment that it comes out that he is actually Tom Holland, well you might not be open with him. Could he tell you he works in the movie field without having to admit who he is? Could he play it off that he’s still a fanboy, because he will be a marvel fanboy until the day he dies, without blowing this whole thing up? There’s just something about you and being able to connect with someone who has no idea who he is that is different. 

Even on your blog today, you shared things from months ago and still reacted like it was your first time seeing them. Your whole blog just radiated positivity, even though your messages sounded like you had a lot on your plate outside of the internet world. He wants to be able to know you without the pressure of having to be, well, him. But you’re not asking him to spill everything about who he is. Just a snip-it. 

Film production. Getting ready to head off to a new project actually.x

Must be fun to travel for it. Anywhere fun?

Cleveland actually. Haven’t been there before, so maybe I’ll find something fun to do outside of the project while I’m there.x

Maybe you’ll run into Tom. He’s supposed to be there shooting a project I think. Especially if you’re also in the film industry, you’d already have more of a way into things than say I would lol 

I don’t know if I’ll have that much time off to look for him.x

Well if you happen to run into him in said little time off, tell him there’s probably half a million if not more tumblr users willing to marry him, should he be in need of a wife, husband, or nonbianary pal.

Would you happen to be one of those said half a million?x

He shouldn’t have sent it. You have been pretty good about responding, but after sending that message, he hasn’t heard from you in over twenty-four hours and he’s beside himself. You also haven’t posted on your blog. Which makes him think you’re avoiding him on the site all together, which is even worse. The flight to Cleveland, wouldn’t have been half bad if he wasn’t worried the whole time about what you might have been sending while his phone was on airplane mode. And of course the one time he would have paid any amount for on flight wi-fi, it was down and no one could use it.

As soon as the plane lands, he’s flipping the switch to connect his phone again. He needs to see if you’ve messaged back. He’s ignoring all the other notifications that pop up, looking for only on apps notifications. And while you haven’t posted again, you have messaged back. Which makes him suddenly feel like he can breathe again. 

I’m not the one who took Tom’s name on here. I feel like you might propose to Tom before I even have a chance to meet him IRL.

I don’t think I’m Tom’s type.X

And what do you think Tom’s type is? 

And it takes everything to not just describe you. It wouldn’t be hard. He had spent a lot of time deep diving through your blog. He had looked through your #me tab on your blog. It was filled with everything from selfies to posts about things you had done. And you were the kind of person that he was into. It wasn’t an only physical attraction thing. It was the things that you found important enough to post about. The little things about your day that you shared about. But instead of typing back you, Tom decides to type something different.

I think he would be into someone down to earth. Someone who is into sharing time with friends and family equally and someone who has a great sense of humor. Oh and they would HAVE to love Tessa. That would be a must.x

Wow you’ve thought a lot about this.

Do you disagree?x

Surprisingly no. But I thought you’d say something more… I don’t know physical I guess.

Why’s that?x

I don’t know. I just did.

What do you think he’d be into?x

He can’t help but ask. He wants to know what you think he’s like. There’s enough speculation out there about what he’s like, but for some reason, knowing what you think about him, it means something to him.

I would say, similar to you- family, friends and Tessa would definitely be at the top. Sense of humor would be important. I also feel like with there being so much he can’t talk about to the public, having someone he can trust with stuff would be important. I also think trust would be important so that he has a space he can just be himself too. 🤷‍♀️

Pretty spot on. All of those are important to him. He wants to ask if those things are all important to you, but asking that would come off weird, so he takes a different approach.

Honestly if I wasn’t such a div when I was making accounts I would have just made a Tessa fan blog. I’m a bigger fan of her than of Tom. x

SO TRUE. How can you not be?! She’s the purest thing in this world (sorry to Tom) and every time he shares more of her with us I melt a little.

Paddy had sent him that picture of Tessa this morning, maybe sharing it would brighten everyone’s days. Especially knowing that you were such a fan of her too. Adding the picture to his Instagram story, with a quick caption of missing this sweet girl, he quickly uploads it.

APPARENTLY TOM CAN READ OUR THOUGHTS?!

What do you mean?x

Cute Tessa content just uploaded to his Insta story. Apparently he’s away from her and missing her 😭

She’s just too pure for this world x

I needed that right now.

Something wrong?x

Work project might kill me. 

It’s due by the end of the day, but photoshop keeps crashing and I might scream. 

I’m sorry love x

I’m restarting my computer for the third time today and it’s not even noon yet. 

You know he’s English so the love thing shouldn’t throw you. Plus he’s a boy on the internet. But for some reason, it feels like something more. So instead of saying anything about it, you just keep messaging like nothing happened. A small part of you is hoping that by not mentioning it though, it might happen again.

Tom spends the rest of the day messaging you when he can. He knows you’re working on a project that has a deadline, so he doesn’t expect you to be at his beck and call. But when he gets a notification at almost eleven o’clock at night his time from your blog, he hopes it’s one of your personal posts to make him laugh. He isn’t let down.

THERE WAS A MOTH FLYING AROUND MY ROOM AND NOW I CAN’T FIND IT IM GOING TO DIE. IF IT EATS ME YOU ALL KNOW WHO THE MURDER IS

#me #killer moth #save me #if i die i leave everything to tom

He can’t help but send you an ask about it.

Tomholland2013 asked: You know moths don’t eat people right?x

Y/T/B: You didn’t see how big this one was. This one was definitely of the people eating variety with how big it was. And now it’s hiding in my room waiting for me to close my eyes and then it will sneak up on me, kill me, and devour me whole. 🖕

Tom laughs at your reply before sending another ask. Sure he could do this in your message thread, but he’s betting the asks are helping distract you from the moth.

Tomholland2013 asked: That’s a quiet defensive response from someone who is going to be eaten. If you want me to come save you from a killer moth, maybe be a bit nicer.x

Y/T/B: If you will race over here, find this moth, and release it into the wild so that it can’t kill me in my sleep I will make you as many Tom edits as it takes in gratitude. 👏😘Just come save me please. I swear I can hear him laughing in the distance. 

Tomholland2013 asked: If he’s laughing in the distance, I’ll be over to take care of him. No one gets to disrespect my favorite blog and get away with it.x

Y/T/B: Thanks darling. I really, really appreciate it. Now I must be off to hunt this moth, before he hunts me.

Tags: @serendipitous-amor​ @im-still-tryin-to-find-it​ @tomfiction4​ @im-deeply-shallow

[kaiowut99]

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters GX Episode 57 Subbed (Finalized)

The Kaiser VS Ed! A Battle in the Pro League

Kaiser Ryou and Ed Phoenix are set to duel in the Pro Dueling League.  While Ed’s deck is an E-Hero deck, it contains different cards and strategies than Judai’s, and so he Fusion-Summons “Phoenixguy.” The Kaiser strikes back with his Cyber Dragon cards, and Judai and the others, knowing it’s a deck he’s faced before, assume Ed to be weak.  At last, the Kaiser closes in on him with Cyber End Dragon, strengthened by his Power Bond, but...

And a newly finalized 57 is all done! Only took 2.5 weeks, so not too shabby, lol.  It’s a neat episode, establishes what the Pro League Ryou’s moved onto is like, we get some fated insight into our mysterious new freshman, and... Ryou’s spiral into Hell Kaiser is set into motion.  Also, Judai learns something new about his deck, which... c’mon, ya dork.  Overall, a good episode.

(Also, did want to note that, for Ed’s Heroes, I decided to use “[x]guy” as opposed to “[x] Guy” as I’d done before (ie, “Phoenixguy” vs “Phoenix Guy”); given that it’s a riff off of Judai’s “[x]man/lady” Heroes, and it’s written that way in Japanese without a space between “[x]” and “guy”, I figured it’d make sense.  Means it’ll be “Diamondguy,” “Diehardguy,” etc when we get to Ed’s D-Heroes reveal next time.)

On the fixes/edits side: had a few card fixes to do, but the big ones were adding Burstlady’s oft-forgotten shoulder strap and taking a crack at fixing the signs Ryou walks past in Domino City that were mirrored for some reason, though I’d handled this latter one as I prepared 56.  Details below the cut~

Enjoy, folks! After a little downtime (we do apparently have something happening tomorrow in the US which, however you go about it, you should consider taking part in if you haven’t yet [wake me up when dueling to settle world issues is being debated]), I’ll be looking more into working on 5D’s 28′s Dub-Uncut edit, mixed with preparing for finalizing both GX 58 and 59; as it’s the first real Judai VS Ed duel, and one of my favorites, I’ll be trying to release them together, so stay tuned!

Translations/Fixes!

As Judai and Misawa chat about Judai’s deck, he pulls out a magazine flipped to a page about Ryou and Ed; as I did in 53, I translated what was visible from the article and “editorialized” the translation such that what was visible vertically originally was visible horizontally.  After applying the translation in Photoshop, I recreated the zoom-in for the shot in Sony Vegas.

As Ryou enjoys the fine Domino City night and thinks about Ed’s deck, he walks past several storefronts where the awning signage is reversed for some reason; to fix this, I stitched together the entire shot, then used layers in Photoshop to flip the signage in question.  Once that was done, I redid the panning shot in Sony Vegas, masking Ryou and some of the attached building over the shot as needed to fill it out well.  Probably the most intensive edit here, as Vegas would keep crashing on me every few keyframes after a while (😭), but I fixed this as I prepared to finalize 56, so this didn’t take much editing time here.

During the eyecatch, I noticed a quick frame as Ed is moving upward past Ryou where he suddenly moves down before continuing to move up; I just replaced that frame with the one just before in Vegas.  Small quality-of-life fix, but y’know.

As Ed gets ready to fuse Featherman and Burstlady for Phoenixguy, when Burstlady appears on the field, she’s without her shoulder strap and arm band.  I used Photoshop to draw them on her in the frame once she’s fully materialized, basing it off of her appearance as she’s about to fuse with Featherman in the next shot, then when I worked it into the footage in Vegas, I did so first by working backwards and moving the edited frame down to match Burstlady’s position as she rises, then keyframing a brightness filter just on the added strap and arm band, and then finally masking in the rays of light from the Solid Vision over the strap and arm band.  Ultimately thought it came out better than 4Kids having to just throw on another burst of light over their edit, lol.

As Ed notes that Spark Gun being used three times destroys it, there’s a blank Effect Monster card where Phoenixguy should be; I first made a proxy for Phoenixguy, then threw it and a Sparkman proxy onto the first frame of the shot in AfterEffects, after which I redid the panning shot in Vegas.

As Ed looks on after Ryou summoned Cyber End Dragon, it looks like they left Phoenixguy on his Disk in his third Monster Zone with Shining Phoenixguy barely visible in his fourth--except he’d already fused Phoenixguy with Sparkman to leave Shining Phoenixguy alone on his field.  I just edited the Phoenixguy card out of the third Zone in Photoshop, then extended the frame for the whole shot before just masking out the newly blank Zone.

As Ryou declares an attack with Cyber End Dragon, a lone impact line looks to have been left over the back of Ryou’s Disk extending into the whooshing background; I edited the first 18 frames of the shot to remove it, recoloring Ryou’s Disk and the affected parts of the background, and then looped those 18 frames for the rest of the shot, as I noticed that was where they started reusing them.

[kumoriyami-xiuzhen]

Hakuoki Reimeiroku Saito Final Chapter

have i ever mentioned how i’m a masochist when it comes to this stuff? like, i will freely admit how i actually don’t like translating and doing more unnecessary work, but I when I do something for myself, I tend to want a certain degree of quality.... which is why i decided i’d do some video editing for this... a decision that I really regret now though i can say that it’s something that i know hate more than photoshop lol. 

after i finished my yuugiroku 2 vid, i figured i might as well try to install Visual Novel Reader to see if that could offer me better visual and audio quality for this... but before I finished installing it, I went and checked what videos were available that I could use for assets and found a video made through vnr had about the same audio quality as to ppsspp... along with videos from someone other psp emulated version of this... which i then clipped for audio. 

between visual and audio quality... i’ll pick audio any day so after deciding that i’d be using some of the less grainy audio i found along with my ppsspp footage... i set to work trying to layer the tracks.... but since the audio didn’t match the visuals’ timing, I had to manually cut pieces of my screencap video up so that it matched the audio timing, while also making sure that the visuals looked like they were still continuous (damn  circle icon which wouldn’t go away and caused problems)... on top of which, i had to deal with removing a number of random black screens that would just flash on screen for less than a second when i ran reimeiroku through the ppsspp emulator.... then i also had to find the song that plays towards the ending of this cuz the audio i had cut before the end of my screencap vid which was also a pain because i couldn’t find the damn thing anywhere on youtube so i had to go find the game rip audio (thankfully i have a site for that. also in the game, that song doesn’t naturally fade out and i manually added in that effect cuz i felt like it and thought it was better than the audio just cutting off) so i could put that in and align it so that track matched the audio timing for the vita audio track.... and then i also had to do something about the interval where i had to increase and decrease volume since the end kept sounding off no matter what i did....tho i kinda think the video still sounds off in 2 places.

once i got all the damn visuals and text properly lined up, i gave up on having to deal with the the stupid circle icon in that was originally in the bottom right hand corner since i got pissed enough seeing it and cuz it was no longer continuously in motion so I decided to remove it entirely along with the auto-play icon (at this point im on about version 10 of the video).

then, to cover up the right side of the video, i figured that’d i’d just stuck up an image over top of that section.... but after several tries i gave up on that since every damn picture i imported regardless if that was a screenshot of the game or a screen capture of the video from the editing software itself, nothing would match the colour of the text box for some infuriating reason... which ultimately led to me redoing everything so i didn’t have the stupid text box then stringing together clips between those stupid bouncing icons to erase the damn thing entirely though i thankfully didn’t worry about the auto-play icon the second time around....

however, doing that in itself posed a whole new problem since what i could effectively clip was less than >0.5 seconds each time to create cropped video layers that would hide that stupid icon, and my comp reaaaaaallllly started to issues when i did more of this and when i copied and pasted too many of those millisecond clips together... it got to the point where i was waiting 15 minutes for about 4 seconds of copied hide-the-damn-icon-video-clips (or about 8 hours for 40 seconds worth)... which pretty much crippled my computer..... 

this resulted in me having insane amounts of segments that looked entirely like this^, which occurred whenever there was an icon to hide... or text shake for some reason.... which caused me to create +20 openshot files for editing...(btw this is 138 tiny clips over the span of 6 seconds)

in the end, over the course of a fucking month, which i can honestly say that me finishing this for today was a complete coincidence (i barely managed to finish Warframe’s Scarlet Spear event cuz of how bad this was lol), i lost count of many versions of this video I made sometime after I reached version #32, openshot crashed on me at least 15 times (gave up counting that too), and my laptop crashed twice.... 

after i finally finished my video, i thankfully didn’t spend that long on subtitles but it took me far longer than i’d have liked to get the damn positioning right since potplayer is annoying when it comes to single lines and i had to guess and check the positioning almost every other time for some strange reason whenever i had a single line... which was never a problem when i had 2 or 3 lines of text... but editing was a slight hassle cuz i wanted the text used to be as accurate as possible... and i checked 3 reimeiroku tls of this chapter and the JP mtl of a bunch of sentences just to be sure. 

anyway, thanks to doing all of this unnecessary torture, i am absolutely never going to ever be repeating this experience ever again even if someone pays me because video editing is a serous pain in the ass and I hate it more than photoshop (also why the hell does ppsspp have so many issues with reimeiroku when compared to yuugiroku 2)!!!

also, learned my lesson and didn’t write this post this after staying awake til an ungodly hour lol. my attention to basic grammar plummets like a rock if i stay up past 4 am.... so i decided to write out all my grievances beforehand.... and put my video for this at the very bottom cuz im terrible like that and want everyone who sees this to deal with a massive wall of text xD! suffer! suffer as i have dammit lol!

enjoy the fruits of my damn labour! i’ve passed the point of caring if there are errors in this so keep anything you notice to yourself!! goddammit i noticed something wrong that i couldn’t ignore... namely the chapter name and my credit.... fixed that now.

on a final note, it’ll probably be more than a year before I touch Reimeiroku again because of my commitment to what I am able to translate for SSL so don’t ask lol.... 

[leqclerc]

1, 4, 19, 34, 36 for the GIF ask :dorime:

1.  What are your top 3 favorite sets you’ve made

(in no particular order)

- Charles + name meanings: mostly because it’s just such a fun concept, I always love those etymology type gifsets and I got to play around with fonts and gradients here too which was fun. I struggled with this gifset for a long time (or rather it’s previous iteration) and then changed up the concept entirely and went with a black and white + grain and colourful text approach and I think that works much better

-  Sebastian teaching Charles German phrases at the German Grand Prix 2019: This one was hell to make, between the text and constantly referring back to the video to make sure I was getting the subtitles right and then also some pixilation issues I had but I’m ultimately happy with how it turned out and oddly proud of myself for bringing that moment back into the spotlight for one night. Watching the dash freak out over this was pretty fun lmao

- Sebchal + Stacie Cassarino’s Summer Solstice: Again the font work was quite fun and I got to use some scenes I haven’t used before (Sauber Chal looking over at Seb in his Ferrari, the Singapore pit stop shenanigans, post-qualy moment from Japan.) Discovering the poem and having that connection was also fun. If I had to re-do it I would try to have a more neutral type coloring though because I feel like colourful edits/gifsets are generally hit or miss and most people seem to prefer more natural-looking colourings. But I couldn’t resist when this PSD looked so good across scenes *cries*. Maybe one day.

Also this makes me realise that I actually haven’t posted that many gifsets, lmao, I should probably do something about that...

4. A set that flopped but deserved better

I’m not sure that it deserved better, lmao, but I guess this one. I mean, I understand why --- the concept’s kinda niche and again the colouring issue (see above) so I get it. But damn it if I’m not proud of putting those garage scenes together. The ✨tension✨

19. What is your gifting process like

It’s just me having a string of mental breakdowns while Photoshop crashes on me. 

Hm. Here’s the thing: I have two versions of Photoshop --- one is older but portable, meaning it takes up less space because it doesn’t have to be installed, and it works fine and is generally more efficient and less RAM-consuming but it’s missing some of my most-used features (or rather, they don’t work for me for ??? reasons???: Import Video Frames To Layers and the whole... thing where the text snaps to where you want it to be which is nice. There’s probably a manual option for that but I’m stupid and haven’t discovered it if it does exist. The second version of it is newer and has those features but it’s evil and RAM-consuming as all hell, meaning minimal background apps and a lot of interrupted giffing sessions because when you go to Sharpen it’ll tell you you can’t because he’s ran out of memory. Which... he hasn’t. it’s stupid. Anyway...

Step 1/2. VLC is a life saver, honestly one of my favourite programs. I use it to record shorter segments of the video I want to use --- say, only one particular scene from a DTS episode or a SkyF1 feature. The shorter the clip is the easier it is to manage once you open up Import Video Frames To Layers and get that little popup where you select the parts of the video you want to use. It’s easy to misjudge and miscalculate on a longer clip, select something that looks like a small segment and then end up with... 263 frames and a Photoshop on the verge of crashing. 

3. I tend to crop and change the size of the imported frames first before doing anything else. Trying to play back a gif with like 60 layers in its full original size... see above. Then I’d play it back and decide where and if I want to chop some layers off. You ideally want to make the gif flow as naturally as possible. This is especially tricky when you’re doing subtitle gifs and you sort of have to do a bit of lip reading and/or referring back to the original clip and decide how much of the speaking part you want in there, again trying to make it seem as natural and seamless as possible.

4. Colouring. I’m lazy and untalented so I generally rely on the PSDs provided by the kind creative souls of Tumblr and Deviantart. Obviously I’d tweak them accordingly and add my own layers if need be --- usually Curves, Color Balance and Selective Color. Those can be life savers when trying to adjust the colouring, getting too-yellow or too-red scenes to look more neutral and natural. 

5. Over that I put the text (if I’m using it.) 

6. From there it’s Convert To Video Timeline (I hate using the Timeline but it has to be done) -> Select all your layers -> Convert for Smart Filters -> Smart Sharpen. Sometimes Add Noise and/or Grain for a bit more spice

7. Save for Web..., then possibly cry if the gif size is too big, chop some layers off, go again, etc.

8. Unfortunately PS is bwoken and you need to open your finished .gif and change the Delay to anywhere between 0.03-0.05, depending on what looks good/natural on the gif (0.05 for “normal” gifs, less if the footage is in slow-mo) 

That’s... probably it. I learned almost everything from Tumblr tutorials, so ajsdkfg

34. A set that took you a long time/was really hard but you’re really proud of how it came out

A cop-out but I’m gonna say Sebastian teaching Charles German phrases at the German Grand Prix 2019 again for this one because it legit took about two days, unexpectedly. 

36. Do you gif with something specific in mind or do you just wing it

I usually have an idea of what I want to do or at least which scenes I want to use, but the ~creative vision~ definitely changes. Sometimes things just don’t work out the way I wanted them to (the clip is infuriatingly short when transformed into layers, or the colouring just doesn’t want to work no matter what you do, or something else entirely) and then you try doing it a different way and maybe that works better

[chrismalcolmhnd2c]

Something New

©NESPRESSO

©DUALIT

“Learn something new. Try something different. Convince yourself that you have no limits” Brian Tracey

Research the Narrative

Point of sale product shots demand a high degree of photographic finish and quality.  They should represent a product at its highest quality.  

Within your blog/workbook, research product shots and advertising photographers. Demonstrate through annotation, your understanding of detail and presentation of perfection. 

Tell the Story

Choose an item that is brand new and blemish free and photograph it to the highest quality possible.

Your object should be photographed with a plain white background to show maximum quality.

Care should be taken to ensure that the best lens and viewpoint are used to maximize the product shape.

Edit and refine: Complete worksheet

High level retouching will be necessary as the object must be as close to perfect as possible. (even brand-new items will have flaws that need fixed)

Be prepared to use a range of retouching techniques to optimise this final file for use as an advertising shot.

The object should be easily dropped into other background so we will look at ways to cut out and present the object as a vector cut-out.

Submit: Final image on A3 canvas, and the object cut out of the background as a PSD. Upload to my city: Upload to my city.

Research

TOP 5: PRODUCT STILL LIFE PHOTOGRAPHERS

January 19, 2016 admin Brands

This week, counting down on our TOP 5, I am going to be listing my favourite product still life photographers, these are purely based on their portfolio and on their popularity.

STILL LIFE PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHERS

1. Nori Inoguchi

http://www.norimichi.com/

Born in Japan, NORI Inoguchi was educated in New York where he refined his passion for photography. His love of luxury and desire to create visually stunning images inspired him to become a still-life product photographer; NORI seeks to find beauty in all of the objects he shoots. With his sophisticated eye and minimalistic approach, he has exploded onto the world stage and has earned bookings from the best names in fashion, cosmetics and electronics. His career has brought him to Paris, London, NY and even back to his native home of Japan. Using clean, clear and crisp techniques, NORI has created numerous campaigns since 2009 and he has since become a trusted name in the field.

2. Sam Kaplan

http://www.samkaplan.com/

Since striking out on his own in 2011, the 29-year-old Boston native has eschewed high-concept aesthetics and taken a more hands-on approach built around exacting precision—a sculptor’s finely honed interest in process and material. His approach might seem throwback, but that’s part of Kaplan’s appeal. Unlike many of his photographic peers, he had a rather low-tech schooling, studying fine art and art history at Wesleyan University.

3. Lucas Zarebinski

http://www.lucaszarebinski.com/

Lucas grew up in Bielsko Biala, Poland, a small city famous for goose down comforters. When he was 17, he dated an photographer named Olga who later inspired Lucas to become an artist even though he said ” I always wanted to be an artist but I was horrible at drawing.” In the few months he was around her, he realised that he had a talent for still life photography. He then moved to Michigan when he was 20, got a degree in Fine Arts and Photography while he parked cars at night and learned English from his 3 roommates. Fast forward 10 years later. He now live in New York permanently and creates images for a living.

He says in his biography  ” I love creating conceptual images, pushing the boundaries of still life photography and resolving client’s problems with an inspiring imagery. I still like red beet soup and blueberry pierogis, but I also like beef with broccoli and spicy tuna rolls these days. ”

4. Jonathan Knowles

http://jknowles.co.uk/

Jonathan Knowles is one of the leading photographers of his generation. Specialising in graphic still life, liquid and beauty, Jonathan’s unique photographic style has earned him award-winning advertising commissions worldwide.

In the past ten years, Jonathan has consistently featured in the ‘200 Best Advertising Photographers in the World’ books. He is one of the top 10 all time award winners in the Graphis Annuals.

Notable commissions include campaigns for many globally recognised brands, such as Coca-Cola, Guinness, and Smirnoff. He is also the creator of the famous O2 bubbles.

He shot the Black Sabbath 13 Album cover, as well as directing and filming the footage that is currently played on stage during performances. Black Sabbath loved the imagery and invited Jonathan to the album launch in New York, where he received a friendly strangle of gratitude from Ozzy.

5. Zachary Goulko

http://www.goulko.com/

Like a modern Chiaroscuro master, beauty, product and still life photographer Zachary Goulko harnesses the power of light to infuse two-dimensional images with drama, shape, and volume. His moody, provocative photographs illuminate the power of a single moment: the arresting beauty of a face, the grace of a sculptural curve, the fluid interplay between light and color and form. It is the Moscow-born photographer’s mission to capture the essence of each subject, and to present its beauty to the world in fresh and unexpected ways. He is an exhaustive experimenter, conjuring moods, intertwining lines with rhythm, exploring the architecture of shape and light. His still life and product photographs are clean and precise, yet startlingly intimate. They achieve a level of visual poetry that is unique in the commercial photography world. With a fully equipped high end studio, based in the New York City area, he photographs product and still life images for many world renown beauty and cosmetics brands. Among Goulko’s clients are L’Oréal, Lancôme, Clinique, Estée Lauder, Strivectin, Shu Uemura, Frederic Fekkai, Patek Phillipe, de GRISOGONO, Roger Dubuis, and Zac Posen, . With a background in design and interactive programming, he is constantly seeking new ways to push the technological boundaries of his medium and give full expression to his creative vision.

Source: http://claphamstudiohire.com/top-5-product-still-life-photographers/

PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY IDEAS

Unusual and even extraordinary product photography ideas are what make many leading brands stay demanding and make people talk about their creative product shots and buy their products. Let me tell you how to do product photography like creative product photographers do. I’ve gathered 20 original product photography techniques and ideas for any product.

What Is Product Photography?

Product photos belong to a branch of commercial photography which is about advertising a product. There are several classical ways of shooting products: product photography on a white background, ghost mannequin,  lifestyle product photography, motion images, photos of the product line, tabletop photography, photos of the product being packed, 360 product photography, etc.

Creative Product Photography Ideas

High-quality product photography is important for you and your client. Therefore, it is obligatory to choose the right strategy to demonstrate each product. But many photographers have a moment when they need to diversify the photos or add some creative elements. Here are some different product photography ideas for your inspiration:

1. One Second Before

This is an example of creative product shots that are taken right before something unexpected: an explosion, fall, etc. That is why you as a photographer should manage to catch the moment in the second before it happens.

2. Use Smoke

This product photography idea is a good way to make your product look dramatic. Use the coloured smoke if it is suitable for your product design. To make smoke more accurate, use Photoshop brushes.

3. Floating Products

You may hang some goods to make them look three-dimensional. Hang a product using a line, wire or rope. Then remove background or a line from the photograph of a floating product in Photoshop.

4. Association Game

If you need extraordinary product photo for a fashion magazine or billboard advertising, what can be better than funny surrealistic illustrations. Such photographs are typically taken in the studio using special product photography lighting kit and digital drawing techniques in Photoshop.

5. Motion Product Photography

This creative product photography idea is realized by means of short exposure and quick photographer’s and assistants’ actions. The photos are striking for a lot of reasons, but the thing that sticks out at first is how adding motion makes images pop.

6. Photo with Models

Give your product character and show the features that make it unique. Use different product photography ideas and creative lifestyle to highlight the product usage.

7. Combined Background

In addition to the familiar white background, I frequently use the background tone that is in harmony with the color of my product. These two product photographs are a good example of colors combination. You may combine the background depending on the product color increasing the image contrast.

8. Crashed or Broken Product

It is pretty a specific idea for product photos and not everyone decides to use it. It attracts people’s attention and evokes pity and interest to the product. It is better to get a shot at the beginning of product crash.

9. Use Reflection

You may use smooth plain covers with high reflectivity as the surface. For example, your product photos may be taken on an average ceramic tile. Make sure, you work in good lighting. In order to take such image, it is necessary to choose the right angle and lighting to get excellent reflection.

10. Product Absorption

This product photography idea has something to do with putting an object into the sand, water or other materials when you intend to put an accent. You may also use different tiny thematic items in which the product may drown.

11. Product Series

Grouping product images creates almost the same effect as zooming. Comparing several products in one photo a customer understands their main differences, volume, shape, size and other features. Moreover, it can persuade your potential customers to buy the whole kit.

12. Symmetry and Dynamics

To take this kind of product photos you have to put a camera at different angles. However, you should be careful while shooting obscure angles in order not to misrepresent the product. Put other products relatively symmetrical mixing them up with different small details.

13. Emphasize the Product’s Colour

Showing the contrast between the background and the product looks fashionable. But the main difference of this photo is an angle between the surface and the background, which creates a three-dimensional image of the lipstick. This dimensional curved shimmering paper underlines the color and the dimension of the product.

14. Sand Print

This product photography idea requires a special background. It may be usual clay, snow, sand, mastic or similar material.

15. Use Associations

Be as much creative as you can. Here Photoshop is you best friend who will help to realize even the craziest product photography ideas as to shape ketchup in the form of a tongue or a lipstick in the form of ice-cream.

10 Famous Product Photographers

https://spark.adobe.com/page/98pcx7gV8QkNW/

[sims2shrine]

“This soulless game isn’t really ‘The Sims’ for me”

I am starting off this blog with a review for The Sims 3 from Amazon.com user Valentinegirl. Why The Sims 3 on a blog dedicated to The Sims 2, you ask? Because this review details just about everything about The Sims 2 that makes it so special and endearing. Whenever I come back to playing The Sims 2 after a long break, I like to re-read this review because it always excites and inspires me to play this game that I am so passionate about. Note that the opinions expressed in this review do not necessarily correlate with my own -- I do enjoy all of PC versions for the most part. I just believe that The Sims 2 is far superior to the others, hence why this blog was born.

“Like many of the other reviewers here, I have been a HUGE fan of The Sims franchises, losing many pleasant hours to The Sims 1 and its wonderful sequel The Sims 2. Even before The Sims came out I was a Maxis fan, playing games like Sim City and Sim Tower with pleasure. I can't say that The Sims 3 has ‘disappointed’ me because the more I heard about the new game over its development period the more I thought to myself ‘why are they including this feature or dropping that feature? It sounds like they are tampering with the heart of the things I enjoy about The Sims’. But I bought the game anyway in good faith. Needless to say I am now back to playing The Sims 2. The Sims 3 has no interest for me at all in comparison. Despite all the ‘improvements’ - and I admit there are some surface ones - the heart and soul of what The Sims means to me is absent from this game. Unlike other reviewers here, my negative review of this game is not due to any technical difficulties. Perhaps I haven't played long enough to experience any, and at any rate - every hard-core Sims fan has learned to live with the bugs shipped with the game and love it anyway. The modding community has always done a sterling job of cleaning up our games and making them more playable and enjoyable. So my negative rating is not due to bugs or crashes - it is purely based on my perception of the game's enjoyment factor, especially when compared to The Sims 2. To be fair, I will sum up what to me are improvements to the game compared to The Sims 2: - the ‘open neighbourhood’ - the ability to go from one place to the other without a loading screen is a fine idea and works well in principal. But I found that it really didn't impact my playing habits as much as you might think at first. While playing a large, busy family there would be very little time to go rushing off to the park or elsewhere and I found I was ‘household’ focussed in my game playing just as much as in The Sims 2. I actually prefer in some ways the way community lots worked in The Sims 2. If you could organise your sims enough to go off to a community lot, time would actually stand still in the meantime, taking the pressure off your enjoyment of this change in pace for your sims. - No doubt about it, the ‘Create a Style’ colour wheel/pattern maker is the one thing that is far superior to recolouring in The Sims 2. It's great fun and so easy to go through and match up clothing, furniture, wallpaper, etc in an obsessive fashion that suits my type of playing down to the ground. But even here is a caveat - there is no Body Shop type program to truly customise textures. You can recolour only which is hardly satisfying in a creative way compared to being able to extract a texture and import it into Photoshop, thereby putting your own personal stamp on the texture. For example, in The Sims 2 you could export a dress texture and by pasting on a texture of your own you could make the outfit appear to be a cardigan and skirt instead. I am sure custom content creators in time will come up with ways of importing new meshes/textures into The Sims 3, but it is obvious that EA is trying to limit this type of thing to the ‘regular’ user right from the beginning by eliminating a ‘Bodyshop’ program from their development tools. - The ease of angle rotation is an unmixed blessing in this game - something that I wish had happened in The Sims 2 - The outdoor scenery in The Sims 3 is gorgeous from the beach, the shimmering water, to the parks, rolling hills etc. But the limitations put on being able to make this neighbourhood your own again shows up the inflexibility built into this game. Whereas in The Sims 2 you could completely customise your neighbourhood, building it up from a terrain created in Sim City, to decorating it and laying out your lots etc, in this game, EA gives you this beautiful scenery and then severely limits your ability to customise it. You cannot create your own terrain, the community lot buildings are the same everywhere and are not even properly functional, and there are a limited number of lots for your houses. It feels like a ‘dumbed down’ version of a neighbourhood to me that even the ‘open plan’ of the game cannot make up for. - There are a lot more surface details to gameplay in The Sims 3 by the way of person and object interactions and the little missions/opportunities that pop up. I do appreciate the amount of thought that has gone into a lot of these things, like adding depth to the career paths and making such things as painting a picture personal to every different type of sim. But again, when playing a busy family (six kids!) I found that I would just click the opportunities away as an annoyance without even reading them. There was no way my busy mother or father could go running off to the town park for a chess tournament when they were caring for screaming toddlers at home! - The lighting of the new game is a nice update and beautiful. It is also flexible if you have the time or inclination to mess around with the many options provided So even the improvements included in The Sims 3 are mostly mixed blessings for me! Here are the things that have decided me against the game: - The sims themselves. Try as I might, I cannot bond with these weird looking people and that bond between the player and their ‘Simmies’ is the major factor that holds many Sims fans in thrall. For a start, these creations just don't look like sims to me. It is laughable that the creators of this game are claiming that the sculpting tools given to create a sim are more flexible and customisable than in The Sims 2! In fact the sliders are very limited in their scope and have less points of difference than those provided in ‘Bodyshop’. That round-faced, chinless look that we all noticed and wondered at in preview pictures of this game is there for the very specific reason that you can't provide your sim with a proper chin and all of them look blobby and quite fat in the face. The noses look like they are just stuck on anyhow and look very unfortunate in profile. And the empty-looking eyes roll in a very disconcerting and unappealing alien manner. The sims toddlers and children - one of my prime delights in The Sims 2 - all look very ugly and all look exactly the same. One couple I played had six children, just to check out the genetics and all of them looked like peas in a pod until they got to their adult years, and even then the differences were minimal. It was very unsatisfying spending so much time and energy raising these unappealing little clones! - Obviously, I have had trouble creating sims I like to look at. That wouldn't matter as much if I could love the way these sims act and interact. If you think back to The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 what charmed fans of these games was how cute, quirky, funny, unexpected and unique all these characters seemed to the player. I don't accept the criticism the developers of this new game kept stating that ‘all previous sims games had sims who were all the same and all they wanted to do all the time was go to the toilet!’ Well really - do they think The Sims 1 and 2 would have been such world-wide successes if this were actually true?? Of course not! Our sims charmed us, made us laugh, surprised us and often took their own little lives in their own hands and pulled the game in a direction all their own. The two things promised by The Sims 3 creators about how the new sims would behave were 1) There would be a lot more time to attend to the sims' lives and less need to run around after them caring for their basic ‘needs’ - such as sending them to the toilet or to bed; and 2) the new ‘traits’ system would ensure truly unique behaviour from the sims and open up entirely new vistas of personalities and interactions for sims fans to enjoy. I'm sorry to say, but I have to rebut both of these stated improvements. 1)I think every Sims 3 player, no matter how dedicated a fan they are will admit that you spend more time waiting for your sims to fulfil needs than ever before. You spend ages just watching them sleep every night. They seem to have bladder and hunger needs that are never satiated, and you spend more boring time staring at their work building while they are off at work. So between taking them to work, watching them sleep, fulfilling their needs and trying to skill up, there is actually zero time left in a sims' busy day to take them to the park, the beach or visit a neighbour! How is this the ‘new balance’ of life over needs that the developers were so proudly proclaiming?? 2) As for the ‘traits’ system - that has to be the biggest disappointment of all. Sure, picking different traits for your sims will give them some very superficial differences, such as different interaction possibilities with other sims, or different animations. but at a deeper level, each and every sim seems the same over and over again. I think the main reason I say this is if you watch a household full of sims who all supposedly have a unique set of traits, you don't see them acting differently unless you tell them to. In fact they barely interact with one another at all if you don't tell them to. They ignore one another and spend their time being boring - fulfilling the endless needs or perhaps using a skill object. They don't care to interact with one another at all! It is quite possible to have two sims living in the same house forever and they remain total strangers to one another. You have to force them to interact which I find really annoying - I had hoped that they might work out their own relationships as they did in The Sims 2. Another annoying thing is the lack of familial affection between sims. Unlike The Sims 2, you never see a parent hug, kiss or play with a child unless you tell them to. You just don't feel that these sims love/care about one another at all, and I remember that feeling that ‘love is real’ between sims being the primary and most striking point that charmed me when The Sims 2 came out. I am sorry to say, if I compare the depth of personality of a houseful of Sims 2 and 3 sims, the Sims 2 sims would win hands down. In Sims 2, they would take one another in like or dislike, be attracted to some and repulsed by others. The parents would hug their kids when they got home from work, and kiss them goodnight. Husbands and wives would find a quiet corner and canoodle in a very romantic way. In Sims 3 they all coldly ignore one another and act in boring and one-dimensional ways, totally uninfluenced by their so-called ‘unique traits’. This lack of true feeling for my sims and between the sims themselves is my primary reason for calling this latest instalment ‘soulless’. How can you feel attached to these ugly, alien-like people who all look and act the same? - I do not care for one of the key selling points of The Sims 3 - the so-called ‘story progression’. Which sim fan really wants to leave their playable family for a little while only to come back and find they've moved out of the neighbourhood, or had a family while you're not looking with kids you didn't get to name? Where is the appeal in that? Most sims fans love to micro-manage their sim's lives - who they love, marry, have kids with, what they name their kids, where they choose to live, etc. Even more frustrating, the ability to turn story progression off is broken!! Good one, EA!! Another one of my criticisms is that EA has written out some of the most enjoyable and endearing elements of The Sims 2. Eliminating these things really proves to me how little the developers of the game understood the things that true Sims fans love about their games. Here are some as an example: - Story mode is gone. Yes I know there is a camera and yes I know they have all this fancy equipment that enables you to easily upload stories and movies onto the web to share. But I bet 90% of Sims players are not all that interested in sharing stories on the world wide web. The Sims has always been a highly personal game - a fantasy world unique to each sims player, and making up and sharing sims stories is not the driving reason to play the game for most. It is to get lost in your own little self-created kingdom and fall in love with the little pixels that people it. In Sims 1 & 2, using the camera as I played and building up an album for each little family became a mainstay of my playing style over the years. Most of the time I would not even add text to the pictures. They would be safely stored in each family's little album and every once in a while I would choose to browse through this visual record of my sims' little lives and enjoy again the sentimental, surprising, funny little incidents that marked the passage of that family's life. I would record the unexpected or charming little things that made my sims seem unique, like when my prim little sim teenager fell in love with the neighbourhood ‘bad boy’ all on her own and against any of my expectations. Or when my shy, nerdy sim who lived with a party animal room-mate spent all her time in her room reading on the bed or, of all things - washing the windows! whenever her room-mate threw one of her wild parties! Not having this record at hand of the family's little story in Sims 3 is definitely a contributing factor to the feeling of the game having little forward progression - every day seems like the one before. - Eliminating memories from the Sims is another way EA has wiped out the sense you might have of the family's story and history. I know memories caused all sorts of trouble in The Sims 2 if you moved sims indiscriminately from one neighbourhood to the next, but I think for many of us, having that sim's little milestones recorded in their memories really gave the sim a feel of individuality and personal growth. After not playing a particular family for a long time the first thing I would do would be to flip through the family's album and check their memories. This would put me back in touch with where the family was in their own particular life story. - Another charming Sims 2 feature that was wiped out was the attraction system. I know the original Sims 2 game did not ship with this, but it was added early on in one of the expansion packs and I am sure every Sims 2 fan absolutely loved it. It was another way to differentiate sims from one another. You could create down to the finest detail two sims who you thought would be ‘perfect’ for each other, only to find they couldn't stand each other! Then two of the unlikeliest sims would get together all of their own accord, making you feel that these little people had minds and hearts of their own. I loved this feature so much that my playing style was to resolutely let each sim choose his or her own mate with no help from me. There are other reasons for me not to like this highly polished, highly superficial instalment of The Sims franchise. But in the end, it came down to these basic feelings about the game - I don't care how gorgeous it is to look at if the gameplay is shallow and boring - I feel like EA is really dumbing down long-time sims fans by trying to eliminate custom content, charging like a wounded bull for their sub-standard stuff and doing their best to stifle the creativity of the custom content community - The sims are cookie-cutter clones of one another, and have no charm either of physical appearance or personality. The life and soul has been sucked out of these pixel-people - There is no sense of story, no unexpected interactions, no story mode or memories to record the sims lives. They no longer care about one another at all - parents, children, lovers, room-mates, friends - it doesn't matter what relationship the sims have to one another, there is no desire for these people to interact or develop their relationships unless you force it. I am mad at EA for ‘missing the boat’ on this franchise upgrade. In fact, it no longer feels like The Sims at all to me. All the charm and spontaneity has gone out of the game. I suppose it's not surprising I feel this way - Will Wright and his unique Maxis team of developers are long gone and EA has taken over. EA have no idea, and do not care what made The Sims beloved of fans the world over and instead are forcing something on them that has only a surface relationship to previous games. Much in the same way they ‘improved’ Sim City out of all recognition of the original game (’Sim City Societies’), they have done this to The Sims and that, I think is unforgivable. Fortunately, The Sims 2 will always be here and I am gladly getting back to my cute, funny, irreverent, surprising little sims with the huge added bonus of all the expansion packs and custom content I have built up over the years. I doubt if I will ever come back to The Sims 3 even if they bring out boatloads of expansion packs. If the game has no soul, it cannot be loved.

This review was written on July 27th, 2009. Source: Amazon.com. Link to original review: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RCEHMW5QIIA7B/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00166N6SA

[yahooeny]

#The Year of the Linux Desktop is Further Away Than Ever Before ##An incredibly long diatribe of my struggles moving back to Linux I'll say right off the bat that Windows is the not the ideal OS. I recently set out to put a Linux distro back on my laptop after growing frustrated with my Windows install, mostly stemming from the GTX 1050/Optimus setup on my Asus FX53D. GeForce drivers have been incredibly buggy, Photoshop and other Creative Cloud software would crash multiple times an hour after switching back and forth between the Game Ready and Creator Ready driver lines. Also even when it is "inactive" the 1050 seems to stay engaged at all times even though the iGPU is supposed to be the main composite, so battery life is often little more than an hour which is too low even for a gaming laptop. Obviously there's nothing on the open source side that could replace the Creative Cloud suite so I'm stuck with the Windows install but the general instability with Optimus was enough for me. After several years I was going back to the Linux desktop. But what distro? Last I used Linux regularly I was using a combination of Ubuntu and Chromium OS Lime (RIP) so obviously things would have to change. I was opposed to vanilla Ubuntu because even back in the day the amount of bloat in the default install drove me away from the distro. And while the goal of this install was to have a light desktop for mostly web browsing and messaging, just a lone web browser was a little too far for me. I was interested in Manjaro but decided an Ubuntu-based distro was going to be more familiar territory. I wanted to run Linux, I didn't want to fix Linux. I've heard good things about Linux Mint, uh sure let's go with that.

Except Linux Mint never booted for me. I couldn't get the install flash drive to actually make it past a black screen. And I coulda sworn I was able to boot into GParted when cloning my SSD so it's not like this thing refuses to boot to any Linux distro... Uh I dunno. Maybe Pop OS will work better. It *is* maintained by a system builder so it's gotta have better hardware support than the competition...

...Hm. Still black screen. So after hours of smacking my brain it turns out this was my problem.

So I guess in the intervening years since I last used Linux UUI has become complete bunk. I don't know if it's because the way install ISOs are formatted have changed, I don't know if it's because UEFI has introduced new incompatibilities. I was able to put a Windows 10 ISO on a flash drive fine with this so who knows what its problem is but it's no good anymore. People recommend Etcher... *Why?* This thing runs on Electron. Why the hell would you want a system utility to be run on Electron? Last time I tried Etcher it couldn't even detect that my flash drive ran out of space and left me with a broken install. Don't use Etcher. Rufus is pretty good though. Pop OS's installer tries to simplify some things about Ubuntu's installer but there is one giant deal breaker...

Where the hell is the dual boot option? Your average user is not going to get rid of Windows. I'm certainly not going to get rid of Windows, not so long as Adobe has me by the balls. The "Custom Install" is not self-explanatory at all. *I* managed to resize my partitions but I also messed up and didn't properly turn on disk encryption. How is your average user supposed to figure out how to manually repartition their drive for multibooting. (We'll get back to the topic of partitioning and idiot-proofing later...) So finally we're installed. Hey man beyond partitioning that was pretty painless. I wasn't trying running around installing my NVidia drivers, I wasn't stuck on my ethernet adapter because I have to separately install my wifi drivers. And with a lot less bloat! Ok, some bloat. Who actually uses Libreoffice? I've been using nothing but Google Docs for the last eight years. At this point Google Docs' only real weakness is that nothing will ever compare in power to Excel. Certainly not Libreoffice. But that's easy enough to uninstall it seems like it's smooth sailing from her- ##GNOME 3 Sucks. I have some questions for the designers of GNOME 3. I'm sure they tried their best to modernize GNOME. Anything's better than Unity (according to the majority consensus, I don't necessarily agree but I can't exactly install Unity anymore so oh well...) and it's not all bad. However... * Why does the Super key take me to an exploded view of all my open applications instead of something useful? If I need to switch between applications I'd rather use alt-tab or the taskbar. Moving the applications dashboard to Super+A is a terrible idea because I'm going to use the dashboard a lot more often than I'm going to need this Win+Tab exploded view. * Why is the taskbar useless? 99.9% of all applications I use are not going to show me any useful options in the taskbar dropdown menu unlike in Windows where developers disciplined themselves around Windows 7 to put quick actions in the taskbar. So if I don't even get that, then why does by default the taskbar only show me one application at a time? There's so much unused space at the top that could be used to show all my open applications instead of me having use up even more space at the bottom for some extension that gets proper taskbar functionality back. *Where is 150% zoom? I guess this complaint is more towards System76 since other friends have assured me that there does indeed exist a level of application scaling between the puny 100% and the ginormous 200% but on this install I ain't seeing it. I'm also not seeing a way to control application scrolling per-monitor like in Windows. *Notifications are a boondoggle. Well, they're bad in Windows too but that's no excuse. I don't know who both at Microsoft and GNOME decided "oh yeah, applications should be allowed to keep a notification on screen indefinitely that's totally good UX and not abusable at all" but they're morons. And so is whoever worked on Chrome that thought the same thing. Chrome, Google Hangouts in particular, is the #1 abuser in indefinite notifications. It's incredibly annoying, I don't want have to stop what I'm doing to wave off a toast. GNOME however gets the slight edge because for some god damn reason Windows disables interacting with anything from about a 10 pixel radius around the toast. And also won't let you move the toast away from the bottom right which is *right where a bunch of apps tack on really important buttons!*

Alright this is a big one.

Why is the mouse so god damn awful?

Maybe this isn't a GNOME problem but it is a big fat problem. Using a mouse or touchpad is just a pain in the ass in Linux. No, specifically scrolling with a mouse or touchpad is a pain in the ass. I use a Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000. Maybe not the best mouse but it's ergonomic and nice to use. Except in Linux.

See the Microsoft Comfort Mouse has an optical scroll wheel with smooth action instead of a traditional scroll wheel with discreet clicks across the wheel. Bad for games, sure but for web browsing it is a dream. I can fly through webpages without losing tracking accuracy because Windows' mouse driver tracks the scroll wheel at a higher resolution.

Scrolling is a giant pain in Linux. For one it's slooooooooow. There's no way to change scroll speed. Well, not elegantly, at least.

imwheel is a mouse service you can tack on top of the existing mouse server that lets you change things such as how many lines one wheel click scrolls through. But there's limitations to this. For my purposes, I can't figure out how to change the resolution of the mouse scroll itself for mice like mine that are linear instead of discreet clicking wheels. Worst of all...

It breaks the trackpad! Pop OS does get trackpad scrolling mostly right (except for the lack of scroll inertia) but imwheel completely breaks it because the trackpad scrolling and mousewheel scrolling are operating on completely different tracking resolution. (By the way, this is what trackpad scrolling should look like.)

(...But trackpad scroll inertia does work in a bunch of system GNOME apps. Why in the world would such a fundamental part of the user experience be application dependent? Why aren't other applications implementing scroll inertia?) I'm not the only person to make these observations on Linux's deficiencies in its mouse input. There's a great blog by Pavel Fatin called Scrolling with pleasure that goes into much much greater detail into the ways mouse I/O can be much better. It's from two years ago and the fact that many of his observations haven't been implemented yet is a shame. It seems with some sects of the Linux userbase, using a GUI or desktop manager as little as possible is some point of pride and elitism. As if people who use mice and need graphic interfaces are noobs who just aren't smart enough for Linux. This sect is really small but they are vocal nonetheless and it contributes to the air of elitism around Linux. Ah speaking of graphics... why am I getting a black screen again?

Well that's not good. Far as I can tell the last time I booted up my Pop OS partition it wanted to upgrade the NVidia drivers among other packages but ran out of space. See, I was under the presumption that 10 GB of space was enough room for a light Linux install in 2019. Clearly I was wrong. I don't know why being unable to upgrade packages due to disk space should brick a system. If I run out of disk space, shouldn't apt stop trying to upgrade it and leave it be? My system shouldn't die on me just because I can't upgrade to the latest packages. Ah well no more bitching. Let's install this thing again...

The installation process when making a multiboot partition should really be a lot more idiot proof. It's not unreasonable for a user to want a light install especially when they are using Linux only as a secondary OS and want to keep as much space on their drives as possible for the Windows install. Maybe the installation should soft-enforce a minimum size for the /home/ partition, or at least when I tell it I want /home/ to be 10GB it should tell me "Hey dumbass! Your install is liable to break from updates if you make it this small!" It also really should not be this hard to encrypt a multiboot partition. I tried to get my /home/ partition encrypted this time around but when I made it an encrypted partition in GRUB the Pop OS installer kept complaining that it couldn't decrypt the partition, even after I gave it the decryption key. I give up, any information I need securing is already file encrypted or on a cloud account I don't care anymore. Hmm... Maybe I didn't make the install light enough. I mean I made it as light as possible, downloads were going to my Windows download folder instead, I removed a shitload of apps including the mail client which I have no use for since I use GApps. But maybe GNOME is not light enough... And also I fucking hate GNOME. What's even lighter...

Oh yeah I should install xfce instead since it sips memory and disk space. I've used lxde before back in the day when PC manufacturers were desperately trying to make netbooks a thing, this should be easy to slip back to!

...What? I had to reinstall Pop OS for the second time because for whatever reason installing lxde broke my install. I don't know how. I don't know why. I tried to follow System76's guide on installing additional window managers... Now here's a problem, the guide says to choose lightdm on Ubuntu 16.04 and not to use gdm or sddm. It says it's fine to choose those on later versions. I don't think the lxde installer gave me a choice of using lightdm and why is this article talking about Ubuntu anyways. isn't this guide specifically for Pop OS? Clearly there is documentation that needs to be revised. So I guess I'm stuck with GNOME 3 now. It's not... horrible. But it took some elbow grease (and a lot of extensions) to get there.

Too many actually. A lot of these things shouldn't be extensions, they should be default. Desktop icons should be default, otherwise why even still have a desktop? The Window is ready notification is the most annoying thing on earth. Even Windows 10 has a clipboard history by default now, that shouldn't have to be an extension. While I'm still bitching.

How hard is it to disable an audio device once it's disconnected? I connect my laptop to my monitor and speaker system through HDMI and whenever I disconnect it I'll move out, try to play some video, get confused as to why no audio is playing, and discover it's still trying to serve audio to the HDMI device. * I disabled the login screen since I'm the only user of the install but how it logs you into your session is so slapdash it makes me actively worried for my security. The keyring popup is often the last thing to show up once GNOME is loaded. The desktop, Teamviewer, and Discord, all load *before I'm prompted to login. In the process of recording video for this blog I logged into Pop OS and managed to open Chrome and browse to a tab all before the keyring prompt finally took its time to stop user input before I ever logged in. What? This is incredibly stupid. The login prompt should be the first thing to load before anything else. In fact, nothing else but GNOME should be able to load before I've logged in. Sure I could re-enable the login screen but that's to me unnecessary steps added to booting up to a single-user install. Why even have the option to begin with? * Can Pop OS please stop moving my NTFS mounts between /dev/ and /media/? Stop that. I can't use my Steam install folder without readjusting it every time I reboot. * I have no idea why the disks in my external USB enclosure keep spinning even when they are connected but unmounted in Pop OS. It freaks me out to the point I keep the enclosure powered off until I actually need it. * I don't get why Pop OS's auto timezone detection seems to think I live in LA. I don't. I live in Atlanta, three hours ahead of LA. When I turn off auto timezone detection and manually change it to EST it's messed up my BIOS clock so that whenever I open back up Windows I'm three hours ahead.

Going back to Linux has been more of a pain than a solution to my existing problems in Windows. Every time I boot it up it seems I find one more frustrating thing to nag about or one more part of the system that breaks out of nowhere. Some people find constantly tinkering with their OS appealing and it does to me but not anywhere to this extent. GNOME 3 has numerous UX deficiencies compared to Windows 10 and Mac OS, many of them regressions compared to predecessors like GNOME 2 and Unity (RIP). It is so frustrating to use I cannot recommend it despite its more mature device and software support. It's been years since the meme of "The Year of Desktop Linux" first became popular that I'm skeptical that this mythical day that Linux on desktop becomes mainstream will ever arrive- even with exciting initiatives like Proton for software compatibility and relatively easy to use distros like Pop OS. I mean, I can't even get Proton to work on my Steam install because it doesn't seem to like sharing the same install folder as Steam for Windows. Ugh. Does this mean I'm removing Pop OS from my drive? No. I get that I've spent 2.5k+ words bitching about it but there are things it does that I cannot live without.

Being able to remove my 1050 from the equation entirely means I get a (still kind of pathetic) three hours of battery life instead of the measly one hour I've been getting lately. *apt-get is godlike. Updating is so fast, so easy, and often doesn't require a reboot. apt-get is what every auto-update OS function should strive to be. Windows Store has got jack shit on it.

Guake is so good man!!! I love being able to pop open the terminal anytime and hide it quick. It's such a giant productivity boost, someone should have the balls to make default in a distro.

Disk and partition management is still leagues better on Linux than on Windows. Drive recovery is a cinch, being able to bypass the permissions system on NTFS is a godsend, imaging partitions is a snap. Of course ext4 isn't and probably will never be natively supported in Windows... A flash drive with GParted should be in every technician's toolbox.

For all my headaches, Linux is still much leaner than Windows. It sips battery, it changes less stuff behind your back, and it's usually easy to know how something broke even if you often can't fix it without reinstallation. But is it the Year of the Linux Desktop? No. It probably will never be.

[oliviaallisonhitegd-blog]

 The goal of this project was to take a blue law and create a campaign out of that single law. My blue was from Montana and it states, “It is illegal to give a rat as a present.” Honestly, I had a hard time working on this project and trying to figure out what campaign path I should go on. It wasn’t until the very end that I decided the main goals would be to prove that rats are worth adopting and gifting as well as giving the audience a reason to sign a petition to change this crazy blue law. I will say my favorite part of the site was when I added in the Instagram rat influencers. I didn’t even realize there was a big market for that. 

Continuing on with my design process, I eventually ended up with creating a campaign around rats throwing their party or crashing someone from Montana’s party. I do enjoy how cute these ended up, especially the little rat on the cake. I also had a lot of fun creating the experimental sprinkle type. Although I did run into a problem with the sprinkles looking more of a brownish color than a bright, upbeat color. Although I tried to be careful about what shape or what color sprinkles I got, I didn’t account for their being so many chocolate sprinkles. I tried adding in a pink opacity over the layers and did a clipping mask to every one of my letters and while there was a slight color shift, it’s not nearly as bright as I want it to be. Also, I need to experiment more with trying to display the sprinkle type without it looking like rat fur or something.

The colors of my campaign were chosen to be upbeat and have a birthday party quality to them. I also went and found stock photos of mice and photoshopped little party hats on them to add to the overall party vibe. 

So mobile for this project was a beast. I don’t know why I had such a problem with it? I had a bit of a hard time figuring out how long to make the pages and what size text was best work on the iPhone Max screen. Also, definitely a learning curve trying to move a desktop site to the screen. I had redone this site layout a few times and did originally start with mobile, but by the time I figured out the final design layout I wanted, I started with desktop first. Definitely understand why you start with a mobile site design first and then move it over to desktop. Look forward to redoing this mobile design. 

This entire website is one continuous page. In order to keep people scrolling, on each section I decided to create the sections in curves rather than straight square cards. By using the curved section approach, I was able to keep the pages flowing into to each (for example, on the landing page section, the sprinkles from the about section bleed up into it). This was also a way to let people know there were more pages to see rather than me using an arrow to pull them down.

[maevefiction]

Your Light in the Mist - Chapter 11

More than a week had elapsed since my last yoga session, and I was pleasantly surprised at my lack of stiffness. My iPod sat silent in the grass next to my mat…the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks proved to be the only music I required. Especially at six in the morning. The sun had just begun to rise behind us, its warmth exacerbating the flush my workout normally provided.

Simon’s skill level was far, far above mine, and some of the poses he worked through made me stop dead in my tracks as I admired the way his body seemed to defy the very laws of physics. He volunteered to work with me whenever we had the time, and I gratefully accepted, though I fully understood that a grace such as his was something that couldn’t be taught.

We chatted while cooling down, learning that our birthdays were only a day apart, his on October 30th, mine on October 31st. He found my being a Halloween baby hilarious, and I was tickled that we shared the same astrological sign. Fellow Scorpios - no wonder he’d liked my tank top. I tried to get him to reveal his birth year, but he adamantly refused until I offered mine up first. The look of delight on his face as he screeched out ‘me too!’ was adorable, and when he high-fived me and christened me his sister from another mister I embraced him and kissed his cheek, grinning at the lovely blush it caused.

I took a seat at the patio table and opened my laptop with the intention of starting work on Tom’s website design. Simon sat next to me, both of us facing the ocean, and he began typing away on his phone. He harrumphed and gave me some wicked side eye.

My brow furrowed. “For fuck’s sake, what NOW?”

He showed me his screen, scrolling through his inbox. “Seven more since last night. You’ve made an awful lot of extra work for me, woman.” I rolled my eyes. He turned on his chair to face me. “I’m curious, though…I thought you just lectured to and consulted with PR firms, which would mean their actual clients wouldn’t know much about you at all. So, it’s kinda surprising that an artist would be willing to jump ship and leave their current rep in the dust to wind up where you are, wouldn’t you say?”

I sighed and finished editing my open layer in Photoshop before replying. “I started out working directly with clients. My first was Anne Rice. She’s is a family friend and was willing to give me a cha…”

He put a hand on my shoulder and shoved. “GET. OUT. I’m assuming this means you’re from or lived in New Orleans at some point? But it mustn’t have been for long, because you have zero accent.”

“Your assumption is correct. Born there, raised there, relocated to New York City in 1998.”

He nodded emphatically. “So you dumped the accent. Understandable.”

It was my turn for side eye. “I didn’t dump it. It just…faded.”

He snorted. “Whatever you say, Maude.”

I pinched his arm, reveling in the resulting squeal he emitted. “Faded. I’m like a chameleon with accents. Soon I’ll be picking up your dialect and sounding like a pretentious asshat, too. In which case, you have my permission to kill me.”

“You can call me anything you like as long as you solemnly swear to take me to Mardi Gras next year.”

I rolled my eyes and held up my hand, palm towards him. “Simon. Please. I don’t think you’re ready for that sort of thing. But, if you start training now, we might be able to pull it off.”

He tilted his head like an oversized puppy. “Training for what? Drinking heavily? I’ve been training for that for years.”

“No. Throwing beads into the crowd. And doing the princess wave.” I demonstrated both. “Because if we go, you must ride on a parade float. It can be arranged. I know people.” I frowned. “At least, I used to know people. Anyway, what I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted was that she was my first client, and it gave me a lot of clout. For which I am eternally grateful. I moved on after three years or so with her and began working directly with clients, most of whom were too small to have a decent PR firm behind them. I did everything, created websites, set up Facebook accounts, provided instructions on how to post, when to post, what to post, yada yada. Lots of hand holding and cajoling. Word spread, and bigger names took notice, which led to PR firms hiring me to work one-on-one with their clients for a specified duration. Most of them already had websites in place, so my focus shifted entirely to social media. In early 2010, I was invited to speak for two hours at a PR conference in San Diego…they wanted me to lecture on enhancing client reputation through social media. It was winter in New York, and they were willing to pay for my travel expenses so I thought, California? Fuck it, why not?”

Simon’s legs were crossed, his upper body leaning in towards me as he listened attentively. I had paused, and he motioned for me to continue.

“So, I spoke for two hours and they handed me a check for three thousand dollars. That was more than I normally made in an entire week and it blew my tiny little mind.  It seemed to be vastly less stressful than dealing with super huge egos and non-tech savvy artists and damn, the money. I adjusted my entire business model, and within a month I was turning down engagements because my calendar was full. PR firms were still asking me for assistance, so I set up a consulting procedure wherein I’d outline a plan for them to implement, collected my fee and was on my way. It was all so…easy.”

He laughed loudly. “And you decided to work for Prosper why?”

“Because my ‘easy’ job and the cash it generated had taken over my entire life. I was the job and the job was me. Much to my surprise, lecturing and consulting long term turned out to be a soul sucking bore…and it transformed me into a miserable drudge. I am, at heart, a creative individual and I missed doing graphic and website design, photography, and learning new things. Terribly. Working for Prosper allows me to do all that again, and then some. That’s why.”

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin with one hand. “And I’m sure it has nothing to do with the exquisite creature sleeping soundly in your bed right now.”

“No, it doesn’t. He was actually the reason why I seriously considered declining Luke’s offer.” Simon looked puzzled, but I didn’t elaborate. “So. Why did you leave such a prestigious position at the Dorchester to become a PA? Just for Luke? Or is there more to the story?”

He grinned. “Damn, turned it right around on me, didn’t you? Touché, my friend. I went to university for business management and administrative assistance, and worked in the field until 2005. Cooking had always been my passion, and I had some sort of spiritual awakening wherein I decided I absolutely needed to become a professional chef or else I would shrivel up and die. So I did. I moved from place to place, learning, working, partying my ass off, and finally landed the sous chef spot at the Dorchester in 2009. It was dandy at first, but as the years passed I felt like I’d grown stagnant, doing the same thing night after night, having little input on menu changes and so on. Like you, I was bored. I was averaging 70 hours a week in that kitchen, cut off from the world, and it hit me that all I had gotten out of it was a nicely padded bank account…and that there was no one to share it with. I’d always loved being around lots of people, and there I was seeing nothing but the same damn faces day in and day out. In 2013 I happened across Luke’s ad, reworked my resume, and the rest is history. Unlike you, though, I don’t think I would have taken the job if it wasn’t for him, because the salary was abysmal. As soon as I saw him, I knew. He was it. The one. Love at first sight. I thank my lucky stars every single day that he felt the same way.”

After wiping the tears from his eyes, he took hold of my hand. “Maude, I don’t know if he’s mentioned it or not, but Tom’s had a rough time of it lately, and I’m so, so happy that you’ve found each other.”

“Me too, Simon.” I smiled, letting go of his hand. “Now, please, for the love of all things holy, shut your cake hole so I can get some work done, okay?”

“God, you are such a bitch.”

“I am. And you’re still talking. Cease.”

We worked quietly, side by side, until Luke poked his head out the doors to inquire as to when Simon planned on getting his butt in the kitchen and making some breakfast. As he got up from his chair, he peered over my shoulder at my laptop screen. I had a basic layout set and was in the process of choosing a color combination that would contrast perfectly.

“Wow, that’s a right brilliant color palette you have there, Maude. Is that for Tom’s site?”  

I nodded. “Does it look…familiar?”

He stared. “Yes…maybe…should it?”

I opened the tab that contained the HD photo of Tom’s eye that I’d drawn all my color options from. “Tada.”

Simon poked my shoulder and called for Luke to come see. He padded out onto the lanai, looked over my shoulder, nodded, then put his hands on his hips.

“So, when are you going to use your magic to revamp the Prosper site?”

I closed my laptop and put my head in my hands, then pushed my chair back and went to wait in the kitchen, muttering to myself about peace and solitude and how I couldn’t find any even though I was in paradise.

Tom bounded our of our bedroom just as Simon was plating our pancakes and bacon, freshly showered, wearing a pair of faded, loose fitting jeans and a tight, light blue V-neck tee. I leaned back on my bar stool and around the counter to look at his feet. Scuffed, well-worn boots. When my eyes finally made their way up to his face I was greeted with a dazzling, toothy smile. I groaned.

Simon pinched his cheeks. “Lovely of you to join us, Thomas.”

Tom lowered himself elegantly onto the stool to my right, resting his hand on my spandex-clad thigh as he leaned in to kiss me.

“Good morning, Maude. How was yoga?”

“Spectacular, actually. Simon and I had a lovely chat and I even managed to get some work done in spite of it.” He laughed and began slowly sliding his hand up my leg, edging ever closer to the apex of my thighs. Simon set our plates in front of us, raising a brow as he spied what Tom was up to.

“Um, excuse me. This is a fine dining establishment, people. No foreplay is permitted.” I glanced up from my plate and saw Luke directly behind him, hand cupping Simon’s ass.

“Whatever, asshole.” I pointed at my short stack. “Do you have syrup for these?”

He pulled a pot off the stove and spooned some of its contents onto them. “Made with fresh pineapples. Especially for you.”

All eyes were on me as they waited for a reaction. I broke off a hunk of pancake with my fork and shoved it in my mouth. “Mmm, yummy. Thank you.” Luke looked at Tom, who shrugged. I took another bite of breakfast. “Yeah, nice try, losers. I happen to like pineapples. Just not on pizza.”

Tom put his arm around my waist, pulled me to him and kissed the top of my head. “I had nothing to do with this. I swear it.”

I said nothing, ripping off a piece of bacon with my teeth instead. He tapped his fork on his plate.

“So, Maude, I was thinking…maybe we could take a ride out to Talk Story today? I called to see if Alani would be in, and she is.” I spun the stool around in his direction, dumbfounded. He smiled. “I did say I’d go back to meet her, did I not?”

“Yes. Yes you did.” I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “What an amazingly generous thing to do. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me just yet. You’re going to be the one in charge of crowd control.” He stole a strip of bacon from my plate and swallowed it down before I could even muster a protest.

“I’d rather corral a group of a hundred people than have to sit next to you while I’m trying to eat a fucking meal, bacon stealer. And everything else stealer.”

He snickered, and I wolfed down the rest of my food, rinsed my dishes, put them in the dishwasher and headed for the bedroom, finally noticing that Luke and Simon had disappeared. I wrote a giant ‘thanks for breakfast’ on the chalkboard in the kitchen and drew a smiley face to go with it, figuring we wouldn’t be seeing them again before we left.

*************************************** After my much needed shower, I wound up standing in my underwear, staring into yet another wardrobe wondering what the hell to wear. Tom looked too damn good for me to get away with shorts and a T-shirt, and my black tank dress just didn’t scream ‘please behave and listen to the nice lady’. Tom was waiting patiently for me, sitting at the desk answering emails and returning calls. I looked at his boots, then back and my limited selection of dresses. The brown chiffon galaxy print sleeveless wasn’t an exact match, but pretty damn close. I pulled it off its hanger and laid it on the bed so I could unzip the back without it winding up on the floor, chastising myself for giving in to my everything-must-coordinate OCD once again. I slipped it over my head, put my arms through the proper holes and managed to zip it up on my own, then went into the bathroom to figure out a hair strategy.

I’d just wrestled it into a braid when I overheard Tom talking in the bedroom.

“How’s Los Angeles? Elsa? Kids? Good to hear. Oh, she’s unbelievable, Chris. Here, I’ll take you in and you can meet her.” He came around the corner carrying his open laptop.

“Chris Hemsworth, Maude Gallagher.” He turned the screen toward me, and there he was, Thor, God of Thunder. In my bathroom. He held up a hand in greeting.

“Hello, Maude. Nice to meet you. See you? Skype you?” He face palmed. “I have no idea what the correct terminology is.” I heard a woman yell in the background that meet was fine and for him to bring the tablet over to her so she could see me. He got up and walked into another room, and a beautiful blonde woman came into view alongside Chris. She waved madly.

“Look at you, you’re gorgeous. A natural beauty. And that dress…I am in love with it. You must tell me where you found it.” Her accent was a delight. She grinned. “I’m Elsa, by the way. Tom has told us so much about you I feel like I know you already.”

I waved at them. “Hi there. Lovely to meet you both. I’d like to say Tom has told me so much about you, but that would be a big fat lie, so suffice to say I’m sure he will tell me so much about you when we aren’t quite so…so…shit, what’s the word I’m looking for here?”

Tom moved to stand next to me, shifting the laptop so we were both visible, smirking. “Preoccupied. The word you’re looking for is preoccupied.”

They laughed, and Chris grabbed at Elsa. “Remember when we were always preoccupied?”

She slapped his hand. “Oh yes. I do.  And that’s why now we’re preoccupied with three little ones, my darling Christopher.” I heard children crying in the background. Elsa said a quick goodbye and ran off, and Chris followed suit so he could assist.

Tom put the laptop on the counter and pulled me to him, hands on my ass as he pressed me up against his crotch and rammed his tongue in my mouth, then backed away quickly, leaving me panting. “Well, I guess we should get going.”

I shot him a scathing look. “We should. But I have to pee first.” He walked out into the bedroom. As I sat on the toilet, I weighed my options for getting even. I mentally high fived myself as I pulled my underwear off over my feet and left them on the bathroom floor.

*************************************** We parked a block down from Talk Story, and I scouted ahead and left Tom in the Jeep. My gladiator sandals clicked on the sidewalk as I half-jogged to my destination, anxious to see if Alani was at the desk. She was, and I texted him to come on down. He ran to meet me, and I stopped him from holding the door for me and letting me go in first.

“Nope, you should be the first thing she sees.” I had my phone all ready to go in order to capture the moment, planning on sending her a copy as a keepsake. He walked through, and she looked up as the bell dinged to announce that someone had entered the store and the look on her face was one I knew I’d remember forever. He approached her, hand extended, and I was right behind him.

“Hello, Alani. I’m Tom.” She remained motionless. He turned to me. “This is Maude. We were here on Monday, and she told me that you’re a fan of my work and would perhaps enjoy meeting me.” She nodded, gingerly lifting her arm up but unable to make herself grab his hand. He took the initiative, holding it to his lips and kissing it demurely. She squealed, so high pitched I thought my ears might bleed. Four other girls came running out of the stacks, took one look at him, and began jumping up and down, screaming, phones in hand. I stopped filming so I could set the boundaries before any issues arose, stepping between them and Tom.

“Hi, ladies. I’m Maude, Tom’s social media manager. Let’s go over some ground rules, okay?” They lowered their phones and nodded. “Tom wants to be able to take pictures, sign for and chat with all of you, but in order for him to be able to do so you need to make sure you don’t post anything to social media until after we leave the premises. No texting or calling, either. If a crowd turns up, we’ll have to cut things short, and where’s the fun in that?”  

A husky, bearded, bespectacled man came out from the stacks, wearing a white and green palm leaf print Hawaiian shirt and khaki hiking shorts. “Girls, what the heck is going on up here? Why all the screaming? You know people prefer quiet when they…” He stopped short when he saw Tom, his mouth dropping open, then quickly closing as he grew closer, hand proffered. I figured he was the owner, so I let him pass.

“Aloha, Mr. Hiddleston. I’m Roger Marshal, and Talk Story is my baby. I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate your stopping by again…the girls were so bummed when they learned they’d missed you on Monday.”

Tom shook his hand vigorously. “Thank you for having me. Your establishment is outstanding…I’m a bit of a bibliophile, and if I had my druthers I’d be perusing the shelves here for days on end. My apologies for dashing off so quickly when I was in last, but I had a prior obligation and thought it better to come back when I had more time to spend.” He turned to me. “This is Maude Gallagher, my social media manager.”

I offered my hand and he clasped it gently with one of his, then placed the other on top. “Maude, nice to meet you. Is there anything I can do to make this easier for you both?”

“Actually, would you happen to have a room available that’s a bit more private?”

He nodded, then turned his attention to the desk. “Sure thing. Alani, why don’t you show our guests to the staff lunch room?” Her eyes lit up, and the faces of the rest of the staff fell. “Girls, you go too. I’ll cover the desk.” They thanked him in unison between excited giggles.

I tried to hang back behind Tom, but he slowed and fell into step with me and slipped his arm around me, hand on my lower back, whispering in my ear. “The way you jumped in and took charge did…things…to me, Maude.” His let his hand glide lower and lower, halting when he reached the spot where the waistband of my underwear should be. He felt around with his fingers, over my hip, diving quickly down into the crease of my left buttock then back up to my waist, gripping me just a smidge too hard.

I met his gaze, noting his narrowed eyes and the way his tongue darted out over and over to lick his lips. I smirked and whispered back. “Gosh, I’m sorry. I forgot to mention that I’m not wearing any panties. They sorta fell off back at the house and are lying on the bathroom floor, all alone and unloved.” The hand on my waist began to shake as we reached the staff room and he began breathing deeply as he attempted to keep his shit together. And round two of Friday’s Titillation Tease goes to…me.

Tom spent nearly two hours taking selfies, videos, signing anything the girls could get their hands on, and answering their seemingly unlimited supply of questions. The giant cup of tea I’d had on the ride over had finally hit my bladder, and I excused myself and went off in search of the bathrooms. There was only a one, unisex, located all the way on the other side of the store, tucked into an alcove deep in the stacks. Nice and roomy, too. I envisioned Tom fucking me up against the wall, then scolded myself for my blatant lack of restraint as I texted him precisely what I’d been thinking while I walked back to the staff room.

Roger had come back to check on them, which Tom took as an indicator that it was time to wrap things up. He was hugging each of the girls goodbye in turn as they left the room, saving Alaini for last. She rested her head on his chest, facing me, and mouthed ‘he smells like a FOREST’ while hugging him tightly. Up until that moment, I hadn’t been sure whether she recognized me or not. She stepped back and looked at both of us.

“This has been, like, the best day of my life. I can never thank you enough.” Her eyes shone with tears. “Would it be okay if I took a picture of you guys together?”

I smiled. “Of course. But I think it would be better if you were in it, too.” We posed, and Tom held out her phone to get the shot. I was entering my Prosper email address into her phone so she could send me a copy and she was putting hers in mine so I could send her the video from earlier when she cleared her throat.

She looked up shyly. “Um, I don’t mean to be rude or get in your business or anything, but I was just, you know, wondering…” She swallowed. “Are you guys, like, a couple?”

Tom grinned. “Is it that obvious?”

Her brow furrowed. “Well, you know, I saw what you posted on Twitter yesterday and I was like, hmm, and I know you guys work together and now seeing you in person…yeah. It’s pretty obvious, I guess.”

Tom took my hand. “Yes, Alani. Maude isn’t just my social media manager…she’s my girlfriend as well. And can I let you in on a little secret?” She nodded, awestruck. “When you saw us here on Monday, that was the very first time we met. So you played a rather important role in what turned out to be the best day of my life so far.”

I kissed his cheek. “Mine too, Alani.”

Alani flopped onto the nearest chair, clutching her hands to her chest. “That. Is. So. Romantic.” She leapt back up and hugged me. “We all want him for ourselves, but if he has to be with someone else, I’m really glad it’s you.”  

I patted her on the back. “Thank you. Hearing you say that means so much…honestly, I don’t have the words to express properly how it made me feel.” We let go of each other, and she made her way back to the desk.

I turned to Tom. “I need to hit the bathroom again before we head out.” He nodded and followed my lead. He didn’t mention my text, and I assumed he hadn’t read it yet. We didn’t see another soul on the way there, and the stacks outside the alcove were deserted as well. I recalled my vision of Tom fucking me against the bathroom wall and decided this was going to be my shining moment of public indecency. I opened the door, stepped in, then turned around to face him, left eyebrow raised.

“Want to join me?” I licked my lips. He barged past me into the bathroom, fingers already working to unbuckle his belt.

“I thought you’d never ask.” I locked the door, then did a 180. He held his fully engorged cock in his right hand, stroking it, catching any drips with his left. “I do believe I need to put this somewhere immediately so I don’t make a terrible mess on the floor.”

I bit my bottom lip as I tilted my head to the side. “I think I’ve got just the place for it.”

He ceased his stroking in order to back me up against the wall, growling in my ear. “Oh yes. You most certainly do.” He bent his knees as he lifted the front of my dress up to my waist, and I wrapped my leg around his, grinding my dripping pussy against him while I rubbed my clit. He groaned, and I slipped my glistening finger into his mouth. He sucked on it, and I felt the head of his cock at my entrance and his hands cupping my ass, his full weight on me, pressing me firmly against the cool tile.

He was panting. “Put your other leg around me and your arms around my neck.” I did the latter, but scoffed at the former.

“Um, there is no way in hell you’re going to be able to hold me up.”

He leaned forward to stare into my eyes, and his expression made me whimper. “Leg. Up. Now. Please.” As I complied he sheathed himself fully. I tried to bite back a ridiculously loud moan but was only partially successful. His mouth met mine, tongues dancing around each other. He pulled back.

“Maude, my apologies, but once I start moving I fear I’m going to last all of thirty seconds. If I’m fortunate.”

I clamped down on him. He began thrusting wildly, and I focused all my energy on not coming before he did. I was doing well until he started whispering in my ear using his Loki voice.

“Give in, mortal. Come for me. I know you’ve dreamed of this, me fucking into you for all I’m worth, you pinned against the wall, unable to sway those mesmerizing hips and have your way with me as you ride my cock to find your own selfish pleasure.”

He pounded into me, almost savagely, and as he felt my walls begin to flutter he put his hand over my mouth.

“Not. A. Sound.” I came, my scream trapped beneath his hand, the wet sounds of him moving in and out of me echoing eerily off the bathroom walls. “That’s it. Look at you, coming and coming all over my cock. So, so beautiful.”

He let his hand drop, and I could feel his thrusts becoming more erratic as I stared at him, his face red, jaw clenched, the veins on his neck standing out with his exertion. His head tipped back, fingers digging into the underside of my thighs, and his entire body shuddered as he orgasmed, come spurting hot inside me. I let my legs slide down one at a time, planting my feet as firmly as I possibly could despite the fact that they felt like they were made of Jell-O.  

He rested his head on my shoulder, and I rubbed his back. “I guess this means you got my text after all.” I felt him nod. “Well, if this is what not wearing underwear gets me, I’m never putting on another fucking pair ever again.”

We both laughed, quickly cleaned ourselves up, and I peeked out the door to make sure the coast was clear. Still not a soul around, and we said a final goodbye to Alani on our way out and proceeded to walk back to the Jeep. We sat for a while, neither of us feeling quite capable of driving.

He leaned over to kiss me, hand on the back of my neck, grinning as he pulled away. “I’m famished. Want to grab something to eat before we head back?”

“You already know the answer to that.” I noticed the street getting a bit congested, a small pack of women heading in our direction and what appeared to be a local news crew up the road a bit…I pulled out my phone and checked Alani’s Twitter feed. She’d posted the photo of all of us.

Here’s me just a little while ago with Tom Hiddleston and his girlfriend, Maude. He smells like a pine forest, and she’s super nice. #bestdayever, #thankyoutomandmaude

I showed it to him. “I’m thinking maybe we should stop somewhere a little further down the road. You?”

He started the Jeep, put it in first and stalled it as he tried to pull away from the curb, and then again on his second try. He smiled at me sheepishly. “Perhaps you’d better drive.”

“Gee, ya think?” We got out and switched places. I shook my head. “What a newb.”

He crossed his arms. “I am not a newb. I’m just out of practice is all.”

I patted his thigh as we got to the highway. “Right. Rusty stick skills. I remember.”

He chortled. “Yours remain top notch though, my love.”

I smiled smugly. “They do, don’t they?”

He raised his index finger. “Although, technically, you didn’t actually make use of them this go round, did you?”

“I’ll make up for it next time.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

“Well I’d fucking hope you’d hold me to it. That’s the whole point.” I saw a McDonald’s sign in the distance. “Dude, I want some French fries in the WORST way. And a chocolate milkshake. You game?’

“I most certainly am.”

“If you behave I’ll let you have my cherry.”

“Bit late for that, isn’t it?”

“How rude.”

“Perhaps. But true.”

“Not entirely true.”

“What do you mean, not entirely true?”

I turned off the highway and into the parking lot. The drive through line was mobbed, but the lot itself was relatively empty. “I mean that the fact that it’s a bit late for you to have my cherry is only partially correct.”

He stared at me as I engaged the parking brake, puzzled, then shook his head. “I’m not following.”

The left corner of my mouth scrunched up in mock irritation. “Really? Are you sure?” He shrugged, palms up. “Think about all we’ve…done.”

“Maude.”

“Good. Now think about what we haven’t done.” I gave him a few moments to review, watching his face closely so I’d see it dawn on him. 3…2…1…aaaannndd there it was. His jaw slackened, hips lifting almost imperceptibly. “That’s right. I’ve played around, sure, but as far as actually having a cock in my ass…nope. Which means, technically, my anal cherry is still intact.”

He covered his face with his hands, groaning, but said nothing.

I went in for the kill. “So, Thomas…tell me. Would you like my cherry?”

Shaking his head, face still hidden, he spoke in a low voice. “Maude.” He paused, remaining silent for quite some time, seemingly avoiding my question. I wondered if I’d overstepped some sort of boundary, pushing him too far.

My mind was racing, and I frowned. “Wow.  I’m really sorry, Tom.”

He uncovered his face to take my hand, gazing at me with eyes full of concern. “Whatever for?”

“Because I put you on the spot there and just assumed it’s something you’d want to participate in. I didn’t stop to think that it’s something that might not be up everyone’s alley.” I rolled my eyes. “That didn’t come out…shit…DAMN. Anyway, that was incredibly presumptuous and I apologize for letting myself get so carried away. Please don’t feel like it’s something you have to…”

He leaned in to kiss me forcefully, covering my entire mouth with his, tongue darting over my lips, then pulled away before I could fully engage. “May I answer your question now?”

I shook my head. “Tom, you don’t need…”

“I know I don’t need to, but I WANT to. My answer is, with undeniable certainty, yes. Please accept my apology for not answering straight away. I’m afraid I was too busy thinking about how deliciously tight you’re going to feel around me and then I remembered that you aren’t wearing panties and it was all I could do to stop myself from dragging you onto my lap and fucking you right here in the McDonald’s parking lot.”

His eyes met mine, nostrils flaring, pupils blown wide open. Never before had I been able to do this to a man, make him want me so desperately using nothing but words. He squeezed my hand.

“That you’d trust me with something so intimate, bequeathing me such a precious gift, wishing to share something that you’ve not yet experienced with another, is…I’m honored, humbled, awestruck…so very many things.” He smiled timidly. “I’ve never been someone’s first anything before.”

My brows shot up, but I managed to keep my mouth shut.

“Maude, there’s something I’d like to ask you, but…”

“Shoot.”

“All right. This may be terribly intrusive, and feel free to not answer it if you don’t feel comfortable doing so, but…knowing what I do about you, sexually, I’m…surprised…that you…erm, never…anyway, I suppose I’m just wondering why.”

I sighed. Good job, Maude. This is what you get for trying to be a seductress.

“Long story short, you’re only the fourth person I’ve been intimate with. The first two were before I was twenty and not even remotely interested in such a thing. By the third I was very interested, but things fell apart before it happened.” I put my arms on the steering wheel and rested my forehead on them for a moment, then raised my head and turned to him. I couldn’t quite read the expression on his face.

“Okay, I’m not sure if that look means ‘I didn’t need to hear that’ or ‘wow, only three, what a loser’.”

He shook his head. “It’s neither. Well, maybe a bit of the first one, because the idea of you being with someone else is much more unpleasant than I would have imagined, but…it was mostly surprise that such an incredibly beautiful, intelligent, hilarious woman wouldn’t have men lining up to be with her.”

“Thomas. Stop being so fucking wonderful, won’t you? Christ. There was no line, believe me. I’ve always been at least a little chubby, but after I moved to New York I put on a huge amount of weight. There are reasons for that, but that’s another story for another time. By 2003 I was tipping the scales at two hundred and forty-seven pounds. I’ve always been a confident person, and I honestly never cared what anyone else thought about the way I looked, but…you know what I’m getting at here, I think. In late 2008 I started feeling like shit, and Anne, who’d nearly died due to undiagnosed diabetes in 2003, pushed me to see a doctor. Sure enough, that was the problem. It was early, and resolvable with lifestyle modifications. So, I kicked myself in the ass, and over the next year I lost more than eighty pounds, and that was when I…a woman in her sexual prime, in the best shape of her life…met number three. God bless him…I was on a mission, making up for lost time and he could barely keep up with me. One time I actually thought he was going to need an ambulance…sheese, why I am telling you this? Yikes. Sorry. Lord knows I don’t want to hear anything like it from you.” I unbuckled my seat belt. “Let’s pretend this never happened and go get those milkshakes, m’kay?”

He grabbed my arm as I opened the door, and I turned to meet his gaze. “I…Maude…I just…you are…everything about you…” He shook his head. “I fall deeper in love with you with every passing moment.”

“Right back atcha, baby.” He laughed. “Yeah. No way I was going to try and out-eloquent you there. Waste of time and energy.”

We went inside, his arm around my shoulders, and ordered two Happy Meals when we saw the new toys were Minions. Neither of us could resist playing with them as we ate. Tom went back for a Big Mac and chicken nuggets, which I shared. He stuck his fingers in through the lid of my milkshake, deftly picking up the cherry and popping it in his mouth, a huge smile on his face.

We both used the bathroom, separately, and as we were walking back to the Jeep I heard the voice of a young boy.

“Mom, Mom! That man over there! That’s the man you’re always looking at on your computer!”

A woman replied to him. “Mason, what are you talking ab…?” And with that, I knew she’d seen Tom. I pulled at his shirt, and he looked down at me and nodded. We turned around and waved. The woman was about my age, maybe a little older, and she looked like she might die of embarrassment when she realized we’d overheard their conversation. Tom strode over, hand extended.

“Hi there. Tom Hiddleston. And you are?” She moved as if in a trance, hand out, and he grasped it gently and shook.

“I…uh…um…Sarah. I’m Sarah. And this is my son, Mason.”

Tom beamed and shook Mason’s hand as well. “Lovely to meet you both.”

Sarah reached into her purse, dug around and pulled out a Coriolanus program. She cleared her throat. “I heard that you’d be on the island and I’ve been carrying this with me, you know, just in case.”

He took it from her. “Were you in attendance?”

Mason piped up. “We flew all the way across two oceans so she could go see your show. I saw Big Ben. It was really cool.”

Sarah was bright red. “I saw it twice, actually, but didn’t have time to stay after.”

Tom pulled a sharpie out of his back pocket. “May I?”

She grinned. “Please do.” He signed his name, as well as a message. ‘Sorry to have missed you there, but better late than never. Glad to finally have met you. XO’”

As he handed it back to her he asked if she’d like a picture with him. He introduced us, and I volunteered to do the honors so Mason could squeeze in as well. I gave him my Minion to keep him occupied while I took some shots of just Sarah and Tom. He held it up to give it back to me when I handed Sarah back her phone.

“Nope, buddy, that’s yours now.” I held out my hand to Tom and he put his toy in it. “In fact, you can have Tom’s too. This way he gets to stay with his friend and won’t be lonely.” He thanked me so quietly I could barely hear him, eyes full of wonder at what to an adult was such a small gesture.

Tom hugged them both goodbye, and Sarah embraced me as well. She smiled at my surprise. “Thank you, both of you, so much.”

Tom put his arm around my waist as we walked the rest of the way back to the Jeep, placing a quick kiss on the top of my head.

“It is my personal opinion that you’re a much kinder, gentler person than you’d like everyone to believe.”

I sighed. “Yeah, yeah. And it’s all your fucking fault, too.”

[obarneybbbwc2021]

I embarked on this project in collaboration with a friend, who studies on a game design course. I thought that it was an exciting idea for us to create a game, and liked how it interprets the brief ‘Beyond black box, white cube’. I would be in charge of the visuals and general aesthetic while he would take care of the mechanics of the game. After enjoying the process of collaboration on the previous project, I was optimistic about this aspect for this project.  I was also excited about the idea of making a game as it was something I had never done and felt like an appropriate medium for the playful kind of work I usually create.

Normally I am not particularly inspired by the idea of virtual art exhibitions, but I feel that we have made something that hangs somewhere between an art piece and a game, which I believe is more likely to keep a viewer / player engaged. The game is a simple concept: a character wakes up and must travel through different rooms of his house in order to catch the bus and get to school on time. I most enjoyed building the imagined environments that the character walks through, and I feel this is where the piece excels - the eccentric worldbuilding. I designed these scenes in Photoshop, first by laying down guides for where doors and furniture would be, then stitching together photos and drawings to add depth and character to the rooms.

I wanted the soundtrack to match the odd aesthetic of the visuals, so I decided to use a toy piano I recently found in a charity shop. I played some melody patterns into Logic Pro, looped them and recorded some drums using the crude drum machine feature on the piano. 

Along with the music, an alarm at the beginning of the game are the only noises. This was due to a technical problem on the game designer’s end wherein any other sound that was added malfunctioned and crashed the entire game. This was a shame because I had gathered quite a lot of foley sounds to bring the game to life - footsteps, doors opening, toothbrushes, but sadly they had to be removed. This was probably the biggest flaw of the project in my eyes, as diegetic sounds would have tied the game together and made it more of an absorbing experience. This was the same for a few other features that I had planned for the game but for one reason or another had to be cut out - primarily they were causing some problem to the game or were beyond the capabilities of the game designer. 

If I could have spent longer with the game designer tweaking the project, I would have attempted to fix the sound problem and added interactive dialogue, which I believe would have added more depth to the narrative.