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m34gs · 7 months

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Saw AU Ask Time!

From designing/creating a trap all the way to implementing the trap on their victim, how long on average does it take each dorm to fully complete their assignment?

Please list this in order of least amount time to longest amount of time because it will spice up the order of your answers.

Oooooh what a fun ask! Thank you! (for anyone curious about the Saw AU my friend is referring to: please see this pinned post about our Twisted Wonderland Saw AU)

I am eager to take a break from my busy weekend and relax by thinking about Saw and Twisted Wonderland; two of my favourite things!! :D I will be talking about the absolute fastest timeline each dorm can make; keep in mind that certain circumstances may cause them to expedite certain processes and that the average trap time may be slower if the need is less urgent! :)

(Also, my friend, please don't panic if you think the timelines don't match your fics. I promise, they do! I have plans to make the murders fit into your stories!!)

Diasomnia - they take the least amount of time because Fae rules. Investigating the victim is a cinch for them and their Fae Powers. Parts are easy to obtain for the Heir of Briar Valley, and Lilia's vast network of connections makes finding locations a simple task. The one hang-up is when they're setting up the traps; in order to make sure it's not entirely inescapable by human standards but still presents a challenge and test, Silver is often the one who ends up putting his strength against various trap parts. While it's all supervised and done in a safe environment, Lilia tries to delay it Every. Single. Time. Still, they manage to get through it in a relatively timely manner. Honestly, when reading White Lilies (Kimium's fic about Yuu and Malleus, with a hint of murder in the background), there wasn't a specific timeline, but I imagined the festival was about 1-2 weeks away due to how Malleus said it was fast approaching. Seeing as he only just met Roy (my name for the man as Kimium left him unnamed and granted me the joy of naming him in my companion fic: Rebirth) on that day with Yuu, that would put the entire operation from start to finish within that 1-2 weeks. Honestly, I was thinking closer to 7-10 days. Of course, that's if they are working nonstop to make it happen, but I believe they would because to Malleus nothing trumps Yuu's safety.

Ignihyde - Idia and Ortho are next! And it's very honestly all because of how tech-savvy they are. Idia Shroud doesn't even need your name to start. He hacks the security cameras at the front of shops and tracks your movements, sees where you go, hacks security systems. And once he does have your name? Game over. He's got your social insurance number, your phone number, your address, and a digital copy of your birth records before the day is up. He sets up a virus that you can't even detect, hacks your computer, and uses an algorithm to analyze your online activity, and on a second monitor he's going through your bank information for patterns to see when the best time is to kidnap you. He knows the names of all your contacts and their banking info and schedules within hours. He knows exactly when he could snatch you and how long he would have before anyone noticed you were gone. And with all his tech and the tech for STYX and the fact that it has to be produced somewhere...you can bet your ass he can get access to an abandoned warehouse. The longest part is actually assembling the trap, because, as we've established, Idia doesn't just want a trap. He wants to challenge himself to see what he can do. He's pushing his limits and learning and growing (which like, yes we love to see growth but not with murder Idia!!! lol) and that takes time. But he'd have it done within the month. Guaranteed. So I'm gonna say Idia is typically 2-4 weeks (probably also depends on if he needs a rare part for his trap and needs to wait on account of shipping).

Heartslaybul - okay, I know, I know. You might be thinking "but Meags...Riddle has all these rules and technicalities and he would probably want to make sure everything was exactly right. He would never slap something together half-heartedly, and he also places a ton of restrictions on himself and has an intense perfectionism that would make him take things even slower". And you would be right! Except we also must consider that this is Riddle we are talking about. (insert tour guide voice, for funsies) If I may direct your attention to the Housewarden Trap Designs ask, we can recall that Riddle is one to go for the more simplistic traps. I also think he is one to always be Prepared. He has trap designs ready to be used ahead of time that can be easily tweaked as needed. He may not have them all built, but the design is there. The majority of time is spent on 1. researching the victim because unlike Idia and Malleus, Heartslaybul has to resort to good old in-person tailing and stalking, and 2. assembling the trap. While Deuce may be really good with his hands and mechanical work, he and Ace together spell DISASTER and I imagine there's more than one mishap that occurs...Taking all this into account, I'm thinking 6-8 weeks from start to finish is the fastest timeline for them.

Savanaclaw - To be honest, I don't think there's much difference between Heartslaybul's timeline and Savanaclaw's. Though they have less people, Savanaclaw has both Jack and Ruggie, who are pretty much doubly more efficient than Ace and Deuce (sorry but it's true). Especially if Leona promises Ruggie a bonus (or some fun in the bedroom). Leona, being a prince, has a lot of resources at his disposal. Plus, they have a lot of connections. Let's be real, Leona has his political connections to work with, but we all know Ruggie has connections in every corner of the city. And they run a casino. That's like, dipping into mafia territory. They probably have some sort of handle in the underground as well. And Leona's very smart. He would be the one to "work smarter, not harder", so I think he'd find a way to keep the traps relatively simple (also mentioned in the Housewarden Trap Design ask) so it couldn't take up a lot of his time. So I think Savanaclaw would also be 6-8 weeks.

Pomefiore - Vil, Rook, and Epel are next. While efficient, they do have one thing that kind of limits them: spare time. Vil is so busy with all his auditions, his roles, photoshoots, guest appearances on various talk-shows, etc. He can only devote so much time to the traps. Yes, he has Epel and Rook to help, but we must not forget: There's no way in hell Rook is going to spend time tailing some asshole when he could be watching his boyfriend on the runway. Much as everyone likes to think Rook would just do whatever Vil asks, the truth is that Rook is the only one on the team in Book Five who voted against their own dance team. Rook is, first and foremost, true to his own heart. And his heart wants to see Vil's beauty in every possible moment. And Seven knows Vil cannot leave all the work to Epel. Perish the thought. Also, they must set aside time to visit Yuu and Grim. It is imperative. Because of this, Pomefiore is looking at upward of 8 weeks; probably closer to 9 or 10 weeks, for their fastest trap runtime.

Scarabia - I honestly don't think it's a surprise they're this low on the list. Kalim, for one, would hesitate to kidnap and put someone in a trap, as we've established. Jamil, on the other hand, would spend so much time trying to account for every detail that his planning phase takes *forever*. FOREVER. Jamil. Please. You're killing me. Anyway; once he gets through that planning part, putting the actual trap into motion is easy, but yeah. It's the planning stages that trip up this dorm and cause them to take longer. And Kalim's big heart. He just really doesn't want people to die. I think more than once he has a heart-to-heart with John, and John reminds him that by putting people in the trap he is helping them (at least, in John's twisted point of view) and that makes Kalim feel a little bit better. He might need a pep talk or two to get through the planning though. Three months.

Octavinelle - ok, ok, let's be real. Who else? Who else but Azul? Honestly, that boy. Ok, so we all know Azul is a perfectionist to rival Riddle, but he is also almost as busy as Vil (especially in this au, where we have him not only running a chain of Monstro Lounges, but also doing consults on the side). Yes, he does have an ever-growing list of people to trap, but he has to make sure it is the *right* time for all of them, and he has to make sure everything goes without a hitch. In fact, the only reason it doesn't take him even longer than it already does is because he has Jade and Floyd. He can 1. outsources (some) work to them, and 2. they push him to stop fussing over details and just do something (I imagine if it comes to this, Floyd makes some sort of fuss; like a cat shoving a cup off the counter if they don't get enough attention). That being said; I think Azul also spends a whole lotta time in the planning stages, much like Jamil. Things are likely a lot faster once he has all the pieces ready to be put together (Probably partly because he gets Jade and Floyd to help more with this part). Three to four months. For his fastest traps. And this is only once he's actually decided on a victim(s) that is/are approved by John. Jigsaw help me.

Alrighty! There you have it, friend! My rankings from fastest to slowest, with an estimate on how long it takes each dorm to do the entire trap process!

(I also need you to know I currently have 10 tabs open on my computer to answer this ask...lol)

#twisted wonderland #sort of saw franchise au #saw au #NRC dorms #headcanons #thank you for the ask

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dollarbin · 1 month

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Free Bin #1:

Prairewolf's Deep Time

There's only one kind of beverage I prefer over Simpler Times, Trader Joe's go-to 49-cents-a pop canned macrocraft brew that tastes like beer-flavored dish water. And that's the free stuff I find in your frig.

Invite me over to your place and begin the countdown: for the first minute I'll pet your dog, pay compliments to your cat and comment on your haircut. In minute two I'll make a bad joke, probably centering around your dog, your cat and/or your haircut. Minute three will find me checking out the board games on your shelf in hopes that we'll get down to some friendly competition before I run out of jokes.

But in minute four you'll find me head first in your frig, looking for free-at-least-to-me beverages to toss back. I've been forced into a gluten-free way of life this past seven months so these days I'm forever hoping for a little sparking water to add to your hopefully high end scotch; but if push comes to shove I'll drink your Modelo and tell myself it's surely corn-based. And if you're not an alcohol purchaser don't relax: your rice milk is gonna get drunk.

And so there's only two kinds of albums out there that can compete for me with a choice Dollar Bin find, and that the free stuff you find in a tattered box by the front door of the shop and the equally stuff you can get off the internet.

Let's begin our periodic appreciation of such sweetly cheap-ass goods by celebrating the news that my famous brother just announced his big deal band's second record. Check out the details here and here and listen to the album's first swinging single, which is available to stream for absolutely zero dollars.

As a big deal mooch with a family connection I already have a complimentary copy of the new album firmly in my (digital) hand, and while I can't compete with the literary and professional advance press Prairiewolf are getting, which includes the use of "woodshedding" as an incomprehensible adverbial phrase, I can say this: Prairiewolf's new record, Deep Time, is You're Gonna Get It! meets The Freewheeling Bob Dylan meets Transformer meets New Wave Hot Dogs meets Clouds meets Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. In other words, it's a classic sophomore album that you are gonna want to get your hands on asap.

Picture Bryter Layter with a drum machine and no vocals; picture The Joshua Tree if The Edge had launched Bono permanently into interstellar space. Picture Sense and Sensibility not as a novel, but as a record made by three middle aged white guys. Picture the New Testament, only newer. I could go on all day...

Because you don't have access to the free stuff in my famous brother's frig or his itunes you're gonna have to preorder the record and then deal with paying and waiting.

But fear not: Prairiewolf understands that miserly curmudgeons like me make up a firm section of their audience. So you can go listen to high-end recordings of their recent and less recent live shows for no price whatsoever, both of which preview tracks from the new record.

So, anyway, it really is a great haircut you've got going; and I was just kidding about your pets. Now, please excuse me; I wanna check and see what you've got in your frig. I'm thirsty.

#prairiewolf #my famous brother #gloom and doom from the tomb

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frienderbender · 2 years

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tell us about how dethklok has affected the entertainment industry, mr bender.

oh man ok you’ve put me on the spot but that’s ok this was probably a long overdue essay anyway haha

so i feel like there’s several things to keep in mind when discussing the music industry in-universe. for one, the worldbuilding of mtl is set up to be like “everything was the exact same as we knew it until the 2000s* when dethklok became the biggest band in the world”

*we don’t really have an exact year or date but all things considered, some time in the 2000s makes the most sense. i’d guesstimate somewhere around 2002-2004 at the latest.

also quick side note before i start: a lot of this is gonna be up to personal interpretation of the timeline. personally how i see it: mid-90s, dethklok is formed (magnus-era), probably some time around 1998 or so, The Stabbing Incident occurs and he’s kicked out, several months later (perhaps into 1999), they hold auditions and toki joins. by the year 2000, they’re starting to make successful music, and from around 2002 onward they’re million, billion, trillionaires, whatever you wanna call it. because by season 1 (2006) they’re credited as the 12th(?) largest economy in the world. that’s still gonna take Some Time, and i’m trying to be modestly realistic with that growth. if you wanna interpret them as literally becoming trillionaires overnight, go for it! feel free to disregard what i’m about to talk about timeline-wise.

SO. with that outta the way, let’s talk about the music industry in the 2000s. i think the biggest distinction in this era was the fact that getting your music digitally was becoming much more common and would soon become the standard. you have the ipod and itunes coming out, napster is letting people exchange music files, and technology itself was advancing so quickly that you could easily store soooo much more music than you could before. so really, dethklok kinda came out at the perfect time: music was more accessible than ever for consumers, and the ways people could share and communicate about music (forums, instant messaging, illegal file sharing, etc) made word spread so much faster. not only that, but by like 2006, 2007 you had a bunch of music-only stores beginning to shut down because of big box stores like best buy. and consider that through the lens of dethklok’s fame: if your music-only store can only carry so many copies, and you can only get so many at a time, it only makes sense you’re going to be driven out by the bigger store because they buy more and can generally restock faster (and inevitably be in more locations). if i want this hot new dethklok album, i can’t wait two weeks for you to get a new shipment of a couple of them: i’m going to the best buy across the street because they have wayyyy more in stock. hell, there’s even a joke about this in season 3 where the record store closes down…..because it’s a record store (tho they credit it with being because people are illegally downloading which….sure whatever, but historically-speaking most smaller music stores were shut down because of places like walmart).

also this isn’t even touching on the fact that by this point a lot of artists were relying on merchandising to make up for the loss of income, and if there’s one thing dethklok loves…….it’s their branding. thank you charles. dethklok is getting more popular by the MINUTE and so ofc they’re selling all sorts of shit, and we see how arguably “out of ideas” they are by the time the series actually starts (snowcones…..).

ANYWAY SO WITH ALL THAT SAID. how can we assume dethklok permanently changed the industry? well for starters, they oversaturated the market, and while that’s typically seen as a negative thing, in dethklok’s case that’s what the people wanted. that’s all the general public wanted. you can see it in how so many people are dressed, how everyday brands like coffee chains have changed their look to better fit the “dethklok metal” look. it’s become the new standard for what the general masses want. with that in mind, you can imagine how difficult it may be now to be an artist who performs literally any other genre. fingers crossed you know how to scream into a mic, otherwise you might want to start job searching. and unfortunately you can’t apply at the record store, because dethklok’s albums sped up the decline of music-only stores altogether. and even if you are an artist who can still release music, good luck getting anyone to talk about it. for every one other-genre-specific forum or blog, there’s dozens—maybe hundreds—for dethklok. honestly the luckiest fate you could get is ending up in some rockstar camp (magnus and the other counselors), or maybe rebranding yourself as something new entirely (rikki kixx), or if you’re really lucky you can get dethklok to sponsor or collaborate with you in some capacity (SnB, rockzo/zazz blammymatazz). and this isn’t even touching on music award shows; those died by the early 2000s. what’s the point? dethklok’s gonna win everything anyway. maybe if we’re feeling nice we can hope there’s a separate music award show for everyone who’s not dethklok.

if nothing else i hope this can really help illustrate just how dystopic this world is for every other musician. like it’s a nightmare. but that’s what makes the worldbuilding so fucking fascinating, and why i find myself very attached to rikki of all people. cool stuff, and it’s fun to compare it to how things are now, or how you think dethklok would fare in the 2020s. is toki releasing tiktok dances with their newest songs? i don’t wanna think about it.

oh, and those not-so-legal music sharing sites i mentioned earlier? yeahhh those are eradicated by the mid-2000s, on account of everyone who ever used one……mysteriously disappearing. you want dethklok? you better pay up.

#thank you SO MUCH. sorry for the wait i wanted to sit down and Really type this out #hope it’s interesting! :^] i’m always talking your ear off #asks #i know you said entertainment but i wanted to focus on music since that’s more what the series focuses on #though i assure you the entertainment industry like film TV book etc where effected similarly #but not to the scale that the music industry was

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daburuwosagase · 2 years

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Manga scanning: a practical example

Lately I've been getting a lot of people asking questions about how to scan and subtitle. And it's kinda hit me: there aren't a lot of visible, accessible resources for this, are there? As time winds by, the masters of these arts have moved on and vanished from the internet. So for posterity, I want to talk about my own work process. (Remember to save a backup of this post somewhere if you like it...)

Maybe someone else has already written this up better than me, but it's nice to infodump about the process regardless.

The book I'm scanning is Inazuma Eleven GO: Saikyou Senshu 100-nin Zukan. It was a magazine extra drawn by multiple artists, and to my knowledge it's never been rereleased in tankobon format. Which is a damn shame, because it's full of hilarious gags! Time to bring it back to the world. So, how do we start?

0) Tools and programs

Before anything else, ya gotta have a good, clean scanner. My actual scanning is done with a basic 11x17 flatbed scanner with 1200dpi max. Default OS scanning programs usually suck, so I always download the scanner drivers and programs from the manufacturer's site!!

Other physical requirements are a microwave and some black paper. The digital steps are all done in Photoshop and XNView.

1) Scan the cover

For scan settings, I default to 600dpi PNG. I used to scan things at 200/300dpi, and while this is quicker and more economical, it's not nearly as crisp! It can also cause some weird color banding, due to some scientific phenomenon that still confuses me! Basically, if a scan looks stripey, change the DPI. It's much better to work at higher resolutions and then shrink it down later. I don't have to fret over 100mb+ raw images anymore because I have plenty of external storage! Yippee!!

Before doing anything else, I scan the cover while it's still in the best possible condition. Obviously, opening the book too far will cause creasing near the spine.

Since my edition was a well-loved secondhand copy, there is a LOT of creasing. But I don't feel like spending 3k yen to get a mint copy that I'm just gonna rip apart anyway, so this is where Photoshop comes in!

2) Retouching cover damage

Fortunately, there isn't any color fading to deal with here. The majority of these imperfections were touched up with Content Aware Fill. It's a very powerful tool that assumes what the selected pixels *should* look like based on the surrounding pixels. Use the Lasso or Magic Wand to select the imperfections, and try to avoid selecting pixels you don't want fixed. Content Aware works best on small spots, so you kinda have to break it up by color blocks, but it's still a million times faster and way less depressing. Seriously, cleaning and typesetting let my mind wander too much.

I currently have two Actions shortcuts to make this process even faster:

1) regular Content Aware Fill

2) Expand by 5px > Content Aware Fill > Deselect

When Content Aware fails, this is when I have to go manual. Clone Stamp is my best friend ever. Carefully select a source with the Alt key, line up the dots over the touchup area (toggle Enter for better viewing), and keep brushing! This can be painstaking, but man, I love seeing and comparing the finished result.

Healing Brush is helpful when you have to clone a pattern but the color is different. It'll preserve the source pattern but adjust the lighting to match the surrounding pixels. It's a lot more finicky and will blur colors *too* much sometimes, especially near borders. This tool's really better on photographs, but it still comes in handy.

(I hear that Patch combines the functionality of these two! I wanna try it out next time...)

When Healing Brush can't blend colors well enough, using Clone Stamp in combination with Dodge (lighten) or Burn (darken), with strength adjusted accordingly, is the next best thing. Burn is GREAT on lines that aren't quite black enough! This technique works wonders when touching up gutter shadows especially. I will spend an exorbitant amount of time on retouching if it means I don't have to rip apart my nice books (that being said, it's important to really gauge whether it's worth retouching in the first place! I waste too much of my time on tiny details that nobody else cares about!!)

If being able to see the printer dots bothers you, there's an easy fix: the Surface Blur filter. This is one I've only discovered recently and I'm still playing around with it. On one hand, it gets rid of the tiny white dots and can make scan images look absolutely magnificent. On the other hand, it has some trouble preserving sharp lines and small highlights. Since I don't like altering the original image too much, the scans I post aren't usually blurred -- but it's something you can try out at home!

Hot damn! Look at the difference! Look at my boy Tenma! You'd hardly guess the condition the original is in!

Note that the final version does not have all the creases removed. At this point I had already spent a couple of hours retouching and decided nobody else was gonna care THAT much about the peripheral damage. If you do care that much, feel free to spend *your* time perfecting this.

3) Melt

Now that the cover's scanned... it's time to toss the book in the microwave!

vimeo

(Pictured is a *different* book, but you get the picture.)

No, seriously. Microwaving is the easiest way to warm up the glue enough to tear the pages out. Or more accurately, gently tug on the pages till they separate from the rest of the bunch. I start from the front cover and tease the pages out one by one. On thicker books, I'll alternate between front and back covers.

I set the initial heating count to 30-50 seconds, and sometimes I turn down the power level if I'm feeling apprehensive. Really gotta play it by ear depending on the book’s size and condition. After tearing out a couple dozen pages, the glue gets cool again and the pages start to resist again. Continuing like this results in the paper tearing!! This is when I chuck the book back in for another 10-15 seconds.

It's a little scary at first, but the toner on the pages heats up too! It doesn't bleed and it shouldn't be *too* hot to the touch though. So it's just something I've had to get used to.

This particular book kinda smelled when I heated it up! I blame either the paper quality or, y'know, being secondhand and maybe not being stored in perfect condition. But the stink was fortunately temporary.

Some people prefer ironing the spine (with a towel over it), but IMO that's more precarious and time-consuming. Maybe it works better for the middle pages though...? Worth trying out someday.

You could just slice out the pages with a knife or something, but with melting, it's possible to rebind the pages later! This is another thing I haven't done myself yet, but I'm excited to try it out with a nice archival glue. I'll update with the results eventually.

So, with the "how" out of the way, "why" would you take apart a book in the first place!? It still feels a little sacrilegious. But scanning pages one at a time gets you the best possible results.

It eliminates three major issues:

1) Gutter shadow

As mentioned before, shadows at the "gutter" (the inside spine) naturally happen because the page isn't lying flat there. It looks bad. And it takes a whole lot of work to retouch.

2) Angled pages

The cousin to gutter shadow, angled pages happen when the spine is a leeeetle more open/closed at the bottom/top. So with a spread, you've got the left page at -1 degree and the right page at .5 degree. Both of these pages are going to have things cut off when they're cropped. And it's going to look very weird when you're flipping through pages and have slightly alternating angles. Rotating these pages so that they're at the same angle is a lot more trouble.

It's really hard to keep the spine open exactly the same way for an entire book! The weight of the scan lid can throw off careful positioning anyway!

3) See-through pages

Manga in Japan is CHEAP and is not printed on the best paper possible. If you have the pages all bundled together, you can see large splotches of black or white from the spread that's behind the page being scanned. Leveling the image can fix this, but it comes at the cost of destroying midtones. Which is to say, any gray in the image becomes off-white or almost-black.

I hope you're beginning to understand how much effort and technical detail goes into the scans you enjoy.

4) Scanning

Same scan settings as the cover (600dpi PNG). I always scan in color, even for grayscale images. And I don't trust the auto settings enough to let the machine fiddle with colors and cropping.

You know how scanners have a little arrow at the corner saying "align here"? Don't do that. The ones I've worked with like to shave off a few millimeters from the edge because they assume there's a margin anyway. So I place my documents about 1cm AWAY from the edge just to make sure the whole page is scanned in. This inevitably causes some slight rotation, which will be fixed later.

A new technique I've learned to reduce the effects of aforementioned see-through pages: use a black background! The toner blends in with the dark backing. This reduces the luminosity of the whites, but that's something that can easily be fixed via leveling later. I do not have black paper around the house, so I resorted to fabric.

For comparison, here's the first page scanned with both a white and a black background. Note that white is slightly brighter, but there are some weird shadowy lines in the background. If you look really hard, the line goes through the screentone on Tenma's hair! Maybe it's excessive, but these tiny details can be weirdly distracting.

This book doesn't have page numbers, so I had to be extra cautious about missing pages (or accidentally dropping the stack)!

5) Leveling

Typically this step is something I leave for last, but since it significantly reduces file size, that's going to make the next steps easier.

So I've mentioned leveling before. But what is it?

Essentially, Levels make black *blacker* and white *whiter*. This is one very easy step to make pages look SO much better.

Switching over to XNView now, I'm setting these pages to about 40-220. Usually this would be a bit too heavy -- this could easily erase something light or turn something dark into pure black. But in this instance, the high dpi means individual screentone dots are visible and any grays are pretty well preserved anyway. So let it rip! XNView batch processing can run through all selected pages all at once and save the leveled copies to a new folder.

There's a ton of dust left still. Leveling gets a *lot* of it, but again, the paper quality is not great in the first place so it's kind of unavoidable. Resizing and cleaning the page later will help somewhat.

6) Rotate

This is the one step I do fully manually. I haven't had much luck with auto deskew/crop before, nor have I tried any different methods for it recently. Please tell me if there's a better way of doing this step that won't sacrifice border pixels.

Anyway, since I scanned slightly away from the edges earlier, the resulting digital image is slightly rotated at a random angle! For some ungodly reason, Photoshop doesn't have a shortcut for custom rotation, nor can you really set an action for it. XNView once again comes in clutch here. The basic steps are:

5a) Click and drag to create a bounding box. This will be used as a guideline to check whether the digital image is actually upright.

5b) Shift-O and test out values from -3 to 3. Ctrl-Z and repeat until it's just right.

After a while, you get a hang for approximate values, but "just right" means getting within .05 of a degree!! Even the untrained eye can tell when something's off by a mite.

5c) Adjust the bounding box's borders to the edges. If the box is aligned to one corner and the adjacent corners *aren't* aligned too, that means you have to rotate until all four corners are aligned. Then crop and save and move onto the next one!

7) Align

This is a new step I've never done before! Given the number and size of pages I'm working with here, I had to think and plan out this process in advance for once. Basically, instead of cropping and resizing each individual file, I load them all in at once so that they're perfectly aligned with each other. This is gonna require a lot of Photoshop automation.

First off, I go to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack. There are four types of pages here: 1 comic on the left, 1 comic on the right, 2 comics on the left, and 2 comics on the right. This process will have to be repeated for each type so that the automation doesn't get confused. Then we check the "Align Source Images" box and let the process run... for a while.

So now I have a single file with one layer for each of the pages, and the comics themselves are all nicely aligned! Yahoo! The edges are mismatched though, so it's time to crop again. There's gonna be some cutoff but that's acceptable in this instance since I just care about the small comics. If I was doing bigger, full-page manga, I'd probably *add* some margin after cropping.

The pages are approximately a 5:8 ratio, so I've decided to crop these down to 2550 x 4080. To make sure that the comics are at the same distance from the margin regardless of page type, I'm using Guides to roughly estimate the comic positions after cropping. I want them to end up at about 70px and 100px from the horizontal and vertical margins respectively. I could also change the size of the canvas instead of cropping if I really wanted to.

Once I'm satisfied with the cropping, I use the Timeline/Animations window to flip through (at about 0.5 seconds) and check that all of the layers look right. There are a couple tears and visible background instances which are quickly fixed with Content Aware Fill and Clone Stamp. Since the background's black, I even had to temporarily change the Photoshop interface color lighter so that I could detect the imperfections better.

Then at last I go to File > Scripts > Export Layers to Files and... wait for a while again. Now we have separate files! And now I have to repeat these steps all over again for the three other page types!

Lastly, it's time to rename the resulting files in order. I actually screwed up on this step. Photoshop exported all the files *backwards*, which gave me file names like "PSexp0025-InaGo01". This is an issue because it makes batch-renaming via XNView a whole lot harder!! Photoshop automatically adds a numbered prefix to all the auto-exported files, and XNView can't remove wildcards from filenames. The result is weirdly staggered out-of-ordered files. It took some careful manual work to fix this, but at long last, we have a whole folder of 90 beautiful pages!

8) Translate (FINALLY)

You see how long it took to get here!? This took at least six hours for 90 pages. After all that work with the raws, finally I can do something with them!

Guess what! If you have a digital edition, you can skip all of these steps! Instant gratification for five bucks! Buy digital editions when you can and give your money directly to the author!!

Anyway, further stages may be discussed in another post once we get around to them. Lassoing translators and typesetters is its own struggle. I hope you learned something new from this post!

#pyroxenescanning

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shijiujun · 3 years

Text

on the danmei twitter fight

okay guys i didn’t wanna say anything about this and yes it’s that hot danmei twitter translations saga thing that’s going on, because honestly i feel like there’s nothing much to say but when i see dumb posts on tumblr taking about that, by people who present a misleading hot take and their friends or moots run off with it without even knowing what exactly is going on - it really pisses me off.

and also if you shit talk translators for not continuing their translations or locking their translations whatever - the door is that way on your right and left, but anyway here’s a rundown on what happened because i am seeing people make comments without two brain cells put together, without the slightest bit of consideration for the people who bring them translations

here’s my hot take and thesis: if you enjoy english translations made by fan translators, you don’t, in any way, no matter happens, shit talk fan translators. fan translators do this for free, and whatever their intentions are, whether genuine sharing or like some of you like to say, for clout, if you consume, and you enjoy these translations, i’m sorry, you’re not uninvolved, and you don’t get to sit on a high horse and say translators should or shouldn’t do something. you should just keep quiet, honestly, because someone else is doing you a favour, a favour that you are enjoying and taking. that’s what respect is.

i’m presenting both sides or i guess three sides of the story as objectively as i can, altho my support is still for fan translators who were just minding their own business before this blew up.

===

🔺 what happened:

so it started because one of the bigger translators in the fandom did this poll - i’m not blaming her at all, i doubt she had any intentions of shaming anyone or causing any controversy and was plain curious, but her poll asked english speaking danmei twitter how many people buy the digital, print copies of the danmei they read, and who did not.

in my honest opinion, it’s not strange at all for her to have created that poll, considering just how much work she’s put into making sure things are accessible for the eng-speaking danmei fandom. i mean i’d be curious too, to know out of my thousands of readers, what the reading and buying behaviour is like. do yourself a favour and don’t read too much into it.

obviously in an era where a lot of people do consume content for free whether the underlying content is profit-making (like anime, donghua, manhua, manga etc.) or not (fanfiction etc.), it was unsurprising to see that the last option - the ones who consume danmei without paying a single cent, came out as the majority. i don’t think this is a surprising result at all, for all sorts of reasons that i will not get into now.

anyway, this is obviously kind of a sore point in the fandom especially for translators who want a wider audience to support their fave author’s works - i won’t get into that for now, but the issue began because other translators or fans started to criticize the majority of people who don’t pay for objectively rather affordable danmei and just consume things for free.

and yes, i don’t deny that the argument on both sides got really heated and emotionally charged with both sides calling each other names which i believe is uncalled for, but it totally derailed the crux of the issue, which basically is that the majority of english-speaking danmei fandom - consumes danmei for free.

anyway this whole thing escalated and fan translators were brought into this for no fucking reason at all except that the people who didn’t want, or were unable to pay for the danmei they usually consume, made what i call a LOGICAL FALLACY in argument by going to the extremes, i will explain why later.

the end result is that fan translators were brought into this (most of them, the bigger ones i know at least) without even participating in the direct crossfire. and obviously, you can see why they’re hurt and decided to lock their translations. let me explain why

===

🔺 kind of like four camps:

(1) translators and fans who criticized those who consume danmei liberally but do not pay for them in any way - no merch, no digital copies, no physical copies, no audio dramas whatever

*** their arguments:

danmei is so cheap right, that technically people should be able to pay for it in one way or another, even if not all

danmei and its authors are, at the end of the day, out here to earn a living, and the industry, like any money-making industry, is a for-profit enterprise - and unlike public goods, if you cannot afford danmei, then there is no obligation for others to make it free for you (fan translators or otherwise, it wasn’t super clearly stated while this shitshow happened) when it is inherently a for-profit industry

yes, i don’t deny that some of them did call the peeps who don’t pay at all, “leeches” and other sort of names. personally, i wouldn’t go that far or even like venture there to be honest because in general, if it’s something that i’ll get punched in the face for if i called someone that in real life i tend not to do it, but i’ll leave my opinions, whatever they’re worth, for later

(2) the readers and fans of danmei who do not pay in any sort of way for them

*** their arguments:

some of them really cannot afford, even the dollar or more, to spend on danmei for several reasons: upbringing, culture, money-spending mindsets, real poverty, struggling to make ends meet etc. - some definitely more valid than others (and when i say not valid, it’s because SOME, a minority or like those few stragglers, say they cannot afford and then you see them like idk, throwing $50 on other merch on kpop and stuff - i’m just bringing up ONE example. not shaming anyone for spending more money on one aspect rather than the other, but yeah you can see why some of them, when making this same argument, are a little invalid, that’s just a small number of them tho)

if translators are blaming them for consuming free of charge, then the fault lies, at its foundation, fan translators who translate illegally, which i mean, in that definition, all of them including me

did i mention that we were called illegal translators like you know in response to being called leeches? anyway-

(3) others translators who literally were just minding their own fucking business before some smart alec dragged them into it

i don’t think most of us had an argument. we were just quietly munching on popcorn and staying out of it and yeah, can you imagine, we provide a service, however illegal it is, for free on our own time, we don’t even check whether people support legally or not, we just... provide, and pray that those who are able to, at least support in some small way or another do so, on their own time. i mean i don’t check, most of us don’t, not the bouncers at your local club before COVID happened do, and then suddenly, to be used to derail an argument, we were called illegal translators. and that we should stop translating, and that it is our fault that there are free riders in the fandom

(4) people who offered to provide JJWXC credits to those who said they couldn’t afford it etc.

honestly i think they were just trying to help - no different than a gofundme. there’s no shame in taking a free thing that people already weren’t intending to pay for. it’s there, just take it!

===

🔺 the shitshow that led to fan translators locking their stuff up:

i would provide some actual examples in the form of screenshots but i’ve blocked most of them, and i don’t want to direct any sort of traffic to them so i guess you’ll have to take my word on it or go search on twitter yourself but-

(1) the affordability issue: i can understand the frustration at being called leeches, and some if not a majority of people, do have valid reasons for not being able to afford something or anything and end up pirating content they enjoy. hey, i am not about to crucify anyone for pirating at some point in their lives. we all have done it at some point, or for example hate disney+ and that $30 they were trying to rip off us for a subpar Mulan live action. i don’t have anything to say about that. inherently, is it wrong and illegal? yeah sure of course it is. do we call people leeches? i wouldn’t go that far.

if anyone cannot afford, cannot access for whatever reason, fine, i’m not gonna go check if jjwxc truly is banned in your country, or is your postal service so terrible that you definitely won’t be able to receive a hard copy of the book you like at affordable rates.

and if you have to pirate? go ahead. i mean it’s always been a rampant thing. the only thing fan translators and fans can do is encourage, motivate and incentivise as much as possible to get people to support legally. they can only put up REALLY COMPREHENSIVE guides as to how to access jjwxc or taobao or whatever.

and if you still cannot afford it and pirate, honestly no one cares about the story behind it. you owe no one justification, just as how no other person is obligated to take it into consideration or understand you or empathize with you. i don’t say this in a malicious way - i do think that in general, you just do you.

(2) the poor people don’t deserve nice things argument: honestly, this was not the point of this entire debacle, altho yes, people were rude to those who could not afford to support legally. but this is not the point of this whole thing.

main point - there are free riders who can support but choose not to because they choose to just consume it for free and if you are able to you should support

everyone going off on a tangent - you guys hate poor people / you guys are leeches

well guess what, no one wins in this argument.

there were a lot of people saying “reading danmei is our only source of happiness, are you saying poor people who can’t access legally don’t deserve to read danmei” (this is just one example i’ve seen, there are other variations), and it wasn’t put across perhaps in the right way, but the other camp of people were saying “you’re not entitled to it for free if you cannot afford it”, which raised a lot of hackles and anti-poor yellings

altho i do not deny that there are those who mean it maliciously, i think what everyone is trying to say is - the danmei industry, like any other profit-making industry, is looking to make profits. the people working in the industry, the authors even, are looking at numbers - traffic to jjwxc or other legal platforms, how much revenue they’re making from their live actions etc., comments, rankings, etc. i think @/hunxi-after-hours made a really succinct post on this aspect which yall should read.

it’s the same as - if you wanted to purchase a standee which costs $20 USD, but you cannot afford it = you don’t get it. there’s no way you can get this standee unless some gifts it to you for free. what the camp trying to ask people to support legally is saying, is that danmei is NOT A PUBLIC GOOD. it is a private, for-profit product. it might be intangible, but it is a PRODUCT that has a price that needs to be paid.

if you cannot afford it, you either don’t get access entirely (i’m saying this objectively and honestly from an economic standpoint). if someone gifts that standee to you for free, count yourself lucky - if someone makes a danmei accessible to you for free, COUNT YOURSELF LUCKY. you don’t have to be grateful and treat them as gods or like obey their every word, but it’s not rocket science. someone did you a favour that you accepted and consumed, show some respect.

if you cannot afford to buy the standee - you do not go on twitter demanding that someone ensures that you have access to the standee for free. do you see how ridiculous this sounds once it’s a tangible product? and danmei novels ARE PRODUCTS. they are not FREE CONTENT. if someone cannot afford the standee, this is the equivalent of people going “we didn’t get the standee for free because poor people don’t deserve nice things”

totally missing the point. i don’t even know how it got to this. once again, i do admit that some users were unnecessarily mean, but going to the extreme of this is ridiculous. in argumentative essay writing we call this a logical fallacy:

e.g. “if you cannot pay for merchandise or danmei, it is a fact that you might not have access to it” morphing into “if we cannot pay for food, does this mean we cannot have access to it?!” - this is a slippery slope, and factors are not equivalent!!!! do they not teach people anything in school

don’t confuse fanfiction with danmei - danmei novels ARE PAID PRODUCTS unless for free chapters, just because it’s released online doesn’t mean it’s free public property, and also selected novels (did you guys know the WHOLE of SCI novel is free? about 500 chapters sorry, random, just a tidbit)

there are of course nuances right, like if anyone told me they were pirating disney+ content i’d be like yeah hey get one over those bloodsuckers, they take enough of our money and produce shit content anyway. the difference is that danmei authors, and the danmei industry itself can still be considered a nascent and not-yet matured industry, with a majority of authors if not all, depending on monetary flow, likes, comments, virality on the sites their content is hosted on, for a living, unlike hugeass MNCs trying to squeeze us dry for content that isn’t even interesting.

danmei is priced rather reasonably - and this brings me to another argument that was made, that the value of money is not the same for everyone. i don’t want to make comments on this because yes this is correct to a large extent. a $6 book might be cheap to most of us, but might be expensive to someone else. i’m not gonna comment on how cheap or whatever it is, if you gotta use your money for other things, definitely! i still maintain however, that a novel less than a dollar should be affordable to most people, a majority of people. and i definitely side eye some users who obviously have money but are just creating noise because they wanna continue free-riding

(4) the “they’re losing out on their international audience” argument: honestly, i feel like english-speaking danmei fandom gives themselves a bit too much credit. danmei has long thrived in china in its domestic market - sure the international audience is a plus to have and i’m sure the authors are grateful and flattered that people who don’t understand chinese love their content and love it a lot, but do they and their companies care about fans who basically don’t bring in money? i’m not sure (okay i’ll get to the fan translators doing illegal shit later okay i got it don’t be impatient)

and international fans are great, i don’t deny that - but when i see arguments like “oh but it’s their loss if they don’t cater or deny access to us, they get more popularity and sharing overseas”, i honestly think they don’t care as much as you think. once again, hunxi made a really good argument regarding non-sinophone audiences, but it really irks me, because this is the same as:

an instagram influencer saying they’ll give a restaurant exposure for free to their followers, if they get a free meal

it’s par for par - danmei authors wants earnings, popularity, tangible results that show that they are succeeding. this is life. if i put something out there for sale, i better be getting returns, simple economic logic. they probably don’t care that a non-paying reader is bringing them greater ‘exposure’ - once again, i mean this objectively.

and yes if they’re thriving without the international market then why should it matter that people are pirating right? which brings me to the next point~

(5) it’s fan translators faults for so many people pirating, and fan translators are the ones doing the “illegal” work: this one is like... wow where do i unpack this and how-

firstly, we are talking about assholes who can pay but decide to free ride and not pay for danmei, and we assume that if you really cannot afford and have to pirate, no one’s saying anything as long as you don’t go around spreading how to pirate, how the hell did it get to fan translators from “you guys are anti-poor” and whatever

yes, fan translations are indeed illegal, i don’t deny that, and i also don’t deny that there are translators who translate for clout and popularity but putting these aside - here’s what i have seen from people who ran their mouths and made this argument

“if you guys care about us pirating the book so much than fan translators shouldn’t have translated in the first place” and “if you wanna come after us for reading illegally, then fan translators, you guys should go get the copyright for the book and then translate it cuz what you guys are doing is also illegal”

hooooo i’m telling ya, i am all for translators locking up their translations at this point. see how fucking hurtful that is? you eat from my hand and then now you biting at the hand that fed you the gays in love?

honestly if you’ve made this argument or supported this, you can basically go to hell. yes this is personal because what, you think fan translators don’t take out their personal time and effort and hard work to make translations accessible to you? if you’re ever consumed and read translations, don’t be a hypocrite and make this argument. you benefitted from it, now you wanna say it’s their fault?

most translators want to share and spread the love they have for a novel right, want to show you how wonderful all these authors are, how much enjoyment u get from reading these wonderfully thought out stories of gays in love. yes we all know we are illegally translating, which is why on top of sharing we first, purchase the novels legally ourselves first, and then we try to encourage people to buy etc. and actually put their money to use. it doesn’t make it any less illegal, but we are bridging the gap between danmei and basically the english-speaking fandom, albeit illegally

we aren’t that self-important to ask for gratefulness but some respect would be nice. like i said, you read it, you consumed it, you enjoyed it, you can only access it because of illegal translators - a bit counter-intuitive to yell at these translators, who are simply telling you, if you can, please support. and none of us went “if you cannot afford, begone!”

===

🔺 some people tried to help by offering jjwxc credits so people who cannot afford as they say, can get legal access: honestly, just take it right, guess what some of these users did in response

they said the people giving away credits are trying to redeem themselves for their comments by giving away free stuff

they also said that we are trying to shame the people who cannot afford it with this handout to them, to show that they are the bigger person - the fact that they think this is a handout to them is TELLING. the people offering this is giving their money not to these readers, but to the authors! that’s the point of this exercise!!!

one of them even said “instead of trying to do these giveaways, here, there are greater world problems out there, donate instead to these causes” - love the initiative, but how did we get from being able to afford danmei and entertainment content to saving the world? i just- i cannot

===

🔺 so why i get why fan translators are locking up their translations, because wow, so hurtful:

you have no idea how many fucking assholes went “sure, lock up your translations, deal with the consequences” - ermmmm firstly, thanks for making a threat. like who the fuck do you think you are?

the consequences is... the authors still don’t get the money these free riders weren’t going to give them anyway, so no loss, and they weren’t reading on jjwxc anyway so you know, the authors don’t lose or gain any readership numbers or traffic they didn’t already have. instead, it WILL push and force people to pay for the PRODUCT. once again, it’s a product.

this works, and i’d say Word of Honor’s payment model worked marvellously for Youku, because they fucking forced everyone to pay to access content. ALL OF THEM. sure ok some people still pirated it, but how many MORE people paid on Youku, on Youku Youtube, watched on Viki etc. than if they didn’t? even english-speaking fandom were wracking their brains trying to purchase a Youku pass even if there were no subs initially - and other examples that lovely hunxi brought up in her amazing piece

and for translators?! honestly me for one, i’m glad i don’t feel pressured anymore to churn out a chapter every week since we get called names etc. most of us are glad to have a break to be honest. we’ve lost all motivation to translate because it’s a free service, at the very least we don’t expect like hate, or rudeass fuckers. for those who are doing a proof of purchase thing - go for it honestly!

hopefully it’ll minimize the free rider problem - some people for whatever reasons really cannot buy or support legally, that’s totally cool and they don’t have to justify it, i get that. but for others making the same argument but obviously are just unwilling to pay because they can’t read chinese, think it’s too troublesome when there are guides and translators provide it for free anyway so what’s the point - we all make concessions and make decisions to grab what we like (not talking about the ppl who have their various troubles and difficulties!)

===

🔺 and those who are saying why is it the ‘rest of us suffer’ from locked translations just because of a few bad apples:

IT ISN’T ABOUT YOU. where the hell were all of ya when we were getting called illegal huh? it’s about us fan translators getting shot at for no reason, and then people still demanding things for free. i don’t see any of the people i’ve seen on tumblr complain about fan translators stopping or locking translations defend any of us in any way. instead, you’re complaining.

it is the translator’s prerogative to start, stop and end translations, unless of course the original author starts to sue i suppose. i see people on tumblr going like if they were gonna do this, they shouldn’t have started in the first place etc. - i don’t what world you live in, but when i do something for free, then get called names and am attacked or get dictated on how i should do something that’s already like free, i tend to be less generous.

i’m sorry, do us illegal and free translators owe ANY OF YOU? i wasn’t aware any of us were being paid for this hobby. readers, especially those who CAN and just refuse to support, don’t get to say SHIT. translators deal with so much shit and so many entitled readers, i say they get to lock whatever they want as long as they aren’t profiting off of this monetarily.

let me give you an example - nan chan, which is translated by lian yin, completed translations by the way for all chapters. it is all free for viewing, and she only locked up one extra and asked for proof of payment. some dumbfuck quotes that locked up extra chapter tweet and said “honestly, this turned me off reading this novel because they restricted access”.

the. fucking. entitlement. the whole of nan chan is free, that’s like what more than 80 chapters. she locked up the EXTRA and the money goes to the author, she doesn’t earn anything. AND HERE THAT BIJ is (yes, i’m going to call them names because you know, fucking asshole who didn’t bother to check) going “yeah i didn’t wanna read because 1/80+ chapters were locked”.

AN EXTRA. LITERALLY AN EXTRA!!!!!!

at the end of the day, translators are not like DYING to translate, not like some of you are DYING to read the translations. once again, this isn’t a “BE GRATEFUL” message, it’s a please be respectful to the people who put in time and hard work for free and share the goodness ya know? what’s the use of yelling at fan translators as if we owe you anything?

================

🔴🔴🔴 TOO LONG DIDN’T READ 🔴🔴🔴

some people may need really need to pirate - and no one needs to justify why they cannot afford to purchase etc. pirating happens all the time, translators only hope that when you can, and in whatever way you can, to support legally - in general we don’t ask and we get it! we’re just annoyed that some people think that it SHOULD BE FREE, when it is a paid product, especially for those who CAN afford it

readers are not entitled to shit on translators for what they do with their translations - once again, you’re not OBLIGATED to have it. so what if i start and stop? i’m the one doing the work, i get the only say. don’t be a hypocrite and shit on translators, whose works you’ve read - it’s no loss for translators, we read and enjoy danmei just fine

yes, fan translations are illegal, but you can’t read and enjoy them like some of you have, and then turn around and point the finger at translators - a lot of us are happy to stop translating - this isn’t a threat, but at the end of the day, shitting on translators simply decreases access, and sure, some people can indeed live with you know, MTL or shitty translations from people who’ve learnt chinese for only six months or whatever, but you’re gonna be reading an entirely different book tbh

the people saying illegal translators are at fault - funnily enough, most of them consume the translations, so what the fuck? i mean we know it’s illegal, we’re trying to share the love and trying to minimize the illegalities of it by redirecting people to hopefully support legally. it’s still illegal yes, but i think it’s hypocritical for people who have read translations, stab translators in the back. and now that translators are indeed ‘restricting’ and ‘removing’ their ‘illegal translations’, yall yelling again? and threatening?

fan translators aren’t “elitist” or “classist” - just looking for some respect in a community which seems to have taken them for granted, and also looking for support for their fave authors - and honestly a lot of us were caught in the crossfires truly, don’t be an asshole and demand things from fan translators - who are you talking about? do you know why they decided to lock? do you know know what their locking system is like and what for?

it’s not EASY to lock the translations up - it’s more admin work, it’s putting together a whitelist of people, if given the choice i’m sure translators would prefer to share everything. but not when there are assholes who have a comment on how they should translate etc. and yeah!!! calling us illegal!! i mean we are but still!!

the last straw was seeing that post on tumblr and people in the comments going like fan translators shouldn’t or should do something, without getting the whole picture, without even considering how hard it is for fan translators being caught in this situation.

whoever puts in the work gets to decide, and everyone else should leave them alone.

be nice to the people who really cannot afford as they say so (or just don’t think about it), be nice to the translators feeding you content, and the people who free ride and shit on translators - honestly, i’d say ready the pitchforks.

edit: i forgot to mention this is my hot take and i’ve tried to like present all the arguments i’ve seen so far. i’m definitely not doing all of it justice and i don’t claim to speak on behalf of any of them except maybe one or two- and i’ve definitely left out stuff, but anyway, lmao we’re just tiny people doing what we love. i wish we could solve you know inequality or poverty or hunger or other pressing concerns. if i was that great i wouldn’t be stuck on tumblr or twitter or have to make posts like these like a loser.

thanks for coming to my ted talk.

#danmei #danmei twitter #rambles #long post #literally cannot take the stupidity of some people anymore

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anti-dazai-blog · 2 years

Text

Intro part 2: Anime or Manga?

So here I am, about a week away from spring break, faced with the decision of the century: do I base my analysis of Why Dazai’s The Absolute Worst off of the anime or the manga?

After (not) much consideration, I have decided to base it off of the manga, for two reasons:

1- I don’t feel like watching the anime again. It was alright the first time but I didn’t love it enough to be worth a re-watch.

2- I don’t want to base any of this off of anything that’s “not canon”. If there’s even the slightest change between what Dazai does and says in the anime and manga, then it would ruin the authenticity of my criticism of him.

That being said, I will be using a translation that I found online (I don’t have access to the official translation). I read through a few chapters and it seems to be a good translation, but if it any point I say something that seems to be misinterpreted or mistranslated, let me know. I’m not gonna hold Dazai accountable for a translation error.

Next thing to cover here-

What about the Light Novels?

I would like to take everything possible into account when thoroughly judging just how much of an asshole this guy is. So I would like to read any Light Novels that are relevant to Dazai. I have access to google docs forms of both 15 and Stormbringer. The ones the I still need to find copies of are

-Dazai’s Entrance Exam

-Dark Era

-55 Minutes

(is Dazai in this one?)

-(?)Dead Apple(?)

is this one canon? I found conflicting posts claiming that it was written after the movie came out, and that the movie wasn’t a story made by Asagiri, so if the story didn’t originate from Asagiri himself I won’t include it in, but if it did then I will.

-The Day I Picked Up Dazai (might not read, Idk yet.)

As much as I love Oda, I cannot elaborate enough how unappealing a book with only two characters in it is for me. And as far as I’ve heard, only Oda and Dazai are in this one.

If you have digital copies of any of those that you can send to me, that would be awesome, please send me it

I will not be including Beast or Wan, since they aren’t canon.

Now all of you can eagerly wait a week until I’m done with midterms and start spring break. Until then, I won’t be making any posts for this account.

#LETS GOOOO ONLY A WEEK UNTIL I START REGULARLY MAKING DAZASI HATE POSTS

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earthbovndmisfit · 4 years

Note

I hope this isn't too weird of a message to send, but doesn't it seem like Jonawagon doujinshi are pretty uncommon? I've only seen maybe 3 posted online & I have a copy of a SpeedJona doujin but aside from those I haven't come across any. Is it like a rare pairing or something? I thought they were fairly popular

It isn’t weird at all, anon! All the opposite actually, cause I love getting asks even if i'm not always around or it sometimes takes me a hot minute to get to them gfjhkjh

This is gonna be long and probs gonna have bits that might sound rant-ish to some, but I hope that’s alright! :'D

For starters, sadly, jonawagon/jonaspeed/speedjona or however you call the ship is quite an underrated ship. This has to do partly with the wrong perceptions some folks have built around it and around the characters as well (that them both and the couple itself are the epitome of "purity" and "innocence", sometimes even labelling them as "boring" as a result even though both characters are far from that, that "it could only be a one-sided thing" on Spw's end despite both showing and sharing a certain bond/closeness towards each other -closeness that sometimes Jonathan didn't show towards anyone else-, etc), partly because of the many timeskips in PB and all the scenes the anime cut out and people wrongly assuming that the main events happened in the span of a few days and thus people dropping the ball on the ship/characters when Jonathan and Speedwagon actually knew each other for as long -sometimes even longer- than other more popular characters/ships in jjba did, partly because neither Jonathan or Speedwagon are as popular as other characters in the franchise as a whole, and also partly because, as sad as it is to say this, the ship lacks a LOT of support, especially from it's own fanbase. While jonawagon is a popular and well liked ship overall (in the sense that even general fans who don't care much about shipping, or those who are still on the fence about mlm ships, or those who just don't actively ship jonawagon actually like and support the ship or the idea of it upon seeing the actual dynamics between the characters and their potential and the fact that the ship can actually coexist with jonaeri without altering the characters/making them ooc, nor altering the story and so on), it still lacks a lot of support from it's fans. I often see most other ships/characters get lots of reblogs and exposure from their fans on literally any and all platforms, helping those ships/characters reach new audiences and gaining more popularity and drawing interest from potential new fans, while jonawagon stuff as well as solo Jonathan or Speedwagon stuff usually only get likes and a few reblogs at most from their fans, which is nice and all, but it doesn't give the artists/writers any exposure nor get those works or the ship any farther than that and just keeps them within part of the already existing fanbase at best, which often times makes the artists/content creators lose interest in continuing to create stuff for the ship/characters. This is also why I always strongly ask -almost beg at this point ngl- for people to support the artists/writers/etc via reblogs!! The ship having a bunch of different names also might have an impact on all of this, as it's not always as 'easy' to tag/find contents if you don't know how to tag/search for it. Jonawagon (normally used in the western parts of the fandom), JonaSpeed/SpeedJona (Western version of the ship's most popular names in Japanese: ジョナスピ/スピジョナ or JonaSupi/SupiJona respectively], SpeedStar (a name that became a bit more popular more recently after a mini jonawagon event in 2019), being the most common ones afaik, asides from the standard JonathanxSpeedwagon/SpeedwagonxJonathan ie and others. In short, Jonathan and Speedwagon as well as jonawagon are quite well liked and even popular to an extent, but they lack a massive amount of support from the fans, which also usually translates into artists and content creators for this ship losing interest in continuing to create new material for it and thus end up not making any more contents.

In regards to doujinshi more specifically, I’m a bit disconnected when it comes to Jojo doujinshi in general, but it seems to be a bit like that for most of the non "crazy popular" Jojo ships if you ask me, which is kinda normal considering the massive amount of characters in the whole series. Putting my experience as example, if it helps, I used to collect doujinshi from one of my previous fandoms, which had a shit ton of them for plenty of it’s ships and it was somewhat easy to acquire hard copies of despite it being an “old anime” basically while most Jojo doujinshi (especially anything that is not parts 3, 4 and 5) seems to be a bit hard to come across regardless of the ship(s) in them, even in auction sites or places like pixiv that sell digital copies if the author puts them up on sale, which is understandable since the aforementioned parts are some of the most popular parts in Japan, where most doujinshi is created, and thus take most of the fandom's interest -authors’ and readers’ alike-, as well as the hype for parts like Phantom Blood being long dead (with it being dead/dormant since the original airing of the anime ended in 2013, and it coming back ocassionally whenever there's a 'special' re-airing of PB in Japan or when events such as the Joestar Radio take place), so maybe my parameters on the whole subject are somewhat disproportionate?

This is also gonna sound all boomer-like, but I’ve also noticed, or it seems to me at least (still in comparison to the doujinshi from my previous fandom), that doujinshi books as we knew them aren’t /as/ common nowadays as they used to be a while back. Even the works themselves don’t seem to be much that way either. For example, doujinshi anthologies used to be a big thing a while back and, while they still exist, they don’t seem to be too common anymore (these worked as "promo books" of sorts for all the artists featured and they also helped lesser known/popular artists and ships to get some exposure to newer audiences). Nowadays such thing still exists, and I actually recall seeing a Jonaspeed/Speedjona anthology being made “recently” (recently as in 2019, if I’m not mistaken? it was published and sold during the mini Jonaspeed event they held at a Jojo con in Japan that year), but they aren’t nearly as common as they used to be, since now most artists can post any samples they want (much more reduced tho, cause you normally get a few pages instead of a full mini story) in places like Twitter or Pixiv. And it’s kinda the same with regular doujinshi. Before, most doujinkas had to publish a book in order to get their stuff out and get some exposure, so they were always working on new stories and making new books to sell and promoing their stuff, sometimes one after the other and even creating multi-volume stories in some cases. Now, thanks to how "easy" it is to get some exposure on social media, it’s much more common to see doujinkas for any ships/characters making short stories (1-4 pages, sometimes more) or just 1 page illustrations instead and posting them on their social media every now and then as a promo for their works. They also still make and sell their books (a few jonawagon artists on twitter do, at least), and these short stories/illustrations serve to boost their works instead, which is not a complain at all cause I think it's amazing tbqh! But this also translates into less stories/doujinshi being created as many of these artists often opt for leaving those stories that years ago would have been their own book or a mini story in a book as a prompt or a short story only.

As for actual jonawagon doujinshi, while it is not as common as say pt 3 doujinshi, there is quite a bunch of it. Some date from 2012-2013 (when the PB anime was originally aired), some are much older than that and some others are much more recent (as there are still some active jonawagon doujinkas around). There are also "fanfic books" that are also considered doujinshi and that seem to be a thing sometimes, but these contain little to no art at all and are usually written 100% in Japanese. The problem here is that not many of them have been scanlated/translated yet, sometimes because they aren't easy to find on sale online, sometimes because re-sellers who do have them set high prices for them plus shipping costs, sometimes because the artists/online shops won't sell stuff overseas, sometimes because those who do own doujinshi copies don't always know how to properly share them (since scanning a doujinshi in high or decent quality without destroying the book can be hard af) among other reasons.

All that said, there is a bunch of jonawagon doujinshi that has been scanned and is available online! but it can be tricky to get sometimes due to the different names this ship can go by and because of the "translations" of said names into different languages (as some doujinshi can only be found in Chinese sites, or Russian ones, and so on for example, so it can take some serious time to figure that out and have a successful search).

In all honesty, anon, I'm a dumdum and I had never thought about doing so in a more public manner until now, since I've already shared my entire jonawagon collection (pics, doujins, etc) with friends who have requested it more privately, but I can upload the doujins I have scans of if anyone's interested?? (I’d post the links where I found most of them but since my hd is pretty much dead and I can’t access Windows or my windows/mozilla profile, I’ve p much lost all my old bookmarks). They were only like... 8 last time I checked (9/10 if you count the Japanese and English versions of the "Joestarsaaaaan" one), but it's something :D Just be aware that some of them are nsfw! and that a couple are either part of a book that has stories from other ships in them (I only have the jonawagon parts tho) or contain other ships implied or openly shown in the jonawagon story.

I also have about 4 more, but the scanlator of one of them openly requested for the file to not be reuploaded, so Idk if it'd be alright to share it? (and they also deactivated their blog, so there's no way to ask them for permission). The other 3 are scans a friend sent to me of their own doujinshi copies, so I also don't know if it would be okay for me to post them?? (i haven't seen this friend in over a year so idk gfhgjkjlkñ). 2 of those 3 are nsfw.

#long post #super long actually oof #sorry about that #i tried to make this shorter #i swear #orz #anonymous

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after-lauhgter · 4 years

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Hey dude, I really like your music taste so do all the music questions that you didn't already answer 🌚

OK DUDE HERE THEY COME (except 1,6 & 14) ... ok lets do number 1 again What's a song you've been listening to a lot lately? as the world caves in by Matt Maltese, if I get high by nothing but thieves, and literally anything off waterparks’ new live album, that thing makes me feel so ALIVE bc like LIVE MUSIC Is there an album you recently discovered and are obsessed with it now? well waterparks live in the uk obviously but if the last 6 months count as recently, then the new abnormal by the strokes. its... absolutely breathtaking. I don't have words. 0 words. except these dudes know what the fuck they’re doing. and then I found the devil and god are raging inside me by brand new and jeeesus. literally Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ was my most played song in 2020 AS IT SHOULD BE bc its EVERYTHING this album is THE SHIT. every song is just *chef kiss* like there's limousine (omg limousine) and you won't know and not the sun and AHH listen to these albums omg Put your playlist on shuffle and show the first 10 songs. No cheating. i assume “your playlist” means all my saved songs so Topography by Civilian (pls go listen its SO great) Na Na Na by mcr yees issa classic Du schreibst Geschichte by Madsen omg geeerman just saying by EDEN (pretty pretty pretty) Westerland von den Ärzten another classic letdown by nothing,nowhere. sad but the good kind of sad The Man by the killers making fun of toxic masculinity gives me LIFE Graffiti by CHVRCHES YES and death stranding by CHVRCHES too YES SO GOOD simmer by Hayley Williams, a queen How do you tend to discover new music? If you do at all of course I do enjoy what Spotify suggests, like my weekly mix brought a lot of bops in the past, although sometimes it just sucks lets be real. I also like the artist- or album-radio, when I wanna find something similar to an album but not the album. and another thing I lovvve is when artists I like recommend music, for example, have you seen dallon weekes instagram stories? THE TASTE? bc yes, someone who writes music like that MUST have a superior taste in music and he fucking does.

What app do you mostly use to listen to music? Spotify :) Is there an artist that you feel ashamed of listening too? I can't think of anyone so probably not What is your favorite album cover art? omg. I have to go with more than one. so there's where the mind wants to go/where you let it go by I the mighty, one of my favorite albums of all time, and I'm going to say it how it is, I LIKE THE COLORS. the blue-ish imagine with the red omg. look at it pls. Also fandom by waterparks looks SO COOL. again the COLORS and I love the art for Isola by Kent. I recently discovered you wouldn't believe what privilege costs by civilian and I think that cover is pretty cool too. well and then there's petals for armor by Hayley Williams, the cover art is so fucking powerful Jesus I get goosebumps just thinking about it. in case you don't know about it, long story short: there's been a lot of shit going on in Hayleys life in the past. relatable imo. then they made after laughter and its been like u know what fuck it we’ll just laugh and dance through the pain. together. and I LOVED the vibe omg it gave me so much. but for Hayley it kinda postponed REALLY dealing with shit. she came home from touring with AL and she also got divorced during the AL era and everything's shit and out of all that came petals for armor. and in it she reclaims femininity, being alone, being powerful, being a women, everything. and ah yeah we were talking about the cover art, the cover is her, having a line of squares on her face, three of these squares are tattooed on her fingers though bc its where her ex husbands initials used to be that she got covered up. WHAT A MOVE. THE POWER. (if anyone is interested in hearing Hayley talking about/explaining all this, I really recommend watching her interview with zane Lowe. its SO GOOD basically free therapy) How much did your parents influence your music taste? a. lot. my dad listened to a lot of “dad rock” you may call it, I guess a lot of dads listened to stuff similar to this. Deep Purple, the police, simple minds, Green Day, Billy Talent, the scorpions and things like that. what influenced me the most tho was the beatsteaks (german band, very good), die Ärzte (german band, very good) and LAST BUT NOT LEAST the fricking blues brothers. my favorite movie (not the 2000 remake, go watch that in hell where it belongs), a great, charismatic band, unbelievable live performances. very big WOW from me. Do you own any vinyl? don't get me started omg. I DO. I wish I could take a photo but my records are at my parents house so ill just name my favorites. -after laughter and brand new eyes by paramore -violent things by the brobecks and their song boring on 7inch (this is very rare ok) -razzzzmatazzz by idkhow in gold :) -may death never stop you by mcr (my first one, I bought it first and then bought a record player for it, that's how it started lol) -omg the black parade is dead by mcr, this was never available on vinyl until record store day 2019 (?) and I hunted that bitch like idek what it was insane but I found a super cute small record store and the owner didn't have copies of it bc NOBODY DID but he fucking CALLED THE LABEL even though it was way too late and he asked if they'd send him a copy and THEY DID I FUCKING OWE THIS MAN -and omg Isola by Kent (in Swedish tho bc the English version was never pressed on vinyl) this was intense. I searched for like 2 weeks and then, on google results page 8 or something, I found what could've been the only copy on the damn internet and it was very expensive but its MINE NOW -my signed vertigo vinyl by EDEN, its clear and on side D it doesn't have music but a little message engraved it the vinyl IT IS CUTe -Placebos MTV unplugged! I am so I love with this album. SO. in love. and one day, when I was in Berlin to see palaye royale, back when we had concerts, I walked by a random record store and they have like 4 records left bc they were closing or idk and the only one displayed in the window was this one. tell me about FATE Do you own any cds? not many. sometimes when im at the store and I see ones I know or like, I just buy them and put them in me moms car bc I want her to listen to them. or when I find a cd by a smaller artist I enjoy, I buy it just to push the nachfrage. HI i am HERE and I WANT this music Is vinyl really better than listening on a digital device? im not gonna be that middle aged white male audiophile that hates on our generation for using Spotify. bc its great. I think its just different. I mean im sorry I don't carry my record player on the bus with me, pls forgive me for using my phone? having immediate access to most of the music that is out there? wow. what a concept. I love the internet. YES TECHNOLOGY. but. vinyls are... different. I feel likes its a different kind of listening. I feel like youre rly LISTENING. and that way isn't better, or right, and im not saying it works like this for everyone. but when I put a record on, my only activity at that moment is listening to music, I sit down and I listen. to the entire album. so skips and no pauses, bc that's how it works. and I think that sometimes, that can do a lot for you. if you let it. and besides that, physically owning a record makes me happy on a level nothing else really does. fuck I love music so much and when I fall in love with it, I fall hard. and then owning a copy of it, something I can touch, something that is MINE, putting it in my little shelf, looking at it every few days and just being in love? fantastic feeling. What is a genre of music that you tend to go to for comfort? sad shit. I feel like I can get great comfort from the sad shit. or maybe just slow shit. and songs that mean a lot to me and have been around me for some time, they have this other level of comfort. like for Emma, forever ago by bon iver for example. I have a playlist, maybe I'll reblog this again and link it ;) Do you tend to like poppy upbeat songs, or more intricate and interesting songs? both. sometimes I wanna have complicated stuff and analyze the shit out of lyrics and instrumentation, sometimes I just wanna v i b e If you have a favorite band or artist, tell us about how you got into them I liked paramore before but when they posted the video of them performing last hope at reading? it was over. when Hayley sang the bridge it was over. now im a die hard fan and I never looked back Is there a song that came out this year that you like? maybe after reading all this shit you expected a list but somehow I can't. where do u even start. but the answer is definitely yes. THANK YOU FOR REQUESTING I COULD GO ON FOR DAYS

#asks #music #i guess #not me putting I guess after my tags all the time #I like guessing #questioning everything is a lifestyle

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halberdierminister · 4 years

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July Monthly Goals Check-In

1. Write 250 Words Each Day Well, I started out very faithful to this. But sometime around the middle of the month, I got pretty choppy. I honestly don't know exactly how many days I skipped. I'm gonna try to write a fair amount today when I can and hope that it is enough to make up for it. Which is fine. It has been an otherwise very productive month in many other ways, so I cannot be too upset about it. I may start running a wordpress blog with a friend of mine, and if I do that may keep me more on track with these.. We shall see. We shall see.

2. Read 55 Books This Year I finished reading 55 books in May! Last month I read 10 more books. THIS month, however… I read 31 books. That brings me to a total of 97 books read for the year!!! A lot of them have been VERY short books. Lots of poetry collections, manga volumes, graphic novels, etc etc etc. But not exclusively!! I was hoping to get to 100 books by the time I wrote this but the last couple days, I have not been able to make the magic happen. But that's fine! That's TOTALLY FINE. This will be a very significant get, but I have months to get over that hump. By the time you hear from me on this goals check-in next month, I will undoubtedly be decently well over 100 books, and I can talk about why that personally feels so good then!

3. Get A Full Time Job I did not get a full time job this month. BUT. I applied to 38 full time jobs. Got a bunch of rejections. HOWEVER, I have scheduled EXACTLY ONE JOB INTERVIEW so far so that is good news! And that would be a VERY good job if I were to get it! Some of these jobs are actually pretty exciting things and I feel confident for the first time in a while that I might actually find a good job IN MY CAREER PLAN!!!! Also I almost lost my part time job but the library director was able to convince the village to let me stay on as a substitute, and it has paid off surprisingly well. I've been working two to three shifts a week on that, which is more than any of us expected. So I guess what I'm saying is I am making good progress again and I hope I can have something positive to report by the time I'm thirty. Eugh.

4. Move Out Speaking of being almost thirty. I really do not want to be here. If I get the job I interview for, I would be able to move in with my friends in Milwaukee just about as soon as possible. So that is good news. Every day it gets more tempting to just say "screw it" and live down there. But that won't help me find a job. And the job really is the important thing.

5. Drink Less Soda I mean yeah. Occasionally, I drink-a the soda. But not too much. I am good at drinking less soda than I did last year or the years before that. That's because I would have several sodas each day, to the point where it worried some of the people I know.

6. Get Something Published Just found out that I'm getting something else published today! So that is one new poem published this month! I also had my fic in the Lalonde Zine come out, but it turns out that the Lalonde Zine was more of a shared Google Drive folder than an actual zine. Maybe I should offer to compile the zine into one document? I should do that. That would be a good thing to do and it would give me a lot of experience with doing that, something I haven't really done in a while. So the practice would do me good! And then I would feel better saying that I got published there too. But yes so besides the Lalonde fic, I have had two poems published in zines, one poem published in an online literary journal, and one fic published in an online fanzine this year! If you include the articles I wrote for school newspapers, I have gotten at least one thing published every year for the past fifteen years. If you don't count the articles (or the Lalonde fic yet), I have had 30 pieces of fiction and poetry published since 2005! That's pretty neat! I want even more though!!!!!! I found a publisher's website that accepts unsolicited manuscripts. I'm going to try to put together an honest to god actual collection of my poetry, one bigger than either of the two digital chapbooks I have made. I have a friend who is a professional editor -- not of poetry, mind you, but I might be able to convince her to give it a shot -- and I would honestly hire her at full price to take a look at it. I actually will need to seek a lot of feedback from a lot of people, so if you want to read a document full of a bunch of my poetry, lemme know and I will show you what I've got when I've got something.

7. Finish Writing A Legitimate Businessman Finished in April! No new news. But just because I completed this goal doesn't mean that is the end of it! I do still have the sequel to work on, even though I haven't done any of that this month. And one of these days I am going to get around to sitting down with the printed copy and a pen and editing the shit out of it so that I can write draft #2! I think I'll probably throw draft #2 up on wattpad (why not?? I've been curious about that website and know absolutely nothing about it) and maybe I'll make a nice looking e-book out of it that I can distribute on noisetrade or itchio or something! I wonder if I could get it printed on demand or something. Obviously not for profit. But like, maybe I have friends I want to send a nice printed copy to.

8. Write More The Revelation of Takaya According to Jin Finished in Februrary! No new news. A friend of mine has offered to bind a copy of it when he has access to the materials, and I think that'd be dope as hell. I ought to work on compiling it into a nice document. I don't know if that's what he would need. He would probably want to do that work himself. Sometimes I think about the concept of making an illustration for it? I don't know. I can't draw. But I might not need to draw for the thing I have in mind. Really I should be consulting with him on that. Ah well. Either way, I hope that ends up happening. That would be so friggin cool.

MINOR GOALS

9. Finish Playthroughs Of 1. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild: Finished in January! 2. Persona 1 Main Quest Good Ending: I didn't do anything on this whooooops. Getting into the second half of the year without once having touched it. I ought to get back to this. 3. Pokemon Sword: Finished in March! 4. Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Finished in February and March! 5. Persona Q2: I have finished the fourth dungeon and gotten to The Twist!!! It's weak. This really is the kids' version of a Persona game. Minus like… the fact that it's still rated M for partial nudity. There was exactly one moment of horror and even that was like… just a bit scarier than The Nightmare Before Christmas. But I did some of the side quests and those are actually decently fun. So I have the final dungeon left. I just wanna sort of power through this. I'll worry about completion when I do new game plus, whenever that might be.

10. Record More Ukulele Videos I did not do this. I want a new microphone. These are not inherently related things, as I do have a microphone already. I have everything I need to do this. I just haven't done this. And I would like a new microphone. Also, an amp for the uke would be nice. I should text my old coworker, see if he still has one to sell.

11. Record Let's Plays Neither did I do this. How could I? My parents think video gaming is the Devil's Lettuce. And they are always home. They would notice if they heard me talking to my computer. And that is assuming that I had something I could play on my computer that anyone would want to watch. I need a better computer. A gaming computer. An editing computer. I'm lucky that these are the same thing.

12. Duolingo? I was SUPER gung ho in the end of June and the beginning of July, but before too long I petered out. I've used a couple streak freezes and have really been doing mostly the bare minimum to not drop out of the emerald league. But I've got a streak of about 208 days, and that is nothing to sneeze at! Do I feel like I'm learning? I dunno. But I am at least interacting with Spanish just about every day so that… that's got to be helpful, right? right?

This was over one thousand five hundred words. Wait! Sixteen hundred exactly.

#goals #new years goals #monthly goals #monthly goals check in #check in #goals check in

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shanced-wedding-blog · 5 years

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Special Update

Hello everyone, this is Mod Sky

Just wanted to address some issues and concerns that have arisen in regards to the zine as of late and to finally clarify what has been going on regarding production of the zine.

First I would like to address a recent comment we received on one of the last updates. While I understand that it has been quite a while since the zine opened pre orders and some of you are reasonably becoming frustrated with the waiting time, cussing us out and using vulgar language to address your issues with us is in no way an acceptable form of proceeding.

That said, I would like to apologize for making you feel like we’re not prioritizing the zine buyers here.

Now, the rest of the mods and myself weren’t planning on making this public at least until the zines had been out to the buyers, but we’ve talked and come to realize that it is probably for the best that everyone knows what’s been going on behind the scenes of this project.

As most of you know, when we started this project there was a call from the head organizer for mods. I don’t know about the other mods, but I personally talked to the head organizer a few times inquiring about the zine, what their ideas for the project were and of their experience with running a zine. They assured me they knew what they were doing and already had a plan laid out for how to get the project done. They told me they had experience modding other zines and I decided to trust them. I applied to help mod the zine because I wanted Shance fandom to have a beautiful zine we all could be proud of, because most of the Shance projects I had been involved in in the past had fallen through the cracks due to mod irresponsibility. I wanted to help bring this project to life and do everything I could to make it succeed. It’s what I’ve been doing from the start.

Well, the mod team was chosen and from the start we were pretty much given a role in the team. My role, when the time came, was to be in charge of finances of the zine, whatever that entailed. The head organizer gave all of us certain responsibilities and we all met in discord to discuss the project.

Now. Im not going to make any excuses for myself as I should have known better, but almost from the moment we started talking about actual specs of the zine and what extra things we wanted to offer, it should've been clear to me that the head organizer wanted to do too much.

They wanted to have 60+ contributors, they wanted to have music done for the zine, they wanted a lot of extra merch to go with bundles etc. At the time this was going on I was in the middle of producing my own personal zine, so I'm ashamed to say I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the planning of this zine, and not gonna lie, this is one of the things that’s ended up coming to bite me and the rest of the mod team in the ass.

Well, in the end head mod came with a plan, they apparently already had suppliers in mind and had been doing research on where to have things made and how much it would cost. We went along with it and contributor applications opened. The process seemed to be going smooth, we selected contributors and at the time I didn't realize just how big of an undertaking it would be to have so many contributors, I had my concerns with certain aspects of the zine but I felt like it wasn’t my place to say anything because it wasn’t my project and my role in the zine was to oversee the money once pre orders opened.

Creation time went by and everyone was involved, contributors did an amazing job coming up with stories and art that basically molded the zine into a cohesive book. As we got closer to opening pre orders and putting together the zine for printing, that's when problems started to show, beginning with the fact that the head organizer became scarcer and scarcer and the rest of the mod team were left grasping at straws trying to answer questions the contributors had that only the head mod could give an answer to. The excuse was that they were having computer problems so they couldn’t check in on things as much. This was the first red flag and we should’ve paid more attention, but we didn’t. We continued to move on and soon it was time for preorders to open.

Yaxi, the head organizer, opened pre orders prior to us having the zine even 1% put together. They made up some stretch goals trying to fit in as much as the extra merch they had people design for the zine as possible and added the contributor merch as an extra that zine contributors could choose to buy. The contributor charm was not going to be made from money from the zine sales. It was simply an extra design up to the contributors to make happen if they wanted it.

After the pre order period ended and having reached 100 sales, it was time to come up with a budget and proceed with production. Well… this was when pretty much everything went downhill. Yaxi came into the mod chat one day and pretty much dumped the production on me. They sent me some numbers and a list of providers they had come up with and said that they needed me to place the orders for the merch, of which there were no files ready. We had raw files for products but nothing has been checked to make sure the specs for printing were correct. As I was coming up with a production cost table I realized that there were many things Yaxi hadn’t taking into consideration when they first made their plan for the zine. They never took into consideration shipping prices, packaging costs, contributor copies shipping fees, and to make matters worse, they didn't take into consideration the amount of money it would take for certain items to be shipped from their production place to two separate destinations, because somewhere along the way Yaxi had decided that in order to offer cheaper international shipping, we would have all the international orders sent to Mod Robin in Europe so they could then redistribute because that would make shipping internationally cheaper.

I mean, i guess in theory that sounded like solid logic, but in practice.. I suppose they never stopped to think that there would still be an added cost of sending all those packages from the US to Europe, so there’s that.

Anyway I did my best to look for new manufactures because the ones Yaxi had on their list could not deliver what we needed, not to mention the fact that the specs Yaxi had given artists of the zine for their pieces were not a standard printing zine. So not only did we have to look for new printing companies, but we had to ask all our artist to adjust their pieces to fit the new dimensions of the zine. Added to that, at this point in time, communication with Yaxi had pretty much become impossible as they were never on the discord server and the only communication we had with them was via text messages from me to them since I had gotten her phone number at some point to meet up so I could deliver to them the special print I had made out of my own money for the zine. We ended up never meeting up.

So with all that going on, we still had not made much progress putting the zine together until Seki (one of our contributors) offered to help with it. We brough Seki along into the team and they worked several days on getting the zine print ready, and also making a digital zine that could be delivered the way Yaxi had originally wanted it to, that is with the music that was created for the zine incorporated into it.

While this was happening, the rest of the mod team and myself got together in a separate group chat to talk about what was to be done about Yaxi, their lack of participation, and the fact that they were the only ones that had access to the money for the zine and to the store front. We decided to ask Yaxi to hand over the money so we could move on with production and just go from there. Thankfully Yaxi was quick to give us access to the funds, they transferred most of the money to me, (we have yet to receive about 200.00USD), and basically the rest most of you already know. We’ve been slowly working on getting all the merch produced and ready to send to everyone, but there have been a few hiccups on the way.

We’re still not sure that we’re not going to have to put even more of our own money into the zine as we’re still pretty much figuring out what we’re going to do about shipping since not only are we sending contributor copies free of charge, but also sending all international orders to Europe first to be distributed from there.

It has never been our intention to keep any of you in the dark about any of this, but we wanted to first get the project completed before making any of this public. None of us in the mod team wanted for you to have to wait so long, unfortunately none of us were any wiser in realizing just how unprepared and irresponsible the main organizer really was. We are to blame for not seeing the red flags sooner and dealing with the issues before they became a problem. I especially would like to apologize because I should’ve known better. But what’s done is done and the only thing I can say besides how sorry I am that you, our buyers and supporters, have had to wait so long for this zine, is that myself and the rest of the mod team are doing everything we can to get this zine to your hands without any further mishaps.

I understand if you're frustrated with us, I understand because I’ve been frustrated and stressed over this whole thing for months as well.

None of us are getting paid for this, none of us are receiving any compensation out of trying to run and complete this project. In fact, we’re still most likely gonna have to put money down out of our own pockets due to the irresponsibility of the person who was supposed to be in charge of this project. But we love this project, we love our contributors and what everyone has managed to accomplish, and you can be certain that we are 100% committed to seeing this project to a successful end.

Once again, I am sorry for not seeing the problems sooner and for not stepping forward before to let all of you know what was happening. I hope this clarifies what’s been going on for you and I hope that you can give us the chance to set things straight and deliver the project to you.

If you have any more questions, or need more clarification regarding the zine, my DMs on twitter are always open (@enderkichi) so feel free to reach out to me.

Production of the zine is still ongoing but we’re almost at completion. We should be releasing a change of address form pretty soon for those who need to change their shipping address. Refunds are also an option if you no longer want to support the project, but we ask that you please let us know if you want to be refunded via email to the zine account: [email protected] and provide us with your name, email, and order # so we can process your refund.

Thank you again for the endless patience you’ve had with us so far and for being understanding of our circumstances. We will keep you all updated as we finalize production and get ready to start packing and shipping orders.

Mod Sky

#update #PSA #shance wedding zine #vld zine

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sturlsons · 5 years

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french in 1.5 years anon

Kinda random but I just found out that I’ll be required to be intermediate/advanced in French by the next 1.5 years; ALL I KNOW IS THAT MEIRDE IS A BAD BAD WORD! Idk if you’re a native speaker but I was wondering if you could provide me of any good French language resources (or language in general since I’ll be needing to learn Arabic soon as well), and like tips for language learning and how to go about it? Sorry to bother you haha this is MY stress but I appreciate any help! Have a great day!

HEY. so i really fucking dropped the ball on this one, i’m sorry. 2019 has been one health fiasco after another (or more like the same fiasco again and again) and i kept telling myself i want to sit down and make a proper post for this, until i realised that that’s just never going to happen given the way things are rn. and i’d rather give you a quickly-written post which is actually helpful than never write that perfect bullet-pointed one.

first of all, i’ve been in your EXACT position (so no, i’m not a native speaker) except i had about...six months to go from je m’appelle teesta to voyez-vous, le problème qui se cache derrière tout ça n’est pas le manque de respect mais la personne dont il s’agit or whatever. i was like, i can so do this. (spoiler: i didn’t, because i was 18 and overconfident and stupid and didn’t actually know how to learn a language.) GOOD NEWS: having learned 3 more foreign languages since then, i am now REALLY GOOD at learning languages REALLY FAST. 1.5 years is a good amount of time, so don’t stress.

i’m going to go generic on this, with some extra tips about french since i speak it, unlike arabic.

first thing, that typical thing everyone hates to hear but knows is coming from the mouth of an accomplished person (pat on my back) in any field whatsoever: you’re going to have to work really hard and practice like fuck.

there’s just nothing else that can replace it. i’ve filled up notebooks and notebooks with japanese verb conjugations, once i did like 1800 of them in one sitting. but you better believe that a bitch will never forget those now. resign yourself to putting in at least three hours of your day to this until you get to the level you need. (and three hours is...kind. at my peak i was literally reading through french dictionaries at the library, 10 AM - 8 PM. i treated it like a workday.)

now, what you need to establish is: are you a hands-on learner or a digital one.

i don’t really care for all the auditory learner and visual learner stuff, i don’t know about anyone else but i personally used those as excuses to avoid certain exercises. unless you have actual disabilities preventing you from accessing certain methods of learning, you can train yourself into anything. it’s a matter of practice. i could barely understand a new song without reading its lyrics first, now i eat up podcasts.

SO. the question here is different. a hands-on learner, like i used to be more or less throughout my bachelor’s, is someone who absolutely cannot retain information unless they’ve written it down BY HAND at least once. pen and paper. (i’m still like this but i’ve learned to combine it with digital methods to go faster.) if this isn’t a hurdle for you, congratulations. your process is going to go that much faster, at least for french. (you’ll have to spend hours practicing your written arabic however, if you’re not familiar with the script.)

now, if you’re a hands-on learner, you need to add an extra hour to your daily time. no matter how fast you write, you will take that time. and you cannot shorthand your way into languages. you need to understand how french is spelt, what accents it uses, that they put a space before exclamation points, question marks, and semicolons. (side tip: learn the IPA. it will be useful to you forever in language learning, at least for the romance languages.) i’m not gonna teach you how to make notes since i’ve never benefitted from copying someone else’s style, so if you don’t have a set method start establishing that. you need regularity and rhythm when you learn a language. my grammar notes look the same regardless of the language. i don’t have my french ones since it’s been years and i didn’t take good ones then anyway, but here’s my japanese and russian stuff.

JAPANESE NOTES // RUSSIAN NOTES

now, it bears mentioning that these notes are NOT the notes i take when i don’t know shit. these are final level notes. they’re brief, idiosyncratic, and only reminders. something to refer to when i’m revising and suddenly forget a rule. the first notes i make are much more elaborate, whether they’re pretty or not. i’ve gradually lost the fucks i had about really going ham on academics so my russian notes are very messy, but my japanese ones from back in the day are magnificent. here’s a look. during lesson one i realised that japanese and my mother tongue, gujarati, are syntaxically similar as shit, and i started taking notes with references in gujarati. it sped up my learning process 2x while my french classmates were still going “BUT WHY IS IT LIKE THAT”.

PRACTICAL GRAMMAR // THEORETICAL GRAMMAR

if you plan to learn more languages in the future, this will be so valuable. sometimes a phrase i learn in russian doesn’t make sense in its french explanation, but a phrase in english might use the same logic. bam, put down the translation in english then. you get what i’m saying? the more languages you learn, the easier it gets to learn languages.

now if you’re a digital learner, i’ve got great news for you. duolingo and anki are your best friends. duolingo’s memed to hell and has a system that might not work for everyone, but they’ll do the brunt work of compiling grammar notes for you in the beginnings/ends of their lessons. note those down and transform them into anki flashcards, and you can learn grammar concepts without doing 20 exercises. (do those exercises if you can, though, nothing beats mindless practice.) now anki is an intimidating-looking but actually super intuitive app that basically builds digital flashcards for you and shows them to you in a rhythm based on your own learning speed. it’ll show you the front of a card, let’s say merde. you say the english translation out loud, shit, and hit enter. correct! was that easy? anki’ll show it to you in 10 minutes. hard? it’ll show you in 1 minute. super easy? merde won’t come up again until tomorrow. eventually you get so good at it that you can bury a card for 2 months. anki will also show you the same cards reversed, which is harder but trains you better. you’ll see shit and have to remember what it’s called in french, which is more difficult than you’d think it is.

you can use anki for more than just vocab, like i mentioned. it’s a little tricky learning to convert grammar concepts into front/back flashcards, but you can do it. for example, here’s a sample of one of my russian grammar cards:

front ^^

back once i hit enter^^

see? not that difficult. now don’t be an idiot like me who manually entered every single flashcard into anki. you can find pre-made packages online (but you can’t guarantee they’ll be correct) or you can make your own without killing your fingers. what you wanna do is open up a spreadsheet and make two columns, A for front of the card and B for back. it’ll look like this:

then you’re gonna save that spreadsheet as a .CVS (comma separated values) and import that into anki. bam, your flashcards are made for you with half the effort. there’s also a script floating around somewhere to make excel translate words automatically for you, but i don’t recommend that unless they’re really easy words. google translate can fuck up. reverso is your friend.

you need to review your anki cards every day. it’ll take less and less time as you go along. i can review 300 russian cards in 15 minutes now. but you need to keep the rhythm going. download ankiapp and sync your cards, review them on commutes or in the hallway or whatever. trust me, it’s magic.

apart from this, if a traditional textbook helps, go for that. i’ve always used textbooks and workbooks, more as supports than as principal methods, but it does help. it’s structured and organised and these people know how to train you. bescherelle is a good go-to for french.

media is always a great way of immersion too, until you get to the country itself. it’ll show you how french people speak french. when i first came to france i didn’t have that experience and even though i spoke an arguably decent amount of french when i got here, it was like, if this is french then what the fuck was i learning in high school. if you like watching movies this is your chance. watch the classics first so that you can get an idea of french pop culture. amélie (though the pop culture aspect here is about shitting on it) and les intouchables, for starters. watch your favourite films, first subbed, then subbed and dubbed, then just dubbed. i watched all ten seasons of friends with french subs, it was wild. with music you want to start off with some indie-ish singers since they will universally sing softer and slower, making things easier to understand than idk, la tribu de dana. (if you’re into bts there’s a hilarious video of their baepsae choreo set to la tribu de dana.) anyway - angèle, cœur de pirate, céline dion, fréro delavega, uhhh that fucking french sufjan stevens. what’s his name. VIANNEY. don’t fucking listen to biglo and oli or like, fatal bazooka right away. you will not understand shit. i barely understand it. white people are wild. ooh listen to stromae. orelsan too, he’s a rapper but he has a relatively clean diction imo. he also sang the french opening for OPM. they call him orelsan-san in japan.

last but not the least: if you have the opportunity to interact in french with people, DO IT. native speakers will do their best to help you and be kind about it. people who learned french might sometimes be assholes from experience. it’s a whole superiority complex thing, and very hypocritical. anyway - online or IRL, wherever you can practice your french, do it. it’ll be immensely helpful. there’s nothing like the frustration of not being able to express simple things to get you motivated to get better. do your best to immerse yourself - changing the language on your devices can make a difference too.

i think that’s all i have and again, i’m sorry for taking this long to finally deliver, thanks for your patience! if you have any specific questions don’t hesitate to hit me up, on anon or not.

good luck - it’s not going to be the easiest but nothing is as gratifying as beginning to understand the workings of a language. you’re gonna love it!

#teesta talks for ts #uni tag #anons #replies

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nightqueendany · 6 years

Text

That Vanity Fair Article

You all know the one....

Now, ever since this article came out earlier today, I’ve seen all number of reactions to it and of course did a bit of gloating this morning. However, OF COURSE there are some in the fandom who shall not be named - COUGHJONSASCOUGH - who STILL think this is all fake.

They believe that Vanity Fair found some Jonerys fanfiction and “thought” it was a real script and so wrote an entire fucking article about it - I guess the Jonsas think this was done without checking sources - and so it MUST be fake. Because, as per this article, DarkSansa is TOTALLY a thing AND Jon loving Daenerys is EXPLICITLY stated for all the world to see.

So, you know, if it doesn’t mention “Dark Dany” or “Jonsa” it’s “fakenews”.

However, I’m sorry to say - no, wait, actually I’m fucking ECSTATIC to say because I made this entire blog because of these fucking hater idiots who just can’t accept the TRUTH - that THIS IS ALL REAL.

Now, how do I KNOW this is all real and Vanity Fair didn’t fuck up and just quote a bunch of fanfiction they found somewhere?

Well, aside from the fact that Vanity Fair is an INTERNATIONALLY REPUTABLE PUBLICATION and OF COURSE they wouldn’t post anything quoting a printed, written source unless it was actually true...

The author of the article states that the quotes featured come DIRECTLY FROM THE SCRIPTS.

Now, the question is, where did they get the scripts because you can’t find shit online.

Well, there’s a fucking reason for that:

These scripts are archived in the WRITERS GUILD FOUNDATION library in Los Angeles, California.

You cannot get copies of them, it is not a lending library so you can’t take scripts home, and there aren’t digital copies (at least not ones available to the public; I think it’s possible to get digital copies of things for educational purposes but not sure).

HOWEVER, the library is open to the public, as stated above in the Vanity Fair article and on the Writer’s Guild Foundation website:

“All scripts must be read on site.”

So, as stated in the Vanity Fair article, HBO has made the scripts of previous seasons available for some time at the WGF Library. People have been able to go in there and access them for years but, likely because you have to be there to read them, not many people would ever bother to do so.

But that’s JUST what the people at Vanity Fair did. The author and probably an assistant or two “poured over them for hours” at the WGF Library and clearly took notes (I guess you can’t take photos of the scripts...? The website says you can bring laptops and phones into the library but it’s not stated whether photography is allowed).

SO FOR THE LAST GODDAMN FUCKING TIME:

JONSA IS OVER!!!!!!

POLITICAL JON IS OVER!!!!!!!

JON LOVES DAENERYS!!!!!!!!!

DAENERYS IS THE YOUNGER MORE BEAUTIFUL QUEEN.

DARK SANSA IS CANON!!!!

AND DAVOS TOTALLY HAS A CRUSH ON MISSANDEI!!!!! (lol)

Oh yeah and to those Jonsa shippers who also claim Kit not knowing when Jon and Dany first start to fall for each other, etc. because of the 7x07 commentary, I touch on that HERE. Essentially: 1) the commentary was recorded like, over a YEAR after it was all filmed, 2) Lena can’t even remember her own lines let alone directional lines in between dialogue, as Kit says “bullshit bullshit bullshit, my line, bullshit bullshit” because the actors barely read the scripts unless it is their line, and 3) everything is filmed out of sync so of course the whole process is difficult to remember anyway, let alone the specific moment Jon and Dany fall in love because it was all filmed out of order.

ALSO to those Jonsa shippers that say “this directly contradicts what Benioff and Weiss say about Jon in 7x06 in the Inside the Episode when Jon apparently notices Dany falling in love with him but Jon not falling in love with her blah blah blah” - stop being so fucking purposefully dense. You know what Weiss and Benioff said. You know it. You heard it. You’re just trying to make it seem like that’s not what they meant. But they did.

“I don’t think EITHER ONE of THEM really knew exactly how powerful THEIR feelings were TOWARDS EACH OTHER until these moments.”

So that makes it pretty fucking clear the FEELINGS are for EACH OTHER, not just “Jon notices Dany’s feelings for him.” - Nuh uh dumb nuts. That’s not at all what Benioff said. He said TOWARDS EACH OTHER. As in, BOTH OF THEM.

“Just the notion of falling for someone, that involves weakness. That’s not something a queen does. But SHE feels that happening AND HE feels that happening FOR HER.”

If we’re gonna do the “Jonsa” thing, let’s compare speech patterns:

“She FEELS [that happening] AND

He FEELS [that happening] FOR HER.”

What is the “that” that’s happening? “Falling.”

So, we can replace this with -

She FEELS herself FALLING [FOR HIM] AND

He FEELS himself FALLING FOR HER

We can’t just suddenly replace Jon’s [that happening] with “her falling for him” - You get “He feels [her falling for him] for her.” Nope. Doesn’t make sense. The [That happening] has to be the same in both parts of Benioff’s sentence otherwise it doesn’t make any sense.

And the [that happening] is Jon and Dany falling in love. So gtf outta here with that bullshit.

....

But likely, the antis will still swear up and down it’s all fake. HBO sent the Writer’s Guild fake scripts because they knew the public could access them and didn’t want people to know the truth or they sent them fake scripts knowing some geeks would go read them and perpetuate the lie that Jon actually loves Dany so that the surprise of Jonsa will be EVEN BETTER BECAUSE IT WASN’T EVEN IN THE SCRIPTS, etc. etc.

I mean, ship whatever the fuck you want. You wanna ship Jon and Sansa, fucking ship Jon and Sansa. You wanna hate Daenerys? Hate Daenerys. But don’t act all surprised or offended when we call you out on your bullshit when you flat out deny canon. We LITERALLY have the fucking receipts.

#ANTI JONSA #ANTI POLITICAL JON #ANTI UNDERCOVER JON #JONERYS IS CANON #GET OVER IT

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