#wind section

[dahliaduvide]

Spitfire Audio LABS: Micah's Choir VST Plugin

[yamnbananas]

Gimme some Flute

[sssleepylizard]

Them: This is the Wave Field Synthesis Studio. This advanced, cutting edge and expensive tech makes it possible to make it sound like a sound is originating anywhere in this room and you can make it travel around, speed it up (watch out for the Doppler Effect!) etc etc...use this wisely for your artistic development.

Me: hmmmm the potential for advancing the avant-garde of fart-pranks is UNFATHOMABLE!!!!!!

[ackee]

me tryna butter up a professor so they wont make attendance mandatory

[salovie]

Your face hides in waves,

dark gold, wind-combed, far-streaming.

I catch your grin glint

behind the strands in the gale—

a gift from your realm to mine.

[communistkenobi]

As a child I thought twilight princess was the best zelda and then as an adult I played it in 2018 and thought it was actually pretty mid and now I’m playing it again and im back to it being pretty good

[icewindandboringhorror]

sneeping with his legs up over his head for some reason... weird boye

[mantisgodiveblog]

(Part 22 is here)

Though we doubt that this will be the end of formatting issues, knowing when they'll begin will give us a solid start. Considering the achievements in this game, the fact that we're on act 2 of 6, the fact that we know someone who's also playing the game right now, and... everything else, we sincerely doubt that this will be the end of the game, and thus, we have no need to rush that banana peel death after this - we can, instead, simply observe the knock-on effects of giving that bow to Mirabelle. Once we've finished with Dormont, of course.

Perhaps fittingly, this post begins with Loop.

We have thought long and hard about the Loop Activities, after the grievous accusations of kinning that occurred a few days ago. Through our musings, we have come to a conclusion. We are not a reflection of Loop, not are we a "Loop kin", or similar statements. We simply bud off the same branch - reflections of the same image of irreverent glamor, the same flavor of "godlike and uncaring of the rabble", the same sort of, as they say, Hot Girl Shit. That said, we are better at it, Loop wishes that they were us, we're hotter than them, also.

In a turn of events that we're certain will surprise no one, we still dislike them. Their lovely suggestion of applying euthanasia via Tear to get out of a dead end has done nothing to endear them to us! They have new dialogue, though, and that means we're coming over to harass our dear Dandelion until they offer us some decent chatter. The amount of excessively infuriating habits packed into them is almost impressive! It's making us better as a person by being able to observe all of the ways in which they fucking suck! We would love to pin them to the wall like an insect.

Thank you for the lovely suggestion, Starlight, but we actually aren't very interested in killing ourself in the starting town so that we can sacrifice our memories to move forward! We do enough memory loss in real life, thank you. We'll die when we die! Preferably, in a manner that doesn't involve you.

[skinks]

The English - 1.02

[greenhorn-art]

Castles in the Sky by Shadaras @shadaras

Fandom: 全职高手 | The King's Avatar

Rating: General Audiences

Category: Gen

Relationships: Chu Yunxiu/Ye Xiu

Words: 36 613

Here are two truths and a lie: Chu Yunxiu is Misty Rain’s captain. Chu Yunxiu is dating Ye Qiu. Chu Yunxiu is happy to have the Shu twins on her team. Of course, a lie can become true if you believe in it enough… (A Chu Yunxiu character study.)

About the book:

FONTS: Alegreya [Google Fonts], Raleway [Google Fonts], Catchy Mager [purchased from MyFonts], Segoe UI Emoji

IMAGES: Clouds from Rawpixel (ID: 9581058); Misty Rain logo from The King's Avatar Wiki (stretched slightly horizontally and traced)

MATERIALS: Domtar Earthchoice multipurpose copy paper, cream, 11"x17" cut in half to form short-grained letter size paper; Recollections' Gilded Ink paper pad; Cialux bookcloth, black; heat transfer foil, gold; 2mm binder board; waxed linen thread, 30/3 size; wheat paste (this time I used 1:4 flour to water ratio, and heated until conditioner-like consistency. An improvement over last attempt.)

PROGRAMS USED: typeset in LibreOffice Writer; title page mocked-up in Procreate then designed in GIMP; imposed with Renegade's Community Imposer.

I spied this fic towards the top of the kudos and kept it in the back of my mind while trawling for more HanYe fics. Thought, well it's gotta be there for a reason so should be good! ooh look aroace queerplatonic relationship 👀👀 Definitely bumping up to top of Read Next!

The amazing thing I've found about The King's Avatar is that the CP possibilities are endless! The characters are both friends and rivals, there's respect and history and it all mixes and clashes creating more possibilities and chemistries than I've ever seen in a fandom before. The fact that AllYe is so popular (and not just in an NSFW way) is testament to it, and also, in part, what drew me to this fic. Asexual representation is scant, aromantic even more so — especially in fandom (in my experience of it at least).

If I were to add a tag to describe Castles in the Sky it would be 'heartwarming'. Shadaras' writing and characterization is wonderful, and I really enjoyed the both the story and the aroace representation. They took a character with relatively little content (in comparison to others in fandom. I have not read the source material) and gave her a voice, dreams, and made me really care about her. I was touched, and after finishing it I jumped to my laptop and set about turning it into a physical book.

So, onto the details.

The thing that stuck out and stayed with me the most about the story was the aroace aspect (Shadaras fed my smol aroace heart so well), so that's what I focused on design-wise.

The title page features a large black ring, referencing the black ring worn usually on the middle finger of the right hand as a symbol of asexuality. The colours of the asexual pride flag are also represented: the text is purple; the clouds colour the page in shades of white and grey; and the ring is black. For the endpapers/cover backing I chose paper that mixes green, purple, and blue: green for the aromantic pride flag; purple for the ace. I also found the green-blue mix of colours to be rather fitting, inspired by the description of Misty Rain's HQ with the "cool blues and greens of Misty Rain's walls" (chapter 5: Transformations). While I personally find CYX's relationship with YX significant, her relationship with her team is just as important.

When choosing which cover each endpaper goes on, I thought about how the story begins with CYX and YX's relationship, and about how after it's established we see her team and it's future at the forefront of her mind. Following that line of thought I put the paper with more purple on the front cover (purple for aroace CYX), and the more green-blue paper on the back (Misty Rain's colours).

The process of foiling the cover took me 3 hours (the length of the movie RRR — good movie actually, would recommend. Which is surprising because I usually find Oscar movies rather boring). The foiling was done with a heat pen. Three hours is not the norm: first, I had the foil backwards and foiled my template instead of the cover; then, my power banks kept dying, so I had to take charging breaks, and I also went over everything again just to make sure that I didn't miss a spot; and of course I was also watching a movie while working, so that ate up some time too.

I had initially planned to bind it as a casebound book, but I didn't have enough time to do it (I was about to go on vacation and wanted to read the book in my downtime). Instead, I did a Coptic binding. The covers were pulled from the press and foiled leaving me 5 hours of sleep to spare.

I went simple on the outer covers to contrast the fun paper on the inside of the covers. I used black Cialux bookcloth instead of my green-blue 'petrol' Iris bookcloth for the contrast, and because it picks up the black from the title page. The text foiled onto the cover is a simple sans serif (Raleway, the same as used inside), and the image is Misty Rain's logo from the donghua. (Image came from The King's Avatar Wiki. It was stretched slightly horizontally because it seemed a bit squished compared to other versions seen on Google, and then traced). Using the colourful paper inside was a practical choice: I couldn't get two covers out of one sheet of paper, but one sheet would do the inner covers with some material leftover.

The sewing and construction of the book was done while camping — I'd packed up what I needed and brought it with me: the signatures (folded and punched); the finished covers; thread; a needle; and an awl. As for the actual sewing, it's supposed to be Coptic but don't look too closely. This was the second time I've tried Coptic stitching and I didn't have any instructions with me. (My first Coptic binding was a thin 2-signature notebook I did a few weeks ago. It was for taking notes at the event I was at, Pennsic War 50).

Book is primarily set in Alegreya. It's currently my favourite body font, and has a matching sans serif family. The fonts used in the title page are Raleway and Catchy Mager. Raleway is also used for titles, headings, etc. Segoe UI Emoji was used for any emojis that cropped up throughout the text (Pretty sure they're the same emojis as seen while reading on my phone and laptop). Catchy Mager was purchased from MyFont. (The first and only font I have ever bought, but I saw it used in a fic's title art and fell in love.)

Lastly, onto The Comedy of Errors, or: When-You-Finally-See-All-the-Typos-and-Mistakes-Once-You're-Done-and-Can-Only-Laugh-While-You-Cry-Inside.

Appendix's footer says 'Epilogue', so I must have missed something with the paragraph style for the Appendix heading.

Forgot about using Segoe UI Emoji font and did not include it in the About the Book.

Missed fixing the archive info for gnomen in the Author's Notes — the copy/paste of metadata into Notebook to remove formatting also removed the commas and spaces between tags.

Because I hadn't planned cover materials/design before printing, there isn't a section for that in the About the Book. Also the reason why the artwork on the cover is not credited in it, as I had not planned to use it.

[dahliaduvide]

Spitfire Audio Labs Foghorn

https://labs.spitfireaudio.com/foghorn

Creepier than just a foghorn...

[danishsweetheartmp3]

sometimes i forget how good the lyrics for nytw hadestown were and then i listen to nytw epic iii and broadway epic iii back to back

like come on…

[whos-hotter-jjba]

[protect-namine]

do you think we'll uncover the story behind the first picture before we do the second

[tired-reader-writer]

Pale light descends from a cloudy sky, almost warm against a monochrome world rousing back into colour.

And the air smells like the earth.

“Oh faraway on a mountain side...”

Mountains. North.

Areyan's home.

They're riding north through petal freckled fields and dew-laden grass.

It's been a while, Merlaine supposes. A few years stuck in the capital's court could drive anyone mad. He didn't know what Areyan saw in that bastard of a Shah, enough to stick by his side and help him rule, and honestly speaking he still doesn't know even now.

“...we'll go to our tent and spend the night.”

Areyan's letters to him were full of frustrations and homesickness, stupid nobles being stupid nobles, him running around untangling their messes, and complaints of the hot weather.

Areyan did not enjoy hot weather.

He took great joy in making fun of the fools, at least. Giving them stupid nicknames and viciously tearing apart the stupid-ass ideas these fools come up with.

Can you believe? one particular letter read, He was going on and on about garden sizes. Garden sizes! As if it has anything to do with the repair projects. It's not even produce gardens he was talking about, oh no. I swear, Merlaine. I swear my intelligence was deteriorating with each passing moment.

Like he said, idiot nobles with stupid-ass ideas.

He wonders why Areyan stayed at all, even if he has to admit the pigeon made good changes. Things were... getting better, ever since the country was restored.

Still.

It made him fucking miserable.

Fucking Shah took too long to let him go.

Just as Merlaine pulls a face at the thought of the bastard, Areyan's horse gallops onwards, full of force, hoofbeats accenting his joyful singing.

Yazata's sake, how does he have so much energy so early?

“The moon shines with its watchful eyes—”

Well, he looks happy, at least. Happier than Merlaine imagines him looking at court. His eyes glimmer with the brightening sky as he glances back at Merlaine, as if daring him to keep up.

“—and from a tree branch a white bird cries!”

And Merlaine has never been one to back down from a challenge.

Puffs of breath emerge in the still-cool air, their hooves sending dewdrops flying off the blades of grass.

His smile matches ones he wore back in the Zott clan village. A sharp smile, wide and free, so unlike the practiced diplomatic smile Merlaine's seen him wear before.

He likes this one better, so much better, it reflects the menace they both know he is in truth.

It doesn't take long for him to catch up and catch the carefree wrist that's not holding the reins. Then and only then they slow to an easy halt, laughter bubbling from Areyan's throat.

“Fakta*,” he grumbles. “Why'd you have to run off like that?”

“No reason in particular,” Areyan replies cheekily. Little shit. “Nothing's the matter at all.”

The pigeon grabs Merlaine's wrist right back, gripping it with a gentle sort of firmness.

Now what.

“Like hell nothing is.”

“It's true.”

“What is?” He quirks an eyebrow. “That you're airheaded enough to do it?”

Areyan gasps, all fake and dramatic. “How rude! Where lies your sense of whimsy?”

“Ick.” Ignoring the pigeon's offended noises he instead says, “Just come and spit it out. You have something to say, don't you?”

Areyan stills for a short moment, then his face morphs into a fond smile, a much softer one than the one he had mere moments ago.

“You know me so well.”

“Course I do. What do you take me for?”

“I don't know, a grouch?”

“Just hurry up and say it!”

Areyan's hand finds his, and he almost jolts on the saddle.

A steady hand, precise and rough.

The hand that wrote all those letters. The hand that heals. The hand that made all those tiny little trinkets.

Hands that have seen hard work.

“Merlaine,” he says, somehow light and serious at the same time. “Do you love me?”

His breath catches in his throat, and it's a miracle he doesn't blurt out “what” like a total dumbass.

Of all the things he was expecting Areyan to say, this was not one of them.

In hindsight, maybe he should've seen this coming.

He doesn't remember when that happened, to speak the truth— just that it did. They'd been friends for six years, almost seven, and...

That doesn't really matter.

What matters is that he does.

“Yes, I do,” he answers firmly, looking at the dove right in the eyes.

There's no need to cushion the impact, to hide.

Why would there be?

A blush blooms on Areyan's face, and oh ain't that a look— and his smile shifts again.

He doesn't know what kind of smile this is, but he does know that he likes it.

“Is that so?”

“Yeah.”

“I love you, too.”

“Good.”

“Good?” He laughs. “Is that all you have to say?”

His own cheeks begin to heat up. Damn it. “Yeah. That's all.”

Areyan leans closer, until their foreheads almost touch, a mischievous glint in those midnight eyes. “Is that really all?”

And.

Well.

If they kissed, then...

That's just the natural outcome, ain't it?

*oh god I forgot to type this in at first but it's an older Persian word? Apparently it means a particular type of dove, the Eurasian collared dove? And since Arslan's (Areyan here) nicknames include “little bird” and “little dove” it's a play on those nicknames. Merlaine also just calls him “pigeon”.

[wordswhisperinthedark]

I'm loving the fact that (so far) the WIND BREAKER anime is basically adapting the manga 1:1